Brian McDonald

Welcome to Carry the Fire, a podcast where we explore the big questions of life through the lens of the good, the true, and the beautiful. I'm your host, Dustin Kensrew. And my hope is that through these conversations with people of diverse and divergent backgrounds and beliefs, we can glimpse the world anew through each other's unique perspectives.

We didn't invent stories. We invented writing. Stories seems to come with the equipment of being a human being. Everybody has it all around the world all throughout time. Social justice people say, easy on people, hard on institutions. You know what? The people are... a result of this is what the machine makes the machine makes these situations and these people we have to change welcome to episode two of carry the fire

I'm excited to share this conversation that I had with the amazing Brian McDonald. Brian's an author, a teacher, and an overall story expert. He consults at Pixar at times. He's helped with some of their best films and his short book, Invisible Ink. required reading for interns there. We get into a lot of stuff today, some of it fun, some of it really heavy.

We talk about the necessity of wonder and the artist's role in reawakening that sense in others. We talk about what it means to tell the truth when you're writing a story. And we speculate on exactly what happened to George Lucas. Brian also shares about a time where he forgave the murder of his brother and how understanding story played a role in how he navigated such a difficult situation.

In light of that, we also discussed the broader ways that the injustices in our society are often far more systemic in nature than we're prone to see. All right, let's get into it.

I'm excited to meet you, man. I've wanted to meet you ever since Jesse was telling me about you a long time ago. Yeah, it's nice to meet you. Congrats on the book, man, the new one, The Old Souls. It's great. Oh, thank you. Thanks. The podcast is talking about the good, the true, and the beautiful. And I've started to feel like maybe a way to get underneath even...

some of those are behind them is, is the idea of, of wonder, or I guess if you're not, if you're not having wonder, you're not seeing any of those things really well anyway. That's true. What are, what are some things that like either growing up or, or like. that have continued threads into where you are now, but that, that caused you to, to have a feeling of wonder about the world. You know, I think it's difficult. It's difficult to be an artist who doesn't have that.

You know what I mean? I think it's equipment you are born with. I don't think you can. I'm not sure you can develop it. I remember the first time I was in San Francisco. I was 19 years old. My mentor. was working for George Lucas at the time for ILM. And he invited me down there to watch the crew screening of Star Trek III, which he had just worked on, and Indiana Jones and the Typical Doom.

So I was down there the first time. Everything about that was a cool experience, and I got to see a bunch of cool props and whatever. But anyway, I'm going across the Golden Gate Bridge on the bus, and it was sunset. And it was gorgeous. I mean, I can't, it was gorgeous. This is pre cell phones, right? So there's no, nobody's on a cell phone, but they're all reading the paper or whatever. And nobody is seeing it.

And I was like, this is the most amazing thing I've ever seen. And nobody seems to care. I think a lot of people go through life like that. And I think an artist's job is to say, hey, everybody, look at this. Yeah. You know, that's cool.

If you don't mind, I'd love for you to tell the listeners a little bit about the idea of the armature that you talk about a bunch. It's foundational to how you talk about building stories. And I feel like if we could... give people a little bit of an idea of that it'll make more sense of the stuff i'm trying to get at later okay that makes sense um so an armature in a story is well i'll explain how i i thought of it so i was very interested in uh

theme for a story what's the theme of the you know and you hear about it all the time and when you're learning to write you know or in school the story's got to have a theme But it seems to be this amorphous thing. Nobody quite knows what it is. And so it's difficult to grasp at first. You think you have to do all these very complicated things and put all this symbolism and all, you know, that's what you kind of think you have to do.

I used to work in creature effects. When I was starting out, I worked, my roommate was a special effects makeup artist. And so I got a lot of freelance sort of work, working in those. uh those studios and those shops and i didn't do much in those shops i was the low person on the totem pole but but i got to see some really brilliant sculptors work and when they sculpt um something out of clay

Usually they would sculpt a little version of the monster or alien or whatever for a producer or director to see. And when they sculpt it, they make a skeleton, a wireframe skeleton, an armature, it's called, so that the... uh clay can support itself otherwise it'll collapse in a couple of hours or a day or two that armature ends up being one of the most important parts of the sculpture because it supports everything but it's not something anybody notices or sees yeah

So it's invisible. Yeah, it's invisible. So the armature of your story is your theme, what you're trying to say. What are you trying to say with this story? That's your armature. And everything hangs on it. It supports everything.

When it's done, your story, probably nobody will notice the armature, but it will be stronger because it has it. It gives it its cohesiveness, it gives it its form, it gives it its solidity, and you can... you know you're in the hands of someone who knows what they're doing when they hang everything on an armature like that so all the classic uh movies would have a really strong armature um most people would think of plot though instead right they'd think

the movie is about the plot right you would say the plot is is maybe somewhat incidental to the armature the plot is the um is an outgrowth of the armature yeah okay yeah that makes sense The story really is a manifestation of your armature, right? So if you want to say that some things are more important than money, you have to create a situation that proves that.

right so you create a situation you create a character like king midas who thinks money is everything wants to turn everything to gold that he touches right you so you can't just put scenes in there of him hanging out with his buddies. That's not part of this story. Right. You just have to stay focused on that, that thread. Right. And then that story, he gets his wish and everything.

touches turns to gold and he realizes he can't eat every time he tries to eat it turns to gold and then his daughter comes in to give him a hug and she turns to gold right so There are things more valuable than gold, right? That's the whole point of that story. It doesn't change when you do a big novel or a big screenplay or a graphic novel or something like that. There's an armature, a thread that makes everything work. It's just easier to see.

a short tail like that yeah yeah it's just easy to see i've heard you talk about medium before and genre being not the most helpful ways to talk about, I guess, getting at like what a story is in the first place, because the story is what it is and it can be expressed in a variety of different ways. Right. For you writing. a comic book is there much is there a different process really as you're crafting that armature or and what goes on top no not really um

The best thing about comics, for me anyway, is that there's a little bit more freedom. So I mean, if I'm writing a movie or something, then there's a budget concern. If I'm writing a comic, I can have an army. on one page if i want and never they never have to show up again right but in a movie they'd be like what you got us out here we all got all these people costumes we fed them for a day it's just one shot of this army

So I sort of like the freedom of that. And because it's drawings, you can think in terms of various styles helping express your armature. So maybe one panel, you might use a particular style or something like that. But as far as the construction of the story itself, that doesn't change no matter what I'm working on. Do you think... If you know the armature of a movie before you see it or a story before you read it, that it ruins it at all? Can you ruin it by understanding that? Well, it depends.

it can it can often it's like i don't know if you've ever uh studied any any magic or uh sleight of hand but it's an interesting thing because when i i studied it a little bit and And the interesting thing is when I was studying it, I would do a trick for somebody and I would screw up and I would think, oh, they can see me screwing up, you know, but they couldn't.

