Professor Jim Al-Khalili

Presenter0:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young. Thank you for downloading this podcast of Desert Island Discs from BBC Radio 4. For rights reasons the music choices are shorter than in the radio broadcast.

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For more information about the programme, please visit bbc.co.uk slash radio four.

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My castaway this week is the physicist Jim Al Khalili.

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He's not the kind of white coat wearing scientist who boils up potions and causes explosions, and perhaps it's just as well. I can't trust myself in a lab, he says they're too dangerous. He fell in love with physics when he was a teenager growing up in Baghdad.

Presenter0:54

His family fled to Britain as Saddam Hussein came to power, and he has lived and worked here for the past thirty years.

Presenter1:01

His line of work is theoretical physics, based at a desk, not a lab bench, predicting how atomic particles will behave using maths and computers.

Presenter1:10

He was drawn to it when he was at high school. It answered all the big questions, he says. What was the universe like? How did it start? What time meant? I remember my father saying, There's something called quantum mechanics. It's very difficult.

Presenter1:27

We might talk, Jim Alcaledia, about nuclear reactions and quantum physics a little later on, but for now I I want to ask you about um not working in a lab because it's too dangerous. You mean literally, you're afraid you might want to blow yourself up?

Professor Jim Al-Khalili1:41

Yes. When I was a student I spent a year working in a lab and one of my jobs was to clean bell jars covering some technical electronic equipment and I'd forgotten to unplug the electronics and I very narrowly missed being zapped by 4,000 volts. When I realized after I cleaned it, I just went weak at the knees and I thought, I don't think this is for me. I think I'd be safer in front of a computer.

Presenter1:52

Yeah.

Speaker 11:53

Yeah.

Presenter1:53

Yeah.

Speaker 11:53

Yeah.

Presenter2:04

And I thought

Presenter2:08

And then the idea is a beguiling one of of sort of studying the tiniest particles that exist, and in doing so we learn significant things about the bigger world and how it acts and reacts. I know that is terrifically simplistic, but is that sort of it?

Professor Jim Al-Khalili2:26

It is, yeah. I mean, it's difficult to think that we can reduce everything down and break it up into its smallest pieces. But certainly in nuclear physics and particle physics, we're trying to understand the most fundamental theories. You know, the ultimate goal is to find that one equation that you can wear on a T-shirt that will describe everything in nature. So when I'm thinking about how an atom behaves or what happens when two atomic nuclei collide.

Speaker 12:50

Yeah.

Professor Jim Al-Khalili2:51

I don't ha often have the picture in my head of tiny balls smashing together. I have Greek symbols and calculus in my mind. I'm thinking about how the equations fit together and what they tell us about nature.

Presenter2:56

Yeah.

Presenter3:05

Because when things happen on a very, very small scale, nature then replicates them on a much bigger scale if you will.

Professor Jim Al-Khalili3:12

Well, it's because the the rules that govern the very small scale are the rules that tell us how atoms fit together to make molecules, to make all the stuff. So all of modern physics and chemistry and electronics is all built on these s rules down at the level of atoms.

Presenter3:16

Vice

Professor Jim Al-Khalili3:30

Yeah.

Presenter3:30

When we talk about the small stuff, because an atom is one-tenth of a millionth of a millimeter across, is that right?

Professor Jim Al-Khalili3:36

Let me count the zeros. Yes, I think that's about right. Yes, yes.

Presenter3:37

DSS

Presenter3:39

And you're going into the subatomic world, so you're getting even smaller.

Professor Jim Al-Khalili3:43

Even smaller. So I'm not so interested in a whole atom. That's far too big for me. I'm looking at the tiny nucleus, which is another hundred thousand times smaller than the atom.

Presenter3:53

Now, I suspect and I'm beginning to feel a little like your father here it is very, very difficult. You wrote a book that you hoped would well, you dedicated it to your father, in fact, but you hoped it would explain this sort of physics to people like me. I'm wondering, given that you dedicated it to your father, what did you make of it? Do you know, I'm not sure he's read it.

Presenter4:13

For now, though, let us get back to the subject in hand, which of course are your discs, your eight discs today. What's the first one we're going to hear?

