Michael Sandel

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.

Presenter0:43

My castaway this week is the political philosopher Michael Sandel. He's professor of government theory at Harvard University and a self-confessed political junkie who initially dreamed of being a journalist until, while covering the Watergate scandal as a young reporter, fate intervened and put him on a different course. He didn't leave politics behind though, far from it. It has been his life's work to ask questions about what makes a good life and a good society. His vision of an alternative politics, what he calls civic republicanism, has been credited with injecting philosophical debate with the adrenaline of the real world. He's been described as a philosopher with the global profile of a rock star and has taken his work to venues around the world including St Paul's Cathedral and Sydney Opera House and he's grappled with some of the biggest questions of our time from bioethics to assisted dying. His course on justice became one of the most popular in Harvard's history with thousands of students applying to attend classes in person and tens of millions watching online worldwide.

Presenter1:48

And you might have heard him here on Radio 4 in his series The Public Philosopher and The Global Philosopher taking on questions such as should a banker be paid more than a nurse and more recently considering the ethics of mass vaccination. But it's not all adoring audiences and calm contemplation. He says philosophy can be debilitating. It demands a critical sensibility and to apply that to everything can be a disquieting thing. The disquiet is necessary, even if you're unmoored by it. Michael Sandell, welcome to Desert Island Discs.

Michael Sandel2:22

It's a pleasure to be with you, Lauren.

Presenter2:24

So, you have to get comfortable with discomfort in your line of work then, this disquiet. How do you manage it?

Michael Sandel2:32

Well, it's true. Philosophy estranges us from the familiar. It leads us to question familiar assumptions, the way we live. But it's a journey in a way. So whether it's in our public life or in our personal everyday lives, there's always new grist for philosophy, new occasion for trying to think through the assumptions by which we hope to live.

Presenter3:00

And are there ever moments where you have to put that critical sensibility on pause and change your mindset? I don't know. I know you're a baseball fan. I'm wondering if you in those moments you kind of say, okay, well, they're just my team because they're my team.

Michael Sandel3:13

Ah, no, no. I don't think that the critical sensibility is ever put on hold. And I say this, taking up your analogy of baseball, which I love.

Michael Sandel3:24

One loves the home team, but is unceasingly critical.

Michael Sandel3:30

the move the manager made, or whether this hitter swung at a bad pitch. So the critical element goes along with the loyalty and the sense of belonging.

Speaker 23:30

La hair demo

Presenter3:43

Michael, you'd be familiar with that description I used of you as a philosopher with the global profile of a rock star. Are you surprised by the level of fame that your work has brought you?

Michael Sandel3:53

When we put the Justice Course online, we never dreamt I certainly didn't, that tens of millions of people would want to watch lectures about philosophy.

Michael Sandel4:07

A colleague of mine came back from

Michael Sandel4:10

Beijing and reported that he'd been riding in a taxi and the taxi driver in Beijing said, where are you from? And he said, Massachusetts. He didn't even say Harvard. And he said, you know, I've been taking a course about justice from Harvard and my wife and children have been watching too. And that's one of the greatest satisfactions, greatest rewards that this whole project, I think, brought me.

Presenter4:36

It's time to hear your first disc then, Michael Sandell. What's it gonna be?

Michael Sandel4:40

It's Feeling Good by Nina Simone.

Michael Sandel4:44

This is such a powerful song about freedom.

Michael Sandel4:50

And you can hear it in her voice.

Michael Sandel4:54

It's freedom against the background of suffering, of oppression. It's almost cosmic.

Michael Sandel5:01

Biblical even.

Speaker 25:03

The Shemisi, you know how I feel.

Speaker 25:10

River running free, you know how I feel.

Speaker 25:16

Blossom on the tree, you know how

Speaker 25:21

A new dawn, it's a new day, it's a new light.

Speaker 25:27

For me and I'm feeling good.

Presenter5:37

Feeling good, Nina Simone. Michael Sandell, you once said choice flows from how I interpret my identity, and part of my identity is that I'm the son of my parents. So your father, Herbert, was a record distributor. What was he like?

Michael Sandel5:53

He was reserved like traditional fathers of those years. He he would spend most of the day in the office.

Presenter6:03

Does that mean it was hard to get close to him? You weren't you weren't too close?

