By Charlotte Vanacore

Internships… When you hear the word, stress can arise from it, but excitement may be a side effect. There is always a bit of apprehension and fear when beginning an internship in a professional work environment. As far as my experience goes, it has been an enriching and eye opening time especially having had the chance to intern with Flirt FM. The reason I say this is because throughout my months of working at the studio, creativity and ambition has been omnipresent in the room, allowing me to learn and gain a handful of skills in a variety of different realms varying from news broadcast, to the basics of podcasting and an initiation to audio engineering. 

Upon arrival, I was encouraged to pick a topic that fascinated me and turn it into a radio show. I chose to focus my research and recording on the mountaineering world and later on extended the theme to sports journeys people had accomplished. I was able to assemble a range of shows where some were more research-based episodes whereas others tended to be interviews with pupils I had sought out. Throughout the experience, I realised that interviewing was my preferred type of episode to record and a precious skill to have as it allowed me to pose all of my curious questions whilst still structuring the conversation in an informative way allowing listeners to take something from the podcast. Hence, I’ve chosen to dedicate this article to the art of interviewing and the skill it requires to allow people to use a platform to talk about an experience and their story. 

Having been very invested in the world of mountaineering and rock climbing, I have always followed certain athletes on social media and admired the way they curated works of videography to transport me into their outdoor adventures. One of these athletes is Robbie Phillips, a professional Scottish rock-climber and a talented storyteller and videographer. In January I decided to reach out to Robbie and see if he might be interested in having a random college student interview him about his career, and to my surprise I got a positive email back from him agreeing to call. I was in Galway, and Robbie being on the Isle of Skye for a rock-climbing trip, we used technology to our advantage and recorded our interview. Chatting to Robbie really allowed me to gain insight on what the life of a professional rock-climber looks like and also having the opportunity to ask my questions, I really got to see how down-to-earth Robbie is, and how his passion is the thing that gives him drive in life. From that interview I learned the skill of treating the interviewee as a normal person, and not letting my fan-girl side get into the way of my work. And as a result I was able to pull Robbie’s authentic side out of him, making him feel comfortable to share personal life stories and perspectives he had on his career. 

The interview with Robbie having been a success to my eyes, I realised that if I didn’t try to reach out to people I would never give myself the opportunity to interview whoever it is that my heart desires. Therefore, I went rogue! Not quite, but I gained some self-confidence to email a few people I had been wanting to interview because I found that their story and accomplishments were fascinating. For those of you having been in Ireland in the last months of 2025 to the start of 2026, you probably heard about Becky Gilmore, the woman who skateboarded the whole of the Atlantic Wild Way on her skateboard to raise awareness for mental health. She was someone I had been following since the start of her journey and just thought she was one of the coolest and bravest humans I had come across in a while on social media. And so what did I do? I sent her an Instagram DM and hoped for the best! Little did I know that a couple of weeks later I would be on a zoom call with Becky talking about her experience and the reasons she chose to embark on this journey. It was a very emotionally inspiring interview, as Becky had a soul that was even able to radiate through the sound waves I was recording for the radio. From this interview I gained insight on how allowing your own emotions to intertwine with the interview can be beneficial when dosed in the right amount. Allowing yourself to feel and be transported into the conversation is very important as you are able to ask questions a lot more easily based on a stream of consciousness. But the danger in that is to not get too side-tracked and lost in the conversation to the point where you might lose your listeners. So my lesson here was reminding myself of the structure and intention of my interview whilst still letting myself converse with human emotion.

Being part of a community radio for my placement year, I really understood the meaning of the word community and the importance of sharing a platform to include everyone’s voice. I used this approach for my interview with Darragh Mcloughlin and it was a memorable time in the studio. I met Darragh through my work at the market as he is a regular market-goer. From simple banter and chats when serving him, I got to know him over the last two years and found out that he was training for the Toughest Row in the World Race. Being captured by his training and resilience, I followed his race across the Atlantic for the 39 days he was out at sea, and on his return to the country we organised an interview where he filled me in on everything he had done and every single emotion he had felt throughout the journey. During our conversation, I couldn’t help but feel awe at what this man had accomplished, especially having found the time to train for this race whilst raising a family and running his own business. But the most jaw-dropping aspect of his journey was that Darragh didn’t come from a rowing background. Darragh trained for almost 3 years towards the build up for this race, and it paid him well as he came home with the winning title of his boat category. Before our interview I had seen Darragh at the market, and everyone who knew him even in the slightest bit was chatting away to him and that is one of the ways I feel community can be visualised and defined as: the support and encouragement of a small group towards a person or cause that inspires the rest of the bunch. In this interview I also learned how to retell a story that I had already listened to; by this I mean that I had already heard Darragh’s first-hand experience, but as the interviewer it was my job to retrace the details for the listeners and find ways for Darragh to express himself naturally, and it was quite tricky to do…

When you think about it, interviewing is essentially “just talking to people”, but depending on your intention with the story, there are so many different ways one could approach an interview. It could be because you are looking for a factual answer to a question, or you are looking to pull entertainment and comedy from anecdotes or it could be for cathartic reasons where you wish to transport your listener into a story. All of these reasons are beautiful and beneficial in their own ways, and this is what I’ve learned the most over my time here in Flirt FM!