Maggie Aderin-Pocock

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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 space scientist Maggie Aderin Pocock. The dyslexic daughter of Nigerian immigrants, she seems to have dedicated her life to confounding stereotypes. Her attraction to outer space began with the Clangers and Star Trek. Attending thirteen schools in fourteen years, she transcended her disrupted childhood by immersing herself in the wonders of the Milky Way.

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Space appealed to me, she says, because life seemed very challenging on Earth sometimes. You've said, Maggie Darren Pocock, that you consider yourself to have a very special relationship with the moon.

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I think I am a bit of a lunatic.

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Literally. Literally, yes. I find it mesmerizing. It would be a nasty place to live. There's no atmosphere and you'd have to walk around in space suits all the time. But at the same time, it's so beautiful. You started this this wonderment and this fascination with space uh pretty early. You you

Maggie Aderin-Pocock1:14

Yeah.

Presenter1:28

Were you a teenager when you wanted your own telescope? How old were you? I was about fifteen when I made my own telescope. I wanted one from longer than that, and I actually bought one, but it wasn't very good. What was wrong with it? It suffered from something called chromatic aberration. So if you're looking at the moon, you have multiple images of the moon all smeared out in different colours. And so then I mean, most people just put it in the corner of the room and decided to save up for something else. You didn't. You decided to make your own telescope. Yeah, it was quite fortuitous because I was living in Camden in London and I saw telescope making classes in an adult education centre. Telescope making classes? Yes, that's what I'm thinking.

Maggie Aderin-Pocock1:37

What was wrong with the

Maggie Aderin-Pocock1:59

Yeah.

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It's it's not very hard at all.

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It it takes a while, but you can make your own telescope. How long does it take to make your own telescope? Mine took probably of the order of six months. Because what you do is you actually grind your own mirror. And that was what made it so wonderful. This is something I'd made myself. Did it work? It did, yes. And to create it myself and then to look at the moon and see the craters jump out.

Maggie Aderin-Pocock2:07

Flight?

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It was just magical. A few years ago, you led a team working on something called the Gemini Observatory in Chile. That was an interesting and quite solitary time for you. Can you explain a little of that? The Gemini Observatory is a beautiful eight-metre telescope in Chile. Eight metres for a telescope that's some of the largest telescopes we have on Earth. When you say eight metres, is that the diameter of the lens? The diameter of the mirror. Lenses, because the light passes through them, you can get sort of corruption of the light passing through. If you use a reflective surface, because the light bounces off, you can get much better image. So most of the big telescopes we talk about these days are mirrors. I call telescopes that are light-gathering buckets. And the bigger the bucket, the more light you can get. And so the fainter objects and the further you can see out. And the work that you were doing, you weren't changing the information that was coming to you, but you were analysing it in a more detailed way, is that? Yes. With a telescope that large, you get so much light. What you actually want to do is analyse that light. Right.

Speaker 33:12

Yeah.

Maggie Aderin-Pocock3:12

Yeah.

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And I was working at University College London, building an instrument that would actually link up with a telescope called a spectrograph. And effectively it just makes rainbows. So it takes the starlight from billions of miles away, puts it through various optics, and then stretches the light out into its rainbow colours. And from that, you can actually work out what's happening in the heart of a star. So you can see chemical reactions. You can actually see perhaps clouds of gas between us and the star. And so it gives us very detailed analysis by looking at its rainbow light. And was it quite an isolated process? Did you do a lot of the work in a sort of solitary capacity? Yes, it was a fantastic place. And I stayed in a little bungalow on the mountain. I'd go home and sort of cook my own dinner and have some local chili and wine, and then the moon would appear and I'd have dinner with the moon. Not such a bad life. It was fantastic. On that note, tell me about your first piece of music today then. Oh, moon dance. I think music for me comes into different categories. Music that evokes strong emotion in me and music I like to bop to. And when I was up on the mountain, I was very isolated and I really missed my husband.

Maggie Aderin-Pocock3:56

Yeah.

Presenter4:21

And that's our song, we played it at our wedding. When I hear it, I think of us sort of dancing in the moonlight.

