4 ms·

My Castaway This Week: the world’s longest-running interview show

23 points by tintinnabula 4y ago

cafard 4y ago
Various NPR affiliates in the US have or have had there own versions. I'm fairly sure that I heard one with Daniel Boorstin on a DC station. And one weekend I heard a Pennsylvania state legislator on a Harrisburg station.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
nsonha 4y ago
Wow, I had no idea and I used to listen to this show when I started listening to podcasts, no particular reason, just curious. I guess the show has this meditating quality in the fact that it's really just people telling their life stories, it's not them talking about some topic of great importance or the next big thing. You can turn on an episode with no expectation. It helped that I was clueless about celebrities in the UK.
- KaiserPro 4y ago
  > It helped that I was clueless about celebrities in the UK. The main selling point is that its not just celebs that do this show, its captains of industry, scientists, philosophers, and all sorts of people who are vaguely successful in their field.
  - nsonha 4y ago
    they are what I meant by celebs
PaulRobinson 4y ago
Desert Island Discs is a stalwart of BBC Radio 4 that has seeped into wider UK culture beyond its core audience: the time pips, the shipping forecast, a show I went to the 50th anniversary recording of at the Royal Albert Hall recently "I'm Sorry, I Haven't a Clue" and it's faux rival "Just a Minute", have all got cultural resonance to almost everyone who grew up here in the UK even if they don't regularly listen to Radio 4. Desert Island Discs is particularly interesting because it really pulls at the British class system. As the article points out, classical music appears more on this show than it does in actual British music sales because there is a tendency for people to want to look more cultured. The article also talks about the political classes in particular seeing it as part of establishing "legacy", and interviewer styles changing over time reflecting the shift in British culture. In a lot of the World people think of "getting on", as being about building status through wealth. That exists in the UK, but we seem to put a higher prize on being seen as cultured by others as part of our status. People who enjoy celebrity and popular music are slightly sneered at unless that genre is elevated into a realm of some intellectual "greatness", and cultural value: Beatles, Rolling Stones, the Who, Pink Floyd, and so on. Desert Island Discs gives air to these weird little cultural nudges. Look at Tony Blair's selection: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0093n5f https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0093n5f - given what he has said in other interviews it's more likely he'd choose Stones or some Paul Simon than this lot, and I seriously doubt that he listens to any of that music on a regular basis. So why did he make these choices? He was giving nudges to those around him: "I'm cultured", "I'm educated", "I'm one of the cultural elite as well, you know". Deep, deep cultural insecurity. Thatcher's choices - https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p009mz07 https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p009mz07 - are even more telling. Beethoven's 5th, "Emperor"? Well, that's subtle given it was 1978 and she was very much "on the make", politically. Let's take a working class lad from Liverpool who has every right to name his own songs, Sir Paul McCartney - https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p009ml01 https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p009ml01 - and we see the nods to cultural legacy. Many of these artists no doubt inspired him and his early musical career, but he still had to squeeze Britten in there. It's genuinely fascinating. As a self-aware Briton who sees the good and the bad of what this country represents (Empire bad, Commonwealth good, Oxbridge good, lack of access to better eduction for all bad, and so on), I love the eclectic list of guests - most of them unknown outside of their fields - and the predictable nods to cultural elitism that defines so much of who we are as a nation. The article takes a little jab at the current presenter - Lauren Laverne - that I think is a little cruel. It's not an original comment on her differing style, and she is not as "under the skin" as Kirsty Young, but she has her own warmth and she's more likely to land some of the prey they've struggled to get over the years like Mick Jagger.
ZeroGravitas 4y ago
Tangentially related: https://www.desertislanddiscworld.com/ https://www.desertislanddiscworld.com/ I enjoyed the episode with Cory Doctorow about 'Making Money' but didn't immediately recognize any other guest names. https://www.desertislanddiscworld.com/episodes/6-1-cory-doctorow-and-making-money/ https://www.desertislanddiscworld.com/episodes/6-1-cory-doct...

