It don't mean a thing if it ain’t got that swing.

Fortunately, the latest Irish Stew guest has that swing. He’s transatlantic Irish jazz singer Austin O’Brien, out of Malahide, County Dublin, where Irish Stew cohost Martin Nutty calls home,

Co-host John Lee saw that this Irish jazz artist was playing at a New York outpost of the Malahide bar Gibney’s. he contacted Austin who invited him out to New Jersey for his recording session at the legendary Van Gelder Studio, where some of the greatest jazz albums were recorded.

In this episode the globetrotting crooner looks back to his Irish roots, saying, “I grew up in a very Irish family. There were like eight boys and two girls. And my granny had a shop, and they lived on Francis Street, which is like the belly button of the Liberties,"

In this episode he recalls his challenges pursuing music. "I was very shy, timid, and dyslexic, so I felt insecure, I can't write music. I actually hear music like a picture. I can hear and see a finished song just from an idea,” he says.

Like many artists Austin felt the pull of Paris where he now lives. “At clubs in Paris people come to dance, here in New York people come to sit and listen. It's like they say, if you can sing in Paris, you can sing anywhere,” he joked.

He recounts an almost mystical experience he had performing there in one of those clubs.

"I was singing in a very famous club in Paris called the Caveau de la Huchette and I could feel a mistake coming, Then it was like my dad was behind me, and he went, ‘you're going to be okay’ and I was able to get through it.” It’s a bittersweet memory for Austin as his father never heard him sing professionally. “He was meant to come to a concert but he died a couple of weeks before,” he says.

Following the footsteps of John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Herbie Hancock, Sonny Rollins, Wes Montgomery, McCoy Tyner, and more jazz legends to record at the Van Gelder Studio was career highlight.

"My drummer, Jonathan, says,’ hallowed ground, we're in Disneyland for a jazzman.’ The studio has stayed the same since 1959. They bow to nobody," he says.

Austin shares another heartfelt personal goal, to bring jazz and other kinds of live music into public school systems where there is need. Four times he’s brought his programs of live jazz and Irish music with Dave Brown mixed with motivational messages to the Cordero Community School in Hamilton, NJ and is now building a team to develop the funding sources and organization needed to make the program grow, with schools in Englewood, NJ showing strong interest in this outreach.

Jazz may not mean a thing if it ain’t got a thing, but what does it mean to Austin?

"I found out jazz is not a music, it's a culture, and that it's not how you play it, but how you interpret it"

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AUSTIN O'BRIEN

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VAN GELDER STUDIO

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GIBNEY'S NEW YORK (our hosts for this episode)

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IRISH STEW LINKS

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• Media Partner: IrishCentral

Episode Details: Season 8, Episode 27; Total Episode Count: 168

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In 1975, three Catholic and three Protestant children from Northern Ireland stepped off a plane at JFK for a summer away from The Troubles. Fifty years later, their stories and the stories of the some thousands of children who followed are the focus of a new book: Project Children: The Legacy by Derry author Jane Buckley.

Launching Tuesday, October 13 at the Monaghan Peace Campus, the book is the centerpiece conversation Irish Stew co-hosts John and Martin had with Catherine Flood and Linda Croston, the volunteer forces-of-nature behind Project Children's 50th anniversary celebration in County Monaghan last October and the upcoming book launch.

Catherine, from County Monaghan and Linda from West Cork were already a seasoned team, running Croston Flood, a highly-regarded recruiting, consulting, and event management firm working across the New York tri-state area.

The Project Children 50th Anniversary celebration last October brought 350+ guests to Monaghan for 11 events over five days, which included a parade featuring the NYPD Pipes and Drums and a 750-person gala. It also marked the transatlantic move of the Project Children archive to the Monaghan Peace Campus, where the Project Children Stories exhibition now has a permanent home.

