from the WNIN Tri-State Public Media Center in downtown Evansville.

I'm David James, and this is two Main Street, new Harmony, Indiana, the site of two early American utopian communities where social equality would flourish.

And the wilderness is the backdrop of two novels in the Starfall series.

Now there's a sense of isolation, maybe too much togetherness in this tight knit compound called new Harmony, where a mother nature and human nature often collide.

In books one and two, the reader leapfrogs from historical new harmony to a futuristic community where real life and fictional characters exist.

But there's one constant here the search for happiness, understanding, and the truth.

Here to take us on this journey through time is author Tristram Yeager, who writes under the pen name Trista New Year.

Our new Year.

So welcome to two Main Street.

Just to try, you know, to get that right.

Oh, it's a tough one.

Thank you so much David.

It's so great to be here.

And what a wonderful summary of the books.

That's well thank you I think I got that so right.

You know it was beautiful.

It was a beautiful, quick portrait of what I'm trying to get at.

So explain Tristram to me.

Well, it's sort of a funny story, named for.

We like.

Oh, good.

I'm named for Tristram Shandygaff, which was the Laurence Sterne novels, my mom's favorite novel.

And my mom is a pretty straight shooter.

Like a good Midwestern soul, pretty, you know, normal English teacher.

But she named me for the main character of a novel where everything goes wrong because the main character got the wrong name.

So when I finally got through the book, it's quite an interesting and bizarre book.

When I finally got through to my early 20s, I was like, mom, what?

What happened?

She's like, oh, I don't know.

I just like the day off.

So that's how I got that name.

Well, now, the Starfall Books, one now, two has recently been published, right?

That's right.

Two of the new book, out now, you live right now outside Bloomington, is that right?

That's correct.

Yes.

Okay.

And you earned a PhD in Central Eurasian Studies at IU.

Now, you've written other novels about your travels in Russia and Siberia.

So what intrigued you about new Harmony?

So close to home?

Well, that's a really interesting question.

I mean, I think many for many of us Midwesterners, as we go through life, we start to appreciate where we came from.

And in some ways, I had to go halfway around the world, well, literally, to Siberia to really start to understand what my own roots meant and how I might want to start dealing with them.

So when I landed back in Bloomington after a bunch of years overseas and traveling and doing research, I, you know, really began to appreciate rural Indiana, small town Indiana, in a really new way.

And part of that was, you know, going to all sorts of different places, including new Harmony, and new Harmony is just one of those places where many people land and find themselves absolutely enchanted.

And I definitely, fell for new harmony when I, I think it was when I went to the second floor of the Workingmen's Institute and saw the Italian paintings, I was like, why are these here?

What is going on?

What is the story with this town?

And thankfully, there's the internet and over the years, more and more interesting resources from the early 19th century, when new Harmony was kind of in its heyday of interesting utopian developments, a lot of those resources have been digitized, so you can go and read the letters of someone like Robert Dale Owen.

You can find out a lot about all these different figures and, you know, major and minor players in the communities and go down all sorts of fascinating rabbit holes.

And, as I did, I, I'm a historian by training, and that's what most of my work was overseas and in Russia.

And in Mongolia.

But, I didn't really want to do a traditional academic history.

And then the longer I was kind of like, well, maybe I should try a novel.

Thinking about it.

Then I was like, well, historical novels.

There's been some really great historical novels or history inspired, history inspired novels written about new Harmony, including, the Angel in the forest.

There's a great one called town of the fearless, which is based on own family, stories that were passed down through the generations, just really charming and interesting books.

And there's, there was more recently something called Fanny and Fanny about, Frances Wright and her adventures.

I was just like, I can't do another, you know, like, we're going to have a utopia kind of costume drama.

As much as I love those, I couldn't just do that.

I somehow really wanted to render, that strange spirit of new harmony in modern terms.

And so.

But I also felt like people needed the historical context, and they needed it in a more, emotional and novelistic way, as opposed to a more dry like, here's Robert Owen expounding on his values, you know, so it was an interesting experiment to try to come up with a way to bring some of that utopian hope and but into, a world where we contemporary readers, we modern readers can take it seriously instead of it being like all those funny little past people with their ridiculous outfits and their, you know, hats and stuff and, you know, their how could they believe this anyway?

Well, new Harmony, of course, founded by the rabbis, religious separatists from Germany who brought who bought land along the Wabash River in 1814, their goal to pursue Christian perfection in every aspect of daily life.

Also advocating, advocating celibacy, which apparently doomed the growth of the community.

Yeah, that does put a damper on things.

New Harmony changed hands in 1825, sold to social reformer Robert Owen, who wanted to establish a model community to attract intellectuals as well as hardworking farmers and craftsmen.

He did just that.

And today, of course, new Harmony remains a magnet for artists, authors and free thinkers.

But, t New Year utopian dreams can become nightmares, can't they?

Absolutely.

We travel in time.

We meet these characters.

Frances, right, and Xenia.

Yes.

Well, the protagonists of your novels.

Yes.

And Frances, right.

And her sister Camilla, who's kind of a shadowy figure in history.

Lots of other real life characters.

