Claudia Rankine

Claudia Rankine0:01

BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, Podcasts.

Presenter0:05

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.

Presenter0:44

My castaway this week is the poet, essayist, and playwright Claudia Rankin. She was born in Jamaica and grew up in Kingston, New York. Her love of poetry dates back to her childhood, when she won a lollipop for reciting Emily Dickinson's Because I Could Not Stop for Death.

Presenter1:01

She's best known for her book Citizen, an American lyric, which won numerous awards in the US and the Forward Prize here in the UK. Through a blend of prose and poetry, and an essay about the tennis superstar Serena Williams, it chronicles the everyday acts of casual racism experienced by black people in America today. According to the New York Times, Citizen had achieved something that eludes much modern poetry, urgency. In 2016, she won a prestigious genius grant from the MacArthur Fellowship, which celebrates intellectual and artistic achievement. Today, she is professor of creative writing at New York University. She says, I write because I don't want to be complicit with my own erasure.

Presenter1:44

Claudia Rankin, welcome to Desert Island Day. Thank you for having me.

Claudia Rankine1:46

I don't think

Presenter1:48

It's such a pleasure. Now, Claudia, you've described your approach to writing as all in. I wonder what that feels like in the moment when you're actually doing it.

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It means that I forget that I have dinner reservations. People call up and they're like, are you coming?

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And I'm sitting over a piece of paper working on something. It's that kind of um strange moment where everything that's said to you, everything you see, somehow relates to what you're doing.

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You do spend a lot of time listening. I wonder where you hear your most inspiring ideas.

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In casual conversations, I love taking the bus. I sometimes when I'm in a place I'll take the bus to the last stop. Sometimes the bus will turn around and go back, but sometimes you have to get off and get on another bus and go back. But I'll just ride. And then you hear the most fantastic things like a father and daughter.

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And the daughter will say, I don't like

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brushing my hair, and the dad will say, Well, most people brush their hair, you know? And those little exchanges stay with you forever.

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And you you do prefer to call yourself an archivist rather than an activist. Can you tell me about that distinction? Well, I I think of activists as people who actually put themselves out in the streets. And I it takes a lot for me to leave my house.

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Really? I can't go out there. But I am really interested in in history and what has happened to lead us to this moment and the questions we should be asking both of the past and the present.

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It's time for your first disc, Claudia. What have you chosen?

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Lizzo's good as hell.

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For my birthday, my daughter got tickets to a Lizzo concert. And it's the first concert I've been to in years. I think the one before that was Joan Armor Treading or something. And it was nice to be able to go and listen to an artist that both of us, you know, she's my daughter's 20, that both of us feel as passionately about. Because she is, I think, the woman of tomorrow.

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Just so much.

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intelligence around why.

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and so much joy and potential for tomorrow.

Claudia Rankine4:10

I do my hair. Check my nails. Baby, how you?

Claudia Rankine4:16

Check my nails. Baby, how you doing?

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Baby, how you feeling?

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Woo girl, need to kick off your shoes. Gotta take a deep breath, time to focus on you. All the big fights, long nights that you've been through. I got a bottle of tequila, I've been saving for you. Buzz up and change.

Claudia Rankine4:37

The life, you can have it all, no sacrifice. I know we did you wrong, we can make it right.

Presenter4:42

Claudia Rankin, you were born in Kingston, Jamaica in 1963. Your parents emigrated to the US when you were about three and you stayed behind with an aunt. What comes back to you when you think about your early years there? The only real memory I have of those early seven years was going to school with my cousin Precious and her explaining to me that most people go to school.

Presenter5:09

And that was it. I I remember that and then I remember being on a plane to the United States. So tell me then about going to the US. By the time you were about seven, I think your parents had established themselves there and they were able to send for you. So they'd both got jobs in hospitals. Your father as an orderly and your mother as a nurse's assistant. What do you remember about the journey?

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It was American Airlines, and they gave you those wings that you pinned on your shirt. And the stewardess gave me a sweater. She said, You're going to need this. It was a white eyelid sweater, I remember that. And then I got here and

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My life as an American began. And it, the one thing I do remember is seeing a television for the first time.

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And I was perplexed as to where all the people lived. And I would walk around and look at the back of the T V and think, Are they in there, all the people you see when you turn on the T V?

