Filmmaker Nuala O’Connor joins Irish Stew cohosts Martin Nutty and John Lee for a “Global Irish Nation Conversation” on her documentary In Time: Dónal Lunny, her filmic tone poem in black and white on the enigmatic innovator of Irish music.
Co‑founder of the seminal groups Planxty, The Bothy Band, and Moving Hearts, Dónal introduced the flat-back bouzouki to Irish music and broke through with new time signatures, revolutionizing the sound and status of Irish trad music without breaking its fundamental architecture.

Previously an RTÉ radio producer, Nuala is now an Emmy Award-winning writer and director whose work in music and arts documentary filmmaking spans more than three decades.

The director explains how the title In Time carries intertwined meanings that mirror the musician’s life and work. “You know sometimes things come to you for no reason and then they seem to be very reasonable after they’ve arrived,” she says of the name. “There’s the idea of time signature in music. Dónal explored time signatures previously unheard in Irish music and he has been at the forefront of Irish music for so long, you know, literally in time.”

The episode also delves into Dónal’s deep relationships with fellow musicians, his creative collaborations with his Planxty bandmates, and newer sonic explorations as he is still pushing boundaries in his late seventies.

He also pushed boundaries in his personal life which the film unflinchingly shows and the podcasters explore.

Nuala explains that she wanted to paint a portrait of an artist still very much in motion, not a nostalgic retrospective, a commitment captured powerfully in the film’s climactic scene where an ailing Dónal and his Planxty colleague Christy Moore reunite.

“I took Dónal out of hospital, drove him to where we shot that, and then put him in the car and brought him back to hospital after,” she says, “I honestly didn’t know, will he be here when the film comes out?

In Time: Dónal Lunny will screen on Day 3 of the Solas Nua Capital Irish Film Festival, Feb. 26 through Mar. 1. Irish Stew will once again be the festival’s Podcast in Residence and will record an episode on stage with filmmaker guests following the Fri., Feb. 27, 6:30 PM Northern Ireland Spotlight screenings of Three Keenings and No Ordinary Heist.

Links

Solas Nua

• Website
• Capital Irish Film Festival
• In Time: Dónal Lunny

Nuala O’Connor

• IMDB

South Wind Blows Productions

• Website
• LinkedIn
• Facebook

Irish Stew Links

• Website
• Facebook
• Instagram
• LinkedIn
• Media Partner: IrishCentral

Episode Details: Season 8, Episode 8; Total Episode Count: 149

In this conversation recorded at the 2025 Capital Irish Film Festival, host Martin Nutty sits down with two trailblazing Irish filmmakers who are pushing boundaries in their respective genres.

Aislinn Clarke discusses her groundbreaking Irish-language horror film Fréwaka, exploring how her childhood love of horror (she saw The Exorcist at seven!) and her father's commitment to preserving the Irish language converged into a unique cinematic vision. Clarke reveals the gift of discovering the perfect location for the film in Ravensdale Forest, and why horror fans have always embraced foreign language films. With international distribution through IFC Shutter and more projects in development, Clarke is proving that Irish-language cinema can compete on the global stage.

Tanya Doyle takes us behind the scenes of her five-year documentary odyssey Eat, Sleep, Cheer, and Repeat, which follows Ireland's cheerleading team to the World Championships in Florida. What began as a search for a film about women in sport became an intimate portrait of athleticism, identity, and belonging. Doyle shares the moment she knew cheerleading was the story—watching a young competitor vomit from sheer physical exertion—and defends the sport against anyone who questions its legitimacy. With 160 hours of footage to wrangle and characters lost to COVID shutdowns, the film became a testament to resilience both on and off screen.

Both filmmakers discuss the challenges of funding independent cinema in Ireland, the intimacy of the editing process, and the importance of creating spaces where diverse stories can flourish. Whether you're interested in horror, documentary filmmaking, Irish language revival, or women in sport, this episode offers rich insights into the craft and passion of contemporary Irish cinema.

Links

Films

• Preview: Eat, Sleep, Cheer, and Repeat
• Preview: Fréwaka

Aislinn Clarke

• IMDB
• Instagram

Tanya Doyle

• IMDB
• LinkedIn
• Griffith College

Solas Nua

• Capital Irish Film Festival

Irish Stew Links

• Website
• Facebook
• Instagram
• LinkedIn
• Media Partner: IrishCentral

Episode Details: Season 8, Episode 7; Total Episode Count: 148

Recorded at the 2025 Capital Irish Film Festival in Washington DC, this episode features a conversation with two Irish women who have both made significant transitions into film from other careers.

