Kevin Cullen

Kevin Cullen is a prominent American journalist and author, best known for his long career at The Boston Globe and his deep expertise in Irish affairs and high-stakes investigative reporting. His career has been marked by both prestigious accolades and significant professional controversy.

Career Highlights

• The Boston Globe: Joined the paper in 1985. Over four decades, he has served as a local, national, and foreign correspondent, and ultimately a metro columnist.
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• Investigative Powerhouse: He was a member of the famous "Spotlight" team. He was the first journalist to raise public questions about the relationship between mobster Whitey Bulger and the FBI in 1988.
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• Pulitzer Prizes: * 2003: Part of the team that won the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for exposing the cover-up of sexual abuse within the Catholic Church.
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  • 2014: Part of the team that won the Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News for coverage of the Boston Marathon bombings.
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• Irish Correspondent: In 1997, he opened and ran the Globe's Dublin Bureau, becoming a leading American voice on the Northern Ireland peace process. He spent over 20 years covering the "Troubles" and the transition to peace.
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• Literary Success: He is the co-author of the New York Times bestseller Whitey Bulger: America’s Most Wanted Gangster and the Manhunt That Brought Him to Justice (2013).

Controversies

• 2018 Suspension: Cullen was suspended without pay for three months following a review of his work. The investigation concluded that he had made inaccurate or fabricated statements regarding his presence and experiences during the 2013 Boston Marathon bombings. This included a story told to the BBC about a firefighter friend that was found to be a "complete fabrication."
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• Public Perception: Despite the suspension, Cullen returned to the Globe and remains a prominent voice, often compared to legendary Boston columnists like Mike Barnicle (who also faced similar fabrication scandals).

Education and Honors

• Nieman Fellow: He was a fellow at Harvard University in 2003.
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• Awards: Recipient of the Mike Royko Award for best columnist, the Batten Medal (twice), and the Overseas Press Club award for his reporting in Ireland.
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• Education: Graduated from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and attended Trinity College Dublin.
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Recent Activities (2025–2026)

Cullen remains active in the Irish-American media circuit. He recently appeared on the Aran Island Discs podcast with Rossa McDermott, where he discussed his career and the influence of Irish culture on his life and reporting.

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:01

Welcome to Iron Island Discs, a podcast series where we talk to Irish people from different walks of life as they reflect on their own journeys. Join me, Ross McDermott, as we explore the many aspects of Irish Discs and what it means to each of our guests through life's ups and downs. Kevin Cullman, welcome to Iron Island Discs. Thanks, Rosa. Appreciate it. Now, the first question is a trick one. Have you been to the Iron Islands?

SPEAKER_01 0:28

I've been there exactly twice. I first traveled there about 45 years ago when I was a student at Trinity College in Dublin. For some reasons that ill estate me, Ross. Trinity accepted me. You know, working class kid from Boston. Um, so I dropped out, I literally dropped, I had to drop out of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst because they did not have a program, an exchange program with Trinity. So when I was at Trinity, I hitchhiked from Randala, where I had a bedsit to Calamara. And I know when I tell people, I used to tell people they what are you out of here? They were so different back then. I mean, I I as I recall, I think I had five or six rides across the country, and I don't think I waited for a lift for more than 10 minutes.

SPEAKER_02 1:14

I think that what amazing about that story, uh Kevin, is the concept of hitching. If I said that to my daughters at 25, 26, they'd look at me and say, What? Hitchhiking.

SPEAKER_01 1:25

And I remember when I would go back, even in you know the 80s and 90s, I was picking up hitchhikers, and sometimes it'd be it would be a solitary girl in the country, down the country. And I'd go, You're gonna be kidding me. So I'd get her in the car and I'd give her the dad lecture. What are you doing there? I could be an American psycho. In fact, I am an American psycho. They have a car. But no, so I I hitched out to um Connemara, and I just remember I was like walking. I I walked from Carroe, where my grandmother, Bridget Conley, was from, to um Cummus, where uh up the upper Cummus. Upper Comus, yeah. Lower Cummings. Upper Cummus where my grandfather, Martin Flarity, was from. And I remember the bogs were popping. It was eerie, it was like dusk, and that was the longest I waited for a ride. I mean, it was it was a bit, yeah, because there aren't that many people out there. So like it's dusk, and the the the bar the bogs are popping like spontaneous combustion. I'm like who is waiting for something to come out of the bonds. But um, anyway, I got a lift down to Rossaville the next day because I stayed at like a beach. Um and took the ferry over, I believe it was the Dunangus. Yeah. Uh, and uh I just you know walked around the island. I only went for the day that time, uh, which was well from what I could see that very few people stayed over, unless they were they were natives, if they were locals, you know. So I um just it was just I just remember if it had to be in Ishmore, I'm assuming.

SPEAKER_02 2:51

Yeah, it would be a good one.

SPEAKER_01 2:53

And I just I just meandered about the place. And one of my aunts, uh Barbara Hayhurst, did a lot of I never did the ancestry thing, which I really regret. And someday I will do it, but she did a lot of research. And I remember her when I was like a teenager, her telling me um that our family that this the Flyhartys were old Flyhartys and that they were on the Aaron Islands, and at some point in like the I believe the 19th century at some point, they just said, This is enough, let's go to the mainland, and then they settled uh around Cumus in Upper Cummus. And um, so that was you know, I'm I was just walking around the island, it was so so like rustic and so I just remember saying, How the hell the people live here? And this was like 1980. But um, I'm thinking about my ancestors living on this place, even within the last hundred and fifty years, it just amazed me. But um, so I you know that was the weather that day was good? It was, as I recall, very good. I don't remember getting rained on at all, but that first time, and again, I was only on the island for hours as I took the the evening ferry or the late afternoon ferry back. But um, years later, um, so that was it about five years later, I went back with little money in my pocket and uh my wife and I dated for about two years before we married um in South Boston, and in 1985, about six months before we got married, we did a 10-day tour of Ireland. You know, we hit some beautiful blue book places, you know, guest houses. Geez, they were lovely. And they weren't crazy money back then, Rosa.

SPEAKER_02 4:25

Yeah, they really weren't, they were a lot cheaper than well that blue book was a very quiet secret in those days, uh Kevin, because I had come across, I was coming back from Spain, I wasn't in the States by then. It was very kind of places off the beaten track you wouldn't know about, and they were very reasonably priced.

