Martin Nutty Podcasts

He’s the quintessential New York Irish cop who rose up through the ranks from walking a beat to becoming a highly-ranked detective. He’s also a respected leader of New York’s Irish American community and a man at the center of a major controversy playing out now in New York as the American Irish Historical Society’s irreplaceable Beaux-Arts townhou…

Growing up with one foot in Dublin and the other in Cork, Michael “Mick” Mellamphy now has a foot in Ireland and one in New York, where he’s in starring in Ronán Noone’s The Smuggler at the Irish Repertory Theatre, part of the Origin Theatre’s 1st Irish Festival he curated, on stages around NYC for Jan. & Feb. 2023. And he still made time to sit do…

Veteran diplomat and C Suite executive, Ted Smyth, joins Martin Nutty, on The Stew for the third time. With the conclusion of the final election of the US Midterm election season, it seemed like a good time to take the political temperature of not just the United States, but also of Northern Ireland and the Western European democracies. Ted is a me…

Speechwriter, novelist, essayist, and now memoirist Peter Quinn returns to Irish Stew to share tales from his home borough of New York City and beyond, captured in his new book, Cross Bronx: A Writing Life. Join us as Peter spins stories from his rise up through Irish American middle-class respectability in New York’s northernmost borough, The Bron…

Yesterday, Twitter suspended the accounts of several high-profile journalists. In Twitter’s understaffed and diminished state, no immediate reason was given for the actions. Apparently, Twitter’s decision relates to the journalists reporting on the suspension of a Twitter account named ElonJet, which tracked the movements of Elon Musk’s private pla…

Singer songwriter and family historian Ronan MacManus is the son of Ross and brother of Declan (aka Elvis Costello) but more importantly is something of a legend among the Diaspora of London and the South East, with his band Bible Code Sundays and their anthem Maybe It’s Because I’m An Irish Londoner. We talk family……

In a way we’ve been teasing this episode since our first, as we’ve treated you to a wee taste of Rosa Nutty’s music at the opening of every Irish Stew episode. Now we go beyond the snippet and follow Rosa through the emotional landscape she travels in song. Her first album after a five-year absence from the recording studio, World So Blue is gettin…

Actor, writer, director, mentor, spiritual advisor, activist…the list of Chia Phoenix’s roles in life goes on and on. In her own words, she is a “Jack of All Trades, Master of All”. She brings a new and vital perspective to our podcasts as we talk about the historical and linguistic connections between the Caribbean and……

Gregory Harrington has stayed busy since our initial episode back in February 2022. Since that conversation, the accomplished violinist released a recording titled Gregory Harrington: Live From The Irish Repertory Join Martin Nutty as he chats with Gregory about the risks of recording beloved traditional Irish tunes as a classically trained violini…

Bass player with the original line-up of Public Image Limited, alongside John Lydon and Keith Levene, John Wardle – dubbed “Jah Wobble” by Sid Vicious -went on to front Invaders Of The Heart, worked on the London Underground during lean years and returned to music to work with – amongst others – Brian Eno, Delores……

Five reasons behind why I'm leaving Twitter and why I think you should tooBy Martin Nutty

The only Irish Traveller to found and head a Gypsy And Traveller Exchange, Josephine (“Josie”) O’Driscoll talks visits to holocaust sites in Krakow, education, family and her hopes for community ownership among Gypsies, Romani and Travellers. Plus John Lee of Irish Stew Podcast raises author Peter Quinn onto The Plastic Pedestal…

In times past, the Irish language (Gaelic) was thought by some to be a mark of backwardness. In this episode, husband and wife team, Colm Bairéad and Cleona Ní Chrualaoi reveal how Ireland's native tongue provided entrée to the world of movie-making leading ultimately to the creation of An Cailín Ciúin (The Quiet Girl), Ireland's nominee for the Be…

A journey across the Atlantic to meet two podcasting contemporaries making their own aural journeys across the Global Irish community. John Lee and Martin Nutty have just marked their half-century of interviews and to celebrate, we talk the difference between the diasporas in the UK and the US, the Connemara Patch, Kennedy, stereotypes and voices.……

Our 50th episode comes to you on the most ancient of Irish holidays - Halloween or Oíche Shamhna (eee-ha how-na) in Irish/Gaelic. It is the night that celebrates the transition from the old to the new Celtic year. That transition point, between the present and the past, was a space where the Celts believed the spirits or pucaí (pook-ee) of the past…

Star of “Blood Brothers”, Chrissy Rogers in “Brookside” and – would you believe – Mrs Devaney in Jimmy McGovern’s “Broken”, Eithne Browne discusses memories of Mayo, her Master Mariner father and singer mother, changes in Liverpool and strange Irish coincidences. Plus Patrick Osborne raises James (“Big Jim”) Larkin onto The Plastic Pedestal https:/…

