Speaker 1: Welcome to Zero, I am Akshatrati. This week an Oil
Speaker 1: CEO in the Bardo. A decade ago, the Indian novelist
Speaker 1: Amitav Ghosh gave a series of lectures titled The Great Derangement,
Speaker 1: where he argued that contemporary fiction in all forms has
Speaker 1: been ignoring the climate crisis and that was adding to
Speaker 1: the peril humans already faced. Many have heeded his call
Speaker 1: sins in the form of books, movies, plays, even oratorio.
Speaker 1: So this year on Zero, we are running a series
Speaker 1: called Imagine to delve into what some of our most
Speaker 1: creative minds can do to help us better understand our predicament.
Speaker 1: My guest today is George Saunders, one of America's best storytellers.
Speaker 1: You may know him for his twenty seventeen novel Lincoln
Speaker 1: in the Bardo, which won the Booker Prize. This week,
Speaker 1: George has a new novel out titled.
Speaker 2: Vigil in a Nutshell.
Speaker 3: We find ourselves at the bedside of somebody who I
Speaker 3: imagined to be kind of a nineteen ninety eight to
Speaker 3: two thousand era oil executive. The last night of his life,
Speaker 3: the last hours of his life, were joined by a woman,
Speaker 3: the ghost of a woman who died in nineteen seventy six,
Speaker 3: so somewhat I guess, like as in a Christmas Carol,
Speaker 3: she's there to help him, but then it kind of goes,
Speaker 3: it goes a little sideways from there.
Speaker 1: I wanted to bring George on the show to ask
Speaker 1: him how he approached writing this book and what his
Speaker 1: exploration of climate change revealed. The first half of my
Speaker 1: interview focuses largely on visual and in the second half
Speaker 1: we brought in the conversation hearing George's takes on AI
Speaker 1: while literature matters, and even get to talk about games
Speaker 1: to get writing as a beginner. This conversation was a
Speaker 1: lot of fun, and I hope you enjoy it as much.
Speaker 2: As I did.
Speaker 1: Send your suggestions and book reviews on Zero port at
Speaker 1: Bloomberg dot net. And sorry about this wise, I have
Speaker 1: a little bit of a cold jeoorgh. Welcome to Zero.
Speaker 2: It's very nice to be here. Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1: Fiction opens up a vast expanse of subjects that a
Speaker 1: writer can touch on throughout your career. You know you've
Speaker 1: touched on things like theme parks and the afterlife, but
Speaker 1: in Vigil you put climate at the heart of the
Speaker 1: conversation why climate change and why now?
Speaker 3: Well, honestly, I was starting this book back when Biden
Speaker 3: was still president and when it looked like some strides
Speaker 3: were being made maybe in the direction of at least
Speaker 3: acknowledging the reality of climate change. Little did I know
Speaker 3: where we were headed, But at that time I thought, well,
Speaker 3: it's kind of the most.
Speaker 2: Important thing for the world and in.
Speaker 3: The world, So I'll try to put climate on the table.
Speaker 3: I don't think I, you know, the idea of climate
Speaker 3: change novel seems a little bit daunting. So I think
Speaker 3: sometimes you put a topic on the table and you
Speaker 3: don't really know what the novel will be about or
Speaker 3: what it will end up being. But if you put
Speaker 3: significant things on the table, at least the book won't
Speaker 3: be trivial.
Speaker 2: So my thought was, what.
Speaker 3: Would it be like some of these people who were
Speaker 3: so working so hard to deny climate change, now they're
Speaker 3: getting old. If one of those guys was dying and
Speaker 3: he looked back at his life's work, would it be
Speaker 3: a shred of honesty about what he had done? Or
Speaker 3: you know, is he still feel like he's in the
Speaker 3: right place, Which then raises a question of how much
Speaker 3: does a person like that know when do they know it?
Speaker 3: So it opened out into all kinds of questions that
Speaker 3: are probably I think relevant for anybody who's lived a
Speaker 3: life and expended their energy. And at the end you
Speaker 3: get to look back and go, how did I do?
Speaker 2: So?
Speaker 3: It seemed like an intriguing challenge at any rate, and
Speaker 3: at this stage of my career, I just want a
Speaker 3: challenge is going to be some fun.
Speaker 1: One of the funnest part of writing is to do
Speaker 1: the research to try and find out more about the
Speaker 1: world as you describe it to the reader while working
Speaker 1: on visual What kind of research did you end up doing?
Speaker 3: I did some I would say medium intense research at
Speaker 3: the beginning. And what I tend to do is I
Speaker 3: do some a deep dive and I read nothing but
Speaker 3: that topic for quite a while.
Speaker 2: I compile it all on.
Speaker 3: A folder, and then I put the folder away and
Speaker 3: never look at it again. Because as a fiction writer,
Speaker 3: you know, one of the big problems is you could
Speaker 3: become sort of attached to your research to the extent
Speaker 3: that the book just becomes a book report about your researchers.
Speaker 2: Nobody wants.
Speaker 3: So my thought is, and this was true in my
Speaker 3: previous novel, Lincoln in the Bartow I thought, I just
Speaker 3: get as well informed as a pretty well informed amateur,
Speaker 3: so that when you invent, you're not inventing totally divorced
Speaker 3: from reality, you know. So there was probably two or
Speaker 3: three months of intense reading and then just okay, you
Speaker 3: know something, and now you can go ahead and make
Speaker 3: up some crazy stuff.
Speaker 1: There's also the that your father, I understand, worked for
Speaker 1: a coal company, that you yourself are an engineer, you
Speaker 1: studied at the Colorado School of Minds, and that for
Speaker 1: a period you worked in Sumatra in Indonesia on an
Speaker 1: oil exploration crew. How did that experience shape any of
Speaker 1: this that's come in the novel?