Yes.

So.

So Camilla and Frances.

Right.

Did exist.

And we do have their letters.

We have, Frances Wright was a pretty prolific author.

And she was a public speaker at a time when very few women would get up on the, on stage and give the kind of speeches which were a common entertainment at the time.

So it's kind of funny for us to think about someone.

Well, I guess it's like a podcast, right?

Or like a radio show, like we're doing right now, where a woman would not be accustomed to stand up in front of a mixed group of people in public and expound on things like moral virtue.

So, you know, there were women preachers, especially during the, you know, the second Great Awakening in the US, but not secular speakers on intellectual topics.

That was pretty rare.

Yeah.

Well, she had some very important friends, too.

The Marquis de Lafayette.

Yes.

She was acquainted with Thomas Jefferson.

Yeah, in Madison.

And it's amazing.

Yeah, yeah.

Scottish born.

Yes.

And then became a U.S. citizen, correct?

Yes.

She, came first to the U.S.. She had read a lot about the American experiment.

And a lot of progressives in places like Scotland and England were looking to America and really keeping a close eye on what was happening.

And Frances, right, got really, really into America.

At least that's how she describes it in her own autobiography.

And was reading everything she could.

And finally, once she was old, when she reached her majority and had control over her family fortune, which again, was another very rare thing for a woman to have.

She and her sister went to the US and she wrote a really groundbreaking book, in that it was a positive travel account about American customs and democracy.

So I believe it's before de Tocqueville.

But along the same lines, she was pretty admiring of what she saw, sometimes a little bit over romanticizing some things.

But she gives some really beautiful descriptions, both of everyday life in places like upstate New York and just there, how impressed she was with, Americans specifically on the East Coast.

Her very, very cognizant of their role as citizens.

So she likes to refer to sort of every farmer was a Cincinnatus, every, every, you know, any random American could come and had an opinion about politics and they could express it fairly well.

I feel like we still have a lot of that.

We're pretty opinionated, group of people, which I really love about Americans.

But I think the time frame, too, is this is just right after Revolutionary War and then the War of 1812.

Yes.

The colonists became a country.

Defeated England twice.

Yes.

Yeah.

And she comes over from the the United Kingdom.

England and to the to the United States.

Yeah.

And what she what she did that was really incredible was as a, you know, I think she was in her late teens, basically she publishes this book, and it wins her all of this praise and, you know, notice from intellectual circles, she becomes friends with people like Jeremy Bentham, the, the philosopher.

She.

And that's how she meets Lafayette after she sort of makes her name as an author.

So really unique, path that she followed, though.

I mean, there are other women writers.

There were other women writers about America who came along later, like Frances Trollop.

But she's really, really interesting person.

And so, she came back to America, and after she sort of had all this fame and traveled around Europe and hung around with the Marquis de Lafayette for a while, almost scandal.

So she asked a scandalously so she became very, very, very close with him as the general.

Yes, exactly.

The general.

And she referred to him as her father, which was, a very difficult thing for sometimes for his family to embrace.

And the general is mentioned in your book.

Yes.

And on a lot of her travels.

Also, you mentioned Frances Trollope.

Yes.

She wrote a kind of a disparaging, review of, of of American Customs.

Oh, yeah.

And then she and people and I think that the word trollop.

Yes.

Is comes from that now, it's very possible and she, she was a, complicated woman.

On one hand, she's extremely witty, very charming, very, very funny.

And so her, her if you've, if you want to laugh, really, really hard you can pull up her her book on Google books and read about her trip on a like a basically a steamboat up the Mississippi from New Orleans to what's, you know, to Memphis.

And she just describes like she's like, everyone's seven foot tall, everyone's redheaded, none of them talk when they eat.

They just run around these, like, giant Kentucky boats, man.

And she's kind of like, they're really strapping and amazing, but they're also just incredibly uncouth, and I don't even know what to say.

Okay.

So.

Yeah.

Now, Zena.

Yes.

Okay.

Now she is the fictional character.

Yes.

In the future.

Yes.

She is integrated.

Yes.

What does that mean?

Well, I have been thinking a lot about artificial intelligence.

I work in an industry that is very closely related to the technology world.

And, I has been a big topic of conversation in my world since, you know, 2018, 2017, and maybe even before.

And so I've always been thinking, like, what?

You know, there's this there's this talk, right now, there's this kind of idea of, this oppositional relationship with technology, and I specifically that I will, get really, really good and get real smart and come and destroy humanity because our interests won't be aligned, to put it really, really bluntly.

But I want I don't see that as the future, I imagine.

I wanted to imagine and present an image of how humans and I might be more like companions.

Now she has a companion in this book called yes, yes.

That's her.

That's your artificial.

She communicates with alt and they have quite a quite a close relationship.

And she communicates by putting her fingers to her temple.

Is that correct?

Yeah.

There's I imagine, gestural controls.

So using motions sort of like we've, we're starting to be able to do with some video games and some other TVs and stuff you can control by moving your hands around in certain patterns.

And I also imagine voice commands.