23 points by tintinnabula 4y ago

Various NPR affiliates in the US have or have had there own versions. I'm fairly sure that I heard one with Daniel Boorstin on a DC station. And one weekend I heard a Pennsylvania state legislator on a Harrisburg station.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

nsonha 4y ago

Wow, I had no idea and I used to listen to this show when I started listening to podcasts, no particular reason, just curious. I guess the show has this meditating quality in the fact that it's really just people telling their life stories, it's not them talking about some topic of great importance or the next big thing. You can turn on an episode with no expectation. It helped that I was clueless about celebrities in the UK.

KaiserPro 4y ago
> It helped that I was clueless about celebrities in the UK. The main selling point is that its not just celebs that do this show, its captains of industry, scientists, philosophers, and all sorts of people who are vaguely successful in their field.
- nsonha 4y ago
  they are what I meant by celebs

PaulRobinson 4y ago

Desert Island Discs is a stalwart of BBC Radio 4 that has seeped into wider UK culture beyond its core audience: the time pips, the shipping forecast, a show I went to the 50th anniversary recording of at the Royal Albert Hall recently "I'm Sorry, I Haven't a Clue" and it's faux rival "Just a Minute", have all got cultural resonance to almost everyone who grew up here in the UK even if they don't regularly listen to Radio 4. Desert Island Discs is particularly interesting because it really pulls at the British class system. As the article points out, classical music appears more on this show than it does in actual British music sales because there is a tendency for people to want to look more cultured. The article also talks about the political classes in particular seeing it as part of establishing "legacy", and interviewer styles changing over time reflecting the shift in British culture. In a lot of the World people think of "getting on", as being about building status through wealth. That exists in the UK, but we seem to put a higher prize on being seen as cultured by others as part of our status. People who enjoy celebrity and popular music are slightly sneered at unless that genre is elevated into a realm of some intellectual "greatness", and cultural value: Beatles, Rolling Stones, the Who, Pink Floyd, and so on. Desert Island Discs gives air to these weird little cultural nudges. Look at Tony Blair's selection: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0093n5f https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0093n5f - given what he has said in other interviews it's more likely he'd choose Stones or some Paul Simon than this lot, and I seriously doubt that he listens to any of that music on a regular basis. So why did he make these choices? He was giving nudges to those around him: "I'm cultured", "I'm educated", "I'm one of the cultural elite as well, you know". Deep, deep cultural insecurity. Thatcher's choices - https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p009mz07 https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p009mz07 - are even more telling. Beethoven's 5th, "Emperor"? Well, that's subtle given it was 1978 and she was very much "on the make", politically. Let's take a working class lad from Liverpool who has every right to name his own songs, Sir Paul McCartney - https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p009ml01 https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p009ml01 - and we see the nods to cultural legacy. Many of these artists no doubt inspired him and his early musical career, but he still had to squeeze Britten in there. It's genuinely fascinating. As a self-aware Briton who sees the good and the bad of what this country represents (Empire bad, Commonwealth good, Oxbridge good, lack of access to better eduction for all bad, and so on), I love the eclectic list of guests - most of them unknown outside of their fields - and the predictable nods to cultural elitism that defines so much of who we are as a nation. The article takes a little jab at the current presenter - Lauren Laverne - that I think is a little cruel. It's not an original comment on her differing style, and she is not as "under the skin" as Kirsty Young, but she has her own warmth and she's more likely to land some of the prey they've struggled to get over the years like Mick Jagger.

ZeroGravitas 4y ago

Tangentially related: https://www.desertislanddiscworld.com/ https://www.desertislanddiscworld.com/ I enjoyed the episode with Cory Doctorow about 'Making Money' but didn't immediately recognize any other guest names. https://www.desertislanddiscworld.com/episodes/6-1-cory-doctorow-and-making-money/ https://www.desertislanddiscworld.com/episodes/6-1-cory-doct...