Episode 171: Transcript

Episode: 171: "Interior Chinatown" Just Became a Very Weird TV Show (with Charles Yu)

Transcription by Alexander

  

Annalee:                      [00:00:00] So, Charlie Jane, have you ever written anything that's meta-fictional, like it's a thinly or not-so-thinly-disguised version of your own life or some aspect of who you are?

 

Charlie Jane:               [00:00:11] Yeah. I mean, my first novel, Choir Boy, is kind of a trippy, weird take on my own experience, singing in church choirs as a kid. But also, my novel that comes out in August, Lessons in Magic and Disaster, a lot of stuff from my real life kind of seeped into that book, even though it's not based on my life.

 

Annalee:                      [00:00:27] Yeah.

 

Charlie Jane:               [00:00:28] Like, I was dealing with my real-life mother and some grief and trauma and stuff. And so that all kind of found its way into the book. How about you?

 

Annalee:                      [00:00:37] Yeah. I also brought some aspects of my life into my novel, Future of Another Timeline. And it's set in the city where I grew up. There's a lot of places that the characters go that I went to as a teenager. And I actually went back and reread a bunch of my diaries from high school and kind of remind myself about where I was mentally at that age and what kinds of things I was thinking about.

                                    [00:01:08] I was actually surprised at how nerdy I already was at that age. And of course, I incorporated into it. There's a lot of stuff in that book about suicide. And my dad committed suicide many years ago. And so that was part of what I was kind of working through in that book.

 

Charlie Jane:               [00:01:23] So yeah, I mean, meta-fiction can be really powerful. I feel like there's a way that we can take real-life stuff and process it through fiction. And sometimes acknowledging that you're doing that can be really great.

                                    [00:01:36] I feel like meta-fiction sometimes gets a bad rap because people think of sort of 90s PoMo stuff that got very obsessed with how clever it was. But there's also a way to do it that is just emotional and honest and kind of holding yourself at a distance while also holding yourself close and getting to kind of play with that tension between those two versions of yourself. I don't know. I think there's a lot that you can do there that's really exciting.

 

Annalee:                      [00:02:00] Yeah, I mean, I think it's interesting that both of us kind of talked about dealing with trauma through meta-fiction. And I think like some of the most classic examples of meta-fiction, like Kathy Acker's work, Blood and Guts in High School, which I think a lot of people of our generation read in high school.

 

Charlie Jane:               [00:02:18] I was obsessed with that book.

 

Annalee:                      [00:02:19] Yeah. And like one of the things that she does and a lot of other meta-fictional writers do is they'll have characters that have the name of the author. And so it kind of invites you to think you're reading about them. But at the same time, like you said, there's a distance because, of course, these are characters who are going through things that human beings can't go through, like either because it's fantastical or just really extreme. Or it's just, you know, it's a way of kind of rewriting your own past or like highlighting parts of your past and making them more universal.

                                    [00:02:52] And it just feels like right now, especially, that this is something that's super important because we're at a moment in the United States where like a lot of stories about our lives are going to be erased. You know, there's a lot of very overt efforts to erase stories about women, about people of color, about other marginalized groups, about queer people.

                                    [00:03:18] And I'm feeling right now like, yeah, I want people to start doing some meta-fiction again, because it's a way of memorializing who we are, but doing it in this sneaky way where people can't quite claim that you're talking about a real person. So it's kind of fictionalized. So it's like, it's one of those things that maybe can sneak under the censors, sneak around people's efforts to suppress writing.

 

Charlie Jane:               [00:03:47] I hadn't thought about it that way, but that's so powerful.

 

Annalee:                      [00:03:50] Well, you are listening to Our Opinions Are Correct, the podcast that turns meta-fiction into science fiction and then turns that into gold.

                                    [00:04:00] I am Annalee Newitz. I'm the author of the recent book Stories Are Weapons: Psychological Warfare and the American Mind.

 

Charlie Jane:               [00:04:10] I'm Charlie Jane Anders. I already mentioned my book that's coming out in August, Lessons in Magic and Disaster.

 

Annalee:                      [00:04:17] That's so good. I can't wait for everyone to have that book jammed into their brains.

                                    [00:04:23] And this week, we are super excited to have a segment from one of our new contributing hosts. Remember how we told you a couple weeks ago that thanks to your contributions on Patreon and your support, we can now afford to pay contributors to come in and host segments?

                                    [00:04:39] Well, the dream is a reality because Nivair H. Gabriel is joining us as a co-host. This week, we're talking about representation and what's happening to it in our culture right now.

                                    [00:04:51] First up, we'll be talking to Charles Yu, author of the slipstream novel Interior Chinatown, which he recently turned into an incredible television series. He's going to tell us about what it's like to write for books and TV and how he adapted a meta-fictional book into a meta-fictional show.

                                    [00:05:09] And then we'll hear from contributing host Nivair about something we've had a lot of requests about: books about science for kids, specifically books about going into space and who gets to steer those rocket ships.

                                    [00:05:23] Also on our mini episode next week, we'll be talking about The Equalizer, our new favorite show. With Queen Latifah as the Equalizer, it now has the first three seasons streaming on Netflix and we're going to break it down for you.

