Here's How ::: Ireland's Political, Social and Current Affairs Podcast

Cormac Lucey is an economics columnist at Sunday Times (Ireland), and lecturer in finance, at the Irish Management Institute, Chartered Accountants Ireland and Trinity College Dublin. *** And we're back! Sorry about the unannounced little hiatus for the podcast. I'll tell you a bit more about it, but first just to say I'm lining up […]

Mathew Creighton is associate professor of sociology at UCD. ***** I've been on a low-information diet. I suppose I'm someone who is generally pretty well-informed but sometimes that can get a bit too much, so a few months ago I just tuned out, deleted all my news apps, Twitter – while it still had the […]

Andrew Wright is a fourth generation dairy farmer near Omagh in Co Tyrone, with a big following on Tiktok. We talked about this video he published. ***** In the world of what used to be called PR, these days they call themselves other things, information management or whatever. PR has PR'd itself. In the world […]

David Maddox is the political editor of Express Online. ***** Kevin and myself always appreciate feedback from listeners, we try to reply when we can, but Aengus Ryan send in a sound file, which is great cos I can include it in the podcast. I think this is an important question, and I think that […]

Pádraig Mac Lochlainn is Sinn Féin's chief whip. *****

Mario Rosenstock is a comedian and impressionist, and creator of TodayFM's Gift Grub. ***** Here's something about the Chinese economy. China's ‘investment' in real estate makes Ireland's property obsession seem breezy and carefree. Just before our crash, 12 per cent of our economy was house-building. Even if Chinese GDP figures are true, then their reliance […]

Ben Habib is one of the deputy leaders of Reform UK, the new name for The Brexit Party founded by Nigel Farage. I misspoke during the interview, I wrongly said that Reginald Dyer, the butcher of Amritsar, was Jewish. I should have said that Edwin Montagu, the Liberal MP and Secretary for India, who did […]

Aubrey McCarthy is the founder and chairman of Tiglin, a charity that provides services to homeless people. ***** I listen to podcasts quite a bit in arrears. I'm not too worried about being current, I suppose, and I was just listening to a David McWilliams podcast from August, he was talking about the banks, not […]

James Ker-Lindsay is Visiting Professor at the London School of Economics. His research focuses on conflict, peace and security in South East Europe (Western Balkans, Greece, Turkey and Cyprus), European Union enlargement, and secession and recognition in international politics. ***** Donald Trump is going to jail. That's a whole big story in itself, the reason why Donald […]

Janie Lazar is the chair of End of Life Ireland. ***** Some people have said some things about my level of political insight, thanks to them, even if I don'treally think it's that impressive most of the time. Actually, whatever level of insight that I do have, Ithink is just down to two habits. One […]

Josie Appleton is the director of the Manifesto Club. ***** You might think that you're not familiar with the CE symbol, but you probably are, I'm sure you've seen it thousands of times. I can't show you a picture of it in audio format, but the symbol is two semi-circles, the first one making a […]

Pauline O'Reilly is the Green Party spokesperson on Education and Higher Education and Senator and the cathaoirleach of the Green Party. ***** I heard Mark O'Halloran on an old episode the Mario Rosenstock Podcast recently, he talked very articulately about how the housing crisis affects him, how he as a man in his 50s has […]

Repeats on podcasts don't always make a lot of sense, but if you are subscribed, you'll know that I put up a podcast from 2019 into the feed again last week; the podcast was an investigation into RTÉ and their relationship with the AA which supplied them with AA Roadwatch, the erstwhile traffic news segments. […]

I think that it's about time to hear this edition of the podcast from 2019 again. Dr Michael Foley is professor emeritus at the school of media at TU Dublin – formerly DIT – also a member of the NUJ's Ethics Council, and has been invited by the International federation of Journalists and UNESCO to […]

Uki Goñi is a historian, journalist and author who has lived in the United States, Ireland, and Argentina. ***** Sometimes it helps to draw a parallel between two events in the news, but two big recent stories – in Ireland, the scandal of RTÉ lying about Ryan Tubridy's salary, and internationally the over-before-it-began apparent coup […]

James Ker-Lindsay is Visiting Professor at the London School of Economics. His research focuses on conflict, peace and security in South East Europe (Western Balkans, Greece, Turkey and Cyprus), European Union enlargement, and secession and recognition in international politics. He has created many Youtube videos explaining his subject. ***** The Financial Times recently made a […]

