Zombie Book Club

'Intercepts' with T.J. Payne | Zombie Book Club Ep 159

• Zombie Book Club • Season 4 • Episode 159

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We welcome horror author T.J. Payne to talk about Intercepts, a sci-fi horror thriller where a secret government facility tortures prisoners into becoming "antennas" who can hijack the senses of anyone on Earth. At the center is supervisor Joe Gerhard, a man who tells himself the work is necessary right up until his own daughter, Riley, becomes a target. We dig into the banality of evil, workplace dehumanization, and how ordinary people talk themselves into extraordinary harm.

We also get into the real-world roots behind the horror (NSA-style intercepts, MKUltra, sensory deprivation research), T.J.'s wild path from Hollywood ghostwriting to indie-published success to landing in TV writers' rooms, and why he thinks "writer voice" is just the weird kid you tried to hide in middle school.


Guest Contact & Social Links — T.J. Payne


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SPEAKER_00

What

What Zombie Book Club Is

SPEAKER_00

is the Zombie Book Club? The only book club where the book is a dark abyss void of light and sound numb to feeling your agency over your own body until you wake up in searing pain and exploitation of the hands of government office drones. I'm Dan. And when I'm not waking up and going to work, I'm writing a book about brothers who run out of fuel in the desert as a horde of zombies follow them.

SPEAKER_02

And I'm Leah, and today we are terrified in the best way to be talking with TJ Payne, author of Intercepts, our current zombie book club read. The book follows Joe Gerhard, a supervisor at a secret government facility where inmates are tortured until they develop the ability to intercept the senses of anyone in the world. But when Joe's daughter Riley becomes the target of those abilities, he's forced to confront the consequences of the work he has spent years justifying and prioritizing over his own family. Beneath the sci-fi horror intercepts is a story about power, family, dehumanization, and what happens when people convince themselves they're doing the right thing. TJ Payne is also the author of The Venue and In My Father's Basement, and his work explores the darkest parts of human nature, I can confirm, while still searching for very small moments of hope and maybe big ones too. Welcome to the Zynebook Club, TJ.

Meeting TJ Payne And Deadlines

SPEAKER_02

Before we dive into the horror, what's been making you happy lately? Uh oh, that's wow, that's a difficult question, Leah.

SPEAKER_01

I'm actually generally a happy person. I'm doing what I love. I'm I'm writing every day. Uh I get to be a professional writer. I get to just make up nonsense and put it onto the page and then craft it bit by bit. I'm uh I'm I'm just very, very fortunate. So I I really have no complaints. It's uh it's a happy life I'm living. I love that. I mean, you told us you're on a deadline right now, right? I am. This uh so Intercepts was part of a two-book deal. Uh it was originally self-published, and uh crown imprint of Penguin Random House acquired it and re-released it, but it was part of a two-book deal. So there is a second book, not in the Intercepts world, it's a completely new horror novel that I'm having to work on. It is I'm I'm being forced to do it. And it is it's just such a joy to be back into I haven't had a book come out since uh 2020. And so it's been six years since I've been in this world of prose. And uh to be paid for it, to be on deadline, uh, to have no excuses, it's it's great.

SPEAKER_02

It's kind of a dream, but maybe a nightmare too, sometimes.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, I've I've never been on a deadline before. That sounds awful. Um but may you probably have a little bit more experience, like having to have something done by a certain time, right?

SPEAKER_01

It's I'm I'm gotten pretty good. That's one of the things just over the years, just learning myself, my my actual pace to set realistic expectations of benchmarks, of you know, okay, I want this many words to be written a day. I want the first draft to be ready this time, and then I know there's there's vomit all over the page that needs to be cleaned up. I'm gonna need this amount of time to clean that up, and then a couple more polished drafts. Readers are going to give their notes. So uh I've gotten pretty good at scheduling things out so that it's not too overwhelming.

SPEAKER_00

Ah, schedule. What a good idea. Dan has a schedule for writing, but doesn't always stick to it. You know, if I had a if I had a deadline like that, I feel like I'd probably put it off until like the last week and then just like write 100,000 words in a week and then like have a mental breakdown, have like a stress dream about the house catching on fire or something. That does sound very that sounds like you.

SPEAKER_02

But you have not been just sort of twiddling your thumbs for the last six years, even though you haven't published fiction. You are also a film and television writer. Can you tell us a little bit about that?

Screenwriting Hustle And Free Work

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, it's uh it was actually the first career that I set out for. Uh I wanted to be a screenwriter. And so I came down to Hollywood after college, got the first job I could in the industry. I was a production assistant, so I was fetching coffee uh and writing screenplays on the side. And that went on for many, many years. I just could not get traction in the industry because it's a hard, it's a hard biz. And so I was incrementally kind of climbing the ladder, getting a little bit of notice, doing well in some fellowships, uh, meeting some people and was meeting a lot of producers who you know would say, We love your scripts, we can't buy it or make it, but we have this other idea that you would be perfect for. And so I wasn't in the guild or anything at the time, so I was writing a lot of uh other people's ideas for free. And eventually that it was on the exposure in Hollywood is on spec. And so they'll give you an idea that they own, they control it. Uh, it might be based on some short story they found, it might be something that they copied off of Wikipedia. Uh and like I've definitely had meetings where someone's like, you know, uh the head of our company really wants to do a TV show on farming, and it's like farming's hot genre. You have a character, you have anything? It's like, no, no, no, just you know, and like they'll they'll truly just say that. And then whatever you come up with, they'll own at the end of the day because they get have the had the initial one-word idea. So I was doing that for free, and it was really uh just wearing me down because all of this writing, all of these words, and I was getting paid in praise and promises that, oh yeah, yeah, if you do this next, you know, we got some notes. If you do this full page one rewrite, then we'll sell it and then you'll have a career. And I was seeing that like my my writing was only reaching like five people per script that I'd be spending like six months on. And so I finally started carving out time to write my own things to get out to an audience. And that's when I turned to self-publishing. Uh, I had a friend who did in indie publishing on a book he wrote, and he sort of demystified the process for me. So uh that's what I started doing uh under the name TJ Payne. And those did well enough that I gained a confidence in myself and my story because for the first time it was like, oh my god, people are reading what I'm writing and they seem to be enjoying it. And so my agents uh set me up for one last uh open writing assignment pitch. And open writing assignments are in Hollywood when the studio actually has money to hire a writer. Oh, nice. Uh, which I had never I'd done many of these pitches and never got them. But there was something about the confidence of just having had this self-publishing career I could pivot to that I really enjoyed. So I just went into that room and took some swings and was like not trying to please anyone. I was just like, here's the story as I would want to see it. And I got that job, uh, which then rolled into another job. I sold a feature film on pitch, and then I started getting staffed in TV rooms. And so that all has happened since my last book came out in 2020, is I've been just consistently rolling from one TV show, one feature development project, a series I sold, like just one thing to another uh for the last six years. So I had to essentially give up on Hollywood and become uh an author in order to finally break into Hollywood. So that's yeah, because at the end of the day, Hollywood's just middle school. And once they get that vibe of, oh, he doesn't need us, he's got this own thing. He could leave us at any moment and go write books. Whoa, we should hire him. Yeah, we want him back.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, suddenly Penguin Random House is like, hello. He's not working for free anymore. Was 25 million pages read on Kindle or something like that?