SPEAKER_01 4:41

Absolutely, and we we just it was great, but you know, we went out of our comfort zone and went to um got back on the Donengus, went out there and we were going to, we made arrangements at a very particular place because it was owned by the aunt, a B, owned by the aunt of a fellow I played ice hockey with in West Roxbury, and uh he was his name was Tommy, and he was kind of a character, but you know, his people from Colomara like mine, and we go, Oh, yeah, you gotta stay with my aunt. So he goes, but Tommy says, Um, I talked to her, she's very happy to receive you, but I gotta tell you, my aunt razor is um super Catholic. Yeah, and I said, Uh, how Catholic? She's she's really Catholic. Like um, she she's very Catholic. I go, uh, okay, whatever. So Martha and my wife, but then my fiance, we take the midday boat over from Rossville, and we're looking at all the natives on the boats, and they look like my cousin Jackie Williams, God almighty. So anyway, we go to we walk up to the B, not that far from the pier, and then drive ourselves to Tommy's aunt, Teresa. And she was lovely. Um, but you know, she was one of those Irish women who end every sentence with a sharp intake of breath. And we were like, we thought she had asthma. We didn't know what's going on. So anyway, she was well again, she was lovely. She showed us around the place and gave us these super Catholic rules about being in her B. And um, you know, before we headed off to walk down to the village pub near the pier and all this, she goes, You're married, Thomas says.

SPEAKER_00 6:18

Martha and I look at each other, and I turned to her and I said, Yes, I would love and live with this woman the rest of my life. And um, and Teresa looks at me very suspiciously.

SPEAKER_01 6:30

So anyway, Martha and I cycled, borrowed bikes down to the pub, the light hanging on. It was just brilliant. And we got there like it was late, we got there like around 11. And being Americans, we had no idea that the pub would be full. It was full. Yeah, and we found out shortly after ordering a pint that it was full because all the natives, all the locals were there to watch that TV show Dallas. Now, I I just remember from Father Ted when um the the the the crazy guy played by Pat Shore and he has that shirt says I shot JR.

SPEAKER_03 7:07

Yeah, yeah, it's a big thing.

SPEAKER_01 7:09

In that episode of Father Ted. Yeah, who he shot him? I think his name is the character's name is Tom.

SPEAKER_00 7:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 7:14

Uh Father Ted goes, How are you, Tom? He goes, Father, I killed a man.

SPEAKER_00 7:19

JR. Ted goes, Well, that's that's great, that's lovely. But yeah, I can't talk.

SPEAKER_01 7:23

I'm doing I'm doing a teleinterview or something like that. Anyway, so but at that time, I don't I don't know if you recall if you were in Ireland at that time or you're in America, but I think you're still in Ireland. Um, so the Irish were more fascinated with Dallas than the Americans.

SPEAKER_02 7:37

Larry Hagman became a hero. He used to come and do the races and to make appearances, he was because he we didn't know who shot Dare.

SPEAKER_01 7:47

To me, it it I always thought it was like the re the inverse relationship. It's like Americans would watch the quiet man and say, Oh, that's what Ireland is like, you know? And I said, and then and then like Irish people would watch Dallas and oh, that's what America's like. The funny thing is, Martha and I had never watched Dallas, not one. Why would you? So, no, I mean, geez, who cares? What we're sitting there above, it's and and the atmosphere was brilliant. And the TV was on the bar, you know, they didn't have a TV in the wall or anything. This was 1980 in the show.

SPEAKER_02 8:18

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 8:19

So at like, I don't know, 11:30 in the middle of the show, who comes in but the local guard sergeant? I'm saying, oh she's we're screwed. You know, he's gonna cite everybody, he's gonna shut the bar down. And he looked like pissed off when he came in. And oh, here we go. But then he like looks at the TV, the crowd, they all how are you, Seamus? He's rubbing his hands together. He nods to the bartender who starts pulling a pint for him, and he sits right down next to me and Martha, and he goes, How is you? I go, Jesus. So, anyway, so we watched Dallas, had a couple of pints, and by the time we get out, I I don't know, one o'clock, two o'clock in the morning. And I said, How the hell are we gonna find the cup the B? And uh Martha said, Well, it was down that hill. I go, we're gonna drive down a hill. So we get on the pipes, and you know, we're not pedaling, we're just gliding, going. And I just remember all of a sudden there's a I'm just going straight, hoping I don't hit a ditch. And I go, I'll hear I'm gonna die on Innishmore off lying about being married when I'm not married. This is gonna be a scandal all over the Irish press. So, anyway, all of a sudden I hear this barking and there's a dog at my side, and I can feel the dog against my leg, and I go, he's gonna take a chunk out of my leg. Anyway, I I gotta tip my cap to the dog because he brought us to the B and B, you know, barking all the way. So, anyway, that was our that was our second experience. And and the next morning, I mean, I knew this was gonna happen. You explain yourself. So we're there, and this is you know, Treza's pouring us tea, and we're laboring over a fry, slightly hung over. We still got, you know, we're not feeling that great. So she knows she's pouring Martha's tea, and she looks at Martha's hand and says, Oh, I see. And then she turns to me. I see you haven't got her a ring yet. So I was mid-sip of the tea. I put it down, I closed my eyes briefly, and I'm conjuring a response. And I finally concluded the only thing reasonable to do was to be honest, tell the truth that we were posing as a married couple because on the advice of her own nephew, we were told to ask to share a bedroom as an unmarried couple, was tanned up to throwing a child off the top of the Empire Stakeholder. And I said, Oh, Teresa, you know, you've hit on it, and as much as I wish you hadn't, I somehow I'm glad you did. And I turned to Martha and I said, Martha, I love you more than I could ever explain. I haven't bought you a ring yet because I have not yet come across an array of diamonds and gemstones that come close to captioning your life, life, your beauty. I will, however, never stop trying to find that stone, whatever it costs, however long it takes. Jorisa just sighs heavily, throws her hands up in the uh the dish towel over her shoulder and says, Oh, for fuck's sake.

SPEAKER_02 11:10

And then I wonder how you got into journalism. Your way with words obviously got you in a lot of trouble.

SPEAKER_01 11:16

No, that's the bullshit artist. Oh my god. It was funny that we we Martha and I tell that story to this day because it's so funny. And you know, now and no no one would bat an eyelash.

SPEAKER_02 11:26

But so endemic of the art in that time, Kevin. Do you know what I mean? It's now it's unimaginable because we're so trendy, modern, etc. etc. But in those days, people of that ill nature looked for the wedding wreath as a big thing to see what culture.

SPEAKER_01 11:41

Teresa was probably thinking if she let these American, you know, the harlots from Boston and nutbag boyfriend sleep together in the same room, that you know, the parish priest would read around at the altar, you know, communication. Contributing to the carnal delinquency of two loser Americans. But it was it was like that. It was like that. Really, the the church influence back then was suffocating.

SPEAKER_02 12:08

And I mean, I sensed that as an American who you would have noticed it more because we in Ireland we didn't really realize unless you traveled, but it was so suffocating in many ways. Now parents re-replicated that, it just became way of life. So you would have noticed it coming from Boston even.

SPEAKER_01 12:24

Well, I came from a pretty Catholic background, you know. My mother, my mother would have been, you know, my mother, Margaret, or we call Peggy.

