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2:38

Hello and welcome to my

2:40

time capsule. My

2:46

name is Mike Anton Stephens, which you

2:48

may already know. You may

2:50

also know that my time capsule is

2:52

the podcast where people tell me five

2:54

things from their life that they wish

2:56

they had in a time capsule. They

2:59

pick four things that they cherish, but they also

3:01

pick one thing that they'd like to forget. Something

3:03

they want to bury in the ground and never think

3:05

of again. This episode of

3:07

my time capsule is dedicated to the

3:10

mother of Carl Simmons, one of our

3:12

regular listeners. Carl's mom's name was Irene,

3:14

and Carl introduced his mom to my

3:16

time capsule. Sadly, Irene passed

3:18

away recently, so we thought we'd

3:20

remember her with this special episode. Our

3:23

condolences to Carl and his dad. And

3:25

as a special treat, my guest in

3:27

this episode is the wonderful Professor Alice

3:29

Roberts. Alice is an academic,

3:32

writer, and broadcaster interested in the structure

3:34

of humans, how we function, and our

3:36

place in the wider environment. She

3:39

combines a fascination with human biology and

3:41

history, which are often considered to be

3:43

separate subjects. Alice, however, is

3:45

demonstrating how they are intertwined and

3:47

inseparable. Alice originally

3:49

trained as a doctor, but left surgery

3:51

behind to become a university academic,

3:54

teaching clinical anatomy to students

3:56

and doctors, and researching human

3:58

origins and institutions. disease in

4:00

ancient bones. From very

4:03

early in her academic career she

4:05

became involved in university outreach, listening

4:07

and learning from others' experience and

4:10

expertise. She's been Professor of

4:12

Public Engagement with Science at the University of

4:14

Birmingham since 2012. Now

4:17

on top of that, Alice has presented more than

4:19

100 television documentaries, ranging

4:21

across human biology, history

4:23

and archaeology. She first

4:25

appeared on television in 2001 as a

4:28

human bone specialist on Channel 4's

4:31

Time Team, and went on to present

4:33

Coasts on BBC 2,

4:35

and then to write and present

4:37

a range of television series for

4:39

the BBC, including The Incredible Human

4:41

Journey, Origins of Us and Ice

4:43

Age Giants, as well as several

4:46

Horizon programmes. She also presented a

4:48

number of history series on Channel

4:50

4, including Britain's Most Historic Towns,

4:52

Fortress Britain and Ancient Egypt by

4:54

Train, as well as Curse

4:56

of the Ancients and Royal Autopsy on Sky

4:59

History. Alice's longest running

5:01

series, BBC 2's Digging

5:03

for Britain, has been going strong for

5:05

more than 10 years, and is better

5:07

than ever. What's the latest series? It's

5:09

fabulous. Now if that

5:11

wasn't enough, Alice is a keen

5:13

artist and enjoys exploring ways of

5:16

engaging people with science through art,

5:18

and she's written numerous popular science

5:20

books. Her book The

5:22

Incredible Unlikeliness of Being was shortlisted

5:24

for the Welcome Book Prize 2015.

5:27

Her latest book, Crypt of

5:29

14th, is out at the end of

5:31

February when she will also embark on a theatre tour

5:33

talking about it. Alice lives

5:36

with her husband, David Stevens, and

5:38

two children. He's a Bescadarian and

5:40

a confirmed atheist, and a

5:42

former president of Humanist UK. So

5:45

as you can see, Alice likes to keep

5:47

herself busy. Amazing then that

5:49

she found an hour to chat with me

5:51

about the things she wants in a time

5:54

capsule. And here is her chat. There

6:00

you are. Let your eyes see, surprise you. Good

6:03

morning. Good morning. How are

6:05

you? Lovely to meet you. Lovely to meet

6:07

you too in the Easter. Yeah,

6:09

in this weird way. There we

6:11

are. My daughter is called Hannah Roberts. Yeah.

6:15

Through marriage. And my name is Stevens. Oh,

6:18

there you go. There you go. Robert Stevens

6:20

is everywhere. It's fated. Yeah. It's

6:23

absolutely fated. What can you do? Lovely

6:25

of you to do this, Alice. Oh, thank

6:27

you. I'm a fan.

6:29

I love digging for Britain. I

6:31

just, it's obsessive, isn't it? Yeah,

6:34

absolutely. It's fabulous. I got so excited

6:36

that, what's it, the dodecahedron that they

6:38

found? Unbelievable. What's

6:40

that? It's just bizarre. I mean,

6:44

I feel like somebody must know what these are. Come

6:46

on. So we got Lorraine Hittings to come and

6:48

talk about it, because obviously she's just finished her

6:50

master's. She's starting a PhD and she's like, I

6:53

don't know. No, no, no. Suddenly

6:57

those things, they show you actually how much you

6:59

don't know. That's what's amazing, isn't

7:01

it? Yeah. I mean, that's a fantastically

7:03

complex thing. Obviously very important.

7:06

We have no idea. It's

7:08

kind of the antithesis of the

7:10

amazing Rutland mosaic that we had

7:12

in series 9, and then course

7:14

up with it again in series 10. Yeah. You

7:16

know, when that was uncovered, it was immediately

7:19

obvious what it was. It was the trading

7:21

war. And in fact, they've been doing more work on

7:23

it. It's notched the

7:25

version from the Iliad. It

7:28

is the version from, I think,

7:30

Aeschylus, from an Aeschylus play. It's

7:34

absolutely brilliant. I mean, you know, that's where

7:36

you've got that bit of culture that we

7:38

completely understand, or at least, you know,

7:40

we understand those details. And then you have something like the

7:42

Jadaquedron, which is obviously a lot smaller. And

7:44

you just get, I have no idea. The

7:47

Wisdom of the Masses at the moment. So Twitter

7:49

went crazy. I think the

7:51

Wisdom of the Masses is coming

7:53

down with the majority thinking it might be something

7:55

to do with knitting. I just

7:57

don't believe it because you can use it. people

8:00

have used replica dodecahedron in its

8:02

vids, but it's

8:04

overly complicated. Yeah, why would they make it

8:07

quite so beautiful as well? It's really so

8:09

ornamental, isn't it? And for something so functional,

8:11

why would it be that ornamental? Yeah,

8:14

and every hole is a different size.

8:16

That's the ridiculous thing about it. And

8:18

every dodecahedron they find is a

8:20

different size as well. So it's obviously not

8:22

a consistent thing, is it? No, it doesn't

8:25

seem to be that consistent. But the size of

8:27

the holes, you know, in proportion to the dodecahedron,

8:29

seems to be a really important

8:31

thing. So the fact that

8:33

there were 12 different size holes, you can kind of

8:35

lay them out and there's a sequence

8:37

of sizes. Yeah. And then

8:40

people said, Oh, it's finishing gloves, it's finishing fingers.

8:42

I'm like, who's got 12 fingers? So

8:50

I don't know how you do it. First of all, I don't know how

8:52

you give me the time. One, you've got

8:54

a family to Yeah, they're at

8:56

school. I mean, honestly, Alice, you

8:58

go to medical school, you think, no, I shall then

9:01

I'll do this. And then you become a professor eventually.

9:03

And then you go to lecture tours, and you do

9:05

make television programs, and you do lectures

9:07

and broadcasts. And then

9:09

you're involved in lots of different societies.

9:11

And just when are you going

9:13

to do something with your life? That's all I want to

9:15

know. No, I don't know. Maybe next year. Okay.

