Professor Corinne Le Quéré

Professor Corinne Le Quéré0:01

BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, Podcasts.

Presenter0:04

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 castaway to a desert island. And, for rights reasons, the music is shorter than the original broadcast. I hope you enjoy listening.

Presenter0:45

My castaway this week is Professor Corin Le Carray. She's an oceanographer and professor of climate change science at the University of East Anglia, where she works on the interaction between the natural carbon cycle and climate change. In 2007, she experienced what she has called her moment of infamy. She discovered that the Southern Ocean, the vast body of water surrounding Antarctica, was not processing CO two the way the scientific community believed. In fact, she revealed climate change was damaging its ability to absorb carbon from the atmosphere.

Presenter1:18

She founded the Global Carbon Budget, which keeps track of where carbon is being released and absorbed and advises the UK Committee on Climate Change, but it almost didn't happen this way. Growing up in Quebec, she wanted to study sports science, only to find she missed the window to apply by 24 hours. So she settled on her second favourite subject, physics. She says, I refuse to let myself be dragged into the emotion of climate doomism. If you go there, you can't really work in this field anymore.

Presenter1:48

Professor Corin LeCore, welcome to Desert Island Discs. Thank you. So Corin, the statistics about climate change make for pretty grim reading. How do you stop yourself being dragged into what you call climate doomism?

Presenter2:01

I try to be as much as possible in touch with nature. I like the weather, so just looking out the window for me is calming. Being in the environment, in the forest or on the sea, in a kayak, is really extremely important because unless you focus on the good things, you just get so anxious with climate change on your daily basis that you can't function. And some people do find this subject very frightening to engage with. What would you say to people who feel scared when they think about this?

Speaker 12:22

Is that you can

Presenter2:30

I would say don't feel scared. Just put yourself in a discovery mode. Do the things you can do. I don't think feeling guilty is helpful. I think just really try to figure out what it is that you can do and support the decision makers that will go in the direction you want to go. But it's not the time to be fearful, you say. No, it's the time to be forceful, not fearful. It's the time for action, it's the time for realizing that it's now and we have to grasp the opportunities.

Presenter3:04

And I know that you're a dancer too. How has that helped? The salsa is very special to me. I've always danced in my life, danced salsa in particular. And this is where my I met my husband at a salsa event. Oh, wow. Did you dance together? Did you see him dancing? What happened? I hadn't seen him before he invited me to dance. And I was really surprised. He was the best dancer I ever danced with.

Speaker 13:17

Yeah.

Presenter3:28

And that sort of changed my life to meet him, really. It started a new phase. All right, well, as we've been talking about music and dancing, let's get started with your discs. What's your first choice today? My first choice is La Vida es un Carnaval, the Cilia Cruz. And it's really a happy song. It's a song that tells you life is a good thing. And yes, there are bad phases, but they will pass. Would you selfer to this on that? Yeah, absolutely.

Professor Corinne Le Quéré3:54

Mirror

Professor Corinne Le Quéré3:59

Todo aqueous bienza que la vida te si juan que que sabar que enu za sí que la vida suner mo sura. Ay que vivirla. Todo aque el que bienza que ta soro y que tamal.¿Ene que sabar que enu za sí que la vida tuinar de sono. Simprey al que está.

Professor Corinne Le Quéré4:18

But can you die?

