Episode 025 - End of Year Message

With a wrap-up of 2023, Dr James McIlroy reflects on his journey hosting the Inside Matters Podcast so far.

I have to say that I've thoroughly enjoyed the first year and a bit of the Inside Matters podcast.

I'm thrilled actually that I took that step to start it. And there was an element of not sure what I'm getting into here. Can I produce content once every two weeks? And are people going to want to come on and talk to me?

But fast forward to December 2023 and we've had genuinely some of the best minds in the microbiome space on the podcast. And we've got a loyal listener base who listened to most episodes. Some every single episode, there's a group of people who write into the podcast and say they're enjoying it.

They've learned a lot. Some people have taken action themselves on their health and some people are reporting amazing benefits. I feel better. Some people have had an impact on their disease and that just makes me happy. Because, fundamentally, I believe that the microbiome is extremely important.

I believe that gut health contributes to wider body health in a way that's currently underappreciated by the general medical community. And even specialist medical doctors who, for some reason, even with all the evidence that's available now, don't think it's as important as it is. So what it's about on Inside Matters is connecting with people on a really deep level and helping them live a better, longer, healthier life through taking steps to improve their microbiota and microbiome, in doing so improving their gut health, in doing so improving their wider body health.

And this is just the start, you know, we're, we're just at the start of this journey, which is why I'm excited. And we're starting to build good traction, you know, 35 5-star reviews on Spotify, I think it's 17 or 18 on Apple podcasts, people commenting on the videos, people writing it on Instagram, stopped once on the subway in Glasgow, which is a bit of a claim to fame.

And it sounds very egotistical, but it was pretty damn cool. And that just motivates me to keep going and to create. Even better content on a week-to-week basis for the listeners. None of it would have been possible without the team at the Podcast Studio Glasgow who've gone above and beyond to help build this because they believed, and believe in me as the founder and the host.

They believe in the vision and the mission of the podcast and Without them, we wouldn't have built the brand. We wouldn't have been able to get it going in the way that we have, and I've learned a huge amount from Mark and more laterally cam about podcasting and creating great content and this new world of education.

21st century year education.

I wanted to take this opportunity on, on record to thank Mark and Cam for their belief in the partnership that we've established. And I'm looking forward to 2024.

What have you got to look forward to in 2024 as a listener?

More great content. A couple of really high-profile people actually in this space booked in for the first couple of quarters in 2024, which I'm excited about.

We're going to continue with the content once every two weeks. We're going to have more solo episodes where I'm talking about topics that are probably more easily accessible to the general population. Why is that? Well, we've had great top minds coming on this podcast and we get deep, really deep actually probably deeper than any other platform on the internet for microbiome.

And for some people that's gold dust.