Paul – Near FM – Listen Again

I am Edel

Paul July 8, 2021

I Am Edel by Susan Connolly and Cormac Plunkett Walsh is a semi-autobiographical account of Susan Connolly’s ten years as a child labourer in Dublin’s notorious Goldenbridge Industrial school over an eleven year period in the 1960s/70’s. . Told from a child’s viewpoint I Am Edel is a…

Oldfilibuster’s Rhyme & Reason – E30 – There are no certainties in Ciphers

Paul June 16, 2021

This is the story of an imprisoned ‘would be’ monarch and a beleaguered emperor who put too much trust in the art of cryptography. Both were victims of a false sense of security. The whole point of cryptography is to prevent information…

Oldfilibuster’s Rhyme & Reason – E29 – Zero Tolerance

Paul June 8, 2021

This programme is all about censorship, the proscriptive practices of non-democracies and dictatorships, and the struggle of artists to express themselves freely and honestly. It will be punctuated with excerpts from Dmitri Shostakovich’s Leningrad Symphony No. 7, and for good reason. He…

Oldfilibuster’s Rhyme & Reason – E28 – The sickly-sweet history of sugar

Paul June 1, 2021

The sickly-sweet history of sugar has stuck fast to so many of the seamier and crueller chapters of history. Sadly, its journey of devastation continues to this very day with modern slavery, worker exploitation, environmental destruction, and damage to human health in…

Oldfilibuster’s Rhyme & Reason – E27 – Duelling is not a good idea if you happen to be a genius

Paul May 25, 2021

Dueling was an insane practice that caused the senseless death of two young men who still had a life’s work ahead of them. At the time of their all too premature deaths, both Galois and Pushkin were young men who had already…

Guides to taking Employment Equality and Equal Status Cases

Paul May 18, 2021

Near FM present a special panel discussion recorded in partnership with the Community Law & Mediation Centre. The Community Law & Mediation Centre have created new guides to taking Employment Equality and Equal Status cases. The guides have been funded under the…

Oldfilibuster’s Rhyme & Reason – E26 – The Vagaries of Voting

Paul May 18, 2021

Voting is a powerful thing, the results of which exercise us endlessly, most recently here in Ireland with an election result that kept journalists busy, pundits scratching their heads and politicians eventually making historic and paradigm shifting deals, and all this in…

Oldfilibuster’s Rhyme & Reason – E25 – Taxation

Paul May 11, 2021

Today it’s all about taxes throughout history and the poor fools who beggared themselves in order to pay them. Taxation has a long history, and from biblical tales to popular culture, tax collectors have never ranked highly on the list of revered…

Oldfilibuster’s Rhyme & Reason – E24 – Jumping the gun

Paul May 6, 2021

I suppose that most of us are familiar with the phrase Jumping the Gun. We have all probably jumped the gun on a few occasions in our lives. While jumping the gun may be a fairly benign oversight in the humdrum of…

Revisiting the Fourth Estate: does the media still serve democracy?

Paul May 4, 2021

Revisiting the Fourth Estate: does the media still serve democracy? – A Radio Panel Discussion This panel discussion explores whether, in a changing media landscape and deepening global democratic recession, the ideal of the fourth estate is still desirable and attainable. Long-term challenges around objectivity,…

Oldfilibuster’s Rhyme & Reason – E23 – Gallileo, green eggs and ‘German’ science

Paul April 27, 2021

Have you heard the one about the bad scientists who called the good scientists’ science bad science? No? Well, I would like to tell you about them. Like so many historical goings-on, this episode is just one more preposterous example of an…

Oldfilibuster’s Rhyme & Reason – E22 – Don’t Mess with the Bourgeoisie

Paul April 27, 2021

A country operating at a feudal level in the late eighteenth century may, in the words of Lady Bracknell in Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Ernest, “be regarded as a misfortune.” A country operating at a feudal level in the early…