Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu

Presenter0:01

BBC Sounds Music Radio Podcasts. Hello, I'm Lauren Laverne and this is the Desert Island Discs podcast from BBC Radio 4. Every week I ask my guests to choose the eight tracks, book and luxury, that they'd want to take with them if they were cast away to a desert island. For rights reasons, the music's shorter than on the original broadcast, but you can find a version with longer music tracks on BBC Sounds. Listeners will also get access to episodes 28 days earlier than everyone else. I hope you enjoy listening.

Presenter0:51

My castaway this week is the scientist Professor Dame Ijoma Uchebu. She trained as a pharmacist and has spent her career harnessing the potential of nanoparticles to take medicines to hard-to-reach areas of the body, increasing efficacy and reducing side effects. She's currently working on a drug that can reach the back of the eye without the need for painful injections. She's also developed medicines for neurological conditions that can cross the blood-brain barrier, painkillers that could help ease the opioid crisis, and she's finding new ways to target cancer.

Presenter1:24

She was born in London to Nigerian parents. Growing up in both countries led her to fall in love with what she calls the universal language of science. She passed the entry exam to study pharmacy at university when she was just 16, but faced challenges as she followed her academic path. She completed her PhD while she was in sole charge of three young children and struggling to make ends meet. In 2010, she co-founded a pharmaceutical company to work on real-world applications of her research, which won the Royal Society of Chemistry's Emerging Technologies Prize. Last year, she was appointed President of Wolfson College at the University of Cambridge. She says, I would tell my younger self to work on what you're interested in and ignore all barriers, as they are there for a reason, to be broken. Professor Dame Ijoma Uchebu, welcome to Desert Island Discs. Thank you so much, Lauren, for having me. Delighted that you're here. Now, Ijoma, I know that you're interested in the chemistry that underpins our everyday lives, the kind of thing that non-scientists might not appreciate. Can you give us some examples?

Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu2:27

So as we're talking now and sitting in this room, all around us is chemistry. The air itself is full of chemical compounds and these chemical compounds, we're breathing them in. They're floating over our lungs and into our cells and they're enriching our cells and the cells are being enriched by just taking oxygen out of the air and giving forth carbon dioxide. And even when we consider our skin, our hair, those are all chemicals, proteins, fats, various chemicals holding us together in one piece. So we are walking chemistry experiments then. We are walking chemical reactions. As you've just spoken to me, a chemical reaction has taken place and produced sound. So we are walking chemical reactions.

Presenter3:17

You've got such a passion for your subject and you love research. Why in particular does that excite you, that part of the job?

Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu3:26

You're never bored.

Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu3:27

You will get disappointment, so it's very hard to fund research. It's very hard to get your papers into the journals you want them to be published in, but you will never be bored. And you could go to bed one night and you're thinking of something, wake up in the morning, you're having a shower, you've clarified your idea, you walk into your lab.

Presenter3:48

And you try it out. You mentioned the difficulties that you can face though. I think you've said every day I don't get rejected for a paper or a grant is a proud day. Rejections are 90% of a scientist's life.

Presenter3:59

It is indeed.

Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu3:59

because money's tight and money is always awarded around a competition. Only the top 10 to 15% of grants get funded. So you're more likely to get a no than a yes. If you just got a paper accepted after trying two journals, each time I got a rejection it was painful. You actually feel the loss, the lost opportunity.

Presenter4:22

And what about that moment of discovery when you've made it through, you've done the research and then you make a discovery? What does that feel like? And who's the first person that you tell when something like that happens?

Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu4:33

Those aha moments are not so easy to come by because the first thing as a good scientist is that you must be consumed by doubt. So even when you see the data and you've interpreted it in a particular way, there's always a part of you that thinks, what if I got a part of this wrong? But we did have a time when we realised we were onto something. What we did was that we wrote it up, I was working together actually with my husband Andreas. We had developed this new molecule that we were going to use to package drugs to take them to particular parts of the body and we tested it, a quick test, and we found that it didn't destroy cells. So we thought it should destroy cells based on what we've read. We wrote it up and sent it for publication. So we kind of told each other, this looks particularly interesting.

Presenter5:22

When do you pop the champagne? I mean, the two of you are you're being very kind of like level and professional.

Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu5:26

When do you let yourself get excited? So we get excited. So recently we've gone into the clinic. So we've taken this molecule.

Presenter5:28

So

Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu5:34

That I remember drawing in my notebook. We've made it, and now we've put it into human testing. Then we get the results that say that the human testing.

Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu5:44

Went well.

Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu5:46

That's the time we pop the champagne. And the gap between drawing the molecule and popping the champagne is almost three decades. Oh, blimey, okay.

Presenter5:55

So it doesn't happen straight away. I hope you picked a bottle with a vintage year.

Presenter6:00

Yeah.

Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu6:00

Let's get started then. Tell us about your first choice. So my first choice is a song called Chop My Money.

Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu6:07

And in brackets, I don't care. And this is a song by P Squared, an Afrobeat musician. And we always play. This has to be played. We have house parties at Christmas, we have them at New Year. Three generations are dancing on the dance floor. There's a specific dance you have to do. And that dance is that you have the palm of your hand outstretched, you have the other hand as if you're counting notes. As soon as he says, chop my money, all of us are doing this. It's crazy.

Speaker 26:35

If you see this baby, then I'm saying She must chuck my money, chuck my money, chuck my money Cause I don't care Chuck my money Chuck my money

Speaker 16:51

Cause I don't care. I don't care, I don't care, I don't care, cause I get them plenty. I don't care, I don't care, I don't care, I don't care.