9:20

It's very impressive. Yes, I think your

9:22

mom and dad must have instilled you with

9:24

a desire for knowledge that has driven you

9:26

through all these things. And I think the

9:29

only thing I've got for my parents is

9:31

an Anglican work ethic guilt. Right. So

9:34

yeah, I find it very difficult. My

9:39

husband's tried to train me a bit, but I

9:43

find it difficult. It dogs me. I

9:46

was brought up a Catholic and therefore I'm able

9:48

to sit and contemplate. Oh, that's much better. Which

9:50

means do nothing. Really? Yeah. But

9:55

I still feel guilty. I'm not sure what it is,

9:57

though. Catholic guilt isn't we're not sure what it's about.

10:00

We just are guilty. It's

10:02

just in there. Now look, would you

10:04

like me to record this lately as well?

10:06

That would be lovely, yes, thank you. We

10:09

ought to get on with it because I know you've probably got...

10:11

I didn't know if we were already in it because we were

10:13

having such fun. You never know. I don't think you know this

10:15

is... Yeah. You never know. It's

10:17

one of those things. I'm recording now.

10:20

Fantastic. Okay. So all we're going

10:22

to talk about, well, it's up to you what we talk about

10:24

because you choose five things to put into a time capsule. No,

10:26

that's been such fun. Yeah. Five things

10:28

that you cherish and one thing that you'd like

10:30

to see the end of. And I want to

10:32

talk about this as well. Yes. This

10:34

is very exciting. It just rose.

10:36

Oh my God. Oh my God, it's

10:38

a thing. Oh my God. Is that

10:41

the first copy you've got? It

10:43

arrived yesterday. Oh, wow. That's

10:45

the first copy you've seen. Yeah. That's

10:48

beautiful. An actual book. An

10:50

actual book. I know, it's weird.

10:53

All I've ever done in my life is written

10:55

a comedy book with some other people and I

10:57

was so excited when it turned up and there

10:59

it was. But the idea that you wrote that

11:01

yourself and all the research, I mean, crypt, it's

11:03

a fascinating subject, isn't it? I

11:05

love it. Yeah. I mean, I've

11:08

always been obsessed with burial archeology and it's such a

11:10

great time to be writing about it right now because

11:12

of the incredible insights that

11:14

we're getting from genetics. I mean, it

11:16

is mind blowing. Yeah. Yeah. So

11:19

it's extraordinary the advances that have been made in how they

11:21

can tell what happened to people. And then

11:23

that thing of following it through being ever say, well,

11:26

actually we can find people basically who are related to

11:28

these people now. Yeah.

11:30

Yeah. It's a kind

11:32

of layers and layers of it. You know,

11:34

the fact that you can look at family

11:36

relationships way in the past, you can look

11:38

at migrations in a way that we've not

11:40

been able to before. That's incredibly important. Yeah.

11:43

And then diseases as well. So this new book is

11:45

a lot about disease, which takes me back to my

11:47

own PhD as well. Yeah. Right.

11:50

Yeah. My wife has

11:52

a PhD in biochemistry, but she

11:55

was always fanatical about genetics and

11:57

those things. She loves

11:59

it. Yeah. And I sort of I took

12:01

no notice of it because I didn't think I

12:03

really understood it But she told me that thing

12:05

of the genetic difference within the human race being

12:08

very slight Certainly in comparison

12:10

with say just a tribe of chimpanzees.

12:12

Yeah Yeah That they have much more

12:14

genetic variation than the whole human race

12:16

and that goes back to that thing

12:18

you were working on of whether Africa

12:21

is is the source of humans Yeah

12:23

Am I quite sure about that now that

12:26

you know Africa is where our species originated

12:28

and because you can see that I

12:30

mean we suspected that before we had the genetics because

12:32

the earliest fossils of modern

12:35

human Samus Appians were from Africa. Yeah,

12:37

and then also the predecessors seem to

12:39

be there as well. Well, they're I think that's

12:42

You know, you could you could debate

12:44

about Homo erectus I think because we've got

12:47

Homo erectus fossils from Africa that are 1.8

12:49

million years old But

12:52

we've also got them in the Republic

12:54

of Georgia as well Right, so

12:56

it could be that actually Homo erectus originates

12:58

in Western Asia. Mmm, and then

13:00

migrates back into Africa Yeah, I

13:02

think there's a lot of detail we're missing but in

13:04

terms of our species Yeah, we come from Africa

13:06

and then we can see early Early

13:09

Homo sapiens, but still some archaic traits going back

13:12

some 300,000 years ago Mmm,

13:15

and then sometime sometime after a hundred

13:17

thousand years ago There's

13:19

a migration out of Africa I think

13:21

there were several migrations but only one

13:23

of them is really led to the

13:25

colonization of the old world of Asia

13:27

and Europe and Australia, of course

13:30

Yeah Do you think that lack

13:32

of variation in the gene in

13:34

the human race? Is that down to the fact that

13:36

at one point we went down to a very small

13:38

number of people or is it? That we've not been

13:40

around that long. It's kind of

13:42

both. Yeah, right It's a combination of the

13:45

fact that we're a relatively young species and

13:47

that there have been these bottlenecks And when

13:49

you get a bottleneck, which you know

13:51

in brutal real terms means a lot of

13:54

people dying Yeah, and you're left with a

13:56

small number then obviously what you've done at

13:58

that point is massively juice the gene

14:00

pool. Yeah. Yeah. What a fascinating idea

14:02

that at one point we almost died

14:05

out. Yeah. Well, I think there's been several

14:07

times when humanity could be wiped out,

14:09

actually, they've been, you know,

14:11

and there are quite a few bottlenecks

14:13

that are related to large environmental

14:16

catastrophes, really, you know, like

14:18

the eruption of Toba, just

14:21

over 70,000 years ago, we know

14:23

that there was a population crash then. And

14:26

when you've, you know, when you're down to small

14:28

numbers, when you are actually just a few thousand,

14:31

you're very vulnerable as a species. Yeah.

14:34

And then you look at those poor northern

14:36

white rhinos, the two of them, mom

14:38

and daughter. It's so desperately

14:40

sad. Yeah. Terrible. Yeah. Well,

14:45

maybe it would have been a good thing if we hadn't gone through, but

14:47

then, you know, look, people like you

14:49

and us, we can look at it and we

14:51

can learn from it, surely. Yeah, I think so.

14:53

I mean, I'm very alert to the fact when

14:56

I'm studying anything to do with ancient humans that

14:58

they don't exist in a

15:00

bubble. They don't exist separate from

15:02

their environment and separate from all the species

15:05

around them. And so

15:07

we do obviously see humans in

15:09

that kind of ecological setting. There's

15:11

a massive shift, I think, with the

15:14

Neolithic. So when we start farming,

15:16

when we have that agricultural revolution,

15:18

and the population booms at that point, the Neolithic

15:21

is when we really start to see

15:24

deforestation, because people are cutting

15:26

down trees to make way for crops. And

15:28

it's also when we have domesticated animals. And of course,

15:30

those domesticated animals are just going to increase and increase

15:32

and increase at the beginning of the kind of the

15:35

crisis. It is a crisis that we ended up with

15:37

today. But those, you know, those Neolithic farmers 11,000

15:40

years ago would have had no idea what they

15:42

were laying the groundwork for. Well, the world is

15:44

enormous and empty. They

15:46

can do anything they like with it, they

15:48

think. And we just keep doing the same

15:50

thing until there are so many of us

15:52

that everything we do is having a terrible

15:55

effect. Yeah, neither are edges now. Yeah, quite.

15:57

A lovely idea.

