Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Disaster recovery advisor and visiting professor of mass fatalities and pandemics; expert in planning for and reacting to major incidents from 9/11 to COVID-19.
On the island
Eight records
It's music that readies you. It stabilizes what is quite a wobbly core.
Choir of Queen's College, Cambridge
This is for Daddy Bob, and it typifies him.
Overture from Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves
This was something we would do together with my sister.
Corrected from “Trustful”
It felt like the right song to take with me, to remind me that it's all worth fighting for.
It's about the sudden realization of how much has changed.
In conversation
Presenter asks
1:47Why is the hardest part of your work going home?
But for me the hardest thing has always been separating, coming away from that and having in many ways to sort of reintegrate back into society and walk through the front door.
Presenter asks
13:16What do you remember about the Hillsborough disaster?
I think our class changed that day with very little support at the time.
Presenter asks
14:54What lessons have you taken from watching Hillsborough into your professional life?
Sometimes the initial event, terrible as it may be, isn't the worst thing. Sometimes the responders and the response is worse than the first event.
Presenter asks
33:30What did you find in your research on the community in Tolbar after the flooding?
I found the most incredible community there. And it also did teach me that the plan has value.
The keepsakes
The book
Rumer Godden
I'm going to go back to the book that's brought me the most comfort as a child, and that was The Diddekoi by Ruma Godden.
The luxury
a solar powered lantern or torch
I don't like the dark, so I would like a solar powered lantern or torch, please, if I may, for my I've made a little shelter and I would like to put that on about five o'clock when the sun starts to set.
“You inhabit two worlds and home can seem a very, very strange place.”
“It's a loss in the soul. And I think a lot of my work has been about losses of soul, losses in the soul that are irreparable.”
“I would be talking to myself a lot and probably out loud because there's no nobody to feel embarrassed in front of.”
“I live every day genuinely as if it is my last.”