Bryan Stevenson

Presenter0:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young. Thank you for downloading this podcast of Desert Island Discs from BBC Radio 4. For rights reasons the music choices are shorter than in the radio broadcast.

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For more information about the programme, please visit bbc.co.uk/slash radio four.

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My castaway this week is the lawyer Brian Stevenson. His life's work is caring about difficult things. Founder and director of the Equal Justice Initiative based in Alabama, he specializes in appealing death penalty cases, the rights of children in the penal system.

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and all the complex issues surrounding race, poverty, and the law.

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He's pretty busy.

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Growing up in a happy close knit home, money was tight and his first few years of education were at a segregated school. Later he went on to Harvard, and recently Barack Obama appointed him to a task force on twenty first century policing.

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America's racial history runs right through his life and work. His great grandparents were slaves he was very close to his grandmother, a tough, strong woman, who'd been through a lot. His grandfather's violent murder left the family heartbroken.

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His work in prisons and on death row has, he says, taught me some basic and humbling truths, including this vital lesson.

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Each of us is more than the worst thing that we have ever done. So, welcome, Brian Stevenson.

Presenter1:39

Firstly, how challenging is it for you, I wonder, to apply yourself to these cases that are very distressing, and to work on behalf of people who have done terrible things?

Bryan Stevenson1:49

Mm-hmm.

Bryan Stevenson1:50

Well, it's difficult work, there's no question about it, but it's also deeply engaging.

Bryan Stevenson1:56

These are people who are condemned. These are people who have been judged to have no moral redeeming features beyond hope. And I've never met anybody about whom I could say this person is beyond hope. I've represented people who have done some really difficult and dangerous things, including some who may have to be institutionalized for a very long period of time. But I've never met anybody about whom I can say there is no hope for this person. And this idea that we are all more than the worst thing we've ever done is very resonant for me. I think if somebody tells a lie, they're not just a liar. I think if they take something that doesn't belong to them, they're not just a thief. And I think even if you kill someone, you're not just a killer. And I actually take great pride in standing and advocating for the humanity of people.

Presenter2:42

Vital though, surely, in a functioning democracy that people ultimately are held accountable for the very worst things they do.

Bryan Stevenson2:48

They did. No question, and I'm not against punishment, but in America we have a system of justice that's really defined by error. For every nine people that we have executed in America, we've identified one innocent person on death row. And that rate of error, in my judgment, ought to cause us to stop the death penalty, not because we think it's morally unacceptable necessarily, but because you can't tolerate that kind of error. If for every nine planes that took off, one crashed, nobody would fly. And what's interesting is that the longer I've spent representing the condemned, the longer I've spent on death row, the more I've become persuaded that these are places where some remarkable things are happening. And that humanity, that compassion, that sometimes beauty that is given to me by my condemned clients has really radicalized my understanding of what it means to be in that space.

Presenter3:40

That is an extraordinary thing t to hear you say, because I I I had planned that my next question really was to ask you about being surrounded by so much darkness. Where is the light in your life? But it sounds to me as though

Bryan Stevenson3:47

Wins the line

Bryan Stevenson3:49

Yeah.

Bryan Stevenson3:50

It's right there in the least expected. Oh, absolutely. I've had clients spend most of the entire visit trying to encourage me, worried about my mental state as I'm dealing with some complex issue. And so there is a dynamic, even on death row, that affirms my very basic hopes and aspirations for what human beings can and should do.

Presenter4:15

Let's hear your first choice of the morning then, Brian Stevenson. What what is this? Why have you chosen this track?

Bryan Stevenson4:19

Well, I haven't danced since I was a teenager, but I think if I were on an island stranded, you know, at some point I might just want to, as they say, get down just a little bit, and nobody would inspire that more than Stevie Wonder. I used to listen to him all the time when I was a kid growing up, because his music was obviously very popular, but also it had this spiritual quality, it had this seriousness, it had this kind of otherworldliness that very much motivated me and engaged me.

Speaker 44:49

Was a little laughing hidden for

Speaker 44:56

Then my only worry was for Christmas what would be my door.

Speaker 45:05

Even though we sometimes would not get a thing

Speaker 45:09

We were happy with

Speaker 45:12

Uh

Speaker 45:12

We sneaking out the back door to hang up with those good lumps.