Because they didn't know where the trick was happening, right? Sometimes a trick is over before you reveal that the thing has disappeared or whatever. The rest of it's just artifice to make. people not know exactly when you put that thing in your pocket or palmed it or, you know what I mean? Or whatever you did, ditched it or whatever. So, um, or whatever the trick is. So, um, so at first you get very self-conscious about carrying that stuff out.

But the other side of it is learning it, you start to be able to see it. And then you start to think, oh, it's manipulative, right? But then you can break past that barrier and then you start seeing how nobody else is noticing what you now can see. Yeah. And.

how well it actually works on an audience while I look at them responding. They didn't know that this set this up and that's why this pays off. And, you know, and then you start to like, I have you ever been to the Magic Castle in Los Angeles? No. oh the magic castle um is a private club for magicians um and you can only go there if you're a magician or if you're the guest of a magician okay and so i went as the guest of a magician once

And so they have several stages and little rooms for like close up magic and everything. And I happened to catch a show by the performance by the guy who was he won best close up magician at the Magic Castle that year. Okay. And so what that means is he's performing for mostly magicians, right? Real close. Yeah. Real close. They probably have a pretty good idea of how he's doing everything he's doing.

What they're noticing is how well he does it. Right. So it's still enjoyable to them, even though they know. Yeah. You know, he's probably doing it. Yeah. They, they could make an educated guess, even if he's doing something slightly differently. So that's a little bit what this is like. If you know the trick a little bit, after a while, you start to appreciate the execution of the trick, even though you know the trick. So you can still appreciate.

spoiler alert if you have not yet read old souls then skip this part but uh i want to talk about a little bit and i think we can maybe talk about it without spoiling too much but i was curious what you would say the armature for old souls would be because i was trying to think about it at the end and i i don't know i want to hear what you well i want to hear what you say all right well okay so there's two things that were popping out of me and

Maybe that's because you're ending kind of the two storylines at once at the end, and I'm failing to cohere them. You've got the man who's nothing without his family, which is ending this thing, but also... to me there was a huge piece about maybe like the real, the real happiness is only found in the present.

So I wrote it a long time ago. So whatever my armature was when I wrote it, I can't even tell you what it is anymore. But I mean, I used it to write the story. I wrote that book in 2006. Oh, wow. Just came out. Right. So, so, so it's been a long time. But I was really getting at appreciating what's in front of you. Okay. Yeah. Grief, grief is a, I'll talk about the grief aspect of it in a second, but.

It's almost like, you know what? It's almost the it's the it's the bridge. It's me on the bridge. It's sunset. Right. It's the same thing. It's like, hey, everybody, look at this. Right. Like. Amazing things. Right now this is happening. Right now this is happening. Amazing things are all around you and you're not paying attention. You're not looking or you're wishing for something else or wanting something else when the amazing thing is right there.

um i don't think people realize that enough so that's really what i was getting at is uh everybody look at this cool sunset on the golden gate bridge over the bay you know yeah and what's and what's so interesting about that idea of like the armature is there's a million stories you could write for any specific armature oh yeah you can steal armatures from other things like oh that's a great i'm gonna use that and you can build a whole different thing off of it whereas like

a plot and that's you steal that sounds like hey you can steal the outer trappings of a plot if you have a completely different armature people won't even see it oh yeah that's yeah yeah E.T. and Iron Giant are like that. Same. Well, they have a different armature.

But they're very similar outwardly in that you have a boy who makes friends with a thing from outer space. The army is trying to get it. There's a lot of similarities. But in The Iron Giant... uh it's really the iron giant story about choosing what he wants to be whether he wants to be this killer robot automo or whether he wants to be superman right and with elliot in et it's about him learning how to empathize how to feel how other people feel

But on the outside, they look very similar in some ways. Yeah, that's interesting. That's cool. You talk about always telling the truth in storytelling. What does that mean to you? Well, that means, actually, I see a lot of lies now. on uh on tv i see it a lot uh it's in movies too where you can pretty much say some things are more important than money and that is true right right there are people who don't believe it but they'll believe it when they're

health is failing or they'll believe it when, you know what I mean? Yeah. You know, there's, there's nobody around them when they're dying. You know what I mean? They'll, they'll believe it then. It's a pretty easy thing to prove in a story. So there's that kind of truth, but there's also the real truth of. of behavior, of human behavior. For instance, in Old Souls, there's sort of an addiction thing underneath. This character gets addicted to finding out about his past lives.

One of the things I knew I wanted to deal with addiction. And so one of the things I thought about with addiction was, you know, the interesting thing is it's seductive at first. It has to be something like everybody, you know, like the people telling kids, like, don't do drugs. They're bad for you. This and that. And it's like, but they don't tell you, well, it'll be fun at first because that's an important part of the story.

That's an important part of the thing because a kid then tries it and goes, this doesn't seem so bad. I was just thinking about that because my kids are, my oldest is 12 right now. I'm just thinking about a story or something in real life, just someone whose life was just...

ruined by by drugs and i was just thinking like how do you what is the best way to communicate that and i was like i think you've got to say this is this is fun and it will it will seem amazing at first but you can't back out Right, right, right. Yeah. And that's what it is. It is fun. And so I needed something that the audience could go along with and they want to find out about the past lives and they want to like they have to get seduced by this thing, too. So that is the truth.

The truth is that with all addictions, there's something about them at first that feels like this is the right thing. Right. That's just going to be true. That's how it gets you in. right yeah and the more truth that you're telling the more your story like people are gonna buy in and right

It's going to resonate. They're going to see themselves, right? It doesn't matter whether it takes place, whether it's supernatural or it takes place in a spaceship or, you know, a different time period. None of that stuff. As long as the human behavior is true and responses are true.

And the motivations are true. Like I recognize all those things because those things don't change over time or, you know, so you can read a story that's 2000 years old and it'll still resonate if it's true about how people operate.

You were saying you saw a bunch of lies, too, though. I see it a lot with comedy right now, where it's not just in comedy, but comedy is a good example of it. So there's some older comedy stuff that I like where the comedy is based on behavior. Like somebody will say something on a, on a show or do something that's completely outrageous that no one would, no one would ever do. And it ceases to be funny for me because like, well, nobody does that. My favorite example, and I know everybody loves.

the Seinfeld, uh, episode where the double dipping episode, everybody loves that episode. Uh, I, I don't like it. And here's why I don't like it because. What happens is that, and I've only seen it once. I only saw it when it aired. I haven't seen it yet. So forgive me if I get something wrong. But basically what I remember happening is a guy double dips and somebody calls him on it and says, hey, you double dipped.

