Ray Nayler, Where the Axe Is Buried

In this episode Brett sits down with writer Ray Nayler for his new book, "Where The Axe is Buried". They discuss what fiction does well, the success in getting a book to engage you and parallels with current events, and what helps him stay hopeful when the world can feel pessimistic. 

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https://www.raynayler.net/

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https://www.instagram.com/raynayler/

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Transcript

Brett Benner: 0:00

Hey everybody, and welcome or welcome back to another episode of Behind the Stack, where today we're gonna be discussing the White Lotus Finale. We're not really gonna discuss it, but I did watch it last night. I don't know if any of you watched it. And I, for the most part, thought it was pretty satisfying. There were certain things that I didn't love, but I thought this was a, decent finale for a very. Subpar season. That is my hot take on the white Lotus. I'll be interested to see what they come up with next, but I thought it was a long, very, very slow and protracted season. But I did think a lot of it redeemed itself in this last episode. And Carrie Coon is just incredible. Anyway, moving on. One book that's coming out today that I wanna talk about that's so good is Katie Kitamura's audition. This is her fifth book, and the, summary says it begins with a tense Manhattan lunch date between an accomplished, middle aged theater actor and a mysterious younger man. Over the course of 197 disquieting pages, Kitamura unravels a provocative narrative that questions the relationship between truth and performance. So this is very much a book for people who are missing severance because it will completely screw with your head a little bit, but. She's such a fantastic writer, and this would also be a great book for a book club because there would be so much to discuss. So that is out today, now onto today's author. So I'm really, really excited to have sitting down with me today, Ray Nayler who's new book, where the Axe Is Buried came out last week. I first discovered Ray a few years ago. He published a book called The Mountain Sea, and I just flipped out over it, which I talk about this with him in our conversation, so I won't go into it now, but about Ray. Ray is the author of the Locust Award-winning novel, the Mountain and the Sea, which was named one of Esquire's best science fiction books of all time. It's been translated into over a dozen languages. that was followed by his second book, the Tusks of Extinction. He was an environment science, technology, and health officer at the US Consulate in the Ho Chi Minh City. He most recently served as international advisory to the Office of National Marine Sanctuaries at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and as a diplomat fellow and visiting scholar at the George Washington University's Institute for International Science and Technology Policy. He lives in Washington DC with his family. So now please enjoy this episode of Behind the Stack. so, I am really so happy today to be joined by Ray Naylor for his fantastic new book where the ax is buried. Ray, I was one of the people that a few years ago discovered you through the mountain in the sea, and. Oh my God, this thing just blew me away. And I, I was like, who is this guy? I was also coming out of just having seen my octopus teacher. And I became obsessed with them. And so the idea of this. Book that these people were communicating with this, you know, Highly intelligent cephalopod. was like, this is real, and this is like my dream of what I want to happen. And who is this man that's you know, creating this, this whole idea. And of course I, I've said the same thing with this book as well in a much more kind of terrifying way. So congratulations on the book. I know it just got a, it's got a star review from Kirkus. It, it really is. It's, it's so good. I, you know, to say it's. Timely is kind of probably the understatement of the year. But it couldn't be more timely in light of everything that's happening right now. Be before we, before we launch into the, the book itself, I just have really quick questions about you. So you are a foreign service officer, correct?

Ray Nayler: 4:00

Correct.

Brett Benner: 4:02

Okay. I have to tell you, when I was telling my son, and he went crazy when I told him this. I had, I told him about the book and then I said, oh, you know, this author that I really love is coming on the show and he's a foreigner. And he's like, I have so many questions. I mean, this is what I wanna do. And, and

Ray Nayler: 4:17

Oh that's great.

Brett Benner: 4:17

And so I, yeah, but I had to be honest, I had to look it up'cause I had no idea what a foreign service officer did. And so just really quickly for our listeners and our viewers, can you sum up what that job entails?

