Hi there. I'm Jason Gatz, and you're listening to Think Again, a Big Think podcast.

A conversation is like a tunnel dug under the prison floor that you patiently and painstakingly scoop out with a spoon.

It has one purpose to get you away from where you are right now. That is said by

a somewhat unreliable narrator in the very, very weird tale car concentrate from Israeli writer

Edgar Carrot's wonderful new collection of short stories called Fly Already. It's not a bad

description of the situation many of Carrot's characters find themselves

in, wriggling like butterflies stuck on the pins of their own minds or circumstances, trying by any

means necessary to get free. It's maybe not too much even to say that this is the human condition

as Carrot sees it. We'll have to ask him in a moment. And the reason that he writes stories.

To open up magical escape hatches in the midst of suffocating realities like divorce or religious hatred.

His stories are strange, beautiful, funny, and poignant, somehow emotionally connected,

even though they're full of people who struggle to make sense to one another.

Like all great art, they defy description, so ignore everything I've just said and go read them.

But first, stick around a bit to see what kind of escape tunnel this conversation might turn

into.

Welcome to think again, Edgar.

Hi.

Before we even get into the stories, I want to start by asking you as a lifelong Israeli to help me try to understand something that happened to me in Israel once a long time ago.

And we'll see what you think.

Okay?

So I was probably 23, 24.

I was living in Israel for about six months, long story, yada, yada. But I was on a bus

...