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So the family was living in the Bronx. How well did your father settle into his new life, James, your father? I remember him being he has passed away, but I remember him being very politically engaged with issues of the Union and those kinds of um conversations. But he was very volatile.

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You know, now looking back, knowing what

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black people, black men have to deal with in the United States and certainly during the sixties, seventies. It's a volatile time. And when he came home, whatever rage he had

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in his workplace was brought into the house. Was he physically abusive? Was he violent? He was violent. And it was the kind of violence that you never knew was coming.

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You would say the wrong thing and and, you know, you'd be across the room, kind of. Were you frightened of him? You must have been. I was frightened. I it made me, even in school, very cautious. I went to Catholic schools and the nuns also were very violent, and so they

Presenter7:11

would hit you for forgetting your homework or for you know, so it was going from the home where that was happening into the classroom where that also was happening.

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Let's go to the music, Claudia. It's time for your second choice today. What are we going to hear?

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We're going to hear Stir It Up, which was a favorite of my mom.

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she you would come home from school and

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She would be dancing to this. Where would she dance? Where would it be playing? In the kitchen, you know, it would just be on. It would be turned off soon after we arrived. But clearly on her own she found Joanna.

Claudia Rankine7:50

Come on, David.

Presenter7:53

Uh

Claudia Rankine7:53

Come on, stand up.

Claudia Rankine8:06

Let's get along now, stand together

Claudia Rankine8:10

Since I've got you on my mind

Presenter8:15

Bob Marley and the Whalers and stir it up. So Claudia Rankin, let's talk about your mother, Lalith, then. How would you describe her? My mother is a forest. She's um, you know, she's now about to turn ninety. And and she always looks great. And really somebody who has your back.

Presenter8:37

And I know that when you were in your late twenties and about to get married, she broke some pretty shocking news to you. What happened? What did she say?

Presenter8:46

Well, it was odd because I was engaged to sort of my college sweetheart and by my late twenties I um we had decided to get married.

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And she said, you need to come and get your birth certificate.

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So I went to her home

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And she said on the birth certificate you'll see where it says father, there's nothing.

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It turns out she had been raped and I was a product.

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of that reape.

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Her gratitude to him.

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To my

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father was that he had agreed to marry her knowing she was pregnant.

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That's a lot to take in. So it was a lot. It was a lot. Do you remember your feelings in in that moment?

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There was something about being released from him that I wasn't biologically attached to that rage.

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And did she tell you anything about your biological father and and who he was? Well, that was the first thing I asked her. Who is this person? She gave a name, but the name came and went very quickly. And now if I ask her, she says she doesn't remember.

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So it's as if whatever happened in that conversation came out and then was locked up again.

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How do you read that? What do you make of it?

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Well, you know, I've had a lot of therapy in my life and I think um I understand it. She carries what she can bear. And it gave me much more compassion for my mother, I think. Um we became women who shared something.

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instead of a daughter who was critical of.

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Her inability to leave, I became a woman who was compassionate about her.

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Trauma

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I think it's time for some more music, Claudia, your third choice today. What are we going to hear next?

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Night Shift by the Commodores. This is a song that I first.

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Appreciated by seeing a film called Thirty Five Shots of Rum by Claire Denis. And it's a song that has shown up.

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In my work, a number of times, probably most recently.

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In just us, because it actually happened that in real life I was sitting next to a man on a plane.

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And he asked me what my favorite song was. And I said Nightship, and we both knew it. And we actually sang it together. Which is particularly interesting because the conversation was about the differences between being a white male and being a black woman. So it became this meeting ground.

Speaker 211:34

Uh

Presenter11:34

Stop.

Speaker 211:34

Yeah.

Speaker 311:37

What's going on?

Speaker 311:41

Say you will.

Speaker 211:42

Uh

Speaker 311:44

Sing your songs forevermore

Claudia Rankine11:50

Gonna be some sweets

Claudia Rankine11:53

Coming down.

Claudia Rankine11:55

Nice to meet you.

Claudia Rankine11:59

I'm the true

Speaker 211:59

You're singing brown

Presenter12:03

Oh, I bet you will try.

Presenter12:07

Night Shift by The Commodums. Claudia Rankin, your early education was at a Catholic school, as we've heard. You've said that the most freedom I had was in reading. I wonder what you were reading and and where it took you. I was reading um

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All of Fitzgerald, all of Hemingway.