And I was like, that's not how people operate. People see a guy double dip and they go, okay, I won't eat the dip. And they tell people, avoid the dip, don't eat the dip, right? Because that's how people operate. They're not that confrontational, right? It's funny.

But it isn't true. And you can still mine humor by telling the truth. You don't lose anything. So I'm not sure exactly. I think it's sometimes it's easy to be outrageous and it's harder to find the humor and the truth of the situation.

So you have this very structured way that you talk about building a story. I know you get a bunch of pushback from people all the time because everybody wants to be their own unique snowflake and they think it's going to ruin their vision.

It's been super helpful for me in a lot of ways, but I'm curious about your thoughts on Stephen King or something, who writes in a totally wild way and does not generally seem to have any kind of plot in view, or I'm not even sure, an armature. He just starts with... generally of situation and a character right is that just like a fluke like no one else can do that or well uh in uh in prose writing they call those people pancers

pantsers like pants they write from the seat of their pants so there's pantsers and there's plotters okay right so he's a pantser if you can do that that's great but here's what's interesting his best work always has something to say yes right so his best work has an armature whether or not he's a panther so so what he might be able to do and i don't know but what he might be able to do is

subconsciously understand that he has something to say right yeah yeah i and i think that's true i think i think he see it seems like he sees something of that armature in that initial situation even and i think he's very brutal about telling the truth. Yeah. So I feel like that keeps his stuff feeling really real and probably keeps it on track. It does. He's, he's very good at telling the truth with characters.

He doesn't lie through his characters at all. No, yeah. Yeah, it's actually, it's an amazing talent he has. But it's interesting how much, so even just that, even just telling the truth and... being a pantser, something is really holding on through doing that. Yeah. And I also think that, I mean, he's written 50 books or something. The other thing is he's got enough experience to be a pretty good pantser.

right to feel a story and know when it's working and know when he's going off the rails and you know what to be honest it's not always true that he can stay on track like yeah right like it's like i don't know what all this is in the book i don't know you know he's just that is true it does it can

meander quite a bit yeah yeah and so i think that actually it would serve him and he would be a little bit more consistent i mean like it needs my advice but i think he'd be a little bit more consistent if he did have an armature, but I think... No, I think you're right. I think I had a friend who, he was a screenwriter, but he had no idea how to write from an armature. He had no idea, and he was, you know, when I first met him, he was in his 80s.

And his brain just couldn't operate that way. It was wired to work a different way. And so he just couldn't learn it. He saw a value in it, but he just couldn't learn it. At this point, I don't know if Stephen King is so set in his ways that it would be a difficult thing for him to learn or if he wouldn't quite see the value in it. But I think it would be helpful to him in terms of his consistency.

It seems like these are not mutually exclusive things, having an armature guiding what's going on and telling the truth about your characters and situations. Oh, no, yeah, those good things work hand in hand. You know, and even if I have an armature and I have some, if I'm writing something and I have a few points, like I want to get to this point or this point or this point, a lot of that stuff in the middle is pantsing. Right. I mean, yeah.

and maybe i don't know how i'm getting from a to b i just know i have to get from a to b um and the characters kind of tell me how to do that if you're not comfortable with this tell me but okay i'm curious

if you have thoughts on what happened to george lucas or or if you think everything's fine right now well well he's not involved in the movies anymore so well i'm saying like uh the even prequels yeah like part of the reason i ask is because i've seen you like praise some of the stuff he's worked on and like so like raiders or something i don't know you're like talking about oh yeah and so it's like

You're like, hey, look at this. And then now you're like, I don't, I don't know. I think he got very interested in money and started making decisions. I don't know this. So I'm just guessing. Started making decisions based on money. And Quincy Jones said that, he goes, you know, I think when you start talking about money, when you're doing something creative and you start talking about stuff like that, he goes, I think God gets up and walks out of the room.

And I think that there's something that it does to the creative process. It starts chipping away at the purity of the thing you're trying to do. When you think so much about what are the returns going to be, what are we going to, you know, you can't, it's not a place to create from. And so I think that George Lucas got to a point where he was creating from that place.

And it was more of a business and less of a passion. He also wanted to do other kinds of movies. He sort of got stuck in his mind, I think, doing these big blockbuster movies. He wanted to do small, independent things.

That were experimental and so but I think that's what he wanted to do and so I think he wasn't as in love with it as We would want him to be wasn't as in love with Star Wars as we would like he wasn't as in love with indiana jones as we would like you know yeah do you think some of that has to do with as you get to that place no one will tell you the truth anymore like no one will give you

Good feedback? Well, you know, I was just talking to somebody about this. There's an interesting thing about that kind of feedback. I have a friend who's a director, and he said that he listens to everybody because... when he looks at the history of film he sees that when people uh you know they start to do poor work is when they stop listening to people yeah okay i actually think he's wrong about that i don't think that's true

And the reason I don't think it's true is because all of those people who have done something amazing did it when everybody said it was a ridiculous thing to do. So they got there by not listening to people. Right. So everybody told Walt Disney that nobody would sit through a feature length animated film. That was crazy. Right. So he's making Snow White. It was called Disney's Folly all over Hollywood. They made fun of it.

It was going to tank. It was going to be the worst thing in the world. If you look at the list of adjusted box office, like all-time box office hits, and you look at the list adjusted for inflation, Snow White is still like... Way at the top. Yeah, that's crazy. Yeah, it's crazy. It was that big of a hit, but everybody told him it was ridiculous. And when he wanted to do Disneyland, everybody thought that was ridiculous. Like, really? You're going to make an amusement park? That's...

They thought it was ridiculous because amusement parks prior to Disneyland were kind of sleazy. They were very dirty. You know, people would cheat you at those games of chance. You know, they had this reputation for being really horrible places. And so he's like, well, I'm going to do something else. And nobody could see it. People would avoid him in the halls when he walked down the halls of Disney. Like, oh, he's going to talk about that stupid.

You know, Coppola, they were going to fire him from The Godfather. The studio didn't like what he was doing. They wanted the Italian-Americans. to sound like they were from italy and he's like well they're italian americans they're not from italy they're from the bronx or whatever you know or brooklyn or wherever they were from right you know um he's telling the truth yeah he's telling the truth

But they didn't like that. They thought the photography was too dark. And they didn't want Marlon Brando in it. And they didn't want Al Pacino in it. I mean, there's a lot of those things. I can go through a huge list of those things of people who haven't listened. George Lucas is one of them. Everybody thought Star Wars was a waste of his time. Yeah, but that was their genius at that point was knowing.

to listen to themselves in that moment when everyone else is saying don't do this right how do you know yeah right why would you start listening to people now it's like well i built this empire based on you know the thing everybody thought was a stupid idea. So, um, so I don't think it, what probably happens on some level is people get out of touch. You know, they live in an ivory tower and they get a little out of touch. I think that's probably a bigger issue.

