Culture File: Christmas with April

we're getting all healthy as we prepare to break our nativity lent (or advent to you and me) and go mummering and chomping cherry cake with Cork-based, Newfoundlander April Danann

Culture File: Portumas

Dublin-based Portugueser, Rogerio Silva, helps us discover a new world of Christmas cakes and desserts, and taste of drop of the good stuff, Port

Culture File: Rob Newman

In the 1990s, Rob Newman's comedy was called "the new rock 'n' roll" - now, it's more like "the new politics."

Culture File Weekly No 49

This weekly, we have a Christmas selection box of Culture Files which brings us from Heathrow airport in the company of an Irish-African rap crew, on to the chapel in TCD for a reboot of the Christmas concert, to some more remote churches in search of Art and Crafts movement stained glass and finally, deep into the dusty heart of the GPO

Culture File: GPO 1916 CENTENARY

At the GPO, a new museum will be home to, among other things, some fine-press work from Dublin's Stoney Road Press

Culture File: Bluett

Léonie Bluett, of the young Irish new music ensemble, Kirkos, on life as a clarinet playing composer.

Culture File: Nikki

The sinewy saints and gnarly angels of Arts and Crafts stained glass artist, Wilhelmina Geddes

Culture File: Rusangano

Limerick rappers Rusangano Family find an emblem of the journey of immigrants all over the world at "Heathrow"

Culture File Weekly No 48

This weekly historian, Jonathan Bardon, takes us on a jaunt back to the days when a gentleman from the lowlands of Germany (by way of Brook St, London) briefly entered Dublin society, and it's fair to say, made a bit of a splash. Georg Friedrich Handel was the man; his Messiah made the splash.

Culture File: Live with Sasha Sykes

Luke Clancy is live from the Classic Drive Christmas Concert in Studio 1, as he chats to designer, Sasha Sykes, who according to the New York Times makes art "for people who live in the city but dream of the country".

Culture File: Part 4

For Handel, opening The Messiah was unthinkable without the talents of scandalous 18th century It Girl, Mrs Cibber

Culture File: Hallelujah Part 3

Did you know Jonathan Swift did everything in his considerable power to stop the first performance of The Messiah?

Culture File: Hallelujah Part 2

Historian, Jonathan Bardon, says Hallelujah and lets his imagination take him back to Fishamble St, Dublin, 1742.

Culture File: Hallelujah

Jonathan Bardon, on the constellations of events that lead to the world premiere of Handel's Messiah in Dublin

Culture File Weekly No 47

This weekly we visit the white cube of North London graphic design studio Barnbrook, where some graphical disobedience is being planned; we roll up to the National Basketball Arena in Tallaght for a bout of the every-growing sport of Roller Derby and we end up swept along by the wind as featured on a new CD from the DIT Dublin Conservatory of Music

Culture File: Celebrating Music in DIT

Laoise O'Brien's new CD taps the talents of the DIT conservatory of music along with the sound of some cold winds.

Culture File: Brandalism 2 - Ethical Design

"Who wants clients who are scared of people who have opinions?" @Barnbrook on running an ethical design practice.

Culture File: Graphic Design and Brandalism

From #brandalism to the art of Bowie's new album, ?, designer Jonathan Barnbrook blends commerce with activism.

Culture File: Irish Roller Derby

Meet Dashing Trudy Snow, Brewdoll E Lowcock, Maria Von Slapp & the pseudonymous stars of Irish Roller Derby.

Culture File: Trish Deseine on Trifle

Promoting the simple joys of trifle and "home" classics made Antrim-born, Trish Deseine, a culinary hero in France.

Culture File: Wonder.land

Moira Buffini, writer and lyricist on Damon Albarn musical, Wonder.land, on the anxieties of an online world

Culture File: Gilles Peterson on Sun Ra

Gilles Peterson on the life, music and astral voyages of composer and jazz pioneer, Sun Ra.

Culture File: Data Obfuscation 1

Artists, academics and technologist are working to regain a click or two of privacy via data obfuscation.

Culture File: Data Obfuscation 2

Gender fluidity, plus the pioneering work of Helen Nissenbaum, in the second part of our data obfuscation special

Culture File: Hearsay 2015

Audio nerds, radio heads and podcast addicts takeover Kilfinane, Co Limerick, for the Hearsay 2015 audio festival.

Culture File: Tequila

Mexican ambassador, Carlos García de Alba on why you should never slam, skull, or generally rush tequila

Culture File Weekly No 45

This Weekly, we practice, tequila connoisseurship with Mexican ambassador, Carlos García de Alba, attend our first eSports event and discover why computer-based sports are ready to conquer the world; and we meet Prof Christopher Frayling, the pop culture polymath, who's rethinking what we should teach at art schools.

Culture File: Siobhan Davies Dance

Usain Bolt's greatest 10 seconds were the inspiration for the latest work from UK choreographer, Siobhan Davies

Culture File: Frayling Part 2

What should be in an artist's survival pack on leaving art college? Prof Christopher Frayling has some ideas

Culture File: Frayling Part 1

Why craft needs a new vocabulary, according to Prof Christopher Frayling, author of On Craftsmanship

Culture File: League Of Legends

Meet the players, the cosplayers and casters of Ireland's nascent eSports scene. Bring your transcendent sword.

Culture File: Autumn in Italy, Day 5

Marilyn Monroe accidentally invented the most famous myth about white fungus...

Culture File Weekly No 44

This Weekly, we are reporting from Northern Italy, where this year's Milano Expo has stoked a conversation about the future of food, and questions about where our appetites and the food industry's development are taking the world.

Culture File: Autumn in Italy Day 4

Giorgio Cassari on a remarkable rebel who caused a revolution in Italian wine in the 70s

Culture File: Autumn in Italy, Day 3

Ellen Cranitch heads into the heart of multi-national mega-attraction, Expo Milano 2015

Culture File: Autumn in Italy, Day 2

The Piedmontese village that's transforming into a Rudolph Steiner-influenced vegan resort

Culture File: Autumn in Italy - Intro

"Autumn in Italy" begins with the hunt for sustainable food at Milan Expo and "white gold" at Alba Truffle Fair

Culture File: Richard Gorman

Milan-based Irish artist, Richard Gorman, on designing scarves for Hermes and the life of an artist in exile.

