In this episode, celebrated food writer Bee Wilson joins Catherine Cleary, journalist and food writer with The Irish Times, to discuss our evolving relationship with food and the way we live (and eat) now. Bee Wilson is a journalist and historian and the author of five books on food-related subjects, the most recent being The Way We Eat Now: Strategies for Eating in a World of Change (2019). She has been described by Jane Kramer of the New Yorker as having “the kind of narrative charm that could carry large chunks of scholarship; weave them together; sprinkle them with asides, experiences, suppositions, and strong opinions; and entertain you.”

Bee Wilson is chair of the Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery.

This First Thought Talk was recorded in front of a live audience at NUI Galway as part of Galway International Arts Festival’s Autumn 2019 First Thought Talks programme https://www.giaf.ie/talks/food-the-vital-frontier

Perhaps Ireland’s best known journalist, Fintan O’Toole is well known for piercing political commentary and in this episode he ruthlessly dissects the psychology and politics of Brexit. His First Thought Talk Listen, recorded in 2018, is both pointed and prescient. Listen to learn how trivial journalistic lies became far-from-trivial national obsessions; how the pose of camp indifference to truth and historical fact has come to define the style of an entire political elite; the redefinition of a country that once had colonies as an oppressed nation requiring liberation; the strange gastronomic and political significance of prawn-flavoured crisps, and their role in the rise of Boris Johnson.

This episode was recorded in front of a live audience at NUI Galway at the Winter 2018 First Thought Talks programme presented by Galway International Arts Festival. To watch the Q&A which followed the talk, visit the talks section on Galway International Arts Festival’s website on giaf.ie: https://www.giaf.ie/talks/first-thought-talk-with-fintan-otoole

Kate Mulgrew is an actor and author best known for starring roles in Star Trek (Captain Janeway) and Orange is the New Black (Red). In this episode, Kate discusses her memoir How to Forget, which chronicles the time she spent caring for her parents at the end of their lives. Her moving, funny talk explores the universal themes of life, death, and family as well as the riotous stories and career highlights that could only come from Kate herself. Kate is joined in conversation by Eithne Verling, Director of the Galway City Museum.

A meditation on the theme of ‘Home’ exploring what it means to share a community, a future, and a planet, presented by President of Ireland Michael D Higgins at Galway International Arts Festival in July 2018. 

Welcome to First Thought, a new podcast from Galway International Arts Festival. In this episode, Festival CEO and Artistic Director John Crumlish and Paul Fahy share what listeners can look forward to. 

Visit https://www.giaf.ie/ for more.