Professor Alice Roberts

Speaker 10:01

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.

Presenter0:45

My castaway this week is Professor Alice Roberts. She's one of the most popular science communicators in Britain today. Her BBC programme, Digging for Britain, attracts millions of viewers and she has 11 series under her archaeological tool belt. In her role as Professor of Public Engagement in Science at Birmingham University, she views sharing science with everyone as her moral responsibility.

Presenter1:09

Her work as a scientist and writer brings together established and emerging disciplines, from anatomy, archaeology, and anthropology to paleopathology, the study of ancient diseases, and archaeogenomics, the fusion of archaeology and genetics. She uses her discoveries to shine a light on our collective past, offering new answers to questions including whether humans are Neanderthals into bred? That would be a yes. To when plague arrived in Europe. That would be a lot earlier than we'd imagined. As for her own story, she trained as a doctor before her obsession with bones took her into academia and then into television as a specialist on time team. She says, Ultimately, I'm interested in how science and technology can be used with a strong dose of wisdom to make the world a better place. Professor Alice Roberts, welcome to Desert Island Discs. Thank you very much. I'm looking forward to being cast away on this island. Oh, honestly, you need the break having done all that. So Alice, you're in a very interesting position as a scientist who studies history. You're kind of looking to the future and the deep past at the same time and bringing together new technology with ancient knowledge. I wonder what your favourite thing about working in that way is.

Professor Alice Roberts2:00

Very

Presenter2:22

I think it is the meeting of different disciplines.

Professor Alice Roberts2:25

And it is really putting me out of a job because my actual area of expertise is looking at the bones and diagnosing ancient diseases from what I can see in human remains, sometimes using radiographs to help me do that. But very often, I'll be looking at a bone and I'll say, I can see that this bone was infected. I can see that there's a plaque of new bone on the surface where the bone cells have been reacting to inflammation, but I don't know what that infection is. And so I would just write a nonspecific infection. And then my archaeogeneticist friends come along, take a little scraping of it, go away and tell me precisely what the bacterium is that has caused that infection. It's just incredible.

Speaker 12:31

Like nasing inches and

Presenter3:05

Yeah.

Presenter3:05

Alice, you are such a lover of bones that you even have a favourite one, and it is the clavicle, the collarbone. Why is it your favourite?

Professor Alice Roberts3:13

Right.

Presenter3:13

Yeah.

Professor Alice Roberts3:13

It is a beautiful bit of human anatomy, I think. And then it's got this incredible backstory because it ossifies, so it turns to bone in a really weird way. Most of the bones in our body ossify by forming little cartilage models first, which then turn into bone. Okay. So the little cartilage models are forming when you're in utero. The clavicle does this weird thing where it just ossifies out of embryonic tissue. It doesn't have a cartilage model first. And this is a clue that the clavicle was once part of a skull, but you have to go back a very, very long time in evolutionary history before you find it back in the skull. And it's in your great to the power ex-grandmother probably about 500 million years ago who was a fish. It makes sense because it was where the front fins, the pectoral fins, attach to the base of the skull. So our limbs, our arms are evolved from fishes' fins and they've dropped away from the skull. And in doing that, they've pulled away this bone. And it's not, it's just been left behind. It's been left behind, yeah.

Speaker 14:11

Mm.

Presenter4:20

I mean, for for a bone that has been captured in photographs and portraiture for centuries as one of the most erotic, you wouldn't kind of think Fisher's skull. It's not the backstory I was expecting.

Professor Alice Roberts4:30

Fish's skull.

Professor Alice Roberts4:33

No, but I love these stories. I mean, I love that depth of evolutionary history within the body. It's just brilliant.

Professor Alice Roberts4:41

It's time for your first music choice today, Alice. What's it gonna be? My first choice is The Pixies and it's Monkey Gone to Heaven. And I remember hearing this for the first time on a jukebox in a pub at the bottom of Park Street in Bristol with my friend Catherine. And I was blown away. It reached inside me and grabbed me by the heart and filled me with this incredible passion for music.