Culture File Weekly No 43

This weekly, we visit cemeteries in Oaxaca and Co Cork; then it's out into the lanes of Kinsale in search of shades with colour theorist, Katherine Boucher-Beug; avant ventriloquist, Nina Conti introduces us to her inner voices, and we wonder why playwright and labour activist Eva Gore Booth is so little celebrated

A Lifetime in Cheese

Did Veronica Steele's 1970s washed rind innovation, Milleens cheese, create the blueprint for Irish artisan food?

Culture File: Gore Booth

Cathy Leeney on how revolutionary playwright, Eva Gore Booth, is too often overlooked from literary history

Culture File: Hiberno Mexican Graveyards

Pass over to another realm via a show of Mexican-Irish cemetery photography at the IGS's Octagon Room

Culture File: Nina Conti

If ventriloquism still lives in 2015, one woman can take a big chunk of the credit: Nina Conti

Culture File: Colour Kinsale

Artist and colour theorist, Katherine Boucher-Beug forages a blue that can only be found hiding behind barn doors

Culture File Weekly No 42

Culture File Weekly No 42 involves a dirty secret to do with model trains, a celebration of George Boole in the form of a pudding; some important info about the term Czechlands, and Richard Herring's career-long exploration of the territory between innovative comedy and gratuitous offence.

Culture File: Stella Feehily

London-born, Donegal-raised playwright, Stella Feehily on her first ballet libretto, Coppelia, for Ballet Ireland.

Culture File: Hana Czech

Czech ambassador, Hana Mottlova, on how to celebrate properly Czech Independence Day.

Culture File: Boole Pudding

The tastiest celebration of mathlete & accidental Corkman, George Boole's 200th birthday takes the shape of a pud.

Culture File: Richard Herring

Richard Herring spent 2015 reviving and relearning his entire stand up oeuvre shares some of his timeless titters

Culture File Weekly No 41

This weekly we divide our time between Wexford, Dublin and the street, as we glimpse a project that is putting Irish poetry in spaces you'd expect to find offers of inclusive minutes; we visit Wexford Festival Opera in search of design and choreography, and meet the artist who putting robots in museums, galleries, theatres - and yes - opera houses.

Culture File: Imran Fest

A Dublin billboard project is putting poetry in the spaces where you expect to fizzy drinks and inclusive minute

Culture File: Opera Robots

Artist Denis Roche's robots let patients visit galleries, theatres, even opera houses, without leaving their beds

Culture File: Jimmy Mac

3D modelling and digital projection interact with glue and seashells in set designs for Wexford Opera's Koanga

Culture File: Boyzie

Soweto-born choreographer, Boyzie Cekwana on creating dance for Wexford Festival Opera's revival of Delius' Koanga

Culture File: AK Photos

When is a photo not a photo, and other riddles of computational photography with tech soothsayer, Aisling Kelliher

Culture File Weekly No 40

This weekly, we’re chewing on chestnuts, discovering the pulling power of evangelical Christianity at the US box office, hearing about some evolutions of the plain old snap, and meeting the classical pianist whose switch to jazz was such a success that no less than Chick Corea calls him a creative genius.

Culture File: Gwilym

Classical piano prodigy turned jazz star, Gwilym Simcock on jazz, classical and what lies in between.

Culture File: Trickster Bird

The trickster bird, the Crow, in all his forms is celebrated in Imram Irish Festival's Cleasaí Éin show

Culture File: Christian Flix

The unexpected rise of Evangelical cinema at the American omniplex

Culture File: Giorgio Marcels

As autumn settles in, Giorgio Casari's fancy turns to chestnuts but the object is not to conquer, but to cook.

Culture File Weekly No 39

This weekly we hear how the word "macaroni" came to be both an insult and a rallying cry and why a Linotype machine is like a piece of cheese. We meet Claudio Simonetti, the composer who created the music world of director, Dario Argento's horror films; and we interpret the Irish 1935 Public Dance Halls Act, through the medium of contemporary dance

Culture File: Macaroni

Mocking the Georgian youth culture of the "Macaronies" in the 1770s caricatures of Mary and Matthew Darly

Culture File: Dance Hall

The Public Dance Halls Act, 1935 and Patrick Scott's art feed Dancehall, the latest from choreographer Emma Martin

Culture File: Ivan/ Feldman

Pianist, Ivan Ilic voyages deeper into the music of Morton Feldman with a CD and a tour dedicated to the composer

Culture File: Profondorosso

Composer, Claudio Simonetti, on creating the chilling soundworlds of director, Dario Argento's 70s Italo-horrors

Culture File: Linotype

The irresistible tap-tap-buzz of what Thomas Edison described as the 8th Wonder of the World: the Linotype Machine

Culture File: Eimear Noone

Irish video game music conductor and composer, Eimear Noone, on why it's not either/or when it comes to Stravinsky and Metallica.

Culture File Weekly No 38

We have all the makings of a good night out at The Last Hotel, take the tour with the Mullingar man who is bringing Shakespeare's Globe alive, find out why companies such as Google, Eircom and UPC are re-branding; and hear what happens when Schubert lieder get rebooted into the Irish language

Culture File: Rebranding Part 2

Brandspert, Eoghan Nolan, finishes decoding a wave of re-brands by the likes of Google, Eir and Virgin Media (2/2)

Culture File: Rebranding Part 1

What We Talk About When We Talk About Brands: brandspert, Eoghan Nolan, helps decode a recent wave of re-brandings

Culture File: Caitriona Joni

Catriona O'Leary on shepherding Joni Mitchell and Franz Schubert into the Irish language.