Professor Jim Al-Khalili4:19

Growing up as a teenager in Iraq, I could get hold of pop music. I'd listen to some of the pops on World Service. But my maternal grandmother was coming over from England to visit us, and she asked me what I wanted brought over. And I said, Well, go into a record shop and find what the latest music is. This was 1977, and Santana was high in the charts. And this track is She's Not There.

Speaker 14:43

But it's been made to say I'm sorry How would I know? Why should I care?

Speaker 14:51

Please don't bother trying to find her, she's my play!

Speaker 14:56

Yeah, well, yeah.

Speaker 14:59

Where children

Presenter5:11

Santana and she's not there. Jim Alcaliri, the world of of theory that you occupy, does it feel to you like a retreat from the real world? Because it can easily sound like that.

Professor Jim Al-Khalili5:23

Yes, in certain areas, in theoretical physics in particular, it is a retreat from the real world. And not all scientists like that. A lot of scientists like to see how their work applies to the real world, that it has some use, that it can lead to a a non-stick frying pan next week, or something that benefits humanity. That's not always true in abstract theoretical physics.

Presenter5:38

Something that benefits.

Presenter5:40

Yeah.

Presenter5:44

So how do you answer the question What is the point, Jim?

Professor Jim Al-Khalili5:46

I thought you do. Well, really, what is the point? It's wanting to know.

Professor Jim Al-Khalili5:52

For me, I can't think of anything more important than understanding our place in the universe. And it's part of an enlightened society to want to answer these questions.

Presenter6:01

Uh

Professor Jim Al-Khalili6:01

Uh

Presenter6:01

Are you ever likely to be able to contribute to the question of clean energy, the thing that we are all these days seeking above all else? I mean, w would it have such a a practical application, the sort of science you do?

Professor Jim Al-Khalili6:08

Uh

Professor Jim Al-Khalili6:11

Certainly the science I do. Maybe not me personally, but certainly the science I do in understanding theoretical nuclear physics. And so if we're looking for the holy grail of energy, nuclear fusion, which is clean, it doesn't produce carbon dioxide and it doesn't produce horrible radioactive waste, exactly what we're doing could lead to that sort of advance.

Presenter6:33

Enough with the signs for now. Let's understand a little bit more about not because I'm not enjoying it, but just because we should understand a little bit more about you. You you mentioned Baghdad there. Your very early days. The first was it, sixteen years of your life? Yes. Spent in Baghdad. Tell me a little bit about that.

Professor Jim Al-Khalili6:46

Yes.

Professor Jim Al-Khalili6:48

Well, my father met my mother over in England. He was studying engineering in Portsmouth and my mother was working at the Central Library in Portsmouth, and so he'd come in as a this foreign student. I'd say tall, dark and handsome, but he's only five foot two, so short, dark and handsome, she says. They met, they dated, they married and then moved back to Iraq. And so I was born in 1962 in Baghdad.

Presenter7:10

Right, and your mother was happy to move, that was she was my mother.

Professor Jim Al-Khalili7:12

She was. My mother embraced the Arab culture. She learned to speak and read and write Arabic even and she enjoyed it. And of course, we'd always come over to England every two or three years for our summer holidays to visit my maternal grandparents. So that was where we came for holiday.

Presenter7:27

And what was your mother's background? You say your father it was engineering that he was studying. What about engineer?

Professor Jim Al-Khalili7:31

Well she went to art college, so she was very musical and and and artistic.

Presenter7:35

We'll find out more, but for now let's have some music. Tell me about uh the second track that you've chosen.

Professor Jim Al-Khalili7:40

The second track goes back to my childhood. I must have been about six or seven years old. And BBC World Service was a constant background in our home. And in 1969, Rolf Harris had this number one hit. And my mother wrote in to the BBC asking for it to be played as a request for two little boys, my brother and I. And it was played. And our names were announced on the radio. This is amazing. The first time, you know, this was this constant background.

Speaker 38:08

You heard it as it went up.

Professor Jim Al-Khalili8:09

We heard it as it went out.

Speaker 38:10

Climb up here, Jack, and don't be crying, I can go just as fast with two.

Speaker 38:18

When we grow up we'll both be soages, And our horses will not be toys.