SPEAKER_01

It's mind-boggling numbers. Phenomenal. The Intercepts, especially. My my first book in my father's basement launched really well. Uh it blew away my expectations, which really encouraged me to do Intercepts. And then that one, um, that that one just keeps finding readers, kind finding fans. Um, and it's really changed like the indie book experience and world really has changed my life and how I um see myself as a writer.

unknown

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

I love to hear that. What is the biggest difference you find between like the indie publishing world and writing for people to read versus being in a writer's room?

SPEAKER_01

Uh it's all the like indie publishing, you are the writer, producer, director. You're in charge of everything. And then in TV, and I've been in five TV rooms now. Uh just recently or recently released was The Burrows uh and Little House on the Prairie.

SPEAKER_02

No big deal, everybody. Yeah. You might have heard of them. Also, can I just shout out Hulu's Emmy nominated Under the Bridge?

SPEAKER_01

And Under the Bridge. And hey, uh, my first show, which I'm had a lot of fun on, great people to work with, was Motherland Fort Salem, which is a very a show not many people saw, but it is great. Premise. It's uh an alternate history where during the Salem witch trials the witches fought back, and now they run

Self-Publishing And Finding Readers

SPEAKER_01

they run the US military. And so Motherland Fort Salem is essentially Harry Potter at West Point.

SPEAKER_00

Writing this down. That actually sounds crazy. I want it now. I I think it's I think it's kind of fascinating how you s you spent so much time writing for other people to like take and just use however they wanted. Uh and and it got you no nowhere, but it wasn't until you actually just started working for yourself that you actually got anywhere.

SPEAKER_01

Um that's been one of the biggest sort of life lessons that I think I've had. And there's a couple things that I think happened in there. One is once I started writing the books with the intent of self-publishing, uh, I started enjoying the process. And it really made it clear to me how much I had come to resent writing. That I didn't have joy when it is someone else's idea and someone else is the boss. They're the creative, like because the structure was such where they had to like everything in the draft before they would push it up the mountain. And so any note they had, I had to take, even if those notes were sometimes just a producer working out their own psycho drama on the page that I had to write. And so I really came to resent writing, I wasn't enjoying it. Like sitting down at the computer, like just sort of filled me with a bile. And once I started doing it for myself, I was like, oh my God, I do actually love this. I love taking words and using that to convey character, which conveys human emotion. This is like such a beautiful, wonderful thing that we do as a species. And that joy then carried over into every room I went into in Hollywood. It was like, no, I'm this is something I I truly love to do. And it changed the way the I approached story, and I think it changed the kind of stories that I was telling. And then it also just made me more confident in what I was saying. I think uh we we often talk, especially in screenwriting, we talk about a writer's voice. And you know, if you're gonna have a screenwriting career, you need to have a strong voice, and no one quite knows what a writer, what that actually means, what that's referring to. Um, and for the most part, people just sort of copy Tarantino or Sorkin or Shane Black, and it's like, oh yeah, a writer's voice is being making witti asides in the action lines. And what I've kind of come to realize is that a writer's voice is all the million decisions that a writer makes uh in telling a story, but it is like this deep part of who they are. It's that part of them that I like to define it as this that part of you in middle school that you thought was weird and you didn't want anyone to see or know, uh, and you tried to suppress it to fit in. That is your voice. And once you kind of let that loose, then there are millions of other people in the world who see that and like, that's speaking to me. That is how I feel. And they just react to it and attach to it. And that is like, that's what self-publishing, like it freed me to be a little more of me and not trying to be predictive of what the person who I'm writing for really wants. Because then you get like very it really sort of softens everything and becomes the most generic version of writing.

SPEAKER_02

I'm so glad that you let your middle school weirdo out because within the first two lines of intercepts, we we listened to it on the way back from um an event called Living Dead weekend where they celebrate George Romero's films. Almost non-stop. Could not, we were, I was like, can't stop for any reason, must keep listening.

SPEAKER_00

It was a nine and a half hour drive.

SPEAKER_02

Fully locked into your story. It's so good. And uh hearing your journey of actually originally starting out with the dream of being a screenwriter makes so much sense because I instantly I looked at Dan and was like, why isn't this a movie yet? Which it's option now. Um so TJ, what that made me wonder was when did you start realizing that your inner weirdo middle schooler was resonating with other people?

SPEAKER_01

Uh the first morning after I hit publish on in my father's basement. Uh, because I enrolled in Kindle Unlimited, which a lot of self-publishers do. And Kindle Unlimited pays you by the number of pages that someone reads. Uh and so I woke up the next morning and someone had read the entire book. And tracks. That uh like they didn't leave a review or anything, they may have hated it, but it was their eye was dragged down the page overnight. And that that had never really happened to me because again, in

Voice, Confidence, And The Inner Weirdo

SPEAKER_01

Hollywood, no one wants to read. Yeah, that's the horrible dirty secret around Hollywood. We're here for movies, guys. We're here to see it on the big screen.

SPEAKER_00

What's all this reading?

SPEAKER_02

I'm not surprised because at Living Dead weekend we had a a table and we brought some of our favorite authors' books with us. We were just gonna promote the podcast, but also we're like, why don't we try and sell some books? And there was a movie table across from us, TJ, and I tell you, movies were going like this. Yeah, five dollar DPD. And I would I'd be like, So do you like to read? What do you like to read? People would just be like, I don't read. And I was like, okay.

SPEAKER_00

They're like, ah, reading, and then they'd look over their shoulder, like, oh, movies. Wrong audience. I'm not surprised to hear that. Guys, these are five dollars. Everyone's just storming the DVD tables.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, no one reads. And so most of my Hollywood career was spent begging people to read the things I wrote. And so just to see someone organically found a book of mine and read it cover to cover was just a very it was a new experience.

SPEAKER_02

And then 25 million pages later, we're here. And not only is uh Intercepts Optioned by I should have this in my notes here. Boulderlight. Thank you. Yes, Intercepts Optioned by Boulder Light, which also produced Weapons and Barbarian, two of my favorite movies that have come out relatively recently. But you also have two feature films that are under development right now from your other books. Is that right?