Presenter7:06

Chop my money, I don't care. Buy P Square. So, Jomo Chebu, you were born in Hackney, East London, in nineteen sixty. Your parents, Jane and Gilbert, had come to the UK from Nigeria shortly before you were born. And am I right in thinking that your name has an auspicious connection to their journey?

Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu7:23

It absolutely does. So my mother arrived. She's 19 years old. She's pregnant with me when they came over. My dad, 30 years old.

Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu7:32

And they've come to study. And my dad has almost liquidated all his assets. So for him, this was a big move. And he bought a house in Hackney. They had tenants to pay their way.

Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu7:45

Then he decided to call me Ijama, which means have a good trip. So he was hopeful. He really hoped it was going to be fine. What kind of welcome did they get when they arrived here? Well, as you can imagine, it wasn't that friendly for them. Definitely, my father told me stories of him being chased by a group of boys and their large dogs as he was coming back from work. So he would have to sort of peer around the corner, check whether these boys were not there or whether they were there, and then sprint to his house because he'd be chased by dogs. But he said he brought it to a stop because one day he approached one of these young boys at the bus stop and he said, You know what I'm going to do? I've bought an axe. So I would advise you not to bother because if you do, your dog could make contact with that axe. He said it never happened again.

Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu8:38

Yeah.

Presenter8:39

Tell us a lot about your dad taking the bull by the horns in that way.

Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu8:41

See that.

Presenter8:42

Wanna find out a lot more about him. But you said they came to study, so

Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu8:43

Might him.

Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu8:45

So what were their subjects? What were they studies? So my father, he studied electrical engineering and did a HND at a polytechnic and my mother, she studied anthropology at London School of Economics, LSC. They came actually to study and then to go back. That was their plan. And that was interrupted by the Civil War then presumably. Exactly, so he couldn't go back.

Speaker 19:04

But

Speaker 19:05

So he

Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu9:06

And he postponed it and started work as a telecommunications engineer. And so a lot of time spent where he was waiting to go back. And I remember each time at home, we'd sort of say, Well, this summer we're going back. And we'd all think, well, what does that mean?

Presenter9:23

When you were a baby, your parents placed you with a foster parents, a white family. Do you remember them looking after you when you were little?

Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu9:30

I really do remember being in the family and being with my auntie Pat is what I called her and her older children.

Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu9:39

And it was just a lovely time with this family. And I've often said that the only way I knew I was different was I was looking at their palms and thinking they should be brown because my palms are white and the soles of their feet should also be brown. But I noticed that it wasn't this like that.

Presenter9:53

And you were fostered so that your parents could complete their studies and work. They were obviously busy building a life in this new country.

Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu10:01

Exactly. And it was very common for West African parents to actually send their children to this arrangement. And also bear in mind that they were so my mother's quite young. My father also comes from a culture where

Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu10:13

Everybody looks after everybody's children. That extended family culture. The extended family culture. The poking your nose in everybody else's business culture as well. Where, you know, what are you doing to your child? I think that's a bad idea and I think you should change. And people have no qualms actually telling you how to live your life. So that's the culture they came from.

Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu10:33

Uh

Presenter10:33

Hey Joma, let's let's go to the music. Don't worry about

Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu10:35

Okay.

Presenter10:35

Your family after it, though. This is your second choice today. What are we going to hear and why?

Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu10:40

So you're going to hear Jeremy by Sir Victor Waifo and my father when he arrived and he you know he decided to set up his life every weekend he would play music and he'd set up these speakers so he'd play it in the living in the front room front room in those days so yeah this space where nobody was allowed and then we'd hear it in the back room and this was a record he always played

Speaker 111:04

Cause it won a vote.

Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu11:06

Uh

Speaker 111:07

Only go.

Speaker 111:09

I need one of my

Speaker 111:12

Oh me, young.

Speaker 111:18

Yeah.

Speaker 211:19

I didn't go here.

Speaker 111:21

Ruby Uh

Speaker 211:22

Who do you

Speaker 211:26

John Meek

Speaker 211:29

Joe and me

Speaker 211:30

Jeremy, Jeremy

Presenter11:35

JOROMI by Sir Victor Waifo. Ijomuro Chebu, your father came to collect you from your foster mother's house when you were four. Your parents had separated by that point and your mum had moved out of the family home. When did you next

Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu11:47

Xi Ha.

Presenter11:49

Uh

Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu11:49

I met her once when I was 13 years old, and I had a glorious weekend with my mother. Lots of shopping, a suitcase full of goodies. Would you like to eat this, or would you like to eat that? And I'm really fond of food, so I had a great time because she would say, What would you like to eat? and I would think of something completely outlandish. And she said, Right, that's it, I'm making it for you. So, that kind of attention was really amazing because by the time I met my mother, our family had swelled to six children.

Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu12:22

As one out of six struggling for parental attention, and then suddenly I've got this one-to-one. It was amazing. And I can't really explain why it took so long for us to meet. But I remember when she came to hug me, she was trembling. I mean, I was fine. I was all blase, teenager, you know, quite cocky. But she was trembling. So you could see that immense.

Presenter12:45

So much to her. And you weren't able to find out what had happened, the reason that she hadn't been able to keep in touch with you.

Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu12:51

Tip. So that time when I met her, I n we never had that conversation.

Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu12:56

I guess I was so pleased that I'd met her, you know, because I'd only actually realized that I had another mother, to be honest. So your your father had married again. Married again and I I didn't really realize that, um, yeah, that she wasn't my mother until I think about two and a half years before I met my mother. You know, I was quite a boisterous child, always getting into trouble.