Ray Nayler: 4:32

Well I have since 2010. So I was a Peace Corps volunteer initially in Turkmenistan in from 2003 to 2005. And then I worked in international education with American Councils for, for International Education in I was a Peace Corps volunteer in Turkmenistan. I worked for American Councils in. Russia and then in Kazakhstan, in Kyrgyzstan, in Afghanistan. In Russia again, and then Tajikistan. From Tajikistan. I joined the US Foreign Service, which is basically how we staff our US embassies abroad. And with them I went to Vietnam where the book Mountain Sea is set. And then after Vietnam, I was in Kyrgyzstan again. And then in Azerbaijan and then in Kosovo, I came back here to the United States in 2022. And so I had been abroad for about two decades. And then I was at the at Noah. I. In their marine protected areas, center for a year on a detail. Mm. And then at the George Washington University as a visiting scholar in their International Science and Technology Policy Institute. And my next posting is here in Washington, DC Again, I'll be at the National Nuclear Risk Reduction Center. That's basically the red phone between. The State Department and Moscow dealing with nuclear armaments and, and other issues including cybersecurity and things like that. It's a 24 hour, seven day a week center that tries to avoid misunderstandings and, and accidents

Brett Benner: 6:06

just because, right. How many languages do you speak?

Ray Nayler: 6:11

I mean, I've learned and spoken a lot of languages. I, I really only speak English and Russian and I mean, I have, you know, you learn languages over the years, but if you don't use them, they kind of decay. I'm learning Spanish right now. Spanish is one of the languages that the center uses'cause it's sort of a, it's now become kind of a web of communications. And so I could say I speak Spanish, so I'd say three currently, but I've learned like seven or eight.

Brett Benner: 6:39

Wow, that's amazing. I can't even begin to unpack not only how much, just the experience of being out of the country for so long and living in such a variety of different places, but it also is so obvious, I guess it's obvious how some of, or so many of those experiences also inform. Your stories in many ways.

Ray Nayler: 7:03

Mm-hmm. Yeah. I mean, 20 years overseas. If it doesn't teach you anything else, it'll certainly teach you how to feel stupid and do things wrong. How to feel like a stranger and an outsider. How to communicate things you didn't intend to communicate. How not to communicate how, you know, easy it is to have misunderstandings and things like that. And, and that's a lot of what the material that went into the mountain and the sea. I mean, besides my obvious interest in, in biology and communications and consciousness and those things, a lot of it is just about the difficulty of communication and you know, just what a. Phenomenon. It really is that we're able to have intelligible communication with one another at all. Right. Yeah. Given just what challenge it can be,

Brett Benner: 7:51

so, okay. So then moving on to where the ax is buried. do you have a. It sounds so Hollywood, but you know, you are what, you know an elevator pitch for the book.

Ray Nayler: 8:01

I do not. I am really struggling not to become a salesman and instead just to remain a writer. But I'll just say it's about two systems that are, that are oppressive. One is more oppressive than the other, but both systems are beginning to fail for certain reasons. And it's. An examination of how systems fail and what that means for people who are involved in that, in that failure. And it's an examination of authoritarianism and an examination of all governmental forms that limit or suffocate human freedom.

