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Desert Island Discs

Michael Lewis, writer

Desert Island Discs

BBC

Society & Culture, Music Commentary, Music, Personal Journals

4.4 • 13.7K Ratings

🗓️ 12 January 2020

⏱️ 37 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Michael Lewis is a best-selling non-fiction writer and journalist. He initially worked for an investment bank, and his experiences of Wall Street excess in the 1980s informed his acclaimed first book, Liar’s Poker. Three of his later books – Moneyball, The Blind Side and The Big Short – have been adapted into Hollywood feature films. He was born in New Orleans in 1960, where his father was fond of quoting the family motto: 'Do as little as possible, and that unwillingly, for it is better to receive a light reprimand than perform an arduous task.' After studying at Princeton and the LSE, he joined an American bank in London, and wrote articles about the quirks of the industry under a pseudonym. In spite of his father’s opposition, he decided to quit his highly-paid job to become a writer. In Moneyball, he examined how a struggling baseball team used intensive data analysis to find undervalued players overlooked by richer clubs. The Big Short focused on the sub-prime mortgage crisis, and his most recent book, The Fifth Risk, is about the Trump administration’s approach to government. Michael lives in California with his wife, Tabitha Soren, and their three children. BOOK CHOICE: A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole LUXURY ITEM: A photo album CASTAWAY'S FAVOURITE: Old Days by Chicago Presenter: Lauren Laverne Producer: Sarah Taylor

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

BBC Sounds Music Radio Podcasts

0:04.7

Hello, I'm Lauren LeVern and this is the Desert Island Disks Podcast.

0:08.4

Every week I ask my guests to choose the eight tracks, book and luxury they'd want to take with them

0:13.6

if they were cast away to a desert island.

0:16.2

And for right reasons, the music is shorter than the original broadcast.

0:20.9

I hope you enjoy listening.

0:30.4

Music Radio Music

0:41.8

My cast away this week is the writer Michael Lewis.

0:44.4

A former city trader, he started out under a pseudonym,

0:47.2

spilling the beans on life on the trading floor.

0:49.8

His first book, a Wall Street exposé, called Liars Poker,

0:53.4

was a smash hit back in 1989.

0:55.9

He gave up life in the city for life in his study

0:58.4

and has been following his itinerant imagination ever since.

1:01.6

Unearthing stories that delight him and by extension his readers.

1:05.6

They include Moneyball, the tale of a struggling baseball team

1:08.9

that harnessed the power of data to take on the fat cats at the top of the league.

1:13.0

And the big short about the roots of the 2008 financial crisis.

1:17.6

Both were adapted for the big screen, gaining 11 Oscar nominations between them.

1:22.2

Asked about his instinct for hunting out award-worthy material,

1:25.6

he says the process is so messy that no business school or writing program would teach it.

1:30.4

I just wonder and I feel as if I'm a wanderer in the world.

...

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