SPEAKER_03 12:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 12:32

Um, and I always laugh because that was the the character in uh Playboy of the Western world, the Kean might. Yeah, her real name is is Margaret Flaherty, Peggy Flaherty. That was my my mother. Yeah, she was Margaret Flaherty from South Boston, and she would have had the exact same attitude as Teresa's. So I didn't judge Teresa. Yeah. I just tried to manage the situation.

SPEAKER_02 12:52

Yeah, but they also underad is the same way that you say your parents use their fluent Irish to talk around the kids who you wouldn't understand but didn't pass on the language to you. When people went abroad, Irish people particularly you adapted to circumstances and used things that worked and other things you had to leave behind because Boston, you know, can be a very waspish kind of place, you know.

SPEAKER_01 13:14

Yeah. Oh, it was. And you know, my grandparents came here, my maternal grandparents, who were both Irish speakers, came here, you know, just at the turn of the 20th century, early 1900s. And, you know, my grandmother came here more or less as an indentured servant. She was like a teenager.

SPEAKER_03 13:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 13:30

She had to pay for her passage. And um, you know, she um and she met my grandfather who, you know, she grew up in Carroe, and my grandfather grew up in Ars, you know, in Arsa's rural way in in Cummus, in uppercumus.

SPEAKER_02 13:44

Upper Comus.

SPEAKER_01 13:45

And yet they didn't know.

SPEAKER_02 13:47

Upper Comus and Lower Comus are very different, I reckon. Are they?

SPEAKER_01 13:50

I I I tr I've tried to figure it out over the year. I I've walked those blogs, but I still can't explain it to you, Russia. But anyway, I mean this is the this is the to me the kind of the classic American immigrant story. So they grew up, you know, so close to each other and yet never met there. Wow. And then they arrive in Boston as a teeming immigrant community, and they were I'm told they met at a dance, which is was very common with Irish immigrants in the 20th century in Boston and New York and places like that. And they got married at St. Peter's and Paul's Church in South Boston in the lower end of South E. And um, you know, never bought a house, lived on one floor of a three-decker on East Second Street, where my mother, my Aunt Mary, uh, my uncles Johnny, Red, Pat, uh, am I missing anybody? Uh oh, Willie, Uncle Willie, my uh he was my godfather. They all grew. There was like six kids or seven. No, six. My mother had six siblings, so they grew up on one floor in a three-decker, never bought a home. And um, and yet, you know, they they were able to produce all these kids that went off and and did fairly well. And but it is sad to me as a I mean, I was told by somebody who taught us sociology. I think I think her name was Hilary Tovey. She was my sociology professor at Trinity. And she talked about this thing of she when she was explaining why I was there. I was like, I don't know why I'm here. She called it third generation return, in which the grandchildren of immigrants identify with their home with the country of their grandparents.

SPEAKER_03 15:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 15:25

And they feel this longing. And I said, Wow, yeah, that does sound like me. But um, you know, my grandparents associated the Irish language, and I that I when I explain this to young Irish people today, they look at me like I have two heads. That the Irish language, even among the Irish, was associated with cultis and the rural Ireland and poverty, and the people who did the worst in the famine, because it was, you know, to hell iconic. Um, and and so my parent grandparents purposely did not pass the language on to my mother and her siblings, and that was very, very common, not only common, I think it was it was very rare that Irish immigrants in the early 20th century would teach their kids the Irish language. Uh, because they again there was also pressure to assimilate back. Yes. They they were in their little enclave in South Boston or West Roxby or Roxby or Dorchester or Brighton and Charlestown. That's where all the Irish neighborhoods in in Boston were, and they had their dances and they all that stuff, and St. Patrick's was a big deal. But at the end of the day, they they were desperate to assimilate, they were desperate to prove they were Americans, and sadly, one of the reasons the ways they were able to prove that was to not pass the language on, which I think is tragic and sad. And um, but the uh the funny story that my and my my aunt Barbara told me that she did all the research in the family, and she she would have known my my grandfather Martin died before I was born. But my grandfather Martin was worked for the gas company. A lot of it was very dangerous work back then when they were first laying the pipes under the ground and all that stuff. And he would have had a lot of co-workers who were black. Um, and I mean that's what you have to remember at Boston in the early part of the 20th century. The the the the the sort of wasp the Protestant um upper class who ran the town, yeah, the Brahmins, they would have put the blacks and the Irish in the same correct. It's like that old line from the commitments, you know. Um they would have considered the blacks and the Irish no different. Like we we can lose these guys them easy enough. So my my cousin, my my grandfather Martin, apparently one day he he was known for making a very uh strong pochine, and he made it in the bathtub of the bathroom on the second floor of East Second Street in Three Decca. So my grandmother was out there um doing the shopping, and she comes home and one day and she hears like you know hysterical laughter coming from the bathroom. So she goes in there, and there's my grandfather with like three black guys from work hammered, yeah, hammered drunk on the Pochine. Yeah and and my so my grandmother looks at my grandfather at the black guys, and in Irish she says, Marchine, what will the neighbors think? And of course, my grandfather's sitting there half in the wrapper with this with his long clay pipe, and he says to her in in English, he says, Delia, because that was her pet name, Delia, you're in America now, speak American. I love that story. And the black guys are just like, ah, you know, they're blasts. And then, you know, fast forward a generation or two, and the all the racial animus that was in South Boston because of the school busing. Yeah, I always I always tell but whenever I'd tell my cousins in Southie, because I didn't grow up there, I grew up in Malden, which is you know, Southie with trees.

SPEAKER_02 18:46

Yeah, or somebody was north more north than Southie, though.

SPEAKER_01 18:50

It's kind of cool, meaning but I used to tell my cousins, like, hey, my our our grandfather used to hang out, he had friends who were black guys, so they didn't want to hear that.

SPEAKER_02 19:01

Yeah, the same way cultural things that Asians probably have a better value for education. What I admire in your story is the fact that Bozo Flarity insisted you seek education, which Irish people probably weren't as programmed to consider as Koreans and the people who came to America in those days.

SPEAKER_01 19:19

Yeah, Bozo was my uncle Johnny. He was um the great name. I hope I hope it's meant affectionate. Everybody in South he had the nickname, Flabo. All the cousins, all the cousins who were Flahertys, their nicknames of they call them Flabo. Hey Flabo, hey Bobo, hey Mako, hey Jocko. I was like, I they were like very my cousins would point out because I spent a lot of time. Uh my mother uh insisted on going to South Boston every Sunday where she and my Aunt Mary would tell the same stories over and over. They never change, they tell the same story every week. But my father would say we would cross over the Northern Avenue Bridge from downtown Boston into South. He goes, Kids, watch your mother. She changes once we across the street. So my cousins would tell me, like you say, yeah, yeah, you're a you're from Malden. You don't get a nickname.

