Cassandra Voices Podcast

Dr. Max McGuinness is a Teaching Fellow in French at Trinity College Dublin. He previously taught at University College Dublin, the University of Limerick, and Columbia University, where he received his PhD in French in 2019. His first book – published this Spring – is Hustlers in the Ivory Tower: Press and Modernism from Mallarmé to Proust (Liverpool University Press, 2024), which explores how French modernist writers used the press as a forum for literary experimentation. He is currently co-editing a collection about Marcel Proust and Ireland, The Irish Proust, which is forthcoming from Bloomsbury Academic. Other publications include articles in the Bulletin d’informations proustiennes, Dix-Neuf, French Studies Bulletin, and Paragraph. Max is also a theatre critic for The Financial Times and has written for many other newspapers and magazines, including The Irish Times, The New European, Air Mail, The Daily Beast, and Private Eye.  Here we delve into this dense, lovingly layered study of the French writing and journalism that arose during a period of intense change and experimentation Episode Credits: Host: Luke Sheehan Episode Music: Played by: National Philharmonic Orchestra Conductor: Leopold Stokowski Danse Macabre (first performed in 1875) is the name of opus 40 by French composer Camille Saint-Saëns. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YyknBTm_YyM  Loafing Heroes - ​​https://theloafingheroes.bandcamp.com  Produced by Massimiliano Galli - https://www.massimilianogalli.com  

Toby Green is Professor of Precolonial and Lusophone African History and Culture at King’s College, London and the author of A Fistful of Shells: West Africa from the Rise of the Slave Trade to the Age of Revolution (2019). He also wrote, along with Thomas Fazi, The Covid Consensus: The New Politics of Global Inequality (2023). This latter work engages with the impact of lockdowns on African countries which were, for the most part, unaffected by the disease itself. In this podcast, Green discusses the application, more widely, of a form of authoritarian capitalism that lingers to this day, with the onset of perma-crises, continued restrictions on civil rights, and the ascendancy of techno-billionaires. He also points to an intellectual failure on the part of many on the left, who failed to recognise there were two versions of accumulation in conflict, one representing traditional forms of small businesses reliant on in-person contact, the other the monopolies which digital capitalism has favoured and whose power is now far, far greater. Episode Credits Host: Frank Armstrong Music:  Loafing Heroes - ​​https://theloafingheroes.bandcamp.com  Shakalak - https://shakalak.bandcamp.com/music Produced by Massimiliano Galli - https://www.massimilianogalli.com  

In late 2021, Matt Ridley and Alina Chan published the hardback edition of ‘Viral: The Search for the Origin of COVID-19’. Well received by many and loathed by some, it remains the most comprehensive book on the origin of the pandemic that leans in the direction of the lab. In a debate that has neither gone away nor gotten more polite over time, there is one thing that both sides tend to agree upon: unanswered questions lead back to China, to Wuhan, the WIV and Zhongnanhai, the leaders’ compound in Beijing – and to the tropical southern borderlands of Yunnan, Burma and Laos. Evidence has trickled into the debate like the steady drops in water torture: by summer 2022, when the paperback of Viral was published, it was necessary to add an update to the epilogue.  A genetically closer virus to COVID-19 had been found, this time in Laos.  That discovery added to the vast puzzle around the origins, and, like the account of Chinese workers falling sick in a Yunnan cave at the start of the work, directed attention to the tropical south, the home of the bat colonies sampled by the Wuhan Institute of Virology. In this conversation, Matt Ridley and Luke Sheehan trace out some of the local particularities of the pandemic’s eruption in China, with the latter’s personal experience there coming to the fore.    Episode Credits: Host: Luke Sheehan Music: Loafing Heroes - ​​https://theloafingheroes.bandcamp.com Produced by Massimiliano Galli - https://www.massimilianogalli.com Links: ‘Viral: The Search for the Origin of COVID-19’ by Alina Chan and Matt Ridley: https://www.harpercollins.com/products/viral-matt-ridleyalina-chan?variant=40127936987170 China and COVID origins essay by Luke Sheehan: https://www.lilliputpress.ie/uncategorized/post-china-post-5-by-%E9%B2%81%E7%A7%91 Associated Press article by Dake Kang: https://apnews.com/article/china-covid-virus-origins-pandemic-lab-leak-bed5ab50dca8e318ab00f60b5911da0c  

