DIG LIFE DEEP!

The Planet Club
DIG LIFE DEEP!

DIG LIFE DEEP! with John Aidan Byrne brings fascinating guests from Main to Wall Street and the worlds of finance, economics, politics, Silicon Valley, Hollywood, sports, art, science and more. The show celebrates success, a spirit of enterprise, in an age of unparalleled social upheaval. An award-winning Irish journalist in his beloved America, Byrne seeks hope for our existential crisis. Byrne is a writer, reporter, editor and Broadway alumnus. His work is published in the New York Post, Wall Street Journal, National Catholic Register, Institutional Investor and other major outlets.

  1. 12/04/2023

    Dublin in Flames. Ireland, Sick Political Dog of Europe. Government Embarrassed. 'The current Irish government clearly cares more about praise from woke media than their own people,' says Elon Musk

    What triggered the worst riots on the streets of Dublin, Ireland, in decades? The rioting, as it should be, was condemned for its destruction and hooliganism in the wake of a shocking stabbling incident in Parnell Street by a man identified as a naturalized citizen born abroad. The motive for the stabbling, which injured three children and a woman, was not clear. But mainstream media and the Irish government and local police, pinned the blame on right wing extremists. Is that it? The reality could point to something more sinister, a state of affairs given only curt attention, or dismissed in the popular media narratives. On this episode, we'll offer some context and more credible reasons for the mayhem in Dublin. Here's how the Guardian newspaper covered the riots: "A strange duality characterised Thursday’s riots in Dublin: the level of violence caught most people by surprise, and yet there was also a feeling of inevitability about it. Ireland’s Booker prize-winning novelist Paul Lynch captured the mood in his acceptance speech on Sunday, when he said he was “astonished” by the disturbances but that the possibility for such disquiet to break out is “always under the surface. "Few expected to see the capital descend into a violent hellscape during evening rush hour. But factcheckers like myself who monitor Ireland’s far right – as part of our work verifying online content and debunking misinformation – have witnessed how the movement instigated city-wide destruction after building on anti-immigrant sentiment over the past year."

    44 min
  2. 09/11/2023

    DR. WINSTON ALLEN: Founder of America's first black-owned brokerage, author, inventor, professor & mentor, led Xerox's global training program. He faced barriers. But his love of America endures.

    Winston E. Allen, author of “DON’T GET MAD, GET RICH” and “LIVE A PURPOSEFUL AND MEANINGFUL LIFE”, newly published autobiography “I PRIED OPEN WALL STREET IN 1962“, is so much more than the title reveals. Dr. Allen’s book is fascinating, riveting, historical and grossly entertaining, and has been getting much acclaim from critics and the general reading public alike. The story of Dr. Allen’s true-life experiences that propelled Dr. Allen to ultimately form the first minority owned, independent, broker-dealer firm in the history of the United States. The title captures just a fraction of the extraordinary life of the author. There are so many stirring experiences told that the reader was compelled to not put this book down. Dr. Allen’s first gripping experience was as a 13-year-old boy, traveling, by train, from New York City to Miami, Florida in a sealed, locked compartment, in 1946 and how this experience shaped his life. Before leaving Penn Station in New York, Dr. Allen learned later in life that his parents provided gratuities to the black porter staff to ensure that their child would arrive safely in Miami. Being locked in this compartment for three days, Dr. Allen would only see the porters when they brought his meals to his compartment.  Before arriving at Union Station in Washington DC, the porters entered his compartment and pulled the curtains shut to make sure no one would see Dr. Allen. Peeking through the curtains, Dr. Allen saw, for the first time, bathroom signs that read “WHITES ONLY” and “COLORED” in bold capital letters. Thinking, since this is the capital, this is the only time he would see these signs. Dr. Allen recalls, as the train traveled further south, the worse things became. This experience had a great impact on Dr. Allen’s life and Dr. Allen was resolute not to let anything deter him from seizing the advantages of whatever opportunities the future might hold for him. In 1961, Dr. Allen earned a Fulbright Scholarship to study in Paris at the Sorbonne at the University of Paris. Remembering his 1946 train ride, Dr. Allen expected a similar experience, only to be flabbergasted that in Dr. Allen’s own words, “My ethnicity was never an issue.” This was a new and freeing experience as Dr. Allen traveled widely throughout Europe, never once experiencing any type of bias because of the color of his skin. This, again, was a life changing experience as Dr. Allen was determined never to let his ethnicity in the United States be an impediment in his life. Returning to the United States in 1962, from his experiences and contacts made in Paris, Dr. Allen decided his career would be within the citadel of capitalism, on Wall Street.