                                    [00:05:38] All right, here's the show.

[00:05:40] [OOAC theme plays. Science fictiony synth noises over an energetic, jazzy drum line.]

 

Annalee:                      [00:06:11] Charles Yu won the National Book Award for his novel Interior Chinatown and then went on to be the show-runner of the Hulu TV series based on it. He's also the author of one of my favorite novels, How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe, and has worked as a writer on several TV shows, including Westworld. Welcome, Charlie.

 

Charles:                       [00:06:30] Thanks, Annalee.

 

Annalee:                      [00:06:31] So we both, Charlie, Jane, and I just finished watching Interior Chinatown, which was awesome.

 

Charlie Jane:               [00:06:38] Loved it.

 

Charles:                       [00:06:39] Thank you so much.

 

Annalee:                      [00:06:39] Yeah, it was really, anyway, it was a highlight of the year. And one of the many things that was fascinating about it is that you adapted a meta-fictional novel about writing into a meta-fictional TV show about making a TV show. So I'm just wondering, how did that process go? Like, how did you think about making that transition?

 

Charles:                       [00:07:00] Yeah, the process was painful. I'm not going to lie. I like the way you framed it because it is very heady and odd to do first the book and then to be the person who adapts it that way.

 

Annalee:                      [00:07:16] Well, especially a book about making a show. And then it's like, yeah, like the act itself feels very meta-fictional.

 

Charles:                       [00:07:22] It is. I mean, I guess just to set up for anyone who's not familiar with the book even, it's, you know, the book is written from the point of view of Willis, Willis Wu, who is a background character. He's generic Asian man number three. And in his world, he lives in a kind of police procedural, which is called Black and White. If you, you know, have watched Law and Order or CSI, you sort of have the flavor of what this is. But on that show, Willis really doesn't have any kind of speaking parts or story-line. He's just a, you know, a little bit like Free Guy. I did write the book before Free Guy came out.

 

Annalee:                      [00:07:58] Yeah, he's like an NPC, but like in a show. Yeah.

 

Charles:                       [00:08:00] Exactly. I also have a story called NPC that I wrote 12 years ago. So I'm like, I feel like people might think I'm just plagiarizing Free Guy, but I'm not.

                                    [00:08:09] But yeah. So in this book, Willis basically is a lens or a metaphor through which to view his experience, you know, I think maybe in a larger sense, experience of Asian Americans or, you know, certain marginalized groups that might feel like they don't have a place in a kind of wider narrative.

                                    [00:08:27] And then I got the chance to show run and adapt the Hulu version of it. And that meant figuring out how to do that on screen, you know, in 10 episodes instead of one book. And so that was the first challenge was: how do you crack the idea? How do you translate the trick that the book relies on, which is that Willis lives in kind of both worlds, that what you're watching is a guy who's off screen watching the action, but 10 feet from the action, a little bit like, you know, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. I think it's, how do you represent that? Because your mind's eye is the best cinematographer of all time, right?

 

Annalee:                      [00:09:06] Yeah.

 

Charles:                       [00:09:07] As good as our cinematographers are, like it's, you still have to explain to people where to put the camera and what the shot is.

 

Charlie Jane:               [00:09:13] Yeah. One thing I loved about the show was all the subplots that kind of deal with the question of identity and like being in a story in different ways. Like the subplot about Willis' mom becoming a realtor and helping to gentrify her neighborhood. And Fatty having like his whole arc from becoming like the rude waiter and creating his own hot sauce.

 

Annalee:                      [00:09:33] Oh my god, I love Fatty so much.

 

Charlie Jane:               [00:09:36] Those were so great. And like they added so many layers to the story. Was there a version of the show where you did more of like that device that's in the book where we see the script pages, like, you know, cause like the, the, obviously the, the credits are done like that. Like we see interiors being typed, but was there a version where we actually could see the script on the screen as people were doing stuff and talking?

 

Charles:                       [00:09:56] Like in the development of it, did we ever kind of consider that?

 

Annalee:                      [00:09:59] Yeah.

 

Charles:                       [00:10:00] Yes, is the answer. I think, for a lot of reasons, we kind of went away from that kind of visual device, but it was tempting. And, and I definitely explored that because I, you know, I mean, you just called out two story-lines that I really love.

                                    [00:10:17] Um, you know, Lily who plays Willis' mom. Willis is played by Jimmy O. Yang, I should say. And Lily is played by Diana Lin, who was in The Farewell and a bunch of other things. And Fatty is played by Ronnie Chieng.

                                    [00:10:27] And, you know, it's, it was really fun to think about not just their story-lines, but the fact that these actors kind of bring, you know, especially with the case of Jimmy and Ronnie bring their own outside persona into it. So there's this kind of meta extra layer to it.

                                    [00:10:42] And the idea of script pages or bringing that level into it was tempting, but I couldn't figure out quite, you know, how to do it.

 

Annalee:                      [00:10:50] Yeah. We, when we were watching it, we were talking a lot about the devices that you guys chose to use to kind of signal to the viewer that we're moving from like Willis’ POV as a waiter in the, in the restaurant. And then suddenly, you know, the show comes in – Black and White – and the lighting changes. There's a completely different vibe. I feel like the music changes too. And it signals to us at first it was really subtle, but it's sort of signaling like now we're inside the show.

