Podcasts about Ireland

Patrick opens with playful Taco Tuesday banter before answering listener questions about Catholic wedding protocols, the real story behind Saint Patrick’s sainthood, and the significance of post-Vatican II changes to church architecture and liturgy. He fields tough situations: guiding a godfather on how to lovingly challenge a drifting family member, addressing concerns over boundaries at the parish, and supporting a grandmother grappling with her granddaughter’s leap to Anglicanism. Amid the laughter and heartfelt dilemmas, Patrick shares a convert’s gratitude for the Eucharist, letting honest conversation and practical wisdom steer the day. Anthony (email) – My 22-year-old nephew and his fiancé asked me to officiate their wedding ceremony. I was honored to be asked, but I'm a bit hesitant. I've never been asked to do this before. Should I accept? If not, how do I decline? (01:560) Marie - I was in Ireland recently. St. Patrick’s Church was Anglican instead of Catholic. I was told St. Patrick was never Catholic, just 'Christian', because he came before canonization. (09:47) Richard - Why did the Catholic Church change the altar around in the 60s? (21:18) Mary - My friend has a crush on a priest. What should I do? Should I let the Pastor know? (30:56) Carol - I was invited to my granddaughter’s Anglican Church confirmation, and I need advice about going to a non-Catholic service. (38:19) Andrea - This is the month of the Eucharist. I am a convert and went 58 years without it. I am full of gratitude. (45:59) Originally aired on 06/03/25

It's almost the end of 2025 – and you know what that means! 2026 trip planning is getting underway and the Ireland Travel Compass is available for presale! Learn more here and get on the presale list at IrelandFamilyVacations.com/compass 2026 Traveling in Ireland Podcast Preview I also have so many amazing podcast episodes lined up for the new year, including • 2026 travel tips – my annual New Year episode with up-to-date advice, plus dates you might want to avoid• Live “from Ireland” episodes – in April & May• Skellig Michael with archaeologist Neil Jackman• Cliffs of Moher cliff walk updates with Ollie Gleeson• What's new at Westport Estate with Biddy Hughes• Why Abbeyleix, County Laois, makes a brilliant base with Ross McDonald• Dark Tourism in Ireland with Lusia Golz Europe Beyond the Crowds Join me at the DIY Trip Summit January 13-15, 2026. The DIY Trip Summit is a free 3-day event and this year's topic is ‘Europe Beyond the Crowds'. Register at : https://irelandfamilyvacations.com/DIYTRIP I will, of course, be sharing Ireland tips including The busiest spots in Ireland How to avoid the worst crowds in popular spots Lesser-known spots to visit in 2026 that deliver craic, charm & cead mile failte Three experiences I think every visitor should have in Ireland But you'll also hear from 30+ trusted travel pros sharing their insider knowledge about Europe beyond the crowds, as well as real-world strategies for finding better flights, stays, and experiences – without overpaying or relying on package tours. Your completely free access includes Expert-led sessions to help you plan confidently and avoid rookie mistakes Practical guidance for finding hidden gems and creating meaningful itineraries Daily live Q&A calls with seasoned travelers Access to a pop-up Facebook group for connection and support A free virtual gift bag filled with travel tools, resources, and exclusive discounts Free tickets include 48-hour viewing access for each session. If you want to rewatch later – or catch every presentation at your own pace – there's an optional First Class Pass upgrade with lifetime access and $700 + in bonuses. Look for the special offer after you register. Check it out and register today at https://irelandfamilyvacations.com/DIYTRIP I hope you'll join me there – and I'll be back next week to kick off the new year with the advice you need to keep in mind when planning an Ireland trip in 2026! Traveling in Ireland podcast episode 319 The post Europe Beyond the Crowds (2026 Travel Tips) appeared first on Ireland Family Vacations.

