Maggie Aderin-Pocock
Desert Island Discs
BBC
4.3 • 14.3K Ratings
🗓️ 7 March 2010
⏱️ 36 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Kirsty Young's castaway is space scientist Maggie Aderin-Pocock.
She has, she says, a special relationship with the moon, one that started when she first saw The Clangers as a small child. As a teenager she made her own telescope so she could study the moon more closely. Now she makes highly technical optical equipment for satellites, but says she still harbours desires to go into space - her dream job is building a telescope on the moon. She says: 'From the age of three, I wanted to get into space and I still do. It's been the driving force of my life really, that desire to get out there one day.'
Record: As by Stevie Wonder Book: Star Maker by Olaf Stapledon Luxury: A telescope.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Hello, I'm Kirstie Young. Thank you for downloading this podcast of Desert Island Disks from BBC Radio 4. |
| 0:06.0 | For rights reasons, the music choices are shorter than in the radio broadcast. |
| 0:10.0 | For more information about the program, please visit BBC.co.uk. |
| 0:17.0 | Radio 4. My castaway this week is the space scientist Maggie Adairin Pocock, |
| 0:38.0 | the dyslexic daughter of Nigerian immigrants, she seems to have dedicated her life to confounding stereotypes. |
| 0:45.5 | Her attraction to outer space began with the Clangers and Star Trek. |
| 0:50.3 | Attending 13 schools in 14 years, she transcended her disrupted childhood by immersing herself |
| 0:56.4 | in the wonders of the Milky Way. |
| 0:59.1 | Space appealed to me, she says, because life seemed very challenging on earth sometimes. |
| 1:04.0 | You've said Maggie Adir and Pocock that you consider yourself to have a very special relationship with the moon. |
| 1:09.0 | Tell me about that. |
| 1:11.0 | I think I am a bit of a lunatic. Literally. Yes. I find it mesmerizing. |
| 1:17.0 | It would be a nasty place to live. There's no atmosphere and you'd have to walk around in spacesuits all the time. |
| 1:22.0 | But at the same time time it's so beautiful. |
| 1:24.0 | You started this wonderment and this fascination with space pretty early. |
| 1:29.0 | Were you a teenager when you wanted your own telescope? |
| 1:31.0 | I was about 50 when I made my own telescope. I wanted one from |
| 1:34.4 | longer than that and I actually bought one but it wasn't very good. |
| 1:37.1 | What was wrong with it? It suffered from something called chromatic aberration. |
| 1:40.1 | So if you're looking at the moon you have multiple images of the moon all smeared out in different colours. |
| 1:45.0 | And so there, I mean most people just put it in the corner of the room and decided to save up for something else. |
| 1:49.0 | You didn't. You decided to make your own telescope. |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from BBC, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of BBC and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.