So, being able to talk to your AI companion, recently there was a new product called the rabbit that is an AI agent in a box, basically like a little device that you can use that's like a super sophisticated version of Siri or another voice assistant, and it allows you to be like, hey, can you plan an entire road trip through Evansville that will include one activity that's fun for kids and one thing that's fun for adults and will give us, a great place to have for lunch.

And then it'll it'll sort of spit out, just like somehow sometimes people use ChatGPT this way.

So anyway, I was a this before the rabbit came out.

I was imagining a similar, agent, but it would be so close to you that it would be part of your brain.

And there's a lot of work being done right now on brain and brain computer interfaces.

We're just at the very, very beginning of that development.

Is that a good thing or a bad thing?

I don't know.

Will it work for everyone?

I'm not sure.

But there's a notion in the book that there are some people who are able to integrate with, device this way, and there are some people who, perhaps for biological or other reasons, can't.

And so Zena is one of the people who has chosen to integrate, you know, and as she's kind of, people are kind of suspicious of Zinnia because of her integration, the people who aren't, I think that maybe something, something weird is going on there.

These people aren't aren't quite right, and they're looking into our lives and there's some suspicions going on there.

And also.

But there's another problem with this, she's integrated, but she's going to start going through something called reversal.

Well, I was imagining how you would keep a brain computer interface stable.

Because any sort of hardware that you put in really close to the brain will slowly destroy the brain tissue.

And that's one, one thing about things like Neuralink that people haven't talked about very widely, but it is, it is a struggle we're going to have to get over.

And there's some other approaches to integrating, computer technology into a brain that don't involve direct implants, but that's a whole other conversation that would probably be like another hour's interview.

But I was a so to stabilize the brain, right.

I was thinking, well, you'd probably have to have a stable hormonal situation, and that might require, basically pausing puberty and, with all that, that would come, you know, it would come along with that.

So people who are integrated in my imaginary world, don't develop, male and female sex characteristics.

They basically look sort of like smaller, androgynous people.

And that's something that kind of is a little it's again, sets them apart from every day, folks who aren't integrated.

And that's what kind of freaked them out.

Exactly, exactly.

But and also, if you're thinking about it from an integrated person's point of view, it would be disturbing to suddenly begin to change.

And that's what happens to Zinnia in the wilds of future Indiana.

That's right.

So, book one starts with this mission.

She is paired with a contractor bodyguard, and the relationship at first is not harmonious as they head to new Harmony.

No, not at all.

Yeah, they, they're definitely from two different worlds.

But those worlds collide.

There's there's I mean, there's all kinds of stuff going on in this book.

There's, they get captured.

Yes, by these eco terrorists.

She.

Wow.

The white violets.

Yeah.

I mean, again, my apologies to the the wonderful, order outside of Terre Haute that has an eco justice center.

By the same name.

But, I was I got obsessed with that.

That name, that flower.

Yeah.

So I was trying to imagine if if we had a situation where due to climate change, Indiana became way, way wetter, which is sort of what the, the models and predictions are saying.

Who would be left?

A lot of us would probably leave if we were constantly being flooded out or.

Right, you know, and there's also been some talk about creating reserves, zones of, you know, basically giant wilderness areas where that would help stabilize the climate over the long term.

So I was imagining one of those being declared in Indiana.

I don't know.

Sorry, everybody.

And then so most of southern Indiana is part of this reserve zone, and there are people who take it upon themselves to protect it.

This is their own self-appointed job.

And they get a little bit, testy about it.

Right now, she's there to fix a relay station, and, so she's this on a regular, she's on a mission.

That's her job.

And she's a tech person.

She's going to go there and get this relay station up and going again.

Yes, because it's in the flood zone and it's important.

And the headquarters is in Bloomington.

Yes.

Yeah.

I got to destroy my hometown a little bit too.

So she sent from Bloomington on this mission with, will, Wills her bodyguard.

So all kinds of things going on there.

And I think nature is really a theme in your book, too.

You talk about the wonders of flora and fauna, humans struggling to coexist with the challenges of the environment.

Is that correct?

Yeah.

In some ways, the early history of Indiana as a frontier state and the future have this resonance in that everybody's trying to cope with nature.

And there's a there's different opinions about how to do it.

So, if you look at the way, you know, if you look at the diaries, say, of Robert Dale Owen, who traveled to new Harmony, is that Robert Owen son?

Or if you look at some other travelers in, you know, in the the what at the time was the western frontier of the U.S.?

I mean, I have to say, it's just shocking how many things they want to shoot.

They just shoot like, they're like, I shot this many birds that I shot this animal, and I shot this, I shot this.

That was really cool because now I can study them, or I just shot them for fun.

And, you know, there's all these discussions of, like, things that don't exist anymore, like huge sycamores that are big.

It's so big.

You could drive a carriage through them.

It's one of the descriptions or the parakeets that used to be in huge flocks in southern Indiana that are no longer with thought about that.

Yeah.

So there's all of these interesting moments of nature.

And so I wanted to make nature kind of like a, a weird character in the book that's always asserting itself in both, delightful and beautiful moving ways and terrifying ways.

In some ways, we have isolated ourselves a little bit from that experience, at least most of us in modern America.

