00:00:00.800Hey everyone! Alright, so once a month, we give everyone a chance to hear what a full
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00:01:14.600today's show. My first question, though, is how do I say Paul Mescal's name? Because I think
00:01:20.880americans say it incorrectly right i'm not sure either it's like not a crazy common name
00:01:30.300yeah like i've heard people say mescal and mezcal i've heard all kinds of pronunciations from irish
00:01:37.340people and non-irish people alike so i think go with god on that one honestly yeah it's not like
00:01:42.420it's like an irish name that like somehow americans aren't getting like some sort of weird
00:01:46.640no he he's our he's our first mezcal I think I say mezcal but like I'm not thinking about it very
00:01:52.680I'm just gonna say it and then just go with it because yeah the common pronunciation yeah it's
00:01:58.540not like with Saoirse Ronan where we had to like really tell everyone yeah or even like I feel like
00:02:04.440every American kid or many American kids has a have a story of like thinking Sean was seen like
00:02:12.220S-E-A-N. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So like people learn these things. We're not, we're not ridiculous.
00:02:23.040Hi everyone. This is the Culture Study Podcast and I'm Anne Helen Peterson.
00:02:27.660My name is Karen Dunahoo. I'm an author and a podcaster, most recently of The Rachel Incident
00:02:32.880and the pop culture podcast, Sentimental Garbage. And a huge Culture Study favorite,
00:02:38.280I have to say that now when we mentioned just kind of like offhandedly that you were coming on the0.98
00:02:42.860show like people lost their shit so we're very are you for real that's amazing yes like Rachel0.93
00:02:49.820Incident shows up so much in the what are you reading threads for the the last couple of months0.99
00:02:54.500like people are obsessed with it I think a lot of this has to do with there are a lot of millennial
00:02:58.960readers amongst the culture study um readership and then people are just such fans of the podcast
00:03:05.980too so this is just perfect oh that that really is music to my ears thank you so much and like
00:03:11.240it feels so fitting that we're we're talking specifically about like the irishification
00:03:16.440of american culture yeah because like because like i think there's like something this happens
00:03:21.480very frequently where like um irish artists will will most often go to england because it's our
00:03:27.220next door neighbor and it's the next um place that has the most artistic and cultural opportunities
00:03:32.180and like very often we will flop in the UK but then but it's like we get to the point where
00:03:39.440the work is big enough that it can get an American release more often we'll find we'll find a lot
00:03:46.160more luck over there which I find sort of fascinating yeah no and we're gonna talk about
00:03:51.400what I think sometimes like veers into a fetishization but also has a lot to do with
00:03:57.540irish americans and understanding of self and that sort of thing um but i i also have to say
00:04:02.440that the genesis of this episode actually goes back to the very beginning of the podcast when
00:04:06.400melody and i were trying to come up with ideas for like our initial episodes and i was like melody
00:04:12.400paul mescal and she's like ew gross whatever and i was like no no he's the hottest contemporary
00:04:20.300like yes he is significantly younger than me but like he is my like like forever young like i am
00:04:26.880always going to be 24 and this is always going to be the type of person that I'm gonna have it for
00:04:33.380and she was like there's nothing to talk about and we kept being like to listeners who could0.98
00:04:39.140who should be our co-host and no one had any ideas and then suddenly we're like oh an Irish
00:04:45.260person who writes about in podcasts about pop culture like what if you would want to do one
00:04:50.540and you're like I don't really like I don't know much about Paul and we're like okay Irishification
00:04:55.100of pop culture let's expand i feel so bad that i couldn't like verify it all to melody that like
00:05:01.300paul mescal is a good topic of conversation um i'm really very sorry i got nothing no but like
00:05:09.140this actually this fits i i told melody to tell you that i wanted to do this topic this broader
00:05:15.020expanded topic because i weirdly took several irish film studies classes when i was a graduate
00:05:21.440student so I've watched a ton of Irish film and also read a ton of Irish literature I took an
00:05:28.300Irish literature class as an undergrad and that like expanded my interest and once you know some
00:05:33.620of like the canonical and historical things it also makes additional historical stuff more
00:05:39.180accessible to you right because I feel like sometimes people are like I don't know anything
00:05:42.800about the troubles I can't watch any Irish anything which is false but like it does make0.57
00:05:49.380Yeah, totally. And I think that like, you know, pop culture in that way, and I'm including sort of literature in that, like it is guilty of like creating myths about places and like that those don't, that those aren't limited to Ireland. Like we have myths about every country on earth. We have ideas about how they should be that have been built by pop culture.0.99
