When Kim Kardashian tells her 364 million followers she doesn’t believe in the moon landing, it’s tempting to roll your eyes. But in 2025, conspiracy thinking isn’t just a fringe obsession — it’s mainstream entertainment.

From claims that aliens built the Pyramids to the wild theory that birds aren’t real (they’re government-controlled drones, apparently), these ideas spread faster than ever and reach millions who never question them.

As Ireland’s Science Week gets underway, Shane Beatty is joined by Dr Shane Bergin, Associate Professor in Science Education at UCD, host of The Trust Race podcast, and the man who actually teaches a course on conspiracy theories at UCD.

Dr Bergin explains why we fall for fake facts, how social media algorithms amplify suspicion, and what centuries-old events like the Gunpowder Plot reveal about the long, strange history of paranoia and mistrust. He also recalls how conspiracy and misinformation surrounding the AIDS epidemic of the 1980s cost lives — a reminder that these ideas aren’t harmless fun.

From 5G panic to flat-Earth videos, and from anti-vaccine movements to moon-landing denial, this episode explores how mistrust takes root — and how science can fight back through education, creativity, and connection. Welcome to your crash course in the psychology of disbelief.

🔬 Explore Science Week 2025 events and activities: https://www.scienceweek.ie

📘 Read Dr Shane Bergin’s new book, The Experimenters: Luke and Ruby’s Scientific Sleepover (Little Island Books): https://littleisland.ie/books/the-experimenters-luke-and-rubys-scientific-sleepover/

💌 Share your favourite (or strangest) science conspiracy with us: newstalkdaily@newstalk.com

He’s the most wanted Irishman on Earth — a boxing promoter turned drug lord, living it up in the desert. Daniel Kinahan’s wedding at Dubai’s Burj Al Arab brought together Europe’s biggest narcos. Within five years, almost all of them were behind bars. All except him.

Now, as the Irish Criminal Assets Bureau sells off his former Dublin mansion for a record sum, Kinahan remains untouched in Dubai: shopping, dining with boxers, and running what Europol calls a “Super Cartel” worth up to €20 billion a year.

On today’s podcast, Shane Beatty talks to Ed Caesar, whose New Yorker investigation reveals how Kinahan built his empire, courted boxing’s elite, and managed to stay free while others fell. They also discuss why the United Arab Emirates have become, in Ed's words, "a sandy place for shady people." And Ed reveals he's been informed that Daniel Kinahan has read his investigation in the magazine.

A story of crime, influence, and the strange safety of exile.

📰 Read Ed Caesar’s full investigation in The New Yorker: 👉 The Cocaine Kingpin Living Large in Dubai

📩 Email the show: newstalkdaily@newstalk.com

Shane Beatty’s had enough — his Local Property Tax bill has jumped by €120 after the latest revaluation. Across Ireland, 1.5 million homeowners are being asked to declare what their homes are worth by November 7th or face an estimate from Revenue.

So, what’s behind the new numbers? Why do councils set different rates? And what exactly is all that money spent on?

Economist Dr Barra Roantree from Trinity College Dublin joins Shane on Newstalk Daily to explain how the LPT really works and argue that it’s actually one of the fairest taxes in Ireland. Barra says a stronger property tax could fund better local services… or even help cut income tax. Shane, meanwhile, has other ideas: “Vote for Barra, he’ll raise your taxes. Vote for me, I’ll cut them!”

From revaluations and rate bands to council budgets and pensioner deferrals, this podcast is your quick, clear guide to the Local Property Tax — what it is, what you owe, where it goes, and why we’re still arguing about it twelve years after it began.

📅 Deadline to revalue: 7 November 2025
🏠 Check your band on revenue.ie
💌 Got thoughts on the property tax? Email newstalkdaily@newstalk.com ✉️

For more than two decades, Marwan Barghouti has been locked in an Israeli prison — a man both revered and reviled, described by many as “the Palestinian Mandela,” who deployed the famous phrase, “our chains will be broken before we are.”

Now, as calls grow louder for his release — including from former Irish President Mary Robinson and the Elders — his son Arab Barghouti joins the podcast to speak about life in the long shadow of captivity.

Arab paints a portrait of his father as both political leader and family man — a man who has spent 23 years cut off from his wife and children, often in solitary confinement, yet who still finds ways to teach fellow prisoners about history, resistance, and reconciliation. He even tells the story of how his father taught inmates about Ireland’s own struggle for independence and the Northern Ireland peace process, as a lesson in political endurance.

In conversation with Shane Beatty, Arab also talks about the personal toll of separation, the role of faith and hope, and what his father’s vision for a unified Palestine might look like today. Shane asks whether US President Donald Trump has intervened with Israel on their behalf, and whether Hamas could ever accept Marwan Barghouti as a unity leader.