Culture File: Canice Globe

One of London's big tourist draws is Shakespeare's Globe; one of The Globe's draws is a tourguide from Mullingar

Culture File: The Last Hotel

Soprano, Claudia Boyle and composer, Donnacha Dennehy on The Last Hotel, loneliness and Irish girl band, B*witched

Culture File Weekly No 37

This Weekly, an audience with Ireland's longest reigning Emperor of Antiques, a journey down a dimly lit corridor of graphic sedition at the National Print Museum, the promise of eternity as a plastinated corpse and a heartfelt piece of pro-Bee propaganda disguised as a show for kids

Culture File: Louis Louis

The Emperor of Antiques, Louis O’Sullivan, tells Eleanor Flegg stories of some of his favourite possessions

Culture File: Death Café

Dublin's recent "Death Café" encouraged Gareth Stack to imagine what we might look for by way of a final send off

Culture File: Hedone

Mikael Jonsson had an early calling to be a chef but a biblical plague of allergies kept him out of the kitchen.

Culture File: Bees

Be they drones or queens, Mark Doherty has big love for the bees in his new apicultural comedy for kids

Culture File Weekly No 36

This Weekly we have a history of psychology and a biography of the happiness industry all wrapped into one. We listen to our inner voices, with a music that uses human physiology to keep the beat, and we make a visit to the Dublin's Merrion Square, where the nation's mutts are having their day in the sun.

Culture File: Posters

A pointed take on history told through political posters at the National Print Museum's A World to Win exhibition

Culture File: Blythman

What's for dinner? is a question investigative journalist turned food detective, Joanna Blythman, takes seriously

Culture File: Heart and breath

Biofeedback-driven music from Arcade Fire's Richard Reed Parry’s decoded by UCC Prof of Physiology, Ken O’Halloran

Culture File: The Doggie Do

Some old dogs and some new tricks at Dublin’s canine carnival, The Doggie Do

Culture File: Magnetism

Big art for big spaces, in curator Vaari Claffey's Magnetism show at a former Korean videotape plant in Co. Sligo

Culture File: Long Gaze Back

Sinead Gleeson, editor of The Long Gaze Back: An Anthology of Irish Women Writers, talks balance, TLS, LRB & VIDA

Culture File: Templemore

Gruesome goings on in the precincts of Templemore in a the second play from Garda College neighbour, Áine Ryan.

Culture File: Clockwork

N-gauge and O-gauge, clockwork and proper steam, at a model train sanctuary at the far end of the Sheep’s Head Peninsula.

Culture File Weekly: No 34

Culture File visits two exhibitions struggling with the very idea of an exhibition - and busily try to create stimulating new hybrid shows. In Weston-Super-Mare, activist artist Banksy has created an “entry level anarchism” funfair, while at Tate Britain, Sensorium is a show bringing paintings together with sound, perfumes and chocolates.

Culture File: Agrippina

English translator of Handel's Agrippina, Amanda Holden, on putting the f-word into the mouths of operatic heroes

Culture File: Sensorium Part 2

Odette Toilette and Bernardo Fleming on the new worlds of scent at Tate Britain's multisensory show, Sensorium.

Culture File: Sensorium

Tate Britain's latest painting exhibition, Sensorium, address the ears, the nose and the tongue, as well as the eyes

Culture File: Dismaland

Bring your ears to Banksy's Dismaland in Weston-Super-Mare, “The UK’s Most disappointing New Visitor Attraction”

Culture File: Soundscapes

Exhibitions that strive to be something more this week starting with a paint 'n' sound show at UK's National Gallery

Culture File Weekly No 33

Culture File Weekly delves into the music of Rhiannon Giddens, the Carolina-born, Limerick-based singer, champion of the banjo and tireless explorer of the forgotten histories of black music in America.

Culture File Weekly No 32

Culture File's journey through the scents of a century fetches up in the present scent world of gourmand perfumes, celebrity "juice" and the middle-eastern driven vogue for perfumes based on the scent of oud.

Culture File Weekly No 31

Culture File's journey through the scents of a century fetches up in the present scent world of gourmand perfumes, celebrity "juice" and the middle-eastern driven vogue for perfumes based on the scent of oud.

Culture File Weekly No. 30

Odette Toilette leads us through the scents that made the 20th century, finding an alternative history in perfumes and the societies that produced them. We begin this week, as the dust of WWI settles and the air is filled once more with the sweet scent of violets...

Culture File: Giorgio Casari

Restaurateur, Giorgio Casari, on Ferragosto and the flavours and sounds of full summer in Italy

Culture File Weekly No. 29

Luke Clancy talks to Tess Gallagher, widow of Raymond Carver about the decade she spent with the writer, during which he wrote some of the most popular love poems of the Twentieth century, for and to Tess Gallagher. We hear about the origins of poems such as Late Fragment, and enjoy some of the music they inspired in Irish composer, Linda Buckley

Culture File: Carsten Holler

A ride on a Carsten Holler slide is to the 21st century what seeing a Piero della Francesca fresco was to the 20th

Culture File: The History of The Humble Donkey

Jill Bough on the history, art and meanings of the always humble donkey.

Culture File Weekly No. 28

This Weekly comes from Galway International Arts Festival, where we make a mindful progress through the city's Woodquay area with choreographer, Bernadette Divilly, we encounter the cacophony of a rehearsal by New Zealand's Live Live Cinema; meet Italian ?film composer, Teho Teardo ? and get tactile with the creations of Patricia Piccinini.

Culture File: Eimear Murphy (Propmaker)

Propmaker for The Abbey's By The Bog of Cats, Eimear Murphy, on the alchemy of feathers ?and? fake blood.

Culture File: Discover Ireland Horse Show

At the RDS, anticipation is building along with an unfeasible high wall for the Discover Ireland Dublin Horse Show

Culture File: Teardo's Music for Enda Walsh

Teardo wrote the music for Enda Walsh's Ballyturk, as well as music for Frank McGuinness' The Matchbox, the later of which premiered at the festival.

