Emily O’Connell and Orla Keaveney, co-hosts of a new podcast on LB culture in Ireland, discuss how the podcast came about and what they hope to achieve with it.

ORLA: suppose a good place to start would be how we met? We’re both UCD students but we only properly met in Cork, weirdly enough.

EMILY: At the All Ireland Student Activists Network’s training weekend RISE, in November 2018. The two of us and a couple of the other activists formed a group pretty quickly.

ORLA: Basically us and the other gays. After the Saturday training ended we went out for pints, and at some point mentioned that I’d gone on a date with a girl for the first time the day before. Then you started asking me if I’d texted her yet and absolutely panicked because I’d no idea that was expected to text her! So handed you my phone and was like - ‘You do it’!

EMILY: So we spent the night passing the phone back and forth crafting texts to this girl, she probably had no idea how much drama she was causing.

ORLA: We all got fairly plastered that night because every time texted her or got a text back, everyone would do shots or buy me a drink.

EMILY: That was also when you started writing your Lesbian Culture list, which is a factor in why the podcast got started.

ORLA: was asking people to tell me what things they thought were lesbian culture and compiling a list on my phone. So stuff like; astrology, carabiners, septum piercings... I’d joke that was doing a PhD in Lesbianism. But part of it was serious as well, because was relatively new to lesbian culture and it was a way for me to learn more about the community since had no other way to access it.

EMILY: Another factor was how over the RISE weekend, was talking to some women from Cork about archiving, and that’s really when started thinking about how we should have a more cohesive way to record our culture. So we both had these ideas independently but we only thought about doing a project together in January. GCN were running a series where younger and older LGBT+ people compared their experiences, so took part in conversation with Ailbhe Smyth. We ended up talking about how lesbians’ contributions to culture and activism haven’t been recognised historically.

ORLA: And just happened to pick up that issue and was like ‘Oh look, it’s your one who helped me text a girl that time’! texted you to say congrats on the article and said that if you were ever going to do something around that to let me know. Then when we got back to college we met up and talked about different options - you wanted to do something written and wanted to do a video, so we met in the middle with a podcast. We were just lucky then that your uncle Glen – the soundest straight guy ever – told us about Near FM.

EMILY: Yeah, my uncle works in Near FM, which is a community radio station out on Bunratty Road. It’s a co-op organisation, so it means that you can become a volunteer and they will platform you to put on your own show. We just had to write up a couple of pitches and they said, ‘lets go’.

ORLA: Since it’s volunteer-based rather than for profit, we were able to be like - ‘we have this specific niche and this is what we want to do’ and Near FM just let us go for it and do it exactly how we wanted, with the benefit of good equipment and access to platforms like iTunes and Spotify.

EMILY: All of our guests are lesbians, bi women or nonbinary people who know a lot about an aspect of LB culture. We just sit down with them and ask them questions about it, or get them to tell their stories.

ORLA: We just wanted to keep it pretty casual, like conversations that you would have with other queer people if you met them out somewhere like a bar. The only difference is that we get the chance to record it and share these perspectives and insights, especially with the people who don’t have the privilege to be able to go into those spaces.

EMILY: We’ve got six episodes out now and we hope to have a few more coming soon. So far the response has been really positive!

ORLA: The point isn’t to become famous or make money or anything. We just really want any lesbians or bi women/NBs out there to know they have a place in the community, and a resource to learn more about it.

‘In Awe Of Mná – A Lesbian+ Podcast’ is available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and nearcast.ie. Episodes are released biweekly – follow @awe_mna on Twitter and Instagram to stay up to date.