The Pantisocracy Season 3 Episode 2 broadcasts July 23 2019.

This is Panti Bliss opener to the show - The Panti Monologue

In this episode of the ‘cabaret of conversations’ host Panti Bliss is joined by Belfast writer Wendy Erskine, author of an acclaimed new collection of stories from a fractured post ‘peace’ Northern Ireland and a young filmmaker Sinead O’Shea whose documentary ‘A Mother Brings her Son to Be Shot’ highlights some of those fractures in the underbelly of Derry suburbs . This episode, please note, was recorded before the tragic shooting of Lyra McKee in Derry by a dissident republican group.

With them is Dean Van Nguyen, an emerging voice on Irish culture, whose father came to Ireland as a Vietnamese refugee in the 1970s and David Joyce, a lawyer and Irish traveller activist, whose father reluctantly ‘settled’ when David was in his late teens. Offering music and insight is the singer and performer Lux Alma whose new work takes a female focus on Irish mythology.

http://pantisocracy.ie/s4-e2/ for more

From Pantisocracy S4 E1: The Writing on the Wall.

You can read the text of the monologue here:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/19eLlVTpV2s1WTzwGh547ldzFYkK2VXeK0X2X0b0H2fw/edit?usp=sharing

In this the first episode of Pantisocracy Season 4 host Panti Bliss is joined by two extraordinary visual artists, Joe Caslin and Maser, who both, in very different ways, use the street as their canvas and their art for social change. With them is documentary filmmaker Aoife Kelleher whose film ‘One Million Dubliners’ changed public minds and hearts about Glasnevin Cemetery and whose recent work takes us inside the Irish prison system. Singer Damien Dempsey, who worked with Maser ten years ago on a Ballymun urban art project , shares his own journey, and a song or two, while the young, spoken word artist Natalya O’Flaherty raps the street and gives life to its stories.

Webpage for more: pantisocracy.ie/s4e1/

Pantisocracy Season 3 Episode 9 ‘Taking a Stand’

Broadcast 28th August 2018 22.00-23.00 RTE Radio 1

In the parlour with host Panti Bliss are Saoirse Long, Caitriona Bergin, Frank Berry and Lisa Hannigan. Sometimes, despite the personal cost, you have to take a stand. In this episode of Pantisocracy, our host Panti Bliss, who has herself been known to take a stand or two, shares her story of how what she thought was a small talk in the Abbey Theatre, the Noble Call, became a viral call of action and change.

In this episode Panti’s guests are Saoirse Long, a young woman who told her own story to dramatic impact during the recent referendum campaign, Caitriona Bergin, whose brother’s death by suicide helped motivate her to radically change her life, filmmaker Frank Berry whose recent work ‘Michael Inside’ brought us into the harrowing world of juvenile detention and singer/writer Lisa Hannigan who performs two of her own songs in the show - ‘Little Bird’ and ‘Undertow’.

www.pantisocracy.ie/s3-e9 for more

Pantisocracy Series 3 Episode 10 "Ties That Bind"

Guests with Panti Bliss in this episode are the bands Ships, Tebi Rex, performer Felispeaks and singer Inni-K. Relationships, both family and friendship, are at the heart of the conversation in this episode of Pantisocracy and the ‘cabaret of conversations’.

Panti Bliss talks of her own ties that bind and her guests include Sorca McGrath of the Choice Music Prize winning band Ships with her partner Simon Cullen, as well as Maynooth hip hop duo Max Zanga & Matt Ó Baoill, aka Tebi Rex.

Joining them is the Nigerian-Irish spoken word artist Felispeaks, aka Felicia Olusanya, whose first play ‘The Boy Child’ is in this year’s Dublin Fringe Festival. Eclectic singer-songwriter Inni-K aka Eithne Ni Chatháin completes the guest list in a show focussed on contemporary Irish talent.

www.pantisocracy.ie/s3-e10 for more

No use of any content, audio video or text, without the written permission of the content creators Athena Media. Athena Media is an independent producer and Pantisocracy is broadcast on RTÉ Radio 1 and available online as a podcast.

Pantisocracy Season 3 Episode 7 – 'Room At The Table'

In this episode of the ‘cabaret of conversations’ called ‘Room at the Table’ host Panti Bliss’s guests are architect Grainne Hassett, singers Susie Q and Síomha, actor/writer Stephen Jones, and visual artist Vukasin Nedeljković.

In this show Panti hosts a conversation around what makes a more open society. Vukasin Nedeljković shares his journey, from war in the Balkans to making a life here by turning his experience as an asylum seeker, in Direct Provision, into art in his Asylum Archive. Meditation coach Susie Q performs her song ‘Home’ inspired by images of children escaping conflict and architect Grainne Hassett talks of how similar stories of refugees fleeing war, prompted her to go and work in the refugee camps in Calais.

Writer and actor Stephen Jones shares the story of his play From Eden and talks about making the film Dublin Oldschool with fellow Tallaght native Emmet Kirwan. Síomha, who comes from County Clare, the heartland of traditional Irish music, performs her songs ‘Spéir Rua an Iúil’, and ‘Why Did We Fall in Love?’ and explains why the Marriage Equality Referendum made her decision to move home from Canada all that bit easier.

www.pantisocracy.ie/s3-e7 for more

Pantisocracy Season 3 Episode 5

‘The Young are at the Gates’

Panti Bliss’s guests in this episode of Pantisocracy are the next generation; young emerging voices shaping Ireland today and pushing for change. In the parlour with Panti are actor/singer Fionnuala Gygax, Raidió na Life DJ Ola Majekodunmi, poet and visual artist Kerrie O’Brien, rapper JYellowL and transgender activist Sam Blanckensee.