Speaker 38:27

And I wonder if we'll remember

Speaker 38:31

When we were

Presenter8:33

That was Rolf Harris and Two Little Boys, and memories there, Jim Al Khalili, of you and your brother getting that dedication on the World Service. You said it was the constant uh sound in the background of your house in in Baghdad with your parents. Is that also why because I don't understand. Growing up in Baghdad you were a leads supporter, football supporter.

Professor Jim Al-Khalili8:53

Oh, yes. You go to any country in the world and ask any little boy and they'll have a favorite English football team. Right. I had a friend in Iraq who'd never been out of his small home town, who supported Preston North End.

Presenter8:59

Right.

Professor Jim Al-Khalili9:07

No idea why. But we used to listen to the World Service to hear the the football scores, my brother and I, religiously, every week. But we we followed leads from from the

Professor Jim Al-Khalili9:17

Early seventies.

Presenter9:18

So your mother's English background, your father's personal background, what what did it mean that w what was spoken at home then? Did you you spoke English?

Professor Jim Al-Khalili9:24

We spoke English. Um English was uh was is my mother tongue and and and I learnt to speak Arabic when I I went to school, when I went to kindergarten. So we spoke Arabic outside

Presenter9:31

Press.

Professor Jim Al-Khalili9:34

the house and English indoors.

Presenter9:35

And and it all felt comfortable. There was no sense of I mean, this was a very metropolitan city you were living in with.

Professor Jim Al-Khalili9:40

Very much so. Well, of course we did move around quite a bit. We didn't live in Baghdad or for the whole of my childhood. But yes, Iraq was a very metropolitan country, wealthy and and under a dictatorship, but a sort of a relatively benign dictatorship.

Presenter9:53

And at school, I'm imagining it was all coming relatively easy to little Jim.

Professor Jim Al-Khalili9:58

Yes, yeah. And and there wasn't the you know, this worry about being embarrassed about doing well. You know, it being the class swat wasn't an issue, you know. We were popular because we were good at the academic subjects.

Presenter10:13

And what have you been back to Baghdad since it's

Professor Jim Al-Khalili10:16

But since Iraq not since nineteen seventy nine.

Presenter10:19

Would you like to go?

Professor Jim Al-Khalili10:20

I'd love to go back sometime. Not just yet. Uh I I don't think my my wife Julie would uh would be very keen about me b going back just yet.

Presenter10:30

What sort of connection do you feel with Iraq when, as it so often does, it occupies the top news stories on our bulletins, and you watch those pictures and you see what the people have gone through in recent times?

Professor Jim Al-Khalili10:44

I was never against the two thousand three invasion because for me that was the opportunity to get rid of an evil dictator. For me, seeing what had happened to Iraq, particularly after the nineteen ninety one war and the devastation that caused, it was heartbreaking.

Presenter11:00

What about your relatives that that are still there?

Professor Jim Al-Khalili11:02

Most of my relatives have fled the country. Have they? They're spread right across the world. My parents, when they go on holiday, they never check into hotels. There's always a a cousin somewhere in some far flung country that will put them up.

Presenter11:04

Thank you.

Presenter11:16

More in just a second. For now, we've got disk number three. Tell us about that.

Professor Jim Al-Khalili11:21

Okay, this is a Beatles track. My brother bought it for me when I think I was for my tenth birthday. And it was an E P from the film A Hard Day's Night. In fact, this track was the B side to A Hard Day's Night, so it's not so well known, but it's a great track, and it's the things we said today.

Speaker 111:38

You say you will love me if I have to go

Speaker 111:45

You'll be thinking of me Somehow I will know

Speaker 111:52

Someday when I'm lonely Wishing you weren't so far away Then I will remember things we said today

Presenter12:05

That was the Beatles and the things we said to day. It was nineteen seventy nine then, Jim Al Khalili, when you were sixteen and your family decided to flee Iraq. How aware were you of the plans that were being made?

Professor Jim Al-Khalili12:18

My brother and I were told that we were coming over to Britain never to return. I have two younger sisters and they were too young to be told. But my parents had been planning it for a couple of years. We'd been over to England in two years earlier, 1977, and I didn't know at the time, but they were looking at property prices and thinking about how we would sell our house in Baghdad. But a few months before coming over, we were told, and so I found it quite difficult to say goodbye to friends saying, Well, you know, I'll be see you in four weeks' time, knowing I probably would never see them again.

