Latest / Story Works Round Table | Conversations About Craft / SWRT 359 | Thought Provoking Fiction with Jesse Thoeming

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SWRT 359 | Thought Provoking Fiction with Jesse Thoeming · Story Works Round Table | Conversations About Craft

0:01
SPEAKER_02: This is the Story Works Round Table.
0:05
SPEAKER_02: Conversations about craft for writers and readers curious
0:11
SPEAKER_01: about writers.
0:13
SPEAKER_02: As you know,
0:14
SPEAKER_02: we've recently moved the podcast to the Substack platform,
0:17
SPEAKER_02: and we're adding some really cool opportunities, like the In Conversations.
0:24
SPEAKER_02: Experience where you can come sit down with us,
0:27
SPEAKER_02: join us at our virtual roundtable, and discuss storycraft.
0:33
SPEAKER_02: We did our first one of those the other week.
0:37
SPEAKER_02: It was a lot of fun, and I hope to see many more of you at the next In Conversation Roundtable.
0:47
SPEAKER_02: You know,
0:48
SPEAKER_02: if you've been following us for a while,
0:50
SPEAKER_02: then you've seen kind of a shift toward author-focused conversations,
0:58
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1:04
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1:08
SPEAKER_02: So, Kathryn and I just had a conversation yesterday about About things we can do
1:15
SPEAKER_02: to make sure this podcast stays focused on storycraft and remains a conversation
1:24
SPEAKER_02: by writers for writers.
1:27
SPEAKER_02: And of course readers who are curious about what it takes to write a novel.
1:32
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1:39
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1:43
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1:52
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2:00
SPEAKER_02: If you've listened to some of our recent episodes
2:05
SPEAKER_02: with people like Antonio Michael Downing and or Somia Sadiq,
2:13
SPEAKER_02: or Susan Swan,
2:14
SPEAKER_02: then you know just how far-ranging and valuable those conversations can be.
2:20
SPEAKER_02: But in 2027,
2:22
SPEAKER_02: you can expect not only a continuation,
2:26
SPEAKER_02: but a deepening of craft-focused conversations and even more opportunities
2:32
SPEAKER_02: to join us.
2:34
SPEAKER_02: This week,
2:34
SPEAKER_02: we're talking with Jesse Thoming about thought-provoking fiction,
2:40
SPEAKER_02: what it takes to write a novel,
2:42
SPEAKER_02: and what some of the pitfalls are when you set out with the intention
2:46
SPEAKER_02: to make your readers think and even challenge their own assumptions.
2:52
SPEAKER_02: I really enjoyed this conversation with Jesse, and I hope you do too.
3:00
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3:04
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4:26
SPEAKER_02: And now, enjoy this conversation at the Story Works Round Table.
4:32
SPEAKER_02: Hello and welcome to this week's Story Works Round Table.
4:35
SPEAKER_02: Today, Kathryn and I are delighted to be joined by Jesse Thoming to talk
4:41
SPEAKER_02: about writing thought-provoking fiction.
4:45
SPEAKER_02: Jesse is a writer whose work explores the intersection of humanity, progress, and imagination.
4:52
SPEAKER_02: Originally from Southern Illinois,
4:54
SPEAKER_02: Where he grew up in the shadow of the Gateway Arch,
4:57
SPEAKER_02: he's lived and worked in Cedar Rapids, Iowa for over two decades.
5:02
SPEAKER_02: His essays and commentary have appeared in numerous local and regional publications,
5:08
SPEAKER_02: and his debut novel,
5:09
SPEAKER_02: The Brown Bottle Squeeze,
5:11
SPEAKER_02: earned praise for its narrative voice and depth of character.
5:15
SPEAKER_02: God Bless You,
5:16
SPEAKER_02: Mr. Trump marks the beginning of a bold speculative trilogy set in the near future.
5:23
SPEAKER_02: Welcome, Jesse.
5:24
SPEAKER_02: We're glad to have you here today.
5:26
SPEAKER_00: Thank you so much for having me.
5:28
SPEAKER_00: Super pumped to be on the show and just delighted to jump into the subject matter of the day.
5:35
SPEAKER_02: Thank you.
5:36
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
5:37
SPEAKER_02: So I think I think before we get into this conversation,
5:43
SPEAKER_02: we just really quickly need to address the title of your book, because
5:51
SPEAKER_02: The name Trump is so polarizing,
5:55
SPEAKER_02: and God bless you, Mr. Trump, is definitely a provocative title.
6:01
SPEAKER_02: So, all right,
6:03
SPEAKER_02: somebody not here who has never met you,
6:05
SPEAKER_02: never heard of your book or read your writing,
6:07
SPEAKER_02: here's that title,
6:09
SPEAKER_02: and they might be thinking, oh, no, this conversation isn't for me.
6:13
SPEAKER_02: It's going to be X, Y, and Z, right?
6:17
SPEAKER_02: So what would you say about that?
6:20
SPEAKER_00: Well, several things.
6:22
SPEAKER_00: Number one,
6:24
SPEAKER_00: when I came up with the concept of the story,
6:26
SPEAKER_00: I was reading God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater by Kurt Vonnegut.
6:30
SPEAKER_00: Kurt Vonnegut is one of those writers that got me into this over 20 years ago.
6:35
SPEAKER_00: And in that particular story,
6:36
SPEAKER_00: which is one of my favorite Vonnegut's,
6:38
SPEAKER_00: Elliot Rosewater is a very complicated figure.
6:41
SPEAKER_00: I wanted to title it as such one because I I just think we as a society
6:48
SPEAKER_00: and culture have lost so much when it comes to nuance and subtlety.
6:54
SPEAKER_00: But also because, darn it, it has a very impact.
7:02
SPEAKER_00: It's a phrase.
7:03
SPEAKER_00: If you see the cover of my book, it's in quotations.
7:05
SPEAKER_00: You don't see that on most titles.
7:07
SPEAKER_00: But it's because it's a very important phrase that's set in the future that has
7:13
SPEAKER_00: a very big impact on the narrative.
7:16
SPEAKER_00: I was just at a book fair in Des Moines, Iowa a few weeks ago.
7:19
SPEAKER_00: And you're right.
7:20
SPEAKER_00: Some of the looks I got was like, oh, boy, what is this guy trying to do?
7:24
SPEAKER_00: And, you know, I didn't do it every time.
7:25
SPEAKER_00: But a lot of times I'd be like, come here.
7:28
SPEAKER_00: I want to tell you a little bit about it's not meant to be political.
7:31
SPEAKER_00: Yes, it is intentionally provocative.
7:34
SPEAKER_00: I wanted to use the title to help it stand out.
7:37
SPEAKER_00: And whether you love.
7:42
SPEAKER_00: The four.
7:44
SPEAKER_00: The seventh president or can't stand it.
7:46
SPEAKER_00: There is no debate that he generates more headlines than anybody.
7:50
SPEAKER_00: And when I was thinking about the future, I wanted to tie it back to the past.
7:54
SPEAKER_00: And what better way to do that?
7:56
SPEAKER_00: And then also,
7:57
SPEAKER_00: just to be frank and transparent and honest,
8:00
SPEAKER_00: not a lot of people have picked up on it.
8:02
SPEAKER_00: And I say not a lot of people won in the six or seven weeks since it's been out.
8:07
SPEAKER_00: When a man,
8:08
SPEAKER_00: and I say a man because we haven't,
8:09
SPEAKER_00: unfortunately, haven't had a woman president yet.
8:11
SPEAKER_00: We will someday, but we haven't yet.
8:13
SPEAKER_00: When a man achieves the Oval Office,
8:16
SPEAKER_00: he is forever President Bush, President Obama, President Trump, President Biden.
8:23
SPEAKER_00: By just saying Mr.
