Patton Oswalt on "This Paradise" || Books That Changed My Life

How do we deal with AI and not being able to trust reality anymore? How are we going to fight for what is reality and what is ourselves? We are always going to find new and creative, maybe not always pleasant, but new and creative ways to defend our autonomy and remain human. It is going to happen. I can't say how it's going to happen, but there will be a weird mass mind moment either through one person or a lot of people.

I think you should be the one to do it.

I just want to sip tea and read books.

Somebody's got to be courageous. You're dad of the year. Why not add that to the list?

My daughter would disagree with that.

10 years from now, she won't.

Maybe I'm making her the relentless one. You do it. You're young. That's still your work. Yeah. Daddy's feet hurt. You get out there.

You change AI. Okay, so the big question: How did This Paradise by Ruby Cowling change your life? It changed my life because it made me realize that I'm Chris Collins and you're watching Books That Changed My Life. This week we're joined by actor and comedian Patton Oswalt, and he's here to talk about the book that changed his life, This Paradise by Ruby Cowling. So we're here to talk about This Paradise by Ruby Cowling.

Yeah.

Curious, when you were asked to pick the book that changed your life, what other books were on that list?

Um, there was— there's one, uh, called, uh, Every Anxious Wave by Mo Davidow. Um, I hope I'm saying her name right. Um, just an incredible mix of— it feels like she's— I feel like she has smuggled some personal memoir into it, but it's— you could also argue it is simply a straight science fiction novel, but it's not. It's this whole other thing. It's one of those things when I read it, I was like, oh, okay, I gotta think about my life a little differently right now. Um, the, um, I mean, the easy one is Stephen King's The Stand because I read it when I was 10, and, and the idea that something this thick could feel like it was over in 10 minutes— I didn't realize, like, to me, thick books were work or a chore, and that was, oh, wait a minute, when a book is really, really well written You— it can't— it, it's not long enough. You know, I'd never really hit that, um, where you wish it didn't end. Like, why is it over? It's over already. It's like, dude, it's 850 pages.

I put the—

and also, um, it's one of the first times that I finished a book and I, in my mind, could imagine further things going on with the characters. Weren't dead for me. They were still doing stuff. I could imagine visiting Franny Goldsmith 20 years down the road when society is rebuilt herself even more, and she's now become the wise person that remembers the Great Tribulation. And what— how is she going to deal with her kids? And how— like, all that stuff. And that was the beginning of that really realizing that, that books are really, truly great books are excerpts of a very, very deeply felt life, and they're just cutting out that moment of it. But you can fill in the stuff that led up to it and then the stuff that comes after. It's why, for the most part, I don't like prequels of, of books when they go back and go, here's what— I don't need to know what led up to it because I've got a better book in my head already. You don't need to write that for me, you know? Yeah. I always go back to, um, Thomas Harris, that great line in Silence of the Lambs when, um— and it's not in the movie, um, because movies— this is almost an, an antithetical to how movies work— but Clarice asks Hannibal Lecter at one point when he's lecturing on, you know, eating people and more morality. And she just goes, "What happened to you?" And then he says, "Nothing happened to me. I happened." Which is the most terrifying thing, you know. And that, that you can link that to Ahab, to Judge Holden in Blood Meridian. There are certain things in this world, they're just there and they are to be dealt with. And you don't need to go into the, "Well, let's go into the, the background." There's no background. This thing is here right now. You got to deal with it. Yeah, which is what life is so often.

So you were 10 when you came to the realization that books are magic?

Oh yeah. Yeah. I was very, very—

Stephen King.

Stephen King, man. Because also he was one of the first writers that I read where, and I'm sure he would deny this, but you could feel him being surprised by what was happening. There were certain things in the novel there's a great thing when, when, when writers are really cooking and the characters get out of their control, or the story almost gets out of their control, and they're like, this guy's going to get— my, my brother, I remember he wrote a screenplay, and you're kind of following this character, and then he gets killed kind of just a little over halfway into the movie. And it, it kind of— it, it threw the screenplay off, but it also felt very real. And I was like, "Like, how did you map that out?" He goes, "I didn't. I realized when I was writing the scene, he was gonna run his mouth and get himself killed, and there was nothing I could do about it." Like, as I started writing, I'm like, "Oh, he's gonna get himself killed." He was just a vessel. He's not gonna shut up. There's nothing I can do. So, like, that— And there's moments, especially in The Stand, I feel like when Nick Andros dies, that was as shocking to Stephen King as it is for the reader. It feels— And the way the characters react afterwards, they— The plot almost shuts down for a couple of chapters because the characters, and I think Stephen King's like, "I don't know what to do right now. How is he dead? What the hell do we do?" You know, it is a genuinely shocking moment that I think shocked him. So I'm very keen now, and I'm delighted when I read books where the author has let his or her characters go, "Oh, shoot. Okay, well, I guess you're gonna do that." Well, nothing I can do. I love that. That always blows me away.

So you have a brother. How many siblings do you have?

I got one younger brother.

So you're the older?

I'm the older by a year and a half.

So you were close growing up?

Yeah, we were close. We just weren't close in our interests growing up. He was way more into sports. I was way more into films and books. Uh, but now as we've grown older, we've really kind of linked up in— because he is also a very astute, clever reader and watcher of things, how he approaches stuff. And it's unlike the way that I think, and I actually value the way that he's so different from me. I'm realizing now that that's actually a gift rather than an annoyance. It's like, oh wow, this is a whole other aspect of how I could look at the world. That he sees that I don't, you know.

Where did you grow up?

Northern Virginia.

Oh, really?

In the— in the— hang on.

So for people that don't understand Virginia.

Well, yeah, it's not just Virginia. It's the whole area. Northern Virginia and Southern Maryland kind of surround Washington, D.C. So that's an area where there's no— it doesn't feel like there's that much of a culture or an accent. That's why I just have this kind of neutral accent, because if you go anywhere south where I was growing up, all of a sudden he's down 81 in Roanoke, Blacksburg, and Norton, Virginia, places like that. Then all of a sudden you get that, that country accent. And then if you go north of like Bethesda and Chevy Chase, and all of a sudden he's getting up there, Baltimore and Arbutus and Towson, on them northern parts, you get that Baltimore accent. And then it's got that thing going on there. But when you get down to where I was growing up, it sounds like this. There's just nothing there, which was kind of cool. It kind of made us all blank canvases.

