Sir Michael Marmot
Desert Island Discs
BBC
4.3 • 14.3K Ratings
🗓️ 6 July 2014
⏱️ 40 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Professor Sir Michael Marmot is interviewed by Kirsty Young for Desert Island Discs. He's an epidemiologist who has spent his career studying what the key factors are in leading a long and healthy life and how your income and post code can affect your longevity.
Professor of Epidemiology and Public Health and Director of the Institute of Health Equity at University College London, Sir Michael specialises in what are known as the social determinants of health: how where we are in the wealth and status pecking order directly influences our chances of illness, disease and lifespan. Why is it, for example, that in 2014 in the same British city the average life expectancy for a man in one post code will be 82 but just a few miles away it's 54? His work has influenced politicians around the globe.
His pioneering research is often at odds with wider societal concerns over what are known these days as lifestyle choices - like smoking, not taking any exercise or eating junk ... he says simply "what I contribute to the policy debate is that I bring evidence - I don't do the skulduggery of politics.".
Transcript
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| 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. the My castaway this week is Sir Michael Marmot, Professor of Epidemiology and Public Health |
| 0:40.8 | and Director of the Institute of Health Equity at University College London. |
| 0:45.9 | He specializes in what are known as the social determinants of health. |
| 0:49.9 | That's to say, how where we are in the wealth and status pecking order directly influences |
| 0:55.3 | our chances of illness, disease and lifespan. |
| 0:58.4 | Why is it for example that in 2014 in the same British city the average life expectancy for a man in one post code will be 82, but just a few miles away it's 54. |
| 1:10.0 | Born in London just after the war to Jewish immigrants, his father then decided to move his wife and young children across the world to Australia. |
| 1:18.0 | The first in his family to go to university, it was during his training as a young doctor in Sydney that it occurred to him that medicine It was |
| 1:25.0 | failed prevention and that in order to really understand disease |
| 1:29.0 | you have to look at the society people live in. |
| 1:32.0 | Up until then he claims he didn't actually know what... have to look at the society people live in. |
| 1:32.8 | Up until then he claims he didn't actually know what epidemiology was. |
| 1:37.0 | His pioneering research is often at odds with wider societal concerns over what are known these days as lifestyle choices like smoking, not |
| 1:46.1 | taking any exercise or eating junk. |
| 1:48.6 | But he says simply, what I contribute to the policy debate is that I bring evidence. I don't do the sculleduggery of politics. |
| 1:57.0 | Can you really do what you do then, Sir Michael, and avoid the sculleduggery of politics I wonder. |
| 2:03.4 | I maintain the fiction to myself that what I do is not political. |
| 2:08.1 | A colleague in Sweden said to me recently, what you do is highly political because there are clear political |
| 2:14.5 | implications of the evidence that you bring. I say it as clearly as I know how. What |
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