From visiting the White House and the United Nations to taking selfies with former US vice-president Joe Biden, Irishwoman Sinéad Burke is blazing an international trail.

Disclosure time. The TV programme on RTÉ One this evening, GAA Nua, is a project that is well known to me.

I stumbled across a very interesting chat the other day between Malcolm Gladwell and Bill Simmons on the future of American football - and whether it has a future.

Seasoned online shopper Liz Dunphy offers advice on how to get the best out of couch shopping

As New York storytelling club, The Moth, comes to Ireland, Richard Fitzpatrick learns the secrets to spinning a great yarn.

The TV-adaptation of Mantel’s novels excelled, but steadily lost viewing figures,, writes Richard Fitzpatrick.

In a week when the plight of the inter-county GAA player has been prominently described as "depressing", any conversation with an Irish Premier League basketball player is worth starting with asking what that experience is like, writes Kieran Shannon.

Kieran McGeeney can make men tick.

Malcolm Gladwell, author of bestsellers The Tipping Point, Outliers, and What the Dog Saw, this year offered a typically provocative take on what it really means to be the underdog.

Books for grown-ups

I’m writing this as my old friend Bill O’Herlihy reads a laundry list of names to Eamon, John and, yes even, Ronnie Whelan.

MALCOLM GLADWELL’S damning profile of the relationship between American Football and brain injury, which he wrote for the New Yorker over two years ago, has stuck with me ever since.

THERE’S no point in beating around the bush: the stand-out flashes of genius in the hurling and football championships have come in the last couple of weekends.

SOMETIMES you wake up with a bright idea and just go with it.

LET’s think back a moment, before we look forward. You’ve just had your dinner. A warm mug of milky tea is perched on the arm of the sofa as you sit back in short trousers on another yawning summer evening.

SITTING on a bus wearing a pair of goggles that doubles up as a television screen may be a fashion no-no for some, but it spells techno-heaven for gadget geeks.

PERHAPS it’s the Johnny Onion Rings.

RESULTS coming in from the British and US food sectors augur well for our home-grown crop of players, including Kerry and Greencore.

Sinn Féin have taken a brave step on an historic day for the North, says Political Editor Harry McGee.

English playwright Byrony Lavery has been accused of plagiarising passages from a criminal psychiatrist and a magazine writer in her Tony Award-nominated play about a serial killer and his psychiatrist.

Philadelphia band The Roots were one of the stars of Witnness 2003.