Professor Sue Black on the mysteries of the human body

Desert Island Discs

BBC

Society & Culture, Music Commentary, Music, Personal Journals

4.4 • 13.7K Ratings

🗓️ 9 October 2025

⏱️ 4 minutes

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Summary

In 2015, the forensic anthropologist, Professor Dame Sue Black, was cast away by Kirsty Young.

Brought up on the west coast of Scotland and in Inverness, she fell in love with biology at secondary school and read Human Anatomy at the University of Aberdeen. After graduation, she worked at London's St Thomas' Hospital as an anatomist, and police began to call on her to help identify bones.

She spoke to Kirsty about the mysteries of the human body.

You can find the full episode on BBC Sounds.

Transcript

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0:00.0	BBC Sounds, music, radio, podcasts.
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0:22.3	In one, I'll walk you through a big money-saving topic step by step.
0:26.2	Then in the new question time, you set the agenda and ask whatever's on your mind.
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0:31.7	The Martin Lewis podcast, now twice weekly.
0:34.4	Listen on BBC Sounds.
1:00.5	Hello, I'm Lauren Levern, and this is Desert Island Disc's postcards, a collection of funny and heartwarming moments from some of our many castaways.
1:08.1	This postcard comes from the forensic anthropologist Professor Dame Sue Black in an interview with Kirsty Young recorded in 2015.
1:14.8	Sue told Kirsty about her passion for forensic work. Oh, it's great fun to be given the opportunity and the permission to open up the skin and look inside and see that every single
1:23.6	one is different. And if every single one is different, that says, what can you use
1:30.7	about the differences that allow you to say, that's who this individual may be? It's like being
1:37.4	taggart and it's like being morse every single day, but using science and using anatomy.
1:43.2	In layman's terms, can you give me an example then?
1:45.8	I just mentioned the tattoo, you know,
1:47.4	that you might have body parts that don't show you the tattoo,
1:51.3	and yet you managed to say, this man, this woman,
1:54.6	had a tattoo on this part of their body.
1:57.2	How can that be the case?
1:58.3	Because it's your, all you have to understand is your anatomy.
	...

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