Irish American writer Frank McCourt wrote a book in 1996 that was on the New York Times bestseller list for over 100 weeks. Over the next 20 years, "Angela's Ashes" sold close to 10 million copies worldwide. It was translated into 24 languages. McCourt was born in New York City, but moved with his family to Limerick, Ireland, for his childhood years. Frank McCourt died at age 78 in 2009 of melanoma cancer. He was a guest on the Booknotes television program on September 19th, 1996. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Original Release Date: November 13, 2025Live from Morgan Stanley's European Tech, Media and Telecom Conference in Barcelona, our roundtable of analysts discusses tech disruptions and datacenter growth, and how Europe factors in.Read more insights from Morgan Stanley.----- Transcript -----Paul Walsh: Welcome to Thoughts on the Market. I'm Paul Walsh, Morgan Stanley's European Head of Research Product. Today we return to my conversation with Adam Wood. Head of European Technology and Payments, Emmet Kelly, Head of European Telco and Data Centers, and Lee Simpson, Head of European Technology. We were live on stage at Morgan Stanley's 25th TMT Europe conference. We had so much to discuss around the themes of AI enablers, semiconductors, and telcos. So, we are back with a concluding episode on tech disruption and data center investments. It's Thursday the 13th of November at 8am in Barcelona. After speaking with the panel about the U.S. being overweight AI enablers, and the pockets of opportunity in Europe, I wanted to ask them about AI disruption, which has been a key theme here in Europe. I started by asking Adam how he was thinking about this theme. Adam Wood: It's fascinating to see this year how we've gone in most of those sectors to how positive can GenAI be for these companies? How well are they going to monetize the opportunities? How much are they going to take advantage internally to take their own margins up? To flipping in the second half of the year, mainly to, how disruptive are they going to be? And how on earth are they going to fend off these challenges? Paul Walsh: And I think that speaks to the extent to which, as a theme, this has really, you know, built momentum. Adam Wood: Absolutely. And I mean, look, I think the first point, you know, that you made is absolutely correct – that it's very difficult to disprove this. It's going to take time for that to happen. It's impossible to do in the short term. I think the other issue is that what we've seen is – if we look at the revenues of some of the companies, you know, and huge investments going in there. And investors can clearly see the benefit of GenAI. And so investors are right to ask the question, well, where's the revenue for these businesses? You know, where are we seeing it in info services or in IT services, or in enterprise software. And the reality is today, you know, we're not seeing it. And it's hard for analysts to point to evidence that – well, no, here's the revenue base, here's the benefit that's coming through. And so, investors naturally flip to, well, if there's no benefit, then surely, we should focus on the risk. So, I think we totally understand, you know, why people are focused on the negative side of things today. I think there are differences between the sub-sectors. I mean, I think if we look, you know, at IT services, first of all, from an investor point of view, I think that's been pretty well placed in the losers' buckets and people are most concerned about that sub-sector… Paul Walsh: Something you and the global team have written a lot about. Adam Wood: Yeah, we've written about, you know, the risk of disruption in that space, the need for those companies to invest, and then the challenges they face. But I mean, if we just keep it very, very simplistic. If Gen AI is a technology that, you know, displaces labor to any extent – companies that have played labor arbitrage and provide labor for the last 20 - 25 years, you know, they're going to have to make changes to their business model. So, I think that's understandable. And they're going to have to demonstrate how they can change and invest and produce a business model that addresses those concerns. I'd probably put info services in the middle. But the challenge in that space is you have real identifiable companies that have emerged, that have a revenue base and that are challenging a subset of the products of those businesses. So again, it's perfectly understandable that investors would worry. In that context, it's not a potential threat on the horizon. It's a real threat that exists today against certainly their businesses. I think software is probably the most interesting. I'd put it in the kind of final bucket where I actually believe… Well, I think first of all, we certainly wouldn't take the view that there's no risk of disruption and things aren't going to change. Clearly that is going to be the case. I think what we'd want to do though is we'd want to continue to use frameworks that we've used historically to think about how software companies differentiate themselves, what the barriers to entry are. We don't think we need to throw all of those things away just because we have GenAI, this new set of capabilities. And I think investors will come back most easily to that space. Paul Walsh: Emmet, you talked a little bit there before about the fact that you haven't seen a huge amount of progress or additional insight from the telco space around AI; how AI is diffusing across the space. Do you get any discussions around disruption as it relates to telco space? Emmet Kelly: Very, very little. I think the biggest threat that telcos do see is – it is from the hyperscalers. So, if I look at and separate the B2C market out from the B2B, the telcos are still extremely dominant in the B2C space, clearly. But on the B2B space, the hyperscalers have come in on the cloud side, and if you look at their market share, they're very, very dominant in cloud – certainly from a wholesale perspective. So, if you look at the cloud market shares of the big three hyperscalers in Europe, this number is courtesy of my colleague George Webb. He said it's roughly 85 percent; that's how much they have of the cloud space today. The telcos, what they're doing is they're actually reselling the hyperscale service under the telco brand name. But we don't see much really in terms of the pure kind of AI disruption, but there are concerns definitely within the telco space that the hyperscalers might try and move from the B2B space into the B2C space at some stage. And whether it's through virtual networks, cloudified networks, to try and get into the B2C space that way. Paul Walsh: Understood. And Lee maybe less about disruption, but certainly adoption, some insights from your side around adoption across the tech hardware space? Lee Simpson: Sure. I think, you know, it's always seen that are enabling the AI move, but, but there is adoption inside semis companies as well, and I think I'd point to design flow. So, if you look at the design guys, they're embracing the agentic system thing really quickly and they're putting forward this capability of an agent engineer, so like a digital engineer. And it – I guess we've got to get this right. It is going to enable a faster time to market for the design flow on a chip. So, if you have that design flow time, that time to market. So, you're creating double the value there for the client. Do you share that 50-50 with them? So, the challenge is going to be exactly as Adam was saying, how do you monetize this stuff? So, this is kind of the struggle that we're seeing in adoption. Paul Walsh: And Emmet, let's move to you on data centers. I mean, there are just some incredible numbers that we've seen emerging, as it relates to the hyperscaler investment that we're seeing in building out the infrastructure. I know data centers is something that you have focused tremendously on in your research, bringing our global perspectives together. Obviously, Europe sits within that. And there is a market here in Europe that might be more challenged. But I'm interested to understand how you're thinking about framing the whole data center story? Implications for Europe. Do European companies feed off some of that U.S. hyperscaler CapEx? How should we be thinking about that through the European lens? Emmet Kelly: Yeah, absolutely. So, big question, Paul. What… Paul Walsh: We've got a few minutes! Emmet Kelly: We've got a few minutes. What I would say is there was a great paper that came out from Harvard just two weeks ago, and they were looking at the scale of data center investments in the United States. And clearly the U.S. economy is ticking along very, very nicely at the moment. But this Harvard paper concluded that if you take out data center investments, U.S. economic growth today is actually zero. Paul Walsh: Wow. Emmet Kelly: That is how big the data center investments are. And what we've said in our research very clearly is if you want to build a megawatt of data center capacity that's going to cost you roughly $35 million today. Let's put that number out there. 35 million. Roughly, I'd say 25… Well, 20 to 25 million of that goes into the chips. But what's really interesting is the other remaining $10 million per megawatt, and I like to call that the picks and shovels of data centers; and I'm very convinced there is no bubble in that area whatsoever.So, what's in that area? Firstly, the first building block of a data center is finding a powered land bank. And this is a big thing that private equity is doing at the moment. So, find some real estate that's close to a mass population that's got a good fiber connection. Probably needs a little bit of water, but most importantly needs some power. And the demand for that is still infinite at the moment. Then beyond that, you've got the construction angle and there's a very big shortage of labor today to build the shells of these data centers. Then the third layer is the likes of capital goods, and there are serious supply bottlenecks there as well.And I could go on and on, but roughly that first $10 million, there's no bubble there. I'm very, very sure of that. Paul Walsh: And we conducted some extensive survey work recently as part of your analysis into the global data center market. You've sort of touched on a few of the gating factors that the industry has to contend with. That survey work was done on the operators and the supply chain, as it relates to data center build out. What were the key conclusions from that? Emmet Kelly: Well, the key conclusion was there is a shortage of power for these data centers, and… Paul Walsh: Which I think… Which is a sort of known-known, to some extent. Emmet Kelly: it is a known-known, but it's not just about the availability of power, it's the availability of green power. And it's also the price of power is a very big factor as well because energy is roughly 40 to 45 percent of the operating cost of running a data center. So, it's very, very important. And of course, that's another area where Europe doesn't screen very well.I was looking at statistics just last week on the countries that have got the highest power prices in the world. And unsurprisingly, it came out as UK, Ireland, Germany, and that's three of our big five data center markets. But when I looked at our data center stats at the beginning of the year, to put a bit of context into where we are…Paul Walsh: In Europe… Emmet Kelly: In Europe versus the rest. So, at the end of [20]24, the U.S. data center market had 35 gigawatts of data center capacity. But that grew last year at a clip of 30 percent. China had a data center bank of roughly 22 gigawatts, but that had grown at a rate of just 10 percent. And that was because of the chip issue. And then Europe has capacity, or had capacity at the end of last year, roughly 7 to 8 gigawatts, and that had grown at a rate of 10 percent. Now, the reason for that is because the three big data center markets in Europe are called FLAP-D. So, it's Frankfurt, London, Amsterdam, Paris, and Dublin. We had to put an acronym on it. So, Flap-D. Good news. I'm sitting with the tech guys. They've got even more acronyms than I do, in their sector, so well done them. Lee Simpson: Nothing beats FLAP-D. Paul Walsh: Yes. Emmet Kelly: It's quite an achievement. But what is interesting is three of the big five markets in Europe are constrained. So, Frankfurt, post the Ukraine conflict. Ireland, because in Ireland, an incredible statistic is data centers are using 25 percent of the Irish power grid. Compared to a global average of 3 percent.Now I'm from Dublin, and data centers are running into conflict with industry, with housing estates. Data centers are using 45 percent of the Dublin grid, 45. So, there's a moratorium in building data centers there. And then Amsterdam has the classic semi moratorium space because it's a small country with a very high population. So, three of our five markets are constrained in Europe. What is interesting is it started with the former Prime Minister Rishi Sunak. The UK has made great strides at attracting data center money and AI capital into the UK and the current Prime Minister continues to do that. So, the UK has definitely gone; moved from the middle lane into the fast lane. And then Macron in France. He hosted an AI summit back in February and he attracted over a 100 billion euros of AI and data center commitments. Paul Walsh: And I think if we added up, as per the research that we published a few months ago, Europe's announced over 350 billion euros, in proposed investments around AI. Emmet Kelly: Yeah, absolutely. It's a good stat. Now where people can get a little bit cynical is they can say a couple of things. Firstly, it's now over a year since the Mario Draghi report came out. And what's changed since? Absolutely nothing, unfortunately. And secondly, when I look at powering AI, I like to compare Europe to what's happening in the United States. I mean, the U.S. is giving access to nuclear power to AI. It started with the three Mile Island… Paul Walsh: Yeah. The nuclear renaissance is… Emmet Kelly: Nuclear Renaissance is absolutely huge. Now, what's underappreciated is actually Europe has got a massive nuclear power bank. It's right up there. But unfortunately, we're decommissioning some of our nuclear power around Europe, so we're going the wrong way from that perspective. Whereas President Trump is opening up the nuclear power to AI tech companies and data centers. Then over in the States we also have gas and turbines. That's a very, very big growth area and we're not quite on top of that here in Europe. So, looking at this year, I have a feeling that the Americans will probably increase their data center capacity somewhere between – it's incredible – somewhere between 35 and 50 percent. And I think in Europe we're probably looking at something like 10 percent again. Paul Walsh: Okay. Understood. Emmet Kelly: So, we're growing in Europe, but we're way, way behind as a starting point. And it feels like the others are pulling away. The other big change I'd highlight is the Chinese are really going to accelerate their data center growth this year as well. They've got their act together and you'll see them heading probably towards 30 gigs of capacity by the end of next year. Paul Walsh: Alright, we're out of time. The TMT Edge is alive and kicking in Europe. I want to thank Emmett, Lee and Adam for their time and I just want to wish everybody a great day today. Thank you.(Applause) That was my conversation with Adam, Emmett and Lee. Many thanks again to them. Many thanks again to them for telling us about the latest in their areas of research and to the live audience for hearing us out. And a thanks to you as well for listening. Let us know what you think about this and other episodes by living us a review wherever you get your podcasts. And if you enjoy listening to Thoughts on the Market, please tell a friend or colleague about the podcast today.

Throwbacks are where I re-release old episodes from the archives. So don't worry if you have heard it already, as 'New episodes' will continue to come out on Sundays. To get some of the old episodes heard.~~~We start this episode with a witness submission from Sergio in Portugal, and the Vision he had on the morning of September 11th 2001. Then we hear from Mimtea in Australia, about her paranormal experiences on her travels in Colombia, Ireland, China, and Australia.More information on this episode on the podcast website:https://ufochroniclespodcast.com/ep-200-the-cloud-forest/SHADOWS WALKINGhttps://www.mimtea.net/buy-books/shadows-walkingWant to share your encounter on the show?Email: UFOChronicles@gmail.comOr Fill out Guest Form:https://forms.gle/uGQ8PTVRkcjy4nxS7Podcast Merchandise:https://www.teepublic.com/user/ufo-chronicles-podcastHelp Support UFO CHRONICLES by becoming a Patron:https://patreon.com/UFOChroniclespodcastX: https://twitter.com/UFOchronpodcastThank you for listening!Like share and subscribe it really helps me when people share the show on social media, it means we can reach more people and more witnesses and without your amazing support, it wouldn't be possible.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/ufo-chronicles-podcast--3395068/support.