And, when you open yourself to that experience, you kind of it kind of changes the equation a little bit.

And how we want to think about the place we live and what we want to do to ensure its future and the future of all of our non-human companions.

And so, in some ways, imagining this future where there was a lot more, where nature had a much more powerful, a much louder voice, in the chorus was really, really interesting.

Yeah.

Well, you we've quite a quite the story involving, these mysterious, forests and, and the things that they encounter on their, on their quest.

which is book two, is just been published.

Starfall takes us to new harmony in the early 1800s through the correspondence of Francis Wright, a real life early reformer and feminist.

And we meet the fictional character Xenia as she stumbles into futuristic new harmony where times and technology have changed, but not the mysteries in this oasis in the wilderness.

Several landmarks mentioned in the books.

Of course, people are familiar here with The Granary, the Labyrinth, and the Yellow Tavern.

Yes, it still exists, and they exist in the books.

That's right, that's right.

It was really survived over the centuries.

It was so much fun to reimagine how the town might be used by future folks who had slightly different goals and ideas.

And it was fun to think of it.

You know, the, the, the, the Wabash is predicted to rise and kind of potentially envelop new harmony.

So how would humans come up with a system for making the Wabash flow around it or through it without destroying the town?

So a lot of really fun, puzzles and inner maps.

I got to draw and it was it was really, really fun to think about.

Remember your first visit to new Harmony?

Yeah, I think that it was more it was definitely probably 15 years ago.

And that's when I had that moment where I went upstairs in the Workingmen's Institute and was just like, what is this?

And then the Atheneum is usually also like a lot of people kind of blew my mind.

And just the whole feeling of the town, it has to be one of the most remarkably quiet towns that I've ever been in in the Midwest.

And I've been to some pretty remote areas.

You have to get up, I think up on Lake Superior.

Maybe there's a town there that rivals it.

But it is very, very, very quiet.

And something about it that sort of hushed, you know, and the past is still very much alive and new harmony.

And people there are still gossiping about people who've been dead for almost 200 years, a, a stellar stewards.

They're stewards of these stories.

I see that, you know, the gossip stuff's a little flip, but, more earnestly, everyone there really takes the past seriously.

It doesn't keep them from living their lives or thinking about the future, but there is a real sense of, responsibility, toward the past, that they are stewards of history.

It is.

It is remarkable.

Okay.

What are puig's are who who are people?

Well, unfortunately there's not you know, there's not a huge role for Puig, which is in the book, but there there's a footnote, there's a footnote.

I and I apologize to everyone.

They wrote a novel with footnotes.

Like, I really couldn't think of another way to do this, but it's because I wanted to talk about things like the packages.

So I'm really fascinated by Indiana's folklore.

And, the packages were part of that.

So there's a great there's a bunch of stories.

There's a good there's an entire book that someone wrote about these legendary forest dwellers, and they're kind of like little elves or fairy folk or gnomes maybe, mostly benevolent, you know, or blue coats.

Yeah.

They were a little coats and they would often, help lost children.

So if someone, if a child wandered into the woods.

Benevolent.

Mostly.

Yeah.

Okay.

But a neutral, maybe chaotic neutral at times.

But mostly pretty.

Pretty nice.

Friendly little guys.

Yeah.

Okay.

Now let's talk about the great venture.

Nashoba.

Yeah.

Nashoba.

The great venture is the name I give it in the book.

Or sort of like the sister's code name for it.

But there wasn't a shop there.

There was, and it's right.

Right.

Actually, there's still a couple roads and things named for it outside of Memphis.

Near Germantown, Tennessee.

That was the original site there, a tract of land outside Memphis.

This was an experiment to rid the land of slavery and still compensate the slave owners.

This is kind of a unique project that Francis Wright was really involved in, and put her fortune into it.

Yeah, it was a strange by modern standards.

It was a strange plan because it was sort of seen as a compromise solution.

Right.

So, the idea was that progressive, abolitionist minded folks would and this is this is difficult for us on modern terms, but would purchase enslaved people.

And under the law, they were still the, enslavers.

Right?

They were the quote unquote owners.

But they would live together under, terms that were very benevolent for the time.

And they would work together and, you know, and through cooperative labor, which Francis Wright had seen work really well for, George Rapp and his group in new Harmony, they would be able to quickly turn a profit.

And that means that the, enslaved people would work off their purchase price and would be then liberated and, ideally colonized, meaning sent out of out of the US because many, European Americans, many white people at the time felt that there wasn't really a safe place for black Americans in the U.S.

So Canada was an option.

And, you know, if you're familiar with the Underground Railroad, that was the destination for a lot of, of African-Americans.

And Haiti was a pretty remarkable place at the time.

It was the first, republic established by African-American or African, Caribbeans, and, run by them.

So it was seen as like this beacon of hope for people of African heritage, where they could be completely free and among other folks who would treat them with dignity.

However, if you look at, there's a lot of even at the time Neshoba was founded in the 1820s, there was a lot of different views about slavery, how to unwind it, and what the rights of African-Americans should be.

And many of these views were put forward by African-Americans themselves.