00:06:10.620like i was just in norway and i was amazed to see how much it was like frozen too like truly and
00:06:16.680there's like and there's like an unbelievable amount of like satisfaction that comes from when
00:06:22.200something it feels like what it what it thought and you might it might be in your brain but like
00:06:26.720what what and like maybe people could call that like sort of yeah um limiting of cultures but i
00:06:32.040also think you know what that does is like you know would so many people know about for example
00:06:38.300the Chinese Revolution if they hadn't heard about haven't read Wild Swans you know like
00:06:42.780like pop culture and literature is so often our first touch point right for getting to know
00:06:48.920countries we've never been to before what what then becomes hard is when it becomes our last
00:06:53.920touch point do you know it's like when people watch Derry Girls for example and they assume
00:07:00.040that's contemporary Ireland now as opposed to like a specific part of Ireland during a very specific
00:07:05.820time you know right or even just the generalization of like all of Ireland and forgetting not just
00:07:14.240like the like northern Ireland and how that's different but also just like different parts
00:07:19.100of a country and how class and race and all of those things intersect with all of that yeah like
00:07:25.740it's crazy I saw an article about this the other day uh not that it was quite quite a few weeks
00:07:30.840ago now at this point but New York magazine ran this huge special and it was around the time where
00:07:35.820you'd reached out to me um about Paul Meskel and um and I sort of counter-pitched can we talk about
00:07:41.940the kind of Irishification of American pop culture because I'd saw this huge spread about like how
00:07:48.380Irish actors Irish writers Irish creators were sort of taking over the landscape we're so hot
00:07:52.920right now they were you know oh yeah they were it was like all of them connected right it was like
00:07:58.040a spider web yes totally and and uh and they referred to this kind of you know these actors
00:08:03.840like barry keown and paul mescal as like part of the crack pack as in crack spelt c-r-a-i-c
00:08:10.940which is like i i looked at that phrase for so long i was like i don't know
00:08:15.220i don't know like i should be offended but i think it's kind of clever
00:08:19.420i i'm like did an irish person write this or did it like someone who just knows like
00:08:26.540No, God, no. But the something I said in the kind of byline, which I found really fascinating was like, how is a country the size of Indiana having having this much of an impact on contemporary culture?
00:08:42.640and it really brought into focus for me like oh yeah like the absolute to me the unfathomable
00:08:48.820hugeness of America versus the tininess and the localness of Ireland and like and like you know
00:08:54.800I I my book was really it came out in 2023 right the Rachel incident came out in 2023 but um this
00:09:00.800summer has been because things take a while to release internationally it's been it came out in
00:09:05.820France this summer and and Spain and Germany and I was touring in all those places last year
00:09:10.760in order to get the word out and so many the impression from sort of the European markets0.94
00:09:16.740are like the question I got absolutely everywhere was like what's the fucking deal like like saying0.69
00:09:23.260why do you why do you guys get so much attention and like you know there are more people who speak0.82
00:09:29.100Catalan than are Irish like so like it and like how many Catalan authors do you know of probably
00:09:34.820none but um i'd wager none and like you know that's so interesting okay i'm gonna pause this
00:09:42.620because i think we're gonna get into this all in our questions and answering our questions
00:09:46.820um because i think that that there's there's some reasons for this but okay first question
00:09:51.940great way for us to get into all of these conversations comes from alicia first what's
00:09:58.540the origin story of americans collective fixation with irish celebs and why has it blossomed so much
00:11:43.380she is so rich she's so rich she's so rich here's a question actually how popular was she in ireland0.99
00:11:53.000because she was you know so ubiquitous she was everywhere in the united states so interesting0.95
00:11:58.640I was thinking a lot about Enya in the in the lead up to this and I think she was definitely
00:12:05.600popular to a point but because I think specifically what Enya was sort of calling to and speaking to
00:12:13.400was this wider thing that was happening in the 90s of kind of world quote-unquote in quotes
00:12:18.760world music and like or new age music or whatever that specifically spoke to kind of crystals and
00:12:27.340like health food health food stores and shops that have you know cds um defined by mood at the
00:12:34.940counter and like a big a big cookie wrapped in cling film for sale you know like that is that
00:12:41.720is the world I place and like nutrition and nutritional yeast and the entire store smells
00:12:48.260like cumin yes that's yeah yeah yes totally and like I think for sure people were supportive like
00:12:54.840I mean, this was the 90s and obviously I was born in 1990, so I was a child.
00:12:59.920I don't remember people being crazy about her.
00:13:02.840I remember her being in the background.