Professor Alice Roberts5:11

There was a guy.

Speaker 45:19

An underwater guy who controls the sea.

Speaker 45:28

Got killed by ten million pounds of sludge from New York and New Jersey.

Presenter5:38

Pixies and Monkey Gone to Heaven. So Alice Roberts, let's go back to the start. You were born in Bristol in nineteen seventy three. When and how did your love of science begin?

Professor Alice Roberts5:49

I think I was always interested in biology in particular, how living things worked. I mean, this seemed to me to be like the biggest question there was in the universe. And I was given a microscope when I was quite young, and I was quite obsessed with drawing all sorts of things down the microscope. I remember drawing bees' wings in great detail. There was never a distinction for me between art and science. The two things went together. But I think archaeology, although I didn't anticipate that my career would take me off in that direction, I was always interested in archaeology, digging up little bits of pottery in the vegetable patch in my parents' garden. And I think I was eight when I was taken to Bristol Museum to go and watch this extraordinary thing. I think it was very ahead of its time, that in a room somewhere in the university, researchers were unwrapping an Egyptian mummy and there was a live feed to the foyer of Bristol Museum. And basically, it was very difficult to get me away from that because I was utterly, utterly entranced by the unwrapping of this mummy and what those researchers were going to find. And so I think that was already kind of sowing the seeds of a real fascination in archaeology, but in the human bits of archaeology.

Speaker 16:13

Yeah.

Presenter7:05

You have said that as a young girl you struggled with being a scientist at school. What did you mean by that?

Professor Alice Roberts7:12

Um, I don't suppose I s I it wasn't so much science, but I was bookish, I wore glasses and I did get bullied to within an inch of my life at primary school, and it was physical bullying as well as kind of verbal.

Presenter7:26

So you were hit, you were hit, they hurt you? Uh, mostly kicked in the shins. I mean, did anybody else notice what was going on? Did you get help from

Professor Alice Roberts7:34

From your teachers? Yeah. No, not really. No. And I think my parents thought that any kind of intervention would make it worse. So it was just something I put up with.

Professor Alice Roberts7:45

Were books a refuge for you from what was happening?

Presenter7:47

Happening in the playground?

Professor Alice Roberts7:49

I think so. I mean, I I loved factual books, but I also loved fiction as well. And I loved disappearing into those other worlds. And I think that was a bit of an escape for me, definitely. So that in a way

Presenter8:01

Maybe felt more vivid because of what you needed it to do for you.

Professor Alice Roberts8:05

Yeah, I would have loved there to have been a door in the back of my wardrobe, I think.

Professor Alice Roberts8:09

disappear off into Narnia.

Presenter8:11

Alice, why don't we take a minute for some music? Disc number two. What have you got for us next?

Professor Alice Roberts8:15

I've got the Sisters of Mercy with Temple of Love. Now, when I started to put together my discs for the Desert Island, my lovely friends, Wendy and Fiona, and we've been friends since university, and they said, well, you can't not have the Sisters of Mercy. Come on, Alice. It was all you ever wanted. Whenever we went out dancing, you'd be going up to the DJ going, please, can you play Temple of Love? And I think your grandmother helped you achieve the perfect goth look in those days. What did she do? My paternal grandmother, I remember her wanting to crochet me a little top. And I was quite excited by this because it was going to be holy, which is, you know, part of the letter.

Presenter8:54

Which is

Presenter8:55

That was the whole look with long sleeves and the hands tucked up.

Professor Alice Roberts8:57

Anyway, so I think she was quite keen on it being pink and I managed to encourage her to think of it being black. So she created me this black top. I've still got it. She created me this black top and then I think she thought it was still too austere and that she might just weave a little pink ribbon round the bottom of it and I was like no no pink. This doesn't mean not wear that.

