056 - Pilgrims with M.R. Leonard - Weird Reads

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
You're listening to the Weird Reader podcast, an extension of
Jason's Weird Reads found on YouTube. Welcome, Hello, and welcome
to episode fifty six of the Weird Reads podcast. This
episode is a little bit different from the usual for

(00:34):
a few reasons. The first reason being that we're talking
about a science fiction book today with its science fiction
author Mr Leonard and his book Pilgrims. But we're also
going to be discussing Christianity, and that is where there
is a controversy here, I think in regards to my podcast,

(00:55):
the Weird Reads Podcast, because I m R Leonard says
he's a Catholic, he identifies as a Catholic, where I
identify more as agnostic. I'm pretty much pure agnostic. I
need scientific backing for almost everything, and Emmer Leonard seems

(01:17):
to be the same way. But when not really questioned
but me leaning, the conversation towards him being able to
admit whether or not he supports people like Donald Trump.
He never admitted that or denied it. So take what

(01:39):
you will from this conversation. What it comes down to, though,
is his book Pilgrims. Pilgrims is I had an absolute
blast reading this book. It really questions religion in the
same ways that I do. It analyzes Christianity and how

(02:02):
people tend to misuse Christianity to hurt other people instead
of perhaps what it should be about, which is helping
other people. It sort of defines the definition of war
and its role in religion, and it's we have a

(02:22):
pretty fascinating discussion that even excuse me, that even goes
into the realms of astral astral physics, if you can
believe it. So my gut during the process of booking
m R Leonard on the show, my gut was kind
of flipping out. I'm afraid of this episode, to be

(02:45):
honest with you, at least a little bit, because it's
so far out of the realm from Weird Reads that
it almost has to be included in a weird weird Reads.
Take what you will from this conversation. I think you'll
find m R Leonard quite intelligent, and he seems to
be fascinated with religion on an intellectual scale. I don't

(03:09):
think he's a scholar of Christianity, but he seems to
study it anyway, and so we had an interesting conversation,
and so I hope you enjoy I hope you'll stick
around and listen to it. It's, as I said, very
different for this show. And here it is my conversation
with m R Leonard and his book Pilgrims. Welcome everyone today,

(03:36):
I have a very different episode. It's one I never
thought I do. One reason for this is that our
guest today is a break outside of the horror genre
that we always talk about, and it ventures into science fiction.
The second aspect is the Christian element in our guests book. Now,

(03:58):
I'm all about growing though, and sometimes something about this
book and the author himself pushed me to go along
and do the episode. I felt compelled to explore the
book or sorry, a science fiction book about Catholic aliens
visiting Earth, along with its author. So what I found

(04:21):
well reading Pilgrims was a fascinating examination of religion, its
significance in human life, and how it can be misused
for evil for lack of a better term. So joining
me today is m R Leonard, author of Pilgrims. Welcome
to the show. Michael.

Speaker 2 (04:39):
Thanks for having me. Jason, it's a pleasure to be here.

Speaker 1 (04:42):
Now. One thing before we get into I just want
to do a little icebreaker here because before we were,
before I hit the record button, we were talking about
having young kids. And I remember when I had a
young kid, when my son was a newborn, up to
like even age of five or whatnot, I really struggled
finding time to write. So how do you find you

(05:04):
have two little ones? Right?

Speaker 2 (05:06):
Yeah, and actually another coming?

Speaker 1 (05:08):
Oh my god? How do you how do you find
the time? And more importantly, how do you find the energy?

Speaker 2 (05:16):
The verb find implies that it's it has been happening,
as opposed to an aspirational hope that it happens more.
It's tough. I wrote this book mostly before my first
son was born, so that helped. Getting in the rhythm
now that I have kids is definitely a process, and

(05:39):
I'm still kind of finding my feet there. So I
don't have any good hacks. I know. Christopher Rocky ho
blurbed the book. He says he gets up at four am.
That's the time. That's the time of day you can
find a big chunk of time to actually get it done.
I haven't resorted to that, but I'm trying a lot
of things at the moment. If you had asked me
that three years ago, before my first was born, i'd

(06:01):
have this really thoughtful Oh this is my routine, this
is how I get it done. But that that's all
followed by the wayside.

Speaker 1 (06:08):
Imagine it's chaos, but you get it when you can. Right.

Speaker 2 (06:13):
Yeah, I do have windows, it's it's just they they
they go in spurts of being pretty regularized till something
comes up. So if, for example, like between ten and
two during the day ends up being like a really
good window, that'll work for like a week until there's
some sort of exingency or emergency that just up ends that.

(06:34):
What I thought I was building a routine because you
kind of like build the routine. You start it going
and you're like, all right, this is this has some momentum,
and then the momentum gets stopped suddenly. So yeah, no,
I don't have any good answers or good solutions to
that question. It's an ongoing challenge.

Speaker 1 (06:50):
Routine is very important. I find. I also find that
do you have like a writing time? Because for me,
I my brain turns the mush sometime around noon, and
I if I go to write anytime afternoon, it's like
pulling teeth. But anytime before noon, I'm good to go.
How about you I'd say ten.

Speaker 2 (07:09):
To four, hand be is probably the best time for me.
The problem with that is so much Again, if you
just had a clean, uninterrupted ten to four, that would
be the idea for me. I've tried morning, I've tried night.
I thought like my twenty year old self imagining myself
as a writer later in life, would have thought I'd

(07:31):
be doing a lot of writing after seven pm. At
by seven pm, it's not happening. Maybe it would have
when I was in my twenties, but it's not now.

Speaker 1 (07:39):
Yeah. I know people who like, oh, I just love
writing when everyone goes to bed and the house is quiet.
It's like, okay, I get that. I get that house
nice and quiet, it's peaceful, but I can't think. I
can't focus on anything like writing at that time.

Speaker 2 (07:55):
It's same here. Yeah, the brain is just not ready
to rev at that hour. So as much as I
like the romantic vision, and I know authors who do
this of like you know, burning the midnight oil and
just getting pages and pages, if I can't do it.
I've tried it, and it's just the output is so
terrible that it's not even worth it.

Speaker 1 (08:16):
That's very true. So, as mentioned, this is a little
bit outside the weird reads Birdcage, so to speak. As
your book, Pilgrims is not horror. It's science fiction, and
it's also science fiction with a strong Catholic bend to it. Personally,
I'm not a Christian, but I found something interesting in

(08:38):
our correspondence while we were trying to organize this. You
mentioned that you like to talk with non Christians about Pilgrims.

Speaker 2 (08:47):
I'd say the vast majority of my readers are non religious,
specifically non Christian. Because I wrote this book, I'd say
I had multiple motivations, but primarily as a science fic
someone who's just loved the genre and just felt like
there were these massive holes or stories that weren't being

(09:07):
told for I think, what are essentially arbitrary reasons. And
I think going forward, you're going to you're going to
feel more writers who feel less encumbered by the historical
contingent ways of approaching stories. They'll be unbounded by. I
think some of the conventions that have not plagued the
genre but been a part of the genre for the

(09:28):
last fifty seventy five years, and I think we can
tell more interesting stories. And as a reader of science fiction,
I just you know, they say, write the book that
you wish you could read, and this was it for me.
I just was wondering, like when you add the when
you add religious components to a social situation and talk
about it seriously and not dismissively, you can actually come

(09:50):
up with some really, really interesting.

Speaker 1 (09:54):
Drama that keeps you to the page for sure. And
once again, I want to apologize for my round of
questioning you when when you first approached me in the
planning stages here. I'm not against religion the religion itself,
but I can be against they're organizers and leaders. So

(10:17):
I needed to confirm in my roundabout way that you're not,
like you know, a Trump supporter. So so many people,
I feel are dragging what could be a beautiful religion
through the mud with misinformation regarding Christianity and what Jesus
actually stood for.

Speaker 2 (10:38):
Is there a question there?

Speaker 1 (10:39):
Now? That's the statement, and I just want to know
if you want to if you want to say anything
to that.

Speaker 2 (10:44):
Yeah, I mean, I think it's important for everyone to dialogue,
dial logos. It's it's the approaching truth through the act
of discussing with others. And I think there's a variety
of different perspectives out there. I mean, I would describe
myself as raised Catholic, and then I fell away from it,

(11:05):
so I probably became a agnostic, if not a full
blown atheist. And I'm what's often described as a revert.
So in my mid thirties, I returned to Catholicism, and
it was a very intellectual return. That's kind of what
brought me back, not exclusively, but that was the sticking
point for me. Actually, I was at MIT when I

(11:27):
reverted to Catholicism, which is kind of a not what
most people get to mit to do, but that happened
to me, so, you know, I mean I would, I
would subscribe to the views of the Catholic Church. I'm
not in schism with any of them. But that doesn't
mean that there isn't productive conversation that can be had

(11:48):
with people who have also from ideas and backgrounds. I
think this idea that like, if people think differently from you,
you have to be you know, inimical and yelling at them,
like I don't. I don't think that's how most people are,
and I don't think that's that's consistent with Christianity actually,
So you know, I like to talk to everyone, and

(12:08):
like I said to you, anything's fair game, Jason, like,
wherever you want to go with this, whatever. But I
hope that I did want to convey to you in
advance that I don't think you have to be Christian
at all to enjoy Pilgrims, like the story. I mean,
it's clearly coming from a point of view. I don't
deny that a little, but I think I think there's

(12:29):
something there for everyone.