Presenter12:44

Yeah.

Presenter12:49

And your parents were planning this, of course, because although Saddam Hussein was not at that point in power, he was the power behind the throne, and it was clear to your father, was it? And and your mother that that things were going to change significant.

Professor Jim Al-Khalili12:59

Yes, my father remained independent. He never joined the Baath Party, which would have, had he done so, helped his career tremendously. But he stayed out of politics and he knew things were going to get very bad. You know, living under a dictatorship, you learn not to criticise the government or say anything untoward. But he knew that with Saddam coming to power, things would go downhill very quickly. You say.

Presenter12:59

Goodbye.

Presenter13:22

That you you learn to say things that are not out of line with with the party line. How how do you learn? How are you aware of that?

Professor Jim Al-Khalili13:30

I'm not sure. It's just part of the culture. You you you learn as young children nev never to criticise the government. I remember I had th an English teacher who was a member of the Communist Party in Iraq, and I remember once he gave me a lift into school, and I was hauled into the students' union and told not to fraternise with him because he's a Communist.

Presenter13:48

So there would be somebody who sees you getting out of his car and that somebody knows that it's in their interests to sneak on you and therefore your behaviour is is trammelled in that way.

Professor Jim Al-Khalili13:51

Yes, and

Professor Jim Al-Khalili13:55

They absolutely

Professor Jim Al-Khalili13:58

And this was just part of everyday life, and you just learned to deal and cope with it. It wasn't a big deal.

Presenter14:04

And you have said that if your parents had left it what just a matter of a few months later, that you wouldn't have been able to leave, is that right?

Professor Jim Al-Khalili14:10

Absolutely.

Presenter14:21

Exactly, yes.

Professor Jim Al-Khalili14:22

We were we were of an age where we would have been conscripted, and because of my father not being a member of the Ba'ath party, my mother being British, and of course because of his Persian background, we would have been earmarked as front line fodder. We would have been quite expendable.

Speaker 114:33

Uh

Presenter14:33

Yeah.

Presenter14:39

Did you have school friends who did indeed die in that young group?

Professor Jim Al-Khalili14:41

Yes, yes, quite quite a few, quite a few. And and it wasn't until later in life that I the sense of guilt would well up, that I'd got away and a lot of my friends didn't.

Presenter14:52

Right. That's the survivor's guilt.

Professor Jim Al-Khalili14:54

Yes, yes.

Presenter14:55

So you would be one of those people, and it it is an unfashionable standpoint these days to think, well, regime change was reason enough.

Professor Jim Al-Khalili15:02

For me, yes. For me personally, Saddam was responsible for well, not just for friends of mine who were killed in the wars, but he had executed friends and relatives of mine. A close friend of mine was a second cousin that I spent summer holidays with in Baghdad. A year or so after we left Iraq, he was arrested. His parents and older sister were taken by the secret police in the middle of the night and dumped on the Iraq-Iran border and told to make a new life for themselves in Iran. He was arrested not to be heard of again. And it was only about seven or eight years later we heard he'd been executed for no reason other than the fact that his father was a a middle class intellectual.

Presenter15:44

Let's have some music then. Tell me about your next track. We're on disc number four now.

Professor Jim Al-Khalili15:48

My fourth track is is a classical piece by Rimti Korsikov. My mother used to listen to this a lot and the only other Rumti Korsikov piece I remember was The Flight of the Bumblebee, which whenever I heard it, I'd get ever so scared and go and hide. There was something about that piece. But this one is Shah Razad, which conjures up these images of of Arabian Nights and and the life I've left behind.

Presenter17:09

That was the opening of Rimsky Corsa Goscheherazade. Jim Al Khalili, you have written you've written many books, and some of them I even begin to understand.

Presenter17:19

Um you've written about the scientific developments under Islam, which were in a particularly golden period significant. Do you think that we in the West tend to tend to overlook that, tend to conveniently forget those developments in that connection?

