Juvenalia

Hello and welcome to the Juvenalia Christmas Spectacular 2016. We gathered some past and future guests around the Juvenalia table to talk Christmas with us. We were *very* surprised by the topics that came up and can pretty much guarantee that you will be too. We won’t spoil too much but if you want a Christmas podcast that features Elon Musk, the Titanic Museum, famous graveyards, Karen Carpenter, and beards within beards, you’re in the right place. 

So who was there? Here’s who was there:

We want to say a huge thank you to everyone who listened, subscribed, or supported Juvenalia in any way this year. We love making this podcast and love that you’re out there listening. HAPPY CHRISTMAS! WE LOVE YOU ALL 

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Sinéad Gleeson is a broadcaster, writer, editor of three short story anthologies, host of The Book Show on Radio One, half of The Anti-Room, and all round enviable sound person. She very kindly joined Alan and Ellen to talk about Top of the Pops and related matters. We were a little in awe of her because she’s very cool and interviews important authors and musicians all the time and we’re two plucky ragamuffins just trying our best. We plied her with donuts until she liked us and we had a good old chat. As well as TOTP, we talked about where the young people get their music from these days, hearing songs properly in big clubs, Buster Bloodvessel related accidents, interviewing Kate Bush and loads of other little bits. 

Juvenalia is eighteen episodes old! We can legally drink now. We wouldn’t do that though because drinking is immoral. 

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Juvenalia original artwork by Dee McDonnell

Playwright Peter Dunne joins Alan & Ellen to talk about Jack Clayton’s extremely terrifying 1961 horror film The Innocents starring Deborah Kerr. We talked about all kinds of stuff: watching inappropriate things when you’re young which is basically the theme of Juvenalia, creepy children, Salem, Amityville, local mythology, whether any of us actually believe in the supernatural (spoiler: some of us do), Ouija boards, demonic possession, fear, nature v nurture, and loads more. Peter was great, we loved him. Obviously it would have been nice to get this episode out in time for Halloween but that’s not how we roll here and in fact, late November could be a perfect time to watch The Innocents for the first time. Who knows?

Peter’s audio horror walking experience Eerie is in Smock Alley until November 30th so get your skates on and Peter’s extreme immersive horror club Morb could be happening anywhere, maybe even behind you right now. Probably not though, probably somewhere scary. 

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Juvenalia original artwork by Dee McDonnell

Anna Carey is a journalist and the author of the Real Rebecca series of YA books and the upcoming The Making Of Mollie about the Irish suffragette movement. She sat down with Alan and Ellen for a DELIGHTFUL chat about 80s British girl’s comics like Mandy and Bunty. It was very informative and fun and I urge you to seek out some of the comics for yourself. 

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Juvenalia original artwork by Dee McDonnell

One of our favourite standups and people Andréa Farrell joined Alan & Ellen to talk about Stephen Spielberg’s classic Jaws. Inspired by Spielberg’s sparing use of the shark in Jaws, we often talked about everything and anything besides Jaws, making the bits where we actually talked about the film all the more special. Make sure to listen to the whole thing as at some point we decided to record an episode within an episode about To Kill A Mockingbird just because. This was fun. Talk soon. ok bye. bye. byebyebye. 

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Juvenalia original artwork by Dee McDonnell

This episode was sponsored by the March for Choice which takes place on Saturday the 24th of September, assembling at the Garden of Remembrance on Parnell Square from 1.30pm

Shawna Scott is the founder of Sex Siopa, Ireland’s first health and design focused sex shop. She’s also a Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion fanatic who has been waiting “her entire life” to talk about it at length. She talked to Alan and Sarah for a long time about the film, being a bit of a weirdo growing up, the Pacific North-West, choreographed dance routines with Alan Cumming, the magic of Lisa Kudrow, Mira Sorvino’s magical voice, cool kids, and loads more. It was fun. 

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Juvenalia original artwork by Dee McDonnell

This episode was sponsored by the March for Choice which takes place on Saturday the 24th of September, assembling at the Garden of Remembrance on Parnell Square from 1.30pm

Elva Carri is the founder of Girl Crew, a brilliant idea that’s been changing the lives of women all over the world since it started. She joined Alan and Ellen to talk about The Den, another brilliant idea that changed lives all over Ireland in the 80s, 90s, and part of the 00s. We talked about Ray D’Arcy, Ian Dempsey, the other humans who we didn’t remember all that much, Zig & Zag, Zuppy, Dustin, Snotser, Socky, Podge & Rodge, and the grim inevitability of death. 

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Juvenalia original artwork by Dee McDonnell

Comedian, actor, writer, philanthropist, and host of The Alison Spittle Show, Alison Spittle, joins Alan and Sarah for a trip down memory lane as we talk about our wild and varied experiences with chat rooms and message boards. Alison was an old-fashioned troll, the good funny kind not the ones that harass people on Twitter, Alan was boring but earnest, and Sarah forged deep friendships. We cover all the angles here. Alison had to duck out early to record her own podcast so we didn’t get to everything we’d have liked but we’re definitely, definitely having Alison back real soon.  

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Juvenalia original artwork by Dee McDonnell

Comedian Teresa Coyne joins Alan and Ellen to talk about the lesser-known but actually quite good YA series The Saddle Club. It was kind of an equine Babysitter’s Club. Teresa was a fan, Alan’s now a convert, Ellen was jetlagged. A good time was had by all. We learn all about the Saddle Club and Teresa's own history with horses stopping along the way to learn the history of dressage, horse maintenance, helicopter schools, moving from London to the West of Ireland, Dustin the Turkey, car boot sales, old Irish methods for warding off faerie folk, aristocratic French shoe customs, ghostwriters, the majesty of Bonnie Bryant, disappointing TV adaptations, and lots of other stuff. It's a good one. We liked Teresa a lot, you will too. 

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Juvenalia original artwork by Dee McDonnell

Darragh McCausland is a writer whose work has appeared in The Dublin Review, Lighthouse, Gorse, and Stonecutter. On this episode of Juvenalia he talks to Alan and Sarah about, well, loads of stuff really but we start with early first-person shooter Wolfenstein 3D. From there we move on to shareware, being bad at computer games, isometric viewpoints, Eve Online, multiplayer vs singleplayer, the Atari 7800, Dads playing games, Charlie Brooker, German FPS Smugglers, Green Blood, the first person to know about computers in Kells, First Person Nausea, Let's Play videos, Abandonware, FEZ, stylised graphics are better than realistic graphics, True Detective season 2, being a woman who likes games, and being or not being a gamer. And also a bit of Barthes and Adorno because we're ~fancy~. 

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Juvenalia original artwork by Dee McDonnell