Beo ar Éigean The popular Irish podcast has taken to the airwaves. Meet the hosts!
Popular Irish language podcast, Beo ar Éigean has found a new home on RTÉ Radio 1. For three years, the show has covered life, the universe and everything as Gaeilge, becoming one of RTÉ’s most listened to podcasts. Now on RTÉ Radio 1 every Saturday, the
Áine Ní Bhreisleáin
From: Gaoth Dobhair, Donegal. Works: Raidió na Gaeltachta, Donegal
We’d been friends and colleagues for many years, and were chatting one day about podcasts we listened to, and maybe doing something for a demographic that wasn’t being catered for. So we started this podcast on RTÉ. We link up – I’d usually be separate to the other two – and record ourselves talking about different topics, then that’d go up on the Irish page at rte.ie, as well as iTunes, Spotify and those places. I’d often be working on news stories for RnaG, so might be on my way to a council meeting or out getting an interview. I’d pull in somewhere for an hour and connect to the studio via an app – sitting outside Aldi! Modern technology makes these things a lot easier.
We generally go into an episode with some idea of what we might talk about, but it can go anywhere from that point. A recent one was ‘Who would you like to be locked down with?’ which went off to a whole other place – where we’d go on holiday when this is over, with a whole cast of invented characters. It’s very off-the-cuff, and that’s what’s nice about it: a bit of spontaneity and freedom. We know each other so well, we know how far we can go with something.
I present an entertainment and chat-show called Bladhaire twice a week, and work on documentaries and news. There’s a real magic to radio as a medium; it’s so immediate. I loved working in television, too; travelling and meeting people, but there’s a lot of pre-production. With radio, you can go live anywhere, at any time. The podcast is like radio in that sense, although sometimes you can forget there are people listening!
Sinéad Ní Uallacháin
From: West Kerry. Works: Raidió na
Gaeltachta, Dublin
I’m really happy about the move to radio, it’s very exciting. I’m a bit apprehensive, because we’ve been doing a podcast for three years and want to keep the essence of what we have now, but we also have to be aware of our new audience on RTÉ Radio 1.
You have to tailor it to radio, without losing what makes it special. We’ll retain all the elements that make Beo ar Éigean such good fun, but slightly amend it to a radio audience. It’s pre-recorded a few days in advance. Our first edition is about friendships. It’s a good introduction – people maybe don’t know us, so this gives us the opportunity to discuss our own relationships and how we got to know each other. And the different sort of friendships, and groups of friends, you have from different parts of your life, that’ll all be explored.
We’re pencilled in for 12 episodes and then we’ll do a review and see how we’re getting on and what the feedback is like. Saturday evening is a lovely slot: people in the car maybe, on their way home from somewhere, tuning in. Hopefully life will get back to that kind of normal soon.
I’ve worked as an illustrator for children’s books, a judge on TG4 and in theatre. But I don’t think I planned any of these, they just landed in my line of sight. These gigs come along every now and then; you need the stable job as well, and I’m grateful to RnaG for that. The podcast is work, but in many ways, it’s a therapy session – you get together with people you’re comfortable with, and chat. There are days when you don’t feel great, a million things on your mind, but after a few minutes of meeting up again, you feel much better.
Siún Ní Dhuinn
From: Dundalk. Works: rte.ie
I’m RTÉ’s Digital Coordinator for Irish Language. I curate the best of Irish language content, from all around the organisation, on to a digital platform, then push it out via the homepage and social media.
It’s a lot to process and categorise, but once you get into the flow of it, get the analytics of what people like, when they like certain content, then it becomes easier. It feels like a mammoth task at the start, but you get into the groove fairly quickly. There’s a wide breadth of content: you might be looking at the Poetry Programme on RTÉ Radio 1, then something from RnaG, then something from Today…
I think the podcast will be different for RTÉ Radio 1 listeners, and from our perspective, a little more tailored. We’ll be adding music and having more guests. We have a full hour to fill now, so it’ll be a step forward. We have rights to music too, so we can soundtrack the conversation. Each week, one person might pick a song that means a lot to them.
One of the best things about the podcast is that no one person is in control of it, as such. We take turns being the anchor or main presenter. And we’ll continue to produce the show ourselves. We don’t do a whole load of planning beforehand! We’re all friends, and the conversation is very natural.
I’m not sure we’d take a producer as the point of the show is that we’re friends chatting; you don’t want to lose the chemistry of the three of us and what we do. Radio can come across at times as a bit over-produced and we want to be mindful of that. There’s a certain rawness about this, which people like.