Ireland is joined by Andy Kamenetzky today in the studio! The guys dive into the great week of NFL games! How great were the primetime games this week? Ireland and AK turn to Lakers basketball! What is the current state of this Lakers team? Fantasy Football is nearing its end! What happened in the NBA on Saturday that Ireland can't stand? Ice Breakers! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Time for Sports Graffiti! Ireland and Andy Kamenetzky dive into USC Football ahead of their bowl game! The guys are joined by Ryan Abraham of USCFootball.com to preview the Trojans in the Alamo Bowl! The crew turned to some stories out of the NFL. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Fast Track! Ireland and Andy Kamenetzky look at the story of a high school basketball coach being fired for cursing. Game of Games! The crew walk you up to Rams MNF coverage! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Thanks to Holly for suggesting this week’s topic! Further reading: Mermaids: Myth, Kith and Kin [this article is not for children] Feejee Mermaid A manatee: A female grey seal, looking winsome: A drawing of the “original” Fiji (or Feejee) mermaid: Show transcript: Welcome to Strange Animals Podcast. I'm your host, Kate Shaw. Let's close out the year 2025 with a mystery episode! Holly suggested we talk about mermaids! Mermaids are creatures of folklore who are supposed to look like humans, but instead of legs they have fish tails. These days mermaids are usually depicted with a single tail, but it was common in older artwork for a mermaid to be shown with two tails, which replaced both legs. Not all mermaids were girls, either. Mermen were just as common. Cultures from around the world have stories about mermaid-like individuals. Sometimes they're gods or goddesses, like the Syrian story of a goddess so beautiful that when she transformed into a fish, only her legs changed, because her upper half was too beautiful to alter, or the Greek god Triton, who is usually depicted as a man with two fish tails for legs. Sometimes they're monsters who cause storms, curse ships, or lure sailors to their doom. Sometimes they can transform into humans, like the story from Madagascar about a fisherman who catches a mermaid in his net. She transforms into a human woman and they get married, but when he breaks a promise to her, she turns back into a mermaid and swims away. In 2012, a TV special aired on Animal Planet that claimed that mermaids were real, and a lot of people believed it. It imitated the kind of real documentaries that Animal Planet often ran, and the only disclaimer was in the credits. I remember how upset a lot of people were about it, especially teachers and scientists. So just to be clear, mermaids aren't real. Many researchers think at least some mermaid stories might be based on real animals. The explorer Christopher Columbus reported seeing three mermaids in 1493, but said they weren't as beautiful as he'd heard. Most researchers think he actually saw manatees. A few centuries later, a mermaid was captured and killed off the coast of Brazil by European scientists, and the careful drawings we still have of the mermaid's hand bones correspond exactly to the bones of a manatee's flipper. Female manatees are larger than males on average, and a really big female can grow over 15 feet long, or 4.6 meters. Most manatees are between 9 and 10 feet long, or a little less than 3 meters. Its body is elongated like a whale's, but unlike a whale it's slow, usually only swimming about as fast as a human can swim. Its skin is gray or brown although often it has algae growing on it that helps camouflage it. The end of the manatee's tail looks like a rounded paddle, and it has front flippers but no rear limbs. Its face is rounded with a prehensile upper lip covered with bristly whiskers, which it uses to find and gather water plants. The manatee doesn't look a lot like a person, but it looks more like a person than most water animals. It has a neck and can turn its head like a person, its flippers are fairly long and resemble arms, and females have a pair of teats that are near their armpits, if a manatee had armpits, which it does not. But that's close enough for Christopher Columbus to decide he was seeing a mermaid. Seals may have also contributed to mermaid stories. In Scottish folklore, the selkie is a seal that can transform into human shape, usually by taking off its skin. There are lots of stories of people who steal the selkie's skin and hide it so that the selkie will marry the person—because selkies are beautiful in their human form. Eventually the selkie finds the hidden skin and returns to the sea. Similar seal-folk legends are found in other parts of northern Europe, including Sweden, Iceland, Norway, and Ireland. Many of the stories overlap with mermaid stories. Seals do have appealing human-like faces, have clawed front flippers that sort of resemble arms, and have rear flippers that are fused to act like a tail, even if it doesn't look much like a fish tail. The grey seal is a common animal off the coast of northern Europe, and a big male can grow almost 11 feet long, or 3.3 meters, although 9 feet is more common, or 2.7 meters. It has a large snout and no external ear flaps. Males are dark grey or brown, females are more silvery in color. It mainly eats fish, but will also eat other animals, including crustaceans, octopuses, other seals, and even porpoises. While I don't think it has anything to do with the mermaid or selkie legends, it is interesting to note that seals are good at imitating human voices. We learned about this in episode 225, about talking mammals. For instance, Hoover the talking seal, a harbor seal from Maine who was raised by a human after his mother died. Imagine if you were walking along the shore and a seal said this to you: [Hoover the talking seal saying “Hey get over here!”] Let's finish with the Japanese legend of the ningyo and a weird taxidermy creature called the Feejee mermaid. The ningyo is a being of folklore that dates back to at least the 7th century. It was a fish with a head like a person, usually found in the ocean but sometimes in freshwater. If someone found a ningyo washed up on shore, it was supposed to be a bad omen, foretelling war and other disasters. If you remember the big fish episode a few weeks ago, if an oarfish is found near the surface of the ocean around Japan, it's supposed to foretell an earthquake. The oarfish has a red fin that runs from its head down its spine, like a mane or a comb, and the ningyo was also supposed to have a red comb on its head, like a rooster's comb, or sometimes red hair. Some people think the ningyo is based on the oarfish. The oarfish is a deep-sea fish so it's rare, usually only seen near the surface when it's dying, and it has a flat face that looks more like a human face than most fish, if you squint and really want to believe you're seeing a mythical creature. These days, artwork of the ningyo usually looks a lot more like mermaids of European legend, but the earliest paintings don't usually have arms, just a human head on a fish body. But by the late 18th century, a weird type of artwork had become popular among Japanese fishermen, a type of crude but inventive taxidermy that created what looked like small, creepy mermaids. They looked like dried-out monkeys from the waist up, with a dried-out fish tail instead of legs. That's because that's exactly what they were. Japanese fishermen made these mermaids along with lots of other monsters, and sold them to travelers for high prices. The fishermen told tall tales about how they'd found the monster, killed it, and preserved it, and pretended to be reluctant to sell it, and of course that meant the traveler would offer even more money for it. The most famous of these fake monsters was called the Fiji Mermaid, and it got famous because P.T. Barnum displayed it in his museum in 1842 and said it had been caught near the Fiji Islands, in the South Pacific. It was about three feet along, or 91 cm, and was probably made from a young monkey and a salmon. The original Fiji mermaid was probably destroyed in a fire at some point, but it was such a popular exhibit that other wannabe showmen either bought or made replicas, some of which are still around today. People still sometimes make similar monsters, but they use craft materials instead of dead animals. They're still creepy-looking, though, which is part of the fun. You can find Strange Animals Podcast at strangeanimalspodcast.blubrry.net. That's blueberry without any E's. If you have questions, comments, corrections, or suggestions, email us at strangeanimalspodcast@gmail.com. Thanks for listening!

This was my #1 most listened to episode of 2025! If you're planning a trip to Marco Island, Florida (or hoping to soon) this is your complete start-to-finish guide.I'm sharing exactly where to stay, where to eat, what to do, and the little details that make a Marco trip feel so special. I also break down my favorite sunset spots, family-friendly activities, and cost-saving tips.If you'd like to share about your trip on the podcast, email me at: kelsey@triptalespodcast.comBuy Me A Coffee: https://buymeacoffee.com/kelseygravesFollow me on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kelsey_gravesFollow me on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@mskelseygravesJoin us in the Trip Tales Podcast Community Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1323687329158879Mentioned in this episode:- Episode 1: Marco Island, FL - Staying at the Hilton with Nicole's Family of 5- Episode 7: Marcos Island, FL - The Iconic JW Marriott Marco Island Had Jenni's Family of 4 Feeling Like They Had Left the U.S.- Fort Myers Airport - Southwest Florida International Airport (RSW)- Punta Gorda Airport (PGD)- JW Marriott Marco Island (10K Alley Arcarde) and Paradise by Sirene Rooms- Marriott Crystal Shores- Hilton Marco Island- Calusa Spirit via Marco Island Water Sports (Dolphins!)- Keewaydin Island- Pirates of Marco Island, Marco Golf & Garden, Mackle Park- Doreen's Cup of Joe, Cocomo's "U Hook It, We Cook It!", Joey's Pizza, Snook Inn (and Milton the Manatee), Oyster Society, Tesoro, Fin Bistro, Sweet Annie's- Isle of Capri: Island Gypsy and Capri Fish HouseTrip Tales is a travel podcast sharing real vacation stories and trip itineraries for family travel, couples getaways, cruises, and all-inclusive resorts. Popular episodes feature destinations like Marco Island Florida, Costa Rica with kids, Disney Cruise Line, Disney Aulani in Hawaii, Beaches Turks & Caicos, Park City ski trips, Aruba, Italy, Ireland, Portugal's Azores, New York City, Alaska cruises, and U.S. National Parks. Listeners get real travel tips, itinerary recommendations, hotel reviews, restaurant recommendations, and inspiration for planning their next vacation, especially when traveling with kids.

On this episode, past guests of Books with Betsy and I share our favorite books of 2025! Listen to hear about lots of great 2025 books and the excellent backlist we got to this year.    Books mentioned in this episode:    Betsy's Best Categorically (books that…):  Shocked me:  It's Not the End of the World by Jonathan Parks-Ramage Sky Full of Elephants by Cebo Campbell  Made me Cry: The Great Believers by Rebecca Makkai  Are You Happy? By Lori Ostlund  Underrated: Fundamentally by Noussaibah Younis  What Kind of Paradise by Janelle Brown  Recommend Widely: There is No Place For Us: Working and Homeless in America by Brian Goldstone  Isola by Allegra Goodman  Hard to Recommend:  King of Ashes by S.A. Cosby  Flesh by David Szalay  Made me Think About my Life Differently: Uzumaki by Junji Ito  Hunchback by Saou Ichikawa    Books Highlighted by Guests: Deedi Brown:  The Everlasting by Alix E. Harrow Telephone by Percival Everett  Searches: Selfhood in the Digital Age by Vauhini Vara  Francisco Rafael Peralta-Cerda:  Grace and Henry's Holiday Movie Marathon by Matthew Norman  Displacement by Kiku Hughes  Yellowface by R.F. Kuang  Chloe Waryan:  The Buffalo Hunter Hunter by Stephen Graham Jones  The Secret History by Donna Tartt  Woodworking by Emily St. James  Poor Things by Alasdair Gray Jess Abra Sandy:  How to Sell a Haunted House by Grady Hendrix  Don't Let the Forest In by C.G. Drews Soft Science & Other Poems by Franny Choi  Time is a Mother by Ocean Vuong  Shakia Perry:  Issac's Song by Daniel Black  King of Ashes by S.A. Cosby  Zeal by Morgan Jerkins  Can't Get Enough by Kennedy Ryan  Chelsey Stone:  The Princes of Ireland by Edward Rutherfurd Creatures of Passage by Morowa Yejidé Deirdre Harrison:  Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants by Robin Wall Kimmerer  Motherhood: Facing and Finding Yourself by Lisa Marchiano  The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley  Chirri & Chirra: The Snowy Day by Kaya Doi & Yuki Kaneko  The Red Fruit by Lee Gee Eun  Red Sled by Lita Judge  Jordan Hernandez:  This is Your Mother by Erika J. Simpson  The Girls Who Grew Big by Leila Mottley  Loca by Alejandro Heredia  Liv Hoselton:  Everything is Tuberculosis: The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection by John Green  A Noble Madness: The Dark Side of Collecting from Antiquity to Now by James Delbourgo  Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton Frankenstein by Mary Shelly  A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens  Leah Rachel von Essen:  And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic by Randy Shilts  Get a Life, Chloe Brown by Talia Hibbert  One Day Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This by Omar El Akkad A Day of Fallen Night by Samantha Shannon