Maggie Aderin-Pocock4:27

Well it's a marvelous night for a moon dance with the stars above in your eyes

Maggie Aderin-Pocock4:34

Van fabulous night to make romance Neath the cover of October skies

Maggie Aderin-Pocock4:41

All the leaves on the trees are falling To the sound of the breezes that blow

Maggie Aderin-Pocock4:48

You know I'm trying to please to the calling of your heart strength in a place of

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Van Morrison and Moondance. Maggie, Deren Pocock, you were describing this time that you spent a sort of golden time in Chile living in a little cabin next to the observatory and doing this pretty solitary work. I would think that would be perfect training for living on a desert island. Yes. I think I can live with my own company. In some ways, I think perhaps I'm too independent. Because I loved it up there, but I did miss my husband an awful lot. And the wonderful thing was he was able to actually come out and join me just for a few days. Did you ever consider yourself going into space rather than doing the sort of looking back at Earth bit? Well, with the clangers, my inspiration. The reason I like the clangers is I wanted to go and join them. And so from the age of probably about three, I wanted to get into space. I still do. It's been the driving force of my life, really, that desire to get out there one day. Is it something you could still work towards? I hope I am. The complication is that I'm pregnant now. And I think that makes it harder. But I'd still like to. My dream job is to be a project manager for a telescope on the moon.

Maggie Aderin-Pocock5:33

Right.

Presenter5:57

Could still happen then. Let's look at your early life. You you were born in the late 1960s, 1968, in North London. Your parents had come from Nigeria. Why had they come?

Presenter6:08

My father, I think, came over because he wanted a better life. When he came over, he was married to my mother, and he had one daughter, my eldest sister, Susan, and she was born in Nigeria, but all the rest of us were born here.

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I think when you're born in a colony of the UK, I think he was brought up to think that the UK was a a panacea. It was the homeland almost, because that's what he was taught in schools. And he wanted to study medicine. And I think he came over to study medicine and he wanted a sort of a career as a doctor. And was he able to? No. That's, I think, one of the disappointments in his life.

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And I think that's one of the things that got me interested in science as well. I think he had two main disappointments. I think he wanted to come and study medicine, and I think he wanted a boy. And so I decided that I'd be a sort of a scientific boy for my father. Yes, what was it you said when you said I'm going to be a boy better than any boy?

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Well, because I always had this feeling that he wanted a boy. Why did you have the feeling? Was it more than a feeling? Did he tell you? Oh, no, he did. He was quite open. I think it's quite a sort of Nigerian thing, you know, to have a son, to carry on the traditions, to take the baton, really. And so I wanted to demonstrate that even though I was a girl, I could be just as good as any boy. And it probably drove me further than I would have gone anyway. What about your mother, the mum of four girls? Was she happy with four girls? Yes, yes, I think she was. But my parents split up when I was quite young, when I was probably about four years old. And I don't know if she wanted a son. I I'll have to ask her.

Maggie Aderin-Pocock7:02

Why did you have

Maggie Aderin-Pocock7:04

How the

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Tell me about your second disc today. What have you chosen? Oh yes, the Brandenburg Concertos by Bach. To me this was sort of like a voyage of discovery because I got a record for some reason from the library and I was amazed that something that was purely instrumental could conjure up that much emotion and it made me cry. And this was probably I was fifteen and sort of an angst-ridden teenager. But to be able to put a few notes together and invoke emotion like that to me is just amazing.

Presenter8:59

The opening of Bach's Brandenburg Concerto No. 2 in F major. So, Maggie Adarin Pocock, 13 schools in 14 years. I read it and I didn't quite believe my eyes. It's true, is it? Yes. We moved around a lot. It was mainly because my parents split up and there was a sort of a long, ongoing custody battle. And sometimes my mother would have custody of us, and then sometimes my father. And it would swing to and fro. It was a very acrimonious break-up. Yes. As a four-year-old, I was amazed at how much I remember and how much I was aware of what was going on. Right. And I think sometimes, especially as I got older, the court would come and ask me, so who do you want to stay with? And I think that is a very hard thing to do because you're rejecting someone. And who would be in the room when that question was being asked of? Actually, not my parents. It was usually a social worker or maybe a judge. And they'd sort of sit you down and say, don't worry, but who would you prefer to be with? But you knew that that information was going to get transmitted to both parties. And so I did feel as if I was almost stabbing people in the back sometimes. So what did you do? Myself and my father, we got on incredibly well. We were very similar characters. And so I just loved my father's company. But also, sometimes I try to sort of not make the decision myself. So I might be influenced by my sisters or by what a social worker was saying. So I wasn't responsible. So it wasn't really my fault. You're about to be a mother yourself for the first time at 41. You must be thinking a lot about what having a child means right now. What do you think of the position that you were put in at that age?

