The sudden death of Ireland’s strongest man, Pa O’Dwyer, was widely reported this week.

The Limerick Lion was five times Ireland’s strongest man, and had also been named Britain’s Strongest Man. But who was he?

The Irish Examiner’s Limerick based reporter Manon Gilbart is today’s guest on the podcast.

Pa O’Dwyer 'always stood up for the underdog', funeral told

Tributes paid to ‘Limerick Lion’ Pa O'Dwyer after his sudden passing aged 40

Limerick man wins 'Strongest Man' contest in UK

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Children are being “bombarded” online by so-called AI girlfriend porn apps, which are gamifying sexual violence and rape and encouraging them to recruit their friends.

The technology allows users to ‘nudify’ photos of real people – including children – and subject them to an array of sexually objectifying and degrading practices including torture and violence.

Irish charities are calling for the Government to act here as the British government announced it was banning AI girlfriend and ‘nudification’ apps and websites.

Educator and researcher with SERP Eoghan Cleary is the guest on today’s episode of the Deirdre O’Shaughnessy Podcast and explains how exactly children are being targeted with this tech.

Read Cormac O’Keeffe’s feature from Monday’s Irish Examiner here: Children being 'bombarded' online by 'AI girlfriend' porn apps

'Build your own AI slut': Boys being targeted online by surge in 'girlfriend' websites

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🎧 Episode 6: May McGee, the woman who fought to make contraception legal in Ireland

May McGee was a young, hearing-impaired mother to four children under the age of two living in a caravan when she took the Irish State to the Supreme Court challenging its position on contraception, and won.

Complicated pregnancies including a stroke she suffered in one meant that she was advised to take contraception by her doctor – but the spermicidal jelly she ordered in the post was intercepted by Customs and she and her husband were threatened with prison. She was furious at the Government interfering in her private life.

May, who died late in 2025, made it possible for Irish women to plan their families and to take control of their own fertility.

📲 To listen, find us wherever you get your podcasts.

‘It was one up for the women’: Mary ‘May’ McGee's family to celebrate her life at funeral

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Anna Wintour is only following in the footsteps of Carmel Snow, who edited Harper’s Bazaar for 25 years, with a vision of catering to “well dressed women with well dressed minds”. She brought Dior and Givenchy to a US audience, hung out with Coco Chanel and Salvador Dali, and edited writers like Truman Capote, Maeve Brennan and Frank O’Connor, never losing her interest in championing Irish writing.

📲 To listen, find us wherever you get your podcasts.

Clodagh Finn: Carmel Snow, the Irish Anna Wintour who reshaped US fashion

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🎧 Episode 4: Irish sisters at the heart of European culture – Sarah and Amelia Curran

Sarah Curran was best known to generations as the tragic fiancée of United Irishman Robert Emmet, but in her own right she was a writer, poet and talented musician who made connections across Europe. Her sister Amelia was a notable artist who painted the famous portrait of Frankenstein author Mary Shelley and that of her husband, the Romantic poet, and came to the attention of US Vice President Aaron Burr, currently enjoying a resurgence in notoriety thanks to the musical Hamilton. How two sisters from Newmarket in Cork came to associate in such exalted circles is a fascinating story.

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Clodagh Finn: Amelia Curran, the Irish painter who immortalised poet Shelley

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🎧 Episode 3: Oonah Keogh,first female member of the Dublin Stock Exchange

The first female stockbroker in the world made her debut on the trading floor of the Dublin Stock Exchange in 1927, at a time of unprecedented equality and opportunity for Irish women. Her groundbreaking role was entirely forgotten by all but her family until documents in relation to her were uncovered by stock exchange staff during Covid – and now there’s a room named after her in the grand old building.

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Clodagh Finn: How Oonah Keogh made history on the Dublin Stock Exchange in 1925

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“A tough type of woman, at the moment growing quite a successful moustache... Not particularly intelligent, and does not seem [to] take her work very seriously”

Despite this blistering account of her capabilities written by a training officer, Maureen O’Sullivan was one of the most successful Allied agents in the French Resistance, lasting seven months in the field compared to an average life expectancy of six weeks.

Her fascinating life story has been uncovered in recent years and she’s been honoured in France.

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Clodagh Finn: In the footsteps of Irish secret agent Maureen O’Sullivan

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Calling women pigs has been a trope to bring down women throughout history.

The famous ‘pig-faced woman’ of Dublin was a trailblazer – in the 1700s she set up Ireland’s first public hospital using an inheritance from her twin brother.

Working with artisans, builders, doctors and notable figures in Dublin society, her work provided the first freely available medical treatment to the city’s poor.

The hospital she founded is home to the HSE today.

🎧 To listen, find us wherever you get your podcasts.

Clodagh Finn: If only we had hospital builder Madam Steevens in today's world

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