8:25
SPEAKER_00: Trump is a very subtle pejorative at a man
8:28
SPEAKER_00: that I really wish never would have won any kind of office,
8:32
SPEAKER_00: but at the end of the day, can't be ignored.
8:34
SPEAKER_00: So a lot to the title.
8:37
SPEAKER_00: I'm sure that in a lot of ways it's turned some people off.
8:40
SPEAKER_00: But again,
8:41
SPEAKER_00: at the end of the day,
8:42
SPEAKER_00: if I can do just a little bit to bring some subtlety and nuance back to our culture,
8:47
SPEAKER_00: Daria, I'm going to try.
8:50
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
8:51
SPEAKER_02: Okay.
8:51
SPEAKER_02: That's a really interesting point, and I don't want to let it slip past.
8:58
SPEAKER_02: Not many people have picked up on this subtle dig of Mr. Trump instead of President Trump.
9:07
SPEAKER_02: It's also...
9:09
SPEAKER_02: Making an allusion back to this book by Kurt Vonnegut.
9:14
SPEAKER_02: And we're talking about thought-provoking fiction.
9:21
SPEAKER_02: So how hard is it sometimes?
9:27
SPEAKER_02: Or what do you think it says about fiction today, readers today?
9:34
SPEAKER_02: That subtlety and nuance and cultural references,
9:39
SPEAKER_02: you know,
9:40
SPEAKER_02: connections to the past and such are made often and
9:45
SPEAKER_02: when they are frequently are lost on our audience.
9:52
SPEAKER_00: I think that a big part of that and I bet what you just asked right there could be
9:57
SPEAKER_00: a dissertation.
9:58
SPEAKER_00: The answer could be a dissertation.
9:59
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I know.
10:00
SPEAKER_02: Sorry, that was a hard-hitting question.
10:02
SPEAKER_02: But it just, I'm like, whoa.
10:03
SPEAKER_00: No.
10:05
SPEAKER_00: I think that we don't have a shared reality anymore.
10:09
SPEAKER_00: We don't all turn on the news and watch Walter Cronkite and get the same news.
10:14
SPEAKER_00: We are so bifurcated because too many people don't realize that
10:20
SPEAKER_00: when they flip open their Facebook or fill in the blank
10:23
SPEAKER_00: with whatever social media platform might be your go-to or several go-tos,
10:28
SPEAKER_00: too many people think it's USA Today
10:30
SPEAKER_00: and they're seeing what everybody else is seeing.
10:32
SPEAKER_00: It's a house of mirrors.
10:35
SPEAKER_00: It's just an insanity closet full of stuff that's just reinforcing your biases.
10:43
SPEAKER_00: It's just reinforcing what you like,
10:45
SPEAKER_00: what you interact with,
10:47
SPEAKER_00: what turns you on,
10:48
SPEAKER_00: what gets you riled up,
10:50
SPEAKER_00: and it just magnifies,
10:54
SPEAKER_00: and that's all that you see,
10:56
SPEAKER_00: and because of that,
10:59
SPEAKER_00: We live in a time where reality has been fractured in a million different ways.
11:06
SPEAKER_00: Man,
11:07
SPEAKER_00: we got to get back to a place where it's cool for the blue team and the red team
11:12
SPEAKER_00: to have a cup of coffee together or to cohabitate together or fill in the blank.
11:16
SPEAKER_00: I remember my dad telling him, just for full transparency, I'm a 99er.
11:20
SPEAKER_00: That's when I graduated high school.
11:22
SPEAKER_00: It's a very interesting time to be alive or to grow up
11:25
SPEAKER_00: because I feel like we had one foot in both worlds.
11:27
SPEAKER_00: We remember what it was like before the digital revolution,
11:30
SPEAKER_00: yet we're not so old that the digital revolution overwhelms us in a way that it does
11:34
SPEAKER_00: for, and again, everything I'm saying is a generalization in the aggregate.
11:39
SPEAKER_00: You know,
11:39
SPEAKER_00: even as a little kid,
11:40
SPEAKER_00: I remember super liberal speaker of the house,
11:44
SPEAKER_00: Tip O'Neill and conservative Ronald Reagan getting together over a scotch after
11:50
SPEAKER_00: a long day and people infighting and being just like,
11:52
SPEAKER_00: what do we got to do to figure it out?
11:53
SPEAKER_00: And they worked it out and they got to, you know what I mean?
11:56
SPEAKER_00: Like that doesn't even seem that if you brought that up today as
11:59
SPEAKER_00: a potential solution,
12:01
SPEAKER_00: you got a better chance of building a rocket and going to Venus.
12:04
SPEAKER_00: You know what I mean?
12:05
SPEAKER_00: It's just not on the, it's not on the menu.
12:09
SPEAKER_00: And we got to get back to that.
12:11
SPEAKER_00: I'm not saying a couple old dudes sitting around drinking whiskey is the solution.
12:15
SPEAKER_00: My point is that two guys from as disparate political viewpoints
12:20
SPEAKER_00: as possible could sit in a room and problem solve and move forward.
12:24
SPEAKER_00: Whereas today we look at each other as if we're worse enemies than our actual adversaries.
12:29
SPEAKER_00: And that's a real shame.
12:30
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
12:31
SPEAKER_01: And you had talked about,
12:32
SPEAKER_01: you know,
12:33
SPEAKER_01: opening social media and having, you know, that mirror and that echo chamber.
12:36
SPEAKER_01: And I think there's a deeper level, too,
12:38
SPEAKER_01: because Alita,
12:38
SPEAKER_01: you brought up Kurt Vonnegut and like all of these sorts of cultural touchstones.
12:45
SPEAKER_01: And I think there's...
12:45
SPEAKER_01: There's starting to be this missing layer of even literature that everyone has read
12:52
SPEAKER_01: or even movies that everyone has seen,
12:56
SPEAKER_01: cultural touchstones that kind of align us all so that we can say, oh, did you see?
13:01
SPEAKER_01: Oh, did you read?
13:02
SPEAKER_01: Oh, do you remember when?
13:04
SPEAKER_01: And there's, I think, less and less of that in addition to the story.
13:10
SPEAKER_01: The social media echo chamber, which is an
13:12
SPEAKER_00: interesting division.
13:14
SPEAKER_00: So well said.
13:14
SPEAKER_00: And we could double click on that and the fact that people don't read
13:19
SPEAKER_00: the way they used to is a problem in my eyes.
13:22
SPEAKER_00: I think that if we could get people back to reading hard copy books again,
13:26
SPEAKER_00: that might solve 50% of our problems in half a generation.
13:31
SPEAKER_02: I think you're right.
13:32
SPEAKER_02: You really do.
13:33
SPEAKER_02: You really do.
13:34
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, this is interesting.
13:36
SPEAKER_02: So what does this mean?
13:38
SPEAKER_02: The...
13:40
SPEAKER_02: Social milieu we are in the midst of for the writer who wants to write deep,
13:47
SPEAKER_02: thought-provoking fiction that has baked into it cultural references
13:54
SPEAKER_02: that have nothing to do with TikTok, right?
13:58
SPEAKER_01: That predate TikTok by decades.
14:05
SPEAKER_00: One of the Sub-themes of my book,
14:08
SPEAKER_00: and it's something that my personal favorite podcaster and philosopher,
14:13
SPEAKER_00: Sam Harris,
14:14
SPEAKER_00: talks a lot about on his show,
14:15
SPEAKER_00: Making Sense,
14:16
SPEAKER_00: is that he sees it as something that could very well happen around the corner.
14:22
SPEAKER_00: I frame it as something a little more specific, but it goes like this.
14:28
SPEAKER_00: There's going to be an epistemological bankruptcy with respect to anything on the internet.
14:33
SPEAKER_00: Because you can't trust it.
14:34
SPEAKER_00: There's so much AI slop.
14:35
SPEAKER_00: There's so much fakes.