Our 49th episode features one of our most global of guests–Deirdre Ryan, a world class athlete who competed for Ireland on the global stage and who is now raising the bar for Irish food. Born in County Dublin, Deirdre studied business and Italian, then worked, studied and trained in Milan. To train and work in Germany, she learned to speak German a…

From a dairy farm in County Offaly to the C-Suite in a global branding agency, her university days in Ulster during The Troubles, her internship with Enterprise Ireland that brought her to New York, her work bringing foreign direct investment and thousands of jobs to Ireland, her MBA from Harvard Business School, her rise in the world of marketers …

Thoughts on Governor Ron De Santis of Florida, how he shipped migrants to Martha's Vineyard, and the long-troubled, painful relationship America has had with many arriving migrants to its shore NPR: On the Martha's Vineyard Migrant StoryBy Martin Nutty

It wasn’t planned this way, but we recorded our episode with writer Brian McDonald on Sept. 11, a date that looms large in his new book Five Flights Up, which traces the Irish American story of four generations of the Feehan family in the Fire Department of New York, the FDNY, a story which would tragically culminate with the terrorist attack on th…

Primary elections frequently result in highly partisan general election candidates. I think Alaska has figured out a better way to produce candidates that better represent voters. Alaska may be The Last Frontier state, but it's leading the way in creating a healthier American democracyBy Martin Nutty

How can somebody with only 26% of the vote win an election? That happened this week in the New York Democratic Primary for the 10th Congressional District. Is that good for democracy? I don't think so and I think Ranked Choice Voting provides a better way to produce a result more closely aligned with the will of the people. Ranked Choice Voting Lin…

Flor MacCarthy was born in West Cork and shares memories of one of Ireland's most idyllic regions. Her childhood was one rich in the indulgence of curiosity, filled with books, history, and fueled by a Russophile father. A Trinity College degree in French and Art History led unexpectedly to a career in journalism. Flor worked for 16 years at RTE, I…

Growing up in a Dublin home with no TV, Aedín turned to books, reading them aloud, drawing out the characters, and letting the words wash over her, which is how at age ten she managed to read James Joyce’s intimidating novel Ulysses. She was drawn to the rhythms and music in the words of the great writers, no surprise coming from a home with her av…

Poet, playwright, novelist, horticulturalist, referee and self-proclaimed spoofer, Patrick Osborne talks family, 70s telly in Dublin, local football teams and the best of British and Irish cultures. All the while managing to slip an occasional reference to his debut novel "Baxter's Boys" - a mix of The Snapper, Fever Pitch and Shameless - into the …

All American political parties are made up of coalitions, or voting blocks, that are cobbled together to support either the Republican or Democratic Party. Looking at the Republican party I see it as broken down into two major groups which in turn can be subdivided. Understanding this particular coalition is to understand some of the peculiarities …

Born in Ennis, Co. Clare, Bernárd Lynch was ordained as a Roman Catholic priest in 1971. He founded the AIDS Ministry in New York in 1982, faced down the persecution of his own church and finally married the man of his dreams, Billy, in 2017. He has been honoured by both the City of New York and the President of Ireland, and now he honours us. Plus…

Our conversation with the warm and welcoming Elaine Ní Bhraonáin takes us from her childhood in South County, Dublin, to New York’s lively Irish scene, to bucolic Ballymoney on the north Wexford coast where she and her husband raise their three healthy children after three difficult pregnancies. She talks about being raised in a home where the pate…

Co-founder of the Dimple Discs label - alongside the similarly named Damien O'Neill (he of The Undertones), Brian O'Neill has a roster of mostly Irish and Irish Diaspora artists including Derry's finest plus Sack, Eileen Gogan, Keeley, Jah Wobble and Telefis and many others. We talk music, Dublin of the 60s, Swastika Laundries, Sinn Fein picnics, T…

Why the Senate Filibuster needs to be eliminated. Why it's invoked more frequently by the Republican Party - the party of Non Governance. Understanding the 3 legs of Non Governance rule Some Links: Josh Marshall June 6th OpEd in the New York Times Brookings Institute article on the filibuster contains a chart mapping the invocation of cloture votes…

Designer Warren Reilly is a rising star in the world of textiles and fashion. A queer, gender-fluid artist of Irish and Afro-Caribbean heritage, his work examines the intersections of identity, taking particular inspiration from the 18th Century. He has been creative director of Fashioning Our History, a headliner for the Queer Georgian Social Seas…

We’re not sure what’s more impressive—that Larry Kirwan originated and co-wrote the Broadway hit Paradise Square, or that his early band with Pierce Turner was banned from the notorious New York punk rock club CBGB for being “too demonic.” Larry talks of how his unusual childhood in Wexford and his need to maneuver through different points of view-…

