Steve Pinker on Desert Island Discs

June 30, 2013 • 10:05 am

In America the ultimate sign of intellectual fame is an appearance on Charlie Rose or Stephen Colbert; in Britain it’s an appearance on the BBC’s “Desert Island Discs.” Steve Pinker accrued the DID honor this morning on BBC Radio 4.

As you may know, Desert Island Discs, which has been going since 1942 (!), has the premise that a famous guest is cast away on a desert island, and must pick only 8 pieces of music to bring along, presumably to listen to until either death or rescue. The program plays snippets of the music, interspersed with interviews with the subject.

Pinker’s interview was 45 minutes long; you can listen to it here or download it here. It’s a really nice listen, with a lot of Steve’s thoughts about linguistics, genetics, human nature, and science writing. I’m impressed, as always, by Pinker’s grueling work ethic, which he describes.

Below are Steve’s choices, all singles (I guess albums aren’t allowed).  I like the choices because they are eclectic and include rock and roll and, especially, a klezmer piece. In fact, there’s no classical music at all.

Pinker choices

I won’t give my own choices here, but I would have left off Costello, replaced the Coltrane with a Coltrane and Hartman song, deep-sixed the Leonard Cohen song (why do people like him?), replaced the Hendrix selection with “Sweet Angel,” and changed the Neville Brothers song to “Tell It Like It Is.” The Eric Clapton and Sarah Vaughan songs are great choices.

Wikipedia gives more information about this long-running show:

At the end of the programme they choose the one piece they regard most highly. They are then asked which book they would take with them; they are automatically given the Complete Works of Shakespeare and either the Bible or another appropriate religious or philosophical work.

Guests also choose one luxury, which must be inanimate and of no use in escaping the island or allowing communication from outside. Roy Plomley enforced the rules strictly, but they are less strictly enforced today, (For example, Plomley would not allow his guests to take another human being with them to the island, however under the rule of Lawley, John Cleese was allowed to take Michael Palin with him, on the condition that he was dead and stuffed) Examples of luxuries have included champagne and a piano, the latter of which is one of the most requested luxuries.

After Plomley’s death in 1985, the programme was presented by Michael Parkinson, and from 1988 by Sue Lawley. Lawley stepped down in August 2006 after 18 years. She was replaced by Kirsty Young, who interviewed illustrator Quentin Blake for her first show, broadcast on 1 October 2006.

I’ll let you listen to learn which book Steve would choose (if you’re impatient, it’s at 42:46), and which luxury (43:00).  I will tell you that at the very end he picks the Clapton song as his favorite.

h/t: Matthew Cobb

90 thoughts on “Steve Pinker on Desert Island Discs”

  3. Listen to Cohen’s ‘The Partisan’ and maybe that will answer your question. Truly haunting, layer upon delicate layer.

    1. Except of course he didn’t write The Partisan. And he changed the words. The original was written in London during the war by Resistance fighter Emmanuel d’Astier. For more info see my book The Resistance, pp 284-5 and 386-7 – now available in paperback in the USA as well as in the UK and Commonwealth! BTW I really like Leonard Cohen too. Not sure what Jerry’s grumbling about.

      1. Matthew, you forgot to say, à la Hitchens: “The Resistance is available in fine bookstores everywhere.”

        As for Cohen, his voice is terrible and I’ve never considered his lyrics particularly profound. Really, it’s a matter of taste, but I’m baffled that people like him.

        1. As a boy I listened to my older sisters playing Leonard Cohen songs on guitar and later listened to Leonard Cohen himself. I find his music to be really haunting and beautiful and I love his voice. Individual tastes vary so much.

        2. You don’t listen to Cohen for his voice, anymore than you listen to Neil Young or Bob Dylan for theirs. It’s much too limiting to think of Cohen as a recording artist or performer, only.

          “Hallelujah”, a Cohen tune, has been covered well over 300 times, is a perennial favorite in movies and television episodes, had a book written about it, and is rumored to be the national anthem of Canada.

          But really what makes Cohen remarkable I think, (and that’s if you discount a song catalog that’s thick and spans decades) is that, after having every penny he had stolen from him by his business manager, Cohen went back on the road-in his mid-70’s-to sold-out shows around the world. He continues to perform, continues to write, and he’s turning 80.

          There was never anyone more cool, or hip, than Leonard Cohen.

          1. I like that Cohen was so tired of all the covers of Hallelujah that he told everyone enough already! 😀

            I like Cohen too – we even used to read his lyrics in English classes when I was in highschool but maybe that’s just how we roll in Canada. 🙂

        3. Pinker and Cohen are both Jewish from Montreal. It is said here’s no accounting for taste in music (or humour or humor!, but perhaps a slight genetic bit is built into us that partially gives us our musical tastes before we ever hear any.