The heartwarming saga began with Denis Mulcahy, a Cork native and decorated NYPD bomb squad detective. He and his brother Pat believed that Catholic and Protestant kids who spent a summer together would grow up less likely to fight. More than 23,000 children went on to stay with 16,000 host families in 22 states.

"You're driven by passion. And sometimes it's a bit crazy and there's not enough hours in the day, but somehow it gets done." Catherine says.

Project Children; The Legacy tells the program's story in the voices of the children, host families, donors and volunteers who lived it. Ironically, Buckley applied to Project Children as a child and was never picked, so this book is her way of finally taking part in the grassroots peace project.

"This book really is a voice for everyone that has been part of the program," Linda says.

The official launch of Project Children: The Legacy will be Tuesday, October 13, from 7 to 9 PM at the Monaghan Peace Campus, featuring author Jane Buckley and Project Children guiding light Denis Mulcahy, special guests from the NYPD where Denis once served, and live music, all streamed throughout the Peace Campus. Launch day will be preceded by a Community Day on Saturday, October 10 and launch festivities continue in Belfast on October 14 and Derry on October 15.

LINKS

CROSTON FLOOD

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• Linda Croston
• Catherine Flood

PROJECT CHILDREN

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MONAGHAN PEACE CAMPUS

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IRISH STEW LINKS

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• Media Partner: IrishCentral

Episode Details: Season 8, Episode 26; Total Episode Count: 167

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Andre Archimbaud spent his life carrying three passports worth of heritage: a French surname, an Italian-American upbringing, and, buried a generation or two back, an Irish line he didn't know existed until a chance conversation set him straight. This episode, recorded at Ryan's Daughter on the Upper East Side, traces how Archimbaud built an identity by choice rather than inheritance.

It started years earlier at a bar in Washington Heights, where a stranger, several drinks in, turned to him and said, "You are what your mother is," invoking a mitochondrial logic Archimbaud had never considered. Two weeks of digging into his maternal line turned up a great-grandfather from Sligo and a great-great-grandmother born in Dublin. From there, U2, a 1997 road trip through Killarney, and a growing engagement with Irish radio and Irish Twitter did the rest.

Archimbaud's other education came from his father, a man who rose from a cramped East Orange apartment to sit on the US Olympic Committee, and who taught his son to network simply by being watched. "It imprinted in me the sort of how to do this," Archimbaud says, a skill that now underwrites Clearly Now Media, the digital agency he launched after nearly two decades in paid search and social advertising.

Even the agency's name has an Irish thread: a Hothouse Flowers cover of "I Can See Clearly Now," framed on his living room wall, that his girlfriend pointed to when he needed a name.

Archimbaud closes on a quieter note: two days alone on Inchydoney Beach in West Cork, sun and rain and a double rainbow, that stayed with him through a season of change.

LINKS

ANDRE ARCHIMBAUD

• Clearly Now Media
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IRISH STEW LINKS

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• Media Partner: IrishCentral

RYAN'S DAUGHTER

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Episode Details: Season 8, Episode 25; Total Episode Count: 166

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Gearóid Mcdaid, known across the surfing world as G-Man, grew up twenty minutes from Mullaghmore, County Sligo's fearsome slab wave, and now holds the 2025 European shortboard title with an eye on the 2028 LA Olympics. John and Martin caught him mid-vacation in New York, tucked into Georgie's Chelsea, right under a photograph of the man himself mid-wave.

"It's a pretty cool thing that surfing's in the Olympics now," he says. Gearóid's victory at the European Championships last year did its part for the sport back home, proof, as he puts it, that Ireland has surfers who can compete with the best in the world.

Gearóid walks us through the two lives of a pro surfer: the technical, judged world of competition, and the far riskier business of chasing 50-foot slabs at Mullaghmore, a wave made by limestone reef geology and giant North Athlantic swells. Chasing those waves takes a safety crew on jet skis and a fair amount of nerve, skills built on a childhood his surfer father set in motion, long before Mullaghmore's entered the picture.