Speaker 19:16

Yeah. Like an

Presenter9:17

The sisters and mercy could not wear.

Speaker 49:25

Sky right from the girl

Speaker 49:28

In the temple on Bombay!

Speaker 49:31

Bye, Life Brent.

Speaker 49:33

In the temple of Lord.

Speaker 49:39

In the temple I

Speaker 49:42

They're running me!

Speaker 49:44

A devil in a black dress watches

Presenter9:50

Temple of Love, Sisters of Mercy. Alice Roberts, your father Alan, worked as an aeronautical engineer. Your mother Wendy was a teacher. How do you look back on family life when you were a child?

Professor Alice Roberts10:02

It's tricky because I became estranged from my parents more recently. And I think that, you know, during that whole process, I've kind of gone back and thought about what my childhood was like. And I think that's one of the things that has struck me about it certainly is that it was very strict. And my mum was not kind of emotionally available for me. I was very lucky to have a wiser family. So I had a grandmother who I saw.

Professor Alice Roberts10:32

Pretty much every day, actually. So, I'd walk down from school to my grandma's house. Yeah, she was my mum's mum, and she was a very warm person, somebody I could confide in. And equally, actually, my aunt, so my mum's sister, we were very close to their family. I was very close to that family, and again, she was a kind of incredible source of emotional support for me, especially when I was a teenager.

Speaker 110:57

Especially when

Professor Alice Roberts10:59

I think it was when I was a teenager that things started to really fall apart for me at home.

Presenter11:01

So you said your upbringing was very strict. What was behind that? Was it an attitude, an outlook? Was it religious?

Professor Alice Roberts11:10

Yeah, I mean there was religion was part of it, but I think it was just it was wider than that. I just found it quite difficult to be my own person. And you know, music came into that. There wasn't really any music in the house and any music that I was trying to listen to was kind of frowned upon. But then lots of things were frowned upon. Boyfriends were frowned upon. It was difficult to be me. But, you know, since I became estranged from my parents, my mother died, my mother passed away. And I've kind of given myself the permission to go back to thinking about earlier stages in my childhood and happier memories. You know, my parents both gave me things. So my dad inspired a love of science and interrogating the world. And my mum was a teacher, mostly in primary schools and really focused on art. And I remember doing lots of art with her when I was a kid. So maybe that's what she could give me.

Presenter12:07

So you became estranged in 2018. How did it happen? Why did it happen?

Professor Alice Roberts12:12

The previous Sunday, I'd done an interview with a newspaper about becoming president of Humanist UK, and my mother had responded to that interview without talking to me at all, first of all with a letter to the newspaper, and then following that up with quite a frank interview as well. It was awful. I mean, I had no idea. And I had seen my parents the previous weekend and actually taken them out for lunch. And then I was just settling down to watch Strictly on a Saturday night when the editor of the newspaper rang and

Professor Alice Roberts12:50

told me they'd been a a not terribly supportive.

Professor Alice Roberts12:54

Interaction with my mother, and that was really difficult because I didn't know what the nature of that was.

Presenter12:59

So, I mean, what's going through your mind? How do you feel in that moment?

Professor Alice Roberts13:03

I felt like my world was falling apart around me. And I remember waiting up until midnight to see the newspaper being published online. And it was yeah, it was incredibly difficult. And it's really difficult talking about it actually. And I think at that point I

Speaker 113:14

I talking about it.

Professor Alice Roberts13:18

just realized that the relationship I'd been wanting to work, you know, I'd I wanted that relationship to work, I wanted affection, I wanted I wanted approval actually. And I think I realized at that point that I was never going to have that.

Professor Alice Roberts13:35

And so I decided to make the break at that point. And I think it was the right thing for me, and it was probably the right thing for her as well.

Professor Alice Roberts13:43

I wish things had been different. Of course I wish things had been different. I think my mum I know that she was quite depressed at times and that that kind of played into it as well. And I think that played into guilt for me as well,'cause I knew that she was depressed, so I kind of felt that I had to be able to

Professor Alice Roberts14:00

sort of put up with what was what was happening to me, but then eventually I I had to walk away.

