Speaker 1 00:00:19 You are listening to right on Ray that's 90.3 FM and streaming live on the
[email protected]. I'm Annie Harvey. Tonight. Josh talks with the NA aria about his biographical work on John van Newman titled man from the future, born in Budapest at the turn of the century, V Newman is one of the most influential scientists who have ever lived mic drop aria explores how a combination of genius and unique historical circumstance allowed a single man to sweep through a stunningly diverse of field, sparking revolutions, wherever he went.
Speaker 2 00:00:54 I'm Dave Feig in the last part of the hour, I will interview Andrew de young St. Paul author, author of the novel, the temps just out today from Turner publishing de Young's debut novel. The exo project was a Minnesota book award winner. As I mentioned, de young is a Minnesota writer, one of our own, he lives in St. Paul with his wife and two children. All of this is coming to and more so stay tuned to write on radio. And now this
Speaker 4 00:01:22 To fully under stand the currents, running through our century from politics to economics, technology and psychology one must understand John Bon Neiman's contribution in the last, the man from the future, the visionary life of John Bon Neman is prescient for understanding our present by learning about the remarkable mind who many have jokingly said it was a time traveler, the a Melike character who quietly seated ideas. He knew we would need to shape our Earth's future, a Nono aria. Welcome to right on radio.
Speaker 3 00:01:53 All right. Thanks, Josh pleasure to be here
Speaker 4 00:01:57 For members of her audience, who aren't familiar with him, who was John van Neman?
Speaker 3 00:02:02 So he was a sort of genius is genius. Really? I was born in, uh, 1903 in Budapest. Um, so his Hungarian, uh, to a wealthy Jewish family there, but he came to the states in, uh, 1930 and most of the rest of his, well, all the rest of his life was, uh, lived in America. Um, he helped her out on the Manhattan project here, Oppenheimer physicist Oppenheimer invited him to join and said, we're in desperate need of your help to build the APO. And, uh, the Hungarians there were, were known for, um, their amazing intellects and their strange accents. So they, they got this nickname, um, of the Martians and they were, you know, the joke was that with their funny accents and their superhuman intellects, uh, they were, um, they were clearly from another planet, but the Hungarians themselves are like Edward teller and Eugene Wigner. They only recognize one genius really amongst them. And that was John VA Neman. So he's really, um, uh, beyond, um, even even the, uh, the most famous, uh, geniuses of the, of the time
Speaker 4 00:03:19 You talk, you speculate in the book about how, what caused such a large group of individuals from a unique part of the world in Hungary to have this surplus of genius coming out of it. Was it partially because of the schooling that they went to that I know they had a very unique setup of the, the GNAs you talk about in the book?
Speaker 3 00:03:39 Yeah. So there was also lots of stuff going on. Uh, I mean, all of the people that we now know as, as the Marshan this group of special Hungarians were Jewish as well, and, uh, V Neman speculated that they felt a special sort of pressure growing up in, uh, Europe of the, uh, 1910s and 1920s. This almost will to succeed or as he put it face extinction and V Neman saw kind of the second world war coming really early, sort of 10, 15 years beforehand. And he's predicting, um, he's predicting the war in, in letters, and he's also predicting that, um, uh, due could well be rounded up and, and slaughtered. And he, he worries about this in his letters. So when the offer comes through from Princeton in 1930, which is, you know, with an immense salary, he, he jumps at the chance and, and leaves.
Speaker 3 00:04:34 Um, so there was this, uh, there was this pressure which for Norman felt to succeed. There was, uh, the, these special schools. So there was the Minta and the, uh, the school that Fort Norman went to, which was the Lutheran now, even at the Lutheran, um, uh, it was because the Jewish, um, families were so successful in Budapest at the time. Um, the, um, the Luther were in school was actually dominated by Jewish students, but they were required to pay five times the fee of, uh, Christians. So, you know, and there was certainly a, a very elite approach. There were private schools you had to pay. And, um, there was also an incredible mass teacher there who was, who became so famous rats that there are streets in Budapest named after him. And, um, he, he talent spotted V Norman, um, very early on and essentially exposed him to a university level curriculum. And he, he would be taught by a university professors, uh, at Budapest university. Um, I mean, you have to bear in mind that, uh, by eight, uh, V Neman had pretty much mastered calculus. And by 11, he was lecturing set theory to his, uh, his closest friend, which is usually in Vigna, who would later go on to win the Nobel prize in physics for work that Bon Loman actually helped him out with <laugh>.
Speaker 4 00:06:09 Let's talk about that for a second. Uh, I mean, there's many anecdotes of the mental gymnastics he was capable of doing that. I was familiar with before reading the book, but one of which is that he is famously, he was capable of multiplying two, eight digit numbers in his head at a very early age. But I was surprised though, from reading this, that he admittedly was not nearly as skilled at arithmetic compared to his grandfather. And it was also em, Midling chess player in your research. What stood out to you as the most surprisingly human aspect of his character?
Speaker 3 00:06:44 Um, well, there, there are many, I mean, of course I don't want to play up the freakishness really, because when you look at stuff like his Wikipedia entry, that's what tends to stick out, right. But he's also this very human figure. And that's what came through to me, he's unusually human and, um, for a genius, uh, of his stature. And we really are talking about, you know, quite possibly the cleverest person that we know of in history. Um, now he had his foibles, uh, you know, what his, um, his daughter told me once, um, her mother Marriott, uh, who's also a, you know, a fellow Budapest. Um, she was, uh, sick. So she told John V Noman that, you know, John Noman came up and said, is there, is there anything I can get you? And she said, yes, I would really like a, a soft boiled egg.
Speaker 3 00:07:40 So he goes right, right away, dear. And, uh, he runs off downstairs to the kitchen, uh, which he didn't really know at all. And, um, half an hour passes. And so he, he came back upstairs looking very sheepish and he said, Marriot, um, the egg's not soft yet. So, uh, I mean, that gives you, uh, the sort of, uh, the slightly absentminded, um, kind of clueless genius. He was also well known for a, a line in dirty, uh, limericks. And, um, you know, he, he, he loved drink. He loved rich food and, um, he games slowly more and more Roton throughout his life. Um, so there there's this distinctly human aspect of him, but, uh, and he's, he, he sort of, he loves America. He's, he's essentially an optimist who, who likes money and, uh, but that is a war with another aspect, his personality.
