Susan Blackmore

Speaker 20:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music.

Speaker 20:08

The programme was originally broadcast in nineteen ninety eight and the presenter was Sue Lawley.

Presenter0:31

My castaway this week is a psychologist. For more than twenty years she devoted herself to the study of the paranormal, telepathy, ghosts, reincarnation. But eventually she abandoned her work. The theories she discovered went against the findings of science. Instead, she turned to the study of human consciousness, in particular the way habits and beliefs are passed on from one person to another. Here her studies have led her to the conclusion that strong beliefs, like strong genes, have the best chance of survival. Her scepticism towards the paranormal has made her unpopular in some quarters, but she remains sternly convinced. The awful truth, she says, is that we are just biological organisms and our precious selves are pure invention. She is Dr Susan Blackmore. Is that an awful truth, Susan, in the sense of in the true sense of the phrase that's to mean it it inspires awe, or is it that you just didn't want to know that? Well, both. Yes, it does inspire awe. I mean

Presenter1:33

I think if you think I just got here for no reason at all, I'm just this lump of flesh that sort of evolved, I'm here because of the genes of my past and the ideas that I've picked up in my lifetime, and that's it, that is awe inspiring.

Presenter1:45

To me it's more awe-inspiring than what some people would prefer, the idea that God put me here or there's a heaven or something. And in a way, it's not awful to me in the other sense, in the horrible sense, because I've got used to it. And I think one of the things we have to do as scientists is if we genuinely think science is telling us something about human nature, then we have to live our lives really believing that. But when you decided to abandon your studies into the paranormal, I mean, let me ask you a very unscientific question.

Presenter2:12

How emotional did you feel? Did you feel.

Presenter2:15

It it was a terrible tragedy. It was a traumatic experience somehow that you devoted all these years to the study of the paranormal and suddenly you thought, you know what? There ain't nothing in it. No, the trauma came much earlier. Deciding to stop recently has really been

Presenter2:30

Just I've had enough now. But the trauma, the emotions came in having to change my mind. Because when I started after having some dramatic experiences and training in the Kabbalah and all sorts of things, I was absolutely convinced about telepathy and ghosts and life after death and the existence of souls and spirits and what have you.

Presenter2:49

And I wanted to prove all these things. And when I began to do research that didn't show them, that's when it was difficult. That's when I had to struggle to say, well, you know, do I believe the evidence and change my mind? Or do I believe what my mind is saying? Oh, of course these things exist. And that was a big emotional struggle and was quite difficult. Tell me about that first experience, though. What was it that inspired you in the first place? What gave you that rush of optimism that there might be something out there? The experience happened in my first term at Oxford when I was studying physiology and psychology. And I joined the Psychical Research Society, the Student Society, for no very good reason, along with a lot of other things. And we used to have meetings in the evening. And one particular evening,

Presenter3:32

I was burning the candle at both ends. I was very tired. And I was sitting around with some some friends late at night listening to music, smoking cannabis, which of course we did all the time in those days, nineteen seventy this was and um I seemed to be going down this tunnel in the music, and there was a bright light at the end of this dark tunnel.

Presenter3:51

and a kind of roaring noise didn't sort of go along this tunnel.

Presenter3:54

And

Presenter3:55

Suddenly, I came out in this light and everything came clear, and it was as though I was on the ceiling looking down, and I could see my own body and my two friends. And it was a classic out-of-body experience. Why didn't you put the whole experience just down to drugs? Why did you think there must be something in it? I mean, you were a scientist, you had a rational mind. For the same reason that people always treat these experiences as different from other things, because it was so realistic. So, it would be intellectually dishonest to deny that it ever happened. Absolutely.

Susan Blackmore4:21

So we would be in select.

Susan Blackmore4:24

Yes.

Presenter4:26

And I I suppose you've hit the nail on the head there, because intellectually, to be honest, I had to say this is the most extraordinary thing that's ever happened to me. I know that this was realer than real, that something was going on that seemed at the time to be more important than ordinary life.

Presenter4:43

And I need to understand it. So this huge detour of your academic life has to begin. Yes. Tell me about your first record.

Susan Blackmore4:47

Uh

Speaker 34:47

Uh

Susan Blackmore4:47

Yeah, we did.

