A gentleman is someone who can play the accordion but doesn’t – especially on an Aer Lingus planeHugh Linehan: ‘Trapped in a confined space with loud music played at you is what they do to terrorists,’ one commenter said about last weekend’s impromptu sessionFri Nov 10 2023 - 05:20
To err is human. Or it used to be, before we outsourced the job to techThe Dublin Marathon medal howlers raise the question of what is going on in a culture supposedly more educated than ever beforeSat Nov 04 2023 - 05:20
Rory Stewart: ‘I fought an existential fight against Boris Johnson, who is a terrible human being’The former Tory MP on the Brexit vote, serving as minister under David Cameron and Theresa May, and running against Johnson for the party leadershipSat Oct 28 2023 - 06:00
Patrick Kielty’s Late Late Show: The host is excellent. Everything else... not so muchHugh Linehan: Does RTÉ have the resources, the technical firepower or, most of all, the guests to make the new format work?Fri Oct 27 2023 - 12:00
Dethroning of a crypto king: ‘Sam Bankman-Fried’s brain couldn’t function doing one thing. It had become addicted to distraction’Author Michael Lewis has written a revealing and sometimes very funny book about the young former billionaire facing a huge US federal fraud trialSun Oct 22 2023 - 06:00
Smithfield the second-coolest place on the planet? It’s not even the second-coolest place in Dublin 7Time Out has form on this, having previously named Phibsborough as the 27th coolest place. So what’s it playing at?Thu Oct 19 2023 - 10:15
It’s not me, Twitter, it’s you: Why I’m saying goodbye to X Hugh Linehan: Elon Musk’s horrible social-media platform is no longer fit for purposeSat Oct 14 2023 - 05:20
U2 and the Las Vegas Sphere: You can admire the band without loving the spectacleHugh Linehan: Without their Achtung Baby pivot, U2 might now be doing shows in mid-sized arenas alongside Billy Idol or Simple MindsSat Oct 07 2023 - 05:20
Aertel brought Day-Glo immediacy into a drab, analogue worldEnd of an era as RTÉ announces shutdown of its teletext service first launched in 1987Tue Oct 03 2023 - 16:44
Laurence Fox’s misogynistic rant on Dan Wootton’s GB News show comes straight from the Murdoch playbookHugh Linehan: The channel suspended both hosts after Fox’s remarks about Ava Evans. But it owes its existence to such Fox News-style attacksFri Sept 29 2023 - 13:14
How did the anti-IRA Zombie by The Cranberries become an Irish rugby anthem?How did Rugby World Cup fans end up embracing a song about the futility of atavistic nationalist violence?Sat Sept 23 2023 - 07:00
Has the BBC secretly cancelled Róisín Murphy for her views on puberty blockers?Hugh Linehan: The Irish singer said she was sorry her comments had 'been directly hurtful to many of you' but did not withdraw themSat Sept 23 2023 - 06:30
Is the age of distraction killing indie cinema, or is that just old person talk?Hugh Linehan: Richard Linklater thinks filmmaking and fiction are losing their central place in the culture. He has a pointSun Sept 17 2023 - 05:15
RTÉ at Oireachtas committee: Less high drama, more a grim crisis. Expect ratings to slumpRatings will inevitably drop as high drama of the earlier hearings gives way to the grim crisis around the broadcaster's funding difficultiesWed Sept 13 2023 - 20:31
If Netflix and Disney+ have ditched your favourite shows, here’s what’s going onHugh Linehan: The era of peak TV is over – so the Hollywood strikes may be a blessing for studios that were making too many programmesSat Aug 26 2023 - 06:00
Shut up and play the hits: The dangers of rock stars getting politicalHugh Linehan: The Killers, The 1975 and Placebo have been getting into trouble with audiences around the world this summerSat Aug 19 2023 - 05:00
Did Kevin Bakhurst make the right call in showing Ryan Tubridy the door? Hugh Linehan: The decision sends a clear, tough message to public, staff and politiciansFri Aug 18 2023 - 13:44
What will Ryan Tubridy’s exit mean for his fellow RTÉ presenters?A significant drop in earnings is on the cards under a new regime that holds all the cardsThu Aug 17 2023 - 20:53
Does Ryan Tubridy have a future at RTÉ? Kevin Bakhurst seems to think soGrant Thornton report shifts blame further towards RTÉ’s shortcomings but new director general will hold all the cards in future contract negotiationsWed Aug 16 2023 - 16:29
Jim Crow nostalgia and a QAnon-adjacent film are among the big US entertainments of the summerThe success of Jason Aldean’s song Try That in a Small Town and the Jim Caviezel-starring film Sound of Freedom raise disturbing questionsSat Aug 12 2023 - 06:00
State and local government have failed to deliver urban spaces that feel functional or comfortableHugh Linehan: In Dublin rough, transitional parts of town get rough, unsympathetic treatment from the authoritiesSat Aug 05 2023 - 05:00
Memo to Elon Musk: Be like the bluebirdHugh Linehan: It takes preternatural chutzpah to replace the traditional symbol of hope and happiness with a letter of the alphabet associated with nihilism, crypto-fascism and pornSat Jul 29 2023 - 05:00
Sinéad O’Connor: A take-no-prisoners defiance in the face of traumaThe acclaimed Dublin singer, who shot to global fame with her 1990 hit song Nothing Compares 2 U, has died at the age of 56Wed Jul 26 2023 - 21:39
Talent is now a dirty word at RTÉ, even though the broadcaster badly needs more of itIt’s plain wrong to suggest the country is full of people who could easily take on the job of presenting for a modest feeSat Jul 22 2023 - 05:00