Speaker 3: It gave me a sense that I could write this character.
Speaker 3: In other words, I if I had chosen, you know,
Speaker 3: given my background a very wealthy politician, I don't really
Speaker 3: know where to start with somebody like that. I don't
Speaker 3: I don't have a way in. But with the oil business,
Speaker 3: especially the stuff that I did, it made me have
Speaker 3: a little taste, as a young man, of what would
Speaker 3: be like to be part of that group, to have an adventure.
Speaker 3: I worked in Sumatra and we had some really you know,
Speaker 3: for a twenty two year old, great adventures in the
Speaker 3: jungle and tigers and you know, all kinds of the
Speaker 3: things that you that would seem appealing to a young person.
Speaker 3: And I also got a taste of that feeling of
Speaker 3: kind of being, you know, even then in the eighties,
Speaker 3: part of an embattled but noble crew of technocrats, you
Speaker 3: know that that we were doing something that was keeping
Speaker 3: the world turning and no one appreciated it, you know.
Speaker 3: So and I also worked in the Texas oil fields
Speaker 3: quite a bit, so I knew that some of the
Speaker 3: some of the technical stuff, some of the jargon, but
Speaker 3: mostly the mindset, you know. So again that it for me,
Speaker 3: the way in is always I use the word fun.
Speaker 3: I don't know if it's really fun, but the idea
Speaker 3: that of overflow, like I could I knew I could
Speaker 3: write about oil from that perspective with some overflow, given
Speaker 3: the people I'd known and the things I'd done.
Speaker 1: And do you have to speak to, especially for your
Speaker 1: main characters, the type of person who you're going to represent,
Speaker 1: So did you end up speaking to an oil executive
Speaker 1: for example?
Speaker 2: No?
Speaker 3: I For me, it's more I really trust my internal
Speaker 3: person generator is funny. The working assumption is that we
Speaker 3: contain everybody. So even though I'm a progressive, you know,
Speaker 3: kind of new college professor, I used to be a
Speaker 3: different person. And not only that, a lot of different
Speaker 3: people that I never actually was do exist within me.
Speaker 3: So one of the great thrills of being a fiction writers.
Speaker 3: You can say, Okay, could I be a gigly fifteen
Speaker 3: year old girl in Montreal. I'm like, yeah, I could
Speaker 3: do that, you know, I could try. I could sort
Speaker 3: of imitate her. So for me to interview people is
Speaker 3: not again, it sort of pins you down a little bit.
Speaker 3: You know, if someone says something you feel, okay, I
Speaker 3: have to be true to that. But the game of
Speaker 3: the novelist, as I understand it, is much more kind
Speaker 3: of fanciful. It's almost like the Shakespearean jester. You know,
Speaker 3: you're just trying to make some sparks, make some laughs
Speaker 3: by any means necessary. So for me that means just
Speaker 3: giving myself license to invent, and at the same time
Speaker 3: trying to have a generosity of spirit and a precision
Speaker 3: so that I'm being specific about what I'm saying. And
Speaker 3: then I think, well, yeah, I can you know, I
Speaker 3: can imagine being anyone. You as a reader, are also
Speaker 3: part of this experiment that you're saying, Oh, George is
Speaker 3: playing a game. He's pretending to be an eighty five
Speaker 3: year old oil executive with different political views, and he holds, Okay,
Speaker 3: I can play that game as well, since I'm also
Speaker 3: large enough and I contain all these multitudes of personality.
Speaker 3: So I think it's a little bit playful. Both reader
Speaker 3: and writer sign up for this kind of parlor game
Speaker 3: in a certain way, and then the fund comes from there.
Speaker 1: And this is true of many of your pieces of work,
Speaker 1: where the story is fantastic, there are these funny moments,
Speaker 1: and then at the end you also realize, oh my god,
Speaker 1: that was a dark story that I just read. So
Speaker 1: you touch on these themes in a very interesting way.
Speaker 1: But going back to this idea that you said, you know,
Speaker 1: a climate change novel feels like a hard thing. This
Speaker 1: is something that others have expressed. So a decade ago,
Speaker 1: the Indian novelist Amaitav Koch gave us series of lectures
Speaker 1: he called the Great Derangement, where he argued that contemporary
Speaker 1: literature and contemporary writers had really ignor the climate crisis,
Speaker 1: and that ignorance is adding to the peril that humans face.
Speaker 1: Do you think, in that ten year sense, and especially
Speaker 1: now that you're doing this research, that the literary world
Speaker 1: has improved in bringing climate change more into the conversation.
Speaker 3: I think so, and I think there's more of an
Speaker 3: intention to do so. But for me, the question is
Speaker 3: how does one do that given given the features of
Speaker 3: the form itself. So, in other words, if I'm if
Speaker 3: I'm a writer of string quartets, you know, and some says, oh,
Speaker 3: you know, your stream quartets are ignorant of climate change, think, well,
Speaker 3: it's a you know, the form has requirements, and the
Speaker 3: form has certain ways of producing delight, and we ignore
Speaker 3: those at our peril. So again, to me, I think
Speaker 3: the idea is to with this book. I think I
Speaker 3: started thinking, all right, I'm going to prove to all
Speaker 3: the skeptics that climate change is real, and then as
Speaker 3: you get into the research, you're like that that isn't. One,
Speaker 3: that's not what a novel does. But two, anyone who
Speaker 3: looks into it is already convinced, so that's not it. Instead,
Speaker 3: I'm going to use it as a backdrop or kind
Speaker 3: of a feature in the same way that you know,
Speaker 3: if you look at a novel like Schindler's List or
Speaker 3: the movie, people always say, oh, it's about the Holocaust,
Speaker 3: but actually it's not. It's set it's you know, it's
Speaker 3: immersed in the Holocaust, but it's about something much more
Speaker 3: specific and human and universal, which is, for example, how
Speaker 3: does one within an evil system? How does one strive
Speaker 3: to do good? So anytime we start writing a novel,
Speaker 3: we find out that the thing we thought it was about,
Speaker 3: it's not about that. And and what I found is
Speaker 3: if you write a novel or a story and it
Speaker 3: ends up being about what you thought it was going
Speaker 3: to be about, you probably failed because the reader feels
Speaker 3: that condescension. You know, Okay, he's given me a lecture.
