Anthony Doerr, CLOUD CUCKOO LAND: A Novel
[0:02]Hi, I'm Zivi Owens, the creator and host of the award-winning podcast that you're listening to right now.
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[1:13]Anthony Door is the author of Cloud Cuckoo Land, a novel.
[1:17]He is also the author of All the Light We Cannot See, which I absolutely loved as did like a bazillion other people, but I loved it.
[1:25]The founder of the Pulitzer Prize, the Carnegie Medal, the Alex Award, and a number one New York Times Bestseller.
[1:32]He is also the author of the story collections Memory Wall and the Shell Collector, the novel About Grace, and the memoir Four Seasons in Rome.
[1:40]He has won five O'Henry prizes, the Rome Prize, the New York Public Libraries Young Lions Award, the National Magazine Award for Fiction, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and the Story Prize.
[1:49]Born and raised in Cleveland, Ohio, Door lives in Boise, Idaho with his wife and two sons.
[1:54]Welcome, Anthony. Thank you so much for coming on Moms. Don't have time to read books. I'm so excited to have you.
[1:59]Thanks so much, zibi. It's a joy to be here.
[2:02]Thank you. Your latest book is Cloud Cuckoo Land is basically everybody in the planet already knows.
[2:08]I'm tempted to ask you to describe it. I've read most of it, but maybe you could give a summary in case there is someone out there who is not that familiar.
[2:17]Of course. And summarizing this book as a total nightmare. So I'm like, good luck with that.
[2:22]Yeah, I understand why you punted on that.
[2:25]The book is set in the past, present in the future, and it's kind of a trip tick that's all shattered and repeats together and a moving back and forth between the 15th century.
[2:34]Now, the present day that, you know, that right before the moment's right before the coronavirus pandemic.
[2:40]And also the future, which was this big golf of courage that it took for me to try this.
[2:46]And I have one character in the future. So to live in the 15th century around the siege of Constantinople, which happened in 1453.
[2:54]Constantinople was kind of like a Noah's arc of books of old Greek and Roman texts. These walls around the city really helped all these old tech survive about 75% of the ancient Greek texts that we can read today survived because they were protected inside libraries monastic and imperial and even private libraries inside of Constantinople.
[3:15]Two characters back then 15th century was this time of crazy technological change. The printing presses about to arrive on the scene.
[3:23]Europeans are adopting gunpowder from China and that's really making all these old defensive walled cities obsolete because cannons are able to knock down all these walls.
[3:33]And of course navigational techniques are really improving. So Europeans are quote unquote discovering the new world or depending on your point of view or bringing terrible diseases to the new world of another point of view.
[3:44]So that's all going down and then I've also chosen two other times of just intense technological change and one is right now.
[3:51]I feel like we're living through this really intense period as as disruptive as the printing press the way we can access information the way you and I are talking right now 1000 miles apart.
[4:02]So we're bringing this podcast to people it's just incredible the way you and I can carry like the all of all of Agatha Christie's novels on our phone you know it's just astounding.
[4:13]So I'm just asking questions about what does it mean to live at this time when all this technology is disrupting existing power structures.
[4:20]And of course in the future I'm asking questions about artificial intelligence and climate change and the disruption of those two. What does it mean to the future humans to our great grandkids when there's going to be very, very interesting powers that artificial intelligence has and also the planet is under extreme duress.
[4:39]So is this the book you started out when did you set out to write this with all these different pieces were you like I'm going to see if I can pull this off.
[4:47]Like how did you end up with this as the the back.
[4:53]Yeah great question.
[4:55]I think for you know young beginning right or beginning writers of any age they often think they have this idea from like the cartoons of a light bulb appears over the head and you just like funnel the muses down onto the page.
[5:06]That's not how it works for me at all you come to these ideas slowly through time you know writings like farming it just takes forever for these little things to grow and you're always tweaking things.
[5:16]So no, in the beginning I started just with Constantinople my previous book on the light we cannot see was set primarily maybe 60% of it is set in a walled city called Semilo and coastal France and Brittany and everything I've read about the history of walls.