In Arteetude 314, Detlef and AI Co-Host Sophia deliberately avoid the usual year-end retrospective.No highlights.No rankings.No productivity myths.Instead, they turn the microphone inward.This episode is a reflective self-interrogation — playful, honest, and at times provocative. Detlef speaks openly about moments of arrogance and vulnerability, artistic doubt, identity, unpopular opinions about contemporary art, the pain of being misunderstood, and the quiet pride of community-based “world-saving art.”Sophia asks the questions many podcasts avoid — not to expose, but to create space for thought.The episode closes with a simple mantra for the year ahead:Love. Try. Repeat.Arteetude remains a non-profit podcast, created out of curiosity, cultural responsibility, and the belief that art is a thinking space — not a marketplace.Detlef Schlich is a rock musician, podcaster, visual artist, filmmaker, ritual designer, and media archaeologist based in West Cork. He is recognised for his seminal work, including a scholarly examination of the intersections between shamanism, art, and digital culture, and his acclaimed video installation, Transodin's Tragedy. He primarily works in performance, photography, painting, sound, installations, and film. In his work, he reflects on the human condition and uses the digital shaman's methodology as an alter ego to create artwork. His media archaeology is a conceptual and practical exercise in uncovering the unique aesthetic, cultural, and political aspects of media in culture.WEBSITE LINKS WAW Official YouTube Channelhttps://www.youtube.com/@WAWBand"The Niles Bittersweet Song" WAW BandcampSilent NightIn a world shadowed by conflict and unrest, we, Dirk Schlömer & Detlef Schlich, felt compelled to reinterpret 'Silent Night' to reflect the complexities and contradictions of modern life.https://studiomuskau.bandcamp.com/track/silent-nightWild Atlantic WayThis results from a trip to West Cork, Ireland, where the beautiful Coastal "Wild Atlantic Way" reaches along the whole west coast!https://studiomuskau.bandcamp.com/track/wild-atlantic-wayYOU TUBE*Silent Night Reimagined* A Multilayered Avant-Garde Journey by WAW aka Dirk Schlömer & Detlef Schlichhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dAbytLSfgCwDetlef SchlichInstagramDetlef Schlich ArTEEtude I love West Cork Artists FacebookDetlef Schlich I love West Cork Artists Group ArTEEtudeYouTube Channelsvisual PodcastArTEEtudeCute Alien TV official WebsiteArTEEtude Detlef Schlich Det Design Tribal Loop Download here for free Detlef Schlich´s Essay about the Cause and Effect of Shamanism, Art and Digital Culturehttps://www.researchgate.net/publication/303749640_Shamanism_Art_and_Digital_Culture_Cause_and_EffectSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/arteetude-a-podcast-with-artists-by-detlef-schlich/donations

The target, agreed by world leaders in 2015, to limit global warming to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels is now impossible, according to scientists. The consequences are global, and some of those consequences have already been seen in Ireland over the past year.

Kate Adie presents stories from Iran, Norway, France, Ireland and Switzerland.A recent marathon race in Iran caused controversy after many of the 2000 women runners ignored the country's mandatory hijab law, and ran without a head covering. Years after deadly protests rocked the country, Faranak Amidi charts how women in Iran today are continuing to defy the religious authorities on a daily basis.Svalbard in the Arctic Ocean is home to an array of wildlife, including Polar Bears. With their survival under threat, Beth Timmins considers their future - and past - while sailing off the bay of Skansbukta.The French have a penchant for chestnuts, and demand in the country often vastly outstrips supply. And in the chestnut groves of the Cévennes, intensifying droughts are pushing the crop to the brink. Julius Purcell met chestnut farmers keeping a centuries-old culture alive, in the face of a warming planet.Irish pubs may be one of the Emerald Isle's most ubiquitous exports, but Irish whiskey has dipped in popularity over the last century in part due to politics - but also increased competition. Jordan Dunbar has been following the fate of his homeland's much-loved liquor, ever since a surprise encounter in Japan.And finally, Switzerland is famously neutral - but what that neutrality means is a subject that preoccupies the Swiss. Everyone knows that the Swiss banked Germany's money during the second world war, but a new exhibition shows how cooperative Switzerland also was to the allies. Imogen Foulkes reports from Geneva.Series Producer: Serena Tarling Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith Production coordinators: Sophie Hill & Katie Morrison

Welcome to Just Between Us, the sex and relationships podcast from the Irish Independent, hosted by Jennifer Zamparelli. What happens when a 22-year-old starts an OnlyFans and earns life-changing money overnight? Jennifer is joined by Niamh O'Connor (AKA Kneevo), once Ireland's biggest OnlyFans creator, to talk money, pressure, plastic surgery, stigma, and the moment she chose herself over the grind. Just Between Us is an Irish Independent podcast hosted by Jennifer Zamparelli. New episodes every Thursday, wherever you get your podcasts. Host: Jennifer Zamparelli Guest: Niamh O'Connor *This podcast was first released in November 2025 See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Please join us at patreon.com/tortoiseshack In this Reboot Republic, Rory talks with Ber Grogan, executive director of the Simon Communities of Ireland about what are real reasons for the ongoing rise in homelessness, finding hope in solutions like a ban on evictions, and is it fair to call out landlord greed to get the market rent & the HAP trap. Venezuela Podcast with el Pais journalist Nicholas Dale Leal:https://www.patreon.com/posts/patron-exclusive-146527115 Support Simon here:https://www.simon.ie/donate/

This week I'm joined by two of my good friends Tom Cristle and Colum hanlon for a bonus, end of year episode. We get into everything from the UFC to Herbal Life scams, AI bots, DJ Carey, Ireland's chances of making it to the world cup, local pride and so much more. Buckle up Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On this episode 202, I am joined by golf podcaster Jonny Mac Cann for a deep and dynamic State of the Game golf edition. The aim was to keep the conversation to 40 minutes which we failed at miserably as the 2025 golf season was packed with history and headlines. In a wide-ranging episode we discuss golf media, Irish women's golf, Lauren Walsh , rising stars in the game, and that masters win by Rory. We also dig into the Ryder Cup, will Luke Donald continue as captain and who will over next. Please note the conversation was recorded prior to the departure of Brooks Kepka from Liv. We discuss Liv's pending merger with the PGA and Tom McKibbon. It's an honest, insightful chat that looks at where the game is right now — and where it might be heading next. Check out Jonny's podcast and socials here https://linktr.ee/bogeymenpod?utm_source=linktree_profile_share

pWotD Episode 3160: Boxing Day Welcome to popular Wiki of the Day, spotlighting Wikipedia's most visited pages, giving you a peek into what the world is curious about today.With 381,321 views on Friday, 26 December 2025 our article of the day is Boxing Day.Boxing Day, also known as Offering Day, is a holiday celebrated on 26 December, the day after Christmas Day. Boxing Day was once a day to donate gifts to those in need, but it has evolved to become a part of Christmas festivities. It originated in the United Kingdom and is celebrated in several Commonwealth nations. The attached bank holiday or public holiday may take place on 27 or 28 December if necessary to ensure it falls on a weekday. Boxing Day is usually concurrent with the Christian festival Saint Stephen's Day.In parts of Europe, such as east Spain (Catalonia, Valencia and the Balearic Islands), the Czech Republic, Germany, Austria, Hungary, the Netherlands, Italy, Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia, Croatia, Denmark, Finland, Catholic Romania, Sweden, Belgium, Norway, Latvia and the Republic of Ireland, 26 December is Saint Stephen's Day, which is considered the second day of Christmas.This recording reflects the Wikipedia text as of 02:20 UTC on Saturday, 27 December 2025.For the full current version of the article, see Boxing Day on Wikipedia.This podcast uses content from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.Visit our archives at wikioftheday.com and subscribe to stay updated on new episodes.Follow us on Bluesky at @wikioftheday.com.Also check out Curmudgeon's Corner, a current events podcast.Until next time, I'm neural Matthew.

It's friend of the podcast (and best friend of Chris Ramey) Carl Hutchinson! Carl joins Chris and Rosie in their studio for a good natter and some retelling of a few famous Carl stories! There's a festive Please Keep Me Anonymous plus we find out how well Chris and Carl know each other in a Christmas edition of Mr & Mr!  Follow Carl on Instagram and TikTok: Instagram @carl_hutchinson_comedy TikTok @carlhutchinsoncomedy  Catch Carl at Newcastle City Hall on 24th October 2026 https://www.ticketmaster.co.uk/carl-hutchinson-fine-whine-newcastle-upon-tyne-24-10-2026/event/3E006375A569613A   For news on Carl's UK & Ireland 2026 Tour visit:  carlhutchinson.net  You can find new episodes of The Carl Hutchinson Podcast, each week, wherever you get your podcasts! Today, get Huel's full Lite & Lean Starter Kit online with our code SMA30 for 30% off at https://huel.com/SMA30. New Customers Only. Thank you to Huel for partnering and supporting our show! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Mason and Ireland are both out today so the Kam Bro's are in for an hour show today! Andy Kamenetzky and Brian Kamenetzky dive into the Lakers loss to the Rockets on Christmas evening. Is the biggest problem for the Lakers their team defense? Is there any update on Austin Reaves? Take a listen to JJ Redick in his postgame presser last night. AK and BK try to unpack JJ's comments. Amazon Pick of the Week! Ice Breakers! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

With 250 years of brewing history behind his family, Arthur Edward Guinness was discouraged from taking on the responsibility that the men of his family had for centuries. Now Ned, or Lord Iveagh, grows crops, brews beer and is in pursuit of being able to pour the perfect pint in one of the two pubs he owns in the rural east of England. He tells Leanna Byrne about the extraordinary family history he sees as his legacy, and talks about how the famous brewery at St James's Gate in Dublin, Ireland became one of the most successful in the world. Presenter: Leanna Byrne Producer: Hannah Bewley(Image: Ned Guinness, 4th Earl of Iveagh, attends the "House Of Guinness" London Premiere at Picturehouse Central on 23 September 2025 in London, England. Credit: Getty Images)

FROM THE VAULT | In the late 20th century, a chilling pattern emerged in Ireland. Young women vanished without warning from a small geographic area stretching across the east of the country. leaving behind few clues, no bodies, and families desperate for answers. The region would come to be known as the Irish Vanishing Triangle.