Presenter4:51

My first record is Is Carmina Burana. It's something that I've sung recently. One of my very few hobbies is I sing in the university choir, and it's a very exciting piece of music to sing, and I would like to sing along with the difficult bits while I'm on my own on the island.

Speaker 35:09

Say maybe lost!

Presenter5:58

The Double Chorus, from Karl Orff's Carmena Burana, Veni Veni, Venias, from the choristers of the Cathedral and Abbey Church of St. Alban, and the London Philharmonic Chorus and Orchestra, conducted by Frantz Velzer Merst.

Presenter6:11

It's not rare, though, Susan, is it, for people to report similar experiences when they've been on an operating table, for example? People do report kind of near-death experiences, don't they? Yes, when my experience happened in 1970, the term near-death experience had not been invented. It came later. And so it was years later that I looked back and thought, actually, I had all the aspects of the near-death experience. The tunnel with the light at the end, going out of the body, going to another world. But you're right, lots of people describe these experiences, and not only in our culture, they've been described in many other cultures and many times in history. So clearly something is going on. Because they have similar features. It's this bright light. The bright light alluring. Yes. So the question is why?

Susan Blackmore6:50

Yes, this

Susan Blackmore6:51

It's a very

Speaker 36:52

At lowering.

Susan Blackmore6:52

Yeah.

Speaker 36:55

Uh

Presenter6:55

Most people seem to jump to the conclusion that because they're similar experiences, that proves that there is a tunnel that goes to heaven, that there is a heaven and so on.

Presenter7:03

But my answer is they're similar because we have similar brains.

Presenter7:07

So for example, um the tunnel is quite interesting.

Presenter7:11

In our visual cortex, the part of our brain which processes visual information, the way the cells are laid out is that there are lots and lots devoted to the center of the visual field, what you're looking at, and very few towards the outside. Now we know that under stress and shock and lack of oxygen and close to death, what happens is all the cells in the brain start firing randomly, you know, giving off, you know, electrical signals all over the place. And what's that going to look like? It's going to look like a bright light in the middle fading out towards dark at the outside.

Presenter7:39

And this is why you get tunnels and lights and so on with various kinds of hallucinogenic drugs, LSD and psilocybin, why it's a common feature in shamanistic stories and practices, and it's such a widespread experience. So that's just one example, but I think the whole of the near-death experience we can understand in terms of the structure of the brain. There's a total scientific explanation for these things. Well, I wouldn't say total, no, no. I would say we have the beginnings of a good explanation. What's important to me is that

Speaker 38:03

Uh

Susan Blackmore8:03

Uh

Presenter8:11

People seem to think that somehow, because I'm trying to find a scientific explanation, I'm somehow belittling the experiences. But why is an experience that can transform your life, that can make you feel different about yourself, that can make you less afraid of death, why should that be less valuable because it happens in the brain than if it happens in some mythical other world? That's what I don't understand. Next record.

Presenter8:34

Oh well, this takes me back to those days in Oxford. This is Grateful Dead. I spent a lot of time listening to Grateful Dead in those days, and it's one of my favourites, not Fade Away.

Speaker 38:43

I tried to show you that you drive me drag

Speaker 38:49

Your love for me has got to be real.

Speaker 38:54

You're gonna know just how I feel

Speaker 38:59

Love's a real, not faded way.

Speaker 39:03

I be the one!

Presenter9:11

Grateful dead and not fade away. You were supposed to be a doctor of medicine, Susan. That's what the family wanted, was it? Well, at one time, yes. In fact, it was more complicated than that. I was always good at science, which was a mixed blessing at school. At my all-girls' school, that didn't go down too well, and I always felt I was, you know, an outsider and hated by everybody for being clever and all that kind of thing.

Presenter9:33

And originally for my A levels I was doing chemistry, maths and biology just because I was good at those things. And then I suddenly got this idea that I wanted to be a doctor, which meant changing to physics, which was quite a traumatic thing to do halfway through your A levels. And my mum and dad were so pleased. Oh, now you're going to be a doctor. We'd never wanted to push you in that direction, but it's what we've always wanted. Your father wasn't a doctor then.

