Clive Oppenheimer

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.

Presenter0:44

My castaway this week is the volcanologist Clive Oppenheimer. He has been professor of volcanology at the University of Cambridge for some 30 years, though you're as likely to find him out in the field as you are in the lecture hall. He's visited some of the world's most mysterious and dangerous places, studying over a hundred volcanoes, though Antarctic ice and machine gun toting rebels in Ethiopia have sometimes been as much of a risk as errant lava flow. He was born in London, where his lifelong love of geology was sparked by childhood visits to what is now the Natural History Museum.

Presenter1:18

Many of us view volcanoes as purely destructive, but his research, books and films, two of which were made with his friend Werner Herzog, aim to help us see volcanoes as a vital part of the evolution of Earth and mankind. He says, Volcanoes make us aware, not just to feel and sympathize with the story of humankind, but to draw us all into the bigger mysteries of the soul and the cosmos, where something beyond what we know.

Presenter1:44

Clive Oppenheimer, welcome to Desert Island Discs.

Clive Oppenheimer1:47

Thank you.

Presenter1:48

Clive, you've been described as an ambassador for volcanoes. Now they're dangerous, mysterious, exciting. I think it's hard to imagine a more dramatic environment. Is there something addictive about them?

Clive Oppenheimer2:00

I think there is. I mean, for me, there is. I've spent my whole life almost looking into them, but I think it's not for everyone. I mean, I've been with people who've been absolutely freaked out by the multi-sensory experience that you get near an active volcano. I mean, it really is assailing everything. The sight of the lava lake roiling in the bottom of the crater, the gases rolling out, stinging your eyes, and you can taste them at the back of your throat. The smell of sulphur, like a struck match. These gases are very acid, so your eyes are streaming. You can hear the detonations and pistol shot-like sounds, or the roar of a jet engine. And maybe you'll even feel the vibrations of the ground through your feet, or these sounds resonating in your chest.

Presenter2:43

I mean it's an alien environment almost the way you're describing it but there's this interesting duality because you also write and talk about volcanoes in very poetic almost human terms and there's this idea that you know we are we are made of the stuff of volcanoes we have this deep connection to them. You say Carl Sagan observed that we're made of star stuff but it was actually volcanic activity that shaped those elements into us.

Clive Oppenheimer3:08

That's right. I measure volcanic gases and one of the the things I noticed is if you look at the composition of gases, it's not that dissimilar to the composition of a human. They've got a bit more sulphur than we have. We're ultimately made of the breath of volcanoes that's been cycled countless times through the earth through the action of plate tectonics and volcanism.

Presenter3:29

Volcanoes play a huge part in the lives of millions of people. Most recently, we've seen evacuations and disruption in Iceland following eruptions there. Was this latest activity expected?

Clive Oppenheimer3:41

It was. I mean not necessarily the precise timing and location, but what we can see geologically is when that peninsula has been active in the past, it's been active for two, three, four, five centuries. So we might be looking at

Presenter3:56

This is a big change then potentially.

Clive Oppenheimer3:58

Yes, I think it will change the picture of risk because this is in a region quite close to all of this infrastructure, the airport, a power station, the town of Glindovik. It poses different hazards to some of the eruptions in more remote parts of Iceland.

Presenter4:13

To what extent can you preempt as volcanologists what's going to happen? How predictable is this kind of event?

Clive Oppenheimer4:22

Somewhere between forecasting the weather and forecasting an earthquake. There are a lot of sensible signs.

Presenter4:27

Okay.

Clive Oppenheimer4:28

The fuel of an eruption is magma, molten rock, and that's typically many kilometres below the Earth's surface. And to erupt, that has to come up to the surface. And in doing so, it's going to crack apart the rocks that are already there, and that will make earthquakes. It lifts up the ground. We can detect that from space or with GPS instruments. And gases will leak out that we can measure as well.

Presenter4:51

We're going to talk about your work, but of course you're going to share your discs with us today. And I know that for you, music is a very important part of your life. You're a keyboard player. Have you got synthesizers at home?

