Samantha Power

Presenter0:01

BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, Podcasts. Hello, I'm Lauren Laverne, and this is the Desert Island Discs Podcast. Every week, I ask my guests to choose the eight tracks, book, and luxury they'd want to take with them if they were cast away to a desert island. And, for rights reasons, the music is shorter than the original broadcast. I hope you enjoy listening.

Presenter0:43

My castaway this week is the author and academic Samantha Power. Once labelled the conscience of President Obama, she was a key player throughout both terms of his administration, first as an advisor on foreign policy, then as America's youngest ever ambassador to the UN. Born in London to Irish parents, she spent her early life in Dublin before the family settled in Atlanta. Her first ambition was to become a sports broadcaster until one day she saw live footage of the events in Tiananmen Square in 1989, and that changed everything. By the age of 23, she was reporting on the war in Bosnia, where she was described as a breath of fresh outrage by her colleagues. Her experiences inspired a book interrogating the American response to genocides throughout the 20th century. It won the Pulitzer Prize and placed her on the then Senator Obama's radar. She went from criticising government policy to working to shape it. She's currently professor of global leadership, public policy and human rights at Harvard. She says, the road to hell is paved with good intentions, to be sure, but turning a blind eye to the toughest problems in the world is a guaranteed shortcut to the same destination. Samantha Power, welcome to Desert Island Discs.

Samantha Power1:57

Oh glad to be here.

Presenter1:59

So let's get straight into it. With Joe Biden's arrival at the White House, rumors are circulating that you might be returning to frontline politics. Have you had a call from Joe Biden yet?

Samantha Power2:10

I don't know honestly what the future holds, but I will say that having been a journalist, an activist, an academic, a diplomat, a staffer, nothing has been more rewarding in my career than and more meaningful really than getting to represent the United States, getting to be a public servant. So if I had the chance to serve again, I think I'd leap at the opportunity.

Presenter2:33

Of course, you spent the last few years in academia. How would it feel going back to politics and leaving that behind?

Samantha Power2:40

We're in a moment of such crisis. It's kind of a national, international emergency. I mean, in a literal sense with the pandemic and the economic crisis, but in such a deeper sense with human rights in retreat in so many parts of the world that I think this is a moment where we need all hands on deck. So I don't think I'd be conflicted about leaving the classroom. I would miss my students. I would miss the lifestyle, which is a little more luxuriant than that of the 24-7 national security job. But there are moments where when the call comes, I think you don't really have a choice.

Presenter3:10

Then that

Presenter3:20

I know you're a listener to the programme, so you know we're here to get a sense of the person behind the politics too. And a journalist friend of yours once said of you, she's either intense or asleep. Would you say that's a fair assessment?

Samantha Power3:32

I it's not untrue. I don't have a middle gear. I think that's fair to say. But I certainly I love music. I love sport. I love to dance. I may be intense in how I do all of those things to a fault, but there's a lightness that comes with not taking myself too seriously.

Presenter3:50

We're going to get started with your first disc right now. What's it going to be and why have you chosen this today?

Presenter3:56

I have chosen

Samantha Power3:56

Wasn't Dancing Queen by Abba. This is a song that just reminds me so much of my beloved mother, who grew up in Cork City, Cork, the daughter of a policeman. She longed to become a doctor when she was a kid and was deterred from pursuing medicine because she was a girl, but in her mid-twenties went back and got her medical degree. Talk about intense. My mother was intense, is intense. But amid that intensity, just this joy, this desire to dance.

Speaker 44:33

Anybody could be that guy

Speaker 44:37

Light is young and the music's

Speaker 44:42

With a bit of rock music, everything's fine.

Samantha Power4:42

Uh

Speaker 44:46

Join the Lootford Band.

Speaker 44:51

And when you get the chance, you are the dancing queen.