SPEAKER_03 20:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 20:03

So I was denied a nickname because I didn't grow grow up in South Boston, which is just as well. I mean, God, I can only imagine what my nickname would have been. But um it it it it's you know, my cousin, I mean, my uncle Johnny was a Boston firefighter. Yeah, and my dad was a firefighter in Malden. And by all accounts, Patrick Cullen, who was my father's grandfather, the first Cullen who came here, uh, you know, went through Ellis Island and was actually held on Ellis Island because he was too dumb to realize that when they asked for his political party, he said, I've had none. Um, but then they said, Well, you have to have some kind of pol. And he said he was a socialist. You didn't say that back. Lock him up. And like guys, apparently, guys from his he was from Kildare, yeah, and guys that we were already established here, they visited him in Ellis Island. They go, you know, geez, Pat, you just just tell them what they want to hear. Yeah. Eventually he got off. He was got on the he got on the New York Fire Department, and then eventually moved up to Malden, Massachusetts, and um was a firefighter there. So firefighting is a huge part of my family uh tradition, literally from the very first um emigrant who arrived and right through to my dad. And um I was pretty sure that that's what I was gonna do because I don't know. But at some point I realized I do not have the courage to run into a burning building. So I went to see, and you know, I was like a student, I was a uh about to graduate from high school. I applied to like three or four school uh colleges because they didn't have the money to do any more than that. Um now kids apply to 16, 20 college. But um, you know, and I I went and saw my Uncle Boso at at the firehouse on D Street in Southie, and he was there just sitting there reading the paper. And uh I went in and I told him what was going on. I I they're gonna take in the fire exam. And um he goes, Well, why don't you go to school? I said, Well, what am I gonna do? I mean, I didn't my parents uh you know, mom doesn't mom. Mom mom doesn't have any money, dad doesn't have any money. He goes, Yeah, yeah, but you'll be able to do it. He goes, he goes, go to school. If you still want to do it, the job will be here. Don't worry about it. And it was good advice. So I went to school. And again, I mean, I after talking to my Uncle Bowser, no choice, chances are going to be a bother of a firefighter. But um, and and and he gave great advice. And you know, he was one of these guys, he was always reading. And when I when I went into the firehouse that day, he was reading some book. I don't know what the book was, but the guy was always reading, you know, um, and and again, it was probably the best advice I ever got. Because my parents were very agnostic on it, you know. They were like, Yeah, you want to go to school, go to school. Uh, and so I went to UMass Amherst because basically it was the only school I thought I could afford. Um, and I didn't want to get saddled with crazy debt. And um and that turned out great. And uh, you know, in terms of Ireland, my sophomore year, I took an Irish history um course with a professor named Joe Herndon. And he was brilliant. And I remember we had to read the Constitution, Bon Rat Aren, and I had to read all these things, and I and um and then but the other thing that Joe did, I think, which was brilliant, is that he had us read Irish writers. Right. Because Joe Joe said you can't understand Irish history if you don't understand Irish literature. And I think that's quite true. So that that sophomore year, that uh that year I was reading, I read Joyce, I read Shaw, I read Swift, I read Oscar Wilde, I re I read Edna O'Brien, one of her earliest her earliest. Yeah, Joe was telling us to read the was it the country girl or something? Country was this wild, you know, that this was published in about obscene. It was crazy. Yeah. And but I mean, it just so it really lit that fire, that third generation return that um my professor at Trinity later told me about. And I was obsessed with getting to Ireland. And initially it was the only program that UMass had transferred, uh like an exchange with was the University College Cork, but I didn't want to live in Cork. I wanted to live in Dublin because I read Dublin's two or three times in about four months. I just loved it.

SPEAKER_02 24:06

Um your first time to Ireland was when you went to Trinity.

SPEAKER_01 24:09

Literally, I got on, and this is such an Irish story, too. I was I worked, I worked at uh my summer job was at a um place called Bolt Baronica Newman in Cambridge, Mass. And I worked in the copy shop. I just I made copies, you know, on a big copying machine. And the woman who ran the canteen, Noreen, was an old lady, and she was from I forget where she was from, but boy, she was Irish. She was like my nana, you know, she looked like my nana from from Cork and Castledown Bear and all this shit. And she was just always, always on me and sweet on me. And did I have a lunch? And she'd slip me a sandwich. If I didn't have a sandwich, and but she when I told her I was gonna go to Trinity, she was like, Wow. She goes, Well, have you ever been to Ireland? I said, No. She goes, Well, who are you gonna meet when you get there? I go, I'm not gonna meet anybody, I'm just gonna I have a family at Rathfarnham I'm living with. She goes, Well, you can't get off the plane and not have anybody. So Norreen called these people that she knew in Swords near the airport. Yeah, I think it was her niece or something, and their name was Cullen, just by coincidence, no relationship. So um, when I got off the plane, they were the the Cullen family, a a a man, a a guy, his wife, and two or three little kids. I they have to greet me. We're holding a sign, welcome Kevin or something. And I go over, they they take me to their house in swords, a very short distance from the airport, and I was jet lagged out of my mind. I had never, you know, this was the overnight flight. Yeah. So they put me to bed, and um these are total strangers, you know. Um, and it had a real profound impact on me because it was the first time I really expect experienced that sort of Irish hospitality and the sort of kindness and generosity that many, if not most Irish people possess. Um, you the the idea that they would just pick up somebody they didn't know who I was.

SPEAKER_02 25:57

Pick up a strange at the airport and the instructor somebody thousands of miles away. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 26:01

And you know, Noreen told them you gotta pick them up. And so I woke up and I remember the first meal, you know, home cooked meal, the all the veg, the big chunks of potato and big chunks of carrots and turnip, and it was lamb. And I remember taking the first bite of it, and it tasted like it still had the wool on it. But I said, Jesus, I can't insult this. Rafa, I'm telling you, it took me, thank Christ, there was a dog there. The dog kept coming up for me. And I kept feeding that dog, like I could, I gave him half the lamb. I'm trying to do it every time the parents weren't looking. Yeah, and one of the kids, one of the boys, he was probably like eight, he noticed me doing it, and he just looked over and winked. Yeah, and he didn't wrap me out.

SPEAKER_02 26:47

Well, didn't have to bribe him or anything, pay him a few quid.

SPEAKER_01 26:51

So anyway, the I um the only other time I saw that family, um, right around Christmas time, I was all my my um most of the Americans I knew at Trinity came from uh more than a little money. They tended to be pretty well off.

