With the war in Ukraine and the ongoing genocide in Gaza dominating the news agenda, Richie is joined for the final show of the series by BBC special correspondent and veteran war reporter, Fergal Keane.  Fergal, who's spent much of the last couple of years covering both conflicts, has been reporting from frontlines across the world for over three decades. But recently, he's been adapting how he does the job, taking on assignments that place him out of harm's way, yet still get him close...

As we may have mentioned once or twice on social media this week, joining Richie on today's show is a very old friend and an up and coming League of Ireland manager by the name of Damien Duff.  Speaking the morning after Shelbourne's 0-2 win over Shamrock Rovers in Tallaght, Damien explains how he had to change his approach to the job after the anger that fueled him began to impact his personal life, how it still takes up most of his waking hours, and why he's not looking beyond management in...

A message for listeners: today's show includes discussions of themes that some people may find distressing from the outset and throughout, including sexual violence, sexual abuse and the sex trade.  When Mia Döring was sixteen years old, she was raped, a hugely traumatic experience she couldn't speak about for two years until her mental health reached a crisis point.  In the aftermath of that assault, a man in his thirties began to groom and sexually abuse Mia. Her abuser would pay her each...

Nine months ago, Pat Sheedy walked out of prison after spending more than two and a half years locked up for trying to fund his decades-long gambling addiction through various scams.  After winning his first bet as a teenager, he quickly fell into a cycle of working, borrowing and stealing to make sure he could place his next bet. Long periods of abstinence - at one point he went 12 years without gambling - followed, but it wasn't until finally being given a custodial sentence in 2020 that he...

This week on Episode we're taking a mid-series break but fear not, Richie and Killian will be back on the road next week when we'll be bringing you another brilliant conversation.  Until then, a massive thank you for all the support for the show so far this series! Episode is a Second Captains production. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week Richie and Killian travelled to Phibsboro to meet James Kavanagh at the home he's just about to leave after eight years for a new life in the countryside. Richie and James look back at James' teenage years, the earliest of which he spent locked up alone in his bedroom, his sanctuary from the homophobic bullying that dominated his time at school. He speaks about the reality of having no friends whatsoever until he was sixteen, darting from class to class to avoid other students and...

As Trump supporters stormed the Capitol building in Washington DC on January 6th 2021, a relatively little-known Irish journalist walked CNN viewers through exactly what was going on as it unfolded.  Donie O'Sullivan quickly became a household name, and within a few weeks he had decided to use his newfound platform to speak about the sometimes acute mental health issues which had been a part of his life over the previous decade.  In the three years since, Donie has continued to report on...

A few short weeks ago, a joint Oireachtas committee recommended that the Government legislate for assisted dying in controlled circumstances where a terminally ill person is approaching the end of their life.  The fight for legal access to assisted dying began back in 2012 when Marie Fleming, who had advanced multiple sclerosis, and her partner and full-time carer, Tom Curran took a case that went all the way to the Supreme Court. They believed that there was a right to die and to be assisted...

It's been a few months since we closed out series one of Episode sitting at Damien Dempsey's kitchen table, and to mark the first show of the new series, we're bringing you an exclusive interview.  Last week, Richie and Killian travelled to France to sit down with Vera Pauw at her home in the Dordogne, as she speaks publicly for the first time since the week the FAI declined to renew her contract seven months ago.  Vera describes the impact she felt the allegations published just before the...

Today's season finale with Damien Dempsey is a beautiful journey through music mixed with some hilarious stories about Shane MacGowan, Ronnie Drew, and a live performance from his kitchen table that blew Richie and Killian away. In ten days time, Damien will take to the stage at Vicar Street for the first of six of his now iconic Christmas gigs at the venue, concerts which have taken on a huge emotional significance for his fans. Ahead of those shows and in the midst of recording his new...

Three years ago this month, Terence Power and Calvin O'Brien, two young Dubliners from the inner city, sat down at a kitchen table and recorded a podcast with one of their phones. That initial conversation spawned Talking Bollox, a podcast which quickly gathered huge momentum and has become one of the most popular shows in Ireland. One of the reasons for the show's success has been Terence and Calvin's frankness about some of the issues affecting their inner city communities, and today Richie...

In March 1992, Zlata Filipović was an 11-year-old girl growing up in Sarajevo, Bosnia in a normal, middle-class family who kept a diary about all the everyday things a child of her age does: going to school, doing music lessons, visiting her grandparents.  Just one month later, Zlata's diary had begun to transform into an incredibly vivid description of a city under siege as the Balkans War reached her hometown. Towards the end of 1993, that diary became she and her family's way out of the...

Today’s Episode is an extraordinary conversation with John Clarke, the husband and partner of forty years of the late Marian Finucane. It’s an intimate, raw and quite beautiful look at love and loss. In late 2019, Marian and John agreed that the time was right for her to call an end to her iconic decades-long broadcasting career with RTE. They set to planning their 'sunset walk' together: the trips around the world they hadn't yet got around to making. Then, in January 2020, Marian died...

Just a few short days ago, Shamrock Rovers manager Stephen Bradley celebrated an historic achievement for the club as he led his team to a fourth League of Ireland title in a row. But although he's our first guest on Episode from the world of sport, today's show is very much not about football.  Instead, it's a love letter from a father to his son. Last year, Stephen and his wife Emma experienced something no parent wants to: they were told their then-eight-year-old son Josh has leukemia,...

In 2018, Holly Cairns was 28 years old and had voted once in her life. In the five years since, she's been elected to Cork County Council, then to Dáil Eireann and in the last twelve months has become leader of the Social Democrats.  Earlier this year, having previously been vocal about the targeted, sexualised abuse she and other female TDs are regularly subjected to, Holly spoke for the first time about that abuse - normally faceless and online - escalating into a real-world situation where...

Richie first met Dr Katriona O'Sullivan - an academic in Maynooth University's Department of Psychology - about seven years ago but at the time, he had no idea about her backstory: a childhood spent in extreme poverty in England as part of an Irish family in which both her parents suffered from long-term addiction issues. Despite being surrounded by adults and structures which continuously failed her, Katriona enrolled in Trinity College aged 23 and forged an academic career while raising her...

For the very first show of the series, Richie travels to Galway to speak to Tommy Tiernan, eight months after meeting each other for the first time on Tommy's chat show.  Chatting in his garden studio - The Hen House - Tommy describes how emotions feel like dangerous territory for him, how his complex relationship with his mother continues to evolve years after she took her own life, why psychotherapy has been fruitless for him, and the repercussions of misjudged jokes.  Episode is brought to...

Richie Sadlier has followed an unconventional career path. He spent his early life as a professional footballer, and is now a psychotherapist and author. Like its presenter, Episode approaches people and subjects in a way that upends expectation. Having initially struggled to adapt after his football career ended prematurely, Richie started down the path of psychotherapy and today works as a therapist specialising in issues such as relationships, adolescent development and sexuality. In this...