Professor Corinne Le Quéré4:23

Don't leave it

Presenter4:27

Celia Cruz and La Vida es un carnival. So, Corinne Le Carré, you were born in Quebec, as we've heard. What comes back to you when you think about growing up there? Lots of nature. I grew up just beside one of the most beautiful national parks, Quebec National Park, beautiful, pristine forests, big lakes. Yeah, we would go, just the immediate family, my three brothers and I, my parents, the dog. Sometimes my grandmother came with us, and it was in the wilderness. We would go down these forestry tracks and find the lake that was lost somewhere in nature and just stay there for weeks. And what about your dad, your father Pierre? He was born in Paris, moved to Canada when he was a young man. How did he find life in his new adopted country? He'd been a waiter in France, and he was a little bit in a closed track, career-wise. And when he came to Canada, he developed this, became a manager in restaurants, then eventually owned his restaurant. And at the end, he was teaching in a restaurant school. And what about at home? Which language did you speak at home? We always spoke French at home. My family was a separatist family in Quebec, so Quebec very much talked about moving out of Canada, separating. But I had really a very strong Quebec accent because of where I grew up as a child. You tend to do that. Only my dad and my older brother a little bit had a quite remarkable French accent. When I eventually later moved to France, it was very noticeable that I spoke with a very, very strong Quebec accent. And language is very important. It was very important.

Speaker 15:17

Then he would

Presenter6:10

were encouraged to only watch television in in French, and I really learned English as an adult, really.

Presenter6:18

Time for some more music, Corinne. Second disc today. What are we going to hear and why have you chosen it? We'll hear Les Copin d'Abord, which is a song by Georges Bracins, a very famous French singer. And I picked it because it was my dad's favourite song and it really reminds me of him. It's about friendship and how friends are very, very precious and they stay with you all your life.

Speaker 26:42

Non sonette paradox, De la Maidus sabato, Concell disaux fond des pour, Disaux fond des pour.

Speaker 26:55

Il navig temp per penard, sur la grandma, rode des canard, and saplé les copins d'abour, les copins d'a bour.

Speaker 27:06

C'est fluctuate nec meritur, c'est pad la literat.

Presenter7:14

Les Coupin de Bourg, Georges Brasson. So, Corinne Le Carret, you've described your mother Nicole as a very special person. Tell me about her. She grew up on a farm, didn't she? She did. She grew up on a farm and her dad was a blacksmith. And when the horse went out to be replaced by the car, then he had to go on a farm and they were very poor. And she always wanted to go to university. She was very good at school. She told me recently that she was ranked first in Quebec for French and math when she was 16 years old. But still, in spite of this, she wasn't able to go to university because that wasn't the done thing. It costed too much money. What really impressed me about her life is that she went and got what she wanted. She wanted to go to university. And when my younger brothers or youngest son went himself to university, she went with him.

Speaker 17:47

When she was

Presenter8:08

Did they do the same course? They did, the same course. They did business management and accounting, and so she's an accountant now. And yeah, in exactly the same class as her son. So that's really quite remarkable. Actually, my parents, both of them, they did not have easy starts. And they went and they did what they wanted. And they always encouraged me to do what I wanted to do. And this is quite an example.

Presenter8:34

You were very sporty as a young girl. So when it came to actually playing sports competitively, what did you do? I picked water polo as being my sports. I always was very comfortable in the water, but my team never won a tournament. There was this team from Montreal. They were just better than us. And we lost a lot of finals as a result. So I have a lot of silver medal, but never an actual gold medal. And this frustration of being almost there, but never quite reaching it, was very formative to me. I know the feeling of kind of failing, but you haven't really failed. If you lost on a final and you have a silver medal, you haven't really failed, but you still haven't won. And so going back home and thinking, okay, what am I going to work on next? What's the next strategy, the next tactic? Who do I get on my team? How do I try again so that next year I try to beat that team who always beat us? And this recovery mode was really important and became very present in my life. And I learned to enjoy the successes when they happened. I can imagine that that is absolutely vital, that ability to regroup, reframe, and go out again, even when it's difficult. I mean, especially with what you're doing now. Exactly. Exactly. And team playing too. Exactly. So the parallel with my work now is really one-to-one. I get to do this all the time that I have, we don't get what we want on climate change, what the world needs to move faster and faster. And I know this feeling where you don't get what you want, but you get something. And you get then the chance to think about it again and do better.

Speaker 19:51

Excellent.

Professor Corinne Le Quéré9:52

Exactly.

Speaker 19:52

Bye.

Speaker 19:53

Yeah.

