Speaker 1: Is it really so bad for Grandma?
Speaker 2: If she dies?
Speaker 1: Won't you spend eternity in the fields of bliss? Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: we're going to the fields of bliss. But the days
Speaker 1: they're past in frolic most joyousness.
Speaker 2: Just frolicking, that's it.
Speaker 1: Sometimes you wave ribbons through the air, but mainly frolicking.
Speaker 1: Doesn't that get old?
Speaker 3: Welcome to Amusing Jews, where we celebrate Jewish contributors and
Speaker 3: contributions to American popular culture. I'm Jonathan Friedman.
Speaker 1: And I'm Joey Agelfield producer.
Speaker 3: Engineer Mike Tomren is working somewhere behind the scenes. Amusing
Speaker 3: Jews is a project of a Dotchavorine Congregation for Humanistic Judaism,
Speaker 3: the Jewish Museum of the American West, and Atheist United Studios. Joey,
Speaker 3: What if we knew for certain that an afterlife exists
Speaker 3: but only for the genetic few? A new novel by
Speaker 3: Today's Guest explores this question and its dystopian implications.
Speaker 1: We're delighted to talk with Don Scheckter, an author, filmmaker,
Speaker 1: and film and media studies professor at TUTS University. His
Speaker 1: debut novel is Ascendants. Don. Welcome to amusing Jews.
Speaker 2: Thanks for having me, Happy to be here.
Speaker 1: You're a lifelong fan of speculative fiction. What appeals to
Speaker 1: you about the genre? Part of it is just cultural.
Speaker 2: With my family in that I grew up and my
Speaker 2: father and my older brother were watching Star Trek one
Speaker 2: day for a while and I was like, this is
Speaker 2: slow and boring. I don't get it. Can we watch
Speaker 2: something else? And then somehow it's stuck. And I do
Speaker 2: that now with my son as well. Number One, it
Speaker 2: allows us to tell stories about what we're thinking about
Speaker 2: right now. Right, So when you look at sci fi
Speaker 2: throughout history of sci fi, which isn't that long, right,
Speaker 2: one hundred and thirty years or so, you know, you're
Speaker 2: able to look at the stories of sci fi that
Speaker 2: were written at the time and see it as a
Speaker 2: reflection of what people were doing then, or like let's
Speaker 2: go with the Star Trek example, like in the sixties,
Speaker 2: all about the upheaval and societal issues with racism and
Speaker 2: cultural and identity, and allowed you to tell stories in
Speaker 2: a way that wasn't potentially wasn't confrontational to people who
Speaker 2: weren't ready to have those conversations. So you're able to say, oh,
Speaker 2: you know, it's the classic black on white one side,
Speaker 2: white on the other side, and white on one side
Speaker 2: and black, you know that thing. But what it also
Speaker 2: does is it allows society and this is something I've
Speaker 2: been researching and looking at the last few years. It
Speaker 2: allows society to rehearse a potential future. So it's so
Speaker 2: it's not just about what's happening right now in our society,
Speaker 2: or if you look at sci fi from twenty years ago,
Speaker 2: it's about we're where are hidden anxieties and what's coming
Speaker 2: and allows us to say, Okay, if this thing that's
Speaker 2: coming in our future came today, how would we all
Speaker 2: act and behave right? Like you know, And I've been
Speaker 2: charting this sort of This is gonna be a long story, guys,
Speaker 2: but I've been charting this sort of history a research
Speaker 2: project where even going back to like post war so
Speaker 2: post World War two era, like the fifties were all
Speaker 2: about the atomic age, surviving and living in the atomic
Speaker 2: age and about so it was the fear of that
Speaker 2: the atomic bomb coming, and it was the fear of
Speaker 2: in the US of like outside ideology communism coming in
Speaker 2: and disseminating and you know, converting our youth like Invasion
Speaker 2: of the Body Snatchers or something like that. Then in
Speaker 2: the sixties and seventies it moved on to like stories
Speaker 2: about ecological disasters of the future, when they sort of
Speaker 2: planet Earth as a whole became, you know, the beginning
Speaker 2: of like climate change issues, and also about racism and immigration.
Speaker 2: Like I grew up, I was born in seventy nine.
Speaker 2: I grew up with like Alien Nation and like Soling Green,
Speaker 2: and these were things about again an environment and racism.
Speaker 2: Planet of the Apes is all about racism. And then
Speaker 2: what I love is like one of the inspirations for
Speaker 2: my book of Sentence was actually a movie called Strange Days.
Speaker 2: It's all about what happens at the turn of the century,
Speaker 2: and it's about memory and who controls technology, and it
Speaker 2: was I remember, like I even had a job where
Speaker 2: I was compliance for Y two K for a company.
Speaker 2: We thought planes were going to fall out of the sky.
Speaker 2: So for like not a decade, but almost a decade,
Speaker 2: everyone's like, oh my god, the computers are going to collapse.