Presenter5:19

That was Stevie Wonder and I Wish. Um Brian Stevenson, we're not really a statistics programme, but it is worth just putting the work you do in some sort of uh context. In the US a person's chance of being sent to jail is one in fifteen.

Presenter5:34

And maybe even more alarmingly, you say that if you are a black baby boy born this century in the USA, you have a one in three chance of being locked up. J just briefly, can you put those bamboozling statistics in some sort of context for our listeners?

Bryan Stevenson5:47

Statistics.

Bryan Stevenson5:49

Sure. No, we're a radically different place than we were 40 years ago. In 1972, the prison population was 300,000 in America. Today, it is 2.3 million. We have 68 million Americans with criminal arrests, which means that when they apply for jobs, many of them, they have to write down, I have a criminal arrest, which is going to dramatically restrict their ability to be employed. One in three black male babies born in the United States is projected to go to jail or prison. That wasn't true in the 20th century. That wasn't true in the 19th century. It became true in the 21st century. We are a society that has, in my judgment, been ravaged by the politics of fear and anger, and we've allowed incarceration and excessive punishment to define us in ways that I think has created a real crisis. And so I do think it's changing now that we recognize that this has gone really out of control.

Presenter6:43

Archbishop Desmond Tutu uh said of you, you are I'm quoting here America's Nelson Mandela. I imagine that's not a term he he uh throws about very lightly. How does that make you feel when you hear that?

Bryan Stevenson6:54

Well, you know, I'm obviously deeply honored by that. I think what he said was America's young Mandela, and I believe he was just comparing the legal work that Nelson Mandela did when he was a young attorney. I mean, obviously, we do face great challenges in America. I don't think we have confronted our history of racial inequality in a meaningful way. And I think we have been burdened by our failure to deal with that history. And I believe America is a place where we need truth and reconciliation, just as they had in South Africa. Because of apartheid and the damage that was done, there was a recognition that there had to be truth and reconciliation after the apartheid fell. And I think that process was vital to creating a healthy future for that country. We didn't do that. We didn't do it after slavery. We didn't do it after terror and lynching. We didn't do it after civil rights. And because of that, we remain vulnerable to the ravages of a narrative of racial difference. And people are presumed guilty and dangerous. I get presumed guilty and dangerous. I was sitting in a courtroom not too long ago, just getting ready for court. It was the first time I'd been there. And I was in my suit sitting at counsel table, and the judge walked in.

Bryan Stevenson8:04

And he was followed by the prosecutor, and the judge saw me sitting there. He said, Hey, hey, hey, hey, you get out of here. I don't want any defendants sitting in my courtroom without their lawyers. You go back out there in the hallway and wait until your lawyer gets here. And I stood up and I said, Oh, I'm sorry, Your Honor. I didn't introduce myself. My name is Brian Stevenson. I am the lawyer. And the judge started laughing, and the prosecutor started laughing. I made myself laugh because I didn't want to disadvantage my client. Then my client came in, a young white kid I was representing, and we did the hearing. And afterward, I was thinking, What is it about our society that a judge sees a middle-aged African-American man in a suit and a tie at counsel's table and doesn't think that's the lawyer? And that problem is absolutely going to manifest itself when that judge sentences young people of color. But it's a manifestation of our failure to deal with this presumption of guilt and dangerousness that many people have been shaped by that we've never talked about.

Presenter8:57

I know this is a tiny thing and that is an astonishing example of it, but did did the judge have the courtesy to apologise to you afterwards, I'm interested?

Bryan Stevenson9:04

No, I think he found it amusing. I don't think it occurred to him that he did anything that injurious.

Presenter9:11

Let's listen to some more of your music, Brian Stevenson. Tell me about this second disc. Why have you chosen this?

Bryan Stevenson9:15

Yeah, so I represent children who have been sentenced to die in prison. And when we were working on a presentation to give to the country, because very few people know that we have all these 13, 14 year old kids in America sentenced to life imprisonment without parole, I was looking for music that could accompany the images of these children in jails and prisons. And this piece really spoke to me. I've always been a big fan of Leontine Price. She came from Mississippi. kind of beat the odds, coming from the segregated South, becoming this glorious, renowned diva. And I've always admired those kinds of narratives because I came from a poor rural community. And so when I found her singing these lyrics, it just spoke to me in ways that I couldn't resist.

