Michael Lewis

Presenter0:01

BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, Podcasts. Hello, I'm Lauren Laverne, and this is the Desert Island Discs Podcast. Every week, I ask my guests to choose the eight tracks, book, and luxury they'd want to take with them if they were cast away to a desert island. And, for rights reasons, the music is shorter than the original broadcast. I hope you enjoy listening.

Presenter0:41

My castaway this week is the writer Michael Lewis, a former city trader who started out under a pseudonym Spilling the Beans on Life on the Trading Floor. His first book, a Wall Street Expose called Liars Poker, was a smash hit back in 1989. He gave up life in the city for life in his study and has been following his itinerant imagination ever since, unearthing stories that delight him and, by extension, his readers. They include Moneyball, the tale of a struggling baseball team that harnessed the power of data to take on the fat cats at the top of the league, and The Big Short, about the roots of the 2008 financial crisis. Both were adapted for the big screen, gaining 11 Oscar nominations between them. Asked about his instinct for hunting out award-worthy material, he says the process is so messy that no business school or writing programme would teach it. I just wonder, and I feel as if I'm a wanderer in the world. When I find something that I am immensely interested in, I look to write something about it and see where it goes. Everything I've written started small, and the books simply mushroomed. Michael Lewis, welcome to Desert Islanders.

Michael Lewis1:44

Thanks for having me.

Presenter1:46

So tell me a little bit more about your creative wanderings then. How do you know when you're onto something good?

Michael Lewis1:50

It's a very distinct feeling I get when I know I'm going to write a book, and it's that I have an obligation to the story. It's so good. And if I don't tell it, nobody else will, kind of thing. I get that feeling.

Presenter2:02

And tell me about that in practice then. For example, your recent book, The Fifth Risk, that's about the workings of the US Government. Where did you start telling that story?

Michael Lewis2:09

Well, first I found out this curious thing. And the curious thing was what had happened when Donald Trump was elected president. There were rules, laws that had been passed by the Congress to ensure that when one president was leaving and another president was coming in, that the transition was smooth because our government doesn't work like your government. It's run by the political people. That the president comes in and he has to appoint 4,000 people to run this 2 million person enterprise. There isn't a permanent civil service that's running the thing. So, what they do always is the guy who's leaving spends six or eight months with several thousand people preparing briefings in each department. Like you go to the Center for Disease Control, and there's a big book telling you how you prevent a virus from getting out and killing a million Americans. Or you go to the Department of Energy and they show you how you maintain the nuclear weapons without setting one off by mistake. So these are not ideological things. It's sort of like how this place runs. And on the other side, the person who's elected has to prepare to have hundreds of people to go in the day after the election to listen to all this. And Trump had that by law. He had a team of like 500 people that he fired the day after the election. So nobody. So what you had was all these people literally days after the election sitting in offices around the federal government with little finger sandwiches and Diet Cokes and parking spaces set aside, and nobody shows up. And when I realized that none of these briefings ever happened, ever, and that I could go to the person who maintained the nuclear arsenal and be the first person to hear how it worked, I realized there was at least the beginning of a story.

Presenter3:46

You share in uh your tracks with us today. Do you write to music?

Michael Lewis3:51

Not only do I write to music, I use music to tune out the world. I mean, the truth is that I'm a moron about music. I'm not musical, and I have a wife who's a musical aficionado who's not only appalled by my taste, but is mortified that you have me on this program.

Michael Lewis4:09

I do think that if you gave my wife a choice between having a sex tape of me released publicly with someone else or my choice of music on desert island discs, she would rather have the sex tape out there. When people find out

Michael Lewis4:25

Who She's Married To? What the State of My Musical Soul. Let me just apologize in advance for what's about to happen.

Presenter4:32

Well, Michael, you know, we don't do that other thing at the BBC, so all we can do is give her your discs. Let's start with the first. What's it going to be?

Michael Lewis4:39

It's the first album I remember ever buying. I must have been 10 or 11 years old. And it's the first song I remembered kind of dancing around to in my underpants. And I imagine that's what I'd be doing on a deserted island in the first place: dancing around on my underpants. And it's Jackson 5, I want you back.