Michael Sandel6:08

I think that that's probably fair enough. You know, we spent times on weekends and so on. But my mother played much the greater role in raising the children. I was one of four, the oldest of four. She was a French and Spanish teacher, and by high school I was taking quite a demanding French class where we had to read Balzac's Le Perigoriot in French chapter by chapter each evening, which I found desperately difficult. And she sat, I'm afraid, and drilled me, got me through it, but I haven't turned back to Perigorio since. It was quite a traumatic experience.

Presenter6:50

You mentioned that you're the eldest of four, so what about the family dynamics there? Were you in charge as the eldest?

Presenter6:57

Mm-hmm.

Michael Sandel6:57

Not really. I wasn't in charge, except I do remember when I was in elementary school, second, third grade, I would ask the teacher if I could have an extra supply of the worksheets that we were assigned.

Presenter6:58

What's the

Michael Sandel7:12

And I took them home.

Michael Sandel7:14

and ran a kind of play school at home. The main attendee was my sister, my younger sister, who was next in age. And the result was that she knew my sister knew how to read by the time she reached kindergarten, so they put her ahead.

Michael Sandel7:33

to the first grade. They skipped kindergarten. But she rebelled. She rebelled and once dashed out of the room and said, If you think I'm going to spend the rest of my weekends in school with you, you're mighty mistaken.

Presenter7:51

So your first student was not not very easy to control. That probably stood you in good stead, Michael.

Michael Sandel7:52

She has a point.

Michael Sandel7:58

Right, I think I've lightened my touch since then.

Presenter7:58

Yeah.

Presenter8:02

It's time to hear your second disc, Michael Santel. What is it and why have you chosen it?

Michael Sandel8:07

Bob Dylan, only a pawn in their game. And this was nineteen sixty three. Medgar Evers, a civil rights leader, had been murdered by a white supremacist. And Dylan writes and sings.

Michael Sandel8:22

This amazing song

Michael Sandel8:25

that explores the complex relation between injustices of race and of class. And it was a biting critique.

Michael Sandel8:35

Bitter but potent critique of institutional racism.

Speaker 28:41

Oh, better than them, you've been born with what scan they explain.

Speaker 28:48

And the negro's name

Speaker 28:51

Is used, it is plain, For the politician's gain As he rises to fame And the poor white remains On the caboose of the train But it ain't him to blame He's only a pawn

Presenter9:07

Leah.

Presenter9:09

Or nearly. Our game

Presenter9:12

Only a Pawn in Their Game by Duluth's own Bob Dylan. So Michael Sandell, you grew up in Hopkins, a suburb of Minneapolis, and you've written a lot about civic responsibility and the value of community. How did that play out in your neighborhood when you were growing up?

Michael Sandel9:27

Uh

Michael Sandel9:28

There was not such a sharp

Michael Sandel9:31

Separation between those who were more affluent and those who were less so. Everyone encountered neighbors shopping in the same places, the same downtown areas. There was also a confidence that politics could make things better. There was perhaps a naive faith and confidence in the possibilities of civic life that seem very, very distant today.

Presenter10:03

So there's a big change that that happened in your life when you were thirteen. The family moved from Hopkins, Minneapolis, to Los Angeles following your father's job. That must have been a huge adjustment for you.

Michael Sandel10:16

It was a huge change, but I didn't really find the adjustment difficult.

Michael Sandel10:22

I loved the weather. It was possible to play baseball outside year round. It was right by the Pacific Ocean. It was possible to see the ocean.

Michael Sandel10:32

From the high school quad, which tempted more than a few of my classmates to cut class and go surfing.

Michael Sandel10:39

I was not a surfer, but over time I began to be struck by the individualism of Southern California.

Presenter10:49

Okay, so you like the climate, but the culture

Presenter10:52

That was a complex change.

Michael Sandel10:53

Coach J.

Michael Sandel10:55

Yeah, that was more complex.

Presenter10:55

Yeah.

Presenter10:57

Yeah, so you describe catching a glimpse of what you call the unencumbered self. Tell me more about that. What is it?

Michael Sandel11:05

This is the image of the perfectly self-sufficient individual, independent of all moral ties, all community ties. And I saw that this was destructive and corrosive of family life, of a sense of community. So this struck me about Southern California. I hadn't quite theorized it in these fancy terms back then as a high school kid, but I think it made an impression on me.

