Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Embryologist and professor of biology, known for cell development research and chairing the public understanding of science committee.
On the island
Eight records
I just would like a South African record, and Quella is something that's very South African and relates to what one hears on the streets, and I like it.
It does remind me of really a liberation of politics and intellectual life and sort of getting out of school and things like that.
String Quartet No. 15 in A minor, Op. 132Favourite
I worked in Israel for a year, and I had a friend there who was a music teacher, and she introduced me to chamber music ... And so I learnt to love chamber music.
Record number four um really relates to my ex-wife, um, Betty Walbert. She's the mother of my four children, and um it's Elizabeth Welsh as a singer that she's very fond of.
Die Walküre: 'Der alte Sturm, die alte Müh!'
Régine Crespin, Berlin Philharmonic and Herbert von Karajan
I came to Wagner quite late, when I was in England, and I am totally devoted to his music. I am absolutely amazed not only by how wonderful it is, but by his confidence.
This is how I wooed my present wife, Jill Neville.
Così fan tutte: 'Alla bella Despinetta'
I think of course, Ivantutti is a truly wonderful opera. And as a friend of mine pointed out, it tells you really something about love. And if you tell someone long enough that you love them, you can actually seduce them by love.
Alfredo Kraus, Orchestre National du Capitole de Toulouse and Michel Plasson
Um I've only just really come to Mathenais Manon recently and it's just very beautiful music, rather romantic.
In conversation
Presenter asks
0:50Why did you choose to go public about your clinical depression?
It was the only time I'd ever been depressed, and it was so unspeakably awful ... and then I realized that people were slightly embarrassed about me having a depression, and that other people who were depressed were somewhat ashamed of it. It has a stigma, being depressed, and I felt it was very important for this to be removed.
Presenter asks
6:58Why are you so dismissive about psychotherapy?
Because you can make up any story you like. You know, it's just like Kipling's Just So story, how the elephant got its nose by being pulled by the crocodile or whatever it was. You can't ever validate this. It's these are just stories. And they're very attractive stories. I think we all use them in our lives. But my depression had absolutely nothing to do with that.
Presenter asks
7:51How did cognitive therapy work for you?
What cognitive therapy, particularly in relation to depression, does, is to point out to you how negative your thoughts are ... I wanted to go to a committee meeting, and I was terrified about going. And what the therapist did was to take me through. She said, Well, now, say you walk out, say say you just can't cope with it, how how bad will your colleagues think of you? and so forth. In other words, by trying to bring reality into my anxiety, she enabled me to go to the meeting, and that was a very, very big um a step towards my recovery.
The keepsakes
The book
An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding
David Hume
Now I've only read bits I've only read bits of it, I'm afraid, and I'm not keen on philosophers at all. But Hume is something completely different, and it would keep me thinking for as long as I was there.
Presenter asks
14:16How do you explain the fact that science is still not as popular as the arts?
Science is hard and um it isn't the way to express your personality. What I mean by that is that if you want a subject where you can, as it were, give your opinion at an early stage. You can do that, say, in English, or in history. I'm afraid that's not true if you're doing science ... you have to know really quite a lot before you can make any contribution to all. So it is tough.
Presenter asks
18:14Are you saying that we lack natural curiosity, or is it just easier to bluff in the arts than in science?
I think it's just easier. I also personally think, but I have no direct evidence for that, is that you can make your l it's more personal. You can make your you know, you can talk you can anybody can make a criticism of a poem. I'm afraid there's nothing much you can do with the second law of thermodynamics. You've got to try and understand it.
Presenter asks
27:23Why can't you scientists leave God alone instead of trying to deny a place for Him?
I have to say that I'm not the one who who sort of raised it. I'm the token atheist. Approached by those involved in religion all the time. It it's not me going out and, as it were, singing my song.
“I think the essence of a clinical depression is that one enters a quite different state. It's very, very hard to describe. But one first of all, depressives are very, very boring. They are totally negative and totally self-involved. So for people who have to live with them, it's a nightmare.”
“I mean, everybody should get out of bed in the morning and realize that they come from one single cell, the fertilized egg, and here you are. That's what we try to understand.”
“In fact, if an idea fits with common sense about the way the world works, you can be virtually certain it will be false.”
“I think there's no evidence for a God, and I'm like David Hume, and th th th you know, why should I believe believe in it? The evidence is very poor.”