Spoken Stories: The State of Us

A woman meditates on change and loss and becoming, when as a young artist she stayed in Florence with her boyfriend who was working there as a restorer, and their baby, and on how what happens to us impresses on our lives.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Austen, a photographer, enjoys playing golf and is a member of a club in the midlands of Ireland. He also aspires to golf-course design, an aspiration that proves to be one deemed by others to be too far above his station.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Sarah was assaulted two years ago. It changed her life. She lies awake beside her sleeping husband and is expecting their first child. Her day in court has arrived. There she sees her attacker, hears the judge's address and garda report, and reverts to stories from her childhood for reassurance.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Lena came of age against the rise and fall of the Celtic Tiger. She is reconciling the role of money in our lives having been a student unable to afford Dublin rents taking two buses and a train to UCD full of posh Southsiders, present at a high-profile kids-gone-wild murder party, and what they reveal about herself and us more generally.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

A near head on collision on a remote mountain road brings two women together who know each other since their school days, but who have been avoiding each other for years. Everyone knows these people, some of us might even be them, as they passing judgement on the state of each other, and on our passions, prejudices, sorrows and joys.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.