The Real History of Guinness

The Irish Passport

Society & Culture

4.8 • 652 Ratings

🗓️ 20 October 2025

⏱️ 95 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The famous 'pint of plain' has become one of the most recognisable commercial brands in the world, and is inextricably linked to the Irish pub. In light of a new Netflix series on the Guinness family, this episode dives into the real history of the 'Black stuff', and explores how the brand has reinvented itself time and time again through the miracle of marketing. An extra-content debrief on this episode is available exclusively to Patreon supporters, who also enjoyed early access to this episode. If you want to access our 100+ extra content episodes, you can sign up to support the podcast at www.patreon.com/theirishpassport.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello, welcome to Irish Passport.
0:02.3	Let's do it.
0:03.1	Welcome to the Irish Passport.
0:04.8	I'm Tim McInerney.
0:06.0	I'm Naomi O'Leary.
0:07.0	We're friends.
0:07.7	Can you both to Naomi?
0:08.5	Anwar Fat, Tim.
0:09.9	This is your passport to Irish culture, history and politics.
0:13.2	Uh-huh.
0:13.5	I'm recording.
0:14.2	One, two, two, three.
0:16.6	Okay.
0:45.1	Hello and welcome back to the Irish Passport, where today we are talking about probably one of the things that comes into people's minds first when they think about Ireland.
0:50.2	Naomi, we are talking, of course, about the black stuff, a pint of plain, the famous Guinness.
0:55.6	Guinness, yeah, in the news at the moment, or I guess on people's radar because the new series,
0:57.9	which we might come to in a bonus episode.
1:03.8	But we thought we would lay out a little bit of the history of Guinness and discuss this curious part of Irish culture because it's so embedded, the image, the symbol of Guinness with the international
1:12.4	conception of Irishness. But yet, you know, it's a private interest. It's owned by Diageo.
1:17.6	It's a company. So we thought we'd discuss it, the cultural meaning of it, and a little bit
1:23.0	about the real history behind that brand. Yes, indeed. And you mentioned the series there, Naomi. We're
1:29.7	talking about a recent Netflix series that came out called House of Guinness. And we'll be talking
	...

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