Speaker 1 (12:30):
Yeah, and you know what, We're going to get into
that a little bit. But that was the hardest part
of this conversation. Now we're just going to go and
gush about Pilgrim so at least in a minute.

Speaker 2 (12:41):
Yeah, I like how this is a this is very
meta because this is a weird read for weird reads. Yeah,
this is not within the wheelhouse of what you typically
talk about, so this.

Speaker 1 (12:51):
Is very much so, Yeah, it is weird for weird reads. Yes.
In our discussion, you also, well you just mentioned it
too that you were raised Catholic and be an atheist
and then converted back to Catholicism in your thirties. Can
you tell us what involved that journey, because that's pretty
I guess it's not severe, but it's it's kind of

(13:11):
going for I'm an agnostic myself, so I understand where
that comes from. But how do you go from being
Catholic to maybe atheist leaning agnostic to back to going
back to being a Catholic.

Speaker 2 (13:27):
I think, well, I'm trying to think of it succinctly,
but here's here's the general gist of it. So I
was raised in a family. You know, we went to
church on Sunday. I had a great experience with that.
I mean it was there was no particular traumatic. It
was a nice, comfortable thing to do as a family.
You know, you do that as a child, you become

(13:48):
a teenager some people that's like thirteen is where a
lot of people start, you know, bucking up against sort
of things like I remember, like they just don't. It's
sometimes it's as simple as you just don't want to
go to church on Sunday. I want to in the
house and what's cartoons or I don't know whatever you
did back back at that time, And uh, that wasn't
me so much as much as I probably would have

(14:08):
I rolled every time we had to. You know, come on,
let's go, let's go to church. And I continued going
dutifully as a high schooler. Then I got to college.
I actually went to a Catholic college here in Boston
called Boston College, so like on the weekends, So this
is the other exit ramp for all the kids who
were raised Catholic for a typical one. You know, they
went with their family. Now they're in college and no

(14:30):
one's like they're pulling them to go on a Sunday,
so they they just stopped. But I didn't because they
kind of made a pretty convenient At Boston College. It
was like a mass like every few hours on the weekend,
so it was you know, you could really be that
lazy college student who rolls out in sweatpants like and
five minutes away, and I think that was kind of

(14:51):
I was coasting at that point. But once I left
college and neither of those those facts obtained, I basically
just stopped going and then a lot came with it.
So one of the things that bothered me, I think
since I was young going through the motions up through college,

(15:12):
was I always felt that religion, in particular Christianity was
very intellectually shallow, like it was it was, and I've
come to disagree with that now, but that's just kind
of my attitude at the time. And I think that
was very much the nineties early aughts kind of the
religion wasn't, at least in Catholic circles or more particularly mine,

(15:35):
It wasn't talked about in a sophisticated way. It was
kind of like, this is a building where we all
go be nice to one another. And you know, I
think nice people would agree. You don't need to go
to a building every week to be nice to other people.
And I think if that's all the religion is, then
it's really a waste of everyone's time. And I personally
did not want to investigate it further because I felt

(15:57):
discouraged from doing so. But I was also kind of
I didn't know what I wanted. I was almost afraid
of what I'd find out. So that's kind of in
my twenties, I'm pretty much was no religion and leaned
toward agnosticism and atheism. I kind of embraced that as
this is what smart people seem to hold as their worldview,

(16:17):
air go I should emulate them, either because I have
pretensions of being smart or just because it's even if
I'm not smart. That seems smarter to emulate smart people
as opposed to not smart people. As I grew up, though,
I saw a lot of kind of holes in that worldview,
and I began doing some more digging, and this is

(16:38):
I think this is just one of the many beautiful
things about the Internet, Like you can actually seriously engage
with some of these big questions a lot easier than
you could in the nineteen nineties or early two thousands.
And as I started kind of inquiring as to some
of the questions, like the objectivity of moral facts or things,
I had my own positions on this. I did take

(17:00):
philosophy in college, so I wasn't completely new to this domain.
But as I started looking into it more, I felt
increasingly like, oh, okay, I don't think this is an
unsophisticated worldview. In fact, I'm getting quite impressed with the
sophisticated nature of it. And this was probably one of
my chief roadblocks to becoming, you know, an adherent of

(17:21):
any religion, let alone Catholicism. That combined with meeting my
wife and just getting in a healthy, loving relationship well
my girlfriend who became my wife, that opened a whole
other set of doors about like what sort of person
I want to be, what sort of aspects of myself
I want to champion. So you kind of remove the
roadblock and open open up love, which in the Catholic worldview,

(17:46):
God is love. And so you know, these things combined,
I think we're pretty pretty much the cause of my reversion.
If I had to summarize it, that was that, okay, Jason,
was that double click where you like, But that's more
or less the high, high level.

Speaker 1 (18:03):
I was just curious about the journey I went through
when I was younger. I went through a religious phase
I call it, and I joined a church and then
pretty soon after I left it and then I never
went back. That's my story.

Speaker 2 (18:18):
When you were when you say young is all relative.

Speaker 1 (18:21):
I was eighteen nineteen. Around that age, I was just
searching to see what was I was more like more
than likely searching myself to see what was what I
believed and testing myself. And when I went to church,
I just didn't find anything there for me. So that's
just my story.

Speaker 2 (18:42):
But it's different for everyone. Yeah, But I think what's
really cool, like if in nineteen I was having this
discussion on another actually with Jeff Hayes and one of
our our we actually put it on the line. But
it felt like in the late nineties, like questioning things
like did Jesus exist would have been like I suppose

(19:02):
if I actually did it, I probably would have gotten
a better answer, But it felt like that was a
question you couldn't even ask. And the great thing about
the Internet, in this kind of proliferation of content that's outside,
is you can ask these questions, and to my surprise,
I got much better answers than I expected. So that's
the cool thing about nowadays, like we can all explore

(19:26):
so much intellectually, philosophically, religiously, spiritually. Then, I mean, you
and I are old enough to remember when access to
this much information was just so onerous and impossible.

Speaker 1 (19:38):
Yeah. Actually, when I said that, I didn't find anything
in the church that was for me. It was more
just the building and maybe the people who went there.
But I did find stuff because I read the Bible
a lot during those days. I used to read like
fifteen minutes every night before I went to bed from
the New Testament. But what I found in Christianity that

(20:01):
I agree with was Jesus's teachings. It's basically teaching about,
you know, helping those who are less fortunate than you
and just being a good person basically is what it
very basics of what it comes down to or what
it comes down to, and I've always held on to
that that aspect is very important to me. I think
it's a good guide book and how we could treat

(20:22):
one another. And that was part of the reason why
I was grilling you when you first contacted me. I
was like, oh, you're you're Christian, okay, And then I,
you know, shut off some questions at you, and but yeah,
what do you think what.

Speaker 2 (20:36):
Sort of things if I had said, would you said,
all right, this is not Was there some impression that
or like type casting character when you get this email,
are you kind of like it's one of these people?

Speaker 1 (20:50):
Well, it was like, first of all, it was the
first time a Christian, like somebody blatantly Christian reached out
to want to be on the show, like they're writing
about Christianity and they want to be on the show.
And so I didn't know how to react to that
because there's so many people who, as I mentioned before,
who are treating Christianity as though it's their own way

(21:13):
of maybe controlling others, you know what I mean, instead
of just spreading kindness and love. And so I just
wanted to make sure that you were on the side
of humanity and believing in kindness and taking care of
one another no matter who they are, and that's what's

(21:35):
important to me. So if you came across as somewhat hateful,
I wouldn't have scheduled the interview. I'm totally open to
discussing religion, but I'm not interested in a discord of hatred,
if that makes any sense.

Speaker 2 (21:51):
Yeah, and I think Christianity in particular, it's definitely unfortunately
I'm not earned might not be the right verb, but
there is no doubt that people have used religion as
a mechanism of just social control and not like not
as incidental to like, if you're engaging in you in

(22:15):
building a world consistent with the values inside uh inside
Christianity or the Bible, that you will end up making
some rules that have social consequences. Like That's that's one aspect,
but that there is undoubtedly naked coercion and social control
across the history of Christianity, people using it as an instrument,

(22:35):
which is obviously completely at odds with with the religion itself,
but it's happened, and this is that's the world we
actually inhabit, and so I can I can totally understand.
Uh you know, I think that's where in an interesting
time where Christianity has kind of receded a little in
the Western world, or at least it has in terms

(22:56):
of its ability to enact social control. So it's it's interesting,
you know. I mean that that might be debated. We
could quibble with it. Some people, you know, say we're
a post religious society. But the reality is the genuine
Christians you meet are not are not excited about using
it in that sense. But that doesn't mean every Christian

(23:16):
is a genuine Christian.