00:13:04.340But I think, again, like because of the size of the U.S. and because of like, I guess, you know, if you are the main exporter of culture in the world, which is America,
00:13:17.140and so much of the cultural mood sort of drips down from there I suppose from from where you are
00:13:24.820and and I think what was happening to some extent or another and please correct me if I'm wrong is
00:13:31.180that there was such a kind of a 90s sort of megalomaniac cynicism happening you know the
00:13:37.040sort of the the starbucksification of the U.S. and everything which which I I didn't experience
00:13:42.180first time but I just sort of know existed from like watching singles or whatever and the and
00:13:47.760people like Enya seemed like a kind of a counter balance to that would you say? Well she was
00:13:55.720elevator music that was also unique in some way and so similar to the success of say the Benedictine
00:14:03.620monks who'd had like a very successful chanting album around the same time as the peak of Enya's
00:14:09.820popularity or someone like enigma another very popular early 90s like mood music or yanni
00:14:15.660yes or yanni so popular people don't know how popular yanni was uh but enya too like
00:14:25.060some of her songs were her like speaky just kind of chanting words but a lot of them
00:14:31.300also included gaelic and she would sing like some of her songs were also traditional irish songs
00:14:37.860and it felt I think like an accessible touch point of like oh well this is this isn't just
00:14:43.480elevator music like this is actually like cultural yeah there's a profundity to it and
00:14:48.540there's layers to it and it feels like it comes from somewhere and like to your guests other
00:14:53.600questions um oh yeah you know but I do think this kind of links in in a way because I was thinking
00:14:58.900a lot about it in the run-up to this about like how you know the because I was talking to um a
00:15:04.920comedian who's quite famous over here called darrow brian and he's in his 50s i was at this
00:15:09.960kind of very irish event with him and he was very we were talking about the whole like oh my god
00:15:14.160we're so hot right now everyone wants a slice of us hello or whatever and he sort of looked at me
00:15:20.520and another young writer and not young i mean we're in our 30s another sort of millennial writer
00:15:24.340and and he said oh you you sweet summer children this is my third go round of this this is like my
00:15:30.660third totally like turn of this the 90s the crying game was such a phenomenon and then there were a
00:15:38.140bunch of other irish focused narratives but also irish stars and irish stories were very much in
00:15:46.480the forefront alongside the news of what was actually happening in ireland in terms of politics
00:15:51.760and the war and everything like that like yeah this is definitely at least like there was that
00:15:57.360time right there but then I also feel like there's a little bit of there was like a resurgence around
00:16:01.460um once late yes 2000s early 2000s yeah I mean like not I mean lots of things win best original
00:16:08.900songs and then we never hear from them again but like once won best original songs at the Oscar
00:16:13.980and that was I mean I think that I was still living in Ireland during that time I now live
00:16:18.940in London for context um but that was such a huge moment I remember and it was also um
00:16:24.640Damien Rice was happening around the same time as that as well and he had gone super international
00:16:30.400and like the I remember that but the feeling with Once was so strange because Glenn Hansard who is
00:16:37.460the star of that movie and and the composer of that song is this lead singer of this band called
00:16:42.340The Frames and like that was a band that was just like you know if you left your house in the morning
00:16:47.980you could probably catch a frames gig on the way to work you know like it was impossible not to see
00:16:53.640so you're like oh it's just that guy and now he's like a global star what was so crazy is that like
00:17:01.100if you were a fan of them and if you followed them and it was kind of impossible not to because
00:17:04.400they were always playing a gig at the end of your road like you had this real sense because you knew
00:17:10.040people who knew the band and the band was large and had violinists and stuff in it and that you
00:17:14.760know they were always like would partially move over to the to the uk for a while to try and make
00:17:19.580it and then they get booted out and have to come back again so they were always kind of like pinging
00:17:23.140back and forth and then they in this weird way they just sort of like hopscotch the UK entirely
00:17:28.420and then had this like phenomenal like movie and an Oscar nomination and like yeah I had a friend
00:17:38.100who was a good friend of Glenn's and he was like yeah we tease him that he has like the same amount
00:17:41.720of Oscars as Leonardo DiCaprio oh and also um uh why am I blanking on Carey Mulligan's husband's
00:17:52.040band's name oh they're not irish they're not irish they sound so irish you um they sound
00:18:00.000so irish you have to agree with me oh yeah uh and their look like is stereo like or what an
00:18:08.880american like me is like oh yeah they're irish i'm so sorry to disappoint you they're from sussex
00:18:14.320and actually i think they caught a lot of flack in ireland for um a sort of the kind of irish