Presenter4:57

Want you around. Those pretty faces always make you stand out in a crowd. But someone kicked you from the bunch. One glass was all it took. Now it's much too late.

Presenter5:19

The Jackson 5 and I Want You Back. So Michael Lewis, that track taken you back to your childhood and to New Orleans. You are from a family that's lived there for many, many years, and you credit your knack for storytelling to your hometown. Why?

Michael Lewis5:33

I didn't know anybody who wrote books when I grew up. I knew very few people who read books when I grew up.

Michael Lewis5:38

So, it wasn't the place where I was going to grow up to be a writer, but it was a place where you were going to grow up to tell stories. And I think it is true.

Michael Lewis5:47

That the people who lead the most interesting lives are the people who have a gift for telling stories about their lives. That they go through their day and things happen to them, and they turn them into narrative.

Michael Lewis5:57

And there was just this impulse. It was in the air that you breathed in New Orleans to turn things into narratives. So the place shaped me that way. And my roots there, I mean, my roots are very deep. The first Lewis was sent down there, was sent by Thomas Jefferson to receive the Louisiana Purchase from the French in 1803. And he wrote the first, he was the first Chief Justice of the Louisiana Supreme Court. That's my whatever grandfather. When I was a little kid, I used to go spend, when I wasn't listening to the Jackson 5, I'd go sit in my father's study and just talk to him about how the world worked. And he had this thing that he repeated a half a dozen times through my childhood about who we were, the Lewis family.

Michael Lewis6:37

He said, you won't be able to understand it because it's in Latin on our coat of arms, but we have a coat of arms and we have a family motto. And the Lewis family motto is, and he made me memorize it.

Michael Lewis6:51

Do as little as possible, and that unwillingly, for it is better to receive a slight reprimand than to perform an arduous task.

Presenter7:00

Sick.

Michael Lewis7:01

I mean, I believe that. I thought that was like the words we lived by until I was about 20 years old. I only realized later he just kind of made it up.

Presenter7:01

I mean, I

Presenter7:04

There it is.

Presenter7:09

It's time for your second disc today. What are we going to hear and why have you chosen this one?

Michael Lewis7:12

This is where my wife's reputation takes a huge hit. This is like the really embarrassing part of the sex tape.

Presenter7:17

I think there's going to be a lot of listeners out there who will love this.

Michael Lewis7:20

I love the song and I still listen to it and it takes me back to about age 13 in the Chicago old days.

Michael Lewis7:30

Times I remember

Michael Lewis7:34

Funding!

Michael Lewis7:38

Few minutes

Presenter7:38

Tip by flesh away.

Presenter7:42

Driving movies.

Speaker 27:47

Uh

Presenter7:47

I miss the

Speaker 27:47

Watching the deal

Presenter7:54

Chicago and old days. So Michael Lucy, the eldest of three children.

Michael Lewis7:59

Yeah.

Presenter7:59

At home in New Orleans, your mother Diana is a stalwart of New Orleans community life. Tell me a little bit more about her.

Michael Lewis8:07

Well, to give you an idea of just what a pillar of the community my mother is, the local newspaper, the Times-Pikioun, has been running, because it's the 300th anniversary of New Orleans, a series that's the 300 most important people in the history of the city. And my mother was just named one of them. And this is without ever making a dime. It's entirely kind of civic activism. She's woven herself into the fabric of the city in all these extraordinary ways. Second trait about her is that all the energy she has thrown into shaping the city of New Orleans, for the first 10 years of my life, she directed at me to try to fix me. And that was catastrophic. That we were at war with each other. Relations were so bitter that when I was maybe 13 or 14, when I was listening to Chicago and the Jackson 5 and those other songs, my mother looks at me with just like steely eyes and she said, Do you know that for seven years, you have made my life a sheer hell? And I remember thinking, yeah, I won. This is a give solace to mothers out there everywhere.

Michael Lewis9:15

I love my mother so much.

