George Saunders on Anger, Ambition and Sin
About this episode
Ezra Klein talks with novelist George Saunders about his new novel 'Vigil,' in which an oil tycoon on his deathbed is visited by angels who keep him alive for one last moral accounting. Saunders defines sin not as rule-breaking but as being out of touch with reality — the self-serving stories powerful people tell themselves to justify harm, a theme Klein connects to Trump's circle. They discuss why specificity defeats judgment: writing, like prayer or moral attention, requires seeing people precisely rather than slotting them into categories. Saunders argues anger and anxiety close the aperture through which truth can enter, while kindness widens it; grace, he suggests, is what elevates a mind that has 'done its homework.' The conversation moves through climate change, AI, and politics to a practical ethic: understand everyone, judge no one — including political opponents — and stay open to being wrong.