Freda Wallace is the cohost of the Gender Nebulous podcast. Statistics of the sharp rise in the number of referrals to the Tavistock clinic, and their age distribution are here, and here. False claims that puberty blockers, given to children to delay typical-age puberty are 'completely reversable' are incredibly common, and have been made by the taxpayer-funded […]

Freda Wallace is the cohost of the Gender Nebulous podcast. ***** I want to comment on a rant that was previously posted on this podcast. The rant in question was posted with episode 120 Levelling the Field and the topic was Minimum Unit Pricing for Alcohol or MUP. MUP, long-time listeners may recall, prohibits the […]

Graham Linehan, now back on twitter, is the creator of numerous famous TV shows including Father Ted. *****

Annabel Fenwick Elliott is a British freelance journalist who previously worked for the Daily Telegraph and the Daily Mail. ***** It might have been Tomorrow's World, that science programme from the BBC from my dim and distant childhood, where they demonstrated an early chatbot, although I think it wasn't called that. You typed in some […]

Dan McClellan is a public scholar of the Bible and religion and author of the book YHWH's Divine Images: A Cognitive Approach. ***** I don't much talk about Jordan Peterson, I don't think that he is as interesting a character as the internet makes out, certainly not as interesting as he thinks he is himself. […]

Graham Neary is a financial commentator who has been a fund manager and analyst in the London financial markets. ***** The transport minister, Eamon Ryan who is also leader of the Green Party, it has been announced will set up an inter-departmental group to make sure the transport sector meets its emissions reduction targets. Related […]

Dafydd Iwan is the former president of Plaid Cymru, the Welsh nationalist party. ***** Bertie Ahern, we are told, had been readmitted, to Fianna Fáil. It might be better to use the term rehabilitated. Fianna Fáil activists gave him a standing ovation at an event recently, it was to mark the 25th anniversary of the […]

John Rentoul is the chief political commentator for the Independent. ***** I'm pessimistic. I'm not naturally a pessimistic person, but I'm pessimistic. Maybe I'm getting older, maybe I'm entering the ‘the whole world is going to hell' phase of my life, maybe I'm right to be pessimistic, maybe I'm not paying attention to the right […]

Jesse Spafford is a research fellow at Trinity College Dublin working on the project REAL - Rights and Egalitarianism. His research is focused on ethics and political philosophy with particular attention paid to debates between libertarians, socialists, and anarchists over the moral status of the market and the state. ***** I was talking to someone […]

Brooks Newmark was a British Conservative Party MP for the constituency of Braintree and is now a PhD candidate at the University of Oxford. ***** I've got a proposal for tax reform. The idea is to make tax easier and simpler to understand, simpler for the government to collect, thereby lower costs which would lower […]

Brendan is the Labour Party TD for Wexford, and former party leader. ***** So, we're talking about a war. We're talking about a war where a huge, nuclear-armed superpower, attacks a territory to its south that this formerly-communist superpower views not as a real country, it views but as an integral part of its own […]

Eoin Ó Murchú was the political editor for Raidió na Gaeltachta. *****

Aoife Gallagher is a research analyst for the Institute for Strategic Dialogue and author.

Aoife Gallagher is a research analyst for the Institute for Strategic Dialogue and author. *****

Kellie Armstrong an Alliance party MLA for the Strangford constituency. ***** I saw a load of comments from commentators online, from talking heads on radio and TV, from people on Twitter, that the mobilisation ordered by Putin last week to try to shore up his invasion of Ukraine was stupid. It was stupid to try […]

It's Q&A time! Thank you to everyone who sent in a question!

Joel Keys is a Belfast Loyalist activist and prolific tweeter. ***** I discovered a big discrepancy. Well, I didn't so much discover it as notice it. And it isn't really isn't a big discrepancy, it is an enormous discrepancy. A gigantic discrepancy. A sort of a so-big-you-could-see-it-from-space. discrepancy This is the discrepancy. Have a look […]

Marc Coleman is a business consultant, former broadcaster and journalist. He is currently working on a book on the persistence of western democracy. ***** ‘Magical thinking' is a great phrase that I learnt years ago, it's a concept that's useful to understand someone's thought processes, maybe even your own. If you know what it is, […]

Jessica Berlin is a commentator at Deutsche Welle News, and she has worked for 15 years working with in security policy, transatlantic affairs, sustainable business and technology, and aid industry reform across Africa, Asia, Europe, the Middle East, and North America. She founded the Berlin-based strategy consultancy CoStruct, she holds an MSc in Political Economy of Emerging […]

