If you are 65+ in Ireland and need help with your tech issues with smartphones, tablets, laptops then covid19tech.ie can help you. We were delighted to be joined by one of the volunteers behind this excellent and free service, John Harrington, to discuss how it works and how you (yes, you) can help. They are looking for volunteers and for […]
From where we sit it looks like Donald Trump is ramping up his war on criticism of his handling of the Covid-19 pandemic, rather than ramping up his governments response to it. So to get a better insight into these events we were delighted to be joined from Maryland via zoom by journalist and writer with the intercept, Jon Schwarz. […]
Ireland already had a housing and homelessness emergency before the Covid-19 pandemic. While the emergency response has received near universal acclaim we’d seen the number of people still sleeping on our streets still very high. So we caught up with Independent Dublin City Councillor and CEO of Inner City Helping Homelessness, Anthony Flynn, to discuss what is going right, what […]
As part of our ongoing look into the impacts of Covid-19 and our #NoGoingBack series we chatted with infectious diseases specialist and internal medicine physician, Dr Clíona Ní Cheallaigh. Clíona explains how those already most vulnerable in our society are the worst impacted by a pandemic like coronavirus. She explains how her research and work in St James’s Hospital on […]
As Ireland battles with the ‘we are all in this together or are we?’ nonsense of holiday homes and street parties, we decided to look to Sweden, where the government there are taking a much looser approach to the Covid-19 pandemic. Tim Fridh is a young Swedish student and a recent visitor to Ireland, so we thought he’d be great […]
Where to even begin! The British Prime Minister, Boris Johnson is in ICU, the Labour Party have a new leader in Keir Stamer and the UK’s Covid-19 curve is on a tragically upwards trajectory. Joining us to discuss all this and more are two friends of the pod, Dawn Foster and Glenn Fitzpatrick. Join us: patreon.com/tortoiseshack
We were joined by Fin Dwyer of the Irish History Podcast to look back and see if there are lessons from history that we can take into the current Covid-19 pandemic. We talk the Spanish Flu, the rebuilding of Europe post WWII and how this crisis has seen the old rules of “market forces” just melt away. Check out Fin’s […]
We decided to have a short catch-up on events. It got a bit heated. We chat about the Covid-19 clusters in nursing homes and Direct Provision and how the ‘for profit’ model has left so many vulnerable. We discuss the welcome news that the Taoiseach will work one day a week in the health service and we argue a lot […]