Michael Lewis9:18

we are so close now that we went from that to this is an extraordinary thing. But I New Orleans saved us because she once she stopped directing that energy at me and started to go fix something else,

Presenter9:23

Yeah.

Presenter9:30

Mm-hmm.

Michael Lewis9:31

Everything got better.

Presenter9:32

Okay, but I have to ask you about the fixing. She was trying to fix you. What was wrong with you?

Michael Lewis9:36

In my mind, nothing. I was always pretty happy with myself, but I caused endless trouble. I was a grifter and a vandal by the time I was eleven ten, eleven years old.

Presenter9:45

How bad are we talking? What kind of thing?

Michael Lewis9:46

There was a period when I was kind of 12, 13, 14, where I would routinely get up, I'd set an alarm for like two in the morning. I would sneak downstairs, go out the back door, slip onto my banana-seated bike, and meet two friends on a corner in pitch black, and run around the city pulling hood ornaments and key covers off cars. And you'd snap them. It sounded like a pistol shot when you snap them. And when my father found the collection that I'd accumulated over 18 months, there were maybe 200 of these things.

Presenter10:22

And why?

Michael Lewis10:23

I don't know why. I had no sense that anything I did when I was 12 or 13 or 14 years old was connected in any way to like what would happen in the future.

Presenter10:33

We'll talk more about that and perhaps about your ambitions that you had for yourself back then. But for now, it's time to go to the music. It's your third disc today, Michael.

Michael Lewis10:41

So it's stairway to heaven. Led Zeppelin.

Michael Lewis10:43

And New Orleans had a very highly developed social scene for kids.

Michael Lewis10:50

bizarrely so. And they had dances. And there was always a point in the dance, and everybody knew it was coming. And you were going to have to decide whether to ask a girl to dance to it. There's a line, and it's if there is a bustle in your hedgerow,

Michael Lewis11:06

Now, that line is now associated with, in my mind, with like 15 moments in my life where I do we keep hugging or do we start dancing? And if we keep hugging, that means we like each other. Now, I couldn't have told you, I don't think anybody in New Orleans could tell you what a hedgerow was then, but a bustle? Like, what the hell's a bustle? What's it doing in a hedgerow?

Speaker 211:26

If there's a bustle in your head drone, don't be alone there.

Speaker 211:32

It's just this spring clear

Presenter11:33

Or the bay?

Speaker 211:34

Uh

Presenter11:34

Uh

Presenter11:37

Yes, there are two.

Speaker 211:39

Too fast you can go back, but in the long run

Speaker 211:43

There's still time to change the road y'all.

Presenter11:51

Led Zeppelin and Stairway to Heaven. Radio 4 listeners watching their hedgerows very carefully during that track. But not their boss.

Michael Lewis11:57

Not their bustles.

Presenter11:58

Michael Lewis, your books have covered finance, baseball, psychology, yet you studied art history at Princeton University. How much of an idea did you have when you were a young man of what you wanted to do with your life?

Michael Lewis12:10

Zero. It didn't even occur to me that I would have to do something with my life. I can remember seeing all these people dressed up in suits and going to their interviews to work on Wall Street. None of that actually appealed to me. But I thought, what is it that I like to do? And when I was a senior in college, they made me write a thesis. It was a year-long commitment and it was a book-length thing in the art history department at Princeton. And I fell in love. I said, I like doing this. I just fell in love with the doing of the thing. I could do this.

Presenter12:40

You came to London and studied economics for two years at the LSE and managed to get a job as a bond dealer in the London office at Salomon Brothers. Did you feel you fitted in when you got there?

Michael Lewis12:50

The answer to that is no, because I was always a fraud, because I wasn't there for a career. I was there to get some money, and then very quickly I figured out I was there to get material. It was so interesting, I knew that there was going to be a story in it.

Michael Lewis13:04

I could pass inside of Solomon Brothers. I was regarded as successful, but I wasn't.

Michael Lewis13:13

Except for the first year when I was learning how it all worked, I wasn't engaged, and it was just a matter of time before I was exposed.

