Hello, I'm Lauren Laverne and this is the Desert Island Discs podcast
from BBC Radio 4. Every week I ask my guests to choose the eight tracks,
book and luxury that they'd want to take with them if they were cast away to a desert island.
For rights reasons, the music's shorter than on the original broadcast,
but you can find a version with longer music tracks on BBC Sounds.
Listeners will also get access to episodes 28 days earlier than everyone else.
I hope you enjoy listening.
My cast away this week is the charity leader, Paul Farmer.
He spent his working life campaigning, fundraising
and changing the national conversation around some of the most challenging issues in our society.
He was a graduate with a history degree from Oxford when he found himself working for a heritage centre.
He fell in love with the charity sector, moving to the Samaritans.
His experiences taking calls from those struggling with their mental health made him a campaigner.
Determined to do more than listen, he eventually moved to Mind, where he became CEO.
As well as leading successful fundraising efforts that changed the scope of what the charity could do,
he effectively lobbied the government, leading a 15-year campaign
that helped to change legislation and the national conversation about mental health.
His latest challenge is what used to be called old age, though we should probably use later life.
He's taken the helm at Age UK and is determined to do the same with the conversation
about ageing as he did for mental health, calling out ageism, campaigning for older people