Juvenalia

Painter and Illustrator Tara Anand joins us to talk about Henry Selick and Neil Gaiman’s Coraline which you should go watch immediately if you haven’t because it’s stunning. We talk about the similarities in Irish and Indian ghosts, making small things, mothers, and lots more. This is a good one. You can see Tara’s incredible work at @taraanandart . The Tiger's Tale, illustrated by Tara and writte...

Comedian, screenwriter, and director Becky Cheatle joins us as we take another look at Star Wars! Becky’s experience of them is different since she actually saw the originals in the cinema, an experience cruelly denied to current Star Wars people. We also talk about the time the actual Darth Vader made an instore appearance in a Waterford shopping centre. It’s a good time, you'll like it. Becky is...

Musician Gavin McDermott aka Dashoda joins Alan and Sarah for a big talk about the console that gave us Ocarina Of Time, Mario 64, and Goldeneye, amongst other classics, Nintendo’s N64. We talked about all of them but we found ourselves coming back again and again to Goldeneye. Alan was a Sega child so this was an educational week for him. Sarah is, of course, 1/4 Nintendo so had lots to talk abou...

Comedian and filmmaker Jonathan Victory joins us to talk about Peter Jackson’s Lord Of The Rings trilogy. We cover as much of it as possible: Gollum, Eowyn, Aragorn opening those big doors in The Two Towers, and also Jonathan’s documentary about his trip to the filming locations in New Zealand, A Far Green Country . ( international link ) Jonathan is @VictoryContent . His Scene + Heard show Elemen...

Ok, so we definitely thought we had this scheduled to go up over Christmas but we just came back from our holidays and it turns out we messed up. Sorry. You’re probably still making your way through all the Christmas specials from other podcasts anyway so what’s one more eh? Alan and Sarah have never seen It’s A Wonderful Life. Sarah and Cassie have never seen Die Hard . Alan, Sarah AND Andrea hav...

It’s the winter time do we’ve got some more recommendations for you. Not, I repeat, not Christmas recommendations. You have to follow your own bliss at Christmas. No, instead Alan and Sarah are here to talk about things that feel wintery-but-not-Christmassy to them. Things like Windwaker, Sigur Ros’s (), Mulled Wine and Nigella’s Roast Chicken, Twin Peaks, and Mount Eerie. Extremely un-festive we’...

Podcaster and comedian Roger O’Sullivan joins us for an absolute trip back into 90s early evening weekend telly as we revisit Breaking The Magician’s Code: Magic’s Biggest Secrets Finally Revealed or as everybody actually called it The Masked Magician. We had a blast. Roger is @RogerOSullivan . His co-hosts Unexplained Legends, it’s very good. Alan is @alan_maguire . Juvenalia is his main thing ri...

Rachael Krishna is back! We had such a great time talking to her about Joseph And The Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat last year that we knew we had to bring her back so we could all talk about all of our juvenile theatre experiences. Between us we covered most of 20th century musicals history, from How To Succeed In Business to Grease to adaptations of Animal Farm written by a drama teacher. Rachae...

It's the final episode of BOOvenalia and it's the best one! Producer Cassie and girlfriend Lydia join us to chat about the most wonderful autumnal magical art that is Practical Magic .  Starring Nicole Kidman and Sandra Bullock,   Practical Magic chronicles the lives of witchy sisters Sally and Gillian Owens. Raised by their aunts after their parents' death from a family curse, the siste...

Things are really getting spooky now as Sophie White joins us to talk about one of the most influential horror films of all time, Tobe Hooper’s The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. Alan and Sophie both saw TTCSM at way too young an age so we have a good chat about that and lots of other stuff. If you’ve seen it before then you know that we’re going to be talking about some heavy stuff. If you haven’t the...

t’s mid-October and we’re entering the prime of spooky season so let’s talk about 2001’s Donnie Darko with illustrator Meagan Hyland. If you listen to Juvenalia you probably had a Donnie Darko phase so enjoy! We talk about the vibes, the direction, the depths of our obsession with the film and we take a spirited stab at developing a holistic theory of the ending. It was a joy. Meagan is @meaganhyl...

WooooOOOOOoooooo, it’s the spooky season so we’re going weekly for all of October and we’ll be covering a different Halloween-related film every week. This week, Alan and Andrea are talking about the 1993 cult classic Hocus Pocus! It’s very fun. Alan is @alan_maguire . Juvenalia is his main thing right now. Andrea @AndreaCleary_ . Her podcasts are My Favourite Album With Andrea Cleary and The Nial...

It’s the pre-spooky season and we’ve picked some games, music, tv, and food that pairs perfectly with the interesting leaf season. This is a little bit of a different one for us but we hope you like it! Alan is @alan_maguire . Juvenalia is his main thing right now. Sarah is @griffski . Her books are in all good bookshops. Thank you to Dee McDonnell for our artwork. We have a Patreon! You can get b...