Speaker 1 (23:17):
So yeah, you know, that's very true. It's not only
Christianity where that people use. It's it's almost every religion
that's what's out there, including the most peaceful ones you
can imagine. Well, Christianity, like I said, if you read
the New Testament, Christianity should be the most one of
the most peaceful religions out there, right, But so I'm

(23:41):
kind of saying that there's other ones that are more
peaceful than Christianity, when that's not necessarily true, but I
think there is a general uh you know, uh outlook
on Christianity from people who aren't Christian as people being
not very nice as Christians, except for the fact that
a lot of us know Christians who are like, they'll

(24:02):
give you the shirt off their back.

Speaker 2 (24:04):
And that was how it spread initially. I mean, in
ancient Rome, there's this religion that has all sorts of
social costs associated with it. It's completely absurd for most
people to even comprehend You're saying, you worship a guy
who was killed like a slave, like really, like that's
like the worst example of what I could even conceptualize

(24:25):
as a god. But what was really compelling was just
the way Christians act in a pagan world, and it
really got people's attention. Tom Holland really just discusses this
in a he's a great classicist, but he wrote a
book called Dominion, and it's essentially how Christianity took over
the Roman Empire and impacts many of the things that
we think of in the world today, which is great.

(24:47):
So I'm gonna plug someone else's book, Tom Holland's Dominion.
I'm very popular. Yeah, he's a he's actually a co
host of a famous podcast called The Rest is History.
So he's a very popularly a lot of smart people
like to cite him, but it's it's a pretty landmark book.
Not to plug it too much, but like, for example,

(25:09):
he essentially goes in, why in Western society do we
hold values that historically speaking and outside the West are
kind of not that common. For example, even like the
concept that racism is bad, the Romans would not have
thought racism is bad. They would like, they wouldn't even
know what you were talking about. Of course, you know,

(25:30):
a Roman is superior to everyone else than they encounter.
And so where do we like what happens? Because if
we're the descendants of ancient Rome, like what happened that
we can reach a point where such things He actually
starts the prologue talking about Harvey Weinstein would have like,
there's no way he could be canceled inside Roman society.

(25:51):
That would have been just the normal behavior of a
Roman aristocrat. So what happens in our society that we
can do? Anyways, enough about Tom Holland, but I just
thought it's really eye opening for people who are into
Western history, Like it's it's kind of an interesting perspective
on things.

Speaker 1 (26:06):
Yeah, it's also interesting how we evolve in our thinking
as a populace, which has always been fascinating to me.
So I find it interesting though that you science and
religion don't often mix. In fact, they usually say if

(26:27):
you don't ever bring up politics, science, or religion in
any conversation, if you want to keep the conversation peaceful.
There's a saying around there that says that, right, But
you've mixed religion and science science fiction at least, but
you do use a lot of science in UH in Pilgrims.

(26:50):
So before we get into Pilgrims, I just want to know,
is UH is Catholic science fiction? What you feel like
you're going to continue to write?

Speaker 2 (26:59):
Yeah, I think you know, we me and other sci
fi writers, some of whom are Catholics, some of whom aren't.
We love to have this debate about did I write
not just about my book, but did I write Catholic
sci fi? Or is this just science fiction? You know
a lot of people don't say that. You know, Lord
of the Rings is Catholic fantasy, even though it is.

(27:20):
Jarr Tolkien was like a militant Catholic and the whole
work is deeply Catholic in every part of it. In fact,
he even wrote one of his letters he thought that
this is such a Catholic work, I don't think there'll
be any readership for it. It's going to be very
Niche Well, that didn't turn out that well, that prediction
at least so interesting. Yeah, that modifier is is something

(27:43):
that I kind of chafe against, even though like I'm
okay being called it, and just I think this is
science fiction. What science fiction has gotten wrong for a
while is there has been and honestly it comes from
the nineteenth century, this idea that science is at odds
with religion, and one talks about, you know, the natural world,
and one talks about the supernatural. They're definitionally different. They're

(28:07):
not really like science can't disprove metaphysical claims, all that
sort of stuff. And I think a lot of the
scientists now are opening up to the idea that the
project of science is in no way contrary to religious
world views, in the Christian one in particular. In fact,
there's kind of a lot more overlap. A lot of
physicists are converting to Christianity. It's a whole other saga

(28:31):
that other people have discussed more, but this is what
I grew up in the twentieth century. You're either you know,
Rick and science, you know, with the capital, or not
even a capitalist. Just Rick, like from Rick and Morty,
is just like science, even though he's basically a sorcerer
and there's no meaning deeper in the world. And you

(28:51):
either believe in science and like star Trek, or you're
one of those backwards religious people who believes in you know,
magic wands and fairy tales. And I just think that
dichotomy was probably wearing thin at the end of the
twentieth century. But as we round our way a quarter
the way through the twenty first, like that just doesn't
hold water. And so what I was really hoping to

(29:14):
do with my book was listen, religion has had a
huge impact on societies. In science fiction, what we do
is we imagine a possible world. We imagine a possible world,
and we try to make it somewhat relatable so that
our imaginings could be followed by the reader. They can
look at the premises we took and see how we

(29:36):
arrive at the world that we build. And I just so,
in other words, you're being graded at how well you
create the premises you use to create this other world.
I'll give you a bold prediction. All science fiction ausms
are closeted or you know, amateur futurists in the year
four thousand AD, so another two thousand years heads or ce.

(30:00):
If you really insist on that, religion will still be
there as long as humans exist. In fact, I would
say the three Abrahamic religions will still be in existence.
Judaism is been around for what like five thousand years,
let's call it. That's a lot of Lendy effect to
use that term. I mean, the odds are that we

(30:21):
will be here for another five thousand as long as
humanities still existing. Weirdly, you could read a lot of
science fiction and not realize that. I mean, that is
just basic futurism, just like you can say that as
a purely clinical, non invested party. And so the way
it was kind of written out of the stories I
felt was anti scientific. It was like it was almost

(30:43):
like this arbitrary like putting the thumbs on the scale
of experiment because you demand a certain result, meaning we're
going to write futures, there's no religion in them. Well,
I mean, that doesn't mean we don't have to agree
with the religion, but it'll probably be there. Well, you
can write cargo cult, superficial religion, or no religion at all.
We just want science and technology, and that's not an
interesting depiction of the human condition. So yeah, I do

(31:06):
marry these all together. Will I continue to write catholic
a science fiction, I, as a writer will not be
bound by these artificial barriers that say you can't address
metaphysical things inside science related, high concept premise speculative fiction.
I think that that is handicapped too many writers for
too long, and there's too many interesting stories to tell

(31:28):
with that in mind. So yeah, we'll keep it going.

Speaker 1 (31:34):
Well, I have this theory that we don't know everything yet,
like we have the great void, the great beyond, We're
only here for a short time. We don't know exactly
scientifically what happens to us when we die, and until
we do have scientific proof of what happens, there's always

(31:58):
going to be spirituality. I think, yeah.

Speaker 2 (32:02):
I mean, there's there's a whole mountain of unanswered questions,
and I don't think science in principle can answer. Like,
for example, a lot of people like to talk about
the multiverse, right, and so you know, again I reverted
at MIT. I mean I met some of these people
who were who were at the boundaries of scientific knowledge.
That was really cool actually, And there's no experiment you

(32:27):
can run to really prove the multiverse. It's what is
appropriately called a metaphysical speculation. So whether you believe we're
up here, because there's at the origin of things before
we can touch it. In the natural world, there's this
process that generates universe. We're not going to examine what
that process is because we might have just pushed the

(32:49):
god question back, or you think there's a creator of
the universe. Those are both metaphysical speculations. And I think
one of the metaphysical speculations is what is mind? If
is it material? If it's not. Frankly, I think that
it's looking like it's not based on the science what
happens to it, because we know matter changes and although

(33:10):
matter and energy don't actually get destroyed, they just convert
to one another. But with regard to mind, if it's
not a material thing, we don't know how it comes
into existence or whether it goes out of existence. So
I just don't think science is ever going to give
us an answer to that question. I think there's a
lot of questions science won't give us an answer to. Maybe, yes,
religion will continue to be around as long as these

(33:31):
big questions remain unanswered. I think you're one hundred percent right.

Speaker 1 (33:34):
I say, maybe if we're still around as our human
race or as a race, as a creature a million
years from now, maybe it'll be answered. But we're nowhere
near it now. Nobody's even really asking the right questions scientifically,
of course, So that's always something that's fascinated me. And
I like that you brought up the multiverse theory, or

(33:57):
at least the metaphysical I think I'm using the writer there.
It's a very physics thing, right, of a different universes popping,
Like I could get up and go to the bathroom,
or I could stay here in one universe. I said, Okay,
I got to put this on pause because I have
to go to the bathroom. And I go to the bathroom,

(34:19):
but in reality and this reality we stay here talking. Right,
that's sort of split. There is no proof that that
can happen, And yet they say the math fits. I
never understood that kind of thing, but well, that mean.