What did your parents do?

My dad was in the Marines for 20 years, and then he retired and worked at Gannett, like building computer systems for them. And my mom was a legal secretary, all just very much living in a bedroom community where people worked, came home, and then got ready for work the next day. And so there wasn't— I didn't have access to the kind of You know, friends of mine who grew up in cities, New York or Philly or, you know, San Francisco or, or just places that had like a scene and a culture. Now things got through to me by accident. Things would fall into my lap. Um, just by, you know, I remember my middle school library had a copy of Ellison Wonderland for some reason. So I got into Harlan Ellison and I discovered, um, one time my mom without meaning to, she bought me the book, um, There's a Richard Brodigan book called the— oh God, the something monster— The Hawkline Monster, which she thought was like a young adult book about, you know, monsters and kids, but it's actually a very, very adult book. Um, you know, Brodigan, which was, you know, he wrote Watermelon Sugar and The Abortion and stuff like that. Um, so there was that. I had the— someone's got a really Someone with a better mind than me should outline that. The bland suburban upbringing where stuff just almost falls into your lap the way that cargo cults start, like a tribe out in the jungle, but then stuff falls off a plane and they're like, "Oh, okay." And then they reverse engineer the bigger world based on this one object that they found, which is what I was doing a lot.

So was mom the reader? Dad?

My mom read a lot of biographies, some fiction. My dad read a lot of nonfiction, history, stuff like that. Not a lot of novels. I got the— although I read a lot of nonfiction as well. I read a lot of biographies and there's certain historians that I really, really like and certain biographers that I think are just as good as novelists when they really, you know, Nick Toshes and Jamie McDonough are just incredible. Like, those are like reading novels. So, um, yeah, they, uh, they, they were reading, but it wasn't like they were reading— wasn't like a big part of their lives as it is with mine. You know, me, books are a big deal, and I try to pass it on to my daughter that, you know, this is— this isn't just something that you study in school and then you're done reading. Like, I knew friends in college, I'm sure you met them too, that were like, the minute I graduate, I'm never opening another book. Like, they felt like this is a job I got to do now, and then when I'm done with this, I never have to do this again. And I'm like, wait a minute, but you all, you get to do this and you don't have to ever write anything about it. You can just read it for the pleasure of reading it. Doesn't that mean like— but they had, and it wasn't their fault, they had just had it drilled into their head that this is work and soon it'll be over. Yeah, that's a bummer.

Yeah, because they never had a real connection with the book. No, it was all transactional.

It was transactional and it was— it wasn't emotional. Unspoken. What do I need to know on the test about this? Tell me what I should be focusing on. What'll be on the test? I'll spit that back at you and then we're done. I've held up my end of the deal. It always had that feel to it. It was adversarial almost.

Yeah. Does your daughter like reading like you did?

Yes, I really—

did you make that happen?

Yes, I've— that was— that's one of my few accomplishments, very great accomplishments, that I really, from a very early age, was like, oh, we get to read, we get to kick back and read, you know. And now she reads, um, a lot of the stuff that I do. She reads a lot of Stephen King, but she's reading Jeffrey Eugenides. And she— her summer assignment for school right now is to read The Odyssey. So I'm going to read her— we're going to read The Odyssey in the evening, and then I'm also going to show her the movie O Brother, Where Art Thou? to kind of lay that in. And then there's a comic book, I forget what publisher does it, it's called Monsterpiece Theater. And you would actually like this, it's like Godzilla versus The Great Gatsby, where they— it seems kind of funny, but then when you read it, they really understand the themes of The Great Gatsby and how those characters would react if Godzilla showed up at at West Egg and started wreaking havoc, like how that would go. Do you know that, Josh? It is— it— they're so brilliant. And then there's a new one that just came out. It's Godzilla in the Odyssey and how Odysseus would deal with both Godzilla and all the monsters in the, in the Toho-verse and how they would fit into the story of the Odyssey. But they get— like, clearly whoever's writing it, as goofy as they're being with it, they've clearly read The Odyssey and know all the themes and all the characters and all the— it's, it's a great— I'm gonna— so I'm gonna read her that comic to go, this is a really cool overall outline of how the story goes. And then of course this summer, take her to the Nolan film.

So how old is she?

She's 17.

So when she was younger, what books did you put in front of her to encourage her to read? And did you— were you paying attention to her personality and her likes?

Yeah.

And matchmaking? Yes. There was a lot of, um, early on a lot of Harry Potter.

I read her all the Harry Potter books out loud, um, and then that led to the, um, uh, oh God, the, the Hunger Games books kind of led to that. And then led— and then also I was, I was not, um, I don't see a difference between really great novels and really great graphic novels. So I also had her reading stuff like, um, John Allison's Giant Days and, um, Paper Girls by Brian K. Vaughan. You know, those are— that's also really good, brilliant, deep storytelling. So we would go back and forth with those. She, you know, and then, you know, early on I was like, okay, you want to read some Stephen King? So I read her Gray Matter. I read a couple of short stories to her. Then I was like, if you read The Mist and you can deal with The Mist, then you can read anything that that guy did. And The Mist and a short story called The Jaunt. Which I think is one of the scariest short stories I've ever read in my life. If you can deal with these, you can read with— And then she's really kind of gone down a path with some of his stuff. One of her favorite books is his book On Writing.

Oh, yeah.

Which is an incredible book, not just about writing, but how to live a creative life and how to not make your life a function of your art. Whereas a lot of people, they make Your art should just be one part of a much bigger life. Don't let your life get subsumed to your art. So those were really good lessons. And then there's other books that she just reads that— I took her to a concert last night for a band that I introduced her to the headliners, Metric, just playing them in the car. But she introduced me to the opening act, which is Broken Social Scene. So there's a lot of— we're very open about Hey, read this. Hey, listen to this. And I was very open about, I'm going to introduce you to as much stuff as I can, but then you start exploring the same way I did. This will lead you, who knows where this will lead you. So that's been really interesting.

Does she want to be a writer?

She doesn't know what she wants to be. She's 17, and I really embrace her not knowing what she wants to be.

Has she written any stories?