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I would stand by the window when it was raining and think I was in a Hemingway Not

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And was reading also an escape from the stresses of home and school? Exactly. I think.

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If you had a book and you could tuck in

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No one would bother you. It was like having an extra room in a house where you could just go. So all of this imagination and appetite for learning, did your teachers notice it at school? Did they appreciate it in you? I got the grades, but not the recognition, no.

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I remember once, um, we had exams.

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And I had done quite well in the exams. I did, you know, I'm one of those people who manages to do okay in schools.

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I remember the woman in front of me was, or child in front of me, was a white girl, and she hadn't.

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achieved as much, but the teacher said to her, Oh, fantastic, you're great And then she came to me and she said, What a surprise, Claudia

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What a surprise, you've gotten top marks on this. And so, those kinds of moments when you just see the difference in the treatment.

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When did the poetry come in for you? In college. I took a class and Adrian Rich was on the syllabus and many of Rich's poems have to do with men talking to women.

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And I thought, these poems are good, but I could do better than this.

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And what about when you were even younger? Because you did win that lollipop when you were a little kid. And it was my mum. She was making me recite poems. And they had said i in third grade, go home and learn a poem and come back and

Claudia Rankine14:08

And you're right, it'll do it.

Presenter14:18

you know, the kids came back and they recited Cat in a Hat or whatever, and then I got up and I was like, um and my mom had made me stand in the living room and memorize this thing and say it to her. So I did it. I got up and I

Presenter14:33

Recited this Emily Dickinson poem, Because I Could Not Stop for Death, Death Kindly Stopped for Me. The carriage held but just ourselves and immortality. And where would the Dickinson come from for your mum, do you think? Was that a passion of hers? I think from her own schooling. I think in Jamaica there's a lot of recitation that happens. And she, just a few Christmases ago, she usually spends Christmas with my husband and I and our daughter. And she started reciting all of these poems by Canti Collin.

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Um Langston Ewes and I had not known she had them in her.

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I think it's time for your next track, Claudia Rankin. Number four, what are we going to hear next?

Presenter15:18

More Than This by Roxy Music. I feel like this is a little, I shouldn't say this, but I love this because it's so sexy. You should tell me that. It's front and center in the sound. It's so slinky. It's so slinky.

Claudia Rankine15:31

She's definitely

Claudia Rankine15:34

The sentence

Presenter15:38

When did it come into your life? Probably in my twenties.

Presenter15:41

You know, when the boyfriend was over

Claudia Rankine15:50

There was no way alone for the return.

Claudia Rankine15:57

You can say that the glowing

Claudia Rankine16:01

As true he had some way.

Claudia Rankine16:06

Oh, for me learning

Claudia Rankine16:09

Uh

Speaker 316:09

My the sea of the sky

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Uh

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Uh

Speaker 316:13

There's no way.

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Checklist.

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Roxy Music and more than this. Claudia Rankin, in the early 90s, you went to Columbia University in New York and you were studying for a master's in poetry there. Your time there led to the publication of your first book, Nothing in Nature is Private. The call from the publisher, however, took you by surprise, I think. What exactly happened? At Columbia, you have to hand in a thesis. And when I was doing that, there was a woman in the copy room and she said, oh, I'm...

Presenter16:49

going to make a second copy and send this to this prize. You should do it too. Very generous of her. And so I did. But she had the address and she knew everything and so she sort of addressed it and it went off.

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And then in the middle of the summer I was thinking, Oh God, now I was thinking, Okay, you've gotta figure out if you're gonna go to law school, what are you gonna do with yourself? And the phone rang and these people said, Is this Claudia Rankin? You've won the Cleveland Poetry Prize. And I said, No

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It's not me because I haven't applied for any prizes. And they said, well, we have your manuscript. And I said, that can't be. How did you get it? And they said, you sent it.

Presenter17:35

Did did the penny drop then? Yeah. And then it slowly began to come back to me. I'm like, oh. And that they published it and they also offered me a job. So that started my teaching career.

Speaker 317:35

The penny drop.

Presenter17:47

So you started teaching at a university in Cleveland, and while you were there you met your now husband, the photographer and filmmaker John Lucas. As an interracial couple, did you ever experience any hostility?

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Not so much hostility, just

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And this kind of thing still happens. It's a kind of invisibility.

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And it happens in restaurants where he'll come in and they'll seat him and then they'll say to me,

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How can we help you?