Presenter13:20

You were already telling yourself this was material and you were going to write it up.

Michael Lewis13:24

A year into it for sure, I started taking notes. I'd jog home at night and I'd get home at eight thirty at night and I would write magazine pieces, and increasingly they were about the city.

Michael Lewis13:36

The first thing that gets published is an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal arguing that investment bankers are overpaid.

Michael Lewis13:44

I come into work the next morning, and the head of Solomon Brothers International is waiting for me at my desk, ashen-faced. And he says, you have no idea what you've done. You might be true. He said, but you can't say it. And the board of directors at Solomon Brothers has had a crisis meeting about the public relations fallout from this. He said, you have to stop. And I said, I'm not going to stop. And he had the idea. He said, could you do it under a different name? How about if I use my mother's maiden name? So I started to write under the name Diana Bleecker. I just had to wait for my bonus to arrive at the end of the year. And I fled in January and I wrote the book the next year that became Liars Poker.

Michael Lewis14:22

That takes us actually to the next song.

Presenter14:24

Exactly. Tell us about this next one.

Michael Lewis14:26

So where I was living in London, I bought a little house in Hampstead on the graveyard. And there were just two little houses on the graveyard. And the other little house, my next door neighbor, contained the actors Michael Williams and Judy Dench. And Michael and Judy became good friends. And as I was starting to write Liar's Poker,

Michael Lewis14:44

She put this song in my hands. She said, You've got to listen to this. So I started putting on headphones and just listening to the same song over and over and over. And this is the song I wrote Liars Poker to.

Speaker 214:56

It was the first time that we met.

Michael Lewis15:01

Uh

Speaker 215:02

Take not forget.

Speaker 215:05

On the map.

Michael Lewis15:06

She stepped into the room and took my bread away.

Speaker 215:14

By the Lord

Presenter15:32

Barcelona by Freddie Mercury and Montserrat Caballier.

Presenter15:35

So Michael Lewis, the book Liars Poker covered the 1987 financial crash, Black Monday, October the 17th. What did it feel like to be inside that moment while it was happening?

Michael Lewis15:46

For me, it was thrilling because it was all material. And what I felt, I felt as if I was watching the end of my story. At the core of the story was the financial system has become absurd. And we can demonstrate that it's become absurd because it's paying me hundreds of thousands of dollars to give financial advice to serious institutional investors when I have no idea what I'm doing. That nobody in his right mind should be listening to me.

Michael Lewis16:11

Much less paying me huge sums of money to do this. And if that's happening, something's wrong in the world. And that's what it felt like to me. I remember walking around excitedly, taking notes on the Solomon trading floor while everybody was screaming and yelling. In the end, it was a false ending. I was wrong about that. I thought I was writing the end of a story, and I was writing the beginning of a story.

Presenter16:31

I mean, as you say, you were making a fortune. You thought you had no idea what you were doing, but you were obviously successful at it. And presumably the the people around you might not have felt as you did. What did your prophecy say, for example, when you said you were going to turn your back on this?

Michael Lewis16:44

There were two people who got in my ear when I said I was going to quit and go write a book. My father was the first. So, my father, you've gotten a sense of him. He parented with a very light touch. I'm 26, and I call and say, you're not going to believe it, I have a $40,000 book contract.

Michael Lewis17:05

He'd just heard I'd been paid $250,000 at the end of my second year at Solomon Brothers.

Michael Lewis17:12

And he said, you can't do this. And I said, why? He said, look, you can write anytime. Wait till you're 35. Those people can make you rich. Wait till you're rich, and then you can leave and write your stories. I can remember very vividly, I was sitting on the Solomon trading floor when I was talking to him, and he was back in New Orleans. I was in London, he was in New Orleans.

Speaker 117:26

Yeah.

Michael Lewis17:32

And I remember looking at the older people around me, and I thought, if I'm here another 10 years and I'm them, what's the likelihood that I'll leave and write my stories? I couldn't imagine any of them. They were all so trapped by the money. They were making millions of dollars a year and they had families. And so I knew that if I didn't do it,

Michael Lewis17:52

I wouldn't do it. It was a fear of getting myself into a situation where money would matter more to me than it should. That was at the bottom of it.