Kathleen Harris, a former Irish Times video journalist, discusses her environmental documentary Birdsong, which won the 2025 CIFF Audience Award for Favorite Irish Feature. Denise Deegan, a novelist, talks about her award-winning short, The Innkeeper.

Birdsong follows ornithologist Seán Ronayne as he attempts to record every bird species in Ireland, traveling to some of the country's most remote locations along the way.

The Innkeeper is a short comedy drama set around a school nativity play, which carries a quiet but powerful message about homelessness in Ireland.

Both guests left stable careers — Harris from journalism, Deegan from running a PR business — to pursue film making, and both talk candidly about the leap involved. A thread running through the conversation is how each approached social issues in their work: Harris structured Birdsong to balance wonder with concern about Ireland's biodiversity crisis, while Deegan deliberately withheld The Innkeeper's central point until the final moment. Neither wanted to lecture. Both wanted to leave the audience feeling something had shifted.

Links

Capital Irish Film Festival

Kathleen Harris

• Website
• LinkedIn

Denise Deegan

• Website
• Instagram

The Films

• Birdsong
  • Website
  • Preview
• The Innkeeper
  • Preview
  • IMDB

Irish Stew Links

• Website
• Facebook
• Instagram
• LinkedIn
• Media Partner: IrishCentral

Episode Details: Season 8, Episode 6; Total Episode Count: 147

Irish Stew wraps its Off the Beaten Craic in the Hidden Heartlands Series in Drumshanbo, the Co. Leitrim town rewriting the rural renewal playbook. What began as a desperate effort to save a shuttered jam factory has become one of Ireland's most remarkable community-led success stories.

At The Food Hub in Drumshanbo, cohosts Martin Nutty and John Lee hear from Cllr Enda McGloin and onsite manager Fergal McPartland how a voluntary local committee refused to let the abandoned jam factory slip away, spending years securing a long-term lease and funding while recommitting the site to food production rather than easier options like storage. The Food Hub now houses multiple thriving enterprises including The Shed Distillery, home of Gunpowder Irish Gin which put this Leitrim town on the global spirits map. Together, the Food Hub and the Shed have transformed Drumshanbo from a symbol of industrial decline into a vibrant food, drink, and tourism destination studied by other towns seeking renewal.

Inside The Shed, the podcasters hear how its managing director and founder P.J. Rigney and his team have fused global imagination with local soul in their distinctive gins, whiskeys and now vodka. At the distillery’s heart beats an Irish storyteller's instinct for character, place, and pride.

The podcasters get to see the magic happen on The Shed Distillery Tour, a popular hospitality experience made complete with a stop at the onsite Jackalope Café, a local foodie destination.

Now P.J. is restoring the town's historic Methodist Church as a community and visitor hub, continuing the ethos of regeneration that began with the Food Hub. He calls it a partnership of "guardian angels" between business and community, each nurturing the other through shared purpose.

This final episode of Off the Beaten Craic in the Hidden Heartlands captures the alchemy of curiosity and connection that defines Drumshanbo, a small town that turned crisis into creativity and built a legacy of craft, courage, and collaboration. From jam to gin, from empty factory floors to bustling innovation, Drumshanbo proves that when community and imagination meet, even the most hidden heartlands can become a global destination.

Irish Stew’s next destination is Washington, DC. Join them next week for the first of several episodes on Irish films featured by the Solas Nua Capital Irish Film Festival.

Links

The Food Hub

• Website
• Facebook

Cllr Enda McGloin

• Website
• LinkedIn
• Facebook

The Shed Distillery

• Website
• Instagram
• YouTube
• LinkedIn
• PJ Rigney on LinkedIn

Episode Details: Season 8, Episode 5; Total Episode Count: 146

Irish Stew’s latest “Off the Beaten Craic” adventure in County Leitrim discovers three new ways to slow down, tune in, and taste this corner of Ireland, through food, forest, and a gentle spin along the Jackalope Trail.

First, we meet Malaysian‑born chef and restaurateur Sham Hanifa. At age 20 he answered an ad to work in Ireland, arriving in Carrick‑on‑Shannon jet‑lagged and short on money, but today he anchors the local food scene with The Cottage, My Kitchen, and Buffalo Boy, blending Irish ingredients with his Thai‑Chinese‑Indian‑Malay heritage.

And he loves Irish Stew, though he was referring to the edible not the audio version.

