What is it that interests you about that?

Right.

So we believe, as we've been talking about, we believe a lot of things that are wrong.

And sometimes we believe things that are wrong willfully and other times we're suckered into it.

As in, I think, many cases, the wellness industry, as Zan's talked about.

But so much of what we believe is wrong.

And as I was writing this book, I thought...

yes, what does it represent, do you think, in terms of this question about questions, that maybe we need to feel that there's some mystery at the centre of our lives?

Sure.

And this is a moment from the second chapter of the book.

And basically, the book begins with them, you know, this husband and the wife and their children sort of fairytale-like taking off across the country.

It follows them across the country until they eventually land in this small town.

They're astonished by it, sort of by the natural beauty of it.

And, you know, especially for a Californian who's... very used to the dry landscapes that we have.

The lushness of a New England summer is really quite striking.

And because he thinks he might be anything, you know, it makes it quite difficult for him to actually see himself for who he actually is.

So why don't we have you kind of just read just a little bit so people can get a feel of what it's like to kind of wa- walk a mile with, uh, with Miles?

Sure.

Uh, sure.

So, uh, this is a, a moment from the second chapter of the book.

And, and, and basically the book begins with them, you know, this husband and their wife and their children sort of fairytale-like taking off cross across the country.

It follows them across the country, um, until they, um, eventually land in this small town.

Uh, they're astonished by it, um, sort of by the natural beauty of it and, y- you know, especially for a Californian who's, uh, very used to the dry landscapes that we have.

Mm

Because your forms are all over the place of historical fiction and short story versus novel, but I think there are some connective tissues and threads through this, and I wa- I was wondering if, is that a dangerous question to even reflect upon as a writer and, and, uh, you don't like to talk about it? Or do you, do you look across and say, "Oh, I've been mulling this over for, you know, some decades here"?

Yeah.

I mean, I think for the first time, for some reason with this book, it's like this is the first time that I've found, like as I, as I went on a bookstore, these questions about, like, how this might relate to earlier work.

And it's funny, I guess, like, I'm old enough now [laughs] that, like, I hadn't really thought about myself as, like, a person who has an evolving style.

Like, I thought of myself as a person who, like, who had a bunch of books that he tried to get out, each one with its own sort of, its own trials [laughs] and difficulties, and, and they ended up kind of, you know, barely making it past the, the finish line.

But I think that there are, like, certainly concerns, I mean, that have, have occupied me for a long time.

Like, most recently, the, the last three books, like the short story collection, North Woods, and, and Country People, I love being able to work with different forms.

[laughs]

Tell us your name and your favorite Mustang story.

Daniel Mason.

And it started off as a Model A story.

I was out shopping for a Model A.

We just got done with the Woodward Dream Cruise in 2002, checking it out, and after picking my girls up from their swimming lessons, I noticed a Mustang for sale, and they were advertising it, well, selling it for $4,500.

I thought, well, that's not a bad deal.

So I stopped to look at it.

Well,

Why was that an important part of the plot for you?

Right, right.

So Miles arrives, and his first encounters are sort of commonplace encounters.

But then he's on a hike, and he meets this man who lets slip that he's part of this community that believes that back in the 19th century, there was this wayward preacher who stumbled, followed his dog down a hole in a cave in southern Vermont and actually found an underground kingdom and sort of wandered further and found that the earth is actually not solid, but hollow at its core, kind of like a giant tennis ball.

And that these kingdoms sort of sit on the interior and look up at this interior sun.

Of course, Miles thinks that this is – it's pretty mad.

But then as the story goes on, he begins to hear more and more about this legend and begins to fall for it himself, begins to get pretty interested in it himself.

Like what?

Mm

... what they were like.

But she's very different.

I mean, she's had success from the beginning.

She's really kind of a star.

They've been in grad school together.

He's known that, uh, and he's known that the path that she's gone down to be an academic is one that at least he began with.

So, um, do you think the world is full of signals that we aren't calibrated to receive? And if so, what are we missing?

Did you have any favorite kind of incidental characters to write?

Yeah, many of them.

I mean, she's hilarious because she's this small town doctor who... really is the person who should be keeping everybody's secrets but but she can't and it's also not a secret that this is true because she's a nickname in town which is doctor i really shouldn't be telling you this anita and so miles gets all sorts of gossip like from her but also through this network of friends that his wife makes you know miles is loner miles will go around and pick up uh the eccentrics in town his wife sort of established herself very quickly into this into this network of folks.

But I mean, another person in her life's network who I always had a lot of fun writing is another very successful academic named Miranda, who's an anthropologist who studies rural American life.

But she, in her papers, gives all these very serious names to these topics, which are not so serious.

So she writes about the can-throwing behaviors of American rural males.

I don't know if this is something you see in the UK, but if you go to the American countryside, you find beer cans scattered everywhere.

Tell us about the local legend at the heart of this story.

[upbeat music] What happens when you trade the comforts of city life for, well, country people? That's the premise of best-selling author Daniel Mason's latest novel, which follows Miles and his family as they embark on a one-year adventure moving from Silicon Valley to southern Vermont.

The wife has been invited to teach at the college, and her husband Miles comes along.

He's supposed to work on his dissertation, a dissertation that he's been working on for 14 years.

He's long overdue.

This is because he's the kind of guy who could fall down any sort of rabbit hole that he comes across.

And so this, the story follows mostly him as he sort of sets off on a series of misadventures.

From where did you draw inspiration for your characters and for your story?

My family had come out from California, and so we found ourselves in sort of one of these kind of like s- city mouse, country mouse kind of situations.

But what did you feel like was most striking to you about coming to New England, whether it was in terms of the geography or the culture or the weather? Yeah.

Right.

All of those.

And I think that, so my first experience of it, a deep experience of rural New England was during the pandemic.

My family had come out to spend some time with family here during the pandemic.

And that was in the fall.

And like I think any listener knows, the fall in New England is, sort of unequaled in its beauty.

Do you think, I don't, obviously, you are the psychiatric professional here, so I don't want to be armchairing anything, but it almost sounds like there was a part of you that needed to kind of have that, not necessarily a victory lap, but, like, go stretch your legs after working on Northwoods, where you're like, I need to, it was almost like writing country people was, like, helping you process the experience of writing Northwoods to some extent? It's, I mean, it's, it's, it's, it's some good, I