More big questions – and more interesting answers – from Gay Byrne's hugely popular RTÉ TV show We all look for meaning in our lives and here twenty well-known public figures share what gives their lives meaning, prompting us to ponder the question ourselves and perhaps even find some answers. Following last year's bestselling The Meaning of Life, Gay Byrne is back with more insightful discussions on the big themes that bind us all: childhood, love, faith, disbelief, morality, religion, grief. Based on his popular and long-running RTÉ TV show, The Meaning of Life 2 explores life's big questions with an array of fascinating public figures, among them Ronan Keating, Micheál Ó Muircheartaigh, Ian Paisley and Imelda May. With Peter McVerry he ponders whether life is shaped by accidents or by the way people respond to accidents. Mary Robinson reveals the beliefs and values that fuel her formidable moral engine. Eamon Dunphy's early experiences led him to believe that 'everyone is magnificent in their own way', and Edna O'Brien discusses her struggles with the Catholic Church after the infamous banning of The Country Girls. 'There are many pearls of wisdom to be harvested from the human oysters featured here who share with me the beliefs, values, thoughts and experiences that have shaped, or been shaped by, their lives.' Gay Byrne The Meaning of Life 2: Table of Contents Preface by Gay Byrne - Imelda May - Peter McVerry - Mary Robinson - Brian Cody - Ian Paisley - J. P. Donleavy - Emily O'Reilly - John Lonergan - Ronan Keating - Maureen Gaffney - Sean O'Sullivan - Christina Noble - Micheál Ó Muircheartaigh - Fionnula Flanagan - Colm Tóibín - Mary Byrne - Colm Wilkinson - Celine Byrne - Edna O'Brien - Eamon DunphyFor each book sold, a donation will be made to The Peter McVerry Trust and The Christina Noble Children's Foundation.

On RTÉ's The Meaning of Life, Gay Byrne has spoken with public figures about these questions and many others.

One of the cultural phenomena to occur in Ireland in the last two decades has been the highly successful growth of stand-up comedy as a popular entertainment genre. This book examines stand-up comedy from the perspective of the narrated self, through the prism of the fabricated comedy persona, including Tommy Tiernan, Dylan Moran and Maeve Higgins.

Mental health-substance use is a complex interrelation, with equally complex implications for individuals and their families, health professionals and society. Although its international recognition as an issue of critical importance is growing, clear guidance for professionals on mental health-substance use and its treatment is hard to find. The Mental Health-Substance Use series has been written to address this need, concentrating on concerns, dilemmas and concepts that impact on the life and well-being of affected individuals and those close to them, and the future direction of practice, education, research, services, interventions, and treatment. This first book outlines the specific health issues, experiential aspects, treatment options and wider implications of mental health-substance use, as well as defining the field, through contributions from international experts and practitioners. This Introduction and the subsequent volumes will challenge concepts and stimulate debate, exploring all aspects of the development in treatment, intervention and care responses, and the adoption of research-led best practice. They are essential reading for mental health and substance use professionals, students and educators.

Seamus Heaney & the End of Catholic Ireland takes off from the poet’s growing awareness in the new millennium of “something far more important in my mental formation than cultural nationalism or the British presence or any of that stuff—namely, my early religious education.” It then pursues an examination of the full trajectory of Heaney’s religious beliefs as represented in his poetry, prose, and interviews, with a briefer account of the interactive religious histories of the Irish and international contexts in which he lived. Thus, in the 1940s and 50s, Heaney was inducted into the narrow, punitive, but also enabling Catholicism of the era. In the early 1960s he was witness to the lively religious debates from the Anglican Bishop of Woolwich’s Honest to God to the seismic disruptions of Vatican II. When the conflict in Northern Ireland between Catholics and Protestants broke out, Heaney was forced to dig deep for an imaginative understanding of its religious roots. From the 1980s on, Heaney more and more proclaimed his own religious loss while also recognizing the institution’s residual value in an Irish society of rising prosperity, weariness with the atrocities of a partly religion-inspired IRA, and beset by the scandals of sex abuse among the clergy. Kieran Quinlan sees Heaney as an exemplar of this period of major change in Ireland as he engaged the religious issue not only in major writers such as James Joyce, W. B. Yeats, T. S. Eliot, Wallace Stevens, Philip Larkin, and Czeslaw Miłosz, but also in a diverse array of less familiar commentators lay and clerical, creative and academic, believers and unbelievers, Irish and international. Breaking new ground by expanding the scope of Heaney’s religious preoccupations and writing in an accessible, reflective, and sometimes provocative manner, Quinlan’s study places Heaney in his universe, and that universe in turn in its wider intellectual setting.

