Desert Island Discs has been a staple of BBC Radio since 1942. That is not a typo. The premise is pretty simple. Each week, a prominent person from some walk of life is selected to be the Castaway. The Castaway is interviewed about his or her answer to this salient question: If you were to be stranded on a desert island and you could only have five records to listen to, what would they be? Me, I'd pick a "how to" record about how to get off the damn desert island but that's not really the point of this, is it?
Over the years, hundreds of folks have been given their lists…and of course, the show's host will interview them about why they picked this one or that one and will play excerpts. An archive of more than 500 of these shows can be found here and I doubt anyone alive can browse it without finding a few who interest them. Because of music licensing costs, a lot of the tunes have been edited out of the downloadable files or truncated…but there's much there to enjoy. And I call your attention to the current show in which the selections are made by one Stephen Sondheim. Some interesting choices there, made for interesting reasons.