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.
Matthew Continetti has written a history of American conservatism, a study of the age old tension between populism and the elites that have, long before Trump, dominated the story of the American right. His book – The Right: The Hundred-Year War for American Conservatism deals with this history at a time when it seems as if one side has triumphed. “Right now,” Continetti says, “I think the Republican Party has consolidated around a populist tradition, exemplified by President Trump and his Make America Great Again movement.” In this podcast he talks to Dion Fanning about his book.
An inspiring careers day at school steered Belfast woman Aislinn McBride towards software engineering when she was 16. She now has 15 years’ experience under her belt at Kainos, a Northern Ireland-headquartered technology business expanding across 22 countries. One of her key challenges as chief technology officer is to replicate this lightbulb moment among potential candidates to broaden the group’s recruitment reach, she tells Thomas Hubert.
Fintan Drury founded a sports agency more than thirty years ago. In that time, he has advised the European Tour and worked on bringing the Ryder Cup to Ireland in 2006. In this podcast, Fintan talks to Dion Fanning about the LIV Tour and what he would say to a player if he was advising them when the Saudi-backed competition came offering money. He also talks about the ethics of sport in a complicated world and why this may be one instance where the choices should have been clearcut.
Sonia Neary co-founded Wellola with the aim of providing tools for patients to be monitored and cared for at home, rather than in hospitals. The company is now working with the NHS, HSE and VHI and forecasting revenues of €25m within five years. In this podcast, Neary talks to Rosanna Cooney about the future of healthcare in Europe, where trained professionals and healthcare settings are a finite resource under increasingly immense pressure.
The life and death of Joe Campbell - and his family's quest for justice - is the subject of a major investigation on The Currency. In this podcast, journalist Phoebe Greenwood and Joe Campbell's son Joe Jr talk to Dion Fanning about the case, the British government's plan for an amnesty for Troubles-related offences which might deny them justice, and how their father's murder affected the eight children of Joe and Rosemary Campbell.
Scooters are being hyped as an integral part of the carbon-neutral cities of the future, but they come with problems too. In this podcast, Andrew Fleury speaks to Rosanna Cooney about Luna, his Brian O’Driscoll backed software start-up that aims to solve safety issues with e-scooters.
Fine Gael have never recovered from their slump in the 2020 election and remain in the low twenties in the polls. Gary Murphy has written a piece for The Currency on the party this weekend and in this podcast he discusses the party's past and future with Fintan Drury and Dion Fanning.
David Jeffreys co-founded ActionPoint, a digital transformation business, in 2005. Since then, it has been behind the modernised passport renewal system as well as a technology driven passport system for cows. In this podcast with Rosanna Cooney, the Limerick native talks about Ireland's future as a leader in the digital economy, being acquired by Viatel and the future of the knowledge economy.
After the London private equity firm Elysian Capital made its first acquisition in Ireland three years ago, it rolled out its model where a local partner lives and works on the ground in each investment destination. Laura McCoy has been Elysian's Irish partner for just one year, and the acquisition of Fastway this month is her second deal in this job. She tells Thomas Hubert how she and the firm connected, and where they fit in the wave of private equity investment targeting Ireland.
Stephen McNulty founded Ambisense in 2014, when the cleantech label was putting investors off. The Dublin company develops analytics software to generate useful environmental management information from gas and water contamination data, and soon from flood defences. Having raised over €5 million to date, it now has a range of products ready to take on three key markets.