Speaker 3 00:08:42 So when he was growing up, there was a communist revolution in, um, Hungary, and that was pretty brutal, but that was quickly followed, that lasted for about six months. And that communist government was then, um, deposed by a sort of nationalist forces that came sweeping in. And whilst the communist had, uh, you know, killed, uh, hundreds of people, this, uh, next brutal counter revolution as it were, uh, would, would, um, kill thousands. Uh, and, um, you, and there was public hangings and, um, there was, uh, this, uh, terrible situation. And then of course he, he foresaw the rise of the Nazis and for him, Germany was this perfect intellectual climate. And, um, what he saw from afar happening in Germany, um, absolutely erased any faith. He had really in human, human decency. Um, he would help, um, his fellow scientists to leave. Um, and throughout his life, really, without much credit, he, he would not really, um, talk much about it, but he was constantly helping people, um, behind their backs. And I think that to me, uh, was, um, was probably the most surprising facet of his personality, cuz there's one other thing that many people know about John Neman is that he supported a preemptive nuclear strike on the Soviet union. You know, if you say to bomb them tomorrow, I say, why not today? If you say four o'clock I say, why not two? Um, and that's, um, you know, that, that would seem to portray him as this kind of almost ruthlessly logical figure. But I think there's a lot more too than that.
Speaker 4 00:10:38 We'll get a little more into that I think later on, but I, before we do that, I, what struck me in the book. I mean, he, he, we painted, we see him, I mean, you talked about his Wikipedia entry in my mind, he's this child prodigy that just came to the world just seemed to have a grasp and, and just was like a sponge and could pick up everything. But he all also had a peculiar curiosity about the world. He, you talk about in the book, how he asked his father, if the brain had a primary language and how does the brain communicate with itself? Was this curiosity, instinctual for Anno, do you think, or a result of growing up in an intellectually stimulating household or maybe both.
Speaker 3 00:11:18 Yeah. I mean, I mean, it's, it's both, uh, it, the it's difficult to grasp, um, you know, Bob Norman's intellect really as a mere mortal, but, uh, he, he was so far above, um, E even, you know, people like Einstein when, when people met him later on and compared him to Einstein, he, he was working at the same place, the Institute for advanced study in Princeton. And everybody agreed that V Norman's mind was just so much faster than even Einstein. Um, he may not have been quite as, as intellectually creative in some ways, although I think even that's been vastly underestimated. Um, so I think he was definitely, you know, endlessly curious and partly self-taught. Um, he would, he plowed through kind of this 20 history of, of Germany and would he had this perfect memory where he could recall pages and pages of it years later.
Speaker 3 00:12:19 And he would, uh, recount them whenever some vaguely relevant circumstance came up. Um, but, uh, of course he was, um, he was also from this incredibly wealthy background. His father was a self-made man. He became, he was a banker and later they won, uh, a title from the emperor. Uh, this was in the, um, a Hungarian empire. So that's why they became VA VA Neman of, um, so, you know, his fathers surrounded with and his brothers, he had two brothers, uh, with, uh, tutors from an early age. Um, his father was an interesting thing because he, he didn't think maths would pay. And so later he, he would sort of pressure V Norman to study chemical engineering and they, they reached this compromise whereby uh, John, the young John VN would study chemical engineering at the et in Zurich, but he'd also do a PhD at the university of Budapest because, uh, one degree isn't enough. And he was kind of catching up on chemistry at the university of Berlin at the same time. So it's a, it's a very rich background. His father was extremely well connected. Culturally they'd have famous mathematicians and writers of all sorts from, uh, Budapest regularly, the dinner table. Um, his father was involved with various businesses. And so he would invite his three sons to sit in on these lunches and ask interesting questions to his prospective new business partners, uh, who he was, uh, having over. So yes, I, I think definitely both
Speaker 4 00:14:01 Early in his life, Norman tried to save mathematics from the fallout of be, and Russell's set theory paradox. Uh, that is the set that contained all sets that were not members of themselves could only be a member of itself. It was not a member of itself would not be as said, uh, his repo, his approach to resolving this was as you describe it, beautifully simple, how'd he resolve Russell's paradox.
Speaker 3 00:14:27 Wow. Well, um, so, uh, Russell's paradox. Uh, I think the simple way to think about it is, uh, it's sort of like the liars paradox. So, uh, if you say this statement is a lie, um, well, you know, if that's true, then it's false and if it's false, it's true, you start to get into a tangle. And so the paradox is that, um, Russell and others were finding was in set theory, which is works as a sort of the language of mathematics. And it's still the language of mathematics today. Now, if you're finding weird paradoxes in the language that enables you to prove stuff in mathematics, you really got problems because if you, if you can't talk plainly about maths, um, you can't prove theorem. So, so maths is a little bit, uh, uh, well, it's, it's not gonna work. And if math doesn't work, then what about the sciences that are based on it like physics?
Speaker 3 00:15:24 So this caused huge rions in, uh, in the early 20th century, uh, through mathematics. So the problems came about when you started thinking about the set of all sets. So when math mathematicians needed to be able to deal with infinities, infinite numbers of stuff, because if you want to prove something about, say prime numbers, you want to be able to prove something about all prime numbers and there's an infinite number of them. So set theory allowed you to manipulate infinite quantities of things, but then, you know, you had these paradoxes and V Norman's approach to set theory. He set out in, um, a very short paper, actually, um, uh, a modification of sort of the language. So you couldn't really talk about a set of all sets anymore. You had two different sorts of things, um, one which, um, allowed you to talk about sets. And the other one was groups of sets as it were. So you could never get into thistle that Russell had found. And V Norman set theory is, is still used this version of set theory that he came up with, um, was modified. And it, it still forms one of the valid approaches to, to proving theorems of mathematics,
Speaker 4 00:16:44 Just showing his, um, his breath here in his work. Soon after VA Neman turned his attention to the rising conflict in physics, a proper model of quantum mechanics, how was Noman or what was it, what was his attempt to reconcile the different approaches between Heisenberg's matrices and TRO Ander's wave function?