And then they start thinking again about money and they start making decisions that way. And one of the things that nobody talks about is what success can do to your output, right? success can be scary, right? It's one thing if you're anonymous and doing art and you can make all kinds of mistakes, but it's another thing if you have a fan base waiting for your new thing, right?

Right? And then there's the pressure of, is this going to live up to the last thing I thought was so great? Right? And you can let that, that can choke you, that can stifle you, and that can make you make safe decisions instead of good decisions. Yeah. There's an author I like, Patrick Rothfuss. He's two books into this three-part series. It's really, really good, but he put out a little novella after the second one.

And it's got this whole disclaimer in the front because he's just like, look, everyone's telling me this book is super weird and it doesn't do what a normal story does or whatever. He's like, I don't know, just... So he's basically just warning people. But it's a gorgeous little book. And I kind of like that he tries to warn you off. He's like, you probably shouldn't read it. Just so that when you get to it, you at least know it's going to...

behave differently. But I love that he made that because you can feel... how important it was to him uh i did the audiobook too and he read it i was listening i was like who is reading this and then i figured out it was him i was like of course it's him it's like you could feel like the love for this character in it but um

that fear i think creep in with success in you know any industry that's creative and it's yeah you see the music a lot um i don't know how you get around it i it you just gotta you can't i think you have to ignore it I think you have to ignore it. I say this here at Belief Agency sometimes, like we'll win an award or something. And I've won a few awards in my time. But what's interesting about them is when I first started getting them, I was like...

wow, I won an award. This is the coolest thing and everything's going to change and everything's going to be great. But then the next day you just have to go to work and do your thing. Right. And so then I started thinking of those things as, oh, this is a good day.

And now I put it on the shelf and I do what I always do. And I don't think about that anymore. You know, I'll think about it when I'm old and I used to do that stuff. But right now I can't think about it because I have work to do. And so I just do whatever I was doing. I see this a lot with shows that become hit shows. At first there's a purity often and then as they get more popular they start doing the things that they know people like.

like people like when this character does x so we'll put more of that in and people then they just keep kind of picking away at the integrity of their piece when they do that yeah which is hard even to balance with something like um because you talk about directors used to really think about audience reaction right in a theater yeah um so what's what's the difference between doing that and doing you know catering right to what

you think that they're going to like in that the bad sense uh the difference is catering is superficial right so catering would be like we know they want car chases put in some car chases yeah yeah right right You know what I mean? Put in more explosions. There's not enough hot women in this. It's quantifiable in a sense where you're like, more this kind of joke. Yeah.

right yeah that guy needs to hit get in the crotch people love that you know whatever it's those kinds of things well hitchcock was really good at explaining this stuff so i'll use a famous hitchcock explanation for what i mean so hitchcock um known as the master of suspense right known as the master of suspense so he would always say i don't create suspense by keeping secrets from the audience i create suspense by telling them everything

Which is counterintuitive. But if you think about life where he learned it, it makes sense. So he said when he was in school, elementary school, he went to like a Jesuit school that was pretty strict. And if you did something wrong. uh you'd get sent to the headmaster's office and you uh you would be paddled right okay but you wouldn't get paddled right away so what would happen is you go to the headmaster and he'd say what did you do and

You'd talk it over and he'd say, okay, Mr. Hitchcock, you're going to get five swats, right? And they'd write it in a book. Albert Hitchcock, five swats. That was at the beginning of the day.

And Hitchcock said, all day, all you would do is think about the swats. The punishment, part of the punishment was thinking about it all day long. Wow. Right? And so he's like, that's how you create suspense. That's... understanding how an audience works psychologically that's not that's not catering yeah yeah that's yeah so the difference is yeah thinking about how your art is going to actually impact someone in the moment versus trying to get them to like it

Right. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's a little like everybody does it on dates, but you know, I'm going to suck in my stomach and I'm going to do this. I'm going to do, you know, I'm going to basically lie. Right. Or you can be yourself and people like it or they don't like it, but at least it's authentic and you don't come off desperate and you don't come off. You know what I mean? It's like people might not like you, but they might go.

that person was fine i you know we didn't hit it off but you know what i mean instead of going what a sleazy weird dude who you know his toupee kept moving around you know what yeah or or i mean if they like you they like you for those deep reasons and

and that's really what you're wanting anyway that's exactly right that's exactly not every movie is for everyone right that's that is true that is true not there's someone that you're making that movie for you're making that song for and right they're gonna get Some people are going to be excluded from that, but I think you can catch more people in your net if you understand how humans operate. Everybody has some...

I mean, I don't believe in genres, but that's another thing. But everybody has some movie that's in a genre they don't usually like. And that's because it transcended that genre by telling the story that mattered, right? I don't really like science fiction, but I really like aliens. I don't really like, you know, you hear that kind of, I don't like horror movies or slasher movies, but I like Silence of the Lambs. You know, everybody has an exception.

And what's funny about that is I feel like a lot of the things they probably don't like are all the catering things. It's like... We put a bunch of spaceships in it. We put a bunch of blood in the horror movie. It's all of that external stuff. And when someone just comes along and tells a story, that's great. People react to it. Yeah.

but a story is risky so that people don't do it it's it's easy to be superficial it's easy to just say you know put in more spaceships i call it i call it creatively inexpensive it might cost you a lot of money but it doesn't cost anything else uh you talk about

stories imparting survival information, and that doesn't have to be necessarily like your physical survival in the moment, but it's imparting something that you need to know. Would you distinguish that? from the armature at all or is that really that's what the that's what the armature is the armature same thing is survival information so there's all kinds of survival like often i say this in classes and people are like well not all stories are

like yeah they pretty much are but it depends now you can again there's physical survival but there's emotional survival spiritual survival cultural survival yeah right there's all these different kinds of survival but a story has to have conflict everybody knows that

well, why does a story need conflict? A story needs conflict because conflict is the thing that we need to learn how to survive. So it could be interpersonal conflicts. It could be all kinds of conflicts, but that's a thing we need to learn how to survive. And so... Or even appreciating the moment of going back to the bridge, going back to King Midas, right? Going back to Old Souls.

That's a thing you should know because you're going to waste your time. You only have so much time. You're going to waste it not noticing or not appreciating. That's a kind of survival. So in a lot of... movies, stories, there's a very popular myth of retributive violence, retributive justice where someone's wronged and then they're going to go and...

kill the guy who wronged whatever, they're going to fix it. They're going to fix this violence by more violence. And you see that undermined in certain movies, but it's pretty...

popular uh it's a popular myth i think out there and you had something happen just terrible in your life where your brother was killed um you the way that you i think framed All of this was counteractive to that idea in the way that you found empathy for your brother's killer. Could you talk about that a little bit?