SPEAKER_01

Uh all the books have been optioned, and there's very they're in various stages of development, rewrites, so I can't I can't make any promise the cameras will roll at any time. But at the same time, you'd you'd some of them I'm like, I never know people have said, oh, this fall we might have a green light. So who knows? It's a lot of creating and then waiting, it sounds like it is, it's a lot of creating and then getting notes and recreating and then waiting, and then uh a new actor comes into the lead role, so you have to rewrite it for them. And uh it it is it it takes uh a lot to get a movie made. I know um as a viewer, sometimes it's like oh, they just make anything, there's so much slop out there, but it really is uh it's an incredibly complex process to get anything from page to screen.

SPEAKER_00

Do you ever find um your decision making being changed by like as you go along this process and you know the you get you you you see certain certain things make it of a certain amount of way down the production line and then stop and you get questions from this person like you know, if if this was like this, then maybe it would have been made. Like, do you find that influencing your writing as you're writing where you're like, well, maybe if I make this character have blonde hair, then Netflix will want to turn this into a series.

SPEAKER_01

I mean, there are definitely you know notes I didn't agree with and full rewrites I've had to do based on some someone at a party that a producer was at said something about, you know, this is how these kind of movies sell. And so then, you know, and I'd have to implement those. But I try not to, at this point, I I really try to ignore that. Uh, with the exception of when writing film, uh, budget and page count are very crucial. Like you have to keep the budget down and something reasonable, and page count is part of that. So you really it is one of the hard things I find about uh writing screenplays now is that I'm always very cognizant of okay, have I accelerated the story enough by page 12, page 15? Are we in these places? Whereas with books, you get to let things breathe a little more. Budget is not a concern. You can have huge sets or action set pieces or go into the depths of hell, uh, and you don't have to worry about the VFX, you can have huge creatures, uh, you can do anything you want in a book because the it's all just in the reader's mind. Whereas film and TV, it's it's all budget. There's never no production has ever had enough money, no matter how big that production is. There's there's always every single, no matter the biggest movie ever made, every department, I guarantee, was begging the line producer for more money. It's like, we cannot make all these costumes for what you're giving us. We cannot build all these sets for what you're giving us.

SPEAKER_00

Mr. Cameron, you want us to make a Titanic? We need more money. The Titanic costs more money than that. We can make it 80% the size that you want it to with the money you gave us. And he's like, go ahead.

SPEAKER_01

I mean, I bet you there are department heads who were on Titanic and watching Titanic and are looking like, oh man, see that table right there? Yeah, that's held together by duct tape.

SPEAKER_02

It's entirely cardboard. That's wild to think about. I think it's also though the beauty of a book. Like I really do love a movie. And as I said, almost from page one, I was like, this needs to be a movie with intercepts because it's just so visceral how you write, and I can picture everything so clearly. Um, but the freedom that you have as an author and also the independence where you don't have to go through all of these steps is really wonderful. And what I'm curious about, just a bit of

From Rom-Coms To Horror Relationships

SPEAKER_02

a segue here, is um we read that you were originally into romantic comedies. So, how do we get from romantic comedies to in my father's basement to intercepts as an indie author? That's a big jump.

SPEAKER_01

So my first jobs were as a production assistant on romantic comedies. And so uh that's where my network was sort of growing. Uh, and so I decided this is what I should be writing and pitching, and uh and so I taught myself story structure by reading a lot of romantic comedies. I was working, uh my first several movies were with Rob Reiner, who's sweetest man. Uh, and I was at Castle Rock for a lot. So I was reading all the things on the Castle Rock shelf, and they were very much uh a romantic comedy company. Um, and yeah, so that's what I started writing with, and I actually had a little bit of uh career momentum in that genre to the point where I was being brought in to pitch on studio comedies, and I was so bad at it. I was just awful at like I had the one note that I cannot handle is can it be funnier? Because I don't know how. And so I really uh and my room romantic comedies were also veering much darker back then, and I didn't realize it now, like. The script that sort of broke me out was uh it was a comedy set in the post-apocalypse after an alien invasion. So I should have known that uh I was more of a horror guy anyway. And I resisted it for a while because my mind naturally goes to dark places. I am very much a what is the worst case scenario kind of guy. And so uh horror was very natural to that, and I very much resisted it because it was almost too easy. And there's the part of me that was like, well, everyone says writing should be hard. Comedy and romantic comedy is very hard. So this means I must be doing it right, uh, as opposed to horror, which came very naturally. Uh and so it's a weird, it's the wrong way to think about telling story. And I've come to realize that storytelling actually should be very easy. It shouldn't be hard. It should be something that kind of comes out of you. And the the hard part is crafting it and making sure that you're hitting all the beats and all the emotions where you want them to. Uh, and so yeah, I eventually realized that this is not where my voice is leading me. And so then that's when I pivoted to horror.

SPEAKER_00

Wow. I mean, I I think there's also like romantic comedy and horror, I think are very related topics. Um, I one of my favorite things is when they take a romantic comedy trailer and they rescore it with a horror, a horror trailer music.

SPEAKER_01

And you're like, And they've done it the vice versa too, where there's a fantastic one of the shiny. Yeah. Where it's just like, he's a grumpy puss and he needs a kid to love. Uh, but yes, no, I totally agree because they both both rom com and horror get to like these really deep human emotions and what it means to be human and how to relate to each other. And starting with rom com and learning story that way was the best mistake I ever made because it really forced me to form story around humans and human relationship. And even intercepts, uh, you know, it's not romance in that sense, but it does, in terms of the beats, the it's a story of a relationship between a guy and his daughter. Yep. And it's sort of a in a weird love triangle. It's a guy, his daughter, and his work, and who is he going to choose? And that relationship, uh, like it hits every beat that it would in a romantic comedy where they kind of combust at the cute meat stage in the midpoint and all that. And that's just how I see the story now. And all of my books, all of my horror have these relationships at the heart of it, often parent-child, or best friends, or you know, and I feel that's where real horror can kind of come from is our relationship, our love toward each other, and the best way to sort of rip those apart.

SPEAKER_02

That's so true. And in your story, the relationship between Joe and his daughter Riley was really heartbreaking because he continued to prioritize his work and he justified prioritizing his work is what he was doing for his family. It's ultimately probably what led to the demise of his first marriage. I won't say much more because I don't want to spoil things. Um, but to Riley's mother. And what made me really sit back was like, you write gore impeccably, sir. It's so good. It made me cringe many times. Uh but the real horror for me felt like the work. It felt like the choice to keep going to work. Uh, and and that Joe couldn't even see that until it was really not gonna say more. Just keep just let's just say he couldn't really see that right away.

