#335 The Good Friday Agreement and the Future of Ireland w/ Mark Doyle & Greg O'Loughlin
The Road to Now
Benjamin Sawyer
4.8 • 628 Ratings
🗓️ 19 May 2025
⏱️ 61 minutes
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Summary
The Good Friday Agreements of 1998 marked a turning point in Irish history, bringing an end to three decades known as The Troubles and laying a course for a better future for the people of Ireland. In this historian Mark Doyle and Friends of Sinn Féin Executive Director Greg O'Loughlin join us for a conversation about Irish history, the status of Irish unification, and how peace is possible even in the hardest of times.
Dr. Mark Doyle is Professor of History at Middle Tennessee State University where he specializes in the history of Ireland and Great Britain. He previously joined us to discuss his books on The Kinks (Episode 169) and John Cale's Paris 1919 (episode 333).
Greg O'Loughlin is Executive Director of The Friends of Sinn Féin and is currently spearheading a listening tour across the United States to learn about Irish-Americans' views on Irish independence. Dates and more information are available at friendsofsinnfein.com.
This episode was edited by Ben Sawyer.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I'm Ben Sawyer and this is the road to now. |
| 0:09.0 | This week on the show, well, look, I think that all of us, we've had our fair share of bad |
| 0:15.2 | news in the world of international relations and politics. |
| 0:19.0 | And in recent conversations with some folks I know around town with some |
| 0:23.0 | friends of mine, I am happy to say that I have come, well, I've come across a story where |
| 0:29.3 | we might be able to find some hope, I think. History is, as we've talked about on the show, |
| 0:33.9 | it's full of so many moments where you feel let down. But as I've said, many times, |
| 0:41.3 | the thing that you've got to look at is that at every moment, people can make the wrong decision. |
| 0:45.8 | And we live in a world that is shaped by both those bad ones, but also the good ones. |
| 0:50.7 | Because anytime somebody could have made a bad decision and made a good one, it's worth |
| 0:53.7 | looking back to him being grateful for. So today we're going to talk about the Good Friday Agreement and the |
| 1:00.1 | conflict in Ireland, the long conflict in Ireland, this period of decades called the Troubles and how |
| 1:05.8 | in spite of all that we found something to be for. And we see improvement in a place where, |
| 1:12.4 | you know, a generation ago, two generations ago, people could not have imagined. So I want to |
| 1:17.7 | use history to expand our imaginations as we spoke about in recent episodes. Before we get to it, |
| 1:24.0 | just a reminder, we got our live show coming up May 29th at the Hamilton Live in Washington, D.C. |
| 1:29.4 | We've got great lineup, Margaret Tilev. We've got Major Garrett and Doug High. We're going to be |
| 1:35.0 | talking about stories of murder and mayhem in the capital city in Washington, D.C. As always, |
| 1:40.8 | you can get tickets to that and links to out to the podcast on all your podcast players at RTNpod.m.m.m.m.m. And before we go, as always, thank you to the patrons. You guys keep the show going. And I mean that. And I'm sincerely grateful to all of you guys. If you want to join us over there, it's patreon.com slash the road to now. And if you can't, you know, money's tight. |
| 2:03.0 | I get it. |
| 2:03.5 | Most of my life was like that and still is sometimes. |
| 2:06.8 | So if you guys just want to give us a five-star rating on Apple Podcasts and a nice review |
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