Speaker 3 00:17:05 Yeah, so, so V Norman gets a draft of his PhD, which, you know, resolves some of these issues in set theory. He's, he's got it done, um, by, I think it's 22 and he, you know, he has a, he has a drafted earlier and a after this, he goes to the university of Gurkin and he goes there really not because of quantum theory at all, but because it's the Mecca for mathematics, it's, it's headed by the mathematician David Hill, who's the most renowned mathematician of his time. So he goes there really to study under hill. And when he arrives, um, Heisenberg who's a, another kind of whiz kid who's a year older than Bon Neman has come up with an approach to this new science, uh, which is gonna be called quantum mechanics. And it's called his version of it. It's called matrix mechanics. And, um, Heisenberg's interpretation of quantum mechanics, uh, visualizes sort of electrons jumping about within atoms and the mathematics are, are sort of grids of numbers.
Speaker 3 00:18:06 Um, now the problem is just a year later, Schrodinger is working at the university of Vienna, came up with a completely different, uh, looking theory of quantum mechanics that seemed to be implying something very different was going on, um, uh, at the, at the physical level. So Schrodinger's version was, was, uh, wave mechanics. And, um, it, it visualized sort of particles as, as waves. And so, you know, there weren't jump, there was no jumping about within the atom. Uh, there was no electron jumping about, and in fact, showing a hated, um, that, um, that view, um, but the problem was both of quantum mechanics seem to give the right answers. And so V Norman looks at this mess and he realizes and, and works out that mathematically speaking, both versions, um, are true. They're two sides are the same mathematical coin. And, um, the mathematical formula that he uses, um, is, is called Hilbert space, which he, he calls Hilbert space after David Hilbert his, his mentor.
Speaker 3 00:19:22 But in fact, um, he ends up doing, uh, a lot of the work to develop this mathematics that David Hilbert had, uh, originally invented. And then later on. So he leaves Gurkin quite quickly, cuz he is only got a fellowship for a year. And um, over the next few years he is, um, developing the first really rigorous mathematical description of quantum mechanics. And that's, uh, becomes extraordinarily influential because when people start talking about the different interpretations of quantum mechanics, what, what does it mean what's going on here? Um, V Norman's approach becomes this kind of mathematical rock, you know, whatever else you say about quantum mechanics and about cats and various other things. You, you, you've still gotta come back to this, this, this math, everything has gotta work out in terms of this math and, um, and, and bond women's interpretation. Uh, this mathematical, uh, interpretation of quantum mechanics, uh, was really the foundation stone of quantum mechanics. And it would be, um, influential for decades and decades to come.
Speaker 4 00:20:33 How did Newman get involved in the Manhattan project? I, I believe Opheim recruited him, sent him a letter and just, uh, made a very, very stern request of wanting him to be there and feel like he could use him. He was a invaluable thing to the project.
Speaker 3 00:20:48 Yeah. Yeah. So op I's letter said, um, uh, to, to Norman said we are only in what can be described as desperate need of your health <laugh> um, we'd like you to come and work with us on, on what he described as a buck Rogers ish project or buck Rogers like project, uh, cuz of course he couldn't tell him that they were building an atom bomb in the desert. Um, now V Norman, when he moved to America, as I said, he foresaw this, this war coming. And so he throws himself as well as doing his pure maths. He throws himself into mathematics that he thinks he's gonna be useful for the war. And, um, much of that was, um, the mathematics of explosions. Um, now this is really, really difficult maths non-linear, uh, there's various non-linear equations. Uh, you have to come up with a, you know, approximations to solve it.
Speaker 3 00:21:39 And he just threw himself into that as well as, um, uh, doing that. And he made himself pretty much invaluable to the us military. So at one stage he was consulting for the Navy, the air force, you know, and the army all at the same time buzzing across, um, the country in, um, in, uh, in planes. And um, he just before op and I calls on his help, he's actually sent to Britain, uh, uh, for a wartime mission for six months, uh, for the, uh, for the Royal Navy and what the Royal Navy we're interested in was, um, they couldn't figure out the mind laying patterns of German submarines and, um, V Norman seems to have worked that out really quite quickly within a few day as, um, so pretty much saving a lot of Royal Navy vessels from, from being mined. Uh, what, what else he did there? We, we don't know much about, but after six months of that, he gets his letter from Oppenheim. And, um, as a result of that, he comes back to the us and he ends up at the Manhattan project in, uh, Sal.
Speaker 4 00:22:51 How did Norman feel about the devastating effects after the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki? I mean, you clip in the book, he didn't have any moral Scruffles with selecting targets. And I know he's seen as this maybe calculating character, but there was a humanity there. And I, I was wondering if you could talk about that.
Speaker 3 00:23:09 Yeah. Um, so Aon Mo's contribution, um, to at Los Alamos was actually, um, the implosion bomb, which in engineering terms was, um, extremely difficult. It was the physicists there were, were described as how, how you crush a can of beer without spilling a drop. So, uh, fireman thought it was a terrible idea and V Norman came along and he showed how he could be done. Um, now in terms of his scruples, well, at the time, of course, during the, you know, during the war, uh, people were all the scientists, many of them were Jewish. They were terrified that the Nazis would get the bomb. And, um, of course, uh, they didn't. And, um, that attempt, uh, by them didn't seem to have gotten off the ground, but many of them didn't know, but even so, um, that wouldn't have affected V Norman's view, cuz he was already looking ahead to the cold war.
Speaker 3 00:24:06 He was terrified of what the Soviet union would do, um, when they got hold of the bomb in, um, large enough numbers. So really that was how, what he was, uh, thinking about, you know, do you want a world where you have to powers with enormous of nuclear weapons or do you find some way to, uh, to stop that? And his initial answer was of course, this preemptive strike on the Soviet union and he seems to have maintained that for a few years. He argued for that privately and, and uh, publicly. But then as soon as it became clear, uh, the Soviet union had, you know, more than enough bombs now, um, so that there could be no preemptive strike. You couldn't wipe out their nuclear capacity. He, he changed his mind. Now he gave the impression of not being particularly troubled by this, but we know that that's not entirely true.