Professor Corinne Le Quéré9:53

Tenka.

Presenter10:16

Time for your next disc, Corinne. What are you taking and why have you chosen it? It is a Queen, uh, We Are the Champions, and it's really a song about working hard to get what you want, and it really talks to me.

Professor Corinne Le Quéré10:29

I've done my symptoms.

Professor Corinne Le Quéré10:33

But committed no crime.

Professor Corinne Le Quéré10:37

And bad mistakes I've made a few.

Professor Corinne Le Quéré10:45

I've had myself bad kicks in my face, but I'm

Presenter11:00

Queen and We Are the Champions. You never made it to be the champion with no. Did you still listen to that song anyway? Yes, we did. And it felt a little bit a little bit guilty, a little bit wrong, but still it gives you energy.

Professor Corinne Le Quéré11:05

No.

Presenter11:15

So, Corin, your second favorite subject at school after PA was physics. So, tell me, how did science capture your imagination and why physics specifically? It's mostly because I had a good teacher. I had this great physics teacher. He made it very real to us. He made us participate. And you learn by experience. So, you're the one making the demonstration. And it's not until you have taken the apple and dropped it on the floor that you can understand that there's gravity. And I respect that. It was tangible, it was demanding. You could see what happens in a physical environment. It was logical. I love all that.

Presenter11:57

So tell me how you ended up studying this full time. You set your sights on the University of Ottawa, I think. What did you intend to study there? So when I went to the University of Ottawa, I really was lost. I didn't know what I would study. There's no scientists in my family. And I thought I liked science, but I need to explore a bit. And so I took 10 classes in different fields. I took sociology, psychology, history, all things that I hadn't really.

Presenter12:24

Taken the time to explore, and then I picked anthropology, especially the evolution of humans, which I thought was really fascinating. And then I went to the University of Montreal for one year studying anthropology. And it wasn't, it didn't really do it for me because I thought who is right in anthropology has too much to do with who speaks the best, who has the best argument, and not quite enough to do with tangible data. And that's when I thought, okay, that's not it. I need to try again. Okay, so you decided to go again, and you had thought that you might study sports science, but as I mentioned, you missed the window. Absolutely. I reset myself. I thought, okay, start from scratch. What did I like at high school sports? And I rang the sports department and I asked if I could get in the program. And they said the deadline was yesterday, come back next year. Yeah, I could not believe it. And I thought, well, okay, what's the next best thing I like? And it was physics. And I rang the physics department and they said, sure, we take everybody here.

Presenter13:29

And that's it. That's what I did. It's time for your next piece of music, disc number four. What are we going to hear? We have Armonie du Soir à Chateauguille by a very famous Quebec group, Beaudamage, who doesn't exist anymore. It's a day in Quebec, sitting by the lake, your feet in the water, and listen to the sound of nature.

Professor Corinne Le Quéré13:55

Lespier pas d'au bour du qua

Professor Corinne Le Quéré13:59

Play pier paid.

Professor Corinne Le Quéré14:03

Les pais pardon au music.

Professor Corinne Le Quéré14:08

La ri de ju la money girl.

Speaker 114:08

Uh

Professor Corinne Le Quéré14:13

I'm not sure if I can do it.

Professor Corinne Le Quéré14:17

Rablan se bang

Presenter14:20

Armonie de Soi a Chateau Guay By Beaudomage

Presenter14:25

So, Corin Le Coray, you studied for a master's in meteorology and oceanography in Montreal and you then went to Princeton University. Now, at Princeton you researched the marine carbon cycle, essentially how the ocean absorbs CO two in the atmosphere and becomes what's called a carbon sink. Why were you drawn to oceanography in the first place?

