WEBVTT - Weekend Listen: George Saunders Imagines an Oil Exec’s Deathbed 0:00:00.560 --> 0:00:04.280 Welcome to Zero, I am Akshatrati. This week an Oil 0:00:04.360 --> 0:00:20.480 CEO in the Bardo. A decade ago, the Indian novelist 0:00:20.560 --> 0:00:24.600 Amitav Ghosh gave a series of lectures titled The Great Derangement, 0:00:25.120 --> 0:00:29.200 where he argued that contemporary fiction in all forms has 0:00:29.280 --> 0:00:32.879 been ignoring the climate crisis and that was adding to 0:00:32.920 --> 0:00:37.479 the peril humans already faced. Many have heeded his call 0:00:37.600 --> 0:00:41.400 sins in the form of books, movies, plays, even oratorio. 0:00:42.240 --> 0:00:44.680 So this year on Zero, we are running a series 0:00:44.720 --> 0:00:47.960 called Imagine to delve into what some of our most 0:00:48.000 --> 0:00:51.760 creative minds can do to help us better understand our predicament. 0:00:52.520 --> 0:00:57.080 My guest today is George Saunders, one of America's best storytellers. 0:00:57.760 --> 0:01:00.480 You may know him for his twenty seventeen novel Lincoln 0:01:00.520 --> 0:01:03.600 in the Bardo, which won the Booker Prize. This week, 0:01:03.720 --> 0:01:06.199 George has a new novel out titled. 0:01:05.920 --> 0:01:07.880 Vigil in a Nutshell. 0:01:08.040 --> 0:01:11.120 We find ourselves at the bedside of somebody who I 0:01:11.120 --> 0:01:14.800 imagined to be kind of a nineteen ninety eight to 0:01:14.959 --> 0:01:18.520 two thousand era oil executive. The last night of his life, 0:01:18.560 --> 0:01:21.880 the last hours of his life, were joined by a woman, 0:01:22.360 --> 0:01:24.839 the ghost of a woman who died in nineteen seventy six, 0:01:24.959 --> 0:01:28.000 so somewhat I guess, like as in a Christmas Carol, 0:01:28.080 --> 0:01:30.800 she's there to help him, but then it kind of goes, 0:01:31.080 --> 0:01:32.600 it goes a little sideways from there. 0:01:33.440 --> 0:01:35.240 I wanted to bring George on the show to ask 0:01:35.319 --> 0:01:38.200 him how he approached writing this book and what his 0:01:38.280 --> 0:01:41.720 exploration of climate change revealed. The first half of my 0:01:41.840 --> 0:01:45.120 interview focuses largely on visual and in the second half 0:01:45.160 --> 0:01:48.559 we brought in the conversation hearing George's takes on AI 0:01:49.120 --> 0:01:52.520 while literature matters, and even get to talk about games 0:01:52.600 --> 0:01:55.920 to get writing as a beginner. This conversation was a 0:01:55.920 --> 0:01:58.240 lot of fun, and I hope you enjoy it as much. 0:01:58.120 --> 0:01:58.560 As I did. 0:01:58.960 --> 0:02:01.400 Send your suggestions and book reviews on Zero port at 0:02:01.440 --> 0:02:04.000 Bloomberg dot net. And sorry about this wise, I have 0:02:04.040 --> 0:02:12.360 a little bit of a cold jeoorgh. Welcome to Zero. 0:02:12.639 --> 0:02:14.520 It's very nice to be here. Thank you for having me. 0:02:14.960 --> 0:02:18.679 Fiction opens up a vast expanse of subjects that a 0:02:18.720 --> 0:02:22.200 writer can touch on throughout your career. You know you've 0:02:22.200 --> 0:02:26.120 touched on things like theme parks and the afterlife, but 0:02:26.240 --> 0:02:30.120 in Vigil you put climate at the heart of the 0:02:30.160 --> 0:02:33.880 conversation why climate change and why now? 0:02:34.360 --> 0:02:38.720 Well, honestly, I was starting this book back when Biden 0:02:38.840 --> 0:02:41.920 was still president and when it looked like some strides 0:02:41.960 --> 0:02:44.359 were being made maybe in the direction of at least 0:02:44.360 --> 0:02:47.640 acknowledging the reality of climate change. Little did I know 0:02:47.720 --> 0:02:50.440 where we were headed, But at that time I thought, well, 0:02:50.639 --> 0:02:53.079 it's kind of the most. 0:02:52.840 --> 0:02:54.600 Important thing for the world and in. 0:02:54.560 --> 0:02:58.639 The world, So I'll try to put climate on the table. 