George Saunders on the ‘Braindead Megaphone’ That Makes Our Politics So Awful

George Saunders is regarded as one of our greatest living fiction writers. He won the Booker Prize in 2017 for his novel “ Lincoln in the Bardo ” and has published numerous short-story collections to wide acclaim, including his most recent book, “ Liberation Day .” He also happens to be one of my favorite people to read and to talk to. Saunders is an incredibly prescient and sharp observer of American political culture. Way back in 2007, he argued that our media environment was transforming politics into a competition within which the loudest voices would command the most attention and set the agenda for everyone else. With the rise of social media — and the advent of the Trump era — that observation has been more than vindicated. So as we approach the midterm elections, I wanted to have Saunders back on the show to talk about how politics and media have changed, and how those changes are shaping the way we interact, communicate and even think. We discuss how Twitter takes advantage of — even warps — our “malleable” selves, how politicians like Marjorie Taylor Greene strategically manipulate our attentional environments, how Barack Obama leveraged our human desire to be seen as our…