I've shot every gun that Evan gets on from Benelli combat shotguns to I custom 19 elevens. I've shot rock and propel grenades. I've snuck on a demolition ranges with seals to blow up cars. You snuck on a demolition range?
That seems particularly dangerous Well, it's fun if you're with the right people, Greg Hurwitz bestselling author of 26 Thrillers, including the Orphan X Series, is one of four featured authors at the Columbus Metropolitan Library's Columbus Book Festival, which will be held at the main library on July 12 through 13th. Welcome to K Craft, Greg Hurwitz. Thanks for having me on. Well, I'm certainly happy that you're here.
what can audience members expect when you appear at the Columbus Book Festival? I will be talking about my Orphan X Series. That's my thriller series, about a assassin. Evan Smoke, my main character was taken out of a foster home at the age of 12 and trained to be an assassin. his handler and father figure told him when he was 12 years old that the hard part wasn't making him a killer. The hard part was keeping him human.
each book is a step in that process of him becoming and trying to figure out after this years of intense training and being one of the most esteemed assassins of his generation, who's now off the radar completely. It's the process of him becoming more and more human and learning to speak the one thing he was never taught, which is the strange language of intimacy. I'll be talking about him, I'll be talking about this big new thriller, that came out called Nemesis.
that's the new one in the series, though it can be read as a standalone. I'm excited to see the Ohio crow. Mm-hmm. So what kind of research do you get to do when you're writing about assassins? it seems like you, would be reading about sociopaths and things like that, but do you go in and try to meet people in prison who have been assassins? I, was fascinated with the idea of how do you find out more about this? there's plenty of.
stuff about assassins, but I've always figured that they were sort of based on, you know, just best guesses. That's a good question. the program that Evan was part of and he was trained to be, is through the Department of Defense. So I have a lot of friends who were Navy Seals and Army Rangers, and so I've shot every gun that Evan gets on from Benelli combat shotguns to I custom 19 elevens. I've shot rock and propel grenades. I've snuck on a demolition ranges with seals to blow up cars.
You snuck on a demo demolition range? That seems particularly dangerous Well, it's fun if you're with the right people, you know. And I also did a lot of mixed martial arts training. not particularly good, but I did some fighting. I always feel like part of my job is to give the reader a front row seat to the action, and so I'm always willing to go and experience the thing myself so that I can write about it in ways that aren't cliched.
that was certainly the case with mixed martial arts, fighting, which I don't mean to imply was any good at it. It was mostly a process of, introducing my face to the training mat repeatedly. Mm-hmm. But getting choked out. Induces a certain kind of claustrophobia and discomfort that I can write about firsthand instead of relying on a cliche like, and then everything went dark. Mm-hmm. So I'm always trying to experience the thing itself.
And I have a lot of other subject matter experts I have, some of the top, Network intrusion experts and hackers in the world, who I rely on.
my last book, Lone Wolf, that preceded Nemesis, had a lot about AI and I talked to a lot of guys who were originating AI leaders in the field, visionaries, computer chip designers, and then even had a little summit at the house where I brought in theologians and psychologists to talk about the ways that we can start to contend with this symbolically and mythologically and psychologically. I really like diving deep into all these different topics. and the more dangerous, the better.
Yeah. And you had a salon article last October, where you talked about how, community can keep storytelling alive. which I, found really interesting because a lot of people, Many authors are having a hard time with the idea of ai. in the article you talk about how, you have a friend who is working on a system that would allow, a Faulkner novel to be written at the touch of a button. that's terrifying, for a lot of folks, including people doing the kind of writing you do.
Well, on the one hand we think it's great 'cause we have everything that we want at the touch of a button, right? write me a Faulkner novel. Half the length. Let's say my IQ is 110. So suit all the vocabulary to that, don't have violence against children and use inside jokes from my, Twitter account. So you push a button and out comes your product. And on the one hand it seems amazing, but on the other hand, it's sort of hellish.
If we keep imbibing only things that are designed for us, we're like the people in Wally, that great Pixar movie, floating around, imbibing our own things. It puts us distant from each other. And distant from a shared narrative. my argument for why I think artists need to be predominant, I do use ai, but as a research tool. I don't use AI to write, but I use it. It's, some of them are wonderful researchers, but there's a couple things that are why I think humans and human authors are essential.
the first is that what turns us on and what excites us more than anything is always human excellence. I don't wanna watch an AI basketball game. I wanna watch Michael Jordan soar. even when Deep Blue came out, the chess AI Mastermind, we didn't wanna see, deep blue play deep blue. We wanted to see how Casper off would fare against it. We wanna watch humans doing things that are superb. That's the first thing.