Speaker 3 00:25:04 We know that, uh, to, through his second wife, CLA Dan who kept a journal that one day he came back from a Los Alamos, this was after really the, the, uh, bombs had been dropped. And, um, he, he slept for 11 hours straight skipping, two meals. And she said that made a more worried than anything. Um, because V Norman missing two meals else was almost unheard of as was him sleeping for that, that period of time. And he woke up late night and he, he starts, um, he starts talking and yabbering and he develops a stutter, which sign of massive nervousness. And he's talking about the fact that as a scientist, he feels like he had, has no choice really other than to work on, uh, these sort of lethal technologies. Um, and you know, he's a Democrat. He, um, totally thinks that the us in a world of, um, you know, many evils, the, the U us, he would rather have as the, uh, as the, uh, the, the devil, you know, as it were, um, as, and he was determined to, to help the us.
Speaker 3 00:26:17 And, um, so you know, this, this was, um, this, this was, um, his commitment really to his new Homeland. Um, now during this garbling, um, as he was talking to, to Chloe, and eventually she, she gives him a, I think, a, a strong scotch and, um, and a couple of sleeping pills to get him off. But before that, he's saying he starts talking about technological possibilities, and he's really talking about the computing machines that he's now working with, um, for, or Salmo, um, he's had a long interest in computing machines and, um, he thinks or implies that they will be far more powerful and more worrying in some ways than the nuclear weapons that he's, he's helping to build. So this is kind of a turning point whereby he's, he's still working, uh, with his friend Edward teller on the, um, on the hydrogen bomb, but really his attention. And most of his mind is now focused in bringing computers, the modern computer into being, and that's kind of what he does next.
Speaker 4 00:27:31 So what is, yeah, let's talk about that then. What is the Yvon Neman architecture and what was his, what was it significance in the history of computer design?
Speaker 3 00:27:40 Right. So as Ason Neman is try traveling the country, looking for computing resources for lost Alamos to do bomb calculations. He bumps into this guy, Herman Goldstein on a train platform, and Goldstein is also a mathematician and he's joined the army at the outbreak when the us joined the war. And he tells VA Norman that he's working, uh, with a machine called the ANAC and the ANAC is gonna be the first, um, completely electronic, um, computer. Um, and it's capable of, you know, an order of magnitude, uh, more, uh, calculations than any of the other machine before it, but it's still not a modern computer, and it's not a modern computer because all of the computers that existed, um, up until this point, um, were pretty much designed for one job and one job only. And to, to rejig them, uh, to do something else, to run a different pro you had to rewire them in some way to run a different program.
Speaker 3 00:28:51 And V Noman turns up he's immensely interested in the, any act, but his, he starts thinking straight away of a different sort of computer role together. And most importantly, because of this background in mathematical logic, that he has, he's able, able to, um, formulate this, um, rather abstract, um, blueprint of the modern computer. And that, uh, is now called the VNO architecture. And one of the main, um, things that the VNO architecture has is a huge memory and that memory, we can store both data and programs together. It's got a central processing unit and an, and an arithmetic unit, and essentially step by step. It FES takes them to the central processing unit, executes them and goes and goes back. And this combination of, uh, big memory that can store data and programs, and, you know, this step by step serial approach to computing that's, um, that's the <inaudible> and architecture, and it's the basis of pretty much all computers today that you're likely to use, um, ranging from, uh, you know, your smartphone to the laptop that I'm talking to you on. So
Speaker 4 00:30:14 Before he passed Noman started a book that he was unable to finish til the computer in the brain. It discusses his view that the brain can be viewed as a computing machine, and he makes suggestions for potential realms of research with this. I was wondering if you could talk about that and what, what did he predict in the future with this, um, this nascent field of study?
Speaker 3 00:30:41 Yeah. Um, so he was, um, constantly taking lessons from, uh, sort of neuroscience from very early neuroscience. Um, he was interested in the way neurons work in an abstract sense. And, um, in fact, his whole computer architecture was, um, described in terms of these kind of fake neurons. These very abstract neurons called me pits neurons. And what V Norman realizes, and this is on his deathbed, he's writing these lectures and, um, he's getting sicker and sicker. He has cancer. He's, he's determined to try and finish these lectures and in the end, um, he doesn't, but they're still incredibly revealing. Uh, he realizes that the computer and the brain are very different kinds of, of machine the computer. He realizes is massively parallel. Whereas the machines he designed these serial machines, um, uh, you know, are, are, you know, work, uh, quite differently in this step by step manner.
Speaker 3 00:31:55 And despite its on paper, you know, the human brain looks pretty appalling in terms of its computational abilities. When you, when you line it up, even again, some something like the ANAC, um, which works incredibly fast, but because of this massively parallel architecture, um, the human brain can accomplish amazing feats that computers are still nowhere near accomplishing. And in fact, it's, it's an insight that hold today. And if you look at, um, uh, you know, deep mind and so on the, the way these work are, uh, uh, are basically neural nets. So networks of artificial neurons that are in essence pretty much like the macock pits neurons that VNO used to describe, um, his original, uh, computer blueprint, the, um, in the, it was called the vac report, but he had the VNO architecture.
Speaker 4 00:32:59 And my last question for you, is there anyone that comes to mind in the 21st century that you see as being on par or as in, as a mind being equivalent to something like John Bond Nomans?
Speaker 3 00:33:12 Well, I mean, this is, um, this is really a difficult question. I think in terms of sheer computational power, there's probably gonna be people, um, out there from generation to GE generation. I mean, um, mathematicians like Terence tower, for example, um, are really famous and seem to have had, um, a similar kind of, um, aptitude from a really young age, uh, attack these problems. That bomb moment was really, really special. And so I, I don't think there's really anybody like him. And I think he came at a historical juncture that also allowed him to achieve, um, a huge amount. So since that early 20th century window, the sciences have exploded into specialty, it's an extraordinarily expensive, um, uh, occupation now, you know, when you, when you, um, look across the range of, uh, the sciences, whereas V Norman turned up at this, you know, in the 1920s, thirties, and forties, you know, he there at the birth of the computer, he was there at the birth of quantum mechanics.
