Bantercast

This week, it’s all about the demon drink. On Easter Monday last, we took part in the nationwide Criunniu Na Casca event with a series of Banters in Dublin Castle. Here, we’re joined by Tara Flynn (actress, comedian and writer), Dave Lordan (writer, poet and dramatist) and Derek O’Connor (RTE.ie Culture editor) to talk about the part which drink plays in Irish culture, what the depiction of alcohol tell is about ourselves and if the relationship between drink and the arts inform and influence a dependency culture when it comes to sponsorship and funding.

As part of the nationwide Criunniu Na Casca event, we spoke to the one and only Fachtna O Ceallaigh, one of the few no-nonsense, straight shooting managers left in the game who still has loads to say and do. There’s lots to dig into here from this encounter in Dublin Castle, from his days writing about music for The Evening Press to managing acts like Clannad, the Boomtown Rats, Bananarama, the Bothy Band, Donal Lunny, Morrissey (for seven eventful weeks), Eamon, Ricky Gervais (when he was in Seona Dancing), Dread Broadcasting Corporation and, currently, Hare Squead.

Is there for a future for the critics? That was the topic for discussion at one of the Banters in Dublin Castle as part of the recent nationwide Criunniu Na Casca event. Cristín Leach (art critic, Sunday Times Ireland), Ian Maleney (writer and critic for The Wire, The Quietus, The Irish Times and Fallow Media), Graham McLaren (director of the Abbey Theatre) and Nadine O’Regan (arts editor, Sunday Business Post) joined us to talk about the role of the critic in 2017, to assess their importance at a time when everyone’s a critic and to muse if arts and culture organisations will miss the critic when he or she leaves their free seat for the last time.

Over the summer, we’ve been doing a monthly residency at the Bullitt Hotel in Belfast and it produced a fascinating discussion on the future of work. We were joined on the night by Adrienne Hanna from Right Revenue, Kevin Curran, Professor of Cyber Security at the University Of Ulster, and Philip Brady from Citibank to talk about how groundbreaking developments in technology and artificial intelligence will mean many changes for workplaces in the years and decades to come. Are any our jobs safe from the robots? Indeed, will Banter in 2027 just feature a bunch of robots having a chat about pesky humans? The sound quality on the podcast you’re about to hear may well have been better had it been a robot rather than me in charge of things so apologies for this.

This week, we’re delighted to say hello to Olan O’Brien from All City Records. Olan was a Banter guest in our very early days and he was great value for the interview, but we never recorded that one so it was fantastic to make amends for that at the Shore Shots Festival in The Model in Sligo a few weeks ago. A great conservation about running a record shop, operating a record label, the state of hip-hop today and various other matters.

There was a full house at the Smock Alley Theatre in Dublin when we put on this discussion about media in an age of fake news as part of the International Literature Festival Dublin. We were joined by Kevin Donnellan (UK editor, Storyful), Lois Kapila (co-founder and managing editor, Dublin Inquirer), Jane Suiter (School of Communications DCU and Director of the Institute for Future Media and Journalism) and Cathal McMahon (Irish Independent) to discuss misinformation on social platforms, fact-checking practices, the journalistic compromises made in the name of clickbait and the problems which occur when readers want to believe the fake news that they see. It was, as you are about to hear, a hell of a discussion.

Seeing as we’ll be back at The Big Grill festival later this summer, here’s one from last year’s adventures with the meat eaters and BBQ fiends in Dublin 4. Neil Rankin is the chef, cookbook writer and restaurant dude behind a host of great joints including Smokehouse, Temper, Pitt Cue, Bad Egg and many more. He joined us to talk about his career, from early days as a sound engineer for various bands to his current run celebrated chef and restaurant runner.

The Journal’s Aoife Barry, writer and podcaster Ellen Tannam, DJ and writer Conor Behan and senior clinical psychologist Mark Smyth joined us at Banter recently for an enthralling conversation about online behaviour. The question for our panel was just why negative comments, offensive remarks and downright nasty and abusive reactions have become the norm in our social media timelines. Our four panelists came up with some great theories and ideas about why this is so - and what can be done to change this state of affairs.