Professor Jim Al-Khalili17:34

Yes, we learn that 2,000 years ago the ancient Greeks were wonderful scholars and philosophers and very, very clever. And then Western Europe went into the Dark Ages for a thousand years and nothing happened. And we forget that just because there were dark ages in Western Europe, it doesn't mean we have to extrapolate it to the rest of the world. And at the time that Europe was in its dark ages, in medieval times, the Islamic Empire was celebrating a golden age of scholarship, and there was a lot of great advances in science.

Presenter18:03

At one point, am I right in saying that you tried to replicate the work that was done by a Persian mathematician, Bayruni? Tell me about that.

Professor Jim Al-Khalili18:11

Tell me about that. Beiruni I would regard as the da Vinci of the Islamic world. He was a philosopher, geographer, mathematician, astronomer and so on. One of the most incredible things he did was measure the circumference of the earth. He knew the earth was was round.

Professor Jim Al-Khalili18:27

What he did was climb to the top of a mountain and measure the angle of dip to the horizon, and then used geometry and trigonometry to work out the size of the Earth, 25,000 miles, to within 1% accuracy. And this was in the 10th century. This was in the 10th century. It's absolutely incredible. So we tried to replicate this, and I found two professional surveyors with their theodolites so we could measure these angles very, very accurately. And we thought we'd done a very good job, only to find that our size of the Earth was only about a tenth of what it should be.

Professor Jim Al-Khalili18:57

Beiruni, this tenth century scholar, could do so much better than we could in the twenty-first century.

Presenter19:02

Let's talk a little bit more then about you landing as this sixteen year old in England. With your family, you you settled in Portsmouth because that was where your mother's family came from. At that point, did you know that science was for you?

Professor Jim Al-Khalili19:10

Yeah.

Presenter19:14

At that point, yes. And I knew I wanted to do physics. I mean, you were instantly popular among the teachers, I'm I'm imagining, because you were such a a clever fellow. What about among the the pupils?

Professor Jim Al-Khalili19:24

The school used to be the Portsmouth Southern Grammar School for Girls. In fact, it was the school that my mother went to, and it was a school that my wife Julie went to, whom I met in the sixth form when I arrived there. But my year was the one just ahead of the comprehensive year.

Presenter19:43

Rise up

Professor Jim Al-Khalili19:45

I was one of only three boys in a sixth form full of a hundred and twenty girls.

Presenter19:48

Nice.

Professor Jim Al-Khalili19:49

Nice. Which was fantastic. And of course, I loved it. It was fantastic. And I was head boy because my other two friends didn't want to do it.

Presenter19:50

And of course

Presenter19:56

I I so you say that that's where you and Julie met. What eyes across a a crowded common room, was it?

Professor Jim Al-Khalili20:01

My eyes, anyway, I spotted her f for the first lesson uh during registration. She she claims for the first few months I would be stalking her, I'd be following her home from school. But it just so happened that our house was the next road along, so it was my route home anyway. Did you slightly divert your route? Possibly.

Presenter20:20

More about Julie later. For now, tell me what you've chosen as track number five.

Professor Jim Al-Khalili20:24

This is from, I think it was my first album I ever owned. It's By The Temptations. And this track was one which I had on this first album I owned and then didn't hear it again for many years. And it's only recently that I heard it again. It's rather melancholy. It doesn't reflect any personal experience. This is not about you and Julie already. It's not about me and Julie, no, but it's just a very nice track. And it's called I Wish It Would Rain.

Speaker 120:42

This is not about you and Julie, not about me.

Presenter20:43

Yeah.

Speaker 120:43

Yeah.

Presenter20:43

Julian

Speaker 120:44

No.

Speaker 120:47

Sunshine, blue skies, please go away.

Speaker 120:53

The girl has found another and gone away.

Speaker 120:59

With her went my future, my life is filled with gloom. So day after day, I stay locked up in my room. I note to you.

Speaker 121:11

It might sound strange, but I wish it would rain.

Presenter21:18

That was the temptations and I wish it would rain and you were saying, Jim, during that, that they won out the temptations over the Bee Gee's. You were

Professor Jim Al-Khalili21:25

It was a close-run thing.

Presenter21:26

And the Bee Gees were big in Baghdad.

