When dry-witted Irish sage, acquired taste underachieving amateur humourist, socially awkward practically unheard-of legally blind cat obsessive and husband Neal O'Carroll ingests a litre of generic energy drinks, a transformation occurs. There emerges a taurine-tongued purveyor of madcap monologues, fantastical tales, comical tirades, nonsensical yet impressively argued opinions, ludicrious lectures, copious Two Cats walk into a Bar stories and lately, an enthusiastic cheerleader for a bespoke new pronunciation of the word dog. Every segment is begun with no idea how the first sentence will end, never mind what the subject, if any, will be. Partly inspired by classic radio comedy Just a Minute, Into Your Head is a one-of-a-kind stream of conciousness comedy podcast by Neal from Ireland, and a creative method honed over 18 years and 800 episodes. Writing in the third party for some reason, O'Carroll insists the first five hundred episodes are apalling drivel. It is only in later years that the drivel has matured into whatever you want to call this. Starting in the early 2000s, his ludicrous process was used to write hundreds of rambling nonsense humour columns under the brands Newsburp* and later Neal's Belch. These included the "Two cats walk into a bar" stories which would become a mainstay of the podcast. Next came a dialogue-heavy yet completely unplanned webcomic Matchstick Cats and, in 2006, the first cringeworthy attempts at a podcast. Then came eighteen years of podcasting, unless you don't count the seven year interlude between 2016 and 2023. Which I suppose is reasonable. Anyway, good morning. *No connection to fellow Irish comedy podcast Newsburp, which later acquired that domain.
Neal discusses popping your Bs, the trouble with playing a zombie, how to purchase free tap water in pubs, BB Max and other nemeses, apple seed myths, the globalisation of bin day, a tip for listeners who don’t enjoy this voice, a card game nation, an entrepreneur’s guide to counting money, why Nickelodeon goes over children’s heads, the trouble with Jack and the Beanstalk, hospitality versus hostelry...
Neal takes an objective look at Hansel and Gretel and discusses the trouble with heroin, basement-attic philosophy, the IRA on Everest, the argument against thought experiments, broken leg mysteries, the rainy day myth, advice for News Junkies, Einstein’s dog equation, dog narratives versus dog stories, how a trained actor drinks piss, declaring garden weed to the authorities, pisswaffles, the stroopw...
Neal discusses Bivouacs, shoes in radio dramas, traversing North Korea, how to talk to your child about podcasting, the phrase teaching your grandmother how to suck eggs, urinal troughs on trains, inventing the commuter picnic, cartoons about puppets, attitudes to scarecrows, curing the listener’s pencil sickness, major life lesson from Man Versus Food, how a bishop moves in Chess, Worzel Gummage (ITV...
Neal discusses things to consider when falling to Earth, the impenetrable mechanics of swatting a fly, victim-blaming a fly, nondescriptness, a dog’s attempts to line it’s stomach, why the Littlest Hobo should learn better posture, why dinosaurs could have been pets, assessing the moon’s flammability, a fly relates to Billy Joel’s No Man’s Land, how air crash investigators measure customer satisfactio...
Neal discusses explaining Pink Floyd to a cat, understanding the Middle East, how parrots work, cars that are very wide and very short, how to dress a performing seal, Chevies, levees, levies, Daewoo, the building layout in Cheers, imagining what it’s like to have undiagnosed haemorrhoids, advice for U.S. homeowners, Led Zeppelin’s creative process, using local language on the podcast, a non-unionised dog, a unionised dog, proof my...
Neal presents a new original Quentin Tarantino dialogue about a bank heist of a bulding that once housed Robin Island jail (tasteful), and discusses assisting an elephant with self exploration, a bland thing that you’re sucking on all day, mapping your face, addressing the far-future listener as ancestor, a non-corporeal Maître D’ versus a cat, Logan’s Run (1976) for fish, podcasts versus comic books, a French dining experience, ho...
Neal discusses what happens to your child if they listen to this, what your cat does to feel alive, how to organise a legalised crime purchase regime, reporting future cold cases, Demolition Man (1993), prepping your child for an era of burning and drowning, how to row your dog, Dinasaur versus Alien, an horrific nursery rhyme. forty years of non-violent teaching, a tonne of bricks versus a tonne of b...
Neal discusses a problem he has in common with Beatle Paul McCartney, a surgeon and a tree surgeon comparing notes, truly hollow fruits, the body as a trickle down economy, doctors berating the comatose, the very worst thing to take on a plane, manicure and footwear logistics for upright cats, cranberry sauce nuts, outsourcing your bedtime thoughts, the face as a fake shopfront facade, dropkick me Jes...