And, there's a lot of really I encourage everyone who's interested in this time period to really look into, you know, there were a lot of folks speaking very loudly for their own education, liberation, and, that that America was their home and they didn't want to go anywhere else, that they should be afforded the rights of an American citizen and treated with dignity here and not forced to leave the country where they had been born.

So there, you know, there's a lot of different viewpoints.

And I think sometimes it all the way we get taught this history or we read about it in summary, these nuances get lost.

But it's very to understand the show.

But you have to understand the nuance of the context, which isn't always this simple, like good people anti-slavery.

You know, there were the pro-slavery people who were very misguided, right?

It was, you know, for instance, like Jefferson Davis brother was a was into Owen was into Robert Owen.

Right.

So he he wanted to run his plantation where obviously he had enslaved people according to overnight principles, which were very, you know, no corporal punishment, no punishment at all.

You're supposed to just give instruction and praise and not, you know, there was a so which for the time was like mind blowingly liberal.

So it's not all cut and dried in America.

And that's really what makes our history so interesting and so difficult.

Why we're still fighting about it so much, I believe.

Right.

Of course.

Then.

Frances.

Right.

She leaves new harmony.

Yes.

Goes down to this job.

Yeah.

She goes to Memphis for.

Yes.

And then goes and then goes down to Nashoba, which was pretty miserable place.

Is apparently a flood prone area.

Mosquito malaria.

Malaria.

And she gets malaria.

That Frances.

Right, contracts malaria.

Anyway, this experiment, they they don't make any money.

It eventually she leaves to because of her malaria.

Yeah.

Leaves it in the control of James Richardson in charge.

His diary of what goes on there triggers a moral scandal.

That's a that's a whole new that's book three.

So hard.

Yeah.

Anyway, a lot goes on there.

Yes.

Yeah.

Anyway.

And of course, the, the showboat then falls, but the slaves, the the, I guess are still slaves.

They're still technically are still enslaved.

Yeah, but Frances.

Right.

Puts them on a ship.

And to Haiti.

Yes.

And there's a voyage to Haiti.

They go together to Haiti because, Frances, right, had made friends with one of the envoys, from the Haitian president.

I don't know if she'd met the president himself, but he the there were a lot of envoys sort of trying to, you know, get some goodwill going in places like Philadelphia that were a little bit more open minded.

And so she met, I believe she met one of the envoys from the Haitian, president there.

And so she kind of had some connections and she, the president himself promised to help these, these folks fleeing slavery to to become established and to get set up on land and start for.

I mean, we're talking about here when the a couple dozen.

Oh really wasn't it wasn't a huge there we Yeah.

And another sidebar to this thing on that voyage to Haiti.

Francis falls in love with a French doctor.

Yeah.

This guy, had been in new Harmony, and he, had come along with William McClure, who was who became Robert Owen's partner in new Harmony.

And, and, you know, Owen and McClure had a longstanding sort of dispute and, like, contractual, it was a big mess.

But McClure, founded a school in new Harmony.

And, this gentleman was a teacher in the school.

He was reportedly a little bit moody, a little bit of a, broody kind of guy.

And so.

But they'd known each other for quite some time.

So when they went on this voyage together, I guess sparks flew or.

Who knows?

It's always hard to predict the motions of the heart.

Right.

So.

So she has a child.

She she and she begins, you know, she gets pregnant.

And I believe they decide to marry as as a result of that.

And she has a daughter?

Yes.

Who?

Silva.

Who is a very interesting character in and of herself.

Yeah.

That's another story.

Yes.

And of course, of course, the marriage didn't last.

Yeah, yeah.

So she it's amazing that she like I mean of course she's Francis.

Right.

So she's like no, I'm just going to divorce the guy, which at the time would have it a fairly big scandalous thing to do.

Silva later on actually testifies against this.

Suffragists.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

That's just weird.

Congress.

Yeah.

She and her, though, she's interesting.

She, the, on the other hand, she raised these two sons who became one of whom became an extremely, progressive sort of boundary pushing, Episcopal minister in New York City.

So who who incorporated all sorts of, non-Christian elements into certain a certain like worship practices.

So they had like a, a corn dance, like they bring in Native American elements into, the Episcopal liturgy.

So lots of there's still an odd family, even if Silva has a I think she really had some issues with her mom, and had a lot of resentment.

And she expressed that in political terms as well as personal terms.

So that was her rebellious nature.

Yeah, yeah.

How do you rebel against someone who's a rebel?

You gotta you gotta be really conservative.

Go way out there.

Okay, now let's fast forward to the future.

Yes.

Xena and her contractor bodyguard.

They they they find a substation, they meet a strange feature called the figure called the genius.

They're they're captured by Eagle terrorists.

They later escaping escape.

After Xena gets cozy with the sub commander, they finally reach to Harmony and there we meet some more interesting characters.

Zero for MoMA.

Oh, Seraphim of yeah, there are a few of them.

I gotta throw some Russians in there.

There's always right.

Okay.

Also, she's kind of like the leader of this area.

J which is her kind of companion and paramour.

Husband?

What is he?