Aficionados of the Dublin cultural scene over the past decade or two are likely to be familiar with John Cummins. Cutting a dash with a distinctive Rasputin beard and Reggae styles, John’s poetic performances in the Dublin vernacular have mesmerised audiences young and old. His playful, rhyming verse always had great musicality, and it seemed a natural progression for him to begin collaborating with musicians, culminating in the formation of the band Shakalak in 2018, which also contains another former Musician of the Month in Fin Divilly. If you haven’t made it along to one of their gigs yet, you are in for a treat. In this special Musician of the Month podcast John discusses his first musical adventures, the evolution of his craft, football analogies and his ambitions for global domination.   Episode Credits: Host: Frank Armstrong Music: Loafing Heroes - ​​https://theloafingheroes.bandcamp.com                Shakalak - https://www.youtube.com/@shakalak2096                                  - https://shakalak.bandcamp.com/music                                 - https://tr.ee/dz8Syxk3BA Produced by Massimiliano Galli - https://www.massimilianogalli.com  

An economist by training, Nadim Shehadi has spent his career analyzing the long, ongoing story of Lebanon. Having lived through Beirut’s ‘golden era’ of post-WW2 prosperity, and subsequently having started out as an academic as the country suffered through civil war and occupation, Nadim has honed his voice and knowledge to become a compelling narrator of everything Lebanese. He is also adept at using themes arising from present-day crises to draw a much bigger historical picture, scanning the horizons of the Ottoman Empire and showing how countries and peoples like Lebanon and Israel, the Druze and the Palestinians and numerous European adventurers fit into the epic story of that fragmented power. We cover the current (late March 2024) war in Gaza, the threat of another erupting on Lebanon’s southern border, and the current “mood in Beirut.” (it isn’t great). And, of course, spies.  Lebanon is sometimes accused, as Nadim admits, of “not being a real country.” But then, what is a real country? Episode Credits:  Host & Producer: Luke Sheehan Music: Evin O'Brien - cassandravoices.com/culture/music/musician-of-the-month-evin-obrien/ Produced by Massimiliano Galli - www.massimilianogalli.com

In early 2020, Sunetra Gupta was quietly working on a universal influenza vaccine as Professor of Theoretical Epidemiology at Oxford University, while finishing her sixth novel. By then, a new coronavirus had been discovered in Wuhan, China. In response, she and her group produced a paper suggesting, among other scenarios, as much as 50% of the U.K. population had already been infected. This was in stark contrast to the assessment of Professor Neil Ferguson at Imperial College London, whose modelling assumed COVID-19 had just arrived in the West and that we had no cross-immunity from other coronaviruses against it, meaning it would kill almost one in a hundred of those who contracted it. For reasons still inadequately explored, the U.K., Irish and most Western governments – along with many in the Global South – followed Ferguson's (and others’) doomsday prediction and chose untested lockdowns in anticipation of a vaccine – a containment strategy to ‘flatten the curve’, as opposed to a (Chinese-style) elimination strategy. Sunetra Gupta has been vindicated in her assessment that COVID-19 had been circulating far longer than initially understood, and also that it had a much lower fatality rate than Ferguson and others assumed from limited data. Moreover, it was obvious that this social experiment would cause serious harms, while the capacity of the strategy to contain the virus was unknown. Sunetra Gupta did not take lockdown lying down. She and a number of academic colleagues authored the Great Barrington Declaration in October 2020, advocating for an end to lockdowns, and promoting the targeted protection of the elderly – who were by far the most susceptible to death from the virus. What followed was not, as she hoped, a civilised discussion weighing the costs and benefits of each strategy, but abuse and even an attempt to have her silenced. Host: Frank Armstrong Music: Loafing Heroes - ​​https://theloafingheroes.bandcamp.com  PostPrimitive - https://postprimitive.bandcamp.com/album/limits  Produced by Massimiliano Galli - https://www.massimilianogalli.com

David Langwallner is an Irish barrister practising in the United Kingdom. A regular contributor to Cassandra Voices, he has represented defendants in criminal cases, including murder, at the highest levels of the U.K. System. He also has extensive experience of constitutional and immigration law and lectured on constitutional law and jurisprudence for sixteen years at The Honorable Society of the King’s Inns in Dublin. Following Julian Assange’s final hearing over his threatened extradition to the U.S., and before the judgment was delivered deciding Assange’s fate, we spoke about the resonances and legalities of the case, the implications for justice and freedom of speech and erosion of journalistic and other valuable voices around the world. Special thanks to Anna Kohlweis, Cassandra Voices’ Musician of the Month for March.   Episode Credits: Host: Luke Sheehan Music: Loafing Heroes - ​​The Loafing Heroes & Anna Kohlweis - https://www.annakohlweis.com/ Produced by Massimiliano Galli - https://www.massimilianogalli.com  

