Aug 15-Ben Affleck, Jennifer Lawrence, The Jonas Brothers, Debra Messing, Bill McCormick, Happy Birthday India

0:19 Hi everyone, I am Jeff and welcome to History and Factoid's about today. I have a really cool co host today. Yeah, whether any science fiction or not, you're gonna love this guy. He's got the nickname mixed sci Fi. Bill wants to go ahead and reduce yourself. And everybody see you listening and home. My my name is Bill McCormick aka Bill mcs sci Fi. The nickname comes from an Amazon account that went horribly wrong that for a brief, brief moment in time, I was technically publishing religious materials and sports blogs. Uh not not what I do, but we got it all straightened out. So one guy's mix sports, another guy's make religion. I'm mixed sci Fi. I gotta stuck with you. So what got you into sci fi? He started when you were a kid?

0:59 Yeah, yeah, I liked the whole idea of the future worth living in as a kid. That really appealed to me, and finding and looking at things in different ways. You know, you learned a lot in I grew up in in the suburbs of Chicago, and so it was very white, very conservative, very Catholic in my area. So you didn't get a lot of diversity you didn't get a lot of different people. You didn't get a lot of anything. But you watch shows like Star Trek. There were black people and brown people and they were just doing the same stuff all the white people were doing. And that was to me, as a six seven year old kid in the sixties, that was amazing. Was alien. I didn't know that could happen. And it helped me in life, you know, become aware that you know, there are more people than us out there and we need to we need to be able to deal with them and work with them and become friends with them. And I'm a drinker, you know whatever, But it helped open my eyes to the world at large. And sci fi has always stuck with me with that.

1:50 Well, it's definitely imaginative. I guess you'd sall it. I mean, your mind could just go anywhere with that. So when you kind of think of like when you're righting today and you can, like, I don't know, see like a space ship or something in your head. Is it something that just comes completely out of your head or is it something that you might have seen in real life and then thought just modified a little bit to fit science fiction. Yes, to all of the above. I mean some stuff I just wake up in the middle of the night and go, I bet I could do something with that. And it's just from nowhere, just my brain going, you know, doing some wool gathering. And other times you look at stuff. We used to do this experiment when I was a kid. It's a little game we used to play when I was in school. You'd hold a pencil in your hand and you had to say what it could be. Could be a rocket shift, it could be a trolley, it could be a train. You had to imagine it being different things other than a pencil. And I kind of take that exercise with me into day to day life every day. It stuck with me.

2:41 We said, the Star Trek, really you get? Is there any type of specific science fiction that really they still even today? Kind of is what you kind of lead towards the most. I lean more towards hard sci fi, although I do like some of the sci fi fantasy stuff, especially my writing gets dumped into that category. I'm not that big on fantasy. Nothing against it. There's some incredible fantasy authors out there. I just done the whole dragons thing. I don't know. I just don't get into it. As much I like being able to say we could build this, we could do this. There's a realm of possibility that this could happen. So I stick with stuff that you know, I stick with stuff that could be. And you know, there's a lot everyone from Octavia Butler to Robert Heinleine have covered a lot of ground that leaves Puney room to go. We could do this. This is within our realm of possibility. Here's one way of looking at how it could get done. And that's interesting to me.

3:34 Well, and it's so amazing when you look back at like the history of science fiction way back when some of the stuff that they wrote about's come true, and it's a bizarre you never thought they did even have the basis for coming up with some of that stuff. Well, you know, it's h. G. Wells wants to talk about that if fish could live under to see why couldn't man And then he strapolated on that and he came up with the very first submarine and Juli Fern in the whole adventures there with the Nautilus and all that, and you know Arthur C. Clark, he wondered, he goes, could we get a method from Earth? Into space back to Earth so we could talk to more more people than we had before. Now he not only imagined what a satellite could be, he actually invented it. The very first satellites. Arth Ce Clark was on the crew to actually developed them. Al but Siorai, the physicist out in Mexico, he looked at a Star Trek episode and you know, faster than light travel, and everyone laughed at him, and then he went, you know, I bet we could do this.

