‘We are being beaten into submission with lies’ - writer George Saunders on Trump, truth and power
Ways to Change the World with Krishnan Guru-Murthy
Channel 4 News
4.7 • 1.2K Ratings
🗓️ 20 February 2026
⏱️ 42 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
“It's really a deep irony that this guy who has really never set foot in a normal American street was mistaken as a man of the people”, writer George Saunders says of the US President, Donald Trump. His work has long centred on the very people who live with the consequences of decisions made far above them, ordinary and fallible individuals navigating increasingly hostile conditions.
In a world marked by political lies, climate denial and the erosion of shared reality, Saunders’ fiction interrogates moral ambiguity, human weakness and the forces that draw individuals toward destructive choices.
In this episode of Ways to Change the World, Krishnan Guru-Murthy speaks to Saunders about the collapse of truth in public life, why satire no longer pierces political leaders who feel no shame, and whether storytelling can still help us understand one another in an age of polarisation.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | The most precious commodity in America right now is the ability to recognize truth even in a thunderstorm of falsity. |
| 0:08.1 | This Trump thing is based on repeating lies, repeating lies until the populace is beaten into submission. |
| 0:15.1 | You can say that they lie and all they say is, I didn't, or I don't care if I did. |
| 0:18.7 | Do you think this is fascism? |
| 0:23.6 | Hello and welcome to Ways to Change the World. |
| 0:25.6 | I'm Christian and Guru Murphy, and this is the podcast where we talk to extraordinary people about the big ideas and their lives |
| 0:31.6 | and the events that have helped shape them. |
| 0:33.6 | My guest this week is a book a prize-winning author whose fiction probes power, morality, |
| 0:38.7 | and the strangeness of contemporary America. In 2013, his commencement speech on the failures |
| 0:44.3 | of kindness went viral online, a reflection on empathy that helped define his public voice. |
| 0:50.6 | George Sanders has long explored how political and ethical forces shape ordinary lives. |
| 0:56.7 | His new novel, Vigil, follows a dying oil executive, forced to confront the real world |
| 1:01.8 | consequences of his life, blending satire with a stark look at climate and responsibility. |
| 1:07.9 | George, welcome. |
| 1:08.7 | Nice to be here. |
| 1:09.8 | How would you change the world? |
| 1:11.7 | Oh, I wouldn't. It's fine. No. No, I actually, you know, I had kind of two answers. |
| 1:16.0 | One is I would start with my own mind because I think that's really the main thing we can |
| 1:21.9 | control is to calm your own mind down and, in my case, get less monkey-minded and more patient. |
| 1:26.5 | But in a more practical way, I would |
| 1:28.3 | actually require that kids, 10 years old or so, start reading the Russian writers, Chekhov, Gogle and |
| 1:36.7 | Tolst-way especially. Those writers are so relatively simple to read, and they also open it as so many interesting moral questions. |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Channel 4 News, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Channel 4 News and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.