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Children are far more aware of their circumstances than they let on. I know I was. And with my child, I

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I don't know how it's going to be. I always say child reading is great in theory, and now I'm going to put it into practice. So I have all these preconceived ideas, but I think none of them will make any sense when she's born. And you and your sisters, you were the third of four. Were you moved together as a group between your parents, or were you split apart? We were generally split apart into pairs. And so I think Sue and Hal actually stayed with my father throughout. But Grace and I were ported around because we were the younger ones. So we were ported around between them. So the 13 schools in 14 years, you had to move around so much, why?

Maggie Aderin-Pocock11:05

Uh

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It was a combination of things. When I was quite young I was sent away to boarding school, and I think I was the youngest to go away'cause I went away when I was about seven.

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And I think in some cases the school fees weren't paid because my father was trying to manage a job, a career and raising four daughters. And so sometimes he couldn't pay, so I'd leave a school and transfer to another school. What impact do you think all this transience had?

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On you. I've wondered that for a long time, and I think I have a horrible um a look at things through rose tinted spectacles, and I don't see it as bad at all. I think it made me very adaptable. Are you were you good at making friends?

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Yes, I'd like to think so. That's a strong contrast between me and my husband, because my husband makes friends virtually for life, and he knows people who went to primary school with. And I admire that, that sort of longevity. Whereas I like to sit down and talk to people and get to know them very quickly. But I'm quite used to it being sort of transitory. I get to know them and then I sort of move on and get to know someone else. And what about being I'm thinking again of you now as an early teenager. Being the new girl is a big deal. Being the new girl who's black in a lot of schools, I'm imagining this to be the case that don't have many people of colour in the class, quite a big deal. Did that matter? Yes. Mattered more when I was a child. When I was a child, I'd never call myself British. I'd always say I was Nigerian. I've never been to Nigeria. But I wanted to be seen as Nigerian because I thought too many people wouldn't accept me. If I said I was British, people say, well, you're black, you're not British. Right. And so there was that barrier. Although I always had an issue with boys, because boys used to tease me a lot when I was a young child. So I was always very, very wary of boys. It's interesting the words people use when they describe these circumstances because some people will say, you know, I was teased, and other people will say I was bullied. Was it worse that I mean teasing has a sort of gentle, slightly good humoured implication. Was it more than teasing? No, I think it was teasing. I don't know. I had a top-tough girl image. Did you? Yes. I don't know how.

Maggie Aderin-Pocock12:51

He writes.

Maggie Aderin-Pocock13:00

Yeah.

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Yeah.

Maggie Aderin-Pocock13:01

Uh

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Ow. But I was. Were you tall? You're quite a tall woman. Were you a tall teenager? Uh, yes. Not as tall as my sisters, because I always thought I was going to be six foot and I'm five foot seven. But I think I walked around as if I was six foot, because I was used to walking around with them. Tell me about your next piece of music then. We're on to disc number three. Yes. This is quite quirky. And I love it because it's quintessentially British and it's science and fun and it's Flanders and Swan. And it was introduced to me by my physics teacher, Mr. Vesti. And it's just quirky fun.

Maggie Aderin-Pocock13:26

Do you

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Heat will pass by convectional Heat will pass by radiation will pass by radiation And that's a physical law.

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Oh yeah.

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Heat is work and works a curse And all the heat in the universe

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John I'm cool.

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Down.

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'Cause it can't increase Then there'll be no more work, and there'll be perfect peace. Really? Yeah, that's entropy, man.

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Flanders and Swan and the first and second law of thermodynamics. That was introduced to you by Mr. Vesti, your science teacher. Did he actually play it for you in class? He did, yes, which I thought was wonderful. But I think science is seen as so dry and so distant. But Mr. Vesti was wonderful because he brought science to life. And why you became a scientist? I said in the introduction that you thought, well, actually, life up there among the one hundred and fifty billion stars seemed a lot more attractive and a lot more straightforward maybe than life the life I have to deal with on earth.

Speaker 414:35

Because

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Yes, this is what a friend of mine calls the retrospectroscope.