00:18:20.660minstrelsy I suppose you could call them totally um yeah but like in you get that um these waves
00:18:28.240of fascinations with the country I mean I've never witnessed it the way I am right now and
00:18:33.320maybe I just feel that way because I am creating work that is benefiting yeah from this kind of
00:18:39.640sense of like the rising tide is really lifting all boats and those boats are specifically my
00:18:45.380books and podcasts and which I'm so I'm delighted um but it really is amazing to me about like when
00:18:51.420I was first publishing as a writer I published my first book when I was 28 um and that was
00:18:59.740yeah and it says 2018 so it was around the time of me too and the only thing I ever answered
00:19:05.320questions about was um being a woman being a young woman and abuse and and and me too and it was like
00:19:13.180that was the identifier that was like interesting about me when I was answering questions about my
00:19:17.100work and then in the last kind of three years it seemed that the only when I'm in sort of
00:19:21.660journalist situations and it's interesting because I was a journalist so I you know it's
00:19:25.280and I'm sure you have the same thing when you're promoting your work how you shift from either
00:19:28.900side of the fence yep um how like the majority of the questions will be about being Irish why
00:19:35.220Irish people are so fascinating to everybody else like how my Irishness affects my work
00:19:40.120how sally rooney affects my work like it's all this kind of stuff it's so and weirdly because
00:19:45.100i've spent you know your nationality i'm sure you probably agree it's like your eye color it's like
00:19:50.240this thing you were just born with it doesn't it doesn't feed into how you work you don't think
00:19:55.560about it when you're working but then when it becomes an identifier of your work it kind of
00:19:59.660forces you to think about it in like a very granular way does the irish press ever ask you
00:20:04.400about the irishness of your work um yes but in a different way so to clarify like delighted to be
00:20:12.360asked about my work at all like it's not a privilege of every creator gets um but um when
00:20:17.400you the irish press um and i'd actually like to talk about them a little bit more in a minute
00:20:21.880because it is kind of fascinating they will ask me about like when do you plan on coming home
00:20:27.000um what is it like for you overseas how do people perceive your irishness overseas so like this
00:20:33.780this obsession and I think this is probably in the same in every kind of small artistic market
00:20:38.420like I'm sure if I was an Austrian writer I would give sort of you know interviews to the Austrian
00:20:44.120press about how my Austrian this is received abroad like people are kind of obsessed with
00:20:48.100looking at themselves and looking at themselves with the kind of lens of how they think the world
00:20:52.120looks at them you know yeah yeah for sure yeah I was thinking just because like when I did press
00:20:58.620international press for can't even it brought home the americanness of like what i was talking
00:21:05.120about in a way that the u.s press had not really interrogated really yeah like i it made me think
00:21:12.580outside of my own experience so much and then also just the initial reception to like the
00:21:19.520the article how millennials became the burnout generation like because buzzfeed at that time
00:21:24.800was so incredibly global i got i received so many emails globally and it was always fascinating to
00:21:31.760see like where are these clustering and i got a lot from people from india and i got a lot from
00:21:37.940people in brazil which i think because a lot of like the the components of american capitalism and
00:21:43.440and hustle culture and stuff had transferred to the brazilian economy and then i got so many
00:21:49.240from people in Dublin and I say that specifically right right because you have the tech industry
00:21:55.460that has transferred over there yeah and yeah like so that like it made me think about not only like
00:22:03.780how I was speaking in many ways in that initial article to an American experience and how doing
00:22:09.840press in other ways allowed me to think differently like in Spain the millennials aren't a generation
00:22:16.260they have a generation that they call the i think it's the crystal generation like
00:22:20.580basically speaking to like the fragility of this generation and their generations are much more
00:22:25.400defined by like when they emerged from fascistic rule right like that's how they think about the
00:22:33.780generations instead of like 1980 as an arbitrary understanding of yeah yeah it's really really
00:22:40.720fascinating to like sort of what you think is being like because i guess because you're online
00:22:45.560all day and you sort of see everyone chiming with you and and uh you forget to think of extremely
00:22:50.800localized points of view on generations like I was I was talking to a German friend the other day
00:22:55.600who is talking she's talking to me about how there's a lot of conversation going on right now
00:23:00.140about how um the millennial descendants are the people who were basically babies when the wall
00:23:05.500came down are now at an age where their parents are dying or not dying but they're thinking about0.50
00:23:12.020naturally like um what their inheritance is going to be and obviously if you grew up in the communist0.58