16:00

Yes, the world is round and therefore you will

16:02

come back to the same place. It

16:04

doesn't go on forever. Yeah. So

16:06

you must be just fitting a tour

16:09

in of crypt. Yeah. It's

16:11

basically squeezed in between my

16:13

university teaching, a lot of

16:15

which takes place in the, in the first

16:18

semester, I'm teaching embryology to the medical students

16:20

at Birmingham at the moment. I'm

16:22

thinking about embryology still actually, I'm teaching

16:24

embryology to biosciences students tomorrow, but

16:27

also musculoskeletal anatomy, again, to the

16:29

first year. I love teaching first year

16:31

medical students. Yeah. It takes me back to

16:33

my own origins. Yeah. How lovely. Yes. I

16:35

spoke to a standup comedian the other day,

16:38

who is a, a new anesthetist,

16:40

which I have to concentrate to

16:43

say, his name's Ed Patrick. He's

16:46

actually an anesthetist, but he is also

16:48

a quite successful standup comedian. Very funny.

16:50

But he was saying that one of

16:52

the feelings that he put in strangely

16:54

into his time capsule was

16:56

the first day at medical school, because he

16:58

thought I'm here. Yeah. And you have five

17:01

years ahead of you where you go, all

17:03

I'm going to do is learn. Yeah.

17:06

Fabulous. Yeah. Although the first day was

17:08

a bit weird for me, because I was at Cardiff

17:10

and there, we did a lot of dissection at Cardiff,

17:12

which I loved, but the very first day of

17:14

all, she kind of rocking up to the medical school and I'm going,

17:17

right, here's a guy who's selling lots of

17:19

instruments and you need to assemble your own

17:21

dissection kit and you get that nice little

17:23

roll. And then you kind of

17:26

go, well, I think I need that scalpel,

17:28

that scalpel, maybe that paraphorset, but it all

17:30

starts to seem really serious. Yes. And you

17:32

get very worried about the student who says,

17:34

it's fine. I have everything I need. Right.

17:40

Avoid that one. Yep. Well,

17:43

good luck with it. I look forward to reading the book. It

17:46

looks fascinating. And you've written a children's book as

17:48

well, hasn't you? Just to fill the time. Yeah. Yeah.

17:51

I, I'd wanted to write a children's

17:53

book for a long time and I'd actually started writing

17:55

a book for my own children. Right. How old are

17:58

they, Alice? Do you mind? They are now. 10

18:01

and 13. So kind of when I started writing it, it's

18:04

a couple of years ago, so they

18:06

were younger. And I wanted to write

18:08

about people in the ice age. I

18:10

wanted to bring that life alive. I

18:13

wanted to describe

18:15

how hunter-gatherers lived. But

18:17

I also wanted to explore that

18:19

fascinating insight that we've had

18:21

from genetics, that modern humans,

18:23

homo sapiens and Neanderthals, which

18:25

are a different species, homo

18:27

neanderthalensis, came into contact with each

18:29

other. And the reason we know that

18:32

is because those populations interbred with each

18:34

other and there's Neanderthal DNA that's

18:36

come back into modern human genomes.

18:38

So it's quite complex because even

18:40

though Neanderthals as a species have

18:42

gone extinct, there's bits of

18:44

Neanderthal DNA knocking around in us. And I think

18:47

I've got 2.7% neanderthal

18:49

that was estimated after it is more

18:51

than Bill Bailey, which I don't understand.

18:53

That makes no sense

18:55

at all. Although

18:58

I think he probably told you he was,

19:00

Tebbers had trolled. Yeah, that's true. It's true.

19:02

Well, I wanted to write about context between

19:04

these two very different groups of humans. And

19:07

I think it's normally, and very often

19:09

in archaeology we do this, we kind of

19:11

frame everything as though it's always adults and

19:14

children are kind of peripheral, sometimes they've looked

19:16

completely. And I wanted to explore the

19:18

idea of that first context being between

19:20

children and what they would make of

19:22

each other. Also, I

19:24

think children have a very innate sense

19:27

of time. Once they

19:29

get the idea of time, they get fascinated by

19:31

it. And understandably, because it is

19:33

an extraordinary thing to contemplate, isn't it? That

19:35

actually having to wait an hour is

19:37

interminable, but you can quite easily think of

19:40

something 10,000 years ago

19:42

and feel at home. Do you think,

19:44

I'm not sure we can. I

19:46

think as you get older, you get better at it.

19:48

But I don't know whether we're hoodwinking ourselves because I

19:50

think that you understand

19:53

it as a kind of abstract concept without

19:55

actually having a visceral grasp of it. So I

19:57

think that Richard Dawkins wrote quite a bit.

20:00

really couldn't be about this, about the fit of the witch ripped

20:02

in our own scale. And I

20:04

think we are when we look at biology

20:06

as well, that most people prefer looking at

20:08

things you can see with your own eyes

20:10

rather than microbiology. And

20:13

I think the same is through the time that you

20:16

can conceptualise years, and

20:18

certainly children can understand years. As

20:21

you get older you get better at grasping off

20:23

the decade means. I think I'm

20:25

just about able to grasp a hundred years now, in

20:27

a visceral way, I mean, the way that you get

20:29

old, that's what it feels like, that's the passage of

20:31

time. A thousand years,

20:34

it's a bit of a stretch I

20:36

think. And then when you start talking about tens of thousands of years,

20:38

hundreds of thousands of years, it is just numbers. And

20:40

you can try to represent it visually, but

20:42

I still think you are

20:44

only then understanding it as a metaphor and

20:46

not really kind of able

20:48

to properly envisage it. Yeah,

20:51

no, I think you're right,

20:53

I'm wrong. I'm always like,

20:56

no, it's all right. I'd like to be

20:58

wrong. I've always loved the concept though, and

21:01

I sit down and I meditate, as

21:03

it were, contemplate things. And I can

21:05

spend hours thinking about something

21:07

travelling through space for what

21:09

is fundamentally forever. And

21:12

I can wait days doing that. That

21:16

sounds very like a medieval

21:18

monk, contemplating the

21:20

vastness, unknowableness of

21:22

the universe. Yes,

21:25

but they called it God. Quite.

21:29

Yes, I'm with you on the humanist area,

21:31

without a doubt. I was

21:33

thinking of becoming a humanist priest, or whatever

21:35

you call it. Yeah, and a celebrant. Yeah,

21:38

celebrate, that's right. Oh, I've written

21:40

some absolutely wonderful humanist celebrants, especially

21:43

through the course of writing the

21:45

three little books that I've written with

21:47

Andrew Copson, we did the Little Book of

21:49

Humanism, something I really wanted to do while

21:51

I was president of Humanist UK was to

21:53

make something that was a bit more accessible

21:55

than some of the weighty tomes on humanism

21:57

that are around. Something you could do.

22:00

just dip into and also just

22:02

explain what humanism is because it's

22:04

actually not a complicated concept at all and

22:06

I think it's a very natural way

22:08

of being and approaching the world, a very

22:10

kind of natural feeling philosophy.

22:13

To me religion feels a lot more complicated

22:15

and that you're introducing kind of

22:17

details and complexity that you don't really need

22:19

to be there and we don't have any

22:21

evidence for so... No and questions that

22:24

you can't answer. No, it's a fairly

22:26

straightforward approach to the world where you take it as

22:28

you find it and you use science to understand

22:30

it because that's the best tool we have for

22:32

understanding the world around us but then it's not

22:34

just that rational approach, it's a fact that it's

22:37

combined with what I would consider to be

22:39

the best of our human faculties so things

22:42

like empathy and kindness and you

22:44

know that you use those to make

22:46

moral and ethical decisions. You

22:48

don't rely on an ancient text which might be

22:50

you know a little bit out of date.