[5:31]I mentioned Constantinople and I knew nothing about it like I felt like in in high school you know in the United States that the teacher would get to like the fall of Rome and Western history and take a sip of water and then suddenly we're at the Renaissance and like this whole 1100 years just get skipped.
[5:48]I love to use my work as a way to rectify my ignorance is I'm going to die ignorant of so many things but just like this amazing project you're doing you're learning every day I just think that's what I love about my job so much as I get to go find little pockets of things I know nothing about and try to educate myself a little bit.
[6:06]I just started with this idea about Constantinople, but I realized to really dramatize the power of stewardship of what it means to protect a text through time to protect what might be the very last copy of a very old book.
[6:20]I ended that lapse of readers long after you're gone and so you know I was a parent the whole time just like you the whole time I was working on this book and one of the coolest things about parenting is it kind of removes you from the center of your life and gets you thinking about you know what what can I pass down what will this place look like for my kids when they're my age or when they're older than me and I'm gone.
[6:44]I'm not going to know you're not going to go to school.
[6:49]And those skills should I equip them with so I had stewardship on my mind the whole time I was working on the novel and on about two months into this project of just the two characters and the 15 century I realize I've gotta show this book kind of tumble down through the pags of history and land and other times and then you'll really feel the effects by the end of the novel.
[7:03]the effects of what kind of the small humble act of courage of saving this one old copy of one
[7:09]old book from Constantinople can mean. And hopefully it inspires folks to think what small things
[7:15]can I do now that might, you know, might really impact the life. I really change somebody's life
[7:19]after I'm caught. Just, oh, I feel like it's interesting the way you show things that back in the
[7:27]day were huge deals that now are fine, right? Even surgery for cleft palettes, for example,
[7:34]right? That was enough to have your whole family be ostracized and basically driven out of a village
[7:40]and have somebody believe to be, you know, this demon, whereas today it's like, okay,
[7:46]this is how you fix that. And what does it mean? What is it today that will be fixed later
[7:51]that feels like an intractable problem now and making people think differently about the people
[7:56]where around? Totally. Yeah, really a student observation, Zibi. I think it's so interesting to see
[8:02]what continuities exist and what fundamental disparities exist when you're studying history. And
[8:07]yeah, one of the characters back in the 15th century, oh, Mir has a cleft pallet that totally
[8:12]alters the trajectory of his entire life. And yeah, that's one of those things that can be repaired
[8:18]now easily. And yet there's other continuities through time like what was so interesting researching
[8:24]this novel as how many different generations of people have been convinced that they live at
[8:28]kind of at the end of history. And, you know, I think during the pandemic, even during the,
[8:34]you know, when Trump was disputing the results of the election, there's this feeling like,
[8:37]oh my gosh, we're living like the end of something right now. But it's kind of reassuring to
[8:41]read like during the Cuban Missile Crisis people felt this way, you know, certainly during the
[8:46]siege of Constantinople, pretty much all the residents of the city believe like this was the end
[8:51]of humans on earth had arrived like the Antichrist is at the gates. And yet, you know, you learn
[8:56]really all like at the end of Rome, all these Roman officials thought, you know, oh boy, this is it,
[9:01]like the humans are over. And yet human culture persists. And so I really wanted to explore that
[9:06]in the book, you know, I'm playing a lot with dystopias and utopias. The phrase cloud pukuland is
[9:12]2,400 years old. It was a, you know, vastly predates English. It was a utopia imagined by this silly
[9:20]playwright, Aristophanes and Ancient Greece. You had a play called the birds. And these two guys
[9:25]think there are too many lawyers and Athens and the play the birds. And they go with the help of
[9:30]birds to find a found a new city in this guy called cloud pukuland. It's really maybe the first
[9:36]written Western utopia anyway. And as I was working on this book, my kids are taking so many
[9:42]dystopian narratives that felt like every time I go downstairs, they're like, there's another
[9:47]flaming city or a melting planet on TV. And so I just wanted to say like, what is the
[9:53]difference between a utopia and a dystopian narrative? Where do they need? And so often my
[9:57]characters are faced with these feelings.
[10:00]It's kind of syndrome of living at the end of history.
[10:03]I felt like that was this one continuity through time.
[10:06]And yet each time, hopefully, the novel kind of proves
[10:09]that human culture and humans and the earth persists.