Presenter11:35

Time for some more music, Michael. What have you chosen, and why is it coming with you to the island to day?

Michael Sandel11:40

The Battle Hymn of the Republic. I always found it inspiring.

Michael Sandel11:45

But I began to be a bit more critical.

Michael Sandel11:49

About the American triumphalist belief that God is on our side. And I began to hear in politics, in political rhetoric, this line: America is great because America is good. And I worry about this because I think it leads to a kind of self-certitude that can lead us to suspend critical judgment about, well, marching off to war, believing that as we march off, His truth is marching with us. See what you think.

Speaker 212:25

Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord. He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored. He hath loosed the fateful lightning of his terrible swift sword. His truth is marching on.

Speaker 212:47

Glory, glory, hallelujah.

Speaker 212:52

Glory, glory, hallelujah.

Presenter12:57

Odetta and the battle hymn of the Republic. Take me back to the beginning of your fascination with politics, Michael, because it is life long. I think you were just seven or eight when you first became interested. How did it happen?

Michael Sandel13:11

I don't know how it happened, actually. The earliest memory I have, the earliest political memory, is of the election of John F. Kennedy.

Michael Sandel13:22

Then I have the searing memory of hearing this, I was 10 years old when he was assassinated.

Michael Sandel13:30

And this was just a shock. It was the first time that the world at large suddenly intruded into the consciousness of, you know, a 10-year-old growing up outside Minneapolis. And there were three networks in those days. This is before 24-hour cable. And I would try if I could to watch each of the three nightly newscasts. I was fascinated by politics.

Presenter14:02

Years later, in nineteen seventy one, you were elected President of the student body at your high school in LA and you invited Ronald Reagan, who was then the governor of California, to take part in a school debate. It must have been quite a coup to persuade him. How did you manage it?

Michael Sandel14:18

I sent an invitation to his office at the state capitol and got no reply. But then my mother read in a magazine article that he loved jelly beans and had them always to hand on his desk. So I went out and bought six pounds of jelly beans, put them in a box with a bow.

Michael Sandel14:39

Wrote out the invitation and delivered it to his house, which was not far from the school. There were state troopers guarding the house. State troopers with German shepherd dogs. I'm afraid of dogs generally, much less German shepherd dogs in a guard house. They wanted to know what was in this box, and I said jelly beans.

Michael Sandel15:03

They took it and looked rather skeptically at it and they felt their way through the jelly beans and decided it was innocent enough and let me deliver it to the front door. And a few days later he called the school and said he'd come.

Michael Sandel15:18

And I was on the debating team at the time, and I thought I was a pretty good debater, and I thought I could make quick work of Ronald Reagan. He held all the views that we rejected. He was for the Vietnam War, we were against it. He was against giving 18-year-olds the right to vote, which was an issue of debate at the time.

Michael Sandel15:42

I thought it would be relatively easy to defeat him in a debate, so I prepared, I sat up on the stage with him, point by point challenged him, and

Michael Sandel15:53

I didn't really lay a glove on him. It was an object lesson in how a politician can, by listening and engaging, actually charm an audience that entirely disagrees with him.

Presenter16:09

It's time for some more music, Michael Sundell. What are we going to hear next, and why?

Michael Sandel16:15

It's Strange Fruit by Billy Holliday.

Michael Sandel16:18

Her voice is a voice of aching beauty.

Michael Sandel16:24

A dissonant song. Dissonance hardly describes the aching pain, but also the beauty of it.

Speaker 216:35

Southern Tree.

Speaker 216:38

Very strange rule.

Speaker 216:42

Blood on the leaves.

Speaker 216:46

And blood at the room.

Speaker 216:50

Black bird is swinging.

Speaker 216:53

In the silent breeze

Speaker 216:58

Strange fruit hanging from the poplar tree

Presenter17:05

Billy Holiday and Strange Fruit.

Presenter17:09

Michael Sandell, you majored in political science at university, and then in nineteen seventy four you landed a journalism internship at the Houston Chronicle's Washington Bureau. You described it as a dream come true. Was that in terms of the job itself, or in terms of the timing?

Michael Sandel17:24

It was both. This was the summer.

Michael Sandel17:28

When Congress was holding hearings on the impeachment of Richard Nixon for the Watergate scandal.