0:02:58.880 --> 0:03:01.520 I don't think I, you know, the idea of climate 0:03:01.600 --> 0:03:04.320 change novel seems a little bit daunting. So I think 0:03:04.360 --> 0:03:07.960 sometimes you put a topic on the table and you 0:03:08.000 --> 0:03:10.360 don't really know what the novel will be about or 0:03:10.360 --> 0:03:12.880 what it will end up being. But if you put 0:03:13.200 --> 0:03:16.040 significant things on the table, at least the book won't 0:03:16.040 --> 0:03:16.560 be trivial. 0:03:16.960 --> 0:03:18.360 So my thought was, what. 0:03:18.280 --> 0:03:20.440 Would it be like some of these people who were 0:03:20.480 --> 0:03:23.880 so working so hard to deny climate change, now they're 0:03:23.919 --> 0:03:27.440 getting old. If one of those guys was dying and 0:03:27.520 --> 0:03:29.360 he looked back at his life's work, would it be 0:03:29.400 --> 0:03:32.440 a shred of honesty about what he had done? Or 0:03:32.639 --> 0:03:35.560 you know, is he still feel like he's in the 0:03:35.680 --> 0:03:38.720 right place, Which then raises a question of how much 0:03:39.080 --> 0:03:41.280 does a person like that know when do they know it? 0:03:41.560 --> 0:03:43.680 So it opened out into all kinds of questions that 0:03:43.840 --> 0:03:46.800 are probably I think relevant for anybody who's lived a 0:03:46.880 --> 0:03:49.720 life and expended their energy. And at the end you 0:03:49.840 --> 0:03:52.040 get to look back and go, how did I do? 0:03:52.320 --> 0:03:52.440 So? 0:03:52.520 --> 0:03:55.080 It seemed like an intriguing challenge at any rate, and 0:03:55.080 --> 0:03:56.920 at this stage of my career, I just want a 0:03:57.000 --> 0:03:58.280 challenge is going to be some fun. 0:03:58.520 --> 0:04:01.760 One of the funnest part of writing is to do 0:04:01.800 --> 0:04:04.840 the research to try and find out more about the 0:04:04.840 --> 0:04:08.400 world as you describe it to the reader while working 0:04:08.480 --> 0:04:10.800 on visual What kind of research did you end up doing? 0:04:11.200 --> 0:04:13.960 I did some I would say medium intense research at 0:04:14.000 --> 0:04:16.400 the beginning. And what I tend to do is I 0:04:16.520 --> 0:04:19.039 do some a deep dive and I read nothing but 0:04:19.760 --> 0:04:21.360 that topic for quite a while. 0:04:21.800 --> 0:04:22.880 I compile it all on. 0:04:22.920 --> 0:04:25.080 A folder, and then I put the folder away and 0:04:25.120 --> 0:04:27.560 never look at it again. Because as a fiction writer, 0:04:27.800 --> 0:04:29.400 you know, one of the big problems is you could 0:04:29.400 --> 0:04:33.480 become sort of attached to your research to the extent 0:04:33.520 --> 0:04:36.400 that the book just becomes a book report about your researchers. 0:04:36.440 --> 0:04:37.040 Nobody wants. 0:04:37.080 --> 0:04:38.919 So my thought is, and this was true in my 0:04:38.960 --> 0:04:41.160 previous novel, Lincoln in the Bartow I thought, I just 0:04:41.200 --> 0:04:45.040 get as well informed as a pretty well informed amateur, 0:04:45.720 --> 0:04:50.040 so that when you invent, you're not inventing totally divorced 0:04:50.080 --> 0:04:53.159 from reality, you know. So there was probably two or 0:04:53.200 --> 0:04:56.240 three months of intense reading and then just okay, you 0:04:56.320 --> 0:04:58.040 know something, and now you can go ahead and make 0:04:58.160 --> 0:04:59.120 up some crazy stuff. 0:04:59.279 --> 0:05:02.520 There's also the that your father, I understand, worked for 0:05:02.560 --> 0:05:06.640 a coal company, that you yourself are an engineer, you 0:05:06.640 --> 0:05:09.320 studied at the Colorado School of Minds, and that for 0:05:09.360 --> 0:05:12.600 a period you worked in Sumatra in Indonesia on an 0:05:12.640 --> 0:05:18.360 oil exploration crew. How did that experience shape any of 0:05:18.400 --> 0:05:19.719 this that's come in the novel? 