Speaker 2: The infrastructure that we don't quite understand is going to die, right,
Speaker 2: So then all the stories were kind of about conspiracies
Speaker 2: of infrastructure and y two K fears we survived that
Speaker 2: two thousand came right, and everyone's like, oh, we survived,
Speaker 2: this apocalypse had never happened. Great, So let's go back
Speaker 2: and have a little bit of nostalgia. Let's look back
Speaker 2: at how we got to the future. So a show
Speaker 2: like Star Trek Enterprise was developed, which ended up failing
Speaker 2: for a lot of reasons. But one of the reasons
Speaker 2: is it came out I believe right after don't quote
Speaker 2: me on this, right after September eleventh. We weren't in
Speaker 2: the mood as an American society for nostalgia. Right What
Speaker 2: we were in the mood for was, oh, my god,
Speaker 2: we are not about to have the apocalypse. We need
Speaker 2: to survive in the apocalypse. So then you had stories
Speaker 2: and it's not very easy for me to get into
Speaker 2: film and TV more than books, which is ironic, but
Speaker 2: like Battlestar Galactica and Lost and all these these stories
Speaker 2: about or even zombie stories walking dead, Like society has collapsed.
Speaker 2: What does it mean for us as society to hold
Speaker 2: onto institutions. Then we ended up in an era where
Speaker 2: storytellers were kind of moving towards religion and spirituality to
Speaker 2: explain the sci fi. Part of sci fi, okay, like
Speaker 2: Lost Or it wasn't like the or any of the
Speaker 2: mysteries that are in sci fi stories. They didn't have
Speaker 2: sci fi endings. And this is when I started to
Speaker 2: think about my book. Ascendance is like the authors of
Speaker 2: these stories would just say, oh, it was actually a
Speaker 2: religious thing, a god thing, an angel thing, and I'm like,
Speaker 2: I don't know that I like that. You know, I'm
Speaker 2: culturally Jewish, you know, but I'm not. You know, I
Speaker 2: grew up at a time, you know, I grew up
Speaker 2: in New York City. I was very kind to the
Speaker 2: city post nine to eleven, and like I was, and
Speaker 2: I was in my early twenties, and you know, the
Speaker 2: sort of extreme ideologies that were really apparent at that time,
Speaker 2: or at least that like I think American society was
Speaker 2: asleep about until then, was sort of jarring for young
Speaker 2: twenty year old. And then we get to sort of
Speaker 2: the age of like AI and like robots coming right
Speaker 2: which takes us to today where we are the rate
Speaker 2: of technological innovation, especially when AI right now is so
Speaker 2: vast and so it just hitting us every few weeks
Speaker 2: something crazy is happening, not over the course of ten
Speaker 2: years that we don't know what the stories are going
Speaker 2: to be that reflect our current time, Like our stories
Speaker 2: right now can't keep up with the change of technology.
Speaker 2: So long winded, that's kind of like like an overview
Speaker 2: of what I'm looking at and what I'm currently studying
Speaker 2: and thinking about. But that's the reason I love sci fi,
Speaker 2: which was the original question, is because it allows us
Speaker 2: to tell stories about, you know, who we are as
Speaker 2: a society. It allows you to tell stories about people
Speaker 2: in extraordinary situations and envision what you know, me as
Speaker 2: a viewer, as a reader would do in those almost
Speaker 2: seemingly impossible situations that are possibly going to happen to
Speaker 2: someone one day, maybe in the near future.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think what you're saying too is at the
Speaker 3: core of any good story in general, and certainly sci
Speaker 3: fi is the human element. So even if let's say,
Speaker 3: you know, classic like Twilight Zone is dealing with the
Speaker 3: Cold War kind of hysteria and xenophobia, those stories are
Speaker 3: still very relevant because now we're in another age of
Speaker 3: xenophobia and the same human emotions and psychology are in play.
Speaker 3: And one of my favorite examples of that is actually
Speaker 3: Gray Bradbery's the Martian Chronicles because he didn't even try
Speaker 3: to make anything scientifically reasonable people farming on Mars and
Speaker 3: doing all kinds of earth things. I think he called
Speaker 3: it like Iowa on Mars or something like that. But
Speaker 3: they're so relatable as human stories, and you know, what
Speaker 3: are humans going to do in these kind of situations
Speaker 3: and how do people react to each other and behave
Speaker 3: in society, so that these stories can persist even beyond
Speaker 3: kind of the ridiculous premise that sometimes can appear, right,
Speaker 3: And that.
Speaker 2: Was something that was important to me, is that when
Speaker 2: I was developing the story and the mythology with sentence,
Speaker 2: people have this misconception that sci fi is all about
Speaker 2: some cool spaceship or weird technology like that was like
Speaker 2: the original germ of like of like, okay, there's this.
