Magazine Minute: Jim Sheridan, The Intelligence Paradox and can Trump make America great again?

The very best of the Sunday Business Post Magazine this weekend

JIM SHERIDAN Vs THE WORLD

“He seems to be a lunatic. He’s a spoofer. Doesn’t he seem more and more like a spoofer?” In the Magazine cover story, director Jim Sheridan speaks out on Donald Trump, and that’s just for starters. The film-maker and activist holds forth on subjects from Hollywood to homelessness, via hip hop, as Catherine Healy meets him in Dublin. On the government, Sheridan says: “They seem to think that if you have social housing, like the boy with the finger in the dyke, the whole edifice will collapse if you take your finger out,” whilst on Ireland’s economic experts, he opines: “I used to bet on horses and did better than they did.” Read the full interview this Sunday.

SMART ENOUGH TO FAIL

Intelligent people are more likely to lose arguments. That’s neuroscientist Dr Dean Burnett’s argument, and he’s sticking with it. “As counterintuitive as it may seem,” he writes, “the smarter a person is, the greater the odds of them being less confident in their views, and the less confident they come across as being, the less they’re trusted.” Read Burnett’s feature ‘The Intelligence Paradox’ in this Sunday’s Magazine to find out more, and to enjoy examples of famously less-than-smart statements, including George W. Bush’s wonderful “Most of our imports come from overseas’.

TRUMPED UP

In the week Enda Kenny was welcomed to the White House,we ask: can Donald Trump Make America Great Again? From New York, Siobhan Brett delivers expert analysis on the Trump administration’s economic policy to date, and asks if early positive signs for the health of the American economy should be heeded. Elsewhere, Professor Larry Donnelly considers the political impact of Trump’s first months in office, and we explore the cultural fallout for the USA in the era of The Donald.

GRAPHIC & NOVEL

Contemporary artist Maser is in contemplative mood in this week’s Magazine as he shares his vision with Ruth O’Connor. The street artist-turned gallery favourite confesses to finding that very transition a challenging one: “I think I was shy about calling myself an artist,” he says. “I felt that maybe there was an arrogance to it. But then I tried to called myself a painter and people would say 'What, like, a painter and decorator?'" Maser, whose Repeal the 8th mural caught the attention of a nation, shares hidden hopes and future plans in this, a rare portrait of the artist.