When Muhammad Ali visited Dublin to fight Al Blue Lewis he famously asked where do all the black people hang out? He was told there weren’t any. Dave Hannigan has written a marvelous book about that week in Ireland. He talks to Dion Fanning about Ali’s time in Dublin and the people who made it happen.
Starting a vodka company straight out of college didn't give Mark Kavanagh much time for credibility, so he has had to carve it out for himself and his company, Wexbury. In this podcast, he talks to Rosanna Cooney about getting stocked nationwide and building a company where the marketing comes first, and the product comes second.
In episode two of Experience with Dion Fanning, former Tánaiste Frances Fitzgerald talks about her resignation in 2017 and why she believes she was suffering from post-traumatic stress in the aftermath.
Journalist Joe Galvin reveals in his coverage for The Currency this week that the supplier of surveillance software under investigation by the European Parliament for abuses including the hacking of a Greek journalist has established a corporate base in Ireland. He tells Thomas Hubert how he came across this story and its implications for the regulation of the cyber arms trade.
In the first episode of Experience with Dion Fanning, a new podcast series with people in Irish life reflecting on the experiences that shaped them, John Banville talks about grief, journalism and why he doesn't care what people say about him on Twitter.
Ireland gets a poor return for its investment in public infrastructure. As the population climbs, that's a big problem. Marco Chitti, a transit researcher who specialises in sharing best practice in infrastructure investment, has some ideas on how to build better. In this podcast, Chitti talks to Sean Keyes.
Mikhail Gorbachev's biographer William Taubman talks to Dion Fanning about how he came to know the last leader of the USSR and how if he hadn't humiliated Boris Yeltsin at a meeting in 1987, the history of the Soviet Union might have been different.
The Irish Fiscal Advisory Council has warned that Government faces difficult choices and needs to prioritise what it wants to achieve in Budget 2023. It must address with the current cost-of-living crisis, without further stoking inflation. It must balance short-term and long-term demands. It must also appease the three coalition partners. And as the economist Sebastian Barnes, the chairman of the Council, says in this podcast with Stephen Kinsella, the upcoming Budget is set against the backdrop of four overlapping crises. He remains positive about the economy but is less upbeat to the state’s approach to pension and climate.
The growth fund BGF made its first investment in the Irish market in 2019. It has followed it up with a dozen more deals, deploying a total of €97.5 million in the Irish market. Backed by Isif, AIB, Bank of Ireland and Ulster Bank, it has €250 million in capital to invest.
In this podcast with Ian Kehoe, the head of BGF in Ireland Leo Casey talks about the type of companies the firm is willing to back, the sectors it prefers, and the size of the check it can write. In addition, the former IBI corporate financier talks about the slowdown in dealmaking this year, frothy valuations and the headwinds facing the economy.
Co Limerick-based Nick Cotter is the winner of this year's Global Student Entrepreneur Awards for the solution developed to reduce chemical use in livestock by Cotter Agritech, the latest strand in a farm-based business sustaining two generations of his family and several employees. From running a marketing survey in his primary school for his first firewood business to selling organic lamb to Adare Manor and keeping a cool head when approached by venture capitalists, he tells Thomas Hubert what drives him to juggle business, college and life – and why it could only have happened on a farm.
The car bomb that killed Darya Dugina may have been intended for her father Aleksandr Dugin, a figure who may or may not have Vladimir Putin's ear but who has articulated a vision of the Russian nation which justifies the invasion of Ukraine. Journalist and documentary-maker Johnny O'Reilly talks to Dion Fanning from Kyiv about Dugin's importance if any and how the war is now playing out on the frontline in Ukraine.