Presenter18:00

It's time for some more music. What are we going to hear next?

Michael Lewis18:02

Well now we're into my soundtracks that I've been writing to for the last 30 years and at some point I discovered this song. It's Dire Straits, Romeo and Juliet. This is a song that has managed to live on virtually all of my soundtracks even after I edit them. So when I go right now, when I go home, I'm probably going to start another book and I'll pull out my soundtrack and I'll get rid of half the songs on it. This is on it. It will remain.

Speaker 218:32

Yeah.

Speaker 218:34

The dice was molded from the sky

Speaker 218:39

When you exploded in my heart, then I forget

Michael Lewis18:49

When you're gonna realize, it was just that the twin goes by

Presenter18:56

Diastrates and Romeo and Juliet. Michael Lewis, a lifelong interest in baseball inspired you to write Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game. It was made into a film and eventually a verb, which is very impressive. And it looked at how different sectors of the baseball community were using statistics and explained how one of the poorer teams began to win so many games. What was their secret?

Michael Lewis19:20

They found a different way to value people. What interested me about the story wasn't the baseball, although I had enough of an interest in baseball. What was curious to me was that.

Michael Lewis19:28

You had this thing that people had been doing for a century, playing this game.

Michael Lewis19:33

They'd been analyzed by millions of people. There were statistics attached to every move they made on the job.

Michael Lewis19:41

And yet this team was able to look at these people in a completely different way and find value in them that in many cases they didn't even know they had.

Michael Lewis19:52

And so for me, it was a story about how poorly markets value people and how they can be so misled and so wrong headed about the value of a human being.

Michael Lewis20:04

There are always moments where I think, oh, that's a book. And I can remember when this became a book. It became a book when I was interviewing the players of the Oakland AAs, trying to figure out how much they understood about essentially the science experiment they were in the middle of. It was after one of their games, and I was waiting for the player I was going to interview to come out of the shower. And so I was watching these players come out of the shower. And so it was the first time I'd seen them naked, and they were such an awful sight. They were like so not athlete. Several of them had fat ankles. I thought, how can you be a professional athlete with fat ankles? They all looked wrong. It's time for you.

Presenter20:39

Sixth disc movie. But

Michael Lewis20:41

Yeah. I've confessed to knowing nothing about music and having tastes that can be called into question by musical snobs, and I met my wife.

Michael Lewis20:51

I nineteen ninety six.

Michael Lewis20:54

Her name's Tabitha Soren and she was the face of M T V when I met her, and was just had more street cred in the rock and roll world than anybody walking the planet. And we'd been set up on a kind of a blind dinner date.

Michael Lewis21:06

And we talked about all kinds of things, not about music. And she said to me, I'm having dinner with friends tomorrow, some lawyers of we were in Seattle, I thought she said. Just meet us at this restaurant. So we get to the restaurant,

Michael Lewis21:20

And one of her friends is outside waiting for her. And he's wearing a purple velour jacket, and he's got long, cascading, dark locks. My first thought was, this is so great that a lawyer can wear that kind of thing. I was introduced to him. I instantly said, I just think it's so great that you are wearing that. You're able to pull that off. And he's looking at me like strangely, but then that moment passes. And then we spend the next three hours having dinner. And I adore this guy. He's just the best. I could see why he would be a successful lawyer, even though he's wearing this purple velour jacket.

Michael Lewis21:56

Now, at the end of the dinner, my now wife says to me, like, what was that about? Like, with a purple. And I said, and I just thought, lawyer. She said, he's not a lawyer. That's Peter Buck. He's the guitarist. He's for REM. I almost said, what's REM? I kind of knew, but I didn't know because that's who I am. And so she put this song in my hand so I would know who REM was. And it's Losing My Religion.

Speaker 222:13

Yeah.

Michael Lewis22:23

Uh

Presenter22:26

Who's bigger?

Presenter22:29

It's bigger than you, and you are not me.