Speaker 2: I had an idea of a scene in my head
Speaker 2: and it was pretty disturbing and like, well what does
Speaker 2: that mean? And then it took me two years to
Speaker 2: develop sort of the technology and what the world look like.
Speaker 2: But that's not a story. Whether it's sci fi or
Speaker 2: romance or whatever. What do they do now? Not pickleball, romance, hockey, whatever, romance,
Speaker 2: whatever it needs to be about you know, people, about
Speaker 2: the relationships from person to person or person to institution, whatever,
Speaker 2: But it's about the people. So you know, for me,
Speaker 2: it's like, once I set up the sci fi elements,
Speaker 2: I really had to focus on, well, what's the actual story.
Speaker 2: And then that's why, like the heart of Ascendance is,
Speaker 2: you know, it's it takes you through different povs, different
Speaker 2: characters who sort of adventures, all kind of come together
Speaker 2: towards the end of the book, not the end, and
Speaker 2: propels them, propels the story forward. But it was important
Speaker 2: to me to have a family. So I've got like
Speaker 2: this fractured family. I've got a mom, she's a single
Speaker 2: mom doctor who's trying to sort of balance the world
Speaker 2: of ascendants and biomasses. And I've got her rebellious daughter
Speaker 2: who ends up being a major character, and a young
Speaker 2: and a young and her young daughter who becomes the
Speaker 2: target of the institution in the book, And it was
Speaker 2: about their trauma and their ability to get along or
Speaker 2: not get along with both the world around them. That
Speaker 2: seems crazy to us as readers and each other. And
Speaker 2: that's one of the reasons. You know, they're Jewish in
Speaker 2: the book. You know that was important to me at
Speaker 2: the time of their genesis is to give them that
Speaker 2: kind of identity. There's Muslims in the book and Christians
Speaker 2: and non affiliated because in the world of the book,
Speaker 2: there's not a lot of religion. And I really wanted
Speaker 2: to have a book and a story that commented on
Speaker 2: religion by making it about science, so that it wouldn't
Speaker 2: be offensive to people who hold religion. Dear it was
Speaker 2: a way for them to think about that without being
Speaker 2: you know, attacked for it.
Speaker 1: Enjoining the show, click like and subscribe.
Speaker 3: What can you tell us about your novel's division of
Speaker 3: society into ascendance and biomasses.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so the general conception is that, you know, in
Speaker 2: this in this world, it's the near future, so it's
Speaker 2: not long from now. You know, a very successful scientist
Speaker 2: through and you discovered this through the book, through a
Speaker 2: series of discoveries of technological innovations, seemingly discovers that first
Speaker 2: that everyone can ascend. And what does this end mean
Speaker 2: is that the institute, this powerful organization, and I think
Speaker 2: we're all used to a handful of powerful technology organizations
Speaker 2: owning our futures in a way is able to quote
Speaker 2: prove the afterlife there's technology, you know how right now
Speaker 2: we're talking about people implanting themselves with chips, you know,
Speaker 2: and things like that to communicate with their devices. You know,
Speaker 2: it starts with people on a global scale putting what's
Speaker 2: called packed thoughts in their system, but basically receivers and
Speaker 2: transmitters between people and technology all around. Well, think about
Speaker 2: you're told there's an afterlife, You're told you're going to
Speaker 2: go to heaven, but you can't prove it, you don't know,
Speaker 2: you just have to believe it. Well, now I can
Speaker 2: go into what's called a viewing room with other people.
Speaker 2: I can see someone a volunteer who's about to die,
Speaker 2: about to be euthanized essentially, and the technology lets me
Speaker 2: experience their experience beyond their corporeal their body right and
Speaker 2: see get a glimpse of what happens. The technology allows
Speaker 2: you to see it, to feel it, to experience it
Speaker 2: so viscerally that you, as a person cannot deny it.
Speaker 2: So the question is what happens society when you when
Speaker 2: everyone can go and physically be somewhere and experience what
Speaker 2: another person experiences when they die and a little bit after,
Speaker 2: what does that do to society? So that's part one.
Speaker 2: Part two is well, now because of a certain mythological
Speaker 2: mythology is not the right word, but certain historical events
Speaker 2: that happen, it's then announced that we made a mistake.
Speaker 2: And only a small percentage of the population. So think
Speaker 2: about the existential dread of people to be that close
Speaker 2: to like certainty of an afterlife and the comfort of
Speaker 2: that for everyone. Now the dread of no only a
Speaker 2: small percentage can ascend. And so what do the ones
Speaker 2: who were quote chosen, the ones who can genetically ascend?
Speaker 2: How do they treat the people who can't? And how
Speaker 2: do the people can't? What do they do? You know?