Speaker 3 00:34:26 Um, and it's difficult to envisage now as somebody being able to, uh, be so influential in the way that he was, uh, he was able to be. And, and lastly, he was a really unusual mathematic. So the mathematicians, when you, when you talk about, uh, or read biographies of famous mathematicians, um, the work will be quite esoteric. It will be, you know, you'll be trying to explain their theorems in, uh, you know, terms that, uh, lay reader might understand that the, the sorts of that Norman applied himself to, he invented game theory as well, um, which would lead to Nobel prizes a half century later. Um, it also game theory is also making billions for the tech industry. People like Google and, um, and Facebook, um, and, um, yeah, that sheer range of accomplishments that incredibly practical mind that he had to be able to apply mathematics to the world. Um, I've never come across anybody that, uh, that has that sort of aptitude, uh, within the world of mathematics.
Speaker 4 00:35:48 You've been listening to my conversation with author, a Nono aria, a science writer who has war at the economist and nature discussing his work, the man from the future, the visionary life of John Bond, Neman a Nono, thanks for being on right on radio.
Speaker 3 00:36:04 Thanks very much, Josh.
Speaker 4 00:36:06 And now this,
Speaker 1 00:36:09 It is still pledge time at KFA I, and there is still time to pledge. You can pledge one of two ways by calling 6 1 2 3 7 5 9 0 3 0 or by visiting KFA i.org. Um, and the reason pledging is important is this is community radio. This is entirely publicly funded, entirely locally run. Most of us here are volunteers, a few people, our staff, and we could not afford the equipment that we need to do this, to broadcast this out to the broader community without your help. Right now, we're here. We're talking about books on radio radio, less than an hour ago. Somali link radio was in bringing you current events from that perspective that you don't usually get on mainstream white dominant media. There's different programming from different culture every hour, and it's so fun and such a treat to be here. And I feel so lucky to live somewhere where there's community radio like this, and even just making our book programming. It's great because we're not, we're not sponsored by or beholden to anyone we're talking about books. We care about that we think matter. And there's, there's nothing else to it.
Speaker 5 00:37:13 Am I
Speaker 2 00:37:14 On
Speaker 1 00:37:15 <laugh>? I, I was like on my impasioned rant. I, over today, if his mic is not on <laugh> all right, here we are.
Speaker 2 00:37:24 <laugh> uh, yes, Annie well said, I don't have much to add to that. Uh, it's a treat to be here. I'm with you to live in a community like this with a radio station like this, uh, is, is a pleasure. Um, and we have with us this evening, Andrew de young, who's joining us live in this studio from St. Paul. Welcome, Andrew.
Speaker 6 00:37:43 Thank you. Good to be here.
Speaker 2 00:37:44 It's great to have you, uh, we're here to talk about your new novel, the temps. Uh, and, uh, before we do that, before we start talking about that, let's learn a little bit more about you. We learned that you're pretty popular and famous. You're gonna be on <laugh>, uh, you're on our literary literary calendar of events, but, uh, uh, tell us, I got how you got into novel writing and, um, your literary background, please.
Speaker 6 00:38:06 Yeah, I mean, I like like many writers, I suppose. I, um, I had dreams of becoming a writer for, for many years, um, struggled to, uh, maintain a writing practice, um, until, um, my late twenties, I think, um, I, it's kind of a cliche maybe, but I, I felt 30 coming and I had this sort of silly idea that if I didn't do it by 30, I would never do it. So I just kind of forced myself to, to, to build a real writing practice and, um, um, published my first novel, uh, some years later in 2017, that was a young adult novel called the exo project, um, which later won, uh, the Minnesota book award. Um, congratulations 2018. Thank you. Um, some five years later, I suppose, uh, book, no number two is coming out. Um, this one is not, uh, young adult as my, uh, adult, uh, literary fiction debut, um, the temps. And so that's kind of my, my path, although, you know, lots of hard work and, um, failure and, uh, rejection along the way, which is the way of, of life for any writer.
Speaker 2 00:39:13 Yeah. A lot of writers this need a and then, and I'm sure many can relate to that. Uh, so let's talk about the temps. We're gonna have a reading here pretty quick, but before we do that, do you wanna set us up?
Speaker 6 00:39:23 Yeah. The temps is a book about, um, I guess we can start maybe with one character, um, uh, a young man named, uh, Jacob who is a recent college graduate. Um, he, um, was an English major struggled, uh, to get a job outta college, um, is ultimately living, um, in his parents' basement. He gets a temp job at a rather large corporation, um, which, uh, in the book I call Delphi Delphi enterprises. Um, it's sort of hazy what the, what the company does. He doesn't understand their business. Um, but he knows that he's been hired, um, in a position for the, uh, mail room. He goes to his first day of work, um, where he learns that there's a big all company meeting. The CEO is going to do sort of a product rollout outside, um, in a big, uh, amphitheater with, you know, thousands of, uh, of employees in attendance, but he can't go.
Speaker 6 00:40:16 Um, cuz he's just a temp. Um, only the, uh, only the permanent employees are invited. Um, so he stays inside the rest of the, uh, employees go outside. So he's kind of alone in this huge office complex. And then during the, the meeting where all the regular employees are outside, a sort of catastrophic event happens, there's a, there's a poison gas and everybody dies. And um, it seems that this is happening elsewhere. It's sort of a, a, a, a global catastrophe and a, an apocalypse event. And, um, he is left, stuck inside and he finds other temps, other people who are not invited to the meeting, um, and they just kind of have to survive, uh, in the wreckage of company that employed them. They're stuck inside for, you know, days, weeks on end. And so it's sort of a survival apocalypse novel, um, that also considers the working life and, um, what it's like to be, uh, the youngest and probably most poorly paid person, um, in a large corporation,
Speaker 2 00:41:17 Well described. And I will say to the listeners, it is as much fun as Andrew, uh, uh, sets it up to be, uh, but also very, very thoughtful. So with that, we'll talk much more about it. Let's have your reading.
Speaker 6 00:41:30 Yeah. I'll just start right. Uh, from the beginning, with the first line, the sky on the morning of Jacob Elliot's first day at Delhi enterprises was clear and bright UNT troubled by any port of the catastrophe that was to come. And yet it wouldn't be accurate to say the day was cheery, not to Jacob, driving down a busy freeway, surrounded by box stores and strip malls. And in the vast untamed scrubland that dominated the outskirts of the city, the slanting early light had a strange quality to it that seemed to drain everything of its color, transforming the landscape into a kind of wasteland in Jacob's squinting eyes. As his car came closer to Delphi, a huge non-descript office complex who's reflect of windows shimmered like a corporate Mirage in the distance. The traffic on the highway slowed then stopped the emotion that rose up in Jacob's chest at that moment was one of utter desolation.