          And Pinker would appear to have had little time left over in his life to develop his taste in music. That is how some of us would account for the lack of so-called classical music in his list. You don’t develop a taste for Bach by just playing it in the background.

          1. You are saying that Pinker likes the Cohen tune because they’re both . . . Jewish?

          2. Of course, I have no idea if this is true (and doubt anyone else has), but would it bother you if people with more similar genetics had also somewhat more similar taste in music, and that, somehow or other, a causal effect in that direction could be verified? Would it even bother you if a scientist attempted to do that work? I don’t quite understand your question, and actually hate the phrase ‘political correctness’, but…?

          3. It seems preposterous to me that Stephen Pinker might like Leonard Cohen’s music because they’re both Jewish.

            Besides defying common sense, the idea is distasteful, and I will be damned if there is a single study, reputable or otherwise, that predicts commonalities in subjective taste between individuals who are not identical twins, Jewish or otherwise.

          4. Actually, an identical twin study, of such twins separated at birth (despite the very bad history of this related to not music but IQ, esp. Shockley) would presumably be one way for such a scientist to proceed, if any such person thought it was worthwhile. Hopefully no such scientist would get too tied up with emotions.

            I’m not the least bit interested in your emotional reaction to anything. It may however make you feel better to realize that I am well aware that two people, likely raised in virtually the same environment (despite perhaps 25 years difference in age) are far more likely to have similar tastes in one thing or another as a result of environmental factors after their births.

            Perhaps I am being a bit simplistic in separation between genetic and environmental aspects. Others here surely know far more than I do on this.

            But this thread is more for amusement than for getting tied up in knots with nervousness about analyzing the mental processes of famous people who don’t mind laying a bit of it out on the radio for the gossipy amusement of the general ‘intellectual’ public.

            Also, I assume Jerry doesn’t mind getting a bit of needle back when he brings out his distaste (apparently) for so-called classical music. Those of us who do like it are all, of course, complete snobs.

          5. “I’m not the least bit interested in your emotional reaction to anything. It may however make you feel better”

            Lovely. In that case, I invite you to stick it in your hat.

          6. Okay, peterr, you will apologize for your arrogance here. I never said I don’t like classical music, nor do I think that people who do are snobs. I do like some (not all) classical music, and some of my dearest friends are big fans. My comment was meant to show how refreshing it was that someone chose rock and jazz over the usual fare on this show.

            You will be polite to my commenters and you will apologize for your arrogance, and snarky comment to your host, or you will never post here again. Get it?

      2. Thanks for the tidbit! I didn’t assume he wrote it, but never bothered to research the original as I was quite content with his version and performance of the song. I can get why people might be turned off by his voice…it’s fairly monotone, but I like the darkness barely covered by melody.

        1. But it’s a nuanced monotone and he can get lower than anyone. Really Jerry has no heart. Leonard Cohen’s music and lyrics are hauntingly beautiful. I never appreciated him till I attended an outdoor concert at a local winery on a warm summer’s night a few years ago. He was in his seventies then and as strong as ever.

  4. Hendrix song is just ‘Angel’ and a way better choice than the repetitive Machine Gun.

    Cohen= mostly really good lyrics + pretty boring music. I don’t get it either.

    1. Angel is a better song (as are several other Hendrix tunes from a compositional pov), but Machine Gun is possibly the best guitar solo (Red House studio version being close 2nd) ever recorded. Indeed if someone needed to understand why Hendrix is a god to guitarists, MG is the song I would play for them. That said, yeah it’s pretty darn repetitive.

      1. Hendrix’s cover of Born Under A Bad Sign is, I think, my favorite by him from a guitar perspective. Though it is really hard to pick a “best.”

        For an overall Hendrix Experience selection I’d go with something like Foxy Lady, The Wind Cries Mary or Are You Experienced.

  5. Tastes & all that Jerry, but perhaps you don’t know This is “Shipbuilding” sung by E.Costello who wrote the lyrics. That’s Chet Baker on trumpet too!