Speaker 2: And in the book explores more things like if you're
Speaker 2: an ascendant in any of those two time periods, like
Speaker 2: does that make you happy? Does that make you say,
Speaker 2: you know what, I'm having a bad time with work
Speaker 2: or love? Do I just want to kill myself? And
Speaker 2: sorry for the Christmas? And ascend? What does it do
Speaker 2: with children? I mean, so there's a lot there sort
Speaker 2: of think about how you and how society would react
Speaker 2: to something that strong kind of smacking the face, and
Speaker 2: what would happen to religious organizations as well, and a.
Speaker 3: Certain kind of survivor's guilt, right knowing that you are
Speaker 3: the chosen.
Speaker 2: It could be. But the question is, would people really
Speaker 2: do that or would they say, you know, and I
Speaker 2: realized we're amusing Jews here and we're talking about the chosen,
Speaker 2: so I don't mean in the Jewish context, but you know,
Speaker 2: would people really have that guilt or would they be like, no,
Speaker 2: I'm special, I was born this way, which I think
Speaker 2: a lot of not everyone, but I think a lot
Speaker 2: of people believe that regardless of their religion, and it's
Speaker 2: solely because of the religion they were brought up in,
Speaker 2: and they're like, no, no, I'm special. My people are special,
Speaker 2: You're not.
Speaker 1: So I don't know that it would change the novel
Speaker 1: does center around a Jewish family? Is there something personal
Speaker 1: about that?
Speaker 2: There is some of my family history that's kind of
Speaker 2: embedded in the story of a sentence. You know, we
Speaker 2: talked about. You know, there's a rabbi who's the father
Speaker 2: of Rebecca who starts, you know, early on in the book,
Speaker 2: and there's an incident that happens to him when he
Speaker 2: comes into encounter with the Jacob's Institute that mirrors my
Speaker 2: own family's history, where my great great my great great
Speaker 2: grandfather in Vienna was thrown downstairs by the Nazis. And
Speaker 2: my grandfather was actually a philosophy student in Vienna, and
Speaker 2: he had an amazing story that I think some of
Speaker 2: the themes in his life made into this book, and
Speaker 2: I'd love to make that the movie one day. But
Speaker 2: you know he was on the legend of my grandfather
Speaker 2: was that he was in school and you know, a
Speaker 2: German team came to play them in soccer. This is
Speaker 2: pre war, and they poisoned his team, right, and they
Speaker 2: all got sick. Then once Hitler invaded, he was part
Speaker 2: of a Jewish community that was debating assassinating Hitler. Half
Speaker 2: of the group wanted to assassinate and the other half said,
Speaker 2: if you do this, it'll if you try to do this,
Speaker 2: it'll only things worse. And so they threat and to report.
Speaker 2: And they were going to report the ones who were
Speaker 2: going to try to assasay Hitler when Hitler was coming through.
Speaker 2: So he ended up escaping to what was been a Palestine.
Speaker 2: In Israel, worked as a guard at a girls' school.
Speaker 2: There was an incident with an attack and the British,
Speaker 2: who controlled Israel at the time, I came to investigate,
Speaker 2: found out he spoke German. They recruited him to be
Speaker 2: in the British army. They recruited him to be in
Speaker 2: the German Army as a spy for the British, and
Speaker 2: he ended up in the desert taking pictures for the
Speaker 2: British as like a German colonel. And then he went
Speaker 2: on after the war to be I think part of
Speaker 2: the resistance in Israel. I'm not quite sure, owned a
Speaker 2: film shop. Eleanor Roosevelt came into I mean, he had
Speaker 2: an amazing life, but it all kind of circles back
Speaker 2: into my feeling of like the amount of hatred and
Speaker 2: the amount of extreme ideology that like the Nazis had
Speaker 2: and had towards someone in my family who was this
Speaker 2: old guy that they just threw down the stairs and killed,
Speaker 2: you know, is something that's you know, definitely, you know,
Speaker 2: is embedded in the work that I did here. So
Speaker 2: I think it's hard to escape any story from the
Speaker 2: experience of an author or a creator and their family history.
Speaker 1: A lot of great science fiction warns that just because
Speaker 1: it can be done doesn't mean it should be done.
Speaker 1: Where does your book fit into that literature?
Speaker 2: Yeah? You know, it sounds like I could be anti
Speaker 2: technology or anti innovation, anti you know all that I'm not.
Speaker 2: I'm like the first person. I was like one of
Speaker 2: the early people to get a vision pro. I love technology.
Speaker 2: I use AI all the time, hopefully responsively, you know,
Speaker 2: so I and it's not something that we can put
Speaker 2: in a box. You know. It's like modern day the calculator.