“What I say is Irish stew is comfort food, packed with flavor and a good‑hearted dish,” he explains, insisting he won’t “mess around” with its unique Irish character even as he adds subtle Asian notes elsewhere on the menu. That respect for Irish produce interpreted with Asian flavors has turned Sham’s Leitrim restaurants into dining destinations

The episode moves next to the Drumhierny Woodland Hideaway, opened to guests in 2022 and featuring 11 self‑catering lodges tucked seamlessly into mature woodland. Sustainability, local partnerships, and wellbeing shape the experience, from an onsite café and private‑chef dinners to a sanctuary with seaweed baths, sauna, and cold plunge.

“They arrive stressed on Friday, and when you meet them on a Sunday they’re completely Zen, which I think is what we’re all about,” says co-founder and marketing manager Alison Moffatt.

The podcasters then roam towards Drumshanbo for a “slow adventure” on the Jackalope Trail with Eileen Gibbons of Electric Bike Trails. Inspired by seeing e-bikes on Ireland’s Greenway network, Eileen and her husband Seamus created guided rides that trade speed for stories—linking canal-side cycling with local heritage and the wider tourism scene.

“We take people along at a slow rate, stop along the way at interesting spots, all with a little bit of joke and a little bit of fun, and maybe even a bit of song,” she says.

The Jackalope Trail leads to The Shed Distillery of PJ Rigney, distillers of Drumshanbo Whisky and Irish Gunpowder Gin, part of Co. Leitrim’s innovative culinary incubator The Food Hub, both to be featured in the next and final episode of Irish Stew’s “Off the Beaten Craic” series.

Links

Sham Hanifa

• Website
• Facebook
• YouTube
• Instagram
• My Kitchen
• The Cottage Restaurant

Drumhierny Woodland Hideaway

• Website
• Facebook
• Instagram
• Alison Moffatt LinkedIn

Electric Bike Trails

• Website
• Facebook
• Instagram

Irish Stew Links

• Website
• Media Partner: IrishCentral
• Travel Partner: Tourism Ireland

Episode Details: Season 8, Episode 4; Total Episode Count: 145

It may be the smallest county in Connacht, the smallest by population in Ireland, with the smallest stretch of beach on the Wild Atlantic Way, but in their latest episode the Irish Stew podcasters learn that Leitrim is capitalizing on its offer of a great quality of life, relative affordability, entrepreneurial energy, appeal to a more mobile workforce, and its “slow adventure” approach experiencing its natural allure.

Arriving in Carrick-on-Shannon, the cohosts head to the offices of the Leitrim County Council, the local government organization committed to building an economically strong, creative and inclusive county, making Leitrim the best place to live, to work and visit.

Though County Council Chief Executive Joseph Gilhooly opened the doors to Leitrim for Irish Stew, for the interview he gave the floor to his able lieutenants, Director of Services David Minton and tourism officer Sinead McDermott.

You’ll hear how Leitrim’s economy is strong on small-scale entrepreneurship and growing sectors like fintech, food innovation, engineering, and renewables. They also detail the County Council’s integrated support system including the Local Enterprise Office, The Hive incubation hub, and the Carrick Campus for growing firms.

They share that tourists from across Ireland, the U.S, and Europe come for Leitrim’s authenticity, natural beauty, slower pace, farm to table food, tranquillity, and eco-tourism. They sense that climate change is subtly shifting European travel patterns northward, making Ireland a “cool” alternative to overheated southern Europe.

With Leitrim’s tourism value proposition top-of-mind, the podcasters head to the Landmark Hotel to meet with Sales and Marketing Manager Ciara Maxwell, who came to Leitrim for a one-year work experience 15 years ago and never left, which tells you everything you need to know about the pull of this place.

She tells how founders John and Ciaran Kelly envisioned a new riverside hotel that would be a real landmark looking out over “The Marina Capital of Ireland” and in the center of Carrick-on-Shannon’s lively weekend nightlife of pubs, shows, and restaurants.

There’s more tastes of Leitrim on Irish Stew next week, including the story of the Malaysian chef who’s upending the local food scene, the new woodland lodging hideaway set on 100 acres of Irish history, and the slow adventure e-bike option for traversing the Jackalope Trail to Drumshanbo, home of The Shed Distillery of P.J. Rigney.

Links

Leitrim County Council

• Website
• LinkedIn
• Facebook
• Instagram
• X

Leitrim Tourism

Sinead McDermott

• LinkedIn

Landmark Hotel

• Website
• Facebook
• YouTube
• Instagram

Ciara Maxwell

• LinkedIn

Irish Stew Links

• Website
• Instagram
• LinkedIn
• Media Partner: IrishCentral

Episode Details: Season 8, Episode 3; Total Episode Count: 143

Irish Stew Podcast is “Off the Beaten Craic” in Co. Longford for the sound of the low whistle and the sight of an Iron Age roadway at the Corlea Trackway Visitors Centre, located a half hour’s drive north from their home-away-from-home in Athlone. There they met their guide Noel Carberry who opens and closes the interview with his virtuosity on the larger, lower-pitched variation of the traditional tin whistle.