00:23:18.620side of of germany you're not going to inherit anything because your parents lived under a
00:23:23.920communist regime and whereas in the west um you you will stand to inherit a lot and so she was
00:23:29.880telling me about like how the it's not so much a generational difference as still being an eastern
00:23:34.620and western divide and like i was like oh wow we don't have anything like that and i guess this is
00:23:40.180a really long way of saying i guess countries are different from one another that's a good
00:23:46.080good conclusion this is we answered her question i guess countries are different yeah but to go
00:23:52.280back to the question i will say that one of the things i think of immediately when we think about
00:23:57.060like the popularity of irish culture is i think the quiet man which is a john wayne marine o'hara
00:24:03.460movie from 1952 which was tremendously successful here has all sorts of like weird depictions of
00:24:11.240how ireland is or how ireland was um and marina o'hara was a massive star but it's more thinking
00:24:18.760about like irish americanness translated on the screen as irishness does that make sense like
00:24:26.040irish american memories translated on the screen and represented as irish yeah i find this so
00:24:32.440fascinating like lining up all these sort of eras of um cultural interest like the you know the 50s
00:24:38.760and and the quiet man and um then like thinking about the 90s and Enya and the chorus and all
00:24:45.760that and sort of like um trad infused pop music and that kind of thing um then if you think about
00:24:52.100like that that sort of once moment and Damien Rice and all that and then now and it's like
00:24:57.060the fascination has always been there but like the the need to be fascinated changes like
00:25:04.040fantasizing about a country you've never been to which we all do in some way or another
00:25:08.840is a form of fantasy and so if you're in the world of fantasy it means that you're
00:25:13.920you're making up for some kind of lack you feel elsewhere and I think that that thing I said about
00:25:19.520new age culture possibly being an antidote to consumerism I think could be a thing I also think
00:25:26.160that kind of Damien Rice, Glenn Hansard, simple, pared back, kind of scratchy looking man in a big
00:25:34.260coat playing a guitar. It feels very like, it feels very recession-y, you know? It feels a
00:25:42.480little global recession-y. It seems a bit like, can we reassure ourselves that even if we have
00:25:47.480to make our lives simpler, they can still be good and true. And maybe we can find earnesty and
00:25:52.860honesty and that and like do we need to go back to basics on this yeah no once is such a post
00:25:57.700recession film too yeah and also a like a post-eu film and like the way that it depicts but
00:26:05.460does not interrogate like it's not like a film about immigration but it is a film about a post-eu
00:26:12.760ireland and so do you know what i mean like yeah no totally it's totally lives in that context
00:26:18.520um and then like I feel if you were if you were to rub that against like the the enormous
00:26:25.680fascination now and I really do maybe it's just because media is bigger maybe it's because I'm
00:26:29.500seeing more of it because of my job but I feel like the fascination with Irishness feels to me
00:26:36.100a little bit like a really comfortable way to be white yeah yeah yeah obviously there are Irish
00:26:45.240people of all kinds of skin tones and creeds and whatever, but it is mostly associated with being
00:26:50.400very, very white. And like, it's like, you know, there are so many people who, you know, in the
00:26:58.120last sort of decade or so have really become switched on to like, oh, wow, to live in this
00:27:03.520body, in the skin, in this world that I'm in, it means to have like inherently stolen from others
00:27:08.960in some way in some way implicit or explicit and like i think a lot of people are sort of
00:27:15.180managing that psychological burden in different ways and so i can so understand why irishness
00:27:20.180would be even more attractive in that context because like we we speak english we're very
00:27:25.360white and yet we were colonized and um and starved to death and and all that and then you layer the
00:27:32.180immigration thing on top of it of course and yeah but that's my theory what do you yeah no i think
00:27:36.420that that's real and i think most people would be like huh that's weird i don't think that i
00:27:40.980identify with irishness because of whiteness for a white person there is all sorts of
00:27:46.940complication with trying to be really into let's say indian culture yeah like you have to tread
00:27:52.200this line of like am i being appropriative like am i being fetishistic or am i being orientalist
00:27:58.560and i think that that is less the case for a white person again if they're dealing with irishness
00:28:05.080yeah because like ultimately who cares like it's like like if somebody if like a nice well-meaning0.78
00:28:12.320american comes over and buys a dumb hat and um and wants to sort of like drink their guinness
00:28:18.260up at the bar and talk to the bartender like there's nothing like truly harmful about that0.99
00:28:23.680like the bartender is making money from the guinness like we're happy to have them we'll
00:28:27.980tell them whatever about their ancestors like it's so fine do you think that the the tv part