Speaker 2: You know, there are people like, don't use it, you
Speaker 2: shouldn't use it. It's like saying my account should shouldn't use
Speaker 2: Excel years ago because it does the math too fast
Speaker 2: or something like that. But the book does warn not
Speaker 2: necessarily about technology, but about extreme ideology and believing something
Speaker 2: in such a pure fanatical way that you can't see
Speaker 2: something else or think or challenge it. You know, I
Speaker 2: was talking with I also do a podcast called No
Speaker 2: When Scenario, and I'm prepping for there's a conversation with
Speaker 2: my co host about Disclosure Day, Steven Spielberg's movie that
Speaker 2: recently came out, and we're talking about how it's like
Speaker 2: subtly his most political film. Because the film ends and
Speaker 2: I don't want to spoil anything, but with a message
Speaker 2: of like listen, like listen to each other it's very political.
Speaker 2: It starts with like the us UFC fight red hats,
Speaker 2: very like if you look at it a certain way,
Speaker 2: you see one side of America and it ends what's
Speaker 2: maybe another side of America and the messages people need
Speaker 2: to listen and stop being consumed in their own path
Speaker 2: and so, you know, I think it's about we need
Speaker 2: to be empathetic and we need to challenge systems and
Speaker 2: we need to challenge and well not challenge, but like
Speaker 2: look at who who is in charge of the technology
Speaker 2: that's being developed. What do they put putting into that technology?
Speaker 2: Because technology right now is changing public opinion, what we believe,
Speaker 2: what we think, what's real? Right? I mean, you know
Speaker 2: Twitter x Twitter I thought was a great utility of
Speaker 2: public resource and it got taken over and it's I
Speaker 2: avoid it like the play because it just junk right now.
Speaker 2: And is that because it was too rare? You know?
Speaker 2: Is that because there was a let's not regulate any
Speaker 2: of it in response to it was too regulated? You know,
Speaker 2: I'm not quite sure what the deal is there, but
Speaker 2: I think we have to sort of think about what
Speaker 2: are the guard rails we as a society are willing
Speaker 2: to endure so that the technology doesn't run a muck,
Speaker 2: or that our realities are not controlled by a few
Speaker 2: billionaires or a trillionaire. And nothing against co you know, again,
Speaker 2: nothing against corporations and profit and all that, but there
Speaker 2: needs to be the sort of checks and balances.
Speaker 3: You say your novel in the not too distant future
Speaker 3: of twenty sixty, a time that's both familiar and even
Speaker 3: more dystopian than the present. Why did you choose twenty sixty?
Speaker 2: Funny enough, I'd been working on this book for so long.
Speaker 2: It used to be like twenty forty, but that's when
Speaker 2: I started, I think, in two thousand and six or
Speaker 2: two thousand and eight with this idea. So I'm like,
Speaker 2: oh god, that's way too soon for now, fourteen fifteen
Speaker 2: years from now. We can imagine. The reason I chose
Speaker 2: something relatively soon is because the world of the book,
Speaker 2: even though there's this whole, this powerful institution, we can
Speaker 2: imagine that I didn't want like some futuristic, unbelievable spaceship
Speaker 2: fearing society because you know, which is funny, because I
Speaker 2: love About About five. We're talking about Deep Space nine
Speaker 2: before the show. You know, I love those shows, So
Speaker 2: it's kind of funny that I'm not like a space
Speaker 2: traveling alien cast kind of thing. I wanted something that
Speaker 2: people could recognize and just poort over, like one idea,
Speaker 2: one germ of a tweak to society that would flip
Speaker 2: everything on its head. So it would be something that's like, whoa,
Speaker 2: what would happen to us right now in twenty twenty
Speaker 2: six or twenty twenty seven if we were able to
Speaker 2: sort of tap into something, what would change? So there
Speaker 2: are things that are very different in that world in
Speaker 2: the inn ascendence, but a lot is very similar. There's
Speaker 2: still waiters and waitresses and schools and you know, cars
Speaker 2: that you know pollute and things like that. People still
Speaker 2: eat normal. It's all that. It's just slight tweaks to
Speaker 2: make it more believable. It was important to me to
Speaker 2: write something that was like somewhat believable with this one
Speaker 2: more fantastical core idea.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and as you mentioned, there are still rabbis and
Speaker 3: the moms and priests and so forth, not.
Speaker 2: A few like it starts off right away. I think,
Speaker 2: like you know, I say, like a, I don't remember
Speaker 2: the exact line, but it's like a priest, a rabbit,
Speaker 2: and a mom walk into a church. You know, you know,
Speaker 2: it sounded like an old joke. They're there, but they're
Speaker 2: far and few between, because part of the conversation about
Speaker 2: this is that, like, wow, could society really abandon organized
Speaker 2: religion so quickly? Maybe if you were shown and you
Speaker 2: felt proof, and you knew in your core this was real,
Speaker 2: maybe you would abandon that religious organization that's telling you
Speaker 2: how to eat and live and what to do to
Speaker 2: be to go to heaven or no heaven, because you'd
Speaker 2: go with what you could feel.