Michael Sandel17:35

The bureau chief, my boss, recognized my love of politics and he allowed me to go and cover the hearings for the paper. So it was a summer where I lived and slept and dreamt about Watergate.

Speaker 217:52

Wow.

Michael Sandel17:53

And about the new evidence coming out and the hearings being held, and chance to write about it was a dream come true.

Speaker 217:53

And a

Presenter18:00

By the end of that summer Richard Nixon had resigned and knew Michael were back at college. Covering a story like that, you must have been tempted to follow a career in journalism.

Michael Sandel18:10

I was tempted. In fact, just before I went back to college for my senior year, I was sitting with my boss, the bureau chief, who was musing. He was a man in his early fifties. He said, Maybe I should retire now. The story will never be this good again.

Michael Sandel18:27

It's not the reason that I didn't wind up going into journalism, but it did stick with me that it would be hard to top that experience. The real reason I didn't is that I was seduced by philosophy when I began studying it as a graduate student.

Presenter18:43

Yes, you got a Rhodes Scholarship to Oxford University with a view to reading PPE Politics, Philosophy, and Economics, but after taking philosophy for a term you changed track.

Michael Sandel18:53

I was persuaded by a philosophy tutor, Alan Montefiore, that really I needed to spend a second term studying philosophy and to study the philosophy of Immanuel Kant. I said, Well, I find philosophy all rather abstract. What I'm interested in are questions of equality and inequality, questions of liberalism and democratic theory. He said, You must study Kant's critique of pure reason. So I went to the bookstore and I took it down from the shelf.

Michael Sandel19:24

And I couldn't make any sense of it. But there was a six-week reading VAC coming up after the first term.

Michael Sandel19:32

So I packed a handful of books, Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, John Rawls's book, A Theory of Justice, and sat in the south of Spain

Michael Sandel19:43

and read them. And then soon I put economics aside.

Michael Sandel19:49

and was, well, was drawn in by philosophy and was persuaded.

Michael Sandel19:55

that in order to think clearly and deeply about contemporary questions of inequality and democracy, it's necessary to look for the deep philosophical background of these questions.

Presenter20:09

It's time for some more music. Your fifth disc today, Michael Sandell. What have you chosen and why?

Michael Sandel20:16

It's Alexander Hamilton from the musical Hamilton.

Michael Sandel20:21

I saw this musical in Broadway shortly after it came out.

Michael Sandel20:25

I was blown away by it, but then during the pandemic, they showed a version of it on television.

Michael Sandel20:33

This was shortly after I had written The Tyranny of Merit and what struck me listening to it just recently.

Michael Sandel20:41

is that Alexander Hamilton is a celebration of the meritocracy that I criticize in The Tyranny of Merit.

Michael Sandel20:50

It portrays Alexander Hamilton not as the founder of financialization, but as an immigrant meritocrat, being a lot smarter, being a self starter. In New York you can be a new man.

Michael Sandel21:07

And I came to hear this song, this celebration, with a more critical eye than when I first heard it.

Speaker 221:18

How does a bastard, orphan, son of a whore and a Scotsman, Dropped in the middle of a forgotten spot in the Caribbean by providence impoverished and squalor, grow up to be a hero and a scholar? The ten dollar, founded father without a father, got a lot farther by working a lot harder, by being a lot smarter, by being a self-starter by 14.

Speaker 221:45

They placed him in charge of a trading charter and the

Presenter21:48

Alexander Hamilton from the musical Hamilton composed by Lynn Manuel Miranda and performed by the original Broadway cast.

Presenter21:57

Michael Sandel, we'll come to the meritocracy in a moment. If you wouldn't mind first, let's talk about justice. After four years at Oxford, you returned to the States and started teaching a course called Justice at Harvard University. You designed it yourself. What were your ambitions in terms of its content?

Michael Sandel22:16

When I had my first brush with political philosophy as a student, I found it remote, abstract, dull.

Michael Sandel22:25

And what drew me to philosophy?

Michael Sandel22:29

was seen the connection between philosophical accounts of justice and rights and liberty and the good life,

Michael Sandel22:39

And the debates we have every day. To take one recent example, there are fraught debates going on now about mask wearing. Does government have the right to mandate the wearing of masks? And does government have the right, for that matter, to mandate?

Michael Sandel22:59

Getting a jab with the COVID vaccine.