00:28:33.420of this has something to do with it because something like dairy girls i don't think americans
00:28:37.320would really have access to pre-streaming like you could get dvds of it right like if you were
00:28:43.180like really into like niche european tv shows but it would not be like something that people0.74
00:28:49.180binge the way that they binge the office it's crazy the dairy girls thing right like and it's
00:28:56.080so it's so wonderful isn't it that just like you wouldn't there's no planning for a thing like that
00:29:01.660you know because like how many small sitcoms that are cheaply made with unknown mostly unknown
00:29:08.040actors sort of come out that's about a very local place and becomes a very dear thing to that local
00:29:13.180place and then nobody ever hears of it and then Dairy Girls just exploding has and I really do
00:29:19.360think that like Dairy Girls kind of walked so say nothing could run like it really proved that
00:29:24.040people were we're not just willing to but are gagging to learn about like cultures that aren't
00:29:30.060their own and histories that aren't their own um yeah and yeah i think like tv is a is a huge part
00:29:36.940of it for sure like and the whole thing of like a rising tide lifting all boats like my first book
00:29:42.560that came out in america was a sort of a fantasy ya called all our hidden gifts it was about like
00:29:48.080you know tarot cards and school girls and all kind of stuff um and the cover of the american edition
00:29:54.240had like an Irish girl in a school uniform on the cover and I just like every and every review and
00:30:00.520every blurb was like it's like Derry Girls meets um Sabrina the Teenage Witch and it wasn't those
00:30:05.560things but it was just but it's that thing of like the signifier was enough and like it went to the
00:30:11.820like New York Times bestseller list kind of riding that wave of like that Derry Girls interest and
00:30:16.880it's incredible to me how little it actually takes like you can you can spend I'm sure you've
00:30:21.960had this experience you can spend like months of your life trying to like come up with some kind of
00:30:26.780PR strategy of like what will make something work and then like just something comparable happens at
00:30:32.700the right time and then it off it goes right that people can reference and be like I like that thing
00:30:37.000so maybe I'll like this thing too yeah I mean answer your question like yeah like that show
00:30:41.620continues to like amaze me and I'm like it's so inspiring like it's so incredible um yeah I love
00:30:49.120that show. So our next question is about another theory about Irishification, but will also prompt
00:30:55.960us to look a little further back. So this one's from Katie. Do you think Irish pop culturefication
00:31:01.060started with Sally Rooney's novels and the publishing industry treating her as a literary
00:31:05.480it girl? Does it have a longer history? If so, how far back are we going? I feel like the first
00:31:11.200or most prominent Irish American was JFK and the Kennedys made Irish heritage cool in the United
00:31:15.880States it's interesting I don't think of Kennedy as like prominently Irish so much as prominently
00:31:22.620Catholic oh my god we think of him as prominently Irish that is really interesting like you spent
00:31:29.300time in Ireland you must have entered a pub that has a picture of JFK in it I mean like
00:31:33.480there's so that's true that's true you look I had to stay at a hotel this Christmas because my um
00:31:39.760my family home was just too full um of of new children and the um the my hotel room in cork
00:31:46.480had a picture of jfk's motorcade above the bed
00:31:52.060like remember that movie um remember that natalie portman movie jackie yes yes i am i was home when
00:32:01.700that came out and me and my dad went to go see it in cork and um people were sitting in the aisles0.52
00:32:06.780people who are fucking obsessed we are cracked about that whole situation still like we are
00:32:15.140fucking mad about it and I have a friend who grew up in the north and he always says you'd know if0.97
00:32:20.060somebody was protestant or catholic because they have a plate with the queen on it if they were0.97
00:32:23.620protestant and a plate with jfk on it but I think um to go back to the literature question I think
00:32:32.300it's a really fascinating one because I think what it sort of often fails to take into account
00:32:37.660when people are like oh wow like Sally Rooney and now and now I guess all these other guys as well
00:32:42.780kind of thing um is that like we are really good at growing novelists and playwrights and all kinds
00:32:50.000of artists because we have like a really robust artistic ground system like we have like for such
00:32:56.560a small country like we have a very we really really do invest in the arts like um last year
00:33:01.880for example and I think I think it was end of 2023 to 2024 and they just extended it but they
00:33:06.500introduced a kind of a um a trial universal basic income for artists and it was done on like a
00:33:13.280lottery basis so um I think it's like you get the equivalent of 16,000 euros a year which like
00:33:21.460you still have it's like a lottery system and not everybody who applied got it but I think something
00:33:26.100like one in five people did get it yeah and um yeah and like that's obviously you still have to
00:33:32.160it's an expensive country you still probably have to work but you also have money and time and