[10:14]Well, I think it also taps into fear,
[10:16]perhaps fear as a parent, fear in general,
[10:19]fear of the world.
[10:19]I'm sure you're writing it during this period
[10:22]of complete upheaval, but what happens when someone
[10:27]who is essentially autistic or essentially
[10:29]processing sort of like what happens when there is
[10:31]this room of innocent kids and something horrible
[10:35]is coming their way, right?
[10:36]What does that mean?
[10:37]What are the shots below?
[10:38]And what does it mean to keep the show must go on?
[10:41]Like what does that really mean these days anyway?
[10:43]Like what threats do we have lurking beneath us
[10:46]that we don't really know?
[10:47]Yeah, a good question, Sibi.
[10:49]Yeah, I mean, yeah, the novel opens
[10:51]with these kids are trapped in a library.
[10:53]Each of the main characters is kind of confined
[10:56]usually within walls in some way.
[10:58]And yeah, these five kids, these elementary school kids
[11:01]are rehearsing a play of this old manuscript cloud,
[11:04]cuckoo land and upstairs in a library
[11:06]of what a young, really sensitive boy comes in
[11:08]and fires a gun.
[11:10]And yeah, and then of course Anna, this girl
[11:12]in Constantinople, she's trapped within the walls
[11:14]as the sieges are occurring.
[11:16]And then in the future, this girl I've invented constants,
[11:19]she's trapped really, it doesn't give too much a way
[11:21]to say there's a pathogen, there's a pandemic occurring
[11:25]around her and so she's trapped in this circular vault.
[11:28]And each of them uses literature as a way
[11:30]to kind of slip the bounds of the walls around them.
[11:34]And that was what I felt during the pandemic.
[11:36]I mean, thank God for books, you know,
[11:39]I just felt like I was, especially those first weeks
[11:42]when you're like, are we gonna be dragging grandpa
[11:44]to the curb?
[11:45]Like what's gonna be happening here?
[11:47]I just felt like books gave me two or three hours a day
[11:49]when I could slip the trap of my own problems.
[11:52]The ironic thing is when you read, you often read alone
[11:56]and yet it makes you feel so much less alone.
[11:58]And I often, you know, when I was finishing this novel,
[12:02]I wanted to somehow pay tribute to that magic,
[12:04]that simple ancient magic of translating black marks
[12:09]on a white page into image and color and feeling.
[12:12]You know, just the way you did it in your memoirs,
[12:14]it'd be, it's like it's such this old magic
[12:17]and tapping into it is such a privilege
[12:20]and I wanted to not take it for granted.
[12:21]So hopefully throughout the book you remind it of,
[12:24]throughout this novel you're reminded of the power
[12:26]of reading and storytelling.
[12:29]I think about this all the time,
[12:30]by the way, in the power of books and story
[12:32]and sometimes thinking about how long it's been
[12:36]that books have been this common language for all of us
[12:40]is very reassuring in today's day
[12:42]where there's, there's, there's, it's impossible
[12:45]to read all the books that come out
[12:46]and even curation is an issue.
[12:48]But people are still gonna read.
[12:49]Like sometimes I think about it,
[12:50]I'm like, if people, if we introduced reading today
[12:54]and books today, would anyone think this was a good idea?
[12:56]Like sit still for 10 hours
[12:58]and don't do anything else.
[13:00]And there are no pictures, there's nothing else.
[13:02]Just like, you have to, you have to think the whole time.
[13:05]You have to use your brain.
[13:07]Like you will be like, oh God, I don't have time for that.
[13:10]Except if you sat them down and read to them,
[13:13]the first three pages of an extremely compelling story,
[13:17]they feel that old magic come over them.
[13:20]Just like that end of the history syndrome
[13:22]that's occurring through time.
[13:23]Same thing you hear all the time, like books are dying.
[13:26]Books are dead, you know,
[13:27]the whole process of reading is gonna go away.
[13:29]And every time that old magic drags humans back,
[13:32]we crave narrative, like we are just like drug addicts,
[13:36]looking for story all the time.
[13:39]And you know, I feel that at night, I'm like,
[13:40]oh, what shows are on?
[13:41]Like, oh, I gotta pick up a book.