Clive Oppenheimer5:01

I do. I've got some from when I was a teenager and I've got some newer ones and uh I don't get so much time to play them now, but it's yeah, a big part of my life.

Presenter5:08

Let's dive in. What's your first choice today, Clive?

Clive Oppenheimer5:11

It's Blue Rondo Alaturk by the Dave Brubeck Quartet. And this was one part of my mother's collection. So I get my love of music and words, I think, from my mother. She had quite an eclectic collection. She had old 78s, she had musicals, she had Gilbert and Sullivan. And she had this, this one of the jazz greats, Blue Rondeu Allaturk. And I think I loved its rhythmic qualities, its changes, and just the sheer virtuosity that you hear in jazz.

Presenter6:37

Dave Brubeck, Blue Rondo Alaturk from your Mum Sue's record collection, Clive Oppenheimer. So I know that you've said about your mum that she gave you the gift of resilience and from what I've heard about her, it sounds like she had plenty of that herself. Tell me a little bit about her.

Clive Oppenheimer6:52

Well, in many ways, I mean, both my parents are mysteries. They were quite old when I was born and had lived whole lives, which I only know smattering of. She left school at fourteen. She married young. She had her first daughter, my half sister, Wendy, during the war.

Presenter7:09

She's a London girl, so she was in in for the Blitz, she was here.

Clive Oppenheimer7:11

She was yeah, I think she was moved out of London for a bit and her husband was in the Royal Air Force, navigator in Lancasters. He was killed after the war while still at the Royal Air Force in an air crash. She met my father in the late fifties. They had a daughter who was born a couple of years before me, who died very young. She never talked about these things, but she had a difficult life and was very, very resilient and imparted that to me.

Presenter7:39

Am I right in thinking that she went back to college in later life?

Clive Oppenheimer7:42

She did, she did. She left school very young and she went to the Open University, did a foundation degree and then enrolled at Hatfield Polytechnic, as it then was, to read history with English. In her mid-sixties she graduated and I was super proud of her. And even more so, I studied at the Open University myself for a PhD and I taught the kinds of students like my mother in later life and then I really came to understand how

Presenter8:02

For P.

Clive Oppenheimer8:09

Much of a challenge it would have been for her to get up to speed with all this learning so late in life.

Presenter8:16

I want to get to the next disc, if that's all right with you, Clive. It's your second choice today. What are we going to hear and why?

Clive Oppenheimer8:22

This takes me to the area of of Sussex around Hastings, where we used to go on holiday every summer in a village called Fairlight.

Presenter8:32

And would this be with your much older sisters and and their children?

Clive Oppenheimer8:36

Yes, and especially my sister Wendy has two boys and they're about my age. So I kind of grew up between generations with these half-siblings. In 1976, it was the heat wave. We were down there and the Montreal Olympics was on and we were running around the garden in the heat competing for quality street medals. Height of disco and this track, Diana Ross Love Hangover, I think was big in the charts. Yeah, it's a great track and I'll be dancing and singing along to it on the island.

Speaker 29:09

Think about it all

Speaker 29:13

Level 19 on the

Speaker 29:15

Cause I love you.

Speaker 29:22

The sweetest hangover

Speaker 29:25

I don't wanna get old.

Speaker 29:28

Sweetest hangover

Presenter9:41

Diana Ross and the Love Hangover. So Clive Oppenheimer, your parents met each other a little bit later in life and they each had these huge stories behind them by that time. So your mother, a widow who'd come through the Blitz and it was your father, John, his third marriage, I think, when he married your mum. He'd escaped to Germany in the 30s. He was in his 50s when you were born. So how much do you actually know about his story, his past?

Clive Oppenheimer10:07

Not a great deal. His father was an artist and was already working in London, had a studio in London. He was looked to for painting people in high society, politicians. Einstein sat for him in 1931, I think. That's the closest I get to an atomic physicist, by the way. Don't ask about Robert Hoffman.