Susan Blackmore9:52

Because

Presenter9:54

No, no, no, he was a businessman. But they just liked the idea of your being a doctor. Yes. Well, and for many parents that's a a marvellous profession.

Presenter10:02

But then I suppose there was huge pressure on me. And suddenly, one night, I remember at school, I woke up in the middle of the night and I just suddenly realised what life as a doctor would be like. That I would work in hospitals with sick people, that I would probably marry a doctor, that my whole life would become medicine. And it was as though there was a kind of great something or other closing in on me, and I just knew I didn't want to do it. And I had to kind of get out of all that, which was quite difficult. And my mum was so disappointed. She's still disappointed, actually. She still wishes you'd been a doctor in medicine. Yeah, when times are hard, she still says, Oh, Susan, if only you'd been a doctor, I'm afraid. But why did you hate school so much? Why was it such hell? And you hated the headmistress, apparently.

Speaker 310:24

Um

Susan Blackmore10:32

Beep.

Presenter10:43

I hated school. It was a boarding school. It was very strict.

Presenter10:49

I'm not a very sociable person. I I I I'm sort of good at socializing, but

Presenter10:55

But actually I'd rather be by myself most of the time. And to be forced to be with other girls all the time, to have no privacy, no way of escaping, to be laughed at for being clever, to be and I was fat and I was called short, fat, hairy legs and you know um I mean, I just had a horrible time. And were you scientifically curious then? I mean, did you all of the time question everything that was going on around you? Oh, yes, I think I've always been scientifically curious.

Presenter11:21

Whether it's true memory or not, I don't know, but I do remember, must have been age five or six, wondering what on earth is heat, and I couldn't.

Presenter11:30

I I couldn't think what heat was because clearly when a hot thing made something else hot, you couldn't see anything transferring. And I suddenly had this idea that um perhaps it was all the little bits were moving. Now I don't know where I got this idea from, but I do know I was curious about simple physical things like that from a very young age. And I do remember two teachers at school, my biology teachers, who really did inspire me and gave me a love of evolutionary theory.

Presenter11:53

Why psychology, then? That's what you decided to read at university. Where did that decision come from?

Presenter11:58

I'm not sure that it came from anywhere much. I went to one of these career guidance things. My parents were desperate. Well, if you're not going to be a doctor, what are you going to do? And the career guidance man said, Well, I don't know you could do anything. Why don't you become a psychologist like me?

Presenter12:10

And I suppose with my interest in biology.

Presenter12:12

um and an interest in the mind, which I think I've always had as well. You know, what what does it mean to be conscious? What does it mean to be alive? Psychology, I realized, would would get at those questions.

Presenter12:24

Next record

Presenter12:25

The next record reminds me of one of the few nice things at school. That's where I learnt to sing, which I enjoyed. And this is Haydn's Nelson Mass.

Presenter13:32

Barbara Hendricks, singing part of the Kearie from Haydn's Nelson Mass with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra and chorus conducted by Sir Colin Davis. So you got to um Oxford, Susan Blackmore, and found yourself in your element,'cause at last you weren't the cleverest one around. Indeed, not very far from it.

Susan Blackmore13:47

Indeed not

Susan Blackmore13:48

I'm there.

Presenter13:49

And then came this out-of-body experience, and ultimately your decision to study the paranormal.

Presenter13:53

How unusual was that? I mean, how many people were studying it?

Presenter13:57

Oh, hardly anybody. It was extremely unusual. And my tutors and lecturers at Oxford tried to dissuade me, or just to laugh at me. I tried to apply for some money to study the paranormal and failed. And they said, well, you know, what do you expect? No one's going to pay money for you to study this rubbish. What about now? How many people are studying it seriously, academically now? A few more, but still not many. Arthur Kerstler, when he died, left money to found a chair in Edinburgh, and there are several people working there on parapsychology.

Presenter14:27

There's myself and a research assistant at Bristol, at the University of the West of England in Bristol. And there's a little group with Richard Wiseman at Hertfordshire. But there's still really no official funding or government money put towards the paranormal. Do you really think there should be?

Susan Blackmore14:41

How long?

Presenter14:45

I'm very glad that research on the paranormal goes on. Given that something close to 60% of the population believe in the paranormal, even though there's.