0:05:20.040 --> 0:05:24.920 It gave me a sense that I could write this character. 0:05:25.040 --> 0:05:27.800 In other words, I if I had chosen, you know, 0:05:27.880 --> 0:05:31.000 given my background a very wealthy politician, I don't really 0:05:31.040 --> 0:05:32.640 know where to start with somebody like that. I don't 0:05:32.680 --> 0:05:36.080 I don't have a way in. But with the oil business, 0:05:36.160 --> 0:05:39.440 especially the stuff that I did, it made me have 0:05:39.560 --> 0:05:41.880 a little taste, as a young man, of what would 0:05:41.920 --> 0:05:45.000 be like to be part of that group, to have an adventure. 0:05:45.120 --> 0:05:47.960 I worked in Sumatra and we had some really you know, 0:05:48.000 --> 0:05:50.200 for a twenty two year old, great adventures in the 0:05:50.279 --> 0:05:53.200 jungle and tigers and you know, all kinds of the 0:05:53.279 --> 0:05:56.159 things that you that would seem appealing to a young person. 0:05:56.640 --> 0:05:58.520 And I also got a taste of that feeling of 0:05:59.560 --> 0:06:02.200 kind of being, you know, even then in the eighties, 0:06:02.560 --> 0:06:06.600 part of an embattled but noble crew of technocrats, you 0:06:06.640 --> 0:06:08.480 know that that we were doing something that was keeping 0:06:08.520 --> 0:06:11.080 the world turning and no one appreciated it, you know. 0:06:11.200 --> 0:06:14.039 So and I also worked in the Texas oil fields 0:06:14.120 --> 0:06:15.960 quite a bit, so I knew that some of the 0:06:16.080 --> 0:06:18.520 some of the technical stuff, some of the jargon, but 0:06:18.640 --> 0:06:22.599 mostly the mindset, you know. So again that it for me, 0:06:22.720 --> 0:06:25.400 the way in is always I use the word fun. 0:06:25.440 --> 0:06:27.800 I don't know if it's really fun, but the idea 0:06:27.839 --> 0:06:30.159 that of overflow, like I could I knew I could 0:06:30.240 --> 0:06:34.400 write about oil from that perspective with some overflow, given 0:06:34.440 --> 0:06:36.360 the people I'd known and the things I'd done. 0:06:36.600 --> 0:06:39.640 And do you have to speak to, especially for your 0:06:39.720 --> 0:06:43.120 main characters, the type of person who you're going to represent, 0:06:43.240 --> 0:06:45.560 So did you end up speaking to an oil executive 0:06:45.600 --> 0:06:46.160 for example? 0:06:46.560 --> 0:06:46.640 No? 0:06:46.960 --> 0:06:50.920 I For me, it's more I really trust my internal 0:06:51.760 --> 0:06:55.120 person generator is funny. The working assumption is that we 0:06:55.160 --> 0:06:59.359 contain everybody. So even though I'm a progressive, you know, 0:06:59.440 --> 0:07:02.520 kind of new college professor, I used to be a 0:07:02.520 --> 0:07:05.440 different person. And not only that, a lot of different 0:07:05.440 --> 0:07:08.320 people that I never actually was do exist within me. 0:07:08.520 --> 0:07:11.000 So one of the great thrills of being a fiction writers. 0:07:11.040 --> 0:07:15.920 You can say, Okay, could I be a gigly fifteen 0:07:16.000 --> 0:07:18.840 year old girl in Montreal. I'm like, yeah, I could 0:07:18.840 --> 0:07:20.880 do that, you know, I could try. I could sort 0:07:20.880 --> 0:07:24.160 of imitate her. So for me to interview people is 0:07:24.200 --> 0:07:27.320 not again, it sort of pins you down a little bit. 0:07:27.720 --> 0:07:29.760 You know, if someone says something you feel, okay, I 0:07:29.800 --> 0:07:31.560 have to be true to that. But the game of 0:07:31.600 --> 0:07:34.000 the novelist, as I understand it, is much more kind 0:07:34.000 --> 0:07:37.400 of fanciful. It's almost like the Shakespearean jester. You know, 0:07:37.600 --> 0:07:39.960 you're just trying to make some sparks, make some laughs 0:07:40.320 --> 0:07:43.360 by any means necessary. So for me that means just 0:07:44.320 --> 0:07:47.680 giving myself license to invent, and at the same time 