The Women’s Podcast, Irish Times
County Lines, Radio 4
When the tables turn, you’re Alice down the rabbit hole.
As a journalist, you’re the one asking the questions – so when you become the story, it’s weirdly unsettling.
I’d wondered where Irish Times columnist Róisín Ingle had gone this year.
She is funny, irreverent, angry, loving, forever upfront.
Yes, she was still podcasting, but where were her personal columns?
It turns out that Róisín received a life-changing diagnosis of breast cancer in October 2023 and in this very personal podcast she talks to Kathy Sheridan about how events unfolded – how she was told the cancer was on her bones, how she had undergone treatment, and dealt with several health catastrophes on top.
She also tells about the good bits of the year: a leap year wedding proposal; her wedding when she wore a gorgeous bright pink dress; precious family time; and dancing to Taylor Swift.
She doesn’t like the language surrounding cancer – she’s not fighting a battle.
She’s living with cancer and, hopefully, living long years with it. In this podcast, she’s a bit of an inspiration.
County Lines on Radio 4 is the story of how criminal gangs exploit vulnerable young people and turn them into drug dealers.
It’s thought that up to 50,000 children have been groomed into county lines drug trafficking.
This is no ordinary documentary – it’s a lived reality. Presenter and producer Phoebe McIndoe’s brother was one of those children.
He was “such a sweet kid”, she said, he was afraid of the dark, he had neon stars stuck to his ceiling. He loved his family.
But when he was 13, he started dealing on a county line.
It was, said Phoebe, “an iceberg in the black of night, rolling towards us”.
He became “a doppelganger in the house… he looked like my brother, he moved like my brother”.
At 15, he disappeared. He was found in a “trap house”.
When he finally came home, “he had a film over his eyes as if to lock his secrets in. He wouldn’t tell us what happened”.
This is both powerful and horrific. It’s about how children are groomed, controlled, destroyed.
County Lines co-produced by Redzi Bernard is quite brilliant.
These voices and stories will stay with you.