May I have your attention please you can now book your train tickets on Uber and get

10% back in credits to spend on your next Uber ride so you don't have to walk home in the brain again.

Trains, now on Uber. T's you've all enjoyed the festive season and the new year

is a great one for you and yours.

As many of you are aware over the past few months I've been preparing a podcast series on

The Great Famine and finally it's here.

I'm really excited about the prospects of making this new series and I thought it was worth explaining a few things about the great famine series before I get going.

I guess this short episode is much like the introduction you get at the beginning of a book.

If this isn't your thing and you want to crack on with the series, the first episode is already available

for patrons at Patreon.com

forward slash Irish podcast.

That's Patreon dot com forward slash Irish podcast

otherwise it will be released through iTunes, Google Play and other podcast platforms in a week's time.

The great Irish famine of the 1840s was a unique event not only in terms of Irish history, but arguably world history.

While it was not the most destructive famine in our past, that dubious honor falls to events a century earlier in the early 1740s.

No other event, be it war, famine or peacetime, has shaped the history of Ireland in the way

the great famine has.

Beginning in 1845, more than 20% of the Irish population had died or fled into exile

by the time the great famine came to an end in 1851.

The island had been transformed. Communities were destroyed, villages

abandoned and Irish society torn asunder. While these provide a dark

tapestry of fascinating stories it was also a time of remarkable

...