Presenter5:04

Dancing Queen by ABBA, dedicated Samantha Power to your mother Vera. And you were born in London in 1970 and your mother and father were both Irish. They took you back there when you were very small. So your mother Vera is a nephrologist, that's a kidney doctor, and an avid sportswoman too. Apparently, when you were growing up, the only time you saw her sitting still was when Wimbledon was on, is that right? Yes.

Samantha Power5:27

Sitting cross-legged, face pressed up to the T V as she would urge me never to do watching every point of every match that was broadcast in Ireland.

Presenter5:39

to follow her dreams and with bountiful energy to do it.

Samantha Power5:42

Yes, I mean, only when I myself became a mother did I sort of reflect on just the bravery and the brazenness in some ways of the choices that she made. And what about your father? Tell me about him.

Samantha Power5:57

My dad was a brilliant thinker. He professionally became a dentist. But as my mother's career and as her sporting conquests progressed, I think he began to feel a little shut out or a little left behind. And he had always been a straightforward Irish drinker, someone who liked to go to the pub. But as he began to retreat a little bit from his marriage to my mother, or as my mother was off banging squash balls and taking courses in transplant nephrology to learn more about the kidney, he began spending more and more time at the pub. And there was one pub in particular called Hardigan's in downtown Dublin. And I was his sidekick. Probably between the ages of three and nine, I'd have been there with him with my Fanta and my planter's peanuts. So what now, of course, seems like exactly the wrong environment for a child to be in. At the time, it was the only environment I really knew.

Presenter7:05

So it sounds like there was a lot going on, and your parents' relationship did eventually break down. Your mother won custody of you and your brother Stephen. She took you with her to start a new life in the US in 1979, a really big change for you at that point. You did go back one Christmas to stay with your father that Christmas later that year, you and Stephen, and your mother came to collect you on Christmas Eve. What happened?

Presenter7:29

Yeah, this is

Samantha Power7:29

It was a very dramatic and very sad evening. I mean, it shouldn't have been. It was Christmas Eve. But my dad, with us back in his company, hitting the tennis ball in the cul-de-sac outside the house, he said to my mother, I'm keeping them. And my mother said, no, you're not. The courts have made clear I have custody.

Samantha Power7:52

And you can come visit them, and they will come and visit again very soon, but you can't keep them. And he said, No, I'm keeping them.

Samantha Power7:59

So she just swooped in on Christmas Eve and and uh picked us up and brought us pretty soon thereafter to the airport and that would prove the last time I saw my dad in person.

Presenter8:11

Let's take a break for some music. This is your second disc today, and I think it is connected to your dad.

Samantha Power8:17

My dad was a magnificent piano player, and one of his favorite songs was Kat Stevens' Morning Has Broken. And I have such fond memories of lying next to the piano stool on the carpeted floor and watching his feet on the pedals as he played this beautiful song, and it ended up being the song that I had played as I came down the aisle from my wedding in County Kerry.

Speaker 48:42

Morning has broken like the first morning

Speaker 48:51

That bird has spoken like the first bird.

Speaker 48:59

Praise for the sea, praise for the morning, praise for them springing, fresh from the world.

Presenter9:14

Morning Has Broken by Kat Stevens. So Samantha Power, you settled in Atlanta, Georgia, with your mother, your brother Stephen and your stepfather Eddie, and you developed a passion for team sports. I'm imagining that that made it a bit easier to fit in at school.

Samantha Power9:30

When I came to America, we initially moved to Pittsburgh. And when I arrived, there I was in my, I had my Irish Catholic girls' school uniform. We didn't have a lot of money. So I was wearing my tartan skirt and my black patent leather shoes to this American public school. And I just, you know, I felt like a real oddball. And then I heard that what people were talking about was Major League Baseball and the Pittsburgh Pirates, the team that belonged to the town, was marching toward the championship. And, you know, I kind of looked around and thought, okay, I think if I can figure this out, I'll have at least something to talk about. I may have an Irish accent, a double N accent, and I worked on losing that as quickly as I could. But this is all the rage. And so, like any kid wanting to fit in, I think that was it.

