‘How The World Begins Again’ on RTÉ Lyric fm

How the World Begins Again is an RTÉ lyric fm series celebrating women composers and sound artists working in Ireland, presented by singer Elizabeth Hilliard, who meets twenty women -composers and sound artists – connected to the island of Ireland. They share their stories, their inspirations, creativity, work and challenges.

Athena Media · How The World Begins Again E1 ‘A Sense of Place’

In the first episode of How The World Begins Again singer Elizabeth Hilliard meets with composers and sound artists, Jane O’Leary, Natalia Beylis and Jenn Kirby and finds out what place and belonging means to them. She discovers how meeting new people from different backgrounds inspires them in their work and how they’ve explored new beginnings in their lives and brought that into their music and soundcraft.

Athena Media · How The World Begins Again E2 ‘The Space Within’

In episode 2, Elizabeth meets with composers and sound artists, Rhona Clarke, Una Lee and Jennifer Walshe and finds out how they found the imposed solitary life that we all experienced in the pandemic. She learns how this was a time for focussed creativity and work, for discovering new ways of creating music, and it allowed time to reflect on how, as artists, we are all individuals on our own journeys.

How The World Begins Again, produced with Athena Media for RTÉ lyric fm, Fridays at 7pm – listen during the interval of The Lyric Concert, and find out more here

Two new podcasts from Athena Media/Podcasting Ireland

Two new podcasts from Athena Media and Podcasting Ireland.


A new Season of The Family of Things with a chart topping episode with broadcaster/singer Ruth Smith and followed up by Berlin based musician and singer Robert John Hope.

The new season is available in all audio platforms and is being distributed to YouTube with closed captions.

It’s an independent podcast, without funding, so if you like The Family of Things do support us on Patreon.


The second new Podcast Is a brand new one with Panti Bliss, called The Panti Personals, and it’s a child of Pantisocracy, our award winning series that ran 2016-2020.

The Panti Personals is a more intimate one-to-one between Panti and a guest and first up for the launch on May 1 is music and mindfulness man ‘Bressie’ Niall Breslin.


You can subscribe to The Panti Personals via the Pantisocracy RSS feed in all podcast places including YouTube. The new podcast is being made with the kind support of Camden Recording Studios in Dublin and HappyScribe, the auto transcription tool, but we’re keenly seeking new sponsorship connections for The Panti Personals – if you’re interested contact us.

#PANTISOCRACY returns with new podcast series

Lisa Lambe, Panti Bliss, John McLoughlin (guitarist with Lisa Lambe) Mark O’Connell and Cauvery Madhavan. ©John Howard AthenaMedia 2020

What happens when the things you’ve been planning, the projects you have been dreaming of, get postponed, cancelled or become impossible to do? In the first episode of a new season of Pantisocracy, Panti Bliss is hosting a gathering of storytelling and song, with three people who found themselves launching their beloved projects, the results of years of work, in the middle of a global pandemic and lockdown.

With her are writer Mark O’Connell, whose book ‘Notes from An Apocalypse’ – explores our obsession with the end of the world and the Indian-Irish novelist Cauvery Madhavan, whose novel ‘The Tainted is a love story set against the background of the Irish soldiers, serving in India with the British army, who mutinied in 1920. 

Alongside them is singer/actor Lisa Lambe who will be performing from her new album ‘Juniper’ launched in lockdown, after a couple of years of work, and whose plans to perform it were postponed, cancelled and parked.  

Follow us on Instagram @pantisocracyradio

Vocal Chords In Conversation with Peggy Seeger – available as podcast

In a new instalment of Vocal Chords – Iarla Ó Lionáird meets folk singer Peggy Seeger at her home in Oxford to explore her life’s journey in song and song composition. Peggy talks of her childhood growing up under the influence of her older half brother Peter Seeger and in a home where legendary singers like Lead Belly and Woody Guthrie would visit to meet her parents, song collectors and composers Charles Seeger and Ruth Crawford Seeger.

Peggy met, and later married folk singer and writer Ewan MacColl, and she shares her experience of working with Ewan from the late 1950s until his death in the late 1980s. Since then Peggy has continued to write and perform and she now works with her musician sons Neill and Calum and she is now in a civil partnership with Irene Pyper Scott, a Northern Irish singer she first met in 1964 in Belfast.

For more about the making of the episode check out our LinkedIn Blog – “Meeting Peggy”.

peggyseeger.com for more about Peggy Seeger

iarla.com for more about Iarla Ó Lionáird

New Edition of Vocal Chords – featuring Maighread and Tríona Ní Dhomhnaill

Iarla Ó Lionáird meets sisters Maighread and Tríona Ní Dhomhnaill, two of Ireland’s most respected traditional singers,

and shares a conversation of family, song and language with them; from the stories of their father, the singer and folk song collector Aodh Ó Domhnaill, and his sister, the blind singer Neilí Ni Domhnaill, natives of Rann na Feirste, Donegal, to their own roots in the Meath Gaeltacht.