Professor Jim Al-Khalili21:27

They were huge. There was a a record shop in Baghdad where the the owner would come over to to England once a month and buy up all the latest albums in the charts and make bootleg copies of them. And when the the the new Bee Gees album came out, there was a queue down the road at the shop in Baghdad to get to to get hold of it.

Speaker 121:36

In the chart.

Presenter21:44

I wanted to talk about this assault on common sense, and the BG somehow seems to link into that. Which is your.

Professor Jim Al-Khalili21:49

That which which is your your

Presenter21:51

I like the Bee G's, but the idea that some of the physics that you explore seems to not make literal sense. Let's talk a little bit about that and a little bit about the science. For example, it is perfectly acceptable that a particle can exist in two places at the same time.

Professor Jim Al-Khalili21:51

How do we

Speaker 121:52

Yeah.

Professor Jim Al-Khalili22:11

Yeah.

Presenter22:12

Take me there.

Professor Jim Al-Khalili22:13

It turns out that the rules that govern how atoms behave and the world of the subatomic world, the particles that make up the atoms, are very different to the rules that govern everyday objects. So, this is what quantum mechanics is all about. An atom doesn't, it's not this tiny little miniature solar system that we have this picture of in our heads. It's something rather fuzzy and uncertain. And you can't really say where it is or what it's doing with any certainty. You can assign probabilities. Chances are it's over here. Chances are it's doing that. You only.

Presenter22:28

Right.

Professor Jim Al-Khalili22:50

But no, when you look, and by the act of looking, you make it change its behaviour. It's a hugely counterintuitive idea.

Presenter22:58

Right, and this this world of change and probability, why is it that when you look at it, it changes its behaviour? I don't understand that bit.

Professor Jim Al-Khalili23:07

That's something that we still don't fully understand. Quantum mechanics is a mathematical theory that tells us the rules about how atoms behave. And without quantum mechanics, we wouldn't have computers, we wouldn't have lasers, we wouldn't have iPods and T Vs or anything like that. So we know it works. But at its heart, there's this mystery. Why? Why does an atom do these strange things? And why does it stop doing when we're spying on it?

Presenter23:32

It's intriguing to me that when I was looking into the background of the work that you do, that Einstein himself did not want to accept the truth of the kind of physics that you were involved in, even though it was beginning of the 1900s that he said, yes, the atom does exist. We can absolutely confirm that. But beyond that, quantum mechanics was something originally that he himself would play no part in and said in this.

Professor Jim Al-Khalili23:56

Plato

Professor Jim Al-Khalili23:57

That was right. He he he could never reconcile himself with it. He thought there was something missing in the theory, something people weren't seeing. And he may still turn out to be right, we don't know. But I find that tremendously reassuring. If if Einstein was unhappy with it and it gave him a headache, then it's fine for me to be confused.

Presenter24:14

But you say we may in fact find out that yes, we're on to nothing at all here. Does that not make you wonder what you've spent your life's work trying to figure out?

Professor Jim Al-Khalili24:22

Well, I th I don't think quantum mechanics will ever be shown to be wrong. I think it may need to be tweaked and it may be ten years, a hundred years from now, we go, oh, how could we have been so silly to think this?

Presenter24:34

Um, does Julie ever tell you to knock it on the head? Does she ever get tired of you theorizing?

Professor Jim Al-Khalili24:38

Theorizing. All the time, yes. I've learnt not to theorise too much. She's heard it all before.

Presenter24:45

Let's take a break for some music, tell me what's next.

Professor Jim Al-Khalili24:48

Okay, well this this next track is partly because of my favorite film of all time, Terry Gilliam's Brazil, and the the track I've chosen is Frank Sinatra's cover version of it.

Presenter24:58

Yeah, so this is not the version that most people have.

Professor Jim Al-Khalili25:00

This is not the version f of the film, no.

Presenter25:02

So you're a Frankson Ultra fan, are you?

Professor Jim Al-Khalili25:04

Yeah, yeah. I remember m my mother liked Frank Sinatra and I remember her telling me when I was younger that uh he was so good he could get away with singing out of tune sometimes. So I I felt I thought, well, he must be good.