Presenter14:45

I was drawn to oceanography mostly because I grew up in the water. The water was very, very present. We know so little compared to what we know on land. It's mysterious. The organisms in the ocean, mostly on the microorganism, the algae, live at the surface and they're eaten. Everything is eaten in the ocean. It's very different from the land. The land, you have the stock of tree. You don't have that in the ocean. The average life is one week. So you have the organism eat each other, then all that organic material, fecal pellets, carcasses, sink to the deep ocean. And that short circuits, ocean circulation, brings a huge flux of carbon downwards, regulates the atmospheric CO2 climate, and all this from microorganisms that we can't even see. So, how much time did you get to spend on the water when you were studying? Did you go on many field trips when you were focusing on your master? Yeah, I'm a bit of an awkward oceanographer because I've only ever been on a cruise once and I hated it.

Professor Corinne Le Quéré15:36

Yeah.

Speaker 115:36

Yeah.

Speaker 115:43

Yeah.

Presenter15:45

Oh, so here we are. We've alighted on a point that I'm going to have to probe for you. What happened?

Speaker 115:45

SAP

Speaker 115:46

So here we are. We've alighted on a point that I'm going to have to probe for you.

Presenter15:51

The chief scientist thought that women should not be on the deck, essentially. And there were two women on the ship, women scientists, and we were told to go up somewhere out of the way, essentially, and write down observations about the weather, which was really useless. And all the men on the deck to fix the instrument and essentially launch them. And I decided, actually, no, I'm here to learn. So I'm going to go and fix some instrument and do my thing. And I did. And then the chief scientist came and criticized and said that we'll lose instruments because it's not tight enough or whatever. And it was not a good experience. So did that put you off? Is that why you didn't do it again? That's certainly why I didn't do it for a long time. Then after that, I started to do modeling, which is computer simulations of the ocean. And I love that. You now have what you describe as an ocean in your office. Absolutely. I have in my computer a full ocean of the carbon cycle with currents, with the biology, with the chemistry. And I can do as many experiments as I want with it. You played a decisive role in cracking the code of how oceans fit into the carbon cycle. Now, obviously, in terms that we can all understand.

Speaker 116:30

No.

Speaker 116:41

Yes, I love that.

Presenter17:04

What happened? How did you do it? At the beginning of the modeling of the carbon cycle, the community mostly focused on how much of the emissions of CO two that we put in the atmosphere is going to end up in the ocean. On an average year, it's about a quarter, so it's pretty big. So it's a service that the ocean does. I actually looked and focused at the carbon that is already in the ocean. So there's 50 times more carbon in the ocean than in the atmosphere. And if you destabilize the ocean, if you change the ocean currents, if you warm the ocean, if you change the ecosystem, this carbon is not going to stay in the ocean. So this is what I did in my research: I looked at how climate change is affecting the storage of carbon in the ocean. And this was quite novel at the time because the assumption then was that it wasn't going to move. So we had this stock in the ocean, that's it, we can forget about it, and the ocean will forever take more. And I showed that actually a problem, that carbon stored in the ocean is not there as solidly as we thought. So it can be released into the atmosphere and then presumably that can exacerbate climate change. That's right. The ocean carbon sink is still absorbing carbon, but the efficiency of it, the speed at which it absorbs the emissions, the percent of emissions it absorbs, that slows down if you start warming the ocean, if you start changing the ocean currents. We'll come back to that thought, but we've got to make some time for the music. This is disc number five. What are we going to hear and why have you chosen it? We have Proud Mary by Tina Turner. And this reflects my American years where there was lots of driving involved between the US and Canada. This is a music that you really listen when you have eight hours in the car.

Professor Corinne Le Quéré18:49

I'm in the city. What in the

Professor Corinne Le Quéré18:53

Night and day, and I never lost one bit of sleep War and never waits my little baby

Professor Corinne Le Quéré19:02

THAT

Professor Corinne Le Quéré19:04

Yeah.

Professor Corinne Le Quéré19:08

Rollin', rollin' on a wheel.

Professor Corinne Le Quéré19:12

Say we're rolling, rollin'.

Presenter19:20

Tina Turner and Proud Mary.