Presenter10:24

This by the way, don't ask about Robert. That's where the science comes in. So no, no, no connection to the other Oppenheimer.

Clive Oppenheimer10:30

No, no.

Presenter10:31

What about your father? What did he do for a living?

Clive Oppenheimer10:33

He settled in South Africa for a bit, worked on the stock exchange, worked in a sausage factory, came back to London, and he ended up in advertising at a press that printed these huge posters for hoardings. He wasn't an easy man at all. He'd been displaced, his his education had been disrupted. I think he'd had his nose broken by some Hitler youth before leaving. And he was very jealous of my half sisters, my mother's daughters, even though he also had three daughters.

Presenter11:06

So he was controlling he wanted your mum to himself.

Clive Oppenheimer11:08

Yes, and he made their lives quite miserable, and ev eventually my my mum left him.

Presenter11:14

Were you scared of him?

Clive Oppenheimer11:17

I don't think I really knew to be scared or anything. You as as a child you just roll with it. He he was very not threatening to me, but he was very threatening to people that had helped my mum, for example, supported her when she left him. I mean, I I soaked it up, but I didn't really know how to process it.

Presenter11:22

Uh

Clive Oppenheimer11:36

He he was very different to different people outside the family. People found him eccentric and funny and charming.

Presenter11:43

Okay.

Clive Oppenheimer11:44

An erudite And he was he was something different in in the family.

Presenter11:48

People often say that children end up as a version of or a reaction to their parents and I wonder if, you know, that's the case for your relationship with your father a little bit.

Clive Oppenheimer11:57

I think I'd see myself as an a aversion to it, yes. I found him to be very hypocritical. I mean, we're all hypocrites, but it's a quality I try to, I hope, I haven't got. He also couldn't really control himself. He hoarded, he had lots and lots of lawnmowers. He was living in a flat in London, and they were, you know, in a warehouse somewhere. And he ate a lot and couldn't control that. And I think these are all things he couldn't really control spending money. My mum set the opposite example of being frugal, of being independent, of being resilient and resourceful.

Presenter12:09

Uh

Speaker 212:09

Hmm.

Presenter12:34

And it sounds like she managed to hold on to her sense of fun and play, which is remarkable really, considering what she was going through.

Clive Oppenheimer12:40

She did. In the end, she she had Parkinson's and went downhill slowly but over a period of time. And it was very sad to see her lose her independence. Particular for example, she she was probably one of the first women to learn to drive, and that gave her an independence that she really, really valued.

Presenter12:58

She sounds like a wonderful woman. It's time for your next piece of music, Clive Oppenheimer, disc number three. I think we're going to tap into your love of keyboards here.

Clive Oppenheimer13:07

We are. So this was a turning point for me in life. Probably would have been about fourteen, listening to the radio late at night and it they played Kraftwerk. And I immediately went out to try and buy the album, but I didn't realize Kraftwerk was a German word beginning with a K, so I struggled to find it, but anyway, I tracked it down.

Clive Oppenheimer13:26

It chimed with me immediately and before long I had some synthesizers and I was playing uh with my nephews Spike and Brett. Uh we had our our own little ensemble. What were you called? Well, I think we called ourselves the Innuendos. Uh no we didn't. I d I can't remember what we called ourselves. This is the Aardvarks.

Presenter13:40

No, we didn't.

Presenter13:43

This is the art farm. I'm spoken like a man who's been in a few bands. That's the sense I'm getting here.

Clive Oppenheimer13:48

A few. Public Enema was the low point because it really described the effect we had on the audience.

Presenter13:50

Into that because it

Clive Oppenheimer13:54

This is Kraftwerk's Autobahn. I love it, and it's quite a long track, so it'll be good on the island. I get my value.

Presenter14:36

Kraftwerk, Autobahn, nineteen seventy four.

Presenter14:39

Clive Oppenheimer, your love of words is obvious to anyone who's read your work, and I think that began at quite an early age too.