Heavy journal, and she's written stories and essays, but she doesn't even know what kind of writing she wants to do. What's kind of interesting now, she's sort of expressed an, uh, an interest in screenwriting or filmmaking. So one of the things I'm going to do this summer is show her a lot of first films by people that just picked up a camera and had no money and just made it anyway. So this summer is going to be, um, Richard Linklater's Slacker and, uh, um, Rodriguez's El Mariachi and Christopher Nolan's Following. And that's going to be really important because I can show her Following which I think he shot for, I don't know, like $2,000 or something. And then go, that led to— and then I'm gonna take her to see The Odyssey. Like, you start anywhere, you don't know where it will lead you. Just start, just start, start shooting and see where it takes you, man.

You're gonna win Father of the Year.

I'm trying. I mean, listen, you—

that's such great parenting. You're so intentional.

I don't want to be the, the, um, the mean jock equivalent of a nerd parent, of like, you're gonna sit down and watch all the Star Wars movies. You know, there's— I'm very open to if I do show her something and Goes, then I go, okay, fine, but she'll get it later. Didn't land on you, or, or she won't. It don't— it won't matter. There are certain things that land on people and other things that don't, and you just have to— I just went to see, um, Michael Sarnoski's, uh, The Death of Robin Hood, and he's an incredible filmmaker who started off with a movie called Pig with, uh, Nicolas Cage, which was another one of like, I never went to film school, I just, I just want to make a movie, you know, it's just kind of Wrote this script, and it kind of got around, and the next thing I knew, Nicolas Cage was interested, and he's like, "Have you ever made a film?" I'm like, "No, but you want to do it?" He goes, "Okay." Like, that attitude of just like, "Just start, just start." And Robin Hood, there's a lot of kids that don't care about Robin Hood, but for some reason, it landed with him so hard, and he's been so obsessed with it, and he's made this genuinely kind of like core-shaking film. So, I'm very much about, Don't judge or overanalyze what lands with you. If it lands with you, it lands with you for a reason. And pursue that. Just chase it down.

Well, that's why I was asking you, is you're curating it to her interest because you probably know her better than anybody. So you kind of, you kind of have a sense of what'll land and what won't by the time she's 17.

But she also surprises me. There's certain things that I think that she's going to be like, oh my God. And then she reads and goes, I didn't— I'm sorry, it didn't really, you know, and I don't judge her for that. Just like, okay, fine.

Doesn't work.

It doesn't work. Um, there's a— I have a new special out right now on YouTube called, uh, uh, Tea and Scotch. And I do a whole bit about— because she also loves horror movies, but she wants to be a badass and like punch above her weight. And she wanted to see the original Halloween, the '78 one. And I was kind of dead set against it. This is back when she was 15, she wanted to see it. And finally I was like, okay, I'll let you see it. Because I watched it again and I was like, this is a really scary movie. It's not gory, and it's very cinematically brilliant. Like, it's very Hitchcockian camera angles. I was like, Carpenter knows how to make a movie. There's one bare boob for half a second, you know? And I reasoned, I mean, it's PJ Soles' boob. Every child should see that. So, um, we watched this movie and it was the funniest thing she'd ever seen. She wasn't scared by it. She was disgusted by how stupid everyone was in the movie. She was just like, I can't believe you think this is the scariest movie ever. And I was like, okay, fine. Although luckily she just saw Obsession, was super creeped out, so yay. But yeah, you— influence gets passed on and it can't be— it can never be a checklist that you're like, okay, if you want to do this, you got to check off the things that I did. Because there were things that my parents grew up with that I didn't land with me, and other stuff landed with me, and that shaped me, and that's going to keep happening, you know. I, I will eventually show her the movie Repo Man, which is one of the most formative things I've ever seen, and I'm fully prepared hard for her to go, I mean, I appreciate it, but it didn't— you know, hopefully she won't, but you just have to do that.

Yeah, well, I mean, what's— what she has and makes her lucky is that you're intentional and you're engaged, and that's really, at the end of the day, that's what matters the most.

I'm intentional and I'm engaged, but I do not have an agenda. I don't have this set goal that she— I've got to form her to do this. She knows that she can just go. And, and by the way, that, that's based on— I had an English teacher, AP English, and we were reading Carson McCuller short stories. I think the— we were reading A Good Man Is Hard to Find, that one. Anyway, I, I hated her style so much. I just, I hated it. And I told her, I was like, I'm reading this and this just doesn't work. This doesn't feel human. I don't know people who act like this. This is just so contrived. And then she said, well, then write a paper and prove to me that it sucks. And so then I read it like 5— like, I'm gonna rip this thing apart. So I did the— I did a closer reading of that short story than anything else I read that semester to put together my thing. And then I realized, oh, she tricked me into, oh, actually analyzing it even harder. So, you know, I like when she comes to me and was like, hey, this thing didn't work. And when she new eyes on things that you are already calcified in your opinions on, and someone comes along and goes, have you noticed this? You're like, what the— you know, I love that. I love that.

Yeah, me too. Yeah, a different perspective that you had, you just hadn't considered because you're who you are.

Exactly. Yeah. And also, it also, I think it really says something about really truly great art when something is illogical or has huge plot holes, but you're like, Yeah, but I don't care because it's so good. It works. You know, there's, there's stuff, there's, there's moments in the movie Jaws that logically don't really follow, and you're like, I don't care. This is so beautifully constructed and just a masterwork in making you, propelling you into this world that even the stuff that doesn't make sense, you're like, ah, you know what, fine, don't care, I'm in. This movie is so good. So, you know, stuff like that will always, will always win out, you know?

Yeah, it's good. Put me in the time that this book came into your life. What was going on? What were you feeling?