Presenter14:53

Precious little evidence that it exists. I think we should investigate it. You don't think that's just because it's fashionable? I mean, the X-Files have helped it a lot, haven't they? Well, belief levels have stayed pretty steady for many decades. I think there's just something in human nature that we want that to be true. Or that we have strange experiences we can't explain and jump to the conclusion they're paranormal. Wasn't there a recent survey that more twenty-somethings believed in the paranormal than believed in God?

Speaker 315:02

Well

Presenter15:17

Well, I did a recent survey of 6,000 telegraph readers and certainly huge numbers believed in the paranormal, yes. So you went off to Surrey University and got involved with experiments of all kinds into the paranormal involving telepathy, among other things, among children. Wasn't there a view, or is there still a view, that children are more psychic than grown-ups? Yes, that was one of the things I did. I funded my way through my PhD by working part-time, which was quite unusual in those days. And what I wanted to do was test my incredible memory theory of ESP, that telepathy and other forms of ESP are really just like memory. We pick things up from other people's minds just like we pick them up from our own. So there's a kind of is that the theory, there's a sort of cosmic store of information that we tune into. I thought I was the first one who'd invented it, but of course I soon discovered I wasn't. But this is what I wanted to test in my PhD. And I did a lot of experiments just using ordinary students for subjects. And to my amazement, I didn't find any ESP. They were not telepathic. So then I thought, well, perhaps they're in the wrong state of consciousness. So I tried to get them relaxed and put them into special

Susan Blackmore15:59

See

Susan Blackmore16:03

Sound link.

Presenter16:23

You know, conditions and so on, still didn't get any telepathy. And then people suggested, as you've mentioned, that perhaps children are more telepathic. So I went to play groups and tested three and four-year-old children trying to transmit pictures to each other or colours of smarties or what have you. And that didn't work either. And that was just one of the many, many things that I did in a stage of thinking, but I know there must be some telepathy somewhere. I'll try everything.

Presenter16:49

And, well, to cut a long story short, I never did find any. Because there were other things that happened, weren't there? Sort of televisions that turned themselves on, or clocks that leapt into. We're getting to Uri Geller territory here, really. Yes, well, Uri Geller came along while I was studying the paranormal. And some parapsychologists at that time said, This is it, you know, we at last have repeatable psychokinesis on offer. We can test it, but of course.

Susan Blackmore16:52

Nick

Speaker 316:59

Yes, we're

Presenter17:12

He was tested in experimental conditions and all kinds of problems went wrong and there really no strong evidence for the paranormal has ever come out of Yuri Galaxy. I think that people do find it quite shocking to believe that there are highly intelligent people working away year upon year out there, spending public money on things which most rational people believe to be a load of old bologna, frankly.

Susan Blackmore17:21

Yeah.

Presenter17:36

Yes, but most rational people aren't necessarily right. It could be that there are paranormal phenomena. And it could be that telepathy exists. We know for sure that if it does, it's incredibly weak and incredibly rare. But even so, if it existed, it would be very, very important for science. So I don't think it's wrong for people to go on looking for it. Indeed, I think they should. Even though, as you say, most rational people would say it was rubbish.

Presenter18:01

Mechanical number four.

Presenter18:03

This is Edie Brickell, not a very well-known record, but something that just takes me back to a certain period of my life, and I would like to be reminded of it.

Speaker 318:10

Me?

Speaker 318:12

I'm a party circle of friends, and we

Speaker 318:18

Notice you don't come around

Speaker 318:22

B

Speaker 318:24

I think it all depends.

Speaker 318:27

Are you?

Speaker 318:29

Touching ground with us, but I quit, I give up. Nothing's good enough for anybody else.

Presenter18:40

Edie Brickeland's Circle, I quit, I give up, nothing's good enough, she sang. Is that how you felt, you know, after all those wasted years when you decided to turn away?

Presenter18:49

In a way, yes. I mean, I I love that sentiment. You know, I give up because nothing's good enough for anybody. It never is. I I love that sentiment. But in a way, I never I never gave up the paranormal just like that.

Presenter19:03

Again and again I would get to the point of thinking, why am I going on with this? This is ridiculous but then I'd get sucked back into it. And in a way I felt that having devoted so many years of my life and so much study to the subject, I had some kind of obligation really to share that with people.