Culture File: Galway's Sky Whale

Patricia Piccinini's hot air balloon, Sky Whale, uses fairground fun to speculate on the future of life on earth

Culture File: Live Live Cinema

Roger Corman's cult, The Little Shop of Horrors gets a makeover from Live Live Cinema's cast of live foley artists

Culture File Mapping Woodquay

Importing "community mapping" techniques from the First Peoples in Canada to create new maps of Woodquay, Galway.

Culture File: Walking Woodquay

Walking Woodquay Wisdom is project to remap Woodquay in Galway, using walking, storytelling - and even mapmaking.

Culture File Weekly No. 27

This weekly, we're all about legacies, from making memorials of Irish engineering history on the Dublin quays, to curating the tweets and Spotify lists of the departed, rebooting "early Music" into Irish "New Music" and taking stock of the inhumanly large cache of Leipzig choral music produced by Kapellmeister of Thomaskirche, JS Bach.

Culture File: A Day in the Life of JS Bach

A day in the life of the Kapelmaster of Thomaskirche in Leipzig, the frighteningly industrious Herr Bach.

Culture File: Dublin's Diving Bell

Victorian engineering genius, Bindon Blood Stoney's innovative diving bell finds new life in Dublin.

Culture File Weekly No. 26

This weekly, a date by the video wall with artist, James Coupe, who is using collaborators he's never even spoken to -- to create his work; we go on manoeuvres with the guerilla filmakers of KinoD; and downshift amongst the bubbling brooks and brimming growlers of stout in West Kerry Brewery.

Culture File: What's your digital legacy?

What's your digital legacy and who'll curate it when you're gone? Aisling Kelliher on digital life after death.

Culture File: Kevin O' Connell Early Music

Rebooting Byrd, Dowland, Couperin and other early music giants in composer, Kevin O’Connell's latest, Early Music.

Culture File: Virtual Reality

The Apollo 11 Experience is a kind of fairground ride for the eyes, seating you alongside Neil Armstrong & chums.

Culture File: Photographing Erris Head with Amelia Stein

An airlift, via the lens of photographer Amelia Stein, to the rugged, rocky North Mayo coastline of the Erris Peninsula.

Culture File: Post Internet Art

What is post-internet art? And why? Media theorist, Florian Cramer on an art world obsession

Culture File: Mechanical Turk

Artist, James Coupe's "General Intellect" uses Amazon.com’s Mechanical Turk system to hire an army of collabrotors

Culture File: Beoir Chorca Dhuibhne

A visit to the West Kerry brewery cum twittering homestead with a spring, with mountains to the rear and the sea to the front, where they make a beer which one American critic described as about as close to Guinness as Guinness is to Budweiser.

Culture File: Kino Kabaret

Kino kabarets are mini film festivals for which all the film are conceived, cast, shot, edited and presented over the course of a couple of days by a mix of amateurs and professionals

Culture File Weekly No. 25

This weekly, a trip to Clonmel to hear how a group of young artists are gathering the town's stories, to the beach, to discover how binge-watching helps us see The Addams Family for what they really are, on to IMMA to celebrate the art of the collective and brand wrangler, Eoghan Nolan, on "native advertising".

Culture File: Osmontheque

Paris' Osmotheque is on a mission to save all the world's scents - and even bring some back from the dead.

Culture File: Clonmel Junction

Canadian artist, Cathy Gordon and a team of local artists go hunting for belongings and their stories in Clonmel

Culture File: Artist-led Archive

Megs Morley's Irish Artist-led Archive attempts to learn the lesson of 40 years of art created by more than 70 artist groups and collectives.

Culture File: Decoding a New Ad World

Content marketing? Product placement? Native advertising? Brand wrangler, Eoghan Nolan decodes a new ad world.

Culture File: Hugh MacDiarmuid

In a fisherman's cottage on the island of Whalsay, in Shetland, poet and Scottish nationalist, Hugh MacDiarmuid, wrote almost half of his work.

Culture File Weekly No. 24

This weekly, we are thinking about typewriters and wondering, why they're still a thing; and then with the help of Jerome McGann, we start to get ourselves ready for a post book world, and with Aisling Kelliher, prepare for everyday robots. Plus comedian, Sophie Hagen's coming out as a teenage writer of Westlife fanfiction, on this week's Weekly.

Culture File: The Death Of The Book?

Are we living in an age when the book as the key tool for defining & transmitting knowledge is drawing to a close?

Culture File: Addam's Family

That thing you missed about TV's The Addams Family? It's really a fable of neurodiversity, as much as a sitcom.

Culture File: #Westlife #fanfiction

At this year’s Edinburgh festival, comic Sophie Hagen is coming out as a writer of fan fiction - #Westlife #fanfiction.

Culture File: The Robots Are Coming

What if robots that lived among us weren’t a metaphor for anything - just fact of life?

Culture File: The Typewriter

Gareth Stack grasps the sticky ribbon and attempts to track the every changing role of the typewriter.

Culture File Weekly No 23

This weekly we discover the surprisingly ancient tradition of sound branding - think church bells - we meet the two Marys, Wollstonecraft and Shelley, a literary tag team reunited in a new double biography, and we go to war in small, plastic tank.

Culture File: Mary Wollstonecraft's & Mary Shelley P2

Did Mary Wollstonecraft's Letters Written in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark give birth to Romanticism?

Culture File Weekly No 22

This weekly, ships sail in and out of our stories, as we catch a glimpse of William Morris through a doorway in Ballyboden and on the Lido at Venice, meet Calvin Coolidge’s Kerry kitchen keeper in a parlour in Listowel and go big with UK saxophonist, Jason Yarde's 100-strong horn composition, Bold As Brass.

Culture File: Mary Wollstonecraft and Shelley P1

An uncanny mother and child reunion in Romantic Outlaws, a double biography of Marys Wollstonecraft and Shelley.

Culture File: Sound Branding

Why do so many of our possessions bleat, beep and chirrup at us? It's sound branding, says composer, John Groves.

Culture File: Small Plastic Wars

Pat McGrath's one man show, Small Plastic Wars, about a crisis in the life of one scale model maker returns.

