The Field Day Podcast

The Field Day Podcast

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The Field Day Podcast episodes

  • Announcement – November 2020
    The Field Day Podcast is going on a hiatus from November 2020.
    It takes quite a bit of time and energy to produce the kind of content we want to share, and time and energy are in short supply these days, in the face of other commitments.
    Additionally, as the podcast approaches its 3rd anniversary, and as Field Day closes its 40th year of existence, it seems like a good time to take stock, consider new directions, and make new plans. So we have decided to press the pause button on this podcast, in the hope that we can resume with new interviews next year.
    Please stay subscribed, if you already are, and you’ll hear word from us again sometime, hopefully sometime soon.
    You can also keep up to date with Field Day here on the website fieldday.ie, and we are on Facebook and on Twitter @FieldDayCompany.
    Go raibh maith agaibh as bhur gcomhluadar go dtí seo. Beirigí bua agus fanaigí i dteagmháil.
    – Cormac Deane

    Cormac Deane, producer of the Field Day Podcast

    The post Announcement – November 2020 appeared first on Field Day.

    10 min
  • 31. Irish Culinary History, with Dorothy Cashman
    The political doesn’t always correspond in Ireland to the culinary.
    Dorothy Cashman reads the long-forgotten recipe books of Irish country houses, and inserts them into the history of the country and the world.
    In her analysis of one recipe book from Kilkenny, she gives us a fascinating portrait of a network of women and food culture, just as Ireland transitioned from the Georgian era to the Victorian.

    What did people eat? How did they eat? How did they make their food, and what was distinctive about Irish food culture?
    As she argues, Ireland’s colonial experience is inseparable from the history of its food, and yet the proximity of Ireland with its colonizer has always meant that the food culture of Ireland and Britain have always been close cousins. The result is that a postcolonial reading of Irish culinary history is a particularly difficult task.
    Dorothy Cashman’s investigations spread out in all directions and lead us to explore major transitions in world food cultures, from the domination of the European Christian heritage, all the way to the era of American-style Big Food, and the inventiveness of the new generation of Irish chefs.
    Listen here to learn about the difficulty of tracing the history of food, the reasons why it has been marginalised in academic research, and the amazing achievements of Dublin’s early confectioners.
    Dorothy Cashman is an independent researcher in culinary history with a PhD from the Dublin Institute of Technology, now the Technological University of Dublin.

     

    The post 31. Irish Culinary History, with Dorothy Cashman appeared first on Field Day.

    53 min
  • 30. The Compact Disc at 40, a media history with Eamonn Bell
    2020 marks the 40th anniversary of the technical standard for the compact disc.
    Eamonn Bell explains how this format is an important hinge in the establishment of digital music for the general consumer. As a portable medium, it belongs to the era of vinyl and magnetic tape, yet as the first widespread digital music format, its arrival marks the beginning of our current digital era.

    Brothers in Arms by Dire Straits was released in 1985. It was the first million-selling CD and the first CD to out-sell its LP counterpart.

    So what led Sony and Philips in 1979-1980 to collaborate on the technical standard for the CD? What problems did they face, and what have been the long-term consequences of the decisions they made in the development of the audio CD format? How did they get the music onto the disc?
    What made the CD so successful and popular? What kind of music could first be heard on CDs, and why?

     

    Eamonn Bell is a music scholar and a postdoctoral researcher in Trinity College Dublin. You can follow his research into the history of the compact disc standard at https://redbook.space/ and you can follow him on Twitter @_eamonnbell.

    Further Listening:

    German electronic music collective Oval, on Bandcamp.

     

    The post 30. The Compact Disc at 40, a media history with Eamonn Bell appeared first on Field Day.

    58 min
  • 29. Absence and Presence in Hollywood: On Polly Platt, with Aaron Hunter
    Polly Platt is not a household name, and that is the problem  we tackle in this episode.