00:33:37.980resource to to work on your art and that art is taken seriously and that's you see that coming up
00:33:44.140in all different places like for example um before Sally Rooney was Sally Rooney she was an editor of
00:33:50.160a literary magazine called The Stinging Fly that's incredibly famous in Ireland and like you know it's
00:33:55.580country of six million people to have like an incredibly famous literary magazine yeah it's
00:34:00.600like it's like cool it's fucking cool and like I think it's always dangerous to single out one
00:34:05.460person and make them the kind of the anointe because I'm like I don't know Sally Rooney but
00:34:10.660from interviews I've read with her it clearly makes her incredibly uncomfortable the amount
00:34:15.200of fame she's received and I think yes you can call one person the anointe of all culture
00:34:20.460and put incredible pressure on them or you could study the system that person comes from and then
00:34:26.060like try and try and see if if you can push for that kind of system where you live too you know
00:34:31.420yeah no and like that's so important because I think sometimes people are like oh well the Irish
00:34:36.460produce so much art because they've struggled and like they know what I mean like just like this
00:34:41.460very like facile understanding of like if you have struggle in your heritage then you will produce
00:34:47.800amazing art it's like no there's also a system that makes it possible for you to produce art
00:34:52.980full-time even like yeah like like you're so correct oh my god i hate that so much this idea
00:35:00.520of like struggle in our or like the kind of idea that like oh well the thing is is that we come
00:35:05.720from this uh you know celtic tradition of singers and poets and and you know the idea that it's kind
00:35:13.440like in the blood somehow i mean everyone has that tradition also has that tradition like literally
00:35:18.880you find me a culture that doesn't sing like it doesn't have ballads like you just have
00:35:24.880solideon instead of like and i i think that people there is something about like the minor key of like
00:35:31.600irish ballads that make people think that it's like more i don't know um something we forgot to
00:35:38.160mentioned Sinead O'Connor in the 1990s uh yes but that what made me think of that is there's a TikTok
00:35:44.460like format where people like there's like someone says like can you explain to me something and then
00:35:52.360they play like the beginning and I don't know if it's Sinead it might be someone else where it says
00:35:57.280like well first of all we have to talk about the famine do you know what I'm talking about
00:36:00.600i love it so much and like the meme is always like me talking to my english boyfriend yes
00:36:07.960first of all we have to talk about the famine and second of all that there was no famine
00:36:11.760but i i did love this point and this comes up in the rachel incident where the character in the
00:36:22.900book is talking about how like the idea of Irish oppression became popular in real like relatively
00:36:31.340recently like the dad in the book is like what are you talking about like we should have planted
00:36:36.760other crops instead of like talking about the famine yeah no I'm so glad that you brought that
00:36:42.520up you were the first person who's ever brought that scene up with me it felt so important to me
00:36:46.540at the time um because I I remember very specifically during that time having having
00:36:52.300a boyfriend who was telling me all about like how the famine was this sort of planned genocide
00:36:58.440essentially and like people still debate whether or not that's true but the kind of fact remains
00:37:03.340is that the reason that the Irish people were so I can't believe I'm on an American podcast
00:37:07.280talking about potatoes I can't I just I just like hovered above my head and I was like whoa0.96
00:37:13.020So the reason the Irish people were so dependent on that one crop
00:37:18.480was because the land was so heavily colonised
00:37:21.120that we were essentially, every person in Ireland
00:37:29.400and that was the only thing they could grow.
00:37:30.800Maybe if they were lucky, they'd also have like one pig.
00:37:33.760And then everything else, every like vast tract of land
00:37:36.340was owned by sort of planters and English landlords and all of that.
00:37:40.360And so when the potato blight struck, people couldn't eat the thing they were growing, but they also couldn't eat any of the food that was growing very plentifully and very well in the land.
00:37:51.780And I remember him explaining that to me and explaining the way that Queen Victoria didn't provide any really very much famine relief at all and how people who were starving were put to work on road projects that were building roads that go nowhere and all this stuff and how terrible it was.
00:38:10.060And I remember learning that for the first time at like 20 and being appalled and saying it to, I think, probably my own parents.
00:38:18.340I'm like, guys, did you know about this? And like, maybe it was just them.
00:38:21.660Maybe it was the mood at the time. But I remember like they were so hand wavy, I think, because it was such that moment, as it says in the book,
00:38:30.060that moment was so just a lack of self-esteem was happening throughout the culture because what was happening during the housing crisis.
00:38:38.120I mean, obviously, 2008 hit everybody really hard.