Brett Benner: 8:37

Mm. And it should be noted that you did finish this before, before the election,

Ray Nayler: 8:41

yes. And it's more about the United States. I mean, I should be really clear about that. Yeah. The US has only mentioned one time in this book. Correct. So I don't, I I, I would discourage people from, and I've been asked like, why didn't I name any of the countries in the book, for example? Really like, sort of avoided that. I don't want people to draw one to one connections because science fiction is not predictive in my. Opinion science fiction does something more complicated and interesting than predicting things. It's predic, it predicates things on a, on by making changes, so you make a change to the world. You write about the world that exists when that change is made, and you use that to kind of point a lens. At things that might or might not be happening in the present moment as well. Mm. Mm-hmm. You know, a a a good example I would say is the classic kind of alternate history where the Nazis win World War ii, right? And then people use that trope to examine what would happen in the United States. If, you know, we were defeated and, and how power works and things like that. I actually flipped that trope a little bit on its head with my series of stories. The Disintegration Loops series, which is being published in, in as OVS over time. The first one came out in 2021. The next installment will come out in next month actually. Well in their next, in their next issue in May, which usually comes out in April. In that book, the United States wins World War ii, but wins it with alien technology and much more quickly. And defeats not only Nazi Germany, but also the Soviet Union and communist China. Mm. And becomes this very unipolar power in the world. And so it's an examination of what happens then, right? Wow. So, so that for me is like, that's, that's the core thing that science fiction does. It, it predicates this world that uses those predications to turn. The lens back on us. It's always about the present moment, in my opinion more than it is about the future. And I think sometimes it's fun to play the game of like, you know, what happened that people predicted in science fiction might happen and what didn't happen. But it's more of a like a side hustle of the genre then. Sure. Its core. Its core power and its core power I think really lies in making changes. And then examining how those changes shine a light on human issues, human psychology, human behavior, human governance, that kind of thing. I think Frankenstein is a wonderful idea a wonderful example of that. Mary Shelley wrote this preface for Frankenstein, the modern Prometheus, in which she says, I know this is impossible. But the reason that I'm writing about this is because, you know, and I'm of course paraphrasing her. Very lovely preface. The reason I'm writing about this is because it allows me a vista from which I can examine human psychology in ways that would not be possible. Otherwise. Mm. And I think that's such a wonderful way of looking at our entire genre as this sort of vista from which we can examine what it means to be human, what it might mean to be posthuman, all sorts of things from, from this really interesting perspective. So that's all to say. I don't want people to think of where the ax is buried as this kind of. Oh, this is Russia and this is this place and this is that. Sure. And this is this thing. And here's how he's talking about these very specific things. I'm really talking about much broader issues, right? And the, the way in which they align or don't align with our present moment is trickier than just this one-to-one kind of, you know, big Brother is Stalin, kind of, you know, like limited analysis. I think I, I really, I really think we, we sometimes as readers can do disservice to works that way when we, when we kind of close them off, right? Like, I think 1984, for example, was as much about George Orwell's. Concerns with oppressive capitalist British systems as it was with his concerns about the Soviet Union. Right. Like he was concerned with all power, right? And the way that all power, affects people's choices. I think in conclusion, you know I really think the power of science fiction lies, its openness to interpretation, right? We predicate these worlds and then those worlds for me, I like to think of them as architectures for exploring questions. Sure. You know, people sometimes ask me like, well, what do you think about this? Or what do you think the answer is to this? And, and usually my response to that is like, if I had answers to things, I would write nonfiction books. Nonfiction books often suggest answers to problems, and I do not believe that is the thing that fiction does well. I think what fiction does well is it creates very sophisticated spaces in which to ask more sophisticated, more complex questions about life.

Brett Benner: 13:53

Hmm.

Ray Nayler: 13:53

And the way that we live it and those kinds of things. But it doesn't provide or isn't good at providing answers. When it starts providing too many answers, it becomes really didactic. Right. And so I'm interested in arguments and clearly where the acts is buried is all about arguments. Right. But I'm not interested in resolution.

Brett Benner: 14:10

Yeah. Well, and it's interesting because I think one of the reasons that so many people are glomming on to something is because of kind of the, the prescient nature of the story. And in line, you know, if this was written two years ago, I don't, certainly there could be you know people could tap in and say, oh, it's Russia. Right, right. But I think because of what's happened in the last five months and the way that we've watched certain things accelerate, as well as the things that we're talking about in this, you know, the use of ai, all of these things, which are becoming so much more prevalent, I think there are a lot of people reading it and doing what you just said, and either looking for answers or looking for. To kind of categorize or box what they think it is mm-hmm. Or what it is you are trying to convey rather than just letting this story take them. And it's about these group of individuals and how people respond to something, these extraordinary circumstances, you know, but

Ray Nayler: 15:10

I, I think that, you know, in a sense, like fiction should invite that, right? Mm-hmm. It, it's this, you know, where the book, when I was going to university, right? It was all about the text, right? And all about where the text fits in. To, to the world. And texts are constantly interpenetrated by their position in reality. So a really good example would be when the mountain in the sea came out. It was October of 2022. It was definitely the year the octopus in this weird way, all this octopus stuff had come out.

