Culture File

Are you coming for an echtra, or ancient Irish outing to the otherworld, with artist Louis Haugh? Paddy Woodworth is waiting within, the greatest ever photobook of Costa Rican caterpillars in his hands; and Welsh triple harpist Cerys Hafana recounts a harp journey away from everything that is high, washy or angelic.

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Why you need to see Truong Minh Quy's film, Viet and Nam, listen to Connie Converse's album, How Sad, How Lonely and read Tove Jansson's Finn Family Moomins. Colm Tóibín, Meghan O'Gieblyn and Luke Clancy have their reasons.

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The Comfort Zone: Helen Flanagan of "art hag" duo, Spooky Beore, suggests Colm Tóibín and Luke Clancy spend some time contemplating the hand bells of medieval Ireland, and their many unintended uses, including in the laying on of curses.

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The Comfort Zone: Helen Flanagan of "art hag" duo, Spooky Beore, suggests Colm Tóibín and Luke Clancy spend some time contemplating the hand bells of medieval Ireland, and their many unintended uses, including in the laying on of curses.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Canadian composer, Thierry Tidrow who features in this year's New Music Dublin festival on the strange history of Claude Vivier, the art of capturing online speech in music, and his attraction to making opera for children.

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Legendary jazz vocalist Norma Winstone on learning to understand the voice as an instrument, the genius of bandmate, Kenny Wheeler, and how Drake became her most famous fan. Also, Paddy Woodwth awards Scott Weidensaul's Living on the Wind some cherished space on the Naturalist's Bookshelf.

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The Comfort Zone: New York-born, Dublin-based fine artist and photographer Ishmael Claxton invites Colm and Luke to head to an imaginary, demon-and-talking-animal-filled Japan in the 14th century, to encounter a masterwork from the Japanese Disney, Studio Ghibli, directed by its founder, Hayao Miyazaki.

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Composer, improvisor and evangelist for the power of children's music, Ríona Sally Hartman leads a tour of her musical world.

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If you enjoyed Orit Gat's essay on Tracey Emin's sort-of-retrospective at Tate Modern (which you can hear in the current edition of Culture File), here is some further conversation between Orit Gat and Luke Clancy, around Emin, Autofiction, Bad Museums, Rose Wiley and Nobel Prize Winners.

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Orit Gat takes in the new Tate Modern show from former YBA, now officially OBA, Tracey Emin; Rachel Andrews is at Cork's Make2026, with Prof Helen A. Fielding to learn which AI to love; and Patrick O'Laoghaire's Island postcard comes from a road near Clifden.

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