Podcast Corner: Two new Irish podcasts — including Cork-made The Magdalenes and I

A behind-the-scenes look at the process of making a Magdalene survivors documentary from Steven O'Riordan and a 10-part Vogue Williams series that seeks to celebrate the universal truths, secrets, joys, and pain between a parent and their child

The Magdalenes and I Steven O'Riordan podcast

The Magdalenes and I 

It will never and should never be anything less than powerful hearing the women who spent time in Magdalene laundries tell their stories. We hear their voices in this new series by Steven O'Riordan from Millstreet, County Cork. One survivor, Mary Norris, told him: “I lost two years of my life from 1950 to ‘52, I don’t know what happened in Ireland, I don’t know what happened in the world. I might as well have been dead.” 

 O’Riordan has campaigned for Magdalene survivors and made a documentary in 2009, The Forgotten Maggies — this podcast is almost like a making of that film and a behind-the-scenes look at the process. 

The opening episode is an interview with O’Riordan, who explains why he moved from Cork to London and how he came to hear of the Magdalene laundries national shame: A college friend invited him over one night in 2005 to watch Peter Mullan’s 2002 drama The Magdalene Sisters. “I go ‘what’s it about?’ So he goes, ‘It’s about these nuns that beat up these women in homes… Just come over, we’ll get a takeaway, get a few drinks, and sure we’ll just watch it’.” Little did he know that it would mark a changing point in his life. O’Riordan has since met and interviewed 165 Magdalene women.

Eight episodes have been released thus far (two every Monday) and they’re short, from seven to 15 minutes. Of course, it’s not the first podcast series about the laundries. Redacted Lives (2022), a six-part series from The Journal, also sought to tell the story of mother and baby homes. We can never let it be forgotten. https://www.irishexaminer.com/lifestyle/artsandculture/arid-41011631.html 

The Apple and the Tree 

“Who wouldn’t want to be in business with Joanne McNally right now?” we asked of the BBC Sounds ‘investigation’ Who Replaced Avril Lavigne?, led by the My Therapist Ghosted Me co-host. https://www.irishexaminer.com/lifestyle/artsandculture/arid-41360683.html Maybe we could pose the same question of Vogue Williams, the other half of My Theraprise Ghosted Me, who heads The Apple and the Tree, a 10-part series that seeks to celebrate the universal truths, secrets, joys, and pain between a parent and their child. 

It says these are the “intimate, revealing conversations we’d all like to have — or wish we’d had — with our nearest and dearest”. Topics discussed across the series include inter-racial adoption and identity; navigating single parenthood and creating safe spaces; embracing LGBTQ+ acceptance within the South Indian community; and abandonment.