Presenter14:07

So So as you said, you you had to cut off contact at that point and then your mother died last year. I know you were still estranged when that happened. How did you navigate that time?

Professor Alice Roberts14:18

Yeah.

Professor Alice Roberts14:19

It was difficult. I mean, I

Professor Alice Roberts14:22

I knew that she was dying, and I did say to other family members that if she asked for me, I would have gone to see her for her sake.

Professor Alice Roberts14:31

But I so I didn't see her. She didn't ask for me. And uh

Professor Alice Roberts14:37

I was very sad, obviously. You know, this person who's part of my life has gone. It's interesting. I mean, I think I'd already done a lot of grieving for that, the relationship that wasn't there. And the only way I can deal with those kind of moments and those kind of feelings, I think, is going off for a walk or going off for a kayak. I went for a very long kayak paddle on my own. It was interesting because the waves that day were a little bit rough and that's what I needed. I needed to be fighting against the ocean.

Presenter15:06

Yeah.

Presenter15:07

All right, Alice, I think we'd better take a moment for the music. It's your third choice today. What are we going to hear?

Professor Alice Roberts15:12

And why?

Professor Alice Roberts15:13

This is a beautiful track from the video game journey that was composed by my wonderful friend Austin Wintry and this is Apotheosis. And we won't understand this just listening to it now. But when you're playing the game, the music is the emotional backdrop to what you're choosing to do. And if you choose to do something adventurous, the music will start ramping up underneath you. It's just, I mean, it's so clever. But I also love playing video games.

Presenter16:11

Apotheosis from the video game Journey, composed by Austin Wintry. So Alice Roberts, you loved biology when you were growing up, and by the time you were eleven you'd set your heart on becoming a doctor. But not long before you went to medical school, you were actually involved in a very serious traffic accident. What happened?

Professor Alice Roberts16:27

Uh

Professor Alice Roberts16:28

Yeah, I mean I got knocked over in Bristol crossing a road which is now pedestrianised. I like to think that's because of me and I remember very clearly being hit by the car and then being carried down the road by the car went over the top of it and then fell off the back and I remember lying on the floor and I couldn't talk or move but I had a very strong conviction that I was okay and then obviously went off to hospital. I had a really badly bruised face and I think I probably cracked a rib but apart from that I was I was kind of all right but it was one of those moments where it wasn't until quite a while afterwards you know sort of probably hours after the actual accident that I suddenly had that terrible realization that that could have been it.

Presenter17:12

Doom

Presenter17:17

You know, having had experience of something like that, did that strengthen your ambition to become a doctor? Did it feed into that at all?

Professor Alice Roberts17:25

Yeah, I think it did. When you do experience illness or injury and you're then very grateful for all the people who are who are looking after you when you're in hospital. And, you know, as a seventeen year old, I was I was looking ahead to me being one of those people.

Presenter17:41

And you did become one of those people. You went on to study medicine at Cardiff and then worked as a house officer doing pediatric surgery. And I know you loved that. What did you enjoy about it?

Professor Alice Roberts17:50

I loved working with children. I used to do my ward round on rollerblades. I loved the craft of the surgery. You know, you were part of the team that was helping them to get better and that was that was just incredible. I mean, I loved medicine and surgery and I would have been very happy doing that as my career.

Presenter18:08

You said that you did your your rounds on Rollerblades. That is.

Professor Alice Roberts18:10

That's it.

Presenter18:11

Yeah.

Professor Alice Roberts18:13

To that. How did that end up happening? When I was on call, I was in the accommodation on site at the hospital, but it was still actually quite a long way from the hospital itself. And there were underground tunnels that ran from the accommodation into the hospital. And it struck me that the best way of getting down these underground tunnels quickly when your bleep goes off in the middle of the night was to stick rollerblades on and go rollerblading in. And then, once I'd kind of worked that out, I decided that I would keep my rollerblades on for ward rains. I don't think you'd be allowed to do it nowadays. You must have loved that. They did love it.