Presenter19:19

But then I got very ill about two and a half years ago. I got flu and I just didn't recover. I got post viral fatigue and was in bed for six months.

Presenter19:29

I think I'd just been pushing myself too hard, thinking I could do everything.

Presenter19:33

And being ill and not being able to do anything, I suddenly realized that you don't have to. Actually, the world goes on without. I could say no to that television programme and no to that radio programme and no to that request to write this article for somebody or another and just not do it. And all the people said, Oh, fine, sorry, you can't do it, no problem. But you were and still are determined to understand how the mind works, who you are, as you said. The question was posed in the beginning. And these days, your theory is that strong views like

Susan Blackmore19:58

That was too much paper.

Presenter20:03

Fascism, militarism, religious fundamentalism, as I was saying in the introduction, actively propagate themselves. Can you explain that? Yes, well this is the idea of memes. It's not only strong views, it's successfully replicating views. This idea comes from Richard Dawkins, who wrote The Selfish Gene, in which he explained how all biological design comes about by the competition between selfish genes. Genes sort of fight it out to get into the next generation, and that's how biological organisms come about.

Presenter20:37

And he describes these as replicators that struggle to get copied.

Presenter20:41

And he asked the question, Are there any other replicators on this planet?

Presenter20:45

And he answered himself: yes. Ideas, habits, thoughts, behaviours, stories, songs, I mean, everything that you learn from other people. So, a meme is to the mind what a gene is to the body. Yes, and memes propagate by going from person to person. So, if I tell you a story and you tell your friend, that is a meme that's passed on. And once you start to think about it, you realize that most of what's in your mind is memes. Things that you've got through language from other people, ideas that you've picked up by watching television programmes. So, that really our minds are structures made of memes. And this is the way that I'm beginning to look at consciousness and at the nature of our minds as the consequence of the battle between the selfish memes. But are there altruistic memes that pass on as well as? I mean, we've only mentioned the downside, as it were, the fundamentalism and the fascism. What about cooperation and generosity and kindness? Well, indeed, that's absolutely right.

Susan Blackmore21:31

In the dam

Susan Blackmore21:38

Well, indeed, that

Presenter21:42

That's one of the theories that I'm working on, that the reason why human beings are so much more altruistic than other animals and are capable of genuine acts of selflessness is because those ideas are copied from person to person. We admire people who act that way and we copy them. And so those ideas spread as well as the nasty ones. But then where does genius come in? Where does inspiration come in? Because that's not just a replication, is it? That's something original happening in the mind. Yes. And this emphasizes the difference really between two views. If you think of a human being as somehow a sort of unique source, having a sort of

Presenter22:21

Little self inside, if you like, that's creative. That's a very common view. But I prefer to see it that we are, if you like, very clever kind of mixing machines. That puts it rather crudely. But all these ideas come in, and a genius, a really clever person, mixes them together in original ways, and out comes something new.

Presenter22:42

Record number five.

Presenter22:45

Oh, this is an old favourite of mine. It's something which I used to listen to often when skiing, with the Walkman on, and get the rhythm and go on the bumps, and you know and that's what it would take me back to from my desert island. It's Dire Straits Telegraph Road.

Speaker 323:08

Then came the churches, then came the schools, then came the riots, then came the rules, then came the trains and the trucks with their load.

Speaker 323:19

I'm a dirty old chap.

Speaker 323:22

What's the telegraph room?

Presenter23:27

Diastrates and Telegraph Road. Your need to know about the workings of the mind, Susan, has led you into meditation, the study of the mind, as it were, from the inside. In a very serious sense, though, I mean, not this half an hour in the morning, half an hour at night stuff. I mean, you do it for protracted periods, don't you? Yes, about once a year I go on a retreat for a week or so. Last summer, I went for the first time and did a solitary retreat, only five days, completely by myself up in the Welsh mountains. This is deepest Wales, and a very austere regime by the sound of it. Sleeping bags on the floor. I think that's it. The whole point about going on a retreat for me is to concentrate on the question.

Presenter24:11

All the time in my life I've been

Presenter24:13

Battling with questions: who am I? What's the point of it all? What is a human being anyway? What is consciousness? What is this? This, whatever it is now.