SPEAKER_01

I mean, in the relationship sense, it is like how many, you know, so many rom-coms begin with the person being engaged to Mr. or Mrs. Rong. And they keep choosing that wrong person when it's so clear that there is the right person out there. Uh, you know, that's Joe. He has chosen work over family all of his life. And yeah, you strip away the the sci-fi horror aspect of it. And I do feel that that is something that all of my friends uh are grappling with in their lives right now, of that choice. Because at a certain point, you you know, you do have to work, like you need an income, especially to support a family. Um, but you know, Joe is a character who went very far on that and the place where he's working. Not a very

Work, Family, And The Banality

SPEAKER_01

uh morally sound career he's chosen, which again, I have a lot of friends who are in industries or companies where, you know, you you peel back the the top layer a little bit, and it's there's an ick factor about what is this this business doing to the world. And um, you know, nothing to the extent of people being held in the basement and tortured till they get uh psychic abilities. Uh at least none of my friends have told me about that employment opportunity. But you know, I I do think there's something very relatable about the situation Joe has found himself in, the decisions he has to make, the the the moral bankruptcy of where he's working and what he's doing, and his ability to keep sort of justifying that for the the greater good for the family. Uh, I think that's something that a lot of people just sort of feel deep down.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. You know, and I there were there's tens of thousands or maybe even millions of people in America that uh that work in industries that are really messed up. Like I worked in at General Dynamics um 2005 to 2007, and like no, I wasn't I I I wasn't um you know, torturing people in basements until they got s uh psychic powers, but like the person whose desk across from mine, they were in charge of uh biometric security for a black site detention center um and would go over there regularly, uh which was actually right next door to us. So like the the the separation between myself and some actually evil stuff happening wasn't that far away. Even though I was just working on computers, those computers were being used by people who were doing some kind of dark stuff.

SPEAKER_02

It's uh it's really struck me because Joe does not see himself as a bad person. The intercepts clearly see him as a terrible person, particularly Bishop, which we'll get into in a minute. But Joe doesn't, I don't think he sees himself as a bad person. He's told himself the work is necessary. Um why did you choose to write a character like that who or like someone who's caught up in this web?

SPEAKER_01

Well, uh, because I found it more interesting and relatable. Uh I think there was an easier version of the story, sort of that that first uh idea of the story of if I'm having this facility where people are kept in extreme sensory deprivation until they can intercept the senses of anyone in the world, well, you should tell that from one of the inmates' perspectives and follow them as they do a jailbreak. And that uh wasn't as interesting as well, what about the people running the facility? How I don't want those people just to be mustache twirling supervillains. Like, there's someone mops the floor at those places, someone uh does the computers, like and they it's a it's a normal workplace environment. And I I thought that was uh just an interesting world to write, was to infuse this sort of corporate uh blandness with water cooler chat and you know everyone, and that workplace kind of a almost a workplace comedy vibe, um in into this sort of scenario to make them human. Because I mean, this is my belief that everything that is done in the world is done by humans. Uh, and so I do think sometimes we do ourselves a disservice by m making them too monstered, too othered, to I would never do that, as opposed to making them somewhat relatable and making people like, oh yeah, I could see myself, you know, in for a penny, in for a pound, getting into this sort of career. Uh and I think that's one of the great things about horror is making people ask those questions, letting them see that side of other people. So, you know, maybe they will make different decisions if they're ever given the opportunity.

SPEAKER_02

We hope so, because uh what Joe is doing is not uh unprecedented in human history, right? Like we've already described it's happening right now. People have to make a moral choice between knowing, you know, sort of just not thinking too much about the the impact of the work that they need to do to survive uh and feed their families all the way to like some of the worst atrocities of the world. People will ultimately just say, Well, that was what I was ordered to do. That's what I was assigned to do. And I used to teach anthropology, TJ, and we would have conversations like this, and people would say, Oh, well, I would never insert horrific things humans have done. And I would try my best to remind them, and I think honestly, I should have just handed them your book, since you hadn't written it yet. It's a little while ago. Like, here, like put yourself in Joe's shoes and like how many of us actually are doing this every day, even if it's in a little way. Um, and this is gonna be this is maybe a little obscure, but I have to ask, is Hannah named after Hannah Arendt and the banality of evil?

SPEAKER_01

She's not, no.

SPEAKER_02

Okay, I feel like that's a happy accident because I learned have you heard that I should have just leaned into it and that's it. Next time somebody asked me that to say, yeah, totally. I meant it. Yeah, she did a whole um study around uh the really messed up experiments, human subject experiments that the Nazis did and talked about like how, you know, during the Nuremberg trials, where we are telling people, okay, well, you yeah, you actually are culpable for these decisions. And all of them would basically say, someone told me to do this. I was just doing my job. And that banality of evil is something that like really haunts me. And I think that's what makes part of your book so compelling, because we're introduced to the name Joe Gerhardt by Bishop and Intercept, and then we meet Joe Gerhardt, and he's just a regular guy. But for her, her her entire experience when she has the ability to be um conscious is is a deep desire for revenge against this man that she's somehow figured out is at the core of her suffering.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. I think that's oh man, I wish I had known like maybe I should have named all the characters like Hannah and Stanley Milgram and solo Simbardo. Um but yeah, I think that's the I find the banality of evil uh chilling and fascinating. And uh I think there are no scarier words in the human language than I was just following orders. Uh, because that you can take that anywhere and people have throughout human history. We're very, very ugly species. Um, at the same time, we're very beautiful species. I think that's the it's there will always be uh plenty of room to analyze that in horror fiction because we are this contradiction in human nature is just so vast.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah. And hopefully books like yours when people get to sort of sit that in it and see both sides do help people make decisions in the moment later on. We we hope. Um, when we're in when hopefully none of us are in that exact circumstance.

NSA, CIA, MKUltra, Sensory Deprivation

SPEAKER_02

Um, can you explain a little bit more about the concept of the intercept and what the role of the intercept is? Like what's the what's the good, the greater good that Joe is participating in here?