Speaker 3: He's still giving me a lecture. The lecture is finished,
Speaker 3: I wish I'd read a different book. But on the
Speaker 3: other hand, if we enter into it as teammates, let's
Speaker 3: let's try to stumble on some mystery, let's open some
Speaker 3: questions up that I think is more the valid function
Speaker 3: of the novel. The book that might need to be
Speaker 3: written about climate change might not have climate change in
Speaker 3: it at all. It might be about denial mindset, It
Speaker 3: might be about corporate hegemony, but or might be three
Speaker 3: people on an island somewhere, so we don't know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it is interesting. I noted that there were only
Speaker 1: three mentions of the word climate in the entire book,
Speaker 1: and one of them is not about climate change at all.
Speaker 1: So it is a very interesting way in which you
Speaker 1: touch on the subject without being so literal. In many cases,
Speaker 1: so crises in general do make for interesting storytelling moments,
Speaker 1: like we have great novels that feature volcanoes and tsunamis
Speaker 1: and earthquakes. There are great novels about financial crises and
Speaker 1: terrorist attacks. War, of course features in many, many great novels.
Speaker 1: Is there something about the disaster that is climate change
Speaker 1: that makes it difficult?
Speaker 2: Maybe?
Speaker 3: I mean, I'm just thinking this for the first time,
Speaker 3: but it might just be that it's it's in some
Speaker 3: ways gradual on the human scale as gradual, and it's
Speaker 3: also disseminated so widely in so many different places. So
Speaker 3: I think that's difficult to come up with a narrative
Speaker 3: stance that could describe that naturally.
Speaker 2: I think Richard Powers.
Speaker 3: Did a really great job in the Overstory, but you know,
Speaker 3: to say a crisis that's happening quite quickly, of course
Speaker 3: in geologic time, but in human time it can appear gradual.
Speaker 3: It's not happening everywhere all the time. It's a little
Speaker 3: bit it's a little bit difficult. But again for me,
Speaker 3: I would never even early in this book, I thought, Okay,
Speaker 3: it's not a climate change novel. It's a novel about
Speaker 3: the end of life. And you know, and then because
Speaker 3: you know, one of the things that will really block
Speaker 3: or writer up is pressure. You know, I must do this,
Speaker 3: I must communicate this. That's not a formula for fun.
Speaker 3: You know, if you went on a date, you know,
Speaker 3: I must make her love me. That's a very bad vibe,
Speaker 3: you know. So I think for writing a novel a
Speaker 3: certain amount of relaxation. And also, you know, you really are,
Speaker 3: no matter how dark the topic, you really are trying
Speaker 3: to make some love, you know, make some some positive
Speaker 3: energy for the reader.
Speaker 2: And I think the endgame of a.
Speaker 3: Novel is somehow to make both parties, reader and writer
Speaker 3: feel a little bit more alert to the fact that
Speaker 3: they're still alive.
Speaker 2: That you know.
Speaker 3: So that is in a certain way, if you think
Speaker 3: of writers like Google or Flammery O'Connor, that's something that
Speaker 3: happens regardless of topic or regardless of darkness. You know,
Speaker 3: it's the It's the in the same way that a
Speaker 3: really well beautifully done horror movie can kind of make
Speaker 3: you feel alive. It's that's the game.
Speaker 1: So the other theme that I want to explore here
Speaker 1: is about guilt and regret, which feature in the book
Speaker 1: in interesting ways, and they don't have to be about
Speaker 1: climate related. They're just sort of at the end of
Speaker 1: your life. What do you feel regret for? What are
Speaker 1: you guilty about? Is something that all of us have
Speaker 1: thoughts about, and not just at the end of your life.
Speaker 1: Sometimes as you go through life, in trying to address
Speaker 1: the guilt, is there something that you hope to get
Speaker 1: out of it? You know, say an oil executive reads
Speaker 1: a visual, which I am sure they will, you know,
Speaker 1: what do you hope they might learn from it?
Speaker 3: That's another question I feel I have to as a writer,
Speaker 3: I have to really be careful of that because it
Speaker 3: puts me in innately sort of condescending position for me
Speaker 3: to teach you something. I am not sure that I
Speaker 3: have much to teach, but I do feel I can
Speaker 3: put an oil executive or anybody through a certain experience
Speaker 3: so in that way, I think of myself more as
Speaker 3: a roller coaster designer. You know, I don't have to
Speaker 3: know your profession to make you gasp at the bottom
Speaker 3: of a steep hill. And then embedded in that is
Speaker 3: the idea that that's a fun, it's a I suppose
Speaker 3: it's a positive experience to go through. And I think
Speaker 3: mostly what happens when when I read fiction that's good,
Speaker 3: All my certainties get wobbly.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: I'm made aware of how quickly I normally rush to judgment,
Speaker 3: uh from and from what a limited place. You know,
Speaker 3: it's a fairly small aspiration. But you know, to say
Speaker 3: to somebody, come on this journey with me, I don't
Speaker 3: care who you are, I don't care what you've done.