JYellowL performs his songs ‘Nuh fi hurt me’ and ‘Cold in The Summer’ while Kerrie performs her poem ‘Dublin’, (it’s now on the Junior Certificate), and Fionnuala shares a spoken word piece she wrote for International Women’s Day ‘The Girl in the Tree’.

Taken from Pantisocracy Season 3 Episode 4 ‘Finding Your Tribe’

Panti Bliss’s house guests for this episode of Pantisocracy, the cabaret of conversations, are singer Honor Heffernan and her partner, composer Trevor Knight, who perform songs from their show The Whistling Girl based on the writing of the American satirist Dorothy Parker. They are joined by comedian Katherine Lynch and Bohemian FC poet in residence Lewis Kenny. Lewis performs his darkly powerful poem Cabra. The Panti Monologue shares Panti’s own story on how she became Panti Bliss and how she found her tribe in the strangest of places - Japan.

www.pantisocracy.ie

Pantisocracy Season 3 Episode 6 - ‘Legally Gay’

Twenty-five years after Ireland decriminalised homosexuality Panti Bliss celebrates in a show called Legally Gay and explores how Ireland stepped out of the closet.

Guests include singer/songwriter Jack O’Rourke, gay rights archivist Tonie Walsh, HIV advocate Robbie Lawlor, grassroots activist Izzy Kamikaze and spoken word performer Vickey Curtis.

This Episode broadcast

7th August 2018 22.00 – 23.00 on RTÉ Radio 1

http://pantisocracy.ie/season-3-2018-episode-6 for more

Pantisocracy back July 9th 2020 RTE Radio 1 - check the website for updates and new podcasts. #pantisocracy

Host Panti Bliss (aka Rory O'Neill) shares her story of being HIV Positive and how she has become an ambassador for change for Irish Aid in Africa and Asia in this episode which is all about being the change you want to see in the world.

"Sometimes you make life happen, and sometimes, life happens to you.

Life happened to me, suddenly and unexpectedly, one Friday afternoon, twenty one years ago when my doctor told me I was HIV positive. And twenty one years ago, before the amazing advances in the treatment of HIV that have been made since, it didn’t so much feel like life had happened to me as life had dropped on top of me from a great height, or life had driven a freight train right over me.

And for a time I felt battered and bruised by Life. Cruelly singled out and abused by Life. And when I could muster up the energy for it, i was pissed off with Life and it’s petty unfair cruelties.

But anger can be exhausting and I’m too lazy for that, so over time I resigned myself to my new three-lettered life partner, and over the years, as treatments improved and we got used to each other, we found a way to rub along together quite comfortably.

But though I was resigned to it, comfortable with it, accustomed to it, I didn’t see anything positive in being positive. Like being gay it was just something about me. Something I’d had to deal with, work out, assimilate, but once I had, it simply was. Neither pro nor con. Inert. But that turned out to be not quite true.

I have been privileged to do some small work with Irish Aid, part of which has involved visiting HIV projects supported by Irish Aid in countries with very few resources. Not long ago I visited an HIV clinic for mothers and babies in Mozambique, on the outskirts of the capital city Maputo. Conditions were basic. A few small, simple, brick buildings, not much more than sheds really, clustered loosely around a large, dusty, unpaved central yard. And every inch was filled with women and babies. Hundreds of them. A line of mothers, shading their babies from the sun, stretched from each small building and snaked into the yard on sun-bleached benches and simple wooden stools, till the stools ran out and they stood or squatted. There was chatting and cooing over babies but it was quieter than you’d imagine. They’d been here since early morning, many had travelled long distances to get here, and they were stoically resigned to long hours of queuing.

And the funny thing is, I didn’t need to ask what they were queuing for, because I recognised each line immediately. Of course I did! Sure hadn’t I’d spent many hours in the very same queues. This line is to see the doctor, this one is for bloods, this one is to get weighed and blood pressure, so this one must be vaccinations, because this one is for meds.

At first glance this sun-baked clinic looked nothing like the clinic I go to in Dublin, with it’s tiles and lino and sliding hatches, and yet, it was also completely familiar, instantly recognisable. The same medications, same instruments, same questions. The same leaflets about viral loads and T cells and flu vaccinations, the same vocabulary, the same glossary of medical terms and drug companies and medications, the same pathologically cheerful posters about liver function and bone density and queue that way and please remember your hospital number.

There was a young woman sitting on the ground beside me with a bright-eyed baby cradled in her lap. As she glanced up and caught my eye I couldn’t have even guessed what her life was like because I had no frame of reference to hang guesses on. And presumably she had no frame of reference for my life. But I knew this.

I sat down beside her and said hello. We had lots to talk about (cont'd)

Pantisocracy host Panti Bliss shares her own dark memories of a boy's boarding school.

‘The Elephants in the Room’ S3E2

In this episode of Pantisocracy, the cabaret of conversations, host Panti Bliss meets writer Michael Harding, actor and singer Ruth McGill, aerial performer Ronan Brady, playwright Amy Conroy and poet Jessica Traynor in an episode called 'The Elephants in the Room'. Panti Bliss kicks off with a moving and dark memory of her time in boarding school while Ruth performs two of her own songs ‘The Good’ and ‘See You’ while Jessica Traynor performs her poem ‘The Artane Band’ and Amy Conroy shares a slice of her recent play ‘Luck Just Kissed You Hello’

www.pantisocracy.ie for more