Here’s another one from our trip to The Beatyard in Dun Laoghaire last summer, a festival we’ll be revisiting in August. Prepare for Danny Wang talking life and music past, present and future in what was one of the best conversations we’ve ever had at Banter.

Seeing as we’ll be back at The Beatyard festival later this summer, here’s one from last year’s adventures by the sea in Dun Laoghaire. It’s always great to have photographers in the mix at Banter because great snappers always have great tales to tell when they put the camera down. We were joined by storied London hip-hop photographer Eddie Otchere, a man with a who’s who portfolio of hip-hop and urban music culture kingpins and queenpins to his credit and lots to say about his work.

It was a huge pleasure to welcome the mighty Alan Simms to Banter at the Shore Shots surf festival in The Model in Sligo the other month. Alan is the founder of Shine, the Belfast superclub which now takes in venues and festivals in the city, as well as venues in Dublin. This was a great conversation, starting off in Belfast of the 1980s and 1990s and leading to the city and scene of today with some fantastic yarns along the way.

For the last few years, we’ve been hugely impressed as the Foodcloud social enterprise has made great strides in helping supermarkets, producers and famers redistribute surplus food to charities. It was a great pleasure then to welcome Foodcloud co-founder Aoibheann O’Brien to the Shore Shots surf festival in The Model in Sligo the other month to hear more about this project and what their future plans are.

On Easter Monday last, we took part in the nationwide Cruinniú na Cásca event with a series of Banters in The Printworks in Dublin Castle, including this discussion on the great GAA novel. We’ve seen reams of factual books on the sports but, apart from the odd reference to togging out for a match or heading to a training session or using the parish pitch as a backdrop, Gaelic games rarely turn up in fiction, which is odd given the place which the games have in our national culture. Here, our senior hurling panel of Michael Moynihan from The Irish Examiner, writer Eimear Ryan, novelist and Morning Ireland presenter Rachael English and chief sportswriter with the Daily Star Kieran Cunningham consider why this is so - and dream up just what the great GAA novel might read like.

There are some guests we’re prepared to wait around for and we’ve been trying to get Dorothy Cross to Banter for four and a half years. The dates and schedules and stars finally aligned and the brilliant, remarkable and forthright Cork-born artist joined us at the Shore Shots surf festival in The Model in Sligo the other month. It was, as you will hear, an interview well worth waiting for.

This week, we welcome one of the most interesting politicians around to Banter. Stephen Donnelly may have billed himself as the accidental politician back when he started out in politics in 2011, but that was then and things are much different now. He joined us at Banter to speak about his life before politics, his time as an independent TD, his role with the Social Democrats, including some very candid observations about the party, and his move earlier this year to Fianna Fail.

This was one of our favourite Banter panels of recent times because of the amount of good sense on show. It's a deep dive into the art, business, blood, sweat, tears and occasional cheers of running a restaurant in Ireland. On this occasion, we were joined by two people who certainly know all about that, namely Jess Murphy from Kai in Galway and John Farrell, the mastermind behind Dillingers, The Butchers Grill, Super Miss Sue, Luna, 777 and other ventures in Dublin. This may be most rock'n'roll and honest discussion you will hear about what it really takes to run a successful food gaff.

A lively gang joined us in Foxy John's in Dingle for our Bringing It All Back Home panel at Other Voices where Justin Burgess from Bean In Dingle, Shane Finn from WK Fitness and Cormac Begley from Airt spoke about the business of being in business. They addressed a lot of issues during this sessions, including the obstacles they faced setting up in west Kerry, the advantages of being in business in a town like Dingle during the tourist season and life outside that same busy season.

The talk which drew the biggest crowd to the Banter tent at Bloom in the Phoenix Park last year was probably this encounter with The Happy Pear's David and Stephen Flynn. It was the second time that we spoke to the Greystones food brothers and, though there were no handstands on this occasion, there was plenty of insights about their story to date and their views on food in Ireland in the 21st century.

