Each week, The Women’s Podcast asks listeners a question and this week we’ve got money on our minds. It was Blue Monday yesterday, allegedly the most broke and depressed we’ll feel all year, so our guest presenter Bernice Harrison wanted to know: “What is your biggest financial concern or worry at the moment?”
You can email the money worries that are keeping you up all night to thewomenspodcast@irishtimes.com or message us on Facebook or Twitter @itwomenspodcast .
Last week’s question prompted a flurry of responses when we asked listeners for their epipanies or “a-ha moments”.
Deborah in Dublin emailed to say that her epiphany happened a few years ago when she was out walking on a grey winter day.
“I was in a bad relationship at the time and was mulling over our latest argument. I walked past a field, and there were these huge white birds - I’d never seen that kind before, and they let me walk right up to them. It gave me this feeling that there’s more to life than this, that there’s hope and I should stop wasting my energy on a relationship that makes me upset more than it makes me happy. I left.”
Mary in Kildare, says her a-ha moment came when standing in front of a boardroom of men in suits. “They weren’t enjoying themselves, and I realised that despite the fact that this was ’a very good job’, neither was I. I handed in my notice the next day and never looked back. Do what makes you happy not what you think should do.”
And Jane Maxwell in Co Laois emailed us to say that her a-ha moment came in history class in the 80s "when I realised that Papal Infallibility was just a relatively recent invention. By the Papacy. They didn't even pretend it was based on biblical authority. Cue atheism."
Also on the podcast this week Oscar nominated Emma Donoghue talks to Róisín Ingle about the response to the movie adapation of her extraordinary novel Room. There is a discussion about pensions and the importance of women saving for their futures. And Anthea McTeirnan talks to female fans of the the latest Star Wars movie and celebrates how The Force Awakens has awakened the feminists.
Individual episodes of the podcast can be downloaded on iTunes, Soundcloud and Stitcher and in the ’podcast’ section of irishtimes.com