14:37
SPEAKER_00: There's so much,
14:38
SPEAKER_00: you know,
14:38
SPEAKER_00: the deep fakes,
14:39
SPEAKER_00: all the things that maybe,
14:41
SPEAKER_00: just maybe,
14:42
SPEAKER_00: that'll be the driving force that returns people en masse back to one
14:46
SPEAKER_00: of our old favorite pastimes, reading the hardening, not the book.
14:51
SPEAKER_00: I don't know, but anyway, so that's not going to...
14:55
SPEAKER_00: But he calls it like the revenge of the humanities with the rise of AI bringing,
15:01
SPEAKER_00: I don't know,
15:01
SPEAKER_00: I don't want to say an end is the right word, but the STEM fields are not the same.
15:07
SPEAKER_00: Just five,
15:08
SPEAKER_00: ten years ago,
15:09
SPEAKER_00: we were telling every kid in America, learn how to code, learn how to program.
15:12
SPEAKER_00: Well, now telling a kid to learn how to do that,
15:14
SPEAKER_00: it's about tantamount to telling them to get a face tattoo, right?
15:19
SPEAKER_00: It's terrible advice.
15:20
SPEAKER_00: You're wasting your time.
15:21
SPEAKER_00: You're going to hold yourself back, all the things.
15:23
SPEAKER_00: But Those that are armed with a deep understanding and appreciation
15:28
SPEAKER_00: of our literature and our philosophy and sociology and a couple
15:32
SPEAKER_00: of those humanity era classes and fields that maybe were scoffed at and,
15:41
SPEAKER_00: oh, you don't want to get a job.
15:42
SPEAKER_00: What are you going to do with a degree like that?
15:46
SPEAKER_00: Well, I think that folks that are proficient and can go two, three,
15:50
SPEAKER_00: four layers deep in that kind of stuff,
15:52
SPEAKER_00: Are going to be the ones that really thrive in the new economy with the kind
15:55
SPEAKER_00: of tools that are here and they're just going to get more powerful.
16:00
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
16:02
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
16:02
SPEAKER_02: Wow.
16:03
SPEAKER_02: I hope that's true.
16:04
SPEAKER_02: I would love to see AI taking over,
16:09
SPEAKER_02: you know,
16:10
SPEAKER_02: tasks like coding so that people can devote their brainpower to more fulfilling,
16:16
SPEAKER_02: creative, humanitarian pursuits, etc.
16:18
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
16:21
SPEAKER_02: And at the same time,
16:24
SPEAKER_02: word on the streets is that humanities departments are closing left,
16:31
SPEAKER_02: right, and center in universities.
16:33
SPEAKER_02: Funding is being cut.
16:34
SPEAKER_02: You know,
16:35
SPEAKER_02: when I was getting my MFA,
16:38
SPEAKER_02: just as I was leaving,
16:40
SPEAKER_02: they were shifting the MFA creative writing department to now be a BFA department.
16:48
SPEAKER_02: Department predominantly, and the professors were talking about what that means.
16:55
SPEAKER_02: Now we're teaching 18-year-olds instead of people who want to be professional writers.
17:02
SPEAKER_02: And just this past year, I saw that the university cut funding for the literary journal.
17:09
SPEAKER_02: And so people who wanted to keep the journal alive were having to try to crowdsource
17:14
SPEAKER_02: and Find grants, which of course is harder to do in this day and age.
17:18
SPEAKER_02: So it's like we're in this real odd situation where on
17:25
SPEAKER_02: the one hand there's what you just said about the revenge of the humanities, right?
17:31
SPEAKER_02: Quoting Sam Harris and what seems to be playing out in other arenas.
17:41
SPEAKER_02: I don't know.
17:42
SPEAKER_02: And then, okay, as writers, as individual writers, what does that mean for us?
17:47
SPEAKER_02: We were just recording with another guest who was talking about attention span
17:52
SPEAKER_02: of people and skim reading and multitasking being on your phone
17:58
SPEAKER_02: while you're also consuming media and such.
18:03
SPEAKER_02: And I wonder if the world of I don't know, what do you two think?
18:38
SPEAKER_00: Let's double click on the reading component.
18:41
SPEAKER_00: I think that we're right around the corner.
18:45
SPEAKER_00: In a lot of ways, we're really close and maybe already there in some aspects.
18:50
SPEAKER_00: But we're going to have legitimate science that showcases being
18:57
SPEAKER_00: on your screen doesn't make you happy.
18:59
SPEAKER_00: Being on your screen makes you anxious.
19:02
SPEAKER_00: Being on your screen does not derive the kind of fulfillment that That diving into
19:07
SPEAKER_00: a good book does.
19:09
SPEAKER_00: And when we can really quantify that, I think that the dial will move.
19:14
SPEAKER_00: I really do.
19:15
SPEAKER_00: I have a couple of younger nieces that aren't.
19:18
SPEAKER_00: Gen Zers.
19:19
SPEAKER_00: They're what they call Alpha Gen.
19:21
SPEAKER_00: And they're like 11 and 13, and they're already talking about that kind of stuff.
19:25
SPEAKER_00: And it's really, really heartening to me.
19:27
SPEAKER_00: Granted, they're exceptional.
19:29
SPEAKER_00: They're ahead of their class and stuff like that.
19:31
SPEAKER_00: So I always say be careful about believing something just because you want it to be true.
19:37
SPEAKER_00: But I do see a pushback with all this mega tech and going back to a lot of things
19:42
SPEAKER_00: that we know are so much better for the human brain.
19:46
SPEAKER_00: They're so much better for our serotonin levels.
19:48
SPEAKER_00: They're so much better for our endorphins and our overall happiness and fulfillment
19:51
SPEAKER_00: and all the things.
19:53
SPEAKER_00: So from a reading standpoint, that's where I like to hang my hat.
19:57
SPEAKER_00: Again, that can be quite hopeful,
20:01
SPEAKER_00: especially when you see these kids just get locked into their screens at such
20:05
SPEAKER_00: a young age and you know the kind of damage that's doing to them.
20:09
SPEAKER_00: I like to reference the book by Jonathan Haidt,
20:11
SPEAKER_00: The Anxious Generation, a lot,
20:13
SPEAKER_00: because I think it shined a light on a huge problem that we created,
20:17
SPEAKER_00: especially for our young ones,
20:18
SPEAKER_00: starting in about 2010 when social media and the smartphone converged,
20:22
SPEAKER_00: and we all entered this sociological experiment with nobody really signing up
20:26
SPEAKER_00: for it.
20:27
SPEAKER_00: But I'll cede the floor to Kathryn.
20:29
SPEAKER_00: That's kind of where I, that's where I owned on the reading component.
20:33
SPEAKER_02: Well, I like hearing about your nieces.
20:36
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, they're fantastic.
20:37
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
20:39
SPEAKER_01: And I think there is that pushback.
20:41
SPEAKER_01: And we were talking before we started recording about your book being unique
20:45
SPEAKER_01: because it looks forward in a way that is hopeful, you know, and not as dystopic.
20:51
SPEAKER_01: And I would love to go into that a little bit because I think...
20:54
SPEAKER_01: This conversation is something where we all want to be hopeful.
20:58
SPEAKER_01: We all want to see the light at the end of the tunnel where we're like,
21:01
SPEAKER_01: people will see this,
21:03
SPEAKER_01: this thing that we all sort of know,
21:04
SPEAKER_01: but we're all addicted to these screens and addicted to the dopamine hits and,
21:09
SPEAKER_01: you know, all these things that they're programming us to want.
21:13
SPEAKER_01: Because of the way that technology and algorithms work.
21:17
SPEAKER_01: So I would love to dive into using fiction as a way to look forward with hope rather
21:23
SPEAKER_01: than looking forward with, like you talked about earlier, the dystopian side of it.
