About Voices of Boyle
What started as a bit of a chat has turned into something we take more seriously.
Every generation before ours lost most of what it knew. We now have the technology to do better than that, so why not take advantage of that?
Unfortunately, some of the people we’ve recorded are no longer with us but their voices are still here, and their grandchildren will be able to sit down and listen to them.
That’s really what the Voices of Boyle is all about. We want it to be an archive for the next generation so that they can listen in to the past.
Episodes
year we started
hours recorded
MEET THE HOSTS
Hi, we’re Carlo and Florence, and we were both born and reared (as they say!) in Boyle.
We’ve spent the last thirteen years living and travelling abroad, but Boyle is home and the place we always come back to.
Like a lot of people who leave, distance changed how we viewed our hometown. The characters we’d walked past for years. The places we played in as kids. The shops we bought sweets in before going to the Pleasure Grounds. The people we’d heard about growing up. The stories nobody had ever written down.
It all became really valuable.
WHY VOICE MATTERS
You can write a person’s story down and get all the facts right and still miss the person entirely.
It’s all in the voice. The pause before someone answers a hard question. The laugh halfway through a sentence. The way a person describes a childhood memory. None of that survives on a page.
That’s why we record rather than write. Someone’s grandchild will be able to hear how they actually sounded, not just read what they said.
How It’s Made
We’re home a few times each year, and we record in batches while we’re there, sometimes talking to several people in a week.
There’s no script and no structure planned. We sit down, press record, and let the conversation go where it goes.
The podcast started because of a conversation we had around the kitchen table. Soon after that chat, we bought the equipment, learned how to record, learned how to edit and upload, and built this website ourselves.
There’s no funding behind it. We do it because we think it’s worth doing.
We’d like to say a big thanks to Brendan O’Dowd, who wrote and recorded the music you hear at the start of every episode. To Carlo’s mum, Mary, who is kind enough to let us take over her front room when we are recording an episode.
Thanks also to everyone who has suggested a name, passed on a phone number, or told a neighbour they should talk to us. A lot of the best episodes came about that way.
And most of all, a big thanks to every person who has sat down with us and talked. There’d be nothing here without you.
“We are the most photographed generation ever, and we are leaving the least evidence after us.”
– Paul Connolly
BE A GUEST ON THE SHOW!
If you’ve a story about Boyle, we’d love to hear it. You don’t need to have done anything remarkable, and you don’t need to prepare a thing. We sit down, have a chat, and you talk about whatever you want to. It usually takes about an hour.
Thinking of someone else? A parent, a grandparent, a neighbour who remembers how it used to be? Tell us about them. Some of our best episodes started because a son or daughter got in touch. You can find us at [email protected].