I don't know, he was.

And Maria's supposed to be J's wife, but they're kind of free.

Yeah.

Free love kind of.

Yes.

In that area.

So a lot of characters here.

And, of course, Xena tries to, make her way in this community, and she does.

She's accepted.

Finally.

Yes.

Into the new who?

You.

New new new harmony.

Yes.

Okay.

But she's troubled with her reversal, becoming more feminine.

So she seeks comfort with J.

Will and Berwin, who is her former captor, the sub commander.

He suddenly shows up and it goes kind of wild there.

And it's to say the least.

Well, the you know, it is.

It is a little, it does get us a some, readers like to call it a little spicy at times, but there are, the reasons there's a reason for some of this, crazy stuff.

And if you think about, okay, just to frame this.

So, Robert Dale Owen, you know, Indiana senator, like very, you know, formidable statesman later in life.

But early on, you know, he he had his crazy moments and he published one of the first American works on birth control in the 1830s.

So he's this guy.

This guy's got a real crazy past.

And, but later in life, he wrote an autobiography where he was like, of course, nothing happened in new Harmony.

Everyone was just friendly.

We were just very friendly and, you know, you know, maybe some people fell in love who shouldn't have fallen in love.

But, you know, it was all good.

It was all clean fun.

And, you know, I have some questions about that because not only because of his own publications, like writing a book like, like he wrote, I think about physiology, quote unquote.

Would not have come from nowhere.

I mean, how would you explore that topic second hand?

And, and there's lots and lots of slightly scandalous relationships, even in the own family.

So, for instance, there's a wonderful article by, Linda Graham, who is a new Harmony resident and researcher, and she traced this woman named Margaret Chase, who was a very gifted artist who ended up, she was married, but she ended up kind of falling for one of the Owen brothers and eventually marrying him.

And her poor husband had headed back east, heartbroken.

So there, there was a little more space in new Harmony than maybe Robert Dale.

Owen wanted to let on.

But, you know, he's writing in the Victorian era.

He had to kind of edit, and that was a very common impulse in Victorian biographers and auto biographers to sort of clean up some of the crazier stuff.

So even, you know, if you look at someone like Mary Shelley, the author of Frankenstein, a notable woman of letters of that time, her descendants just destroyed parts of her journal that were considered too spicy for anyone to read.

And I'm sure, you know, literary researchers have been crying ever since.

I bet now we have this mysterious vegetative growth of a fungus mycelia, which there really is mycelia.

And yes, it does have some beneficial qualities, doesn't it?

Yeah, I was trying to.

I'm not quite sure where mycelia came from, my fictional mycelium, but I wanted some element to stitch together the past in the future.

And so.

And I wanted some sort of embodiment of this strangeness, the spirit that a lot of us feel when we go to new harmony.

And this is how it came out.

So it is, it is a phenomenon and there is no real clear explanation for what it is.

And that theme will get developed further.

I've got two more books in the series on their way.

But the theme sort of unwinds more and more.

And as as it does, we see the many different characters and their different relationships with this phenomenon.

It's almost hallucinogenic, isn't it?

It is.

It's it's definitely.

Or, you know, or is it an extradimensional being that is like opening we're, opening little terrors in our reality, like, well, there's so many ways.

One of the mysteries of new harmony.

Yes.

One of the many mysteries of new harmony.

Yes, Now let's learn more about my guest.

So where did you grow up, Christopher?

I was born in Texas, but grew up primarily in Missouri.

My childhood was spent in a little town called Lee's Summit on the western side of the state.

So outside of Kansas City, okay.

And then as a teenager, my family moved to the Saint Louis area.

So I grew up right at the Saint Louis city limits as, as a sullen, kind of brooding teenager with where are we all exactly?

We go.

I think it's a good place to brood as a teenager, actually.

So what brought you to the Hoosier State?

Well, like a lot of people, I came here to one of the universities I went to, IU because it has one of the best programs in, Mongolian and, Siberian studies.

So I have a kind of crazy, background in that I got obsessed with the indigenous peoples of Russia.

I speak fluent Russian, and I had all these experiences that took me to, like, an archeological dig on the, you know, on the steps of.

Konnichiwa.

I met all these actors and even a shaman from, Brazil, which is a part of Russia.

That's right near the Mongolian border around Lake Bicol, which have you ever.

When things calm down, I hope many, many people can go over and see this beautiful, beautiful part of the world because it is breathtaking.

But, and the people were fascinating and so friendly, so down to earth, kind of like Midwesterners.

I think a lot of Siberians and Midwesterners would get along just great.

If there weren't a language barrier.

We would all have fun together because they, like, cook it out.

They like walking in the woods, they like goofing around, you know, swimming.

Just crazy, crazy things with vehicles, right?

Like there's no mud pit too deep for a Russian driver in Siberia.

Like, you know, they're just it's it.

They're just.

We got a lot in common.

Yeah, well, the expanse of Russia is incredible.

Like, how many time zones is eight?

It's just amazing.

Yeah.

You just I can't even.

Yeah.

So.

So I was at I got sidetracked.

Sorry.

