The Women's Podcast

There are hundreds of books out at the moment so it's difficult as an author these days, when people are reading more than ever, to stand out from the crowd. One writer who has managed to do that with her terrifying novel The Nothing Man is Catherine Ryan Howard, the Cork woman who has won a devoted army of fans with her always original and often disturbing books. This latest one is a riveting rea...

When we've asked you what subjects you'd like us to discuss on the podcast, menopause is often mentioned. One listener who got in touch was Helen Kirwan who talks to Roisin Ingle on the latest episode. Helen is going through peri-menopause and has found some of the symptoms stressful and difficult. She talks honestly about coping at this seismic time in a woman's life, while we get some expert adv...

Our last Book Club took place months ago, early in Lockdown, so we are delighted that in this show Ann Ingle, Bernice Harrison and Niamh Towey are back to discuss our latest read. The book under discussion is Rodham by Curtis Sittenfeld, a political fantasy that imagines what life would have been like for Hillary Clinton had she turned down Bill Clinton's proposal of marriage. So it's a what if no...

Female genital mutilation is a practice that, according to the World Health Organisation, has affected 200 million women and girls alive today. Today’s guest, author and anti-FGM campaigner Nimko Ali is on a mission to end this worldwide by 2030. In her new book, What We’re Told Not to Talk About (But We’re Going to Anyway): Women’s Voices from East London to Ethiopia, Ali shares her own personal...

It’s been a long time coming, but this week the kids are finally going back to school. For many, it will be a welcome return to normality and routine, but it may bring about some challenges too. In this episode, Róisín Ingle speaks to Irish Times parenting columnist and mother of seven Jen Hogan, who is juggling four different start times and coming to terms with a whole new set of rules and regul...

Cancer is life changing in many ways, but our guest this week found that her devastating diagnosis in 2017 set her off on a new career path. Georgie Crawford, mother of one, lives with her husband Jamie in Dublin and is the host of the hugely successful The Good Glow podcast. She started the podcast as she struggled to come to terms with her cancer diagnosis and treatment and found that talking to...

After six months of a global pandemic we needed some good news so this episode features Mimi Wilcox, a young filmmaker from Chicago who after a whirlwind weekend romance in her home town with an Irish man decided to visit him in Ireland for five days. The only problem was, Leo Varadkar announced Lockdown the day she arrived. Air travel was cancelled and Mimi was stuck in Ireland with David Michael...

The Artist’s Way was first published in 1991 by screenwriter and teacher Julia Cameron. A classic guide to creativity, the book has sold over five million copies and has recently been redesigned and relaunched for a new generation. Hailed by celebrities such as Alicia Keys, Russell Brand and Reece Witherspoon, it’s key ideas include Morning Pages, a daily ritual designed to declutter the mind, and...

By age sixty-four, Jenni Murray's weight had become a disability. The broadcaster and author avoided the scales, wore a uniform of baggy black clothes and refused to make connections between her weight and health issues. A successful author and the host of BBC Woman’s Hour, Murray appeared to have it all, but in private she lived with a growing fear that she wouldn’t even make it to seventy. In th...

The last Big Night In of our first season took place on Zoom last Saturday night with author, literary historian and playwright Emma Donoghue. The Room-author joined us from her home in Ontario, Canada where she lives with her partner and two teenage children. Donoghue has just released The Pull of the Stars, a novel set 100 years ago in Dublin during The Great Flu. The pandemic setting was a comp...

Yoga has had an excellent pandemic. There's been a boom in online classes and even President Michael D Higgins was still getting his downward dog on in the Áras during Lockdown. So it's the perfect time for a free online yoga festival and in this episode we talk to Cathy Pearson, the woman behind the Celtic Woodland Yoga Festival, a three day gathering for people who love yoga or who are just yoga...

In this episode Roisin Ingle talks to Susannah Dickey, the author of a stunning debut novel Tennis Lessons which is set in Northern Ireland and follows a young woman as she struggles to find her place in the world. Dickey is an award-winning poet from Derry but her new novel shows her gift for the longer novel form. She has written a fantastic book containing rich dialogue and a gritty, authentic...

