Don O’Neill doesn’t speak in slogans. He speaks in stories — slow-burning, salt-air-soaked, stitched through with a kind of quiet resolve. Raised in the small seaside town of Ballyheigue, County Kerry, O’Neill grew up sketching gowns in secret, dreaming of runways far from the Atlantic’s reach. But even as he dressed icons like Oprah and Michelle Obama, the pulse of home never left his designs.
His journey wasn’t a straight line. It zigzagged through kitchens and catwalks, through heartbreak and hard-earned success. O’Neill trained in design in Paris while working restaurant shifts at night. He spent years as Creative Director at THEIA, only to see the brand shutter suddenly — a moment that cracked open his identity but didn’t break his belief. In this episode of Arts Matters, he speaks with Alison Cowzer. Arts Matters is sponsored by HLB Ireland.
Last year, out of the blue, the Biden administration sanctioned China’s semiconductor industry. It banned the sale of semiconductors to China and US citizens working with Chinese companies. The move highlighted the importance of the sector – and the growing geopolitical issues enveloping it. After all, it is a resource that is fuelling the global economy. In Chip War, Chris Miller recounts the sequence of events that led to the United States perfecting chip design and details why the battle to control this industry will shape our future. In this podcast, he talks to Sinead O’Sullivan about the politics and economics of the semiconductor industry.
Qualtrics is far from a household name but that belies its prolificacy. A $12.5 billion company, its client roster includes 90 per cent of the Fortune 100 companies. Irishman Donnchadh Casey is chief customer officer with the SaaS company. In this podcast, he talks to Rosanna Cooney about its new EMEA headquarters in Dublin and the upcoming acquisition of Qualtrics by private equity firm, Silver Lake.
On July 22, 1982, Malcolm Macarthur went to the Phoenix Park in Dublin and bludgeoned Bridie Gargan, a 27-yeara-old nurse, to the point of death. Two days later, he shot a young farmer, Donal Dunne, in Edenderry, Co Offaly with Dunne’s own shotgun. The killings triggered the resignation of the Attorney General, and almost brought down Charles Haughey’s government. A new book by the Irish Times journalist Harry McGee delves into the murders – the motivation behind them, the manhunt, and enduring legacy of Macarthur’s violent killing spree. On this podcast, McGee talks to Ian Kehoe about the events of 1982, Macarthur’s personality, and the political fallout that almost toppled a government.
By his own admission, Noah Charney is “half criminologist, half art historian”. An academic and a prolific writer, he is widely acknowledged to the world expert in the area of art forgery. His book, The Art of Forgery, examines how to value art and weird things, but it is also a book about psychology and the manicness of the men (and they are nearly always men) who try to one-up the high world of art institutions. In the latest instalment of The Context, Charney talks to Sinead O’Sullivan about what constitutes original work, the biggest cons attempted, and why the De Vinci Code is riddled with inaccuracies.
Ireland will become the first country in the world to mandate health labels on alcoholic drinks. In this podcast, chief executive of Alcohol Action Ireland speaks to Rosanna Cooney about the long slog of advocacy to make this happen and Ireland's future crackdown on alcohol advertising.
Is the era of globalisation coming to an end? And if it is, what does mean for Ireland, a country whose economic model is built on acting as a conduit between continents? These are just some of the question that Sinead O’Sullivan discuses with Michael O’Sullivan in the latest instalment of The Context, our new podcast/book club series. Michael O’Sullivan, a Cork-born economist and former chief investment officer for wealth management at Credit Suisse, discusses the thesis behind his book, The Levelling: What’s Next After Globalisation, zeroing in in on Ireland’s place, in a de-globalizing world.
Our Tandem co-founder and chief customer officer of Beqom, a Swiss-headquartered compensation management business, Aisling Teillard is helping companies to rebuild their relationships with staff after a rocky period of layoffs and disenfranchisement. In this podcast, she talks to Rosanna Cooney about her start-up Our Tandem being acquired, moving to Geneva and developing a new-age of company culture 3.0
In 1876, two Swiss spies came to America and conducted some of the most covert and consequential industrial espionage in history. It changed the course of the global watch industry forever. Aaron Stark, a former Apache pilot and economics professor, chronicles the story his new book, Disrupting Time: Industrial combat, espionage, and the downfall of a great American company. In this podcast with Sinead O’Sullivan, Stark talks about the story, the history of watches, and what it says about the nature of innovation.
Simon Johnson is the former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund and is currently Professor of Entrepreneurship at the MIT Sloan School of Management, where he is head of the Global Economics and Management group. He has just co-authored a book with US economist Daron Acemoglu, entitled 'Power and Progress: Our Thousand-Year Struggle Over Technology and Prosperity', proposing ways in which digital technology can be repurposed for societal benefit as well as private profit. In this podcast with Stephen Kinsella, he talks about the thesis of the book, the nature of the global political economy, and the outlook for Ireland.
The essential act of eating food isn't an area many would think ripe for disruption, but powdered food replacements have been lurking in the productivity-obsessed techie realms for more than a decade. Now Ireland is getting its own powdered iteration from Darren O'Reilly a former professional rugby player. He tells Rosanna Cooney about Whole Supp, his start-up that is trying to take on the big guys.