It’s an intimate conversation that folds the headlines of the present into the wounds of the past — and asks whether peace could be strengthened by one man’s release.

📩 Email: newstalkdaily@newstalk.com

For every euro a man earns in the EU, a woman earns just 87 cent. Here in Ireland, that gap is smaller, but it’s still there. Despite years of promises, pilot schemes, and political speeches, the Government’s long-awaited pay gap portal still isn’t properly up and running, even though companies are required to report their pay gaps this month.

On today’s podcast, Shane Beatty speaks to Jennifer Keane, founder of PayGap.ie — the independent project that’s been collecting and publishing Ireland’s pay data long before the State ever did. Jen’s blunt about it: “The oversight is me — and I’m easy to ignore.”

She explains why companies are still struggling with transparency, what the latest data says about who earns what, and how some employers have quietly overwritten or buried their pay reports online.

Jen also warns that Artificial Intelligence could make the pay gap worse, not better — especially if hiring algorithms are trained on biased data. She’s even tested it: one AI system recommended a higher salary for a man than for an equally qualified woman.

And with experts estimating it could take another century to close Ireland’s gender pay gap, we ask: what will it take to fix a problem everyone admits exists, but no one seems to own?

💻 Explore the data: 👉 paygap.ie — Ireland’s independent gender pay reporting portal, created by Jennifer Keane.

📧 Share your story: ✉️ newstalkdaily@newstalk.com — Tell us your experience of the gender pay gap.

From langers to gurriers, lads to ould wans, Ireland’s English is a carnival of colour — equal parts poetry, pub talk and pure mischief. Comedian and author Colm O’Regan joins Shane Beatty on the podcast to celebrate the launch of his new book “Gallivanting with Words: How the Irish Speak English” and to explain why our slang, insults and odd turns of phrase tell the story of who we are.

They talk bollocks (literally), trace the word ‘craic’ from Yorkshire to Connemara, and explore how the Dáil’s list of banned words says as much about Irish politics as any debate. There’s even a defence of jizz — not what you think, but the spark and energy that gives our language its life.

📘 Buy Colm’s book: Gallivanting with Words – Gill Books

🎧 Listen to Colm and Aoife’s podcast: A Few Scoops on GoLoud

✉️ Email the show: Send your favourite Hiberno-English words to newstalkdaily@newstalk.com.

It’s the campaign that’s electrified New York and unsettled Washington. Zohran Mamdani, the 33-year-old democratic socialist from Queens, has become the unexpected lightning rod of American politics. Ugandan-born, the son of a filmmaker, and a proud New Yorker, he’s promising to take on the city’s entrenched establishment with rent freezes, free buses, universal childcare, and a $30 minimum wage.

He’s taken on heavyweights like Andrew Cuomo and Curtis Sliwa and won over crowds of young voters in stadium-sized rallies featuring Bernie Sanders and Alexandia Ocasio-Cortez. But his insurgent campaign has also drawn fierce criticism from centrist Democrats and Republicans alike, who accuse him of dragging the party too far left.

So, who exactly is Zohran Mamdani? What explains his meteoric rise from local organiser to national figurehead? And could his brand of grassroots socialism redefine what it means to be a Democrat in America?

On today’s podcast, Shane Beatty speaks to Scott Lucas, Professor of American Studies at UCD’s Clinton Institute, about Mamdani’s story, from his Queens roots to his bid for City Hall — and what it tells us about the future of U.S. politics.

Listen and follow Newstalk Daily on the GoLoud Player or wherever you get your podcasts — and drop us a line with your thoughts at newstalkdaily@newstalk.com.

Fianna Fáil is reeling — again. The bruising fallout from the presidential election has left Micheál Martin fighting for his political life. His handpicked candidate, former Dublin football manager Jim Gavin, flopped spectacularly, opening deep fractures inside the party and sparking fresh doubts about Martin’s judgment and future.

He’s led Fianna Fáil through crises before — the post-crash collapse, coalition with Fine Gael, and two terms as Taoiseach — but this latest controversy has some in the parliamentary party wondering if the Corkman’s luck has finally run out.

On today’s podcast, Shane Beatty is joined by Shane Coleman, presenter of Newstalk Breakfast, to chart Martin’s extraordinary political endurance, from his first election to the Dáil in 1989 to today’s leadership crisis. Listening to the voices of Fianna Fáil TDs John McGuinness, John Lahart, Malcolm Byrne, and Senator Anne Rabbitte, the two Shanes explore the rifts, the rumours, and the reality of life inside a party openly debating whether to stand by its survivor-in-chief — or move on without him.

Email us your thoughts on Micheál Martin’s future and Fianna Fáil’s next chapter at newstalkdaily@newstalk.com.