Culture File: Remembering Misha

Free jazz percussionist, Han Bennink, on his life in music with Misha Mengelberg and the Instant Composers Pool

Culture File: The Hippy Dream Reanimated at Galway's Tulca 2017

Searching for the ghosts of lost hippies with Matt Packer, curator of Galway's yearly festival of visual arts

Culture File: The Endless Voyages of Eva Stotz

Couchsurfing and tap-dancing come together in the career of German filmmaker, Eva Stotz

Culture File Likes: Jenny Thomas

Jenny M Thomas of Australian new folksters Bush Gothic shares some of the things she's clicked 'like' on lately

The Culture File Weekly 27.10.17 (Kurt Andersen in Fantasyland, Sylvia L'Ecuyer in Wagnerland)

This weekly, American writer, Kurt Andersen reports to us from Fantasyland, his nightmare contemporary USA, in which entertainment and reality have finally merged. And musicologist & opera writer, Sylvia L'Ecuyer, decodes good and evil in updating opera

Culture File: Right and Wrong Ways To Update Opera

Musicologist and Wexford opera regular, Sylvia L'Ecuyer, on the risky art of gussying-up Mozart and Wagner

Culture File: The End of Reason

US author, Kurt Andersen, completes his takedown of the "nuts and crackpots" of what his latest book calls "Fantasyland"

Culture File: The Birth of Fantasyland

Author, Kurt Andersen, on how the credulity of America's first Europeans led, inevitably, to the Trump presidency

Culture File: Buffalo Bill, Donald Trump and the birth of Fantasyland

Kurt Andersen's new 500 year history of American explores how reality and entertainment merged in the New World

Culture File Likes: Aisling Kelliher

Our tech correspondent shares some of the stuff she'd be clicking "Like" on, including a guidebook to tyranny

The Culture File Weekly 20.10.17 (Jonathan Meese, Anneleen Boeme, Aisling Kelliher)

This weekly, we're in Berlin with German artist-provocateur, Jonathan Meese; on the new frontiers of jazz with Anneleen Boeme and deep inside the matrix as Aisling Kelliher marks our card for the AI-filled future

Culture File: What exactly is wrong with AI?

Culture File techspert, Aisling Kelliher, on learning to love, cherish and discipline the AI in your life

Culture File: The jazz mission of Anneleen Boehme

Belgian double bassist, Anneleen Boehme, is in search of new, more diverse audiences for jazz

Culture File: Jonathan Messe's (and his mum's) Dictatorship of Art

The German artist briefs us on what's preventing the dictatorship of art that he and his mum are working towards

Culture File: Jonathan Messe's (and his mum's) Dictatorship of Art

The German artist briefs us on what's preventing the dictatorship of art that he and his mum are working towards

Culture File Likes: Justin Green

Cork hotelier and gin distiller, Justin Green, shares some of the reading, listening and eating experiences that delight him

The Culture File Weekly 13.10.17 (Tamara Saulwick, Paddy Mann, Silver Linings LARP, whey alcohol)

This weekly, it's all about endings, with Tamara Saulwick's memorial interviews performance, Endings, the imagined life of a nursing home in Silver Lining, and the not-at-all dirty secret of whey alcohol

Culture File: LARPING old age (Part 2)

Silver Lining, a live action role play (LARP) game, offers a kind of engaged play the organisers call LARPtivism

Culture File: LARPing Old Age

In Valdelaguna, Spain, players of a game called Silver Lining are exploring life, death & love in a retirement home

Culture File: Crackles, Pops and Endings

Exploring loss with help from hissy reel to reel recorders and crackly vinyl in Tamara Saulwick’s Endings

Culture File: The old new world of whey alcohol

Milk-based alcohol has ancient roots and remains very common - so why are we coy about it, wonders Justin Green

Culture File Likes: Liam Carson

Imram festival director, Liam Carson shares some books, shops, youtube videos he's been enjoying this week

The Culture File Weekly 06.10.17 (Mastering songwriting, the 21st century trumpet, horror sound)

This weekly, we spend some time with Duke Special and Carl Corcoran at a brand new Masters in songwriting at University of Limerick, hear how blowing into a trump is only one way to make it produce music, and unpack the new recipe for heebeegeebees-inducing movie music

Culture File: The New Trumpet

Norwegian composer and trumpeter, Hilde Marie Holsen, on her unique blend of brass and electronics