Brett Benner: 15:39

Yeah. And

Ray Nayler: 15:39

none of us who were doing things on octopus knew any of the other people and we're doing things on octopuses. But it was sort of like what William Gibson called steam engine time. Right. When all of a sudden a hundred people invent the steam engine. And then forever about who actually invented the thing, because it was really invented in all these different places at the same time. It's kinda like that. It was like Octopus time, 2022. Mountain in the Sea comes out in October and it's definitely a book about octopuses and then December and January come around. AI hits like a sledgehammer. Right. So now it's January of 2023 or December of 2022, I think. And this issue of new scientist comes out with a review of the mountain and the sea in it. And that review is four pages long or something like that. It's a really long review. Very nice review of the, of the book. There's not a single mention of an octopus anywhere in the review. It's entirely a review about how this is a book about artificial intelligence. So nothing has changed in the book, but somehow its position has shifted. And for this person who's reviewing it for new scientists, this is clearly a book about ai. And I think that's kind of the wonderful thing about books is that for the person reading it, this is clearly a book about X thing that they're concerned with. Right? Sure. And, and, and if a book is open enough. It can do that for a lot of different people. It can be that for a lot of different people. And I think that's really the, the, the wonderful thing about fiction. You know Keats talks about what he calls negative capability. Mm-hmm. You know which he. Suggests is the author's ability to live with contradiction and a lack of resolution in things. He thinks that's what makes poems beautiful is that they don't resolve and they, they aren't just easily classified or, or put into a box. And I want that, I want people to stick things onto. Where the ax is buried. Right. And, and be like, well this is a book about, I mean, you, this has a parallel with this that happened in my life, and this is what I see in politics that might be related to this in the book. That for me is just a sign that the book is doing its job. It's it's engaging people, it's pulling them in, and it's connecting to their lived experience. Where they are, where they are. And I, I think that's great.

Brett Benner: 18:06

Yeah. So. So then what was the original seeds for this for you? What started this in terms of gerian?

Ray Nayler: 18:15

Well, I had read some books about what was going on in Western China and the, you know, genocide that is occurring there. And I am, I. I have a lot of experience in Central Asia, and this is essential Asian people being effectively destroyed by Han Chinese imperialism. And I read a lot of books about the camps that they were, were taken to and the, and the, the use of social credit scores and, and this really pervasive surveillance and all these control systems. Mm-hmm. And as a science fiction writer, I thought about what the futures of those things could look like. I also knew that China was exporting those techniques to other authoritarian regimes, that other authoritarian regimes are communicating authoritarian techniques with one another behind the scenes. And this. General tendency in the world toward control and centralization of data and the use of data to control people's decision making, examine their dec decision making attempt to manipulate that decision making in all senses for me seems like one of the fundamental. Sort of elements of our modern life, right? Like what we're really dealing with right now is this kind of cybernetic moment in governance where governments and corporations and other large entities with the capacity to pull in massive amounts of data, are starting to use that data or attempt to use it to change. The system and change the way that people interact with the, with the system and change the kinds of choices that people make. And those changes can be for, on the one side, very authoritarian purposes. On the other side, they might be just trying to get you to buy a product, right? Or trying to get you to hold your attention for 10 seconds. And, and those corporate sort of moments may not feel like such a threat, but for me. You know, if you were looking for what freedom is, I would say freedom is choice. And so if choice is being manipulated and choices are being limited by funneling you down certain tracks towards certain kinds of decisions that are beneficial to other people, but not maybe to you, then freedom is being limited. So there is an an authoritarian element to both sides, right? And so I wanted to come up with a way to, to present both of these things. And then kind of push them up against each other, see how they align and don't align. And then try to think also through the idea of like, well, how might that end? And, and how, how do you get out of systems like that and, and what's the final, you know, result? And what seeds are in those systems that might cause their own collapse?