Presenter10:56

Leantine Prize singing When I am laid in earth from Purcell's Dido and Aeneas. So you're a graduate then of Harvard Law School, Brian Stevenson, and you have got, frankly, um more more honorary doctorates than is polite. Um you began your education though in the it was the nineteen sixties and it it astonished me to find out that you were in a a segregated school. Surely by then segregation had been outlawed by the mid

Bryan Stevenson11:17

Surely

Bryan Stevenson11:19

Well, you're right. The Supreme Court banned racial segregation in public schools in 1955, but some school systems remained segregated until the 1970s. Lawyers came into our community. Which was on the east coast of America. Yes, that's right. The Eastern Shore. And I was in Southern Delaware. And these lawyers came in and demanded that they open up the public schools. And as a result of that,

Bryan Stevenson11:45

I got to go to high school. There was no black high school for kids. My dad couldn't go to high school because there was no black high school in my county. And it changed everything. I mean, I grew up in a community where, you know, none of the black adults that I knew had gone to college. There was a poultry plant. Poultry farming is a big industry where I grew up in, so most people end up in the chicken factory. And you're shaped by those expectations. When you've never met a black lawyer, or a black doctor, or a black teacher, or a black scientist, it's very hard to imagine yourself in these roles.

Presenter12:15

Tell me a little bit about your grandmother.

Bryan Stevenson12:17

My grandmother was amazing. She was the daughter of people who were enslaved. Her parents were born into slavery in Virginia in the eighteen forties. She was born in the eighteen eighties. At the period of our history when terrorism and lynching was very prominent, she used to say to me I was terrorized every day of my life, and so I had to be smart.

Presenter12:37

You use that word terrorism a few times and I believe being a lawyer you probably use that very deliberately because America considers itself to currently be going through its first ever wave of terrorism on its shores.

Bryan Stevenson12:45

Of terrorism on its shores. Yeah, that's right. Yes, no, I am quite deliberate about it because in 1865 slavery was abolished in law, but not the real evil. It turned into decades of white supremacy and terror. Older people come up to me all the time and they say I get angry when I hear somebody on T V talking about how we're dealing with terrorism for the first time after the 9-11 tax because they said we grew up with terrorism.

Bryan Stevenson13:09

We were menaced and threatened, and bombed and lynched, and my grandmother was born during that era, and she just gave me this way of looking at uh this world uh through a different lens.

Bryan Stevenson13:19

And she had this way of en engaging us, and she would give me these hugs, and she'd squeeze me so tightly I could barely breathe. And she'd let me go, and then she'd see me an hour later and she'd say, Brian, do you still feel me hugging you? And if I said no, she'd assault me again, and if I said yes, she'd leave me alone. But she had this quality

Bryan Stevenson13:38

That brought us to her, and she'd say you have to get close to things to really understand them.

Presenter13:43

Let's have some more music, Brian Stevenson. Tell me about your third then.

Bryan Stevenson13:47

You know, I grew up surrounded by gospel music. My family was very, very musical. My mother's a musician. My dad was musical. And he had a male chorus that would go around and they were very popular. They traveled all around the region.

Bryan Stevenson14:02

And I started playing the piano when I was very young and every now and then I would uh play for them. And so the Fairfield Four are an acoustic group, but they remind me of those male choruses I used to play with. And so, yeah, this was a great song.

Bryan Stevenson14:15

And this notion of standing in a safety zone, even in the midst of conflict and controversy, even in courtrooms where people are angry and hostile, that you can create a safety zone where you're convinced you're right, you're convinced what you're doing is about protecting basic human dignity, has always been something that I've tried to keep with me.

Speaker 314:33

Oh, I'm standing in a safety zone So many times I stand alone When all of my friends see me And they call me to weep and moan Oh I'm standing in a safety zone So many times I stand alone

Speaker 315:01

And if you want to get

Speaker 315:05

Heaven war

Speaker 315:08

First day and say

Presenter15:11

Standing in the safety zone, that was the Fairfield Four. Um, Brian Stevenson, tell me then about the circumstances of your grandfather's murder. He he was elderly. He was murdered.

Bryan Stevenson15:21

Yeah, uh my grandfather was living in the projects in South Philadelphia and the low income um housing projects where there was a great deal of crime.

Bryan Stevenson15:30

And uh he was essentially the victim of a home burglary. Some young people were trying to steal his T V and

Bryan Stevenson15:38

He tried to stop them, but he ended up being stabbed to death by these young kids. He was eighty six years old.

Bryan Stevenson15:44

Uh and so it was quite devastating uh to my family.