    Notes from the above video channel:-

    Written by Elvis Costello (lyrics) and Clive Langer (music), during the Falklands War of 1982..it’s that kinda song which gets under your skin and stays there..the awesome contribution of jazz trumpeter Chet Baker is outstanding !! You will find this beauty on the1983 album “Punch the Clock”..the tune was originally written for Robert Wyatt..but Elvis rewrote it and made it his own

    I also love Machine Gun, but my choice would have been Little Wing [not that DID is ever going to come knocking on my door] 🙂

  6. Has anyone tracked the rate of choosing that ~1800 y/o collection of fables over something else, over the years?

    Also, is a house or other shelter included in the package? If not, I’d choose that as the luxury. If it is, or perhaps even if it’s not, I think I’d go for a rain barrel.

    Tunes: Maybe ‘Car Wheels on a Gravel Road’, to remind me of the place I left. And something by Emmylou Harris, The Band, Jefferson Airplane, …

    1. I liked Tim Minchin’s reaction to being offered the bible. Something along the lines of needing material for kindling on a desert island…

    2. I love Lather best from the JA oeuvre.

      That said, HERE’S Grace [with folk singer cupped ear] belting out White Rabbit to an adoring & healthy pre-corn syrup Woodstock crowd. I guess this was recorded/mixed from the line feed ~ it would not have sounded anywhere near as good to anyone present.

  7. What’s NOT to like about Cohen’s I’m Your Man???? Maybe you have to be a woman (or a gay man) to appreciate it…I would have picked different Coltranes and Vaughans and Hendrixes and Claptons, and added some Dylan, Billie Holiday, and Chet Baker, Springsteen, Stones (Start Me Up?), and some Brahms and Verdi.

  8. When this program started the guests were automatically given a copy of the bible. Later that was changed to a bible or other holy book. There is a campaign now for this to be changed to allow non theists a philosophy book (or similar) as a choice.

    This being Auntie, it’s not getting very far at the moment.

    1. No, because it misses the point of automatically giving you the Bible and Shakespeare.

      The point of the show is that the artifacts you are allowed to take say something about you. They only throw in the Bible (or alternate religious text of your faith) and Shakespeare for free because, otherwise, a high proportion of the guests would choose one or the other of those as their book choice and that would be boring radio.

      This is also why you don’t see albums as choices. It’s really about individual pieces of music that mean something to the guest as a framework for talking about their lives and work. The can only ever play a short extract from any choice for time constraints, so there’s no point in naming a whole album because they’ll only play a minute or two from one of the songs.

  9. I love Leonard Cohen! His songs have wonderful lyrics and he seems like a very impressive and humble person.

  10. at bottom of page is a table [up to 2010] of DID luxuries. My favourite is Maggi Hambling’s choice of the wine cellar from All Soul’s, Oxford

    Hambling CBE is a marvellous British contemporary painter and sculptor. Worth checking out ~ lovely stuff!

    I would opt for wine making equipment & bottles/stoppers. My *desert island* of course would be a well established tropical version stocked with various sugars & low-hanging fruits.

  11. I’m afraid I would have to skip most “popular” music for my choices, as the songs are too short. I also couldn’t pick really long repetitive stuff, or I’d slit my wrists and go feed the sharks (Philip Glass comes to mind).
    And I think picking entire symphonies/concertos (in my case by either Shostakovich or Bartok) is probably out, since they really are multi-part pieces… different “movements” would disqualify them as single choices. That would also disqualify Mingus’ “Epitaph” (2 hours).

    With that in mind, I’d probably pick Pat Metheny’s “The Way Up” for ONE 68-minute multi-layered piece. (that there are multiple tracks on the CD is irrelevant, as that’s just for CD navigation. That it also is an entire album should be irrelevant… it’s also strictly one musical “piece”.

    Another I’d probably go with is “Big Swifty” by Zappa (off Waka Jawaka) (18+ min). And probably “The Purple Lagoon” (16+) for excellent electric horn and keyboard work by the likes of George Duke, Don Preston, Sal Marquez, Randy & Michael Brecker and others.

    Hmmm. So far… no words, no lyrics. I guess I must be more interested in hearing people play instruments than singing stories… for some reason, i cannot understand anybody when they sing over instruments playing. Just the way my brain works, I guess.

    1. The Way Up (love it) is essentially divided into ‘movements’ just like classical works and the music comes to a full stop after each ‘part’.(I know it quite well and own the score.) If that qualifies as a single work then so do symphonies/quartets etc.

      My favorite Metheny Group record is ‘Imaginary Day’ which can also be thought of as one complete work.

      I’d pick the Beethoven Late Quartets. What more would you need? Although I do love good rock and pop.

      2. I’d go with American Garage, especially Across the Heartland. It always gives me the feeling of getting someplace, which I would really need on an island

    2. “or I’d slit my wrists and go feed the sharks (Philip Glass comes to mind).”

