The Irish Are Coming podcast is about how Irish people and their heritage helped shape the United States. Each episode follows a story, a person, a place, or a moment from Ireland into America — and connects it with our American fabric of today.
Irish Gold Miners Earn a Corner of the American Flag
"I got a letter from a relation telling me to hasten across the sea, that gold was to be found in plenty there." An Irish poet who dug copper in Butte, MT wrote those words in a poem called Alas That I Ever Came.
Letters like his drew thousands of Irish into the mining West, and historian Dr. Alan J. M. Noonan has followed their trail. One letter leads to Nellie Cashman of County Cork, who never waited for a man to strike it rich for her. When miners lay snowbound and sick with scurvy in the mountains of British Columbia, she led six men on snowshoes through 77 days of brutal weather, survived an avalanche and is credited with saving as many as 75 lives.
She bought and worked her own mines and led prospectors all across the West. When her sister died, and Nellie was suddenly raising five children, she put them through Catholic schools and kept on mining. At one point in Alaska she owned eleven mines.
You will also meet the miners who knew the rock dust was killing them and went down anyway, and the union man in Leadville, CO who said he had earned a corner of the American flag.
Gold in plenty? A few found it. For everyone else, what did that letter really cost? Press play to find out.
2 Oct 2026
Habits, Hearts and the Irish Heroines of Chicago
In 1846, a 24 year old nun from County Carlow arrived in a young, rough Chicago. Mother Agatha O'Brien went on to build schools and a hospital, and she was only the beginning.
Dr. Sophie Cooper of Queen's University Belfast joins Robert Moon to tell the story of the Irish nuns and women that history often leaves out. They nursed the city through cholera and cared for Chicago's Irish Brigade during the Civil War. As far as Dr. Cooper can tell, the Sisters of Mercy were the only group let inside the Camp Douglas prison camp. After the Great Fire of 1871, they walked the city collecting firewood to rebuild. The girls they taught went on to become teachers and union leaders.
Why did Chicago open doors for Irish women that stayed closed in Boston and New York? Listen to find out.
22 Sept 2026
Bloody O'Reilly and the Irish Canals
Spanish and French colonial Louisiana through the antebellum city, 1768–1850s — from the Creole rebellion and its aftermath, through the first recorded New Orleans St. Patrick's Day celebration in 1806 and the Battle of New Orleans, to the digging of the New Basin Canal and the Irish church-building boom.
With Dr. Laura D. Kelley — immigrant and ethnic historian at Tulane University, where she teaches history and directs the Dublin study-abroad program, and author of The Irish in New Orleans (University of Louisiana at Lafayette Press). Her work traces Irish New Orleans from the colonial period forward, separating the documentary record from the city's most cherished Irish legends.
Historian Laura D. Kelley on the Irishman who ended America's first colonial revolt — and the canal diggers whose deaths New Orleans has been exaggerating for a century.
"We use the term rebellion when we lose, and we use the term revolution when we win."
— Dr. Laura D. Kelley
31 Aug 2026
Civil War Letters from the Irish Brigade
The American Civil War, 1861–1865, with roots reaching back to the 1848 Young Ireland rebellion and an epilogue reaching forward into the post-war Indian Wars (1860s–1880s).
With Dr. Damian Shiels — founder of Irish in the American Civil War (2010), co-host of the Transatlantic podcast, and author of The Irish in the American Civil War (2014), The Forgotten Irish (2017), and Green and Blue: Irish Americans in the Union Military, 1861–1865 (LSU Press). He holds a Ph.D. in history from Northumbria University, where his research recovered the voices of Irish American soldiers through their own correspondence.
Historian Damian Shiels reads the letters Irish soldiers sent home from the Civil War's bloodiest battlefields.
"I'm tired of the fighting and the killing of men, but I suppose we have to continue because that's what we need to do."
— Barney Carr, Irish soldier, in his last letter home from Kennesaw Mountain, June 1864
31 Aug 2026
Aid to the Irish in Their Darkest Hour
The conversation centers on the Great Irish Famine of the 1840s and its transatlantic aftermath, with a particular focus on how the famine became the world's first large-scale international relief campaign — and how the famine influx reshaped New York's public health institutions. Shrout traces donations from Indian Territory and the enslaved South, and the rise of Bellevue's hospitals, poorhouses, and jails.
With Dr. Anelise Hanson Shrout, an Associate Professor of Digital and Computational Studies and History at Bates College, cross-appointed in American Studies.
Historian Dr. Anelise Shrout traces how the Great Irish Famine became one of the nineteenth century's first transnational humanitarian campaigns — drawing aid from the Cherokee, the Choctaw, and enslaved people in the American South, while Irish arrivals reshaped New York's hospitals, poorhouses, and jails.
"He had said, 'Will you give up one meal a day to aid the starving Irish?' … The enslaved people go away and they talk, and they come back and they say, 'We're not going to do that. We will, however, give you fifty dollars.'" — Dr. Anelise Shrout
31 Aug 2026
Inside New York’s Most Notorious Slum
Inside New York’s Most Notorious Slum
The conversation centers on Five Points and Irish New York from the 1820s through the Civil War era, with a particular focus on the Great Famine influx of the 1840s–1850s and the neighborhood's politics, labor, and lore. Anbinder traces the slum's origins on a filled-in lake, the migration routes that brought the Irish there, the myth-busting reality of who could afford to come, and Lincoln's 1860 visit.
With Dr. Tyler Anbinder, a Professor Emeritus of History at George Washington University, where he taught the history of American immigration and the Civil War era.
Historian Dr. Tyler Anbinder takes us inside Five Points, nineteenth-century New York's most infamous immigrant neighborhood — revealing that the Irish who settled there were not simply the poorest of the poor, but workers, artisans, servants, and voters who reshaped the city's labor, politics, and streets.
"Poor people can't afford to emigrate to the United States… the ship's not giving you any food. Zero. Nothing. And no water. You have to bring your water, you have to bring your food — five weeks' worth." — Dr. Tyler Anbinder
31 Aug 2026
Irish Arrival and American Prejudice
Irish Arrival and American Prejudice
Irish diaspora to the U.S. 1700-1900 in phases, the colonial-era Protestant/Presbyterian (Scots-Irish) wave of the 1700s; the shift to Catholic migration from the 1820s; the famine decade (1845–1855) — one million dead, two million gone; and the relentless post-famine exodus through the end of the century.
With Dr. Kevin Kenny, a Professor of History and Glucksman Professor in Irish Studies at New York University, where he also directs Glucksman Ireland House.
Historian Dr. Kevin Kenny traces the Irish diaspora beyond the familiar famine story — revealing an Irish America that was Protestant before it was Catholic, and shaped by land hunger, labor, religion, and slavery's shadow.
"You could sum up the whole story of mass emigration with that image — the replacement of human beings by animals on the soil." — Dr. Kevin Kenny
31 Aug 2026
Leaving Ireland on a Death Ship
Pre-Famine and Famine era Irish emigration to North America, roughly 1710s-1850s
With Dr. Cian T. McMahon, author of three books and over a dozen scholarly articles on Irish and American history including The Coffin Ship: Life and Death at Sea during the Great Irish Famine (NYU Press, 2021) and The Routledge History of Irish America (2024).
Historian Dr. Cian McMahon takes us below deck on Ireland's famine-era "coffin ships," where survival depended not on luck alone, but on family, friendship, and the networks emigrants built before they ever reached America.
"You see these 'information wanted' ads where people say, 'I arrived on this ship, with this captain. I was supposed to meet my husband. If anybody knows where he is, please tell him that his family is here.'" — Dr. Cian McMahon
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