Speaker 3: But at the end of it, we're both going to
Speaker 3: feel a little something, a little more i'd say a
Speaker 3: little more open, but you can say it however you like.
Speaker 2: That really is it?
Speaker 3: I mean, if we think about a songwriter, what does
Speaker 3: a songwriter try to do? It tries to remind you
Speaker 3: you're alive for a couple of minutes, you know. So
Speaker 3: you know, I don't really have a very a sort
Speaker 3: of a toutological or a brother a educational intent. Really,
Speaker 3: I don't because that if I do that, I'd become
Speaker 3: a you know, a pedent.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, a great novel is also giving you
Speaker 1: an experience of being somebody else, putting yourself as a
Speaker 1: reader in somebody else's shoes for that period of time
Speaker 1: to really acknowledge the reality of another being, and that
Speaker 1: can be very powerful, regardless of the type of person
Speaker 1: you're empathizing with or what cause you're empathizing with them for.
Speaker 1: And in this case it's an oil executive. You know,
Speaker 1: it's very clear. Some of the dialogues are very direct,
Speaker 1: calling out the horrors that may have happened as a
Speaker 1: result of his direct actions. But the reader is empathizing
Speaker 1: with the characters. Is there a limit to that empathy?
Speaker 1: You know, because people can do horrible things, and those
Speaker 1: horrible things are very real. But is there a limit
Speaker 1: to that?
Speaker 3: Well, that's where I get in a bit of a
Speaker 3: tangle because the words empathy, compassion, and sympathy those are
Speaker 3: sometimes confusing. I think there's not a limit to the
Speaker 3: interest we can feel in another human being, even the
Speaker 3: most terrible and I think there's no It's all positive phenomenon,
Speaker 3: just to be more interested in somebody and therefore to
Speaker 3: understand them better. The tricky part is that sometimes I
Speaker 3: think in the West, we confuse that activity with permission
Speaker 3: giving somehow, or a kind of a pre forgiveness. So
Speaker 3: if I empathize with somebody, it doesn't matter what they
Speaker 3: do to me, I don't. I think that's a misunderstanding
Speaker 3: of compassion, for example. So to me, I have no
Speaker 3: problem trying to imagine even the inner process of even
Speaker 3: the worst person in the world. The difficulty, I think
Speaker 3: is it's almost like Heisenberg's uncertainty principle. When you narrate
Speaker 3: somebody from inside, you warm them up. You can't help it.
Speaker 3: You know, you have somebody in the esset and you
Speaker 3: narrate a childhood memory, they suddenly are warming up. And
Speaker 3: that's a really complicated question. It's one of the reasons that,
Speaker 3: I mean, this guy in the book is bad, but
Speaker 3: he's bad in that sort of two thousand George Bush
Speaker 3: kind of way. He hasn't rejected a rules based order.
Speaker 3: He gives lip.
Speaker 2: Service to Enlightenment values and so on.
Speaker 3: So he's kind of compared to some of the stuff
Speaker 3: that's going on now, he's kind of a lightweight, but
Speaker 3: that I feel I can do him. Could I do
Speaker 3: somebody worse what I want to? That's a really interesting question,
Speaker 3: and honestly I don't know until I try, but it
Speaker 3: would be interesting for me. I have the idea of
Speaker 3: trying to write something about the current administration, and then
Speaker 3: you get into some tricky stuff. What does the mental
Speaker 3: phenomenon of megalomaniac look like?
Speaker 2: Can you do it? Is it interesting to read it?
Speaker 1: All?
Speaker 2: You know? Important questions?
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a difficult one as a journalist too. I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, I've had all executives on the podcast before,
Speaker 1: and there is this immasuate judgment that comes from a
Speaker 1: lot of the green climate crowd saying you should never
Speaker 1: platform these people. You shouldn't give them a voice. They
Speaker 1: already have a platform of their own. And we've got
Speaker 1: into this sort of territory, especially with the conversation on
Speaker 1: the Internet, where people don't want to hear the other side,
Speaker 1: and a novel of yours kind like breaks through and
Speaker 1: enables people to look at the other side. Are there
Speaker 1: other ways in which we could do this, not just
Speaker 1: a novel.
Speaker 3: Well, I think the conversations that you're describing would be
Speaker 3: really interesting. But from as someone who does these conversations,
Speaker 3: the trick is to get somebody off their stick, you know.
Speaker 3: So if an oil executive comes in and he's just
Speaker 3: going to resist you, then you.
Speaker 2: Know, I don't know.
Speaker 3: I mean, for me, the question that's in my mind
Speaker 3: right now is, Okay, I'm a natural tally conflict averse person.
Speaker 3: That's why I'm a writer, and I love to think
Speaker 3: the best of people, and I love to pretend I
Speaker 3: can inhabit anybody's mind. But your earlier question really haunts me.
Speaker 3: You know, is there are there people one that you
Speaker 3: couldn't inhabit and two that you shouldn't you know? And
Speaker 3: that's interesting. But I think, to me, okay, I think
Speaker 3: that understanding another person's point of view is always a superpower,
Speaker 3: even if your intent is to resist them.
Speaker 2: It's a great tool. You know.
Speaker 3: If you were in a football game or something and
Speaker 3: someone said, hey, would you like the chance to inhabit
Speaker 3: the mind of the opposing coach for five seconds?
Speaker 2: You'd be crazy not to take that chance, you know.