Brett Benner: 21:21

there's a multitude of people in this, from both sides. From there's a, there's a presidential figure there's for lack of a better word, there's rebels. was there someone that you started with first that you, that can became a launch off point for you?

Ray Nayler: 21:35

I started with the story of Lilia and Palmer and Zoya and the other characters kind of came into focus shortly afterward. I think the first scene I, I wrote is the first chapter of the book. It's the scene with Soya where she sees this person who's. Using this masking device so she can only see them with one eye and can't see them with her electronic eye. Right. And that was just an image that I loved because I had seen a painting I. That had that kind of effect. And, and it just fascinated me. So I, I, you know, in some ways that chapter emerged from this thing I wanted to do visually right in, in my writing, this kind of image of a person who's there and not there. Because they're being looked at with two different sort of perspectives and so. So I think you know, that story of the story of Livia and Palmer, which is kind of the most straightforward element, was there. But before that, I had also been writing this story about this hapless. Parliamentarian parliamentary staffer, right? Just trying to get through a day at work when this revolution starts to unfold. And he gets trapped in the parliamentary building, you know, trying to figure out how to survive this, you know, revolution and. And like he's really just this kind of person who like wants to eat a good meal at night. And that's as far

Brett Benner: 23:08

as he's just trying to get by. He literally like wants to punch in, punch out and go home. Like, like I think he's the most, almost in a lot of ways, the most every man of everyone in this book because it really, he does really come to the point of what would you do in this kind of situation when you're faced with these incredible things. Right.

Ray Nayler: 23:30

Yeah. I mean, everyone in the book to some extent or another, except for Krotov right, is kind of limited in their, in their perspective. Krotov is the is the

Brett Benner: 23:40

security. The part security agent. And, or were we talking about Nerlon earlier, correct. Yes. Yeah. Yes. Nerlon is the parliamentary staffer. Yes. Yeah.

Ray Nayler: 23:48

Yeah. And yeah, Nerlon just really wants to like, like, have a nice dinner Yes. And just go to sleep. His, the extent of his his desire, he is a. He's a pretty, pretty simple person, and, and I think he's, you know, he's, he's like a lot of us too. He like, has a job. He's not that interested in his job. You know, it's a decent job. He doesn't really love or hate it. But really, you know, what he wants is to you clock in and clock out, right? And have this routine. I, a big question I was asking myself, you know. Is what does the end of the world look like to an average person like you or me? From and from a limited perspective, because, you know, i's kind of like thinking of war. We often think of war. In these gigantic sort of sweeping perspectives where you see everything from a kind of God-like view, right? Mm-hmm. The way the battles unfold and all those kinds of things. And especially boys when they grow up, right? Like they're kind of it's, it's, it's hopefully not true anymore, but certainly in my generation, we were still growing up with like army men and kind of, you know, sure. You arrange these battles, these kind of set pieces and. Which is nothing like what war looks like to anyone, right? Like, like it's I mean, war and Peace does a fantastic job of this, of showing what war looks like to individuals on the battlefield and even to generals, right? It looks like just chaos and like a series of almost unrelated events that could change at any moment, just according to someone's emotions. And, and so I wanted the, the novel to have that kind of quality too, that like, you don't see what's going on, right? You're not, you don't have this, one of these characters who has like a privileged viewpoint into why everything is happening. Instead, you see the world the way that we see the world. the way people really see it, which is that you just, you don't know what what is going on and, and what's happening. And even if you're close to power, you don't understand the real sequence of events. And, and, you know, and things are very, very confusing. Given knowing that that frustrates some readers who are used to things like spy novels and, and, you know, and things where there, or these like political thrillers where there's always like these insiders that really have some knowledge of what, of what's going on. I think representing people or characters that are closer to, to people and closer to the capacities of real people is kind of a priority for me. Right. Like norlan people, like really all of the characters in the book who are just trying to get by for the most part.