Culture File: Hearing all the feels

Caitriona Walsh has been researching film composers who use new ways of making our bodies respond at the cinema

Culture File: The Hallowed Words of Michael Longley

Singer-songwriter, Duke Special's latest album, Hallow, is based on the writings of Northern poet, Michael Longley

Culture File: Mastering Songwriting with Carl Corcoran

A brand new Masters in songwriting at UL's Irish Academy of World Music and Dance welcomes its first students

The Culture File Weekly 29.10.17 (Alan Butler, Jenny Thomas, Gavin Fitzgerald, The Judgement of Paris: The Rematch)

This weekly a deep dive into the NURBs with artist Alan Butler, who creates his art within the game, Grand Theft Auto V, there's more skirmishes in a France v California wine battle, a confession on The Truth About Irish Hiphop and a 2017 Wild Colonial Boy

Culture File: Gavin Fitzgerald's Culture Picks

Culture File: Gavin Fitzgerald The director of Notorious and The Truth About Irish Hiphop decodes his content shopping list

Culture File: Bush Gothic

Singing fiddler, Jenny Thomas, reimagines Waltzing Matilda, The Wild Colonial Boy, and other Australian staples

Culture File: The Truth About Irish Hiphop (Abrgd.)

Documentary maker, Gavin Fitzgerald, on how the preeminent sound of urban America became a naturalised Irish music

Culture File: Down and Out in Dublin and Los Santos

The hard knock life of a street photographer in the virtual world of Grand Theft Auto, with artist, Alan Phelan

Culture File: Another Judgment of Paris

Irish noses re-enact the occasion in Paris in 1976 when some of France's greatest wine experts were caught rapid

Culture File: Elizabeth Magill's Vernissage

The Antrim painter meets us @limerickgallery where she's watching over the hang for her exhibition, Headlands

Culture File: Büchner and Schubert remixed

Büchner’s play, Woyzeck, and Schubert’s song cycle, Winterreise, get a mash up in Woyzeck in Winter

Culture File: The Mae Trio

Two thirds of Australia folksters, The Mae Trio, on the special sauce of their glowing harmonies

Culture File: La La Live!

Oscar-winning La La Land-composer, Justin Hurwitz, on his trilogy of musical movies with director, Damien Chazelle

Culture File Likes: The Mae Trio

The Australian folksters share their current ??? including Liane Moriarty and the smell of eucalyptus trees

The Culture File Weekly: Match and Fuse, Spliced, Alannah Hopkin, Alan James Burns

This weekly, a cave Portrane in North Co. Dublin is trying to trying to tell us something, writer, Alannah Hopkin is observing island life, spoilt hurler, Timmy Creed, in performing a play about loving and hating the game, and we enter the world of not-necessarily-jazz at Match and Fuse.

Culture File: Match & Fuse Festival of Brand New Music

Dublin hosts the festival that creates new acts by matching and fusing the best of Irish and European improvisers

Culture File: Timmy Creed's Spliced

Timmy Creed's play, Spliced, explores the demands and rewards sport places on those who offer it their youth

Culture File: Closely Observed Islands

Ex-photojournalist and art critic, Alannah Hopkin's new collection of short stories explores Irish island life

The Culture File Weekly No. 1

The program returns with a special WOMAD edition, featuring sounds from the festival of global music and culture

Culture File: Entirely Hollow Aside from the Dark

What do caves think about, when they’re alone? A new cave-based sound installation makes a guess

Culture File: Elizabeth Magill

Elizabeth shares her current cultural highlights.

Culture File: Mamadou Diabate and his talking balaphon

The percussion language of Sambla people with its greatest practitioner, balafon master, Mamadou Diabate.

Culture File: Xaos Theories

The music of Xaos melds the most ancient sounds of Greece with vintage synthesisers in search of the future

Culture File: Hannah Peel's Brass Voyages

Armagh-born electronic composer, Hannah Peel, hits the stage at WOMAD 2017 with a 29-strong colliery brass band

Culture File: Turning residents to dissidents with Benjamin Zephaniah

Voter competence testing and other post-Brexit fixes from poet and occasional reggae star, Benjamin Zephaniah

Culture File returns with dread at the controls

TODAY: Culture File returns & @BZephaniah plans the future of democracy @WOMAD 6.05pm, @RTElyricfm @LyricLorcan