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And I think you've also had the more frightening experience of being pulled over in your car.

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There are many, but the one that comes to mind

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is being stopped by the police and they asked us they asked him how he knew me.

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I wasn't driving, so it it's irrelevant. There was no reason to pull us over, because we weren't speeding.

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But the police came on both sides of the car and I it was quite intimidating actually.

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They didn't speak to me, but they said to him, How do you know her?

Presenter18:56

I don't know if they thought I was, you know, he had picked me up off the side of the road or something.

Claudia Rankine18:56

I don't

Presenter19:03

And and what did he say? What did you say? How did you deal with that?

Presenter19:07

He said I was his wife, you know, and they didn't um push further than that, but

Claudia Rankine19:07

He said I was

Claudia Rankine19:09

You know, and

Presenter19:14

They were ready.

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For something. It's that sense you describe of not being immediately understood as a unit of two. Do you think that can put a strain on the relationship? I think it puts a strain if the other person, whoever they are, refuses to acknowledge what's happening. John and I have always been.

Presenter19:36

in complete recognition of the dynamics going around us. And often I'm the one who says, let it go, because he is on it. So that, I think, has allowed us not to carry it further than it needs to be carried.

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Let's have some more music, Claudia. It's your fifth choice today. What have you gone for, and why?

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Can't take my eyes off you. That was the song by Lauren Hill that we played at our wedding.

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And um we had a wedding in New York and then we

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For some reason John wanted to get married again.

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In um Wales. So we went to Wales with some friends and played it on the beach. Harleck Wales. And you know, we stayed in a hotel.

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Everybody must have been 90, so all the food was mashed.

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Everything, everything was mashed. But the music was fantastic. But the music on the beach, in the rain, in the wind, was fantastic. And why whales? I don't know, and he doesn't know.

Speaker 220:37

But that's your

Presenter20:46

But he wanted to do it, so we did it.

Claudia Rankine20:50

You're just too good to be true Can't take my eyes off of you You be like heaven to touch

Claudia Rankine20:58

I wanna hold you so much And long last love hasn't rot And I thank God I'm alive You're just too good to be true Can't take my eyes off of you But in the way that I stare There's nothing else to compare The sight of you

Presenter21:18

I can't take my eyes off you. I Love You Baby by Lauren Hill. Claudia Rankin in 2014, your much lauded book Citizen came out. So it combines short stories about the everyday injustices experienced by people of colour within poems and then tells the stories of black men who've died during confrontations with the police. I wonder about that idea of placing those very small moments alongside the bigger stories and why that's important. Can you explain that to us?

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It's one thing to tell a single story, but another thing to understand that if a thing happens again and again and again and again.

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That w

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The management of that will have a cost.

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the domestic, the small moments, what people call the paper cuts, that become a kind of weathering that wears you down. You have two black people in the room and

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Your colleagues call you by the other person's name.

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They can't quite figure it out.

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You have people

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And this has happened to me.

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telling you that the only reason you got into school was because of affirmative action.

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or that you have their job.

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If it weren't for you, then they would have gotten the job, but they had to hire a person of color. You know, things like this.

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Though y you clearly

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Are there out of merit? And so these kinds of things, even though they get laughed off or are met with silence or.

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You go home and you think about them, you think about that person, you know that the next day you have to encounter that person, and you want to keep your job and you want to so you you swallow so much. And then in the news somebody has been killed by the police because they're black, and so you see how it amplifies.

Presenter23:17

There's also an essay about Serena Williams, who I know you're a huge fan of. What made you want to include her story? I thought I want to have an example where

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The reader can look it up for themselves.

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where they can go back

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and watch a match or watch

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An interview or watch something and see that I am just reporting what was said.

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Her body was being criticized, her manners were being criticized, her clothing, everything. And then she would win.

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Even as these things were happening, she would win. And I was convinced that the reason she would win is because she responded. So she wasn't holding it in. Claudia Rankin, it's time to make some room for the music. You're sixth disc today. What are we going to hear?

Presenter24:13

KISS by Prince and the Revolution. During college we used to have Prince parties, I have to tell you. He he was a symbol of freedom. You know, people say you choose between Michael Jackson and Prince, but there is no choice. It was Prince all the way.

Claudia Rankine24:30

Uh

Presenter24:30

Just leave it.

Claudia Rankine24:31

Uh

Presenter24:31

Yeah. Me

Claudia Rankine24:33

Yeah.