Yeah, it seemed to baffle people when I did it. It didn't seem like I was doing anything to me. It just seemed like it was a natural thing for me to do. I've come to realize, in fact, the new... book i'm writing now is all about this i was wondering yeah yeah so that's what this is about so it's about the process

sort of about the trajectory of my life and how it led to that moment in terms of being able to forgive this guy. What I did was, what happened was, you know, when he got killed, it was sort of a random killing on the street, just got shot. And when he got killed... and then i got married and and that was weird because he wasn't there of course and then went on my honeymoon and then the trial the murder trial started when i was on my honeymoon and so when i got back from my honeymoon

The trial was going, so I went right from the honeymoon to the trial, the murder trial. And there was a woman there who was somehow associated with my brother, and he had a lot of support friends. co-workers and stuff that came to the trial um a lot of my family my sister went but a lot of my family couldn't go didn't they just couldn't go yeah but i felt like i needed to go so i was there and anyway this woman said um

Because the defendant was going to take the stand that day. And he had taken the stand on other days, but this is the first day I was able to attend. And this woman said, oh, great. Now we get to hear how hard it is to be a crack dealer. My first response was, I bet that is hard. Yeah. Which is not most people's first response. But this gets into, I think, the different angle you were seeing.

Yeah. So I thought, well, you know what? I'm going to listen to that. I'm going to listen and see what I hear. I didn't think, well, I'm going to forgive this guy or anything. I just thought.

There was something about the way the woman said that that made me think we can dispose of this human being. Yeah. The human being has no. humanity i don't know a better word yeah right and i just thought that can't be true so i'm gonna listen and see what i learned i came to understand um how he ended up in that position he was born into a gang

His parents were the founders of the Crypt of the Bloods or something. So he's born. There's no choice in it for him. He's born into a gang. You know, if you know the history of how ghettos are created. then I also know that his parents were also in a weird situation because the ghetto was created through policies and redlining, and you can look all that up.

So I was like, OK, so the ghettos are created. Then you have a kid born into that situation. Then you have a kid who, because of the way we. fund schools is in a a poor school district a poor overcrowded school district right so so not getting much of an education not much money put into his education nor his future ends up he ends up selling drugs because

that's what you do in the world that he grew up in. He goes to prison and while he's in prison, decides he never wants to go back to prison. So he learned a trade. I can't remember what it was, welding or something. He learned a trade. And when he got out of prison, he couldn't get a job because he's a felon. He's an ex-felon. Yeah. So not only can you not get a job, you can be denied housing.

you are not eligible for public housing, and you're not eligible for food stamps or government assistance, but you still have to eat, right? And in fact, if... Uh, your family is on public assistance. Like if they live in public housing or something, they can lose it. If they put somebody up as a felt, it's like, there's really literally nowhere for you to live.

No way for you to make money. No way for you to get food. So what they did is the system put that guy on the street because he still had to eat. He was supporting his... his sister and her kid helping them out with stuff so so uh that was all he knew and he couldn't get a job doing anything else he got stabbed um this guy um i don't know a little while before

He shot my brother like a couple of weeks or something. He'd been stabbed by somebody trying to steal from him or something on the street. And what he says was that he when he when my brother approached him on the street, he was sort of gun shy from having been stabbed. Right.

or gunshot, whatever. You know what I mean? He was jumpy. He was jumpy. So he shot my brother. They were a little bit of a confrontation and he shot my brother. Now, I don't know if that last part is true or if it's a lie or whatever, but I do know all that other stuff. yeah it's true and so i thought well if the system had taken care of him from anywhere between the cradle and now we wouldn't be sitting here yeah

So I was more angry at the system than I was at the guy that just surprised people. So that was my part of it was through my own personal experiences. And some of it was, I think, through story and understanding. that if you're writing a good story, you have to see all sides of the thing, and you've got to be honest to those characters and their perspective, and maybe that training helped. I don't know. It wasn't until I did it and wrote a letter to the judge talking about this stuff that I...

I gave it much thought or thought it was anything special. Other people seemed to think it was special. It just seemed logical to me. Empathetic. Well, thank you for sharing that. I feel like that story is an interesting... Example of where someone can have a gut reaction towards what they think is the good. In this lady's case that kind of sparked this, she's thinking...

Well, the good here is some sort of retributive justice or violence. This person is clearly just refuse and we need to treat them as such. Right. And somehow that sparked in you this idea of, so there's a connection between what's perceived as a good and then if you actually connect what is true.

with that situation where you started to dig and see oh what's true of the situation what's true of this man's life there's a much bigger picture and there's so much context and it as you tell this as a story it undermines a different story, which is this myth that we, and I use that in the pejorative, the myth of maybe of an exaggerated sense of free will where you just, there's no barriers on what.

good or bad you could do in the moment but the reality is there's such a larger story that goes back that connects you to all those things and I don't want to sit on either side of that where you know you don't have any agency or right you have all of it but i but i do think our society and i think maybe it's you know the

american exceptionalism this idea of everyone can make your own way and and whatever you want to do you can do it right and that's told from the point of view of uh the victors and oppressors

generally right no that's true well it's funny because i i gave a lecture about this my brother and somebody came up to me afterwards and they said they talked about free agency talk about that and i find that an interesting thing because I don't even know where I fall on that only because if you think about Flint, Michigan right now, you think about all these kids who have lead poisoning in Flint, Michigan, right? We know that lead...

will cause them to have cognitive issues. And we know that they will have impulse control issues. Is that their fault? Right. And we know that poor kids, poor kids, poor black kids. often lived in housing that had lead paint where those kids ate paint chips. Yeah. Right. So does he have impulse control because of, you know, I have a problem with impulse control because of his upbringing. He might.

Did he have impulse control problems because of eating lead paint when he was a kid? He might, right? So it's a really hard thing to say whether or not, because here's my thinking. we're going to be dealing with these kids in Flint in the legal system at some point. But who really committed the crime? Why did we start justice there? What about all those people who put lead in the water?

shouldn't they be sitting in prison yeah you know yeah and that's at the end of the day that's really just saying that people with less resources are less able to defend themselves in those situations because the people who are responsible are generally more well-off and generally are not going to be held.

Accountable. And that's not even just because they can hire a better lawyer. It's just the way that the system works. Yeah. And so I think that all of it gets more complicated, more muddy than just.

Um, well, there's free agency, you know, it's like, well, even that you don't know is for sure. Like, I don't, I don't know anything about that. I don't know if there's, he hasn't asked, I don't know if the guy's a complete jerk. The guy who got my brother, he might be the worst person in the world. I don't know.