In this segment from the upcoming documentary feature Iarla talks to the sisters about that journey back to Donegal when they were children, to what they see as their spiritual home, and how their Dad would tip them sixpence for the first sighting of Errigal. In the piece you hear the song Níl sé ina lá that the sisters learnt as girls from their Aunt Neilí and recorded by them on the album Idir an Dá Sholas.

The full episode will be broadcast at 7pm on May 5th on RTÉ Lyric fm.

This feature documentary, in the award winning Vocal Chords series, is a unique insight into a family whose work has played a profound part in preserving the traditional culture and soundscape of Ireland and gives an intimate portrait of sisters, and singers, who share a deep and instinctive bond in song and life.

From their first band Skara Brae, with their late brother Micheal, the sisters share their work together and separately, Tríona in the ground-breaking Bothy Band and Maighread in her acclaimed solo work. They sing together for Iarla a song once sung by their late Aunty Neili and collected by Maighread’s husband and traditional music devotee, Cathal Goan.

Vocal Chords is an Athena Media production for RTÉ Lyric fm made with the support of the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland and the TV licence fee.

The producer is Helen Shaw, The audio editor is Pearse Ó Caoimh. The digital editor is John Howard.

Photo image by Helen Shaw – all rights in Vocal Chords, recordings and images, rests with Athena Media Ltd. athenamedia.ie

Cross Currents – 3 Part Series on Contemporary Irish Composers for RTÉ lyric fm

WHAT ARE THE INFLUENCES WHICH SHAPED MODERN IRISH COMPOSERS?

A THREE-PART SERIES ON RTÉ LYRIC FM NARRATED BY BARRY MCGOVERN AIRING AT 7PM ON FRIDAYS 9TH, 16TH AND 23RD OF SEPTEMBER 2016.

The 1970s was a defining period for music in Ireland with a number of major talents blossoming. Roger Doyle produced his first LPs; Raymond Deane and Gerald Barry traveled to study at the very epicentre of new music in Cologne, Germany, studying with Stockhausen and Kagel; and Jane O’Leary arrived in Ireland from the US, establishing Ireland’s first contemporary music ensemble, Concorde.

This was the era in which contemporary Irish music came of age, shedding its self-conscious often nationalist image, and becoming internationally focussed, in keeping with the wider political and economic shift in Ireland after it joined the European Economic Community.

Cross Currents is a landmark three-part music documentary series, narrated by award-winning actor Barry McGovern, exploring contemporary Irish composers and their work. Produced by Athena Media in association with the Contemporary Music Centre and RTÉ lyric fm, the last 50 years have seem Irish composition flourish as young Irish composers look to Europe and beyond to re-imagine an Irish identity in music, paralleling many of the societal and economic shifts in post-de Valera Ireland. After the ‘nation-building’ period of Seán Ó Riada’s music and the watermark 50th anniversary of the 1916 Rising in 1966, a new generation of musicians and writers sought to explore their identity within the influence of continental Europe.

Episode 1 of the series airs at 7pm Friday the 9th of September on RTÉ lyric fm. Detailed background on the series and composers at crosscurrents.ie.

Wilde Stories – new iTunes Podcast channel

Wilde Stories is an artistic transmedia project around Oscar Wilde‘s collection of fairytales The Happy Prince and Other Tales. This Athena Media project brings together Irish artists including composer Michael Gallen and visual artist Felicity Clear, to re-imagine the stories in a broadcast collaboration with RTÉ lyric fm.

In anticipation for the release of the full episodes this Summer, an iTunes channel/RSS Feed has been established for Wilde Stories, where listeners can access a number of short promo features, with readings by Lauren Coe, Brian Gleeson and Robert Sheehan. As the episodes go to air, the full length radio programmes will be uploaded to the iTunes channel to stream and download.

RSS Feed

Wilde Stories – Taster : 'High Above the City' – Support our Wilde Imagination from Athena Media on Vimeo.

The Family of Things – Episode 12: Vivienne DeCourcy

Vivienne DeCourcy

Vivienne DeCourcy, the writer and director of the new feature film ‘Dare to be Wild’ is Helen Shaw’s guest in episode 12 of The Family of Things.

‘Dare to be Wild’, is based on the true story of Irish wild garden designer Mary Reynolds who won the Chelsea Garden Show in 2002. The film is Vivienne’s directorial debut and in this podcast Vivienne talks about her connection to the film’s message, the importance of the environment, nature conservation on our planet and the connection between man and the environment. Vivienne, a former lawyer, began writing scripts after surviving cancer and she talks about her instinctive relationship with the outdoors and nature from her childhood.

Her parents, her father was in the Irish Army, and her mother was an English teacher, encouraged her to become a doctor or a lawyer, but as a lover of art and history, she feels she was given a special gift – to take inspirational and enlightening stories and share them with an audience. Stories, she says, that may “positively impact the way we live on planet earth”.