Presenter18:44

That's my

Presenter18:46

For now, I think we better have some more music. This is your fourth choice today. What are we going to hear next?

Professor Alice Roberts18:51

Well, this is The Smashing Pumpkins with Cherub Rock. Really difficult to choose one track, but this is definitely the one that would get us all rushing onto the dance floor.

Speaker 419:04

Cousin Maddie hasn't got any

Speaker 419:10

Stay true.

Speaker 419:13

We saw ice cream this year.

Speaker 419:18

Say no.

Speaker 419:21

We're right, just wait for

Speaker 419:25

Tell John.

Presenter19:29

The Smashing Pumpkins and Cherub Rock. Alice Roberts, alongside your work on the woods, you taught anatomy to medical students at the University of Bristol. Now, you thought it would be a temporary job, but things didn't turn out that way. What

Professor Alice Roberts19:42

Tattened. I mean, I kept my GMC number open for a long time thinking I'm just doing this for a while and then I'll go back to my surgical career. But I stayed at Bristol University teaching anatomy for eleven years.

Presenter19:55

There's a little note of regret in there. Is there? Am I picking that up correctly?

Professor Alice Roberts19:59

Yeah, I think there is because I had decided aged eleven that I was going to be a doctor. And I think it is really difficult when you've trained. It's a vocational training. You've always had that destination in your mind. And so to accept that I was being

Professor Alice Roberts20:18

I don't want to say being pulled because it's me making the decisions, but I was definitely being moved in this other direction. And I think I would have been very happy to have have stopped in anatomy and gone back to surgery at any point. But I was equally happy to become an anatomist. What did you love about the world that you

Presenter20:35

You would just

Professor Alice Roberts20:36

Let's go f

Presenter20:36

Break.

Professor Alice Roberts20:36

Yeah.

Professor Alice Roberts20:37

I mean, I love the subject itself and then the research I was doing looking at old bones. I mean, for me as a medic, when I

Professor Alice Roberts20:44

First, I learnt how to lay a skeleton out in the basement of the old Bristol Royal Infirmary. I was thinking, what can I tell from a skeleton? This is a patient, effectively. I can't take their medical history. I can't take any bloods. There's so much I can't do. But actually, there's so much you can do. And so it was the fact that there was so much information that I could extract from those bones that really intrigued me, really drew me in. Alice, it's time to go to the music. Your fifth choice today, what have you got for us next? My fifth choice is about a band that I absolutely love, the Foo Fighters, but I've actually chosen the collaborative version of Times Like These by the Live Lounge All-Stars because it was such an amazing

Speaker 121:07

Uh

Professor Alice Roberts21:31

Demonstration of how music could bring everybody together when we were in the throes of the pandemic.

Speaker 421:37

Bye.

Speaker 421:39

I'm a one-way motorway

Speaker 421:43

I'm the one that drives away then follows you back home

Speaker 121:47

Follows you back

Speaker 421:53

I am a streetlight shining I'm a wildlife blinding bright burning

Presenter22:06

Times Like These performed by Radio One's Live Lounge All-Stars featuring among others Dave Grohl, Jua Lipa, Celeste and Chris Martin.

Presenter22:14

Alice Roberts, in 2019 you became the President of the charity Humanists UK that aims to increase public awareness of humanism. What made you decide to take on that role?

Professor Alice Roberts22:25

I had been brought up in quite a religious household, and I decided aged 15 that I didn't believe any of it. So I became atheist. And I never really liked that term because it then feels like you're defining yourself by an absence of something you never thought should be there anyway. And that actually, my whole take on the world is that it's a natural place and that you know we can understand it and we can hope to understand it better using science and all of that. So it's a kind of a kind of rational scientific approach to the world. But there's something more than that because it's also about how to be as a human. And that's how I feel about humanism. It's not a club. It's not a kind of, you don't have to sign up to it. You don't have to join Humanist UK. But it's just a, it feels to me like a very kind of natural approach to the world.

