Please join us at patreon.com/tortoiseshack Taoiseach Leo Varadkar has announced that he’s leaving. The tributes are pouring out across the airwaves and opinion pages. This podcast will not be among them. We look at how he has tried (and succeeded?) to normalise homelessness, his anti-people-in-poverty campaigns and a tenure that always put style above substance. We also talk about the […]
Please join us at patreon.com/tortoiseshack This is a belter of a podcast with Colombian, but Mexico-based El Pais journalist, Nicholas Dale Leal, on all things Latin and South America. We talk Argentina and the plunge into poverty that has created a budget surplus; we dig into Bukele as a celebrity of the aspiring autocrat and there’s a lot to be […]
Please join us at patreon.com/tortoiseshack In this Echo Chamber podcast special you’ll here from survivor of child sexual abuse at the hands of a senior member of St John Ambulance, Mick Finnegan, Sinn Féin’s spokesperson for Sport, TD Chris Andrews, Green Party TD and Chair of the Children’s Committee, Patrick Costello and Irish Times journalist, Jack Power. They each give […]
Please join us at patreon.com/tortoiseshack (Note: This podcast begins with a conversation about the use of ChatGPT in the polling for the referendums that is very, very interesting) The votes are in and no matter what your preference (FWIW, I was a Yes/No voter) it is a humiliation for the government, an omnishambles for lots of the opposition and a […]
Please join us at patreon.com/tortoiseshack Minutes after the broadcast moratorium began, in advance of the vote on the Family and Care referendums, online independent media outlet, The Ditch, dropped a bomb. They’d only gone and gotten the unpublished Attorney General’s advice to the government on the contentious wording of both referendums. Joining us to discuss the makings of this scoop, […]
Please join us at patreon.com/tortoiseshack No one should have been shocked to hear that Taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, say that he sees care as the responsibility of families and not of the State. He is who he Ayn Rand is. But that’s not the Ireland most people want to live in. Joining us on the podcast are three wonderful disabled women, […]
Please join us at patreon.com/tortoiseshack Our friend and fellow tortoise shack podcast host, Dr Rory Hearne, has announced that he’s seeking to run for the Soc Dems in the upcoming European Elections. So you knew that we were going to sit down and ask him all about it. We discuss his reasons for getting into party politics, the type of […]
Please join us at patreon.com/tortoiseshack Rejoining us on the podcast to talk all things Spain and Catalunya is Madrid-based journalist and podcaster, Eoghan Gilmartin. He outlines how the amnesty law that is to pardon Catalan independence advocates, is getting used by a politicised Judiciary to charge several politicians with terrorism. Yes, terrorism. We also talk Spain’s climate action challenge as […]