SPEAKER_03 27:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 27:06

So they were all going on holidays at Christmas time, they're all traveling to France and Spain and London, whatever, and I had no money. I had nothing. I tried to get a job at at um Arnett's and then at um gun store. And the the unemployment rate was 20%. That's right. Different times. If we were gonna hire an American kid of I literally couldn't work, so I was so broke. But I did I was able to scrape up enough money to go, and I got um the kids, the Cullen kids, like three Irish language, like, you know, not coloring books, but just books that are aimed for kids about, you know, I think one was about Kuhal and the and all that. And and I brought it to the and I, you know, I took the bus out the swords and I walked like wherever to get to the house. I found the house, I knocked on the door. And it was brilliant because they brought me in. We just had I just had tea and biscuits and the kids were really lovely and hugged me and all that stuff. And that was like the only that was the only thing that I really did that Christmas uh up until Stephen's Day, and it was brilliant. And I felt, but a boy, I was very lonely that first year. It was very that for that first Christmas. I it was the first time I felt really homesick. But the next day, on Stephen's Day, I got invited to uh my friend uh was traveling, but the family we lived in Rath Farnham and um I didn't last very long there because uh the family was um the the father worked for uh board gosh and the mother was a uh former nun. She left the convent to marry this guy, and it was the only time in my life I would have encouraged somebody to stay in the convent because this guy was a jerk. He was unbelievably they clearly had me as a boarder for the money.

SPEAKER_02 28:45

Money.

SPEAKER_01 28:45

I mean, it was pretty obvious. Yeah, and so his not Pat the woman was she could she was lovely, she was really nice, but her husband was a real like a he was just highly agitated, he was always moving and he had uh yeah, like ADHD or whatever he had. He just was really difficult to be around, and he treated me like a he didn't treat me well. And so his rule was I had to be home at six o'clock. And if I wasn't home at six o'clock, then I got no dinner, even though I was paying for dinner. And I tried to explain to him, I said, Ronnie, I'm a student. I have classes a couple days a week that are at like four o'clock. I don't even get out of class till like close to half five. I can't get a bus and get back to Rathfarnham. And and then the other thing that happened, the buses were on strike all the time back then, and so were the banks. It was unbelievable. So besides so basically, I I very often didn't eat. Wow. Um, and and finally I got like drunk one night, I think, in frustration, threw up on my bed, and I took it to the laundry, you know, trying to launder it because I was so embarrassed. And Ronnie went into the room, saw that the sheets were there, and called the guards. And and yeah, and they were gonna like arrest me for stealing sheets. And I had to explain what I was doing. I was embarrassed. I got I threw up in my sheets and I wanted to wash them myself, and I didn't want Pat to have to do it. And Pat, I remember Pat was just lovely and just said, Don't worry about it, Kevin. And you, you know, I'll I'll clean them. And Ronnie said, No, you're you're out of here. So he basically threw me out. And that, you know, it was the best thing he ever did for me, given that he was a jerk.

SPEAKER_03 30:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 30:23

And I was able to find a bedsit in Ranala, and it was by chance because uh an American graduate student, Tom something or other, was leaving uh after the the first term of the three terms. He had just finished his master's, and um, he said that you know, I it was like I want to say it was 10 or 15 quid a week. And I said, Wow, that's great. So I went and met the um landlady, her name was Mrs. Gallagher, and I saw pictures on the wall. There was a picture of her with Michael McCleamore and Hilton Edwards, the founders of the Gate Theater. Yeah. And I said, Oh, you know them? And then she looked at me and she goes, You know them? I said, Yeah, I've read about them. And she goes, Well, when are you gonna move in? That was the interview because I knew who Edwards and McCleamore were.

SPEAKER_03 31:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 31:08

And um, and she was lovely. She could, but boy, was I homesick after moving in. And and I just remember how cold it was. And it was one of those bed sits where you had to put like a 10p piece in for um to get the heat. Yeah, correct. Yeah, so I'd sit in my bedsit, um, put the 10p in, and then like after, I don't know, a couple hours, I just I said, I'm just gonna put more covers on the bed because I need these 10p pieces to get up. So I slept and I'd wake up in the morning, and it you could see the frost, you know, it was like I was living in an igloo. But it it it was also just a great and Ranala was a a great place. I would walk to school. That's right. Handy about, you know, and I got up, I got a lot of exercise. But the other thing I learned about in Ranala was on particularly on week that weekends, on like Saturday mornings or Sunday mornings, I'd walk by these things that I thought were like horse droppings, and I later figured out it was a combination of Guinness and and fish and chips and people being sick. The morning after the night before stuff. Yeah, I remember having to dodge that. It was like, you know, you you had to keep your eye down on the on the footpath or you or you'd step in this stuff.

SPEAKER_02 32:14

It was so that hasn't changed, Kevin.

SPEAKER_01 32:16

So it still happens. When we lived in uh Dunleary, we're right up the street um from Georgia Street with the abacabra wood.

SPEAKER_00 32:24

That was a that was a warf, I'm telling you.

SPEAKER_01 32:26

That was like a that was like trying to go through a minefield with my little kids at the time. Said, Dad, what's that? I go, that I said, that's Declan's Supper. Yeah. I didn't realize you lived in Dunleary so many years, actually. I only lived in Dunleary in '97 and '98 when the Globe um moved me over there. But we had a lovely experience there. We and this is the other thing I tell people. For about 20 years, the Globe sent me over, not 20, what am I saying? Probably in the late 80s. Because I remember I asked um Steve Early. I I I thought I thought Northern Ireland was a story that was badly underreported in all American newspapers, but I thought especially in Boston, because I argued it was an international story that was a local story.

SPEAKER_03 33:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 33:10

Um that so many people in Ireland, and so many people in the Boston area, our readership was overwhelmingly Irish American. There it wasn't even close to any other ethnic group being that close. And so Northern Ireland was a local story to them. They wanted to know more about it. So when I was like, what do I got to the globe? I worked for two years at the Boston Herald, which was run by Murdoch.

SPEAKER_02 33:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 33:30

I was actually the I actually was the union president at um the Boston Herald when I was the police reporter, which meant I worked like 70 or 80 hours a week. And the only good thing I did as a union president, I got us affiliated with the um newspaper guild. And it brought up it really narrowed the the wage gap between Boston uh the Herald and the Globe. But I went to the Globe in 85 first just to cover cops and robbers and stuff, but I I really wanted to do other things. And like after I think it would have been after trying to think the um it might have been 1988, the the Gibraltar killings, or it might have been uh when Michael Stone opened fire on one of the um funerals in Belfast and in Milltown.

SPEAKER_03 34:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 34:11

One of our older correspondents was over there and he covered it, but the guy was pretty old, and I I knew that that was the story. So I asked him if I could cover it. And he said, Well, you're gonna have to the new London bureau chief is Steve Erlanger. And Steve uh is now with the New York Times, extremely distinguished journalist. Um he was the bureau chief in London at the time, and I said, you know, I just I asked him, I said, I have this fascination with the story. I went to school in Ireland, we need to spend more time on the Northern Ireland story. And Steve, like I mean, I ended up doing the same job as Steve, and the London Bureau means you're responsible for all of Europe.