Speaker 1: I'm also a pretty big fan of the show Severance,
Speaker 1: and I feel like there's some similarities there with you know,
Speaker 1: with your book, although it seems like your book was
Speaker 1: probably started a little bit earlier than that process.
Speaker 2: Was a decade or two before Severance came, but there
Speaker 2: is because it's about like Severance is about, you know,
Speaker 2: if the technology that its founders created work the way
Speaker 2: they wanted to how right? Very often, like Terminator right
Speaker 2: from a couple decades ago, was about technology run a book,
Speaker 2: modern storytelling, and like you're bringing up, Severance is about
Speaker 2: technology that's working exactly as created and affecting offs. So
Speaker 2: I think that's an interesting change the other thing.
Speaker 1: That I see in both Severance and Silo and in
Speaker 1: your book, there's also like a thing about you know,
Speaker 1: everybody believes this truth and then there's like another truth
Speaker 1: that not everybody knows about. It seems like there's like
Speaker 1: a falsehood to it, and I'm wondering what that's like.
Speaker 1: That seems like that's a big part of you know,
Speaker 1: the aforementioned shows, and I feel like maybe it's going
Speaker 1: to be a big part of you know, where the
Speaker 1: book is going.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, mystery is important to me. One of
Speaker 2: the things that was important to me when finalizing the novel.
Speaker 2: And it's gone through a lot. It's got a big history.
Speaker 2: It started out as a feature film script that I
Speaker 2: thought I could make, but then I couldn't find my
Speaker 2: own eighty million dollars in two thousand and eight to
Speaker 2: make it. Then it became a series of an anthology
Speaker 2: of short films that take place in that world because
Speaker 2: I want to develop it. So I had a film
Speaker 2: of three short films that another short film that take
Speaker 2: place in the world. Then I was told, this is great,
Speaker 2: you really should turn into a book so that you
Speaker 2: can make it into a TV show. So when COVID
Speaker 2: hit I turned into a book, but it was important
Speaker 2: to me that to have mystery there and to not
Speaker 2: have it so like right in your face at first
Speaker 2: about what's happening. It's funny disclosure to day, Like that
Speaker 2: first hour, it's very much. It takes you if you
Speaker 2: guysn't seen it, but like it takes you right into
Speaker 2: the story and you're like, wait, I need some time,
Speaker 2: like you're trying to figure out what's happening. I like,
Speaker 2: as a kid, I remember picking up Dune in fourth grade.
Speaker 2: It's not really a book for fourth graders, but my
Speaker 2: older brother got me to all this sci fi stuff
Speaker 2: that was beyond me. And ever since I'm in fourth grade,
Speaker 2: I've read that book one or two times a year,
Speaker 2: and for all these decades, there's always something I get
Speaker 2: from it, or some seed of something that picks up
Speaker 2: later that I might not have noticed when I was younger.
Speaker 2: So my hope is that Ascendance is a book where
Speaker 2: you get to the end and you're like, oh, wait, yeah,
Speaker 2: I get it, but do I get it? Let me
Speaker 2: go back and see what's planted and what's there to
Speaker 2: sort of wrap it in so that that you get
Speaker 2: a little bit more the second read. I don't make
Speaker 2: more money if you read it a second time. I
Speaker 2: just personally find it more enjoyable when the seeds are
Speaker 2: planted but you don't necessarily know where they're headed. And
Speaker 2: then when you get to that like last third of
Speaker 2: the book and it's all coming together, you're like, wait
Speaker 2: a second, wasn't this all and then you see it.
Speaker 2: I like that experience. Otherwise, it's like the analogy I
Speaker 2: have is like a lot of storytelling sometimes is like
Speaker 2: a young child telling a story in school. This happened,
Speaker 2: then this happened. Then this happened, then this happened. It
Speaker 2: could be good. You know, the movie projectail Mary and
Speaker 2: the book Project I read projectail Mary first. I enjoyed it,
Speaker 2: so the movie thought it was a fine adaptation of
Speaker 2: the book, and I really enjoyed the book. But I
Speaker 2: will never read it again, I think because I had
Speaker 2: that experience. This happened, this happened, this happen, this happened.
Speaker 2: I was riveted. I liked it, but once it was over,
Speaker 2: I'm like, I don't think there's anything more for me
Speaker 2: to go back and revisit. So I prefer the types
Speaker 2: of storytelling where there's something to go back and revisit.
Speaker 1: The sentence deals a lot with tensions between technocratic determinism
Speaker 1: and human agency. Is this a commentary on the dangers
Speaker 1: of AI?
Speaker 2: I don't think it's a commentary on the dangers of AI.
Speaker 2: And it's hard for me to answer this without potentially
Speaker 2: spoiling the point of the book at the end, so
Speaker 2: I just keep going back to it's a commentary about
Speaker 2: the dangers of not having empathy and not questioning institutions
Speaker 2: and ideology. I don't think it's about AI. There is
Speaker 2: AI in there, There is advanced technology, and it could
Speaker 2: be read that way for me personally, that's not the intention.
