Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Scientist who invented the oral contraceptive pill, later became a writer exploring scientific dilemmas.
On the island
Eight records
The Leaves Were Sadly Rustling
The first record is Boris Kristoff singing one of the Musovsky songs, in this case called The Leaves Were Sadly Rustling, but the important thing was for me to hear this Bulgarian bustle, this wonderful singer of really the 1930s and 40s and 50s singing. It's a Bulgarian connection that interests me, and these are among the loveliest songs that I know.
Villanelle (from Les nuits d'été)
Marie-Nicole Lemieux and Daniel Blumenthal
My second record is Berlioz's Neu d'Été. As a teenager and still a virgin, I read the first Arthur Kustler book called Spartacus, in which a courtesan walked into Spartacus' tent and started to make love to him, the macho man, and while they had intercourse started singing and sang more and more. At that time I was dreaming of the woman that I one day sleep with who would actually sing to me during sexual intercourse.
Well, the next one is Place de Domingo singing an aria from There is the Mass Ball. And that has a real play connection because my second play that I wrote together with a famous chemist Roald Hoffmann is called Oxygen.
Well, the next song is a song I've never heard. Neil Young is our neighbor. He has a very large ranch adjacent to ours. Yet I've never heard Neil Young's music. That genre of music has never appealed to me. It is my wife who is much more modern. She said, I will suggest to you a Neil Young song that you should hear. And in a way, Helpless seems to me to be a rather interesting title.
KindertotenliederFavourite
Janet Baker and the Hallé Orchestra conducted by Sir John Barbirolli
The next piece of music is Janet Baker singing one of the kindertoten leaders from Gustav Mahler. Kindertoten leader means of course the songs of the child's death. And Gustav Mahler went through the same experience, this horrible experience having one of his children die. And it's in that tremendous sadness that he wrote what to me are perhaps the most beautiful leader that I've ever heard.
Victoria de los Ángeles and Geoffrey Parsons
It is one of the songs that I played when we scattered my daughter's ashes. Respond to me is really in a way what I continuously still ask my daughter.
String Quartet No. 9 in C major, Op. 59, No. 3, 'Razumovsky' (1st movement)
Beginning of the first movement of Razumovsky, Quartet No. 3 by Beethoven, which I've picked because it is wonderful cello part with which it start.
Steve Reich Ensemble conducted by Paul Hillier
It's a wonderful piece that I saw first here at the South Bank, The Cave by Steve Rice. It is really the question is who were your ancestors? And this desire to find your roots.
In conversation
Presenter asks
0:44You've certainly led life at high speed. Drive is second nature to you, isn't it?
Yes, that's both good and bad. That sort of ambition is both the nourishment that makes this sort of work possible, and I think it's also the poison. This desire for name recognition, for approval by your peers, the fact that you think you never have enough time for all the things that you want to do makes you impatient and at times not very prodient.
Presenter asks
2:33Did you look at [the pill] and think millions of women around the world really need and want [it]?
No, it would be nice to romanticize this, but I would say no. And what we did is we then sent this material to many different biologists all over the world, including one named Gregory Pincus … whose interest at that time was to try and work on the contraceptive applications of progestational compounds. So he was very interested in the compound that we sent him. So he trialled it.
Presenter asks
11:01Did you in America ever feel wary? Were you still quite instinctively looking over your shoulder?
Oh, absolutely, absolutely. I did uh all the time. I saw anti-Semitism in places where of course it didn't exist. This is a phobia, particularly I think of a refugee that you probably never uh forget.
The keepsakes
The luxury
Solar battery-operated computer with a hidden compartment containing cyanide
The powder is cyanide. … if I found that life at some stage would become intolerable, I would want to be in a position to end it.
Presenter asks
17:44How did [your daughter Pammy's suicide] happen? How old was she?
She was twenty-eight, and I think there was a time when I was closer to her than I'd ever been. … and the following day I had a frantic phone call from my son-in-law saying my daughter had left a suicide note and saying I went into the woods to die. For three days we didn't find her body … and then a neighbor of ours saw tracks in the woods and called me and I went there and then saw the bloated face of my daughter. It was the greatest tragedy of my life. I've never overcome it, of course.
Presenter asks
29:39How long do you think it will take us to get to the point where sex is simply recreational as opposed to procreational?
A hundred years from now, this may be the norm. I do not know this. But we are moving in that direction. We've already crossed that barrier. I do not believe that genie can be put back in the bottle.
“That sort of ambition is both the nourishment that makes this sort of work possible, and I think it's also the poison.”
“To survive your own children is really almost anti-biblical. It's something that you can never overcome.”
“I wanted to create something living out of death, not as some memorial, some building and so on, but a dynamic process.”