It was a pleasure to welcome 3FE Coffee's Colin Harmon to the Banter tent at the Bloom Festival in Dublin's Phoenix Park last year. Colin is an experienced Banter hand at this state of the proceedings, but this was the first time we’ve had him for an in-depth one on one conversation about how and why he gave up a career in investment funds to dedicate himself to coffee. His move from high finance to caffeine has been a good one, as outlined in this story of his award-winning coffee, food and café business.

Everyone in Ireland has got an opinion good or bad on what our TDs do for a living, so what is it that gets these people into politics in the first place? We were joined by Kildare North TD and Social Democrats co-founder Catherine Murphy at Other Voices in Dingle, who talked about her political activism, life as a public representative, the Irish parliamentary system, new politics, the Social Democrats and making the headlines.

It's always great when a Banter conversation goes to places you never thought they'd go and we never imagined for a moment that talking to artist Aideen Barry would lead to stories about NASA and vacuum cleaners. It was a pleasure to have Aideen with us at Other Voices in Dingle and she had loads to say about her work to date, her motivations and especially her fantastic Brittlefield retrospective.

Paul Howard is the writer who has brought us the trials, tribulations and triumphs of Ross O'Carroll-Kelly, but it was another dude who was on his mind when he joined us at Other Voices in Dingle. Paul was at Banter to talk about his new book I Read the News Today, Oh Boy about the life and times of Tara Browne, the inspiration behind The Beatles' “A Day In the Life” and, as we found out, a colourful character who lived quite a life.

This week, we're joined by Aoife Kelleher, the film-maker behind such award winning documentaries as One Million Dubliners, Strange Occurrences In A Small Irish Village and Growing Up Gay. She joined us for a fireside chat - yes, there really was a fire behind us - at Foxy Johns in Dingle during our weekend at Other Voices to talk to us about the art of storytelling on screen.

At Banter, we have always a welcome for someone with a great yarn and that certainly applies to Aoibheann McNamara. She’s the Donegal-born firebrand behind Galway restaurant Ard Bia and The Tweed Project who joined us at Foxy John’s in Dingle, Co Kerry during the Other Voices festival to talk about food, fashion and much more besides. It was one of our favourite conversations from the Other Voices series so dig in.

We keep a list of people we’d like to feature at Banter and Paul Kimmage has been on that list for ages so we were delighted to persuade him to join us at the Workman's Club in Dublin in January to talk about his life and work as part of this year’s First Fortnight mental health festival. One of the most influential and widely read sportswriters in the country, Paul talked to us about his life as a professional cyclist, his career as a sportswriter, the mental stresses and strains that occur in sport and sportswriting and the art of the interview.

Recorded during our annual trip to Dingle, Co Kerry for the Other Voices festival, here’s Dublin born neurologist Dr Suzanne O’Sullivan telling some tales from the frontline of psychosomatic illnesses. As she explains in her book It’s All In Your Head, the winner of the Wellcome Book Prize 2016, psychosomatic illness, where your body acts as if it’s sick but there isn’t anything wrong, are common but misunderstood and rarely discussed. Here, she talks about some of the extreme cases she has treated and what may have been behind them.

We were delighted and honoured to welcome legendary sports broadcaster Mícheál Ó Muircheartaigh to Banter for our 150th outing. Recorded in a packed house at The Yacht pub in the heart of Raytown in Dublin during the No Idle Day festival for Young Hearts Run Free, here’s the mighty Mícheál talking about some infamous games, characters and occurrences during his formidable career to date.

It’s time for the the annual Banter review of the year, the show where we look at the news stories of the past 12 months which have had the most traction. As you can imagine, there was lots of mention of Brexit and Donald Trump from our guests Fintan O’Toole from The Irish Times, Elaine Buckley from the Fair Game podcast, Anna Cosgrave from the Repeal campaign and Emmet Condon from Homebeat and Another Love Story, but there was also room in the mix for other stories too, including Robbie Brady’s header against Italy, Leonard Cohen, Axel Foley and much, much more.

It’s time for our review of the year in arts and culture and it’s also the first broadcast from our now annual trip to Other Voices in Dingle, Co. Kerry. Eithne Shortall, the Chief Arts Writer at The Sunday Times - and the author of the soon to be published debut novel Love in Row 27 - joined us by the fire in the back room of Foxy John’s in downtown Dingle to run the rule over the arts and culture highlights and lowlights of 2016. Here’s Eithne on the books, films, music, theatre, TV shows and much more of the last 12 months.