Presenter15:48

Were the killers arrested? Were they found guilty?

Bryan Stevenson15:49

They were. They were young kids. They were all convicted. They got prison sentences. Not especially harsh sentences. One of the challenges in America's criminal justice system is that race of the victim shapes outcomes. My state of Alabama, 65% of all murder victims are black, but 80% of the people on death row are there for crimes involving victims who are white.

Presenter16:11

Sixteen when your grandfather was murdered. And at sixteen and and indeed your earlier teenage years, what kind of guy were you? What were you getting up to? What were you interested in?

Bryan Stevenson16:19

You know, I was so excited to be in the high school, I wanted to kind of exploit every opportunity. So I was playing sports, I played soccer and basketball and baseball, and I was running track and

Presenter16:30

Why do I think you were very, very good, were you?

Bryan Stevenson16:33

Good. I did okay, yeah. Um, I was interested in music, and so I was doing all of the dramas, and I was a, you know, a a decent student.

Presenter16:33

Right, Ditto?

Bryan Stevenson16:41

And so I took full advantage of all of it.

Presenter16:43

Were you very articulate then? Were you sort of head of the student council and all that?

Bryan Stevenson16:47

Yeah, I was the head of the student government. I had a wonderful English teacher. Her name was Harriet Jaglum, and she took an interest in me.

Bryan Stevenson16:54

And she said, Oh, I think you should be in some speech contests And I didn't even know anything about this, but she said, You can make some money. And I was so poor, my dad was like, Yeah, you do that And so I got involved in these speaking contests and

Presenter17:08

Did you enjoy it? You know, because for for most people getting up and speaking in front of an audience can be a terrifying thing.

Bryan Stevenson17:10

People getting up

Bryan Stevenson17:12

It's gonna be a terrifying is that you immediately

Presenter17:13

Immediately enjoyed it.

Bryan Stevenson17:14

I did. I did. I liked the challenge of it. It was at a time when you still didn't see many kids of color in some of these settings. And so I liked kind of being in a setting where the expectations were different, and trying to exceed those expectations was a bit motivating for me.

Presenter17:21

Mm-hmm.

Presenter17:29

Did you win lots of prize money?

Bryan Stevenson17:31

I won some, yeah. My dad was, yeah, no, you need to keep doing that. You need to keep doing that.

Presenter17:36

BAP

Presenter17:38

Let's have some more music, Brian Stevenson. Tell me about this. It's your fourth of the morning. What are we going to hear?

Bryan Stevenson17:38

Yeah.

Bryan Stevenson17:42

This is Beethoven, the Miso Solemnis, and I just find it just extraordinarily beautiful music. There are times when you've been just so challenged by the day that it's wonderful to find a space where you can just be calmed by something unbelievably beautiful. And I don't think anyone composed short, beautiful little moments in music better than Beethoven.

Presenter19:11

Sanctus Preludium from Beethoven's Misa Solemnis, played by the Berlin Philharmonic, conducted by Herbert von Karrion. I want you to tell me, Brian Stevenson, about the very first time that you visited Death Row. How old were you, and and who were you there to see?

Bryan Stevenson19:26

Yeah, I was a law student, pretty disillusioned with law school. When I got to law school, I was interested in race and poverty and justice, and they weren't talking about race or poverty and justice. And I'd actually left after my first year of law school to go to the school of government because I wasn't confident that a lawyer c a legal career was for me.

Presenter19:43

And this was when you started at Harvard.

Bryan Stevenson19:44

It started at Harvard. I was twenty one when I started at Harvard.

Presenter19:46

I started

Bryan Stevenson19:47

After that first year, I went to the School of Government. I'd like that even less. So I went back to the law school, took an internship with this human rights project in Atlanta, Georgia, that provided legal services to people on death row. And I found a community of lawyers who were animated by their work. They were passionate and hardworking. And they asked me to go down to death row and tell a death row prisoner that he wasn't at risk of execution anytime in the next year. And I was really nervous. And I was pacing in this little visitation room. And they finally brought this man in who was just burdened with chains. He had chains on his wrists, on his ankles, on his waist. And I was so nervous, I went up to him and I just started apologizing. I said, I'm so sorry. I don't know anything. I can't tell you anything or answer any of your questions. But they sent me here to tell you that you're not at risk of execution.

Bryan Stevenson20:34

Any time in the next year and when I said that, the man said, Wait, wait, wait, say that again.