                                    [00:11:21] I'm just curious about how you guys came up with that idea. Like how you, you got away from like showing script pages and into like, okay, we're going to signal this vibe shift basically.

 

Charles:                       [00:11:30] Yeah. Both of you are basically circling the exact thing that kind of happened. The reason why we went from script pages to that was in the book, I literally use the margins and white space and a screenplay format, right. As sort of formal way to signal to the reader, “Now you're in the story. Now you're not in the story,” you know, and using that kind of 2d space helped a lot. Yeah. And so the question was, what's the, analogous toolbox or like the toys to play with were lighting and music, you know, I think those are the two big ones sound even a little bit.

                                    [00:12:08] The sound is, you know, in theory, it's, it should be cleaner in the cop show and a bit more ambient and warm in Willis's world. Same with colors. It's colder and bluer in the procedural warm.

                                    [00:12:23] And the music, you know, with these amazing composers, Mark Mothersbaugh, who's Devo, and really amazing show composer as well, and Nick Lee. And they basically wrote two different scores, right? They wrote a score for Willis's world and for the cop show. And then the assignment was to blend those scores together more and more throughout the season.

 

Charlie Jane:               [00:12:43] Oh my gosh.

 

Annalee:                      [00:12:44] So interesting. That's part of what's happening is that we're seeing it kind of blend. I just had one follow-up question, which is, and this was also something that Charlie and I were talking about a lot as we were watching. How many genres or sub-genres do you feel like are active in the show? And did you track them? Because I feel like at first we just have Black and White, which is clearly like an NCIS type show. But then we move into something that's more like, you know, like Dark Winds or like a kind of HBO fancy elevated detective show. And then there's kind of other shows. Like how many other shows are there in this show?

 

Charles:                       [00:13:20] I'm curious about what other shows. I mean, I'll tell you the answer, but you hit on the two main ones for sure. Yeah. It's, it goes from the general idea was that we start in a very broadcast network procedural and say CBS kind of flavor ABC, you know, and then the HBO comp that I, we talked about this writers and on set was a True Detective, especially season one.

 

Annalee:                      [00:13:47] Yeah. I definitely saw the True Detective vibe. I had just been watching Dark Winds and that also has the same thing of like guys in a car driving down a long beautiful highway, you know?

 

Charles:                       [00:13:59] And then the question was what happens. So, so throughout the season involves, because as Willis' role gets bigger, you know, he advances on this kind of career ladder. The show itself is serialized, right? The cop show, which used to be week to week episodic, all of a sudden finds itself in a kind of The Killing or True Detective where it's an entire season for one case, which is the case of Willis' brother.

                                    [00:14:27] So the, the format of the cop show evolves and by the end, it is this kind of collision of two different worlds because the boundary between, or I would say, I should say the boundaries between the cop show and whatever's outside of it have dissolved to the point where it's just one show, which is the show you're watching on Hulu.

 

Annalee:                      [00:14:47] Right.

 

Charles:                       [00:14:47] So it kind of comes all over.

 

Annalee:                      [00:14:48] Yeah. I definitely, in answer to your question, I definitely kept imagining that all of the scenes in the restaurant and the stuff that's happening to Fatty as he becomes like a reluctant influencer. To me, that was like an indie comedy and that like we would go back into the indie comedy world and like kind of dip into that a little bit.

 

Charles:                       [00:15:09] Yeah. Indie comedy is perfect. Yeah, totally. And then of course there's a, there's some commercials sprinkled in there.

 

Annalee:                      [00:15:14] Yeah, that was great.

 

Charlie Jane:               [00:15:15] The commercials were amazing. That was so wild. We talked a lot about like, as we were watching it, the lighting changes and the sound changes and everything, and how you can kind of feel the, the tone shift at times. And like, I was wondering if there were things that influenced you there, like I thought about Kevin Can F**k Himself. Annalee definitely thought about WandaVision and also Annalee sort of thought about The French Lieutenant's Woman, which is kind of a movie about making movies. Were any of those influences or were there other things that were influences on how you kind of decided to do this, like visually and orally?

 

Charles:                       [00:15:51] Kevin Can F**k Himself, I was aware of as we were developing and I was a little bit like, Oh, wow, they, you know, kind of already got there in some ways. But you know, this show is obviously so different, but it was helpful as a way to think about things. And definitely, I think, well, cop shows is a very strong influence, of course, Law and Order specifically.

                                    [00:16:11] WandaVision, yeah, was very cool in how it felt like it was, you know, progressed through sort of a history of TV in some ways. And, or at least was, you know, playing episode to episode with genres.

                                    [00:16:23] I think a couple other things that maybe not as directly, but certainly I love and are influential to me are Atlanta, you know, in the way that it could take something on in an episode and then shift radically into something else. And yet you should have an overall arc, you know, for the characters.