Actually, okay, this book didn't come into my life. One of this writer's short stories came into my life first. There's a publishing company up in Canada and they're, and they're going out of business, which kills me. Called Hingston Olson. And every Christmas they do a— did, they're not doing them anymore— a short story advent calendar where they send you 25 short stories as little pamphlets in the slipcase, and each day you read a new one. So one of the years, there was one of her stories called Odemon Till that was so extraordinary. I couldn't tell again, is this science fiction? Is this about someone who thinks he's in a science fiction setting. Is this person an alien? Are they someone who's neurodivergent? What is going on here? And it was so touching and beautiful that it— I went chasing everything else she wrote, which then led me to this short story collection. And this was during a time when it felt like a lot of the— I think it was a combination of the crushing overall supremacy of the Marvel Universe in film and then in comics, where it felt like every huge idea had been explored to every single angle that it could be explored to. You know, and I had been reading— and I read, you know, I was reading people like Jonathan Hickman and Ted Chiang that, you know, were really going interesting places. Al Ewing. These are, you know, comic book writers and science fiction writers. But I was like, "Oh my God, have we hit, like, a wall with..." how to tell these stories. And I just— I was having one of those weird anxiety moments of, has it all been done now? Like, are we at this weird— And then I picked up this little book full of these quiet little sort of science fiction, sort of not, sort of horror stories, sort of not, that it was so this absolutely new, uh, direction. And, um, and by the way, this is Boiler House Press, but that the stuff these people find and put out is all Amazing. But this collection— and I'm very evangelical about this— I bought like 10 copies of this and just mail it to people like, read this, read this. And you see I mark it up. This is the one I just left this for my daughter to read. I took this with me today. I'm bringing it back home. These are the ones she should start with.

Um, so you tab it up for her?

I tab up certain ones like, hey, just to— you know, I don't— there's no spoilers. One of them, um,, that we'll do in a second, uh, The Ground is Considerably Distorted. You'll see the tab says The Way We Think Now, and I just want a little phrase like that to get her started when she's reading. But I don't go like, oh my God, this is so badass. Um, this is a, this is a person that is— and also I was very, I was getting very despairing about, because I, this was my, my just now kind of I'm coming out of it. I was very much a slave to the brain rot and the slop and the swiping all night, all day, the little bits. I was getting away from reading. And so I was like, I guess this form is just not a way to grab people anymore. And then picking this up was like, oh no, this absolutely can still grab people. And so it just, I don't know, it really was like, hey, stop your whining and get creative.

Okay, so there's an originality to this because it's a bunch of short stories. They don't go together. No, they're formatted completely different. They're written in different voices, but all by the same person.

Yeah. So, so have different typesetting and fonts.

Yeah.

That's how far off the field she goes. It is. It is.

Each one stands on its own.

Absolutely.

And you're not quite sure how it all fits together. For somebody who hasn't read the book, is there a takeaway?

The takeaway at the end is we are going to find new creative ways to deal with the way that creativity and choice and imagination is being beaten out of us in a lot of ways. And also we're going to deal— we're going to have new moral questions that are going to come up that are going to seem like new moral questions, like what do we do in this instance? But they're actually linked to very ancient questions that we've wrestled with since we— to steal from the movie Network— since we crawled out of the slime. We are still dealing with this whole new openly multi-billionaire criminal class that's just now— there's nothing hidden anymore. And in not hiding anything, that's part of the power play and the way to make us feel powerless is like, "Oh no, I'm just doing it right in front of you. There's nothing you can do." Well, how are we going to deal with this? This book very much addresses that, um, in some of the stories. And also just how do we deal with AI and not being able to trust reality anymore? What is— how are we going to fight for what is reality and what is ourselves? We are always going to find new and creative, maybe not always pleasant, but new and creative ways to defend our autonomy and remain human. And that kind of comes through in a lot of these.

So, and then climate change.

Well, climate change, I feel like climate change is just part and parcel with the new, um, power and the new power announcing itself as power that does not care. That is like, uh, we're, I'm openly doing something to harm you so that I can benefit. It's, it's one thing to, I'm doing something so that I can benefit and come out on top and maybe you'll survive and maybe you won't. And now it's like, I made the choice. Someone gave me this choice of you can become powerful and privileged. Now it'll directly hurt this other person. People went, fine with me, I'll take that.

Yeah. So we live in a time today where companies will prioritize profits over the health of the food that they're making or over the—

they prioritize profit over humans and they will work in and again, all but announce that Yeah, this will kill about 20% of you and we're okay with that. And this will cause this many lawsuits, but we'll have the money to pay it off. It won't actually affect us. So you can absolutely, like the old days of the whistleblower that brings down the giant. Now you can blow the whistle all you want and the giant's like, well, how much money do you need to go away? Like there's no, we're not going anywhere. And they're very, very open about that. And that is a very despairing, thing to have to deal with, you know. But again, there's going to be new ways and new methods we're going to find to defend our humanity in this, in this world and keep them from bulldozing over us. We don't know what they are yet, and these giants don't know what they are yet.

Yeah. And then, so other topics are family, trauma, media— you kind of mentioned that— inequality, and generational divides. I mean, there's a lot going on.

Oh yeah. I mean, she just— And again, I don't think she set out to go— Here's another thing I love about this book, and it reminds me of a lot of the early Harlan Ellison collections. She wasn't trying to put together this whole thematic thing. Each story is its own. She almost writes them as this is my last attempt to write a story on this and wrestle with this topic. And they just happen to be enough to collect in a, in a book. But I don't think that she had the idea that her overall thesis would be that it's just— this is whether we like want to or not, this is how we have to engage with the world every day, whether we want to or not. There are like battle lines you have to— we now live in a world where, okay, what companies am I still going to use knowing that they're openly doing these things? How do I, how do I work out my moral balance sheet ordering something off of Amazon knowing what they're doing. Okay, well then maybe, um, I'll get this medicine that I need off of Amazon, but I'll only get books from bookshop.org. Or I'll try to— you just— it's impossible. Like, every— do I want to do a show somewhere? Yeah, every network is connected to something horrifying now. They're connected. So what, what level of horror are you able to work with and, and stomach? And then how can you find a way to balance it out or not? Or do you go. I don't— there are people who have, who've clearly reached a point where they're like, yeah, I don't care. It's, it's— there's a lot of people out there, and I, I get this feeling too sometimes, where it's this unspoken, um, not everybody gets on Noah's Ark. I'd rather have a spot on the ark than drown, no matter what it cost me, no matter what it cost my soul, my emotions, and my mind. There are people making those deals. You see them surrounding our leaders all the time. The people that I'm fascinated with are not the people at the podium, it's the people standing to the side listening to the unspeakable just being said, and their faces just like, "My kids' teeth are straight, they're going to the best schools. I will get to be in the survival bunker when this all collapses." You can see the decisions being made.