Speaker 3: So to me, it's kind of a win win to
Speaker 3: try to empathize or sympathize with other people as long
Speaker 3: as we don't slide over into enabling and and you know,
Speaker 3: like for example, now here in the US, the press
Speaker 3: is really doing, in my opinion, a pretty poor job
Speaker 3: of dealing with these Hedgemonts that are taking over. There's
Speaker 3: a lot of enacting of older models of journalism, which is, well,
Speaker 3: you know, we've got to show both sides. So but
Speaker 3: it sometimes becomes you know, this site says hippos can fly,
Speaker 3: this site says they can't.
Speaker 2: Okay, we'll meet in the middle. They fly sometimes, you know.
Speaker 3: So there's a kind of institutional sternness that that we're
Speaker 3: struggling with.
Speaker 2: I think to.
Speaker 3: Call it, call it a spade of spade and describe
Speaker 3: these things that are being done. But it's difficult in
Speaker 3: the old model of journalistic fairness.
Speaker 2: I does that? Does that seem true? Yeah?
Speaker 1: It is. It is definitely a challenge because as soon
Speaker 1: as you are firm about something, somebody will say that's
Speaker 1: a biased point of view, and it's a it's a
Speaker 1: tricky balance to play out. But maybe one other thing
Speaker 1: that I've you know, in preparation to talk to you,
Speaker 1: I read a bunch of your work, but I also
Speaker 1: listened to you talk and give interviews, And I've interviewed
Speaker 1: hundreds of people in my life, and there is a
Speaker 1: type of person who says I don't know often, and
Speaker 1: that typically is a writer. And I've heard you say
Speaker 1: I don't know, I don't know. How I feel about that,
Speaker 1: I don't know. I am sure about that particular point
Speaker 1: of view. That uncertainty of not knowing is not comfortable
Speaker 1: for most people, and that's why we get so much
Speaker 1: judgment online. Is there a way in which you can
Speaker 1: make somebody be comfortable with that uncertainty without having to
Speaker 1: be what you and I are, which is writing, which
Speaker 1: is a writer, which is what our profession is.
Speaker 3: I'm going to answer this question kind of backwards, maybe,
Speaker 3: but it occurs to me that one of the reasons
Speaker 3: people have become uncomfortable with uncertainty is that there's so
Speaker 3: much space for opining. You know, we have the Internet,
Speaker 3: and it seems to be saying, hey, what do you think?
Speaker 3: Even if you don't know anything, what do you think?
Speaker 3: And so there's a kind of an implied pressure that
Speaker 3: we never don't know. For me, as a lifelong anxious person,
Speaker 3: and when I started doing interviews, I found that it
Speaker 3: was so much easier just to say I have no
Speaker 3: idea than to falsify an answer that later I would regret.
Speaker 3: So for me, it's kind of an anxiety reducing move,
Speaker 3: but I think for most people these days, it's a
Speaker 3: sign of weakness to not have an opinion. Which actually
Speaker 3: some of the most powerful people I have ever known
Speaker 3: were quite reserved, and they recognize that, you know, an
Speaker 3: opinion costs you. To have an opinion costs you because
Speaker 3: it nails you down at a certain point in a
Speaker 3: world that is always changing and always uncertain. So a
Speaker 3: person who can resist a facile opinion stays open three
Speaker 3: hundred and sixty degrees, and they also receive more data.
Speaker 3: That's a very, I think, a very powerful thing for
Speaker 3: someone to recognize that their integrity and ultimately their ability
Speaker 3: to act when needed are all improved by a certain
Speaker 3: sort of reserved quality. So I tried to make it
Speaker 3: a point not to express an opinion. Well, when I
Speaker 3: don't know anything, that's a good one, but also when
Speaker 3: the opinion isn't needed. You know, the abstract opinion is
Speaker 3: a hallmark of contemporary life. What do you think about
Speaker 3: these idiots who climb mount Everest? First of all, I
Speaker 3: don't know, And second of all, is the world really
Speaker 3: waiting for me to oppine? I don't think so, and
Speaker 3: I found it really comforting to go. You don't have
Speaker 3: to know everything. You don't have to know almost anything.
Speaker 3: And if you factor in time, like what time do
Speaker 3: I need to know that thing about Mount Everest, the
Speaker 3: answer is probably never. So so much of are the
Speaker 3: opining we do online is speculative and abstract, and I
Speaker 3: think it also costs us something.
Speaker 1: After the break, I asked George, what do you thinks
Speaker 1: about AI and whether it complements or compromises human creativity?
Speaker 1: What do you think? Write to the show at zero
Speaker 1: pod at Bloomberg dot net, And while you're at it,
Speaker 1: writer's a review on Apple podcasts, Spotify and YouTube. It
Speaker 1: helps new listeners find the show. You know, you've been
Speaker 1: writing at a time and you've found success at a
Speaker 1: time where the written word in general is in perhaps
Speaker 1: the most fierce competition that it has been in against
Speaker 1: other type of media. It's not cinema, Netflix streaming these days,
Speaker 1: it's TikTok and Instagram and reels. Do you think that
Speaker 1: the written word is losing to audio and video? And
Speaker 1: if it is, then what are we losing as a result.
Speaker 3: I think it kind of depends how you define losing.
Speaker 3: I figured out a long time ago that if you
Speaker 3: have a handful of dedicated reads who really know how
Speaker 3: to read, that's kind of a super dense pod of
Speaker 3: potential influence. People who really read deeply, they go out
Speaker 3: into the world. They take that into themselves very deeply,
Speaker 3: and it affects their actions. Whereas you take twenty million
Speaker 3: people watching a cat fall off a counter, that's just
Speaker 3: you know, as they say, like poop through a goose,
Speaker 3: You know doesn't it doesn't. So those people have seen
Speaker 3: the cat fall off the counter, and they go in
Speaker 3: the world and nothing. So I become a kind of
Speaker 3: a believer in super encoding my stuff with density and care.