Presenter10:17

So you were fourteen, Samantha, when a call came and you received some terrible news from Ireland. What do you remember about that day?

Presenter10:25

I

Samantha Power10:25

I remember sitting in my bedroom in Atlanta, Georgia, and hearing my mother come home from the hospital early, and that didn't happen often. Probably some radar was going off in me that something was amiss, but I wasn't prepared for my mother coming into my room and sitting me down and telling me that my father had passed away. He was 47. The one detail that was seared into my soul was that he died alone. And I remember overhearing that he had been found days later in the house, in our house. Only as a mother now.

Samantha Power11:10

And seeing my own children and just how young they are when they're young.

Presenter11:15

Uh

Speaker 411:15

Yeah. Uh

Presenter11:15

Yeah.

Samantha Power11:16

Do I realize that my childhood sense of having superpowers? You know, if I were stronger, if I had been more worth it, you know, my dad would have been able to get it together. Only when you get older do you understand what addiction is and what alcoholism is and how much bigger it is than one person's will or one family's will. But again, I was 14. All I knew was this large, charismatic, very loving father had vanished.

Presenter11:52

in an instant.

Presenter11:54

Got to go to the music, Samantha Power. What are we going to hear next and why have you chosen it? Yeah.

Samantha Power11:58

Yeah.

Presenter11:58

So

Samantha Power11:58

Oh, this is a song by one of my favorite bands, the Pogues. It's a song about immigration, coming across that big Atlantic Ocean, the hardship of coming to a new land, the longing for what you've left behind, and the determination to dance.

Speaker 412:18

When Manhattan's desert swilight

Speaker 412:22

In a da-da-da-da-da-da

Speaker 412:26

We stepped hand in hand up Broadway Like the first man on the moon

Speaker 412:34

An a blackbird broke the silence As he whistled, that's so sweet.

Speaker 412:42

And then trending beyond footsteps by dance stop and down the street.

Presenter12:50

The Pogues and Thousands are sailing. So, Samantha Power, in 1988, you went to Yale University to study for a liberal arts degree and you had set your sights on becoming a sports journalist, but not long into your course, you changed your mind. What happened?

Samantha Power13:06

Aaron Powell, Jr.: Well, the summer after my first year at university, I worked, unsurprisingly, at the CBS sports affiliate. And as I was sitting in the booth, the video booth, taking notes on a routine Braves game, the CBS news feed was up next to me, and on it came unfiltered footage from Beijing, China. And the footage captured what was the beginning of the Chinese government's crackdown on democracy protests. And the tanks rolled in. And as I sat with my clipboard in hand, I watched students my age fleeing onto their bicycles out of the line of fire. And it was a devastating scene. And made me think, okay, I could probably get the balance a little bit better between how much time I'm spending learning about sport and what's actually happening in the world around me.

Presenter14:11

Is it true that you used to mark up the newspaper and test yourself on it afterwards?

Samantha Power14:14

Indeed, yeah. I began subscribing to the New York Times, the hard copy of the New York Times would come to my dorm room every day and I would read it and I would underline the name of the head of state and then I'd finish the article and I'd quiz myself to know who it was and I didn't quite make flashcards for myself.

Samantha Power14:33

But it was almost that bad.

Presenter14:35

And so you were set on a different course and by 1992 you'd taken up an internship at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. That's a foreign policy think tank.

Presenter14:44

And there you learnt about the atrocities that were taking place in Bosnia. You decided to become a war correspondent. Why did you feel at such a young age that you had to go there yourself?

Presenter14:54

Yeah.

Samantha Power14:54

In the period

Samantha Power14:56

Where I was coming of age in America, the Holocaust was getting heightened attention. There was a museum opening up on the mall in Washington with America's cherished monuments. It was taught in great detail in American schools. And the idea of never again had gathered significant force, I think. So fast forward, then, 1992, I've just graduated from college. The Berlin Wall has fallen just a few years before, and there's a great sense of promise that peace is at hand and that the world can come together. But at the same time, as Yugoslavia collapsed, you see this savage war in Bosnia break out, this horrific ethnic cleansing and such suffering.