00:38:41.600But what was happening psychologically with Ireland is that we had kind of created this enormous middle class in the space of about 10 years.
00:38:48.160And then we sort of lost it overnight.
00:38:50.180And the kind of the shame of that was very strong.
00:40:43.440I happened to move to Ireland a couple years ago. And what continually surprises me is the distance
00:40:48.900between the typical American perspective of Irish culture and the reality. Just watch Paul
00:40:54.020Mescal's recent stint hosting SNL for prime examples of the stereotypes. Ireland is so
00:40:59.240different from what we experience as quote-unquote Irish culture in the U.S. It's far more nuanced,
00:41:05.120modern, and deeply independent from the U.K. Do you think this Irish-fication will shift the
00:41:10.600American understanding of true Irish culture, or will the old stereotypes live on in perpetuity?
00:41:16.820So I think that there is always going to be this stereotype that's like the quiet man mixed with
00:41:22.080like, most Americans haven't seen the wind that shakes the barley, but like Irish people dressed
00:41:27.300in the costumes of the wind that shakes the barley yeah yeah but i also think that there's a
00:41:33.280new like normal people stereotype that it's just like irish people are paul mescal and his like
00:41:39.140giant thighs just running around playing
00:41:41.360giant thighs we call them in our house we call them meaty clackers like that's what a giant thigh
00:41:49.020looks like is a meaty clacker his meaty clackers oh my god i'm obsessed that's so good yeah so
00:41:58.220what do you think like the sally rooney style like has that subsumed some of that old stereotype or
00:42:05.400do you not see that happening yet you know what it's it's almost too soon to tell right like
00:42:10.300because like right now we're in the grips of like what is a very well-meaning fad do you know what
00:42:14.560mean like and like um and so we won't know like in what will last a bit for sure I think like
00:42:20.300the sense of Ireland's sort of ruralness and ancientness I think will last a very long time
00:42:26.120like that will have a long shadow because like the fact remains that like there are still places
00:42:29.960in Ireland that are a bit like that there are like yeah you know cutie little towns and like0.66
00:42:34.880farmers who who don't who speak seven sentences a fucking year and like they're like that is like
00:42:41.600Like, you know, every year, like, another 155,000 Americans come to Ireland to find their ancestors, and some of them do find their ancestors.0.98
00:42:53.360And, like, I would never deny anybody on this earth the privilege and the beauty of, again, as we said at the beginning of the podcast, of going to a country and it being like what you felt it should be like.
01:04:49.080what is her stress sign that's so funny did you learn how to be a good friend when you were in
01:04:58.240college oh my god what a sweet question um the i mean the my kind of university experience
01:05:03.720the rachel linson isn't a memoir but like the experiences are very similar in that like
01:05:08.800i had this sort of thing of um joining this extremely bloated english department that was
01:05:14.920like it was like there was like 450 students or something in my freshman year at English and like
01:05:20.760and you would just never sit next to the same person twice and so I primarily kind of remember
01:05:27.360the university moments of university as kind of wandering around by myself a bit like I remember
01:05:33.320feeling extremely lonely and and then my real life happening at my part-time job which in the
01:05:42.220in the book is a bookstore but i i worked at a record store um or a record store not a record
01:05:47.600it was a hmv it was a cd shop um which by the way love the callbacks to empire records that
01:05:53.880are in the rachel yeah i mean i wondered about including those but i then i realized that like
01:06:00.140so much about being a kid who works in retail is looking about movies like kids who work in retail
01:06:05.180and acting like them you know yes yes yes yes yeah um yeah no that makes sense and i think like
01:06:13.120to our question asker like there are experiences that you open yourself to parts of this time of
01:06:19.600your life that are not necessarily rooted in the classroom like yeah you're becoming an adult yeah
01:06:25.180it must be hard as well to like be a academic like be like an undergraduate in the time post
01:06:31.480dark academia where I feel like yeah there's a more idealized sense of like what university is
01:06:38.000supposed to do for you than ever before like for for the vast majority of people going going to
01:06:43.680university every day is like a weird little prefab building that's like kind of off the
01:06:49.640main campus that you have to walk to and it's hard to find and and like your your professors
01:06:55.120just aren't that interesting and interested in you and like no one really cares about like that
01:07:00.200Like the idea of the kind of gothic secret history vibe is just such a like, I really feel bad for the for the kids who are brought up on that.
01:07:09.700And then they have the sort of, oh, I'm at Michigan State University or whatever.
01:07:15.200Yeah, they're just watching like Rush Talk and they're like, wait, where's all that happening?
01:07:19.980Right. Like I've done a dark academia episode.