4:26 And now his equations are the basis of us trying to build a faster than light engine. So I discount nothing when it comes to what we can do. It's just why are we willing to do it? Are we willing? Are we willing to put the effort into it to make it? Make something happen that benefits everybody. That's for sure. It's just amazing. Hey, do you want to like celebrating today? Sure? Why not? It's anyway. I suppose it. I should lie the reason.

5:09 It is National Lemon Meringue Pie Day. You a lemon Mari limon mering pie guy? Actually I am. My mother used to make a really good one. Yeah, they're pretty basic really in principle, anyway, they're just their crust is golden short bread, then the filling is lemon curd, and then they're topped with meringue. Meringue is just beaten egg wipe, so they add some sugar to it. People actually started eating lemons for dessert back in the year one thousand. Then the French they created meringue. In the seventeen hundreds, Americans, we combined the two of them came up to the first limon meringue pie recipes. They start showing up in cookbooks in about eighteen sixty nine. Now they're actually the healthiest kind of pie. If you're gonna eat one, you know, there's really not it's bad about them. So if you want to enjoy the dog days of summer today, join some limon rang pie. Then relax because today is also National Relaxation Day. That's right.

5:56 You just get to sit back and do nothing today. I guess that's cool. If you're out of work early, A good way to celebrate your Friday. Are you going to sell it relaxing? You're gonna relax today? I relax every day. I'm a writer. That's what I do. I just relax. That's true. Well, I was kind of going through your website you do you do blog squad a bit and kind of give everybody else what you're up to, don't you. Right, I have a newsletter. It started out with eleven people in twenty seventeen. I started working with that and now it's just under five thousand subscribers, so it's been growing. And I discovered what people charge to host newsletters the size of mine, and I laughed because I'd have to sell a kidney just to do that. So I went in and I found some software and I rebuilt it and now I can do my own newsletters from my computer.

6:47 Two thousands of people, it doesn't matter. And then I store them on my blog so anyone who misses one can go read them. And that's worked out. That's turned out to be a very handy little thing. It's like, you know, some people will write me like, well, what about this or what about that? Or didn't you say this? Didn't you say that? Look you're there's the original post. There you go, and uh, I like having you know that that. On the one hand, it keeps me accountable, and on the other hand, it prevents some of the goofy stuff that goes on online. I can circle right back and go, nope, there's there's there's the truth. Have at it now that it keeps your your fans involved too. Yeah, my fan base is really fun. They they respond to stuff. As a matter of fact. Today is a really good example of there's a gentleman from Bangladesh who follows along my stuff. And I put up a promo for one of my uh for my book co Three of the Mysts, and it had a typo in it.

7:32 When I didn't catch it, nobody caught it. This guy, who English is his third language, not only caught it, he wrote me a lovely little letter saying, mister Bill, someone at your team let you down. There's a typo and about it like, no, no team, buddy, it's me. I screwed up, you know. But but that amazes me that there are people out there. I have a fan club in India, and it's just like I'm sitting in Chicago knocking stuff out and you know, I'm hoping somebody reads it and then you'd find out you go to my LinkedIn there's a whole bunch of people from India up there who follow me rather rather strenuously, rather religiously and they're very into what the universe have created. And it's fun. It's you know, it's it keeps me on my toes because I can't put I can't. I'm not gonna slide anything fansome either, you know, either it meets the it meets their approval, or it gets laughed at, and so far I have not got laughed ats. I'm doing. Okay, there you go.

8:23 All right, let's who's going on to entertainment on August fifteenth, Let's go to your twenty eleven. The number one album was Chief by Eric Church. The top song was by L M f Ao. It was party rock, anthem. Rock, everybody, you know, everybody, every. Lady, Antebella, methanem one country song with just a kiss, just a kiss on your heads and a little mind, just a talk shore the bomb but it's so bad, not on mastesting on a close too.

9:14 Far, just a shot and the duc that you just my lean alone on the. Land for. The number one book was Colt Vengeance by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child. Since we're talking about books, you're I can't be the only person who thought this, But I was blonde and drank a lot. Back in the day. I always thought graphic novels meant they were just graphic, you know, just bloody and all that kind of stuff. Well you're into graphic novels. They're not like that at all, are they. No. No, No, graphic means graphic imagery as in comic imagery art imagery, uh means painted or graphically created. I was looking for that word. I found it. Although some of them can be quite quite violent, it can be quite bloody, but for the most part, it's more of telling the story pictures with some words. And I've got I've got my own graphic novel out now with the Legends Parallel series, and I've participated in several others, and it's a different way of telling a story. And to me, when I first started it, I was like I didn't realize how different it would be. I was like, I just have to tell a story and someone writes a picture.

