Craic in the Habit 🎸☘️

So, What’s the Craic?

The Craic is back on this autumnal (bit blowy out) Friday evening, bringing you news and views of the Irish and Irish-at-heart at home and abroad. The Craic is the weekly newsletter from Shift, our app for the global Irish community. If you ain’t got Shift yet, download it here. And if you’d like to share The Craic with a friend, pop their email in here, please.

News from Home

Zuck’s a Gael? We don’t have a bingo card, but if we did, we probably wouldn’t have “Mark Zuckerberg donates money to Waterford GAA clubs” on it. But here we are. The clubs, located in and around the castle/estate/big-aul-house that Zuckerberg bought, received 50,000 euros ($56K) each, so we imagine he’s simply trying to make a good impression on the locals. As an aside, it’s been estimated that Zuckerberg’s company, Meta, has so far accumulated 2.5 billion euros in fines from Irish regulators over the years, so 150 grand probably feels like pocket change.

You Don’t Ask, You Don’t Get. Two cheeky, yet determined, 18-year-old Irish podcasters landed the interview of a lifetime with none other than Oprah Winfrey. O’Prah (no? okay) has been spending a bit of time in Ireland recently, and one of the lads accosted (in a friendly, Irish way) her bestie, Gayle King, and persuaded her to send their video plea to get the deal done. Anyway, Oprah obliged like the queen she is and gave the two boys their interview. You can catch it on The Back of the Class Podcast here.

Ah, Lads. The Guinness Open House Brewery in Baltimore is closing its doors, with owner Diageo citing changing consumer habits (corporate speak for “people aren’t spending enough money in our joint). The establishment had a popular taproom and restaurant, while the beer production plant side of the operation ceased operating in 2023.

Good man, Eddie. A lovely little tale this: Up-and-coming Irish rock band Florence Road had their guitars and gear stolen during their American tour last week. So in stepped legendary Pearl Jam rocker Eddie Vedder, furnishing the band with all they needed to perform at the Ohana Festival. Good guy Eddie even gave Florence Road’s frontwoman Lily Aron his own guitar to play on the show.

The Craic Recommends….having a laugh. Katie Boyle, our favorite Irish comedian, is playing Comedy Loft in Washington, D.C tonight and tomorrow, and last night too. In fact, Paul paid her a visit last night at her gig, presenting her with a Shift T-shirt of her very own, and you know what? She’s only gone and turned them into jammies. Yes, that’s right, Katie Boyle wears Shift Pajamas. And we have pictorial evidence. Seriously though, if you’re stuck for something to do, there are tickets still available for Katie’s “Irish Immigrant” show at the Comedy Loft here. We can vouch that it's class. 

The Irish Influence

This week’s Irish influence is…you, the readers of this hebdomadal newsletter. It’s actually our second birthday (we’ve missed it by about a week), marking two years of The Craic coming in every Friday. Why do we do it? Well, let’s be totally honest about it: It’s a little bit of a marketing and awareness-building for Shift. However, we also do it because we love it. It’s a joy to bring you odds and ends about Ireland and Irish culture every week. As Patrick says in the video below, it’s one of our favorite parts of the week. Anyway, we think there’s somewhere in the region of 13,000 of ye opening your Yahoos and Googlemails each week, and we can’t thank you enough. It wouldn’t exist without you brilliant bunch of lads and lasses and your passion for all things Irish. A heartfelt go raibh míle maith agaibh from all of us. 

Cúpla Focal

Fómhar {Foe-Ver} – Autumn/Fall. It’s now Deireadh Fómhair (October), which literally means end (of) autumn. You know, we found this little piece in the Journal.ie that covers all the wee beautiful autumnal words in Irish. Our favorite? Seordán, which describes the rustling sound you might hear, such as the wind in the leaves. 

Blast from the Past

We can’t really put a specific date on the fall of the Celtic Tiger, AKA the booming Urish economy that defined the early 2000s, but let’s just say in the autumn of 2008 we were really, really, really, really in the shit. Lehman Brothers had just collapsed, and Irish people were quickly finding out that their two-bedroom terraced house in Drogheda was, indeed, not worth 7 trillion euros after all. We can make light of it now, but things were hard, hard enough to see a sharp spike in emigration levels, especially among young people. For a few years after, we, along with our friends in Greece, were the economic black sheep of Europe, too, which led to a lot of scolding from then-German Chancellor Angela Merkel about living and working within our means. Remember all that with Angela? It led to The Greatest Flag In History™️. Anyhoo, things did get better, though not as equally as many would like, and some are even suggesting a Celtic Tiger 2.0 to describe this current boom period. Let’s just hope things don’t turn sour again.

And One Last Thing….

From festivals to podcasts. After the Irish festival circuit saw the Shift team crisscross America (Patrick’s wrecked), it’s now time for us to pull up comfy chairs and do some podcasting. This week, we had our CPTO Darren Gibney join Hibernian Radio to talk about his journey from Warrenpoint, Co Down to Chicago - and why we’re building Shift for the global Irish community. We are going big on podcasts on Shift (watch out, Spotify), so if you want to add yours, check out the app to get started. You can find the Hibernian Radio podcast on Shift, or listen to it directly on Apple Podcasts here.