21:27
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, no, I love that.
21:28
SPEAKER_00: And that's where I spent most of my time when I was cooking up this story.
21:31
SPEAKER_00: I didn't want it to be like, oh, the blue team won and we did all this progressive stuff.
21:36
SPEAKER_00: And that's why it's a great future.
21:38
SPEAKER_00: Or no, the red team won and we're conservative America again and that's why it's great.
21:42
SPEAKER_00: That's boring to me.
21:43
SPEAKER_00: And that's going to alienate 50% of your readers and most especially as a writer, super boring.
21:49
SPEAKER_00: I wanted to think of it like a chess match and really think like what would have
21:54
SPEAKER_00: to happen for us to get out of this mess and really be hitting the cover off
21:58
SPEAKER_00: the ball,
21:58
SPEAKER_00: especially with the new generation that's coming up,
22:01
SPEAKER_00: this alpha gen and what comes behind them.
22:03
SPEAKER_00: And where I landed is And the through line of God bless you, Mr.
22:07
SPEAKER_00: Trump is this,
22:09
SPEAKER_00: that starting in the early 2030s,
22:14
SPEAKER_00: an entire generation of little boys and girls are given the legitimate opportunity
22:19
SPEAKER_00: to be instilled with the kind of what I like to call a Carl Sagan-esque wonder
22:25
SPEAKER_00: about existence and the cosmos and the consequence, the corollary is an explosion.
22:32
SPEAKER_00: And creativity,
22:33
SPEAKER_00: problem-solving,
22:34
SPEAKER_00: and harmony that make the Enlightenment look like a day at the beach.
22:37
SPEAKER_00: That's the through line.
22:39
SPEAKER_00: That's this foundation of my positive, idyllic future in the final hours of 2049.
22:45
SPEAKER_00: And it's paid for by the richest people on the planet,
22:50
SPEAKER_00: or the richest people in the country, in a self-imposed additional tax.
22:56
SPEAKER_02: Wow, what a great premise.
23:00
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
23:01
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
23:02
SPEAKER_01: Let's hope it comes to fruition.
23:04
SPEAKER_01: Problem solving.
23:06
SPEAKER_01: I mean, come on.
23:08
SPEAKER_01: Yes.
23:09
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
23:09
SPEAKER_01: Like a whole generation of genius.
23:12
SPEAKER_02: That's so cool.
23:13
SPEAKER_00: And they use all these tools productively.
23:17
SPEAKER_00: A lot of things just get solved when you have that kind of perspective.
23:22
SPEAKER_00: I really believe that.
23:23
SPEAKER_00: And Carl Sagan and Sam Harris are the two guys that I dedicated the book to.
23:28
SPEAKER_00: I always say Carl is my Inspiration for the external and the outward thinking of the cosmos.
23:34
SPEAKER_00: Sam is more on the internal and how to live and examine life and just meditating
23:44
SPEAKER_00: and all the stuff that's more internal.
23:45
SPEAKER_00: But those two had more of an impact on this story,
23:49
SPEAKER_00: my own podcast and my work moving forward than anybody else.
23:53
SPEAKER_00: And that blend is how I came to formulate this.
23:59
SPEAKER_00: It's going to have an impact on the parents, too, going through it.
24:03
SPEAKER_00: And I really think it would solve so many of our problems if what Carl always wrote about,
24:19
SPEAKER_00: Calling it the cosmological perspective.
24:21
SPEAKER_00: Having just a one or two layer deep appreciation for what we know about our story
24:26
SPEAKER_00: as homo sapiens.
24:27
SPEAKER_00: For what we know about our story being in this vast galaxy that has billions
24:34
SPEAKER_00: upon billions of more galaxies.
24:35
SPEAKER_00: It really is incredible when you have,
24:38
SPEAKER_00: like I said,
24:39
SPEAKER_00: just a one or two layer deep appreciation and understanding of that knowledge and
24:44
SPEAKER_00: that story.
24:46
SPEAKER_02: We love talking about theme on this podcast, one of our favorite topics.
24:52
SPEAKER_02: So this is a deeply theme-driven story you're describing.
24:59
SPEAKER_02: What challenges did you find as you were writing it?
25:07
SPEAKER_02: If you're serious about your craft and ready to take your writing to the next level,
25:13
SPEAKER_02: check out Word Essential.
25:16
SPEAKER_02: That's my home for developmental editing,
25:18
SPEAKER_02: writer's coaching,
25:19
SPEAKER_02: and workshops tailored for serious writers of fiction and nonfiction.
25:25
SPEAKER_02: Whether you're drafting your first book or polishing your fifth,
25:29
SPEAKER_02: I bring decades of experience to the table as a published,
25:34
SPEAKER_02: award-winning author, teacher, and editor.
25:38
SPEAKER_02: I work one-on-one with writers to dig deep into story, structure, and craft.
25:45
SPEAKER_02: So if you're looking for expert guidance that's both insightful and actionable,
25:50
SPEAKER_02: head to wordessential.com and let's talk
25:54
SPEAKER_02: about how I can help you reach your writing goals.
26:02
SPEAKER_00: Well, Bert, So I started it in March of 2018.
26:06
SPEAKER_00: It comes out in April of 2026.
26:08
SPEAKER_00: So it's an eight-year journey.
26:10
SPEAKER_00: A lot of the back end of that was going through the editing process from a legitimate publisher.
26:17
SPEAKER_00: It wasn't done through Amazon.
26:18
SPEAKER_00: It took a lot longer than I was anticipating, but certainly made the story much sharper.
26:22
SPEAKER_00: I bring that up because I did have what we were going through, electing a carnival barking...
26:33
SPEAKER_00: Badman to the most powerful office in the world.
26:37
SPEAKER_00: And how the heck could we do that?
26:39
SPEAKER_00: So for the first 90 percent, how man, 95 percent of the story's life, there was.
26:47
SPEAKER_00: The story was like 80 percent narrative,
26:50
SPEAKER_00: but 20 percent interspersed within every I'd say five or six chapters,
26:54
SPEAKER_00: there would be what I call the letter from the citizen.
26:58
SPEAKER_00: And it would you didn't know anything about the citizen.
27:01
SPEAKER_00: You didn't know if they're male or female.
27:02
SPEAKER_00: You didn't know if they're rich or poor, black or white, old or young.
27:06
SPEAKER_00: You only knew if they were big time supporters of the president or big time detractors.
27:11
SPEAKER_00: That's the one thing that you knew from this letter that you got.
27:14
SPEAKER_00: And it would be like a two or three page letter.
27:16
SPEAKER_00: And it would describe certain things that had happened since 2020.
27:20
SPEAKER_00: And I was trying to do that by having it balanced because,
27:24
SPEAKER_00: again, tying it back to having a controversial or provocative title.
27:29
SPEAKER_00: But in the end,
27:30
SPEAKER_00: my editor drove home a point to me that really stuck because he was trying
27:37
SPEAKER_00: to tell me, he's like, hey, this is bogging down the story.
27:40
SPEAKER_00: It's going to confuse the reader.
27:42
SPEAKER_00: It's slowing things down.
27:43
SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, no, no, no.
27:44
SPEAKER_00: It has to be in there because of this, this, this, and this.
27:47
SPEAKER_00: But then he framed it.
27:47
SPEAKER_00: He's like, Jesse, think of it as you're a builder.
27:52
SPEAKER_00: You're in construction.
27:54
SPEAKER_00: The letters from a citizen's chapters, they were scaffolding.
27:57
SPEAKER_00: And guess what?
27:58
SPEAKER_00: We've been working on this thing together for the last nine months now.
28:01
SPEAKER_00: The story's ready.
28:02
SPEAKER_00: Are you going to build a beautiful building and leave the scaffolding up?
28:05
SPEAKER_00: Of course not.
