They went against the flow. Tom McDonough and Ned Hammell immigrated to Ireland from the US in the early years of the last century - they left America as children to settle in Ireland. Tom left before WWI, Ned during the Depression. How did they get on?

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Life inside a 'wet' hostel - where residents are allowed bring in alcohol. Sundial House, run by DePaul Ireland, a long-term housing project in Dublin for men and women who have lived for long periods of time on the streets and have alcohol problems.

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It used to be that you could varnish your nails - now you can have 'shellac nails'. It's a hard protection that makes the colour last. However, it's applied by a nail technician which sounds like a drawback, but it's not, there's a hidden benefit...

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Horror movies that are so bad, they're good. Erik Threlfall is an expert on horror movies, trashy ones: 'Bloody Moon', 'Pieces', 'Slumber Party Massacre'. They scare you but they just make him laugh. Although, there is one thing that frightens him...

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Everyone got behind the Irish Paralympic team at the London 2012 games but we also had good reason to be cheering on another team - Vietnam. Irish Aid took the Vietnam team under its wing and brought them to Ireland for training (Funded by Irish Aid)

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Kiliwa is a community living with the aftermath of violence and child abduction by Joseph Kony’s Lord's Resistance Army. Della Kilroy records stories of survival in the Democratic Republic of Congo (This documentary was funded by Irish Aid)

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In the week in which Angela Merkel put the frighteners on Ireland, The Curious Ear visits a place in Germany you may imagine didn't exist: a soup kitchen for hungry Germans, the Bahnhofsmission - the 'Railway Station Mission' in Berlin.

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Three professional musicians go on the wards of Ireland's hospitals to make live music part of the healthcare experience, but for one, a tragic accident shows just how fragile life can be. (Part of RTÉ Big Music Week)

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Four classical elements: Earth, Air, Fire and Water. Producer, Laura Haydon makes a series of programmes from Northern Ireland recording nighttime sounds using the classical elements as themes. This is the second in the series: Nightscapes – Fire.

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In September 1980, twenty young religious men entered a seminary in Milltown in Dublin. Thirty years later, three of them tell their personal stories of a a journey from believer to unbeliever.

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