The Òrga Spiral Podcasts
Where do the rigid rules of science and the fluid beauty of language converge? Welcome to The Òrga Spiral Podcasts, a journey into the hidden patterns that connect our universe with radical history, poetry and geopolitics
We liken ourselves to the poetry in a double helix and the narrative arc of a scientific discovery. Each episode, we follow the graceful curve of the golden spiral—a shape found in galaxies, hurricanes, and sunflowers, collapsing empires—to uncover the profound links between seemingly distant worlds. How does the Fibonacci sequence structure a sonnet? What can the grammar of DNA teach us about the stories we tell? Such is the nature of our quest. Though much more expansive.
This is for the curious minds who find equal wonder in a physics equation and a perfectly crafted metaphor. For those who believe that to truly understand our world, you cannot separate the logic of science from the art of its expression.
Join us as we turn the fundamental questions of existence, from the quantum to the cultural, and discover the beautiful, intricate design that binds it all together. The Òrga Spiral Podcasts: Finding order in the chaos, and art in the equations Hidden feminist histories. Reviews of significant humanist writers. -The "hale clamjamfry"
The Òrga Spiral Podcasts
The Pogues: with Brendan Behan and Shane MacGowan
Their artistry was inextricably linked to their infamous personas, which were built upon a foundation of alcohol. For both, drink was not merely a vice but a central character in their mythos—a muse, a demon, and a form of rebellion against a sober, orderly world. Behan famously quipped, “I am a drinker with a writing problem,” a sentiment MacGowan lived to its logical, teeth-rotting extreme. Their public identities became cautionary tales and perverse sources of national pride, embodying a romantic, if tragic, ideal of the suffering artist. The world watched their brilliance flicker and often drown in the very substance that seemed to fuel it.
Yet, to reduce them to mere drunkards is to commit a grave error. Their indulgence was also a form of radical honesty and a rejection of respectability. In a country that often struggled with its puritanical past, Behan and MacGowan were gloriously, scandalously disrespectable. They refused to sanitize the Irish experience for polite society, whether English or Irish. They presented it raw, with all its contradictions, its sorrow, its black humour, and its overwhelming passion intact.
In the end, Shane MacGowan and Brendan Behan are kindred spirits because they channeled the same chaotic, beautiful, and tragic energy of Ireland itself. They were walking, talking, drinking contradictions: tender and violent, traditional and punk, celebrated and self-annihilating. They proved that the rebel spirit could be housed as effectively in a three-chord punk ballad as in a three-act play. One gave us the words, the other the music, but both sang the same raw, unforgettable song of the Irish soul.