Today with Claire Byrne RTE Radio 1
There is only one news story in the world. It has been told in thousands of ways.
But perhaps one of the most powerful moments on radio was a recording of a woman sweeping up glass after a bombing on a Ukraine street and, slowly rising, gathering pace; the voices of ordinary people, shocked and dazed, standing up and singing their country’s national anthem.
Courage, defiance, bewilderment seeped out of the radio.
With a finger on the pulse as ever is RTÉ presenter Claire Byrne. She presents with infinite calm and poise but is happy to ruffle her guests’ feathers as necessary.
Not Adi Roche.
The founder and chief executive of Chernobyl Children International was among many guests interviewed as Russian tanks rolled into Ukraine.
Roche is calling for the site of Chernobyl – site of the 1986 nuclear explosion – to be declared a no war zone.
The Irish humanitarian charity has been working for decades to support families affected by that disaster – thousands of children have enjoyed holidays breathing in the fresh gutsy air of Ireland.
I was a latecomer to the HBO series Chernobyl, but am still reeling.
News that Russian tanks were at Chernobyl and that the site could be dragged into this conflict is the stuff of nightmares, Roche told Claire Byrne.
She has escorted many journalists down the years through that “no man’s land” where thousands of villages and towns are deserted of life.
Thousands of displaced people still grieve for a home to which they can never return, she said. They are “environmental refugees”.
Chernobyl is filled with a sense of grief and a sense of loss. “It’s a sacred burial ground really,” she said.
"I hate to think that Ukraine and indeed Europe and the world could be held to ransom by using the world’s most radioactive environment as a battleground."
She quotes a stark statistic on the sheer volume of radioactive material that is still buried in the zone around the disused power plant: "Only 3 per cent of the radioactivity in the reactor got into the earth’s atmosphere and we know what that did. 97 per cent remains. So, the consequences are unimaginable."
The gear shift is very sudden … Goodbye Covid, hello a new world war.
But sometimes the weight of what is happening in the world becomes too much.
Time to turn away for a while.
Byrne can switch to the more personal with ease.
Take the topic of toxic friendships – the people who don’t add anything to your life.
Ditch the so called “drains” and fill your life with radiators is the advice.
In the interview chair was clinical psychologist and author Dr Malie Coyne talking about how human connection is essential to our emotional development.
How we suffer without it.
Surely that is one of the lessons of the pandemic.
But it’s when a friendship turns toxic – all give and no take – that you’re on difficult ground.
If you’re walking on egg shells or if something good happens in your life and your friend doesn’t share that joy and if that’s a pattern of behaviour, then maybe, just maybe… it’s time to walk away.
