The Irish Passport

The rebellion of a raggedy band of teachers, nurses and poets sent shock waves around the world and changed Ireland forever. But why does the Easter Rising of 1916 still cause controversy? Naomi and Tim introduce the countess, the grocer’s daughter, the carpenter and the ex-cobbler who all picked up guns on the morning of April 24 1916 and marched out to declare an independent Irish republic. Lead...

A bonus special episode in honour of our national day! We discuss the annual pilgrimage of Irish politicians to the White House that inevitably results in scandal. Tim tells us the surprising origins of the St. Patrick's Day festival and the murky history of the leprechaun mascot. Naomi investigates the global empire behind the viral spread of Irish Pubs from Hong Kong to Panama, but discovers how...

A United Ireland: the idea has been a political force in Irish and British politics for centuries, and it has been given fresh momentum by Brexit. Tim explains how the concept long pre-dates the partition of the island and was once championed by Protestant elites. Naomi visits a public meeting about unification in central Dublin, and asks why it matters to people -- and when they expect it to happ...

It's the grand finale to the first season! Tim and Naomi examine how a standoff over the Irish border in the Brexit negotiations brought ignorance about Ireland among politicians and media to the surface. We review the biggest embarrassing moments on air from the past few weeks, quiz ordinary English people about what they know about Ireland, and give a quick and dirty roundup of the history you n...

Just below the surface of modern Ireland, a parallel world exists with its roots in pre-Christian belief. Irish fairies aren't like Tinkerbell - they're more like a supernatural mafia. So be careful what you say, because as the story goes, they're probably listening. Tim talks to one of Ireland's last seanchaí or story-teller historians, who once managed to get a highway diverted to prevent the fe...

Ireland has one of the strictest abortion laws in Europe. Banned unless the woman's life is in serious danger, it carries a 14-year prison sentence. Rumblings of change are beginning, but some a campaign could open up ugly political fault lines. Why is Ireland like this? Tim and Naomi explore the strange and surprising backstory to Ireland's constitutional abortion ban. Tim hears from a journalist...

Have you heard that the Irish were slaves? If so, you may have been targeted with political propaganda from the American far right. Naomi speaks to actress and writer Azie Dungey about how Irish history is being abused for a political agenda in the United States, while Tim asks two experts in the topic about the truth behind the internet myth. We hear from American journalist Traci White who set o...

Ireland's great famine was the worst peacetime disaster in 19th century Europe. It shaped both Ireland and the world. And it remains such a political bombshell that people still can't agree on what to call it. We explore the hidden history of the mass starvation, from its little-known role in the origins of modern journalism to its surprising link to a Native American tribe. Tim discovers a piece...

Applications for Irish passports surged in the last year, largely from people in Britain and Northern Ireland. Who are the new 'Brexit Irish'? We meet them in this new episode and hear their motivations for claiming their Irish identity. We also speak to the Irish ambassador who found himself in the eye of the storm as applications soared. Tim hits the streets of Galway to investigate what ordinar...

Ireland and Europe: what is Ireland's future in the EU now that its neighbour the United Kingdom is leaving? Is the so-called Irexit at all realistic? We explore Ireland's relationship with the continent now and in the future and unpick why Ireland differs so much from Britain in its history as part of Europe. We speak to Ireland's most, and perhaps only, well-known eurosceptic Ray Bassett, as wel...

Who are Ireland's elites? That question was once easily answered, but not since independence upended the entire social order! In this episode, Naomi visits a castle in Dublin that has been the home of one family for 35 generations -- and finds the current heir still feels he's not accepted as one of Ireland's own. Tim investigates how his own ancestors went from being aristocrats' servants to rebe...

For decades, Ireland was synonymous with Catholic state control - but the last 30 years have seen a new cultural climate take hold in the country, and a furious backlash has broken out against the legacies of the Church's institutional stranglehold. We'll be looking at how the Church became so powerful in the Irish Republic in the first place, and the reasons behind its dramatic fall from grace in...

Why is there a knowledge gap about Ireland in the UK? As journalists scrambled to put together basic facts about Northern Ireland in the wake of the 2017 UK election, the country's blind spot about one of its own constituent nations became painfully evident. The Brexit debate further highlighted that many were unaware of the sovereign independence of the UK's closest neighbour, the Irish Republic....

Irish: a rare and ancient language that is spoken from the streets of Canada to the corridors of power in the European Union. This episode delves into why the language is such a powerful national symbol for Ireland, its fraught history, and how it's still a point of political strife today.

The dramatic UK election result has suddenly made Northern Irish politics more pressing than ever. Are you trying to figure out what the DUP is anyway and what all this means for Brexit? We answer all these questions and more in this special UK election edition of The Irish Passport. It includes a report from a loyalist pipe band event where we asked marchers what they thought of Brexit, and got s...

What will happen to the border between Ireland and Northern Ireland after Brexit? We discuss how Britain has ignored this problem, and speak to ordinary people on the border about their lives and their fears about any hardening of the border. Naomi reports from the border on how Brexit could affect a family of farmers and a man who has to cross the border four times in 10 minutes to get to his nea...