Speaker 2 (34:35):
You could just imagine. Listen, I'm gonna be put on
my anti religious cynical hat. You know. You know the
priests saying there's this place called heaven. You know, I'm
just some peasant farmer. I don't really read all that well.
And the priest can read. He gets that book. He
speaks Latin. You know, I'm just a humble guy farm
in my fields and I don't read all these books,
and he says this is going to happen, so I'll

(34:57):
just kind of go with it. The math doesn't really
show that. I mean, it's essentially people fill in the blanks.
You know. The math is causally affect is what the
technical philosophical turn means. Meaning you can do numbers all day.
You can take your bank account balance and multiply by
ten all you want, but you don't have ten times.

(35:18):
You know, you don't increase your wealth light order of
magnitude every time you do that. I mean, I wish
it was that easy, but it doesn't really work. So
sometimes things get the esthetic of science when they're really
like more comparable to philosophical speculation. I would put the
multiverse and these alternate realities into that camp. Is it
when we go past what the quantum field theory, and like,

(35:42):
we know that the quantum field theory applies, it's very
predictive in terms of what happens to matter in all
sorts of things when we go past it, So like
if matters existing in states of probability, it doesn't and
it only kind of comes down to actuality when it's
observed by an observer. What does that mean? And so

(36:03):
that's where people posit things like in this other universe,
you're going to the bathroom at this time. Basically all
of the Marvel cinematic world at this point. And you know,
like our Hollywood has really run with this genre because
it makes for some fun things, but it's not really science.
Like they get off the science train and get into
the just speculative train really easily. But because scientists do that,

(36:26):
sometimes we confuse the science part versus just their musings.
So yeah, I and that's one of the interesting things
about writing the book. You know, when you write a
first contact novel, an aliens show up, there's all these
expectations that you kind of import but don't necessarily follow
from the way the aliens are and I get to

(36:47):
play with that as an author and kind of subvert
some expectations and make some pleasant surprises for the readers.
So that was kind of the goal, I think, and
I think more more writers are going to start playing
with those things.

Speaker 1 (36:59):
I hope so, And that was the term I was
looking for, the philosophical quantum physics. But my brain turns
to mush after a certain time of day, and we're
there now? Where there now? So, speaking of Pilgrims and
aliens and first contact books, can you tell us what

(37:20):
Pilgrims is about.

Speaker 2 (37:22):
Yeah, Pilgrims is about a washed up Latin teacher who
is thrust into the center of humanity's first contact when
aliens arrive, land at the Vatican and ask for an
audience with the Pope. So it's kind of flipping on
its head that classic trope where you know, the aliens
land on the White House lawn and say take me
to their leader. Instead, they land at the Vatican and
ask for the audience with the Pope, which no one

(37:43):
in this world is expecting. It's essentially set in a
near future, vague about the time, but more more or
less a world like ours. And before the novel starts,
it starts a few days before the Aliens actually arrive
on Earth, but humanity tected the Aliens coming five years prior,
and so they saw aliens are coming to Earth. They

(38:05):
tried to communicate with them, they didn't hear anything back.
So the world has just been on tenterhooks wondering if
this approaching alien ship is friend or foe. And when
it finally does get here, and this happens at about
the twenty five percent mark of the book, but it's
on the back matter, so this isn't really a spoiler.
They basically pop the hatch and asked for an audience

(38:26):
with the Pope, which my protagonist and no one was expecting.
So that's kind of the setup for the novel. And
we get to see what the world looks like as
Aliens are arriving, and then we get to see after
they make this announcement that you know, are they lying,
are they faking? Did they have some sort of agenda?
What do they want now that they're here in purporting

(38:47):
to be Catholic? Like, well, maybe everything will be perfect.
Maybe you can just end the novel like, yeah, there
you go, happily. Ever after the Aliens are Catholic. End
of the book. You know, as a writer, I didn't
take that direction. As you know, Yeah, every five percent
happens after that point, A lot of a lot of
stuff happens.

Speaker 1 (39:04):
I was reading some of the reviews after reading this book,
and there are some people who reviewed it as though
that's what happened, purporting this book as like just simply
Christian fiction. But it's so much more than just Christian
fiction because you're pummeling the reader with questions throughout the
entire You're asked to question what's going on every step

(39:26):
of the way.

Speaker 2 (39:28):
Yeah, and I think I think that's how I wanted
to write it because I well, the main character Austin.
All all authors get asked, are you just Austin? The
main character, And when we meet him in the beginning
of the book, he's kind of he's got some Uh,
he's got some he's got some issuing up, he got
some issues. That's a good way to put it. But

(39:48):
you know, honestly, there's not I'm not better than that.
I I don't know. So just to give some you know,
more setup that's revealed very early in the book, he's,
you know, just a guy pursued doing Latin education. Uh,
I think he wants to be a professor in Latin,
and then the aliens are show up, and if whatever

(40:09):
amount we need people who speak Latin and know Latin
very well in today's world, multiply by you know, or
you know, I was gonna say, multiplied by whatever percentile
you think that will be worth after you know, if
that's worth x, like is it worth point one x?
Point zero one x point zero zero one x. The
point is, I don't know how lucrative learning Latin is

(40:31):
as a career path today, but it's a lot less
lucrative when aliens are going to arrive in five years.
And so he's in a pretty terrible state when we
start the novel and he he thinks the world's going
to end.

Speaker 1 (40:42):
You know, no one knows what the aliens.

Speaker 2 (40:44):
Are going to do. Some people are not you know
a lot of people like that about the beginning part,
because I'm really tempted to just get straight to the aliens,
but I kind of wanted to set up you have
to set up a lot of these things, and a
lot of people like this kind of distoe I wrote
because it's not mad Max, but it's not like don't

(41:06):
look up because and don't look up like everyone's worried,
but like the power works and everything's like it's like
normal life with a lot of angsts, but so no,
it's like somewhere in between. Like some people, as you
can imagine, we're panicked for a little bit, they kind
of were tired of being panicked and just decide to
be diluted and go on with life. Some people are excited,

(41:26):
they think this is going to be good. Some people
are certain that this is the end of the world,
and society's filled with people of all these different perspectives.
My protagonist happens to be in the end is nigh camp,
but not everyone is, which is why the lights are on,
why there's food to be eaten, and why there's some
social order, although that's heavily imposed by the state at
that point.

Speaker 1 (41:46):
And he also decides to kind of get drunk and
stay drunk, and he steals a lot of money from
his mom, and yeah, after there's a lot going on
with you know.

Speaker 2 (42:03):
My developmental editor was also Canadian, and we had a
few debates about that because he's like, you know, he
was just there for a robbery when someone got killed.
That doesn't make him a murder. I'm like, well, in America,
in the state I live in, and I think all
fifty states, it's called felony murder. If in the process

(42:24):
of committing a felony, a murder happens, everyone involved is guilty.
So you know, like the three bank robbers, the legal
I don't know if this applies in Canada, but here,
you know, you only planned on pointing a gun at
the teller at the bank, you and your two campadres.
But you know guy three is an extra crazy and
he shoots the teller and you run out there. You

(42:45):
can't say, well, I only meant to rob the bank.
I'm not going to kill anyone in my state. And
I think across most of the United States everyone is guilty.
So yeah, yeah, So he he might have been inverted,
but he himself in a position when something like that
could happen, So he's still quite culpable for that, for
that outcome. And this is all in the first few chapters,

(43:06):
so we kind of see that this this Austin fella.
He's uh, he's not the best character. But I would
also say I don't think, I don't think I'm above
any of that. I never wrote him with judgment. I mean,
if I thought the world was going to end and
I had, you know, the world view that Austin holds,
I probably would try to drink myself, you know, silly

(43:28):
in a cave, and maybe I would be like, what,
who cares if you knock over a store? I mean,
they're not going to need the money after the world's ending,
So what's so wrong about that?

Speaker 1 (43:38):
Sort of Yeah, But Austin has an interesting arc to
his story too. He starts off in a very confused,
painful place because he just think everything's going to end right,
and he does these terrible things, but he goes through
an arc of redemption. He has a very redemptive arc

(43:59):
to his story, and that's something I really enjoyed about
it because there's a lot of people out there and
I don't know if you had this conversation with your
editor whether or not people were gonna like Austin or not,
because we.

Speaker 2 (44:14):
Definitely had that conversation. Yeah, I'm sure he did.

Speaker 1 (44:17):
Because he's unlikable at first, it's hard to get you
on his side, but but you do end up on
his side. And that's there's a lot of people who
say that they don't like unlikable characters. But I always say,
if they're interesting, then that's what keeps me going. And
Austin is certainly a character because he has a lot

(44:38):
of reasons why he's doing the things he's doing. He's
he's uh, he's interesting, and and he pulls you into
the story regardless of what he's doing.