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We don't mind that on the desert island. Because I think I didn't realise it at the time. But I was attracted to emotionless states. So, for instance, I loved Star Trek because it was sort of a multicultural group travelling to the stars and having adventures. But the person I liked the most wasn't Captain Kirk, it was Doctor Spock, sort of very distant, emotional, very controlled. And I think I was attracted to that because it gives you that sort of buffer. So I think that's part of why I was sort of fascinated by space, that distance. Because of your dyslexia, when you were at school, you were relegated to the lower orders. I mean, people thought you were not very bright. Oh, no. I was actually held back a year when I was quite young. Probably about

Presenter15:45

Five, something like that, and I was very much aware of it. I knew that they were saying that I wasn't good enough. I was there with the safety scissors and the glitter because they just didn't think I was academically capable. And by being branded that way, especially so young, I just wanted to sort of reject it. So, how did you overcome that? Opportunities came along. I remember being in a science class, and it was a very simple question. They were saying that if a litre of water weighs one kilogram, if you had a cubic centimetre of water, how much would that weigh? Yes. And I was like, Well, it's one gram, I could scale it up. And no one else in the class got it. How come I know that? All these bright people, you know, far brighter than me, don't. And so, suddenly, science was quite appealing. Is it true that you convinced your teachers at one point to put you in the higher set for classes because they didn't really know you as a pupil because you'd done all this ping-ponging around between schools? Yes. That takes a lot of balls.

Presenter16:39

Sometimes, uh you grab an opportunity. If you change school, suddenly they don't know you. They don't classify you as the dull one in the corner. And he goes like, Well, no, no, actually, I'm quite right and you can see if you can get away with it. And it's so much easier to get transferred down than to get transferred up. You were at one point advised not to aim at studying science, though.

Maggie Aderin-Pocock16:47

Depending on the

Presenter16:58

Yes, it was done with the best intentions because they felt that if I studied science and I failed, it would just be sort of very disappointing for me. And because my academic performance wasn't up to snuff, the idea of trying to be a scientist was, oh, well, you know, that's for clever people. And so I was advised that I should go into nursing instead, because that was quite scientific and I had a caring nature, so this would be better use of my skills. And I think that I have a stubborn streak, which my husband often points out. Because I think someone says, you can't do that. I think, oh, oh, oh, can't I? And I'll focus and try and get it done. And I was very lucky because I had lots of support from my father. And we studied science together. Did you? Yes, yes. It became like a hobby as well as doing it at school. And so I just saw my marks going up and up and up. Let's have some music. What's next? Ah, next, a piece of music which I find amazingly strong. It was introduced to me by my sister Helen and it's by Libby Cifra and it's called Something Inside So Strong.

Speaker 417:58

Brothers and sisters!

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When they insist we're just not good enough

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But we know better

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Just look them in the eyes and say

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Gonna do it anyway.

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But I do it anyway.

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Something inside's so strong.

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And I know that I

Presenter18:29

Labi Zifera and Something Inside So Strong. So, Maggie Adair and Pocock, you didn't go on to be a doctor like your father. You went to study physics at Imperial College London, a university that is renowned for its science teaching. Was your father very proud?

Presenter18:43

Yes, I think he was. I think he was disappointed that I hadn't studied medicine. Was he? That was his dream. And it almost transferred it. You said that your father was disappointed that he hadn't been able to pursue medicine and that that was one of the reasons that he and your mother had come from Nigeria to Britain. What did he end up doing? Ah, a multiplicity of jobs. So he used to manage a pizza restaurant, but he also ran his own business as well, importing and exporting. But the problem is he lost his sight. He suffered from glaucoma. And then he did get very bitter and he felt that he had wasted his life.

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And that was very hard because he went from s someone bright and happy to someone very Troubled.

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Really? Travel and did he talk did he share that with you? Because by that time you would have been an adult, were you? Yes, I was. In fact, he got custody for me and my sister when we were, I think, probably about fourteen. And that was the last custody change.

Maggie Aderin-Pocock19:31

But yes, I was

Presenter19:40

And I actually watched him go through the process of losing his side.

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I think he felt that the loss of his sight was stress related, and therefore by taking on the custody of four children.

Presenter19:51

Perhaps there was a a correlation there. Right. Was he saying to you, If it weren't for you and if it weren't for all of this, I wouldn't be where I am today?