28:06
SPEAKER_00: Get them out of there.
28:08
SPEAKER_00: So that was a big challenge.
28:09
SPEAKER_00: I don't know if Stephen King was the one that coined the term,
28:13
SPEAKER_00: but I'm sure as writers you've heard, be willing to kill your darlings.
28:18
SPEAKER_00: Well, this was a big deal for me because I loved my letters from a citizen shepherd.
28:21
SPEAKER_00: I took so much time to write them and I thought they were interweaved within
28:24
SPEAKER_00: the story perfectly.
28:26
SPEAKER_00: But I had two or three people read it when I was making that final decision.
28:30
SPEAKER_00: People that I really trusted, my mom being one of them, and they kind of told me the same thing.
28:35
SPEAKER_00: Like, you got a good story here.
28:36
SPEAKER_00: These letters from the citizen chapters,
28:37
SPEAKER_00: put them on your website or, you know, do something with them in the future.
28:40
SPEAKER_00: You don't need them for your novel.
28:44
SPEAKER_01: But it sounds like it was good for you thematically as an exploration of how
28:48
SPEAKER_01: that was going to work out.
28:49
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
28:49
SPEAKER_00: And as a guy that doesn't like our president, didn't when I was writing these original drafts.
28:56
SPEAKER_00: As a writer,
28:57
SPEAKER_00: it was so much fun to try to be in the skin of somebody that really appreciates him
29:03
SPEAKER_00: and thinks that he's this John Wayne,
29:05
SPEAKER_00: Ronald Reagan,
29:06
SPEAKER_00: you know,
29:07
SPEAKER_00: bravado kind of figure that we need and write it from a really genuine,
29:11
SPEAKER_00: authentic sense.
29:14
SPEAKER_00: It was challenging, but it was a lot of fun.
29:17
SPEAKER_00: Another reason why I was reticent to scrap him in the end, but I'm certainly glad I did.
29:25
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, so challenging but fun.
29:28
SPEAKER_02: I want to hear a little more about that process going from your headspace,
29:35
SPEAKER_02: which has a very fixed,
29:38
SPEAKER_02: you know,
29:38
SPEAKER_02: opinion on this figure to the headspace of someone with the opposite opinion
29:45
SPEAKER_02: and making it sincere and genuine on the page, you know.
29:52
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
29:53
SPEAKER_02: And what would you say to writers who are thinking, oh, that sounds interesting.
29:57
SPEAKER_02: That might help with my novel.
29:58
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
29:59
SPEAKER_00: No, that's a great question.
30:00
SPEAKER_00: And I don't like to use the cliche,
30:02
SPEAKER_00: great question,
30:03
SPEAKER_00: but I've been thinking about that and I'm glad that you brought it up.
30:07
SPEAKER_00: I'm going to take a page from another guy that's been an influence to me.
30:11
SPEAKER_00: And it's not that I agree with him on everything.
30:13
SPEAKER_00: I just think he's one of the few out there that's trying
30:15
SPEAKER_00: to have Genuine conversations with both sides.
30:19
SPEAKER_00: And Bill Maher always says, like, you can hate Donald Trump for all the reasons, right?
30:24
SPEAKER_00: You can look at him and just be like, wow, like, what an awful vile figure.
30:28
SPEAKER_00: But you can't do that to his supporters because so many of them are supporting him
30:35
SPEAKER_00: for legitimate reasons because they think that the blue team side
30:38
SPEAKER_00: of politics has gone crazy or whatever reason.
30:41
SPEAKER_00: But you can't be one of these folks that, okay,
30:44
SPEAKER_00: you don't like the president,
30:45
SPEAKER_00: but you can't, like,
30:47
SPEAKER_00: You can't dislike somebody for supporting someone in particular,
30:50
SPEAKER_00: especially in a time where, again,
30:53
SPEAKER_00: the nuance and the subtlety of culture has just been wiped away with these absolutes
30:57
SPEAKER_00: and these silos that we live in.
30:59
SPEAKER_00: So from that standpoint, that's what I would say.
31:02
SPEAKER_00: But more overarching in terms of challenging but fun, don't take yourself so seriously.
31:12
SPEAKER_00: Just step back and let it rip.
31:15
SPEAKER_00: And then The advice that I'd give to anybody is like,
31:18
SPEAKER_00: don't be scared to read stuff where you know you're going to disagree.
31:23
SPEAKER_00: As soon as he got elected, I read J.D.
31:25
SPEAKER_00: Vance's Hillbilly Elegy.
31:27
SPEAKER_02: I can't stand J.D.
31:28
SPEAKER_00: Vance.
31:29
SPEAKER_00: He's the first elected official that high of office of my generation.
31:37
SPEAKER_00: I've been waiting for somebody in my generation to come along and see what they got forever.
31:42
SPEAKER_00: Not forever, but you know what I mean.
31:45
SPEAKER_00: And You hear this guy comes along who wrote a pretty darn good book in 2016,
31:49
SPEAKER_00: who disparages the president at every turn.
31:52
SPEAKER_00: And then I would say he's like political tofu.
31:55
SPEAKER_00: He takes on the flavor of whatever the particular room is at the time.
32:01
SPEAKER_00: But my point is, my point is, don't just read stuff when you know you're going to agree with it.
32:07
SPEAKER_00: Don't just listen to podcasts where it's just going
32:10
SPEAKER_00: to be like social media is just going to be reinforcing your biases,
32:13
SPEAKER_00: reinforcing your Already hardened beliefs.
32:16
SPEAKER_00: Now, that's not to say to go off and, you know, like, I don't like Candace Owens.
32:19
SPEAKER_00: I think she's crazy.
32:20
SPEAKER_00: I'm not going to waste my time listening to somebody who just espouses lies
32:24
SPEAKER_00: and just absolute madness at every turn.
32:27
SPEAKER_00: But there's enough content out there,
32:29
SPEAKER_00: everybody knows that,
32:30
SPEAKER_00: where you can go out there and find stuff that you know, boy,
32:33
SPEAKER_00: this is really going to butt heads with a lot of my belief structure and a lot
32:37
SPEAKER_00: of my ideas.
32:38
SPEAKER_00: It's good for you.
32:40
SPEAKER_00: It's good for you.
32:40
SPEAKER_00: I don't think we do that enough.
32:42
SPEAKER_02: Mm-hmm.
32:43
SPEAKER_02: Well, and I think as writers,
32:45
SPEAKER_02: it's important to approach things with an open mind and to be receptive
32:53
SPEAKER_02: to different viewpoints,
32:55
SPEAKER_02: you know, because we have to write protagonists and antagonists.
33:01
SPEAKER_02: We have to write conflict.
33:03
SPEAKER_02: That is the engine of our story.
33:06
SPEAKER_02: And so if we want to have characters who Well said.
33:10
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
33:10
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
33:27
SPEAKER_01: I think if you never push on your beliefs, how do you know what you actually believe?
33:33
SPEAKER_01: And I like that what you said,
33:35
SPEAKER_01: your response to what would you say to other writers
33:38
SPEAKER_01: about writing stuff like this was,
33:39
SPEAKER_01: go do research, go experience, go listen to things, go read things.
33:45
SPEAKER_01: And you said, I don't like this guy.
33:46
SPEAKER_01: I read his book.
33:47
SPEAKER_01: And I love that because I feel like that's really good advice that we don't always hear.
33:52
SPEAKER_01: It's like, Find that push point.
33:55
SPEAKER_01: Where have I never questioned?
33:57
SPEAKER_01: And don't just say, oh, I'll just write from a different perspective.
34:00
SPEAKER_01: It's, well, what is that perspective?
34:02
SPEAKER_01: And if I don't know it, I got to go find it.
34:05
SPEAKER_01: So, yeah.
34:07
SPEAKER_00: I'll use a quick example.