22:52

Yeah or a fear of punishment. Yes,

22:54

yeah. It is one of the main drives

22:56

of all religion is if you don't do

22:59

it you get punished. Well religion's all bound

23:01

up isn't it with the

23:03

need to make people in society behave

23:05

themselves and that kind of idea of

23:07

Leviathan, the idea that you know there

23:09

has to be something that

23:12

is watching your behaviour and keeping you

23:14

on the straight and narrow. Yes. And

23:17

that maybe there's a time in early

23:19

societies when that's like that's always the

23:21

necessary thing to reduce violence but we've

23:23

kind of passed through that now. I don't know

23:25

whether it is, I mean I think

23:27

what's very interesting is that there's plenty of

23:29

humanist thought. If we go back into

23:31

ancient literature there's actually a lot of

23:34

humanistic, atheistic thought being

23:36

expressed and then of

23:38

course we have periods of time particularly in

23:40

the west where we've had complete

23:43

suppression of other ways of thinking

23:46

in a way that I expect that there were

23:48

still plenty of, this is completely unscientific because

23:50

I can't know this but I suspect that there

23:52

were plenty of atheists during the middle ages,

23:55

if they couldn't say they were because my

23:57

goodness if you said you were you would have been burned

23:59

at the stage. Yeah, and that's still

24:01

the case now, isn't it? You see people

24:03

now in societies, you say, well, being involved

24:05

in the religion of that society is so

24:07

fundamental to being part of it, that you

24:10

could never say, well, actually, you know what,

24:12

I don't believe in this. You

24:14

have to keep going at it. Yeah,

24:16

yeah, it's bound up with so much

24:18

about identity and politics. Yeah, absolutely. But

24:20

yeah, we've got wonderful, there's, you know,

24:23

wonderful ancient Indian philosophy. This

24:25

is a great quote about who painted

24:28

the peacocks. Nature did, which

24:30

is just, oh, wonderful.

24:32

But you don't need deities. Why

24:35

do you need deities? It's just

24:37

nature. Yeah, beautiful. There

24:39

you are. Right. I

24:41

could just chat. I really could just chat. We've got

24:43

things to put in a hole in the grain there,

24:45

haven't we, Mike? Seeing

24:48

as a person constantly takes things out of a hole

24:50

in the ground, it seems almost cruel to ask you

24:52

to bury things away. And I'm interested to see how

24:54

you've approached this, whether you think it's a thing for

24:56

you, or whether you think it's a thing for

24:59

the future. Yeah. Well,

25:01

I've had to approach it in a very particular

25:03

way, Mike, and I don't know if anybody's done

25:05

this before on your podcast. But when

25:07

I'm thinking about it as a time

25:09

capsule, very often for me, that is

25:11

a burial. Because I look at burials

25:14

that are time capsules, they have an

25:16

individual in them, those bones are

25:18

telling us all sorts of stories about

25:20

that individual were able to construct elements

25:22

of a biography from those bones. And

25:25

more powerfully now than ever before, with the

25:27

era of archaeogenomics, or reading entire ancient

25:29

genomes, with decoding ancient DNA, there's also the

25:32

objects in those graves, which tell us about

25:34

that person, about the culture that they were

25:36

part of. So that's been a

25:38

kind of central feature in these books I've

25:40

been writing and said, buried in their crypt

25:42

is it, you know, burials of time capsules.

25:46

So my time capsule, I

25:48

have to be in it, I'm afraid.

25:50

Okay. It is, it is a burial.

25:53

And there are various objects with me. Now, I haven't

25:55

cainted myself with one of the objects because I

25:57

want to know. to

26:00

put in there. So that's how I

26:02

approached it. I think if anybody else has

26:04

buried themselves along with their objects. No, but

26:07

I'm glad it's not you because you'd sort of think,

26:10

I want you to bury the thing you most treasure

26:13

in a time cut. You go, yeah, well, me,

26:15

obviously. Yeah. Well, also, I'm not going to miss

26:17

these things because I'm going to be dead. Yeah,

26:20

quite. Yeah. So that gets around that.

26:22

Yeah, no looking down on it from

26:24

on high. Yeah. Yeah,

26:27

lovely. Okay. So let's talk about the

26:29

objects that go in there with you.

26:31

Well, my mind is immediately

26:33

drawn. I'm thinking about my time

26:35

capsule burial. I sometimes say I'd

26:37

like to be buried in a Bronze Age,

26:39

kiss burial with a little Bronze Age pot.

26:42

And that would confuse archaeologists of the future.

26:45

But I'm going to put that mischievousness to one

26:47

side. And again,

26:49

right, okay, what I put in there

26:51

that would tell people of the future

26:53

a bit about me, a bit about

26:56

the 21st century in Britain, what

26:58

do I want to say to

27:00

people in the future? And my

27:02

mind is immediately going back to

27:04

one of the most brilliant burials

27:06

I've ever seen and researched, which

27:09

was the Pocklington chariot burial. Oh

27:11

my goodness, where we've got a

27:13

middle aged man buried in a

27:15

crouched position in what we have

27:17

to presume was his chariot. And

27:19

the chariot is standing up in the

27:21

ground. And not only that, it has a

27:23

couple of ponies drawing it. So

27:26

there are these skeletal ponies in the grave

27:28

as well. So he's all ready to go

27:30

off to the afterlife, presumably. And

27:33

I imagine that that is his chariot. So

27:35

it's a very important part of his identity.

27:37

Oh, I'm sure it is. Don't you think he's going

27:39

to say when I get there, they're going to know

27:41

who I am? Yeah, absolutely. And that's, you

27:43

know, that's how he got around. That's how he would

27:45

have traveled around the territory that he

27:47

was familiar with and probably ruled. Now, I

27:50

didn't rule any territory, but I do like

27:52

traveling around and say I'm going to be

27:54

buried in my campervan. Lovely.

27:59

Yes. How many adventures have you had

28:01

in that? Many, and it's

28:03

campervan number two to me. So

28:05

I had my first campervan about

28:08

20 years ago, maybe a

28:10

bit longer than that. And I bought it

28:12

from the wonderful Professor McCaston of

28:15

Time Team fame, of course, that we also

28:17

hung out together at Bristol University. And

28:20

he introduced me to campervan life.

28:22

I'd not really even

28:24

thought of owning a campervan before I met Mick.

28:27

And it just seemed like such a fantastic

28:29

way of getting around. And

28:31

the fact that you basically got your home with

28:34

you, I mean, it's just brilliant and it's very,

28:36

very flexible. I love traveling

28:38

around the camperfans. I like taking it abroad.

28:40

I love traveling around Britain in it. We

28:43

go up to the out of Hebrides

28:45

in it. It's just fantastic. And

28:47

it is a home from home. I

28:49

love it. Yeah, and there's a difference in the

28:51

speed that you travel, isn't there, in a campervan?

28:54

It's not getting somewhere quickly. We're not worried about

28:57

getting there. The journey is part of it, isn't

28:59

it? Because at any point you think, well, let's

29:01

just pull into this lay-by, have a

29:03

cup of tea, make a sandwich. Yeah,

29:06

and it's lovely. And you can break journeys as

29:08

well. Say, quite often if I go living

29:10

in North Somerset, if I am traveling up, for instance,

29:13

to see my cousin on the West Coast of Scotland,

29:15

I will plan to break the journey

29:18

somewhere. And I never planned to the

29:20

extent I'd book anywhere. And

29:22

that's another thing I love about having a campervan, is you

29:24

just set off. But

29:26

very often I end up in Cumbria, which I

29:28

love. So I'll end up somewhere in Cumbria, have

29:31

a lovely night camping by a beautiful

29:33

lake. That's the dream. And

29:35

then carry on up to Scotland. I'm very

29:38

jealous. I've always wanted a

29:40

campervan and I've never owned one. Really? No,

29:43

my wife's father owned campervan after campervan.