Happy New Year from Destination Eat Drink! On our special New Year’s episode we’re ringing in the new year by banging bread on the wall in Ireland, celebrating the constellation of Matariki in New Zealand, and observing First Footing in Scotland. Plus, throwing furniture off the balcony in Naples and adding whisky to trifle! [Ep 369] Show Notes: Foodie Travel Guides by Destination Eat Drink Flavour Trails food and whiskey tours in Ireland Mickela’s TV show Bare Feet Daniel Stables travel writer Dan’s book Fiesta: A Journey Through Festivity Edinburgh food tours with Nell at Edinburgh Food Safari Brent’s video from the Lille, France Christmas Market

Aoife Moore is an independent investigative journalist from Derry, Northern Ireland and formerly worked as a political correspondent for the BBC.She calls herself a victim of England's legacy in Ireland and says that every facet of her life has been marred by British colonialism, including the death of her uncle in the violence of Bloody Sunday.Aoife chose her path to become a journalist because of her frustration with the British media's unwillingness to challenge the government's official narrative of what happened on Bloody Sunday and her desire to be a part of revealing the truth.She is the best-selling author of The Long Game: Inside Sinn Fein, a book that explores the growth of Sinn Fein from the armed struggle of the IRA to its current political dominance in the country.Credits:Photos and text, John NoltnerField production, summer interns Kate West, Sawyer Garrison, and Kaitlin ImaiAudio Engineering, Razik SaifullahThanks for listening to A Peace of My Mind's podcast. For photos, videos, and additional content, visit our website and follow us on Instagram.

Jon Kay on Fashion designer Antony Price who fused together the worlds of fashion and music in the 70s and 80sSister Stan Kennedy, the nun who founded one of Ireland's largest homelessness charitiesEna Collymore Woodstock, the Jamaican barrister and magistrate who throughout her career broke many barriers for women John Carey, the academic and former chief literary critic for The Times who took no prisoners with his reviews.Producer: Ed Prendeville Assistant Producer: Ribika Moktan Researcher: Jesse Edwards Editor: Glyn TansleyArchive Midweek: Professor John Carey, Benny Lewis, Eduardo Niebla, Lynn Ruth Miller, BBC Radio 4, 19/03/2014; The Verb (Week 10), BBC Radio 3, 13/03/2015; Meet the Author, BBC News, 20/03/2014; SAL Night 2020 – A Message From Sister Stan, Founder and President, Focus Ireland, YouTube, 16/10/2020; Redlight – Sr Stan Kennedy, YouTube (Immigration Council), 20/08/2018; Everyman: Ireland's Hidden People, BBC One, 24/04/1988; Mary H.R.H. Princess Royal, BBC Archive, 26/06/1940; Mortimer & Whitehouse: Gone Fishing – Gone Christmas Fishing, BBC Two, 13/12/2020

In the summer of 2005, a typical Friday night in the local pub changed the life of Dolores McNamara forever when she learned that the EuroMillions ticket she bought on a whim led to her becoming €115 million richer. But what became of Ireland's first ever EuroMillions winner? Host: Tabitha Monahan Guest: Ralph Riegel *This podcast was first released in July 2024 See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Other big Steelers stories: fans booing and calling to fire Tomlin, TJ Watt's extension, playing in Ireland, trading Minkah for Ramsey and Jonnu, Heyward's holdout, acquiring Metcalf and trading Pickens, DK's altercation with a fan, Steelers Hall of Honor inductees. NBA talk! Jokic is ridiculous. Pat Narduzzi joins to discuss Christmas with his team in DC, what to expect from ECU, Kyle Louis' impact on the program, Cam Lindsey's growth, Mason Heintschel's bowl prep. The NFL Christmas games were mostly duds. George Pickens is having a big season, but it still feels like the Steelers made the right move. It's fun to hate the Chiefs. 

Other big Steelers stories: fans booing and calling to fire Tomlin, TJ Watt's extension, playing in Ireland, trading Minkah for Ramsey and Jonnu, Heyward's holdout, acquiring Metcalf and trading Pickens, DK's altercation with a fan, Steelers Hall of Honor inductees, 

This is our annual Christmas tradition.  This year I'm reading UFO reports from 2000 - 2004.Email us!  indarkplacespod@hotmail.comFacebook:https://www.facebook.com/indarkplacespodcastYouTube:https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCdrL6rsNSKeBA31NcU3reXARumble:https://rumble.com/user/InDarkPlacesPatreon:https://www.patreon.com/indarkplacesThe ABCs Of Salvation:A.  ADMIT THAT YOU'RE A SINNER. This is where that godly sorrow leads to genuine repentance for sinning against the righteous God and there is a change of heart, we change our mind and God changes our hearts and regenerates us from the inside out.B.  BELIEVE IN YOUR HEART THAT JESUS CHRIST DIED FOR YOUR SINS, WAS BURIED, AND THAT GOD RAISED JESUS FROM THE DEAD. Believe in your heart that Jesus Christ died for your sins, was buried, and that God raised Jesus from the dead. This is trusting with all of your heart that Jesus Christ is who he said he was.C.  CALL UPON THE NAME OF THE LORD. This is trusting with all of your heart that Jesus Christ is who he said he was. Every single person who ever lived since Adam will bend their knee and confess with their mouth that Jesus Christ is Lord, the Lord of Lords and the King of Kings.

** We are taking a week off and will be back January 16th!** Happy Stephen's Day and Happy New Year! I hope everyone is having a very lovely Christmas break. This week we are joined by the incredible Dr Sparky Booker, Assistant Professor in Medieval Irish History, Trinity College Dublin. Sparky enlightens us on the legal systems in force in 14th and 15th century Ireland, how to keep your land and why Elizabeth Le Veele married King of Leinster, Art McMurrough. She also discusses how the prevalence of intermarriage in the so-called 'four obedient shires' indicates that the English and Irish interacted far more peaceably and amicably than the often belligerent attitudes displayed toward the Irish in records from the colony would indicate, and that the attempts made by the Irish parliament to distance the English of Ireland from their Irish neighbours were largely unsuccessful.Suggested reading:Sparky Booker, Cultural Exchange and Identity in late medieval Ireland: the English and Irish of the Four Obedient Shires, Studies in Medieval Life and Thought Series (Cambridge, 2018)Sparky Booker, ‘Women and legal history: the case of late medieval English Ireland and the challenges of studying ‘women'', Irish Historical Studies, 46:170 (2022), pp 224-243Sparky Booker, ‘Intermarriage in fifteenth-century Ireland: the English and Irish in the ‘four obedient shires', Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy, 113c (2013), pp 219-250Sparky Booker, ‘Widowhood and attainder in medieval Ireland: the case of Margaret Nugent' in Deborah Youngs and Teresa Phipps (eds), Litigating women: gender and justice in Europe, c.1300-c.1800 (Abingdon, 2022), pp 81-98Ellis, Stephen G. (1998). Ireland in the Age of the Tudors, 1447-1603: English Expansion and the End of Gaelic Rule (2nd ed.). RoutledgeRegular episodes every two weeks (on a Friday)Email: medievalirishhistory@gmail.comProducer: Tiago Veloso SilvaSupported by the Dept of Early Irish, Maynooth University & Taighde Éireann/Research Ireland.Views expressed are the speakers' own.Logo design: Matheus de Paula CostaMusic: Lexin_Music

Send us a textThe Song of Amergin is an ancient, powerful Gaelic poem from Irish mythology. It was spoken by the bard Amergin when the Milesians (Celts) arrived in Ireland to claim the land from the Tuatha Dé Danann.  He identified himself with the land's spirit through myriad natural and elemental forms (stag, wind, wave, sunbeam, etc.) to quell a magical storm and assert divine right. It's considered perhaps the oldest poem from the all the Islands of the west coast of Europe.  It is found in ancient texts like the Book of Leinster, and is known for its enigmatic, transformative imagery, asserting control over the land's essence.Support the showIrish Mythology - Mythical Cycle - Book of Invasions

It's an absolute honour to welcome Bernard (Barney) Haas from the Blue Man Group to the podcast. Barney was in Shanghai for a four-month residency, and I was lucky enough to attend one of the shows. I went in not knowing what to expect and came away completely blown away by the talent of the Blue Man Group performers — from drumming on bongos to create exploding paint, to catching marshmallows in their mouths, to creating art live on stage. The audience was a perfect mix of young kids through to grandparents, all equally captivated. In this episode, Barney and I talk about working in Shanghai and learning not just Chinese, but other languages along the way. We dive into his life in Ireland, busking on the streets, forming bands, and eventually landing acting roles. He shares how he first discovered Blue Man Group in an Indian restaurant, the intense audition process, meeting the original members, and travelling the world as part of one of the biggest live music productions in the world. We also talk about navigating the entertainment industry during COVID, his time with Le Wagon, his passion for tackling insomnia, and many unforgettable experiences from a truly unique career. Please welcome Barney Haas from the Blue Man Group.