Claudia Rankine24:34

I'm gonna show you

Claudia Rankine24:36

Oh no.

Presenter24:37

Uh

Claudia Rankine24:37

Uh

Presenter24:38

Don't have to be rich

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Be my old girl, you don't have to be cool.

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Boomer ain't no particular sign no more compatible with I just want your little extra time and your

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Cheers.

Presenter25:02

Prince and the Revolution with Kiss. Claudia Rankin, you call your most recent work, Just Us, a series of conversations about whiteness, and you've said that unlike most of your writing, it's very subjective. Why did you want to focus on your own experiences in that way?

Presenter25:18

The people I don't talk to, even though I'm married to a white guy, I don't really talk to white men. I have lots of white female friends, but I go to their house and their husband and they're like, Hi, Claudia and then they go upstairs.

Claudia Rankine25:30

Upstairs.

Presenter25:32

And so I thought I would, I would, I spent a lot of time in airports and on airplanes, and those are the liminal spaces where you just pass time. And so why not use that time to find out what they're thinking? Can you give me an example of a constructive interaction? A constructive interaction. Well, I was sitting next to a guy, and he's the guy actually who I sang Nightship with. And we were talking about racial dynamics. He's the head of a company, a CEO of a company. And he said to me that...

Presenter26:08

They were doing

Presenter26:10

Diversity work, but he himself didn't see color, didn't see race. And it was one of those ones where I was like, oh no.

Presenter26:20

Why did you say that? Did you call it out? I did. I I how did it go? I said, Ain't I a black woman? Ain't you a white man?'Cause I was thinking, you're going to go home and you're going to say to your wife, I had a nice conversation with a black woman.

Claudia Rankine26:24

Yeah.

Presenter26:33

You're not going to say I had a nice conversation with a woman.

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And he was just like

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You got me.

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And so then we you know, and I was glad for myself that I hadn't backed down just because I liked him. And he didn't get defensive.

Presenter26:50

You quote a very powerful example in the book of how, in your words, the world turns. So I think it was when you were at the first-class counter waiting to board a plane.

Presenter26:59

What happened?

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I was going up to check in, and a woman comes running out from behind the counter, and she says to me, This is the first cl

Presenter27:13

You want to go down there. And I say to her, Look, I can read. And then she still says, Let me see your ticket. She then sends me to the counter. So I'm cutting the line now because there's a lot, you know, a line of like 10 people. And they're all white and they're all laughing because they are seeing what's happening as well. And then I get on the plane and I see three stewardess and they are talking and looking over at me. And I am exasperated at this point. And I think, what is it now?

Presenter27:45

And finally one of them comes over to me and says, Are you the poet?

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And she's talking back to the other two, saying, I love her work.

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So you never know which direction these things are going.

Presenter28:01

Do you ever come across people who say you've written enough about this? You know, when are you going to move on to something else?

Claudia Rankine28:05

You know what?

Presenter28:08

That happens quite often, actually. People are like, Aren't I I'm tired of

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And I say to them

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You know, when the system changes, then we'll stop talking about it.

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It's time to go to the music, Claudia. Disc number seven, what have you got for us?

Presenter28:25

John Crowltrain's favorite things. And I just

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Love that Coltrane is able to pull it into a kind of jazz blues.

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black sensibility, where it goes from

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a kind of denial of its initial sadnesses.

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of Nazism into

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A song of almost morning.

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My Favorite Things Performed by John Coltrane.

Presenter29:58

Claudia Rankin, in twenty twelve you were diagnosed with breast cancer. You're fully recovered now, but did the experience change your attitude to your work and what you wanted to say?

Presenter30:10

Having cancer.

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was the moment that I decided.

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I'm gonna just do what I wanna do.

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It's a sense of freedom. It's not about I think I'm going to die tomorrow. It's I'm going to live today, which is a different thing.

Presenter30:30

The subject matter of your writing often involves difficult conversations, you know, challenging territory. Do you ever feel ground down by what you're writing about, particularly when it comes to describing th those structures that you were discussing? And if so, what takes you out of yourself? There's some writers who, when they're working, they lock away.

Presenter30:52

But I'm not that person. You know, my husband would come in and say, look at this thing on TikTok.

Presenter30:58

And it'll make you smile for a minute. That's a difference since the cancer, I think. I I definitely

Claudia Rankine30:59

Men

Presenter31:05

Sort of in a swivel chair. I'm like, I'll turn to that.