29:45

And the first one he had, he

29:47

bought an old lorry and converted it.

29:49

So she has memories of sitting in the back

29:51

of this thing, thinking, oh, for goodness

29:53

sake, where are we going now? And

29:56

so she's never let me get one.

29:58

Oh, no. No, no,

30:01

hotels. That's it.

30:03

Yeah, but I do every time I get in

30:05

the car with my grandchildren. I think

30:08

I almost always say, right, where should we

30:10

go? Yeah, because that's the

30:12

sense of it, isn't it? Yes,

30:14

I think so. And it is that element

30:16

of being nomadic as well. We're

30:18

all settled down now, but it's quite an

30:21

unusual thing for humans. Most of our

30:23

ancestors were nomads. Yeah, we only started

30:25

settling down 11,000 years

30:27

ago when the Neolithic happened. And we

30:30

started becoming farmers and had to stay

30:32

where our crops and our animals were.

30:35

And the Neolithic reaches Britain, well,

30:37

6,000 years ago. So

30:39

here in Britain, we've only

30:41

had settled communities for that long. Yeah,

30:44

so it's very odd what we do. Most of our ancestors would look

30:46

at what we're doing now and go, oh, oh,

30:49

don't you want to move? Don't you want to, don't you

30:53

feel the need to kind of just up sticks

30:55

and go? And I do. Yeah, yeah. Well,

30:57

you have the option, of course, with a

31:00

campervan. I've actually one day saying that, you

31:02

know what, get the people you

31:04

love in it and say, let's go, let's

31:06

go and go where, go anywhere, go anywhere

31:08

in the world. Yeah, yeah, just drive

31:11

and drive. For as long as you like as well, as long

31:13

as you can afford the petrol. Yeah, that's true. I

31:16

am eagerly awaiting the next

31:18

generation of electric campervan. They haven't quite

31:20

got there. There's a small version of a

31:22

VW campervan at the moment, but they haven't

31:24

quite got there. But I'll be first on

31:26

the list when they do bring out the

31:28

electric campervan. Yeah, that can't be far off,

31:30

can it? Once they... No, I didn't think

31:32

so. Once all buses become electric, which

31:35

they will do, once that happens,

31:37

then the technology will advance incredibly quickly, I

31:39

think. Yeah, it's gathering pace. It's bound to

31:41

happen. Yeah. Oh,

31:43

fantastic. Do you mind me asking what

31:45

sort of campervan it is? Yes. Well, the first

31:47

one I had actually from which I bought from

31:49

Mick was a very beautiful classic. Well, I

31:51

say it's classic. A lot of people think it's not classic. It

31:54

was a VW pipe 25 synchro,

31:56

which was a kind of blocky thing from

31:58

the 1980s. is not

32:00

the kind of keepsie, you know, old

32:02

fashioned, split wind screen or bay window

32:04

camper van. It was a blocky one

32:07

that came in and I think people who own those

32:09

more classic Vida camper vans very

32:12

rudely refer to it as the

32:14

wedge. By lights that kind of 1980s styling

32:17

and also

32:19

it was a beast. It was a

32:21

synchro, it was a four wheel drive

32:23

camper van, and you could drive through

32:25

forwards, you could just drive anywhere with

32:27

it. It was fantastic. My current camper

32:30

van is not quite as err but

32:32

it's a Vida type 5 California. Love

32:34

it. It's a bespoke camper van, it's

32:36

not the conversion. It's not

32:38

as pretty as my old one. So

32:40

my old one, we did the conversion

32:42

ourselves and I painted little hocus-i waves

32:44

inside it on the plywood. This

32:46

one is, I hate

32:48

to say it, but it's a bit grey. It's

32:50

very utilitarian. It all

32:53

works of course, you know, it's the

32:55

thing about this German manufacturing. It works

32:57

and it's utilitarian and does

32:59

look a little bit like the inside

33:01

of a Porsche. I think sometimes I

33:04

do my best to kind of, you know, put some

33:07

cushions in there. Lovely. Well, we'll put

33:09

your original. You could be buried in your original.

33:11

Oh yeah, I'll do that then. I'll be buried in

33:14

my original bright green type

33:16

25 synchro. Lovely. When I first started

33:18

acting and I came out of university,

33:21

we organised our own tour of Britain,

33:23

which was a mad tour. So we

33:25

were doing things like Glasgow One Night,

33:27

Portsmouth The Next, Edinburgh

33:30

The Next, that sort of tour.

33:32

We took any date that was available, but

33:34

we went to Australia House where you could buy

33:37

camper vans from Australians who'd come over to tour

33:39

Europe and then they were just selling them before

33:41

they went back. And for

33:43

I think £500, we bought a

33:45

lovely dark green original

33:48

VW camper. And

33:50

we all crammed into it and toured the

33:52

country for about four months, had a fantastic

33:54

time. And at the end of

33:57

it, because all of us were living in rented flats,

33:59

we said, Who's going to keep the

34:01

cap? Do we need this for the next tour? I

34:03

don't know when the next tour is. So somebody took

34:05

it to a street in West London and

34:07

left it with the door open and the key and

34:10

the ignition. And we walked away, left

34:12

the log book on it. Or things. So somebody's

34:14

got it. I wish

34:16

I'd kept it. Yeah, yeah. I wonder if

34:18

it's still late there. I wonder

34:21

if it's still going. I hope it is. I hope

34:23

somebody gets in touch. Hang on a minute. Hang

34:26

on it, I've got that. I wish I could remember

34:28

the registration. I must have a photo somewhere. Oh,

34:31

look it up. How lovely. Yeah. Anyway, let's put that

34:33

in. Oh, I hope it comes back to you, right?

34:35

Oh, yeah, I know. Now

34:37

I could. I could just buy it back from them.

34:40

It wouldn't cost 500 pounds, though, would it?

34:42

No. No. No. OK,

34:46

so that's you. You're not the object that you're

34:48

in your plan for that. That's number one. Yeah.