More big questions - and more interesting answers - from Gay Byrne's hugely popular RTÉ TV show. We all look for meaning in our lives and here twenty well-known public figures from Ian Paisley to Ronan Keating reflect on life's big questions and share what gives their lives meaning.

The book of Job is one of the oldest surviving pieces of writing in human history. It also deals with two of the biggest questions that humans have asked throughout history - what is God like, and why does he allow such suffering in the world? Allow Phil to take you on a journey through the book of Job to discover insights that have shaped the way that people have viewed God and viewed humanity for over 3,000 years. God inspired the Bible for a reason. He wants you read it and let it change your life. If you are willing to take this challenge seriously, then you will love Phil Moore's devotional commentaries. Their bite-sized chapters are punchy and relevant, yet crammed with fascinating scholarship. Welcome to a new way of reading the Bible. Welcome to the Straight to the Heart series.

Following last year's bestselling collection of interviews from the RTE TV series The Meaning of Life, Gay Byrne is back with more big questions -- and more interesting answers. With Peter McVerry, he ponders whether life is shaped by accidents or by the way people respond to accidents. Mary Robinson reveals the beliefs and values that fuel her formidable moral engine. Eamon Dunphy's early experiences led him to believe that "everyone is magnificent in their own way," and Edna O'Brien discusses her struggles with the Catholic Church after the infamous banning of The Country Girls. We all look for meaning in our lives and here twenty well-known public figures share what gives their lives meaning, prompting us to ponder the question ourselves and perhaps even find some answers.

It is no exaggeration to call Gay Byrne a colossus of the Irish broadcasting scene. Throughout the latter half of the twentieth century, as host of both the Late Late Show and the Gay Byrne Show, he played a seminal role in the shift in Irish society and culture from the Church-dominated fearful state of the early 1960s to the modern multicultural Ireland we live in today. The Gaybo Revolution examines the significance of Gay Byrne's influence on this maturation of Irish society, while simultaneously highlighting the centrality of the talk show genre in Irish life. Equally reviled and revered, Byrne has been referred to as "the great window-opener" and a "media lay priest". But his influence in single-channel Ireland is undeniable. Using letters to the editor, media articles, recent studies of Irish culture, quotes from Byrne himself and a re-examination of the original broadcasts, The Gaybo Revolution explores how Byrne and his talk shows, on both radio and television, provided a forum for popular debate and acted as catalysts for change in Irish life. It analyses and discusses the impact on Irish society of such controversies as Church denunciations of the Late Late Show, the Brian Trevaskis affair, the development of the Irish Women's Liberation Movement, the Ann Lovett letters, and the seminal interviews with Annie Murphy, Pádraig Flynn and Terry Keane. In the final section of the book, the modern history of the Late Late Show, the development of Irish TV and radio talk shows in the post-Byrne era and the contrasting nature of TV talk shows in the UK and US are explored. The Gaybo Revolution will appeal to all those who wish to understand the evolution of Irish society and culture in the late twentieth century and the substantial impact of Irish media on this change.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • David Byrne’s incisive and enthusiastic look at the musical art form, from its very inceptions to the influences that shape it, whether acoustical, economic, social, or technological—now updated with a new chapter on digital curation. “How Music Works is a buoyant hybrid of social history, anthropological survey, autobiography, personal philosophy, and business manual”—The Boston Globe Utilizing his incomparable career and inspired collaborations with Talking Heads, Brian Eno, and many others, David Byrne taps deeply into his lifetime of knowledge to explore the panoptic elements of music, how it shapes the human experience, and reveals the impetus behind how we create, consume, distribute, and enjoy the songs, symphonies, and rhythms that provide the backbeat of life. Byrne’s magnum opus uncovers thrilling realizations about the redemptive liberation that music brings us all.