Presenter22:34

Me

Michael Lewis22:35

It's that I will go to

Michael Lewis22:38

Distance and y

Speaker 222:40

Arise

Speaker 222:44

Oh no, I've said too much.

Speaker 222:50

Uh

Presenter22:50

I set it up.

Presenter22:54

R. E. M. and Losing My Religion and uh Peterbuck would go on to play at your wedding, wouldn't he?

Michael Lewis22:59

It wasn't planned. He just picked up the guitar and started playing. But from that moment on, my wife was pretty sure that my musical tastes and understanding would be a source of constant embarrassment to her.

Presenter23:11

Was she right?

Michael Lewis23:12

Yes.

Presenter23:12

Yeah.

Michael Lewis23:13

It's just like one bad thing happened after another, and there really is no end to it.

Presenter23:18

Your daughter Dixie has inspired your next book. She's a superstar softball player. What sort of world are you exploring there, and do you think any of her friends will speak to you again?

Michael Lewis23:28

Well, this book is still a work in progress. I'm writing it now, and it's a little memoir of not just raising Dixie, but it's a memoir of youth that tells a story of what's happened to youth sports in America, which is just a bizarre and incredible story. It's a world where a market has opened up for child athletes that has become far more elaborate and complicated and expensive than it should. You don't really have a version of it here. It's all driven by the fact that.

Speaker 123:57

Mm-hmm.

Michael Lewis23:59

Colleges give $3 billion a year away in scholarships, and the elite colleges, the only way to get into them now, unless you are a perfect student, is to be an athlete.

Presenter24:08

And what about for Dixie? I mean, does she enjoy it?

Michael Lewis24:10

I think she loves the sport, but the process of having it professionalized when she was 12 and put in a very intense pressure cooker situation for four or five years where she was on stage constantly, I think that that part of it was not so joyous. So she's now done with it. She's now figured out what college she's going to. The market part of it is over, and I think she's back to enjoying it. But it did take a person who was.

Speaker 124:19

Hmm.

Michael Lewis24:38

Doing something purely for pleasure, and turned her into someone who was doing something for other reasons.

Presenter24:45

It's time for some more music. What's it gonna be?

Michael Lewis24:47

Well, my wife tried to educate me.

Michael Lewis24:50

She tried to get me better about music. And we would go to concerts because her friends were playing. And she'd usually have backstage passes. And we went when our first child was maybe three. Quinn is our first child. She's now twenty. We took Quinn and we went backstage to Neil Young's charity f music festival. It was to raise money for

Michael Lewis25:14

Kids with disabilities. I was aware that it was a philanthropic event, but I wasn't quite sure what the cause was. We were backstage talking to REM, and I noticed that

Michael Lewis25:27

All the parents who had little kids were running onto the stage to sit behind the band that was about to play.

Michael Lewis25:35

And I thought, well, it would be cool for Quinn to be able to sit right behind the band when they're playing.

Michael Lewis25:41

So I'm aware, as we get in the story, how bad this story is. So just be aware that I I know what I did was bad. I apologize in advance. So I took my child by the hand and sat right behind Eddie Vetter. Pearl Jam was about to play.

Michael Lewis25:58

And they start playing the song, Who's Better Man? And I look around and I realize all the other little kids are disabled kids. The level of mortification and social embarrassment was about as high as it's ever been. And my wife never lets me forget it. And this is the song that triggers the memory.

Speaker 226:18

She lies and says she's in love all the time Can't find a better man

Speaker 226:26

She dreams in codes, she dreams in me.

Speaker 226:31

Can't find a better man

Speaker 226:35

Find a better me

Presenter26:48

Pearl Jam and Better Man. Michael Lewis, you've returned to the money markets as a source of inspiration for your books repeatedly. The Big Short, Boomerang, Flash Boys. I wonder how you feel about the future of finance as we know it.

Michael Lewis27:01

If you'd have asked me that when I wrote Liars Poker, I would have said the interesting things just happened. The story's over.

Michael Lewis27:10

There are no more books to be written about this.