    Photo by © Steve Banks / mptvimages.com

    She was a lynchpin in the making of an astonishing list of some of the best American films for more than two decades. So how come so few people know about her?
    When her name is remembered, it is as a production designer. But, as Aaron Hunter explains in this interview, that does not nearly encompass what she did in films such as The Last Picture Show, Terms of Endearment, The Witches of Eastwick, Broadcast News and Paper Moon.
    But Hollywood was, and still is, a sexist place. Women almost never get to direct, and Platt never did. So when the industry moulds itself around the cult of the director, almost everyone else involved in this most collaborative of art forms, gets shoved out of the frame.
    Aaron Hunter’s detailed and impassioned contribution here identifies what made Platt so special, so distinctive, and so worth remembering.
    You will hear lots of references in this episode to the recent 10-part series on Polly Platt by Karina Longworth on the You Must Remember This podcast. It is highly recommended.
    Aaron Hunter writes and posts video essays at doctorfilm.org. He lectures in film in the Department of Media Studies at Maynooth University and has written on the New Hollywood of the 1970s, film authorship and women in film and television.
    Follow him on Twitter at @aaron_m_hunter

    The post 29. Absence and Presence in Hollywood: On Polly Platt, with Aaron Hunter appeared first on Field Day.

    1 hr 18 min
  • 28. The Atmosphere of Crowds, with Illan Rua Wall
    Crowds create atmospheres. Police try to control those atmospheres.
    From the interaction between them, says Illan Rua Wall, emerges power. And that power can take the form of political upheaval and unrest, or the consolidation of pre-existing sovereignty.
    A lecturer in law at the University of Warwick, Illan Rua Wall pursues questions of police and power through the lens of Critical Legal Theory, which he describes in this interview.
    He also draws a line of continuity from the establishment of the world’s first police force, in Ireland, to the expansion of its experimental techniques throughout the British Empire, notably Hong Kong.

    Illan Wall’s book, which is the subject of today’s talk, is Law and Disorder: Sovereignty, Protest, Atmosphere. It will come out with Routledge later in 2020.

    He is an editor of the Critical Legal Thinking blog.

    The post 28. The Atmosphere of Crowds, with Illan Rua Wall appeared first on Field Day.

    1 hr
  • 27. Post-work and Busynesslessness, with Stephen Dunne
    When it comes to work, the coronavirus has changed everything, and changed nothing.
    We are more idle, and we are busier than ever.

    Petting alpacas can be good for your mind and body. Photo: Tambako the Jaguar (Flickr)

    Some employers bring therapets (therapeutic pets), such as alpacas, into the office. It helps people get out of their heads, as Stephen Dunne explains in this episode. So, what’s wrong with our heads when we’re at work?
    Stephen Dunne researches work and society, asking what work is for, and who does what jobs.
    Is there a way for us to fully be ourselves outside of work?
    We talk here about the figure of the detective, a person who is totally identified with the work they do; we talk about the potential downsides of the 4-day week; and we mention Fully Automated Luxury Communism too.

     

    Stephen Dunne

    Stephen Dunne is a lecturer in marketing at the University of Edinburgh. He is a writer in social theory, consumer research and business ethics. You can read some of his research articles here.

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

    Michael Pedersen is co-author with Stephen on the research that we talk about here, though he doesn’t appear in today’s episode.

    Michael is an associate professor at Copenhagen Business School. He has published work on self-management, stress, identity management and habits. He is currently doing research in the 4 day work week. Find out more about his work here.

    The post 27. Post-work and Busynesslessness, with Stephen Dunne appeared first on Field Day.

    1 hr 9 min
  • 26. Cooperative Movements and Political Change in Ireland, with Patrick Doyle
    The history of rural life is a history of technology.
    In this interview, we explore the machinery, systems of distribution and technological innovations that transformed many Irish rural communities when they adopted the cooperative model in the late 19th century.
    Historian Patrick Doyle of the University of Manchester opens his account of the Irish cooperatives with a description of a simple but revolutionary machine – the cream separator – and shows how it connected the butter-producing Irish farm to the grand technological enterprises of British imperialism and international trade.
    How did Irish nationalism regard the cooperatives? What was the Catholic Church’s attitude to the sharing economy? Was this an assault on private property, on the British Empire, or simply on rural poverty?

    Patrick Doyle

    Patrick Doyle is Hallsworth Research Fellow in the Department of History at the University of Manchester. His book that we discuss in this episode is: Civilising Rural Ireland: The Co-operative Movement, Development and the Nation-State, 1889-1939, published by Manchester University Press and available here.
    Luke Gibbons wrote a review essay on Patrick’s book in the Dublin Review of Books in November 2019. Read the essay here.
    We at Field Day are proud to be sponsored by the Dublin Review of Books.

