Season 1 Wrap Up with Sonia Nolan

Thank you for your support of Season 1 of My Warm Table Podcast. 

Sonia Nolan wraps up the Season with an overview of some of the smart conversations with heart we have enjoyed around the warm table.  She shares  how your feedback affirmed her goal to build empathy and perspective by adding more positivity and warmth to the WA media landscape.

This episode is also an opportunity to say thank you for all of the wonderful people who contributed to the feast of insights and expertise around My Warm Table.

As we look forward to Season 2, we are reflecting on Season 1 - what you liked or what we can improve. Please fill out the survey:
https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/GTLKMHZ

Thank you!

·      Sincere thanks to Jay (Justin) Hill for his expert sound mastering and patience! Jay, together with the incredible Eva Chye, have inspired me through their passion project If Innovation Could Talk – a YouTube vlog also promoted through LinkedIn. If you have your own ideas for a podcast or video, feel free to reach out to them through the LinkedIn page.

·      Thank you to all my generous guests for their time in sharing their expertise and experiences around My Warm Table and the loyal listeners who make this worthwhile!

·      Music: ‘Sweet Soweto’ by Cast Of Characters. Copyright licence for use via soundstripe.com  

Transcript

Sonia Nolan: 0:05

Hello, and thank you for taking a seat at My Warm Table during Season One. I'm Sonia Nolan, and I'm so grateful for your support of my podcast, passion project, and all that we've achieved together in our weekly episode. As we wrap up season one, I thought I'd just check in, say hello, and just give us a bit of an overview of what we've achieved in this first season. Season One for me was all about learning the art of podcasting, and producing quality content that I hoped would add value to my warm table listeners. It was also an exercise for me in overcoming impostor syndrome. I'm really proud of the weekly discipline in releasing the episodes that we have, we released 30 quality conversations with an eclectic and expert range of guests who were so generous in sharing their stories throughout season one. Looking back, we really have created an amazing catalogue of smart conversations with heart that I really hope you'll continue to dip back into and reaffirm some of the messaging that we had during the year. We talked about politics just ahead of the Australian Federal election. And I'm so pleased that our first who warm table guests Kate Chaney and Madeleine King won their respective seats and they're making their marks in Parliament. I like to think that My Warm Table had a little tiny, itsy bitsy reason behind their success. We dabbled in the arts with a very talented singer songwriter Helen Shanahan, and the fabulous comedian Bonnie Davies, who both very generously gave us backstage passes to their creative worlds. We talked a lot about the brain. Specifically we heard about concussion, autism, migraine and epilepsy. We met one of the world's pioneers of neuroscience Professor Lynn Beasley, and we also took a trip to a world renowned facility for brain rehabilitation, which is right here in Perth. Our conversations ranged from women's health with nurse practitioner Shiree Walker to dreaming about a childhood long ago in mystical Bombay with spice mamas, Sultana Shamshi and Shaheen Hughes. We've pondered our overconsumption and sustainability with Raj Kandiah. And we also wondered how to create beautiful livable cities with Milly Main around the warm table. We have feasted on the insights of internationally renowned, but Perth based talent including futuristic Gihan Perera, personal brand consultant Alba Gomez, career transition coach and Churchill fellow Lois Keay Smith and of course our global ambassador for Applied compassion Catherine Kolomyjec and survival expert Mike House, we met a real Flying Doctor. We met a royal housemaid, an Aboriginal funeral director, we heard the wisdom of a beautiful Catholic nun, Sr Anne Tormey we heard about the joys and the frustrations of being a tech startup entrepreneur. We heard about an award winning author, a comic book contract lawyer and a personal chef. There is definitely a lot of food for thought in our episodes. Together we build community on Facebook, LinkedIn and Instagram. And we shared recipes, comments and encouragement. We even entered the Australian Podcast Awards, and My Warm Table faithfuls voted with their hearts in the listeners choice category. We didn't win, but we didn't need an award to know just how great the My Warm Table community is. My aim in launching my own podcast was to add positivity and warmth into the WA media landscape. My hope was to create a recipe for smart conversations with heart around a warm table of curiosity and acceptance, to build empathy and perspective. Your feedback throughout season one really encouraged me and affirmed that I was on the right track. Your response to the episode on neurodiversity with Alexandra Helens was a particular highlight. So many listeners were deeply moved by the conversation sharing their family experiences with autism. They told me that hearing Alexandra's story and success gave them hope because it encouraged