In an episode from VinePair's newest podcast series "The Buildout," Adam sits down with The Dead Rabbit co-founder Jack McGarry to talk about his early career as a bartender in Ireland, what brought him to New York, and how The Dead Rabbit remains a vital and vibrant part of New York's drinks scene. Please remember to subscribe to, rate, and review The VinePair Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your episodes, and send any questions, comments, critiques, or suggestions to podcast@vinepair.com. Thanks for listening, and cheers!Join us for a live podcast recording at the Unified Wine & Grape Symposium inSacramento, California on Wednesday, January 28, 2026Instagram: @adamteeter, @jcsciarrino, @zgeballe, @vinepair Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The legend of Jeremiah in Ireland does not line up with historical evidence and timelines from the most reliable resources.  It takes a lot of research to separate the true history of Ireland from the conflations and fabrications.  Jeremiah did go to Ireland, and the ruling line of Judah did continue, but this story is not the same as what has been regurgitated in error by so many. Watch, Listen and Learn 24x7 at PastorMelissaScott.com Pastor Melissa Scott teaches from Faith Center in Glendale. Call 1-800-338-3030 24x7 to leave a message for Pastor Scott. You may make reservations to attend a live service, leave a prayer request or make a commitment. Pastor Scott appreciates messages and reads them often during live broadcasts. Follow @Pastor_Scott on Twitter and visit her official Facebook page @Pastor.M.Scott. Download Pastor Scott's "Understand the Bible" app for iPhone, iPad and iPod at the Apple App Store and for Android devices in the Google Store. Pastor Scott can also be seen 24x7 on Roku and Amazon Fire on the "Understand the Bible?" channel. ©2025 Pastor Melissa Scott, Ph.D. All Rights Reserved

From a sequence starting in 2025. You can join, live, each Tuesday, 7.30 p.m. Ireland time (the same as UK time)! Information about the sequence can be found here: https://first164.blogspot.com/p/zoom164.htmlMore information can be found here: https://first164.blogspot.com/

We've had the good fortune this year to enjoy the support of fans like you, so we've decided to share a little bit of the wealth of content that our MaxFun backers get and put together this present for everyone. It's the very first episode of But Enough About Eurovision Already from April, our pop culture chat about anything non-Eurovision, and the very first episode of Dimitry's interview show Eurovision Journeys, where he talks to European fans of the ESC and their history with it. Jeremy's wearing his Dale shirt, Dimitry's got a Chip jacket, and Oscar is the 'N'."Bottle Blonde" by Momma: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D8CHz7tNHTw"Endless Fantasy" by Anamanaguchi: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6fdr-Fiv92c"Come Over" by Le Sserafim: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z_uqieM8VGMLinda Martin's famous exchange with Billy McGuinness: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q6nOWx7tqXwThis week's companion playlist: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2V6PNHjv13ZMQgpPNCOY2S The Eurovangelists are Jeremy Bent, Oscar Montoya and Dimitry Pompée.The theme was arranged and recorded by Cody McCorry and Faye Fadem, and the logo was designed by Tom Deja.Production support for this show was provided by the Maximum Fun network.The show is edited by Jeremy Bent with audio mixing help was courtesy of Shane O'Connell.Find Eurovangelists on social media as @eurovangelists on Instagram and @eurovangelists.com on Bluesky, or send us an email at eurovangelists@gmail.com. Head to https://maxfunstore.com/collections/eurovangelists for Eurovangelists merch. Also follow the Eurovangelists account on Spotify and check out our playlists of Eurovision hits, competitors in upcoming national finals, and companion playlists to every single episode, including this one!

Hunger Strike in English PrisonsIn English prisons five people, imprisoned under new repressive laws targeted at pro-Palestinian activists, are on hunger strike. Several of them will have been on hunger strike now for over 50 days. At the weekend and each day since, protests have taken place across the island of Ireland and in Britain. Irish republicans have a natural affinity with those who use hunger strike in protest against inhumane prison conditions and to advance democratic aims. The use of hunger strike by political prisoners following the Rising and during the Tan and Civil Wars and in the North is well documented.Grace – just hold me in your arms …Next year the judicial review, taken by the Moore St. Preservation Trust, will be held in the Dublin High Court to challenge the Irish government's support for the plans of the developer - Hammerson – to demolish much of the historic 1916 Moore St. battlefield site.16 Moore St. is where the leaders of the 1916 Rising held their last meeting and where the decision to surrender was taken to prevent further civilian loss of life.Among those present was Joseph Plunkett who was centrally involved in the planning of the 1916 Rising. He was Director of Military Operations in the Irish Republican Brotherhood. He was also a member of that organisations Military Council. He was a signatory of the Proclamation and although heavily bandaged as a result of medical operations in early April, Plunkett spent Easter week in the GPO. A bleak Christmas for PalestiniansThe story of Christmas and the birth of Jesus in a stable, as Mary and Joseph sought shelter, is known by billions around the world – even by those of other faiths and none. Christmas will be celebrated – presents given – and many will go to their respective places of worship to remember the child born in poverty, surrounded by a loving family and animals.But for the people of Palestine, surviving in the occupied Palestinian Territories, this Christmas thousands of families will be separated from their loved ones, many of them children, held illegally in Israeli prisons. In the Gaza Strip families will mourn the 20,000 babies and children killed in Israel's genocidal war and the many more left with life changing injuries. Children will grieve for the parents who have been killed.

Ross Halls caught up with former Ipswich Town forward Daryl Murphy to discuss his time at Portman Road and journey in football in our Kings of Anglia Christmas podcast special. Daryl spoke about a range of memories, including his early life in Ireland, coming over to England, playing in the Premier League with Sunderland and his relationship with Roy Keane. He discusses his multiple loan spells at Town, before joining permanently under Mick McCarthy, his partnership with David McGoldrick, that 27-goal season and overall spell in Suffolk. The Irishman also chats about his transfer request to join Newcastle United, playing for his country, coaching journey, his son now playing and much more.  Kings of Anglia is sponsored by Stardust Spirits. Get 20% OFF with promo code KOA at https://www.stardustspirits.co.uk/ Also sponsored by Molecular! Get 10% OFF with promo code KOA10 at https://www.molecular-uk.com/ Subscribe on our website to watch the video version of the podcast - https://www.eadt.co.uk/subscribe/ You can shop the KOA range here - (kings-of-anglia.myspreadshop.co.uk) 

Spike Island, or "Ireland's Alcatraz", is a small coastal enclave off the coast of Cobh in Co Cork. But while most of us associate its colourful history as one of a battle-hardened prison, its story begins much earlier, centuries earlier in fact. Today on the Indo Daily, Ellen Coyne is joined by John Crotty, former general manager of Spike Island and author of the book Spike Island: The Rebels, Residents and Crafty Criminals of Ireland's Historic Island, to discuss the island's past and the potential histories yet to be unfurled Host: Ellen Coyne Guest: John Crotty *This podcast was first released in May, 2025. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

https://thecommunists.org/2025/12/01/news/break-academic-zionism-chains-university-college-dublin/ Social Rights Ireland on the Palestine solidarity encampment and the crisis of imperialist analysis in Ireland. The lack of engagement by Ireland's official ‘left' with the encampment at UCD illuminates a fundamental crisis: the abandonment of a revolutionary understanding of imperialism. The refusal to think beyond moral outrage at the genocide in Gaza, to trace the roots of the genocide to imperialism as a global economic system, is a sign of intellectual and political bankruptcy. Subscribe! Donate! Join us in building a bright future for humanity! www.thecommunists.org www.lalkar.org www.redyouth.org Telegram: t.me/thecommunists Twitter: twitter.com/cpgbml Soundcloud: @proletarianradio Rumble: rumble.com/c/theCommunists Odysee: odysee.com/@proletariantv:2 Facebook: www.facebook.com/cpgbml Online Shop: https://shop.thecommunists.org/ Education Program: Each one teach one! www.londonworker.org/education-programme/ Join the struggle www.thecommunists.org/join/ Donate: www.thecommunists.org/donate/