SPEAKER_01

Well, so a lot of the the research, the idea of the book came from research I'd done on the NSA uh and the CIA. Uh NSA, I read a book about just everything they would do to gather intercepts, uh, which is uh listening in on foreign communications for the most part, it's been the Soviet Union, uh, and just all of the crazy things they do. So the book is set in West Virginia, which NSA has a massive facility there called Sugar Grove, that um you can't there's no radio transmissions in the area. It is a radio dead zone because they need the frequencies all clear so they can have these antennas that listen to Soviet communications that are bouncing off the moon. Like it's it's crazy the kind of things that are going on there. Um, and then I sort of combined that with things from the CIA, uh the MK Ultra experiments. Uh CIA did uh experiments into extreme sensory deprivation as an interrogation technique. They've done all sorts of things. And so that those were the real world basis for this facility, for the idea that this sort of sci-fi out there uh premise for the book, that people are being kept in this extreme sensory deprivation. And when you think about sensory deprivation of just what it would be like to not even hear the hum of the room you're in, not be able to feel anything, not the clothes on your skin, not even the fact that you're standing, like and how uh unmooring that can be. And so these people are kept in that state and they go insane because it's just their mind floating in their body. And then through this very painful process, they're able to be tuned so that then they can intercept the senses of anyone in the world. And I intentionally kind of keep the book somewhat vague on who they're intercepting, like it in theory, it's world leaders or terrorists or cartel leaders. Um, but you know, it really could be anyone.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. I mean, that's a that's a state of the government, which is just like whoever they deem to be the dangerous person that they need to know about.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah. The other mystery is that for most of the book, we don't have an inkling of where these people come from that become intercepts, and they're also not referred to as people. Um, can you tell me a little bit about the name of Bishop and where that comes from and how Joe Gerhardt and other staff navigated this dehumanization they needed to do with intercepts?

SPEAKER_01

So they they very much treat the uh in the book, they're treated like a piece of equipment. They're called antennas, and they've been very much dehumanized, and they just have an identifying number. And at a certain point, the the staff of the facility realize that it's very hard to communicate about you know the rotation system and who's giving the sponge bath to who, and it's just a number, so they give them names and they give them names from the colonial marines from aliens. So Bischoff is a character from aliens, and there's Hicks and Hudson and Vasquez. Uh and it was kind of just a the thing is like I've worked in a place where we um in post-production we had a bunch of hard drives that kept different project files on them, and we named them after the colonial marines and aliens. So it is it was just like a real jokey kind of way to continue the dehumanization so that they still are not being humanized. These aren't even real names they're being given, they're given being given joke names. Uh, so everyone can keep turning a blind eye to what they're doing, so they can keep not seeing these these inmates as human. Um and so yeah, that's that's where that sort of concept came from.

SPEAKER_00

As as soon as I as I heard the name, I'm like, from aliens? Bishop? Well, that's not gonna go well. Um we're probably raiding into this too much. It probably has nothing to do with aliens. And then then it was confirmed, and I'm like, uh oh.

SPEAKER_02

Having Bishop's point of view in the story was wa literally put the hackles of my hip back, like the hair on the back of my neck, go up. She is so disturbing for many reasons. I mean, for one, like when she tries to feel her body anyway that she can't, but two, that she doesn't even know who she is anymore. All she knows is that occasionally she's put into these like horrifically suffering, painful experiences because in order to be an antenna, they have to feel again after they've been deprived from their senses. Um and her rage at Joe is so justified, but she doesn't direct it at Joe right away. And yeah, say more tell us more about that, TJ.

SPEAKER_01

Well, it was uh, I mean, she was looking for his weak spot. How do you get to this guy? What like because if you try to intercept his mind, if you try to haunt him, he can just shut the whole thing down, he could throw a red flag and get the the bosses to you know to close the whole thing. And so she found his weak point, and that was his daughter. And she starts intercepting his mind. And for me, like as the writer, that was also kind of where my thought process went was okay, I have this guy who's a supervisor of this facility. Like, how do I connect with him? How do I get a reader to connect with this guy? Uh, what is his what is his weak point? Why is he doing this? And it was like, oh, he he has a daughter. And so it was, you know, a way to access him, a way to humanize his work, but uh it was his his vulnerability, and it gives him a very stark choice of, you know, am I going to help my daughter or am I going to keep doing this work?

SPEAKER_02

And you chose to write from her perspective as well. So it's not just, we're not just getting Joe Gerhart or Bishop. We also hear from Riley. Am I remembering correctly that Hannah we get a first person view as well? What was what's it like to inhabit? I mean, in some ways, I was you're literally intercepting the minds of your characters. Um what made you decide to have that multiple point of view?

SPEAKER_01

Uh that one, so yeah, this was it, it's written from a lot of each lot of different third-person limited point of views. And because Bishop and the antennas are intercepting the minds of characters and they're able to implant horrifying visions. They're able to, they've intercepted the senses, and so they can make characters see things that aren't there, or hear things that aren't there. Uh, it was important to be able to go into those characters' perspectives. And then the reader is very like, you don't quite know what is real and what is not anytime that you're inside a character's head. And so that was a real fun experience uh to do as a writer was to really lock down on what our senses, uh, because that's what the whole book is about. And what what are we seeing, what are we hearing, what are we feeling at all times? And how can those be exploited by the foreign entity in our in our head manipulating them?

SPEAKER_02

This really brought me like when we were reading it, um I was like, okay, we're a zombie podcast, but we have a definition of zombie that is maybe not what everybody expects. And originally I went

Dehumanizing The Antennas Named Bishop

SPEAKER_02

into it being like, okay, the intercepts are the zombies. Dan, can you define how we describe zombies before I go forward further?

SPEAKER_00

Um, a zombie is an organism that is controlled by another organism.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah. And so intercepts, obvious, right? Must be. But then I'm starting to read it, and then we get what happens to Riley, where now she's having these horrifying visions through Bishop and others. Um, and I'm like, wait, are they is this like a revenge thing? The intercepts have finally like it's like a rebellion. Now they're actually controlling other organisms. There's like multiple layers. And I'm curious from your point of view, when you saw, like, oh, a zombie book club podcast wants to talk to me. Um, what's your take on this idea of the intercepts or even Riley and Joe in some cases being the zombie?

