Part One: Escape from the Magdalene Laun...

Hello, Cool People Listeners! We want to share a new show you might enjoy, SAD OLIGARCH Season 2! About the show: Since January 2022, dozens of Russia's wealthiest oligarchs and power brokers have died suddenly. One was poisoned with frog venom. Two killed their whole families. S ... Show More

In part two of this week's episode, Margaret continues her talk with Jamie Loftus about Baba Yaga, the Slavic legend who eats children and occasionally helps people. Original Air Date: 11.9.2022See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. 

Margaret talks with Jamie Loftus about Baba Yaga, the Slavic legend who eats children and occasionally helps people. Original Air Date: 11.7.2022See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. 

I’m going to be a voice for these childrenChris Page, the BBC’s Ireland correspondent speaks to the Irish historian Catherine Corless, who has changed history in her own country.When she began to research a long-closed mother and baby home near where she lived, she encountered lo ... Show More

Journalist Sean O'Driscoll met the IRA Heiress herself. He would cycle to her Dublin care home to chat over tea and biscuits. Though he went easier on the digestives after he found out Rose was the architect of the biscuit-launcher: a deadly weapon used in countless attacks durin ... Show More

Decades after Georgia Tann’s black market adoption ring was exposed, similar patterns of coercion and control are still unfolding across the U.S. At the Liberty Godparent Home in Lynchburg, Virginia, young pregnant women are isolated, shamed, and pressured into giving up their ba ... Show More

While we’re on the last week of our summer break, we’re bringing you one of our most popular episodes from the back catalogue.For over four decades, contraception was not just taboo in Ireland—it was illegal. From 1935 to 1979, selling contraceptives and even accessing informatio ... Show More

In this episode, we explore the fascinating and controversial story of NORAID, the Irish American organisation at the heart of the new documentary NORAID: Irish America & the IRA. Joined by the film’s producer, Jamie Goldrick, we unravel the history that made NORAID so influentia ... Show More

In the 1950s, more than 20,000 people—over one percent of the adult population of Ireland—were locked away in mental asylums. This was the highest rate in the world, with more people confined in asylums than in all other institutions, including prisons, combined.Yet, despite thes ... Show More

This podcast opens a broader series on the 1798 Rebellion, but also works as a stand alone episode.For over a century, Irish Catholics and Presbyterians were subjected to the Penal Laws. Although the vast majority of the population, they were banned from voting, sitting in parlia ... Show More

The U.S. immigration detention system is spread out across federal facilities, private prisons, state prisons, and county jails. It’s grown under both Democratic and Republican presidents. And it’s been offered up as a source of revenue for over a century, beginning with the firs ... Show More

Alice Kyteler's witchcraft trial shocked 14th century Ireland. Today, the charges against her are seen largely as nonsense, and more about personal vendettas and struggles for power. Research: Bailey, Michael D. “HISTORICAL DICTIONARY of WITCHCRAFT.” Scarecrow Press. 2003. Callan ... Show More

In County Kilkenny, Ireland, in an early year of a century not too long before our own, Alice Kyteler was accused of witchcraft. But the story doesn't end there. This week, Molly Aitken—author of BRIGHT I BURN—is here to tell us a tale where the more things* change, the more ... Show More