Professor Julian Nida-Rümelin is is a Professor of Philosophy and Political Theory at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich. He was the State Minister for Culture of the Federal Republic of Germany under Gerhard Schröder. Professor Nida-Rümelin, along with dozens of other prominent Germans signed a letter in Die Zeit, a leading German newspaper, about the […]

Seán Keyes is the finance correspondent for the Currency, a subscription news website. ***** I spoke to a Sinn Féin supporter in the years after the Good Friday Belfast agreement, I think it was during one of the interminable negotiations trying to get DUP to participate and have the institutions up and running, and she […]

Ellie O'Byrne is co-editor of Tripe and Drisheen, a Cork-based local news substack, and we discussed a recent article of hers. ***** In talking to Ellie, I mentioned a tweet from Cllr Fiona Ryan of People Before Profit, who claimed that there are 25,000 'Airbnb vacancies' in Ireland. I used the website InsideAirbnb.com to show […]

Derek Mooney presents Mooney on Politics. Give it a listen.

Frank Armstrong is the editor of the magazine called Cassandra Voices. ***** I got a lot of the ideas for this discussion from an article by Yuriy Gorodnichenko on Berkeley Blog.

Reinhard Bütikofer is the senior member of German Green Party delegation to the European Parliament. *****

Sarah Hurst is a journalist who has been reporting on Russia for thirty years - her interview starts at 15:00. ***** Sharon Keogan is an independent member of Seanad Éireann, she's one of those independent politicians who discovered her deeply-held belief in independent politics, just after she discovered that she had failed to get a […] The post Here's How 134 – Inside Russia appeared first on Here's How.

Michael Doherty is the PRO of the Mica Action Group. ***** I was talking to Billy Kelleher in the last podcast about Ukraine, and the west's reaction, and in particular the attitude of MEPs Clare Daly and Mick Wallace. Naomi O'Leary started and epic Twitter discussion over Easter about the contrasting attitude of Wallace and […] The post Here's How 133 – Broken Homes appeared first on Here's How.

Billy Kelleher was Fianna Fáíl's only MEP from being elected in 2019 for the South constituency until he was joined from the subs bench by Barry Andrews. He previously he served as a senator since 1993, and as a TD since 1997, including as and served as a minister of state from 2007 to 2011. […] The post Here's How 132 – Ireland and War appeared first on Here's How.

Ewan Mackenna is a sports journalist who was written five books on sports. Recently, he has been blogging and tweeting about the public health response to the COVID-19 pandemic. ***** The post Here's How 131 – Who Decides appeared first on Here's How.

John McGuirk is the editor of Gript.ie There is no doubt about the extent of the housing problem in Ireland, certainly not if you've been listening to this podcast, I've been banging on about it for longer than I, probably longer than you, care for. And if you've been listening, you'll know that I'm a […] The post Here's How 130 – An Injection of Sanity appeared first on Here's How.

Moore Holmes is a Loyalist and a member of the advocacy group Let's talk Loyalism. ***** You probably think that you've never heard of the WSM, the Workers Solidarity Movement, but you probably have heard of them, even though you don't remember it; most people don't pay much attention when they are offered a leaflet […] The post Here's How 129 – Protocol Problems appeared first on Here's How.

Inspector Peter Woods is an inspector at the Dublin Roads Policing Division of An Garda Síochana and Seán O'Kelly is the cofounder of Access for All Ireland. ***** In the last podcast I talked to Professor Norman Fenton the professor of Risk Information Management at Queen Mary University of London; he takes a position that […] The post Here's How 128 – Access Denied appeared first on Here's How.

Professor Norman Fenton is a professor of Risk Information Management at Queen Mary University of London. I want to clarify a couple of things that Norman said there. First off, Klaus Schwab is the founder of the World Economic Forum, this is basically an annual event where the captains of politics and business get together […] The post Here's How 127 – Build Back Better appeared first on Here's How.

Dr Geraldine Simmie Mooney is a senior lecturer in education at the University of Limerick and director of EPI STEM, the National Centre for STEM Education. ***** One thing that, I thought, the Green Party had that left wing parties didn't, was an understanding of how taxes could be used to modify behaviour. The Greens […] The post Here's How 126 – Educational Values appeared first on Here's How.

Dr Karen Keaveney is Head of Subject for Rural Development, and an Assistant Professor in the School of Agriculture and Food Science, University College Dublin. ***** A short update on the last podcast about the conflicts of interest and poor academic and ethical standards at the Active Consent Unit in NUI Galway - we will […] The post Here's How 125 – We Need to Talk About Rural Ireland appeared first on Here's How.