Presenter23:12

Oh, yeah. While you were President, you were supporting a a campaign to end state funding for church schools, and that brought with it some criticism for sending your kids to a church school. What was your response to that?

Professor Alice Roberts23:24

Uh I was quite open about this with Humanists UK, actually. I was quite open about the fact that if you are in a rural area, very often you don't have a choice. And of course, your situation. Yeah, and of course, what most parents want is their children to go to the local school so your children are part of the community. You don't want to be driving your children miles, tens of miles away to school every morning. And also, you don't want to be forced into the situation of, well, if you have the means, to send them privately, just so they don't have to go to a faith school.

Presenter23:34

And was that your situation?

Presenter23:53

Do you have to think carefully about whether your kids should take part in collective worship or singing hymns at school?

Professor Alice Roberts24:00

Yeah, I mean, I just it's a conversation with my children really. So in the end, we did send them to a church school for the early part of their primary education. And there were things there where I would go into the school to just say, well, when you're telling them to pray, please could you ask them rather than tell them, invite them or, you know, tell them that they could do something else, meditate or whatever, have a moment to think for themselves. I mean, parents can choose to remove their children from things like collective worship, but that's quite socially divisive, I think, because this is when, you know, these are moments in the day when the whole school is coming together. And so you're excluding your child or the child is excluding themselves from something which is socially important as well. It's a tricky thing to deal with at the moment. And I don't think we've, you know, I think the situation is far from ideal.

Presenter24:54

So your thirst is not just for knowledge, it's for meaning as well. I wonder where you go to find it if you don't have that spiritual dimension in your life.

Professor Alice Roberts25:02

This is probably quite controversial. I think that some atheists, agnostics, humanists would say, Well, we're definitely not spiritual. I would say I am a spiritual person because I find myself moved by nature. I love being out in nature. I love contemplating the deep past in our landscape and thinking about all the generations that have been in these places that we now walk in before us. I think that art and music and nature are what move me. And I think there is what you might call a spiritual dimension to that.

Presenter25:36

It's time for some more music, Alice. Disc number six. What are we going to hear next?

Professor Alice Roberts25:40

Oh, this is Sugar by System of Adane. I love System of Adane. I mean, they're very, very strange, I think, in a brilliant way. It can be quite aggressive at times, and then it can be absolutely beautiful. And Serge Tankian's voice is amazing, it's operatic, and the lyrics are just crazy, and I do like a crazy lyric.

Speaker 426:02

Nothing but your pay pause sentenced round the

Speaker 426:27

I'm the pair all the time, you know, tell me about song

Presenter26:30

System of a Down and Sugar. Alice Roberts, in twenty ten, you started presenting Digging for Britain. Now there have been eleven series so far, and very often this is history of ordinary people, their stories.

Professor Alice Roberts26:42

And stories.

Presenter26:43

Yeah.

Professor Alice Roberts26:43

Archaeology is not just illustrating history, it is another strand of evidence, and it is showing us people that we don't necessarily hear about in the history books. And I've been lucky enough to excavate some burials myself, and I remember an Anglo-Saxon burial that I excavated, which was an ordinary woman. She was an ordinary woman. As I brushed her bones and exposed her skeleton, I could see what remained of this person. And what's amazing with the early Anglo-Saxon burials is that you often get objects in the grave as well. And so she was buried with what looked like little muddy brown beads. But when you washed them with these intense colours, and they were beautiful little glass beads. You know, it's not an important archaeological discovery, but it's a real intimate connection between me.

Professor Alice Roberts27:36

And this other person.