Presenter31:10

Give me ten minutes. I'll take the world. You know, it's fun.

Presenter31:16

You wrote once, Claudia, I'm really interested in what it is to be human. We're all struggling to make a life. Looking back at yours as we have been to day, your life so far, how satisfied do you feel?

Presenter31:29

I have to say I am pleased with how I've lived my life.

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And

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who I've supported in my life.

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What I've written, who I've loved.

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So, you know, knock on wood.

Presenter31:43

It's been a good one.

Presenter31:46

And I'm about to send you off to the islands. How are you feeling about it? Do you like your own company?

Presenter31:51

I do, actually.

Presenter31:54

I like my own company, but I love visitors. So, what's going to happen? What's going to happen? Visitors-wise, not a lot.

Claudia Rankine31:56

So what's gonna happen?

Speaker 332:00

This is

Presenter32:02

Well, we're going to allow you one more track before we send you away, Claudia. What's going to be your final choice today?

Presenter32:09

The Rhythm of the Night by Corona. It's a song I first heard in another Claire Denis film called Beau Trevais.

Presenter32:18

It's kind of actually a man on an island by himself. He's he's dancing and he dances the film out after behaving very badly throughout the film.

Presenter32:30

I'm very he's been very human in his jealousies and

Presenter32:35

all kinds of things, but it's a really a stunning moment of

Presenter32:39

Confronting one's aloneness. This is the rhythm of the night.

Presenter32:44

The night

Presenter32:46

Uh yeah yeah yeah

Presenter32:48

The rhythm of the knife

Presenter32:50

This is the rhythm of my life

Presenter32:53

My life

Presenter32:55

Oh yeah.

Presenter32:58

The rhythm of my life

Presenter33:12

The Rhythm of the Night Corona

Presenter33:15

So, Claudia Rankin, 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 will it be?

Presenter33:24

I'm going to take Faulkner's as I lay dying.

Presenter33:28

Partly because it's a book made up of sections that are short but complete in and of themselves. So you can pretend that you have 10 books.

Presenter33:37

But you don't have to read a long time to get to the end of each one.

Presenter33:42

And they're all different characters and really beautifully written. And what about a luxury item?

Presenter33:49

I don't know how or where I'll plug it in, but I think I would like a television so I could watch some tennis. Maybe it could be.

Claudia Rankine33:55

Maybe

Presenter33:57

In the future, the television that works in the future without a plug.

Presenter34:02

We can do a solar powered television. There we go. We can preload it with with tennis tournaments past. Yes. We can't give you a communication device. That would you know in any way keep you in touch with the world, but we can certainly give you plenty of tennis topics.

Claudia Rankine34:04

There we go.

Claudia Rankine34:07

Tennis

Claudia Rankine34:12

You know what anyway

Claudia Rankine34:17

Yeah.

Presenter34:21

I'd be good.

Presenter34:22

All archive. It's yours.

Presenter34:25

And finally, which one track of the eight that you've shared with us today would you rush to save from the waves if you had to?

Presenter34:32

I think I might need propping up, so I think it'll be

Presenter34:35

Lizzo's good as hell.

Presenter34:37

Claudia Rankin, thank you very much for letting us hear your desert island discs. Thank you.

Presenter35:22

Hello, I hope you enjoyed my conversation with Claudia. We'll leave her watching her favourite tennis moments on her solar-powered television. We've cast away many poets including Lem Sissé, Gillian Clark and Ian Macmillan. You can find these episodes in our Desert Island Discs programme archive and through BBC Sounds. The studio manager for today's programme was Michael Millem. The assistant producer was Christine Pavlovsky and the producer was Paula McGinley.

Speaker 336:08

I'm John Sudworth, and this is the story of my quest to ask a question. No interviewer, parental.

Speaker 336:15

You don't you have no right to tell me not to ask questions.

Speaker 336:19

It's one that's become embroiled in the fractious and fevered politics of our times.

Speaker 236:24

It's very dangerous to stir up suspicion, rumors. It's not racist at all, no, not at all. It comes from China.

Speaker 336:32

But it's a question that matters. Where did COVID come from?

Speaker 336:38

Fever The Hunt for Covid's Origin from BBC Radio 4

Speaker 336:43

Listen and subscribe on BBC Sounds.