0:07:47.760 --> 0:07:51.800 trying to have a generosity of spirit and a precision 0:07:52.040 --> 0:07:56.240 so that I'm being specific about what I'm saying. And 0:07:56.280 --> 0:07:58.240 then I think, well, yeah, I can you know, I 0:07:58.240 --> 0:08:01.080 can imagine being anyone. You as a reader, are also 0:08:01.160 --> 0:08:04.200 part of this experiment that you're saying, Oh, George is 0:08:04.200 --> 0:08:06.880 playing a game. He's pretending to be an eighty five 0:08:06.960 --> 0:08:10.840 year old oil executive with different political views, and he holds, Okay, 0:08:10.880 --> 0:08:12.960 I can play that game as well, since I'm also 0:08:13.080 --> 0:08:16.200 large enough and I contain all these multitudes of personality. 0:08:16.280 --> 0:08:18.560 So I think it's a little bit playful. Both reader 0:08:18.600 --> 0:08:21.200 and writer sign up for this kind of parlor game 0:08:21.240 --> 0:08:23.680 in a certain way, and then the fund comes from there. 0:08:23.880 --> 0:08:26.760 And this is true of many of your pieces of work, 0:08:26.800 --> 0:08:30.400 where the story is fantastic, there are these funny moments, 0:08:30.440 --> 0:08:33.040 and then at the end you also realize, oh my god, 0:08:33.120 --> 0:08:36.000 that was a dark story that I just read. So 0:08:36.120 --> 0:08:38.080 you touch on these themes in a very interesting way. 0:08:38.120 --> 0:08:40.640 But going back to this idea that you said, you know, 0:08:40.760 --> 0:08:45.160 a climate change novel feels like a hard thing. This 0:08:45.240 --> 0:08:47.880 is something that others have expressed. So a decade ago, 0:08:48.080 --> 0:08:51.959 the Indian novelist Amaitav Koch gave us series of lectures 0:08:51.960 --> 0:08:56.920 he called the Great Derangement, where he argued that contemporary 0:08:56.920 --> 0:09:01.360 literature and contemporary writers had really ignor the climate crisis, 0:09:01.840 --> 0:09:06.040 and that ignorance is adding to the peril that humans face. 0:09:06.800 --> 0:09:09.400 Do you think, in that ten year sense, and especially 0:09:09.400 --> 0:09:13.160 now that you're doing this research, that the literary world 0:09:13.520 --> 0:09:17.439 has improved in bringing climate change more into the conversation. 0:09:18.000 --> 0:09:19.760 I think so, and I think there's more of an 0:09:19.760 --> 0:09:21.960 intention to do so. But for me, the question is 0:09:22.000 --> 0:09:26.440 how does one do that given given the features of 0:09:26.480 --> 0:09:28.679 the form itself. So, in other words, if I'm if 0:09:28.720 --> 0:09:32.480 I'm a writer of string quartets, you know, and some says, oh, 0:09:32.520 --> 0:09:34.959 you know, your stream quartets are ignorant of climate change, think, well, 0:09:35.000 --> 0:09:38.280 it's a you know, the form has requirements, and the 0:09:38.320 --> 0:09:42.559 form has certain ways of producing delight, and we ignore 0:09:42.600 --> 0:09:45.040 those at our peril. So again, to me, I think 0:09:45.080 --> 0:09:47.400 the idea is to with this book. I think I 0:09:47.480 --> 0:09:51.280 started thinking, all right, I'm going to prove to all 0:09:51.320 --> 0:09:54.319 the skeptics that climate change is real, and then as 0:09:54.320 --> 0:09:58.000 you get into the research, you're like that that isn't. One, 0:09:58.040 --> 0:10:00.440 that's not what a novel does. But two, anyone who 0:10:00.440 --> 0:10:05.360 looks into it is already convinced, so that's not it. Instead, 0:10:05.400 --> 0:10:07.480 I'm going to use it as a backdrop or kind 0:10:07.480 --> 0:10:10.080 of a feature in the same way that you know, 0:10:10.800 --> 0:10:13.080 if you look at a novel like Schindler's List or 0:10:13.120 --> 0:10:15.840 the movie, people always say, oh, it's about the Holocaust, 0:10:15.840 --> 0:10:19.320 but actually it's not. It's set it's you know, it's 0:10:19.600 --> 0:10:22.839 immersed in the