Bryan Stevenson on race and criminal justice in America

Desert Island Discs

BBC

Society & Culture, Music Commentary, Music, Personal Journals

4.4 • 13.7K Ratings

🗓️ 22 October 2025

⏱️ 5 minutes

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Summary

In 2015, the American lawyer Bryan Stevenson was cast away by Kirsty Young.

Bryan is the founder and executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative, a private, not-for-profit organisation in the US working on death penalty cases, prison and sentencing reform, and issues of race and poverty.

He spoke to Kirsty about racism in the American criminal justice system.

You can listen to the full episode on BBC Sounds.

Transcript

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0:00.0	BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, podcasts.
0:07.3	Welcome back to the home of the oxymoron.
0:10.5	Evil genius.
0:11.6	He asked the newspaper to print his obituary early so he'd enjoy it.
0:15.5	That's like hiding at your own funeral.
0:17.1	Yeah, a bit great gig.
0:18.6	I'm Russell Kane.
0:19.6	Join me to weigh in on whether the biggest players in history
0:22.3	are more evil or genius.
0:24.1	Becoming that rich, I'd say that
0:25.4	is some level of genius.
0:26.4	It also helps it.
0:27.4	It's a long time ago, right?
0:29.4	It's like the podcast version
0:30.6	of telling your kids
0:31.5	the ice cream van plays music
0:33.0	when it's out of ice cream.
0:34.9	Listen to Evil Genius on BBC Sounds.
0:55.5	Hello, it's Lauren Levern, and this is Desert Island Discs postcards,
1:00.3	a selection of some of our most memorable moments from some of the thousands of people we've cast away to our imaginary Desert Island.
1:03.6	This postcard comes from the American lawyer Brian Stevenson.
1:07.4	Kirsty Young spoke to Brian in 2015 about his work.
	...

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