Clive Oppenheimer14:47

Yeah, very much. And I think again that came with Mother's Milk. She loved words, she loved language. We played Scrabble and Boggle, you know, on a daily basis, probably almost. I spent my teens playing music and writing bad poetry and taking photographs. I mean, I knew at this stage I was going to go into geology and science, but I loved the humanities as well. And I think it's one of the things that we don't really value enough in society just actually how interdisciplinary we could be in linking together physics with English or maths with history because all these things interconnect in a way.

Presenter15:16

And link

Presenter15:23

So tell me about that love of geology then. How did it actually start for you?

Clive Oppenheimer15:27

That began in the Geological Museum in London, which I dunno, I must have visited around 8, 9, 10. It's part of the Natural History Museum now. I was just in awe at the the wonder of these gems and minerals, huge opals, big gold nuggets. There was a radioactive mineral with a Geiger counter clicking away. And I think just the the aesthetics of these specimens really captivated me.

Presenter15:54

So after you finished school, you took a year out before university and spent some time travelling. You went to Indonesia looking at active volcanoes. So I think you've said that was where you discovered their immense mystique, their mystery. What was it that captured you?

Clive Oppenheimer16:09

These were all the first volcanoes I ever saw, and some of them were quite active and steaming and rumbling, but also there were temples built on their sides and people venerating them. I saw both sides of what a volcano is. It's a natural wonder, but it's also part of a human ecosystem.

Presenter16:28

Clive, we're going to take a moment for your next disc. It's your fourth choice today. What have you gone for?

Clive Oppenheimer16:33

This is the first gig I went to when I was maybe just turned 15 or so, and it was at the Electric Ballroom in Camden Town, and maybe one of the first shows that this band had played. It's the B52s. And none of my friends wanted to go. I went along, and of course, you know, your first gig, it's unforgettable. It was so exciting, the sound. And this particular track turned out to be quite prophetic for me. It's lava.

Speaker 217:05

I come inside me.

Speaker 217:09

I love a lava bomb, knock you in the head, knock you in the head, kick you in the bed I love a bomb

Presenter17:29

The B52s and Lava. Clive, you said you couldn't get anyone to go to the gig with you, but I happened to know that your mum was a B52s fan.

Clive Oppenheimer17:36

Ah, she was. Well, she didn't have a lot of choice, to be honest. I mean, I I played a lot of loud music.

Presenter17:40

Loud music.

Presenter17:42

So the two of you studied at Open University. As you mentioned, you did your PhD at the Open University, and you actually had the chance to do some field work on Stromboli in Italy. I need to hear about your time there dodging lava bombs because it sounds extremely intense.

Clive Oppenheimer17:57

Yes. The idea was to to measure temperatures to see how well we could measure them from space. So I had to measure them on the ground. And that involved going up to the crater of Stromboli, leaning over with a little infrared thermometer, like the kind of thing you'd put in your ear, but a sort of long range version, and measuring the temperature of the lava in these vents about fifty meters away.

Presenter18:12

Yeah.

Speaker 218:13

Okay.

Clive Oppenheimer18:17

They were exploding. This was exploding every 10 minutes or so, and the projectiles, lava bombs, were flying out. They're so molten when they hit the ground, they splatter. And we call them cowpack lava because that's what they look like on the ground. And on one occasion, one of these bombs landed very close. I went to her, I thought, I'll have that. It turns out they're very, very hot.

Presenter18:37

So did you touch it?

Clive Oppenheimer18:38

I did, yes. It was a steep learning curve.

Presenter18:41

And what about your attitude to risk? Because volcanology is a science that has a considerable amount of risk attached, and plenty of people unfortunately have died studying volcanoes. How much care do you have to take?

Clive Oppenheimer18:53

Well, a great deal. And of course, this was driven home to me when I was a PhD student. My own head of department was killed on a volcano in Colombia in the early 90s, Jeff Brown. That was a big deal in the community, which led to quite a lot of scrutiny of how important is it for us to get these measurements. We're obviously putting ourselves in harm's way. So yes, we're much, I think, much more careful and rigorous.