One of the things that you're describing that is in the book over and over again is the contradiction. There's an inherent contradiction in a lot of things. Two things are true at the same time, and you got to pick the worst—

at the same time, you got to pick the worst of the two.

Yeah, but sometimes there's consequences for picking the one you think is the best.

There's consequences for doing the right thing, and there's consequences for picking the thing that is most beneficial to you. And there's no way to avoid that. And a lot of what we're being sold now more than anything, and it gets back to the whole, you know, life is pain and anyone who tells you otherwise is selling something from The Princess Bride. But now what people are trying to sell you is you can purchase no consequences. If you make enough money, you will be free of consequence for the rest of your life. And that's become the goal. The goal now is not, I want to create something to make— listen, I'm all for making money. And being happy and being comfortable. But there's this, there's this new psychotic level that's been added to it. Even the old robber barons were like, yes, I'm exploiting people and I'm doing horrible things. Maybe I'll give the people some hospitals and libraries and theaters to balance out the awfulness that I'm— the, the good that I'm scraping out of the world. Now it's like the new, uh, the new, uh, um, status is, I'm taking stuff out of the world and I'm giving nothing back. That's how strong I am. I am so strong that I don't— I'm not even worried about my soul. I'm going to take everything and literally give nothing back. And that will be— and I'm going to crow about that. These other people are, oh, they're trying to assuage their guilt. Not me, because I don't have that, because I'm strong. Like, that feels like there's a new class of of billionaire, trillionaire that is openly, no one gets anything but me, and that's my legacy.

And, um, well, have you ever had— have you ever had a friend that's a billionaire?

I've never had a friend that's a billionaire. No. I mean, I've known— I know people who are billionaire adjacent, and I know people that, um, are very, very happy to look the other way and entertain billionaires and be a part of their court. If that makes sense. I don't want to get any more specific than that, but I've never actually known a person who's a billionaire. I would imagine it would be like meeting an alien species.

Well, my point of it is that it's a different set of rules. It's like Biggie's lyric, more money, more problems.

Yeah.

And so that inherently creates that isolation that justifies the behavior in a way.

But what I'm saying is there's this new level that's been unlocked. I think the phrase, "More money, more problems," is a salve to people who aren't billionaires and trillionaires that they would like to imagine that there's this unseen set of anxieties and fears that these people are experiencing. And what I'm saying is it seems to me that They're not experiencing any anxiety, fear, or doubt at all, that they actually made the choice to simply structure their lives around getting money, and then they did whatever they had to do to get it. Horrible things probably. And then just went, I don't feel anything. It, I don't, they're not bothered. We tell ourselves that so that we can live day to day, but I think that there are people at the top who. They get 10 hours sleep at night. They don't have stomach ulcers. They are perfectly happy sociopaths. The mask of sanity. And so, this is— a lot of the stories in this book kind of deal with characters that are putting that fairy tale on the world so that they can live in the world. And especially in the story, This Paradise, we see that fairy tale crumbling down. Because of the woman that is working for the people that are going to take care of their family in the disaster and not her. And she realizes, "They're going to let me die, and they'll never think of me again. They'll never spare a second thought to me." You know, we love to— I think of the, "Oh my God, I'm at the top, and I'm so tormented. I'm haunted by the faces of the people that I did wrong, killed." They're haunted by nothing. There's no feeling there. And that's a really scary thing to have to face. But I think that's a real thing.

It's a lot in the world. How did that change your personal perspective on success and money?

I, it stopped me wanting things and it made me more about try to build a name and try to build a body of work and then be brave enough. And I'm not there yet, but be brave and strong enough to let it go out in the world and then have other people do with it what they will. And you know, maybe it lives after you, maybe you—

So let go.

You let go. You don't get to control it. I, when I, my first, memoir, I was recording the audiobook, and one of the chapters has lyrics from REM songs, because it's all about how the album Fables of the Reconstruction really kind of changed me. And so, through a friend, Michael Stipe read those lyrics on the audiobook. But when they sent him the galleys, he was laughing. He's like, "These lyrics are wrong." He heard them wrong. "These aren't the lyrics I And I was like, "Oh God, I'll totally change them." He goes, "No, no, no, no, no. That's what you heard and that helped you. So that, like, the song is out there and it's doing whatever it has to do, and you did whatever you needed to do with it to make it help you. So let me read these, 'cause that's what the reality was." Like, you know, that's that— he was so confident in what— I know what it means, but if it meant something different to you and it helped you, I'm not gonna go, "No, no, no, no, no, no, no, you can't." And that's kind of how I want my work to be. Like, now I was always to be very, very concerned with status and, oh my God, what platform am I on? Where am I? And now I'm just like, I'm just showing up and doing the work every day. I'm doing the work that I like. And then that's for other people to decide. You cannot— because we have so gotten— because of social media, people are now designing their work around clicks and views. And will it go viral? Will people— it's like, do the thing that you really, really like. That's the only thing that'll ever last. The only thing.

And so you're letting go of whether it has a zillion views or it sells a bunch.

I'm letting go.

If you're happy with it, then you just let it go into the world.

I'm letting go of posterity, reputation, and cool. I'm letting go of all that.

So this was the start of that.

This was one of the things that let me— again, I— it was the start of me subconsciously realizing it, but I had to go through a lot of anxiety. Okay. Before this then punched through.

So one thing I think that is something to point out is there's a lot— if you read this cover to cover, there's a lot going on in your unconscious mind that would come out over time. It's— there's too much going on here for you to comprehend it all.

There's—

in one sitting. In fact, if you read this book every week for a year, you'd probably get something out of it each time.

In the story The ground is considerably distorted. In just that story, there's 20 things going on. You know, like, that story you could wrestle with for a year, and it pays off big time. But, you know, they, um, to shy— it's, it's— she does not shy away from these annoyances and these technologies. These are here, and these are bothering us, and that's part of the landscape. Now, maybe in the future there won't be constant text threads and, you know, updates on your phone. Maybe this will make it seem dated, but I'm capturing what is going on right now, and this now becomes a very crucial historical document. This is how people were thinking, and this is how their minds worked. It's like when you read Ulysses, and his thoughts literally start taking the form of newspaper articles and advertisements. He was going, "I'm affected by this junk. This junk is here. Yes, I'm trying to write the great literary masterwork, but while I'm writing it, I gotta go down and buy breakfast, and I open a paper, and there's some..." some tabloid story and some ad for soap, and that also stays in my mind. So how about I also incorporate that? Because that's how we're all thinking. And she just does that so brilliantly.