[13:42]Like every day I wanna be living my life
[13:44]and maybe the life of some characters I'm inventing,
[13:47]but also I just wanna be immersed in these worlds
[13:50]and other people have created.
[13:51]So that's what I feel like my life is in balance
[13:54]when I get to live in these kind of three separate places.
[13:58]It totally relates to them.
[13:59]Are there, is there anything amazing that you love and read?
[14:02]And that feel is like a huge escape for you
[14:04]that maybe you wanna recommend,
[14:06]but you don't have to cause I just-
[14:07]Oh, no, that's fine.
[14:09]You know, it's funny to write or mildly,
[14:10]my lawyer years ago told me about the Patrick O'Brien series
[14:14]to talk about like addictive stuff.
[14:16]He wrote a series of books about like British Navy.
[14:21]And Master in Commander was made into a movie,
[14:23]I think, with Russell Crowe.
[14:25]And this is the first one.
[14:26]And she's like, they're cracked, these books are cracked.
[14:28]So eventually I just did a publicity tour in France
[14:31]and was like, okay, I need something
[14:33]to get me through long flights.
[14:34]So I'm only halfway through the very first book,
[14:36]but it's exactly what she said.
[14:38]You know, you're like, the detailing is unbelievable.
[14:40]It's a great work of historical fiction,
[14:42]but it's also an adventure story
[14:44]and you're just hooked.
[14:46]And that same magic trick occurs
[14:48]where you leave, I mean, you're sitting in an airplane,
[14:51]see, going 500 miles an hour at 34,000 feet,
[14:55]but you're also somehow simultaneously living
[14:58]the life of this British naval captain.
[15:00]And, you know, that magic doesn't get old.
[15:02]You know, may have been a little stronger
[15:04]and more powerful when we were kids,
[15:06]but I still chase those feelings
[15:08]of that immersion into another world.
[15:10]Let me tell.
[15:11]I read your memoir where seasons in Rome,
[15:13]which was amazing.
[15:14]And you made a joke speaking of flying
[15:16]and just reading and escaping.
[15:18]You're like, in the time it took me
[15:20]to watch two Lizzie low hand movies
[15:22]in an episode of Everybody Loves Raymond,
[15:24]like my twins and Sean and I were all,
[15:26]you're here, we are in Italy, it's so funny,
[15:28]because it's true.
[15:29]All these things we take for granted,
[15:30]it's like, oh my gosh, so funny.
[15:33]I loved your memoir so much.
[15:36]I know we're supposed to talk about Clad,
[15:37]Cuckoo Land, which is also all your stuff is amazing.
[15:39]All the light we cannot see
[15:40]was one of my absolute all time favorite books,
[15:42]but I feel like I learned so much about you
[15:44]in your memoir too and how you are as a father
[15:47]and what it's like, I have twins also.
[15:48]So I've been in a plane with six-month-old twins.
[15:52]It is not a moment I wish on anybody else.
[15:55]I remember walking, I had like the two car seats
[15:58]over my arms going to this really narrow plane at one point
[16:02]and I heard somebody whisper like,
[16:03]oh my gosh, she's got twins.
[16:05]And then I was like, oh, terrible.
[16:08]I'm like, don't you?
[16:09]Anyway, I totally related to the whole thing.
[16:11]But I loved the way you wrote about your life
[16:14]and the way that you use language,
[16:16]even for the simplest things to make things come to life
[16:20]where you say census like, you know,
[16:22]a palm tree out the window traps the sunset.
[16:25]Beautiful.
[16:26]Like, not that many words, everything is very clear,
[16:29]but like an immediate picture comes out.
[16:32]And then even though you talk about writing,
[16:33]when you're like, all morning I lay down sentences,
[16:36]erase them and try new ones.
[16:38]That paints a picture of a whole day.
[16:40]And like all those experiences.
[16:43]So anyway, talk to me about writing your memoir
[16:44]and what that experience was like.
[16:47]Oh, thanks, Timmy.
[16:48]Thanks so much.
[16:49]Yeah, so in 2004, there's something that's amazing.
[16:54]It's like this lightning bolt from the sky
[16:55]called the Rome Prize, the pre-to-room.