Michael Lewis27:13

It turned out that this thing that had happened in the financial world, this financialization of economies, where all of a sudden all the kids from the most selective schools wanted to go work on Wall Street when they got out of school, where all of a sudden

Michael Lewis27:29

what people could charge for being an investment banker or a private equity person or a venture capitalist were going through the roof. It's just continued and gotten more and more pronounced and sits at the heart of both political and economic life.

Michael Lewis27:47

After the big short, I thought I was done all over again. I thought, now we figured out that we've got a reel in the financial sector. It's got to be shrunk, it's got to be less important, it's not actually productive enterprise. The societies will figure out how to put this thing back in its box. And they haven't. So I assume the future of finance is to generate some other spectacular story for me to tell at some point. The trend that's most unsettling.

Michael Lewis28:17

to me is that and we see it in our politics

Michael Lewis28:21

Is there's been such a decline in trust in both your society and my society. Trust in institutions, trust in other people, and the entire financial system depends on trust. The reason we were able to get out of the last financial crisis is governments were trusted. So governments could step in and say, all right, yeah, Citigroup's about to go down, but we'll back Citigroup. So you don't have to worry about that anymore. If you don't have an ultimate trusted authority, then you get a different sort of crisis, where it's sort of a crisis that's hard to stop. And that's the thing that worries me because I think that we're drifting into a situation where governments won't be trusted. And what that looks like and what kind of story that generates, I don't know, but that seems to me the direction we're heading.

Presenter29:12

It's almost time for me to cast you away to our desert island. How do you think you'll cope with being stranded?

Michael Lewis29:17

I enjoy my own company, but not that much. I think I'll be fine for a few days. I won't have any trouble listening to the same music over and over and over again because that's what I do already. I look forward to learning how to fish. I think the first thing I do is figure out how to have a feast. Like, let's figure out how to make this fun. The first experience would be that. It would be like, what resources are here and what can we do with them?

Presenter29:41

Okay, perfect. We'll give you one more piece of music to take with you. What's it gonna be, Michael?

Michael Lewis29:45

My children have watched the peculiar way I live my life and live my work life.

Michael Lewis29:50

My children are all very musical.

Michael Lewis29:52

They think it's curious that I sit and listen to this same soundtrack over and over and over. And I said to Quinn.

Michael Lewis29:59

who is now twenty years old in the Sophomoring College.

Michael Lewis30:02

I need some stuff for my next soundtrack. Any music you can think of that might work for your dad to write to. And her judgment was impeccable. She completely knew what would get me going, what would get me into the right headspace, the kind of music that worked in a way that even I don't know. And this was the first song she sent me. And I thought how great it is that my kid knows me. And it's Roller Coaster by Bleachers.

Michael Lewis30:30

There was a summer when I saw your face

Michael Lewis30:33

Like a teenage runaway

Speaker 230:36

God, I never thought I'd take it that far Some kid I quit me Round and I can't stop anywhere I go

Speaker 230:45

Shout it every day and night I can't let go

Speaker 230:48

Mm.

Michael Lewis30:49

I'm never the

Speaker 230:49

Same. Uh

Michael Lewis30:50

We a shotgun open side with shotgun running away

Michael Lewis30:54

Come a little closer.

Michael Lewis30:57

There is something I could tell

Presenter31:01

Bleachers and a roller coaster. So, Michael Lewis, I'm now sending you away, and you can take with you three books: the Bible and the Complete Works of Shakespeare. You can also have a book of your choosing. What will that be?

Michael Lewis31:12

Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole, which is not just a brilliant comic novel, but it is the single best description of the New Orleans I grew up in that's ever been written.

Presenter31:24

You can also have a luxury item, something to make your time on the island more enjoyable, would you like?

Michael Lewis31:31

Well, I'm torn between um

Michael Lewis31:35

A photo album.

Michael Lewis31:37

That would have pictures of all the people I love, so I'd have those associations, and a Peloton bike.

Michael Lewis31:44

But then I figure that I'll get plenty of exercise, right? Fishing, running around the island, and probably calories will be scarce. Oh, yeah.

