Podcasts about culture file

1990s teenage trance prodigy and superstar DJ, James Holden on lighting out for the territories of modular synthesizers, spiritual jazz, Moroccan ceremonial music and Live Coding.

Colm Tóibín suggests getting down to zero with Shostakovich's last string quartet; Poet, Karen Solie points out Nathalie Léger's 2012 book, Suite For Barbara Loden,; and Luke Clancy is learning to assemble a soundsystem in the Moroccan outback with the help of director Óliver Laxe's 2025 film, Sira

learn about the French railway system

The Shortwave Orchestra is a collection of experimental musicians who came together to play for the first time in Dublin in April. Following their world premier performance, Culture File convened a panel featuring Orchestra members to talk about the modular synth scene, endangered communities and surviving in the avant garde. (photo: Fergus Kelly)

The Comfort Zone's Colm Tóibín suggests reading a new literary biography by Nicholas Boggs, Baldwin: Alove Story; artist Harold Offed thinks a trip to your local Brazilian foods store would be a solid idea; and Luke Clancy recommends Emily leBarge's art 'n' trauma memoir, Dog Days.

Y'know, Cecil Taylor is way easier to enjoy if you slow it right down, and other insights from composer, musician, and .25 speed YouTube clip enthusiast, claire rousay.

Are you coming for an echtra, or ancient Irish outing to the otherworld, with artist Louis Haugh? Paddy Woodworth is waiting within, the greatest ever photobook of Costa Rican caterpillars in his hands; and Welsh triple harpist Cerys Hafana recounts a harp journey away from everything that is high, washy or angelic.

Why you need to see Truong Minh Quy's film, Viet and Nam, listen to Connie Converse's album, How Sad, How Lonely and read Tove Jansson's Finn Family Moomins. Colm Tóibín, Meghan O'Gieblyn and Luke Clancy have their reasons.

Canadian composer, Thierry Tidrow who features in this year's New Music Dublin festival on the strange history of Claude Vivier, the art of capturing online speech in music, and his attraction to making opera for children.

Legendary jazz vocalist Norma Winstone on learning to understand the voice as an instrument, the genius of bandmate, Kenny Wheeler, and how Drake became her most famous fan. Also, Paddy Woodwth awards Scott Weidensaul's Living on the Wind some cherished space on the Naturalist's Bookshelf.

Composer, improvisor and evangelist for the power of children's music, Ríona Sally Hartman leads a tour of her musical world.

If you enjoyed Orit Gat's essay on Tracey Emin's sort-of-retrospective at Tate Modern (which you can hear in the current edition of Culture File), here is some further conversation between Orit Gat and Luke Clancy, around Emin, Autofiction, Bad Museums, Rose Wiley and Nobel Prize Winners.

The Comfort Zone's Colm Tóibín suggests spending (quite a few) minutes with The Met's latest production of Tristran und Isolde (screening in select Irish cinemas this weekend); artist Rónán Ó Raghallaigh offers Carlo Ginsberg's The Cheese and The Worms; and Luke Clancy counters the two series of Lucia Keskin's sitcom, Things You Should have Done.

Events on Valentia Island around 360 million years ago set in motion an exhibition from artist Bryony Dunne, currently at the Irish Architectural Archive in Dublin.

Sound artist and composer Tarek Atoui, musician and recordist Natalia Beylis, and Oxn drummer, Eleanor Myler probe the act of making a sound, and the art of receiving one. Recorded at IMMA, Kilmainham. Photo: Louise Williams

The Culture File panel explores the place of quiet and loud in the contemporary attention economy, with poet, Paula Meehan and musicians and composers, Siobhán Cleary, John Godfrey, and Christine Tobin. Recorded live at New Music Dublin 2025. (From 260425)

The Culture File panel explores the place of quiet and loud in the contemporary attention economy, with poet, Paula Meehan and musicians and composers, Siobhán Cleary, John Godfrey, and Christine Tobin. Recorded live at New Music Dublin 2025. (From 260425)

How birds and their metaphors move through the work and the lives of novelist, John Banville, art critic, Orit Gat, novelist, Sara Baume, journalist and author Paddy Woodworth. Under consideration are: The Pigeon; The Swift; The Wheatear; and The Crane. But which scribe fancies which wìngéd muse? (First broadcast Dec 24)

An ancient Irish farming tradition that sees the wisdom of leaving some farm land free from the imperatives of production --  ‘The Hare's Corner' -- is celebrated in poetry, story, discussion and music. Paddy Woodworth leads a panel featuring Jane Clarke, Catherine Cleary, Jane Carkill and Colm Mac Con Iomaire.

An ancient Irish farming tradition that sees the wisdom of leaving some farm land free from the imperatives of production --  ‘The Hare's Corner' -- is celebrated in poetry, story, discussion and music. Paddy Woodworth leads a panel featuring Jane Clarke, Catherine Cleary, Jane Carkill and Colm Mac Con Iomaire.

Outlandish Theatre Company's performance event Freedom uses the myth of Antigone to explore the act of speaking about Gaza, about the limits of art and speech. Recorded live at Samuel Beckett Theatre, TCD, Dublin in November 2025.

Outlandish Theatre's latest, Freedom works with the myth of Antigone to focus on the act of speaking about Gaza, about the world in which it exists, and about the limits of art and speech. After the show's Dublin debut, the creative team gathered to explore further for the Culture File Debate.

Hamburg-born composer and pianist, Niklas Paschburg on the shortcomings of perfection and his footstamping solo piano outings.

Luke Clancy and panel make the case for loving some teeming critters of the invertebrate kingdom. Advocating for their favourites are: Rachel McKenna (shieldbugs); Liam Lysaght (wasps); Cassia Gaden Gilmartin (earwigs); and Nessa Darcy (woodlice). Recorded live at National Botanic Gardens, Glasnevin as part of Dublin Book Festival.