    The post 26. Cooperative Movements and Political Change in Ireland, with Patrick Doyle appeared first on Field Day.

    52 min
  • 25. Trust, Truth and Trolls, with Eileen Culloty
    I don’t trust newspapers.
    Half the time they lie.
    – Alex Jones, Infowars
    In this conversation, we talk about trust, truth and trolls.  Are conspiracy theories a new phenomenon? Do we believe authorities less than we used to? What is a Russian troll farm?
    Eileen Culloty is an expert in conspiracy theories, and she has written recently about the half-truths and lies that were traded in the media about certain events in Syria’s civil war. We also talk about the moon landings, 9/11, climate change, and a lot of other things that may or may not actually be real.
    A postdoctoral researcher in the Institute for Future Media and Journalism at Dublin City University, Eileen is leading researcher on countering disinformation, as part of the EU-funded Provenance research programme. Find out more about her research here.

    Dr Eileen Culloty of Dublin City University

    The post 25. Trust, Truth and Trolls, with Eileen Culloty appeared first on Field Day.

    50 min
  • 24. Pop Music and British Cities, with Karl Whitney
    Does a city have a sound? It’s the question that set writer Karl Whitney on a unique musical pilgrimage around the cities of Britain.
    The result is his book, just out:
    Hit Factories: A Journey Through the Industrial Cities of British Pop.
    When Karl was back in his native Dublin recently, we talked about the book, the journey he took, and the experience of being a writer of non-fiction. We also talked about Ireland and Britain, Britain and Ireland, colonialism and (inevitably) Brexit (which officially happens tomorrow).

    Find out more here about Karl and his writing.

    The post 24. Pop Music and British Cities, with Karl Whitney appeared first on Field Day.

    1 hr 5 min
  • Episode #23: Seamus Deane on the Right to Have Rights
    Hannah Arendt coined the phrase ‘the right to have rights’ in her 1958 book The Human Condition. In this lecture, literary critic Seamus Deane links Arendt’s phrase with the Irish immigration system, in particular the ‘Direct Provision’ centres.
    Since the first half of the the twentieth century, the condition of being stateless, of being a displaced person, has been experienced by untold millions who have had to listen to the claim that ‘human rights’ are universal and fundamental – but not for them.

    Literary critic and novelist Seamus Deane.

    In Ireland, it is not only people without citizenship who are denied rights. Those people in homes and orphanages, schools and ghettos of various kinds – religious, economic, gender, medical – have been denied their rights as vigorously here as what we may call the ‘disabled’ of all countries have been.
    Now, as we see migrants, victims of ‘just wars’ yet again, flee from the ruins of their homes, one would hope that we could recognize and act upon the crimes of the past in which we have been both agents and victims.
    This episode is presented in association with the Dublin Review of Books. We heartily recommend the drb to supporters of Field Day. In the words of Seamus Deane: “The drb sustains a level of commentary on Irish and international matters that no other journal in Ireland and few elsewhere can reach.”
    This lecture took place on 14 January 2018 in University Church, Stephen’s Green, Dublin.  We are grateful to the Newman Centre for Faith and Reason, who kindly provided the venue and welcomed the audience.
    A video of the entire evening of events, including the lecture, poetry readings and music, is on our videos page and on our Youtube channel. Videos of the other lectures in the ‘Right to Have Rights’ series are also available there.
    An article based on the content of this lecture, appeared here in Village Magazine in April 2018.
    Seamus Deane has featured in two other Field Day Podcast episodes to date. You can go back and listen to him on the conservative politics of Edmund Burke, and on the Marxist literary critic Georg Lukács.
    Seamus Deane is a founding member of Field Day. He is emeritus Professor of Irish Studies at the University of Notre Dame, author of many books in Irish literary criticism, and he was the General Editor of the Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing (1991, 2002). His novel, Reading in the Dark (1996), was shortlisted for the Booker Prize.

    The post Episode #23: Seamus Deane on the Right to Have Rights appeared first on Field Day.

    1 hr 2 min

About The Field Day Podcast

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Irish studies, books, theatre, debate