SPEAKER_01

I mean, I think the the great thing about zombie fiction is how it explores humanity by dehumanizing. Uh, and it takes an entire group and turns them into, you know, they're bipedal and they used to be humans, but they are no longer seen as humans. Um, and I think that's where zombie fiction like is like is such it will always last because I think that's those are questions about what what makes us human that will always go on. And I think for me, that was Bishop and the antennas, they're treated as these pieces of machine, machinery. They are dehumanized. They're one character refers to them as uh highly tuned vegetables. And because of that, and they don't see them as a threat to themselves. Uh, and so in many ways, they are treated as zombies, but you know, a lot of good zombie fiction also, you know, in Walking Dead, who are the Walking Dead? Is it the the actual survivors? And so, in some ways, uh, I think it's very fascinating to think of the people who work at the facility as the actual weird drones that are not behaving like humans, that are the zombies just going about. their orders, not questioning anything, that they are in in a weird way the the walking dead of the book.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. A thought that I had um is that like so the uh the antennas the intercept the antennas is is what you call them. Uh and intercepting is what they do. Uh you know in in a lot of zombie fiction it's about something that once had agency suddenly not having agency anymore. But like this is kind of like a reverse story where the antennas start off the story with no agency. They can't do anything, they can't think anything, they can't feel like they can't can't even see uh unless they're pulled out of that state and then that's being controlled by somebody else to go uh intercept somebody else's senses. Um and this is a story of them regaining their agency. Um so it's kind of like a reverse zombie. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

I mean a lot of zombie stories are the the finding that the zombie actually has memories or a soul uh and it it is not is more than just a zombie is more than just a a moving flesh sack. And I think that's very much what's happening in Intercepts.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah and their their um push for revenge without revealing too much I think is actually partly what wakes up Joe and others out of their zombie stupor um which I hadn't thought about it's a really good point that they are themselves because Joe's not really doing what he thinks is best necessarily he's just following orders which are somebody else's um so he he they're kind of in a stupor on their own and I hadn't thought about that until right now.

SPEAKER_01

That's really fascinating TJ and by the end they've to certain degrees they find their own humanity and those who don't then you know they're yeah there's an end.

SPEAKER_02

The torture of um always talking with an author is like my deep desire to get into the things that I know I can't say because people need to read the book. So just picturing how it ends.

SPEAKER_00

That's all yeah it ends but it also doesn't um yeah you know like a lot of horror even after even after you uh you've defeated what what has been considered to be the evil um you realize that it's it's it's still going there's room for another movie.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah I mean there could be another book with intercepts if if you wanted to for sure I don't know if you want to but I think there's there's definitely room there um to follow some of those characters and what happens to them next. There's also a running theme of like I I couldn't think of a better term for it than generational trauma with Riley uh because Riley is his daughter she's just living her life she's already probably got some like low-level trauma from just having an absent parent for a really long time but then she's the one who suffers for his decisions. And um I wondered what your thoughts are on like intergenerational trauma and how that shows up in this book, but also outside in society. Like what was the message there that you were hoping to share?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah it's it's odd that so many of my stories have these really complex bad relationships between characters and their parents because I have a great relationship with my parents they're they're wonderful people. And I think as a writer I often um there's there's a bit of me in everything of course but I also watch people and friends and uh extended family and see their relationships and because it's some sometimes much clearer when you're looking at other people to be like oh you're you are just becoming your mother aren't you and the worst diss truly and so I do see how hard those cycles are to break in just a lot of people in my life um in my own family histories and I think my parents like as I get older I can see certain cycles I'm like you guys like that wasn't easy you broke it. I don't even know if they knew they were breaking those cycles or putting this deep effort into doing it but they they did what was right uh in improving and changing and uh the older I get the more I'm like oh that's hard. That's really hard that when you're raised by someone who was raised by someone who was raised by someone and there's just a worldview there's a way to respond to things that's just drilled into you from a young age and it's very hard to disrupt that. And so uh yeah that I know it's it sucks for the character Riley

Multiple POVs And Unstable Reality

SPEAKER_01

because she's so innocent.

SPEAKER_02

It's part it's hard to watch what happens to her.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. Because and she's bearing the brunt of it to get back at her father. And there's something that's also like it's horrible it's also very real to me that you know what parents do does dictate who their children are and the lives they have and some of the pain and suffering they have. But yeah these cycles they they do exist and I think the things that parents do they impact their children and that's just the reality.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah. And Riley is like moving into young adulthood soon in the book.

SPEAKER_01

And that's why like it left me wondering like who will Riley be after this and did did Joe without giving away what happened did Joe end up breaking the cycle in his own way I I want to ex like I have not much of a plan for a second book but if I were to uh there are elements there that I would love to explore I'd love to see what happens uh because I do think it's an interesting question of where where are these people at this point?

SPEAKER_02

Yeah well I know you're very busy on a deadline for another book but I think there's a lot of people who'd be very excited if you choose to to take that story forward.

SPEAKER_01

I think that's the first time I've ever mentioned that I've been noodling on this one.

SPEAKER_02

I mean there's something there I was I was sad when the book was over. I was like okay it was a great end very satisfying end and I was like there what's going to happen to Riley long term.

SPEAKER_01

Um on that note you have been uh with your high school sweetheart turned wife for I'm assuming many years and I'm curious what her role is or if you have the role of women in your life who help you think through what it's like to write from the perspective of women uh oh totally she reads everything uh that I write she's my most honest critic uh she's got a PhD in psychology she teaches child and adolescent development she's a professor so wow uh I'm I'm very very lucky and she's very smart but she's also not someone who's in Hollywood so she's not reading screenplays so she's not giving a uh a technical sort of breakdown of anything I write she really does just sort of connect to it on a I like this I didn't like this I didn't understand this why did this character do that? And so and because again I I like to write a lot about the people I interact with uh I interact with her more than anyone so uh I try to write characters that would appeal to her that she could see herself in uh and and she'll definitely tell me if I ever drop the ball or miss the mark.

SPEAKER_00

I love that that's very adorable.

SPEAKER_01

Um yeah it's important to have that uh close by um because like some of our some of my favorite date nights at this point because we're getting older we don't want to go out to a bar or anything and so there are like the and I've just started calling them date nights where it's like you know what I'm gonna pour let's both pour a whiskey I have some story questions do you mind if we just sit down on the couch and talk through some stuff that's fun and we just hang out for hours and just just talk through story questions and characters and those are some of my favorite nights.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. Getting out of your out of your own head is is like super valuable when when writing I think um because you can the I I feel like the worst trap to get caught in is thinking that all of your ideas are the best ideas. And anyone who disagrees is just dumb. But it's easy to get there if if you're the only one who's in involved in your creative process.

SPEAKER_02

And that's the balance that I find it really interesting. So um I am not the writer in the room I do enjoy writing but Dan is the the one who's really in it. I just write nonfiction reports for work speaking of my own zombie reality right now. But I find it fascinating for folks to occupy identities that are not their own and figure out how to empathize with them and do them well, which you really did um TJ that's a it's a thank you you wouldn't be on the show if you had done a terrible right job of writing women criteria hard boundary. Yeah or any any identity that's not your own. But it's it like I I don't know if you thought a lot about it, but I just can't help in this conversation but think about how writers are kind of antennas. Like you're sort of putting I don't know like how what is that even like to try and put yourself inside of the experience of someone else and that's a fictional character but you're obviously drawing from reality.