Culture File: Sightless Cinema in UCD

White Cane Theatre prepare to take their work public in Sightless Cinema, a night of audio in a darkened cinema.

Culture File Weekly No 22

This weekly, ships sail in and out of our stories, as we catch a glimpse of William Morris through a doorway in Ballyboden and on the Lido at Venice, meet Calvin Coolidge’s Kerry kitchen keeper in a parlour in Listowel and go big with UK saxophonist, Jason Yarde's 100-strong horn composition, Bold As Brass.

Culture File: Odette Toilette & the scent of the now

Odette Toilette's Century of Scent ends with Justin Bieber & the smell of the now, Oud, wafting through the world.

Culture File: Kathy Buckley Cooking for the White House

Hail to the Chef! Kathy Buckley, the Kerry cook who ran the White House kitchens under three US Presidents.

Culture File: BIG Brass with Jason Yarde

British composer/saxophonist, Jason Yarde's "Bold as Brass" was created not for a Big Band, but by a massive band.

Culture File: William Morris

The Dublin legacy of activist-artist and proto-hipster admirer of the artisanal, William Morris.

Culture File: Composer James Wilson

The life & music of Islington-born Irish-based composer & teacher, James Wilson in a new study by Mark Fitzgerald.

Culture File Weekly No 21

This weekly playwright, Mark O’Rowe fights the Shakespeare flab to create a bite-sized bard for Galway's Druid, we "um" and "er" along with composer and lyricist, Adam Cork, who scored everyday speech for the play (and now film) London Road, and we head to West Cork on a wild yeast hunt.

Culture File: Odette Toilette's on Frédéric Malle

Odette Toilette on Ed. de Parfums Frédéric Malle where perfumers get top billing - even if sometimes posthumously

Culture File: Verbatim Musical, London Road

The UK National Theatre verbatim musical, London Road, is putting the real words of real people in the cinema.

Culture File: Fermenting in West Cork

Irish fermentation movement's "mother of the mothers" April Danann, on the wild yeasts of West Cork.

Culture File: Shakespeare Reduced with Mark O'Rowe

Boiling down Richard II, Henry IV (parts 1 & 2) and Henry V into a bite-sized 6 hours of theatre, with Mark O’Rowe.

Culture File Weekly No. 20

On this Weekly, some poems, along with a fishbox or two of slates removed (legally) from the former home of Peig Sayers, a wave of computers that really just want to know how you feel, the sight and the sound of the Golden Section and how to build new images of ageing.

Culture File - Odette Toilette on Perfume and Food

It's perfumes riffing on food from green tea to essence of candyfloss, as Odette Toilette sniffs the 90s in scent.

Culture File: Women and Aging

The Strange Adventures of Ageing and other dispatches from University of Limerick's Woman and Ageing conference.

Culture File: Maurice Quillinan on Maths & Music

The latest incarnation of artist, Maurice Quillinan's maths, music and painting collaboration, Music on the Water, reaches Limerick.

Culture File: Rehabilitating Peig Sayers

Artist, Ken Bolger and poet, Dairena Ni Chinnéide enlist slate to salvage Peig Sayers from her status as leaving Cert pariah.

Culture File Weekly No. 19

This Weekly, we wander the kitchens and lecture sheds of Ballymaloe Literary Festival, where some of the world's greatest food pros have been munching and wandering among the mortals. We break bread with Chez Panisse founder, Alice Waters, glug with Beer oracle, Garrett Oliver; and hear about what's on breakfast tables from East Cork to Burgundy.

Culture File: Empathising Brands

Brand wrangler, Eoghan Nolan, on what happens to brands in the era when our devices want to know how we feel right this minute.

Culture File Weekly No. 19

This Weekly, we wander the kitchens and lecture sheds of Ballymaloe Literary Festival, where some of the world's greatest food pros have been munching and wandering among the mortals. We break bread with Chez Panisse founder, Alice Waters, glug with Beer oracle, Garrett Oliver; and hear about what's on breakfast tables from East Cork to Burgundy.

Culture File: The Scent of the '90s with Odette Toilette

Odette Toilette leads us into the '90s, when perfume was all about diffusion - of global brands, rather than precious molecules.

Culture File - Breakfasts in Burgundy

Breakfasts in Burgundy and East Cork, in the final report from this year's Ballymaloe Literary Festival.

Culture File - Garrett Oliver on Beer

Some people call him the “Robert Parker of beer” - but don’t hold that against brewmaster and US craft beer guru, Garrett Oliver.

Culture File Weekly No. 18

This weekly, we visit "urban opera" set in St Teresas Garden in Dublin and a "terror noise opera" performed in a shed in Leitrim, and enjoy Pigtown Scratchings, which isn't an opera at all, but an experimental cabaret. Plus, we hear why the sounds of hammering coffin nails is filling the streets of Cobh. Again.

Culture File: Food Visionary, Alice Waters

Alice Waters, founder of world's-greatest-restaurant contender, Chez Panisse, on her "delicious revolution".

Culture File: Writing for Children

Killer first lines, and other strategies of the successful children's book writer, with literary agent, Julia Churchill.

Culture File: Odette Toilette on Rare Blockbuster Scents

Were you a Body Shop White Musk lurker? Or sweating/whispering in a cloud of Obsession. Odette Toilette on some retro blockbuster scents.

Culture File: Recalling the Lusitania

Coffin carpentry and headstone carving spill out of Sirius Arts Centre, for an exhibition which recalls some of those aboard The Lusitania's final voyage.

Culture File: Pigtown Scratchings

Cries, whispers and a touch of satanism at the latest edition of Limerick's works-in-progress, ideas-in-flux cabaret night, Pigtown Scratchings.

Cullture File - St Teresa's Gardens Opera

Outlandishtheatre Platform’s Maud Hendricks on the company’s St. Teresa’s Gardens, Dublin-set “urban mini opera” EX-hib-IT-US 2015.

Culture File: My Weekend As A Performance Artist

Gareth stack recalls "My Weekend As A Performance Artist" at Leitrim's boutique Goth festival, Species.