Speaker 2 (44:48):
Yeah. So I have two thoughts. One, I'll put a
pin in the Redemption arc thing because I think that
that I kind of telegraph on the back matter so
I can describe that. But with regard to likability, it's
it's really interesting as a writer, and I this is
my debut novel, so I kind of learned a lot
of the As someone who consumed a lot of science

(45:10):
fiction and you know, film and television. I probably knew
this stuff intuitively, but until you kind of learn it
and someone points it out, you're like, oh, that's why.
There's a lot of ways we can build likability with
the character, and it's not always they're great actions. There's
a famous book called Save the Cat. It's actually about screenwriting,
but it applies for like all writing, and it's like,

(45:32):
have your protagonists save a cat in the very beginning,
so that the audience will will like them. And you'll
see this in so many movies. It's even sometimes just
gratuitously added. Like there's a children's movie called Malana, and
very early on there's like a turtle that can't make
it to the water while she's singing one of her songs,
and she goes and she helps that turtle get into

(45:53):
the ocean. So it's not there's not even dialogue, but
like the Disney writers are like, make sure that save
the Cat beat is in there. We have to have that,
and so that's one way to do it, but the
other there's there's there's other methods, one of which is
put your make us sympathize with the character, so they
can be put in a terrible situation where you kind

(46:13):
of feel like you yourself would be trapped. And that's
kind of the direction I go with Austin. Another category
is called competence. Like we love seeing competence. So even
like a serial killer like Dexter, we're sitting there watcher
and kill someone, but he's doing it so competently. Like
some people call that competence porn or whatnot. Some people
just love that and all audiences respond to it. Some

(46:34):
people seek it out like they just want an unlimited supply.
But we can get characters. That's how you can get
some really mean characters, think like mob movies or like
hit Map, and they they're just so good at what
they do you just can't stop looking at it. So
I want the sympathy route, because as bad as Austin is,
he's in pretty tough straits, like he's got a lot

(46:56):
of kind of crap thrown his way. And there is one.
It's at chapter seven when he has a choice to
basically stay with his mother or go see a prostitute
that he's been like that that's been driving the plot
for the first seven chapters. And if I had made
him go see the prostitute as opposed to staying at
his mother for what he he believes to be the

(47:18):
end of the world, I think I just would have
lost all the readers. So that was the That was
the crux. But there was a lot of debate as
if we had already lost them already before chapter seven.
So yeah, it was, but I'm glad to see that
a lot of readers have stuck around for it. I
can talk about the redemption arc if you want. We're
going to something else.

Speaker 1 (47:37):
Now you can talk about the Redemption arc if you want.

Speaker 2 (47:40):
But yeah, so the book is a sci fi retelling
of Augustine's Confessions. Now Augustine, Saint Augustine was a saint
in around the year four hundred AD, so you know,
the end of the Roman Empire, but still still the
Roman Empire, and he wrote a book called The Confessions
that literally invented the genre of memoir. Before that time,

(48:04):
we didn't you know, there were biographies of famous people,
but they're written in almost like a mythic way by
someone else. It almost reads like a story about a god.
And some people had letters and correspondence, but there was
no like this, honest like pour your heart onto the page.
People didn't do that until Saint Augustine came along. And
so he wrote this book to called The Inventions, which
is as it sounds, it's his life story as a

(48:27):
long confession to God. And so this became kind of
foundational for the Western canon. Now, of course, people still
know about it now, and again he was very important,
influential in Christianity, but just in a literary sense. This
is a cornerstone of the literary canon of the West
and so a lot of people also know it from

(48:47):
that dimension, but fewer people nowadays. Like in Shakespeare's time,
they would have known about the different aspects of the Confessions.
Like people know about Romeo and juliet even if they've
never come close to reading a Shakespeare play or seeing
one on the stage. You know, they know about They
can see the balcony and go like, oh, yeah, that's
that Romeo and Juliette thing. You know, Romeo and Juliette

(49:10):
on the balcony. The famous scene from Augustine's Confessions is
Saint Augustine kind of is really torn up about a
bunch of pairs. Him and his teenage kind of like
up to no good friends go and smash for no reason,
and he really has torn up about these bears for
all of his writing, even though as a as a

(49:31):
well to do Roman youth, he spent a lot of
time in the brothel. You know, there was all sorts
of fun stuff. So you can just imagine these these
students in Shakespeare's time like turning the pages being like,
why can't we hear more about the brothel instead of
these stupid pairs, Like this is sick, So I kind
of telegraph what the arc is going to be, where
we start and where he's probably going to end. But luckily, unfortunately,

(49:56):
whatever you want to call it, most of my readers
will not be away air enough about the Gustin's confessions
to be like, I see where this is going. And
even if you do know where it's going, it's still
interesting to watch. But what's really cool about the book
is it's kind of highlighted this famous ancient like I said,
cornerstone of the Wetstern Cannon. People like, oh wait, what's
the source material of this? Let me go check it out.

(50:17):
I have a lot of people reach out to me
that say, like they picked it up for the first time,
and not all Christian, a lot of people who aren't Christian.
They're just like, yeah, I feel like I should I
should read this like I read Moby Dick or something,
just so I'm more sophisticated. So yeah, that's that's the
Redemption arc. I tried to have a very Augustinian arc,
and even Austin's name Austin DeSantis. Austin is the Anglicized

(50:39):
version of Augustine and DeSantis means saint or the sanctified,
so it's it's all there, but not every reader sees it,
and that's totally cool. But the Easter eggs are there
if you want them.

Speaker 1 (50:50):
I've never read that, so I got to go check
that out.

Speaker 2 (50:53):
It's it's a little different remembers written in four hundred
a D. But there's a there's some great work to discuss,
like why this was so influential across so much of
our art throughout time.

Speaker 1 (51:05):
Yeah. Interesting. I also wanted to talk I mentioned this earlier,
UH before we hit record. I fell in love with
the Ai Virgil. I want to know what what went
into uh went into the creation of Virgil because he
was he was fun to watch, UH and his relationship

(51:28):
with with Austin and Father Ambrose UH was interesting to see,
UH form How how did that come up? It?

Speaker 2 (51:39):
So the name itself is pulled straight out of Dante's
Divine Comedy in Virgil is Virgil is the poet who
wrote the Need, which is kind of like, if you
had to it's fiction. Well, it's kind of like these, Uh,
these analogies get harder when you go pre Christianity or
you're not including Judaism, like they didn't like the ancient

(52:01):
Greeks didn't have a Bible, but the Iliad and the
Odyssey almost functioned like a Bible, like everyone knew it,
they had the stories. It was like a foundational mythos
for their entire people and their society. The Romans kind
of wanted that too, because they kind of looked up
to the Greeks. So Virgil penned this book called the Eneid.

(52:22):
I'm sure there's people screaming at the screen who are
much more better at explaining ancient history than me, and
all the facts I'm getting wrong, but more or less,
the Inneid is this famous thing. And in Dante's Dante,
when he wrote The Divine Comedy, he needed a what
he called virtuous pagan to take Dante through hell and purgatory,

(52:43):
and Virgil ends up being his guide as one of
you know, Virgil being one of Dante's What was famous
about the Indead is people say that the Latin and
the pros and it is of almost another level of quality.
That's why I kind of took this supreme place in
the societ So so Dante Aligari has this huge love

(53:04):
for Virgil, the author of the Aenea, and so in
my book, Virgil ends up meeting up with Austin and
bringing him through the alien ship, which is very reminiscent
of the Divine comedy as you go to different aspects.
So that was it, how to how to make it.
Everyone loves Virgil. He's by far the favorite character of
the whole book. And you listen to the audio Virgin

(53:27):
he's voiced by a guy named Justin Thomas James, who
is just outstanding. He actually did some of the original
music for the audio book too. So Justin is just
this multi talented Canadian. He's a Kaffecker Canadian. There's a
lot of Canadian influence in this novel. I gotta tell you,
you guys are just just bringing this art to another

(53:47):
another sphere. Its awesome. But when I wrote Virgil, so
just the conception is that aliens are here. They're purporting
to be Catholic. They seem to be Catholic enough to,
you know, cross the galaxy to go to the Vatican.
They's very outward signs that they're seemingly devout. Again, we

(54:08):
don't know if it's a show or what they're up to.
So I just thought they're ais like if you're gonna
if you're a society that's ah, you know, advanced society
that's very religious. You know, your robots are going to
be religious too, So I wanted to depict a saint.
It's like a saint essentially, and so imagine a saintly robot,

(54:30):
you know, C three po but like epically sat And
I don't mean saintly like ned Flanders, like not Simpson's
like Oakley Dugley. No, we're talking like people who you
could be like, wow, that's an aspiring person.

Speaker 1 (54:46):
This is like a pure being. Like they're so exactly
innocent in a sense. But they follow the rule book
basically to the t. And even when it goes against
what there its race is is doing, it still wants

(55:06):
to do what's right. And because you know, I'm kind
of skirting around the issue here because near the end,
uh well we know right, like you know where I'm
going here, But Virgil ends up doing what's right. And
and that's when I knew. I was like, oh my god,
I love this guy.