Holocaust, but it's about something much more 0:10:22.880 --> 0:10:26.439 specific and human and universal, which is, for example, how 0:10:26.440 --> 0:10:29.720 does one within an evil system? How does one strive 0:10:29.760 --> 0:10:32.760 to do good? So anytime we start writing a novel, 0:10:32.800 --> 0:10:34.960 we find out that the thing we thought it was about, 0:10:35.480 --> 0:10:38.120 it's not about that. And and what I found is 0:10:38.120 --> 0:10:40.439 if you write a novel or a story and it 0:10:40.520 --> 0:10:42.480 ends up being about what you thought it was going 0:10:42.559 --> 0:10:46.200 to be about, you probably failed because the reader feels 0:10:46.200 --> 0:10:48.880 that condescension. You know, Okay, he's given me a lecture. 0:10:48.920 --> 0:10:51.199 He's still giving me a lecture. The lecture is finished, 0:10:51.240 --> 0:10:53.640 I wish I'd read a different book. But on the 0:10:53.640 --> 0:10:56.560 other hand, if we enter into it as teammates, let's 0:10:56.640 --> 0:10:59.240 let's try to stumble on some mystery, let's open some 0:10:59.360 --> 0:11:03.720 questions up that I think is more the valid function 0:11:03.800 --> 0:11:06.000 of the novel. The book that might need to be 0:11:06.000 --> 0:11:08.680 written about climate change might not have climate change in 0:11:08.720 --> 0:11:12.040 it at all. It might be about denial mindset, It 0:11:12.120 --> 0:11:16.280 might be about corporate hegemony, but or might be three 0:11:16.320 --> 0:11:19.120 people on an island somewhere, so we don't know. 0:11:19.400 --> 0:11:22.840 Yeah, it is interesting. I noted that there were only 0:11:23.080 --> 0:11:27.040 three mentions of the word climate in the entire book, 0:11:27.640 --> 0:11:31.120 and one of them is not about climate change at all. 0:11:31.360 --> 0:11:34.560 So it is a very interesting way in which you 0:11:34.640 --> 0:11:39.360 touch on the subject without being so literal. In many cases, 0:11:40.040 --> 0:11:45.360 so crises in general do make for interesting storytelling moments, 0:11:45.960 --> 0:11:50.400 like we have great novels that feature volcanoes and tsunamis 0:11:50.440 --> 0:11:55.160 and earthquakes. There are great novels about financial crises and 0:11:55.559 --> 0:12:00.319 terrorist attacks. War, of course features in many, many great novels. 0:12:01.720 --> 0:12:05.400 Is there something about the disaster that is climate change 0:12:05.800 --> 0:12:06.960 that makes it difficult? 0:12:07.520 --> 0:12:07.840 Maybe? 0:12:08.360 --> 0:12:11.520 I mean, I'm just thinking this for the first time, 0:12:11.559 --> 0:12:14.360 but it might just be that it's it's in some 0:12:14.400 --> 0:12:17.920 ways gradual on the human scale as gradual, and it's 0:12:17.960 --> 0:12:21.800 also disseminated so widely in so many different places. So 0:12:21.880 --> 0:12:24.480 I think that's difficult to come up with a narrative 0:12:24.520 --> 0:12:27.360 stance that could describe that naturally. 0:12:27.600 --> 0:12:28.840 I think Richard Powers. 0:12:28.520 --> 0:12:31.040 Did a really great job in the Overstory, but you know, 0:12:31.160 --> 0:12:36.400 to say a crisis that's happening quite quickly, of course 0:12:36.600 --> 0:12:40.000 in geologic time, but in human time it can appear gradual. 0:12:40.480 --> 0:12:43.720 It's not happening everywhere all the time. It's a little 0:12:43.720 --> 0:12:45.960 bit it's a little bit difficult. But again for me, 0:12:46.000 --> 0:12:49.480 I would never even early in this book, I thought, Okay, 0:12:49.880 --> 0:12:52.520 it's not a climate change novel. It's a novel about 0:12:52.520 --> 0:12:55.959 the end of life. And you know, and then because 0:12:55.960 --> 0:12:58.520 you know, one of the things that will really block 0:12:58.600 --> 0:13:01.720 or writer up is pressure. You know, I must do this, 0:13:02.040 --> 0:13:05.480 I must communicate this. That's not a formula for fun. 0:13:05.600 --> 0:13:07.640 You know, if you went on a date, you know, 0:13:07.960 --> 0:13:11.559 I must make her love me. That's a very bad vibe, 0:13:11.600 --> 0:13:14.960 you know. So I think for writing a novel a 0:13:14.960 --> 0:13:18.360 certain amount of relaxation. And also, you know, you really are, 0:13:18.600 --> 0:13:21.040 no matter how dark the topic, you really are trying 0:13:21.040 --> 0:13:24.680 to make some love, you know, make some some positive 0:13:24.800 --> 0:13:25.640 energy for the reader. 