Yeah. You know, let's go through a couple of your favorite stories in here.

Yeah. Yeah.

Which one do you want to do first?

Let's do— oh, let's start with The Ground Is Considerably Distorted. Well, this is a story about— there is a massive event going on in the news. And as it goes on— Wow, I even folded out some of the corners. As it goes on, I don't know if you can see, but there are, along the margins, there are texts from her friends, updates on social media, quick, short listicle articles about, you know, the bigger—

So, they kind of accompany the story.

Yeah, but it shows you this character. And not just his character, it shows us, too, going, here is this event happening. And I think this goes along with a lot of the— what we saw during COVID which were, you know, footage of like a young person being gunned down by the police. And then, and like, wow, the police just gunned that person down, they weren't armed. And then off from the sides come the, but wait a second, what about— and like how we start to obfuscate a very kind of straightforward piece of reality that we are viewing then starts getting all static and fuzzy because of our friends texting with their opinions, social media, you know, talking heads, pundits, blogs, you know, all these— and it just shows you how every— it's almost like reality in this is a piece of dropped hot dog on the sidewalk, and then all the ants are starting to gather around, and it's not going to stay a piece of dropped hot dog for very long. It's going to become something else. And so, it's a very— Again, I'm just so loath to get too deep into these because that is especially a reading experience that was one of the weirdest and most startling ones I'd ever had, where I was like, "She wrote a story that—" 'Cause a lot of times, look, when I read, I don't know if you— Maybe you've gotten over this. When I read, I mean, I have a— Let's say I find 3 hours unbroken to sit and read, But then while I do it, I'll like, "I'm gonna check this really quick." I take myself out of— What are the— It's just so— And so it happens in the story itself. She shows you what happens to your mind as you're trying to just think a simple thought and form a simple opinion. And the wor— We've now designed a world to— It's not like there are these secret government agencies there to obfuscate and block us. We do it for entertainment. It's entertainment now. It's all— it's just gossip. So, she just captures that so brilliantly. And it's funny, and it's also nightmarish, and it's a little bit futuristic and science fiction-y. Like, it's the— You know, the three science fiction plots are, "If only," "What if?" and "If this goes on.". And a lot of these stories are, if this goes on— okay, what's the next one? Uh, next one would be, um, oh, Eliminate Toxins and Increase Blood Flow. This is a short— it's 3 pages basically. Wait, 1, 2— it's 4 pages long. Short, nasty little story, like the kind that John Collier or Dorothy Sayers or Ray Bradbury, when he was just beginning, would do those, or Robert Bloch. Um, just a very mundane, um, day at the nail salon and massage parlor, and there is a creepy customer who comes in who, um, is disturbing a lot of the other, uh, employees and, and seems to be fixated on one specific Asian woman. And this woman And she really captures the thought process clearly. Without making a decision, decides to take care of this problem in a very— I included this. Higson and Olsen let me do these things called the ghost boxes where I would collect 13 short horror stories in a box, like the advent calendar box. So I included this in my last one because it's just this— it is someone making a decision without realizing they're making a decision. You see them about to do it before even they do it. It's this weird— the body is rejecting this bad element in the world. And it— again, I don't want to spoil it, but it's— and it also has one of the—

You kind of got to spoil it a little to give it context.

Well, this guy would like to have a massage, but one of those ones where someone walks on their back. And she, um, you know, does it. You got to hold on to the poles because you can only put so much pressure on it, on, on the back. And he's making his comments and just being creepy. And then she just, uh, you know, if I let go of these poles and my full body weight, you know. And then it ends with a line from one of the other employees that I won't spoil that is so sweet and so sinister, but it, it, it's implied like no one's going to know about this. It's just the way they say it's like, and no one will— this will, this will just go away. It's so nasty and quick. And what's the lesson in that? The lesson is that sometimes your body can make decisions that your brain does not have to be a part of. And a lot of times, because we've been so overwired by this and by the world coming into this, that I feel like it feels like a warning that maybe the body politic itself is going to start making physical decisions that we are not going to make on an intellectual level to get rid of some bad elements in society.

It'll be— experience that personally.

I don't know that I've experienced it in, in that straightforward way, but there are like— there's just certain— especially like on social media or with texting, sometimes you just don't acknowledge that person anymore. Like, they're gone. Like, my brain just— like, when I see it, I just delete it without even opening it. Like, and I'm not even thinking about, okay, what is this person— you're just kind of— I'm just kind of done. Like, I'm just kind of— we've taken ourselves to such a point of overstimulation that sometimes I think our bodies need to step in and go, we got to get rid of this. You can't do this anymore, man. You can't. Stop it. And— but it'll be interesting to see. It feels like we're leading up to an event where that happens on a mass planetary scale. There will be some kind of mass planetary physical removing of something. Do you think that'll be AI? It, that very well could be. I forgot who wrote this. They, oh, this was so creepy. Somebody posted this on social media and I, I want to quote the person that said it, but basically, you know, the fact that there's an uncanny valley and that even the best AI, after looking at it for a second, you're like, this isn't human. This is fake. And we're so repelled by it, which means that somewhere within our, uh, uh, evolutionary history, there was something that looked like us but wasn't us that we learned very quickly to reject as a survival instinct. And it feels like— and there is a survival element to this story of And I'm not in a— not that, not that there anyone's being directly threatened, but just their peaceful everyday life is under attack by this creepy customer. So it almost feels like this woman is channeling the loathing of everyone in this salon. And I feel like someone is gonna channel the loathing and fear and trepidation of, of the mass of humanity against AI.

It's interesting to me that, like, when people are talking about AI, it's, it's presented in a way that we don't have a choice. Like, exactly. And I'm kind of like, well, just like, you know how you're saying like this creeps in, it doesn't creep in for me. I don't scroll, I don't have TikTok, I don't— well, I don't do that. It's a choice. Yeah. And it's odd to me that it's presented to us in a way that we don't have a choice. Like, it's coming, it's going to replace your jobs and I mean, it is what it is. Another thing, I was at an event maybe like a year ago and one of the vice presidents of one of the big AI companies, maybe the biggest one, was asked like, what do we, you know, it was a Q&A and they go, what do we do? It's going to replace us all. And he goes, I don't know if it was me, I'd buy a park. People are going to want to go to parks. And I was like, that's the funniest answer I've ever heard. By nature, like, their mind is like, we'll control the thing, go buy the thing, go monetize. To me, like, nature isn't something you buy.

