Show Notes
Tara Westover grew up in on Buck Peak, a beautiful mountain in rural Idaho, in a household that was in a perpetual state of preparation for the End of Days.
Her family didn't talk about the summer, it was ‘canning season’ to them, a time spent furiously preserving peaches and other foodstuffs to stockpile for the inevitable End of Man.
Westover’s father, a Mormon Survivalist, lived in fear of the ‘feds’ throughout her childhood, but with a divine belief that everything that happens in this world – good or bad – is God’s will.
She wasn’t registered for a birth certificate until she was old enough to ask for one and because her father didn’t believe in doctors or the public school system, she had no medical or educational records by the time she left home at 17.
On the first Róisín Meets podcast recorded in front of a live audience at The Gutter Bookshop in Dublin, Tara Westover talks to Róisín Ingle about her memoir, Educated.
It tells the story of her childhood and explains how she went from bare minimum home-schooling in an isolated part of the U.S., to earning a PhD at the elite Trinity College, Cambridge in Britain.
More from Róisín Meets...
In the final episode of the Roisin Meets podcast, Roisin chats to her mum Ann Ingle and legendary Irish race car driver Rosemary Smith about the latter's biography, ghostwritten by Ann. Expect tales of rallying across continents, love affairs with the likes of Oliver Reed and why, in the depths of despair, Rosemary looked over the edge but decided to turn back and give life another shot.
For over 20 years, Ziauddin Yousafzai has been fighting for equality - first for Malala, his daughter - and then for girls all over the world. On this week's podcast, he talks to Róisín about the roots of his activisim in Pakistan's Swat Valley, his Nobel Prize winning daughter and his book, Let Her Fly.
In his first children's book Niall Breslin has written a story that encompasses a mindfulness technique to help children explore difficult emotions, face their fears and return to the present moment. Illustrated by Sheena Dempsey, Bressie hopes The Magic Moment will help to encourage children to feel the fear and jump in anyway. He talks to Róisín about the book, about his mindfulness studies and why music is still an important outlet for him.
Game Changer, Cora Staunton's autobiography, is the first from a female GAA player. In it the Mayo woman documents her sporting journey, from her childhood home of Carnacon, to her 67 Championship games over 23 seasons in the Mayo jersey. Her inter-country career game to a bitter end this year and she talks to Róisín Ingle about the controversy that brought her there. She also talks about the woeful under-resourcing of women's sport in Ireland and about her mother, who died when she was a teenager.
Auschwitz survivor Dr Edith Eger came in Ireland for the first time to speak at the international Safe World Summit, hosted by Safe Ireland. The 91-year-old psychologist’s best-selling memoir The Choice recounts her time in the concentration camp and her struggle to be free of the survivor’s guilt and shame that followed her as she made a life in America.