    1h 13m
  3. 08/22/2023

    NEWARK'S COLLAPSE & AN EPIPHANY IN CONNEMARA: JACK CASHILL'S monumental new book on the tragic fall of his native NJ city. His true story of white ethnic flight from urban America

    Long accused of racism and “white flight,” the ethnic Americans driven from their homes and neighborhoods—the author JACK CASHILL included—finally get the chance to tell their side of the story.“A startlingly honest and poignant look at ‘white flight’ from the white perspective. A necessary and overdue corrective.” —Brent Bozell III, founder and president of the Media Research Center wrote of JACK CASHILL'S latest book, UNTENABLE. The True Story of White Ethnic Flight From America's Cities. (Post Hill Press)CASHILL, a native of Newark who now lives most of the year in Kansas City, once asked a lifelong friend, a rare Democrat among the displaced, why he and his widowed mother finally left our block in the early 1970s, twenty years after the first African-American families moved in. He searched a minute for the right set of words, and then simply said, “It became untenable.” When I asked what he meant by “untenable,” he answered, “When your mother gets mugged for the second time, that’s untenable. When your home gets broken into for the second time, that’s untenable.” In researching this project, I found myself repeatedly stunned by the failure of self-described experts on white flight to ask those accused of fleeing why it was they fled. The reason the experts didn’t ask, I discovered, is that they were afraid of what they might learn. Website: Cashill.com

    1h 11m
  4. 07/28/2023

    LONELY GENERATION: US Surgeon General Declares Loneliness a Health Crisis. JP Gance Communio's Scientific Study On Biggest Causes & Surprising Victims, Young Americans

    Communio, a national nonprofit organization that works with churches to strengthen families and develop stronger faith lives, has released its new Nationwide Study on Faith and Relationships showing that a forty-year decline in marriage and fatherhood has fueled the public health crisis in loneliness and driven the national decline in Christian faith. The conclusions are drawn from a nationwide survey of 19,000 Sunday church attendees conducted during worship in 112 evangelical, Protestant, and Catholic congregations. In the wake of the US Surgeon General’s May 2 advisory on loneliness, this study found just 22 percent of church goers were considered lonely. Single church goers were more than three times more likely to be considered lonely than the married. Men and women who had never married in their 30s were more likely to be lonely than the loneliest group of widows. The collapse of resident fatherhood through the decline in marriage is fueling the direct decline in faith. The study found 80 percent of all Sunday church attendees – single or married, young or old -- in the United States grew up in a continuously married home with both biological parents at a time where this is increasingly rare. This trend held across age groups. Roughly 1 in 5 married churchgoers struggle (have a satisfaction gap) in their marriage. Women are 62 percent more likely to struggling than men. Cohabiting women were 76 percent more likely to struggle than married women and twice as likely to struggle than cohabiting men. “To effectively evangelize today, we must address the declining number of marriages, poor marital health and improve the effectiveness of fathers in those marriages,” said J.P. DeGance, President of Communio. “By addressing these three issues, we can end the loneliness epidemic as well as spark a sustained revival in Christian faith and active church attendance. The link between marriage and faith is clear, yet 85 percent of all churches in the United States report spending zero dollars annually on marriage and relationship ministry.” Communio is a nonprofit that equips to evangelize through the renewal of healthy relationships, marriages, and families.

    49 min
4.8
out of 5
33 Ratings

About

DIG LIFE DEEP! with John Aidan Byrne brings fascinating guests from Main to Wall Street and the worlds of finance, economics, politics, Silicon Valley, Hollywood, sports, art, science and more. The show celebrates success, a spirit of enterprise, in an age of unparalleled social upheaval. An award-winning Irish journalist in his beloved America, Byrne seeks hope for our existential crisis. Byrne is a writer, reporter, editor and Broadway alumnus. His work is published in the New York Post, Wall Street Journal, National Catholic Register, Institutional Investor and other major outlets.

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