0:13:25.960 --> 0:13:27.800 And I think the endgame of a. 0:13:27.800 --> 0:13:31.360 Novel is somehow to make both parties, reader and writer 0:13:31.480 --> 0:13:33.720 feel a little bit more alert to the fact that 0:13:33.760 --> 0:13:34.480 they're still alive. 0:13:34.960 --> 0:13:35.640 That you know. 0:13:35.880 --> 0:13:38.960 So that is in a certain way, if you think 0:13:39.000 --> 0:13:43.440 of writers like Google or Flammery O'Connor, that's something that 0:13:43.520 --> 0:13:47.200 happens regardless of topic or regardless of darkness. You know, 0:13:47.640 --> 0:13:49.480 it's the It's the in the same way that a 0:13:49.559 --> 0:13:52.360 really well beautifully done horror movie can kind of make 0:13:52.360 --> 0:13:54.240 you feel alive. It's that's the game. 0:13:54.800 --> 0:13:56.920 So the other theme that I want to explore here 0:13:57.120 --> 0:14:01.000 is about guilt and regret, which feature in the book 0:14:01.040 --> 0:14:03.079 in interesting ways, and they don't have to be about 0:14:03.080 --> 0:14:05.080 climate related. They're just sort of at the end of 0:14:05.120 --> 0:14:08.520 your life. What do you feel regret for? What are 0:14:08.520 --> 0:14:12.760 you guilty about? Is something that all of us have 0:14:12.920 --> 0:14:15.120 thoughts about, and not just at the end of your life. 0:14:15.200 --> 0:14:19.400 Sometimes as you go through life, in trying to address 0:14:19.440 --> 0:14:23.480 the guilt, is there something that you hope to get 0:14:23.520 --> 0:14:26.360 out of it? You know, say an oil executive reads 0:14:26.360 --> 0:14:29.360 a visual, which I am sure they will, you know, 0:14:29.400 --> 0:14:30.880 what do you hope they might learn from it? 0:14:32.680 --> 0:14:36.000 That's another question I feel I have to as a writer, 0:14:36.120 --> 0:14:37.880 I have to really be careful of that because it 0:14:39.160 --> 0:14:45.160 puts me in innately sort of condescending position for me 0:14:45.320 --> 0:14:47.720 to teach you something. I am not sure that I 0:14:47.760 --> 0:14:50.120 have much to teach, but I do feel I can 0:14:50.200 --> 0:14:54.000 put an oil executive or anybody through a certain experience 0:14:54.800 --> 0:14:57.040 so in that way, I think of myself more as 0:14:57.080 --> 0:14:59.600 a roller coaster designer. You know, I don't have to 0:14:59.600 --> 0:15:02.480 know your profession to make you gasp at the bottom 0:15:02.560 --> 0:15:06.160 of a steep hill. And then embedded in that is 0:15:06.200 --> 0:15:09.960 the idea that that's a fun, it's a I suppose 0:15:10.040 --> 0:15:13.480 it's a positive experience to go through. And I think 0:15:13.600 --> 0:15:16.280 mostly what happens when when I read fiction that's good, 0:15:16.720 --> 0:15:19.040 All my certainties get wobbly. 