Newstalk Daily

On paper, Gaza is in a ceasefire. On the ground, Israeli military operations continue, borders inside the strip are shifting, aid access is tightening, and more than 400 people have been killed since the agreement came into effect last year. Humanitarian organisations, including Doctors Without Borders, have been suspended from operating in Gaza under new Israeli registration rules, while reconstruction remains blocked and civilians are being killed near expanding control lines. At the same time, new Israeli settlements have been approved in the occupied West Bank, raising further questions about whether the ceasefire is stabilising the region or quietly storing up the conditions for more violence. Professor Fawaz Gerges of the London School of Economics argues that what now exists is not a ceasefire at all, but a region-wide low-intensity war. He joins Shane Beatty on the podcast to assess whether the current arrangement was ever designed to hold, how credible the US role as mediator really is, and why the risk of renewed conflict between Israel and Iran in 2026 may be higher than many are willing to acknowledge. Is this a genuine pause on the road to peace, or simply a different phase of the same conflict?

This year, the United States marks 250 years since the signing of the Declaration of Independence. What was meant to be a sweeping national commemoration — exhibitions, reenactments and reflection — has instead become a flashpoint for political and cultural conflict, with funding rows, museum controversies and a White House determined to shape how the story is told. On today’s podcast, Sean Defoe is joined by Dr Sandra Scanlon, lecturer in American history at University College Dublin, to ask what the American Revolution was really about — and why its legacy is proving so contested 250 years on. They discuss the Declaration of Independence, mythmaking around 1776, how anniversaries shape national identity, the challenge of commemoration, and whether it’s possible to celebrate the founding of the United States while confronting slavery, exclusion, and inequality. They also explore Donald Trump’s policing of “patriotic history,” the fallout from statue debates and Black Lives Matter, and what a genuinely successful 250th anniversary might look like.

During 2025, the Catholic Church celebrated its Jubilee of Youth. At the same time, polling research in Ireland and the UK revealed growth in spirituality and religious practice among young people. In this podcast from the Newstalk Daily archive, Ciara Doherty is joined by Colm Flynn, Vatican correspondent with EWTN.

One of the biggest streaming hits of the year was The House of Guinness on Netflix. In this podcast from the Newstalk Daily archive, Ciara Doherty is joined by journalist and author Emily Hourican, whose The Guinness Girls novels also fictionalise characters from the famous Dublin dynasty.

Five years ago, the fallout from an Oireachtas Golf Society event at the Station House Hotel in Clifden, county Galway, became one of the most politically explosive stories of the pandemic: Golfgate. In this podcast from the Newstalk Daily archive, Sean Defoe is joined by the journalists who broke the story for the Irish Examiner, Aoife Moore and Paul Hosford.