The Nutty story
In 1983, I came to America on an athletic scholarship to St. John’s University in New York City. I was a modestly talented thrower: shot put, discus, and hammer. In making that journey, I was following a tradition ignited decades earlier by a Tipperary man named Jimmy Reardon.
After competing at the 1948 London Olympics, Reardon (1925-2019) accepted an athletic scholarship to Villanova University, and in doing so helped establish what became known as the Irish Pipeline, the pathway through which generations of many talented Irish athletes traveled in pursuit of Olympic ambition and educational opportunity. My own journey through the Pipeline did not produce an Olympic moment. It did produce an education that opened doors I could not have imagined standing on a track in Dublin.
The Ireland I left in 1983, Dublin specifically, had little to offer economically. The Celtic Tiger was not just distant, it was inconceivable. Arriving in New York, I was dazzled by the contrast in wealth and pulled in by an optimism that felt entirely foreign to the subdued, cash-strapped Dublin of my youth.
Like many of my generation, I held a jaundiced view of Ireland, particularly when measured against America’s relentless forward momentum. As I built a career in financial technology, I gave little thought to where I had come from or what I had left behind. That has changed. In recent years, I have come to understand the extraordinary culture I carried with me and how, when given the space to operate, it punches well above its weight in the American story.
That understanding is what drives the Irish Stew Podcast, which I co-host with John Lee. Together we have hosted more than 150 conversations with accomplished Irish people from across the globe, each one a small but vivid window into the Irish mind as it navigates a rapidly changing world. It is, at its core, a thank you to everyone who made my journey possible, and a nudge to anyone just starting out: the Irish bring something real to wherever they land. New York included.