0:15:19.440 --> 0:15:19.640 You know. 0:15:20.400 --> 0:15:23.880 I'm made aware of how quickly I normally rush to judgment, 0:15:24.720 --> 0:15:27.600 uh from and from what a limited place. You know, 0:15:27.960 --> 0:15:31.000 it's a fairly small aspiration. But you know, to say 0:15:31.000 --> 0:15:34.040 to somebody, come on this journey with me, I don't 0:15:34.080 --> 0:15:36.440 care who you are, I don't care what you've done. 0:15:36.840 --> 0:15:38.400 But at the end of it, we're both going to 0:15:38.480 --> 0:15:41.600 feel a little something, a little more i'd say a 0:15:41.600 --> 0:15:44.400 little more open, but you can say it however you like. 0:15:45.000 --> 0:15:46.800 That really is it? 0:15:46.880 --> 0:15:48.640 I mean, if we think about a songwriter, what does 0:15:48.640 --> 0:15:51.120 a songwriter try to do? It tries to remind you 0:15:51.160 --> 0:15:53.720 you're alive for a couple of minutes, you know. So 0:15:54.120 --> 0:15:56.240 you know, I don't really have a very a sort 0:15:56.240 --> 0:16:00.120 of a toutological or a brother a educational intent. Really, 0:16:00.320 --> 0:16:02.240 I don't because that if I do that, I'd become 0:16:02.280 --> 0:16:03.920 a you know, a pedent. 0:16:04.560 --> 0:16:07.440 Yeah, I mean, a great novel is also giving you 0:16:07.480 --> 0:16:11.120 an experience of being somebody else, putting yourself as a 0:16:11.160 --> 0:16:15.000 reader in somebody else's shoes for that period of time 0:16:15.080 --> 0:16:20.720 to really acknowledge the reality of another being, and that 0:16:20.800 --> 0:16:24.560 can be very powerful, regardless of the type of person 0:16:24.600 --> 0:16:29.080 you're empathizing with or what cause you're empathizing with them for. 0:16:30.000 --> 0:16:32.080 And in this case it's an oil executive. You know, 0:16:32.120 --> 0:16:36.360 it's very clear. Some of the dialogues are very direct, 0:16:36.680 --> 0:16:39.840 calling out the horrors that may have happened as a 0:16:39.880 --> 0:16:44.239 result of his direct actions. But the reader is empathizing 0:16:44.280 --> 0:16:48.720 with the characters. Is there a limit to that empathy? 0:16:49.000 --> 0:16:52.480 You know, because people can do horrible things, and those 0:16:52.520 --> 0:16:56.000 horrible things are very real. But is there a limit 0:16:56.600 --> 0:16:56.920 to that? 0:16:57.600 --> 0:16:59.080 Well, that's where I get in a bit of a 0:16:59.120 --> 0:17:03.720 tangle because the words empathy, compassion, and sympathy those are 0:17:05.000 --> 0:17:08.720 sometimes confusing. I think there's not a limit to the 0:17:08.840 --> 0:17:11.959 interest we can feel in another human being, even the 0:17:12.000 --> 0:17:16.359 most terrible and I think there's no It's all positive phenomenon, 0:17:16.520 --> 0:17:19.159 just to be more interested in somebody and therefore to 0:17:19.280 --> 0:17:23.119 understand them better. The tricky part is that sometimes I 0:17:23.119 --> 0:17:29.159 think in the West, we confuse that activity with permission 0:17:29.200 --> 0:17:32.840 giving somehow, or a kind of a pre forgiveness. So 0:17:33.240 --> 0:17:36.639 if I empathize with somebody, it doesn't matter what they 0:17:36.680 --> 0:17:38.919 do to me, I don't. I think that's a misunderstanding 0:17:38.960 --> 0:17:43.160 of compassion, for example. So to me, I have no 0:17:43.240 --> 0:17:47.000 problem trying to imagine even the inner process of even 0:17:47.040 --> 0:17:49.520 the worst person in the world. The difficulty, I think 0:17:49.600 --> 0:17:53.240 is it's almost like Heisenberg's uncertainty principle. When you narrate 0:17:53.280 --> 0:17:57.320 somebody from inside, you warm them up. You can't help it. 0:17:57.440 --> 0:18:01.000 You know, you have somebody in the esset and you 0:18:01.119 --> 0:18:06.040 narrate a childhood memory, they suddenly are warming up. And 0:18:06.080 --> 0:18:10.800 that's a really complicated question. It's one of the reasons that, 0:18:10.960 --> 0:18:13.520 I mean, this guy in the book is bad, but 0:18:13.640 --> 0:18:18.320 he's bad in that sort of two thousand George Bush 0:18:19.359 --> 0:18:22.320 kind of way. He hasn't rejected a rules based order. 