Presenter13:04

If you

Speaker 113:14

You know, I've

Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu13:18

And my father sort of called me and said, you know, I want to talk to you about this and and did you ever think that, you know, your mother is not your mother? And I and I thought, I'm just going to be nasty and say yes, because I think it's going to hurt.

Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu13:34

And he said, Well, you're absolutely right. And then, of course.

Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu13:38

I dissolved into tears because that was not what I was expecting.

Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu13:42

So meeting my biological mother was quite special and I'm so happy that it happened. Before she died. And and when did she die? When did she leave? She died about a year after I'd met her. She'd emigrated to the States. She'd married again, had another child and my sister was only four months old when she died and she she died in her sleep. So she would have been thirty three.

Presenter14:07

But he

Presenter14:08

It's probably not something you could process at that age. You must have only come to understand it better as you've grown up yourself.

Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu14:13

Absolutely. For example, when I was told that my mother had died, I actually didn't believe it. I thought, they're at it again because they don't want me to form a bond or they don't want me to get hurt. And this is the final straw. So I'll go along with it. And then actually, when I'm older, I'm sure to find her and we can rectify this nonsense. They being your family. Yeah, that this was just something they were saying to sort of make sure I didn't pine or anything like that. So I went along with it. Then after a while, you're thinking, well, actually, I haven't seen her for 10 years. Must be true.

Speaker 114:35

Uh

Presenter14:35

Yeah.

Speaker 114:35

Uh

Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu14:49

It is something that's hard to process.

Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu14:52

But at the time you're just getting on with it. You're building a shell around yourself so that you don't get further hurt. And I think that's what I did. Mm-hmm.

Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu15:00

Uh

Presenter15:00

So as you mentioned.

Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu15:01

Dad played music in the front room. Who would be there with him? His friends. So some people would visit him and there'd be members of the Nigerian community and they would come along and there would be lots of shouting and lots of eating. So he was sort of almost a leader of the group because he had emigrated a lot earlier. He would always have the one-liners ready. I think he also fancied himself a bit of a man about town and things like that. So I think he was having a really he was having a really nice time, but he wanted to get back to Nigeria. Did that start?

Presenter15:37

Stop him putting down roots here. You know, he you said he was mixing with people from the Nigerian community, you know.

Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu15:41

I think now with hindsight, I do realize that.

Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu15:46

For example, we never had many English people visit us. At home, he would speak Igbo definitely, you know, and we didn't speak Ibbo, we spoke English, but we could understand Igbo at that. Igbo is the language spoken in southeast Nigeria. So I don't think he was making an effort to, you know, you really need to get to know your surroundings. I remember he would say, right, I'm going to read to you tonight. And he'd get a book and start reading. And we'd be cracking ourselves up at the pronunciation of the names. We'd be like, no. So he would be, because he was English. Yeah.

Speaker 216:18

I love it.

Presenter16:19

She would be

Presenter16:20

Bash

Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu16:21

Murdering Enid Blighten or whatever. Murdering the words. But he'd take time to read to us, which was really, really sweet.

Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu16:29

It's time for you.

Presenter16:30

Your third disc drummer. What are we gonna

Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu16:31

Yeah. Here

Presenter16:32

Uh

Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu16:32

So we're going to hear Love to Love You Baby by Donna Summer. And you always remember the first record you ever bought. I remember going to the store.

Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu16:40

Getting the album. I'd been admiring it for a long time before I'd got all my money together to coming home. We had a small record play in our in our bedroom, you know, sort of taking it out and just marveling at the fact that I could now afford my own music. And this was the first record I bought.

Speaker 217:09

When you're laying so close to me, there's no pizza rather than with me.

Presenter17:33

Donna Summer, and love to love you, baby. So, John, with the first record that you ever bought, I mean, there is an undeniable subtext.

Presenter17:41

Blissfully unaware. Okay. Unaware completely. Ejoma Chebu, you were a bright little girl and did well at school. What about science? Did that pique your interest at all?

Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu17:51

At that point, not really. At that point, not really. And science teaching in those days wasn't like it is now. So no experiments really in primary school. When I got to secondary school, I went to a grammar school. When I got to secondary school, we would do a lot of writing and we would always say, when are we going to get around to the dissections? When are we going to get around to actually doing things with our hands? I fell in love with science when I went to Nigeria.

Presenter18:19

So tell me about that. You were thirteen when you made the move. Obviously you'd been brought up with an expectation that it was going to happen at some point. How did you feel about moving? Ha ha ha.

Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu18:28

The good thing about that was suddenly we had new clothes. So that was all I was thinking about. I wasn't thinking too much about leaving my friends. But then towards the end, I remember my form teacher said, Go and tell the head teacher that you're leaving, that this is your last week.

Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu18:46

And I'd have been this bravado. I'm going to Nigeria. I'm going to leave you all. I'm going to be in the sun.

Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu18:53

I went to see the head teacher and I just fell apart. I remember being in her office sobbing.

Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu19:00

And I remember her telling me, At least you'll have Christmas in the sun.

Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu19:04

As if that was something that was comforting, I then became absolutely bereft that I would never see this place again. So that was really, really tough. And then when I got to Nigeria, it was even tougher because I then had a skin condition that sort of confined me to my bedroom. So this wasn't, it was kind of analogy to analogy to sun. Yeah, to strong sunlight and I looked like I was a burn victim. So really awful. And people would come, you know, I'm in this dark room, they'd have a look and it's from their expression that you realize actually you're not looking that great because of the way they looked at you.