Speaker 3: I give it to you obviously, a deeply thoughtful person
Speaker 3: who's very involved in living. It comes to you, it
Speaker 3: opens up in your mind, and that's that's all I
Speaker 3: need to know.
Speaker 1: The other thing that has been encroaching on writing and
Speaker 1: reading and thinking these days is artificial intelligence. And a
Speaker 1: lot of good writing is about making somebody think. When
Speaker 1: it comes from one human to the other, there's a
Speaker 1: level of transfer that is amazing. Whereas with AI. You're
Speaker 1: getting these machine generated answers to questions that every day
Speaker 1: people have. What is your view of AI, and you know,
Speaker 1: how do you think it compliments or destroys human creativity?
Speaker 3: This might be one of those I don't know, I
Speaker 3: don't know questions. I mean, I don't have a strong
Speaker 3: I don't know. I don't have much knowledge about it's
Speaker 3: use in math or science. But in writing, I can
Speaker 3: just say de facto it's It shouldn't be a problem because,
Speaker 3: as you intimated, I'm over here in California, I'm having
Speaker 3: my day. I'm feeling things, I'm tasting things, I'm touching things,
Speaker 3: I'm thinking things. I go to my desk, I somehow
Speaker 3: get all of that into a made up story. But
Speaker 3: it's so infused with qualitiya. You know my experience of
Speaker 3: being in the world, then I send it to you.
Speaker 3: And the magic is, even though we have completely different experiences,
Speaker 3: it opens up in your mind. AI can imitate that
Speaker 3: all it likes, but it isn't the same. It can't
Speaker 3: be the same. The danger, I think is just that
Speaker 3: if as AI inundates the world, our standards go down,
Speaker 3: and that part of the mind that can be developed
Speaker 3: to pick up that human message might go a little dull,
Speaker 3: And of course, economically it means that a lot of
Speaker 3: human writers may be put out of work by the
Speaker 3: poor simulation of human writing. So I think that's worth
Speaker 3: fighting for fighting about.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's not.
Speaker 3: My sense is that AI is kind of just being
Speaker 3: driven by investments, but when we're not really asking why
Speaker 3: we need it. You know, there's efficiency, but who efficiency
Speaker 3: always means more money for somebody, don't you know?
Speaker 2: It doesn't there's no in the abstract.
Speaker 3: Efficiency isn't necessarily better. I mean, I if I can
Speaker 3: get my garden done efficiently by a robot, that's nice.
Speaker 3: But it's nice to work in a garden. So I'm
Speaker 3: not I'm not a fan of AI for writing, and
Speaker 3: I think we should be very skeptical of it because
Speaker 3: in all the sort of fun around AI to see
Speaker 3: what it can do, every one of those experiments involves
Speaker 3: a sacrifice, of course, of resources, but also of human involvement.
Speaker 3: You know, I saw something. There's a sort of a
Speaker 3: wave of commercials here where you know, there's one where
Speaker 3: a man is having a woman over for dinner, and
Speaker 3: he asked AI is to design a menu that will
Speaker 3: indicate I'm interested but not ready for a commitment with.
Speaker 2: The straight face.
Speaker 3: So the AI cranks out the thing, he cooks it,
Speaker 3: and you see the two of them dancing around the kitchen.
Speaker 3: I'm like, dude, that's your job, you know, that's your job.
Speaker 2: To come up with that menu.
Speaker 3: So or another one is about a brother and sister
Speaker 3: going on a road trip and the brother asked AI
Speaker 3: to design the road trip. What a what a default?
Speaker 3: Or what are giving up of responsibility? So those kind
Speaker 3: of things, I think intelligent people can look at that
Speaker 3: and go, I don't want I don't want that.
Speaker 2: No, thanks, I don't want it. So I'm not I'm
Speaker 2: not a fan. But maybe when I need brain surgery.
Speaker 2: Maybe when I need brain surgery, I will be I
Speaker 2: don't know.
Speaker 1: Yes, that's true. There are other aspects of air that
Speaker 1: might be quite interesting. Two other aspects of writing that
Speaker 1: I want to touch on. So one thing that good
Speaker 1: novels do, they're almost philosophical texts. While being entertaining, you
Speaker 1: don't have to read philosophy, but you learn things about
Speaker 1: life and how to be a person and how to
Speaker 1: be a good person in the world. It is also
Speaker 1: a tool of critical thinking. Because you've put yourself in
Speaker 1: somebody else's mind and you see how they've thought about
Speaker 1: a certain situation, and maybe you will never encounter the
Speaker 1: exact same situation, but that logical steps that you've taken
Speaker 1: teach you something about the world. Do you think the
Speaker 1: media landscape as it exists? We talked about how it's
Speaker 1: hard for a journalist, but do you think it's also
Speaker 1: a problem on the reader side, that they are not
Speaker 1: critical thinkers today, that they are not seeing what is misinformation?
Speaker 1: What is disinformation, what it is that non responsible players
Speaker 1: of information are doing with information, and if so, what
Speaker 1: could be done to improve critical thinking among readers?
Speaker 2: Yeah? I think this.