On today's episode, we are talking about life, death and grief in the time of Covid-19. This is a fraught issue, not just for those who've lost loved ones to the virus but for those with friends or relations that died during this very strange time of socially distanced funerals where numbers are severely limited. Roisin Ingle spoke to Orla Keegan at The Irish Hospice Foundation’s Bereavement Suppo...

In this episode, Roisin Ingle talked to Green Party Councillor Hazel Chu who has just been elected Lord Mayor of Dublin, only the 9th woman in the city's history to take on the role. On a Zoom call from her new home the Mansion House in Dawson Street, Chu told Ingle why being the first person of colour in the role is important and reflects the rich diversity of the city. She spoke about her experi...

For many women the Spring and Summer of 2020 will always be the time when their much anticipated weddings were prevented from happening because of the pandemic. While not exactly life or death, there’s no getting away from the fact that the cancellation of these special and meticulously planned days were a cause of disappointment for everyone involved. In this episode, two almost-brides author Lau...

On today’s episode, Róisín Ingle speaks to American crime writer Karin Slaughter from her home in Atlanta, Georgia. Slaughter has just released her 20th novel, The Silent Wife, which follows the investigation into a brutal attack on a young woman. In this conversation, the author paints a picture of lockdown life with her two and a half cats and takes a look at the US response to coronavirus. They...

Activist, writer, addiction specialist and senator Lynn Ruane was the brilliant guest for our seventh Big Night In hosted by Róisín Ingle. An audience of over 150 joined us on Zoom to watch this force of nature speak about some of the lighter moments from inside the Seanad, her learnings from lockdown and why The Real Housewives of New York has become her new obsession. Hosted on Acast. See acast....

No pandemic is gender-neutral and neither is Covid-19, which is negatively affecting the lives of women and girls. Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka is the Executive Director of UN Women and she spoke to Roisin Ingle from lockdown in South Africa about the three areas where women and girls are particularly at risk in the current crisis: Domestic violence, frontline work - the majority of workers are women -...

During the pandemic, there has been increased pressure placed on one parent families, from shopping struggles and homeschooling demands to dealing with feelings of loneliness and isolation. In today’s episode, we hear from Clare O’Leary, a single parent living in Wexford with her 5 year old son Peter. Clare has just completed the first year of a psychology degree at Waterford IT and spoke to Róisi...

Where are you going on your holliers? That's the question we are asking on this episode with travel writer Joan Scales who has been uncovering deals up and down the country from castles to hotels, from campsites to cottages. Whether you are the adventurous type or fancy a bit of luxury, there is an Irish holiday for you so we wanted to help you with all the options that are available. In pandemic...

Born in Ireland, to Breton parents, Olwen Fouéré is a writer, producer and theatre maker. A reviewer once said of her that if she sat on a stage doing nothing it would still be completely compelling. Fouéré makes theatre that people find disturbing or unsettling and much of her extensive body of work is provocative, the kind of art that stays with you or even might change you a bit. Since the 1970...

Some listeners may remember Cindy Gallop from 2009 when she did a hugely popular Ted Talk in which she shared her experience of how hardcore pornography had distorted the way a generation of young men thinks about sex - and now she's fighting back. This was the genesis of her social sex company Make Love Not Porn, a user-generated video-sharing platform where people can submit videos of themselves...

It feels like a lifetime ago, but it was only March when Morning Ireland presenter and best-selling author Rachael English came in to the Irish Times studio talk to us about her fifth novel The Paper Bracelet. The gripping story centres around a fictional Mother and Baby home in the West of Ireland and the paper bracelets that were used to identify the babies born there who were then sent away for...

It was not on the agenda at her career guidance meetings at school, but somehow in Lockdown 17-year-old schoolgirl Hannah McSorley has ended up as a "Tik Tok Tadpole Influencer". The tens of thousands of tadpoles in her garden have earned more than half a million followers on the platform and a US Influencer agent has come calling, so it looks like tadpoles are going to be this teenager's lucrativ...

Our fifth Big Night In happened on Zoom in front of an audience of 250 on Saturday June 6th with author, playwright and Irish Times columnist Hilary Fannin. She spoke about her debut novel The Weight of Love, her early childhood memoir Hopscotch and about life in lockdown with her sons, partner and long suffering cat. Fannin also reflected on her decision to become a college student - doing a mast...