Mind Your Bap Podcast
Short Cuts Radio 4
In a week when the high rate of suicides in Northern Ireland was in the news, podcasts like Mind Your Bap matter more than ever.
It’s a simple premise – two men, Marty and Robbie – sit and chat about how they are feeling.
You don’t hear men admitting when they’ve had a bad week. But here you do.
The podcasts offer plenty of practical steps to help mental health – the five steps to wellness include putting energy into a work out.
There is a clear message about social media - “friends” and “followers”.
Marty and Robbie are ordinary, warm and frank – just what you want, just what you can trust.
And they’re joined by all sorts of guests who can help you “mind your bap”.
Pulitzer prize winning poet Mary Oliver who died earlier this year did not have an easy start in life.
Poetry saved her.
Her poetry is loved by hundreds of thousands of people.
She wrote the lines: “Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”
This Short Cuts was an adventure in sound inspired by her.
It included an interview with her where she was frank about the past.
She has never liked buildings, she said. That is why she found a haven in the woods.
In an earlier interview she said that she had been sexually abused as a child and had recurring nightmares.
Hers was no happy home.
“I saved my own life by finding a place that wasn’t in that house,” she said.
“I had a very bad childhood and I escaped it barely with years of trouble but I did find the entire world.
“I got saved by poetry and I got saved by the beauty of the world.”
Her ability to love her one wild and precious life was hard won. But she offers inspiration and hope.