Presenter27:37

And we've talked quite a lot today about death and bodies. And I wonder if you've given much thought to what you would like to happen to you one day when life is over. You know, have you given your own final resting place much contemplation?

Professor Alice Roberts27:51

I think I've spent so long learning from the bodies of others that I think what I would actually have to do is leave my body to medical science. But there's a bit of me, because I do have a mischievous streak that wants to be buried.

Presenter28:04

Okay, here we go.

Professor Alice Roberts28:06

That I would like to be buried in a Bronze Age style kissed burial, so a little stone lined burial. So is this like a short imagine like a short coffin, like a little

Presenter28:14

So is this like a short

Presenter28:17

Almost a box, but maybe

Professor Alice Roberts28:18

Maybe. Well, you'd dig the hole in the ground and then you would put stones to line it. So slabs of stone to line it. Okay. And then I'll be in there in a crouch position with a a little Bronze Age style beaker. And the intent here is simply to confuse archaeologists of the future.

Professor Alice Roberts28:38

Sup Up Just

Presenter28:39

Yeah.

Professor Alice Roberts28:39

Yeah.

Presenter28:39

That's

Professor Alice Roberts28:40

Uh

Presenter28:40

Yeah.

Professor Alice Roberts28:40

Yeah.

Presenter28:40

Yeah.

Professor Alice Roberts28:40

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.

Presenter28:42

Yeah.

Presenter28:43

Uh Type

Professor Alice Roberts28:44

For disc number six, Alice. What have you chosen? I'm quite an unmusical person in terms of not being able to make any music myself. But I am absolutely overjoyed to be surrounded in my house by people who play music. And I think part of what made me fall in love with my husband was him playing music. He's a brilliant guitarist. And my children love music and they both play piano. And my daughter just passed her grade three. proud mom moment with distinction. And then this was one of the pieces that she was playing a couple of months ago and it's just absolutely beautiful. This is Phoebe playing Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence.

Presenter29:56

Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence from the film soundtrack composed by Ryuchi Sakamoto and performed Alice Roberts by your daughter Phoebe. So you've got two kids, a daughter and a son. And as someone who spends a lot of time exploring and thinking about our ancestry and history, do you feel a deep connection to that through adding another link to the chain yourself by becoming a parent?

Professor Alice Roberts30:18

Yeah, I think so I mean, it's interesting. When I had my daughter, Phoebe, there was a kind of intellectual thing which struck me in the moment, which was that I felt myself to be part of this chain of life.

Professor Alice Roberts30:30

going back and back and back and back and back, you know, mothers and mothers and mothers and mothers all the way back. But there was also something that I was quite worried about actually up until the point that she emerged, which was that I didn't know how I was going to love her.

Professor Alice Roberts30:45

And and I didn't know I didn't know what that was going to be like in the moment. And I fell in love. And I wasn't expecting that. I wasn't expecting. So I've I've fallen in love three times in my life, my husband and then my two children. And it was almost like somewhere inside me that this little cupboard had opened and there was this all this love.

Professor Alice Roberts31:04

And then I was worried, of course, when I had another child. I thought, is th is it going to happen again?'Cause I'm slightly worried now that there's just one cupboard with the love in it. And then it and then it did happen again.

Presenter31:15

Well, I'm very glad that you discovered all of those feelings inside yourself, Alice, of course. But I'm sad to say I'm actually going to be sending you away from your lovely family and to the island soon. I know. Who knows how many castaways will have been to the island before you? I wonder how long you'll leave it before you start digging about, excavating, trying to find out.

Speaker 131:23

And to the islands soon. I know.

Professor Alice Roberts31:33

Yes, I'm probably going to be less focused on that than using some of my research into ancient technologies to actually help me survive on the island. So I'm going to be pretty focused on making myself tools. Good point. So I need to find some good stone.

Speaker 131:43

So I'm gonna be

Professor Alice Roberts31:51

Because once I've got a nice source of something that flakes nicely, like flint, then I can start to make all sorts of flint tools. I'm not very good at napping, but I'll get good at napping.