Culture File Weekly No. 17

This week we remember Wexford's own El Zorro, find the crossovers between nature documentaries and dance films and recall, with the help of restaurateur, Giorgio Casari, the Po Valley when the Neo-Realist rice was handpicked.

Culture File: Odette Toilette & the Scent of Poison

Odette Toilette leads us deeper in the scents of the 1980s, where dwell the possibly fecal joys of Dior’s zeitgiesty, Poison.

Culture File: Dance Artist, Mary Wycherley

Mary Wycherley on the history of bodies on screens, the power of the bell and her film collaboration with choreographer, Joan Davis.

Culture File - Foraging in Italy with Giorgio Casari

Restaurateur, Giorgio Casari, on the pure joys of Italian spring cooking, and the link between foraged greens and budgie smugglers

Culture File - William Lamport aka El Zorro

The tale of Wexford's swashbuckling Jesuit hero, William Lamport, who some prefer to call...El Zorro.

Culture File Weekly No 16

Wool, tape and an electric guitar played with a knife sharpener all have their role this time, as we get some stitch tips at Cork's legendary knitting-as-art project, The Knitting Map, meet the man behind a cassette only music label and enlist a charming company of West End Men to help decide what exactly "legit" currently means.

Culture File - Cork's Knitting Map at the Glucksman Gallery

Jools Gilson organised knitters from all over Cork to sit down over the course of a year to produce The Knitting Map.

Culture File - The West End Men

What makes "legit" legit?...and other riddles of the contemporary musical, with the stars of The West End Men.

Culture File - The Scents of the 80s

Odette Toilette's journey through the scents of the 20th century makes a stop at the power-suited, iron-pumping, calorie counting 1980s.

Culture File: C60 & C90s Still Recording!

C60 and C90 lover Phillip Marshall, on the enduring attractions of wow and flutter for his cassette-only record label, the Tapeworm.

Culture File Weekly No 15

The Culture File Weekly this time goes to Castledermot in search of the sound of wood, turning on the lathe of Emmet Kane, to Camden Town with the vaguest of hopes of finding an alternative to end-stage capitalism, with comedian, Liam Williams and to Leitrim for the lowdown on lattes, bus routes and The Heart Sutr, with writer, Michael Harding.

Culture File: The Dodeca Cycle

Ed Devane takes us for a ride on the Dodeca Cycle, a 12-player instrument cum time machine asking fundamental questions about making music.

Culture File: The Liberating Scent of the '70s

"Liberating and patronising at the same time" says Odette Toilette of 70s superscent, Charlie, in the latest stage on our journey through perfume.

Culture File: Comedian, Liam Williams

Comedian, Liam Williams, on his show Capitalism and the almost equally powerful attractions of revolution and apathy. --

Culture File: Woodturner, Emmet Kane (P2)

Woodturner Emmet Kane find inspiration in the ancient stones of a churchyard in Castledermot. (Part 2 of 2)

Culture File - Emmet Kane Wood Turner

Emmet Kane, helps us capture the sound of holm oak on the lathe, and other treasures of the woodturners craft.

Culture File Weekly No. 14

This week printmaking, turntablism and the not-so-secret ingredient of some of the worlds most "effective" perfumes, as we visit the studio of artist, Daniel Lipstein, put the needle 'pon the record with DJ Yoda and take our latest sniff of the scents of the 20th century with perfume historian, Odette Toilet.

Culture File: Michael Harding on The Field

Actor, playwright and columnist, Michael Harding's rulings on lattes, water rights, bus routes and The Field.

Culture File: Odette Toilette - Patchouli v. Chanel

The progressive power of patchouli v. the persistence of Chanel, as Odette Toilette's history of the scents of the 20th Century meets the counterculture.

Starlings in West Cork

Starlings in West Cork farmyard with cars passing.

Starlings in West Cork

Starlings in West Cork farmyard with cars passing.

Culture File: Newspapers in a Virtual Age

Brand whisperer, Eoghan Nolan, on how newspaper brands are dealing with a new world in the latest in our series, What We Talk About When We Talk About Brands.

Culture File - DJ Yoda

A career in cut 'n' paste, with the guru of British turntablism, DJ Yoda.

Culture File: Daniel Lipstein, printmaker

Printmaker, Daniel Lipstein on his family history, as well as Rembrandt, Degas and the arts of aquatint and bite.

Culture File: Daniel Lipstein, Artist

A bathtub, some acorns, a printing press and a theory of everything: the special world of artist, Daniel Lipstein.

Culture File Weekly No. 13

This week we divide our time between discovering what vocalist, Jennifer Walshe does when it comes to singing emojis in Brian Irvine's 13 Vices, and hearing some very familiar words on love, loss and what’s left behind, with Tess Gallagher, poet, muse and window to Raymond Carver.

Culture File: The Scents of the Twentieth Century Contd.

Like a waft of hyacinth from the municipal flower display, Odette Toilette, returns to continue her journey into the scents of the twentieth century.

Culture File - Hank Shocklee

Most Of My Heroes Don't Appear On No Podcasts: Luke McManus meets his teenage hero, hiphop grandmaster, Public Enemy's Hank Shocklee

Culture File - 13 Vices

How should a soprano sing a crying-face emoji? Brian Irvine & Jennifer Walsh's on their classical-jazz-improv chamber opera, 13 Vices

Culture File Weekly No 12

This week: we are spend time with banjo hero, Rhiannon Giddens, who been researching some of the lost histories of Black musician in the united states; have a cup of tea in Pearse Street fire station to hear about the degrees of gusto with which fires were quenched by the Dublin Fire Brigade in 20th century Dublin, and take opera to the streets.

The Great American Feminist Songbook

Rhiannon Giddens on uncovering a feminist version of the "Great American Songbook".

Culture File: The History of the Banjo with Rhiannon Giddens

Rhiannon Giddens on the lost history of black music in the American, the Minstrelsy and the special place of her favourite instrument: the banjo.

Culture File: Irish Opera in Edinburgh

Wide Open Opera's Fergus Sheil on casual opera users, and his Edinburgh Festival opera collaboration with Enda Walsh.