10:19 And I remember the first artist wrote me back, he goes, dude, you have to give us some room to write and to do our art because you're just writing everything. And I was like, oh, I need to step back. And it's kind of this dance where I say something and then the artist fills in the next step, and then I take the step. And it's really fun to do and it's a very different way of looking at a creation. So I'm very I'm very honored to have been involved in as much many projects as I have been. Well, that's really cool. Well, the number one book today in twenty eleven was The Help. In the nineteen sixties, a writer. She writes a book from the African American and maid's point of view on the white families that they were working for. Started violl the Davis, Emma Stone and Octavia Spencer. Well, well, you were watching Star Trek and Night teen sixty nine, the Woodstock Music and Arts Fair.

11:02 It began. It was at a farm near Bethale, New York. Now it's supposed to be Hell at a dairy farm near Woodstock, New York, but that didn't work out, so they just moved to sixty miles. Wow, they didn't change the name. He's young to tell me, what's that? You see them marching. To the fields of gettings Burgs looks like Hampton Johnny with a flint clock in the town marching to the Ghetting'sburg wall. Marching to the ghettings. Now that was Richie Haven. He opened up Woodstock, but he wasn't supposed to. Now the band's Sweetwater. They were supposed to kick it all off, but they were stuck in traffic. Richie, he was just hanging around backstage. He was just hoping for a chance that let him play.

11:43 Sometime during the three day festival when the organizers yo, they retchie get out on stage. We'll tell you when the stock now Sweetwater, they did get to go on and play when they finally showed up, as Richie's only claimed the fame. Yeah, he made a pretty big career out of just going around touring as the guy who opened up Woodstock. That's what kind of music as? That's true? What kind of music do you like? Oh God, I'm a music wore. I grew up on rock and country, and by the time I was in my twenties, I was touring with some industrial and alternative bands, punk bands basically, and then I learned some more synthetic stuff. So I became very involved in the electronic dance movement that was just starting out. The industrial movement actually started here in Chicago. So all that music from KMFDM and Ministry when they were first starting out and all that stuff was happening actually at one recording studio called Chicago Tracks, and I was very intricately involved with that and watching it all come to be. Pig Face came out of there, a whole bunch of people came out of there, and then I went on. I started working in the soul and R and B world. I worked with James Brown for ten years, Ray Charles, a few others, and then I opened I didn't open up. I was hired to run a Latin and dance label called Ascension for division of Warner Brothers Records, part of Warner Brother's distribution family, and then I eventually just kind of got out of the music business because of getting old and I was tired.

13:04 I didn't want to be on the road anymore. I didn't want to be living in hotels, you know. I wanted to settle down and to find a corner bar with my name on a stool, and that's kind of where I'm at. Let's go. So, if you were just jumping in your car and you went to hit it on the radio, what song would you not turn from? What would you just leave on. Oh, absolutely, California by doctor. Dre Okay, that's pretty cool. All right, we're ready to see what happened on August the fifteenth. Throughout history, we're going to start in sixteen twenty. The Mayflower. It sets out from Southampton, England, on its way to the United States. Well, America. Back then we were at the United States jet. Now it took him sixty six days across the Atlantic. They actually started out with a sister ship. She was called the Speedwell. Had a couple of days into that voyage, yeah, Speedwell started leaking water. So they transferred all their pilgrims over to the Mayflower, and then the Speedwell headed back under two pilgrims made it the United America. Now half of them they didn't get through that first winter. Eighteen forty eight. Waldough Hatchet, he invented the dental chair. No, he wasn't even a dentist. Now, we talked about this before and how that they had that great, big ceremony at Promontory Point in Utah and they nailed the Golden Spike in and they were all happy. They completed the trans Continental Railway. Well I pinted out then that that was all fake news. No, they still had to get off the train and cross the Missouri River in a boat and get on another train. But it was today.

