The Laura Dowling Experience

Laura sits down with community pharmacist Darragh Connolly, who has built a men's health service — Men's Health Downunder — around something most clinics rush past: helping men get their sexual function back after prostate surgery. It's a candid, frequently very funny conversation about a subject usually wrapped in silence and shame. Darragh explains the male anatomy in plain (and memorable) terms...

In this bitesize moment pulled from the Laura Dowling Experience back catalogue, GP Dr Mick Crotty explains why weight is far less within our conscious control than we are led to believe — and why so many people carry a load of self-blame they never deserved. He walks Laura through the genetics of appetite, the brain's reward response to food, and the "set point" it quietly defends, which is why w...

How many women quietly put up with heavy bleeding, painful periods or a difficult coil fitting, telling themselves it is just part of being a woman? In this episode, Laura sits down with obstetrician and gynaecologist Dr Áine Dempsey, who works at BlackRock Women's Health and at the Rotunda, for an honest, practical conversation about the things women are so often told to live with - and what can...

Aimee Donnellan joins Laura to talk about her new book Off the Scales: The Inside Story of Ozempic and the Race to Cure Obesity, and the much bigger story sitting underneath it - how generations of women learned to live with food. Through interviews with women across the world, Aimee found the same pattern repeating. A trip to a dietitian around the age of seven. A mother quietly carrying her own...

Darragh Fleming went viral last year for a poem — but this conversation is about everything that came before it. The Cork writer talks to Laura about a childhood spent lost in books, a long detour through sport and self-doubt, and the years he spent convinced he wasn't creative at all. At seventeen, Darragh lost his close friend Irby to suicide, and the grief changed him profoundly. For years afte...

In this episode, consultant obstetrician and gynaecologist Dr Fadi joins Laura for an open, practical conversation about pelvic floor health, incontinence, prolapse and the realities of modern obstetrics. Dr Fadi explains how childbirth, ageing and menopause affect the pelvic floor, and why so many women end up living with stress incontinence, prolapse and faecal incontinence in silence. He walks...

In this bitesize moment pulled from the Laura Dowling Experience back catalogue, GP Dr Sarah Carty explains why ADHD looks so different in girls and women — and why so many only recognise it years, sometimes decades, after it first showed up. She tells Laura how the "quiet" presentation — daydreaming, internal restlessness, working twice as hard to look fine — slowly turns into anxiety, perfection...

What does proper midlife care actually look like, and who keeps getting left out of it? In this episode, Laura sits down with Dr Caoimhe Hartley - founder of Menopause Health in Dalkey, clinical lead of the Complex Menopause Clinic in the Rotunda, and clinical lead for women's medicine at the new BlackRock Health Women's Health Centre. They talk about the women being told no - those over 60 who fe...

In this bitesize moment pulled from the Laura Dowling Experience back catalogue, menopause specialist Dr Deirdre Lundy walks Laura through how decisions about HRT and family history of breast cancer actually get made in clinic — and why a blanket "no" rarely tells the full story. If you've ever been handed that flat refusal, this is for you. She unpacks the difference between "a family history" an...

Pamela Deasy was in her early 40s, working full time and volunteering with the RNLI, when fatigue started dragging her back into bed in the middle of the day. Her bloods were clear. She was told it was perimenopause, then depression. Months passed before a kinesiologist, of all people, pointed at her pancreas — and within days she was in a Cork hospital being told she had a tumour. In this episode...

In this bitesize moment pulled from the Laura Dowling Experience back catalogue, endocrinologist Dr Mary Ryan opens up about losing her husband unexpectedly while raising three small children, and what grief actually looked like for her in the years that followed. She tells Laura about the shock, the anger, and the long fog of those first two years — and the small, practical things that helped: le...

Anxiety author Caroline Foran joins Laura for a deeply personal conversation about parenting a young son recently diagnosed as autistic with a PDA profile, alongside her own long history with anxiety. Caroline talks openly about the years before the diagnosis, the blame she turned inward, and everything she has had to unlearn about parenting. She explains what PDA — Pervasive Drive for Autonomy —...