34:08
SPEAKER_00: And this isn't from a book standpoint, but a podcast.
34:12
SPEAKER_00: There's a Brilliant podcast out there right now called The Last Invention
34:16
SPEAKER_00: and it dives deep into the backstory of AI, where we're headed.
34:20
SPEAKER_00: It gives the perspectives of the accelerationists and the doomers and the scouts.
34:24
SPEAKER_00: I don't want to get into all the nuance,
34:25
SPEAKER_00: but the guy I spent some time with last week in Oregon,
34:30
SPEAKER_00: at one point in his life, he really thought Steve Bannon was the devil incarnate.
34:35
SPEAKER_00: And then he heard Steve Bannon on this podcast and You know,
34:38
SPEAKER_00: Graham, we're not talking about everything, but we're talking about AI safety.
34:41
SPEAKER_00: We're talking about guardrails.
34:42
SPEAKER_00: We're talking about trying to think around the corner so this thing doesn't get away with us.
34:46
SPEAKER_00: And it was almost cartoonish insofar as his jaw was on the floor.
34:52
SPEAKER_00: And he couldn't believe this guy that he, again,
34:55
SPEAKER_00: going back to his social media algorithms,
34:58
SPEAKER_00: had been convinced that he was like the destructor, the antichrist.
35:03
SPEAKER_00: And here he is on this 90-minute podcast podcast.
35:05
SPEAKER_00: Um, espousing ideas and beliefs about this one particular challenge and issue of AI.
35:10
SPEAKER_00: And he's in agreement with 100% of everything that Steve Bannon's saying.
35:14
SPEAKER_00: Again, goes back to knock down these silos, knock down these barriers.
35:20
SPEAKER_00: We're all in this together.
35:23
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
35:24
SPEAKER_01: And it sounds like when you were writing your book,
35:26
SPEAKER_01: you're very much focused on the humanity of it, right?
35:28
SPEAKER_01: Just humanity rather than on trying to pick any given side.
35:33
SPEAKER_00: Right.
35:35
SPEAKER_00: Very much so.
35:36
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
35:38
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
35:38
SPEAKER_02: So tell us about your influences.
35:42
SPEAKER_02: I know you already mentioned Kurt Vonnegut,
35:44
SPEAKER_02: and I think you mentioned Hemingway and Kerouac in your
35:48
SPEAKER_02: in your pre-show conversation.
35:52
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
35:55
SPEAKER_00: When I first got into writing, I only read novels.
35:59
SPEAKER_00: Because I thought, this is what I'm trying to do.
36:01
SPEAKER_00: This is where I'm going to spend my time.
36:03
SPEAKER_00: And that was really short-sighted and foolhardy.
36:09
SPEAKER_00: A conversation I had years ago has still influenced me to this day.
36:16
SPEAKER_00: And I don't know the gentleman's name.
36:18
SPEAKER_00: It was before I had Facebook.
36:20
SPEAKER_00: It was before I had a smartphone.
36:23
SPEAKER_00: But I'll never forget it because we were in downtown San Diego.
36:27
SPEAKER_00: And a buddy of mine and I,
36:28
SPEAKER_00: we were single at the time,
36:29
SPEAKER_00: so we were running around having a fun little nightlife in the Gaslamp District.
36:35
SPEAKER_00: And I ran into this guy and we started talking.
36:38
SPEAKER_00: And as soon as it was like,
36:39
SPEAKER_00: you know how it goes,
36:40
SPEAKER_00: you meet a fellow writer,
36:41
SPEAKER_00: you get posted up in the corner,
36:42
SPEAKER_00: you're smoking cigarettes, you're drinking beer, you're telling stories.
36:46
SPEAKER_00: And I'll never forget him when he asked me the question.
36:49
SPEAKER_00: He said, so how many do you put down every year?
36:52
SPEAKER_00: Asking me how many books I write.
36:53
SPEAKER_00: I'm like, oh, you know, I read three, four, five books a year.
36:55
SPEAKER_00: He's like, get out of here.
36:57
SPEAKER_00: You've been babbling for the last half hour.
36:59
SPEAKER_00: You're not serious.
37:00
SPEAKER_00: You're just a joke, man.
37:01
SPEAKER_00: It's like,
37:02
SPEAKER_00: if you're going to be a good writer,
37:04
SPEAKER_00: you've got to read a minimum of 12, 15 good books every year.
37:08
SPEAKER_00: And it can't just be fiction.
37:09
SPEAKER_00: So what do you smoke it?
37:11
SPEAKER_00: And I don't know if it was because I took him so seriously based upon his own story
37:17
SPEAKER_00: and what he was telling me that he did.
37:19
SPEAKER_00: But that conversation struck me so hard.
37:23
SPEAKER_00: And ever since then, I'm like, you're right.
37:27
SPEAKER_00: What am I doing?
37:27
SPEAKER_00: I love reading.
37:28
SPEAKER_00: I don't have to watch ESPN every night after work.
37:32
SPEAKER_00: I don't have to go out four nights a week just because I'm in my 20s and I'm making good money.
37:36
SPEAKER_00: No, I want to do this and I want to be serious about it.
37:39
SPEAKER_00: So a kind of long-winded answer to your question,
37:42
SPEAKER_00: shortly after that,
37:43
SPEAKER_00: I put in a habit that I haven't changed to this day,
37:46
SPEAKER_00: that I'll never read two novels back to back.
37:49
SPEAKER_00: Everything I read, I read novel, nonfiction, novel, nonfiction.
37:52
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't matter if I'm reading the world's greatest trilogy or series and it leads
37:57
SPEAKER_00: on a cliffhanger and I got to know it doesn't matter.
37:59
SPEAKER_00: The next book is going to be nonfiction.
38:01
SPEAKER_00: And in the intervening years,
38:04
SPEAKER_00: I would say that more folks in the mold of Sam Harris,
38:09
SPEAKER_00: Richard Dawkins,
38:10
SPEAKER_00: Yuval Harari,
38:12
SPEAKER_00: certainly Carl Sagan have become way more influential to me in my work than
38:18
SPEAKER_00: the novelists.
38:19
SPEAKER_00: But from a novelist standpoint,
38:20
SPEAKER_00: because that's still where I spend my time,
38:24
SPEAKER_00: I've gotten recently introduced to Ken Follett.
38:26
SPEAKER_00: And I read The Pillars of the Earth just last month,
38:29
SPEAKER_00: and that was a book that was like,
38:30
SPEAKER_00: I don't even know why I'm ever going to write another sentence again.
38:32
SPEAKER_00: Because, like, cheesy Pete's, you talk about beauty on the page.
38:37
SPEAKER_00: Like, that guy is something else.
38:41
SPEAKER_00: But I would be remiss if I didn't mention that From chapter titles,
38:47
SPEAKER_00: a couple different phrases,
38:49
SPEAKER_00: a couple pieces of, you know, some subtlety and some scenery in my story.
38:56
SPEAKER_00: George R. R.
38:57
SPEAKER_00: Martin's Song of Ice and Fire was a huge influence,
39:00
SPEAKER_00: an absolutely enormous influence.
39:02
SPEAKER_00: And here's why.
39:03
SPEAKER_00: Every time,
39:04
SPEAKER_00: so for the listeners,
39:06
SPEAKER_00: just to be sure,
39:06
SPEAKER_00: the Song of Ice and Fire is the series that spawned Game of Thrones.
39:12
SPEAKER_00: Every time you see a big episode, Whether it's Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, the Marvel movies.
39:18
SPEAKER_00: Think of anything that's big on an epic scale.
39:21
SPEAKER_00: You know who the good guys are.
39:22
SPEAKER_00: You know who the bad guys are.
39:24
SPEAKER_00: It's the Jedi's against the stormtroopers.
39:26
SPEAKER_00: It's the men against the orcs.