Speaker 219:07

Check.

Presenter19:19

Clive, beyond our understanding of geology, people are increasingly looking at volcanic activity through the prism of climate change and environmental science. Can you tell us a little bit more about the role that volcanoes play in that and how they intersect? Because it's not widely understood, I don't think.

Clive Oppenheimer19:36

Volcanoes have a very important role in climate and I would say in the pre-industrial times they're probably the most important factor in climate change. And the main way they do it is a large explosive eruption can put a lot of sulphur gas in the stratosphere and this will oxidize to make tiny little particles that reflect a bit of sunlight back into space. So there's a cooling effect at the surface that can affect crops and pasture around the world.

Presenter20:05

Yeah.

Clive Oppenheimer20:05

And that can lead to a cooling of of a few years.

Presenter20:08

But there's no way to recreate that kind of cooling effect with the particles, the sulphur particles, to bring temperatures down.

Clive Oppenheimer20:16

It's one of the ideas to combat warming is basically to simulate volcanic eruptions.

Presenter20:21

Okay.

Clive Oppenheimer20:21

And put dust into the stratosphere.

Presenter20:24

What do you think of it?

Clive Oppenheimer20:24

What do you think?

Clive Oppenheimer20:26

Well, I don't think it's a good idea. It will have other less desirable consequences. And it won't stop things like acidification of the oceans and deaths of corals. It can lead to deficits in rainfall in very important grain baskets of the world. For example, the Indian monsoon, the East Asian monsoon, could be affected.

Presenter20:46

It's time to take a break and go to the music club, your fifth choice today. What are we going to hear and why?

Clive Oppenheimer20:51

This is another game changer. This is going back to PhD days. It's a track by the Pixies. And it's one of those tracks when I first heard it, I just instantly keyed into this and I thought.

Clive Oppenheimer21:03

That's good and the Pixies changed everything for me and this is debaser.

Speaker 221:08

I want you to know Slashing up my mouth, I want you to know. Girl, it's so groovy, I want you to know. Don't know about you, but I am wound, shed, I'm a loser. I am wondering, share, and the loser, I am moon, shed, and a loser. I am wound, shed, and the loser. Wanna grow up to be

Speaker 221:37

Thanks, sir.

Presenter21:40

Pixies and Debasa. Clive Oppenheimer, you've spent quite a bit of time in North Korea working on the Mount Pektu volcano. How did the team on the ground there respond to your visit? I think for some of the scientists you were the first person from outside the country that they'd ever worked with.

Clive Oppenheimer21:56

Yes, I mean it's of course very isolated, but it has scientists with a great thirst for knowledge who know that they're disconnected from the international conference circuit and they don't get the journals. And they had some very antiquated bits of apparatus for measuring gas emissions, but they were very subject to power cuts, so there'd be big data gaps in their seismic records. So they were very excited. When I first went in 2011, they were very excited to share

Presenter22:19

Uh

Speaker 222:19

Uh

Presenter22:19

So

Clive Oppenheimer22:25

their knowledge of Mount Pectu and they were very well trained in the fundamentals, the geophysics of seismic waves, but they were not really aware of where volcanology is, which is actually almost a sort of a meeting of the natural sciences and the social sciences. So this was a disconnect and they would ask quite curious things about, you know, how do we stop the volcano erupting? And one of their concerns was that if it did erupt, that it would destroy some very important cultural sites. They seemed to be as worried about that as the impact it could have on people.

Presenter23:01

Clive, you went back to Mount Peck II with filmmaker Werner Herzog to make Into the Inferno. Tell me a little bit about what you found.

Clive Oppenheimer23:09

A number of people who've complained about the film have said, you know, I didn't learn anything about volcanoes. And that's great, because it's really a film about the underworld and the cosmologies that the communities living on volcanoes have about these extraordinary natural wonders on their doorstep. In Vanuatu, we stayed in a village and I had a conversation with the chief of the village who was describing how he visited the crater once and looked in and saw this red stuff flowing like water. But it couldn't be water because it was hot and it was the wrong colour. And so it made complete sense to me that you couldn't ignore that. You couldn't not put that into some cosmology, some way of seeing the world and how it works. And of course, you know, it's a place of spirits and it's a place of the afterlife for him. And that seemed to me equally valid as my interpretation of it based on having studied geoscience at university.