Culture File: Composing for Computer Games

Game music maestro, Craig Stuart Garfinkle, on the evolution of a new stage for composers.

Culture File Weekly No.11

If your laptop got to choose what you'll watch tonight, would you end up with American Beauty again? How is a DJ like a Ulster weaver? Which side of Dublin's historical fires were the Fire Brigade really on? And what exactly should one do with a Golden Olive? All questions essayed this week and now answered in The Culture File Weekly No. 11.

Culture File: Lough Mask Ghillie

Easy oars on Lough Mask with a ghillie who knows all the underwater lakescapes that will never make it to Google maps.

Culture File: Why do computers love the Oscars?

What would win best film if the Oscar’s were decided by computers? Aisling Kelliher on the algorithms’ favourite art.

Culture File - Sampling Sounds and Textiles

Finding (and even weaving together) the common threads of sound art and the Ulster linen industry, with David Littler.

Culture File Weekly No. 10

This week, a special from FutureFest2015, London, a futurology fair at which Edward Snowden dropped in electronically, George Clinton appeared in a coat covered in golden flames to talk about adding funk to democracy, there was a neurological fairground ride, and everyone attempt to decode one of the event’s keywords: blockchain.

Culture File - George Clinton on Copyright

At FutureFest2015, funk godfather and Parliament-Funkadelic leader, George Clinton, sets down to talk about the future of copyright

Culture File: A Fairground Ride Called Neurosis

A fairground ride that reads your mind? Prof Brendan Walker on Neurosis, his ride/art project at FutureFest2015.

Culture File: FutureFest 2015, Music in the Future

At FutureFest2015, we are imagining "the Next Millennium of Human Music-Making" with author, Adam Harper.

Culture File: FutureFest 2015, the blockchain.

Culture File goes to FutureFest2015: this time we meet Harvard Law School’s expert in crypto- technology that is "the blockchain", Primavera de Filippi.

Culture File - Odette Toilette in the 1960s

Culture File Weekly No. 9

For edition No. 9, philosopher-turned-fashion designer, Roman Milisic, dreams a dream of Fashion Weeks yet to come, the Ulster Hall fills and empties its capacious lungs, as does Phelim Drew, as he gives us a taste of Orwellian song, while Sara Baume introduces us to her debut novel, Spill Simmer Falter Wither - and her one-eyed dog, Winky

Culture File - Signs and Brands

Brand whisperer, Eoghan Nolan joins Luke Clancy to decode "Signs" a new US ad from McDonald’s.

Culture File: "Down and out..." with Phelim Drew

"Down and Out in Paris and London" is up and in Dublin in a one man show from Phelim Drew.

Culture File: New York Fashion Week

Manhattan-based philosopher turned designer, Roman Milisich, dreams a dream of fashion yet to come.

Culture File Weekly No. 8

This week we will be coming to terms both with the not-quite ready for primetime technologies that go under the heading "virtual reality" as well as with some well proven ones, namely the vast range of yeasts produced by one of Ireland's wealthiest men, plus we tune in to a murder of gift-giving crows, and we sniff the 1950s with Odette Toilette.

Culture File: Communication by Touch

The importance of touch as a means of understanding, communicating and remembering, with curator, author and academic, Leslie Millar. (But remember the boundaries, John Travolta!)

Culture File: Sarah Baume on her dog, writing and art

Cork writer, Sara Baume on her debut novel and her dog, Winky, as well as on making and writing about art.

Culture File: Biollionaire Brewer, Dr Pearse Lyons

Meet the Irish biochemist/billionaire at the heart of the craft beer revolution, Dr Pearse Lyons.

Culture File - Gift Bearing Crows

Ever get a gift from a crow? 8-year-old Gabi Mann gets them most days from a murder of crows each of which she knows by name.

Culture File Weekly No. 7

Voices from Mexico, Belfast and the land of the imagination on this week's weekly, as we explore the figure of the spornosexual, discuss stoking interest in symphonic music via Instagram with Alondra de la Parra, and hear from composer, Jennifer Walshe, about the feat of musical speculation that is the Avant Garde Archive of Ireland. (aisteach.org)

Culture File: Perfume After WWII

Odette Toilette on the perfume industry's flight, in the shadow of WWII, from the old world, to the new.

Culture File Weekly No. 7

Voices from Mexico, Belfast and the land of the imagination on this week's weekly, as we explore the figure of the spornosexual, discuss stoking interest in symphonic music via Instagram with Alondra de la Parra, and hear from composer, Jennifer Walshe, about the feat of musical speculation that is the Avant Garde Archive of Ireland. (aisteach.org)

Culture File: Vitrual and Augmented Reality Trends

MS Hololens, Magic Leap, Oculus Rift, Google Glass...Prof Aisling Kelliher appraises recent promises and products in the area of Virtual and Augmented Reality.

Culture File: Mexican Conductor, Alondra de la Parra

Do you follow the conductor on Instagram? Mexican conductor, Alondra de la Parra, on the modern maestro.

Culture File: The Avant-Garde Archive of Ireland

Jennifer Walshe is a prominent Irish composer. Actually, she’s several prominent Irish composers, only one of them real.

Culture File: Spornosexual Dining

Spornosexual-friendly dining with the crew at Belfast's Home restaurant. A spornosexual is a man who aspires to the toned and muscled body-type of professional sportsmen.

Culture Weekly No. 6

This week Culture File moves from high on a hill above Cork city, remembering conductor, composer and teacher, Aloys Fleischmann, to diving down into the fathomless depths of International Klein Blue with writer and Yves Klein scholar, Nuit Bania.

Culture File: Yves Klein Blue

What is it about the colour blue? Yves Klein, colour and commerce with critic and writer, Nuit Banai.

Culture File: Yves Klein

The many deaths of Yves Klein, with Nuit Banai, author of a new book on the trickster inventor of Klein International Blue.