[16:58]And back then, anyway, you didn't apply for it
[17:00]in literature.
[17:00]You would just get nominated anonymously
[17:03]and get a letter saying, hey, would you like
[17:04]to go to Rome for a year?
[17:06]And the day we found out that we were offered
[17:08]that my wife gave birth to twins.
[17:10]I had this fellowship at Princeton.
[17:12]I ride my bike back from the hospital,
[17:13]get her bag while she's finished after she's finished
[17:16]delivery.
[17:17]And I get the mail and they're like, hey,
[17:19]she's like to move to Rome.
[17:20]So like, go back.
[17:22]I'm like, hey, how are you feeling?
[17:23]She's like, come on, who am I?
[17:25]Boys, you just birth.
[17:26]Hey, would you like to read this letter?
[17:28]So thankfully she had the courage to say, yes,
[17:30]we had this really transformative experience.
[17:32]It was so good for our marriage
[17:33]because there was just the two of us.
[17:34]And we each basically had an AD all the time.
[17:37]And I had never lived in a city that big.
[17:40]You know, I live in Idaho.
[17:41]It was so engrossing to every street corner
[17:45]was so interesting.
[17:46]There's so many stories spiraling up out of every Piazza
[17:49]that I just, I couldn't write fiction.
[17:51]I was just totally absorbed by learning about where I was.
[17:55]And so I kind of just kept notebooks.
[17:57]Usually I might write in an open for a few minutes
[17:59]before I start writing fiction,
[18:00]but the notebooks really took over that experience.
[18:03]And so when I got home, I just wanted to see
[18:06]if I could transform those, it felt like this dream
[18:09]when we got back and suddenly you're immersed back into habit.
[18:11]And I wanted to try to capture that sense
[18:14]of having your habits all disrupted
[18:16]because I was living in the kind of a new country,
[18:18]admittedly in the new country of fatherhood,
[18:20]all at once.
[18:21]And I wanted to see if I could use language
[18:24]somehow capture that because we all live in habit.
[18:28]And habit can be a extremely useful thing.
[18:30]Like it helps zippy find the light switch
[18:32]in the bathroom in the middle of the night.
[18:34]But habit can really be paralyzing to.
[18:37]There's a Chinese proverb that says,
[18:39]habits are cobwebs at first, cables at last.
[18:43]And I do feel like sometimes there's days
[18:46]when I ride my bike to work to start writing.
[18:48]And I don't even remember my bike ride to work
[18:51]because I just was so stuck in my own head.
[18:54]And I don't want to sleep walk through life.
[18:55]I became a writer.
[18:56]I got interested in art because it helps wake you up
[18:59]to the wonder and the grander of being alive at all.
[19:03]And of course it's okay.
[19:04]It's occasionally when you're tired at night
[19:05]like taking a Disney movie where you know everything
[19:08]that's going to happen.
[19:09]Of course, it's fine.
[19:10]But I want sometimes to seek out narratives
[19:13]and descriptions that startle you again,
[19:15]that remind you what it looks like when a son is when
[19:18]the son is slipping down behind a palm tree.
[19:21]So I love writers and painters and musicians,
[19:26]anybody who's taking habit or structures that are a little
[19:29]familiar and disrupting them.
[19:31]Sometimes it's a little more challenging,
[19:32]but it always wakes you up and reminds you like,
[19:35]oh, a bowl of fruit has never been painted like this before.
[19:39]And my favorite painters are always showing you the new world
[19:43]and the world in this new, almost childlike way
[19:46]so that you see it again so that you feel habits
[19:48]are disrupted a little bit.
[19:50]That's such an interesting way to talk about it.
[19:52]Yeah, even when you talk about the size of the fridge
[19:56]or all these little things, right?
[19:57]You're like, just these little, just the dial tone.
[20:00]And it's a different toner.
[20:01]It's a different tone.
[20:02]And this is just the police sirens
[20:05]or just a little bit different.
[20:07]And that's what makes life,
[20:08]so that's what's so unique about travel.
[20:11]Somebody, I just read somewhere.
[20:12]It was something like, if you don't,
[20:14]like your life is a book
[20:15]and if you don't travel,
[20:17]then you stay in chapter one, your whole life.