                                    [00:16:43] I love both Fleabag and Search Party, I think just in terms of the freedom to play. Well, Fleabag, I think the freedom to play with form and breaking fourth wall. I don't think we break the fourth wall in the way Fleabag does. Not quite, but there's playing with walls in ours and Search Party just in terms of the tonal. I don't know that our show approaches that, but in terms of the mix of the kind of black comedy, and yet it always feels so sharp and specific in what it wants to be. I just really love that.

 

Annalee:                      [00:17:13] I read this really moving interview with Jimmy O. Yang, where he was talking about how this role had finally let him play something other than a stereotype. And maybe for the first time in his career. And I was wondering, did you talk to him about that? Was that part of why you guys wanted to cast him was because he'd always played these, you know, like in Silicon Valley, it's just this like wretched stereotype that he has to play.

 

Charles:                       [00:17:40] We did talk about it. Yeah, from the beginning. I think it really meant a lot to him and to me to see this character as someone who you honestly can't imagine as a leading man. I think Jimmy has a lot of swagger internally and externally. He carries it in his personal. But I think Willis starts in a place of a bit less confidence.

                                    [00:18:02] But yeah, Jimmy's own experience growing up as an immigrant, you know, he's a first generation American. He came when he was a teenager and then his experience in the industry, which is kind of part of his own, you know, I mean, it's a little bit insidery, but I think people that know of him, you know, you kind of know his story, which was that he came up on Silicon Valley, that there was this breakthrough and it was a, you know, some controversy around the accent and the role itself.

                                    [00:18:29] And he's broken down some barriers himself. And he's part of a cohort that I think has broken down barriers. I mean, I would say progress has happened quickly enough that even from the time I started developing the show to the time it came out, it felt a little bit like, I don't want to say we sort of missed a window, but in a way, it's like some of the things that were going on, even when I was writing the book, when I started the book was over 10 years ago in terms of like lack of representation. I don't know. I don't know that we're in the same place we were.

                                    [00:19:01] So I think what we also talked about is how do you tell a story that still feels relevant today in 2024, 2025. So, but yeah, I think it meant a lot to both of us for him to play this role.

 

Charlie Jane:               [00:19:14] I'm a sucker for stories about a person being trapped in a narrative. Like I feel like that's always super powerful. And one thing I love about Interior Chinatown is it's not just Willis who sort of realizes that it's like a lot of the characters one way or the other are trapped in either like Miles and Turner and Green kind of realize that they're trapped in a narrative, but also Willis' mom in a different way. And even Fatty is kind of trapped in a role that he didn't choose. And like, can you talk about expanding that motif outward to kind of encompass all of the characters rather than keeping it confined to just Willis, which I feel like maybe it does a little bit more in the book.

 

Charles:                       [00:19:52] Yeah, I think it's something as writers we really wanted to hit on that every one of the main characters, you know, and quite a few of the secondary characters have a journey somewhat parallel to Willis in that they're trapped in roles, you know, sometimes of their own making, sometimes externally imposed on them.

                                    [00:20:13] And we see Fatty kind of adopt this mean waiter persona and then become a kind of mini celebrity and then businessman and sort of he's sort of playing at Willis too, right? Willis goes AWOL, so Fatty kind of steps up in his family and Lily herself as well.

                                    [00:20:32] So and then I think the Green and Turner as these kind of tragic comic cops stuck in a perpetual sort of never ending franchise. It's like it looks pretty on the surface, but the kind of reality of the existence of doing the same thing forever, just something really fun to write. So yeah, I think the idea that they all… I'm a sucker for those narratives, too, you know, like The Matrix and, you know, The Game – and I'm talking about the David Fincher movie from 1997 or so – Truman Show.

                                    [00:21:05] And I think Charlie Kaufman's adaptation was also helpful in that sense in terms of, you know, trying to figure out how someone can be trapped in a story somewhat of their own making, I guess. So yeah, it was really fun that because I think ultimately what the story is about is I mean, yes, it's very much about Asian American sort of psychology.

                                    [00:21:26] But in a broader sense, and I think this is what your question goes to is like, it's about the roles that anybody can play, you know, regardless of what sort of race, sex, gender, you know, like they are the idea of how we perform ourselves and what we are underneath that kind of at our deepest sense who we are. And that's really what it wants to be, I think, is real connection and authenticity.

 

Annalee:                      [00:21:52] One of the things that I kept thinking about in the show is what happens to Willis is that he starts, as you said, I mean, he starts as like this background character and then he slowly like works his way up until he's in kind of a different genre and he's the star of the show. And that's where he kind of winds up. He's in the foreground, but he's still kind of being typecast. Like he's still in this really confining role. And I wondered if you could maybe talk a little bit about that.

                                    [00:22:21] Like, do you think that, you know, there really is room to kind of have, you know, marginalized characters break out of those roles? Or is it that we're just trying to make those roles more central? Do you know what I mean? Like more centered. So it's like, you can't really play a different role, but at least you can be the star of the show.

 

Charles:                       [00:22:41] Right. It's a, I've had this question come up too, sometimes in the, in the sense of like people will say, “well, you're kind of poking at stereotypes, but you're also trafficking in them.” Like “do you have Kung Fu in your show?”

 

Annalee:                      [00:22:56] That's true. Yeah. Which I kind of loved.