Speaker 2: If someone gets that out of it.
Speaker 3: Sure, speaking of AI. Ray Kurtzweil, an AI pioneer, calls
Speaker 3: your novel a provocative thought experiment on the future of
Speaker 3: consciousness that underscores the moral imperative to guide our technological
Speaker 3: ingenuity toward the common good. Are you at all optimistic
Speaker 3: about tech companies and governments following this moral imperative?
Speaker 2: Once I'm optimistic, I think I'm stupidly hopeful that we
Speaker 2: will find our way out of it. Maybe it was
Speaker 2: luck that we survived the atomic age and nuclear destruction.
Speaker 2: We still might not Maybe it was aliens who prevented
Speaker 2: those missiles. Know, disculature may be happening, But you know,
Speaker 2: I am, I am hopeful that we as a people
Speaker 2: can prevent the worst of the worst from happening, that
Speaker 2: at some point the fever breaks and that we're able
Speaker 2: to empathize with one another with at making this too political.
Speaker 2: There's definitely this tension between empathy and what's mine and
Speaker 2: should be mine? And I think that transfers to technological
Speaker 2: advancement and innovation. So will it happen now? What happened
Speaker 2: with this administration? You know, governments are always what they're
Speaker 2: lagging twenty thirty years in terms of regulation, Like are
Speaker 2: we still talking about regulating I don't know what, but
Speaker 2: we're not talking about regulating AI right now. Could you
Speaker 2: know a country decide to create an unleashed an AI
Speaker 2: that just gets into a sis destroys everything, you bet? Am
Speaker 2: I hopeful that we survive that somehow? I think so?
Speaker 2: Am I optimistic? I don't know, it was hopeful and
Speaker 2: optimism the same thing. There might be a little nuance there.
Speaker 3: One of the things that could come out of this
Speaker 3: whole moment that we're in is that AI is teaching
Speaker 3: us how to be human or what being human is,
Speaker 3: because we're seeing kind of the absence of it in
Speaker 3: the AI art and other things that are kind of
Speaker 3: crapping all over the place.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, yes, there's AI slop. However, I take
Speaker 2: sort of a slight objection to that because I think,
Speaker 2: you know, we're still in the early phases of AI.
Speaker 2: There was a ton of AI slop what a year
Speaker 2: or two ago, and now things are so much better.
Speaker 2: I use it every day as a tool, not as
Speaker 2: a content tool, but as a you know, it used
Speaker 2: to have a blank page, and now you don't need
Speaker 2: to have writers or creative design writer's block. You can start,
Speaker 2: you can describe what you want and have that written
Speaker 2: or visualized there, and then you tweak it, you edit it,
Speaker 2: and I think that's a wonderful thing. I think what's
Speaker 2: interesting is that that the AI might be telling stories
Speaker 2: for us. So that's part of it that's interesting. But
Speaker 2: there's a world where you can look at this, where
Speaker 2: AI relieves such burden of labor that with the right
Speaker 2: conditions of political and societal will, the human race turns
Speaker 2: towards art and music as what's valued and what people
Speaker 2: can do so that their creative passions. Like that's super
Speaker 2: optimistic next generation, whereas like, oh, we don't need money anymore.
Speaker 2: People just pursue their passions. And everyone watching that in
Speaker 2: was the nineties eighties were like, huh, Like how is
Speaker 2: there no money? Like how do you have like a
Speaker 2: you know, a janitor cleaning a ground? Like how is
Speaker 2: that their passion? So if people were skeptical, skeptical of that,
Speaker 2: but if the technology can relieve us of some of
Speaker 2: those burdens and society appreciates that, then maybe we all
Speaker 2: can go out and survive and thrive, you know, doing
Speaker 2: what we love doing. And so maybe it does lead
Speaker 2: to it to utopia. Maybe we're all saying it's going
Speaker 2: to lead to the end and destruction, but maybe it
Speaker 2: leads towards utopia. It might take a long time to
Speaker 2: get there. Maybe not. Now you're sounding like Ray Kurtzwow,
Speaker 2: Ray is interesting. I mean, I've known obviously his work
Speaker 2: on the Singularity tremendously influenced this book. When I was younger,
Speaker 2: I was the second unit director, was my official title
Speaker 2: on a film called Transcendent Man. That came out about right.