In this bitesize moment pulled from the Laura Dowling Experience back catalogue, comedian Kyla Cobbler shares an honest, no-frills account of how her drinking quietly turned into dependency — while she was still training, working, and gigging five nights a week. She tells Laura how being a regular performer in Barcelona blurred the lines between socialising and self-medicating, and how Dry January...

Barbara Scully sits down with Laura for a wide-ranging conversation that starts with her own recent run-in with the medical system and opens out into what it actually means to age as a woman in Ireland today. Barbara talks about months of hip pain, a string of MRIs, a suspected stroke that turned out to be nothing, and the moment she decided to step off the treadmill of tests, hand back the prescr...

In this bitesize moment pulled from the Laura Dowling Experience back catalogue, GP and menopause specialist Dr Sarah Callaghan explains why perimenopause so rarely arrives with a bang — and why so many women spend years "muddling through" before they realise what's actually going on. She tells Laura about the slow, sneaky creep of symptoms, the patterns she sees most often in clinic, and the wome...

Laura sits down with MEP Maria Walsh for a wide-ranging conversation about women, power and what is shifting in Europe right now. Maria has just returned from the UN Commission on the Status of Women in New York, where for the first time in seventy years member states could not agree a final text on access to justice for women. She talks honestly about online misogyny, the deepfakes already circul...

🎧 Episode Description In this episode, Michelle Flynn shares her deeply personal and professional insight into birth trauma, and why it’s not always about what happens, but how it’s experienced. Drawing on her own journey through pregnancy anxiety and her work as a perinatal psychotherapist, Michelle explains how trauma can live in the nervous system, showing up long after the moment has passed....

🎧 Episode Description How many women have been told that pain is just part of being a woman? For many women, painful or heavy periods become something they learn to live with. In this conversation, periods are reframed as something far more important - a vital sign that reflects what’s happening across the whole body, not just a monthly inconvenience. Through real clinical stories, we hear how wo...

🎧 Episode Description Hannah Daly talks openly about the long path to understanding her brain. Growing up, she knew she experienced the world differently, but dyslexia and dyspraxia seemed to explain enough at the time. It wasn’t until much later that she began to question whether there was more to it. A period of intense physical and cognitive symptoms during perimenopause became a turning point...

🎧 Episode Description This conversation with Ger Killian offers a thoughtful and honest look at what it really means to feed children in today’s world. As co-founder of The Lunch Bag, Ger has spent years navigating the realities of school meals - from supply chains and budgets to the emotional responses of parents and children alike. What emerges is a story not just about food, but about trust. T...

🎧 Episode Description This episode traces Dr Andy Hogan’s path into immunology, from a childhood curiosity to a career exploring how the immune system shapes our health. Growing up in a challenging environment, the Access Programme gave him a route into higher education - highlighting the impact of support and opportunity. Alongside his story, Andy explains the immune system not just as a defence...

🎧 Episode Description Occupational therapist Martina Tierney joins the podcast to share how something as ordinary as a chair can profoundly shape a person’s health, independence and dignity. After witnessing older people being sold expensive but inappropriate equipment, Martina set out to change the system. What followed was the creation of Seating Matters, a company grounded in clinical evidence...

🎧 Episode Description What does it really take for women to enter politics today? In this special edition from the European Parliament, Laura Dowling speaks with MEPs Kathleen Funchion and Cynthia Ní Mhurchú on International Women’s Day about their experiences of political life and the wider landscape for women entering leadership roles. Through personal stories and candid reflections, they discu...

🎧 Episode Description Laura sits down with comedian Aoife Dunne for an honest and humorous conversation about everything from grief and fear to the unexpected turns life can take. Aoife opens up about the sudden loss of her mum while she was backpacking in her early twenties - a moment that changed the course of her life. After spending time in therapy and trying to make sense of the fear she car...

🎧 Episode Description Arriving in Ireland from Somalia as a child after years of displacement, Nadia grew up watching her mother sacrifice everything to create stability through education. That path led her into finance and onto a trading floor surrounded by high earners and high pressure — a version of success that looked impressive but never fully felt aligned. What began with selling her own 0...