Presenter19:25

Uh

Presenter19:40

Yeah.

Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu19:40

A Uh Yeah. Uh

Presenter19:40

Must have been awful.

Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu19:41

painful weeping. But um eventually it settled down. So it delayed me starting school for a bit. But also when you turn up at school looking like a Burns victim,

Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu19:54

And you're not speaking like everybody else. Nobody wants to be your friend. And so I went from being the popular child to being someone who people just said, you know, I really don't want to be your friend. That was difficult, especially in the beginning. I remember one particular classmate saying, you're just an ugly monster. But you know what I did? I resorted to comedy.

Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu20:18

So I used to literally put on one woman plays and I'd have people laughing and so I would actually use you know that to make friends and eventually I did make friends but of course with hindsight going to Nigeria was the best thing that ever happened to me the very best thing because 1970s Britain was not like Britain is now

Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu20:45

You could be racist. It didn't matter. You could be racist in school. You could be racist in the job market. You could have signs saying no black people. And had you grown up with that, seeing that? That seen that? Racist abuse in the classroom. It was acceptable in those days. And then was that coming from, who was that coming from? Other students? It was coming from if you had a fight with someone, that would be the first thing that would come out. And no person that looked like you in any position of authority. I think I had.

Speaker 121:11

Right.

Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu21:16

One woman from the Caribbean that was a a teacher when I was in primary school, that was the only person I saw in a position of responsibility who was black.

Presenter21:23

How can I possibly be?

Presenter21:26

Yeah, so in that case, you know, going to Nigeria, what what was that like to just then be in a completely different social environment?

Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu21:33

It was unbelievable because then, when I was, even though I went to a grammar school in Hackney, I had zero ambition. I wanted to go and work in a shop as soon as I could. I was thinking about, I need to earn seven pounds a week so I can go dancing on a Saturday, buy myself a new frock from Marks and Spencer and have a good time.

Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu21:57

I go to Nigeria, I see a completely different life. I see people in positions of authority that kind of looked like me. They didn't speak like me, but they looked like me.

Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu22:08

Suddenly I thought, Yes, I really

Presenter22:10

Did you want to go to university?

Presenter22:11

And it was around this time that you discovered a love of science. Exactly. How did it happen?

Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu22:16

So I've I've come from a very different curriculum in the UK, very different geography, very different history, very different English language, because now I have to learn English language by the rules.

Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu22:29

But I then realized, well, but physics was the same, maths was the same, chemistry was the same, biology was the same. So I took refuge in those subjects which were very similar to what I was learning in the UK. And then I really began to enjoy chemistry, really enjoy it. Why chemistry in particular?

Speaker 122:35

Yeah.

Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu22:48

Because you're actually study and we weren't even doing things about inside the atom, just the atom. You know, we were that was the level we were at. And how you could build these atoms together to make different molecules was actually, to me,

Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu23:02

It was I I felt

Presenter23:03

I felt it was wondrous almost.

Presenter23:05

Hey Joma, I want to hear more about what happened next, but first I'd love to hear some more music. It's your fourth choice today. What have you gone for?

Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu23:11

I've gone for Zombie by Fella Nicola Mokuti. Now Zombie is a very special record because this was a record about the Nigerian military dictatorship, where what Fella was doing was showing that actually this was not competent leadership.

Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu23:28

And it was banned, but we would play it at university where the military couldn't hear it and we would dance to it. Little bit of rebellion.

Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu23:38

PES

Speaker 123:38

Yeah.

Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu23:38

OBO

Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu23:40

Let's go!

Speaker 123:42

Zombie oh zombie zombie not go go unless you tell him to go Somebody not go stop unless you tell him to stop Some be not go turn unless you tell him to turn Some be not go tink unless you tell him to think zombie oh zombie zombie

Presenter24:07

Zombie Fellacuti

Presenter24:10

Ijo Morochebu, you read pharmacy at Benin University and then completed a Master's in Pharmaceutical Chemistry at the University of Lagos. By this point you'd got married and you had three daughters, but your marriage was failing, so you decided to return to London. What was the plan?

Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu24:27

Oh wow, I wish there was a plan. There was no plan.

Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu24:31

The plan was to get away and also to see if I could have get a PhD. That was it. So yeah, I turn up at Heathrow with my three children with one suitcase between us and £500 in my pocket. And we didn't have anywhere to live. So we were in a homeless person's shelter in Bayswater, a bed and breakfast for the homeless. They used to have a lot of them in those days. And we lived in one room and we shared a bathroom and facilities with other families. It was pretty hard. And, you know, with the kids, I sort of said to myself, I've got to do something by way of applying for, you know, jobs. So I go to the library and take the little one when the other two had gone to school. How old were they at that point? Eight, four, and one and a half. Oh, my goodness. So the one and a half year old, eight and four were in primary school and the one and a half in childcare. But before, you know, I had anything to do, because £500 doesn't take you very far, I had to apply for things. And so I had the first offer of a position to really look at trying to get drugs out of plants. It paid really well. I mean, it doesn't sound like a lot of money. It was £14,000 in those days. I mean, for someone who's got £500, it's quite a lot. But then I went for another interview and was offered this position that was looking at nanotechnology. It wasn't even called nanotechnology then, just little particles. And this position was giving me a student stipend of £6,800.

Speaker 125:47

It's quite a lot, okay.

Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu26:01

So I'm faced with these two choices and I thought getting drugs out of plants is pretty old fashioned. And would I have an enjoyable career? And so let's go the hungry route, the six thousand eight hundred route and go for the other position.