Presenter19:22

Corin LeCore, you started working with the University of East Anglia and the British Antarctic Survey in 2005 and you looked closely at the Southern Ocean, the waters surrounding Antarctica. Your first big scientific breakthrough came two years later. What exactly did you discover? I discovered with my collaborators that because the winds had increased, the uptake of carbon by the Southern Ocean wasn't as fast as we had expected, so it was leveling off. And that that was due to human activity? Exactly. That was due to that speed up of the winds, and that was related to the depletion of stratospheric ozone. So we have it's unrelated to climate change, but we have sent gases, Freons, the cooling gases to the atmosphere, depleted the stratospheric ozone, changed the ocean conditions for wind, and that had an effect on carbon dioxide. So this is disrupting the ability that that ocean has to be a carbon sink. Exactly, exactly. And we know that climate change also increases the winds in the Southern Ocean. So there is an effect that is there that we think also amplified by a changing climate. What was the reaction to your discovery and when you realized, how did you feel? It's one of those tensions in a scientist. I was really excited about the science because this was a big discovery that it took me four years to do this work, to write this paper. And at the same time, it was such bad news. And how do you deal with this? It really is really quite hard as a scientist, very worrisome. And this is about the time where I started to be a lot more vocal about climate change, to accept and seek discussions with the press, with policymakers, with all kinds of actors to have a voice essentially. Did it make you braver then? That you had found something that other people didn't know and that you had a duty to share it? Absolutely. I had a duty to go and share the findings of the science with people who ought to know.

Speaker 121:16

This is the

Presenter21:28

Climate science was and is still pretty male-dominated. Has that caused any problems for you during your career? On and off, especially 20 years ago when I started, there was this event where the opening ceremony of one IPCC authors meeting where the chair had asked the chapter lead to show a figure that represents the results of their chapter. And the chair was a woman, but they were all male, the other ones. And chapter 13 came and showed a picture of a women's swimsuit gets smaller and smaller and said, Well, this is the proof of climate change. And I felt really shocked because I was a single parent at the time. It was hard for me to go to meetings. You know, there was a cost arriving at the meeting. I already had worked really hard. And to have this sexist joke thrown in my face, and everybody laughed. And I had to say something. Oh, how did that go? Terrible. Well, I stood up at the end of the questions and I said, you know, I thought this was really totally inappropriate. And then the chair said, okay, let's break for a coffee. And we did. And during coffee, of course, I wanted to disappear. I was mortified by what I said. And then person after person, they were all men, all white men. Several of them came to me afterwards and said, Really, really thank you. I couldn't say it myself, but you were completely right. So I busted in emotions.

Presenter23:00

It's time for some music, Corin. What's next? So my next song is Der Rüle Rache Kourt in meine Herzen. So in English, Hell's Vengeance boils in my heart. So it's the main area in the magic flute. I lived in Germany for part of my life, and at some point I took my six-year-old daughter to an opera, the magic flute, and I was very anxious that she would not like it or be fidgety, but she stayed motionless for the three-hour opera, and that became her favorite song.

Speaker 124:24

Save for me.

Presenter24:36

Mozart's De Hohlerache, Kocht in meinem Herzen The Queen of the Night, Aria, from Mozart's Magic Flute, performed by Edita Gruberova, with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Bernard Heitink. Corin Le Corre, do you ever have your doubts about the work that you're doing?

Presenter24:54

No, I think that the work that I'm doing is important. I think that we are moving, that the global response is moving in the right direction. The problem is it's not fast enough, and I have frustrations and anxiety about that. But I never think that I should slow down or stop whatever. I think that really I just need to be out there and continue that will be with me all my life. You have said in the past, though, that every now and again you question yourself. I do. I mean, I'm a scientist and I worry about the science. And every few years I go back and think, okay, okay, have we got it right? Have we got it right? And I just go back and look at the evidence, look at the fundamental principle, gather data from the past, look at the latest report of the IPCC or latest scientific report. And every time, of course, it's the same conclusion. I mean, the climate is changing. It's caused by human emissions of greenhouse gases. And as long as we emit greenhouse gases, it's going to continue to warm. And what would you say to a climate change denier who says, go on then, convince me?