Presenter20:00

Yes. As an older teenager, so when I started going to university and for the first two years at Imperial I lived at home and in 1930 I moved out. But my father was very angry at that and partly disowned me at the time. And we sort of reconciled to a certain extent, but it was cleft in our relationship and it never gelled the same way again. He was angry because you were leaving and he felt you should be there to support him.

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He was

Presenter20:28

Very, very, very independent, and he didn't want support. But I think at the same time, he needed support. When he died, on his tombstone, I came up with the phrase father, brother, teacher, philosopher, friend, because that's all the things he represented to me. If our relationship with somebody is complicated in life, it can often become even more complicated by grief. How did you feel when he died?

Presenter20:51

I couldn't believe it. How old were you? I had left university by then, so I was working. So it was eight years ago this year.

Presenter20:57

And so I mourned my father, but I mourned the father that I used to know, and the father of later years was of more distant, more bitter.

Presenter21:06

Let's have some music then, Maggie. Tell us what we're going to hear next. Yes. This is um Dido's Lament. When my father died, I didn't know what I could do. Also, he was such a wonderful man, I didn't want him forgotten. And I was looking for some music we could play at the funeral, and I bumped into this track, and it was so poignant and so sad. And the first notes come in, and they just take me down to a level. So whenever I hear it, my heart slows down, and I get into a certain place. And the main phrase is remember me. And I decided that's the only thing I can really do, remember my father, because he's living on through me.

Speaker 422:02

Oh, it was cool.

Speaker 422:33

Uh

Speaker 422:42

Uh Yeah.

Presenter22:46

Sarah Connolly, singing Dido's Lament from Purcell's Dido and Aeneas. So, Maggie Adair and Pocock, your career path has not been straightforward, and it's probably quite important to talk about the other things you've done that are not the things you're you're currently doing in science. Your doctorate was in engineering. Yes. Right, and rather than

Maggie Aderin-Pocock23:04

Right.

Presenter23:05

Physics then. You went on to work in in rather sort of practical areas, landmines and so on, with that Ph D. Tell me a little of that. I like to describe myself as an instrumentationalist, which I think as a dyslexic I can get away with making words of. I think you can.

Presenter23:20

Because from building my telescope I love the practical side of things. And for landmine detection, I was actually working for the research arm of the Ministry of Defence and I started off working on missile warning systems using optics there. And we had a group looking at landmine detection and it was very prominent in the news then. This was around about the time that Princess Diana was taking it on as a cause and we had the picture of her in the visor walking through the landmine fields with the detector. Yes, and so it was just that sort of period. And landmines are such a devastating problem all over the world. They're so indiscriminate as well. I went out to Cambodia a few years ago and met kids with limbs blown off.

Maggie Aderin-Pocock23:47

Yeah.

Presenter24:00

And so if you can do anything to stop that and so it was very nice using my scientific knowledge and applying it to a problem that's so well, emotional. Is it important to you that your science is applicable?

Presenter24:13

Yes, I like that. Understanding science or having a knowledge of science just for science's sake is fantastic. But if you can use that science to understand climate change, to detect landmines, I think for me personally, that just gives it an added dimension. It's good and useful stuff. We haven't mentioned when and how you met your husband. When and how did you meet your husband? I met him at university. Right. We met actually while we were both studying our PhDs because Martin is an electrical engineer and I was studying physics and then we sort of both met up in the mechanical engineering department because it doesn't sound like a very romantic environment, it occurs to me.

Speaker 424:47

It doesn't

Maggie Aderin-Pocock24:48

Uh

Speaker 424:49

It occurs to me

Presenter24:51

Funnily enough, I think it was.'Cause we used to meet up in the coffee area. Slightly the outsiders, and so we'd sort of sit there. And then I think one outsider meets another outsider, and so we'd huddle together. The outsiders, because it wasn't your subject. That's it. So I think most of the other people who were doing PhDs had studied mechanical engineering and then gone on to do a PhD in mechanical engineering. And as we sort of infiltrated from other departments, we had something in common. So a relationship developed from there. Let's have some music, then tell me about disc number six. Stevie Wonder as.

Maggie Aderin-Pocock25:01

Yeah.

Maggie Aderin-Pocock25:02

That's it.

