Archives: Episode

It’s always great when a Banter conversation goes to places you never thought they’d go and we never imagined for a moment that talking to artist Aideen Barry would lead to stories about NASA and vacuum cleaners. It was a pleasure to have Aideen with us at Other Voices in Dingle and she had loads to say about her work to date, her motivations and especially her fantastic Brittlefield retrospective.

Paul Howard is the writer who has brought us the trials, tribulations and triumphs of Ross O’Carroll-Kelly, but it was another dude who was on his mind when he joined us at Other Voices in Dingle. Paul was at Banter to talk about his new book I Read the News Today, Oh Boy about the life and times of Tara Browne, the inspiration behind The Beatles’ “A Day In the Life” and, as we found out, a colourful character who lived quite a life.

This week, we’re joined by Aoife Kelleher, the film-maker behind such award winning documentaries as One Million Dubliners, Strange Occurrences In A Small Irish Village and Growing Up Gay. She joined us for a fireside chat – yes, there really was a fire behind us – at Foxy Johns in Dingle during our weekend at Other Voices to talk to us about the art of storytelling on screen.

At Banter, we have always a welcome for someone with a great yarn and that certainly applies to Aoibheann McNamara. She’s the Donegal-born firebrand behind Galway restaurant Ard Bia and The Tweed Project who joined us at Foxy John’s in Dingle, Co Kerry during the Other Voices festival to talk about food, fashion and much more besides. It was one of our favourite conversations from the Other Voices series so dig in.

We keep a list of people we’d like to feature at Banter and Paul Kimmage has been on that list for ages so we were delighted to persuade him to join us at the Workman’s Club in Dublin in January to talk about his life and work as part of this year’s First Fortnight mental health festival. One of the most influential and widely read sportswriters in the country, Paul talked to us about his life as a professional cyclist, his career as a sportswriter, the mental stresses and strains that occur in sport and sportswriting and the art of the interview.

Recorded during our annual trip to Dingle, Co. Kerry for the Other Voices festival, here’s Dublin born neurologist Dr Suzanne O’Sullivan telling some tales from the frontline of psychosomatic illnesses. As she explains in her book It’s All In Your Head, the winner of the Wellcome Book Prize 2016, psychosomatic illness, where your body acts as if it’s sick but there isn’t anything wrong, are common but misunderstood and rarely discussed. Here, she talks about some of the extreme cases she has treated and what may have been behind them.

We were delighted and honoured to welcome legendary sports broadcaster Mícheál Ó Muircheartaigh to Banter for our 150th outing. Recorded in a packed house at The Yacht pub in the heart of Raytown in Dublin during the No Idle Day festival for Young Hearts Run Free, here’s the mighty Mícheál talking about some infamous games, characters and occurrences during his formidable career to date.

It’s time for the the annual Banter review of the year, the show where we look at the news stories of the past 12 months which have had the most traction. As you can imagine, there was lots of mention of Brexit and Donald Trump from our guests Fintan O’Toole from The Irish Times, Elaine Buckley from the Fair Game podcast, Anna Cosgrave from the Repeal campaign and Emmet Condon from Homebeat and Another Love Story, but there was also room in the mix for other stories too, including Robbie Brady’s header against Italy, Leonard Cohen, Axel Foley and much, much more.

It’s time for our review of the year in arts and culture and it’s also the first broadcast from our now annual trip to Other Voices in Dingle, Co. Kerry. Eithne Shortall, the Chief Arts Writer at The Sunday Times – and the author of the soon to be published debut novel Love in Row 27 – joined us by the fire in the back room of Foxy John’s in downtown Dingle to run the rule over the arts and culture highlights and lowlights of 2016. Here’s Eithne on the books, films, music, theatre, TV shows and much more of the last 12 months.

We’ve heard a lot about 1916 this year so it struck us as a good idea to find out what Irish farmers were up to 100 years ago, as things took an unexpected turn that Easter in Dublin. We were joined by Dr Arlene Crampsie from UCD’s School of Geography at the Bloom festival in the Phoenix Park to discuss the state of the land 100 years ago and the difficulties and challenges which Irish farmers faced.

It’s the first time we’ve had an Olympic medal winner at Banter and that was swimmer Allison Wagner who won a silver medal for the United States at the Atlanta 1996 games behind Irish swimmer Michelle Smith. Allison and former Canadian Olympic swimmer Nikki Dryden joined us for a dive into the deep, murkier end of the swimming pool with a look at the current state of the anti-doping movement as we asked why more attention is not being paid to systematic doping schemes in sport.

It was a pleasure to say hello to Michael Shamberg. The producer of Django Unchained, Pulp Fiction, Erin Brockovich, The Big Chill, Contagion, Gattaca, Get Shorty, Garden State and tons more – and currently advisor to BuzzFeed Motion Pictures – talked to us about the state of the movie business in 2016.

Bruce Pavitt will always be associated with the Sub Pop label. He was one of the co-founders of the hugely influential Seattle grunge label in the 1980s and he joined us at Banter in Lisbon to talk about the label’s genesis, the rise and rise of Nirvana, record labels today and his involvement with new tech play 8Stem.

Marian Goodell is one of the founding board members of the Burning Man Project and is now the organisation’s first CEO. She joined us on the Banter stage to talk about her long and winding road to Burning Man, what keeps her turned on about the event and what comes next for the worldwide community of Burners.

Bill James is probably best known as the influential American baseball writer, historian, and father of sabermetrics but there’s another side to him too and that’s his interest in our cultural obsession with murder and popular crime. Aside from talking about his books Popular Crime and the forthcoming Man From the Train, about an early 20th century serial killer, Bill also talked stats and polling – and dodged a question about Tipperary hurling.

There’s a first time for everything and this was Banter’s first onstage encounter with a bishop. Paul Tighe is the Navan-born bishop who is part of the Vatican team who put the pope on Twitter and has been a member of various influential Catholic Church councils on communications and culture. He talks about what the church has been doing in the realm of social media and culture and what else it hopes to do in the future.

We began our Portuguese debut with Bradley Tusk the morning after Donald Trump’s shock victory in the US presidential election. The political consultant, who worked on Michael Bloomberg’s successful run for New York mayor amongst many other campaigns, broke down what went wrong – or right, depending on how you look at it – for the candidates. Bradley also has much to say about his client Uber and his bete-noir, current New York mayor Bill de Blasio.

One of the biggest crowds we’ve had at Banter in ages was the one that showed up to hear Blindboy Boatclub from The Rubberbandits talk about this, that and the other during the Beatyard festival in Dun Laoghaire. Here’s a conversation about art, politics, surreality, Limerick, sex, mental health, hip-hop, fish fingers, religion, fashion and other matters.

For Banter 101, we’ve another legend in the bag and it’s someone that anyone who has lived or worked in Dublin will need no introduction to: say hello to Mattress Mick. We brought the don of bedding to our stage at the Beatyard festival in Dun Laoghaire over the summer and he gave us a masterclass in the art of selling and a deep dive into his own lifestory. He also showed he was a generous soul and gave away a mattress to one lucky person in the audience.

We promised you a legend for our one hundredth Bantercast and we think we’ve delivered. There is only one George Clinton and we’d the privilege to talk to the great man at the Beatyard festival this summer. Here’s George in conversation in a packed room – there’s a lot of whooping and hollering in the background because people couldn’t believe he turned up – about his life on and off the mothership.