Speaker 125:12

The package.

Speaker 125:15

Brazil Where hearts were entertaining June.

Speaker 125:23

We stood beneath an amber moon

Speaker 125:28

And softly murmured, Someday soon we care.

Speaker 125:35

And clung together Then tomorrow was another day.

Presenter25:45

That was Frank Sinatra and Brazil. So, Jim Al Khalili, a couple of years ago, I think it was, you were awarded the Royal Society Michael Faraday Award for the work that you've done trying to to popularize science, to trying to make people like me understand what's important about science and why we should be engaged in it. Was that professionally the sort of the most important moment you've had?

Professor Jim Al-Khalili26:07

Probably, probably the I mean I was I'm I'm proudest of that achievement. There are various other science communicators around at the moment who are still research active, and we feel as a group that it's important for our credibility that we are still research active. We're not just reporting on the Boffins' work. We are the Boffins as well.

Presenter26:11

Right.

Presenter26:29

You are the Boffins. And and when you are that Boffin who has found something out that nobody else has found out, it must be a golden private moment to think I know something.

Presenter26:41

And because I haven't written it down, or made the phone call, or communicated it in an email, I'm the only person who knows it.

Professor Jim Al-Khalili26:43

I mean

Professor Jim Al-Khalili26:47

It's a wonderful feeling. It doesn't happen that often. No. And inevitably, it's probably something in a very narrow field, a sort of a backwater of. It's not Nobel Prize winning.

Presenter26:49

No.

Professor Jim Al-Khalili26:59

work that you might be doing. But nevertheless, it's another piece in the jigsaw about nature. You get that thrill when you know something that no other human has ever known. It's a tremendous thrill.

Presenter27:05

Good.

Presenter27:12

And you've said that your wife of twenty three years, Julie, does sometimes say to you, Oh, come on, you know, I d I d really don't want to to to read another article. What what is it that that she enjoys? What does she I know you have two children does she work? Does she have a passion?

Professor Jim Al-Khalili27:25

Um yes, I I we've had a difficult period recently that she was diagnosed with breast cancer and she's coming to the end of her her treatment now and and uh she's got a new zest for life. But she she's not been career-minded like me and that's enabled me to pursue my career. She's always been there organizing my life for me because I wouldn't be able to cope without her, to be honest.

Presenter27:51

And so

Professor Jim Al-Khalili27:51

Yeah.

Presenter27:51

What about uh the impact of the

Presenter27:54

the illness must have been profound on the family, because I imagine and I I know you have to travel all over the world and, you know, your work is is a is a preoccupation, so family life must have had to change.

Professor Jim Al-Khalili28:06

Yes, I've had to reconsider the sort of commitments. I mean, she's always telling me that I'm over-committing myself, and I'm not unique in that.

Presenter28:16

Has her illness made you more likely to say no to some things? Do you think it's given you a different perspective?

Professor Jim Al-Khalili28:16

Has he

Professor Jim Al-Khalili28:21

I hope so. She may she may argue that it hasn't enough, but I I I like to think that uh I also want to try and see if we can do more travelling together, even if it's through my work. Um if if I can bring her along with me, I think uh I want to share more of it with her.

Presenter28:39

Let's have some more music then. Tell me what we're at disc number seven. Tell me what that is.

Professor Jim Al-Khalili28:43

Um this is probably my favourite piece of music of all time. It's hauntingly beautiful and it always brings a lump to my throat. Uh and it's Rodrigo's Concerto di Aranjued.

Presenter29:54

That was John Williams playing the second movement of Rodrigo's Concerto de Aranque. We've mentioned that you have two children, but not much more than that. Tell me, h how old are your kids?

Professor Jim Al-Khalili30:03

David has just turned eighteen and Kate has just turned sixteen, and David is a physicist.

Professor Jim Al-Khalili30:10

No, he's going to be an engineer.

Presenter30:12

He's going to be an engineer.

Professor Jim Al-Khalili30:13

Yes, he's decided he wants to do something useful. And that's how he argues it. Engineers do useful stuff. Like his grandfather. Like his grandfather, yes. Okay. And do you know what? I think he'd have been a better physicist than me. It just comes so, so naturally to him.

