Juvenalia

Hello and welcome to the Juvenalia Christmas Spectacular 2016. We gathered some past and future guests around the Juvenalia table to talk Christmas with us. We were *very* surprised by the topics that came up and can pretty much guarantee that you will be too. We won’t spoil too much but if you want a Christmas podcast that features Elon Musk, the Titanic Museum, famous graveyards, Karen Carpenter, and beards within beards, you’re in the right place...

Sinéad Gleeson is a broadcaster, writer, editor of three short story anthologies, host of The Book Show on Radio One, half of The Anti-Room, and all round enviable sound person. She very kindly joined Alan and Ellen to talk about Top of the Pops and related matters. We were a little in awe of her because she’s very cool and interviews important authors and musicians all the time and we’re two plucky ragamuffins just trying our best...

Playwright Peter Dunne joins Alan & Ellen to talk about Jack Clayton’s extremely terrifying 1961 horror film The Innocents starring Deborah Kerr. We talked about all kinds of stuff: watching inappropriate things when you’re young which is basically the theme of Juvenalia, creepy children, Salem, Amityville, local mythology, whether any of us actually believe in the supernatural (spoiler: some of us do), Ouija boards, demonic possession, fear, nature v nurture, and loads more...

Dreamgun's Heber Hanly joins Alan and special guest co-host Andréa Farrell to talk about 1999’s dystopian cyber-punk philosophy marital arts and guns classic The Matrix. We talk about the effect a good action film can have on a ten-year old’s brain, getting older, our skincare regimes, Wild Wild West, the blank magic of Keanu Reeves, Heber answers our questions about the plot, and of course, we slam the sequels good and hard...

Anna Carey is a journalist and the author of the Real Rebecca series of YA books and the upcoming The Making Of Mollie about the Irish suffragette movement. She sat down with Alan and Ellen for a DELIGHTFUL chat about 80s British girl’s comics like Mandy and Bunty. It was very informative and fun and I urge you to seek out some of the comics for yourself...

One of our favourite standups and people Andréa Farrell joined Alan & Ellen to talk about Stephen Spielberg’s classic Jaws. Inspired by Spielberg’s sparing use of the shark in Jaws, we often talked about everything and anything besides Jaws, making the bits where we actually talked about the film all the more special. Make sure to listen to the whole thing as at some point we decided to record an episode within an episode about To Kill A Mockingbird just because. This was fun. Talk soon...

Shawna Scott is the founder of Sex Siopa, Ireland’s first health and design focused sex shop. She’s also a Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion fanatic who has been waiting “her entire life” to talk about it at length. She talked to Alan and Sarah for a long time about the film, being a bit of a weirdo growing up, the Pacific North-West, choreographed dance routines with Alan Cumming, the magic of Lisa Kudrow, Mira Sorvino’s magical voice, cool kids, and loads more. It was fun...

Elva Carri is the founder of Girl Crew, a brilliant idea that’s been changing the lives of women all over the world since it started. She joined Alan and Ellen to talk about The Den, another brilliant idea that changed lives all over Ireland in the 80s, 90s, and part of the 00s. We talked about Ray D’Arcy, Ian Dempsey, the other humans who we didn’t remember all that much, Zig & Zag, Zuppy, Dustin, Snotser, Socky, Podge & Rodge, and the grim inevitability of death...

Comedian, actor, writer, philanthropist, and host of The Alison Spittle Show, Alison Spittle, joins Alan and Sarah for a trip down memory lane as we talk about our wild and varied experiences with chat rooms and message boards. Alison was an old-fashioned troll, the good funny kind not the ones that harass people on Twitter, Alan was boring but earnest, and Sarah forged deep friendships. We cover all the angles here...

Comedian Teresa Coyne joins Alan and Ellen to talk about the lesser-known but actually quite good YA series The Saddle Club. It was kind of an equine Babysitter’s Club. Teresa was a fan, Alan’s now a convert, Ellen was jetlagged. A good time was had by all...