Maybe that's why I was able to forgive him. I don't know. I don't know if he would have, if all things were great for him and he'd end up killing somebody, then maybe I could say, well, that guy, you know, right. But that wasn't the way his life worked.

And even trying to get better, he was not supported in trying to get better. Yeah. Thanks again for sharing that. Sure. There was a gal, Claire Keechel, who's a writer for the OA. I don't know if you've seen that show at all. I saw someone retweeted something she said the other day, and it made me think of you, and I wondered what your take is on it. She said... And then goes on to talk about...

the importance of structures. So if we keep seeing these structures, it's reinforcing itself. And she says, if no one teaches us stories about the importance of community, the importance of love, the failings of violence, then we're going to be stuck in one story.

Say those stories about a group or a woman or a queer person, or say it has an ambiguous ending where there's no death or catharsis. It'll never satisfy the widest audience because we haven't been taught to value other kinds of stories or endings. She says, this is terrifying for me.

Because in order to confront the actual problems of the world, we desperately need new stories that don't rely on an Aristotelian or Campbellian or Hollywood framework. We need stories that teach us how to value listening, faith, cooperation, and kindness. So I'm curious what you think about that idea kind of pushing against Joseph Campbell or this hero's journey kind of thing. No, I'm not one of those. I don't...

I think she makes some good points and there are other things where I'm like, nah, that's not... I think she's right. I mean, in that I think that she's right in that we are telling the same kinds of stories.

usually from a particular perspective, right? I remember a friend of mine, Paul Feig, had directed Bridesmaids. And I remember when that movie was coming out, he was sending out tweets and other people were sending out tweets like, hey, this is a rated R comedy starring women and you have to support this movie because if you don't, Hollywood won't.

Fund these kinds of things and produce these kinds of movies right if it fails and my feeling was well That's a really interesting thing. They do the same thing with minorities with Asians with you know African-Americans, they do the same thing. If this doesn't make money, then I'm like, well, that's an interesting category to put people in because they never say if this movie about a straight white male tanks, Hollywood will never support another one.

right so you have to support it right they don't they don't think of that failure as that being part of the failure like you can have a movie with all asian an asian cast and maybe it's just a bad movie so you might have to make a few of them right you can't just make one and go i guess that doesn't work

right uh you can't just make one comedy with women and go i guess that doesn't work if it tanks but do you think that the system works that way at all like as far as the people with the money making decisions do they look Look at that and think that. They do look at that and think that. They're thinking about it a little less because now they're getting pushback, right? So it's like...

Maybe we should cast an actual Asian person as the Asian character. You know, they're getting pushback. So I think that they're being held accountable a little bit. But there are other places where I don't think they're being held accountable. We can talk about that.

later i think behind the scenes there's still some issues but i have a lot of students who want like uh an ambiguous ending or something they're like oh shouldn't it be it's like endings don't exist on their own endings are part of a piece yeah you don't choose an ending the story has the ending that it has because that's the one that stresses the armature that proves the armature right so that doesn't mean you can't have an ambiguous ending it means

the point of the whole piece better be it's ambiguous uh-huh does that make sense yeah yeah still has to be your armature you can't just not have an ending right you know what i mean and go hey that's the way it's like

People for thousands of years, for a couple thousand years, have tried to push back against Aristotle. So this Aristotelian structure, he's really the first person to talk about the REACT structure and all of that, right? But here's the thing. Aristotle didn't make anything up.

uh joseph campbell didn't make anything up right they looked at that way human beings told stories naturally and said this is what we do right so thinking that like they're not all they they're just like reporters it's like saying You keep reporting on disasters. You're like, well, that's my job. Right. All they did was report. This is how people operate. So one good example for me or one example I often use in class is about three act structure. Right.

So three-act structure is really Aristotelian structure. So Aristotle, he didn't talk, he didn't say three-act, but basically he talks about the first part and the second part, you know, beginning, middle, and end. It can be broken down like this. You have your proposal, you have your argument. you have your conclusion.

Right. So your proposal would be like sort of your armature statement in your first act. It would all be setting up all that stuff. Here's King Midas and he has, you know, he's rich, but he wants to be more rich and, you know, all that stuff. Right. So you would set up your proposal, then you would argue your. case in the middle. And then you conclude in the end. And the interesting thing is it's not artificial. It's the way we speak. So if I, I, and it's this way all around the world.

There's no story accent. I mean, I've listened for it. There's no, people may have an accent in language. They may move things around and put this word in front of that word or whatever. But in terms of actual structure, it's always the same. especially and this is what the ones that i mean maybe someone played around something else and we don't it didn't stick around well yeah we have we have what survives so right but this is this seems to be the thing well yes except for

What's interesting about stories and storytelling is that people separate it from life, right? We didn't invent stories. We invented writing, but we did stories. Stories seems to come with the equipment of being a human being. So it's innate. Everybody has it all around the world all throughout time. So your proposal might be in life might be, oh my God, Saturday I was at the best party I've ever been to in my life. It's my proposal. You know the very next thing I'm going to say.

You're going to tell me why it was so great. Yeah, I'm going to argue it, right? Proposal, argument. You already know that, right? Conclusion. Oh, my God, you missed a great party. Because often stories are circular. That's just the way people speak. So trying to get rid of that or think there's some new way to do it is like, well, okay, go ahead.

die on that hill but it's not you you can work within these structures and tell all kinds of stories the structure isn't the problem the problem i think has been who gets to say yes and no to what gets made yeah and so So what she's seeing as maybe this patriarchal undergirding to these things, you would say, no, no, no, these things are human. And the patriarchy has then laid itself on top of these structures. Yeah.

And in fact, I think that if you want to do something different, first of all, if you want to do something, I run into students like this all the time. They want to do something different just because it's different. That's not helpful. If they want to do something different because that's their truth or that's the way they see the world, that's a completely different thing. Yeah. Right. But if you want to do something different, your best friend is going to be structure that is solid.

Right. Because that's going to be the way in for people. Yeah. So, I mean, so in this case, it seems like the better solution is not throwing out the way that we've told stories necessarily, but. but using that framework and telling new stories that are actually dealing with those problems that she's talking about in the world. Right. Yeah. And I don't think, I mean, first of all, it's hard to latch onto.

community it's hard to latch on to um from a storytelling perspective you can tell the story of a community if you talk about the holocaust that's a big topic and there's a lot of things right if you tell one story about one person going through that. Now there's, there's at least 6 million stories to tell, right? There's more probably, probably a lot more, but let's just say, so you've got 6 million stories you can tell.

That one person though stands in for all of those other people. That one person's experience stands in. So now you can overlay that and go, oh my God, is that what it was like for people? Yeah, I've heard that described as getting to the general through the particular. Like the best way to talk about the larger picture is to have this pinhole that you... Yeah, I think so. I think that...