Presenter24:07

This human fascination with volcanoes is obviously it runs very deep. How do you explain it? I think you have said that it there's a sort of spiritual element to it, really.

Clive Oppenheimer24:16

I would explain it on, I guess, a couple of levels. One is just the visceral raw experience of being on a volcano, you know, feeling vulnerable probably, but I'm also there professionally to get the best observations I can to understand how that volcano is working, how it's plumbed in in the regions that I can't see or touch. And when the instrument's running, that's when I've got time to just take in where I am.

Presenter24:41

And is that when you're happiest? Are those some of your happiest moments?

Clive Oppenheimer24:45

Oh, my spirit soars when I'm on a volcano.

Presenter24:48

Where you're meant to be.

Presenter24:50

It's time for your next piece of music, Clive, your sixth choice. Tell us about it.

Clive Oppenheimer24:54

Well this has some resonances for me for Indonesia. It has some gamelan, Indonesian gamelan-like motifs in it. And it's also by a composer whose work I adore. It's Olivier Messiah and it's the Trungalila Symphony. I think this piece actually captures everything about humanity and the human condition. It's a love song. It's a hymn to joy. And it's got complex motifs and moments of extraordinary beauty. And it has these gamelan sounds. It has bird song. He worked, he was passionate about bird song. The piece we hear has got blackbirds, nightingales and garden warblers.

Presenter25:26

Huh.

Presenter26:30

Part of the Tarunga Leader Symphony by Messiang, performed by the Bastille Opera Orchestra with Yvonne Loriot on piano, Jeanne Lauriot on And Martineau, and conducted by Myung Wan Chung.

Presenter26:41

Clive, one of the places that you visited most frequently for your research is Antarctica to study Mount Erepus, the volcano there. You've said you'd quite happily live there, and have referred to the place as your Muse. How does it feel when you go back?

Clive Oppenheimer26:56

In some ways it's a crazy place to go and you're aware that there there isn't much of a safety net if there's some kind of medical emergency, an accident, because if the weather is bad, although we're so close, there would be no possibility of being rescued or bringing medical support in

Presenter27:10

Bing.

Presenter27:12

So it's the basic stuff, trying not to fall over and hurt yourself.

Clive Oppenheimer27:15

Yeah, and also trying to make sure your friends, colleagues don't do something like that as well. So you're watching after each other, you're watching out if someone else is looking hypothermic. Uh it's nearly four thousand meters high, so the temperature up there is is minus thirty, minus thirty five, and in wind chill it can be, you know, minus seventy.

Presenter27:33

And you've played your own part in the place's history, because in twenty twelve you discovered the campsite used by Captain Scott's team during their expedition. Was there a sense of kinship with the scientists who trod the same path as you a century earlier?

Clive Oppenheimer27:46

Captain Scott had died by the time some of his comrades were climbing Erebus.

Presenter27:52

So they kept going.

Clive Oppenheimer27:53

So they kept going and they climbed to the top on the 12th of December 1912 and I was there exactly a century later, 12, 12, 2012 and I thought I've got to commemorate this ascent somehow. And I came, I was reading their account and there was a photograph labelled highest camp in Antarctica and there's the tent, the pyramid tent, there's some men standing around it and I looked at the rocks behind and thought I wonder if I can find where that was. And it took me 15 minutes. I thought it'd be a needle in a haystack. It was about 800 metres away and there was a little stone circle where they held down the tent flaps and I even found bits of bread and broken glass and pemmican where the food supplies that they didn't need anymore on the left had been blown by the wind and snagged in the rocks. So it's a historic site and monument now.

Presenter28:41

So it's

Presenter28:43

It's protected now, but what what was that like for you, standing in that place and seeing those those ordinary things that the people just like you had left behind?

