“I had a very frank discussion with McGuinness and I told him that I couldn’t ever square the application of violence for political reasons”
Northern Ireland journalist Eamonn Mallie has just released a memoir, Eyewitness to War and Peace, and his interview with Dion Fanning explores the upheaval he has witnessed through a career covering the Troubles and the peace process, as well as the process of reporting on it. "With Michelle O’Neill and Emma Little-Pengelly at the helm, I’m hopeful that we’re on the right track again," Mallie says, and he explains why.
“This has been the eternal debate since 1982 – What made Malcolm Macarthur do what he did?”
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.
“Art forgers tend to almost all be Caucasian, middle-aged men with strained relationships with the women in their lives.”
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.
“We had the Italian ambassador saying wine is good for the heart. That is simply not true.”
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.
“Ireland has some extreme negative effects of globalisation, which in many cases can be traced to the domestic economy and not to global factors”
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.
“You’ve got to make sure all bias and subjectivity are long gone from performance processes”
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
“They become indentured to the idea of punctuality. That begins to spread. By 1880 or so, there is a change in society where you are now expected to be punctual, you are expected to be places.”
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.
“Just look at the Irish numbers. They are eye popping since 1960.”
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 reality is people are very time poor. That’s where our product comes into play.”
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.
“The government support and the tax warehouse prevented the tsunami of insolvencies”
A financial advisory partner with the accountancy firm Deloitte, David Van Dessel has been tracking company failures for more than a decade, producing quarterly reports on how many companies are going out of business and what sectors of the economy are struggling most. Earlier this week, Van Dessel published the data for the first quarter of the year showing that corporate insolvencies in the Republic rose by 22 per cent in the first three months of the year compared with the same period last year. In this podcast, he talks to Ian Kehoe about whether the long-anticipated wave of liquidations is finally set to happen.
“I realised the world didn’t care how big or small we were, they cared about the quality of the output”
Newly minted President of the Dublin Chamber of Commerce Stephen O'Leary began his career as a journalist before founding social media analytics company, Olytico, which landed a Fortune 500 company as a client through hustle and luck. He talks to Rosanna Cooney about the vast applications of social listening and his plans for the presidency.