[20:19]Oh, that's amazing.
[20:20]Right, isn't that a good one?
[20:22]I would quote the person
[20:23]if I could even remember where I found it,
[20:24]but I totally relate to going through life like that.
[20:27]I actually went to a doctor.
[20:28]I went to a neurologist at one point
[20:30]when I was deep in the not sleeping with twins early on.
[20:33]And I was like, I think I'm losing my memory
[20:35]because I'll like,
[20:37]I never know if I've washed my hair or not.
[20:39]Like I'll, I sometimes I am getting lost on the street.
[20:42]Like I'm not, and it turned out,
[20:44]like I just wasn't imprinting the memories
[20:46]to begin with because I wasn't paying any attention.
[20:49]So it's not that you're losing memory.
[20:50]It's that you just are so not present
[20:54]that they never imprint to begin with.
[20:56]Oh, yeah.
[20:57]I'm sorry.
[20:58]I could so relate those first years
[21:00]were so hard and sleep is so important
[21:02]to our memory making and our sanity.
[21:05]And when your sleep is disrupted night after night,
[21:08]you're always a little bit on edge.
[21:09]Those first years are so tough.
[21:11]But we, I take solace now and thinking,
[21:14]you know, we all, everybody survives.
[21:16]You get four of us years.
[21:18]And it's so, you know, our boys went to college
[21:20]two weeks ago.
[21:22]Oh my gosh.
[21:23]It's like it all just felt like it was just this rush,
[21:26]this like light speed movement of these 18 years.
[21:29]So I want, it's just like I'm talking about.
[21:31]Just want to try to remember to be present.
[21:34]Every time I get the chance to be around them again,
[21:36]if they ever want to come home and be around us again,
[21:39]because it's also precious.
[21:40]You know, the fact that our lives end is sucks,
[21:44]but it's so beautiful too,
[21:45]because it just puts pressure on our life to say,
[21:48]like you're only here.
[21:50]The earth is four and a half billion years old
[21:52]and you're only going to be here.
[21:53]If you're so lucky 80 years.
[21:55]So why don't try to be as present as you can
[21:57]and pay attention to everything you can while you're here?
[22:00]100%.
[22:01]I released this episode with Neil DeGrasse Tyson recently
[22:04]who's amazing and that was,
[22:06]he's like, it is so unlikely to even be alive
[22:10]that you have the chance to exist.
[22:13]So don't waste a day.
[22:15]I don't know, I've had like a spring in my step
[22:17]since I had that episode because it's so true.
[22:19]It's like we're so lucky to even get this.
[22:21]It's just, it's against all odds that we're even here
[22:23]right now and who knows how long.
[22:25]But he also of course, like what you're saying pointed out
[22:28]that the beauty in it is because it's going to end
[22:31]just like the beauty of a flower, you know, all of that.
[22:33]But it's true.
[22:34]It's a good reminder that to seize the day, if you will.
[22:37]Yeah, Richard Dawkins has this great thing
[22:40]and it's an musical called Unweaving the Rainbow.
[22:42]He just goes through the odds of that one sperm
[22:45]finding that one egg to make you is so astronomically improbable
[22:51]and that the pregnancy is successful
[22:53]and that you're delivered and that you get to survive
[22:55]into the point where you could read this book
[22:57]that he's writing so incredibly unlikely.
[23:01]And it is really important, I think,
[23:02]when you're stuck in traffic or you're in a long line
[23:04]at the supermarket to occasionally take a breath
[23:07]and be like, I should be so grateful every second,
[23:10]especially those of us who are lucky enough
[23:12]to be able-bodied, like I'm standing on two legs
[23:15]and I get to buy food in a supermarket as incredible.
[23:19]So all these little miracles around us,
[23:21]sometimes we forget to be grateful for them.
[23:23]Are you really sad that the boys are gone?
[23:26]What does it feel like?
[23:27]Yeah, thanks.
[23:29]It feels joyful and sad
[23:30]and they braid around each other all the time.
[23:32]Like trash night the other night was hard
[23:34]because I would go in their rooms and like,
[23:36]oh yeah, there's nothing in their trash cans
[23:38]because they don't live here anymore.
