Every March, St Patrick’s Day transforms Dublin — but few people know the man helping to turn a single parade into one of Ireland’s biggest cultural and economic events.
Richard Tierney is the CEO of St Patrick’s Festival, the organisation behind Ireland’s national celebration. In thispodcast with Ian Kehoe, Tierney explains how the festival has evolved into a multi-day, citywide programme — with free daytime events, night-time culture and thousands of participants — while still carrying the weight of national identity at home and abroad.
Coming from a background in live entertainment and major commercial deals, Tierney was brought in with a clear brief: make the festival financially sustainable without losing its cultural soul.
In this podcast, Dion Fanning talks to Jarrod Kimber, the acclaimed Australian cricket writer, about what the Azeem Rafiq story tells us about English cricket and more broadly professional sport.
As the dust settles on COP26 and the publication of the Government's Climate Action Plan, Thomas Hubert is joined by The Currency's columnists Ed Brophy and Stephen Kinsella and contributing journalist John Reynolds. From a common assessment that both high-profile events fell well short of the level of commitment needed to tackle climate change, they draw lessons for the changes now required of the state, businesses, voters and the foundations of democracy and capitalism underpinning their interactions.
Sean FitzPatrick's death has led many to reflect on his time at Anglo Irish Bank. In this podcast Tom Lyons - whose book with Brian Carey, The FitzPatrick Tapes, details the rise and fall of the bank - talks to Dion Fanning about the Sean FitzPatrick he knew, the generational divide in business between those who feel FitzPatrick deserves more credit for his achievements and those who see those days as history, and how he will be remembered.
Jack Murray has always been fascinated with the art of storytelling. For 20 years, he has advised politicians and business leaders on how to tell their own story, while his company MediaHQ has built software to help people share stories. Now, he has just published a book on the topic called: “The Magic Slice: How to master the art of storytelling for business.”
In this podcast with Ian Kehoe, Murray explains the book's thesis – that companies with great stories get more funding, more customers, and more emotional reaction. He explains what companies need to do in order to hone their story and gives examples of companies who have got the process right – as well as those who have failed. He also talks about the science of storytelling, why he abandoned PowerPoint, and the journey that led to him writing the book.
Ben Southwood is a fellow at Policy Exchange, a UK think tank. Along with his co-author Samuel Hughes, he has an idea: individual streets should control their own planning rules.
Now, Southwood and Hughes' idea is on the UK legislative agenda. Obscure as it may sound, the plan has the potential to deliver tens of thousands of new homes in the places they're needed most. In this podcast, Southwood talks about street votes, along with his diagnosis of what has gone wrong in the housing markets of the English-speaking world.
In this podcast, Roman Imielski, journalist and editor at the largest broadsheet newspaper in Poland Gazeta Wyborcza, explains what is happening in his country and why the stand off with the EU could play into the Polish government's hands as they try to create anti EU feeling in a country which remains supportive of the union.
Sean Smith is a fresh-faced 22-year-old ag-tech entrepreneur who co-founded Micron Agritech, a parasite testing kit for livestock, while at university in TUD. Since its creation in 2019, the business now has 10 employees and an office on Dublin’s Northside. The company has already raised €500,000 through Yield Lab and is looking for a further €1.5 million in funding ahead of its official launch in early 2022. Although parasite testing in livestock is the current focus for Micron Agritech, Smith believes it has the potential for use in human health in the future as well.
"I don't believe we can trust the gambling industry." As his book on corporate culture See-Saw is published, Fintan Drury looks back on his own career and his time on the board of Anglo Irish bank and chair of Paddy Power. It has been an extraordinary career and in this interview with Dion Fanning, he discusses representing Brian Kerr, his early career in journalism and why his career left him with a feeling of angst.
Nicholas Boys-Smith is the founder of Create Streets, a social enterprise in the UK which is focused on making new development as popular and as beloved as historic development. This matters not just for its own sake, but because unpopular development tends to get blocked in the planning process, which drives up housing costs. Boys-Smith speaks to Sean Keyes.