Presenter26:16

That says quite a lot about you, that you made that choice with three little kids living in a homeless ch shelter to pursue your curiosity. I mean, that's that's very much usually the preserve of people who can afford that kind of thing, isn't it?

Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu26:19

Yeah.

Speaker 126:19

Okay.

Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu26:21

Uh

Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu26:28

I know, but I thought to myself, I wanted to do something. I've come a long way.

Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu26:33

I've left everything I know. I need to make sure it's worth my while. So I need to make sure I'm doing something I enjoy. And I've never looked back, but I hid the fact that I had children from my boss. Yeah, so were you able to maintain that all the time you were studying? Not at all, because I've got a big mouth. It eventually fell out of me. Fell out one day. I was talking an anecdote, and I said, My daughter says, and he says, which daughter? Where is she? I said, well, she's at, they are at school at the moment. He said, how many have you got? So I told him I've got three children. And my supervisor, Sandy Florence, couldn't do more for me.

Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu27:07

So supportive. Why had you kept it to yourself? What was the reason? I was scared. I was scared that I wouldn't be taken seriously. I was scared that he would think that I haven't got enough time for the PhD. And so I felt that I needed to win that approval.

Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu27:24

As a scientist in the making, before actually telling them I've got these challenges.

Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu27:30

But I shouldn't have done that, because actually the moment he knew he couldn't do enough for me.

Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu27:37

Tell me about during those tough times, Adroma, what kept you going?

Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu27:41

I didn't have a choice. I had to do everything on my own. So that keeps you going. There's nothing that keeps you going more than your child looking at you and saying, well, I really need this or the other. And you have to feed them and you have to give them the things they need.

Presenter27:56

Eventually you found somewhere permanent to live and you could start working on nanoparticles, a subject you were fascinated by. What is a nanoparticle? I mean, how small are we talking?

Presenter28:06

So now

Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu28:06

Hydroparticles are tiny particles a thousandth of the width of a human hair. You cannot see them. You need a very powerful microscope to see them.

Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu28:17

So what do they do? We use them to create medicines that have fewer side effects.

Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu28:22

All we're doing there is making sure when you have a drug compound, so you have a chemical which is a drug.

Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu28:29

It goes to an area where you have the disease, and less of it goes to an area where you have healthy tissue.

Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu28:36

So, if you've got a disease in the brain, for example, a brain tumour.

Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu28:41

We make sure we get more of the drug going there and less of it going into your bone marrow and poisoning your blood.

Presenter28:49

So this increases the efficacy and the side effects are fewer and reduced.

Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu28:51

Yeah.

Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu28:53

That's all we do. It's just a shuttle.

Presenter28:56

The drama, it's time for some more music.

Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu28:57

Your fifth choice today. What's next? This is Coat of Many Colors by Dolly Parton. This really reminds me of when I went to secondary school in Nigeria.

Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu29:09

So, this is a song about a very poor child, and I wasn't poor in Nigeria at all, we were very middle class, but going into school with.

Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu29:18

clothing which doesn't quite fit with the rest of her classmates.

Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu29:23

And that ridicule. But what Dolly Parton sings about is a triumph over the ridicule.

Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu29:30

I didn't get that. I had to work through it quite laboriously. So that's why I really like this song.

Presenter29:36

My coat of many colors that my mama made for me

Presenter29:42

Made only from brakes, but I wore it so proudly

Presenter29:49

Although we had no money, I was rich as I could be, in my coat of many colours.

Presenter29:57

My mama made for me

Presenter30:04

Dolly Parton and coat of many colours. Ijoma Chebu, you were awarded your PhD from the University of London in 1994. Now, by that time, I think you'd met your second husband, Andreas. How did it happen?

Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu30:21

Uh

Presenter30:21

I had gone.

Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu30:21

Uh

Presenter30:22

Uh

Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu30:22

Uh

Presenter30:22

Uh

Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu30:22

Into

Presenter30:22

Conference

Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu30:22

Once in Germany.

Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu30:23

And I met Andres. We got chatting one evening, you know, almost throughout the night. We kept on talking. Then I had to leave.

Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu30:32

So we're driving to the Strange Station, then Lauren suddenly I looked at the snow and I started to cry. I thought, I'll never see this guy again. And he said

Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu30:42

I can see you're crying and I'm crying inside too. And I thought, what a cheesy lie. But anyway, we got to the station and then I leaned over and sort of gave him a platonic kiss. And then he hugs me and says, I love you. And I'm like, what? This is after what how many days? Four days.

Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu30:58

But we've only maybe had conversation for two.

Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu31:02

So anyway, he came to visit and then of course we started this long distance relationship.

Presenter31:08

So where was he? Was he over

Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu31:09

He was in Germany. Oh, I should have said he was in he was living in Munich and I was living in the UK. Anyway, eventually he came to live with us.

Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu31:17

And I was over the moon.

Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu31:20

But I wanted to get married, and he was like, Well, you know, I don't really believe in it. All this kind of nonsense that men say, I don't really believe in it.

Speaker 131:25

Beef and I

Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu31:27

I asked him three times, shall we get married? No, no.

Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu31:33

Anyway, at one point he then said, well,

Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu31:37

Since we're going to Las Vegas for a conference, I think we should get married in Las Vegas. And in fact, when I went to Vegas, I was just newly pregnant. So a lot of morning sickness in that Vegas trip. But yeah, so then our family grew and now there were six of us.

Presenter31:49

And that Vegas trip.

Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu31:54

four daughters and my husband and I.