No, listen, that one of the scariest— one of the scariest— buy a park. One of the scariest moments in movies recently is at the very end. I shouldn't be laughing about this, but at the very end of Adam McKay's The Big Short, You know, the Christian Bale character, Michael— Dr. Michael Burry makes that, you know, like $900 million off of the shorting the real estate market. And he used like most of that money to buy up water rights. That's the first thing he did with his money. And it's that same thing of like, they're going to need it, so I may as well own it. Yep. But yeah, you don't need to have—

by the way, where my mom lives in Washington State, the water rights to has changed hands 3 times. Each time the water gets worse and the price goes up. Yeah, it's— and it's water. You're in Washington, it rains all the time.

I know, it's— we're living in— we're basically reliving Chinatown like every, uh, every other week. It's funny. What are you drinking? This is, uh, hi. When I need to relax but also get a nice midday jolt, I enjoy a cup of PG Tips tea. PG Tips 2 bags and a little bit of honey, you'll feel like a cynical old British spy who's given up.

I kind of thought it was coffee there for a second.

No, no, no. I love coffee. Coffee doesn't love me. Buy a park. Actually, man.

Isn't that the craziest thing? Buy a park. We don't have a say?

And he, by the way—

Can we not say we don't want it?

But he also, yeah, exactly.

Can I not build a library and not have a, like, how much do I want AI to affect my daily life?

Oh, by the way, there's a great great thing on, um, if you watch, um, the show, um, Hacks, uh, Hannah Einbinder has a great scene where she's talking to an AI person about— and she's like, you keep saying that it's inevitable, but you're the guy selling it. Of course you're gonna say that, you know. It's great. It's not, you know— and also, I've never— what you realize is, like, coming up with jokes out of thin air, coming up with a painting that started as a blank canvas and you don't have a single fucking idea in your head, and then it becomes something. Coming up with a movie that started with you sitting there going, "What if a kid could see dead people?" And then you write the script, and then you make the— you know, and then it's something. That process is fun. You get to write music. You get to do a painting. You get to— But some people, like you said, buy a park. They're just like, "Buy the method that creates it and then own it." that there's no— the only joy comes from owning stuff. What used to be a pathology, those like shopaholics where they go, I just want to own everything. Now it's a business model. Yeah. So that's terrifying. Terrifying. Yeah. And but also it's a very—

it lacks agency. It's like, at what point are we going to decide that we, we want to prioritize humans over profits I think again, how psych— how psychotic does everybody have to get? How out of their minds is it? How low does the self-esteem have to be?

Eliminate toxins and increase blood flow. Eliminate toxins and increase blood flow. That phrase, it is going to happen. I can't say how it's going to happen, but there will be a weird mass mind moment, either through one person or a lot of people channeling everyone's subconscious. Of rejecting this thing. They're going to eliminate the toxin and then increase the blood flow. I don't know how it's going to happen. It's going to be ugly.

I think you should be the one to do it. Yeah, I think that's your life work.

I just want to sip tea and read books. So I got to be John Connor and go out there and fight the Terminators? You do, for sure.

Somebody's got to be courageous.

Or what's the line from John Deming? Someone has to be relentless. It's not courageous. You got to be relentless. I don't know how relentless I am.

You're dad of the year. Why not add that to the list?

My daughter would disagree with that.

But she— 10 years from now, she won't. I hope.

Don't ask a 17-year-old. Maybe I'm making her the relentless one. You do it. You're young. You're healthy. That's still your work. Yeah. Daddy's feet hurt. You get out there.

You change AI. Unplug.

Just unplug the thing. I don't even hate AI. If AI can help diagnose diseases and/or collate cosmic data and we can absolutely—

No, the problem is who controls it and how much of it we're forced to—

But all they're aiming it at is the creative arts. It's like the people that are controlling it are people that, they resent creativity. So that's what they're using it to eliminate that.

Do you use it? No. Oh, well, I do sometimes in a— what, research or just ask it questions. Like, I'm fascinated with psychology, so I'll ask it stuff and it'll get stuff wrong or it'll miss something. And it's all very like, especially Google and a couple of them, like it's very politically correct, but it doesn't give you the answer. Right. And then when you say, well, what about this? It'll— it does this most condescending thing where it'll be like, Chris, that's a great point you bring up. And I'm like, oh, fuck, everything's got to start with a compliment now.

Also, it's not even complimenting anything.

We're just stupid humans. Yeah.

And it's also that too.

Rub my belly and pet my head and I'm fine.

You don't know what you're doing. And also, that's their safeguard for when they don't have the answer. Yeah. What a great question. That deserves further exploration. Oh, fuck off. You don't know.

I can tell you really think about these things.

That's the same way as like when we used to go, like when, when you're, if you're in a band or you're a comedian or something and you do a show, the worst thing you want to hear someone go, "Why, you look like you were having a lot of fun up there, man." Like, that's when you suck.

Okay, one more story. You mentioned this before. Flamingoland.

Oh boy. This again, I don't want to get too into that. Come on, we got to.

Let's, let's spoil this one. But Tom is motivated by love and practical intelligence. He wants to hold his family together. Beth is the story moral of a moral heart. She refuses to stop eating, not because she can't, but because she won't. It wasn't laziness, I suddenly realized. Tom comes to understand it was an act of giant rebel energy.