Clive Oppenheimer28:51

I didn't just see the ordinary things, I saw them. In a flash I saw them and I couldn't help saying hello boys and yeah, it was like looking across time a hundred years earlier.

Presenter28:55

And yeah, it was

Presenter28:59

So as well as working in very difficult environments, your work has also brought you into contact with some quite dangerous people on occasion. There was one time when you were almost kidnapped. What actually happened?

Clive Oppenheimer29:11

This was in Ethiopia on a volcano with a lava lake in Ethiopia called Urta Ale. Pretty soon we ran into a couple of characters armed to the teeth. One of them was playing with a hand grenade the whole time. It's a place where there isn't, there aren't police. And if you show up with money and food and medicine and water and vehicles, you're there for a reason. And if you're there for a reason, then it's right that you should pay to be there. So we made some negotiations, but they turned up in our camp the following day, and things got pretty hairy.

Presenter29:28

Anyway

Presenter29:46

What happened?

Clive Oppenheimer29:47

I mean, this was all going on in the Afar language, so I didn't follow all of it. There was an elderly chief from a nearby settlement who was sort of moderating. We'd got all of the permits, all the authorizations, we had some local guides. And I'd been uncomfortable. One of the guides was armed, but I think we wouldn't have got out of it if he hadn't been. So there was some balance in in the weaponry, and eventually the old chief said it's best if you leave in the morning. And you do.

Presenter29:58

Is it

Presenter30:11

Yeah. Wow. Did you go back now? Have you you've been back to with your since?

Clive Oppenheimer30:16

Uh yes, yeah, I've been been back a few times and uh I'd say half the times I've had sort of episodes a little bit like that.

Presenter30:22

It's time for some more music, Clive. Your seventh choice today. What are we going to hear and why are you taking it to your island with you?

Clive Oppenheimer30:24

God

Clive Oppenheimer30:28

Well, this is by an Ethiopian musician Bezwerk Asfaw. It's a song called Tizata, which every Ethiopian musician has performed, and it means longing or memories or remembrance. I didn't really know Ethiopian music until I first went there, and I was immediately struck by its kind of waltz rhythms and this Ethio jazz. I was staying next to a cassette shop, and they blared out music every morning that woke me up. This will remind me of travelling in Ethiopia, and it will also, through its theme of remembrance, help me think of home.

Speaker 231:18

I'm not sure if I can do it.

Speaker 231:25

I am not afraid of the world.

Presenter31:37

Bazawak Asphau and Tuzetar. Clive Oppenheimer, you've spent your life observing the much longer volcanic life of our planet, and I wonder if your work has shaped your perspective on your own personal story.

Clive Oppenheimer31:50

Being a geologist, it does make you think about cycles, and we see cycles from hundreds of millions of years time scales to short time scales of glaciations coming and going.

Clive Oppenheimer32:02

I do feel kind of enmeshed in the way the planet works. Yeah, I do think about even when I drink a cup of coffee, I think about, well, that coffee probably grew on a volcano.

Presenter32:11

It's almost time for us, though. Our cycle moves on, inevitably, to the island where soon you are going to be cast away. What kind of island are you picturing?

Clive Oppenheimer32:21

Obviously, quite like it if it had a volcano on it. I mean, there are lots of volcanic islands around the world.

Presenter32:26

I don't see why not. What about the idea of solitude? How are you in your own company?

Clive Oppenheimer32:31

I distinguish between being lonely and being alone, and I I'm quite happy alone. I I quite like aloneness and I've I've really felt that with great intensity in Antarctica. If there's no wind,

Clive Oppenheimer32:42

And it's a sunny day. You feel the sun warming you up.

Clive Oppenheimer32:46

And all you can hear is your breathing and your own heartbeat, and there is a great serenity in that.

Presenter32:53

Who or what will you miss the most when you're on the desert island?

Clive Oppenheimer32:57

Oh, well, my wife and my two daughters, Poppy and Maya, of course I'll miss them dreadfully.