Presenter26:01

I don't want to. I don't want I'm not there to convince people of something. People have liberty of choice. I don't want to force things onto people. I have come to the conclusion that this is an extremely important problem. And I hope that people who spend the time to look at the problem come to the same conclusion. And this is really what is happening. And therefore, that's enough for me. And what about the climate activists who are taking extreme measures to get their point across? What's your opinion of them? I share their frustration. I'm angry with politicians that we're not moving fast enough is really clear. I think if we were moving faster, people would be much more on board. You have sympathy with their frustration. What do you think about the tactics they're using? I understand it, but no, I don't support these extreme actions. I think that everybody could play a role in tackling climate change that is productive. And I would like to see the energies focused on making those changes that we need to do across the board in our environments, schools, hospitals, and so on. I would like that.

Presenter27:14

I think you once brought along a prop to a meeting with David Cameron to make your case to him. What was it? We brought very old ice. That's when I was working at the British Antarctic Survey. 100,000-year-old ice in a thermos. And when you get it out of the thermos, because it's under pressure, this ice it pops like rice crispies. And so this is quite impressive. So we brought that to just show what it's like. What did you do with it afterwards? You can't have just chucked it out. No, I was really excited because of this thermos. And this was in London and I live in Norwich, so two hours away by train. So I took the Tharmos home. I was very careful not to open it so that the ice would remain. I called my husband. I said, get the kids together, get some gin and tonic, get some orange juice. And I got home with all the kids and I opened my atlas of the world's ocean and we drank the adults' gin and tonic with 100,000-year-old ice and the kids' orange juice with the little bubbles. How did it taste? It was very special. You know, you drank and sort of breathe in the 100,000-year-old air popping out of those bubbles. It was really special.

Speaker 127:44

Yeah.

Presenter28:33

It's time for your next track, Corin. What have you chosen? We got LDN by Lily Allen. And I picked this one because I love the UK. I came in the UK in 2005 and it was so welcoming as a country. It was welcoming to my daughter. And this song is really about the chaos sometimes that you see in the UK, but it's a lovely chaos.

Professor Corinne Le Quéré29:00

Sun is in the sky, oh high, oh why I don't wanna be anywhere else.

Professor Corinne Le Quéré29:05

When you look with your eyes, everything seems nice But if you look twice, you can see it's all lines There was a little old lady who was walking down the road She was struggling with bags from Tesco There were people from the city having lunch in the park I believe that is called Alfresco

Presenter29:25

London by Lily Allen. Corin LeCorre, as a climate scientist, do you feel an extra responsibility to live sustainably in day-to-day life? I do because people look at me all the time and I get asked all the time, what do I do? And I feel like, yes, it's normal. I'm a climate scientist. I should walk the talk. You must have to set limits though, because in the society that we live in as it is, none of us can be perfect. No, that's right. And I do a contribution and I also have a plan for myself, for my family to go towards carbon neutrality. And so I kind of know the steps because I know the field very well. But at the same time, I live my life. My daughter lives in New York. I go and to see her, I fly. And I have to because that's the option that I have today. It doesn't stop me from doing other things that I can do, that I can control, to make a contribution towards tackling climate change. So you said you have a plan for the family. What is it? And how far into it are you? Is this a kind of growing our own food, you know, yeah, that's yeah. I'm not quite vegetarian, but I mostly eat plant-based, and that was a tough one for me. But I got there. We have a solar panel, we have an electric car, I cycle to work. The plan in the long term is we need to tackle the gas heating. That's a big one. So that's going to come in the next few years. But my dream plan is to buy a piece of land and grow a forest. So this is going to come. I don't know when, but it will. And so that's because the forest will take up carbon. The forest will become my very own carbon sink. And this is what I work on in my research. And I would love to have one. When you said I have a plan, your face lit up.

