Spectral isolation of naturally reductive metrics on simple Lie groups

We show that within the class of left-invariant naturally reductive metrics \documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$${\mathcal{M}_{{\rm Nat}}(G)}$$\end{document} on a compact simple Lie group G, every metric is spectrally isolated. We also observe that any collection of isospectral compact symmetric spaces is finite; this follows from a somewhat stronger statement involving only a finite part of the spectrum.