"You're always scared," he admits, "but it's just trying to push through it and enjoy it."

He talks sponsors, wave pool training in Scotland, four straight years of injuries, and the tight-knit, fast-growing surf scene back home. "The Irish surf community's so small," he says. "Everyone knows each other that surfs."

Next up for G-Man: a video trip to France for Monster in October, then the World Championships in Peru in November, all building toward one goal. As Martin puts it, fingers crossed we'll see the Irish flag flying on a beach at the LA Olympics in 2028.

LINKS

GEARÓID MCDAID

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  • Mullaghmore in the Summer - Hurricane Erin Swell
  • Mullaghmore in the Winter - Dec 2025
• Seamus Plug: Jackdaw
  
  

GEORGIES CHELSEA (our hosts for this episode)

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POINTBREAK (this episode's featured music)

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IRISH STEW LINKS

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• Media Partner: IrishCentral

Episode Details: Season 8, Episode 24; Total Episode Count: 165

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One year and a week since taking his new post, the Consul General of Ireland in New York Gerald Angley hosted the Irish Stew podcasters in his office high above Park Avenue for a behind-the-scenes look at Irish diplomacy in action while sharing his reflections on the first year on the job.

One event stands out for Gerald.

"The scale of St. Patrick's Day blew our minds,” he says. “It's 24/7 for a number of weeks."

Gerald walks listeners through the impressive scale of his six-state consular territory of New York, New Jersey, Delaware, Connecticut, Ohio, and Pennsylvania.

"That's 59 million people. That's the same population as the UK," he notes, adding that the region ranks as the world's third-largest economy in its own right.

The conversation traces Gerald’s path from a University College Dublin commerce degree and a stint at Citibank to a career in the Department of Foreign Affairs, with postings in Brussels, Paris, and London during Brexit. On landing the coveted New York job, he admits to a bold move: "I wrote a letter that said, 'I dare you not to pick me.'"

Talk turns to the perennial Irish Stew topic of diaspora engagement, where the diplomat reflects on evolving Irish American identity, saying, "We have to look at it not as purely Irish-born people, but rather people who have several identities."

He also points to what distinguishes Ireland's mission from other consulates: "We're one of the only countries that has an immigrant support fund... we need to be bigger than most of the other consulates, and we are."

As the episode wraps, Gerald provides the listeners with his must-read book recommendation and previews of the imminent launch the Green Pages, the new directory of Irish organizations in his consul region.

And what’s it like to be a Consul General in New York? Gerald quotes a predecessor in his role who said, "It’s Wall Street by day, Broadway by night!”

Links:

Gerald Angley

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Consulate General of Ireland in New York

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Episode Details: Season 8, Episode 23; Total Episode Count: 164

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Why doesn’t a country good enough to produce Ryanair and Stripe have a normal venture fund industry? Alan Merriman spent three years lobbying the Irish government just to be allowed to launch one, and what he ran into along the way says more about Ireland’s capital gap than most economic reports ever will.

Merriman built Elkstone from a boutique advisory firm into one of Ireland's most active venture investors, and in this conversation he's candid about what it actually took to get there. In this episode, you'll learn:

• Why Ireland’s tax code made venture investing nearly impossible before 2022, and what it took to change it
• Why Merriman puts the quality of a founder at eighty percent of any investment decision, and what he’s really screening for
• Why Elkstone bets on the country instead of a sector, and what that says about the depth of the Irish market
• What Merriman calls “network compounding,” and his pitch for why the Irish diaspora is worth more than its checkbook

If you've ever wondered what it actually takes to build serious venture capital in a small country, or how Merriman makes the case for engaging the Irish diaspora as more than a source of sentiment, this one's worth the full listen.