SPEAKER_01

It's the coolest feeling in the world and it's so hard to get to and like I can definitely feel when I'm I'm getting words on the page and I'm not in the head and it's a weird like sort of force there there's just like sort of a vague amorphous quality to it all but then those times where you're like there and you understand the character and you understand what he or she is feeling and what they're sensing and what's happening and it it just it just comes alive and it's so wonderful when that actually happens.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah I I hadn't thought about it but you're absolutely right Leah it is like being an antenna

Zombies, Agency, And Reverse Possession

SPEAKER_00

because like there's this thing that I've that I noticed because like my my day job was driving a dump truck um and I would listen to audio books or just like kind of brainstorm uh on writing while doing that. And there was this point where I'd I'd realized that I'd driven like 60 miles, but I my eyes were turned off. Like all of my senses were off. I was in the world of the book that I was reading and I'm like how did I get here without killing anyone like my my body was up occupying a different part of my brain seeing the road driving shifting going uphills and downhills and breaking around corners getting to where I needed to go while my conscious mind was somewhere else entirely where I was seeing a different reality unfold. And like that's the place that you want to get as a writer because like that's that's where the stories come come from but it's like also a state of meditation almost and it is like turning off your senses and going to a completely different place.

SPEAKER_01

It's the weirdest sensation. And I know uh I think one of the hardest things that no one talks about is how as a writer learning from experience is why it takes so many people so long to just break in myself included it's 15 years before I made any money on this is just training your mind to do that to to intercept all these characters and their experiences and their world and their histories. Like they're not just there in the room doing the thing that you have them doing. They are people who you know Riley is this girl whose parents divorced and she's living with that and uh like there's this whole years and years of backstory in the character that you have to sort of feel and become a part of and it's it's so cool when it actually happens. And I think I think as a writer it's one of the hardest things to sort of train yourself how to get in that head space and to do it organically I think you know there's there's a lot of writers who unfortunately give themselves substance abuse problems to try to chase that head space to sort of oh how do I disconnect from reality and get into this character and uh it's so because it is a very bizarre thing we do. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

It is it is unique. I think it's like the ultimate version of empathy um but also frankly as a non-author kind of disturbing that you all are just walking around with people in your head that you've fully increated it's it's it's really wild. Um but at least you don't have to torture yourself physically like the intercept or the antennas do. So I'll say that I hope I hope there's not nobody in the writer others like you know physically harming themselves in order to get into the space of whatever they're writing about. Going into sensory deprivation tanks and it's so disturbing just the way you described like going back to that like wanting to lift your arm but not lifting your arm and it's part of like I'm gonna believe this movie's coming out because I need to see it. This is a part of the movie that I'm really curious to see how they would do. Do you have any ideas as a screenwriter like how you would depict that experience of of no sensation and floatingness honestly no I'm excited to see what they come up with.

SPEAKER_01

I've lived with the story so long uh and been in and out of the the Hollywood system so much that uh I'm I'm very okay with passing off these babies to someone else to to lend their expertise to uh it is the the great thing about Hollywood and filmmaking is you are bringing together this this army of artists like 200 artists coming together to make something and you know something like conveying the feeling of sensory deprivation like that's I mean the the writing but you know how the actor performs the role of bishop how you know the design the production design are they going to just have her in a void a black void or something or underwater or you know how do you do that um it's fascinating I'm I'm curious to see it too.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah I'm also curious to see how they handle the horror parts of like the physical horror body horror. We watched a documentary about George Romero recently and learned like before him there were no ratings. I didn't know that I didn't know the Knight of the Living Dead forced the creation of ratings. He ruined it for everyone. But all well no but he also paved the path because some of the like this also was very zombie like and you can tell me to take this part out if you feel like it's spoiling it but when the one of the antennas is literally digging into a person's body and like pulling out all of their parts would be an incredible like this is how you know I love zombie stuff. I'm like that would be so amazing to see happen and like what the special effects and makeup effects would be to make that come to life. And it did I was like they want to they want to kill someone.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. And what I find so fun about that scene is they don't because they don't have their senses they don't quite know when they're done.

SPEAKER_02

So they just keep digging yeah keep digging that hole it is it is that's what it makes me do when I think about it. As somebody who moved from writing uh rom-coms

Generational Trauma And Parenting Fallout

SPEAKER_02

to this level of body horror what do you think is the role of that extreme violence in your storytelling why is it why do you choose to write those kinds of visceral moments?

SPEAKER_01

Part of it is it really I'm a very squeamish person. I don't like getting my blood drawn there's something about watching that little vial my my blood squirt into that vial and fill up so suddenly where I'm like oh god it's it's not gonna stop is it I'm just gonna drain out it's just so you can write right now.

SPEAKER_02

You can both write the most horrific things but you can't get your blood drawn is what I'm learning right now.

SPEAKER_01

That is yeah I find it very uncomfortable and so I put that discomfort onto the page and go very gory um very visceral and I find it very uh therapeutic and fun uh I find most of my my books are very violent very bloody I try not to do it without a point though and so in intercepts there is a lot of gore but again it's coming from the the characters the antennas they have a certain way of interacting with the world and if they are going to attack someone they would do it in a certain way and they wouldn't know when to stop they wouldn't know how to sort of do it quickly and snap a neck and move on no they would be something very violent and purposeful and without a clear ending because they couldn't quite sense when that end happens. So it it does as characters and monsters or whatever they lend themselves to that kind of gore. It's gonna be up there like I I think when this film comes out again I'm willing it into existence in gore just that one scene there's many others folks if you haven't read it yet um after writing about government experience experiments monsters the darkest parts of humanity uh you still have hope right and like what why why as somebody who can see the darkest things what's still giving you hope about people oh I love humanity I think we've done like we are so beautiful the things that we do um I uh I I like Flairy O'Connor's writing and the things she said about being a writer so I'm gonna uh pilfer some of that and she said one of the themes that unites a lot of her work is a search for grace in territory controlled by the devil. Wow and I'm like I that's how I see the world too is I'm looking for small wins in an evil place. Because I do think that if we just succumb to the evil well that doesn't do anyone any good. That's not a world I want to live in uh and I do think for the most part humanity is good and we want to be good and a bunch of small wins do accumulate and you know so I do have a lot of hope for humans. We're so good when we want to be and yeah um so I'm not I'm not a nihilistic kind of person and I like my I don't care for repressively bleak horror for the most part because it's just not how I see the world.

SPEAKER_02

I really appreciate the small wins because we're living in a time I don't have humans always lived in every time has every time been like this where small wins and hard things matter um and that we don't always get the exact happy ending we want even in a book but the the victories that we do have are what sustain us long term. For the folks who have not read your book yet but will be because of their their participation in our book club is there any advice you'd give them going into reading it?