Culture File Weekly No. 5

This week we spend a little time with groundbreaking British performance artist and self-professed Republican, Stuart Brisley, visit a shop selling what poet, Paul Durcan calls "Celtic Fashion" and go underground, in Cork, where the rivers run free.

Culture File: On Musical Snobbery

Is Puccini too popular to be good? George Fleeton on the pervasiveness of Puccini and musical snobbery.

Culture File: On Musical Snobbery

Is Puccini too popular to be good? George Fleeton on the pervasiveness of Puccini and musical snobbery.

Culture File - Cleo on Kildare St.

Come with us behind the red door at No. 18, Kildare Street, inside Cleo, keeps the flame of the Irish handknit (and its smell) alive.

Culture File: Stuart Brisley. Artist II

Sixty-plus years of art making and counting: the work of British artist, Stuart Brisley’s work, at the MAC, Belfast.

Culture File: Stuart Brisley, Artist PI

The many directions of veteran artist/educator, Stuart Brisley, from landscape painter to transgressive performance artist and back.

Culture File Weekly No. 4

This week Culture File has been roaming the Dublin docks not helping much with the installation of a new art project, listening to cellist, Matthew Barley experiment with healing music, welcoming composer, performer and reverb fanatic, Brigid Power-Rice, and journeying a little deeper into a century of scent, with scent historian, Odette Toilette.

Culture File: The Scent of Success in the 1930s

Odette Toilette's voyage into scent reaches the 1930s, and Joy, a perfume to appeal to the 30s super rich.

Culture File Weekly No. 4

This week Culture File has been roaming the Dublin docks not helping much with the installation of a new art project, listening to cellist, Matthew Barley experiment with healing music, welcoming composer, performer and reverb fanatic, Brigid Power-Rice, and journeying a little deeper into a century of scent, with scent historian, Odette Toilette.

Culture File: Cork's Waterways in Sound

Composer, Tom Lane and performer, OlwenFouéré, offer a headphones tour of Cork's waterways.

Culture File: On Acting in A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing

Aoife Duffin on becoming the girl in question in Corn Exchange's stage version of Emer McBride's novel, A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing.

Culture File: Songwriter Brigid Power-Ryce

Tales of an abandoned underground carpark and the ideal way to stress test freshly-composed songs, with Brigid Power-Ryce.

Culture File - Cellist Matthew Barley

Cellist, Matthew Barley, on the therapeutic power of sound and music.

Culture File - Dublin Ships

The Arklow Venus and all the other ships moving via Dublin Port get their names in lights courtesy of artist, Cliona Harmey.

Culture File: Odetette Toilette and the Smell of Chanel

Odette Toilette continues her voyage into the scents of the 20th century, with a squirt of Chanel No.5.

Culture File Weekly No. 3

A secret garden hidden behind Thomas Street, a White van parked up in Crumlin and a kitchen in Finglas are the locations for a Dublin odyssey this week on Culture File, as we explore a garden/art project, the revival of Donal O'Kelly's Catalpa and percussionist, Alex Petcu-Colan's take on the music of Evelyn Glennie.

Culture File: Catalpa Kitchen Review

Over a pot of tea, playwright & director, Phillip McMahon and his Mam assess the revival of Donal O'Kelly's Catalpa

Culture File: Guerrilla Gardening with Tony Lowth

The future of gardening, with self-styled guerrilla composter, Tony Lowth, the horticultural brains behind NCAD's Garden Farm.

Culture File: NCAD Urban Gardening

In every secret garden, a compost heap. The footsoldiers of a foodie revolution at NCAD talk kale and relational aesthetics.

Culture File: The Scents of the 20th Century II

Odette Toilette continues her journey into the Twentieth century of scent with the treason of 4711, the distant bonfire of Chanel's Cuir de Russie, and fragrances for the smoking woman.

Culture File Weekly No. 2

In this week's program, we float in the strange particles of another world w/ sean-nós master, Iarla Ó Lionáird, attend an unsettling feast of things you might foolishly have imagined were inedible with the Domestic Godless, and hear from Odette Toilette about imaginary flowers and olfactory intellectual property in the early years of the 20th C.

Culture File: Alex Petcu Colan, percussionist

Cork-born percussionist, Alex Petcu Colan, show us his bag-o-hundred sticks, and other staples of the knocking-on-things trade.

Culture File: Domestic Godless

Gareth Stack finds no hiding place amongst the chocolate covered brussels sprouts, edible fabrics and sauted sheep testicles of food art collective, Domestic Godless.

Culture File: Odette Toilette's History of Scent II

Bottle branding, synthetic scents and Caron’s mythical perfume, Narcisse Noir, in the second part of our history of perfume in the C20th, with Odette Toilette.

Culture File Weekly No. 1

The very first Culture File Hebdo - or Weekly as we say around these parts - involves therapy with stand up Eleanor Tiernan, taking fright at the airborne befane of restaurateur, Giorgio Casari, kicking over the stones of Dublin with historian, Lisa Marie Griffith and rolling with the punches at Bantry Boxing Club.

Culture File: Smelling the Century with Odette Toilette

Culture File Scent Correspondent, Odette Toilette, sets of on a journey through the smells of the 20th Century.

Culture File: Painting the Fight with Sarah Walker

Artist, Sarah Walker explores in paint the sparring, the waiting, the fights and the folding chairs of the Irish boxing scene.

Culture File: Irish Storytelling with author Lisa Marie Griffith

Everything you've ever wanted to know about Hill 16 and other staples of Irish historical storytelling, with author, Lisa Marie Griffith.

Culture File - The Making (Ireland's Year of Design)

A glimpse of the alternative worlds of unfinished design objects at In The Making, the first exhibition of ID2015, Ireland’s Year of Design.

Culture File - Little Gems

Culture File - Nollaig na Mban

Italian restaurateur, Giorgio Casari, introduces to Nollaig na mBan Italian style, when the all-seeing Bufana takes to the air.

Culture File - National Therapy Project

The possibly imaginary exhibits in the "Sensory Healing" section and other highlights of comedian, Eleanor Tiernan's National Therapy Project.