Speaker 6 00:42:25 He was a piece of human flotsam in a river of metal and glass inching toward a destination made of the same dead substances. Jay wasn't looking forward to his new job at Delhi. The position he had taken was a temporary one in the company's mail room. The fact that he'd been reduced to this kind of work that he needed the job, even if he didn't want it filled him with shame. He was a college graduate for God's sake, a star student in the department of English, the subject in which he'd majored his senior thesis. The game is a foot game theory and social control. And late Victorian detective fiction had been published in an academic journal next to the work of PhD students, tenured professors and posts, and he'd been waited and he'd been waitlisted in several prestigious graduate programs though. Not a cruel voice from deep with his mind, always reminded him ultimately accepted to any of them, not even his safeties, but that was long a long time ago, three years since graduation, during which time Jacob had worked a series of low paying and sometimes no paying jobs, barista clerk, intern assistant over roughly the same period.
Speaker 6 00:43:32 He'd shared an apartment in the city with a college friend, a former friend, really their relationship had been strained by the minor stresses of living together. Dishes piled in a sink, sharing a bathroom, the mechanics of bringing girls over Jacob's perpetual inability to make his half of the rent. Then four months ago, the roommate, a computer science major when they were still in school, landed an it job was steady pay and an inform, Jacob, that he'd be moving to a nicer place with his girlfriend. Jacob took out an ad for a new roommate couch surfed for a couple weeks, then ultimately left the city and landed in his parents' basement. Jacob once felt that he was destined for some kind of greatness, had dreamed of fame as a writer or an intellectual of some sort, but the past three years had taken their toll. Now, the thing he craved most was the same thing.
Speaker 6 00:44:19 He'd once sustained a white collar job as a cog in the cist capitalist machine with a salary health benefits and a 401k. And so when notification of the temp listing a job in an office requiring no skills or experience had buzzed on his smartphone, he applied for it at once. It may have been beneath him may have been at a company whose business, he didn't even understand. The website said something about research and intelligence and analytics, but it was at least adjacent to the kind of life. He not quite fame and fortune, but not another unpaid internship or fast food job either. And I'll stop there.
Speaker 2 00:44:57 Great. That was Andrew de young reading from his new novel, just out today, the temps. So this reminded me of a thought I had when I was reading this, that if he, if we didn't know what you told us, didn't have that clue of what the book was about. Um, we would believe and think as, as I did, mostly, this is gonna be a great send up of modern corporate, uh, office work and capitalism, if you sure. And it ends up being that with a lot of wild stuff with
Speaker 6 00:45:26 A lot of other stuff, too. Yeah,
Speaker 2 00:45:27 Yeah. That first chapter begins as Andrew read it, obviously. And you think that's what you're getting and then something hits the fan and it's, it's really big. Um, let, let's start there. Uh, you decided to write sort of an apocalyptic, um, slash dystopian sort of story. Uh, we love these things. They're everywhere in our lives and our cultural lives. Um, so how, how did you deal with that and how did you place your narrative within these other narratives that you know, are flying in people's minds when they think something like this?
Speaker 6 00:46:02 Yeah. I, I think that I, I chose the apocalypse, uh, sort of theme because it is such a it's, it's such a, a thing that, that preoccupies all of us. Um, we are surrounded by images of the end of the world or people imagining the end of the world predicting the end of the world, um, in different forms. Um, so it was, it was something that, um, that I was interested just in dealing with. Um, what is it like to live in that kind of an environment? And of course, you know, I, I deal with that by literally making it happen in this, in this book. But I also, you know, that, that first passage passage that I read dealing with a young person, um, taking a job that he doesn't want, I thought a little bit about sort of the, the existential crises people in their twenties sometimes have when they're trying to enter the world and make a life for themselves. Mm-hmm <affirmative> and that can feel like the end of the world on a personal level.
Speaker 2 00:47:03 That's real that's well
Speaker 6 00:47:04 Said, you know, um, you, you enter the world and yeah, you
Speaker 2 00:47:07 Enter, you recall
Speaker 6 00:47:08 Those days, you enter the adult world and you discover that it's not what you thought it was. Yeah. And also you are plagued by all these images of all the things, all the social ills, uh, the, the cultural problems that might be leading us to the end of the world. And at least when I was that age and trying to establish myself as an adult person, uh, with a career, um, that personal sense of existential crisis and personal apocalypse and the fears of apocalypse outside war, um, uh, climate change, all the rest, they felt connected on some level. Um, and so that's, that's really what I wanted to play with. Um, in, in this novel, you
Speaker 2 00:47:49 Did that very well listeners, you can get a sense for how thoughtful Andrew is. It really comes to his writing. I love the titles, the temps, uh, in as much as the temps become the permanence, if you will. Yes. It it's beautiful. Uh, you wanna talk
Speaker 6 00:48:03 About that? Not just the permanence, but like the permanence of PO possibly the whole world. Yeah. Right, right. They, they have been treated well, and this is, this is something that I think connects to sort of maybe a, a generational, um, observation, which is that millennials and, and gen Z, uh, people as they enter the workforce are dealing a lot more with the gig economy than prior, uh, generations have. So they are, are doing a lot more temporary work. Um, the word temp, I don't hear it that often on an official capacity people often talk about like contract workers. Yeah. But colloquially, you'll talk about the temp mm-hmm <affirmative> um, and it's kind of derogatory. Um, the, the notion that they're not going to have a job for very long built right into the word. Yeah. You know, they're treated as disposable. Yes. But there just seemed to be, it's something that excited me about the premise when it kind of popped into my mind that the temporary employees, those who have been treated by the capitalist system as the most disposable mm-hmm, <affirmative> become the only ones who survive. Um, and who are kind of trying to figure out what's going on in this, in the wreckage of the company that they've kind of inherited and the wreckage of the world that they've inherited.