Presenter31:48

Efficient.

Presenter31:49

Hello.

Presenter31:52

Oh yeah.

Michael Lewis31:52

So I'll probably be kind of buff anyway, just naturally.

Presenter31:54

Just naturally.

Michael Lewis31:55

So I'm going to go with a photo album.

Presenter31:57

Photo album it is, nice choice. And finally, which of these discs, which one would you save above all the others if you had to?

Michael Lewis32:07

Chicago old days.

Presenter32:09

It's a statement of intent right there.

Michael Lewis32:11

There you go.

Presenter32:12

Michael Lewis, thank you very much for letting us hear your Desert Island discs.

Michael Lewis32:16

Thanks for having me and don't take too long before you come back and get me.

Presenter32:40

Hello, I hope you enjoyed that podcast with Michael Lewis. There are more than 2,000 desert island discs available to listen to in our archive. Michael mentioned that he lived next door to Dame Judy Dench when he was a student at the London School of Economics. She's been cast away three times on our island. Also in the archive is the economist and director of the LSE, Dame Minouch Shafiq. She spoke to Kirsty Young in 2018. Dame Minouch Shafiq, the London School of Economics and Political Science, I believe to give it his full title, has a proud tradition of being right at the centre of debates regarding the role of the state in society. William Beveridge, who held the same position as you do, laid down the foundations of the welfare state, of course, in the early 40s.

Speaker 133:10

Yeah.

Presenter33:24

Might I ask you just to play a little parlour game with me. If you were to put yourself in his shoes, what do you think he would make of the welfare state and the position it's in currently in the UK? I launched a project at the LSE this month to rethink the welfare state in light of Beveridge. It's the 75th anniversary this year, and I think Beveridge would be amazed at how much the welfare state had grown.

Presenter33:49

I think there are many elements to it that he never envisioned. You know, I think he thought of the NHS, for example, as a sort of.

Presenter33:57

in case of emergency as opposed to a preventative health care and comprehensive health care system. I think he'd be amazed at how the role of women has changed and how the welfare state has changed to support women. I think he would be

Presenter34:11

Amazed at the size of the welfare state. I think he'd look at an aging society and the demographics.

Presenter34:17

And I think he would say it's time for a reform and to rethink how do we have a welfare state that is both affordable but also meets a very different set of needs in a modern economy. You spent a good healthy chunk of your career as a very senior civil servant. You were permanent secretary at the Department of International Development.

Presenter34:35

I wonder how this is a sort of current debate, how individuals guard against their sort of personal preoccupations, maybe even their personal views and opinions, starting to seep into what they choose to expose the minister to. Because ministers have to rely very heavily on experts in their department, because they come in and they've got to get across a brief very quickly. I mean, good ministers and good civil servants always consider an array of options when they're looking at policies. There is never just one answer. There are usually many ways you can solve a problem, and they each have costs and benefits. Was there ever a time when you sat across having done that meticulously and thought, I can't believe he chose that one?

Presenter35:14

You're kidding me on, did you? Come on, seriously, yes. Yeah.

Michael Lewis35:16

Seriously, yes.

Presenter35:18

But you know what? They're democratically elected and I'm not, so that's their prerogative. Bad policies tend to get undone eventually. So

Presenter35:27

That's the democratic process. Dame Minou Shafiq talking to Kirstie Young. Next time my guest will be Dame Sue Campbell, the FA's Director of Women's Football. I hope you can join us then.

Speaker 235:50

Henry Aikley disappeared from his home on the edge of Rendlesham Forest somewhere around the end of June twenty nineteen.

Speaker 236:03

What we uncovered is a mystery that has sent us deep into England's past.

Speaker 236:09

To an area steeped in witchcraft, the occult, secret government operations.

Speaker 136:14

Now we have multiple sites of five lights with a similar shape property.

Speaker 236:19

And something that might indeed be altogether.

Speaker 236:23

Otherworldly

Speaker 236:26

This is the Whisperer in Darkness.

Presenter36:29

Available now on BBC Sounds.