Standup comedian Felix O’Connor joins us to talk about the manga/anime/card game behemoth Yu-Gi-Oh! We had a great time diving into what makes Yu-Gi-Oh! different from the other Japanese cartoons that broke through to Western audiences in the late 90s/early 2000s and some of the idiosyncrasies of localisation in Yu-Gi-Oh! Felix is @FelixirOfLife28 . He hosts the podcast Not Trans Trans Movies and...

Singer-songwriter Carlo Magliocco joins Alan and Andrea to talk about Soundgarden and Audioslave frontman Chris Cornell. We talk about how Cornell was always more then the stereotypical rock frontman that a casual look at his work might lead you to believe, the thought and intentionality of his solo shows, and Carlo tells us about the time he got to meet the man himself. Carlo is @Carlo_Magliocco...

Emer McLysaght, one half of the Oh My God What A Complete Aisling books and our fifth ever guest returns to talk to us about the Adrian Mole series. Emer was obsessed with all of the Adrian Mole books as a youngster, Alan read and loved the first one as a child but then got distracted by Terry Pratchett and never returned, and Andrea read The Secret Diary Of for the first time for this episode so...

The Lighthouse Cinema very kindly asked us to do a live episode as part of their Not Another Teen Season and we said absolutely yes of course we will. Alan and Andrea talked to the programmer at the Lighthouse, Charlene Lydon, about Pretty In Pink and we got into it. We had a long, enjoyable chat about every aspect of the film: the music, the dress, Harry Dean Stanton, Annie Potts, all the importa...

Comedian, Podcaster, and Twitch streamer Ashley Manning joins us to talk about one of the biggest Disney Channel shows of all time, That’s So Raven . We talk about Raven-Symoné’s amazing physical comedy, Anneliese van der Pol’s amazing voice, the Undercover Superstar episode which indirectly led to High School Musical, the show’s willingness to tackle big issues like body image and race head-on in...

Women’s Prize longlisted author Kirsty Capes joins us to talk about the books of Jacqueline Wilson. We focused on three in particular, The Story Of Tracy Beaker, The Illustrated Mum, and Lola Rose but the conversation took in a lot more than that. We talked about Jacqueline Wilson’s fearlessness, how the topics in her books intersected with Kirsty’s life, and about Kirsty’s PhD which was about dep...

DJ and host of Housewives And Me Conor Behan returns to Juvenalia to talk about Scream. We talked about Scream way back in episode 8 but we’ve had a whole Scream Requel since then and we’re all different people now so we thought it was worth a revisit. We talked about brand activations, lens flare, press junket misdirects, the requel, and lots more. This episode came out before it was revealed tha...

Comedian Aoife O’Connor joins us to talk about 2001’s cult classic consumerism satire/teen drama/fake rock biopic Josie and the Pussycats . We talked about the fashion, the Parker Posey, the Alan Cumming, the absolute bangers that make up the Pussycats’s music, a very serious Josie-inspired crime Aoife committed, and lots more. Aoife has been obsessed with this film since they were ten years old s...

Singer of sad bops Eve Belle joins us to talk about her intense teenage feelings about My Chemical Romance, being a Donegal emo, misogyny in music, Gerard Way as a gender role model, and her own approach to the aesthetic side of being a musician. Also, Alan makes a startling confession. Eve is @EveBelleSongs . Her brilliant album In Between Moments is out NOW. Alan is @alan_maguire . Juvenalia is...

Author Josh Winning joins us to talk about Jim Henson and Frank Oz’s most challenging creation, The Dark Crystal . Josh’s novel The Shadow Glass has been described as a love letter to Labyrinth and The Dark Crystal so we had a lot to talk about such as The Dark Crystal ‘s let-the-audience-figure-it-out approach to worldbuilding, the depth of that worldbuilding once you get a handle on it, the mome...

Louise Gaffney of Irish new-wave ambient band Dirty Dreamer joined us to talk about what many people regard as the greatest album of the noughties, Radiohead’s Kid A . We talk about how Kid A sounded in 2000, how it sounds, how it influenced Dirty Dreamer, and we talked about making music that sounds like it’s happening in a specific location. You can find Dirty Dreamer @dirty_dreamer_ . Their deb...

It’s a live show! Bláithín De Burca returned to Juvenalia to talk to Alan and guest co-host Andrea Cleary at the Foolhardy Festival in Waterford!. We had a good long chat about The Strokes, partly about the music and partly about their faces. We talked about the clothes, the mythmaking production choices on Is This It and their first videos, the music they destroyed and the bands that were created...