Presenter24:23

And in most of life, you can't really go on and on at a question like that. You know, you've got to do this, you've got to do that, whatever.

Presenter24:29

The point of meditation for me is to get yourself in a situation where you just sit there, look at a white wall or the floor or whatever it is, and really concentrate on that question. But what happens then? Is it possible to say once you've got past the kind of

Presenter24:45

Where do you go to? Can you just give it voice? Well, it it it's difficult as you imply by the question. What happens for a very long time is that you can't concentrate. That the more you sit quietly in, as you say, austere place cut away from everything.

Speaker 224:50

What?

Presenter25:04

You sit there, and there's you and the wall, and there's all this stuff. And as my teacher said, you know, there's only you and the wall, and the wall's not doing it. Really, it's about letting go, I suppose. It's about practicing an attitude of mind which is not grab this, grab this, do that, do that. It's an attitude of mind which is, oh, that's how it is.

Presenter25:25

And the meditation really is kind of practice for the rest of life of being more aware in the moment, more present all the time, less dragged this way and that by ideas or obligations or anything else. And out of that comes a kind of clarity. A kind of peace? Yes.

Susan Blackmore25:39

A kind of seat?

Presenter25:41

Where mundane acts are actually rather attractive. Absolutely. Yes.

Susan Blackmore25:41

Where

Presenter25:47

In fact, some of the simple things that you do on the retreats, but you do at home as well: chopping vegetables, washing up, sweeping the floor.

Presenter25:54

If you are really fully present in the moment of doing those things, they can be a delight, and life becomes, well, easier, certainly more peaceful. And how much h has it helped your academic studies?

Presenter26:07

That ver very much in the sense that

Presenter26:11

As I think you implied, to me, if you're going to struggle with difficult questions like what is consciousness or what is the mind, to me a science is only part of a science if you're doing it from the outside. So to do it from the inside is very important.

Presenter26:26

One of the strong things that comes out of this is what is a self?

Presenter26:30

When you start out, you may think, oh, it's obvious what myself is, it's the bit inside that's, you know, that does everything.

Presenter26:37

But looking intellectually from the point of psychology, there is no such thing in there. There isn't a little hole somewhere in the middle of the brain where the self lives and pulls the strings. Doesn't exist.

Presenter26:47

Looking from experience, from meditation and so on, you ask the question, Who am I? Where am I? You look and look and you don't find it. So that both the scientific way and the meditation way lead to this awful ah conclusion.

Presenter27:02

That really there's nobody in there.

Presenter27:04

Awful. Yes.

Presenter27:06

It's all right, really.

Presenter27:07

Number six.

Presenter27:10

One of the things I'll miss terribly on my Desert Island is Radio 4. I love to have voices, so I want something that's spoken rather than sung. And I also want something to make me laugh. So I've chosen The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which is a wonderful radio series. And I love the fact that they always at least try and explain things. You know, in Star Trek, everybody speaks American, but at least in The Hitchhiker's Guide, the book tries to explain how it is that you can understand everybody.

Susan Blackmore27:38

The Babelfish is small, yellow, leech-like, and probably the oddest thing in the universe.

Susan Blackmore27:45

It feeds on brainwave energy, absorbing all unconscious frequencies and then excreting telepathically a matrix formed from the conscious frequencies and nerve signals picked up from the speech centers of the brain.

Susan Blackmore27:57

The practical upshot of which is that if you stick one in your ear, you can instantly understand anything said to you in any form of language. The speech you hear decodes the brainwave matrix.

Susan Blackmore28:09

Now, it is such a bizarrely improbable coincidence that anything so mind bogglingly useful could evolve purely by chance that some thinkers have chosen to see it as a final clinching proof of the nonexistence of God.

Presenter28:23

Peter Jones, as the book from Douglas Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, first broadcast on Radio 4 in 1978. The result of your looking into all of these things and going very public on your views about them is that you've attracted all sorts of wrath from people who are either deeply religious or they are people who believe very much in the paranormal and can't stand your scepticism. How difficult has that been to bear?

Susan Blackmore28:38

Or either deep

Presenter28:47

At times it has been hard. Mostly it isn't. Mostly I enjoy the battle. I enjoy the fact that I don't know whether I'm right. And having a good argument with somebody, hearing their point of view, putting mine, will help me to work out, you know, who is right.