Speaker 3: Studies show that what you're saying is true that as
Speaker 3: you read less, read read a complex text less, your
Speaker 3: ability to follow a long argument erodes. And I believe
Speaker 3: also there was some study that made a connection from
Speaker 3: that to the ability to empathize, which it all makes sense,
Speaker 3: you know, of course it does. I think, yes, it's
Speaker 3: a big I think it's a big problem. I think
Speaker 3: here in the States it's the biggest problem there there
Speaker 3: are You know, you hear some of these things that
Speaker 3: our leadership says, and you can't believe that anybody can
Speaker 3: get through that text without walking, and yet people people
Speaker 3: swallow it. So I don't know, but anecdotally in my lifetime,
Speaker 3: I started out in Chicago as a young kid in
Speaker 3: a Catholic school, and books were sacred. I've had experiences
Speaker 3: in my life where from and I know you have
Speaker 3: to an intense period of reading, I could feel my
Speaker 3: mind shifting, my vocabulary improved, my ability to express myself improved,
Speaker 3: and therefore the world changed. The world became a more
Speaker 3: workable place because of the internal change. I'm sure of that,
Speaker 3: as I am in my shoe size that that happened.
Speaker 3: So if that isn't happening, then that means that the
Speaker 3: millions of minds aren't being kicked up into this higher gear,
Speaker 3: aren't being made more confident and more empathy friendly.
Speaker 2: That has to have a cultural effect.
Speaker 3: There was a wonderful piece in The Times Ezra Klein
Speaker 3: and I think Master Guessen talking about how important it
Speaker 3: is in a time like this to claim the space,
Speaker 3: meaning what we're doing right now. Let's just say, let's
Speaker 3: just say that reading long text is a gift to
Speaker 3: yourself and it's necessary for a culture. Let's just say
Speaker 3: that out loud, and other people who agree with us
Speaker 3: will go, yeah, that's right, I'm all good, I'm not wrong.
Speaker 3: It sounds like a small effect, but I think it
Speaker 3: can be world changing just for people to occupy the
Speaker 3: space of truth, a benevolence of patients, of fellow feeling.
Speaker 3: It's a time where I think demonstrations of those things
Speaker 3: are so meaningful. You know, on Instagram you see somebody
Speaker 3: here standing up to ice and being articulate, and you
Speaker 3: can feel the thrill running through your body and a
Speaker 3: little surge of courage.
Speaker 1: Another writing question for you, So I, as a writer,
Speaker 1: came out of the age during the Internet era. So
Speaker 1: I really started with blogging all my life. My main
Speaker 1: form of writing has been typing on a screen, and
Speaker 1: then over the past year I have actually started writing
Speaker 1: with pen and paper, longhand I'm writing letters. I'm writing
Speaker 1: sometimes first draft of my story, and it's really changed
Speaker 1: how I think and how I then convert my thinking
Speaker 1: into that writing because it's a physical action that is
Speaker 1: different from what I used to do, so it's just
Speaker 1: a variation. Has made a difference, but it's also improved
Speaker 1: my mental health. And I wondered, you know, you've taught
Speaker 1: writing for so many years. Obviously you teach creative writing.
Speaker 1: You teach them to some of the best writers out there.
Speaker 1: But if you had to give a fun exercise to
Speaker 1: someone who's not a writer, just to get going on writing,
Speaker 1: what would that exercise be.
Speaker 3: I have one that I give and it's kind of
Speaker 3: a party game. So the game is this, You're going
Speaker 3: to write a two hundred word story and it has
Speaker 3: to be exactly two hundreds, not one ninety nine, not
Speaker 3: two oh one. But you can only use fifty words
Speaker 3: to do it. So the way you play is you
Speaker 3: get a piece of paper and you start your story
Speaker 3: and you say, the cat sat on the table. Well,
Speaker 3: that's cats. That's five words. You write those down at
Speaker 3: the bottom, enumerated at the bottom of the sheet, and
Speaker 3: this way you keep track of where you are. At
Speaker 3: some point you hit your fifty and there's no new words.
Speaker 3: So and then the other thing is you try to
Speaker 3: do this in fifteen minutes. It's a lot of imposed
Speaker 3: pressure and that exercise, I, you know, for it to
Speaker 3: be at its best, I shouldn't say any more about it.
Speaker 3: But if someone tries to do that, what they'll find
Speaker 3: is that a lot of the normal anxieties associated with
Speaker 3: writing go away under the pressure of the rules, and
Speaker 3: people will find. You know, the one of the key
Speaker 3: things in a work of fiction is rising action, you know,
Speaker 3: to have that feeling of increasing complexity that automatically happens
Speaker 3: in this exercise. For reasons I don't quite understand. So often,
Speaker 3: if I have a young writer at Syracuse who's kind
Speaker 3: of pend herself in with certain ideas and dictums and
Speaker 3: mantras about how she is as a writer, you get
Speaker 3: in this exercise and they don't have time to think
Speaker 3: about those things. They're just trying to get the thing done,
Speaker 3: and often a different writer will emerge on the page,
Speaker 3: and it's very, very exciting if you can do it.
Speaker 3: The other condition is do it in a group and
Speaker 3: let everybody know that they have to read theirs at
Speaker 3: the end. So then introduces a kind of entertainment function.
Speaker 3: And so it's funny, you know, if you ever believe
Speaker 3: that we contain many writers within us, this is a
Speaker 3: great exercise to get a different one than usual to
Speaker 3: come out.
Speaker 1: I'll also tell you a little story that happened last
Speaker 1: night that you'd appreciate because you mentioned in a swim
Speaker 1: in a pond in the rain a book that you've
Speaker 1: written about writing and reading, that you could do some
Speaker 1: of these exercises that you do in the book with others.
Speaker 1: And you gave the example of doing it with the
Speaker 1: story of Honest Hemingway called Cat in the Rain and
Speaker 1: it's twelve hundred words, and you said, cut it into
Speaker 1: six sections and do the exercise. And last night I
Speaker 1: was commuting back home with my wife and I told
Speaker 1: her it's the perfect length. Can I do a story
Speaker 1: exercise with you? It was the end of the day.