14:20 In eighteen seventy the first trans continental railroad was actually completed. They finished it up out of Strasburg, Colorado. Now, for the first time you could actually take a train completely across the United States without getting off. Now Strasburg I gets not about six miles from US here at cool Media, about thirty miles east of Denver. Now this weekend is a big celebration at Stratsburg. They got Stratsburg Days. They celebrate that big historical event that no one really knows about. Do you use many, many of your trains for your imagery and your writing? Not really. I do use them because well, especially in my novels the Brittle Riders and go through the miss I see no reason for aviation travel whatsoever. So everything's ground based or ship based, partly for the environment and partly just for logistics. Airplane travel. Really, when you look at it dollar for dollars cent percent, everything that's involved, it really doesn't make that much sense. And so he's here to two things, just tick them on the ground to make them go. So yeah, I don't. I have trains in there, some very comfortable ones and when I have royalty traveling in them. But uh, they're there.

15:23 That's cool. I think you got some good news coming about what happened in the United States today. I did, I do? Did you want to talk about the Sioux Indians? Oh? Yeah, sorry, I thought it was something that happened like while we were talking. Yeah, back into your good old days. The United States gave the Sioux Indian Nation the Black Hills in South Dakota as their reservation in the US said they would honor the Sioux nation claims that the Black Hills were traditional hunting lambs, but the Sioux have to stay there, they can't leave now. For eight years, the Sioux lived up to their end of the treaty, but then in eighteen seventy six, the United States, surprise, surprise, said nope, you gotta go. You can't stay here, and kick them out and then move them to the southern South Dakota on the prairie. And no one's surprised. Here gold was found in the Black Hills. Since they couldn't mine it with the Sioux there, they just threw the Sioux out in nineteen eighty, the United States Supreme Court ruled that the US did violate the treaty and had to pay the Sioux nation one hundred million dollars. That's more than I make in a month, and the Sioux have refused to accept that money, as they say the Black Hills were never for sale. Back in nineteen eleven, which is just a little down the road, Procter and gram Campbell started selling Crisco. Now, if you're older, that's why your grandma's food tasted so good. No, if you're my age, that's why your grandma's food tasted so good.

16:37 But anyway, when you think of really rich guys, you probably think of Bezos, Musk, Zuckerberg, Gates, blah blah blah, the kids at school. But there were nothing in bear to JP Morgan, so much so that in nineteen fourteen, the United States government was forced to ask JP to quit loaning money to countries so they could use it to fight World War One, said that it was against the US policy of neutrality in the war. And back in nineteen thirty one, everyone remembers, says Richard Granton earned his lassie, completed the longest canoe journey without a portage. That's where you can carry a canoe over eleven months. The two wins six and two miles all over the Eastern United States, the Great Lakes, Chicago, New Orleans, Miami, New York City, and so on into work. The record hasn't been broken. But then again, keep in mind there weren't a lot of dams back at the time.

17:20 Nineteen thirty nine overrom Poland, that was two weeks before they were going to invade the German Air Force. They decided to put on a little air show for the people in Poland. They were showing off all the German airplanes that the Poland started to like release fear about Mike coming in there. Well, thirteen dive bombers are putting on a show. Crash straight into the ground. No one lived. Thet's celebrate. Already here a celebrate last. Throughout the. That was just a coincidence. Happy Birthday India. Let's say in nineteen forty seven, India got his independence from Great Britain.

18:06 So to celebrate our independence from Great Britain, we shoot out fireworks, we drink beer, drink eight hamburgers and hot dogs. I don't know, do you think that people in India are going to celebrate like that. No, no more dancing involved. Let's blowing things up. More dancing, I think kind of like, Yeah, that'd be horrified if they actually came over here on the fourth probably. Okay, I really want to talk about about your book that you're actually trying to get into a movie. I believe it's the Brittle Writers trilogy. Yeah, the Brittle Writers Book one is actually we're in the process of developing it as part of an option deal, and right now we're at the point where we're developing the characters, what they look like, what they could be like, you know, sometimes even a little bit what they move like.