Thinking about how Americans and Siberians should have a cookout together, but, I came to IU, and, you know, I was going to just do a masters, and I just really got into both my studies and, the sort of community in Bloomington.

And I ended up marrying a, native Bloomington Iron.

And we through various, you know, various trials and travels, came back and decided to settle in Bloomington.

So we have, you know, we settled, we've got a family.

And, now, I'm totally all in now.

And you told me you work for the Moscow time.

Yeah.

That English language.

Yeah.

Back in the day, in the early, like in the 2000s.

I worked at, the biggest English language newspaper in Russia at the time.

And that was just the Moscow Times.

It's just.

I think it just took its last breath, and it launched a lot of really wonderful journalists who are working both in Russia and the former Soviet Union region and, other places like the Wall Street Journal.

There's some Wall Street Journal folks who are, Moscow Times alum.

So it was a really interesting place to get like thrown into a newsroom.

I worked on the opinion page.

I was the editor of the opinion page because I was a good translator.

So I, was able to hear all sorts of different perspectives from Russian thinkers and scholars, and I would translate them into English and edit them for, for clarity and things like that.

So it's a really, really interesting job.

That were you ever afraid, way over there now, a journalist?

Yeah, I don't know.

Yeah, it is frightening.

It's a very, very different place than it was back then.

However, there were the first inklings of some, intimidation tactics and other little things that just made you wonder, like, what's why is that person always there?

What's what's going on here?

Why did my friend just call me and say they got a weird phone call about this or that?

So I had questions, but there was nothing that really felt felt scary or super intimidating.

But I wasn't covering super sensitive topics.

I wasn't at the time.

The big No-No was Chechnya.

And the conflict there and the corruption there.

So the people there were journalists who were involved in reporting on that, who did face a lot of harassment and or threats to their personal safety.

So.

Well, tell me about some of your adventures.

You said you were in Mongolia.

You were in Siberia.

Well, what's going on in Siberia?

Well, my, you know, the research that I settled on in graduate school was into theater.

So I had a lot of friends who were actors, and, they would drag me around to various functions like so and so.

It was kind of fun.

I was like, oh, here's mine.

It was almost like, here's my pet American, and I have an American.

You and I sing, and I have a, an arts background.

So I, they would ask me to sing an American song and I'd pick some sort of Appalachian folk song that I'll be like, wow, okay, cool.

And so I'd sort of.

And then they'd have another round of, of drinks and everyone would continue with their festivities.

But, so some of the adventures.

Wow.

One of the most interesting times was going deep into the mountains.

And those are, a mountain range that is like, linked up with the all time mountains, which people may be slightly more familiar with.

It's right on the border between Russia and Mongolia.

So, about 12 time zones away, very rugged mountain range, know very little development.

So there are places where, even though even in the US, it's pretty hard to find a complete vista that has no mark of, of humankind.

So, like, not a road, a little building, maybe.

No, no, nothing like that.

So there was a lot of those there.

And the roads were, incredible in that you're like, wow, this is a road.

You're going to drive all this.

So, but yeah, there's, we went up to this little, festival of the mountain people, which are a special branch of the Brits, who are a Mongolian speaking group within Russia, about quarter million to 300,000 strong in terms of, like, language spoken.

And so we were way off in this remote little pocket, and it was one of the craziest, like, times of my life.

Like, there's just everyone there was there at a party.

It was kind of like little five weekend, but in, a super remote, Alaskan village.

It was really wild.

What were you eating and drinking there?

Well, one of the, It's a great question.

One of the one of the favorite dishes is a dish that's common throughout Central Asia, which is basically like a meat dumpling.

And they're called birds in, in Mongolian.

And they're kind of like, a not I wouldn't say a national religion, but they're really, really, really popular.

People are really into them.

So they're these large, like they're about the size of your fist and they're stuffed with various kinds of meat, often lamb.

So lamb and mutton are very popular meat in Mongolia and among the burritos.

And they're just this, you'll get a huge mountain, like a big stack of these dumplings.

And, inside is this, like, delicious, delicious, juicy broth.

So you have this dumpling that you bite into and it you just have to slurp, because otherwise you'll just be covered in meat, juice and it's great.

They're delicious.

And, there's, there's all sorts of good food there.

There's a lot of fish that are specific to Lake Baikal that are delicious.

And, there's pine nuts that grow wild.

And so people will gather those and make various candy, like there's a local candy company that makes these delicious pine nut candies with chocolate.

And just.

Yeah, there's a lot of is there a local liquor?

Well, people will make their own or so.

It's variations on vodka, so people will make their own, they're called Natsuki.

Their own.

How are we?

How do we say that?

Basically, you make your own flavored vodka using wild herbs or, other, like, fruits or spices.

And people have a lot of beliefs about what's medicinal and not, there's also in Mongolia, there's a tradition of fermenting mare's milk.

So you milk a female horse, that's what it is.

And you, you basically you make, like a yogurt or a kefir and it's mildly alcoholic.

It's like, like near beer in terms of alcohol level, but it's also this fermented milk products.

So you end up it's really, really interesting.

The first time that was let's just say that and they'll distill this, it's called E-Tech.