SPEAKER_02 34:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 34:47

So Steve was more than happy because as far as he was concerned, London was a kit. So he goes, if you want to, I mean, uh not London, the Belfast kit. And he goes, You can want that story, it's it's all yours, kid. Yeah. So that's when I first started going over there in the late 80s.

SPEAKER_02 35:02

And if you were affected by that trip you took up and met the the British uh paratroop or the British Army chap, and that would have been that would have been the like the spring of 1980.

SPEAKER_01 35:14

Yeah, you were still in Trinity then, weren't you? I was, yeah, and I went up there and I, you know, I I I had a I had a couple of friends that was uh they were Protestant kids from um Carrick Fergus.

SPEAKER_03 35:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 35:24

One was from Lisbon, um, a real loyalist town in Carrick Fergus, and I I went up there to see them, but I arrived in like on the bus in Belfast, and I just said, I'm gonna go. So I walked around the falls and uh you know I uh I later walked around the shankle too. Um because I didn't know what I was naive, you know. So they found out my name was Kevin Cullen, they would put me on me. So but I'm on the falls and I'm walking down around Dimus Flats and just looking up at the uh you know, the towers up there and the British helicopters landing and all this stuff, and all of a sudden I'm surrounded by a British Army patrol. And um, you know, they said, What are you doing? And I start just talking. And one of them said something to the effect like, you know, knock off the phony accent or phony yank accent. I go, I'm an American. And I went to uh uh like you know, reach for my passport, he hit me, and I was like, and I remember at that very moment, I think, if this is how they treat Americans, imagine what how do they treat the locals? And it really had a profound impact on me. I was 20 years old, Ross. Wow, and I didn't know I was gonna be a newspaper reporter and be back in that very place eight years later. Um, but there I was, and so uh but I I but I think you you and I talked about this, the idea of you know having a you know a a name and heritage like mine when I went to Northern Ireland as a reporter. I I I kind of often wished my name was like Richard Rodriguez or something like that, because I think that it it brought so many assumptions with it. So Republicans assumed I was sympathetic to their cause, yeah. Loyalists assumed I was to theirs. Yeah. And it took me a long time, but I think eventually I was able to convince them, you know, I'm just here for the story. Yeah, I'm not on anybody's side. But you know, that doesn't mean that I took the he said, she said, or that that one side has just as much a you know legitimate grievance as the other, because that's not true. And the bottom line is when I started going to the North of Ireland, um, the discrimination, the grievances held in the Catholic nationalist community were serious and sincere and they needed attention. Um, and you know, I was there throughout that process in which I I think that the British government finally figured out that the way to address the grievances, or the way that to address the political unrest and the violence that sprung from the 70s, or actually the late 60s, was to address those grievances because they were genuine.

SPEAKER_03 37:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 37:55

Um that there was incredible housing discrimination. There was discrimination in every form. Whenever the government, uh the unionist government, had any kind of power, whether it was housing, whether it was education, Catholic nationals were discriminated against. And, you know, that was the greatest recruiting method for the propose, for the IRA. And then Margaret Thatcher's, you know, intransigence during the um hunger strikes was again, I would say, was Margaret Thatcher did more to recruit members of the IRA than Martin McGinnis and Jerry Adams ever did. That's my line. I've always believed that. And I I saw it with my own eyes. I talked to another enough people, paramilitaries on both sides to understand why they chose what they chose. And and I tried not to judge because again, uh I was like a working class kid, and I I I would think that, you know, man.

SPEAKER_02 38:44

But it clearly comes across, Kevin. I mean, obviously, apart from Bozo pushing you to educate and you taught history, writing is part of it, but it's the way you think and your passion, you know, given the stuff you've involved with the globe after your move, like Spotlight, Chasing the Truth on Whitey Bulger, uh the Mar. You have a quest in your head or a drive to find the truth or the reality. You're not afraid of confronting facts and figures and information.

SPEAKER_01 39:11

No, because you know, it's weird because you know since 2007 I've been a columnist and I'm entitled to engage. In fact, I'm encouraged to engage in opinion. But you like the Mike Barnacle now, are you? No, not that far.

SPEAKER_00 39:24

I don't like the kind of mic's money that Mike makes, that's for sure.

SPEAKER_01 39:27

I mean, um Barnacle was a very good friend of me over the years, and and Jimmy Breslin was a very strong focus on me. And I didn't really get to know Jimmy until after when I worked on the church stuff.

SPEAKER_02 39:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 39:39

Um uh the the spotlight team on the on the on the the the cover-up of the sexual abuse of miners by priests. Breslin called me out of the blue, and he it was famously gruff. Yeah, what are you working on? I go, who is this? He goes, it's Breslin. I go, Jimmy Breslin? He says, Yeah, what are you working on? So that was our introduction. So um, but then we became you know great pals, and I I I I like I said I read everything that Breslin did, and I really admired him. And Breslin always, and I remember Pete Hamill, who whose family are from Belfast. Um, Pete, I remember we were talking about Breslin after he died. Oh no, was it before? He was before he died. When we had a big time for him down at um down at NYU, we had a a a big like testimony, as as Jimmy called it, it was awake before he died. And he hated that. Jimmy hated that being told I want to but Pete Hamill had, I thought the way he put it, while Breslin was entitled to engage in overt opinion, he really did, because he let his subjects tell the story, and you had no, you know, you were under no illusions where Breslin's sympathies lay. And I kind of try to model myself after that. That I mean, I would say I would I I'm not even remotely comparing myself to Jimmy Preslin because he was incomparable in the number of books he wrote, and uh he was, I think he was the best American columnist in the history of American newspapers. So I'm not even I I I couldn't carry his notebook, but he really did influence me in terms of that way to approach um opinion journalism or being a columnist. That the most the strongest opinion you can have is rooted in facts. And your opinion is even stronger if someone else states it. And so I've tried to adopt that um, you know, with limited success over the years, but uh and that was the way I felt in Ireland. I you know, I really tried to play it straight when I was a reporter, but I couldn't ignore horrible things.

SPEAKER_03 41:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 41:40

Um, so you know, when the real IRA blew up people in Omaha.

SPEAKER_02 41:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 41:46

And I wasn't I wasn't couching in that that they had every right to do this because of historical discrimination. That's crap.

SPEAKER_02 41:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 41:53

They killed women and children.

SPEAKER_02 41:54

And you saw it there yourself.

