Richard Powers’ Novel ‘Playground’ Explores Vastness of Oceans and AI

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KQED

Politics, News, News Commentary

4.6 • 656 Ratings

🗓️ 31 October 2024

⏱️ 56 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Novelist Richard Powers has a way of making us see the world, and our place in it, in entirely new ways. His 2019 Pulitzer Prize Winning novel Overstory attuned readers to the power and mystery of trees. In his new novel, Playground, he focuses his awe and concern on marine life, the oceans and the perils we’ve inflicted on them. We talk to Powers about his epic story of friendship, colonialism and the looming power of AI. Guests: Richard Powers, author, His new novel is "Playground." His previous books include "The Overstory" which won the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and "The Echo Maker" which won the 2006 National Book Award for Fiction. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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0:57.3	Novelist Richard Powers has a way of making us see the world and our place in it in startling new ways.
1:04.0	His last book, Overstory, attuned readers to the power and mystery of trees, the way they bend time and form networks.
1:13.3	His new book is Playground,
1:15.4	which is a grand and nested story of oceans and friendship
1:19.6	and the looming specter of an artificial intelligence
1:22.6	that can play the greatest game that humans have ever invented,
1:26.3	telling people the stories that they want to hear.
1:28.6	Richard Powers is coming up next, right after this news.
1:50.9	Welcome to Forum. I'm Alexis Madrigal. I have to tell you that today's guest was my first literary love. Before Thomas Pynchon and Jane Austen and Octavia Butler, for me, there was Richard Powers.
1:57.9	As a teen, my father left his book, Galatea 2.2, lying around, and it set my world on
2:04.7	fire with its vision of artificial intelligence. Powers described back then in the mid-90s,
	...

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