Speaker 2 00:49:21 One of the many things I like about this book is that it actually talks about work. I remember reading an essay years ago, can't remember the literary critic at the time. Um, my owning the fact that American post midcentury novelist rarely have ever wrote about work anymore or real life. It was always what's going on in the lives and character's heads. And he was just over it, give me some America, gimme some real stuff, and this is thick with, uh, a real corporation. And, um, I would, I, I, what you do during the day, you can tell us about that, but you really plum the depths of in my mind. Cause I have some experience in larger corporations. You get it. Yeah. And it's in there. Um, do you get this intuitively or did you have to do some research and tell us a little about little, little bit about Delphi. Geez.
Speaker 6 00:50:07 Yeah. So I mean, my, my, I, I can wrap all, I can wrap all that together. My, my day job, I work in, I work in publishing. Yeah. You know, I don't work in a large corporation, but I do, you know, it's a, it's a medium sized, uh, company. I have worked, um, at an ad agency before mm-hmm <affirmative>, um, you know, I have worked some of the, some of the jobs that, that Jacob worked, you know, um, I worked for like caribou coffee and stuff like that. Mm-hmm <affirmative>, you know, when I was, when I got out of outta college, mm-hmm <affirmative>, um, my observation is that, um, you know, when it comes to work, it's the way that most people spend most of their days. So it should be addressed somehow in, in fiction mm-hmm <affirmative>. And another odd thing about, um, contemporary life that's not always addressed in, in fiction, um, is that people have real relationships with the or organizations that they work for, or that they en encounter. Mm-hmm <affirmative>, you know, corporations are a huge force in our lives, right. Huge force in our lives. And we actually have whether we want to, or not, we have relationships with those corporations. All of us have like a relationship with target with Amazon
Speaker 2 00:51:26 In respect of a, we work for them,
Speaker 6 00:51:28 Whether we work for them or not. And, and the one that you work with, you definitely have a relationship with because you are there, you're kind of imbibing, uh, a corporate culture. Mm-hmm <affirmative> that, that worms its way through the whole thing in very insidious ways, it's not always a negative corporate culture, but it's, it's there mm-hmm <affirmative> um, so I think, think that I'm just kind of a student in all the jobs that I've had, I've just been very interested in the way that the corporate culture expresses itself. Mm-hmm <affirmative> and the, and the relationships that people have with the companies that they work with. You know, I I've had, like back when I worked as a, as a barista, I had, I had managers who hated corporate, who were definitely corporate people, you know, all those different things. There's, there's, there's true believers. And there's people who just say, you know, this is just, just a day job. It doesn't have anything to do with who I am. Mm-hmm <affirmative> um, whether we, whether we want to, or not, we all have this relationship with right. The entity that is the organization.
Speaker 2 00:52:31 Yeah. That's well said, Andrew pointed up when he said the entity <laugh>
Speaker 6 00:52:36 As if it's like a God like
Speaker 2 00:52:38 Entity. Well, but that's how you treat it. And you use, uh, metaphors, Greek mythology, uh, these words, Delph, FIEs, the corporation, and it comes through a time. And again, this is obviously purposeful part, a
Speaker 6 00:52:50 Happy accident in some ways, although once I discovered it, I, I kind of leaned into it that I was creating mm-hmm <affirmative> I was creating something that was sort of godlike, um, or, or mythic mm-hmm <affirmative> with, with Delphi, because of that, that of course refers to Greek myth and the Oracle of Delphi. Yep. Um, but initially I was really interested in this, that the, the young people in my book, the people in their twenties they're working, but they don't yet understand the economy. They don't under yet understand the company that they're working for. Yeah.
Speaker 2 00:53:22 That's brilliantly done. Yeah.
Speaker 6 00:53:23 Because I think, and actually there's a lot about the economy about the ways that companies make their money, that I don't understand. Right. And so I wanted to think about like, what's a company that I kind of know them. I know their brand. I know, like I recognize the name, but I don't actually have a great sense of what they do. Mm-hmm <affirmative> and one that occurred to me was, uh, the company Oracle. Yeah. But I didn't wanna call it Oracle cuz that's an existing company. So I said Delhi. Yeah. And, but then I just kind of made it, uh, I made it a stomping ground for a bunch of different things, a bunch of different disparate businesses. Mm-hmm <affirmative> where the temps, the characters are just getting little bits of what the company does mm-hmm <affirmative> but they can't put a coherent whole, um, that was interesting to me thematically. Yes. Because I feel like that is how an individual human experiences, the, the 21st century global economy, it's hard to understand the whole thing, the whole machine mm-hmm <affirmative>, but also it becomes a plot element as well. Cuz there's, there's a mystery to it. Like what is this actually about? Yes. Um, and some characters are interested in that. Some characters do not wanna know
Speaker 2 00:54:31 And to push that even further. Talk about that a little more in terms of religion, uh, you have certain employees who are trying to really figure out what's going on. What, what is the CEO really thinking? It's almost as if they're reading, you know, the holy text in, in various different ways, interpreting what does he really want? What is he really thinking? Uh, it's it's really nicely done
Speaker 6 00:54:57 Well. And if you think this is silly,
Speaker 2 00:54:59 No, not at
Speaker 6 00:55:00 All. Well, I, I, I'm more to the, more to the listener because I think, you know, you and I, you and I are probably on the same page, but this definitely happens. Absolutely. In companies, you know, um, the boss, the, the big boss will fire off an email and then everybody else will gather together and be like, what did, what did he mean by this? Uh, we need to parse this text as though it were holy. It's so True. Yeah. It's
Speaker 2 00:55:24 So true. And people come up with weird idea and the, and <laugh>, I won't name names or places where I used to work, but that is exactly how, uh, some companies are run. Yes. Trying to, to define what, uh, whoever their leader is, what, what that person wants. Um, so you obviously have an interest in tech or maybe you don't, but you got a lot of things. Right. I think, um, histor of tech, it's all Conditions. And
Speaker 6 00:55:51 I'm not gonna say that I'm especially tech savvy. I, you know, I, I try to keep my finger on the pulse of what's going on. I've certainly paid attention to like, you know, what Facebook and Amazon and Google seem to be doing. Um, I don't know many of the ins and outs, but I've, I've done some research, but my observation is that tech has, uh, bled into everything. Mm-hmm <affirmative> um, I know people who work in like education, who will talk about educational experiences and they'll talk about beta testing. Mm-hmm <affirmative>, you know, even in publishing, we'll talk about end users sometimes, or, you know, like it's just, it's readers, it's gotten into the water, the, the, the, the sort of ideology of tech, capitalism. Yeah. Is it's, it's everywhere. It's ubiquitous, even if you don't, uh, even if you don't work in tech, my, my more specific interest in, in, in technology, in, in tech capitalism is the ways that it influences our lives. Mm-hmm <affirmative> um, because the, the devices that we carry around with us, I mean, just to pick a very small example are spying us on us in way, ways that we don't even understand. Yes. Um, and we're kind of willing, we're willing victims and participants in that, in that, uh, corporate surveillance state that we all live in mm-hmm
Speaker 2 00:57:14 <affirmative> and unless readers get the idea that this is a really serious thematically latent sort of book, which it is in a very smart way. It is
Speaker 6 00:57:23 Funny. It's funny. I hope,
Speaker 2 00:57:24 Yeah. It's funny. It's funny. The, the characters, uh, are real they're young and they're funny. And, uh, uh, but it's also got a lot of wild, um, uh, there's some good violence in there. There's gore, I
Speaker 6 00:57:37 Mean, right. In the first chapter, right. In, I mean, brace yourselves, it doesn't get any worse than what's in the first chapter. That's right. It's a, it's a bit more tame for the rest of the novel hopefully, right? Yeah.
