Safety Moose Says, "Stay Home!" Author Neal Pollack On His Dangerous New Novel, Edge of Safety

The Unspeakeasy With Meghan Daum

Meghan Daum

Society & Culture

4.7 • 855 Ratings

🗓️ 20 June 2022

⏱️ 78 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Known by his nom de guerre "The Greatest American Living Writer," Neal Pollack has published eleven books, including a rock history satire, several crime thrillers (including two yoga-themed crime thrillers), and memoirs on subjects ranging from fatherhood to yoga to marijuana addiction. His latest book is Edge of Safety, a satirical dystopian novel set at some indeterminate point in the future. In this world, the obedient citizens of Canada live in an almost perpetual state of high COVID alert, walking their dogs on treadmills and receiving food deliveries by drone during "stay home" orders relayed by their public service mascot, Safety Moose. The United States, meanwhile, has descended into ecological and infra-structural chaos thanks to its lack of unified response. In this conversation, Neal talks about the pandemic in relation to his fictional characters as well as his own real life friends and neighbors. He and Meghan also compare notes about their struggles to stay afloat in the new creative economy and Neal's side career as a competitive trivia player, which includes winning more than $60,000 on Jeopardy!. They also reminisce about People Who Suck, their short-lived but legendary talk show group on the Clubhouse social media app.

Guest Bio:

Neal Pollack, The Greatest Living American Writer, has written 12 books of fiction and nonfiction, including the novels Repeat, Jewball, Keep Mars Weird, Downward-Facing Death, and, most recently, Edge of Safety. He's also the author of the bestselling memoirs Alternadad, Stretch, and Pothead, and many magazine articles, blogposts, short pieces of Internet satire, and corporate training manuals. A three-time Jeopardy! champion and aspiring semi-professional poker player, Pollack lives in Austin, Texas, with his family.

Transcript

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0:00.0	The night after Trump was elected, you know, I was surprised like everyone else.
0:11.3	There was an event. I live in Austin, Texas, and there was an event at book people,
0:15.9	which is Austin's big independent literary bookstore. And there were hundreds of people there,
0:19.9	and a bunch of awesome writers were gathered.
0:22.8	And there was a woman there who was a writer and a martial arts instructor.
0:26.8	And she was leading the crowd and like a call and response chant, like chanting things.
0:31.5	And people were chanting back.
0:32.5	And one of the things she chanted was, I will think for myself.
0:36.0	And the entire crowd chanted back as one, I will think for myself. And the entire crowd chanted back as one, I will think for
0:40.9	myself. And I looked around and I was like, these people aren't thinking for themselves.
0:51.7	Welcome to the unspeakable podcast. I'm your host, Megan Down. My guest is author Neil Pollock. I'm going to tell you more about him in a second. But first, a very quick word about my new project. You've probably heard me talking about lately. The Unspeak Easy. It is in the works. Yes. What is it? It is a heterodox
1:14.3	women's community, an intellectual free space for free thanking women. Free thanking, free thinking,
1:21.6	you can be thankful, an intellectual space for free thinking women, of which there are apparently a lot because I have been
1:28.7	flooded with interest about this project. If you would like to learn more about it, you can go to
1:34.2	the unspeak easy.com and find out more. You can get on a mailing list. You can leave me a note and
1:42.6	tell me what kinds of offerings you would be interested in. This is something
1:46.6	I'm going to be working on through the summer. So I would love to hear from you about it.
1:51.8	Okay, enough of that. My guest is Neil Pollack. Working under the Namdegere, the greatest American
1:59.5	living writer, Neil has published 11 books. He has written
2:04.2	about subjects like fatherhood, yoga, and marijuana addiction, among lots of other topics.
2:10.4	His latest book is a novel, Edge of Safety. It is newly out, brand new. It's a satirical
2:17.2	dystopian novel set at some indeterminate
	...

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