Episode with Richie Sadlier

Nine months ago, Pat Sheedy walked out of prison after spending more than two and a half years locked up for trying to fund his decades-long gambling addiction through various scams. After winning his first bet as a teenager, he quickly fell into a cycle of working, borrowing and stealing to make sure he could place his next bet. Long periods of abstinence - at one point he went 12 years without gambling - followed, but it wasn't until finally being given a custodial sentence in 2020 that he began to really reflect on the damage he was doing to other people. Pat speaks to Richie just a few hundred metres down the road from where he placed his first bet in Limerick city today and explains why prison was the best thing that ever happened to him, describes the life of a compulsive gambler and how he's tried to make amends with the victims of his scams since being released last August. Episode is a Second Captains podcast. 

This week on Episode we're taking a mid-series break but fear not, Richie and Killian will be back on the road next week when we'll be bringing you another brilliant conversation. Until then, a massive thank you for all the support for the show so far this series!Episode is a Second Captains production.

This week Richie and Killian travelled to Phibsboro to meet James Kavanagh at the home he's just about to leave after eight years for a new life in the countryside. Richie and James look back at James' teenage years, the earliest of which he spent locked up alone in his bedroom, his sanctuary from the homophobic bullying that dominated his time at school. He speaks about the reality of having no friends whatsoever until he was sixteen, darting from class to class to avoid other students and how he managed to start afresh and leave those days behind him. After the chat, Killian describes an experience both he and James have had in common with last week's guest, Donie O'Sullivan: recurring panic attacks and trying to manage them before they derail your day-to-day life. Episode is a Second Captains production.

As Trump supporters stormed the Capitol building in Washington DC on January 6th 2021, a relatively little-known Irish journalist walked CNN viewers through exactly what was going on as it unfolded. Donie O'Sullivan quickly became a household name, and within a few weeks he had decided to use his newfound platform to speak about the sometimes acute mental health issues which had been a part of his life over the previous decade. In the three years since, Donie has continued to report on misinformation and conspiracy theories on the American right for CNN, all the while managing his evolving relationship with his own psyche.  He joins Richie today to chat about the way in which his personal experiences with irrational thinking guide his reporting on fringe groups like QAnon, how a diagnosis of OCD has brought more clarity to his life and how alcohol can muddy those same waters. Episode is a Second Captains production. 

It's been a few months since we closed out series one of Episode sitting at Damien Dempsey's kitchen table, and to mark the first show of the new series, we're bringing you an exclusive interview. Last week, Richie and Killian travelled to France to sit down with Vera Pauw at her home in the Dordogne, as she speaks publicly for the first time since the week the FAI declined to renew her contract seven months ago. Vera describes the impact she felt the allegations published just before the World Cup in The Athletic about her time as manager of the Houston Dash - allegations which she denies - had on Ireland's World Cup campaign, and how she thinks she is now unemployable in the western world. She also responds to Diane Caldwell's suggestion that everything Ireland achieved, including their first World Cup qualification, was in spite of Vera being their manager, and outlines the disconnect she feels with the team she spent four years with. Episode is a Second Captains podcast. 

Today's season finale with Damien Dempsey is a beautiful journey through music mixed with some hilarious stories about Shane MacGowan, Ronnie Drew, and a live performance from his kitchen table that blew Richie and Killian away.In ten days time, Damien will take to the stage at Vicar Street for the first of six of his now iconic Christmas gigs at the venue, concerts which have taken on a huge emotional significance for his fans.Ahead of those shows and in the midst of recording his new album, Richie sat down with Damo in his home in Donaghmede to chat about that Vicar Street magic and how little pressure there is when you and the audience want the exact same thing: the best gig of their lives.Episode is brought to you by NOW and is a Second Captains podcast.

Three years ago this month, Terence Power and Calvin O'Brien, two young Dubliners from the inner city, sat down at a kitchen table and recorded a podcast with one of their phones. That initial conversation spawned Talking Bollox, a podcast which quickly gathered huge momentum and has become one of the most popular shows in Ireland.One of the reasons for the show's success has been Terence and Calvin's frankness about some of the issues affecting their inner city communities, and today Richie sits down with Terence to speak about one of those issues which has been a feature of his life since childhood, addiction. Terence describes growing up in a home where his mother found herself unable to cope and spent years in active addiction, how their relationship has been completely transformed since she began her recovery and had Terence's younger siblings, and his own recovery after years of cocaine and alcohol abuse. He also speaks really candidly for the first time about his recent relapse, how it made him realise alcohol and drugs really hold nothing for him anymore, and the joy Talking Bollox brings him. Episode is brought to you by NOW and is a Second Captains production. 

In March 1992, Zlata Filipović was an 11-year-old girl growing up in Sarajevo, Bosnia in a normal, middle-class family who kept a diary about all the everyday things a child of her age does: going to school, doing music lessons, visiting her grandparents. Just one month later, Zlata's diary had begun to transform into an incredibly vivid description of a city under siege as the Balkans War reached her hometown. Towards the end of 1993, that diary became she and her family's way out of the city: picked up by a French publisher, it became an international bestseller in the midst of the war and Zlata, just 13 years old, became a media phenomenon. She joined Richie in the Second Captains studios earlier this week and described the daily reality of life in a war-torn city, how overwhelming at times the coverage of the ongoing atrocities in Ukraine and Gaza have been, and how she and her family eventually came to resettle in Dublin in the nineties. Zlata's story is truly incredible and feels particularly timely - we'd like to thank her for being so open and willing to share it. Episode is brought to you by NOW and is a Second Captains production.