[23:40]That was a tough one.
[23:42]But then you hear from them and they're making new friends
[23:44]and having new experiences
[23:46]and especially with the pandemic being right before they left,
[23:50]we're so grateful that they're going off
[23:52]to live these big lives where they get to all be around
[23:54]each other and live in that like zoo of hormones
[23:58]that is freshman year at college.
[23:59]And you realize that we can't give them that big
[24:04]of a life at home anymore.
[24:06]And so I try to remember it most of the time
[24:10]that I'm really grateful.
[24:11]But there are moments when you feel sorry for yourself
[24:13]or you just feel old.
[24:14]You're like, wait a minute.
[24:15]What now?
[24:17]Yeah.
[24:18]My twins are boarding school for the first time this year
[24:20]for high school.
[24:21]And it's similar.
[24:22]I have two other little guys at home.
[24:23]So it's not quite the same.
[24:24]But I'm like, if these guys were gone too,
[24:27]like then what, like when you worry in your life
[24:29]so much around somebody else's set of activities
[24:32]and things, even with a professional life.
[24:35]But anyway.
[24:36]Yeah.
[24:37]But you're doing it.
[24:37]You're managing like a really rich professional life.
[24:40]And that's a great model for them to see.
[24:43]Oh, mom's doing our podcast now.
[24:45]Mom's writing now is a great way to show them.
[24:47]Like I am a human being too.
[24:49]I don't just exist to serve your schedule.
[24:52]Yes.
[24:53]So I don't even really care.
[24:55]I'm like, hello, anybody?
[24:57]I'm here.
[24:57]You don't brush your teeth?
[24:59]Anyway.
[25:00]So what are you like now that they are out of the house
[25:03]and this book is out?
[25:05]What is your next year or two look like?
[25:07]What are you going to do?
[25:08]Are you travel or are you committed to living where you live?
[25:10]Like what's your, what now?
[25:12]Yeah, good question.
[25:13]I'm still, I'm doing publicity still for cloud.
[25:15]And I have the paperback coming out in the United States
[25:18]next week.
[25:19]So right now I'm still kind of just living short term.
[25:21]Like I got to get through that.
[25:23]And then yes, it's going to be really interesting.
[25:26]I know we're going to stay in our house for a year or two.
[25:29]We've been told like the kids want to come home
[25:31]to have their own bedrooms.
[25:33]But it does seem odd because we have a five bedroom house.
[25:36]And it seems odd that now like, you know,
[25:39]one's my office.
[25:40]But like what do we have these bedrooms for their empty?
[25:43]So yeah, eventually I'd like to get a slightly more
[25:45]streamlined life I think and be able to travel more.
[25:48]I would love to just, you know, do Airbnb in a couple
[25:51]of different countries.
[25:52]Everyone's a while chase projects.
[25:54]You know, my books are usually really research intensive.
[25:57]And so having my wife be able to come with me, you know,
[26:00]I had three trips to France to ride all the way.
[26:02]We cannot see it back then.
[26:03]She's just in the mix of raising kids.
[26:06]And we don't even know if we've got to finish the book.
[26:08]And the trips are costing us money.
[26:10]And you know, it's just the stress of that is going to be gone.
[26:13]And that's so exciting.
[26:16]I was so worried about her in the memoir when she had that moment
[26:20]which was fainting in the hospital.
[26:21]And you were freaking out.
[26:22]Oh my gosh.
[26:23]Anyway, I'm assuming all is good now.
[26:25]Everything's just do a great day.
[26:27]OK, good.
[26:28]And what do you have another book that you've already started on
[26:31]that you have on it?
[26:32]Yeah, yeah, three projects.
[26:33]And there are kind of like plants.
[26:35]You know, you've got to water them with attention and time
[26:39]and see which one kind of grows sturdy and strong
[26:42]and captures your attention.
[26:43]So I don't, I'm not really talking.
[26:44]I don't try not to talk about things until I'm far enough
[26:47]along because you kind of tend to abandon projects.
[26:50]Sometimes it's all just trial and error for me.
[26:52]And you just need time to just say which one of these
[26:55]is going to kind of, you know, you
[26:57]rummage around in it.
