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Luke Clancy's culture come-all-ye, featuring bright spots in music, performance, film, tv and art from Ireland and the world. Broadcast Saturdays at 6.30pm, repeated Wednesdays at 9pm on RTÉ lyric fm.
111 Episodes
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The Comfort Zone: New York-born, Dublin-based fine artist and photographer Ishmael Claxton invites Colm and Luke to head to an imaginary, demon-and-talking-animal-filled Japan in the 14th century, to encounter a masterwork from the Japanese Disney, Studio Ghibli, directed by its founder, Hayao Miyazaki.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Composer, improvisor and evangelist for the power of children's music, Ríona Sally Hartman leads a tour of her musical world.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
If you enjoyed Orit Gat's essay on Tracey Emin's sort-of-retrospective at Tate Modern (which you can hear in the current edition of Culture File), here is some further conversation between Orit Gat and Luke Clancy, around Emin, Autofiction, Bad Museums, Rose Wiley and Nobel Prize Winners.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Orit Gat takes in the new Tate Modern show from former YBA, now officially OBA, Tracey Emin; Rachel Andrews is at Cork's Make2026, with Prof Helen A. Fielding to learn which AI to love; and Patrick O'Laoghaire's Island postcard comes from a road near Clifden.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Marking your cards for some time well spent, The Comfort Zone's Colm Tóibín suggests spending (quite a few) minutes with The Met's latest production of Tristran und Isolde (screening in select Irish cinemas this weekend); artist Rónán Ó Raghallaigh offers Carlo Ginsberg's The Cheese and The Worms; and Luke Clancy counters the two series of Lucia Keskin's sitcom, Things You Should have Done.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
The Comfort Zone: Artist Maeve Stone champions Katie Paterson's deep time artwork, Future Library, and sparks a conversation with Colm Tóibín about space, eternity and marshmallows.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Events on Valentia Island around 360 million years ago set in motion an exhibition from artist Bryony Dunne, currently at the Irish Architectural Archive in Dublin.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Sound artist and composer Tarek Atoui, musician and recordist Natalia Beylis, and Oxn drummer, Eleanor Myler probe the act of making a sound, and the art of receiving one. Recorded at IMMA, Kilmainham.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Essayist, Meghan O'Gieblyn invites Colm Toibin and Luke Clancy to an encounter with French philosopher and mystic, Simone Weil, in particular her posthumously published essay/poem Attention and Will.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Rion Hanora O'Donovan on the place of 'bad' graffiti in her clothes designs; Dermot Rogers puts some sunlight on the legacy of jazz guitarist, Louis Stewart; Paddy Woodworth slips Esther Woolfson on to the Naturalist's Bookshelf; and Patrick O'Laoghaire starts a new series musical Island postcards.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Culture File Presents: The Comfort Zone. Artist and performer, Harold Offeh encourages Colm Tóibín and Luke Clancy to think/talk about the late US artist, William Pope.L's performance crawls, as well as the powers of lounging and of silliness.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Culture File XXXL Edition | After a troubled Northern Irish childhood, Vivien Hewitt found a new life in Italy, and in opera. The director and designer takes a seat in the afternoon quiet of Trieste's Theatre Verdi to talk about a life in the dreamworld of opera.(Photo credit: Vivien Hewitt)See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Culture File Presents: The Comfort Zone. XXXL Edition. Drummer, vocalist and member of the danktrad supergroup, OXN, Eleanor Myler leads Colm Tóibín into the nice 'n' steady sound of krautrockers, Neu! (From 111025)See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
The Culture File panel explores the place of quiet and loud in the contemporary attention economy, with poet, Paula Meehan and musicians and composers, Siobhán Cleary, John Godfrey, and Christine Tobin. Recorded live at New Music Dublin 2025. (From 260425)See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Culture File Presents: The Comfort Zone XXXL Edition: Artist and curator, Kerry Guinan join Colm Tóibín and Luke Clancy to rake over the embers of art-provocateurs K-Foundation's 1994 performance of burning £1 million on a Scottish island. (First broadcast July 25)See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
How birds and their metaphors move through the work and the lives of novelist, John Banville, art critic, Orit Gat, novelist, Sara Baume, journalist and author Paddy Woodworth. Under consideration are: The Pigeon; The Swift; The Wheatear; and The Crane. But which scribe fancies which wìngéd muse? (First broadcast Dec 24)See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
In this XXXL edition of The Comfort Zone, The Rats: 'horrademic' Prof Darryl Jones brings a favourite 1970s gorecore novel into the Zone, with a steer that James Herbert's The Rats, racism, misogyny and homophobia notwithstanding, has something to offer the world of 2025. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
In this XXXL edition of the debate, an ancient Irish farming tradition that sees the wisdom of leaving some farm land free from the imperatives of production -- ‘The Hare’s Corner’ -- is celebrated in poetry, story, discussion and music. Paddy Woodworth leads a panel featuring Jane Clarke, Catherine Cleary, Jane Carkill and Colm Mac Con Iomaire.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Culture File Presents: The Comfort Zone. Music critic Michael Dervan wants everyone in the zone to enjoy the artistry of The Great Slydini and other masters of sleight of hand and misdirection.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Outlandish Theatre Company's performance event Freedom uses the myth of Antigone to explore the act of speaking about Gaza, about the limits of art and speech. Listen to the piece in its entirety here. Recorded live at Samuel Beckett Theatre, TCD, Dublin in November 2025.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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