Jim Sheridan needs little introduction. His films, including ‘My Left Foot’ (1989), ‘The Field’ (1990), ‘In the Name of the Father’ (1993) and ‘In America’ (2003) have gained both critical acclaim and global audiences. It is fair to say they have helped define the Irish national character. In recent times, Sheridan has taken a keen interest in the unsolved murder of the French television producer Sophie Toscan du Plantier in west Cork in 1996, producing a series for Sky called ‘Murder at the Cottage’ in 2021. During that period, he became acquainted with Ian Bailey, who was arrested by the Garda Síochána in connection with the murder, but was never charged. The Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) found insufficient evidence to proceed to trial. Earlier this year, Cassandra Voices arranged an interview with Ian Bailey, which was supposed to take place in west Cork at the end of January. However, on January 21 Ian Bailey died of a heart attack – days before the interview was to take place. Thankfully Jim Sheridan agreed to give us an exclusive interview on the murder. Jim Sheridan suggests we re-visit our opinions, and prejudices. He discusses the symbolism of the case, exploring the legacy of famine, the endurance of a colonial mindset and the eccentric character of Ian Bailey.   Episode Credits:  Host: Frank Armstrong Music: Loafing Heroes - ​​https://theloafingheroes.bandcamp.com  Introduction Music:  ‘Wonder’ from Catrin Finch & Aoife Ní Bhriain’s album Double You.  Produced by Massimiliano Galli - https://www.massimilianogalli.com https://cassandravoices.com/society-culture/the-cassandra-voices-podcast/

Jim Sheridan needs little introduction. His films, including ‘My Left Foot’ (1989), ‘The Field’ (1990), ‘In the Name of the Father’ (1993) and ‘In America’ (2003) have gained both critical acclaim and global audiences. It is fair to say they have helped define the Irish national character. In recent times, Sheridan has taken a keen interest in the unsolved murder of the French television producer Sophie Toscan du Plantier in west Cork in 1996, producing a series for Sky called ‘Murder at the Cottage’ in 2021. During that period, he became acquainted with Ian Bailey, who was arrested by the Garda Síochána in connection with the murder, but was never charged. The Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) found insufficient evidence to proceed to trial. Earlier this year, Cassandra Voices arranged an interview with Ian Bailey, which was supposed to take place in west Cork at the end of January. However, on January 21 Ian Bailey died of a heart attack – days before the interview was to take place. Thankfully Jim Sheridan agreed to give us an exclusive interview on the murder. Jim Sheridan suggests we re-visit our opinions, and prejudices. He discusses the symbolism of the case, exploring the legacy of famine, the endurance of a colonial mindset and the eccentric character of Ian Bailey.   Episode Credits:  Host: Frank Armstrong Music: Loafing Heroes - ​​https://theloafingheroes.bandcamp.com  Introduction Music:  ‘Wonder’ from Catrin Finch & Aoife Ní Bhriain’s album Double You.  Produced by Massimiliano Galli - https://www.massimilianogalli.com https://cassandravoices.com/society-culture/the-cassandra-voices-podcast/  

For 50 years Patrick Cockburn has been practicing the art of journalism with integrity and persistence: a specialist on the Middle East, he has written extensively on wars and political machinations from Beirut to Belfast and Baghdad.  Within books like ‘The Occupation and Saddam Hussein: An American Obsession’ (written with his brother Andrew), he has revealed the workings of Arab dictatorships and Western Imperialism and hubris alike. Over the last decade, he has also created a separate, no less distinguished profile as a memoirist: ‘The Broken Boy’ describes his survival of a Polio epidemic in 1950s Cork, while ‘Henry's Demons’, co-authored with his son, immerses the reader into the pain of psychosis. For our conversation with Patrick Cockburn, we sought to sketch out the lives and work of two independent-minded writers: both himself and his father, Claud. Claud’s own 50-year career brought him around the world, from Civil War Spain to Wall Street during the crash of 1929,  back to 1930s London, where his newsletter The Week both documented and fought the rise of Fascism. It was only after WW2 that Claud moved to Ireland, where Patrick and his siblings would be born from the 50s onwards.  Making use of unclassified MI5 files, and an abundance of material directly remembered from his late father, Patrick spoke to Cassandra Voices as he was preparing the final manuscript of a new memoir, covering Claud’s life.   Episode Credits: Host: Luke Sheehan Music: Loafing Heroes - ​​https://theloafingheroes.bandcamp.com  Produced by Massimiliano Galli - https://www.massimilianogalli.com

Welcome to Cassandra Voices Podcast