39:28
SPEAKER_00: Not in this story.
39:30
SPEAKER_00: Not in this story.
39:31
SPEAKER_00: At the end of Act 1, which is Season 2 of the show in Book 2, there's a huge battle.
39:37
SPEAKER_00: And the generals,
39:39
SPEAKER_00: or the guy who thinks he should be king,
39:41
SPEAKER_00: is coming into King's Landing to take it over.
39:44
SPEAKER_00: And I'll never forget it.
39:45
SPEAKER_00: I watched it before I read it, but I've read it as well.
39:50
SPEAKER_01: You don't know who you're rooting for.
39:52
SPEAKER_00: It's the end of this epic act one where they beheaded the main character in one of
39:57
SPEAKER_00: the most jaw-dropping scenes in the history of television.
40:00
SPEAKER_00: And this is the consequence.
40:01
SPEAKER_00: This is the comeuppance.
40:03
SPEAKER_00: And there's folks on both sides you want to see die.
40:06
SPEAKER_00: And there's folks on both sides that you want to see be the hero.
40:09
SPEAKER_00: And I've never seen that before.
40:11
SPEAKER_00: So that was a lot of his work.
40:14
SPEAKER_00: And a lot of his ideas,
40:16
SPEAKER_00: I think folks that have read it or appreciate Game of Thrones and that take the time
40:20
SPEAKER_00: to read God Bless You, Mr. Trump will come away seeing that.
40:23
SPEAKER_00: So sorry, I wanted to answer your question, but I did want to get on all those points.
40:28
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, no, that's a great answer.
40:30
SPEAKER_02: Hmm.
40:39
SPEAKER_01: This is our thoughtful.
40:40
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you made us think.
40:42
SPEAKER_01: I guess that's good about we're talking about thought provoking fiction.
40:45
SPEAKER_01: You're making us think so.
40:47
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
40:49
SPEAKER_01: Yes.
40:49
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
40:53
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
40:53
SPEAKER_02: I think fiction without black hats and white hats is important.
40:59
SPEAKER_02: You know, it's interesting.
41:01
SPEAKER_02: You said you never saw it before.
41:04
SPEAKER_02: In that
41:06
SPEAKER_01: epic, yeah.
41:07
SPEAKER_02: Yeah,
41:08
SPEAKER_02: there's certainly other stories where you have an antagonistic force instead of
41:12
SPEAKER_02: a true antagonist, you know, a true villain.
41:16
SPEAKER_02: And that force, of course, expresses through characters and through action and such.
41:24
SPEAKER_02: I wonder if this...
41:27
SPEAKER_02: That type of story with good guys and bad guys on both sides
41:33
SPEAKER_02: that you were just describing with Martin's work is more important than ever today
41:41
SPEAKER_02: because of the world we live in,
41:43
SPEAKER_02: which we've been discussing because of that polarization in those echo chambers.
41:48
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
41:49
SPEAKER_00: Piction is the place where you explore humanity.
41:52
SPEAKER_00: It drives me nuts when my friends tell me that...
41:55
SPEAKER_00: Well, why would you waste your time just coming up with stories that never happened before?
41:58
SPEAKER_00: There's been billions and billions of stuff that's happened on planet Earth
42:01
SPEAKER_00: since we, why don't you just pull from that?
42:04
SPEAKER_00: It's like, come on, man.
42:06
SPEAKER_00: Human imagination is the most powerful tool that the universe,
42:09
SPEAKER_00: that the known universe is aware of.
42:12
SPEAKER_00: And this is the place where we can, you know, frame something and then strive to get there.
42:17
SPEAKER_00: That's kind of what my podcast is about.
42:19
SPEAKER_00: I mentioned at the jump that I didn't want to bog down the story in exposition.
42:23
SPEAKER_00: I wanted to be a page turning character driven story with these big sub themes
42:28
SPEAKER_00: and pots behind it.
42:30
SPEAKER_00: But I use my podcast to explore.
42:33
SPEAKER_00: I bring on subject matter experts in any particular field or industry.
42:39
SPEAKER_00: And we just talk for an hour or so about how that particular world,
42:43
SPEAKER_00: how that particular line of work or arena can be vastly improved in 10 or 20 years.
42:49
SPEAKER_00: A lot of times,
42:50
SPEAKER_00: don't worry about the bureaucratic systems,
42:52
SPEAKER_00: don't worry about the infrastructure,
42:54
SPEAKER_00: don't worry about how hard it would actually be to do it.
42:56
SPEAKER_00: Let's just talk about, let's imagine it, and then we can back into all the other stuff.
43:01
SPEAKER_00: And to me, that's one of the best uses of fiction.
43:08
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I couldn't agree more.
43:12
SPEAKER_02: What else?
43:14
SPEAKER_02: What haven't we touched on thinking about thought-provoking fiction
43:20
SPEAKER_02: and its relevance in today's world that we want to make sure we get
43:24
SPEAKER_02: into this episode?
43:27
SPEAKER_00: One more thing from my standpoint on that particular question, topic, whatever.
43:37
SPEAKER_00: A timeline.
43:39
SPEAKER_00: I'm really...
43:41
SPEAKER_00: I'm intrigued and I'm concerned about this timeline.
43:43
SPEAKER_00: And when I say the timeline, I'm talking about the story of us, the story of humanity.
43:47
SPEAKER_00: And I think about the big,
43:49
SPEAKER_00: huge things,
43:50
SPEAKER_00: innovations,
43:51
SPEAKER_00: inventions,
43:53
SPEAKER_00: leaps forward that have occurred that have gotten us to where we are now.
43:57
SPEAKER_00: And I think back to fire 200,000 years ago,
44:00
SPEAKER_00: plus or minus a few thousand years based upon what anthropologists you might talk
44:04
SPEAKER_00: to.
44:05
SPEAKER_00: And then it's on a timeline that's Literally tens of thousands of years later,
44:10
SPEAKER_00: and then we get agriculture.
44:12
SPEAKER_00: That's a few thousand years later, and we get the written word.
44:15
SPEAKER_00: And then we get the industrial revolution.
44:18
SPEAKER_00: And then we get the nuclear revolution.
44:22
SPEAKER_00: And then the digital.
44:23
SPEAKER_00: And it just keeps getting smaller and smaller and smaller to the point where we're
44:27
SPEAKER_00: at right now with AI and AGI on deck.
44:32
SPEAKER_00: Again, depending upon who you talk to.
44:35
SPEAKER_00: So when you're writing a book about the future,
44:37
SPEAKER_00: I don't think it's ever been more challenging, right?
44:40
SPEAKER_00: And I'm not just saying that because look at me, I did it.
44:42
SPEAKER_00: I'm saying like to really think critically and hard about what two decades from now
44:48
SPEAKER_00: or a quarter century now might look like when we've had these huge milestones go
44:53
SPEAKER_00: from thousands of years in between to now, I mean,
44:57
SPEAKER_00: depending upon when you mark the start of the digital revolution to the point of
45:02
SPEAKER_00: the internet and then the smartphone and now where we're at with commercial AI.
45:07
SPEAKER_00: It's coming down to months.
45:10
SPEAKER_00: So that was something I really wanted to do my best to wrap my head around and,
45:15
SPEAKER_00: again,
45:16
SPEAKER_00: play it like chess and not just have it cliched where,
45:20
SPEAKER_00: you know,
45:22
SPEAKER_00: progressive politics won,
45:23
SPEAKER_00: conservative politics won,
45:24
SPEAKER_00: or we did this with the tax system, or we did this with, eh, it's boring.
45:28
SPEAKER_00: I wanted to think about, like, what could we do?
45:31
SPEAKER_00: What seed could we plant?
45:33
SPEAKER_00: That would blossom into something that would really move the dial in a significant way.