But that doesn't mean you can't tell a story about the importance of community. I think that also what she's talking about is very Western, some of it, where in the East, they're much more... about community. It's really interesting to me that when apartheid ended in South Africa, that one of the first things they did was have those reconciliations.

people who did horrible things during apartheid came and confessed those things to the community, right? Yeah. And then, okay, you confess them. It's on the record. We know you did it. You're forgiven. Go live your life.

right yeah i i that's not a very um certainly not a very american thing to do we would never do that it's interesting they did in south africa and i think they're much actually considering when apartheid ended and when we ended slavery they are way much further along in their development i think in terms of at least their racial conflicts interesting yeah and and we look at that and and uh

judge it because in certain ways we're further along but we've been at it for a lot longer yeah yeah yeah yeah um and so um i think other other voices with other perspectives would necessarily change the kinds of stories that you saw. I just think there needs to be more people who can say, yes, we'll make this. No, we're not going to make that. Those people have to be more diverse. And I mean diverse across the board.

uh people who are not able-bodied and you know like across the board right because they will make different decisions about what stories get told and i think somebody telling a really compelling story about somebody a person with a disa disability for instance, or a sexual minority or something, and they really told that story well, that would resonate for some people, and that would stand in for all this community in some way. They would be closer to that.

uh oh all i i know you know you people find that all kinds of their prejudices disappear when they know somebody from that group that they you know what i mean like well i like that guy you know she's all right you know i was like oh my my uncle's a he's gay and i like him you know like you know you know that that seems to help and so i think stories can help you get to know people well and i think yeah i've thought that too and some of the

television that's been coming out, especially dramas, I feel like there's a way in for people who might be socially isolated from a bunch of different segments of society to... actually have some kind of experience of seeing the humanity in this person that they normally would dehumanize, even if they're doing that subconsciously. Right. So I think that's...

really important. That reminds me, going back to the story about my brother and writing this graphic novel, that's exactly what I'm trying to do. Because right when my brother was killed, there was a... I was looking some stuff up on the internet and somebody had written something like it was a white supremacist site or something. And they'd written about my brother's murder. Like here they are killing each other again, kind of a thing. It's probably the thing that hurt me the most.

other than the actual death of my brother during that whole thing, was to see that. Without knowing my brother, without knowing this other guy, just choose a thing. For them, it was just fodder. They didn't care. And I thought...

You know, we have all these people getting shot, you know, all these black kids, 12 years old, get shot, you know, all these things. And I thought part of it is that people aren't, they've been fed a lot of propaganda over the years. People of color have been dehumanized. And so my job is to humanize both my brother and this guy. So that at least you see the humanity. You can still, if you want to have an argument about black on black crime, which is a weird.

phrase anyway because people kill who they're next to right there nobody says white on white crime but more white people will be killed by white people than white people right so it's like it's kind of a weird thing but but If you want to have that conversation, that's a different conversation. But I, at first I think you need to go, well, these are human beings. Like I think about this guy who shot my brother, given all the circumstances, given all of the choices and all of the barriers.

would your life be any different than his right well and and and what you're doing there is so you're seeing the humanity but you're also seeing the process by which he is being dehumanized by a larger system and by the by people around him right as you dehumanize someone like that has effects on their psyche as well as it does it does and so uh i think that's just something we have to um

deal with that we haven't dealt with as a as a country we haven't dealt with it in a real way we deal with it sort of superficially and we deal with it uh one-to-one i like that guy this person's okay but we didn't deal with like

hey do we have a system that's making me like you know when a 12 year old boy is killed by the police and they say well we were scared for our lives i believe that they were scared for their lives I want to know why you were scared of a 12-year-old boy. And you could ask yourself that question. Like, oh, I believe you were scared. Which is a larger question even than just, are you an asshole? Right. It's much bigger than that. It's beyond that.

I've often felt bad for the people who commit those crimes. I've often felt bad for the cop who's like, oh, I killed the guy. My life's upside down because I was scared of that guy. Because they are as much a victim at that moment. I think, and a lot of people wouldn't say this, but I think they're as much of a victim of racism as anybody else. Not of the person that they killed, but of society in that... They're getting the other side of it, which makes them scared, which makes them...

You know, which makes puts them on edge, which puts them in dangerous situations. And then they go through the only my life will get ruined and maybe this will happen. And I'm a good guy. And why did this happen? It's like you're not questioning the system that you live in that made you.

frightened of a 12 year old boy or frightened of a guy reaching for his wallet when you said hey get your wallet right yeah and so and so when yeah when that when that guy i mean actually i mean that's actually another i feel like instance of the myth of retributive

violence where you see oh that guy shot the kid so we need to get him and you're you're skipping this whole larger thing that's happening like you have to hold people accountable sure you have to try to prevent things from happening sure again But if you're not looking at the bigger issue, like, do you really actually care? You're not going to solve the problem. You're going to put one guy away and things, I mean, have things gotten better? Right.

You're going to put one guy away and that just means one guy went away, right? It doesn't mean that the system that created that guy, that created that situation is being addressed. I think you have to address the system. There's a thing that social justice people say, but it's something like, easy on people, hard on institutions. And that I really take to heart.

you know what the the people are a result of this is what the machine makes the machine makes these situations and these people we have to change we have to change the way this thing operates yeah and and the less empathy you have for the person who has come up in a different part of that machine, I feel like the divide just grows. I think that's true. Because you then don't see that the machine is...

put spitting out people like this right and you just see that person and you're mad at them and i don't know i mean you can apply that same the same logic you're talking about to the guy who killed your brother like you could apply to white supremacists who grew up in you know wherever and his parents were terrible to him and he was taught this and that and yeah and look like

I am in no way condemning or condoning anything that someone would do. But if you can't try to understand the person, you're never going to get to the root of what created them. Right, right. Well, there's that guy who goes around. Black guy who goes around making friends with Klan members. You know this guy? Oh, yeah. He just makes friends with him. And then eventually they give him their robes. He's got all these robes like, you know what? I don't need this anymore.

Yeah, it's a pretty, I mean, there are people I think who probably disagree with him, but it's like, it didn't take, there was no argument that happened. No, it's just like, he just addressed their humanity and said, you're a human being. I'm going to treat you as a human being.

I'm not going to preach to you. I'm not trying to convert you. I'm just going to be a good human being. And sooner or later, that will get to you. There's a scene in Gandhi. I don't know if it's true of Gandhi the person. It might be. But it's in the movie. Gandhi's walking down the street with this. He's a minister or something. Anyway, they're walking down the street, and there are these thugs who want to beat up Gandhi. Gandhi's not famous Gandhi. Well, he's getting there.

