In this promotional episode, Dr Elaine Farrell and Dr Leanne McCormick are joined by Derry Girls’ actress, Siobhán McSweeney, to guide you through the laughs, the tears, the prison sentences and the resourcefulness of Irish women in the US over the next five episodes of this new podcast.

Hear how many young Irish girls and women, some as young as 11 or 12, travelled alone to America to escape poverty at home and to earn money for their families.

Listen to how the discrimination and prejudice experienced by the Irish over 150 years ago has similar echoes in today’s society.

Many Irish women travelled to North America, got jobs and sent money home. But perhaps their families did not know where that money came from.

Hear about the Irish women who became sex workers, about wrongful convictions and how much family reputation really mattered to some.

Listen to the stories of girls and women who left Ireland pregnant or became pregnant in North America outside marriage.

Some who migrated from Ireland believed their partners would follow them, only to find themselves alone and thousands of miles from home. Hear how for some women having a baby out of wedlock had tragic consequences.

The Irish have a long association with alcohol and in this podcast we look at what happened to those Irish women who got into trouble with alcohol abroad.

Those who drank to drown their sorrows, the mothers who neglected their children, and groups of women whose drinking on the streets brought them to court.

We’ve saved our most sensational cases to the end!

Hear about the woman who murdered her neighbour and put her in a trunk to steal her house, the wife who suspected her husband of having an affair, and the Irish serial killer who was the first women in America to be sentenced to death by the electric chair.