How did the Republican Party become what it is today? Here's a quick sketch of its long, strange and troubling journeyBy Martin Nutty

A tale of remembrance fighting against amnesia, Margaret Urwin works with Justice For The Forgotten, a campaign seeking to find the truth behind the Dublin-Monaghan bombings and other similar atrocities that took place on Irish soil during The Troubles of the 1970s and 80s. It is a tale as often overlooked in Ireland as it is in England and sheds a…

Lets talk about the real crisis faced by American and Western DemocracyBy Martin Nutty

An Irish Traveller with an MA in Education, Chelsea McDonagh is also an academic, a creative, a sportswoman, a loving granddaughter, daughter and aunt, a voracious reader, an intellectual powerhouse and one of the most incredible people we've had the privilege to interview.By The Plastic Podcasts

Our Bloomsday episode with the engaging James Joyce scholar John McCourt takes us to Italy for the first time, specifically its outpost across the Adriatic Sea, Trieste. “There, I can safely say I discovered James Joyce,” McCourt says of Trieste. “Having encountered him occasionally in Ireland, I found myself in the city that had been his home for …

On Thursday evening June 9th, the US House of Representatives will hold the first of six hearings on last years January 6th insurrection. There have been accusations of partisanship, the usual political Kabuki and questions of whether these hearings have been hijacked for the upcoming Mid Term elections in November. Here are my thoughts on why I th…

I wanted to talk about how Americans need to reorient toward radical centrism and practice two-thirds politics meaning the need to step away from the tired national dialogue stoked by fear mongers towards a place of engagement where a significant majority of Americans agree In this episode, I refer to a couple of polls. Here's the links Pew Researc…

Our new season of Irish Stew opens with trailblazing journalist Mark Little, a former RTÉ newscaster working to make sense of social media. Coming from a family where there was a daily scrum over who got the newspaper first, armed with “premature cynicism” and blessed with an insatiable curiosity for what made the world work, journalism beckoned an…

Some thoughts on yesterday's violence in Uvalde and Texas and why America struggles in regulating the distribution of gunsBy Martin

Introducing Nutty in NYC. A podcast with a Midlantic viewBy Martin

Liza Donnelly: New Yorker Cartoonist & “Very Funny Ladies” Irish Stew’s favorite cartoonist is back to tell you about her just-published book, Very Funny Ladies: an in-depth celebration of women cartoonists who have graced the pages of the famous magazine from the Roaring Twenties to the present day. And you learn that somewhere between way back th…

In a special one-off podcast for St Patrick’s Day 2022, we interview Jack Byrne, Liverpool-Irish author of The Liverpool Mysteries. “Across The Water“, the second part of this trilogy and sequel to “Under The Bridge” is published by Northodox Press today and sees Vinnie and Anne journeying to Ireland to discover the truth nature of……

We last spoke with Ted Smyth back at the start of 2021. A lot has happened in the world of politics in the intervening period. Ted’s experience on both sides of the Atlantic in the worlds of diplomacy and corporate life make him a thoughtful and well informed commentator on recent Irish and American developments. Join Martin Nutty as he talks with …

We first sat down with Liverpudlian, Jack Byrne back in Season 2 when we talked about his first novel: Under the Bridge. You can catch that episode here: Jack Byrne: Mystery Writer. Now Jack is back with the second installment of his Liverpool Mystery Series - Across the Water which continues the story of Paddy and Vinnie Connolly. The action moves…

Season III of Irish Stew concludes with our conversation with a very Global Irish citizen, Dan Mulhall, Ireland’s Ambassador to the United States and your guide to one of the classics of Irish literature through his recently published Ulysses: A Reader’s Odyssey. Join us as we tour the world with one of Ireland’s top diplomats as he wields Ireland’…

In this episode, we reach for the stars with Irish American astronaut Dr. Cady Coleman, a veteran of two Space Shuttle missions and 159 days in orbit on the International Space Station (ISS). Cady says she’s one-quarter Irish on both sides, but that it adds up to much more than half. When not exploring outer space, she’s exploring Irish music on th…

From Carnegie Hall to Lambeau Field, Gregory Harrington elevates the Global Irish Nation Conversation through his music. Born in Dublin, based in New York City, he is redefining the classical violin virtuoso for the 21st century, pairing his expressive lyricism, tonal beauty, and impeccable musicianship with his uncanny ability to transform film sc…

In this episode we explore the “roots” and “routes” of the Irish diaspora for a very “Global Irish Nation Conversation” with CEO Patrick Greene and Historian-in-Residence Maurice J. Casey Ph.D. of Dublin’s EPIC: The Irish Emigration Museum, voted Europe’s leading tourist attraction the last three years running. Patrick shares how an apprenticeship …