0:18:22.720 --> 0:18:23.560 He gives lip. 0:18:23.320 --> 0:18:25.119 Service to Enlightenment values and so on. 0:18:25.200 --> 0:18:28.480 So he's kind of compared to some of the stuff 0:18:28.520 --> 0:18:30.480 that's going on now, he's kind of a lightweight, but 0:18:30.720 --> 0:18:33.440 that I feel I can do him. Could I do 0:18:33.520 --> 0:18:38.480 somebody worse what I want to? That's a really interesting question, 0:18:38.560 --> 0:18:41.199 and honestly I don't know until I try, but it 0:18:41.200 --> 0:18:43.560 would be interesting for me. I have the idea of 0:18:43.600 --> 0:18:47.000 trying to write something about the current administration, and then 0:18:47.040 --> 0:18:49.960 you get into some tricky stuff. What does the mental 0:18:49.960 --> 0:18:53.960 phenomenon of megalomaniac look like? 0:18:54.359 --> 0:18:56.199 Can you do it? Is it interesting to read it? 0:18:56.240 --> 0:18:56.400 All? 0:18:56.480 --> 0:18:58.600 You know? Important questions? 0:18:58.720 --> 0:19:03.040 Yeah, it's a difficult one as a journalist too. I mean, 0:19:03.560 --> 0:19:06.600 you know, I've had all executives on the podcast before, 0:19:07.119 --> 0:19:10.800 and there is this immasuate judgment that comes from a 0:19:10.840 --> 0:19:13.720 lot of the green climate crowd saying you should never 0:19:13.800 --> 0:19:16.560 platform these people. You shouldn't give them a voice. They 0:19:16.560 --> 0:19:21.240 already have a platform of their own. And we've got 0:19:21.280 --> 0:19:25.240 into this sort of territory, especially with the conversation on 0:19:25.280 --> 0:19:28.640 the Internet, where people don't want to hear the other side, 0:19:29.320 --> 0:19:32.560 and a novel of yours kind like breaks through and 0:19:32.680 --> 0:19:35.720 enables people to look at the other side. Are there 0:19:35.840 --> 0:19:39.080 other ways in which we could do this, not just 0:19:39.160 --> 0:19:39.600 a novel. 0:19:39.720 --> 0:19:42.000 Well, I think the conversations that you're describing would be 0:19:42.080 --> 0:19:46.560 really interesting. But from as someone who does these conversations, 0:19:46.560 --> 0:19:49.320 the trick is to get somebody off their stick, you know. 0:19:49.560 --> 0:19:51.560 So if an oil executive comes in and he's just 0:19:51.640 --> 0:19:54.680 going to resist you, then you. 0:19:54.640 --> 0:19:55.399 Know, I don't know. 0:19:55.480 --> 0:19:57.800 I mean, for me, the question that's in my mind 0:19:57.960 --> 0:20:01.760 right now is, Okay, I'm a natural tally conflict averse person. 0:20:02.680 --> 0:20:05.760 That's why I'm a writer, and I love to think 0:20:05.800 --> 0:20:07.840 the best of people, and I love to pretend I 0:20:07.880 --> 0:20:13.240 can inhabit anybody's mind. But your earlier question really haunts me. 0:20:13.280 --> 0:20:16.280 You know, is there are there people one that you 0:20:16.320 --> 0:20:21.159 couldn't inhabit and two that you shouldn't you know? And 0:20:21.280 --> 0:20:25.640 that's interesting. But I think, to me, okay, I think 0:20:25.680 --> 0:20:30.360 that understanding another person's point of view is always a superpower, 0:20:30.880 --> 0:20:32.920 even if your intent is to resist them. 0:20:33.480 --> 0:20:35.040 It's a great tool. You know. 0:20:35.080 --> 0:20:38.760 If you were in a football game or something and 0:20:38.800 --> 0:20:41.840 someone said, hey, would you like the chance to inhabit 0:20:41.920 --> 0:20:44.280 the mind of the opposing coach for five seconds? 0:20:45.160 --> 0:20:47.080 You'd be crazy not to take that chance, you know. 0:20:47.160 --> 0:20:48.840 So to me, it's kind of a win win to 0:20:48.960 --> 0:20:52.560 try to empathize or sympathize with other people as long 0:20:52.600 --> 0:20:57.000 as we don't slide over into enabling and and you know, 0:20:57.080 --> 0:20:59.080 like for example, now here in the US, the press 0:20:59.680 --> 0:21:02.160 is really doing, in my opinion, a pretty poor job 0:21:02.800 --> 0:21:06.040 of dealing with these Hedgemonts that are taking over. There's 0:21:06.080 --> 0:21:11.320 a lot of enacting of older models of journalism, which is, well, 0:21:12.200 --> 0:21:14.800