BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts.
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 castaway this week is Professor Lucy Easthope, an advisor on disaster recovery.
She's an expert on planning for and reacting to major incidents,
natural disasters, terrorist attacks, pandemics and fires.
Cataclysms like these comprise her working life.
She's been involved in the response to many of the most significant disasters costing British lives from 9-11 onwards,
including the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami, the 7-7 bombings,
the Manchester Arena attack and the Covid-19 pandemic.
She was born and raised in Merseyside and cites watching the 1989 Hillsborough disaster unfold on television when she was 10 as the spur for her career.
Why is no one helping, she asked her father,
the first of many difficult questions she would pose as she pursued her calling.
She's the Visiting Professor of Mass Fatalities and Pandemics at the University of Bath.
She says the hardest part of working in disaster is going home.