[26:59]And if you feel that like lightning inside of it,
[27:01]you're like, this is something.
[27:03]This is enough energy in this that I can sustain a year
[27:06]as long project.
[27:07]And I'm in that phase now where I'm like, well, maybe this one.
[27:10]How about I'll try this one today?
[27:12]It's kind of great.
[27:13]It's kind of a fun time.
[27:15]And it doesn't, you don't get confused
[27:16]between all the different narratives and all that.
[27:17]No, no, no, no, no, yeah.
[27:19]I'm reading about like cybersecurity one day.
[27:21]And then like DDT, I've been reading a lot about this
[27:23]pesticide DDT that was really this amazing savior
[27:27]in World War II, you know,
[27:29]eradicating all these diseases because of wiped out mosquitoes.
[27:31]But of course, we started using way too much of it
[27:34]and it really damaged ecosystems later.
[27:36]But it's really glinks in my mind to the nuclear bomb
[27:39]in this idea that like technology
[27:41]builds these really dangerous weapons
[27:43]and science can both save us and destroy us
[27:46]all at once is something really interesting about that.
[27:48]I thought you weren't gonna talk about it.
[27:50]Sorry, yeah, who knows.
[27:52]Maybe that won't become a blowout.
[27:54]I'm amazing.
[27:57]I'm just wondering even at this for so long,
[28:00]you were such a successful revered author.
[28:03]And how do you feel about continuing to do book publicity?
[28:06]Oh gosh, good question.
[28:09]You know, I think there are so many interesting young writers
[28:13]coming out.
[28:13]So the last thing I want us for like somebody
[28:15]to choose my book and not buy like a story collection
[28:19]by a young 26 year old writer.
[28:21]But I also feel like sometimes if you spend whatever,
[28:25]a hundred thousand hours, I don't know if that's accurate
[28:28]but so much time writing a book.
[28:30]Maybe you owe it to that project to spend, you know,
[28:33]one half of one percent of the time
[28:36]trying to get it into people's hands.
[28:37]And, you know, you fall in love with all these people
[28:39]at your publishing house and, you know,
[28:41]they want the book to be successful in a sense
[28:44]of whatever successful means is probably me selling copies.
[28:48]So yeah, there's parts of me that I don't mind.
[28:50]And you get to meet interesting people.
[28:52]You know, I just did seven days in Paris
[28:53]and, you know, talking to all these journalists
[28:55]about what's going on in Europe right now,
[28:56]the fear of the rise of this extremist nationalism
[29:00]and talking to them about the mustard shortage,
[29:02]which is tied to climate change and invasion of Ukraine.
[29:06]You know, so it's always an opportunity to learn
[29:08]if you're not just talking about yourself all the time.
[29:11]So I would rather probably be writing
[29:14]or standing in a stream by myself,
[29:16]but it's not the end of the world
[29:17]that people want to talk to me about my books.
[29:19]It's kind of nice.
[29:20]Awesome. Well, thank you for letting me talk to you
[29:22]about your book.
[29:23]This is so much fun for me.
[29:24]And again, I'm just, I'm such a fan.
[29:27]I have so much respect for you.
[29:28]And what you do with words and story, it's just,
[29:32]I mean, it's amazing, really amazing.
[29:34]So thank you for chatting with me today.
[29:36]Oh, well, thank you so much,
[29:37]to be in thanks for all your work
[29:39]trying to connect readers and writers.
[29:41]My pleasure.
[29:41]All right, I'll take care.
[29:43]Okay, bye.
[29:44]Have a good luck.
[29:45]Thank you, you too.
[29:46]Okay, take care.
[29:48]Thanks for listening to this episode of Moms,
[29:50]Don't Have Time to Read Books.
[29:51]Don't forget to follow me on Instagram,
[29:54]at Zibi Owens, and at Moms,
[29:55]Don't Have Time to Read Books.
[29:57]Also, sign up for my newsletter at Zibi Owens.com
[29:59]and sign up for more videos.
[30:00]I'm out for my virtual book club and meet lots of authors on Zoom every other week.
[30:03]Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan in fact, Texture Sound for the Sound Editing.
[30:07]And thank you to Morning Moon Productions for providing this fantastic intro and outram music.