34:50

So what's in there with you? Right,

34:53

I'm loathed to drag you away from the

34:56

lovely Alice Roberts. But we have to leave

34:58

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started. Welcome

36:25

back to My Time Capsule, where I'm sure you're

36:27

itching to get back to Alice Roberts, which is

36:29

a good idea because she's a doctor and she

36:31

can probably give you some cream for that. Yeah,

36:35

this is really tricky. I wanted to

36:37

put in objects which kind of represents

36:39

where we are as a society and the

36:42

kind of achievements that we've made. And

36:45

so I think the next thing I'd like to have

36:47

in there is a COVID

36:49

vaccine. Great. I thought about

36:51

the genetic sequence of COVID and maybe

36:53

have that printed out or something, but

36:56

I actually think maybe I think

36:58

the vaccine because the genetic sequences,

37:00

the start of it, but

37:02

the vaccine is phenomenal and

37:05

it does represent, I think, the pinnacle

37:07

of our science at the moment. And

37:10

I think about this a lot. I mean,

37:12

I was astonished at the way that scientists

37:14

around the world worked together during COVID. I

37:16

was astonished and just massively

37:19

heartened by it. I

37:21

think the pandemic pushing us into that time

37:23

of crisis, for some people it brought out the

37:25

worst in them actually, but for a lot of

37:28

people it brought out the best. We found communities

37:30

coming together in a way that we hadn't really

37:32

seen before. We saw the

37:34

immense admiration and gratitude that people have

37:36

from the NHS, even if that doesn't

37:39

translate back into pay restitution. We

37:42

saw the way that scientists in particular, I

37:44

mean, I felt very strongly during COVID that

37:47

there were some ways in which our society

37:50

failed globally and the failures included

37:52

pulling up jaw bridges. In

37:54

some ways, we acted in a very medieval way, individual

37:57

countries hoarding resources and when we were in the United States,

37:59

we were able to do that. came to the vaccine that happened

38:01

as well of course, you know, buying up

38:03

loads of vaccine and hoarding it. And not

38:05

really, you know, the global north didn't

38:07

really fulfill its promises to the global

38:09

south in terms of vaccine equity. So

38:11

there were all those problematic things that

38:13

happened, which I hope we'll learn from. But

38:17

the fact that while you had

38:19

that kind of political divisiveness happening,

38:21

you had scientists around the world working

38:24

en frontier, working without borders, helping

38:27

each other, sharing data. I mean, we

38:30

had data out of China very, very

38:32

quickly. And so any scientists

38:34

were very quick and sharing DNA

38:36

sequences, that kind of thing. And scientists

38:39

right across the world came together

38:41

to tackle what is the biggest challenge. Well,

38:44

one of the biggest challenges, I think, you know,

38:46

obviously, climate change is still here and present with

38:48

us, but one of the biggest changes of the

38:50

21st century. And I know

38:52

there was some nervousness about how quickly the

38:54

vaccine was developed. The vaccine was

38:56

developed that quickly because we threw resources at it. It

38:59

shows us what we can do if we want to.

39:01

Yeah. A lot of that is about funding. It

39:03

just meant that what would normally take several

39:05

years could be condensed because

39:08

we were investing so heavily in it,

39:10

because we knew that it would be what helped

39:12

to get us out of this pandemic. Yes. And

39:15

that the science around the development of that vaccine,

39:17

people have been talking about it for a long

39:19

time. People in labs have been saying, I think

39:21

this is going to work. Yeah, we were

39:23

very lucky. I mean, especially with, you know,

39:26

the vaccine that uses RNA, we

39:28

were extremely lucky that that technology

39:30

was just about ready to go.

39:32

Yeah. So a technology that would

39:35

enable you to create a bespoke

39:37

vaccine in record time, basically,

39:39

if you throw enough resources at

39:41

it. And I do think

39:43

it is incredible. It's an amazing feat

39:45

of molecular engineering, but also

39:48

understanding the enemy and what

39:50

you're up against. And so

39:52

it represents to me the

39:55

way that we need to tackle challenges, the

39:57

way that we need to work together across

39:59

borders. globally. And

40:02

I think another amazing thing that's happened

40:04

during my lifetime is putting a probe

40:06

on Mars and being able to

40:08

see pictures from the surface of Mars. And

40:11

I try to explain to my children how

40:13

absolutely mind blowing this is. And for them

40:15

it's just like, yeah, there's a probe on

40:17

Mars driving around, sending pictures back. Like this

40:19

is amazing. But I think the

40:21

vaccine is up there. And for

40:23

me, possibly even, you know, slightly

40:26

more impressive than managing to

40:28

send a probe to Mars. It's an

40:30

incredible feat. And it has

40:32

saved countless lives. And it shows

40:34

such promise for mankind. What they

40:36

expect to be able to do

40:38

with that technology is extraordinary things.

40:41

Yeah, yeah. I mean, I

40:43

think, you know, we'll look back, I think, in it's

40:45

a bit too close for comfort still,

40:48

but we'll look back in a few

40:50

decades, I think, and we will see

40:52

how that investment in science during the

40:54

pandemic actually carried on

40:57

paying dividends. And I think

40:59

that, you know, now we're looking at vaccines

41:01

against all sorts of viruses that seemed a

41:03

long while off actually, pre 2020. And

41:06

now looking as though they're kind of

41:08

within our reach. And as we understand

41:10

more and more about how a lot

41:12

of cancers are related to a viral

41:14

infection, we will see that that has

41:16

a big impact, not just on, you

41:18

know, the immediate effects of those infections

41:20

in communities, but on on cancer in

41:22

the longer term as well, which is

41:24

amazing. And it's a brilliant thing in science,

41:26

isn't it that that open nature of the

41:28

whole community, and that have been under pressure

41:31

from the corporate world, I think, that that

41:33

thing of where we want to own, you

41:35

know, the thing that's going to make money.

41:37

So you can't tell the other people in

41:39

case they get there first. The joy of

41:41

pure research is that you're not doing it

41:43

with the idea of monetising it, you're doing

41:46

it to find out something, or

41:48

usually, I think there's a to disprove

41:50

something. Yeah, I don't want to I don't

41:52

want to completely I don't think all you

41:54

know, pharmacology companies are evil. No, some of

41:56

them, some of them have evil people in

41:59

them and and doing things

42:01

that are not necessarily that ethical. But

42:03

the way to manage that then

42:05

is to have better regulation. But

42:07

also for publicly funded science and

42:10

corporate science to work more productively together.

42:12

And we see that at the institutes,

42:14

like the Quick Institute in London, led

42:17

by the wonderful Sepul Nurse, where there's a

42:19

real kind of open atmosphere

42:21

there and encouragement of

42:23

knowledge sharing. Because that's

42:26

everyone's best interest. Yeah, quite. Yeah,

42:29

at the end of the day. We're talking about

42:31

scientists are there to help

42:33

humanity. And we can do that

42:35

better if we share the knowledge. Yes, absolutely.

42:39

And if you get the funding. Yeah, yeah.

42:41

Yeah, quite. But let's hope that continues.

42:44

My wife was a research scientist for a

42:46

long time. And she spent nearly the whole time

42:49

just trying to get money. And it's a shame,

42:51

I think. It is a shame. And as

42:53

a country, we need to be investing more in

42:56

science. And of course, we

42:58

saw a major blow to British science

43:00

with Brexit and the

43:02

withdrawal from Horizon, which is the big

43:04

pan-European research program, which is about collaboration

43:06

as well as funding. Yeah, we used

43:09

to pay into it, of course, but

43:11

we used to get back more than we paid in. So

43:14

there was a worry that the government wouldn't

43:16

cover that shortfall. But there's

43:18

also, I think, an even more pressing worry

43:20

about the fact that we've broken

43:23

a lot of collaboration through that process,

43:25

which is really sad and there's a

43:27

big effort now to build it back up again. Yeah, yeah.

43:30

I'm sure it will. I'm sure eventually

43:32

all those connections will be rebuilt because

43:34

it's stupid not to. It

43:36

is stupid, yeah. Okay, lovely.

43:38

I'm going to put the vaccine into the camper

43:41

van with you. That's two things.

43:44

So we have two you want and one you

43:46

want to put in there so that the world

43:48

can, or you can forget it. Oh, yeah, yeah.

43:50

I might bury it just outside the camper van.

43:53

Not actually in the... Put it in the boot, in

43:55

the boot. In the chow it very well with me.

43:57

Yeah. Okay, so the next thing actually

43:59

having... about the amazing

44:01

feat of creating a vaccine

44:04

in super fast time and not

44:06

just well saving lives but also

44:08

allowing society to return to

44:11

normal. We've seen other astonishing

44:13

peaks, pinnacles of science. The

44:15

Mars rover is great but I'm

44:18

rather fond of a probe that went

44:20

even further, a probe that went

44:22

to the edge of the solar

44:24

system and that is Cassini. I

44:26

think those incredible, incredible images

44:29

from the Cassini probe as

44:31

it made its way to

44:33

the very edge of our solar system, 900

44:35

million miles away from

44:38

here, sending us pictures back

44:40

over 900 million miles. I

44:42

mean this is just crazy and

44:44

there's a beautiful, beautiful image that I would like

44:46

to have printed out and have in the camper

44:48

fan as well which is

44:51

called the day Earth smiled and

44:53

it's Earth and Saturn. So the

44:55

Cassini probe is taking a

44:57

photograph of Saturn with the

44:59

rings of Saturn, very clear

45:02

and then just underneath the rings is

45:04

a tiny, tiny speck in the

45:06

distance and that tiny, tiny speck

45:08

is Earth, looking back at Earth.

