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Democrats are pushing a hard line on DHS funding. Will the administration blink, and how will it influence ongoing immigration enforcement? Plus Gallop's optimism poll, the ongoing Epstein revelations, and Seth recommends the Netflix documentary Miracle.
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George Saunders is tired of being the “kindness guy.”
Saunders is one of my favorite fiction writers, and a friend of the pod; I talked to him back in 2021 and 2022. He also has a reputation as a kind of guru of kindness, thanks to a viral commencement speech he gave back in 2013. We talked about kindness on the show before.
But with the publication of his new novel, “Vigil,” I noticed that something about Saunders seemed to have shifted. He was pushing back against that public persona, and wrestling with darker themes.
“Vigil” follows an oil tycoon who, on his deathbed, is visited by angels and people from his past asking him to reassess his life. And you can feel a tension in that book that is also very alive in Saunders himself — between recognizing how much of our lives are conditioned by our circumstances and the need to pass judgment to reckon with the truth.
In this conversation, I discuss that tension with Saunders. I ask him about his relationship not just to kindness but also to anger; how he defines sin; whether he believes in free will; and what he thinks lies beyond kindness.
This episode contains strong language.
Mentioned:
Vigil by George Saunders
“What It Means to Be Kind in a Cruel World” by The Ezra Klein Show
“George Saunders Convocation Speech 2013”
“A Tough Question Indeed” by George Saunders
East West Street by Philippe Sands
“When Is It Genocide?” by The Ezra Klein Show
Book Recommendations:
I Will Bear Witness, Volume 1 by Victor Klemperer
Red Cavalry and Other Stories by Isaac Babel
The Place of Tides by James Rebanks
Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at ezrakleinshow@nytimes.com.
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.
This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Annie Galvin. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld, with additional mixing by Aman Sahota, Efim Shapiro and Isaac Jones. Our executive producer is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Marie Cascione, Rollin Hu, Kristin Lin, Emma Kehlbeck, Jack McCordick, Marina King and Jan Kobal. Original music by Aman Sahota and Pat McCusker. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The director of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser.
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Amanda Holmes reads Lynette Roberts’s “The Temple Road.” Have a suggestion for a poem by a (dead) writer? Email us: podcast@theamericanscholar.org. If we select your entry, you’ll win a copy of a poetry collection edited by David Lehman.
This episode was produced by Stephanie Bastek and features the song “Canvasback” by Chad Crouch.
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Founding director of the Critical Theory Workshop and professor at Villanova University Gabriel Rockhill is out with a new book that calls out many of the intellectual fathers of the academic left as insufficiently imperialist and often funded by the CIA. How have we been mislead by the "compatible left" -- a cohort of leftists that support marxism only in theory while inveighing against actually existing socialism? Where do Slavoj Zizek & Noam Chomsky fall in this analysis? How do we identify the contemporary "compatible left" in our media and political environment, and if the deep state is so effective at coopting left movements, what can we possibly do to evade them and achieve revolutionary change? This is a sprawling, three-hour episode you wont want to miss.
Subscribe to Bad Faith on YouTube for video of this episode. Find Bad Faith on Twitter (@badfaithpod) and Instagram (@badfaithpod).
Produced by Armand Aviram.
Theme by Nick Thorburn (@nickfromislands).
Understanding history is not about understanding formulas or narratives. Instead, we must understand the people who made history, their motives, and their goals.
Original article: https://mises.org/mises-wire/history-not-mathematical-calculation