Presenter25:19

I love Stevie Wonder because it was part of my upbringing. With me and my three sisters, we just used to listen to Stevie Wonder incessantly and I think he was sort of a role model. And also his music was just so beautiful. And it's something we shared together. And talk about sort of some of the nastiness in the world and wanting to be distant from the world. But Stevie Wonder almost sort of pulls me back in because he speaks about love in such a beautiful way. All-consuming love. Love that has no boundaries. And I think that's wonderful.

Speaker 325:49

As around the sun, the earth no seas revolving

Speaker 325:54

Rosebuds know the bloomin' early May

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Hate knows love's the cure You can rest your mind assure That I'll be loving

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Always

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Cause now can't reveal the mystery up to tomorrow.

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But in passing we'll grow older every day

Speaker 326:18

All that's fun is new.

Presenter26:21

Stevie Wonder and As. Your specialism now, Maggie, is satellites, and it's probably useful to put satellites in some sort of context. The big European Space Agency satellites cost about, what, two hundred million for it? Yeah, two hundred, three hundred million depending on their application. Now, the satellites that you work on come well, they're sort of bargain basement ones, aren't they, by comparison? Eleven million pounds, right about that first? Yes, I work on both. I contribute subsystems for the big satellites, but also then work on the small satellites as well. And explain to me what it is these smaller satellites are doing, because they they tend to be owned by individual countries who want information. Yes, that's very much the case. So there is something called the Disaster Monitoring Constellation.

Maggie Aderin-Pocock26:34

Yeah.

Maggie Aderin-Pocock26:46

I can also

Presenter27:01

And this is a group of countries and they each own a satellite. If there is a disaster, the satellites go into what I call disaster mode and they take images of the affected area. With Hurricane Katrina, for instance, there was extensive flooding throughout New Orleans, and people were trapped, and they wanted to get help in, but they couldn't work out the best route to take. And so by looking at it from space, you can have a real application on the ground, and it means you can get help to people a lot quicker. The Blue Peter Sat 1, it's called. That's one of these satellites, isn't it? It is, yes. And children are able to take a look online on the Blue Peter site at what it is that their particular satellite is looking at. Now, this is something you were instrumental in organising. Yeah, it was one of my crazy ideas. I like to have at least one crazy idea of space is very much a part of our lives and people don't realize that. And so by having a satellite in space, which is owned effectively by the kids, and that they get images coming from it, and they can look at glaciers receding in Antarctica or the rainforest being wiped out, it gives them a practical understanding of what's happening, but showing also how space can actually help us understand our planet. So given your fascination with what happened beyond the Earth, does it now mean that paradoxically your science is all about what's happening on the Earth?

Maggie Aderin-Pocock27:29

Top.

Presenter28:16

Yeah, well, I think I'm in a very lucky position because I work on many projects that are looking at planet Earth, monitoring carbon dioxide emissions, things like that. But I also get the opportunities to look at missions that are looking at the edge of the universe. You're also working, I understand, on the team that's constructing the James Webb Telescope. Now, this is the replacement for Hubble. Yes. What's it going to do? What's it going to tell us? Because Hubble is of the order of 20 years old now, which is very old for space instrumentation. And so what we're doing now is building the next generation of space telescope. Now, Hubble was fantastic. It's given us some beautiful images, but it was mainly working in visible light, so the things we see with our eyes. James Webb Space Telescope has some visible capability, but it's mainly looking at infrared, so heat energy. And when you do that, you see different things. Let's have some more music. Tell me about track number seven. Oh, yes. Track number seven is going in a slightly different direction. You could say that. And this is A Where's Your Head At by Basement Jacks. Explain to me. Why have you chosen?

Presenter29:17

I was saying earlier, I love music that I can just dance to. And this is one of those tracks. I think Marcel and I make a really good combination because he's.

Presenter29:25

down to earth and very stable and I'm pinging all over the place, you know, bouncing off the stars. And sometimes I need to sort of come back down to earth. And it's just giving me some space, moving the walls out and saying, Okay, where's your head at? You're okay. Keep going.