Bryan Stevenson20:39

I said you're not at risk of execution any time in the next year.

Bryan Stevenson20:42

And that man hugged me.

Bryan Stevenson20:44

and said, I can't tell you how grateful I am for that information. He said, you're the first person I've talked to in two years on death row who's not a death row prisoner or death row guard. And we had this amazing meeting where we talked for three hours. And after three hours, the guards came bursting in the room because they were mad that I'd stayed past the time. And they started putting the chains on him very roughly. And they were manhandling him and pushing him roughly out of the room. And before they pushed him out, I saw him plant his feet on the floor. And he turned to me and he said, Brian, don't worry about this. Just come back. And the first death row prisoner I ever met then looked at me, closed his eyes, threw his head back, and he started to sing.

Bryan Stevenson21:24

That's the last thing I expected. And he started singing this hymn we used to sing when we were kids I'm pressing on the upward way, At new heights I'm gaining every day, Still praying as I'm onward bound. And then he said, Lord, plant my feet on higher ground.

Presenter21:25

Expect

Bryan Stevenson21:40

And all of a sudden, I believed that maybe I could get condemned people to higher ground. And I believed.

Presenter21:45

And I believe

Bryan Stevenson21:46

that for me to get to higher ground

Bryan Stevenson21:49

That's what I had to do and it changed my relationship to the law because then I went back to law school and I needed to understand everything and you couldn't get me out of the law library.

Presenter21:56

Harvard, of course, one of the most uh renowned seats of learning in the world, I think it'd be fair to say. Did your parents come to visit you while you were there?

Bryan Stevenson22:03

You know, they didn't. For many people in my family, they'd heard of it, obviously, and they had some notion of it, but it didn't represent to them what it might represent to other people. And I think had they known some of the options that were available to Harvard Law Cross.

Presenter22:17

I know. You see, this is where I'm because I'm thinking about your father saying do the speech make competition and I'm thinking about you being a Harvard law graduate. I imagine you got a terrific degree. You could have gone anywhere and made, let's be frank, millions.

Bryan Stevenson22:19

Thinking about your phone.

Bryan Stevenson22:20

Yeah.

Bryan Stevenson22:23

Lord Roger.

Bryan Stevenson22:25

Okay

Bryan Stevenson22:29

Yeah. Yeah. I think they weren't as clued into that possibility, which which helped a little bit. But ultimately, they always had tremendous confidence in me to do what I thought was important.

Presenter22:41

Let's have some more music, Brian Stevenson. We're on your fifth.

Bryan Stevenson22:44

Well, jazz was for me a really important outlet when I was in law school. Nothing stimulated me more than the music of our great jazz musicians. And for me, one of the great recordings of all time was Miles Davis's Blue and Green. And it's just one of my favorite jazz tunes of all time.

Presenter24:00

Miles Davis, Blue in Green. So, Brian Stevenson, you've succeeded in changing US federal law on two occasions, I think. You've appeared in front of um the Supreme Court in the US on five occasions. Do you get nervous?

Bryan Stevenson24:14

Oh, sure. I mean, that's a really intimidating court because you have nine judges that aren't bound by clear precedent, which is what you're usually trying to manipulate when you're in front of a court. The last time I was there, we were trying to persuade them to ban life without parole sentences imposed on children.

Presenter24:31

In the US system.

Bryan Stevenson24:33

Uh

Presenter24:33

A thirteen or fourteen year old child who's guilty of a serious crime can be tried as an adult and sentenced as an adult. Am I right?

Bryan Stevenson24:35

Yeah.

Bryan Stevenson24:40

That's correct. We have several states that have no minimum age for trying a child as an adult. I've represented actually 10 and 11-year-old kids facing long-term adult incarceration, where they face tremendous risk of sexual violence and suicide. And we won a case in 2010 when I was there banning life without parole for children convicted of non-homicides. And then in 2012, we persuaded the court to end mandatory life without parole sentences for children convicted of any crime. And that's been a huge step forward in helping this community of children who were sentenced to die in prison.

Presenter24:40

Right.

Presenter25:16

When you go to visit these very young people, these children in adult jails.

Bryan Stevenson25:20

Yeah.

Presenter25:22

What do you see? Paint me a picture.