It gets down to— again, it feels like there's a game of musical chairs and the music is about to stop. And, and they just— as we're speaking today, that, that Peter Thiel list just got leaked, leaked, of all of the people that are going to be in his, like, bunker or whatever when it— when it goes down. But, but the driver that you hire— are you on the list? No, I could not be further. I'm, I'm below Soupy Sales, who's dead. That's where I am on the list. Um, but so the driver that you, the— you hire to drive your children around and get them to the shelter. They're going to abandon their family just like— it's people seeing other people just as, as, um, accessories and functions of their lives. And they don't realize when that— when this all goes down, it is— everything's even all of a sudden. Everything's equal. And that guy, like, so what happens when that— when that all goes down? You know, who is going to be I don't think a lot of— I think a lot of people are not ready for the radical shift in status that is coming. Um, and if you watch Triangle of Sadness or the amazing movie Send Help, um, that can shift in a heartbeat. You know, what, what used to be the people at the bottom or the people that are just, I'm here to do the labor to make your life easy, are suddenly like, well, I don't need to do this. And also, I, I have skills to make my life easy and you don't. If I'm not here, what happens then? That's going to be such a massive upheaval because you can be the best with memes and AI prompts all you want. If you don't know how to collect rainwater or set a broken bone or find mushrooms that you can eat and not die from eating, you're in trouble. And I think that feel, I mean, again, I kind of say it as a joke, But the doomsday preppers on my Instagram feeds are very happy these days. They are very excited. They feel like there is some kind of shift coming. Now, I don't think it has to be malign. It can be like, hey, maybe we don't need to keep dreaming so friggin' big. Just take care of your— you know, I'm very connected to my neighborhood, the 3 streets that were kind of— that make up my neighborhood. I know everyone on it. You know other people. But all this lone wolf, alpha mentality, it doesn't work in nature. The people that survive are the people that form the strongest relationships and are open to other people as human beings. Those are the ones that make it. Just like the idea of lone wolf means a wolf that's about to die because a wolf can't survive without its pack. So that kind of thing is— it's going to be very— and this is, you know, obviously Ruby is doing a very extreme, almost— it's almost a great take on the whole you know, disaster movie. A comet's hitting the planet, here comes this big wave, we got to get to the shelter. Um, but then all that gets upended and people like, well, wait a minute, I'm driving my family there. Well, why am I driving yours? Yeah, but I'm paying you. Money doesn't mean anything anymore, dude. Money is worthless. It's all, it's all different now. So that's going to be, you know, and it's interesting how that's the last story in the collection. It leads up to, you know, this— she, she deals with a lot of the aspects of our shifting thing. And then she goes, okay, let's just look it right in the face.

And that's the title of the book, This Paradise. Yeah, it's the last story, but the title—

yeah. And this— but this paradise is— I don't want to parse the title of the book or the story too quickly, but it's like, um, it really feels like, um, this paradise feels like the beginning of a sentence. Well, this paradise, you're not necessarily the king of it anymore. You know, so it's just, again, it kept— wow, now that you pointed out, it does kind of come to an end. It does build to a weird cohesive conclusion now that I think about it. I, I can't wait for her to like write a novel, you know.

Okay, so the big question: how did This Paradise by Ruby Cowling change your life?

It changed, uh, my life because it made me realize that the distracting mundane, the distracting mundane disposable stuff that I think is getting in the way of my deeper creativity is actually where my deeper creativity is hiding and is trying to smuggle itself in that way. You just don't see it because you're so, I got to do the really big ideas. No, and by the way, it's nothing new. We need geniuses like her to come along and remind us Hey, what was one of the best plays ever written? Death of a Salesman. A guy, just a salesman. But Arthur Miller was able to see through everything and go, no, there's a whole tragedy going on here. James Joyce's Ulysses. What about, what if it's just a day in a guy's life and he thinks he knows his wife's going to cheat on him, but he doesn't know what to do yet? And that's an epic. You know, you got to keep— so getting texts and dealing with social media and dealing with you know, bad retail customer, those— there's epics in there and our humanity is in there. So it really made me rethink looking at my daily day-to-day life and looking at the world. Powerful. Thanks, man.

And it's presented in a very original— oh, man. So, I mean, I love to collect books that kind of break the patterns of what you expect a book to be. And this one is on that list now because of you. Thanks.

I hadn't heard of it. Yeah, and go seek out her short story, Odamet Till, Odamet Till, because it's— again, I just think she's one of the best contemporary writers working right now, and I can't wait to see what's next for her. She's so good. Thank you for picking this.

What are you working on right now?

Well, I got the new special just dropped on Netflix, so what I'm— dropped on YouTube. Uh, so I am working on the new hour. I just shot a music video that we're going to start editing, shot it for a band called the Ettes. And then I'm, uh, writing a— there's a, a movie that my brother has written that I want to direct, so we're working on getting that together. So I'm about to— I'm again, I'm entering this whole new world, a creative endeavor that I haven't really ever pursued. And I'm— because of this book and other things, but especially because this I'm seeing the art in the mundane crap I have to do to get a movie made. 'Cause there's very boring mundane crap, but that you realize, oh, there's, there's massive creativity hidden in that.

Does that dramatically increase your happiness? Yeah. Happiness and stress.

But I think sometimes they go hand in hand. But, but especially when you finish a massive creative endeavor, you level up in terms of happiness and strength and what you're able to do next. So you can't just keep doing the same stuff that you know you can already do. You gotta lay out stuff in front of you. You were like, I don't know how I'm going to do this.

Do you know when happiness and stress go hand in hand? When? When you're a workaholic.

That's right. That's me, man. Well, thanks.

You don't need a degree in psychology to point that one out. No, that's great. What is the movie that your brother—

or the script? It is.

Can you do it for I can do it super cheap.

How much? Oh, I can probably— I think we can squeeze it in unless we end up getting a big name attached, because then that increases the budget. But if we do it with the unknowns, I'm sure it could be done like $2 million. That's exciting. Nice and cheap. Yeah, cheap, lowdown. You can just run it tight. And yeah, it's the kind of— it's what I love the best. Low-stakes crime. How many locations? 2. Oh. Yeah, that's great. Yeah. So we'll see. We'll see what happens. Thank you for doing this.

It was such a fun conversation.

This was awesome. Is this place visitable or?

You're welcome anytime. All right, let us know. We'll leave you alone in here. I don't know if you saw the photography room in the front. I did, but it's kind of photography and then we have art and then it—

I might come here one day, just bring the laptop and sit and write.

Amazing. Yeah, and the Dolly Bibles, and there's all kinds of fun stuff. Okay guys, thank you. And tea, we'll make you tea.

And make me tea.

We are so excited to announce the Books That Changed My Life website. We made a way for you to show your book pride and that you love books. Hats, tees, hoodies, check it out, link in the description. Everybody needs a self-help hat.