Paschal’s Choices
Peril by Bob Woodward and Robert Costa
The storming of the Capitol on 6 January 2021 revealed the transition from President Trump to President Biden to be one of the most dangerous periods in American history, with the result of the election called into question by the sitting president.
In Fact by Mark Henry
If you follow the headlines, you could be forgiven for thinking that things in Ireland in 2021 are worse than ever. In fact, we live longer than ever before, we have never been healthier or better educated, we earn five times more than our grandparents did, our personal freedoms exceed those of any previous generation, and the lives of women and children have been transformed for the better.
Confronting Leviathan by David Runciman
Based on the History Of Ideas podcast series by Talking Politics host David Runciman, A History of Ideas explores some of the most important thinkers and prominent ideas lying behind modern politics - from Hobbes to Gandhi, from democracy to patriarchy, and from revolution to lock down.
A Want of Inhabitants by Geraldine Powell
In the idyllic setting of Bantry Union, thousands of the poorest inhabitants starved to death in the decade of the 1840s. Little is
known about the sequence of events of the famine in the Union and how this tragedy unfolded.
In the Thick of it by Alan Duncan
As Minister of State at the Foreign Office, Alan Duncan was once described as Boris Johnson’s ‘pooper-scooper’. For two years, he deputised for the then Foreign Secretary, now Prime Minister.
Lise’s Choices
Landslide by Michael Wolff
Politics has given us some shocking and confounding moments but none have come close to the careening final days of Donald Trump's presidency: the surreal stage management of his re-election campaign, his audacious election challenge, the harrowing mayhem of the storming of the Capitol and the buffoonery of the second impeachment trial.
Rememberings by Sinead O’Connor
Sinéad O'Connor's voice and trademark shaved head made her famous by the age of twenty-one. Her recording of Prince's Nothing Compares 2 U made her a global icon. She outraged millions when she tore up a photograph of Pope John Paul II on American television.
Did Ye Hear Mammy Died? By Séamus O’Reilly
Séamas O'Reilly's mother died when he was five, leaving him, his ten brothers and sisters and their beloved father in their sprawling bungalow in rural Derry. It was the 1990s; the Troubles were a background rumble (most of the time), and Séamas at that point was more preoccupied with dinosaurs, Star Wars and the actual location of heaven than the political climate.
Love in a Time of War by Lara Marlowe
When Lara Marlowe met Robert Fisk in 1983 in Damascus, he was already a famous war correspondent. She was a young American reporter who would become a renowned journalist in her own right. For the next twenty years, they were lovers, husband and wife and friends, occasionally angry and estranged from one another, but ultimately reconciled.
A Swim in a Pond in the Rain by George Saunders
For the last twenty years, George Saunders has been teaching a class on the Russian short story to his MFA students at Syracuse University. In A Swim in a Pond in the Rain, he shares a version of that class with us, offering some of what he and his students have discovered together over the years.
Paschal Donohoe, minister for finance and Lise Hand, journalist and broadcaster joined the Last Word to discuss.
Catch the full chat by pressing the Play button on this page.