Presenter15:48

You wanted then to put your journalistic skills to good use, but you were a sports reporter, so getting a press pass was going to be tricky. How did you manage it?

Samantha Power15:56

Yeah. Carnegie Endowment at that time put out an academic publication called Foreign Policy.

Samantha Power16:03

And that editor's office was a few doors down from mine. And so late at night, when the cleaning staff had finished hoovering, I crept into the office and took a piece of stationery and wrote a letter on my own behalf, but unfortunately in the name of the editor of foreign policy, urging the UN to grant Samantha Power all the necessary credentials she would need in order to contribute to the publication. I was just consumed with this objective of getting over to Bosnia and I was going to do whatever it took, even if it meant doing something else.

Presenter16:42

I shouldn't have done.

Presenter16:43

Time for some more music, Samantha Power. Your fourth disc, if you would, what's it gonna be?

Samantha Power16:48

Crazy by Seale, an Australian journalist, took this song and spliced together video of the carnage in Bosnia. And so this song and those images that this journalist captured will always go together in my mind and just how war can scar you for forever.

Speaker 417:15

You were fractal on a breaking wall I see you my friend and touch your face again Miracles will happen

Speaker 417:34

I'm never gonna survive.

Speaker 417:37

Um

Speaker 417:39

We get a little crazy No one ever gonna say

Presenter17:45

Seal and crazy. Samantha Power, you'd taken great pains to get there. How did covering the conflict in Bosnia firsthand shape your own thinking?

Samantha Power17:57

It has left me certainly with a desire

Samantha Power18:01

to be out in the world talking to people who are affected by our decisions, affected by the decisions of their governments, that that is a perspective that is invaluable and too often lacking, honestly, in the bubble of policy.

Presenter18:17

Do you make it?

Samantha Power18:17

Thanks.

Presenter18:18

President Clinton refused to intervene in the conflict at that stage. What were your personal feelings about what you saw as a lack of direct action by the US and NATO at the time?

Samantha Power18:28

To see kind of chaotic and dispersed diplomacy that didn't seem to be well leveraged, and to know that the effects of diplomatic failure was going to be more bloodshed and more kids killed while jumping rope in playgrounds, it tore me up inside, and it tore many, many journalists up inside. So, as a citizen, I think, of the world and a citizen of America, I really wanted President Clinton to prioritize this conflict.

Presenter19:02

In september nineteen ninety five, President Clinton changed his mind and NATO launched airstrikes against Serb forces. You had left Bosnia by then, but how did you feel when you heard the news? Because it is

Samantha Power19:14

Involved bombing, I was scared. You know, I kind of lived in suspended animation for that week or two as events unfolded on the ground. And when Sarajevo was liberated, when it was clear that military force was going to work and a peace agreement was going to be forged, an imperfect one, but nonetheless, a peace agreement.

Samantha Power19:37

It just was the greatest sense of relief I think I've ever felt.

Presenter19:41

And on the professional side, I wonder about your experience as a war reporter. I mean, many people who pursue that career talk about the camaraderie, the adrenaline. Did it suit you?

Samantha Power19:54

I think it did suit me. I think it's an incredibly stimulating line of work. The ability, if you're a curious person, to go out and talk to people, whether people who had survived unimaginable

Samantha Power20:08

Crimes against humanity, or even to talk to the perpetrators of those crimes and get inside the head of people who were doing things that a year before, two years before, that would have been inconceivable to them. But at the same time, I felt its limits. I felt that what we were writing was not landing in a way that was affecting the calculus of people with power. It's time for disc number five. What are we going to hear next, and why have you chosen it today, Samantha? So, this is a Bob Dylan cover, Boots of Spanish Leather, and it is performed by a wonderful group called Mandolin Orange. This is a song that reminds me of my husband Cass, who, in addition to being the most original.

