The Women's Podcast

On Friday March 28th, the Irish Cancer Society (ICS) will celebrate Daffodil Day. It’s the charity’s biggest fundraising event and aims to raise millions of euros to support cancer patients and progress cancer research. In this episode, Kathy Sheridan is joined by Daffodil Day Ambassador Tara Doonan, who was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2022 at 36 years-old. Tara lives in Cavan but travelled to the Mater Hospital in Dublin for h...

Sarah Corbett Lynch was just eight-years-old when her father Jason was killed at their home in North Carolina by her stepmother Molly Martens and her father Tom Martens in 2015. Over the next decade, the Martens, who claimed self defence, were put on trial for murder, had their convictions quashed and later took a plea bargain for voluntary manslaughter which saw each of them spend less than five years in prison.

For all of that...

In Ireland, more than 5,500 children are currently in foster care. This could be because of illness in the child’s family, the death of a parent, neglect, abuse or violence in the home, or simply because the parent or family is not coping. Whatever the reason, foster carers are there to take care of children who cannot live with their own family, either on a short-term or long-term basis. In today’s episode, we hear from two foster...

To celebrate International Women’s Day, the book club gathered with a handful of podcast listeners for a live event at Kildare Village on Saturday morning. Niamh Towey, Ann Ingle, Bernice Harrison, and Roisin Ingle, explored the books by women that have challenged and changed them and that they think every woman should read.

Book Club Choices: 

Ann Ingle: The Women’s Room by Marilyn French & Anne Tyler novels

Bern...

International Women’s Day is on Saturday the 8th March and there are lots of events happening all around the country to celebrate the occasion. Irish Times features writer Ella Sloane joins Róisín Ingle on the podcast today to tell us about some of them, including a free guided tour exploring how women are represented in a selection of works at the National Gallery and a ​​march against gender violence taking place in Dublin c...

Born and bred in New York, the last place that Rosie Schaap thought she’d end up, was living in a rural village in Northern Ireland, miles away from the bustling city she once called home. But that’s exactly where she’s found herself. Five years ago, the writer and journalist moved from NYC to the tiny town of Glenarm in Co Antrim, in search of a new life. The writer and journalist was grieving the death of her husband and her moth...

After lengthy government formation talks and a chaotic first week in the Dáil, the new Government is finally settling into it's first few weeks of a new term. There’s a whole host of new faces in Leinster House, including 10 new women TDs. We wanted to hear what life is like for three of those women, so we’ve invited Labour’s Marie Sherlock, Fianna Fail’s Erin McGreehan and Social Democrats’ Jen Cummins to tell us their first impre...

This Valentine’s Day, we’ve decided to shift the focus away from love and relationships and onto the joy and excitement of the single experience. If you’re single and sick of dating apps, Irish Times relationships columnist Roe McDermott is here with some new dating ideas, from singles running clubs to mindful dating events. Later on, Róisín Ingle is joined by Nicola Slawson, an author who has literally written the book on the sing...

America might be rowing back on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives, but one woman who is fighting to keep interculturalism at the forefront of people’s minds is Mamobo Ogoro, the CEO of Irish social enterprise GORM. 

Ogoro is a Nigerian-Irish Social Psychologist and multi-award-winning social entrepreneur, who is “on a personal mission to unify the world”. Through her work with GORM, she helps organisations i...

Blue Road: The Edna O’Brien story is the brand new documentary by Irish filmmaker Sinéad O’Shea. It’s a portrait of one of Ireland’s finest writers, featuring extracts from O’Briens journals, contributions from the likes of Gabriel Byrne and Anne Enright and a remarkable final interview with O'Brien shortly before her death aged 93 last year. In this episode, O’Shea tells Kathy Sheridan about the late-writer’s extraordinary life an...

Yoga teacher and wellness coach Kerry White was 48 years old when she finally decided to pursue her long-held dream to become a mother. As a single woman, who had just entered perimenopause, White used donor sperm and donor eggs to become pregnant. Then, in 2020, two months shy of her 50th birthday, her baby girl Freya was born. In this episode, White talks to Róisín Ingle about going it alone, the reaction from those closest to he...

These days, we’re hearing a lot more about ultra processed foods and the dangers of over eating these highly industrialised food products. But what exactly are UPFs, how bad are they really and how can you spot them when out doing the grocery shop? In this episode, nutrition consultant Sophie Morris joins Róisín Ingle to answer all these questions and to explain why she’s joined the growing movement away from ultra processed foods....

It’s a brand new year and to celebrate we’ve got a brand new segment to kick off the podcast each week. It’s our weekly news wrap covering the stories that affect women in Ireland and around the world. This week, Róisín Ingle is joined by Irish Times podcast producer Aideen Finnegan to talk about some of the stories that caught her eye this week and what she's been watching and listening to. They'll be discussing Meghan Markle’s ne...

2024 was the year Americans chose a convicted felon as their next president, Afghanistan banned women from speaking or singing in public, and the slaughter of innocent women and children continued in Gaza.

In Ireland, a record number of female candidates stood in November’s general election, but only seven additional women were elected to the next Dáil.

A brave young woman called Natasha O’Brien, used her voice to condemn the...

Each week on The Women’s Podcast, we hear from women from all walks of life who come on to talk about their lived experiences, their life stories, their passions and their challenges. This week, it’s the turn of podcast presenter Róisín Ingle, who in October 2023 received a life-changing breast cancer diagnosis. This is the first time she has spoken about it on the podcast.

In this conversation with co-presenter Kathy Sheridan,...

If you’re looking for a new book to curl up with over the festive period or to give as a Christmas gift, The Irish Times Women’s Podcast is here to help.

We’ve gathered our book clubbers Niamh Towey, Bernice Harrison, Róisín and Ann Ingle in studio to share their favourite reads of 2024.

Their recommendations include a comedy-crime novel, a “surprisingly good” western and a book for the people in our lives that are impossible...