Ryan Tubridy is the inoffensive figurehead RTÉ wantedThe broadcaster’s conservatism, reliant on a few big names for decades, will have to change nowWed Jul 12 2023 - 19:40
Kevin Bakhurst’s arrival gives RTÉ a much-needed leaderPublic service experience of new director general fuels his first moves but real meat needs to be put on bones of plansMon Jul 10 2023 - 18:20
Would Oscar Wilde have survived in the #MeToo era?Hugh Linehan: Wilde and Roman Polanski both took advantage of positions of power and privilege to sexually exploit young peopleSat Jun 24 2023 - 08:00
RTÉ's shocking breach of trust over Tubridy’s unusual pay deal weakens broadcaster’s financial pleasRevelation that broadcaster consistently under-reported earnings received by presenter is deeply damaging – for both partiesThu Jun 22 2023 - 19:00
Berlusconi’s political stand-up comedy routine was hugely influential but the joke isn’t funny any moreHugh Linehan: The potent blend of machismo, shamelessness and corruption set the mould for Trump and JohnsonSat Jun 17 2023 - 05:45
Ian Paisley jr and the mock-cock-rock of Kiss: Strange things happen behind the privet hedges of North AntrimHugh Linehan: Gene Simmons and Nick Cave represent two very different strands of musical conservatismSat Jun 10 2023 - 05:00
Public Morality and the Culture Wars; Left is Not Woke: Reviewing contemporary political thought Both books provide robust interrogations of compelling ideas shaping societies for good or illMon Jun 05 2023 - 04:47
That AI-generated Magdalene selfie: a lot of fuss about very littleHugh Linehan: Why did a banal picture in a Dublin exhibition elicit such a furious response?Sun Jun 04 2023 - 09:32
Andy Warhol gets another 15 minutes of fame – a reminder we all still live in his worldHugh Linehan: A judgment by the US supreme court may have all sorts of legal implications for copyright in the futureSun May 28 2023 - 06:25
‘A lot of history is a very, very dark comedy in which people behave quite badly’The cult podcasters behind The Rest is History visited Dublin recently to record episodes about Ireland’s past with their trademark self-deprecating humour and lightly worn eruditionSat May 27 2023 - 05:00
We were promised jetpacks. Instead we got Outlook calendars and two-factor authenticationHugh Linehan: The metaverse is not the exciting and dangerous world science fiction once teased us withSun May 21 2023 - 05:00
There’s only one great British institution that’s really worth rooting forHugh Linehan: The contrast between events in Westminster Abbey and on Merseyside is starkSun May 14 2023 - 05:00
Viral death: how new media failed to live up to its promiseHugh Linehan: Over-reliance on social media and clicks undermined the promise of Buzzfeed, Vice and othersSun May 07 2023 - 05:00
The vinyl revival holds the prospect of an unappealing futureHugh Linehan: Premium physical products may survive the digital tsunami, but at what cost?Sat Apr 29 2023 - 05:00
Sixty years of evolution and revolution in videoHugh Linehan: A major exhibition in New York looks back at politically engaged video art since the 1960sSat Apr 22 2023 - 06:00
Joe Biden is probably the last great avatar of an Irish-American culture in terminal decline Hugh Linehan: Ireland doesn’t do nostalgia. We’re happy to let others do it for usSat Apr 08 2023 - 05:00
Artificial intelligence: the time for funny pictures is overHugh Linehan: There are growing fears that the AI arms race could pose an existential threat to humanitySat Apr 01 2023 - 05:00
Succession is back, and the super-rich are more popular than everHugh Linehan: What is driving the fascination with financial elites in contemporary drama?Sat Mar 25 2023 - 05:00
Does the Irishness of a film matter? No, except when it doesHugh Linehan: There was a time when debates about authentic Irishness had more of an edgeSat Mar 11 2023 - 05:00
How true crime took over media with victims being dehumanised in the search for the killer Hugh Linehan: Very few of us can claim to never have been drawn into these storiesSat Mar 04 2023 - 05:00
Roald Dahl, JK Rowling and Dr Seuss: Language police to the left, book-banning zealots to the rightHugh Linehan: If sensitivity readers are willing to bowdlerise an author such as Roald Dahl, what’s going on with first-time writers?Fri Feb 24 2023 - 05:30
Why is trust in media declining? Maybe it’s not us, it’s youHugh Linehan: Trumpist framing of the media as the enemy is commonplace among both the far right and far leftSat Feb 18 2023 - 05:00
Deathly dull Grammys and Oscars are heading for either oblivion or reinventionHugh Linehan: How did the word’s richest and most sophisticated media industry get to be so bad at the basics?Sat Feb 11 2023 - 05:00
What are the real divides between North and South?If politics is downstream of culture, then culture is where we need to lookSun Feb 05 2023 - 06:15
No laughing matter: The Snapper asks troubling questions that weren’t noticed at the timeHugh Linehan: Both book and film offer an insight into how unconscious misogyny and ambiguity about sexual violence are deeply embedded in Irish societySat Jan 28 2023 - 05:00
Yes, The Banshees of Inisherin is up for 10 Baftas. But is it just more Martin McDonagh shtick?Martin McDonagh’s film has been widely acclaimed and looks set for Oscar success. There’s so much to admire about it, and yet...Fri Jan 20 2023 - 09:47