45:10

So that's going in there as well.

45:13

Yeah, it's a very important thing isn't

45:15

it to realise how extraordinary we are

45:17

but also how insignificant. I think it's

45:19

a good thing in life to know

45:22

that. Yeah, I mean it reminds me

45:24

of what Carl Sagan called it,

45:26

the pale blue dot. Oh yeah, it's an

45:28

amazing image isn't it? Yeah, yeah and

45:31

with the day the Earth smiled with

45:33

the Cassini image it was only the

45:35

third time that the Earth had been

45:37

photographed from the outer solar system

45:40

and it was also interesting because it was

45:43

known about before it happened. So

45:45

there was a bit of a fritter

45:47

on social media because at that moment

45:49

we knew that Cassini was out there

45:51

taking a photograph of us which was amazing. I think

45:54

with the other photographs we've not known it just happened. So

45:56

that's why it's called the day the Earth smiled. You were

45:58

kind of meant to look at the image. up and

46:00

smile and it's like waving at an aeroplane isn't

46:02

it? I like to do, you think they can't

46:11

see me but you know why not? The

46:13

thought is there, the thought is there and

46:15

again we're talking about a mission which is

46:18

a wonderful example of international collaboration in

46:20

a NASA, ESA, the

46:22

European Space Agency and the Italian Space

46:24

Agency all working together on that incredible mission.

46:27

I always say it's quite personal to me

46:29

as well because I know the head of

46:32

the imaging team at Cassini very

46:34

well, Carolyn Porco is

46:36

a very, very good friend of mine, wonderful

46:38

woman and a bit of a

46:40

mentor as well. She's one of those women, I've

46:43

picked up various women during my life who

46:45

I consider to be kind of like

46:48

wise aunts I think and

46:50

she's one of those wise

46:52

women that I've met on my own journey.

46:55

Brilliant and it's interesting

46:57

thinking of that image isn't it because

46:59

when we were talking earlier about the

47:01

conception of time and being able to

47:03

actually genuinely understand it, because

47:06

we are so used to seeing models of

47:08

the universe with these things

47:10

going around the sun all within the

47:12

space of a desk, it's

47:15

extraordinary to actually get the real

47:17

sense of the distance and see

47:19

the earth is almost invisible. Yeah,

47:21

I mean the distances are enormous

47:24

and then yeah, 900 million miles.

47:27

And that is not even left our solar system.

47:30

No, that's the edge of our solar

47:32

system. And then

47:34

Porco Cassini, very sadly has not

47:36

carried on heading out into the

47:38

universe. Cassini plunged

47:40

into Saturn's atmosphere back in

47:42

2017. So

47:45

that was that, so it was a

47:48

suicide mission. Yes. What was the probe

47:50

they sent out with the idea that

47:52

another civilization somewhere one day would find

47:54

it out there? I'm always a bit worried

47:56

about that. I mean, is that

47:58

an invitation? to be

48:00

friendly. Yeah. Basically

48:02

going like we're here we've got technology

48:05

we've got minerals come

48:07

and get us. Come and get us we can work hard.

48:11

Oh yeah quite right okay well we're gonna

48:13

put the probe in itself. No just the

48:16

image. Just the image. Because the probe is

48:18

gone so it's that picture. Okay. The

48:20

data smile from the Cassini mission. Lovely

48:22

all right that goes in that's number

48:25

three so we've got two left

48:27

one good one bad any order See

48:30

these things have been quite abstract and they're about science

48:33

and they're about the way that

48:35

science is benefiting humanity. I think

48:37

that the vaccine has a very

48:39

obvious impact on society on humanity.

48:42

The Cassini image is

48:44

about curiosity and understanding

48:46

the universe and

48:49

how that science is culturally important and

48:51

gives us that wider perspective. I'm going

48:53

to bring it right back down to

48:55

home now and the importance of family

48:57

and so I want to have a

48:59

picture of my family in there as

49:01

well and the picture is a

49:03

photograph that we take regularly pretty much

49:06

every year on our wedding anniversary. My

49:08

husband and I walk up

49:10

to the top of Cook Peak in the Mendeep Hills

49:13

where we walked up on the day we got

49:15

married and so I've got this

49:17

wonderful sequence of photographs us on our own

49:19

and then the children pop up and the

49:21

children get bigger and bigger. So I

49:23

have the last one in that sequence of

49:25

the four of us on top of

49:27

Cook Peak normally on a very windy day in February

49:30

and it's always one of those kind of timed

49:32

photos so everybody's just managed to sit down

49:34

in time and it's

49:36

about family, it's about love,

49:38

it's about what's

49:40

important to us as humans but

49:43

there's also some useful I think

49:45

most organic things will rot away

49:47

in that campervan chariot burial. I'm

49:50

hoping that these photographs survive somehow but

49:53

there's a lovely shot of

49:55

a snapshot of 21st century

49:57

outdoor clading there as well so that'll be

49:59

very interesting. the historians of the

50:01

future. If

50:03

you looked at that photograph yourself in

50:05

a thousand years time, would you then

50:08

say well clearly the habitable parts of

50:10

the world were obviously very full of

50:12

dangerous and enormous beasts, so

50:14

they had to live at the

50:16

very, very top of these inhospitable

50:18

places. That's true,

50:20

there could be all sorts of things that you can draw

50:22

from that face though, which I'm not anticipating and that

50:24

could be one of them definitely. There's

50:27

nothing wrong in playing a trick on

50:30

people in the future. I'm sure you've

50:32

come across those occasionally. Well, yeah, I

50:34

think that most burials are about

50:37

the moment actually. I don't think

50:39

people are thinking too far into

50:41

the future. I think they're about

50:43

memorialising that person there and

50:46

then. So this is a

50:48

very different approach to it, burying yourself in the

50:50

idea that you are going to be dug up at some

50:52

point in the future and look back. Yes,

50:54

you don't think that do you obviously when you're being

50:56

put in the ground. People don't think

50:58

I'm putting them in there so that somebody eventually can

51:00

dig them back up again. Yeah,

51:03

and then I wonder what they think if they did know

51:05

that. So there are interesting discussions

51:07

of course about whether it is ethical

51:09

to disturb an archaeological burial

51:12

and those are very difficult discussions because we don't know

51:14

what those people would have wanted. And it's like with

51:16

the Amesbury Archer, various druids

51:18

said he should be reburied and English

51:21

heritage did a great big consultation

51:24

on it. And most people thought it

51:26

was perfectly ethical to keep

51:28

his bones above ground and actually to

51:30

put him on display in Salisbury Museum

51:32

because that's done in a very respectful way

51:35

and it enables people to go and read about

51:37

him and look at his bones and understand what

51:39

we can learn about him from his burial. And

51:42

I think that we don't know. You might

51:44

have gone back and said to that man

51:46

who lived on Salisbury Plain three and a

51:48

half thousand years ago. How would

51:50

you feel about us digging you up? And he might

51:52

say, oh no, put me back in the ground. Or he

51:54

might say, well, yeah, that's fantastic

51:56

that you still know who I am and wonderful.

52:00

My fame has outlived me. Yes.

52:03

Well, the whole family are going to be famous

52:05

in the future if somebody finds it. Yes. First

52:08

of all, though, they're going to go, This is

52:10

a bloody camper van. Who buried that? Yes. That's

52:13

me. I've got to dig the hole, you know. Yeah.