ALAN MERRIMAN LINKS

• LinkedIn
• Elkstone

IRISH STEW LINKS

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• Media Partner: IrishCentral
  
  

Episode Details: Season 8, Episode 22; Total Episode Count: 163

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Through its ongoing “Global Irish Nation Conversation” Irish Stew is all about connecting the worldwide Irish family, so sitting down with Dr. Martin Russell, one of the world's foremost diaspora engagement strategists, felt like a meeting of kindred missions. The proud Corkonian has spent nearly two decades turning diaspora theory into practice, working with governments and communities across Africa, Latin America, the Caribbean, and the Balkans, all while championing Ireland's potential to be a global leader in the field.

Hosts John Lee and Martin Nutty open with a thought-starter on the "diaspora World Cup" unfolding across North America, then trace Russell's journey from a would-be mathematician at UCC to a scholar of the Irish diaspora's role in the Northern Ireland peace process. Along the way, Russell unpacks the famous 70 million Irish worldwide figure, his four pillars of diaspora engagement, and the crucial distinction between migration and diaspora.

"Other partners come and go and that's fine. That's the nature of life. But your diaspora are a community of consistency if you do it well," Russell says, making the case to governments worldwide.

The conversation turns to Ireland's new Diaspora Strategy 2026–2030, which Russell's research helped inform, the duty of care owed to the vulnerable Irish abroad, and the threat of "diaspora fade" in Irish America. His answer? "The quick answer is don't let it happen, be active."

A masterclass in belonging from a thought leader who's incredibly bullish on the diaspora's future.

MARTIN RUSSELL LINKS

• LinkedIn
• The Diaspora Institute
• The Networking Institute

EPISODE REFERENCE LINKS

• Ireland’s Diaspora Strategy, 2026-2030
• NY Times: Is this the diaspora World Cup?
• EU Global Diaspora Facility
• Institute for Integrated Transitions

BOOKS

• Fragile Neighborhoods by Seth Kaplan
• Belonging: The Science of Creating Connection and Bridging Divides by Jeffrey Cohen
• On Belonging: Finding Connection in an Age of Isolation by Kim Samuel

IRISH STEW LINKS

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• Media Partner: IrishCentral
  
  

Episode Details: Season 8, Episode 21; Total Episode Count: 162

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From Crumlin and Tallaght to the City of Brotherly Love, Irish Stew spins another Philadelphia story, appropriately timed to America's Fourth of July celebration of the Declaration of Independence forged in Philadelphia 250 years ago.

Recorded in advance of Philadelphia's Irish American Business Chamber & Network's Ambassador Awards Luncheon, cohost John Lee talks with John Cummins and Adele Farrell, who drew on the grit of their working-class Dublin roots to build business success and rewarding lives in America.

They tell of brutal Boston winters, tropical job sites in Puerto Rico, founding their breakout company NEXA Enterprise Asset Management, successfully exiting from it, and founding their new business initiative, Cummins Business Ventures.

The pair underscore the importance of the Irish American Business Chamber and Network in their success story, calling it the “missing piece” they wished they'd found on day one. They look forward to the Chamber’s signature Ambassador Awards event every year, especially in 2023 when John and Adele received the IABCN’s prestigious Taoiseach Award.

The episode wraps with a heartfelt Seamus Plug. This October, in partnership with the IABCN, John and Adele are launching a fundraising gala benefiting The Autism Hub, a new Dublin-based charity providing assessments, therapies, and family support for autism services in Ireland, a cause that's become deeply personal for them both. Hosted by their Rise Above Fund and the IABCN, The Infinity Gala will be held on Oct 15 in Warrington, PA.

It’s a warm, genuine, and often inspiring Global Irish Nation Conversation about finding your tribe in Philadelphia, three thousand miles from home.

LINKS

• John Cummins LinkedIn
• Adele Farrell LinkedIn
• The Rise Above Fund
• Irish American Business Chamber & Network
• Infinity Gala

IRISH STEW LINKS

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• Media Partner: IrishCentral
  
  

Episode Details: Season 8, Episode 20; Total Episode Count: 161

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