Curator, Beulah Ezeugo takes a tour of some of the work she's brought into the big tent of TULCA Festival of Visual Arts 2025, including the immense quilts by artist, Jessica Zamora-Turner. Photo by Chaz Scott

Luke Clancy and panel make the case for loving some teeming critters of the invertebrate kingdom. Advocating for their favourites are: Rachel McKenna (shieldbugs); Liam Lysaght (wasps); Cassia Gaden Gilmartin (earwigs); and Nessa Darcy (woodlice). Recorded live at National Botanic Gardens, Glasnevin as part of Dublin Book Festival.

learn about gardens in Germany

Dennis Harvey and Lars Lovén on the music of a Celtic Utopia in their new documentary, plus Light Moves festival teams up with Palestinian Movement Film Festival, as well as Catherine Young Dance and the Palestinian company El Funoun, for a Palestinian dance solidarity happening.

Musical director of African Gospel Choir Dublin, Adeniyi Allen-Taylor on the ingredients of his music - and his Oba Nlá 2025 concert, showcasing his Afro-beat Orchestra.

The myths and meanings of fire with: Dr Cathy Smith of Leverhulme Centre for Wildfires; ANNEX co-founder Donal Lally; Andrew Scott, Professor of Modern and Ancient Fire Systems, and artist and performer, Rónán Ó Raghallaigh. (First broadcast 291022)

The horticultural turn in contemporary art has a long history, but the urgency with which artists address our patches of green has never been greater. Laura Ní Fhlaibhín, Sara Muthi, Helen Flanagan and Elida Maiques join Luke Clancy to discuss artists and gardens. Recorded live at Mermaid Arts Centre in Bray, County Wicklow.

Culture File goes for full immersion into some extended realities at Immersive Island at Venice Film Festival, and at Ars Electronica Festival in Linz, Austria, meeting the creators of experimental experiences designed to dip users into new worlds, including the Irish team behind Irish dance gameworld, Foolish Flame.

Recorded live at Beta Festival '24, writers and artists Noam Young-rak Son, Joanna Walsh and Leon Butler to help chart recent shifts at the intersection of art, design and AI. (First broadcast 140125)

Recorded live at Beta Festival '24, artists Basil Al-Rawi and Conan McIvor, researcher Dr Autumn Brown, and historian Ciaran Wallace explore how we preserve and reimagine our cultural archives in a world of digital tools. (First broadcast 110125)

learn about Hua Hin

Raina Lampkins-Fielder, the Paris-based curator behind IMMA's current Kith & Kin: The Quilts of Gee's Bend, on a few of her favourite things

The spiritual calling that is running a rave; the sylvan sci fi of Cecilia Danell; unfinished art; and Paddy Woodworth's The Naturalist's Bookshelf.

Sound artist and recordist Kate Carr talks to Culture File about her sonic practice and principles, and the importance of messy urban soundscapes.

Cityscape-appreciating sound artist ,Kate Carr, on her urban practice; Dublin-based musician-composer-carpenter, Zoe Basha on getting into and out of music; and how to play mini-golf in your "fursona" with Berlin's favorite pianist-fox, CoVahr.

For the latest version of his Culchie boy, I Love You exhibition, artist Kian Benson Bailes, has added in some ceramic flutes, with which he finds some tunes, as part of his exploration of traditional Irish culture and storytelling.

Culture File Debate broadcasts live from Eyeries Village Hall, Rachel Andrews is your host with three panelists who will give a broad and unique understanding to the myth of An Cailleach Beara (The Hag of Beara), to give listeners context to this myth ahead of the two hour Ambient Orbit following it..

The frontline of knitting, DIY monuments and macabre collections, and our latest suggestion for books to include on the ideal Naturalist's Bookshelf.

Booker Prize winner Samantha Harvey, co-novelists Helen Macdonald and Sin Blaché; and investigative journalist Andrei Soldatov share their favourite photographs of themselves, and explore how writers navigate self-presentation. Recorded Live at Borris Festival of Writing & Ideas 2025.

Caravaggio is celebrated this summer in Rome with a once-in-a-lifetime meetup of paintings normally living in museums around the world. Colm Toibin, Orit Gat and Luke Clancy went to see that blockbuster in the Barberini and then gathered to imagine what the painter might mean to the 21st century.

Artist, Marianne Keating on her archival voyage into the lives of Irish migrants to the UK; Tadgh O'Sullivan's further encounters with artworks that never were; and harpist, Alannah Thornburgh plays the tunes of the fairy folk.

Rachel Ní Bhraonáin reginites her award-winning dance-theatre take on the mosh and the moshers at Dublin Dance Festival; conductor Gabriel Crouch dives the fathomless depths of Jóhann Jóhannsson's enigmatic music-out-of-time choral work, Drone Mass; and Paddy Woodworth's latest book for the Naturalist's Bookshelf.

Recorded live at New Music Dublin 2025 at the NCH in Dublin, the panel explores how creative practices engage with the quiet space of loud sound, as well as the roles of quiet/loud in the contemporary attention economy, with Paula Meehan, Siobhán Cleary, John Godfrey, and Christine Tobin.

Ghost bands and circus values, with LA artist, Marnie Weber; Tadgh O'Sullivan on art that never was; and an in-the-end surprisingly pleasant visit to Berlin's Disgusting Food Museum.

Percussionist, James Larter reboots of the Four Season; the allure of ancient craft in New York; and Paddy Woodworth suggests a new old volume about New England as essential reading for today.

learn about The Festival of Cannes