 

Charles:                       [00:23:01] Like it's, it's ironic Kung Fu. Okay. It's deconstructed Kung Fu.

 

Annalee:                      [00:23:05] But also I liked that he did genuinely get to be a badass and kick people around. So there was definitely some authentic excitement there.

 

Charles:                       [00:23:14] Yeah. I know. I mean, who wouldn't want to watch like stand-up comics do martial arts?

 

Annalee:                      [00:23:20] Yeah, for sure. I was just, I mean, honestly, the whole time I was just happy that Jimmy Yang was like doing all that stuff. Like he's just great. And he's so like magnetic when he's not being forced to just do one terrible comedy role, but that's a side.

                                    [00:23:33] So yeah. So what do you think? Do you think we are to a certain extent just stuck with the idea of, well, I'm still stuck in a role, but at least I can be in charge kind of thing.

 

Charles:                       [00:23:42] I think you're hitting on something really that yes, you know, to me, I feel like that's a kind of invisible trap of like surface representation or, and I'm not pointing fingers or including out myself. I think I'm just saying there's a genuine question of: where are we on the road to, like true kind of, I want to say color blindness? But that's not what I mean. I mean, like where are we on the road to just a world where anybody could be cast as anything, you know, and whether or not that's right.

                                    [00:24:14] Anyway, I mean, there's certainly some stories where of course you're only going to cast people that match the part, but in terms of yeah, exploding kind of structures or barriers that have existed for a long time and that continue to limit the way we see someone like Willis, you know.

                                    [00:24:32] Have we really made progress or have we made as much as, you know, it appears or are people still for the most part kind of typecast? You know, I don't know. That's a good question. I don't have an answer to really. Sorry.

 

Charlie Jane:               [00:24:46] Yeah. No, thanks so much for joining us. So where can people find you online and what's next for you?

 

Charles:                       [00:24:51] You cannot find me… I’m on LinkedIn.

 

Annalee:                      [00:24:55] Amazing. Totally legit.

 

Charles:                       [00:24:59] I'm technically on X or Twitter or whatever. I mean, but if someone really wanted to reach out, feel free to message me on either one of those or offer me a job on LinkedIn. I don't know.

 

Annalee:                      [00:25:08] What are you working on right now or what's coming up next?

 

Charles:                       [00:25:11] A couple of things. Three sci-fi things that I can't talk to you about. Yeah.

 

Annalee:                      [00:25:15] Awesome.

 

Charles:                       [00:25:16] Yeah. Going back to my roots. But yeah, in various stages of development. So not announced yet, but some for TV, some for film. And if they come to fruition, I hope I get invited back to talk to you about them.

 

Annalee:                      [00:25:28] Yeah. Well, you can bet on it. Yeah. I'm excited to see more of your work on screen. Awesome. Yeah. Thanks again for joining us. We'll be looking out for more stuff from you in the future.

 

Charles:                       [00:25:40] Thank you. Thank you both.

[00:25:42] OOAC session break music, a quick little synth bwoop bwoo.

 

Annalee:                      [00:25:44] And by the way, did you know that this podcast is entirely independent? That’s right. We are no longer owned by the Weyland-Yutani Corporation. We are just on our own, funded by you – our listeners – through Patreon. So if you become a patron, you're making this podcast happen. You're helping us to pay cool contributors like Nivair Gabriel, who you're about to hear from.

                                    [00:26:10] You're also helping us to hone our correct opinions and pay for this podcast to exist. Plus, if you support us on Patreon, you get a really awesome mini episode every other week where we dive deep into all kinds of topics and get a little out of pocket sometimes.

                                    [00:26:29] Plus, you also get access to our Discord server where we hang out all the time. So think about it. All that could be yours for just a few bucks a month. Anything you give from $5 to $20 goes right back into making our opinions even more correct.

                                    [00:26:44] You can find us at patreon.com/ouropinionsarecorrect.

[00:26:49] OOAC session break music, a quick little synth bwoop bwoo.

 

Charlie Jane:               [00:26:52] Books can play a super important role in helping kids to become the next generation of space nerds. This is so important. Our new contributing host, Nivair H. Gabriel is the perfect person to talk about this.

                                    [00:27:04] She trained as an aerospace engineer and now she works in children's publishing. She's currently building the inaugural list for a new publisher called Scattered Light Press. And she also reviews children's and teens books for Kirkus Reviews. She's here to talk to us about books about space for kids. The good and the, well, let's just say the not super well facts checked. It's so great to have you here with us, Nivair.

 

Nivair:                         [00:27:30] Thank you. I'm really happy to be here. My interest in children's books actually comes from my own experience as a young aerospace nerd. A Wrinkle in Time, which actually came out seven and a half years before Apollo 11 landed, left a huge impression on me when I was growing up in the 90s, because it felt like such a fantastical take on space travel.

                                    [00:27:55] Even though Madeleine L’Engel called it science fiction, and it certainly is, it also has the three Mrs. W characters who are obviously witches.

 

Charlie Jane:               [00:28:04] Yeah.

 

Nivair:                         [00:28:04] There is a sense of wonder and ineffability. And of course, what saves the day is not research or cleverness, but love.

