236. The Great Famine: The Blight Strikes Ireland (Ep 1)

And welcome to Empire with me, Anita Arnim. And me. William Durham Pool. Thank you so much for all of your very kind comments about the Irish series that we are embarking on. It's been really lovely to hear what many of you have thought, and also it is not an easy listen. And I won't lie, today's episode is going to be a particularly difficult listen, isn't it, William? It's gonna be very rough. I've been Deeply depressed all week just reading the the material for this Pod I think since we did the Armenian genocide last year, I had such a depressing and sad

We could read it. It is a relentless tale of suffering and unnecessary. trauma. But the bright side of this is we have one of our favorite people coming to speak to us today, which is Com Toy Ben, who is getting up out of bed in LA. Hello. Thank you. So look, the reason that you're here and what we are going to talk about, it's an episode that really does form the bedrock, I think, of Irish cultural identity. It is we're going to be talking about the famine, the the great Hunger.

And there is I don't know whether it's because I'm not Irish, but I always sense it in song, in music, and poetry, a great fatalism about the Irish mindset. And I wonder whether there is something about that. cultural memory that is founded on something so horrific, the thing that we're gonna talk about today. Does stamp The Irish identity somewhat. I suppose I take the opposite view to that, that um It's very easy to claim victimhood and um

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