Presenter33:03

Well, we'll let you have one more disc before you go. What's it gonna be?

Clive Oppenheimer33:06

This is a track by John Tavenagh, Hymn for the Dormition of the Mother of God, and it has a line in it, something like O ye Apostles assembled from the ends of the earth. So that reminds me of Antarctica and also in the films that I've made with Werner Herzog we've used Russian Orthodox music which has some similarities to this, its voices. And I do love just the sound of the human voice. I think that will be something that will entertain the wildlife on the island after they've heard the pixies.

Presenter33:32

No.

Speaker 233:57

Oh dear.

Presenter34:39

Hymn for the Door Mission of the Mother of God by John Tavener, performed by The Sixteen, conducted by Harry Christophers. You drifted away listening to that track, Clive Hopppenheimer. Where does it take you?

Clive Oppenheimer34:50

It takes me to Antarctica. It takes me to the blue ice, the expanse where you you could walk and walk and walk, and the crunch of the ice beneath your feet, and the solitude, the quiet, and the contemplation.

Presenter35:03

So, the time has come, Clive. I'm going to send you away to the island. I'm giving you the Bible and the complete works of Shakespeare, and you can take one other book, your own selection. What will it be?

Clive Oppenheimer35:14

I'm going to take a book by Patrick White for no other reason than he was one of my favourite authors. A number of his books were historical fiction, but based on real characters who are pitting themselves against the desert, or one was indeed in a shipwreck, actually. But I think I'll choose one of his books, The Vivisector, which is about the life of a great artist. And I just loved some of his descriptions. He wrote about the human condition with tremendous intensity and insight.

Presenter35:45

You can also have a luxury item for pleasure or sensory stimulation. What have you gone for?

Clive Oppenheimer35:50

I'm a little bit worried that you're going to say I can't have this. It's a seismometer, which does have a practical use, but I promise not to use it to predict an eruption if there is a volcano on the island.

Presenter35:52

It's a side.

Presenter35:59

Okay, so what are you going to use it for, Clive?

Clive Oppenheimer36:02

To listen to the earth, to listen to the music of the earth.

Presenter36:04

Yeah.

Clive Oppenheimer36:04

Uh I'll hear it rattling here and there.

Presenter36:06

Yeah fine

Presenter36:07

Yeah.

Clive Oppenheimer36:08

I will just enjoy those vibrations.

Presenter36:10

Excellent, and you simply must have it.

Presenter36:13

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

Clive Oppenheimer36:19

It's got to be debaser. It's the the Pixies loud quiet playbook that defines me, so I'll have the Pixies.

Presenter36:26

Clive Oppenheimet, thank you very much for letting us hear your Desert Island discs.

Clive Oppenheimer36:30

Thanks so much. It's been a thrill.

Presenter36:42

Hello, it was lovely to chat to Clive and I hope he's very happy listening to the sounds of his island. There are more than 2,000 programmes in our archive which you can listen to including fellow adventurers Simon Reeve, Steve Baxhall and Anne Daniels. You can find all of those programmes if you search through BBC Sounds or on our own Desert Island Disc's website. The studio manager for today's programme was Andrew Garris and the producers were Tim Bannow and Sarah Taylor. Join me next time when my castaway is the costume designer Sandy Powell.

Speaker 337:19

Hello, it's Zahn Van Tulliken here and I'm back with my twin brother Chris. That's me. In the third series of our Radio 4 podcast, A Thorough Examination. And we're going to be talking about exercise. Now, I really love it. And this has been really annoying for me. In fact, it's gone beyond annoying. It's more like you've joined some sort of cult. But I think Chris needs to do more. In fact, I think everyone needs to do more. There is a general crisis of inactivity in the UK that we should all be worried about.

Speaker 337:47

So in this series, we weigh up whether exercise really is the miracle cure for all that ails us, or whether it's been oversold and actually lounging around is just fine.

Speaker 337:57

Listen to us resolving the argument on BBC Sounds.