Sinners are supposed to be much more interesting than saints.
Not to longtime writer for The New Yorker, Larissa MacFarquhar. She finds the kind of people who adopt 20 children or turn their backs on family wealth to set up a leper colony in India or open their doors to the homeless endlessly fascinating. Some of us are skeptical and uncomfortable with acts of extreme generosity.
Strangers Drowning: Voyages to the Brink of Moral Extremity is a new book by MacFarquar that asks, in a world of strangers drowning in need, how much should we help, and how much can we help?
We spoke to Larissa McFarqhar in New York and asked her what it was that drew her to the stories of people who've pushed themselves to moral extremes.