Presenter31:56

That sounds perfect. And it was the start of a new chapter. So got married in 1998 and then in 2006 you became the Professor of Pharmaceutical Nanoscience at the School of Pharmacy, University of London. Your research up till that point had been about using nanotechnology to make new medicines. So how do you do that exactly?

Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu32:17

I actually had to design a new molecule. So, this is a molecule to put the drug inside, right? It's a molecule that will make the nanoparticles.

Presenter32:22

Can I

Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu32:25

And the difference that this molecule had compared to other molecules was that it was very big, at least one hundred times longer than the other molecules. But what this means is that if you imagine a ball of wool,

Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu32:39

And the ball of wool is made of tiny, tiny fibers of wool. And you scrunch that all together in your hand.

Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu32:46

And that's your nanoparticle. But you can imagine that a puff of air.

Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu32:50

and all the fibres will fly away because they're very small.

Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu32:54

If you have longer fibers, they can get tangled up into each other. So if you squash them together, you can have a nice little tangle. And if you blew that, the fibers wouldn't blow away because they're a lot longer, which means that they're not going to fall apart in the body prematurely.

Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu33:09

and they would last for a long time and get to their site of action. For example, it's very hard to get drugs into the brain. If you take an injection, you put the drug in your blood, it's hard for it to pass from your blood to your brain.

Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu33:24

Really difficult. There are all sorts of obstacles in the way.

Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu33:27

And those are drugs that are relatively small. If you've got a gene, so are drugs that are relatively small, they're about 180 Daltons, just say 180 units. If you've got a gene, it's a million units. So what we do when we package it in nanoparticles, we can get the gene into the brain by going

Presenter33:43

It's through the nose. So you can get the nanoparticles past the blood-brain barrier, because that's the key.

Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu33:49

Say

Presenter33:49

Say he

Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu33:49

In fact, when you go through the nose, you don't actually encounter the blood-brain barrier. The blood-brain barrier is when you're going through the blood, but through the nose, you go straight into the brain. So, this is a drug that's delivered nasally. So, is it a spray? Is it a drug? It's a nasal spray. Yes, it's a nasal spray. And we are developing a nasal spray for pain.

Presenter34:02

Spray, is it a drop?

Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu34:09

As well, we've taken a compound in everybody's brain.

Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu34:13

We've all got this compound called encephalin and we've made it into a nasal spray.

Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu34:18

And we've actually given it to a company in the States, and they are developing it with government funds because the government wants to address the opioid crisis.

Presenter34:27

So this has advantages over traditional opioids, doesn't it? What are the advantages of it?

Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu34:30

Yeah.

Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu34:31

The advantage is that because it's a a compound that's in in our brains, it won't be addictive. Most opioids, they cause their problems by being addictive.

Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu34:41

This

Presenter34:42

Compounds shouldn't do that. And what about kind of drug resistance and accidental overdose? Because that's a big issue, isn't it?

Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu34:48

Yeah, so accidental overdose normally happens when you've got addiction. So you want to take more and you pointed at something important. When you take these opioids, they don't work as well as they did the second time. So you have to increase the dose, increase the dose, increase the dose. What we found with our therapeutic is that they keep on working. It doesn't lose its efficacy.

Presenter34:48

Yeah.

Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu35:12

So, you don't have what we call tolerance, analgesic tolerance. So, then you won't have to take more each time.

Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu35:19

It's time for some more music at your mouth. Disc number six. What have you got for us? It's I Have Nothing by Whitney Houston. And this was the song I used to play when Andreas would come by.

Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu35:31

When he would come and visit me, we had this long distance relationship which lasted from 1993 to 1996.

Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu35:38

I would play this, trying to get him to understand that he needs to relocate.

Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu35:44

It worked. Yeah.

Speaker 135:47

Share my life, take me for what I am.

Speaker 135:55

Uh

Speaker 235:56

Cause I'll never change all my colors for you.

Speaker 236:06

Take my love.

Speaker 236:10

Yeah.

Speaker 136:10

I'll never ask for too much.

Speaker 136:15

I'm just all for the you

Presenter36:18

Whitney Houston with I Have Nothing.

Presenter36:21

So Ijoma, you have your own pharmaceutical company with your husband, and you say you're trying to apply your science to real world problems. Now part of your work focuses on making medicines to treat diseases that lead to blindness. What are the difficulties and what are you working on in that area?

Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu36:34

Yeah.

Speaker 236:34

So now

Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu36:37

So the one that we went into clinical trials with, and that's the first time the company had done a clinical test, is really looking at a form of allergic eye disease, but very, a very severe form. So people that have this form of allergic eye disease, they have nodules inside their eye and the whole eye is inflamed. So you can imagine on the inside of your eyelid, you actually have hives, that kind of thing. And to treat these diseases is very difficult. They can either take steroid drops, but if you take steroid drops for too long, you have side effects, you have very high intraocular pressure, something called glaucoma, or you have a cataract forming. So you can't take steroids for too long.

Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu37:20

Or they can take drugs by mouth that suppress the immune system, but then they suppress everywhere. So then what we've taken into the clinic is something that we can use, which will only suppress the immune system around the eye. It doesn't get into the blood, so it increases the safety. And is that taken orally or topically? It's taken as an eye drop. The second area that we're interested in is that we can give eye drops where the actual drug compound goes to the back of the eye, the retina.

Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu37:48

And that's important because patients at the moment, they have to get an injection into the eyeball. But that injection into the eyeball comes with all sorts of side effects. You can't put an injection into the eyeball every day and all the time and for years and years.