Noel is a 26-year-veteran of the Corlea Trackway Visitors Centre, a “life sentence’ as he jokingly calls it, but beyond the bog he’s best known as an expert musician of the uilleann pipes, the Irish tin and low whistles, and bodhrán.

He brings Ireland’s Iron Age dramatically to life through his expert commentary on the Corlea Trackway, the widest prehistoric road of its kind discovered in Europe. Laid down in oak planks between the autumn of 148 BC and the spring of 147 BC, this one-kilometer wooden roadway once stretched from dry land to dry land across the bog, a monumental and mysterious statement of power and belief in the Hidden Heartlands.

“What you’re talking about is a prehistoric planked road, for all the world like a railway track upside down, with planks of oak laid down on runners of ash, oak, or silver birch,” he says.

Noel tells of growing up in the nearby workers housing of Bord na Móna, the Irish agency which extracted peat to fuel power plants. That same industrial extraction uncovered the buried trackway in 1984, when milled peat operations stripped the bog down to the level of the ancient timbers and a worker with an interest in archaeology realized their importance.

For Noel, the ancient trackway may have been less a simple road than a display of dominance, possibly built with timber taken from defeated neighbors, their sacred oaks regarded as the reincarnation of ancestral spirits.

On view at Corlea are eighteen meters of preserved roadway saved from industrial destruction and maintained, presented and compellingly interpreted by the OPW, or Office of Public Works.

With tales of ancient kings, bog bodies, and spirited tunes like “The Rocky Road to Dublin” echoing through the Centre, Noel makes a compelling case that Ireland’s true story runs not just around the coasts, but through the deep, mysterious middle.

With thanks to Noel and the OPW, the podcasters depart for the final Off the Beaten Craic stops in the Hidden Heartlands series with episodes coming up next in County Leitrim.

Links

• Corlea Iron Age Roadway and Visitors Centre
• Facebook

Irish Stew Links

• Website
• Instagram
• LinkedIn
• Media Partner: IrishCentral

Episode Details: Season 8, Episode 2; Total Episode Count: 144

The Irish Stew podcasters venture across Westmeath one last time, to the county’s eastern reaches to explore the picturesque village of Tyrrellspass, where they once again find a story of community commitment…and a bog.

The community leader giving cohosts John Lee and Martin Nutty the grand tour of his charming town is Eugene Dunbar, a retired teacher who never retired from educating anyone who’d listen about the treasures unique to Tyrrellspass.

After meeting Eugene at the town’s centerpiece castle tower, the trio followed the signs to the Cloncrow Bog & Village Trail.

“I came here in 1972 as a geography teacher, and I was absolutely intrigued with the whole system of the bogs and having one so close to us here in Tyrrellspass,” he says. “It’s what they term an intact raised bog, with the same vegetation that would have been on it 5, 6, 7, 8, 9,000 years ago. So, you're looking at a unique landscape that hasn't changed in millennia.”

Eugene tells of how people moved from viewing bogs purely as fuel sources to recognizing them as vital carbon sinks and ecological wonders, driven locally by the volunteer effort known as ETHOS--Everything Tyrrellspass Has On Show. Refusing to be bogged down by bureaucratic challenges, Dunbar and the other ETHOS volunteers created the interpretive raised boardwalk through the local raised bog, which morphs into a trail through the highlights the village itself, culminating in its picture-perfect town green with its evocative 1970 Imogen Stuart sculpture of three school children representing the future of the new Ireland.

After a restorative pint (or maybe it was two) in the snug, welcoming Willie’s Bar, Eugene took the podcasters back to his inviting home, decorated with the paintings of his wife Josephine who served the trio tea and scones while the podcast recording began in earnest.

Add signature Irish hospitality to Everything Tyrrellspass Has On Show!

It’s off to Longford next week when Irish Stew adds a mysterious Iron Age road to its Off the Beaten Track Road Trip itinerary as they explore the Corlea Trackway, discovered in 1984 by workers digging peat in the local bog--yes, again with the bog!

Links

• Cloncrow Bog & Village Trail Website
• ETHOS
  • Website
  • Facebook
  • YouTube

Irish Stew Links

• Website
• Instagram
• LinkedIn
• Media Partner: IrishCentral

Episode Details: Season 8, Episode 1; Total Episode Count: 143