Samantha Power20:56

Person and having the most original mind that I have ever encountered, and being the author of dozens and dozens of books, he is someone who has a Bob Dylan lyric response to anything that happens in one's life. So, no matter what news I bring in a given day, or what crossroads I find myself at, or what lamentation I am making, he's got a Bob Dylan lyric for it.

Speaker 421:23

Oh, I'm sailing away.

Speaker 421:26

My all true love.

Speaker 421:32

Yes, I'm sailing away in the morning

Speaker 421:41

Is there something I can send you from across the sea?

Speaker 421:51

From the place where I'll be land

Presenter21:56

Boots of Spanish Leather, written by Bob Dylan and performed there by Mandolin Orange. Samantha Power, in 1995 you took up a place at Harvard Law School. You had intended to become a prosecutor, but you ended up writing a book instead. A Problem from Hell was published in 2002. It would go on to win the Pulitzer Prize. What was its central thesis?

Samantha Power22:17

That America, despite making grand promises and despite believing itself a country.

Samantha Power22:26

That would stand up in the face of genocide, by and large, look the other way when genocide happened.

Presenter22:33

And it was that book that ended up on the nightstand of a man that was then a young Senator, Barack Obama. Later, you'd go on to work in his Senate office and then in two thousand seven, you joined his election campaign. How would you describe your working relationship?

Presenter22:49

Ah

Samantha Power22:51

We have an understanding, put it that way. I think he puts up with me. There would be occasions when I was at the White House or when I was in his cabinet as UN Ambassador where he would just say straight up, Sam, you're getting on my nerves.

Samantha Power23:09

Or in one occasion when I think I was going on too long, which is a tendency of mine, in the Syria context, he snapped, we've all read your book, Sam. We've all read your book. I'm thinking, I'm actually not sure everyone here has read my book. I'm not convinced of that, Mr. President. But he has a really uncanny ability to kind of look around a room and say, I don't have all parts of myself here. And what I mean by that is, if he looks around a room and sees, okay, I have a lot of people here who are going to be arguing for providing more military assistance to the CC government in Egypt, get that. But where's Sam? Like, where's the person who's going to tell me why this is a bad idea?

Presenter23:57

Yeah, didn't he used to prompt you occasionally if you're a bit too quiet by asking, Are you sick, Power?

Samantha Power24:01

I heard

Samantha Power24:02

Yeah, exactly. And of course I have no poker face. My forehead would be all coiled up and and he'd be like, Something on your mind, Samantha? And and so he was immensely decisive, but never wanted yes men, that happy talk as he as he described it, that would get you nowhere.

Samantha Power24:24

Yeah.

Presenter24:24

Samadhapau, we've got to take a moment for your next disc. It's number six. Why are you taking it to the island? So the

Samantha Power24:29

This is Nina Simone's Why The King of Love is Dead. And it's a song written a few days after the assassination of Martin Luther King. I think it captures some of the anger that we see today, given that so much injustice persists, particularly racial injustice. I think Simone, who was radicalized in her later years, meant it as a song of despair, as a lament. I find it immensely motivating.

Speaker 425:03

Folks, you'd better

Speaker 425:06

Stop and play.

Speaker 425:10

Cause we're heavy

Speaker 425:12

The frame

Speaker 425:16

Happen now

Speaker 425:20

And he is dead.

Speaker 425:30

He was for equality.

Presenter25:33

Why, the King of Love is dead, Nina Simone.

Presenter25:37

Samantha Power, as we've heard, your career has had many highs, but it has had its lows too, one of which occurred during Obama's 2008 election campaign. You were forced to resign after referring to Hillary Clinton, who was then a presidential candidate in the race to the White House, as a monster in print. How do you look back on what you said now?