Celtic Christmas is here. Carols, reels, and winter warmth from Belfast to Pittsburgh. Turn it up and deck the halls...Celtic style. Do you need a soundtrack for lights, baking, or a snowy drive? This week's Irish & Celtic Music Podcast is packed with festive favorites and fresh Celtic Christmas cheer. The Gothard Sisters, Kinnfolk, Irish Christmas in America, Ritchie Remo, The Chivalrous Crickets, Boston Blackthorne, The Shamrocks, The Rogues, Terry McDade & The McDades, Plunk Murray, Kathleen MacInnes, The Irish Rovers, Celtic Woman, Sean Griffin, Seán Heely On the Irish & Celtic Music Podcast #739  -  -  Subscribe now! GET CELTIC MUSIC NEWS IN YOUR INBOX The Celtic Music Magazine is a quick and easy way to plug yourself into more great Celtic culture. Enjoy seven weekly news items with what's happening with Celtic music and culture online. Subscribe now and get 34 Celtic MP3s for Free. VOTE IN THE CELTIC TOP 20 FOR 2025 This is our way of finding the best songs and artists each year. You can vote for as many songs and tunes that inspire you in each episode. Your vote helps me create this year's Best Celtic music of 2025 episode. You have until December 4 to vote for this episode. Vote Now! You can follow our playlist on YouTube to listen to those top voted tracks as they are added every 2 - 3 weeks. THIS WEEK IN CELTIC MUSIC 0:13 - The Gothard Sisters "Here We Come a Caroling" from A Celtic Christmas 3:27 - WELCOME 6:12 - Kinnfolk "A Wintertime Feast" from A Wintertime Feast 10:58 - Irish Christmas in America "Set Dances_Single Jig  -  An Suisin Ban, The Hunt, Clancy's" from A Long Way From Home 15:42 - Ritchie Remo "Christmas Family" from Home For Christmas 18:52 - The Chivalrous Crickets "Carol Set  -  Sussex Carol / Bring a Torch Isabella / In dulci jubilo / Ding Dong Merrily on High" from A Chivalrous Christmas 24:23 - FEEDBACK 28:41 - Boston Blackthorne "Christmas in Pittsburgh 1943" from A Celtic Christmas 33:37 - The Shamrocks "Christmas in Belfast" from Single 36:56 - The Rogues "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen" from Hellbound Sleigh 38:13 - Terry McDade & The McDades "Maybe This Christmas" from Winter Rose 40:44 - THANK YOU 42:59 - Plunk Murray "I Saw Three Ships" from Christmas in the Pub 45:52 - Kathleen MacInnes "Santa Take Me Home" from Single 48:48 - The Irish Rovers "Bells Over Belfast" from An Irish Christmas 51:54 - Celtic Woman, Sean Griffin "I'm in Love for Christmas" from Nollaig – A Christmas Journey 55:34 - CLOSING 57:17 - Seán Heely "Silent Night" from So Merry as We Have Been 1:02:15 - CREDITS Support for this program comes from Hank Woodward. Support for this program comes from Dr. Annie Lorkowski of Centennial Animal Hospital in Corona, California. Support for this program comes from International speaker, Joseph Dumond, teaching the ancient roots of the Gaelic people. Learn more about their origins at Sightedmoon.com Support for this program comes from Cascadia Cross Border Law Group, Creating Transparent Borders for more than twenty five years, serving Alaska and the world. Find out more at   www.CascadiaLawAlaska.com The Irish & Celtic Music Podcast was produced by Marc Gunn, The Celtfather and our Patrons on Patreon. The show was edited by Mitchell Petersen with Graphics by Miranda Nelson Designs. Visit our website to follow the show. You'll find links to all of the artists played in this episode. Todd Wiley is the editor of the Celtic Music Magazine. Subscribe to get 34 Celtic MP3s for Free. Plus, you'll get 7 weekly news items about what's happening with Celtic music and culture online. Best of all, you will connect with your Celtic heritage. Please tell one friend about this podcast. Word of mouth is the absolute best way to support any creative endeavor. Finally, as we celebrate Celtic Christmas, remember this: caring for the earth is part of the old traditions. It's stewardship. It's community. Clean energy isn't just good for the planet. It's a gift to our families and our neighbors. Solar and wind are now the cheapest power sources in history, yet too many politicians would rather toast billionaires by the fire than help working families keep their homes warm and their bills low. Real change begins when we stop letting the ultra - rich write our energy policy and run our government. Choose affordable, renewable power. Clean energy means lower costs, greater freedom, and a world that can still sing for future generations. Promote Celtic culture through music at http://celticmusicpodcast.com/. WELCOME THE IRISH & CELTIC MUSIC PODCAST * Helping you celebrate Celtic culture through music. I am Marc Gunn. I'm a Celtic musician and also host of Pub Songs & Stories. Every song has a story, every episode is a toast to Celtic and folk songwriters. Discover the stories behind the songs from the heart of the Celtic pub scene. This podcast is for fans of all kinds of Celtic music. We are here to build a diverse Celtic community and help the incredible artists who so generously share their music with you. If you hear music you love, please email artists to let them know you heard them on the Irish and Celtic Music Podcast. Musicians depend on your generosity to release new music. So please find a way to support them. Buy a CD, Album Pin, Shirt, Digital Download, or join their community on Patreon. You can find a link to all of the artists in the shownotes, along with show times, when you visit our website at celticmusicpodcast.com. Email follow@bestcelticmusic to learn how to subscribe to the podcast and you will get a free music - only episode. You'll also learn how to get your band played on the podcast. Bands don't need to send in music, and you will get a free eBook called Celtic Musicians Guide to Digital Music. It's 100% free. Again email follow@bestcelticmusic WANT MORE CELTIC CHRISTMAS MUSIC? I host multiple podcasts, but the other big show of the year is Celtic Christmas Music. It's a free podcast highlighting Christmas music by Celtic musicians. The show is nearly as old as this podcast. You can enjoy 6 new episodes every year, all supported by folks like you. In fact, head on over to the Celtic Christmas Music Patreon page so you can listen to the show for free and follow it as well. IRISH & CELTIC MUSIC PODFEST Today's show is brought to you by Irish & Celtic Music PodFest. Our first ever festival will feature three Celtic bands, including yours truly, Marc Gunn. It's happening Sunday, March 8, 2026 at The Lost Druid Brewery in Avondale Estates, GA. Follow our event page on Facebook for more details. Or even better, Follow us for Free on our Patreon page. While you're there, you'll also find out about the Kickstarter we're launching for an album of the Best Celtic Music of 2025. And you can find out how You can get involved. ALBUM PINS ARE CHANGING THE WAY WE HEAR CELTIC MUSIC I got an email from Discmakers, my CD manufacturer, saying they were forced to raise their prices because of tariffs by our president. This is a tax on Americans. So if you love CDs, remember that the prices will go up. So please support those higher priced CDs. But there is an option for those who don't want to buy CDs and for those who want a better alternative for the environment. It's the Album Pin. Album Pins are lapel pins themed to a particular album. You get a digital download of the album. Then you can wear your album. All of my latest Album Pins are wood - burned and locally produced. This makes them better for the environment. And they are fun and fashionable. If you want to learn more about Album Pins, you can read more about them on my celtfather.Substack.com or just buy one at magerecords.com THANK YOU PATRONS OF THE PODCAST! Because of generous patrons like you, the Irish & Celtic Music Podcast releases new episodes nearly every single week. Your support doesn't just fund the show—it fuels a movement. It helps us share the magic of Celtic music with thousands of new listeners and grow a global community of music lovers. Your contributions pay for everything behind the scenes: audio engineering, stunning graphics, weekly issues of the Celtic Music Magazine, show promotion, and—most importantly—buying the music we feature from indie Celtic artists. And if you're not yet a patron? You're missing out! Patrons get: Early access to episodes Music - only editions Free MP3 downloads Exclusive stories and artist interviews A vote in the Celtic Top 20 Join us today and help keep the music alive, vibrant, and independent.

Ireland is back in the studio on Christmas Eve! Ireland is joined by Bergman to tip off the show, with Ramona Shelburne joining later! The crew dive into the Lakers loss last night vs the Suns. Take a listen to what JJ Redick had to say after the game. Ireland weighs in on the USC vs Notre Dame game situation. Take a listen to former Trojan Keyshawn Johnson talk about the rivalry! Boys in Blue report! Ice Breakers! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Time for Sports Graffiti! Ireland and Momo dive into the Lakers game last night and their Christmas Day matchup vs the Rockets! Which Hall of Famer has gotten into Professional photography? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Fast Track! Ireland and Momo talk about the soon to be “California Post.” More Fast Track! Who is the highest paid female athlete? Game of Games! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi Kids. We're taking a little break over the festive season. Today's story is one of our personalized tales. This one is about a regular BKFK listerner from Ireland named Jude! Happy Holidays!Support the show

The line of Judah was blessed with the right to rule and to give laws, and God promised that the seed of David would always sit on a throne somewhere.  That ruling line did not end with Zedekiah; Jeremiah took Zedekiah's daughters to Ireland.  But research shows that this did not happen in the time of Ollam Fodhla and Tea Tephi.  We must take a closer look at Irish history. Watch, Listen and Learn 24x7 at PastorMelissaScott.com Pastor Melissa Scott teaches from Faith Center in Glendale. Call 1-800-338-3030 24x7 to leave a message for Pastor Scott. You may make reservations to attend a live service, leave a prayer request or make a commitment. Pastor Scott appreciates messages and reads them often during live broadcasts. Follow @Pastor_Scott on Twitter and visit her official Facebook page @Pastor.M.Scott. Download Pastor Scott's "Understand the Bible" app for iPhone, iPad and iPod at the Apple App Store and for Android devices in the Google Store. Pastor Scott can also be seen 24x7 on Roku and Amazon Fire on the "Understand the Bible?" channel. ©2025 Pastor Melissa Scott, Ph.D. All Rights Reserved

On this year's Annual Christmas Mailbag: New Year's Resolution results are shared, Big Cool Ranch speaks out, Eli gives Christmas Boardroom advice, Mike makes a statement about a needed mindset shift, and much more.  Kudos to Titleist for the incredible prizes New YouTube Series - Between Two Sims: https://youtu.be/45hjEjhMByo  Interested in Ireland 2026? chasingscratchgolf.com/events Want bonus content? Join the Velcro: patreon.com/chasingscratch  Kudos to Nerd Fitness: Nerdfitness.com/chasingscratch Kudos to Vuori: vuoriclothing.com/chasingscratch   

In Ukraine, the Christmas season is being observed even amid war. We hear one story from a Christian ministry leader and Kyiv resident. Also, the Trump Administration has recalled nearly 30 ambassadors and senior embassy officials, serving mostly in African and Asian countries, from their posts. And, a $500 million AI factory is set to open in Armenia. Plus, members of Parliament grant full clearance for Santa Claus to use Ireland's airspace to deliver toys to the country's children. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

