You and Betty and the Nancy's and Bill's and Joes and Jane's will find in the study of science a richer, more rewarding life.

Hey, welcome to Inquiring Minds. I'm Indravis Gontas. This is a podcast that explores the space where science and society collide.

We want to find out what's true, what's left to discover,

and why it matters. If you're listening to this podcast, like me, you're probably a bit of a fan

of science fiction. And one of my favorite things to discover is a new series,

especially if there are multiple books in the series,

or if the series has turned into a TV show.

And so I was delighted to discover Silo

when it was first advertised to me as I was watching something else on Apple TV, and I thought,

huh, that looks kind of interesting. And after the first episode, I was hooked. So imagine my delight

when I got pitched with the opportunity to interview the author and executive producer Hugh Howey.

If you haven't watched the show or seen the advertisements,

let me just tell you, it's about a society of humans in a dystopic future that live underground.

And while sometimes I get turned off by science fiction in which the emphasis is on the technology

and on the different aspects of the world in which people live in without any thought to the influence that we'll have on human behavior,

Silo is the opposite. Silo takes a deep dive into the minds of people who are stuck in this place and they don't know why.

So I hope you enjoy this conversation

with Silo's executive producer and the author of the Wool series, Hugh Howey.

Hugh Howie, welcome to inquiring minds. Thanks, Andrea. Appreciate you having me. So you wrote a blog post about mosquitoes and insoles, which made me laugh out loud.

And I actually wanted to start there because I think that a lot of the ideas that you talk about in that blog post have informed the way now I think about silo and the show

for better or for worse in terms of like whether it's accurate. But why don't you give us,

you know, we've actually talked on the show before about the gene drive approach to getting

...