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

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

190 episodes — Page 1 of 4

Here’s How 187 – Final Order

Apr 16, 202644 min

S1 Ep 186Here’s How 186 – Secret History

John Crotty is an author and historian traditionally published by The History Press and Merrion Press. ***** I came across this on social media, it’s obviously an American anti-tax rant, he’s talking about a tax on a breakfast beverage, that’s obviously a reference to the Boston Tea Party, when according to legend, American colonists protested […]

Apr 2, 202645 min

S1 Ep 185Here’s How 185 – Dangerous Tendencies

Joan Esposito is the afternoon drivetime presenter of WCPT and Arnd Bauerkämper is the adjunct professor of modern history at the Free University of Berlin. ***** This piece is not about Trump. I promise, this isn’t a piece about Trump. Well, just a tiny bit, but really it’s hardly about Trump at all. In fact, […]

Feb 13, 202647 min

S1 Ep 184Here’s How 184 – Little Empires

John Moran is the first directly elected Mayor of Limerick. Automated Transcript There are probably on large number of people in that council chamber that would see themselves as mayor sometime. And therefore, it is actually the nature of politics that they would like to take a, you know, a political shot at whatever is […]

Jan 29, 202648 min

S1 Ep 183Here’s How 183 – Who’s at it Again

Iain Dale is a presenter on the British talk radio station LBC, former Conservative party electoral candidate and author of the book The Taoiseach: A Century of Political Leadership *****

Nov 6, 202553 min

S2 Ep 182Here’s How 182 – It Takes a Village

Frank Connolly is a journalist, author and former head of communications with SIPTU. Tony Lowes is director of Friends of the Irish Environment. Michael Smith is the editor of Village Magazine. ***** Lucid Talk is the Belfast-based polling company which, every year, does a poll on attitudes in the north to a border poll. Polls […]

Oct 23, 202537 min

S1 Ep 181Here’s How 181 – Votes, Lies and Video Tape

Kev Collins’ Youtube channel his here. Ben Scallan writes for Gript. ***** That’s a clip I played on the podcast a while back, it’s from one of the far-right protest a while back, and we’ve had a couple more of those anti-immigration protests in the last while. I saw some comments on social media about […]

Jun 12, 202538 min

S1 Ep 180Here’s How 180 – Medieval Attitudes

Dr Kirill Bumin is Associate Dean of Metropolitan College of Boston University and Dr Mordechai Inbari is Professor of Religion at the University of North Carolina at Pembroke. ***** That’s the diminutive Justin Barrett, formerly of Youth Defence and a string of other far-right organisations, Litler himself, talking to a commentator with the Canadian YouTube […]

May 22, 20251h 6m

S1 Ep 179Here’s How 179 – Lost Boys

Amun Bains is a journalist. ***** The first amendment to the US constitution starts “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof” Our constitution is not quite so concise. Article 44 of De Valera’s handbook for governing deals with freedom of religion. Section one says “The State […]

Apr 3, 202555 min

S1 Ep 178Here’s How 178 – All Changed Utterly

Daniel Mulhall is a consultant with DLA Piper law firm and, prior to that, he was ambassador of Ireland to Malaysia, Germany, the United Kingdom and the United States. ***** I want to talk about a couple of fellas that I’m really not so sure of. It’s hard to overstate how disappointing the last century […]

Feb 20, 202558 min

S1 Ep 177Here’s How 177 – Threats to Democracy

***** Now that the dust has settled after the election, congratulations to all the candidates, all 686 of them. Congratulations to everyone from Pearse Doherty who got 18,898 first preference votes in Donegal, all the way down to Seán O’Leary who stood for election in Wicklow and got nine votes. Pearse Doherty got that massive […]

Dec 19, 202435 min

Here’s How 176 – Fair and Balanced

Wendy Grace is a presenter on Spirit Radio and the director of a communications training company. *****

Oct 10, 202446 min

S1 Ep 175Here’s How 175 – Rolling the Dice

Professor Colin O’Gara is Head of Addiction Services at St. John of God Hospital and author of the book Gambling Addiction In Ireland: Causes Consequences and Recovery. ***** There is a pattern, I suppose it’s so well-known that it’s a cliché, of people mellowing their view as they get older. One version is the famous […]

Sep 12, 20241h 8m

S1 Ep 174Here’s How 174 – The Price of Everything

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

Aug 8, 202455 min

Here’s How 173 – Hidden Faces

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

Mar 21, 20241h 2m

HH172 – Never Mind the Bullocks

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

Mar 7, 2024

Here’s How 171 – Tilting at Monoliths

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

Feb 8, 2024

Here’s How 170 – Nobody Tells Us What to Do

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

Jan 18, 2024

Here’s How 169 – Gift of the Gab

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

Dec 21, 2023

Here’s How 168 – Mark of Empire

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

Dec 7, 2023

Here’s How 167 – Holes in the Net

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

Nov 23, 2023

Here’s How 166 – Tsar Wars

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

Nov 2, 2023

HH165 – A Step into the Dark

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

Sep 7, 2023

HH164 – Uncivil Liberties

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

Aug 24, 2023

Here’s How 163 – Guilty Speech

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

Aug 10, 2023

Here’s How 162 – Gravy Trains and Spin Cycles

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

Jul 20, 2023

Here’s How 161 – Once Again for Those at the Back

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

Jul 13, 2023

Here’s How 160 – Heading South

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

Jul 6, 2023

Here’s How 159 – War and Peace

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

Jun 22, 2023

Here’s How 158 – Up with this sort of thing Part II

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

May 19, 2023

Here’s How 157 – Up with this sort of thing Part I

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

May 18, 2023

Here’s How 156 – Down with this sort of thing

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

Apr 27, 2023

Here’s How 155 – Computer says Tá

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

Apr 6, 2023

Here’s How 154 – Faithful Translations

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

Mar 23, 2023

Here’s How 153 – Tax Reform

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

Mar 9, 2023

Here’s How 152 – We Are Still Here

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

Feb 16, 2023

Here’s How 151 – Never Mind the Ballots

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

Feb 2, 2023

Here’s How 150 – I Wanna Be Anarchy

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

Jan 19, 2023

Here’s How 149 – Schrodinger’s Cake

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

Jan 5, 2023

Here’s How 148 – Labouring Forward

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

Dec 22, 2022

Here’s How 147 – Makey-up Nonsensical Propaganda

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

Dec 8, 2022

Here’s How 146 – Another Calm Discussion

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

Nov 11, 2022

Here’s How 145 – A Calm Discussion

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

Oct 13, 2022

Here’s How 144 – Stuck in the Middle with you

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

Sep 29, 20221h 2m

Here’s How 143 – Question Time

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

Sep 15, 2022

Here’s How 142 – Both Sides Now

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

Sep 1, 2022

Here’s How 141 – Defender of the Faiths

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

Aug 18, 2022

Here’s How 140 – German Divisions Part II

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

Jul 28, 2022

Here’s How 139 – German Divisions Part I

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

Jul 26, 2022

Here’s How 138 – Market signals

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

Jul 7, 2022