Speaker 2 00:57:47 Yeah. To say that there's a gas and then people die that doesn't begin to describe what happens. No happens. No. You wanna read that? I mean, if you like that sort of thing, um, we're press, we're running out of our precious time already. Believe it or not. Andrew. So, uh, 58 or 59, look at that. Any is,
Speaker 6 00:58:02 We've been given more time. Oh,
Speaker 2 00:58:03 My, the great I'm raising my hand. I'm pointing up to Annie. <laugh>. Um, tell, <laugh> tell us about, I wanna make sure we talk a little bit about your first book. Yeah. Um, you did so well with that. Tell us a little bit about that. Um, remind us again, of the title.
Speaker 6 00:58:17 Well, it's called the exo project. Um, it is a book about, um, well, it's, it's young adult, uh, fiction mm-hmm <affirmative> uh, so, so fiction for routines. Um, it is, it's, it's kind of on a similar theme, although not quite as corporately minded mm-hmm <affirmative> and not as satirical, but it's very much, it, it all, it also considers a future, uh, earth that is sort of, uh, ravaged by apocalyptic forces. In this case, it would be climate change it and, um, a, uh, sort of mission to find a new home for, uh, for humans, for human civilization. Um, that brings, uh, two characters, one human, and one sort of a humanoid alien mm-hmm <affirmative>, uh, in contact with each other, um, and considers what happens when, um, cultures collide. And if there can be, um, any possibility of, of sort of a peaceful version of that, of cultural collision.
Speaker 6 00:59:15 Um, when one, when, you know, one of the, one of the, uh, representatives actually comes with the expectation of, of colonizing this planet. Um, so it's, it's, it's a pretty like complex complexly plotted book. Mm-hmm, <affirmative>, um, not quite as funny, but, um, pretty, um, heartfelt, I think. And, um, and still, you know, a lot of big ideas there, big juicy ideas, mm-hmm <affirmative> um, in spite of it being for, for, uh, young people, you know, young adult fiction can be as thematically complex as, uh, as adult fiction. Absolutely. And, um, and, uh, you know, I was really proud to have, uh, won the, uh, 2018, uh, Minnesota book award for that, with that book that's, which was, yeah. A fantastic way to get started.
Speaker 2 01:00:04 How do you know when you have a ye novel versus an adult novel? What, what's the thing that makes it ye
Speaker 6 01:00:11 That's a really good question. I think that, um, for me, and it it's gonna be different for, for each person, but, but for me, it really has to make sense for the, uh, for the characters to be, to be young people and on some level, that means that, that, um, the question of, of kind of like moving from childhood into adulthood. Mm-hmm <affirmative> um, are, are cons are being considered on some level? I sure. Um, so, so the exo project was very much a, um, sort of like looking to the stars and wondering if there's anybody out there for you mm-hmm <affirmative> and, uh, sort of like metaphorically, like meeting someone kind of like a first love kind of story. Right. Um, but also some disillusionment with the, with the sort of adult, um, with the, uh, adult generation, I suppose the temps in its way is, is similar in that it considers young people moving into adulthood. Yeah. But it very, it, it very explicitly and deliberately considers young adults, people who are in their, in their, uh, mid to late twenties. Uh, um, so on that level, you know, since I'm just since this, this book is, is so deliberately thinking of itself as something that, that tackles a certain time of life mm-hmm <affirmative>, um, it was just obvious to me that, that this would be something that would be for, for adults. Although I think that, you know, teens could certainly enjoy this as well.
Speaker 2 01:01:42 Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. I didn't even think about it. And I try to think we all in this room and, and listeners think critically about what we read, but the idea of that this is a novel about young people mm-hmm <affirmative> and stuff happens to them. Um, it that's what it is. Yeah. Uh, and, uh, beautifully told we have a little bit of time. What are you working on next? You must be working on something.
Speaker 6 01:02:02 Well, I've got a few things in the can. Um, I've always got, I've always got some things that I've, I've finished. Wow. Considering, considering what might be next. So I've got a couple more, somewhat dystopian concepts that I'm kind of tinkering around with. Awesome. And waiting for one to kind of grab me and say, let's, you know, I'm the one, not this other one. Yeah. And, and still, still kind of, not there yet, but we're, but we're gonna, we're gonna pick one soon.
Speaker 2 01:02:30 Well, that's awesome. And uh, we hope that we hear about that. We will. And we'll have you back. Congratulations, Andrew, on this book, it's been a pleasure and drew de young, the book is the temps. Um, it's getting a lot of love, uh, nice, uh, review in the star Tribune this weekend. Look it up. Folks, Google that. Um, and look it up the temps by Andrew de young Andrew, a pleasure to
Speaker 6 01:02:51 Have you. Thank you so much. Happy to be here.