Presenter38:01

Anyone who had to have that would prefer an eyedrop I'm sure.

Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu38:04

would prefer an eye drop. So we are developing eye drops where the medicine will go to the back of the eye without the requirement of a needle. And when might they be available? We've started the trial of the eye drop for the allergic eye disease. We've started that and so if all goes well in two to three years we should have something that could be used by patients. But the eye drops to the back of the eye, we're only starting those trials. Uh

Presenter38:29

And how do you feel about the responsibility that you have to the people that you're trying to reach, that you're trying to help?

Presenter38:37

Yeah.

Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu38:37

We don't see the subjects, we're not involved in that at all. It's all done by an arm's length company, and that's the way it should be done. But you get reports that some of the subjects wanted to know a bit more about why we're doing it, and you know, they feel quite enthused that they're part of the trial, and that made me really happy actually. To be honest, I thought that.

Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu38:56

The first time I hear that the eye drops have gone into the eye with the molecule I designed that I would be ecstatic over the moon skipping about really happy.

Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu39:06

It wasn't like that, because the first time

Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu39:11

Is it okay? Yes. What about the second time and the third? And even when the trial was over and it was all the results came in, and we wanted to make sure it was safe and well tolerated, which we were able to establish, there was still a feeling of okay, it's safe and well tolerated, but now we have to show it works in the disease. And so there's always a next thing, I'm afraid. I wish I could just relax and enjoy it and have fun.

Presenter39:33

Maybe one day. It's time for some more music. What are we going to hear next, Ajuma?

Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu39:38

So Touch Me in the Morning by Diana Ross was a tune that used to play on the radio when I was a teenager in London. And it used to make me cry because the lyrics are so

Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu39:50

They're so gentle and I would lie there listening to it'cause you kind of had to get up and go to school, but I'd steal five minutes just listening to Diana Ross.

Speaker 240:02

Touch me

Speaker 240:06

Money

Speaker 240:10

Then let's walk away

Speaker 240:25

But we had yesterday.

Presenter40:30

Diana Ross and Touch Me in the Morning. So Ejomo Ichebu, in twenty fifteen you were appointed the Provost's Envoy for Race Equality at University College London. It's quite a title, quite a role.

Speaker 140:41

Um

Presenter40:44

What made you decide to

Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu40:44

Take it on. Yeah, so I had never been involved in any race equality initiatives at all.

Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu40:52

And I got a note from the provost saying, would you come to the meeting and be part of this self-assessment team?

Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu40:59

I was furious. I thought, why why me? I'm a scientist, I'm not a social scientist. That was my feeling. But anyway, I went to the meeting, too scared to sort of say no to the provost.

Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu41:11

And then we started talking about the data. And I was horrified. I had no idea. So okay, I'm a black woman doing my science and going into spaces and seeing that I'm the only one a lot of the time in in those days, the noughties and the teens.

Speaker 141:24

A lot of times and and

Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu41:28

But I thought it was demographics. I thought there are not many black people in the UK and in Glasgow, you know, hardly any. Yes, because you were at Strathclyde for a long time at university there. And what did you find out then? What opened your eyes? So I got in there, and the first thing I saw which really upset me was the awarding gap. And the awarding gap is defined as.

Presenter41:35

Yes, because you're at Straff Cline for a long time at university.

Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu41:48

The percentage of students that would get a particular degree. So the good degrees are first-class honours and second-class upper.

Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu41:57

So if you came into university, and it still exists in our sector, if you came into university with

Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu42:03

particular set of A levels and you are from an ethnic minority background, compared to a white student coming in with those same A levels, you are less likely to get this good degree.

Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu42:15

This annoyed me. And then I asked the proverbs, I said, I need to have a role in this. So I've gone in from I'm just going to sit at the back and sneer at everybody to now

Presenter42:24

So I'm leading.

Presenter42:27

And so so is this in is this just in science or is this in also

Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu42:31

whole sector, but it can be changed.

Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu42:36

I led a lot of different initiatives and we found that some faculties reduced their awarding gap year on year.

Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu42:43

by adopting a whole heap of measures, making sure they had diverse reading lists, making sure they had diverse examples, making sure that in small group settings you actually asked the student their name multiple times instead of ignoring them.

Presenter42:59

So is that about the lecturer perhaps being reticent to address students in case they get their name?

Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu43:04

I am wrong there. Exactly. The embarrassment of there's so many vowels in each other. Oh my god, I'm going to get it all mixed up. I'll just pretend she's not here.

Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu43:12

Whereas actually what Yona wants is

Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu43:15

Ask me my name again and I'll tell you. It's frustrating because that's such a s a small thing. But the students said they would prefer that because a lot of them get ignored.

Speaker 143:21

Uh

Presenter43:21

These major

Speaker 143:21

Oh shit.

Presenter43:25

So Ijoma, you were involved in the consultation to remove the names of eugenicists from buildings on the university campus. Some people listening might not understand why that makes a difference to a student walking in the uni on a university campus many decades later.

Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu43:44

I'll tell you why it makes a difference, if you consider theoretically that one of my descendants would have had to sit their exams in that building.

Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu43:54

If you think about sitting exams, it's incredibly stressful. I used to always find this stressful. And then you see the name of the lecture theatre that you're sitting your exam in, and you wander over to the library or you check your phone to see what this person's famous for. And then you're horrified that this person actually believes that because of your ethnicity, you are less than. So what I thought is that by getting rid of the names, and they were removed in 2020,

Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu44:20

Even if my descendants theoretically had to sit their exams in that room.

Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu44:25

My descendants' descendants would never have to sit their exams in a room named after a prominent eugenicist that thought they were less than.

Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu44:34

So

Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu44:35

One of the proudest things, of course, I'm proud of my children, proud of my science, but one of the proudest things I.

Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu44:42

I've ever done is lead that work to get rid of those names. Those names were there for 100 years.

Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu44:48

And they

Presenter44:49

Gone nav.

Presenter44:51

I'm about to send you off to the island. I wonder how you're feeling about it. Is there anything that you're bracing yourself for?

Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu44:58

I couldn't cope with the loneliness. I think I'd be dead in a few weeks because I like people. I like chatting.

Presenter45:05

Is there anything that you think you might embrace about island life?

Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu45:09

Yeah, I I think looking at the water every day would be a gift.

Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu45:15

That's about it.

Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu45:17

Well, we'll let you take one more tune with you. Your final track today. What's it gonna be?

Presenter45:17

But we'll let you

Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu45:21

It's I'm so glad I'm standing here today by The Crusaders with Joe Cocker. And whenever I hear this song, it always makes me emotional. Because when I started on this journey coming to the UK,

Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu45:36

Many people told me this was a bad idea.

Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu45:40

Don't do it. Stay behind.

Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu45:43

Or even if you're here, send your children away.

Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu45:47

So that you can study.

Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu45:49

So I had all that kind of advice, which I didn't take.

Speaker 145:50

At five.

Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu45:53

And I'm just happy that it all worked out, to be honest, that's all.

Presenter45:57

Uh

Presenter45:59

Your kids must be so proud, and your grandchildren now.

Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu46:02

I hope they are, but

Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu46:04

You know, I'm just mum and grandma to them, so I don't know, but

Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu46:09

Yeah, to survive it and do it.

Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu46:12

Sometimes I can't believe it.

Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu46:14

I really can't.

Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu46:16

See?

Presenter46:17

Said I was hoping

Presenter46:23

Ma

Presenter46:25

Jingle in the middle.

Speaker 246:28

Uh

Speaker 246:30

Strong

Speaker 246:32

Hearts just keep going.

Speaker 246:36

That is why I'm still standing.

Speaker 246:40

Yeah.

Speaker 246:43

Yeah.

Presenter46:43

Come together

Presenter46:45

I'm so glad I'm standing here today, The Crusaders with Joe Cocker.

Presenter46:51

Ijoma Chebu, I'm going to send you away to the desert island. I will give you the Bible, the complete works of Shakespeare, and you can take one other book. What are you going for?

Presenter47:00

So I'm gonna go

Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu47:00

For Angela's Ashes by Frank McCourt is a book I read about fifteen years ago and it's never left me. And he talks about the very hard life he had growing up in Ireland.

Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu47:14

But the way he writes the book, you always feel hopeful. And that feeling of having hope is something that I think I've carried around with me. I'm a very optimistic person. My husband makes fun of me that you're so optimistic that you really think that when it's raining, it's not.

Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu47:36

And I think it's very important to have optimism because there's so much that you could be unhappy about. But if you feel that the future is going to bring you joy, happiness, fulfilment, it keeps you going.

Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu47:52

You can also have a luxury item. What are you going to take with you? A variety of seeds so that I can grow some food.

Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu48:00

For the year after I've foraged for food, hoping I don't die of starvation because I really like food.

Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu48:06

So if you can give me some yam seeds, some corn seeds, some rice seeds, with a little bit of a how-to, then I can probably catch some fish.

Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu48:18

Make some rice.

Presenter48:20

Just the thought of it. Mm, sounds quite nice. I mean, it is a bit on the practical side, but there's plenty of precedent for taking seeds, so it's yours. Finally, which one track of the eight that we've heard today would you rush to save from the waves if you needed to?

Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu48:35

It's

Presenter48:35

Gots B.

Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu48:35

The Crusaders with Joe Cocker. I'm so glad I'm standing here today because

Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu48:40

I am glad I'm standing here today, so yeah.

Presenter48:43

Yeah.

Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu48:43

And that's the record I'd like.

Presenter48:45

To save.

Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu48:45

Uh

Presenter48:46

Professor Dame Ijomo Uchebu, thank you very much for letting us hear your Desert Island discs. Thank you for having me.

Presenter49:33

Hello, I hope you enjoyed my conversation with Ajoma. I wish her many happy planting days. We've cast away a range of scientists, including Professor Brian Cox, Professor Alice Roberts, and Professor Tim Spector. The studio manager for today's programme was Sarah Hockley. The assistant producer was Christine Pavlovsky. The production coordinator was Susie Roylance and the producer was Paula McGinley. Next time, my guest will be the writer, Abdul Razak Gurner. I do hope you'll join us.

Speaker 150:14

From BBC Radio 4 and the History Podcast.

Speaker 150:18

We're not so funny people in our families. I'm Joe Dunthorne.

Speaker 150:23

True.

Presenter50:23

Yeah.

Speaker 150:23

People

Presenter50:23

Uh

Speaker 150:24

And this is half

Presenter50:25

Uh

Speaker 150:26

Life.

Speaker 150:26

She finished her job, she dropped dead. My father finished his job, he was dead within a week. I mean that's all quite a weird thread of story, don't know. And so we call it like the curse of this minimal.

Presenter50:31

Wait.

Speaker 250:31

BEAP

Presenter50:39

An eight-part podcast about how the past lives on inside us.

Speaker 150:43

I wonder about how you feel after all of this.

Presenter50:46

Even when we try to ignore it, all of the bombs will detonate sooner or later.

Presenter50:54

Listen to Half-Life on bbc sounds.