Big Take
Big Take
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Weekend Listen: George Saunders Imagines an Oil Exec’s Deathbed
43 minutes Posted Feb 8, 2026 at 3:00 pm.
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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.

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