Bryan Stevenson25:24

Well, you know, it's heartbreaking. The relationships tend to be very familial. They don't look at me as their lawyer. They look at me as a parent or as a sibling. They're much more emotional. They're much more dependent. They're much more desperate. You know, I get calls. So, you know, I have this little thing I do with my clients where we don't charge anybody money for the services we provide. But my young clients, I make them read books. I say, well, I want you to read this book, and we're going to talk about it when I come and visit. Because it gives them something to focus on. And so they're challenging because they're very intense, but they're also deeply energizing. I am absolutely persuaded that all children are children. All children are children. And that's not a legal argument, but it's the essence of the legal case that we are bringing.

Presenter26:10

When you have been in a day in a set of circumstances like that.

Presenter26:15

What do you feel like?

Bryan Stevenson26:16

But no, I think it unquestionably has an impact on you.

Bryan Stevenson26:20

When you're surrounded by that much pain and anguish and suffering, it will affect you. I've been in a cell where I was holding a little boy who had been assaulted right before I got there. And this child was crying hysterically for almost an hour.

Bryan Stevenson26:34

And I was so overwhelmed by it. When I left the jail, I asked myself, who is responsible for this? And I realized we are. We've created a society that tolerates these kinds of injustices. And we've got to change the society. We've got to push the society. And you'll be motivated to do that when you get intimate with these kinds of situations. When you get close to people and problems and suffering and anguish, it will give you insight that you can't have from a distance. You shed some tears, there's no question about it. But when you prevail, you experience joy unlike joy that you can experience when you haven't been through those valleys, right?

Presenter27:10

Let's have some more music, Brian Stevenson.

Bryan Stevenson27:12

You're sick.

Presenter27:13

Yeah.

Bryan Stevenson27:13

Yes. So this is an incredible recording by an artist I love listening to, Donnie Hathaway. You hear so many performances where you're wondering, well, where's the musicianship? Where's the talent? You don't wonder about that when you hear Donnie Hathaway sing.

Speaker 427:38

This may only be a dream.

Speaker 427:48

We come.

Speaker 427:52

And we go.

Presenter27:56

Donnie Hathaway, and for all we know, Brian, many people would agree with your perspective on the ingrained difficulties in America to do with racial prejudice, but a lot of people had a fair degree of optimism when America had its first African American President. Many of those people now remain disappointed as Barack Obama's in his second term and they think, well, that was a lot of fuss about nothing. Nothing seems to have changed for us.

Bryan Stevenson28:17

Nothing's

Bryan Stevenson28:18

Yes. It was astonishing that he was elected President of the United States. Many of us never believed we'd see that in our lifetime. And it was a moment, and we'll never lose that moment. It does mean something. But I think we quickly realized that it didn't change any of the fundamental challenges in American society. Even that is not enough.

Bryan Stevenson28:38

To avoid dealing with this history of racial inequality, we haven't had that truth and reconciliation that we desperately need in America.

Presenter28:46

Are you ever tempted by a political life yourself?

Bryan Stevenson28:50

Uh not really, no. For me right now, um political laws would be very restraining.

Presenter28:56

I'm interested that you used the phrase right now in there.

Bryan Stevenson28:59

You know, I'm we could see a different political dynamic emerge in America where I felt like those majoritarian norms and values would actually be something I could advance in elective politics, but I don't expect that any time soon. And you know, I'm a product.

Presenter29:00

Watch the space.

Bryan Stevenson29:15

Of a civil rights movement that was largely sustained by the courts. You know, there was never a time when you could get the majority of people in Alabama to vote, to give the voting rights to African Americans. We had to win those rights by insisting on the rights of people who are minorities. And what I like about being a lawyer and going to courts is that sometimes you can win even against the wishes of the majority, and that still makes for a healthier democracy.

Presenter29:39

The music, let's go to at night. Disc 7, Brian Stevenson, tell me about this.

Bryan Stevenson29:43

So growing up playing the piano, I was always, always preoccupied with the playing of Art Tatum. I think he's the greatest piano player of the twentieth century. He has technique unlike any other musician I can think of, but also these really sophisticated ideas that he takes these jazz tunes, pop tunes, and he expresses with these harmonic tensions that are just unbelievably rich. And he does it rhythmically in ways that are sometimes kind of confusing. But the more you listen, the more you hear the brilliance of it. I think he was really an American genius.

Presenter31:18

Yesterday's Art Tatum. You were listening to that, Brian Stevenson, with a very keen ear. Y you did play piano in school. Do you still play?

