Hereby Monsters is a podcast about facing the unknown. I, uh, I start to float, float away from the earth. Have you ever smoked crack before? We're all kind of frantically searching for meaning. They have the neurotransmitters. I think we're all jugglers in some way. Yo, we're not broken. Crazy delinquents. We're in our last day, young man. Listen to Hear Be Monsters.

The podcast about the unknown.

On the KCRW iTunes page.

Funds for Bookworm are provided in part by Lannon Foundation.

Boots.

Well, we're there with a... by Lannin Foundation. Boots. Where would we be without boos?

Where would we be without good?

No, Timber.

It's a rhetorical question, sir.

But where would we be without books?

From KCRW and KCRW.com, I'm Michael Silverblatt, and this is Bookworm.

Today, I'm lucky to have, as my guest, Greg Jackson.

He's just published his first book of stories. It's called Prodigals. It's published by

Ferris Strauss and Sheru. The first story in this book, Prodicles, is a story called

Wagner in the Desert, and it appeared in the New Yorker and created shockwaves.

It's a sort of radioactive story,

and the editor of the Paris Review

said it was the most extraordinary thing

he'd seen in the New Yorker in 20 years.

It's really quite an introduction to the work, but it's only an introduction.

This is a book of eight stories. It's called prodigals. There is no title story. So

prodigals is the theme. How do you define prodigals?

...