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b'We\\u2019re taking a week off from releasing new episodes, so today I wanted to re-up one of my favorite episodes of the show, a conversation with fiction writer George Saunders that covers much more than just his writing.\\n\\nSaunders is one of America\\u2019s greatest living writers. He\\u2019s the author of dozens of critically acclaimed short stories, including his 2013 collection, \\u201cTenth of December\\u201d; his debut novel, \\u201cLincoln in the Bardo,\\u201d won the 2017 Booker Prize; and his nonfiction work has empathy and insight that leave pieces from more than a decade ago ringing in my head today. His most recent book, \\u201cA Swim in A Pond in the Rain,\\u201d is a literary master class built around seven Russian short stories, analyzing how they work, and what they reveal about how we work.\\n\\nI\\u2019ve wanted to interview Saunders for more than 15 years. I first saw him talk when I was in college, and there was a quality of compassion and consideration in every response that was, well, strange. His voice doesn\\u2019t sound like his fiction. His fiction is bitingly satirical, manic, often unsettling. His voice is calm, kind, gracious. The dissonance stuck with me.\\n\\nSaunders\\u2019s central topic, literalized in his famous 2013 commencement speech, is about what it means to be kind in an unkind world. And that\\u2019s the organizing question of this conversation, too. We discuss the collisions between capitalism and human relations, the relationship between writing and meditation, Saunders\\u2019s personal editing process, the tension between empathizing with others and holding them to account, the promise of re-localizing our politics, the way our minds deceive us, Tolstoy\\u2019s unusual theory of personal transformation and much more.\\n\\nWhat a pleasure this conversation was. So worth the wait.\\n\\nRecommendations: \\n\\n"Red Cavalry" by Isaac Babel\\n\\n"Stamped from the Beginning" by Ibram X. Kendi\\n\\n"Dispatches" by Michael Herr\\n\\n"Patriotic Gore" by Edmund Wilson\\n\\n"In Love with the World" by Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche\\n\\n"Loving; Living; Party Going" by Henry Green\\n\\n"Scrambled Eggs & Whiskey" by Hayden Carruth\\n\\n"Tropic of Squalor" by Mary Carr\\n\\n"They Lift Their Wings to Cry" by Brooks Haxton\\n\\n"The Hundred Dresses" by Eleanor Estes and Louis Slobodkin\\n\\n"Caps for Sale" by Esphyr Slobodkina\\n\\nYou can find a transcript of this episode and more episodes of "The Ezra Klein Show" at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein.\\n\\nThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at ezrakleinshow@nytimes.com.\\n\\n\\u201cThe Ezra Klein Show\\u201d is produced by Rog\\xe9 Karma, Jeff Geld and Annie Galvin; fact-checking by Michelle Harris; original music by Isaac Jones; mixing by Jeff Geld.'