45:38
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
45:40
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
45:40
SPEAKER_02: So given all of that,
45:42
SPEAKER_02: did you write much about technology and technological innovation
45:47
SPEAKER_02: in your futuristic story?
45:49
SPEAKER_02: Or did you really focus on humanity and the idea of genius and creativity transforming?
45:57
SPEAKER_00: So I have a really good friend.
46:00
SPEAKER_00: He was a writer.
46:02
SPEAKER_00: He actually wrote the definitive book about the post-Columbine tragedy,
46:06
SPEAKER_00: but he also dabbles in screenplays,
46:10
SPEAKER_00: and he was a stage actor himself,
46:13
SPEAKER_00: and he wrote this beautiful screenplay that got turned from a stage play into
46:18
SPEAKER_00: an actual feature film, two-hour-length feature film, and it goes like...
46:25
SPEAKER_00: Young married couple, you don't know what year it is.
46:28
SPEAKER_00: You just know it's the somewhat distant future.
46:30
SPEAKER_00: And something happens to her.
46:32
SPEAKER_00: I can't remember if it was an accident or an illness, but she falls into a coma.
46:36
SPEAKER_00: And the husband is given the choice by this,
46:39
SPEAKER_00: you know,
46:40
SPEAKER_00: kind of like cutting edge tech company that nobody knows about
46:44
SPEAKER_00: where they can extrapolate all her memories,
46:46
SPEAKER_00: all of her synapses,
46:48
SPEAKER_00: everything that makes her her,
46:49
SPEAKER_00: and then upload it into a synthetic version of herself.
46:52
SPEAKER_00: So I tell that story because Rob Merritt,
46:55
SPEAKER_00: who was the writer and producer on it,
46:58
SPEAKER_00: he came on the podcast and we were talking through it.
47:01
SPEAKER_00: And that question that you just asked came up.
47:04
SPEAKER_00: And I really agree with him.
47:05
SPEAKER_00: There's a fine line from going way deep and getting wonky into the The details of
47:12
SPEAKER_00: the tech and the science versus not giving the reader enough.
47:17
SPEAKER_00: It's that threading that needle, that fine line.
47:19
SPEAKER_00: And I really tried to do that with God Bless You, Mr. Trump.
47:22
SPEAKER_00: I did not want to immerse the reader into all kinds of different tech advancements
47:28
SPEAKER_00: and the dirty detail.
47:30
SPEAKER_00: I didn't want to go that route.
47:32
SPEAKER_00: I look at a writer like Neil Stevenson who does that, but he does it so well.
47:37
SPEAKER_00: That's not what I was trying to do with God Bless You, Mr. Trump.
47:39
SPEAKER_00: I wanted to thread that needle,
47:41
SPEAKER_00: give the reader just enough of what's going on with a couple
47:43
SPEAKER_00: of these big tech advancements to where they can imagine it on their own and come up
47:48
SPEAKER_00: with their own conclusions,
47:49
SPEAKER_00: but also not having to be too vague where they wouldn't understand it.
47:53
SPEAKER_00: So did I do it effectively?
47:56
SPEAKER_00: I think that that's up to any reader critic to decide.
48:01
SPEAKER_02: Mm hmm.
48:02
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
48:03
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I appreciate that answer.
48:05
SPEAKER_02: I think that in thinking about futuristic stories, writers need to pick a lane, right?
48:15
SPEAKER_02: Like take a stand.
48:16
SPEAKER_02: What kind of a story am I telling?
48:18
SPEAKER_02: What kind of questions is a reader going to have?
48:21
SPEAKER_02: Or what assumptions will a reader make about this time, place, and time?
48:26
SPEAKER_02: And how do I want to handle it in regards to Like technology and different advances
48:33
SPEAKER_02: in society,
48:34
SPEAKER_02: the way we live in our homes and what sort of interactions
48:41
SPEAKER_02: and integrations do we have with things.
48:44
SPEAKER_02: And I can see that being a real rabbit hole and a distraction, you know.
48:48
SPEAKER_02: So knowing what your story is about and how you want to handle it makes a ton of sense.
48:54
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
48:55
SPEAKER_00: And just to...
48:57
SPEAKER_00: Again, to double click on that point,
48:59
SPEAKER_00: I wanted it to be seen through the four main characters of the story, right?
49:04
SPEAKER_00: And how these tech advancements have changed the game of life for
49:09
SPEAKER_00: so many folks 25 years into the future,
49:11
SPEAKER_00: but also, again,
49:13
SPEAKER_00: doing it in a way that's not You know,
49:15
SPEAKER_00: I don't need five pages of exposition explaining how the retinal leaf,
49:19
SPEAKER_00: which is a big device in my story, how it works.
49:23
SPEAKER_00: Just give them the major beats and move on and trust the reader
49:26
SPEAKER_00: to be intelligent enough to connect the dots.
49:30
SPEAKER_02: Nice.
49:33
SPEAKER_02: All right.
49:34
SPEAKER_02: Any other thoughts or questions?
49:38
SPEAKER_02: Now, this has been such a great conversation.
49:41
SPEAKER_02: Thank you for joining us today.
49:43
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's been awesome.
49:45
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
49:46
SPEAKER_02: So where can listeners find you, your book, and your podcast?
49:51
SPEAKER_00: So the book is, both of them are available wherever you get your books online.
49:56
SPEAKER_00: With the book, I have to hit a couple sales thresholds to get it into more and more stores.
50:01
SPEAKER_00: So it cascades out as published to Indigo River.
50:07
SPEAKER_00: My website is jessethelming.com, all one word, my first name, last name, dot com.
50:14
SPEAKER_00: The story is available there.
50:15
SPEAKER_00: That's where the podcast is available.
50:16
SPEAKER_00: The podcast is called Only Advance, and it's available wherever you get your podcasts.
50:23
SPEAKER_00: The title comes from,
50:24
SPEAKER_00: we didn't touch on this today,
50:25
SPEAKER_00: but it's another story that inspired a lot of my work,
50:29
SPEAKER_00: and it's one of my favorites, the Three-Body Problems series.
50:32
SPEAKER_00: Remembrance First Past is actually the series named Three-Body Problems, the first story.
50:36
SPEAKER_00: A book in that trilogy was adapted by the Game of Thrones guys.
50:40
SPEAKER_00: That happens to be a total coincidence onto a Netflix show two years ago where
50:45
SPEAKER_00: the next season is going to be pretty remarkable.
50:46
SPEAKER_00: But only advance is a phrase in that story that I really liked and I wanted
50:52
SPEAKER_00: to utilize for the podcast.
50:54
SPEAKER_00: It kind of goes like, no retreat, no surrender, no contingencies, only advance.
50:59
SPEAKER_01: Nice.
51:00
SPEAKER_01: Love it.
51:01
SPEAKER_00: I think I'm about 13 episodes in and I got some really great guests on
51:05
SPEAKER_00: from You know,
51:07
SPEAKER_00: folks that have held an elected office to,
51:11
SPEAKER_00: you know,
51:12
SPEAKER_00: IT and tech company owners and diving into all things AI and what
51:17
SPEAKER_00: the future looks like there.
51:18
SPEAKER_00: But yeah,
51:18
SPEAKER_00: I've had some really great conversations that I invite people to check it out
51:22
SPEAKER_00: if they thought this conversation was worthwhile, which I certainly do.
51:25
SPEAKER_00: And I really appreciate the invite.
51:27
SPEAKER_00: And this last hour has been fantastic.
51:30
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I agree.
51:31
SPEAKER_02: This has been wonderful.
51:35
SPEAKER_02: Want to keep up with my latest thoughts on writing, life, and the writing life?
51:41
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51:44
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51:46
SPEAKER_02: where I share craft insights,
51:48
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51:52
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51:56
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52:02
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52:05
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52:13
SPEAKER_02: Thank you for listening to the Story Works Round Table.
52:17
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