Samantha Power25:59

Well, even at the time, I couldn't believe that I had said it. I it's hard to

Samantha Power26:06

Be convincing in this regard since the words came out of my mouth, but I got way too caught up in it. It was my first presidential campaign.

Samantha Power26:13

the mud was being slung from one campaign to the next, and I regret it to this day. I did have a chance to apologize to her in person, and I'm very glad about that. And of course, had a chance to work with her

Samantha Power26:26

When she was Secretary of State and I was President Obama's human rights advisor. And so we've come a long way. But it's a reminder of just how one can lose perspective. It can feel like the center of the universe, but you have to stay true to treating people and talking about people with respect. And I didn't do that.

Presenter26:47

And in the short term, of course, it cost you dearly. You went from being at the heart of the campaign to being a complete outsider. Is it that you resigned or that Obama asked you to go?

Samantha Power26:57

Initially, he rejected the idea that I would have to resign. Then he realized that it was potentially going to be costly for the campaign. So he said, I'm going to put you in the penalty box. And of course, my Irish cousins would say the Sin bin. I had to go to the Sin Bin. So I was in the Sin Bin for quite a while there until he locked up the nomination and then I came back for the general election.

Presenter27:11

I have to go to the Sin Bin.

Samantha Power27:20

Time for disc number seven, Samantha. What's it going to be and why have you chosen this?

Samantha Power27:25

This is a Leonard Cohen cover, Tonight Will Be Fine, by my dear friend Teddy Thompson. I had long had this sense, because of my father's death when I was young, that nothing great can last. And when I had kids, of course, my fear of something bad happening was always with me when I had Declan just thinking, Will he be okay? And this song kind of calms me and just says, You know, we can't predict the future, but tonight, let's enjoy it. Tonight will be fine.

Speaker 427:57

Sometimes I find I get to thinking of the past

Speaker 428:05

And we swore to each other that our love would last

Speaker 428:13

You kept right on lovin' now and on the fast

Speaker 428:20

Now I am too thin, your love is too fast.

Presenter28:27

Tonight Will Be Fine, written by Leonard Cohen and performed by Teddy Thompson.

Presenter28:32

So, Samantha Power, after President Obama was elected, he brought you back into the fold, appointing you to the National Security Council. In his second term, you served as US Ambassador to the UN. Now as we've heard, you are unafraid to speak your mind. How did you take to being a diplomat?

Samantha Power28:49

Yeah.

Presenter28:49

The short

Samantha Power28:49

Good answer is

Samantha Power28:52

I loved every minute of it.

Samantha Power28:54

Aaron Powell, Jr.: The longer answer is that I wasn't known for being the most diplomatic person before becoming a diplomat, but I think that authentically being curious about my colleagues from these other 192 countries, playing soccer with the Latin American ambassadors, joining the Korean, Danish, Serbian, and Thai ambassadors in a amateur rock band, you know, building, just seeing all that we have in common. We all love music.

Presenter29:31

And as a diplomat, you would often have meetings at home. How did that change the dynamics of the conversations that you were having?

Samantha Power29:39

I think for ambassadors from other countries to just see the chaotic humanity of somebody barely hanging on in this period, taking phone calls from John Kerry, the Secretary of State, and from my daughter's daycare. I mean, that's life, right?

Presenter29:59

Yeah.

Samantha Power30:00

But in one instance, I was on a call with Secretary Kerry around, I think, Russian sanctions, and Declan came up looking to get my attention.

Samantha Power30:08

And in this instance I shoot him away I think one too many times and it he marched off saying, Putin, Putin, Putin, Putin When is it going to be Declan, Declan, Declan, Declan?

Presenter30:19

Uh Well, Samantha, I am of course about to cast you away to our desert island, and I know that you're going to miss your family. And you've also thought a lot about the idea of leaving family behind in real life. I read the letter that you wrote to Declan when he was just six months old. You were going away on your first trip to Iraq. What did it say?