Michael Sandel23:02

Now the ideal scenario to play out that discussion is not to begin with like minded people people who say, well, of course everyone should be required to wear a mask. It all depends on gathering people, whether in a classroom or in a public forum.

Michael Sandel23:19

Who disagree?

Michael Sandel23:20

Not just for the friseon of having clashing views. The disagreement is a starting point.

Michael Sandel23:28

To see whether the participants can respond to the arguments, to the competing principles that are at stake in the debate.

Michael Sandel23:37

That's the excitement of it.

Presenter23:40

As we mentioned, you are, Michael, not afraid to take on conceptual sacred cows. And one current example is this notion of meritocracy. So politicians from all over the spectrum embrace that idea, you know, the idea that our own efforts dictate our latest success and that we should concentrate on giving people opportunities to excel. Now on the surface, we're used to hearing that. It doesn't sound like there's too much wrong with it, but you believe that there is a toxic side to meritocracy.

Michael Sandel24:09

The problem arises.

Michael Sandel24:11

When, as we've seen in recent decades, those who land on top come to believe that their success is their own doing, and that they therefore deserve the full bounty that the market bestows upon the successful,

Michael Sandel24:28

Because this way of thinking about success also leads the successful to believe that those who struggle, those who are left behind, have no one to blame but themselves.

Presenter24:39

What does thinking about all this mean for you in terms of placing your own story, I wonder, Michael?

Michael Sandel24:47

Those who have succeeded thanks to the meritocracy need to remember our indebtedness to those people and those conditions that made our success possible family, neighborhood, community, country, the times in which we live.

Presenter25:04

Michael, it's time for your next piece of music, your sixth choice. What is it and why have you chosen it?

Michael Sandel25:10

It's a Leonard Cohen song called Anthem. It's a song of darkness but with hope, and it's also a song against the striving for perfection. He tells us there is a crack in everything.

Michael Sandel25:27

That's how the light gets in.

Speaker 225:30

Ring the bell.

Speaker 225:32

Let's tell.

Speaker 225:34

Tonight

Speaker 225:38

Forgive your perfect offering.

Speaker 225:45

There is a crack, a crack, in everything That's how the light gets in

Presenter26:02

Anthem by Leonard Cohen. Michael Sandell, you're married to the scholar and writer Kiku Odato. How did the two of you meet?

Michael Sandel26:10

We met when we were both young junior professors at Harvard, when we were asked to join a panel of junior faculty members to speak to the governing board, the board of overseers, about the condition of the junior faculty and how they were treated. I wanted to ask her out, but I was not brave enough. So I said, is there anyone, there were about four or five of us, who would like to go for coffee. She wasn't able to, so I was, but there was some classics professor who took me up on it. So there I was, and I had to try again. And after several tries, she agreed to go out with me.

Speaker 226:46

So

Presenter26:55

You have dedicated all of your recent books to her, and I quote whose intellectual and spiritual sensibilities improved this book and me. Is she your first reader?

Michael Sandel27:05

Yes, and not a bashful reader about telling me when something needs to be fixed.

Presenter27:14

But I'm I'm assuming you can take that.

Michael Sandel27:16

Just barely. I am still working on it.

Presenter27:19

The two of you have uh two grown-up sons.

Presenter27:22

You've written that parenting is a school for humility. Was that a painful conclusion to come to at times?

Michael Sandel27:29

Not painful, but challenging. And the humility that parenting teaches, I think, springs from the fact that however much we might try to shape our children, help our children, they are who they are, and it's not thanks to our doing only. And cultivating that distinctiveness, which exceeds our efforts to shape and control and to mold, simply beholding them and loving them for who they are, that's where the humility comes in. That kind of humility, I think, is part of love.

Presenter28:11

It's time for your next disc. It'll be your seventh. What have you chosen and why?

Michael Sandel28:16

A song that my wife Kiku Adato composed when our children were very young. It's a lullaby called The Stars Will Sing to You. It's a cosmic lullaby.

Speaker 228:30

When the moon is on the rise, Sleep my child, now don't you cry Sleep, my child, I'm by your side The stars will sing to you

Speaker 228:51

All the cares of the day slowly will begin to fade.