Speaker 2 (55:24):
You know, yeah, yeah, Virgil is I have a I
had a copy editor too, so this is different from
my Canadian editor. This was a a just for in
the pilots developmental auditor kind of helps you with the story.
Copy editor. They they don't just like edit typos. In fact,
it's much more than that. They helped make the words flow,

(55:44):
the sentences. They might be like, you talked about this
here in this chapter, I don't think you need to
cover it again in this later chapter. So it's substantive,
but it's less like the big story. So I had
this copy editor from Brooklyn, Like I was convinced she
would just the Catholic, like the sort of individual that,
at least on the surface I imagined would be hostile

(56:05):
to Christianity, even something that just went near it. But
she really loved the novel, and I all these notes
when we get to Virgil and some of the things
he does towards the end, and she's like, Virgil, I
love it him like this, these are most of the
notes are like, you're bad at writing here. You need
to fix this. This is the problem. So it's very
pleased to get to these notes of you know, I

(56:27):
love him, he's so pure. I just wish I knew
someone like him. And that's actually one part about the
book that surprised me, because I would say Virgil's arc
is probably one of the smallest. He's kind of consistently
the way he is, and I think people are really
thirsty for what are called paragons. You know, Superman's a paragon,

(56:49):
meaning they're not really a flawed individual. They kind of
have all the pieces put together for the most but
they get in conflicts and they do have to overcome obstacles,
but they generally are like more or less, just this
aspiring personality to look up to the whole time. And
we've kind of in our very postmodern, very kind of

(57:11):
ironical end of the twentieth century or beginning of the
twenty first, like, we started kind of not seeing as
many of those characters in fiction as often. I think
people thought it was a little unsophisticated, shallow, and I
do think it can be done badly, but when it's
done well, I think we all really love to see
a good paragon in our fiction. And I think Virgil,

(57:34):
I'm honestly surprised, But as I reflect on why people
are so into that character, I think that's why. I
think it's just different, and it's I feel like it's earned,
it's not just there arbitrarily. Virgil pays a big price
for being the way that he is but he you know,
he's he is who he is to his soul, and

(57:58):
that makes it way more interesting. But also I just
think from a science fiction point of view, the Catholic
aliens are going to make See three po super super catholic.
You know, So that's all what we're used to expecting
when we meet the alien robot. But it's once I
you know, that's what a lot of people like about
my book. It's a lot of a lot of comments

(58:19):
are When I heard it was about Catholic aliens, I
thought it was a joke, and then I saw that
this guy played it straight the entire time and took
it really seriously, and I was into it. So it's like,
once he set the premises, people like to see, Like, yeah,
I suppose the aliens all the alien robots also would
be pretty religious as well. What's a religious robot look like?
That doesn't make any sense. I just got to read
more to figure it out.

Speaker 1 (58:40):
Yeah. Now, my next question is kind of hard to
ask because it really goes into some of the reveals
through the book, and I really wanted to escape that.
And the reason why is because there's some mind blowing
things that happen in this book that I feel you
kind of have to go into blind in order to

(59:01):
experience similar to what I experienced while reading it. So
the Aliens, they're Catholic, they became so through a fascinating
thread that I don't think we should spoil because of
what I was just talking about. However, I do think
it's essential to acknowledge that the Aliens, although they do

(59:22):
really try, they are not saintly by any means, and
fall into similar sins of humanity what we've been kind
of discussing throughout this entire show, and I was wondering
if you could maybe discuss a little bit about that,
because yes, yeah, ahead, I was just going to say,
this kind of contrasts against what those reviewers saying that

(59:44):
this is merely Christian fiction. This goes against that, It
pushes against that idea. So it's kind of weird to
me that people would just summon up as Christian fiction.

Speaker 2 (59:57):
Yeah, I think, you know, I told my story, and
I think I got a pretty weak tea unsophisticated, superficial
Christianity in my upbringing. I think that's a lot of
people did, and a lot of people in the culture
got that, whether they were Christian or not. Ned Flanders

(01:00:18):
is not a bad sort of example of of kind
of like the id of what the caricature of a
Christian is, you know, not Thomas Aquinas, who I consider
one of the most impressive thinkers in human history. Not
you know, all the people who had sophisticated understandings of

(01:00:40):
their faith and were willing to die for it. You know,
like some of the martyrs during the Holocausts. There were
people who who gave their life to free Jews who
were going to be killed in Auschwitz. There's a famous saint.
My wife's from families from Poland is a saint. There's
Saint Maximilian Kolbe and that's his story. I mean, like,

(01:01:01):
these aren't dumb people who are just kind of going
through things simply like that. So I got a lot
of the culture in my background. Like I'm very sympathetic
because that's what I got a lot of. But this
idea that Christianity makes everything okally docally and everything nice

(01:01:22):
and oh the fact that you're showing Christian sinning is
uh is somehow not consistent with the Christian tradition. You
should show them like everyone who's Christian should be perfect
because Christianity makes people perfect. It's like, no, no serious
people have ever said that. And frankly, the New Testament
doesn't show that, and none of the Bible shows that.

(01:01:44):
The Bible is filled with betrayal, lust, people who who
have literally seen miracles from God stopping to believe in God.
I mean, that's humanity.

Speaker 1 (01:01:54):
And if you.

Speaker 2 (01:01:55):
Don't write that, no one is going to buy into
this religion. Really, Christianity became a thing because it was
a potent, strong, intellectual, solid faith. And I don't know
what happened in the various centuries, but by the time
I came along, that had kind of left the picture,

(01:02:15):
and we kind of got the ned Flanders version of Christianity.
And you know, church is just a place to be nice,
and I think a lot of people fell away, I think,
and reasonably so if that's the Christianity that they're getting.
But I wanted to show what the real deal. And
if you're going to show the real deal, there isn't
one Christian I guess, besides Mary in the Christian tradition

(01:02:39):
who's not a sinner. So even if we get Catholic
aliens like you better believe they're flawed. Okay, These aren't
actual angels coming down from heaven. These are other creatures.
And it's fun. It's fun to play with that expectation
because I think some Catholic readers were probably like surprised
to see that. But it's also the readers who are

(01:03:00):
non religious and are just expecting kind of milk toast.
This is gonna be boring, nothing happens, no Christian sin.
Christians do evil things all the time. Christian scandal, which
is what they would be called the delta between their
purported beliefs and what they actually do, is the reason
people have not become Christian, deconverted from Christianity, and has

(01:03:24):
been plaguing the faith ever since Peter denied Christ three
times before the cock crows, which for those who don't know,
is the New Testament. I mean that's that's the first
pope of the Catholic Church is Saint Peter. So this
is an old story and I don't know why we
haven't been telling stories like that because it's always been
this rich layered tapestry, but we have it, and so

(01:03:47):
I wanted to show that warts and all, you are
not sanctified because of what you say. You're sanctified by
what you do and the aliens. That's honestly, that's kind
of a Catholic tape. But that's how I feel, and
I think that the the aliens are no different, and
so we have to depict that. And unfortunately, when you're

(01:04:10):
dealing with something as powerful as an alien race, you know,
like Independence Day is a great movie. You can see
the parallels to Independence Day in my book, but it's
so absurd. I mean, I think if there are aliens
and they have into you know, lack to travel, you know,
if a kid takes out his dad's spaceship for joy ride,

(01:04:31):
he could conquer the earth or depopulate it without much effort.
I mean, this is the asymmetry of power between aliens
capable of that sort of thing in humanity. So with
that kind of power and the ability to send all
sorts of terrible things can happen.

Speaker 1 (01:04:46):
Yeah. Well, I really loved the Aliens and your creation
of the aliens because I honestly I went in expecting
it to be that. You know, they got to be
perfect if they're also Catholic, How could they be otherwise?
Was my question? But you answered that question quite well
by showing their own you know, creatureness because you can't

(01:05:10):
say humanity because they're definitely not humans, but but they're
conscious beings. And because they're conscious beings, they have flaws,
like huge flaws in their line of thinking. And you
go into some dark territory with that, and this dark
territory is very reflective of what's going on today.

Speaker 2 (01:05:32):
Yeah, I think that, Uh, there's you know, there's a
lot of stuff that happens in the Middle East in
the book and I wrote that before What's what's going
on now? And people were like, how did you know
that was gonna happen? Like, I didn't really know it
was gonna happen.

Speaker 1 (01:05:46):
Well, if you think about it, it's been kind of
happening off and on for thousands of years.

Speaker 2 (01:05:50):
Yeah, So it's a lot of turmoil in that part
of the world. And frankly, there's a lot of turmoil
human history. I mean, the one thing, you know, going
back to future predictions in the years and six thousand AD,
we're gonna have war and we're gonna have killing, and
it's gonna be injustice and it's probably gonna be worse
than it is now. I can probably bank that bet

(01:06:11):
as well. Yeah, I just I the the I wanted.
I think you owe your audience your honest assessment. I mean,
what people are buying a ticket to when they read
my book is basically my imagination, my mind, and I

(01:06:31):
wanted to be you know, I set the parameters aliens
are coming. This is what they're like, you know, parameters
I probably aren't even written in the book. And then
I have to run that simulation and I run it
in front of all of you, and if you at
all think that I'm faking it, I'm I'm like getting
an answer in my simulation, but choosing not to put

(01:06:53):
that into my novel because I don't know it's in
politic or I don't like the way certain thing looks.
Readers detect that stuff so easily, and that's I think,
you know, there's that's why a lot of like people
are getting mad at some of the art that comes
out now. They feel like they're being lied to by
the creators, Like really, you expect me to believe that?
Like I don't believe that, Like what are you talking about?