 

Charlie Jane:               [00:28:13] Yeah, I feel like children's books played an underrated role in getting kids interested in space. Like, you know, you have the Space Cat books that are super popular in the 60s. A lot of people were obsessed with The Little Prince, which is like fantasy philosophy. I personally read like that Tintin thing where they go to the moon, which was also published a long time before the actual moon landing. A lot of it is like kind of philosophy alongside space travel.

 

Nivair:                         [00:28:38] Yeah, yeah. A Wrinkle in Time was definitely like that, like philosophical, even religious. I think that's another reason it feels like fantasy, because there's this fundamental benevolence to the universe. But it also had just enough actual science to give it verisimilitude. And you definitely can't say a book where the mom uses a Bunsen burner in her home lab isn't full of appreciation for science and scientists.

 

Annalee:                      [00:29:03] Yes, I love that.

 

Charlie Jane:               [00:29:05] That book is where I learned about mitochondria. No lie. Freaking great book. I love it. And, you know, the space race is over. The space age is kind of over. Are there kids books that are doing that same thing now, though, of trying to get little kids interested in space and space exploration?

 

Nivair:                         [00:29:23] Yeah, I think there's definitely still fascination and like a fairy tale view of space – kind of the fantasy of space travel. One of my favorite picture books is Interstellar Cinderella by Deborah Underwood and Meg Hunt, which also features a space prince who's a young boy of color.

                                    [00:29:42] So instead of sleeping in ashes, this Cinderella is covered in engine grease because she's a mechanic. And it's a rhyming picture book, which is really hard to do well. I'll read you a little verse from it.

                                    [00:29:54] “Once upon a planetoid, amid her tools and sprockets, a girl named Cinderella dreamed of fixing fancy rockets. She fixed the robot dishwashers and zoom-brooms in her care, but late each night, she snuck away to study ship repair.”

 

Charlie Jane:               [00:30:11] Oh, my God, I love that so much. And I can see the fantasy part, but I also see the wonder of space travel.

 

Annalee:                      [00:30:17] Yeah.

 

Nivair:                         [00:30:18] Yeah, totally. And I think it can be hard to balance that, especially in children's books where more than any other genre, they're generally intended to be educational.

                                    [00:30:30] But that's tricky, especially when it comes to science, because publishers aren't required to fact check their books and they often don't because of the additional cost. I've frequently been the only person with science or technology or engineering background working on books about STEM. And unfortunately, I've just as frequently been denied the chance to correct errors in them.

                                    [00:30:55] Let's just say don't trust any aeronautical explanation of lift that you read about in a kid’s book. They have not had an engineer look that over.

                                    [00:31:05] I really loved this book I saw recently, a picture book called Astronaut Training, because it had this charming art and it had a family of color traveling in space. But then there was this quote unquote educational end matter that was trying to be factual. And it had some really basic errors about gravity and rockets that I thought were either going to disappoint or confuse a child reader who was really interested in those things.

 

Charlie Jane:               [00:31:30] Wow, yeah, that's really tough. Are there any examples of books that feature really accurate, like well researched science, but still are kind of entertaining for kids?

 

Nivair:                         [00:31:40] Yeah, I think they're definitely good examples. Like another one of my favorite picture books is Listening to the Stars by Jodie Parachini and Alexandra Badiu. It has really gorgeous, gorgeous art. There's a showstopping spread with the radio telescope, I think either in like a sunrise or sunset. And it has really great descriptions of pulsars that show the author really did her research.

                                    [00:32:07] I like this bit where she says, “Stars don't last forever. When they die, stars explode. What's left behind collapses, shrinking into something small and very heavy. It spins faster and faster as it shrinks, just like figure skaters when they tuck their arms in tight. This is a neutron star.”

 

Annalee:                      [00:32:29] Oh, that's so cool. That's actually I mean, you could have that in an adult book as a description of a neutron star. Like that's really good.

 

Nivair:                         [00:32:35] Yeah.

 

Annalee:                      [00:32:36] Like explaining the way that it's like when a figure skater pulls in their arms, like that's very vivid and like helps people like get why this would be shrinking, basically. It's really cool.

 

Nivair:                         [00:32:48] Right. That's so key. Yeah, and I agree. I was raised by two MIT PhDs. And my mom always said whenever she wanted to learn about something, she would start with a kid's book. So I think that's like the best example of children's nonfiction.

                                    [00:33:02] And then there are also really great examples of fiction for kids that presents science in a really cool way and also shows child protagonists having agency and solving problems in space. One example of that that I really like is a middle grade novel, Jillian vs. Parasite Planet by Nicole Korner-Stace. It's such a fascinating book. So much of it is just Jillian trying to survive on her own on this strange planet, but I couldn't put it down.

 

Charlie Jane:               [00:33:30] Yeah, I love the notion of like giving kids like a lot of agency and like kind of letting themselves imagine themselves being explorers.

