Ag Éisteacht: What I’m listening to this month

Welcome to the first post in the Ag Éisteacht series, in which I chat about what podcast I’m most listening to at the moment. This month, I’m all about The One Girl Band Podcast, by Lola Hoad.

greyscale photography of condenser microphone

The One Girl Band Podcast is a series of podcasts that comes out weekly when there isn’t a break in series, and whil it is currently releasing episodes, I’m working through the backlog of episodes, having gone back to the very first episode. I heard about this podcast from the fabulous Karen of Lovely Girlie Bits, who shared that she had been listening to it on her InstatStories a while back.

So, what’s The One Girl Band podcast all about? Aside from having a *great* title, it is described in its blurb as being ‘little pep talks’ and that’s essentially what each episode is – a little pep talk aimed at female entrepreneur and creative types who are going out on their own.  While I technically am not currently being an entrepreneur, or in any way creative, really, there is a lot of this podcast that I can still apply to both my college and my work life, I find.

black and white blackboard business chalkboard

The episodes are quite short, which makes them easily digestible, but they are quite broad, so you don’t have to skip a bunch of episodes that aren’t relevant to you. Lola’s voice is always quite cheerful and pleasant (that feels like a weird thing to say, but when it’s a listening medium the voice counts!). I like to put an episode on when I’m lacking in self-belief or motivation and I’m always left feeling more like I can accomplish anything by the time it finishes.

The only criticism I would have of this podcast, and perhaps it’s the app I’m using, or my phone, is that even when I have the volume turned fully up, the sound is fairly quiet on it – this means that I can’t really listen to it when I’m outdoors, as if a car goes past for example, it completely drowns it out. But again – that could be a *me* problem, not an *it* problem!

pink corded headphones on pink and teal wall

I’m still working my way through old episodes, but so far, my favourite has been the episode on Imposter Syndrome. I happened to come to that one right when I was feeling like Imposter Syndrome had come true for me – I’d have negative experiences in a lot of areas of my life and I was feeling really useless and unmotivated. While I don’t think Imposter Syndrome ever really goes away, either for women or for those in academia (and I have the misfortune of being in both those categories currently!) this episode really helped give me a kick start and I felt able to start picking myself up again.

What podcasts have you falling asleep with your headphones still on? Do let me know in the comments!

Ag Éisteacht (which translates from Irish as listening) is a new Monthly series on the podcasts I’m loving, and my thoughts on them as I go along. Posts will usually go live in the first week of the month.

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