SPEAKER_01 41:56

You know, and and same when I remember being one of the most horrible things I covered uh when I I talk about this roster to this day, I I get really upset. Um there were three little boys in Ballymina, uh, the Quinn brothers. And during the it was after the deal was done, it was after Good Friday, and we thought peace was coming, but there were a lot of people who didn't want it, and some of them were loyalist paramilitaries, and uh they, you know, uh lit a house on fire that was I think it was a drug dealer who wasn't paying them or whatever. And there were three little boys up there, the Quinn brothers, and they burned to death. And the next day I went down there and I talked to the people because I I was up there covering covering Porta Down and the and the standoff at Drum Cree, which I did every summer. I would say my friends went to Cape Cod in the summer and I went to Port of Down. Drum Cree. Trust me, I'd rather be in Cape Cod. So anyway, I went down there and I talked to the people, the locals, you know, and there was like a little girl, and um her mother allowed me to talk to her because she said the mother was friend the girl was friendly with one of the particular Quinn boys, and she said that they were went out there in the fire and they couldn't get out the window. And she told me, this little girl told me I heard my friend say his feet were burning. And I I lost it. I started crying. And all these people who who lived in this neighborhood in this housing estate came over and comforted me. And I remember I I went back to my hotel room and I wrote that story, and what I remember is that my there were tears falling on the keyboard as I wrote it. And it was especially uh crushing because this was just within weeks of the Good Friday Agreement being signed. And we thought we were in this new era, and these old hatred surfaced and killed these murdered these little boys, burned them to death like they were some heretic to uh an old Ireland. These kids were gonna be the future of Ireland. And the old eye would kill them.

SPEAKER_02 44:02

How do you get the resilience to deal with those situations, Kevin?

SPEAKER_01 44:06

How did I what?

SPEAKER_02 44:07

The resilience or the strength to carry on.

SPEAKER_01 44:10

I don't know. You know, it's it's how to explain it. As a human being, it's the hardest thing to go through something like that. And I I I think the trauma cumulatively really kind of affected me um years later. Um but at the time you're just thinking, how do I I t how do I best tell the story? How do I best honor the memory of somebody who's killed like this and murdered for and again I just never accepted I get my mentally that this had to happen. That that that there was a way what's that the Paul Brady's song The Island? Yeah, I don't know. How these how this twisted wreckage down on Main Street is gonna bring us all together in the end.

SPEAKER_02 44:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 45:00

I mean, uh yeah. The funny thing is, years later, I uh when I was based in London, I called Paul Brady to do a profile of me, got pissed off. He goes, How'd you get my number? I said, Well, Jesus, I'm a newspaper reporter. He goes, Yeah, well, don't call it again, but he hung up.

SPEAKER_02 45:15

That's Paul.

SPEAKER_01 45:17

That's what I was saying. I mean, I laugh when people say, because you know, I've I've had people have said very complimentary things about me uh covering Ireland, and I'm the American guy that knows it, and blah, blah, blah. But then the other thing I remember, I I I told I was with John Hume and Pat, uh his wife, and we were having uh a meal in in Donegal, not in in in Derry. Because John and Pat very regularly went to Donegal and had a place there. And and so I just I don't know. John and Pat were talking about what are you working, what do you work on? And I mentioned that I wanted to do a profile of Brian Friel. And Pat just, oh, I'm very close to Brian, I'm very friendly with Brian. I said, Well, geez, do you think they will put a word in for me? And she goes, Absolutely, Kevin, absolutely. And I I gotta tell you, Rosa, I I liked John Hume, I loved Pat. I it just and I've told Aiden, uh, their son that how much I I just adored her. She was just and I think she was kind of underappreciated. I think she'll be appreciated in history because without Pat, there's no John.

SPEAKER_03 46:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 46:18

She made the call to to Bryce. So I and she gave me his cell number. And I don't know if it was the next day or the day after. I was, you know, I was in in that part of the country for a while, and I called Brian Friel, and he answered the phone. He he sent to me, Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. I said, Well, I think Pat yeah, yeah, she called me. I said, So is is there a chance we uh could sit down this week uh while I'm here? He goes, uh no, there's not. And I said, Well, uh, sometime I I have to go back to London, maybe we could speak by phone. He goes, No, no, no, no, that's that's not gonna happen. And I said, Well, I thought you said that Pat. He goes, Listen, I love Pat Young, she's a lovely woman. I told her I'd talk to you, I've talked to you.

SPEAKER_00 46:58

Anyone classic.

SPEAKER_01 47:04

I gotta I gotta be honest. I was like, I really admired that.

SPEAKER_02 47:08

That is absolutely brilliant. That's absolutely fantastic.

SPEAKER_00 47:12

And is there is there a quote? I told Shamazzini that story over. And he says, Yeah, that's Brian.

SPEAKER_02 47:20

Is there a quote that travels you, Kevin, that gives you strength or you resort to or you help to reflect? I just mentioned shamus.

SPEAKER_01 47:28

I don't know. It's not the quote that it it's not something that I there are all all sorts of you know inspirational things said by Irish people from Yates to I I mean, I I've off often quoted uh Oscar Wilde who said that the definition of a cynic is someone who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. I always loved that one. But I always I very often, in terms of the my favorite Irish quote, I think would have to be Seamus Heaney. And we had a funny, funny, funny relationship, Seamus and I, we used to fly over on the when he was at Harvard a few times, we flew over on the Erlingus to uh together. And um, and um there was a woman who ran when Erlingus actually had offices in real cities like Boston. Yeah, um, there was a woman named Noreen Courtney who ran the Erlingus office, and she was this tiny little sweet as could be. Again, and one of my aunts, whenever I was seeing Noreen again, I'd I'd say, that's my aunt, that's my Aunt Kate, that's my Aunt May. And she would always bump me and Seamus up. And this was before Seamus won the Nobel, so yeah, it's not like he was swimming in money. Poets didn't make a ton of money back then, and yeah, he really didn't come into money until after the Nobel Prize. So we were po we were po. I was a newspaper guy. It's like dog, the globe's not gonna send me over to Ireland on first class. So Noreen would boot me up. I think I I don't have an exact number, but I'd say three or four times Seamus and I sat either next to each other or within talking distance in first class on Erlingus. And we got friendly. He knew what I did, I knew what he did. Um, and so um uh we had famously a great night together um well after he won the Nobel Prize, but he came back to lecture at Harvard. And um he came into the greatest living, certainly American, what would you call it, writer who understood Seamus was Helen Vendler at Harvard. Yeah. And I I did a Neiman fellowship in 2002, 2003 at Harvard. And um I went to Helen and asked her if I could be in the class. Because as a Neiman fellow, you're entitled to take classes at all levels, whether it be Harvard Business School, Harvard Law School, the college for undergrads. And she taught this for this, she was an undergraduate. And she said, Kevin, I I I know you, I like you, I admire your work from Ireland, but these kids 30% of their grade is based on participation. So if you're there, you know, I said, Well, Helen, what if I just keep my mouth shut? Don't talk. She she looked at me like over her glass. You can do that. I said, Yeah, I will, I won't say that I won't do that. And so I she let me audit the class. And it was time, it was a seminar, it's like 12 kids.

