TWO best friends who turned their frantic voice notes into a popular podcast are close to celebrating one year of providing listeners with a weekly dose of ‘light-hearted good craic’.
Marie Shields is from Glen, Carrigart and Trish Geraghty (pictured below) is originally from Mayo but is now living in Rosnakill. The pair launched the ‘No Other Craic’ podcast in June 2022.
Almost one year on and with the help of ‘sound man Darren’ the podcast is on the 45th episode and has over 60 five star reviews on Spotify.
Speaking to the Donegal News, the hosts said Darren initially encouraged them to make a podcast as they were always frantically voice-noting one another funny or interesting things.
“We’re both TV and film nerds, and love to rate and review everything – it could be a Donegal walking route to a murder documentary or a skincare product – we’d be dying to tell each other about it.
“We also both love podcasts ourselves and thought, why not give it a go from our own perspective.
“It’s been so much fun, and we cannot believe we’re on our 45th episode.
“Especially when 90 per cent of all podcasts don’t make it past episode three, staying consistent was important to us.
“The response from our listeners keeps us going, we get lovely messages from people saying they listen and laugh along on their drive to work, or save it for their walk – which is so cool! We have over 60 five-star reviews on Spotify.
“We have lots of private jokes with our listeners and have built a wee community of like-minded people,” said Marie and Trish.
The podcast is described as being a lighthearted, bite-sized magazine in your ears bringing their own brand of ‘craic’ to keep listeners company on their walk, journey or doing chores.
From their own version of the TV guide to what’s going on in the worldwide web, top tier recommendations that range from skincare to life hacks and food, as well as shop local shout outs, a tonne of 90’s nostalgia and no doubt lots of endless weird and wonderful topics in between.
Marie, who works in business development and marketing and Trish, who is a palliative care nurse, have been best friends for years and said they often end up ‘crying laughing’ while recording the podcast.
They said, “We have great craic, we cry laughing at times – we’ve been friends for years and so it’s all very natural.
“A listener described the podcast once as ‘eavesdropping on two friends having a good chat’ – the three of us (Darren and ourselves) look forward to recording every week, because we genuinely enjoy sharing our craic with one another, and are grateful that others seem to have fun listening, too.
“We’ve crafted a format that we enjoy so it’s – TV Guide, Word Wide Web, and Recommendations – like a pop-culture magazine for your ears.
“Informative and varied – but light hearted! It’s been a great creative outlet for us all.”
While the girls are discussing their busy schedules, listeners will hear of plenty of recommendations for things to do in Donegal. The pair said it is extremely important to them to promote Donegal in the best possible light.
“We’re so proud to live in Donegal and so our ‘recommendations’ section includes lots of Donegal experiences or places – the Donegal listeners love the local shout-outs, and listeners from other counties have ideas for when they visit the hills of Donegal.
“We also have listeners who have emigrated to places like Australia, who enjoy the references to home.
“We have fortnightly episode sponsors, and so far most of the sponsors have been locally based businesses. Any excuse to plug our home turf.”
Looking ahead to the future of the podcast, the girls have their first event coming up in July and are hoping the podcast’s success will continue.
“We have our first live in person experience coming up in July.
“We are going on a bus-tour with a group of listeners so that’s exciting and we’d love to do more of the same.
“We’ve made it into the official podcast charts, which is great – and of course we’d like to keep growing our audience.
“Mainly – we want to keep making episodes for our listeners, and continue to have the craic,” said Marie and Trish.
Find ‘No Other Craic’ on Instagram @noothercraic_pod and subscribe on all major streaming platforms including Spotify, Apple Podcasts and Audible.
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