And the second thing is if we have too much of our own bespoke entertainment, that's separate. There's nothing shared. There's not that experience that we had waiting online. I remember Tim Burton's Batman came out. When I was in high school, I remember waiting online you go in and there's this oxytocin release when the audience is excited. There's all this energy, we already feel this to some extent. I have Apple tv, like a lot of people.
I sit there and there's like a trillion dollars of entertainment on the TV and nothing feels special. And it's already starting to foreclose some of our conversations where you might say, what show are you watching? Oh, white Lotus. Well, what app is it on? And I'm in season one, so don't tell me about season two. we're getting all fragmented. book tours for me are incredibly important. I spent a lot of time at libraries 'cause I was raised in the library.
Ohio, by the way, is the best libraries in the nation, which I'm sure you're aware of. Yes. yeah, I haven't, I haven't done, Columbus, but I spent a lot of time in tour in Ohio and on libraries. And part of that is that sense of community where everybody's reading the same book. as much as we can have different interactions at least we're connected in that.
And so these events and this ability to create community in the way that we can in a movie theater or at a library or at a book signing is distinct. And that's a very important part of what keeps us alive and functioning is a shared experience of art or entertainment. It's very important. It's interesting that you say that because I see some crossovers to some of the other work that you've done.
you've written op-eds for the Wall Street Journal, the Guardian, the Bulwark, salon and others to push against polarization in politics and culture. So, it seems to me some overlap there. How's that work going for you, what's the reaction been to your op-eds? I am sure mixed is the most obvious answer. when I'm doing it right, I'm drawing complaints from all quarters. increasingly we really need each other. We're facing very, unsure times on the international stage right now.
the more divided we are over minor political issues, which might seem major. but are really minor and they're driven by three different things. They're our differences are driven by psychopathic algorithms, designed for outrage, fear, anxiety, if you're online and you're feeling something, somebody's making money. You know, that's one thing to remember. They're driven by hostile foreign regimes.
A lot of the issues that we have, a lot of polarization around are driven by full blown PSYOPs from China, Russia, and Iran that are administered through our news, through, social media and there's bad faith domestic players who are dividing us for money. I was very curious about this and I did a set of polling where basically I phrased every question in the polling, not like partisan jerk.
So instead of coming in and using phrases that are cliched or ideologically laden, like if I go in and say, I believe in climate change, maybe 50, 55% of people will say yes. If I say, I don't believe in climate change, maybe you get 45, 50% of people. But instead, I phrased the question by saying, I believe we have a duty to keep our skies and seas clear and our fields and streams. 94% of people agree.
Hmm. So if you're actually willing to ask the questions from a basis of agreement, and then we can litigate what those differences are like, are some people more focused on ocean biodiversity? Other people might be concerned about carbon imprint. Like there's all these different ways that you can have discussions. I. If you're building upon what's shared. But unfortunately, there's too much monetization, fundraising for politics, leadership, clicks for eyeballs.
That's all about exacerbating the outrage and the differences. And the more that we do that, the more that it becomes a reality. one of the things that I'm trying to do with my messaging is to pierce this veil of, there's a term called pluralistic ignorance that I learned when I was researching my. Fifth novel where I went undercover into mind control cults in a mind control cult, everyone's miserable independently, but they can't talk to each other.
they're in these little miserable bubbles because everywhere they look, they feel like everyone else is in lockstep. a lot of aims are made to not have them communicate with each other. And to silo them into different arenas. So if you think about it, that's sort of like all of North Korea is starving to death and miserable, but they look everywhere that they see.
And so that's called pluralistic ignorance, where people don't agree on a ton of different issues people will say, I certainly don't want to have wide open borders and having people come across the border who aren't vetted and aren't safe. But I also think that there should be a legal process that's fair and safe and humane. if you phrase each issue in a rounded way, you can bring 90 to a hundred percent of America with you.
everybody feels like if they're gonna say anything about these topics, you can just list them. Abortion, immigration, DEI, you get the list people are frozen and terrified to speak because they feel they're risking reputational and financial damage to themselves. if we can shatter that effect, it's interesting because some of these themes have been formed.