SPEAKER_01

None at all I mean honestly I I I feel like a book hopefully should just be something you pick up and then you I mean maybe you know their genre but you just relax and have a good time. I don't think you're gonna be relaxed folks just say you'll be very tense.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah there's nothing relaxing about this read. I'd say I'd say uh go in with no expectations because when we when we started reading the book I had no expectations because um you know usually when we start reading something for zombie book club I'm like there will be zombies some kind of apocalypse um and sometimes I'm let down and in this case I knew there weren't

Writing Women And Honest Feedback

SPEAKER_00

going to be those things. It's gonna be very different. It's gonna be a different story but there will be a thread there that connects it to uh what we like to talk about. And that thread made itself obvious uh very quickly and um I wasn't I I didn't have any expectations so I went in and I'm like everything was a delight. Well I mean it was horrifying but it was a horrifying delight. It was delightfully horrifying um so yeah uh go in with with an open mind and have that open mind clawed out uh by something that's scooping it out like it's shoveling through your brains.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah yeah that's a good description where would you most love people to order your book from um wherever you can get it but honestly I libraries are one of my favorite things in the world and it was it it is one of the differences now that uh it's been picked up by by Penguin Random House is as an indie publisher you can't really get yourself into libraries. But the traditional publishers can. And so I've seen uh it was released in hardcover so it's got that that plastic sheet over it now with the barcode on it for the libraries. And so uh I I love a library that's where I learned to to fall in love with the written word. Uh so So I would say order from a library if your library doesn't carry it, uh request it because it is out there in the wholesale ecosystem now where they can get it pretty easily. Uh and yeah, use your libraries too. Yes. They're amazing. They have everything.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, in this day and age, I think many of us have forgotten the revolutionary power of the library. We gotta be spending some time there. Uh where can people follow your journey as a writer and as a screenwriter?

SPEAKER_01

I'm starting up social media. Uh so I'm on, I'm I'm not good at it. I'll warn you that. I do it's not my natural uh environment, but I am on TikTok, Facebook, and Instagram. So most of the handles are tj.pain.author. Uh pain is spelled P-A-Y-N-E. So tj.pain.author at TikTok, at Instagram, at Facebook.

SPEAKER_00

Amazing. We'll have all those in the show notes, folks. I'll have all those links down there in the down there section.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah. Well, this has been really fun to talk with you, TJ. I appreciate you taking the time with us. And thank you for writing the kind of book that made me uh forget that I was on a grueling road trip home. Uh didn't want to get out of the car.

SPEAKER_00

That's how good it was. That's actually true. Yeah. What was it, like 10, almost 11 hours later? It's like, but it's almost done.

SPEAKER_02

Actually, we were uh we were almost finishing it and we were like 10 minutes from home. And I was like, can we just sit in the driveway? I need to know how this finishes.

SPEAKER_01

So that is the best and worst experiences, those in the garage or the driveway. Just five more minutes.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah. So my inner middle school weirdo salutes your inner middle school weirdo. Thank you for being who you are and creating the work that you do, TJ. It's been a pleasure to talk to you.

SPEAKER_01

Thank you so much for having me. This was a blast.

SPEAKER_02

All right. Thanks everybody for listening. Go order intercepts wherever you want to find it, particularly your library. And remember, you can also get from your library the audiobook version. Yeah. So whatever your uh reading pleasure type is, it's available for you right now, and we'll be talking about it as a group in a few weeks.

Gore, Grace, Libraries, And Closing

SPEAKER_00

Um Leah, for the last for the last couple minutes, I've I was intercepted um and my brain completely stopped. Uh so you have no idea that we closed out the the podcast with TJ. Yeah. So after after TJ left the interview, um, I was like, are we gonna end this episode? And Leah's like, we already did. And um yeah. This this kind of happens sometimes to me. Uh where was I just now, Leah? I don't know.

SPEAKER_02

Someone else took over your brain, maybe. Maybe TJ.

SPEAKER_00

TJ took over my brain. That's what happened.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Um I mean, he did for however many hours that the audiobook is. Yeah. Uh I turned I turned into an antenna. Uh except it wasn't as as bad as he describes. Um, not my experience anyway.

SPEAKER_02

No, but what a nice guy.

SPEAKER_00

And he's a great guy.

SPEAKER_02

So it's so much to enjoy in this book. Like you can just read it for the horror, like the general horror of it, but also there's like a lot of really powerful messaging there uh around what it means to be in the capitalist workforce and how that forces us often to choose work over our family, which is also what's supporting our family, which is deeply disturbing to me.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

So Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

It's uh a lot of a lot of questions and um a lot of open-ended answers. Uh which is that uh the a lot of a lot of evil out there, but it's not 100% evil. It's but it's also kind of good. Um, and sometimes the good is evil, you know, sometimes the evil's good. It's all perspective. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

That's another thing we didn't really get into a lot, but it's really it's whose perspective are you in?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, especially if you're not allowed to have your own perspective due to a government experiment that pops drugs into you.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, I'd hate I'd love to be like, this is totally implausible, but TJ did a very good job of listing all of the inspiration. I was like, oh, I didn't realize we did sensory deprivation experiments. That's horrible.

SPEAKER_00

Oh yeah. I didn't know about that. And it like it's there's there's so many things that like um like while we were reading it, I was like, uh, like this this reminds me of like the the Men Who Stare at Goats thing where they were trying to like do mind control on goats. It didn't work. But they tried. Then I'll like like he mentions the MK Ultra experiments where they were um trying to see if they could control people's minds with LSD and various other psychedelic substances, uh, which they couldn't um is what they discovered. Uh and in fact, they inadvertently invented a drug that would open people's minds and make them resistant to the government's uh propaganda.

SPEAKER_02

Which is also kind of I mean, there's a rebellion that happens with the antennas, so there's definitely a through line there too. Well, if you haven't read it yet, you know where to pick it up from your library. Yeah. And looking forward to talking with folks. We don't have a date scheduled for those of you who are like, wait, is there a date scheduled to talk? There's not. Um, we will be posting on Patreon to see when folks would like to chat about intercepts. It is summertime, so it might be a little bit of a slower roll than usual, but we'll get there and then can't wait to hear what you all have to say.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, then we're gonna discuss it. Yeah, we'll get to talk about the stuff I couldn't talk about. Yeah. Spoiler. Yeah. But thanks everybody for listening. Thanks, everybody. Read that book. Or listen. That's my new catchphrase. Read that book. Yeah. And don't die. Don't die.

SPEAKER_03

Bye bye.

SPEAKER_02

Bye bye.

Contributor

Dan

Host
Contributor

Leah

Host