(01:07:14):
So I just I took it as an important thing
that if Catholic aliens showed up, what do I think
would happen? Not it must happen. There's other wayss could go,
but uh, let's just say that it doesn't go well,
you know, I think you have to. There's like a
moment of there's an exhale when you realize the alien

(01:07:35):
ship wasn't come here to like eat all humans, you know,
and you're kind of going, oh, they just want to
go to church, Like that's what we were all worried
about for five years. But if you think that, you know, after,
you know, one day later, you start to realize, oh,
this is just setting up a whole bunch of additional
problems that we're all going to have to contend with.
And that's all president in my book. And if I

(01:07:56):
didn't show that, Jason, I think people would have thrown
the book away. It's like, I don't don't lie to me,
or don't be so unimaginative as a writer that you
can't foresee some of these conflicts that would essentially unfold.
So I wanted to show warts and all. And I
think that's you can only justify people reading your book
if you're honest with them. So that's what I.

Speaker 1 (01:08:16):
Wanted to look forward. And I think it's kind of
maybe even a responsibility on your part to do that
kind of thing as a science fiction author, because you're you.
As I mentioned before, there is science in this book,
and consciousness is a form of just the study of
consciousness and other consciousnesses. That's hard to say consciousness is

(01:08:41):
that could exist. You know, I'm sort of rambling here,
but I'm fascinated with consciousness and alien consciousness and what
consciousness is and all that. So the fact that you
had the aliens act the way they did despite what
they believe was just a fascinating aspect to me, and
it'll kind of blew my mind. I was like, Okay,

(01:09:01):
I'm hooked.

Speaker 2 (01:09:02):
This book is awesome, And did I get you at
the prologue because the basically my prologue functions as kind
of a window into a flash forward of a sense,
so it's pretty bracing. That's usually my filter if people
can get through the prologue and still want to continue reading.
I wanted to put my filter right at the very
front so people could decide if this was for them.

Speaker 1 (01:09:24):
I remember not knowing what to expect right as I mentioned,
I kind of had like an unfair preconception of what
this book was going to be. It's unfair to you,
but it was there regardless, And I remember listening to
that first little bit, the first couple of chapters, and
I was just like, Okay, there's something here, right, like

(01:09:44):
something really good here, And so I obviously I kept
going and I really enjoyed the experience.

Speaker 2 (01:09:51):
I'm really glad you did. What was your favorite part,
in vague terms, Jason, what part really had you like?

Speaker 1 (01:09:59):
Oh, okay, there's a few. Well, first of all, Virgil
just him, he was awesome. But also one of my
favorite parts was the reason why the Aliens are Catholic,
because you actually answer that question, and that was like
the first time I had to sit back and I
was like, Okay, wow, that's really interesting. Just imagine that

(01:10:24):
word actually happen, Like how would that affect the world?
And the ramifications of that revelation in the book itself
has some there's some really fascinating consequences because the reasons
that they have for believing in everything should you would
think would just make everyone suddenly convert to Catholicism or Catholicism, right,

(01:10:48):
But that's not what happens. In fact, it creates a
lot more tension and a lot more conflict than you
would ever expect, you know, just rationalizing it.

Speaker 2 (01:11:00):
Yeah, I'm so glad that was your action, because that's
how I feel too. That's my personal opinion. If the
reasons that the Aliens became Catholic were somehow replicated in
our world now, like for example, that the knowledge just
is entered in a different pathway, I don't think it
would go well. I say that as a Catholic, like

(01:11:23):
I don't think it would go well in society. There's
I don't want to give too much away, but that
was part of the reason I wanted to write the book.
In other interviews. If people want to see other interviews
where I do talk about spoilers, they can go to
they can go check those out on my website.

Speaker 1 (01:11:40):
I have a list of all my Okay, yeah, there
you go.

Speaker 2 (01:11:42):
But I think I think that book first, and then
go listen to those interviews. By by a few copies,
by copies for your whole street. Actually that would be
that's yeah, that's always good. I mean, who needs just
one copy of the book, I mean when you can
have a hundred. But uh, my website is Mr Am

(01:12:03):
I going to get this wrong? Mr Leonard author dot com.
So it's like mister Leonard author, m r H. Everyone
calls me mister Leonard, which is correct, but it's actually
my first two initials, m R. Leonard, author dot com.

Speaker 1 (01:12:17):
Yeah, and so go there and check out those because,
like I said, I don't really want to go into
the spoiler that spoilery territory, because my I think the
people who listen to this podcast would benefit from from
learning it as they go, going in as blind as
possible when it gets to the philosophical and even scientific

(01:12:39):
reasons for everything that's going on.

Speaker 2 (01:12:43):
Yeahs, you think this will be popular with your audience.
I mean there's there's actually a huge overlap in the
Ven diagram between horror fans and Catholic readers, believe it
or not, So it's not completely You've one person said
that to me. He's like, well, isn't like those two
different circles a science fiction fan and Catholic people, and

(01:13:05):
like there's probably barely any overlap. And I'm like, actually,
there's a shocking amount of overlap. I think this is
kind of a poorly understood thing about the publishing world
is yeah, yeah, a lot of people don't realize that
these interests tend to intersect. There's all sorts of people
out there that you maybe you wouldn't know it, but
one of the most famous Catholic podcasters they call him

(01:13:26):
a Joe Rogan of podcasting, Matt Frad. He's a huge
horror fan. I don't know. He reads a lot of
in the genre, but he actually writes it with his sister,
and he has he publishes hard short stories.

Speaker 1 (01:13:37):
So what's his name? I got a check list?

Speaker 2 (01:13:39):
Matt Frad.

Speaker 1 (01:13:40):
Matt.

Speaker 2 (01:13:41):
He doesn't do it on his main channel. I think
he has a separate channel for that, but like, you know,
just to show that the interests are there.

Speaker 1 (01:13:48):
What how do you spell his last name? Fr r
A D D. Okay, I had it almost right. I
was missing.

Speaker 2 (01:13:55):
His show's called Pints with the Quinas.

Speaker 1 (01:13:57):
Okay, that that sounds interesting, But yeah, you're right. You know,
because of the culture and that we live in, living
in the Western world, there's a lot of people who
listen to this show and watch the YouTube channel that
come from this background, like Catholicism and whatnot, so there
is an overlap. But and science fiction, because I know

(01:14:22):
a lot of my audience read science fiction. It's just
not something I usually cover. On my channel. But I'm
totally I'm totally open as obvious here to you know,
spreading my wings and investigating new avenues. So I think
this is kind of.

Speaker 2 (01:14:42):
Would you call this this is not the hardest sci fi?
I mean, I tried to be. There's some science stuff
in there. When Aleens arrive on Earth, that's kind of mainstream.
That's like Independence Day arrival, the day the Earth stood still.
It's like we've seen the Martians showing up since the
War of the World, and it's just another example of that.
It's just my take on it.

Speaker 1 (01:15:02):
And it's not like I never it's not hard science
fiction at all. You're not going to get confused by
the science that is in this book. But there is
a little bit of science because there kind of has
to be here and there.

Speaker 2 (01:15:13):
Right, Well, you've got to have some right, I mean
absolutely to make it feel real. It's like salt, you
got to put the right dose in.

Speaker 1 (01:15:19):
Yeah, but it's definitely like the first contact type story
of science fiction. And yeah, I've read a fair amount
of that. I really enjoy that genre.

Speaker 2 (01:15:33):
Yeah, I think it's interesting. And someone was talking about
there's I don't know if it's the origin of it.
But you know, you can imagine first contact between you know,
native peoples in the Western Hemisphere and Europeans, Like first
contact is kind of a part of human existence, Like
we're constantly encountering peoples across our history that we didn't

(01:15:54):
know about or understand and we have to figure that out.
So I think that's why I kind of peel sometimes
large than people who are just into like space operas
or hard sci fi that explore like a high level
scientific concepts in a fiction universe. So first Contact is
almost like a cheat. It's science fiction, but it's really
more closer to general fiction. But that I will continue

(01:16:15):
this story of Austin because by the time the book ends,
we're at like t plus fifty, like fifty days post arrival.
We're not you know that a lot happens in that time,
and the aliens are still here at the end. So
what happens to the world ten years later fifty and
so that's kind of things I'm going to start exploring

(01:16:36):
in the sex sequent works.

Speaker 1 (01:16:38):
So is that can you say that that's what you're
working on right now on?

Speaker 2 (01:16:43):
Yeah, I'm working on the sequel to this book. It'll
take place about ten to eleven years after the events,
and it will be following Austin DeSantis, the protagonist.

Speaker 1 (01:16:52):
Nice. That's that interests me too. Do you have any
idea is there any projection of when that might be
coming out?

Speaker 2 (01:17:02):
Speaking of writing habits from the beginning, that's something I
have to lock down a little bit better. I anticipate
a trilogy, and I think I want to write books
two and three simultaneously or basically write them together so
it coheres as a whole. So I'm really going to
be writing like two books and then publishing them in order,

(01:17:24):
so that could delay production, but not in twenty twenty five,
I can tell you that. But if you go to
my website, you can sign up for my newsletter and
that you'll be the first people to know if people
sign up at Mr Leonard author dot com.