Speaker 2: He lived right around the corner from my old studio,
Speaker 2: so Barry told me who directed the film. When he
Speaker 2: couldn't fly out or when he needed a backup crew
Speaker 2: or whatever, I'd go out with my team. We'd film
Speaker 2: for a number of years. So I'm sure I was
Speaker 2: influenced by him. Just so happened last year, after years
Speaker 2: of not seeing him, he and his team came back
Speaker 2: into my studio to do some work for streaming and filming,
Speaker 2: and I'm like, oh, any chance I could slip the
Speaker 2: right and take a look. So you guys have the
Speaker 2: arc the advanced copy, but his quote is right on
Speaker 2: the top of the on the sales copy and on
Speaker 2: the inside as well. So I was really grateful for
Speaker 2: him and his team to take a look and agree
Speaker 2: to do that because having his voice, you know, the
Speaker 2: praise quotes in the book are from him, from the
Speaker 2: Science Advisor, from Star Trek, from Derek Tyler Attack who's
Speaker 2: a writer for Star Trek, the Manhattan book review. I
Speaker 2: believe it just really meant a lot to have these
Speaker 2: voices sort of in support of it, And so that's
Speaker 2: really helpful because you know, this is my first book,
Speaker 2: I've been working on this story for twenty years, you know,
Speaker 2: but you know it's hard to I'm not known for
Speaker 2: being a novelist, so getting it out there is a
Speaker 2: real challenge, even with a publisher and a publicist. So
Speaker 2: having ray support and other people's support has been has
Speaker 2: been a big plus for it.
Speaker 1: You already kind of told us about the history of it,
Speaker 1: but you know you are also a filmmaker. May we
Speaker 1: see in the sentence movie someday.
Speaker 2: I hope there's an ascended something one day, whether or
Speaker 2: not it's a movie, a TV show, or a lunchbox.
Speaker 2: I loved when this book was done and out in
Speaker 2: the world and the story was there. It was a
Speaker 2: process to write it. It took a while to write
Speaker 2: a book, and someone who's primarily you know, I run
Speaker 2: a production company. You know. I've done films, produced films
Speaker 2: that made my own. Those happen faster than writing a
Speaker 2: novel getting it out, so I was antsy to get
Speaker 2: it out. It literally has just been three months and
Speaker 2: two days since the book was released, and I was
Speaker 2: meeting with someone about potentially selling it for a show,
Speaker 2: and I'm like, I gotta keep moving. I gotta keep
Speaker 2: moving and she's like, it's only been three months. It's
Speaker 2: a book, Calm down, and I'm eager. I do think
Speaker 2: this story lends well to a TV show more so
Speaker 2: than a movie, because there's a lot of story to
Speaker 2: tell in the book, and there's a lot more stories
Speaker 2: to tell in this world. And I do want to
Speaker 2: continue the series. I have the ideas right now for
Speaker 2: the next couple of books, so if it does well,
Speaker 2: I do want to continue the series a novel form.
Speaker 2: But ultimately, in my heart, this is a TV show,
Speaker 2: So I would love to get it out there and
Speaker 2: picked up by the Apple TVs, the hbos of the world,
Speaker 2: because that's where genre genre TV is hard enough as
Speaker 2: it is, but that's where they're Those two in particular,
Speaker 2: are really spending the time in the resources on it.
Speaker 2: So that's kind of half of my time now, beyond
Speaker 2: my job as Charles Remediate CEO, as teaching when I teach,
Speaker 2: as podcast hosting, beyond selling kind of get the book
Speaker 2: out there and doing podcasts and all these things. I
Speaker 2: am trying to now get out there and get a
Speaker 2: team together to get this book option. Because even I've
Speaker 2: had a lot of good reviews, a lot of great
Speaker 2: reviews from people people called it like one an early
Speaker 2: reviewer called it a sci fi game of Thrones. I
Speaker 2: loved it. I don't think so one bit. I don't
Speaker 2: see the connection, but I will take it. It's great.
Speaker 2: It's a great quote. I printed it out. It'll be
Speaker 2: with me when I signed books on tables. But the
Speaker 2: reviews that were more critical, almost every single one of
Speaker 2: them has said this would work better as a TV show.
Speaker 2: I love the idea, but I don't like four characters
Speaker 2: or whatever it is. But this would be great on
Speaker 2: TV and I would watch it. So I have a
Speaker 2: slide deck, and I have these are the good reviews,
Speaker 2: and the next slide these are the bad reviews, and
Speaker 2: they all say make it a TV show, make a
Speaker 2: TV show. There should be a movie. I'd love to
Speaker 2: see this on a screen. And so that is really
Speaker 2: great to see because you can't expect every review to
Speaker 2: be perfect. But if people who maybe worse mid to
Speaker 2: quote my kids on the book still want the story
Speaker 2: and they want to see it visually, then I think
Speaker 2: that's a great sign. So I'm really hoping I can
Speaker 2: continue the conversations I had years ago pre COVID about
Speaker 2: getting this seen on screens.
Speaker 3: Well, I hope it happens.
Speaker 2: Thank you, thanks for joining us my pleasure. I'm glad
Speaker 2: I was an amusing Jew and.
Speaker 3: To our audience, now back to your regularly scheduled lives.
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