Brett Benner: 26:26

And, and, and also for me, there's something that is more that, that lands a little harder too, that any of these people can end up being collateral damage. Mm-hmm. That, that no one is no one is kind of exceptional and no one, in a situation like this comes out unscathed, regardless. Mm-hmm. It's affecting everybody., you pull on so many bits of tech, which one of them that I think is so fascinating, I'd love to just hear you talk about this, is Lilia comes up with this diorama. Mm-hmm. And that she shares with Palmer, which becomes a big thing that everyone's after. Can you explain that a little bit? I just thought that was so ingenious

Ray Nayler: 27:09

well, it's, it's, it's an idea and I don't think it's a very near future idea. It probably would take a lot more time to develop, but this sort of idea that you could. Use quantum entanglements to map the whole neurological system, right? And then you could actually have a view into someone else's mind and maybe a, a keyhole, not more than a keyhole, you know, a doorway into that, into that mind to actually change things, like their opinions about things. This for me is kind of a terrifying concept. You know. Because that barrier of that last barrier of like what's in our heads is not one I think that we want to have crossed by anyone else. Like we wanna have that last, you know, what is it, maybe six or eight inches of private space that we have left. But yeah, so the idea is that she creates this thing. These dioramas that allow you that access into someone else's entangled neurological network that the, the device is entangled with their, their mind. And so, you know, via this sort of intermediary machine, you can. Actually maybe change their thoughts about things, right? As well as just observing their thoughts. But the dioramas are masked by these pictures that are kind of just inexplicable narratives that appear to be what the dioramas do, what are, are really just a screen for what's really going on behind. I just thought that was an interesting concept. I mean, it's like many science fiction concepts. I think not necessarily possible. And, and you know, people think of hard science fiction concepts like faster than light travel. Highly unlikely to be something that we could ever obtain or that is possible in the universe. It's, it's quite likely that the speed of light. Is the fastest thing there is and there's no getting around it and you can't travel through wormholes or, or anything like that. So you're stuck. And that, that kind of sucks, right? Because it means you're not gonna get to lots of places quickly that you would like to get to really quickly. And it would be cool to, to have space travel, but, but we're probably not gonna get that. I think this is a bit like that, right? But but at the same time, I do think that this idea of. Yeah. Entanglement of minds is suggestive of lots of metaphors about how our minds really are entangled with one another and technology and the world and all the other things around us, and how that private space really isn't so private. Right? For sure. I think all this penetration from the outside into it and and so in a sense the dioramas are already here. Right. This is just kinda a, a, a concrete realization of something that's going on in more abstract ways.

Brett Benner: 29:55

Sure. And the way they're getting into our head and into our consciousness. And look, I, you know, we've always had the Amazon, devices in the kitchen that we've used mostly for timers, uhhuh when cooking, right? However, however, there's always, you know, check the time, what's the weather? All that kind of thing. But inevitably, you're having a conversation about some innocuous thing. More often than not, it's something that someone could buy and the next thing you know, you're open your phone and it's there, which is always kind of the most bizarre, right. Frightening. And at the same time, I've had people say to me, well, don't you wanna turn that off? Aren't you? Aren't you weirded out by that? Mm-hmm. And my response has always been, look, if someone is so interested in the mundane aspects of our life that they're gonna listen to us talk about these things, fine. But I get it. And I, I especially get it when I'm reading something like this and thinking, okay, where could all this, where does all this lead to? And where does all this information that's getting disseminated lead to? Yeah.