There are these kind of thugs on the street and they want to kind of, they're harassing Gandhi as they get closer. I think it's a priest or something. He says to Gandhi, he goes, maybe we should take another road. Maybe it's better if we just, and he goes, no, I think we need to go.

right toward them and the guy says uh uh well no i think it's better to do this and he goes yes but doesn't because gandhi wasn't a christian because gandhi said so gandhi says but doesn't your bible doesn't jesus say uh that if your enemy strikes you to turn the other cheek and the guy says

I think he meant that metaphorically. And God, he says, I don't think he did. If a guy strikes you and he continues to strike you and you let him strike you, sooner or later, he's going to see your humanity. Yeah. Yeah, there's a bunch of stories of him actually taking Jesus really seriously when a lot of Christians don't. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's just kind of interesting that he's like, no, I don't think he meant it in his metaphor. Yeah.

That's pretty bold. But anyway, to understand that, to think that way, you have to understand that that person has humanity. That person will eventually see their humanity when they beat me, right? You have to understand there's a human being in there. no matter what they're doing to you yeah right you still have to know that and that guy who goes around making friends with the clan understands that there's a human being in there yeah you know

um i don't think it does us any good to think of other human beings as monsters there's very few monsters there's a few but you can probably count them you know on two hands you know well and the problem is those monsters don't see themselves that way right Some of the biggest monsters view themselves very morally. That's true. I was just talking to...

Guy James Carse, I don't know if you've heard of him. I feel like you would actually really like... He has a short book called Finite and Infinite Games from back in the 80s. It's fascinating. But he has a line in there. He says, the root of evil is the... the desire to eliminate evil, which is really interesting. Yeah. But all of the worst things that happen, happen because someone has put evil out there and tries to eliminate it. Oh, that's often true. Yeah.

that's often true i i um no one comes out well when they say history says it over and over again no one comes out well when they say those people different from us yeah that never works it never it never History never sees those people as good people. People might at the moment go, that's a good person. They hate those people. I hate those people. But history never treats those people kindly. It never has.

um your own i'm curious of your own views on kind of the bigger picture of reality like how do you how do you look at what's what's going on why why are we here oh that's a good question i uh i can't

I don't know. I'm not sure anybody knows. I know that for me personally, I could never figure out like, there's so many people with so many good, um, they almost always say the same thing. Right. So like there's a book called, um, buddha jesus or jesus buddha and it's all things that they said and not just those two but all these great people throughout history have said that are exactly the same thing so worded differently

And I always feel like, you know what? I think everybody, all these factions, though, think that they're right. And I'm not very good at choosing a team. if that makes any sense i go that person makes a really good point that group makes a really good point that group makes a really good point i and so i'm i'm cool with all of it um most of it anyway

I mean, unless it's hateful, right? But any of the stuff that deals with compassion and the humanity of other people, I'm totally down with. And it makes sense to me. I do think that there's something else, but I don't know what that is. I can't quite give it a name. When you see a beautiful sunset, do you feel a thankfulness in a sense? Yeah. Or is it less specific than that? No, I would say it's a thank.

fullness um you don't know to who exactly but yeah yeah no i mean well yeah i mean that goes down a road of you know i don't know if you've heard the term negative theology but it's basically the idea that anything you say of god it can't be true of god like it

It's like this negation of, well, if you can say it about God, then it can't be totally true because you're putting this in language now and it can't actually be representing. Do you know Karin Armstrong? I don't think so. It looks like Karen, but she goes by Karin. Okay. Anyway, Karen Armstrong is amazing. She has a really interesting history. She writes a lot of books about theology and God. And she used to be a nun for a while in the 60s.

and uh maybe a little earlier than that but she came out because it didn't work for her she goes i pray i try it doesn't work i don't get it So she got out. She's British. So she got out and the Beatles were big. And like, she's like, what is this? Like the whole world was all weird, you know? Anyway.

She but she she got a job somehow, I think on the BBC or something. And her job was she had this show where she just debunked religions. That was her gig. OK. And then she did that for a while. And then she had to.

Study something like research something for a talk thing or a talk show and she's like got interested in religion again And she started studying all these ancient religions and she's totally come now come through to the other side and and is more of a kind of the thing i'm talking about where she she will talk about god but she's more about the cat

uh the compassion aspect of it and that kind of thing but she knows a lot about ancient religions a ton um and a lot about ancient christianity and all this stuff she's like really really smart about that stuff but not just christianity uh islam and buddhism she knows all these things like she's like i don't know what she's read seems like she's read everything and she said that there was a religion that i think it

predates uh hinduism but it's sort of the early version of hinduism and there were these monks and these monks would have these sort of they would have these sorts of debates where they would debate the nature of god and um

But they would go off into the wilderness and think. I don't know if it was a week or something. They'd go out and they'd think. And then they'd come back. And then they would have these debates about the nature of God. And the monk... who reduced everyone to silence won the debate because they believed that god existed in that silence that definitely is uh

Good example of negative theology. Yeah. Awesome. Well, thanks so much, man. I appreciate you taking all this time. I wanted to... Plug your stuff. So check out Old Souls. Anyone who's interested in any kind of writing, storytelling, Invisible Ink is great. You've got a blog, invisibleinkblog.blogspot.com. Is that right? Yeah, but I don't... update it it's all old stuff it's all but it's still but you can read it yeah like it's still still viable you know yeah

Okay. And then your ink spots book is essays from there. Yeah. I haven't read that one yet. Yeah. And then, uh, and then there's the show, right? That you are a storyteller. Yes. Oh, yeah, of course. So, yeah, Brian and my buddy Jesse do a podcast. It's on YouTube, too. It's called You Are a Storyteller. And if you're at all fascinated by...

um, the way Brian talks about stories, it's, there's a ton of stuff on there. He goes through a lot of what's in invisible ink. It's, it's fascinating to, uh, to listen to or watch. So check that out. And, uh, what do you know when you're new?

Well, the one I'm writing now, I don't know when that's coming out. There's one in the middle. There's one that's a new graphic novel that's being drawn right now. Oh, cool. So that's all about taking characters to the underworld to gain wisdom and how... that happens in every story even though we don't know what's happening in a story so all the elements of what the land of the dead are in other stories and so i talk about that so i go from ancient times to the first story that we know of um

which is the Epic of Gilgamesh is the first written down. And then I go all the way up to modern stuff. That sounds fun. Is it, but there's a story that's woven into that retelling too, or is it. Yeah, there kind of is. It's more of a nonfiction book, but there's a character, there's a narrator, and that narrator does take you on a bit of a journey. Well, I can't wait to check that one out. Do you know when that's coming out?

They have not given me a release date yet, so I don't know. My guess is probably next year, May or something. Okay. Well, thank you so much, Brian. Thank you. Thank you, Dustin. Have a great day. You too.

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