We’ve heard a lot about 1916 this year so it struck us as a good idea to find out what Irish farmers were up to 100 years ago, as things took an unexpected turn that Easter in Dublin. We were joined by Dr Arlene Crampsie from UCD’s School of Geography at the Bloom festival in the Phoenix Park to discuss the state of the land 100 years ago and the difficulties and challenges which Irish farmers faced.

It's the first time we've had an Olympic medal winner at Banter and that was swimmer Allison Wagner who won a silver medal for the United States at the Atlanta 1996 games behind Irish swimmer Michelle Smith. Allison and former Canadian Olympic swimmer Nikki Dryden joined us for a dive into the deep, murkier end of the swimming pool with a look at the current state of the anti-doping movement as we asked why more attention is not being paid to systematic doping schemes in sport.

It was a pleasure to say hello to Michael Shamberg. The producer of Django Unchained, Pulp Fiction, Erin Brockovich, The Big Chill, Contagion, Gattaca, Get Shorty, Garden State and tons more – and currently advisor to BuzzFeed Motion Pictures – talked to us about the state of the movie business in 2016.

Bruce Pavitt will always be associated with the Sub Pop label. He was one of the co-founders of the hugely influential Seattle grunge label in the 1980s and he joined us at Banter in Lisbon to talk about the label's genesis, the rise and rise of Nirvana, record labels today and his involvement with new tech play 8Stem.

Marian Goodell is one of the founding board members of the Burning Man Project and is now the organisation's first CEO. She joined us on the Banter stage to talk about her long and winding road to Burning Man, what keeps her turned on about the event and what comes next for the worldwide community of Burners.

Bill James is probably best known as the influential American baseball writer, historian, and father of sabermetrics but there’s another side to him too and that’s his interest in our cultural obsession with murder and popular crime. Aside from talking about his books Popular Crime and the forthcoming Man From the Train, about an early 20th century serial killer, Bill also talked stats and polling - and dodged a question about Tipperary hurling.

There's a first time for everything and this was Banter's first onstage encounter with a bishop. Paul Tighe is the Navan-born bishop who is part of the Vatican team who put the pope on Twitter and has been a member of various influential Catholic Church councils on communications and culture. He talks about what the church has been doing in the realm of social media and culture and what else it hopes to do in the future.

We began our Portuguese debut with Bradley Tusk the morning after Donald Trump's shock victory in the US presidential election. The political consultant, who worked on Michael Bloomberg's successful run for New York mayor amongst many other campaigns, broke down what went wrong - or right, depending on how you look at it - for the candidates. Bradley also has much to say about his client Uber and his bete-noir, current New York mayor Bill de Blasio.

One of the biggest crowds we’ve had at Banter in ages was the one that showed up to hear Blindboy Boatclub from The Rubberbandits talk about this, that and the other during the Beatyard festival in Dun Laoghaire. Here’s a conversation about art, politics, surreality, Limerick, sex, mental health, hip-hop, fish fingers, religion, fashion and other matters.

For Banter 101, we’ve another legend in the bag and it’s someone that anyone who has lived or worked in Dublin will need no introduction to: say hello to Mattress Mick. We brought the don of bedding to our stage at the Beatyard festival in Dun Laoghaire over the summer and he gave us a masterclass in the art of selling and a deep dive into his own lifestory. He also showed he was a generous soul and gave away a mattress to one lucky person in the audience.

We promised you a legend for our one hundredth Bantercast and we think we’ve delivered. There is only one George Clinton and we’d the privilege to talk to the great man at the Beatyard festival this summer. Here’s George in conversation in a packed room – there’s a lot of whooping and hollering in the background because people couldn’t believe he turned up – about his life on and off the mothership.

This is Bantercast number 99 and the first of four podcasts in a row featuring some colourful legends. We welcomed chef, writer and food business owner Yotam Ottolenghi to the Banter tent at the Ballymaloe Litfest in May for a freewheeling conversation about his life and times - and he’d much to say about taste, lifestyles, his own rise to top and much more besides.