They'll distill it down into a liquor that's basically like if Jim Beam made something out of Camembert, it's pretty specific.

No, I think it's an acquired taste that I never quite acquired, but it's it's definitely original.

Now, you've written, a couple other novels about your travels in Russia.

Yes.

And that's kind of historical and fictional, right?

Yeah.

I, I seem to have something for the 1820s and 30s.

I don't know why, but the I wrote, it's a long story, sort of like Starfall.

It's a story in several parts because it's extremely long.

And it's about the Decemberists uprising.

So the first, democracy inspired uprising against the central Russian authorities at the time, which was the czar.

So it's a group of noblemen and other officers and some, you know, commoners as well, who all attempted to overthrow the czar, at one, one day in December, which is why they're called The Decemberists.

And, they were exiled to the part of some of them were exiled to the part of Siberia where I spent a lot of my time and did my research.

So they were so because they were such interesting people and did a lot of sort of preliminary writing about just the geology of the area, the ethnography.

So writing seriously about, baroque customs and songs and traditions and artwork, painting portraits of people, including borealis.

They were often featured as footnotes.

So this was a family called the and they have a house that I, that I saw literally in the middle of nowhere.

It's like this tiny little village, and I was just like, who were these people?

I really need to go back and do some more reading after I finished my dissertation, which once I did and I had a, a young child and I was extremely bored, and thank goodness for IU.

They have an amazing library.

I found the letters of the best of brothers and they broke my heart.

They were so beautifully written.

Gorgeous descriptions of the of just the the landscape and the people and the the animals, and of their own relationship.

What's the name of a novel?

That novel is called The Tomb of the Stone.

But, the first part is called hyper adamantine.

So I wanted to try to tell the story of the wolves, but just like with the Starfall stuff, I couldn't quite muster doing like a strict, you know, are just going to be historical, because it's really a lot of it is quite depressing fare, to be honest.

And so I wanted to add a more fantastical theme, and I wanted to make it more Siberian centric.

A lot of writing about Russia tends to focus on the European capitals.

Sure.

So Moscow and Saint Petersburg.

And I wanted to kind of open up the English speaking readership to other worlds that are in Russia.

I'm going to check that out.

Yeah, yeah.

So there's a mythical search for the tomb of Genghis Khan is sort of the the fantastical element.

Okay, good.

Now, before we wrap this up, what's been the reaction to the Starfall in New Harmony?

I am just about to find out.

So when this airs, I might already know.

But so far everyone there has been really supportive.

Who knows about it?

We'll see as more people read it how they feel.

I mean, I did kind of destroy their town and fill it with some weirdos.

So, I'm curious.

I'm really curious and excited.

But I've found most people that are open minded and they want to engage.

And even if they don't agree with what you've done, they'll, they want to have a conversation.

So I'm looking forward to that, I really am.

So what's next for t New Year?

I well, I am hoping to I'm hoping to finish Starfall by next year, so 2025.

And then I have another sci fi project in mind, that will also have an Indiana hook.

I'm kind of interested in trying to tell stories that are very much based on, this region.

But it will also be set.

I'm, I'm thinking on a mission exploring one of the moons of Saturn remotely, but with someone based kind of, you know, there's we have Crane, we have IU, we have we have Purdue sort of thinking about someone who is sitting here on Earth trying to figure out if there is intelligent life on one of these moons in these oceans.

So kind of playing around with with those ideas.

Now, you also write that we women need new myths, not just retellings need to stir the pot in the darkness.

So what are your missions to stir the pot?

Well, it's interesting, people love to talk about strong female characters, but, often strong female characters have what we culturally think of as male attributes.

And there are female strengths.

And in some ways that I'm sort of inspired by some of the thinking of Ursula Le Guin, where instead of talking about swords and conquest and things like that, she talks about the sort of carrier bag this vessel that we can fill with culture.

And in some ways, that is that's, a role that's often been assigned to women.

So what would the heroine's journey be keeping that in mind?

Right.

If if we're not conquerors, if we're not warriors, and if we want to take the marriage plot out of the mix.

Right.

So a lot of fairy tales with female protagonists, the end goal is to marry.

And what's the happy ending?

Yeah.

Which which can be a happy ending?

No, no, no, no, you know, of course, that's always there's always a wonderful, resolution to a story and can be very beautiful and meaningful.

But what if the the but if you look at a hero's journey, that's often not the resolution, right?

The hero's journey ends quite differently.

What's the end for the heroine?

So I feel like we are at a point where we can really explore that more men and women together, men, women, people who, however you want to identify, and find other interesting endings that could give us new myths to help us better understand how to care for one another, love each other, interact with one another.

Well, Trista, thanks for being my guest.

T New Year author.

Feminist, we call you that.

You can call me that, I don't mind.

I think we have a feminist.

Vibe in this, in these novels.

Thanks for taking us on this adventure.

That makes me want to wander down Church Street.

Now and listen for the echoes of Frances.

Right.

And maybe run into a Pucci, if you're lucky, I hope so.

I'm David.

James is.

This is two Main Street.

Thanks for listening and watching.