This week we talk about energy consumption, pollution, and bipartisan issues.We also discuss local politics, data center costs, and the Magnificent 7 tech companies.Recommended Book: Against the Machine by Paul KingsnorthTranscriptIn 2024, the International Energy Agency estimated that data centers consumed about 1.5% of all electricity generated, globally, that year. It went on to project that energy consumption by data centers could double by 2030, though other estimates are higher, due to the ballooning of investment in AI-focused data centers by some of the world's largest tech companies.There are all sorts of data centers that serve all kinds of purposes, and they've been around since the mid-20th century, since the development of general purposes digital computers, like the 1945 Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer, or ENIAC, which was programmable and reprogrammable, and used to study, among other things, the feasibility of thermonuclear weapons.ENIAC was built on the campus of the University of Pennsylvania and cost just shy of $500,000, which in today's money would be around $7 million. It was able to do calculators about a thousand times faster than other, electro-mechanical calculators that were available at the time, and was thus considered to be a pretty big deal, making some types of calculation that were previously not feasible, not only feasible, but casually accomplishable.This general model of building big-old computers at a center location was the way of things, on a practical level, until the dawn of personal computers in the 1980s. The mainframe-terminal setup that dominated until then necessitated that the huge, cumbersome computing hardware was all located in a big room somewhere, and then the terminal devices were points of access that allowed people to tap into those centralized resources.Microcomputers of the sort of a person might have in their home changed that dynamic, but the dawn of the internet reintroduced something similar, allowing folks to have a computer at home or at their desk, which has its own resources, but to then tap into other microcomputers, and to still other larger, more powerful computers across internet connections. Going on the web and visiting a website is basically just that: connecting to another computer somewhere, that distant device storing the website data on its hard drive and sending the results to your probably less-powerful device, at home or work.In the late-90s and early 2000s, this dynamic evolved still further, those far-off machines doing more and more heavy-lifting to create more and more sophisticated online experiences. This manifested as websites that were malleable and editable by the end-user—part of the so-called Web 2.0 experience, which allowed for comments and chat rooms and the uploading of images to those sites, based at those far off machines—and then as streaming video and music, and proto-versions of social networks became a thing, these channels connecting personal devices to more powerful, far-off devices needed more bandwidth, because more and more work was being done by those powerful, centrally located computers, so that the results could be distributed via the internet to all those personal computers and, increasingly, other devices like phones and tablets.Modern data centers do a lot of the same work as those earlier iterations, though increasingly they do a whole lot more heavy-lifting labor, as well. They've got hardware capable of, for instance, playing the most high-end video games at the highest settings, and then sending, frame by frame, the output of said video games to a weaker device, someone's phone or comparably low-end computer, at home, allowing the user of those weaker devices to play those games, their keyboard or controller inputs sent to the data center fast enough that they can control what's happening and see the result on their own screen in less than the blink of an eye.This is also what allows folks to store backups on cloud servers, big hard drives located in such facilities, and it's what allows the current AI boom to function—all the expensive computers and their high-end chips located at enormous data centers with sophisticated cooling systems and high-throughput cables that allow folks around the world to tap into their AI models, interact with them, have them do heavy-lifting for them, and then those computers at these data centers send all that information back out into the world, to their devices, even if those devices are underpowered and could never do that same kind of work on their own.What I'd like to talk about today are data centers, the enormous boom in their construction, and how these things are becoming a surprise hot button political issue pretty much everywhere.—As of early 2024, the US was host to nearly 5,400 data centers sprawled across the country. That's more than any other nation, and that number is growing quickly as those aforementioned enormous tech companies, including the Magnificent 7 tech companies, Nvidia, Apple, Alphabet, Microsoft, Amazon, Meta, and Tesla, which have a combined market cap of about $21.7 trillion as of mid-December 2025, which is about two-thirds of the US's total GDP for the year, and which is more than the European Union's total GDP, which weighs in at around $19.4 trillion, as of October 2025—as they splurge on more and more of them.These aren't the only companies building data centers at breakneck speed—there are quite a few competitors in China doing the same, for instance—but they're putting up the lion's share of resources for this sort of infrastructure right now, in part because they anticipate a whole lot of near-future demand for AI services, and those services require just a silly amount of processing power, which itself requires a silly amount of monetary investment and electricity, but also because, first, there aren't a lot of moats, meaning protective, defensive assets in this industry, as is evidenced by their continual leapfrogging of each other, and the notion that a lot of what they're doing, today, will probably become commodity services in not too long, rather than high-end services people and businesses will be inclined to pay big money for, and second, because there's a suspicion, held by many in this industry, that there's an AI shake-out coming, a bubble pop or bare-minimum a release of air from that bubble, which will probably kill off a huge chunk of the industry, leaving just the largest, too-big-to-fail players still intact, who can then gobble up the rest of the dying industry at a discount.Those who have the infrastructure, who have invested the huge sums of money to build these data centers, basically, will be in a prime position to survive that extinction-level event, in other words. So they're all scrambling to erect these things as quickly as possible, lest they be left behind.That construction, though, is easier said than done.The highest-end chips account for around 70-80% of a modern data center's cost, as these GPUs, graphical processing units that are optimized for AI purposes, like Nvidia's Blackwell chips, can cost tens of thousands of dollars apiece, and millions of dollars per rack. There are a lot of racks of such chips in these data centers, and the total cost of a large-scale AI-optimized data center is often somewhere between $35 and $60 billion.A recent estimate by McKinsey suggests that by 2030, data center investment will need to be around $6.7 trillion a year just to keep up the pace and meet demand for compute power. That's demand from these tech companies, I should say—there's a big debate about where there's sufficient demand from consumers of AI products, and whether these tech companies are trying to create such demand from whole cloth, to justify heightened valuations, and thus to continue goosing their market caps, which in turn enriches those at the top of these companies.That said, it's a fair bet that for at least a few more years this influx in investment will continue, and that means pumping out more of these data centers.But building these sorts of facilities isn't just expensive, it's also regulatorily complex. There are smaller facilities, akin to ENIAC's campus location, back in the day, but a lot of them—because of the economies of scale inherent in building a lot of this stuff all at once, all in the same place—are enormous, a single data center facility covering thousands of acres and consuming a whole lot of power to keep all of those computers with their high-end chips running 24/7.Previous data centers from the pre-AI era tended to consume in the neighborhood of 30MW of energy, but the baseline now is closer to 200MW. The largest contemporary data centers consume 1GW of electricity, which is about the size of a small city's power grid—that's a city of maybe 500,000-750,000 people, though of course climate, industry, and other variables determine the exact energy requirements of a city—and they're expected to just get larger and more resource-intensive from here.This has resulted in panic and pullbacks in some areas. In Dublin, for instance, the government has stopped issuing new grid connections for data centers until 2028, as it's estimated that data centers will account for 28% of Ireland's power use by 2031, already.Some of these big tech companies have read the writing on the wall, and are either making deals to reactivate aging power plants—nuclear, gas, coal, whatever they can get—or are saying they'll build new ones to offset the impact on the local power grid.And that impact can be significant. In addition to the health and pollution issues caused by some of the sites—in Memphis, for instance, where Elon Musk's company, xAI, built a huge data center to help power his AI chatbot, Grok, the company is operating 35 unpermitted gas turbines, which it says are temporary, but which have been exacerbating locals' health issues and particulate numbers—in addition to those issues, energy prices across the US are up 6.9% year over year as of December 2025, which is much higher than overall inflation. Those costs are expected to increase still further as data centers claim more of the finite energy available on these grids, which in turn means less available for everyone else, and that scarcity, because of supply and demand, increases the cost of that remaining energy.As a consequence of these issues, and what's broadly being seen as casual overstepping of laws and regulations by these companies, which often funnel a lot of money to local politicians to help smooth the path for their construction ambitions, there are bipartisan efforts around the world to halt construction on these things, locals saying the claimed benefits, like jobs, don't actually make sense—as construction jobs will be temporary, and the data centers themselves don't require many human maintainers or operators, and because they consume all that energy, in some cases might consume a bunch of water—possibly not as much as other grand-scale developments, like golf courses, but still—and they tend to generate a bunch of low-level, at times harmful background noise, can create a bunch of local pollution, and in general take up a bunch of space without giving any real benefit to the locals.Interestingly, this is one of the few truly bipartisan issues that seems to be persisting in the United States, at a moment in which it's often difficult to find things Republicans and Democrats can agree on, and that's seemingly because it's not just a ‘big companies led by untouchable rich people stomping around in often poorer communities and taking what they want' sort of issue, it's also an affordability issue, because the installation of these things seems to already be pushing prices higher—when the price of energy goes up, the price of just about everything goes up—and it seems likely to push prices even higher in the coming years.We'll see to what degree this influences politics and platforms moving forward, but some local politicians in particular are already making hay by using antagonism toward the construction of new data centers a part of their policy and campaign promises, and considering the speed at which these things are being constructed, and the slow build of resistance toward them, it's also an issue that could persist through the US congressional election in 2026, to the subsequent presidential election in 2028.Show Noteshttps://www.wired.com/story/opposed-to-data-centers-the-working-families-party-wants-you-to-run-for-office/https://finance.yahoo.com/news/without-data-centers-gdp-growth-171546326.htmlhttps://time.com/7308925/elon-musk-memphis-ai-data-center/https://wreg.com/news/new-details-on-152m-data-center-planned-in-memphis/https://www.politico.com/news/2025/05/06/elon-musk-xai-memphis-gas-turbines-air-pollution-permits-00317582https://www.datacenterwatch.org/reporthttps://www.govtech.com/products/kent-county-mich-cancels-data-center-meeting-due-to-crowdhttps://www.woodtv.com/news/kent-county/gaines-township-planning-commission-to-hold-hearing-on-data-center-rezoning/https://www.theverge.com/science/841169/ai-data-center-oppositionhttps://www.iea.org/reports/energy-and-ai/energy-demand-from-aihttps://www.cbre.com/insights/reports/global-data-center-trends-2025https://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/news/chandler-city-council-unanimously-kills-sinema-backed-data-center-40628102/https://www.mlive.com/news/ann-arbor/2025/11/rural-michigan-fights-back-how-riled-up-residents-are-challenging-big-tech-data-centers.html?outputType=amphttps://www.courthousenews.com/nonprofit-sues-to-block-165-billion-openai-data-center-in-rural-new-mexico/https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/microsoft-cancels-plans-for-data-center-caledonia-wisconsin/https://www.cnbc.com/2025/11/25/microsoft-ai-data-center-rejection-vs-support.htmlhttps://www.wpr.org/news/microsoft-caledonia-data-center-site-ozaukee-countyhttps://thehill.com/opinion/robbys-radar/5655111-bernie-sanders-data-center-moratorium/https://www.investopedia.com/magnificent-seven-stocks-8402262https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/technology-media-and-telecommunications/our-insights/the-cost-of-compute-a-7-trillion-dollar-race-to-scale-data-centershttps://www.mckinsey.com/industries/technology-media-and-telecommunications/our-insights/ai-power-expanding-data-center-capacity-to-meet-growing-demandhttps://www.marketplace.org/story/2025/12/19/are-energyhungry-data-centers-causing-electric-bills-to-go-uphttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_centerhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ENIAC This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit letsknowthings.substack.com/subscribe