Speaker 429:55

Don't let the world stay

Presenter30:10

That was Basement Jack's, and where's your head at? A good question, you think, for any scientist who's in danger of spinning off into outer space with her thoughts and never coming back. Maggie, you've said that you've never been home to your parents' homeland, to Nigeria. But often when we become parents, and as we know you're just within a few weeks going to become a mother to you know it's a daughter, yes. Sometimes we feel the need to not just look forward to their life, but to look back at the lives of our parents. Will you feel, do you think, as a parent, that that might

Presenter30:40

Might be important to you, might be important to show your daughter about her grandparents' world? Yes, because I feel in some ways disconnected. I was teased as a child, and so I didn't call myself British, I call myself Nigerian. But at the same time, when I meet Nigerians, they say, Ah, yeah, but you were lost Nigerian. So I feel like I don't really fit into either category. And as a space scientist, when I contemplate space, I'm just a member of the human race, and that's the key thing. But at the same time, I would like to understand my heritage more for me, but also for my daughter. You explained to us very clearly this sort of disjointed childhood that you led a lot of the time with custody battles between your parents. How has that developed or not your relationship with your mother? Are you close to her?

Presenter31:24

Um getting closer. When I was living with my father, I didn't have much of a relationship with my mother at all. Although when I was living with my mother, I got on w with her very well.

Presenter31:33

Which made uh decisions to go and stay stay with my father harder because again I felt I was being um negative against her.

Speaker 331:41

Yeah.

Presenter31:41

But now my relationship with my mother is developing and I know her a lot better and I like that.

Presenter31:50

Well, about what you went through as a child.

Presenter31:54

Well I think that was part of the challenge and part of the distance between us. I think if you bury things, I don't think that works'cause they come back and haunt you. They come and bite you later. Uh so um we have discussed a few things, but I think we've laid some things to rest. She has told me that a number of times she felt betrayed by my actions, but I think she understands the circumstances for that. So we have laid some ghosts to rest. We can

Presenter32:21

We can forge a relationship from here. Let's have some music then. It's your final disc, number eight. What are we gonna hear? Yes, this is a track called A Fragile by Sting.

Presenter32:31

And um it always conjures up real emotion because I think the organisation Amnesty International used to use this track.

Presenter32:39

One of the things I think I've realised as I was growing up was that people can do nasty things to other people, but it's not just those people out there that can do that. I think we all have that capability, and the more we realise that, the more we will keep an eye on ourselves. So I think this track is very important because it invokes that emotion and it always reminds me of the safeguards what we all need to have. Because if we let those safeguards slip, are very scared about what we're capable of.

Speaker 433:07

Let us love

Speaker 433:10

Fletcher steal our war.

Speaker 433:13

Trying in the colour.

Speaker 433:16

Happy evening sun

Speaker 433:19

Tomorrow's rain

Speaker 433:22

Watch the steels away

Speaker 433:25

Something in our minds will always speak

Speaker 433:31

Perhaps this final act was meant To clinch a lifetime's argument That nothing comes from violence

Presenter33:39

That was sting and fragile. So the books, Maggie, I'm going to give you the Bible and the complete works of Shakespeare and your book will be what?

Presenter33:48

The book I've chosen is called Starmaker by Olaf Stapledon.

Presenter33:53

I haven't actually read it. I've read a bit of it, but I'm almost saving it. This is a book about a man that goes out into a field and lies down and looks up at the stars and projects his mind into a journey through the stars. And the likelihood of me actually making it to Mars or anywhere like that is probably getting slimmer and slimmer. And so the idea of making this journey with your mind I think is a fantastic one. I wouldn't feel contained by the island then. I'd have the universe to play with. Okay, that's your book. What about your luxury?

Maggie Aderin-Pocock34:17

It runs.

Presenter34:23

I think I'd like a telescape.

Presenter34:25

What I'd like to do is sit on the beach and I'm I'm assuming the beach is in sort of the southern hemisphere,'cause then you look into the heart of the Milky Way. And then I'd be there with my telescope and every night I'd sort of pick a new star.

Speaker 434:31

Uh

Maggie Aderin-Pocock34:31

No.

Speaker 434:31

Yeah.

Presenter34:35

Lie down on the starry beach, look at that star, and say, Okay, that's where I'm going to make my mind journey tonight. Okay, it's yours. The telescope is yours. One of the eight discs, you have to choose just one. Yes. Which one will will yours be? It was a a toss up between Sting and also uh Stevie Wonder.

Presenter34:53

And I still find it hard to choose, but I think I'd go for the Stevie Wonder. Doctor Maggie Adair and Pocock, thank you very much for letting us hear your Desert Island discs. Thank you so much. It's been good fun.

Presenter35:48

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