Dare to be Wild will be released in cinemas in Spring 2016.

The Brain Box – Episode 1 now on iTunes

“We’ve learned more about the brain in the past 50 years than in the previous 2000” says The Brain Box presenter and lecturer in the Department of Psychology at Maynooth University, Dr. Richard Roche.

The Brain Box, a two part radio series for Newstalk 106-108 fm, brings listeners on a quest into our mind to uncover the secrets of the human brain, ‘the most complex entity in the known universe’, asking questions like What is intelligence?, How are memories made and lost? Is madness linked to creativity? and How close are we to creating true Artificial Intelligence?<p>

“It’s the most complex entity in the known universe. You’ve got these three kilograms of fat, and yet the most fascinating capacities come out of it!”
Professor Ian Robertson, Trinity College Dublin.

Richard meets experts in the field, like Professor Ian Robertson and Professor Fiona Newell from Trinity College Dublin, to talk about the brain and the things that we are still discovering every day, including new research into the exciting area of brain plasticity which states that the brain constantly evolves and adapts, even after damage and into old age, which has implications for the rehabilitation of the brain after trauma and in treating diseases like Alzheimer’s.

Episode 1 – How the Brain Works
What is intelligence, how do we learn, think and create? How do we create and lose memories and why have we learnt more about the human brain in the last few decades than the previous thousands? Neuroscientist Dr. Richard Roche unravels the most complex thing in the universe.
Voices you will hear in this episode include: scientists Fiona Newell, John Foxe, Kevin Mitchell, Shane O’Mara and Olivia O’Leary and synesthete Karen Kane. Part 1 was broadcast on October 17th at 7am and 10pm and is now available for free on iTunes.

Episode 2 – How the Brain Breaks
What causes mental illness? is genius linked to madness? What is autism and how should we treat it? And is dementia inevitable in old age? What happens to us in a stroke or brain injury and how can we recover? Scientist Dr Richard Roche explores the human brain and our quest to know ourselves.
Voices you hear in this episode include neuroscientists Niall Pender, John Cryan and Michelle Kelly, Seamus Cunningham, who has early onset Alzheimer’s, and mother of 2 autistic children Lisa Domican. On Air October 24th at 7am and 10pm. Additional content is available on The Brain Box Audioboom channel.

An Athena Media production for Newstalk made with the support of the TV licence fee via the BAI.
The producer is Helen Shaw.
The presenter is Dr. Richard Roche.
The audio editor is Amy Millar.
Researcher/Recordist is Cormac McAdam.
The Brain Box is made with the funding support of the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland and the TV licence fee.

The Kinder Letters – Podcast now on iTunes

The Kinder Letters is a radio documentary broadcast on Newstalk 106 – 108fm about one Irish man’s quest to unravel the mystery of a thank you book that unveils a web of untold stories of human struggle, childhood innocence, and the complex bilateral relations between Germany and Ireland in post-war Europe. This story about war, memory and the power of love airs is now available for free via iTunes

In 1955, 11 year old Irish girl Mary Walshe came into possession of a colourful book of letters, compiled by schoolgirls in Saarbrücken, Germany in 1946. This ‘dankebuch’ thanks the Irish people for their invaluable donations at a time of humanitarian crises after the collapse of Nazi Germany. More than 60 years later, the book passed to her husband Tony O’Herlihy, who as a loving remembrance after her death in 2011 began unravelling the mysteries behind the origins of the book, revealing a complex story about that time in history.

The story of the Dankebuch is shrouded in mystery. I regret that while Mary was still alive we never tried to find out anything about it….So it was a few months after she died that I came across the book again, and I thought now, hold on, Tomorrow has come.

Tony O’Herlihy

The Kinder Letters follows Tony’s highly emotional journey into the devastation of post-war Europe via modern day Dublin and Saarbrücken as he narrates this incredible story of meeting survivors of the original class, hearing first-hand recounts of the time. Historical experts such as executive editor of the documents on Irish foreign policy at the Royal Irish Academy Dr. Michael Kennedy, Irish Ambassador to Germany Michael Collins and researcher in mid-century Irish-Jewish history Dr. Kevin McCarthy reveal Ireland’s largely unspoken positive, yet at times unsavoury, position at that time, such as with the relationship between De Valera’s Ireland and Germany, and the contrasting fortunes of the German orphan children of ‘Operation Shamrock’, against that of the Jewish refugee children housed in Clonyn Castle whose admittance to Ireland had stringent conditions attached because of their religion.

This documentary captures a rare glimpse of post-war Europe through the microcosm of this children’s book, and through a rich canvas of archive, music and interviews reveals Ireland’s position within Europe at a time of chaos.

The Kinder Letters is produced by Robert Hope and Amy Millar of Athena Media

A short write up about the program is also available on The Independent.

The Kinder Letters is an Athena Media Production for Newstalk 106 – 108fm made with the support of the BAI and the TV licence fee. All rights rest with Athena Media Ltd.