You're listening to Imaginary Worlds, a show about how we create them and why we suspend our disbelief.

I'm Eric Malinsky.

When I was a kid, I discovered I had an ability to completely detach my mind and live in my imagination.

It started with action figures.

Eventually, I could just disappear at will.

When I was in a trance, I could still

hear my mother's voice saying, earth to Eric. Earth to Eric. Come in, Eric. I remember one day,

my mother was talking about someone we knew, and she said that that man was a Luftmensch.

It's a Yiddish word for someone whose mind is in the clouds to their own detriment.

And I thought, there's a word for that?

As a Luftmensch myself, I have always been drawn towards stories of other Luftmensch.

Around 20 years ago, I was working for a public radio show called Studio 360. They assigned me to work

on an audio documentary about The Wizard of Oz. That's when I learned that the 1939 movie

with Judy Garland was based on a children's book from the early 1900s. And when I read about

the author of that book, El Frank Baum, I understood this guy at a core level.

Michael Patrick Hearn is one of the leading experts on El Frank Baum.

No one creates a secondary world like the land of us who's happy with the world as it is.

I think there are a lot of things that Baum was not happy about his life and about America.

And I think there is always a sense of skepticism that you don't trust that man behind the curtain.

And I certainly think that's something that comes out in the Oz books.

L. Frank Baum has been on my mind lately because when I'm not happy about the world, I default to my coping mechanism.

It's so automatic at this point, the way my mind just keeps going right up to the clouds to avoid thinking about what's on the ground.

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