 

Nivair:                         [00:33:38] Yeah, totally. I think a lot of kids books are about a lone protagonist, but surviving in space is really a collective enterprise. Oh, yeah. Another one of my favorites is actually a book I was lucky enough to get to edit. Andrea J. Loney's chapter book series, Abby in Orbit. The first one is called Blast Off. And it really exemplifies the future Star Trek fans dream of where a few decades from now at the International Space Station actually houses several hundred scientists and their families all doing research about problems that will help humanity to solve. And Abby is this big-hearted Afro Latina third grader who is full of enthusiasm. But of course, she can also be a bit spacey. Ha ha.

 

Charlie Jane:               [00:34:30] Nice. So, you know, I mean, the goal here, I think, is really to help kids kind of fall in love with space travel the way books helped us fall in love with space travel when we were kids. How do you do that in a way that will kind of appeal to kids?

 

Nivair:                         [00:34:43] Yeah, that's interesting, because there are definitely things that are not glamorous at all about space travel. And falling in love with the reality can be very different from the fantasy. I think probably the most difficult part of working on the Abby books was the art. And I think the art director, Afalandra, and the illustrator, Fuuji Takashi, did an amazing job doing an incredibly difficult thing because I think I drove them both crazy with all my corrections because basically working in micro-gravity, like not having an earth gravity just changes all of the ways that we think about visual composition.

                                    [00:35:28] So like characters couldn’t stand on the floor, their hair and clothes can’t naturally hang down. And then especially there's a part where Abby does a spacewalk. And I said under no circumstances would the ISS let kids outside without being attached to tethers. And they had to figure out a way to make all the realistic stuff look visually stunning. And I think it was incredible the way they really worked to address all those realistic things while also breathing the most fantastic futuristic life into Andrea's stories.

 

Charlie Jane:               [00:36:03] So you already mentioned one nonfiction book, Listening to the Stars. Are there other kind of nonfiction books for kids? Like if people want their kids to like learn the real facts of space, are there other books you recommend?

 

Nivair:                         [00:36:14] Yeah, I have a couple classic ones that I like to recommend. First, definitely the Young Readers edition of Margot Lee Shetterly's Hidden Figures. The Young Readers edition was actually edited by a former colleague of mine.

                                    [00:36:29] That book left a huge impression on me because I'd already had my BS in aerospace engineering from MIT for like six years before that book came out. I couldn't believe I had never heard of any of these women's contributions because I so often felt like I didn't belong in the white cis male military dominated world of aerospace. But I was already like well into my two master's degrees in children's lit that I discovered Margot Lee Shetterly's book and realized that wasn't true.

 

Charlie Jane:               [00:37:01] That's amazing.

 

Nivair:                         [00:37:03] Yeah. And then another one as part of my first master's thesis, I worked with the editor of Almost Astronauts by Tanya Lee Stone. And that was another one that really was a huge it, you know, smacked me with a bunch of realizations. It's a middle grade nonfiction book that shared amazing stories about the Mercury 13, who are a group of women who train for spaceflight.

                                    [00:37:27] I learned among many other things that Jerrie Cobb actually outperformed John Glenn by a large margin on many of the astronaut tests. And it really made me wonder if his testifying against female astronauts in Congress probably had more to do with his own envy and insecurity than any rational justification to bar women from space travel.

 

Annalee:                      [00:37:49] Oh, man.

 

Charlie Jane:               [00:37:50] Yeah.

 

Annalee:                      [00:37:51] Makes me think of an alternate timeline where those women could have been given a chance to really go out there early on.

 

Charlie Jane:               [00:37:57] Yeah. [crosstalk] has done some great stuff with that. But tell us about some more great nonfiction for kids. I'm loving this.

 

Nivair:                         [00:38:05] Yeah, there's some really good stuff. And especially for someone like me who didn't read enough of it growing up, I've enjoyed discovering it in adulthood. I also really liked Amy Cherrix's In the Shadow of the Moon. That's also a middle grade nonfiction and told the biographies of Wernher von Braun, the Nazi scientist whom America poached to design rockets, and Sergei Korolev, who was the leading rocket scientist in the Soviet Union.

                                    [00:38:32] So just like in Almost Astronauts, it reproduced some primary sources that hadn't been published before, including a chilling calculation of von Braun's about the number of emaciated prison laborers he would need to build his technology. It also talked about how Stalin tortured Korolev in order to get him to do his work. It made me think a lot about the responsibility we have to use our skills and talents to uphold human values. And also brought to mind some uncomfortable memories of one or two former classmates I had who would definitely facilitate human suffering if it meant they got to earn money for their favorite hobby.

 

Charlie Jane:               [00:39:18] Yeah, I mean, it's amazing that kids are learning about this, but it makes me really upset that adults aren't learning more about this stuff. Like, I feel like the fact that this is showing up in kids' books but, you know, not in adults' books makes me really sad.

 

Nivair:                         [00:39:31] Yeah, I think that's why also, you know, there's a lot of stuff that can make you sad, but I also think we need even more stories about real-life heroes.

 

Charlie Jane:               [00:39:40] Hell, yeah. And we do want to inspire those kids to, like, actually get out there and explore space, like we said earlier.

 

Nivair:                         [00:39:46] Yeah, yeah, totally.

 

Charlie Jane:               [00:39:47] So tell us about some real-life heroes and some books that celebrate them. I want to hear about that.