Speaker 1: She was tired. She's like, do you really want to
Speaker 1: I'm like, yes, John Saunders has convinced me this is
Speaker 1: the exercise. I think you'll love it.
Speaker 2: He sounds like a very good wife.
Speaker 1: And we did the exercise, and this morning she wakes
Speaker 1: up and she said, can we do it again when
Speaker 1: we commute back? Oh?
Speaker 3: Oh, that's beautiful. Tell her thank you. You know, if
Speaker 3: there's another of his stories called Indian Camp, and that's
Speaker 3: a it's a darker story and it's but that it
Speaker 3: works the same way. Yeah, that's that's a really uh
Speaker 3: that's a fun exercise. Thank you for telling me that
Speaker 3: that really is nice to hear.
Speaker 1: So one last sort of more an advice for writers
Speaker 1: like me, for nonfiction writers, people who write about climate change.
Speaker 1: It's going to be a topic that we stick with
Speaker 1: for decades to come. It is going to go through
Speaker 1: as we are seeing political upswings and down swings. Thinking
Speaker 1: as a fiction writer, but from a nonfiction context, how
Speaker 1: do you think we can tell better climate stories?
Speaker 3: Well, I'm always a big believer in particular particularity. I've
Speaker 3: done some casual humor type pieces for GQ in the
Speaker 3: New Yorker, and I always go in with a big idea,
Speaker 3: but I'm looking for specific things to contradict or complicate
Speaker 3: that idea.
Speaker 2: So I think.
Speaker 3: My thought is to ground it in the cost to
Speaker 3: actual people. I mean, that seems to be the one
Speaker 3: thing that we can't we can't deny, you know, I
Speaker 3: actually be interested in your thoughts. One of the kind
Speaker 3: of unspoken hardships that I found in nonfiction writing but
Speaker 3: also in fiction, is that the people, I'll put it,
Speaker 3: the people I would like to convert, don't read my books.
Speaker 3: You know, they don't come to my events. So often
Speaker 3: you're preaching to the choir, And I wonder if if
Speaker 3: you have any insights about in your experience of how
Speaker 3: maybe success stories or when you've been able to reach
Speaker 3: across that divide and maybe not change somebody's mind, but
Speaker 3: communicate in a meaningful way with somebody who wouldn't be
Speaker 3: predisposed to your ideas.
Speaker 1: It is a constant struggle. I will say the fact
Speaker 1: that I have interviewed for this podcast, but in general,
Speaker 1: people who do not act in good faith on climate change,
Speaker 1: like oil executives, which, as you said, it's an interview
Speaker 1: where it is an honest conversation. I'm going to push back.
Speaker 1: I'm not going to allow somebody to lie. But those
Speaker 1: conversations the other side also walks away with respect because
Speaker 1: they've come back on the podcast because even though the
Speaker 1: questions were hard and they were pushed back, they felt
Speaker 1: like it was a conversation where I heard them and
Speaker 1: that they felt it was a fair conversation. I think
Speaker 1: the value of fairness in journalism is being questioned all
Speaker 1: the time. But it's good to be questioning that value
Speaker 1: because that is a value that we need to live
Speaker 1: up to, because that's one way at least that I
Speaker 1: find you can break to the other side.
Speaker 3: You know, with the oil executives you've interviewed at their core,
Speaker 3: are they well, this is maybe too broad a question,
Speaker 3: but do they really believe that climate change isn't real?
Speaker 2: Or are they being strategically dishonest?
Speaker 1: No oil executive I have interviewed now does not believe
Speaker 1: that climate change is real. Now, yes, And you know,
Speaker 1: I've been a journalist doing this for ten years. So
Speaker 1: for the last ten years I have not met an
Speaker 1: oil executive that denies climate change. I will say I
Speaker 1: have mostly spoken to oil executives of multinational public corporations,
Speaker 1: and so they have shareholders and their shareholders, our pension
Speaker 1: funds are large asset managers who have clear understanding of
Speaker 1: the science. If you're going to make money, you need
Speaker 1: to know reality.
Speaker 2: That needs to go on a bumper sticker.
Speaker 3: If you make money, you have to understand reality.
Speaker 2: Amen.
Speaker 1: But you know, there are, of course climate deniers in
Speaker 1: other places. And I haven't yet interviewed a private oil
Speaker 1: company executives. I haven't interviewed the Cooke Corporation executive, for example,
Speaker 1: or Harold Ham, and I would be very open to
Speaker 1: interviewing them if they'd ever be interested in coming on
Speaker 1: the show.
Speaker 3: But then you know that for me this book with
Speaker 3: the interesting part, especially towards the end, was uh, what
Speaker 3: does what does denial look like in a phased approach?
Speaker 3: You know, and when somebody is in full denial they're here,
Speaker 3: what are the steps they go through as they get
Speaker 3: closer to admitting the truth? And that was really interesting
Speaker 3: because of course, you know, you can look at yourself
Speaker 3: to figure that one out.
Speaker 1: Yes, and a lot of the justifications. That's why even
Speaker 1: though you didn't speak to an executive and you simulated
Speaker 1: this exercise through your understanding, it is the kind of
Speaker 1: stuff that they actually go through in reality. There is
Speaker 1: this truth that comes out even in a fictional context,
Speaker 1: in which is I enjoyed reading visual quite a lot.
Speaker 2: Thank you, George, it was such a pleasure. You've got
Speaker 2: an amazing mind. I hope to encounter it again sometime.
Speaker 1: And thank you for listening to zero Now for the
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