us all to embrace how these amazing minds will undoubtedly help us solve our world's many complex issues. I also had parents reach out with thanks for the conversation with futuristic Gihan Perera it helped them reconnect with their teenage children who are facing very different future trends than we did at their age. Catherine Kolomyjec, our very own global ambassador for Applied compassion, created ripples of kindness and many tears amongst our listeners, as she reflected on her life as a social worker resettling refugees, and how her postcard project with 400 volunteers touch the hearts of stranded sailors off our coast during COVID. Your feedback told me how hearing her story changed your views, and actually made you more compassionate. That was incredible feedback to receive. We shared some recipes to along the way. But I must admit this became less and less important to me as the season evolved, and the warm table feast became so much more about ideas and insights than it was about our entrees. But in saying this, it was a delight to reconnect with personal chef Valerio Fantinelli and hear his philosophies on food, his Italian heritage and traditions, his thoughts on veganism, and also how to study and work with passion. Importantly, a common theme, which emerged in several episodes was the importance of finding moments of stillness to reconnect with yourself and your quiet inner voice. I was astounded at how many times this came up in this real call to find time to slow down and appreciate nature and the simple things in life. It was also continually reaffirmed with the example that our Aboriginal people show us the example of stewardship of our land, and the many, many things we can learn from Australia's Aboriginal people. It was highlighted many times over so it was an absolute privilege to then welcome Sharon Todd, who's Western Australia's first female Aboriginal funeral director around the warm table. And she shared with us, her culture, the stories of the dream time, and her hopes for reconciliation. It's been such a privilege to set the table for so many wonderful humans who live and work among us here in WA. So thank you for taking your seat with us and sharing the feast of ideas, insights and expertise. And while I'm on the thank yous, I must take a moment to thank some important people who were instrumental in getting my warm table off the ground. A very special thanks to Jay, the sound engineer extraordinaire, who's been the one to create the magic sound mastering and to fix any of my dodgy edits along the way, Jay added the final polish to each episode. Thank you, Jay, for helping to make My Warm Table sound that little bit more professional than it would have been if I'd been left to my own devices. I'd like to thank Eva of If Innovation Could Talk, which is a wonderful vodcast that you can find on YouTube or LinkedIn. Eva was instrumental in encouraging me in the early days to give podcasting a go, and to help me overcome my imposter syndrome. I'd like to thank Maria, Juliana and Jo three of my dearest friends who provided unfiltered feedback and proud encouragement every step of the way every week. Also, to Tania who very bravely showed us how she listens to my warm table by sending me photographs every week of what she was doing as she was listening to the podcast. It was hilarious, and you can see them on Instagram and Facebook, many many ideas of how you can keep listening to the podcast. I'd like to thank my dear friend Jane for her provocation to get a better podcast title than what I had originally been thinking. It's thanks to Jane that we landed on my warm table and the whole concept then took shape. And it took me back to my Italian heritage to honour my Papa's words of a tavola calda. That warm table of good friendship and deep conversation. And of course, my gratitude always belongs to my family to Paul Elliana and Daniel for their patience, while I physically and absolutely ignored them with my headphones on when I was deep in the land of podcast producing and editing. For every one of you who reached out with ideas, and the encouragement of friends who humoured me as I over talked about my passion project and to all our generous guests of season one who said yes to my invitation to come and sit with me around my warm table. And thank you so much to the listeners to you. Every single time I saw that my downloads statistics were rising and that people actually listening to the podcast. I really really got a real buzz. So thank you so much. If you've missed some episodes, do wander back through the catalogue. And listen, as you can hear from today's wrap up, we just spoke to so many interesting people and there really is something for everybody. Please share your favourite episodes with your family and friends, and continue to tell people about my warm table podcast so that we can keep amplifying the good news and the good people of Western Australia. You can keep in touch through our social media pages on Facebook, LinkedIn and Instagram. Or send an email to mywarmtable@sonianolan.com. I can't wait for next season. I'm not sure what that's going to look like right now. I'm putting a little bit of planning and thought into it but I really hope that we can continue to eat drink and be merry