Bryan Stevenson31:24

Yes, I still do. Sometimes when nothing else will get me to sleep, you know, spending a little time at a piano will help a lot. So I I get I take great comfort in in music. It's a great way to relax.

Presenter31:33

I'm glad you said that, about bringing comfort, because I know you you you've never been married and you don't have kids.

Presenter31:38

You know what, how are you supported?

Bryan Stevenson31:40

Well, You know, I feel like the project that we've created is very familial.

Bryan Stevenson31:45

And we have a community of people who work there.

Bryan Stevenson31:49

Many of whom are married and with children, but I also feel really supported by the client community. You know, I'm the unworthy recipient of a lot of kindness. I am often just surprised at the ways in which people go out of their way to say, you know, keep fighting, or we love you for standing up for us. And these kinds of things are priceless.

Presenter32:12

Truthfully, what do you think your grandmother would make of what you're doing with your life?

Bryan Stevenson32:16

You know, I think she'd be really, really proud. I think she'd be glad he'd be really, really proud. Oh, I do. You know, she and my mother.

Presenter32:20

I'm glad you feel you can say that.

Bryan Stevenson32:25

And I think about them a lot. My grandmother made me promise three things to always love my mother no matter what happened. That I would never drink alcohol, which to a nine-year-old kid seemed like a really easy promise to make. It got a lot more complicated later in life. And then she made me promise me to do the right thing, even when it was the hard thing. And that's the one I'd want to talk with her about and at least try to persuade her that maybe I've done that.

Presenter32:51

So now I can figure out how come you look so young. What are you were you fifty six, fifty-five? Fifty five, yeah. Fifty-five. You look about thirty-five. Oh, I appreciate that. I appreciate that. I'm going to cast you away to this island, as you know, rather cruelly. Um you'll be on your own. No no briefs to to read or prepare, no people who need your help.

Bryan Stevenson32:55

Yeah.

Bryan Stevenson32:58

I appreciate that. I appreciate that.

Bryan Stevenson33:07

The real

Bryan Stevenson33:09

Yes.

Presenter33:10

How on earth will you survive here?

Bryan Stevenson33:11

You know, I think it'll be a wonderful, wonderful experience. You know, when I was a college student, I majored in philosophy, and I would sometimes tell my friends, I'm going to go out on the hillside and I'm going to go philosophize. And they always thought that I was, you know, saying I'm going to go do something illegal, go use drugs or something like that. But I'd genuinely like to have this moment to just think about all of these challenges and questions. And I'd like to persuade myself that this time on the island would be like that.

Presenter33:39

No reason why not. Let's hear your eighth disc then. Tell me what we're gonna hear today.

Bryan Stevenson33:42

Yeah, so this is you know, I grew up surrounded by gospel music, so I couldn't go to an island without something that brought back that history.

Speaker 433:59

Say it out.

Speaker 434:04

Oh, oh, no, no, no.

Speaker 434:14

I get a little no

Speaker 434:18

Uh

Presenter34:19

That was Aretha Franklin with the Reverend James Cleveland and the Southern Californian Community Choir and Precious Memories. We give people the books, Brian Stevenson, and the books that they get are the Bible and the complete works of Shakespeare, and then another book of their own to take to this island.

Bryan Stevenson34:31

Yeah.

Bryan Stevenson34:35

What's your book going to be? I think mine would be The Brothers Karamatsov by Dostoevsky.

Presenter34:41

Okay, that's yours. And a luxury too, something.

Bryan Stevenson34:42

Yeah.

Presenter34:44

Not necessarily useful, but to make life just that bit more bearable.

Bryan Stevenson34:48

Um I don't know the logistics, but could I have a piano?

Presenter34:51

Oh, certainly.

Bryan Stevenson34:51

Piano

Presenter34:53

And if I was to ask you to save just one disk of the eight, which one would you save?

Bryan Stevenson34:57

That's very difficult, very, very difficult, but probably uh the last one, Precious Memories, because that's the music of my um of my youth and in some ways it's probably closer to the soundtrack uh of my life than anything else, and so I'd probably take that one.

Presenter35:14

It's yours then, Brian Stevenson. Thank you very much for letting us hear your desert island discs.

Bryan Stevenson35:18

Thank you. Love being with you.

Presenter36:00

You've been listening to a download from the BBC.

Presenter36:03

You'll find more information on the Radio 4 website bbc.co.uk slash Radio4.