Presenter32:00

We're going to let you choose one more disc before you go, Professor Alice Roberts. What's going to be your final choice today?

Professor Alice Roberts32:06

When Digging for Britain rebooted and we were coming back on to BBC two and I really wanted it to have different music and I wanted to have some more lyrical music,

Professor Alice Roberts32:17

And then Robert MacFarlane.

Professor Alice Roberts32:20

Got in touch with me about one of my books and said that he was enjoying reading it, which is always lovely when an author does that. And he said, Oh, and by the way, my friend Johnny Flynn likes it too. And I was just so excited because Johnny Flynn did the music for the Detectorists. And so I said, Well, I don't suppose Johnny might be interested in doing the music for Digging for Britain. And it turned out that Robert was also interested because the two of them were working together on music with Robert writing the lyrics that was inspired by heritage and archaeology. And so we ended up with this beautiful piece of music that included actually some of the stories in that first series of Digging for Britain as we came back onto BBC T, series 9, I think it was. And it's so perfect. It's Coins for the Eyes by Johnny Flynn and Robert MacFarlane.

Speaker 433:09

We dig for the gods that leave no bones For the ship to sail in a sunken sea Vessel aloft in a sky of stones The famine rolled and the merchants key

Speaker 433:30

Come and search for we do search And looking for a scoutland

Speaker 433:38

Dan Asio

Presenter33:40

Coins for the Eyes. Johnny Flynn and Robert MacFarlane. So, Alice Roberts, I'm going to send you away to your island now. I'm giving you the Bible, the complete works of Shakespeare, and you can take one other book. What will that be? Well, I'm not having the Bible, because I'm a humanist. Of course, you don't need to take the Bible if you don't want to, but I can offer you another book of your choice to take with you. What would you like?

Professor Alice Roberts33:53

The

Professor Alice Roberts34:01

I would like to take George Eliot's Middlemarch. It's a very humanistic novel. And I also love it because it is about ordinary people. And it is about the small choices that we make in our lives that are really important. You can have a luxury item too, Alice. What would you like? I'm going to take my kayak. I mean, it's just absolutely amazing to be kind of at that level on the top of the waves. I think people have been moving around in small boats for tens of thousands of years. And so I'm looking at the coast in a way that my ancestors would have been very familiar with as well. And it's just my happy

Presenter34:41

Place. Well, Alice, I'll let you have it for those reasons, but you definitely can't use it as a means of escape. Now, finally, which one track of the eight that you've shared with us today would you save from the waves if you needed to?

Presenter34:53

It's got to be my daughter playing Merry Christmas, Mr Lawrence. That's going to stay with me. Professor Alice Roberts, thank you very much for letting us hear your Desert Island discs. Thank you for having me.

Presenter35:25

Hello, I hope you've enjoyed my conversation with Alice. We'll leave her to relax in her happy place on the water. We've cast away scientists and broadcasters Professor Brian Cox, Dame Maggie Adair in Pocock and archaeologists including Professor Glynn Daniel. You can find these episodes in our Desert Island Discs programme archive and through BBC Sounds. The studio manager for today's programme was Steve Greenwood. The assistant producer was Christine Pavlovsky and the producer was Paula McGinley. The series editor is John Gowdy.

Presenter35:54

Next time, my guest will be the scientist Professor Tim Spector. I do hope you'll join us.

Speaker 136:14

Hi, I'm Izzy Judd and I'm quickly dropping in to let you know of an incredibly calming podcast which I think you'll love.

Speaker 136:21

The Music and Meditation Podcast is a place where we press pause and give ourselves some brain space to step back from life a bit, with the help of inspirational guests, wonderful guided meditations and stunning music.

Speaker 136:37

Honestly, I think you'll really enjoy it. Why not give it a go? Join me, Izzy Judd, for the Music and Meditation Podcast on BBC Sounds.