The Orphan X book, the newest one called Nemesis, it's not overtly political because I don't write overtly ideological books because then I wouldn't be writing fiction, I'd be writing propaganda. But it is very much about how friends from different codes can collide with each other and they have to figure out how to, you know? And in this case, it's deadly friends. 'cause one of 'em is an Orphan X, who's an assassin, who best friend in armor his crossed him.
By selling weapons to somebody that were used to harm innocence. And these two very dangerous men are going up against each other and they have different codes. the book is about how they will resolve those feelings of betrayal and differences.
And it has to come from when you care about somebody sufficiently that you have to reexamine your own presuppositions in your own values when you know that somebody might have acted in a way or voted differently or said something that you just cannot square with your worldview, but you can't dismiss them or excommunicate them, or unfriend them, and there's a lot of rising mounting stakes around them that are equally deadly as they're trying to negotiate this.
it seems like as you're writing you must be. struggling with some of your own, views as you imbue the two different characters, with different traits. How did you get past that to say, I don't agree with what this guy's doing, but I want the reader to understand why it is and therefore I need to understand and be at least in some sense open to it. That's a really good question, Doug. are you familiar with the psychologist Carl Rogers? Yeah, Roger.
He's the one that we make fun of a lot when we go, well, how did that make you feel? Right. He's like the stereotypical soft therapist. But one of the things Carl Rogers did that I think about a lot was he sat the patient up face to face with him as opposed to Freud, who kind of sat in a superior position right behind the couch. Well, he had to be close to his cocaine, Yeah, exactly. that's exactly right.
And so when he looked at him, one of the things Carl Rogers was doing, and what he realized was, you have to hold your patient with, he called it unconditional positive regard. So that means if something horrible happened to the patient or if the patient did something horrible, you have to have a regard for them as a therapist that you're trying to treat them. he found that to do that, that the truest act of listening is you actually set your nervous system in resonance with another person.
psychiatrists and psychologists have talked about this, and I'm sure you've had this experience. In your own life, like a lot of your listeners might too. If you talk to someone who's very manic and energetic, you come away and you feel that way. If you talk to someone who's depressed or dysthymic, there is a sort of emotional osmosis that takes place.
for me, with my characters, my primary aim is not determining whether they're right or wrong, more than, that's my primary aim when I'm doing interventions to build bridges in the culture and politics, right? My aim is really to understand as best as I can, to listen as deeply as I can and to try to embody what that character is thinking and feeling. I describe it sometimes as it's like pulling on a mask and trying to see the world through their eye holes.
If I can embody characters with opposing views and hold them in mind, that act for me is much more compelling and gives greater depth to the characters the plot, the drama, and the tension than if I've decided in advance, well this one's good and this one's bad, I want the reader to be constantly tempted into different points of view where I don't make them too overt. Yeah. Which makes, a lot of sense in theory.
I have to imagine that you have a little bit more regard for Orphan X, at some points. 'cause you're like, I still need this guy, you know, so I can't, it's funny, Doug, there's some chapters in Nemesis the new one that long time Orphan X readers were losing their minds. 'cause they're like, wait, this is the first time I've ever read a chapter. that I'm rooting against him. Mm-hmm.
so I like to put him in confusing ways where we're very intimate with maybe goings on in another sphere that Evan isn't aware of. Mm-hmm. And so he's coming into this and so, you know, one of the things somebody said on my book tour for Nemesis, it was a great line. Somebody said to me, it's very hard to hate up close. in this book in particular, I take readers very close with some of the people who, from an outside perspective.
These are people who Evan would just kill without even thinking about them. But the more that I'm peeling the onion with them and the ways that they think when Evan shows up as this sort of force of nature menace that we're accustomed to being, ideally the reader is having some cognitive dissonance Mixed emotions around that, where they're a little bit confused and on edge I like to keep my readers on edge.
Yeah. It's kinda like, you know, there's other characters I can think of in the anti-hero mode that you're talking about it makes a lot of sense. Yeah. Well, Greg Hurwitz, I. Thank you very much for talking to me today. the book sounds fantastic and you'll be talking about it at the July 12th through 13th Columbus Book Festival. Congratulations on all the success and the 26th thrillers, and we will see you in Columbus. Thank you, Doug. I'm looking forward to seeing you.