Presenter30:18

Like his grandfather. Like his grandfather, yes.

Presenter30:28

Was that a bone of contention at all? Did he

Professor Jim Al-Khalili30:30

No, not at all. I am obviously very pleased. And probably best that he does engineering, then there's no rivalry. The

Professor Jim Al-Khalili30:36

Well, I'm wondering either you m might either be

Presenter30:36

Well, I'm wondering either you m might either be grateful or you might regret. If you think that he has the sort of mind that could have gone further than even yours, then that might be a source of regret for him.

Professor Jim Al-Khalili30:45

No, I think, because I think he will go very far in engineering. I think he will make use of his logical scientific mind, I'm sure. And your daughter?

Professor Jim Al-Khalili30:54

Kate is much more interested in debate and m moral issues and ethics and so on, so she's going to move in that direction.

Presenter31:02

Now, as you know, I'm going to maroon you on a desert island and and I'm thinking that maybe y you can exhibit all of the the tendencies that you have to live in a theoretical way on your own.

Professor Jim Al-Khalili31:12

Brown.

Professor Jim Al-Khalili31:13

I guess so. You know, I don't think about the abstract mathematical world of quantum mechanics all the time. But, yeah, maybe with no distractions I could allow myself I could be immersed in it a bit more deeply.

Presenter31:26

Let's have some music then. Tell me about your final track today and why you've chosen this.

Professor Jim Al-Khalili31:29

Well, I'd chosen my other seven tracks and realized that I had nothing more recent than the late 1970s.

Presenter31:37

And I

Professor Jim Al-Khalili31:37

I don't want to be judges on old farts, but but I don't believe any good music came out of the 1980s.

Presenter31:44

Right.

Professor Jim Al-Khalili31:44

And it wasn't until the nineteen nineties that suddenly there was good music again. So this track is for me symbolic of the nineteen nineties and proper rock music again, and it's Oasis Wonder War.

Speaker 131:57

There are many things that I would like to say to you, but I don't know how

Speaker 132:08

Because maybe

Speaker 132:12

You're gonna be the one that saves me

Speaker 132:17

And I felt wrong.

Speaker 132:23

Uh

Presenter32:27

That was Oasis and Wonder Wall. I'm going to give you the books now, Jim. It's uh the Bible and the complete works of Shakespeare. What's your book going to be for this desert island?

Professor Jim Al-Khalili32:37

This is a book that's over a thousand pages long. I've had it for five years on my shelf and I haven't got round to reading it. It's not a novel. It's a physics book, I'm afraid. It's a book by a physicist called Roger Penrose, who worked with Stephen Hawking. And he wrote this book called The Road to Reality. It started off as a popular science book aimed at the masses, but he basically gets very deep into the subject of modern physics and it really ties up a lot of loose ends in modern physics. I'd love to have the time to wade through it carefully.

Presenter33:09

You will have the time and you will have the book. And what about the luxury?

Professor Jim Al-Khalili33:13

The luxury I think will be my acoustic guitar. I I I made a guitar when I was fourteen. I built one in Iraq out of scratch'cause I was so desperate to have a guitar.

Presenter33:23

But would your parents not buy you one?

Professor Jim Al-Khalili33:23

What would you parents?

Professor Jim Al-Khalili33:24

You couldn't get hold of one there.

Presenter33:26

Right.

Professor Jim Al-Khalili33:26

I've owned several guitars, but this acoustic guitar is quite expensive. I've owned it for a few years and I haven't had the time to sit down with it, so I think it will be nice a nice opportunity to reacquaint myself.

Presenter33:36

Right. And if you had to choose just one of the eight disks, if they were threatening to be washed away, which one would it be?

Professor Jim Al-Khalili33:43

Uh well, I w I w given that several of them are quite melancholy, I think I would choose something that's uplifting, and provided I could play it very loud, I think I'll go for Santana, she's not there.

Presenter33:52

You can, as loud as you want. Professor Jim Alkalili, thank you very much for letting us hear your desert island discs.

Professor Jim Al-Khalili33:58

Thank you.

Presenter34:45

You've been listening to a download from the BBC. You'll find more information on the Radio Four website bbc.co. uk slash radio four.