 

Nivair:                         [00:39:51] Yeah, well, I was actually lucky enough to acquire one called Dancing Through Space by Lydia Lukidis and Sawyer Cloud. That’s a biography of Dr. Mae Jemison.

 

Charlie Jane:               [00:40:04] Oh, hell yeah.

 

Annalee:                      [00:40:05] Yay. A hero of this podcast.

 

Nivair:                         [00:40:09] Yeah, totally. I love that picture of her, where it's like a picture of her as a doctor on Star Trek and then a picture of her as a doctor in space in real life. And it's like, “wow, this is the only person who has a picture of herself working in space as a doctor in two different contexts.”

 

Charlie Jane:               [00:40:27] Amazing.

 

Annalee:                      [00:40:29] Fiction and non-fiction.

 

Nivair:                         [00:40:32] And I learned from Dancing Through Space that she was also a dancer. So it talks about how she blended her love for dancing with her love for science in space.

                                    [00:40:45] There's a little passage I'll read that says: “Mae spotted science everywhere, from symmetry to gravity. She had more questions than there were stars in space. Mae spotted choreography everywhere, from birds soaring to waves swirling. She had more dance moves than there were leaves on a tree.”

 

Charlie Jane:               [00:41:05] Oh, my God, that's so beautiful.

 

Nivair:                         [00:41:06] And I should say she probably still dances.

 

Annalee:                      [00:41:08] Yeah.

 

Charlie Jane:               [00:41:09] That is beautiful.

 

Annalee:                      [00:41:10] I mean, dancing would prepare you well for a zero grav environment, you know, you really need to be able to have like a lot of physical coordination.

 

Nivair:                         [00:41:18] Yeah, I loved the way it showed like a different perspective of this really well-rounded person and how like her other passions contributed to her love for space and vice versa.

 

Annalee:                      [00:41:30] Yeah, very cool.

 

Nivair:                         [00:41:32] And there was another another one of my space heroes I actually got to meet. And that is Margaret Hamilton, who was the director of flight control programming on the Apollo missions.

                                    [00:41:45] So while she was working on Apollo, her daughter was about four years old, and she would take her to work with her a lot. And her daughter would just play with the Apollo guidance computer, kind of for fun. But also she was sort of doing secret user testing because the different combinations of keys that she pressed sometimes no one had come across before. And she ended up discovering an error condition that they ended up having to fix later in the software.

                                    [00:42:15] So that's what the story that I based my picture book Playing Astronaut on. And what I love about that story is not just that it shows the value of stuff like take your kid to work day and flexible work arrangements, but it also shows the value of broad usability testing and fault tolerant programming. And…

 

Annalee:                      [00:42:36] Yeah.

 

Nivair:                         [00:42:37] And it shows a young child making a really valuable contribution. I think kids are often made to feel like the important things in life are above them or beyond them, but they have as much to add as anyone.

 

Charlie Jane:               [00:42:51] That's amazing. That's really inspiring. And like, I'm so happy to hear that there are so many great books about space for kids now, because we really need that. We need the next generation of space nerds to come along.

                                    [00:43:03] Do you have any final thoughts about like what the bedrock things that make a good space book for kids are?

 

Nivair:                         [00:43:09] That's a good question. I mean, I think like genuine passion and interest are definitely there. And also like the kind of obsessive research that would lead someone to know, you know, all the details the way kids get when they're really excited about something they know every last detail about.

                                    [00:43:30] And then I think hopefulness and an optimism about the power of science and technology to improve people's lives and help people and kind of the wonder of space and getting us to think about our own position as humans.

 

Charlie Jane:               [00:43:47] That is awesome. Thank you so much for joining us, Nivair.

 

Nivair:                         [00:43:50] Thank you for having me.

 

Annalee:                      [00:43:52] And we'll have links to all of the books that Nivair mentioned in our show notes so that you can go find them and hopefully share them with the kids in your life of all ages.

[00:44:01] OOAC session break music, a quick little synth bwoop bwoo.

 

Annalee:                      [00:44:04] Thank you so much for listening. You probably already know you’ve been listening to Our Opinions Are Correct. And you can find this podcast wherever fine podcasts are purveyed. We’d love it if you’d rate and review us wherever that is that you’re finding the podcast, because it just helps other people find it. Tell your friends about it. Get your pets hooked on the podcast. Anything you can do would help.

                                    [00:44:27] Remember, you can also find us on Mastodon, on Instagram, on Bluesky, on Patreon. Usually we're either listed as ‘our opinions’ or ‘our opinions are correct’ on those places.

                                    [00:44:41] Thank you so much to our incredible producer and audio engineer, Niah Harmon. Thanks to Nivair Gabriel for contributing a segment to this episode. Thanks to Chris Palmer and Katya Lopez-Nichols for the incredible music. And thanks to you. If you're a patron, we'll see you on Discord. If not, we'll just be in your ears again in two weeks. So talk to you later.

Both:                           [00:45:05] Bye!

[00:45:06] [OOAC theme plays. Science fictiony synth noises over an energetic, jazzy drum line.]

 

Annalee Newitz