Hello William.
Don’t mention it William, it was really nothing.
How did you get your own podcast? I haven’t listened yet but I will. I hope you cleaned that cunt of a man Ewan out. He’s an incredible spoofer.
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If you’ve come here for praise, fuck off
Good man Billy.How many points did you get in your leaving?
Worth a listen. The first time I’ve heard two people on either side of the covid issue actually debating. William has a nice precise style and makes a prick of Ewan on a few occasions but Ewan does ok too.
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Finished that, I didn’t particularly like the guys style, he is very sure of himself and I felt he was quite rude to his guest, particularly with constant interruptions, kept saying he would go back to things which he never did.
But he absolutely destroyed Ewan, if it had been a twitter conversation Rwan would have gotten very dirty very quickly with his brown nosers egging him on,
Anyway, a worthwhile 45 minutes with Ewan’s infamy in mind, never really heard him much before, comes across as off his head on twitter, much more sedate in this format, but not much of a debater
You can also tell that it is heavily edited; he may be in the middle of a question or making a point and there is a sudden change in tone of voice.
It honestly isn’t. Sometimes I stumble over words, and do a re-take; once in this interview my recorder got to the 2GB limit and stopped, and I had to restart it and we cut that bit out, but other than that, the interviews are recorded as-live unless very clearly signposted otherwise.
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I’ve listened to a good few of your podcasts and they’re generally very good. I’m torn about whether platforming obviously bad actors McGuirk and MacKenna is a good idea but I do appreciate the effort you go to to be well briefed as to your subject matter.
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Thanks for that, listened to a few of them in the past few days. Once you get over his oddball accent he’s a very good interviewer. Researches the topic in great detail and is very respectful to his guests. His reasonings on the housing crisis seem to be very accurate.
How are people after the podcasts?
Are they pissed off?
The AA roadwatch one is gold and when he is asking why so many RTE presenters are related to other RTE presenters
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Being an RTE presenter is clearly a genetic thing. It’s not something that can be learned
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I totally agree with you. My general thought is that if you are well briefed, understand their position well and construct your questions well, then you can do a good interview. The issue is striking a balance between situating your questions entirely within their worldview, or questioning from outside it. If you do entirely the former, then you are really just handing over a megaphone; but if you do entirely the latter, then you are in danger of just having a dialogue of the deaf.
A good question is essentially a path from inside the interviewee’s worldview to the outside. A good answer takes that path. That said, where there is an obvious inconsistency in their position, or an unacceptable conclusion of their train of thought that they like to glide over, it’s important to keep the conversation on that topic either until they answer, or until they expose their unwillingness to answer.
Once you get over his oddball accent
I’ve been everywhere man…
How are people after the podcasts?
Are they pissed off?
I absolutely don’t try to be a hard-ass interviewer, or to piss people off, or be performatively aggressive. The only difference really between me and a luvvie-interview on RTÉ is that I have a different view of what ideas should be challenged, and if they need to be challenged, I will challenge them. I’m in no way special. In normal democracies, there are a variety of voices, and between them everything gets challenged. The only reason I stand out, (to the very minor extent that I do) is that I don’t operate inside the Overton window, and our entire media has the same Overton window, with almost no variation.
To this extent people like McGuirk and MacKenna are correct in their analysis that their ideas are being excluded because they are not ‘correct’. Where I differ from them is in their thinking that their many of their ideas hold water, when in reality they are often nonsense, but their exclusion from most media means that their followers don’t get much exposure to them being challenged.
Both McGuirk (especially after his second interview) and MacKenna were excellent sports, and took robust challenge very well. That doesn’t always happen. If you are really interested in more ah car crash interviews, listen to Sarah Benson, then of Ruhama:
and Brigid Laffan
It’s notable that they both are very deeply embedded in ‘official Ireland’ ideology, and were shocked that I didn’t stick to the ‘approved’ list of questions, and spent far more time questioning my right to ask, rather than in formulating a decent answer. By contrast Paul Murphy and John Lyons, from the far left, are great crack, and take hard questions without batting an eyelid, even if they are very firmly rooted in their own worldview.
The one that I’m most proud of at the moment is about the Active Consent Unit at NUIG, the collision of public money, ideological-driven research and people precious about their careers is really toxic. This podcast is only scratching the surface, by the way, there is much more to tell here and none of it reflects well on NUIG. I have thousands of pages of FoI to wade through, I’ll get back to it.
If you like, share share share!
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It’s really you??? 
I enjoyed the interview with Ewan, he’s a divisive figure on this forum, I think he’s a dickhead.
I felt you could have let him expand a few times, you spoke over him on a number of occasions in order to clarify questions or his interpretation of your meaning, maybe I’ve just been programmed by main stream media into interpreting the rules of engagement in a certain way.
But well done, I enjoyed it, I’ll listen to a couple more some time.
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@Little_Lord_Fauntleroy is after pulling off an astounding coup. Ireland’s Joe Rogan on TFK.
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All the usual suspects batting their eyelids now that they have a z list celeb in their midst.
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Have we had one before?
Not sure that we’ve had one this prominent before.
Yes, similar to the fawning over the hurling columnist
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