Speaker 130:30

Yeah

Speaker 130:53

Yeah.

Speaker 131:09

So

Presenter31:10

Where will it be?

Presenter31:12

Well, it has to be somewhere in Norfolk, but I'll have to see. You have said in my lifetime, I believe, that we will stop this nonsense of environmental destruction. I will breathe clean air in the heart of our cities. Yeah, we need, as a global society, to become 100% sustainable. There is only one planet. We have a big and growing population. We have to work towards clean air, clean water, and I think we'll get there. I think it's always slow, it's always frustrating, but we are working towards improving the relationship with the environment. And I think it's coming. We have an international agreement, the Paris Agreement. There's a process behind that. And they don't always succeed, or sometimes they have succeeded in one bit and fail in another bit, but they come back. And I'm hopeful because I see the process continuing every year that policymakers have come to the table that has not failed. I feel it's a victory. And how are you feeling about life on the island? From an environmental point of view, I mean, the ocean, the sea will be clear, the air will be clean. Yeah, I think I might be your happiest castaway.

Presenter32:25

Especially with the ocean around all the island. I can continue my research. Of course you can. Okay, well, one more song before we send you there. One more piece of music. What's it gonna be? So that's a Bach Three Parts Invention by the the pianist Martin Stadtfeld.

Speaker 132:28

I can continue my

Presenter32:41

I started playing piano when I was in Germany, and this was my first real challenge because when you play, you start with the two parts invention. You have two hands, you can do it, but three parts, you're missing a hand. And I thought that the mental process of carrying these three voices in your head while playing music was really important and useful. And I actually carried this into my work, then started coordinating research of others and realized that you could do a lot more if you were a bit more coordinated.

Presenter34:16

Symphonia in B minor by JS Bach, played by Martin Stadtveldt. So, Corinne Le Coray, I'm going to send you away to the island. I'm giving you the Bible, the complete works of Shakespeare, and you can take one other book. What would you like?

Presenter34:30

The Atlas of the World's Oceans. So, is this the one you got out with the genotonics? Exactly, that's the one. Okay, is it is it pleasingly enormous? I'm imagining a gigantic atlas. Exactly, it is big, it has the deep sea bottom, it has the ocean currents, it's beautiful. Oh, kraken, it's yours. You can also have a luxury item. What would you like? Oh, an obvious one, a mask and a snorkel.

Speaker 134:39

I'm imagining a gigantic apple.

Presenter34:52

So I can continue my research. Absolutely. And finally, which one track of the eight that you've shared with us to day would you rush to save from the waves? Ah, La Vida Esson Carnaval, the Silia Cruz, that's the happy song.

Presenter35:05

Professor Corin Le Coray, thank you very much for letting us hear your Desert Island discs.

Presenter35:10

Thank you.

Presenter35:35

Hello. I hope you enjoyed my conversation with Corin. I'm sure she'll make some fascinating discoveries in the waters around the island. We've cast away fellow oceanographer Jacques Cousteau and other scientists including the physicists Professor Brian Green and Professor Carlo Ravelli. The singer Lily Allen, one of Corinne's music choices, is there too. You can find these episodes in our Desert Island Discs programme archive and through BBC Sounds. The studio manager for today's programme was Bob Nettles. The assistant producer was Christine Pavlovsky and the producer was Paula McGinley. Next time my guest will be the actor Leslie Manville. I do hope you'll join us.

Speaker 136:30

Are you confused about why your mortgage rate is going up, unsure of what causes inflation, or befuddled over what GDP stands for? I've got the perfect podcast for you.

Speaker 136:43

I'm Tim Harford and in my new Radio 4 podcast, Understand the Economy, I'm taking you back to basics. I'm going to explain all the complex financial terms you're hearing in the news as clearly as I can. Inflation, interest rates, growth, bonds, banks, I'll explain it all. Search for Understand the Economy, available now on BBC Sounds.