Weekend Listen: George Saunders Imagines an Oil Exec’s Deathbed

from Big Take · host Bloomberg and iHeartPodcasts

What is the best way to tell a climate story? This week on Zero, Akshat Rathi speaks with Booker Prize-winning novelist George Saunders. His new novel Vigil is an exploration of guilt, told on the deathbed of an oil executive haunted by ghosts. Rathi asks Saunders what he learned about climate change, his thoughts on whether AI complements or compromises human creativity, and why literature still matters in the era of TikTok. Listen now, and subscribe on Apple, Spotify or YouTube to get new episodes of Zero every Thursday.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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This episode was published on February 8, 2026.

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