Ray Nayler: 30:48

I mean, I think there's a limit to how much you should be paranoid about those things. And then there's also like, just the fact that I. The more we participate in these systems of data collection, the, the easier we probably get to manipulate. But there is no such thing as opting out either. And so Correct. In some ways it kind of becomes like, yes, you should limit certain things. You should not let them track like certain things about you if you can. But at the same time, you have to be somewhat stoic about it. And just understand that like there is no opt out. This is the world that you live in and there are many things that you can't control. You should push for better policies, for lots of things. You know, all of that is true, but this is also the world we live in and changing it is beyond most of us to do.

Brett Benner: 31:42

I have a question related to that because are you finding, as you continue to write, as you put this out. That being a relatively new parent has changed your attitude towards certain things or it's changed certain things in your writing?

Ray Nayler: 31:56

It's utterly changed everything in, in my writing and my attitude toward things. It's pushed my concerns beyond the selfish boundaries of my own life. That's what being a parent. I think does to you, is it, it is like someone described it as walking, like having your heart walk around outside your body. Right. And I feel like, I feel that, I feel that every day. Like my heart is just walking around outside my body and I'm very concerned with this other, other person. And, and with the future in a way that I was concerned before, but in a, a, it has a new power because this is the world. The world we are creating is the world that she will have to live in. And yeah, I can't help but feel somewhat disturbed by that. But also hopeful because it doesn't pay to be pessimistic. I think being pessimistic is also an excuse, right? Pure dystopias for me always come off that way, like an excuse. And so I would say this has been called a dystopia, and I don't agree with that. I actually think that this is a very hopeful book.

Brett Benner: 33:08

No,, I think so too. And I, I, I think you know, one of the things that the book really questions is a sense of having a responsibility and what do you do with that responsibility, whether it's collective or individual. And I think I. That is the one thing for me that is very parallel to what's happening right now mm-hmm. Is we all have to make choices and figure out what does it mean to fight for something. Right? And what does it mean to stand up for rights and citizens and all of the things that so many of us have. Taken for granted at the expense of losing them. And that's what the book is to me about it. It, there is a hopefulness to it, but I agree with you. I, I, I think, you know, it's easy to get numb mm-hmm. But it's necessary to still be plugged in. Literally and figuratively, even if it means you've gotta step out of it for a while and then reengage. Yeah. Because it's the only way we're gonna get through.

Ray Nayler: 34:16

Absolutely.

Brett Benner: 34:17

Absolutely. But I do feel like the book ultimately has a very positive through line. It's not. Hopeless, dystopian, no. By any stretch.

Ray Nayler: 34:27

I, I, I would never write a book that was like that because I also think books need to do something in the world and I don't wanna write books that do that, right? That discourage people from action.

Brett Benner: 34:37

No. And I think, and I think what it does, and coming back to what you were saying earlier, the success of the book is it is going to, you're gonna come at it from where you're at presently and be able to extrapolate what you will because of that. But it is that same thing that's going to cause conversation to happen in the best way. Mm-hmm. And be able to find if there's parallels to be found or hope to be found. It does it in the best way and, and that's what a good book should do is create that conversation. So well, alright, I wanna thank you so much for, for being here again. The book is where the ax is buried. Buy Independent. I always say if you can but make sure you you check it out. I also listen to a lot of this on audio and I will say the audio is, is really fantastic as. Yeah. It is, it is been a pleasure just being privy to your mind.

Ray Nayler: 35:35

Thank you Brett

Brett Benner: 35:35

for this time. I really appreciate it and and best of luck with it. I can't wait to see everything that's gonna, that's gonna come out of it and hopefully we won't end up in this world.

Ray Nayler: 35:45

Let's not have it become more relevant than it's

Brett Benner: 35:48

exactly. Alright, thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much for listening, everyone, and if you're liking what you're hearing from these conversations, please like and subscribe, so you'll never miss an episode. And also what would be really helpful is if you're enjoying this podcast, consider writing a review and giving me five stars because all of that helps. Raise the profile of the podcast, so I would really appreciate it. and I will see you next week.