Presenter29:03

But sometimes I just can't stand it anymore. One of the things that annoys me particularly is when I'm saying.

Presenter29:11

I don't know the answer. There's this evidence and there's this evidence, and it all suggests to me that this is not paranormal, for example, explained this way.

Presenter29:21

And the answer comes back from people: well, you may say you think this and you've got a theory, but I know.

Presenter29:27

There's nothing you can say.

Presenter29:29

Because I can't know for sure. And the whole point about science is that you never come to a final answer. You keep you have to keep shifting. And it's very difficult then when you're confronted with people whose religious beliefs or experiences tell them that they've got the answer. But you've talked about it being a huge detour and a terrible mistake.

Presenter29:46

Yes, I think intellectually to study the paranormal all those years when the questions that I was asking were about the nature of mind, the nature of self, the nature of consciousness, it didn't give me answers. But I learned so much about scientific method, about experiments, about myself, about how to work. None of that was wasted and I wouldn't want to change it. You are just an optimist, isn't it? Maybe, yes. Record number seven.

Susan Blackmore30:12

Yeah.

Presenter30:15

I thought going to this desert island

Presenter30:18

I don't know that much about music technically, and I thought it would be a nice idea to take some music which I don't know at all, but which might educate me about music. And I asked various people's advice, and my choir master suggested that I took Bach's musical offering. Apparently Frederick the Great gave Bach a theme on which he improvised many fugues, more complicated than anything anybody else has ever written, and I think perhaps I could enjoy the challenge of both enjoying the music and trying to understand what he was doing.

Speaker 330:59

Boom dummy

Presenter31:46

The six part richer card from Bach's The Musical Offering played by the Ensemble de Sonnerie. What happens to someone like you on a desert island, I wonder, Susan? I mean, you you like and enjoy solitude, but what about infinite solitude? Well, I wonder too. I I think

Presenter32:03

I think I wouldn't find it too difficult. I do love being on my own. I would spend a lot of time meditating, thinking about the difficult questions.

Presenter32:12

I'm also reasonably practical and I would find plenty to do, I think.

Presenter32:17

And of course, if you had time to think again about everything that you've ever researched, you might come to some different conclusions. I mean, particularly during those long, dark nights on a desert island, do you think you might yet decide that perhaps there is something in the paranormal? Yes. I can imagine that, you know, a turtle levitates in front of me on the beach and I go, oh, I was wrong all this time, I've got to tell everybody, I've changed my mind again and I wouldn't be able to. It is it is possible, yes.

Susan Blackmore32:30

Yeah

Presenter32:42

Last record.

Presenter32:43

My last record is because of my children.

Presenter32:46

They are teenagers and always have music on, and so to remind me of them I've chosen the Verve Bittersweet Symphony.

Speaker 332:53

No change, I can change, I can change, I can change, but I'm healed in my mold, I am healed in my mold, but I'm a million different people from one day to the next, I can't change my mold, no, no, no, no.

Presenter33:19

Ferve and Bittersweet Symphony from their album Urban Hymns. If you could only take one of those eight records, Susan, which one?

Presenter33:27

I think it would be the Grateful Dead.

Presenter33:29

Take me back all those years.

Presenter33:34

I found the book so difficult. M my life is full of books. I have thousands of books and I read a lot. And the thought of only having one book is terrible.

Presenter33:43

But in the end, I decided to go for my great scientific love and my admiration for Charles Darwin. I have never read all of The Origin of Species, so I would take that and read it very slowly from cover to cover. Unless you're going to be really generous and there's complete works of Darwin, in which case I'll have that. We'll argue about it. What about your luxury?

Presenter34:04

Oh, my luxury. I don't know if you'll allow me this.

Presenter34:07

I would like to take a handful of cannabis seeds, and then I can also enjoy my favourite hobby, which is gardening.

Presenter34:14

To an island where they wouldn't be illegal. Indeed.

Presenter34:17

Doctor Susan Blackmore, thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your Desert Island discs. It's been a pleasure, thank you.

Speaker 234:29

You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Island Discs Archive. For more podcasts please visit bbc.co dot uk slash radio four.