Samantha Power30:40

Uh

Samantha Power30:41

I just was, again, afraid that something bad would happen, that I'd be in Iraq and wouldn't come home to my boys. And so I just tried to convey to Declan the love that I felt for him at that time. And don't get me talking about the letter. I'll lose it here at the end of the program. Whenever you hear thunder, that will be me. Whenever the Red Sox win the ninth, that will be me.

Presenter31:08

Whenever the red

Samantha Power31:10

Yeah. It was uh it was very hard to write. It's very hard to read. And right now it's very hard to keep that book away from my son uh'cause he's eleven and wants he's heard about the letter and he wants to read the letter and I'm absolutely determined for him not to read the letter and I hope never to have to read the letter.

Presenter31:26

Well, one more track, Samantha Powell, before we send you off to your island. What's it going to be your last disc to day?

Samantha Power31:32

So, well, it did take Cass and me a few years to conceive our second child, our daughter Rhian, who's now eight. It was after many rounds of IVFs and miscarriages. And so, this song I heard not long after Rhian was born by Alexander Ebert, and it's called A Million Years. And the key resonant line for me is A Million Years Full of Tears, but I found my girl. I found my girl, Rhian.

Speaker 432:03

An ocean of love devotion.

Speaker 432:14

Then come Cupertine Now I'm stupid

Speaker 432:19

I feel it's just fine.

Speaker 432:23

Black explode in face

Speaker 432:27

I'ma tell the world.

Speaker 432:31

Been a million years full of fears, but I found my

Presenter32:38

A Million Years, Alexander Ebert. Samantha Power, it's time to cast you away. So I'm going to give you the books to take with you, as you know, the Bible, the complete works of Shakespeare, and another book of your choosing. What would you like? Column

Samantha Power32:49

Tobin's Irish Times book of favourite Irish poems. So, Colum's a great friend of mine, brilliant Irish writer, poet in his way, and for him to choose the poems that I'd be cast away with, I think, makes a lot of sense. It's yours. You can also have a luxury item. What would you like?

Samantha Power33:10

I have wanted to learn the guitar my whole life. I thought I might do it in the pandemic period. I have failed the guitar and me on the island. It will happen.

Presenter33:23

It's time. And finally, which of these eight tracks would you rush to save if there was only time to rescue one from the waves?

Presenter33:30

Yeah.

Samantha Power33:30

Teddy Thompson's take on Leonard Cohen's Tonight Will Be Fine.

Presenter33:35

Samantha Power, thank you so much for sharing your Desert Island Discs with us.

Samantha Power33:39

Thank you.

Presenter33:52

I hope you enjoyed my conversation with Samantha. I'm sure that she'll find many ways of brushing up her baseball skills on the island. Of course, we've cast many diplomats away, including Sir Nicholas Henderson, Sir Crispin Takell and Rory Stewart. And you can hear their programmes via our website and BBC Sounds. Next time, my guest will be the astronaut, Major Tim Peake. I do hope you'll join us.

Speaker 334:29

Hello, I hope you've enjoyed the podcast you've just heard. There's another podcast available as well. It's called The Infinite Monkey Cage with me, Robin Inz, and me, Brian Cox. And it's gonna be, I think, more educational than whatever it is that you just listen to, because we're gonna consider subjects such as the nature of reality, which encompasses whatever it is that you just listen to. So, yeah, Jan 11, Eric Idle, Frank Wilcek, Sarah Pasco, Ross Noble, Chris Jackson, Alan Davis, David Deal. There's a huge number of people talking about many big ideas. There won't be that many equations. There might be one equation, won't there, Brian? There will. And also, Erica McAllister, Lady of the Flies, very 2021. And you can hear The Infinite Monkey Cage on BBC Sounds. Yeah, there's hundreds of them, actually. Hundreds, loads of them. Who would have thought you could do over a hundred episodes about everything that's in the universe? There's a lot more than I first imagined. Why you're a comedian, not a scientist.