Speaker 1 (01:17:38):
Awesome. Now, science fiction is it can be anyway an
idea driven genre. Pilgrims I think is big on ideas,
as we pretty well discussed here. Where can you tell
us where you're taking this series? Are there any other
big ideas that you're exploring without of course boiling anything.

Speaker 2 (01:18:04):
Well, it's it's probably the same idea, but just following
the ramifications through a little bit further. I mean it's
it's earth shattering. What if there were, you know, aliens
here that purport to have one religion. I mean people
are wondering what it's all the conflict when you purport
to have one religion, it's generally at the exclusion of

(01:18:26):
all the others. So just to I always said, I
don't know why my book was not written seventy years ago,
and why it's not a subgenre of books where it's
you know, Muslim aliens come to Earth, Jewish aliens come
to Earth, Buddhist aliens come to Earth, Hindu aliens. Like

(01:18:46):
why hasn't every you know, the uh, the Southern Methodists
Congregation comes to Earth. I don't know all the different things,
and there's like, you know, it's been played out, and
then you know, no one's even writing in that little
subgenre because back in the fifties and sixties they wrote
all the works of this kind and everyone's board of it.
It's not that interesting. I was shocked that, like, I

(01:19:08):
was one of the first to approach it. And it's
kind of like a man in a high castle. It's
a high that's film. K Dick's work where the Axis
wins World War two? And you know, what does the
world look like after that? Amazon turned that into a
series for I think like four seasons. So you know,
if Catholic aliens show up, what does that mean for

(01:19:28):
all the other world religions? What does that mean for
world societies? What does that mean for America? I mean,
we're not the most Catholic country. There's a lot of
Catholics in the United States, but we're not the most
Catholic country. Like, do we go down a few pegs?
Does it matter how many Catholics you have in a
country for power? What about all the other you know,
people who don't believe? And are they kind of nonchalant

(01:19:50):
about it? Are they upset? If you read my book,
you'll a lot of the events in this book have
major impacts about how people say. So I think there's
just more to hell and that that's the big idea
that I think I want to explore more.

Speaker 1 (01:20:04):
Jason excellent, Well, before we go, you already mentioned your
your website. Can you say what your website is again?
I'll put it in the show notes for everyone to
go and click on if they want, But can you
say what your your website's address is again and where

(01:20:25):
else they can find you online.

Speaker 2 (01:20:28):
Yes, so my website is Mr Leonard author dot com.
Leonard is l E O N A R D. You
can find my my website there. It has links to
all my socials including I'm probably most active on Twitter,
although not super active, but I'm there at Monks at
Monks on the Moon. I think it's there's an underscore

(01:20:51):
between the and moon, and I believe that that's my
Instagram handle it. Well, so you can follow me in
those places. Uh, you can sign up for my newsletter
on my website. And Uh, in terms of the book itself,
you can it's at it should be at all retailers.
It's it's I think it's published everywhere. It's not just

(01:21:12):
on Amazon currently. It's in the Kindle Unlimited, so if
you have Kindle Unlimited, you can get it that way. Uh.
And then there's the audio book, which is what Jason experienced.
And so for the audio production, I really wanted to
I wanted to do it at the next level I had.
I really I had this theory that I see everyone

(01:21:33):
walking around with AirPods in you know, whether it's the
teenager walking from school to the cop directing traffic to
the banker, like cleaning ladies, like everyone has AirPods in
all the time, including myself, and so much as being
consumed through audio that I just wanted to make the
audio product top notch. So I actually teamed up with
Jeff Hayes, who did a book called Dungeon Crawler Carl Uh.

(01:21:54):
He turned that into audio and that's been a smashing success.
They've you know, that's that's the that's a whole other
saga of just extreme extreme, just good fortune and well
deserved credit that's going in that direction. So the same
guy who did this hit Dungeon Crawler Carl, this hit series,
did my book, and I think the audio product's great,

(01:22:16):
and we actually put it online so you could listen
to my audiobook on YouTube if you'd like, by going
to sound Booth Theater their YouTube channel, they're called sound
Booth Theater, and you could listen to there's an interview
on the file when you click on it. There's an
interview in the beginning, or you can just skip ahead

(01:22:38):
to the book itself, and starting tomorrow, which will be
June ninth, twenty twenty five, the whole thing will have
been published online in four parts. So if you want
to listen to the book and you know you don't
want to send me money, that's fine, but I go
live it. You have to. If you don't buy the book,
you have to like it and share it. That's the deal.

(01:22:59):
But you can experience the audiobook if that's your flavor.
And that's what Jason listened to. And I love to
send people in that direction because I think they did
such a good job that it's probably my favorite format
of the book.

Speaker 1 (01:23:10):
Absolutely, I have to agree. I listened to a lot
of audiobooks and this one was definitely. The production of
it is like top tier. It's one of the most
entertaining audiobooks I've listened to. I'd put it up with
like Project Hail Mary.

Speaker 2 (01:23:31):
That's great, that's such a huge that.

Speaker 1 (01:23:33):
Audiobook, it was just absolutely beautiful, And this one is
so close to that. It's like just as Good's. It's
got a series, Like, Yeah, definitely go check it out
because the audiobook is fantastic. You're not going to be sorry.

Speaker 2 (01:23:48):
Yeah, And you don't have an excuse. It's on YouTube,
so you're already on on YouTube. You're listening to this listen,
so you can just click on a different thing after
we're done and go right into the book. You just
have to like it and share it. That's the only
thing I ask if you listen to it for free.

Speaker 1 (01:24:03):
All right, Well, thank you Michael for coming on and
talking about this book with me, and thank you for
you know, slinging some questions your way.

Speaker 2 (01:24:15):
Anytime, Jason, and thanks so much for taking a chance
and reading my book and then having me on your show.
I know it's not exactly in the middle of the
bell curve of what you normally do, but I really
enjoyed talking to you, and I'm really thrilled you got
to participate in the book, and thank you very much.
I really appreciate it.

Speaker 1 (01:24:37):
Well, there you have it, my conversation with m r Leonard.
Please email me at Weirdreads podcast at gmail dot com
and let me know what you thought. It was an
interesting conversation and an interesting experience challenging both what I
believe and hopefully challenging Mr Leonard what he believes. It

(01:25:01):
was just fun too, a fun discussion on what I
found to be an interesting book. I think if you're
if you're into reading science fiction of today, I think
despite the Christian aspect of this book, the Catholic Angle.
I think you might enjoy it. It has a lot

(01:25:23):
of things that we talked about, and if you listen
to this entire conversation then you'll know what I mean.
You may have picked out some of the things that
you would enjoy in reading this book, and I would
be interested in your thoughts what you thought, so shoot

(01:25:43):
me an email. And if you want to support the show,
you can do so very easily by just going to
Apple Podcasts, finding the show there and rating it and
giving me a review there, or giving Weird Reads a
review there. I would I would highly appreciate that that

(01:26:04):
that would make Apple more willing to spread the show
and to share it with other like minded people, and
that would help the show to grow. If you want
to help me with with with your money, your hard
earned money, you can join the Patreon. I have three
tiers there and they all offer some interesting selections like

(01:26:27):
ad free. You may have noticed I've been putting ads
on these lately, and the reason why I do that
is because it costs money to UH for me to
produce these and to put them out to you, and
I wanna I want to continue doing it and it
helps when people offer me their their change. Of course,

(01:26:50):
it's not necessary, but if you are willing to to
separate yourself with some of your hard earned money in
support of the show, I am gratefully appreciative. So head
on over to where what is the address? You know?
I wish I could remember these things, but go to

(01:27:12):
patreon dot com, forward slash, Jason underscore White, or just search.
I believe you can find it by searching weird reads
on the Patreon. If not, maybe just Jason White. And
that that wraps up the show for this week. Thank

(01:27:33):
you for listening. As a bit of an update, I
am going on a bit of a summer hiatus. I
you will see a few episodes here and there come
out during the summer. In fact, because this is a
bi weekly show, you may not notice too much of

(01:27:54):
an absence from me. But I am dealing with some
health issues and nothing serious, hopefully. And I've also you know,
summer changes for me. When summer comes along, my work
area becomes different. But I've organized myself. Hopefully it works

(01:28:15):
out where I will not only get extra time off
this year, but I won't have to do a lot
of those ten hour ruling shifts that I had to
do last year during the summer, so stay tuned for that.
If nothing changes on that aspect, then I might not
disappear at all. So thank you for listening, and until

(01:28:39):
next time, keep being weird my friends, because being weird
is very important these days. And stay safe and we'll
catch you guys on the next podcast. Li

All Episodes

056 - Pilgrims with M.R. Leonard

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

Dateline NBC

Stuff You Should Know

NFL Daily with Gregg Rosenthal

.css-15opob5{left:0;position:absolute;top:0.8rem;} All Episodes

.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}056 - Pilgrims with M.R. Leonard