In our first episode of Recording the Revolution, Conor and Harlan sit down with Catherine O’Mahony, a producer at Scratch Films. Catherine and Aine O'Neill were working on a project several years ago when a source, Jim Dolan, told them about an interview transcript in his attic. Within days, Catherine and Aine had tracked down the interviewer Harlan Strauss and flew to Berlin to meet him, starting a new chapter in the history of the tapes at the centre of this podcast series. In this episode Conor and Harlan take a look at the extraordinary life of 'the Blacksmith of Ballinalee”', General Seán MacEoin who was a key military leader in both the War of Independence, and on the side of the Free State in the Civil War. Seán MacEoin was interviewed by Harlan on 16 March 1972.