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.
The Fisherman and the Marine Biologist
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Show notes
Fifty years on the water, twelve years studying it
Donal went to sea at fourteen and skippered his own boat out of Castletownbere for most of his life. His granddaughter Aoife is a marine biologist who has spent a decade modelling the fish stocks he once chased. They have argued about quotas every Christmas since 2015. This is the first time with a recorder running.
- What the sea looked like in 1962 and what Aoife's data says
- The quota years and what they did to the town
- Donal's unasked question: was I part of the problem
- Aoife's unasked question: were you ever afraid
- A walk down to the pier at the end
Recorded in Donal's kitchen with the range going and a dog underfoot.
Transcript
Hello, I am Niamh Brennan and this is Same Table, Different Century, where a grandparent and a grandchild sit at one microphone and ask each other the things they have never dared to ask. This first episode takes us to a kitchen in Castletownbere in West Cork. Donal is seventy-nine. He went to sea at fourteen and skippered his own boat for fifty years. His granddaughter Aoife is a marine biologist who studies the very fish he once caught, and the two of them have argued about quotas every Christmas for a decade. Today they do it properly. Donal asks whether she thinks he was part of the problem. Aoife asks whether he was ever afraid out there. The answers surprised them both. Then we walk down to the pier. You are listening on Witspeak Podcasts.
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