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Into the Impossible With Brian Keating

James Jordan: The Speed of Life (#126)

Into the Impossible With Brian Keating

Brian Keating

Physics, Natural Sciences, Science

4.71.1K Ratings

🗓️ 14 March 2021

⏱️ 34 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

James Jordan joins The INTO THE IMPOSSIBLE Podcast to discuss his novel The Speed of Life: An Illustrated Novel. What happens when a brutal crime threatens a mother’s love for her son? An old Florida family and those in their orbit get caught in a torrent of passion, a deadly legal system, and the mythology of the Everglades, which runs as deep as this story does. Propulsive, engaging, evocative, beautiful writing. Tom Holland, writer of Psycho II, writer-director of Stephen King’s Thinner, Fright Night, Child’s Play "From the courtroom to the swamp primeval to the underpinnings of the universe, James Jordan takes us on a wild ride. A hugely ambitious and thoroughly enjoyable triumph of a first novel. All I can say is "Bravo!" T.C. Boyle Author of The Tortilla Curtain. "I hugely enjoyed this remarkable novel. It blends human courage & cruelties with solid astrophysics and with Seminole culture & mythology – resulting in a richness that held me tightly in its grip." Kip S. Thorne, Winner of the 2017 Nobel Prize in Physics; Executive Producer, co-story writer, and science advisor for the movie "Interstellar." "The Speed of Life is a fast-paced, character-rich, thought-provoking novel that takes the reader from the heart of Western philosophy and civilization to the heart of millennial America. A fine storyteller, James Jordan knows his characters and where all their secrets are buried, and something more—the hope still strong in their restless, striving hearts. A remarkable debut." Aram Saroyan winner of the William Carlos Williams award for best poetry collection. "The Speed of Life, by James Victor Jordan, is a ground-breaking, scientific/philosophical novel wrapped in a Carl Hiaasen-flavored thriller. Jordan relates cutting edge theoretical physics to ancient Seminole shamanic practices and produces a credible explanation of why and how old magical methods may have tangible effects in our world. At the same time, this novel is sparklingly contemporary, bright and crisp around the edges of its plot, and ingenious in braiding elaborate story lines to bring an extraordinary cast of characters together. And it fires itself forward at a break-neck velocity; this is not a book you will want to put down." Madison Smartt Bell, winner of the Pen/Faulkner Award and National Book Award finalist for All Souls Rising. “Impressive . . . Descriptions . . . are primarily images that Jordan sears onto the pages.” Kirkus Reviews Get the book: https://amzn.to/3qG71Xd Sign up for Brian's mailing list and get access to exclusive content: http://briankeating.com/mailing_list.php 📝 🎥 🎥 🎥 🎥 Watch my most popular videos🎥 🎥 🎥 🎥 Deepak Chopra and Frank Wilczek https://youtu.be/E-8mF4HWDnE?sub_confirmation=1 Weinstein and Wolfram https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OI0AZ4Y4Ip4?sub_confirmation=1 Garrett Lisi https://youtu.be/TCZxpMTzRP4 Sheldon Glashow: https://youtu.be/a0_iaWgxQtA?sub_confirmation=1 Michael Saylor The Physics of Bitcoin https://youtu.be/CaN_CDKqXOg?sub_confirmation=1 Sir Roger Penrose, Nobel Prize winner: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AMuqyAvX7Wo?sub_confirmation=1 Frank Wilczek https://youtu.be/3z8RqKMQHe0?sub_confirmation=1 Jill Tarter https://youtu.be/O9K9OBd3vHk?sub_confirmation=1 Sabine Hossenfelder: https://youtu.be/V6dMM2-X6nk?sub_confirmation=1 Sarah Scoles: https://youtu.be/apVKobWigMw Stephen Wolfram: https://youtu.be/nSAemRxzmXM 🏄‍♂️ Find me on Twitter at https://twitter.com/DrBrianKeating 🔥 Find me on Instagram at https://instagram.com/DrBrianKeating 📖 Buy my book LOSING THE NOBEL PRIZE: http://amzn.to/2sa5UpA 🎙️Please subscribe, rate, and review the INTO THE IMPOSSIBLE Podcast on iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/into-the-impossible/id1169885840?mt=2 🎙️Listen on all other platforms: https://wavve.link/into A production of http://imagination.ucsd.edu/ Support the podcast: https://www.patreon.com/drbriankeating Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

0:07.0

James Jordan, welcome back again to the Into the Impossible

0:10.9

Podcast, we are now live you're joining us from Santa Monica you've

0:16.1

been a friend of the show and a friend to me and thank you so much for joining us we're

0:21.5

here to talk about your book, The Speed of Life, but not that much because the thing I always hate is when I would be interviewed by a podcaster who didn't read the book and didn't care about the book, but wanted to save his

0:38.4

listeners the expense and time of reading the book so they would say to me,

0:42.1

tell us what's in your book, tell us what the reader will learn

0:45.3

and what your conclusion is, etc.

0:47.8

I don't want to talk about that, but I do want to say

0:49.8

that this book has a subtitle, an novel which is quite lovely I actually

0:55.6

bought the Kindle book I have the hard copies courtesy of you but I want to look

0:59.8

at some of the illustrations in the book after we do the following thing, which is something that

1:05.9

authors are told and readers are told never to do, which is to judge a book by its cover.

1:11.6

I want to ask you, how did you come up with the cover

1:14.4

illustration and the title of this book? This cover took a long time to develop. There's a

1:20.2

character named Andrew who is a very young shaman,

1:26.2

Seminole, of mixed race.

1:29.2

And in this picture, he's paddling his canoe up the Loch

1:33.6

the River towards what I hope would be a supernova,

1:39.0

a connection between the coast and the earth.

1:46.1

I had an original illustrator who did.

1:51.5

Anyway, not as good at the cover as this one, Eric.

...

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