Same Table, Different Century

Grandparents and grandchildren talk honestly across the years

Niamh Brennan2 episodes2 min of audio77 playsEpisodic

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S1 · E2Jan 22, 20260:5648 plays Preview

The Mill Worker and the Coder

Sushila worked a Mumbai textile mill for twenty-six years. Her grandson Rohan writes software for a bank in the same city. They compare shifts, wages, bosses and what each thinks the other is missing.

S1 · E1Jan 5, 20260:4929 plays Members

The Fisherman and the Marine Biologist

Seventy-nine-year-old Donal fished out of Castletownbere for fifty years. His granddaughter Aoife studies the same waters as a scientist. They talk about the sea, the quotas and who was right.

About the show

Niamh Brennan started this show after recording her own grandmother for an hour and realising she had never once asked her a real question. Same Table, Different Century puts a grandparent and a grandchild at the same microphone for about forty minutes and gives them a list of questions neither of them has had the nerve to ask: what did you want to be, what did you give up, what do you think of my life, what frightens you about mine. Guests have included a Cork fisherman and his marine-biologist granddaughter, a Mumbai mill worker and her grandson who codes for a bank, a Beirut seamstress and the grandchild she raised, and a retired Ghanaian headteacher and his granddaughter who left school at fifteen. Niamh sits in, gently, and steps out when she should. The show is fortnightly and often funny, occasionally very quiet. For anyone with a grandparent they have not really talked to, and anyone who misses one.

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