We kick off our autumn/winter series with a fascinating conversation about bees. Erin Tiedeken from the All Ireland Pollinator Plan joined us at Bloom to talk about how one third of Ireland’s bee species are threatened with extinction and the efforts being made by the All-Ireland Pollinator Plan to ensure bees can survive and thrive. Funding for implementation of this plan has been provided by Bord Bía and the Heritage Council.

It’s always good to speak to a legend and they don’t come more legendary than Neneh Cherry. She was in Dublin a few weeks ago to speak to us at the National Gallery of Ireland as part of the MusicTown festival. It’s an enthralling encounter with a diamond interviewee who had much to talk about regarding her life and work.

When it comes to putting on events and festivals, the hardest issue most organisers will have to deal with has to do with funding. As part of EventBrite’s Free: Celebrating Free Events For All exhibition at Teeling’s Whiskey Distillery in Dublin in April, we were joined by Colin Hart (founder and creative director of independent ad agency The Public House), Sam Bishop (manager of Happenings and founder of Street Feast and Granby Park) and Aine O’Mahony (marketing and event management consultant) to talk about the ins and outs of sponsorship.

One of the questions which comes up again and again at different Banter discussions has to do with who sets the news agenda. Be it the general election or Syria, people are curious about why certain stories make the mix, the filters which are used to make those decisions and the stories which don’t make the cut as a result. This Banter discussion at Wigwam in Dublin brought together Susan Daly (editor, The Journal), Richie Oakley (editor, The Times Ireland edition) and Vincent Murphy (editor, Morning Ireland, RTÉ Radio One) to talk about their work, the decisions they make, the factors which inform those decisions and other issues around the editorial process.

One of the most fascinating Banter at Bloom discussions last summer involved lessons in looking and listening. We’re joined here by Niall Hatch from Birdwatch Ireland and Richard Collins from the RTÉ Radio One Mooney Goes Wild team to talk about the huge growth in interest in birdwatching - and they’ve also lots of advice for newcomers to the twitching game.

This week, we’re looking at the business of food and specifically what’s required to keep an Irish food business going in the long run. The Country Choice deli and café opened in Nenagh in 1982 and the Burren Smokehouse business opened in Co Clare in 1989. Many years later in a much different Ireland, both are still in business - and still growing. We were joined at Banter at Bloom by Peter Ward from Country Choice and Birgitta Curtin from Burren Smokehouse to hear from them about the changing environment for an Irish food business.

With more and more villages throughout the country now without a local shop, a campaign is underway to change this and bring back a place to go for the messages. Recorded at Banter at Bloom, Declan Rice from the Kilkenny LEADER Partnership Company talks about what’s involved in putting together a network of community-run shops and cafés in rural Ireland.

This week, it’s all about charities. Recorded at Banter at Bloom in the Phoenix Park in June 2015, we hear from Aidan Stacey (head of fundraising at GOAL), Joan Freeman (founder of Pieta House) and Marian Carroll (CEO of the Ronald McDonald House Charity) about the current lie of the land in the charity sector.

Ahead of our return to Dublin's Phoenix Park in June, we’ll be podcasting some of the highlights from last year’s Banter tent at Bloom in the Park over the next few weeks. Here, we’re joined by Darragh McCullough (RTE’s Ear to the Ground and deputy farming editor Irish Independent), Richard Moeran (chairman Agri Aware) and John Lynskey (Chairman of the IFA National Sheep Committee) to talk about such issues around Irish farming as farm size, price volatility, the ageing population of farmers and farm viability.

Last year at the Bloom festival in the Phoenix Park, we spoke to award winning garden designer, author and broadcaster Fiann Ó Nualláin not once but twice. In the first half of this podcast, we hear from Fiann as he talks about how you can find remedies for ailments and source for beauty treatments in your garden. In the second half, he talks about the gardens he’s put together with transition year students from Ashton School in Cork and Collinstown Park Community College in Clondalkin and we’ll also hear from Collinstown students Luke Rothwell and James Adair.