SPEAKER_03 50:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 50:10

And so one day, Seamus comes walking in and he looks around, greets everybody, and then he looks at me, and and he I he didn't say anything, but he just gave me that sly look. And um, so anyway, I after class, and he was classic Seamus, he was self-effacing, he was very interested in the students, they really responded to him. Um, he was so good to these kids, and these were young kids, they were like probably sophomores juniors. And um, anyway, the class ends, and Seamus came up to me. He just looked a surprised look on his face, and I think it's because I kept my mouth shut. And I think he found that hard to believe. So he says, uh, what are you doing later? I said, nothing. He goes, Stop by Thompson Hall um about half five. We'll take it from there. I go, okay. So I went to Thompson Hall is where the English department at Harvard is, and that's where Seamus would have spent his time when he lectured a lot more regularly. Yeah, he was spending a whole semester there before the Nobel. So um, anyway, I I go there, and this this is classic Seamus. He brought me in and he introduced me to everybody within an arses roar of the office. He introduced me to custodians, he introduced me to like librarians, he introduced me to his secretary, and this is what he said this her name was Sheila. He said, Sheila, this is Kevin. Kevin, this is Sheila. Sheila, Kevin is a journalist, tell him nothing. And uh that was that it was a sly reworking of my favorite Irish phrase, which is shamus when he said it was obviously referring to the North. Whatever you say, say nothing. Say nothing. And I always said that that captured that sort of you know, the the the the the it captures the complexity and the elasticity of language the way the Irish use it.

SPEAKER_03 51:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 51:56

And certainly in the peace process, where I think both, you know, John Hume, Jerry Adams, Martin McGuinness on the nationalist side used that elasticity to great effect and got the deal over the line. They told the unionists what they needed to hear. They told their own people what they needed to hear, and the truth was somewhere in the middle, you know. And so anyway, so Seamus and I retired to this place, lovely place called Daedalus, after the character from Joyce on Mount Auburn Street and back of Adam's house, which is where I was I was when you're a Neiman fellow, you get affiliated with a house.

SPEAKER_03 52:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 52:31

I was affiliated with Adam's house. So I went there every week for lunch. I gave lectures, I talked to the kids, tutored some kids, and that's where Seamus was affiliated. He lived in Adam's house. And that night he said, So we're leaving to go to Deadless. And he says, Listen, I have to be home. The masters are having a lot of uh the house masters were um Judy and Sean, who um they ran the house, and they were also practicing pediatricians with the poorest kids in Boston. I love these people, so I'm not gonna screw them. I got Seamus, we'll have a couple of drinks, and you can go to dinner with uh Sean and Judy. Well, anyway, the other thing I remember about that night in Daedalus, Seamus introduced me to all these people, and they weren't like uh tenured professors or famous people, they were the custodians at the Wagner Library. All these people, like working people at Harvard, were coming up and saying they were so glad to see him because he hadn't been around.

SPEAKER_02 53:24

So, Kevin, what piece of music has traveled with you through the good years and the bad years that you always turn to?

SPEAKER_01 53:31

I'd say I always go back to Michael Russell, the Claire Man and Virtuoso of the Tin Whistle, anything he did. But I one of the songs that stays with me is The Cliffs of Moor, which I think is from that album, Under the Cliffs of Moor. But I had a um, when I was 20 years old and I was a student at Trinity, I hitchhiked out to Doolin with my guitar, a guitar I bought at a pawn shop near my bed sitting ran on. And I walked into Gus O'Connor's pub because my buddy Con O'Brien from Dolphins Barn said, if you go out there, you gotta go there. And I found this old farmer, and there was nobody in the pub except this farmer with shit caked wellies uh sitting there, and the lady behind the bar. I had no idea who Michael Russell was. I was really just getting into Irish traditional music, and the woman behind the bar more or less bade me to play my guitar with the farmer. So I walked over, sat next to him. I he pulled out his tin whistle and he asked me what I knew. And I didn't really know anything Irish beyond like the Tommy Makem and Classy Brothers songs that. Usually, even then, I knew I was just savvy enough to know that that's not what the real traditional musicians and the Gale tech were playing. So I told Michael, uh, who I didn't know was Michael. I mean, he did introduce himself as Michael, but I had no idea it was Michael Russell. I told him I knew a lot of Eagles and Neil Young. He goes, Oh, that's great, okay. So I remember we played Take It Easy and a couple of Eagles songs, and then some songs off the Neil Young album Harvest, which I knew. And I remember trying to sing The Needle and the Damage Done and like this Neil Young falsetto. And I'm sure it wasn't very good, but I do remember Michael's tin whistle was haunting in that song because it it added a layer to that song, which is almost always performed as just an acoustic guitar. Um, and after we played about a half a dozen songs, Michael, you know, without any ceremony, just tucked his tin whistle in his crust, crusty tweed jacket, tipped his tweed cap at me, shook my hand, and disappeared into the night. And I'm telling you, Rosa, I think it was months, if not years, before I figured out who he was. I told that story to somebody who knew about, you know, Doolan and O'Connors, and they said that was Michael Russell you played with. Oh, geez, I don't know. And then I subsequently found out, you know, sort of like if it put it back on like a some German kid's walking around and walks into a pub uh hundreds of years ago and plays uh the piano with some guy he didn't know was Beethoven. Beethoven, yeah. Because I mean, because you know, Michael Russell was to the Tim Whistle, what Beethoven or Mozart was to the piano. I mean, he just was a virtuoso and just I and and I remember his, you know, his house, I found out later, it looked out right over the Iron Islands. And um, you know, I just literally just a few days ago booked uh travel for my son Patrick and I. And uh we're gonna go back to um well, we got we want to be in Ireland when um Troy Paris grows his next five goals. And um we're gonna be uh we'll be in our we'll be in Dublin for the um the match against the Czech Republic or probably watch a my old haunt on Larry McKenna's charter. Great spot. Great spot. Nice, nice pint, and it's a nice pub, it's not big, you know. And then uh we'll probably be if and we believe they will move on to that second playoff game. We hope to be in Dublin for that. We'll probably be at O'Connor's and McCann's and listen to some real good music. And we'll take the we'll take the ferry from Dulan over the five.

SPEAKER_02 56:56

I was gonna ask you a free fly now, wouldn't you? Big Mr. Flahulak fly. If you're gonna move by ferry, stick to the ferry. Exactly. And if you're McKenna's next March, give me a call. I will, I'll give it a shout. Kevin Cohn, thank you very much for joining us on Aaron Islandis.

SPEAKER_01 57:13

Thanks, Rossi. It was a great trip down memory lane.