52:17

Lovely. So a February wedding, though. That's unusual. Yeah,

52:21

it was very quick. We'd

52:23

been together for 15 years by the time we

52:25

decided to get married, and we decided to get

52:27

married in a very impromptu way when my husband

52:29

just said, Should we get married? And

52:32

I was like, Yeah, that

52:34

sounds like a fun thing to do. And

52:36

you have to wait three weeks, I think, for

52:38

the legal checks to go through. And

52:40

we were like, Right, we'll get married on the next available Saturday

52:43

after those legal checks have gone

52:45

through. And the next available Saturday,

52:47

amazingly, was Saturday the 14th of February

52:50

in 2009. And

52:53

I thought, God, we're never going to be able to get a

52:55

sloth in a registry office. That short

52:57

notice on Valentine's Day. But

52:59

we did. Yeah. So we got married on Valentine's

53:01

Day, which basically means my husband will never forget

53:04

our wedding anniversary. Very good. Awesome

53:07

Valentine's Day. He remembers both. Yeah. Perfect.

53:11

My wife, I think, in order to make

53:14

me remember our wedding anniversary, wanted us to

53:16

get married on April 4th's day. Brilliant. But

53:20

we couldn't get a sloth. Typical. There

53:22

you are. That's brilliant. Oh,

53:24

lovely. Okay. That photograph's in there. I'm going

53:26

to hermetically seal it in something to make

53:28

sure that it is preserved. Thank you. Thank

53:30

you. Right. So

53:33

we've got, finally, the thing that you'd

53:35

like to put in and forget. Oh,

53:38

so this, for me, represents one of

53:40

the worst things that's going on in

53:42

our society at the moment. I

53:45

thought long and hard about all the things that I, this is kind

53:47

of like Room 101, isn't it? What

53:49

do you want to stick in there? It is

53:51

political three-word slogans. That

53:54

is, I'm going to have one of those slogans, which often

53:56

is on the front of a lectern in a press

53:58

briefing. Yeah. that is

54:00

going in the ground. I

54:03

absolutely hate them. It is the

54:05

worst kind of dumbing down. You know,

54:07

it is reducing complicated,

54:09

challenging concepts and, you

54:12

know, political challenges that

54:14

we're facing to an almost

54:16

meaningless slogan and a

54:19

slogan that is endlessly repeated at

54:21

every available opportunity with hardly any

54:23

words in between it. So

54:25

I think it represents the worst thing about our

54:27

politics at the moment, which is talking down

54:30

to us. We don't want to

54:32

be talked down to. We want politicians to

54:34

explain their policies and

54:36

to discuss them and to treat us

54:38

like grownups. And that is not treating

54:40

us like grownups. And I also think

54:42

it's really manipulative. I don't like

54:45

it. It's, you know, it's obviously

54:47

manipulative. It's too close

54:49

to being very lame advertising. It's

54:52

often socially divisive as well. And I

54:54

don't think our political leaders should be.

54:56

I think that's very unethical to be

54:58

safely divisive. I think a good

55:00

leader throughout history, we've seen this. Good

55:03

kings are the kings that rule in

55:06

a magnanimous way that

55:08

understand that they have a diverse population

55:10

that they try and whip up

55:12

hatred or any kind of divisive sentiment

55:14

between one group of people and another.

55:17

There's a fantastic story about this in

55:19

my new book Crypt about Esselweg and

55:22

his hate speech inciting violence against the

55:24

Vikings when he describes them as the

55:26

cockles among the wheat, the weed in the

55:28

wheat field. It's like calling them vermin and

55:31

unleashes a tide of violence against them. So

55:33

I hate that divide and rule. I think

55:35

that is, you know, we should have grown out

55:37

of that by now. Esselweg was doing it as many

55:39

years ago. Our politicians should have grown out of

55:42

that by now. And one of the ways they

55:44

do it is with these three word slogans. So

55:46

just as an example, let's stick stop

55:48

the boats in the grass. I knew

55:50

it, of course. Yes. Oh,

55:53

my word, that phrase gets the hair on

55:55

my back of my neck goes up when

55:57

I hear that phrase just because what does

55:59

it mean? It doesn't mean

56:01

anything. It's just extraordinary. It's really really

56:03

extraordinary. I mean we're talking about a

56:05

really really complex issue We're

56:08

talking about on the one hand migration

56:10

happening because people are living

56:12

in countries which have war torn or Blighted

56:14

by famine and want something better for their

56:17

children. You know, we all want something good

56:19

for our children Beyond

56:21

that, you know, there's legal immigration and

56:23

there's illegal immigration and There

56:26

are criminals at work who are putting people's

56:28

lives at risk We should be focusing

56:30

on that criminal element. I think yeah,

56:32

not just just stop the boat.

56:35

It's very shame the boats Yeah,

56:37

it also sounds easy. It sounds easy

56:40

and it's not an easy issue That's always

56:42

what they do is those slogans do make

56:44

everything sound easy sound as if I consult

56:46

this in a moment Yeah, it's the Trump

56:48

trick of you know, I'm just gonna make

56:50

America great again. I'm just gonna do that

56:53

Yeah, that's good. Yeah I'd

56:56

like America to be great again That would be good and

56:59

stop the boats and all those things even

57:02

down to see it say it's sorted that

57:04

drives me mad Yeah, and during cave it

57:06

of course hands face face. What? Sentences

57:12

yeah, I know hopeless. Well, I should say

57:14

to you can we put that in there?

57:16

Yes, we can Excellent. Yes,

57:19

we can as Obama said with

57:22

his three-word slogan Sometimes

57:25

I like it it depends whether I like

57:27

the person that's the problem, but I agree

57:29

with you I think that we should politics

57:31

is far more important than it's

57:33

treated by the people who actually do it Yeah,

57:35

and we're so clever than they think we are

57:38

Yeah, yeah, absolutely Okay.

57:41

Well, there we are. That's it. They all go

57:43

into your camper van time capsule and that's a

57:45

lot of digging for me But I'm very happy

57:47

to put it in the ground for you. Thank

57:49

you very much. It's been really delightful to talk

57:51

to you and to meet You thank you very

57:53

much for doing this and have a fantastic tour

57:55

and I hope the book is an enormous success

57:57

Thank you very much. I'm I'm feeling good.

57:59

I mean This bit completes that trilogy of

58:01

ancestors and buried it moves us into the Middle

58:03

Ages. And I'm really looking

58:05

forward to going on tour. So February, March,

58:07

I'm going to be touring around the country. And it might

58:09

be a few days later in the year as well. People

58:12

keep an eye out. Great. Thanks, Mike. You

58:18

have been listening to My Time

58:21

for Sure with me, Mike

58:23

Stinson-Stevens, and my guest, Alice

58:25

Roberts. Now, if you've got

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imagine. So feel free to join us there.

59:18

This was a cast-off production for ACAST.

59:20

Thanks very much for their support and

59:22

many thanks to my producer and lovely

59:25

son, John Fenton Stevens, for all his

59:27

hard work making me sound reasonably capable.

59:30

I'll see you soon when I'll be

59:32

talking to another fascinating guest. In the

59:34

meantime, thank you to the amazing Alice

59:36

Roberts for making this episode. I am

59:38

literally birthing with pride. Good luck

59:40

with all her endeavors. It's not easy,

59:42

is it? History. People make jokes about it,

59:44

of course, which I'm sure you guess is what

59:46

I'm going to do now, such as a

59:48

Roman walks into a bar holding up two

59:50

fingers and he says, Five beers, please. Anyway,

59:53

I won't finish with a joke. I'll finish with this

59:55

great quote from the lovely Desmond

59:58

Tutu, who said, we

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