In a podcast laden with twists and nail-biting revelations as we sit in on a jail-hardened dog’s parole review, Neal considers what an M and M is, Mother Nature’s periodic landscapes, a doctor’s views on bi-directional blackboard scraping, the dog bitch to dog Hitler ratio, dog parole board makeup, the French resistance on ‘Allo ‘Allo (BBC1), what home means to a dog serving life, lingusitics versus c...
In the first show of 2024 Neal discusses the term “west brit”, Trevelyan, a cat avoiding New Year’s beer scams, a dog’s dealings with the registrar of deaths and stuff, defining hella dodgy, Hurricane Charlie mountain memories, songs about meatloaf, accepting that toilets trigger thirst, Chas and Dave but not Status Quo, realities of building a road to the Moon, a show-permeating glasses incident, fin...
In a Christmas special culminating in the heartwarming story of a foulmouthed fake Santa who holds up bars, Neal discusses face cloth enthusiasts, introducing your child to A Clockwork Orange (1972), conversations with a working dog, a guide to shooting yourself in the foot, dogs in soap operas, how parenting ends, a deleted undersea mountain climber story, watching Highlander (1986) for the Queen son...
Neal discusses reassuring a fast food operative who’s seen Michael Douglas in Falling Down (1993), the trouble with one-way vocal chords, whodunnits at mass, thoughts of a depressed eternal dog, bar security’s guide to aging a cat, a new way to deliver heating oil, misinterpreting a blue moon, temporal extradition, custody of a padlock, cat linguistics, commissioning the word bespoke, smuggling toast,...
Neal discusses sit-com bunk bed envy, takey-offey parachutes versus landy parachutes, a dignified way to kill off libraries, eternal peanuts, where cabaret fits in the grand scheme of things, a curtailed feed remnant advisory for returning listeners, fooling yourself with documentaries, Everest without a Walkman, measuring hell-broken-loose levels, steamboats and whitewashing, long distance stewing, c...
In an 800th episode during which he may have overdone the energy drinks somewhat, (although the Cat Stevens part is true) Neal exposes a gaping loophole for toddler movie producers and discusses merry-go-rounds versus the events depicted in The Deer Hunter (1978), what he learned in his days in a Dublin boxing arena, achieving immortality by outwitting his future self, sit-com revolving door tropes, novel advice for joggers, you co...
Neal discusses the imaginary listener’s secret existential crisis, approximating the taste of grass for the discerning diner, a new way to measure your height, whether crosswords count as relaxation, changing atitudes to chimneys, what’s under your face, the first humans ever to see a bridge, canal tow-path horse height issues, harmonica design mysteries, Lovely Daaaaaaaaaay versus a barking barman, c...
In an hour culminating in an elightening explanation, using the story of his recently departed mother’s 1950s or early 1960s Atlantic crossing, of how silence works, Neal discusses why animals need to become gardeners, your chances of getting a pharmacist to sell you tea or paracetemol or cocaine, the movie “Downsizing”, quicksand on a playing field, the pros and cons of having Anthony Hopkins as your...
Neal discusses turning against Tom Hanks, a cat versus Pope Benedict XVI, Apple Pencils in banks, turning against Monopoly, a beverage based on some woman off Deep Space Nine, misexplaining Occupy Wall Street, off-air cat songs, debriefing a temporary cat, why you should have something wrong with you, fonts in the blood, transmitting barmen over the Wicklow Mountains, taking up space, IT security as entertainment, cistern noise ana...
Neal discusses filling a bath from the bottom, an anti-prelude, harmonica haters, witchhunts under Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, isolated tool-blaming, the case for (domestic) cats vomiting on each other, QED memories, a particularly taxing song for harmonica, what to drink in a vomitorium, understanding bass guitar operators, misunderstanding Queen’s John Deacon, vomitorium enthusiasts in academia, na...
Neal deals with how head transplants do or don’t work, cinematography of Pope John Paul II and Oscar Schindler, how donkeys are processed hygenically, the problem with Steve Jobs RIP, a cat purchasing fake magic in a laundrette, elephants in a library, the problem with the human digestive system, surviving a long weekend in prison, what to do after you’ve made lemons into lemonde, talking microbes wit...
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations.
Anna Sale explores the big questions and hard choices that are often left out of polite conversation.
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people.
A straightforward look at the day's top news in 20 minutes. Powered by ABC News. Hosted by Brad Mielke.