      Oy with the Philip Glass. His music is like a persistent drip on the forehead.

    3. I too cannot “hear” most lyrics…I am the worst. I thought I was the only person who couldn’t understand lyrics when sung. Needless to say, I have been often surprised (sometimes pleasantly, often not so pleasantly) when I bothered to look up the lyrics of a song I particularly liked.

      1. Ha ha, for the longest time I thought the lyrics to the Kiss song “Rock and Roll All Nite” were “I wanna rock and roll all night & part of every day” vs. what is actually was “party every day”. It seemed reasonable to me…you need to rest sometimes.

          1. Your 3 yo has good taste. I like that song too and yeah I can never understand what the heck is getting sung. It’s been like this all my life too. Oddly I do well with language but for some reason suck at it when it’s sung. Maybe it’s not our fault, the singers just don’t enunciate…yeah their fault!

          2. I’m a bit relieved to see this pattern here. I thought it was just me. I’m also better than I thought at language… having to learn some written Greek and Ukrainian for an emergency project.

            Strangely enough though… when the lyrics are especially humorous or absurd, I can usually pick them out.

          3. LOL Thanks. It’s grown on me…she is a wiggly cutie. It’s hilarious when he flips his hair like she does in the video.
            I don’t hear that great, especially when people talk…so I guess it makes sense that it carries over to singing.

          1. That was hilarious! It just got funnier & funnier with each line.

            I have a weird O Fortuna thing – I heard it all the time in movies and hunted it down just by doing google searches on what I thought it could be. I downloaded the song and looked at the Latin lyrics because it is so hard to understand.

            And. This. Was. Epic!

        3. Well, that would make sense. They’ve got to set aside some time for sleeping, buying toilet paper, tending to their fish or topiaries, whathaveyou…

          2. See it totally makes sense. That’s why I thought that’s what the lyric was! 😀

      2. I think quite a number of pop singers are actually going for an ambiguous, poorly-enunciated sound. Intelligible diction implies effort and cool people do not make efforts.

      1. When we looked for the most popular track choices we made the decision to consider symphonies as one track choice and not to treat individual movements as separate tracks… …This is partly because castaways will often nominate a whole symphony as a track without specifying a movement…

        Well bugger. Then I’ll go with my original choice of “The Way Up”, throw in Mahler’s symphony #3, Shostakovich’s #9, Bartok’s Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta, Khachaturian’s #2, skip the Havergal Brian #1 though. Oh… and Justin Bieber “As Long As You Love Me”.

        2. Yes, in my opinion, you’ve hit the nail on the head. I love pop tunes, but if you’re going to be stuck with eight discs for the rest of your life, it seems that the best strategy would be to select long, complex pieces that will keep providing new insights and surprises for years to come.

          Length and difficulty of memorization would be two key factors for me. The obvious choices in this area are classical, but I would be tempted to go for something like Ascension by Coltrane, A Love Supreme, or one of his extremely lengthy live preformances of, say, Favorite Things, India, or Impressions. You could listen to those solos hundreds of times before they became predictable.

          Personally, looking over the lists, I was baffled to see people selecting individual movements (and even /parts/ of movements!) from larger works. I can only conclude that many of the participants are looking at the list as a way to simply highlight their favorite moments in music as they understand them in the context of their real, day-to-day life, and not as a true desert island scenario.

  13. Pinker said in the interview that his main study is trying to understand the human condition. I would say that that is why he would like Cohen, who always gives you something to think about in that direction.
    As a poet he absolutely brilliant. The music carries the poems “hoisted on its shoulder”.
    His reworking into English of Lorca (Vienna) and Kavafis (Alexandra Leaving) stick with me forever. The second one very consoling in difficult moments.

  15. The most notorious Castaway was Elisabeth Schwarzkopf who chose seven of her own recordings; her eighth choice was the overture to Rosenkavalier, from the recording in which she starred, naturally.

  16. Spike Milligan chose to take a car door to the island so that he could wind down the window if it got hot.

  17. My wife who didn’t like Cohen until she went to a concert a couple of years ago bought a book of his poems and is of the view you should start from there, not the songs (a lot of the poems were the lyrics but the poetic perspective gives a different context)

  18. I reject the premise. For my luxury I choose a solar-powered, satellite-Internet-enabled MP3 player. Who in their right mind wants to limit themselves to just eight pieces of music for the rest of their life?

  19. DID is an institution and often pleasurable, but I’d draw the line at saying it is our accolade for intellectuals. In fact, I’m not sure we have one, they often end up presenting programmes rather than be celebrated.