Presenter29:01

The Stars Will Sing to You, performed by Lynn Sena and composed by your wife Kiku Adato. Michael Sandel, you've written a lot about the way that economic theory shapes the world we live in. You talk about market values. In your opinion, they don't always make the world a better place. What metric would you use to measure the value of your own work as a teacher?

Michael Sandel29:23

If I'm in a lecture hall and I hear people coughing or shuffling their papers or their feet, I know that I've lost them.

Michael Sandel29:31

So my metrics, if you want to call them metrics, are looking at the eyes and listening to the sound of the classroom. And if there's coughing and shifting and shuffling of feet, I need to shift. I need to do better.

Michael Sandel29:47

The other is, and it's the most gratifying report that any teacher ever gets, is when years later someone from the course writes or calls to say what an impact it made on their thinking over the course of their lives. It matters more than any quantitative teaching evaluation could possibly do.

Presenter30:09

I'm about to cast you away to your desert island, of course. You'll be facing the challenge of uh pursuing philosophy alone, without an audience to talk to. What are you looking forward to about the island? Is there anything?

Michael Sandel30:22

I'm a bit worried about this island because what I do and what I care about depends on being with people.

Michael Sandel30:31

And even if you gave me

Michael Sandel30:33

A Zoom account and laptop, which I know you won't do when I'm cast away. Certainly not.

Michael Sandel30:39

It still wouldn't be the same.

Presenter30:42

Well, before you go, you have of course got one final music choice to share with us today. What's it going to be and why?

Michael Sandel30:49

The incomparable electrifying Ray Charles singing America the Beautiful. What's interesting about the song, and the reason I want to bring Ray Charles along, singing it.

Michael Sandel31:03

Is this line God shed His grace on thee?

Michael Sandel31:08

is sometimes read as a hope and a prayer, May we be worthy of grace.

Michael Sandel31:15

but is sometimes read as a fact God has already declared us worthy. That's a reading that I resist.

Michael Sandel31:25

that I disagree with because I think it leads to a kind of divine triumphalism. And yet Ray Charles, in his riff on the words, takes that second meaning, and it's certainly magnificent as he sings it with aching sorrow and redemptive joy.

Speaker 231:44

America sweet

Speaker 231:49

I'm married

Speaker 231:51

You know.

Speaker 231:53

God done shed his grace on thee.

Speaker 231:59

He made me crow that good.

Speaker 232:04

Yes, it is!

Speaker 232:06

Heavy brotherhood

Speaker 232:09

From C to

Speaker 232:12

Shine and Sea.

Presenter32:16

America the Beautiful, performed by Ray Charles. So, Michael Sandell, it's time. I'm going to cast you away to the island. I'm giving you the Bible and the complete works of Shakespeare. You can take one other book. What will it be?

Michael Sandel32:30

the collected dialogues of Plato. They depend on an interlocutor, but I could sit on the desert island and read them and imagine my interlocutors, so that would enable me to subsist at least for a while.

Presenter32:45

You can also have a luxury item, Michael, to make life more enjoyable on the island, or perhaps for sensory stimulation. What would you like?

Michael Sandel32:54

A good pair of binoculars to do birding on the island. I'm not sure what the bird population of the island is, but I have a pair of binoculars on my desk at home. And during the pandemic, I set up a couple of bird feeders out in the garden.

Michael Sandel33:12

There is something that kind of relieves the insularity of the lockdown.

Michael Sandel33:18

to be able to keep track of the birds in the garden and how they're behaving with one another. And I'd like to do the same on the island if I could and have a good pair of binoculars.

Presenter33:32

Absolutely, we'll even give you a case to keep the sand away from the lenses.

Presenter33:37

And finally, which one of the eight tracks that you've shared with us today would you rush to save from the waves if you had to?

Michael Sandel33:45

I have to save The Stars Will Sing to You by Kiku Adado. This is my family's song. It's her creation that will be able to keep me in touch with Kiku and our two boys.

Presenter33:59

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

Michael Sandel34:03

Thank you, Lauren. Thanks so much.

Presenter34:19

I hope you enjoyed my conversation with Michael. We'll leave him in peace now, birdwatching on the island. We've cast many philosophers away, including John Gray, Mary Midgley, and Sir Isaiah Berlin. You can find their episodes in our Desert Island Discs programme archive and through BBC Sounds. Next time, my guest will be the former footballer Peter Schmeichel. I do hope you'll join us.

Speaker 334:56

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