For professional athletes, retirement doesn’t come in the form of a gradual career peak—it arrives suddenly, often through injury or physical decline. Unlike those in other careers who can steadily build toward financial security, many athletes find themselves facing uncertainty in their early 30s. In this episode of Sports Matters, former rugby players Niall Woods and Marty Moore discuss the challenges of transitioning out of the game, from financial instability to the loss of identity and structure. Speaking to Ian Kehoe, they explore the psychological and practical difficulties of life after professional sport and the importance of preparation for the next chapter. Sports Matters is sponsored by Whitney Moore.
Sonya Lennon has put in the hard yards. For three decades, she has worked in the fashion industry gaining fans and favour. What makes her remarkable is what she has done with that profile. She talks to Rosanna Cooney about making the decision to empower women economically and doing so in a practical hands-on way.
David McNair of ONE talks to Ed Brophy about food insecurity and the reality of the fall out from Russia's invasion of Ukraine for African countries who no longer trust the West and have been courted by Russia and China as a new front opens in a new cold war.
The sanctions placed on Roman Abramovich in the UK have created uncertainty about the future of his football club, Chelsea FC. Dion Fanning talks to the sportswriter Paul Hayward about the rise and fall of Abramovich, the money in the Premier League and where English football - and England - goes from here.
Dave Mulligan is a man on a mission. Having shaken up the drinks industry in Ireland with the lockdown hit Craft Cocktails, he is working on making Poitín the drink of the roaring 2020's. In this podcast he talks to Alison Cowzer about the bars of the future, how to retain staff during a national shortage and breaking into a bottled drinks industry dominated by global players.
The Ukrainian academic Volodymyr Ishchenko has dealt for much of his career with nationalism in Ukraine and beyond. He is part of this podcast this weekend, discussing the motivation of Vladimir Putin, why he feels Russian nationalism doesn't play a huge role in the career of a man who has been driven by cynical, kleptocratic politics and Ishchenko also talks about his own parents who remain in Kyiv. In the first part of the podcast, Johnny O'Reilly speaks to The Currency from Odessa about covering this story and what lies ahead.
As international sanctions target an ever-increasing list of Russian interests in response to the invasion of Ukraine, Thomas Hubert's reporting has traced €13 billion worth of Irish-domiciled assets to Russian firms on the EU and US sanctions list and Stephen Kinsella has assessed the balance of forces between Moscow's military might and Western powers' economic pressure. They join Ian Kehoe to discuss how this confrontation will play out and why Ireland finds itself at the centre of it.
After a harrowing week in Ukraine, two academics at the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna spoke to Dion Fanning about what is happening in the country. Ukrainian Lidiia Akryshora and US historian Katherine Younger about why Putin isn't a rational actor and why there is no way he can achieve what he wants in Ukraine.
Paul Keogh advises some of the most illustrious dynasties of Ireland. His new book, The Family Business Book, offers practical advice on succession planning, firing your relatives and employing them in the first place. He tells Rosanna Cooney how to prevent bust-ups and plan for the future when more than just business is at stake.
Time magazine correspondent Simon Shuster has written extensively about Russia, Ukraine and the key figures in the crisis. In this podcast, he talks to Dion Fanning about what will happen next in Ukraine, how the origins of this crisis began a year ago and why Putin wants disagreement and instability in the west almost above anything else.