  20. I finally listened to this interview and it was a very good one. I was especially happy to hear Steven say that “internet speak” was not going to destroy the language. I like that the language changes, as does Steven Pinker. I look forward to his next book too (a style guide for good writing) because I intend not only to learn from it but also to say “see – told ya!” to people who get all stuck up about language.

  21. Steven Pinker’s mother and Leonard Cohen went to high school together. Plus, I can’t imagine anyone growing up in Montreal without being inundated with Cohen. A lot of music just grows on you over time.

    It’s a good list, but mine would have been completely different.

  22. There’s a clear difference between your favorite 8 songs, and those you’d bring to the island.

    I wouldn’t pick my favorite. I’d pick long (at least 10 minutes) recordings with plenty of variation in order to keep me sane.

    Just a few I’d pick would be:

    Fela Kuti: Zombie

    John Coltrane: Blur Train

    Yes: Close to the Edge

    1. Blur Train sounds like a fascinating cross-over track, Damon Albarn does Johnny Hartman?

    2. “here’s a clear difference between your favorite 8 songs, and those you’d bring to the island.

      I wouldn’t pick my favorite. I’d pick long (at least 10 minutes) recordings with plenty of variation in order to keep me sane.”

      That is very true. So Napalm Death’s “You Suffer” is out, sorry Guys 🙂

      Is it too clichéd that no one mentions it? Because I would really want to take Beethoven 9. (maybe I would get depressed by the lyrics though 🙂
      Runner-up would be the German Requiem by Brahms or the Mozart et al. Requiem.

      Kyuss “Gardenia” should help too, It’s desert rock after all.

      Also, Opeth’s “Blackwater Park” please.

      1. Maybe change that to Demon of the Fall.

        Also, Schumann’s Violin Concerto in D, the old version by Yehudi Menuhin would be fine.

        The “Vespers” by Monteverdi…

        And for some Pop music,

        Genesis “Land of Confusion”

        And last but not least:

        Donald Fagen “New Frontier”, I can really see myself fixing desert island coconut + gull egg breakfast toe a tappin to that one.

    4. “Close to the Edge” is hands down the track I’ve listened to most over the past 40 years. But I’d scarcely need to take it with me since the whole thing is in my head already.

      1. The glory days of prog. Tracks took up the whole side of an album. And a proper cathedral organ kicks in at around 10 mins. Then there’s the bonkers lyrics. Maybe you had to be there. Definitely in my top 10 along with ‘And You and I’.

  23. You could choose songs as long as albums and therefore effectively get to take while albums with you.
    How about “Thick as a Brick” and “A Passion Play” by Jethro Tull?.

    1. I’d go for A Passion Play… but only because I’ve rehearsed Thick as a Brick so much. It’s also rather strange to me that A Passion Play sold so poorly.

  24. The idea of having to listen to the same 8 songs over and over fills me with dread. It’s like the thought of having to spend an eternity in heaven – “when we’ve been here ten thousand years…we’ve no less days to sing God’s praise than when we’ve first begun” And that’s better than brimstone how? How about 8 pieces by Phillip Glass? Or 8 versions of “This is the Song that Never Ends”? Thus guaranteed to spend the time in an insane stupor not reflecting on my predicament.

  25. They should do a similar set that includes music that would have you figuring creative ways in which to drown yourself.
    #5 – Any Mariah Carey Christmas song.
    #4 – Dave Matthews – any song (or boring 25 min jam session)
    #3 – Jazz Flute / Smooth Jazz
    #2 – That Nelly and McGraw song – REALLY??? THIS IS A REAL #%^!’ SONG??? I thought it was a joke when I first heard it.
    #1 – Primus (I know…I am The Only Person In The World who does not adore this band.)

    1. I was once stuck in an airport secure holding area (Curacao) for EIGHT hours… eight hours with Kenny G. …playing the same arpeggio… one chord… one mode… up and down, up and down, up and down. I don’t know WHAT the idiot management was thinking. It was truly hell.

      I have a similar reaction to nearly all Christmas music.

      Others on my to-drown list:
      “Relax” (Frankie Goes To Hollywood)

      “American Pie” (Don McLean)

      Almost any 12-bar blues, or anything else that has an inflexible I-IV-V chordal structure, no matter how “great” the lyrics supposedly are (unless said lyrics are over-the-top absurd or satirical)

      For some reason, I don’t mind Komar & Melamid’s “The Most Unwanted Music” nearly as much as the above.

      1. “or anything else that has an inflexible I-IV-V chordal structure”

        I understand completely. May I recommend to you some I-V-vi-IV chordal structure, instead? 😀

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