18:53 Because the original concern with the Brittle Riders was that the universe that created, or the world I created, was so unique that absolutely none of it could involve live actors. There could be no humans in the room when this thing was put together. And thankfully, I've been working with a nice, lovely, lovely young man from practical Effects who works for a major company, and this other lady who works as a AI specialist doing graphic AI for a major company. They've taken me under their wing. They took pity on me and we've been going through a character by character to see what we could do, what it could look like, and we found that a well over half of them could be done with just good old costumes and then a little bit of CGI, a little bit of visual effects to make them look a little more lifelike. You know, you see it when you see those TV shows with the lady has wings. She's like an elf or something like that, or a fairy and she's standing there and she's got her little wings. Well, those are just regular cloth wings, but with the video effects, they can wiggle a little bit and they look like they're breathing with the person and it looks very natural.

19:53 But ninety percent of what you're looking at is just a practical effect. So that's what we're aiming for it, to get as many practical effects, to get as many humans as we can in front of the cameras. And it's going along nicely. Actually, we're not only doing this with the development deal, the option deal. We're also on the desk of a major streaming service and we're in the hands of a production company, So we got three different people that are trying to figure out how to if we didn't make this happen if it can really happen. And I do know every time people read the book they like it. It's like, the worst thing is cann happen to me is somebody reads the book and go, no, I like it. They may be offended by it, they might think I'm insane, but they like the book. They like the story. So it helps a lot.

20:35 Well, I said, like even the second printing of it still win in awards for that. Yeah, right now it's been Let's see if I can get them on now. It's the best science fiction novel of twenty twenty two for the critters, readers, roll and critics is slang for book critics, not the small, slimy things that bother you at night. As a winner of the twenty twenty five Los Angeles Book Fast Best Dystopian Novel Award, it's been nominated for the Global Best Dystopian Novel Global Book Awards, which is coming out in September. Hopefully I'll be on the list there. I do know, I'm in the finals. So the team, Yeah and critics. Garrett Dion he's an internationally famous film producer. He liked the project so much he wrote the back cover for the books. I mean, you buy the book, you flip it over. There's Garrick right there. I don't even have to make that up. No film producer like your stuff.

21:22 Turn the book over, read it there he is. So you know, I like being able to do that. By the way, it's like you're not making stuff up to turn the book over. But people really like the book. They really like the story and really fun. Quick aside, we were talking about Happy Birthday in India, and I mentioned before I have a fan club in India. When Gogri the Myth first got released in India, it got released as a theological experiment. In other words, people thought I was discussing the Hindu gods as though they the Hindu gods were the whole focus of the book, and not the dystopian nightmare, the death of all humans, all the rest of the stuff that's actually the focus of the book. So we had I ended up in a long online conversation with some Indian scholars saying, no, this is not a religious treatsy, this is not a historical book.

22:04 This is really this is fiction. Look up the big word, this is fiction. I just made it all up out of my head and here's why I did what I did, and here's what's going on. And everyone's like, oh, they got it, and now everyone's cool with me. I'm so, they're not going to burn me at the stake or anything. So we're doing all right. You know, people are learning. So did you even know about the Indian gods before you wrote it? Oh? Yeah, yeah. I have friends from all over the world. And before I met my wife, I dated a nice Indian girl who was very involved with her culture and her history. So you know, I got to celebrate a lot of the holidays with her and learn what they mean and learn what's going on with them, you know. And there's different people that I've met from my life that are still friends of mine twenty thirty years later that you know, they're from India, Pakistan, and I'm blessed to have a really diverse retinue of friends. So if I have a question or if I'm concerned about something, I can go to someone who lives it. I don't have to, you know, and I've got the Google. Google's moonable.

23:02 But you know, if I have a question about you know, this festival or that festival, or how they dressed her, you know, how this person would or would not dress for this specific occasion. I would just pick up phone and call and that makes my life so much easier. Oh sure, and well, we're gonna step back now. At the end of the show, we're going to tell you how. But you definitely want to read The Brittle Writer Strategy before it comes out on streaming or in the movie theater. It's a really good I mean, so, when you get really weird, do you run it off your wife? Make sure you're not going too far overboard. No, my wife, I think has gotten She's used to my weirdness. I'll tell you this. This is a true story. When she and I were first dating, we were sitting on the steps of my old apartment or all apartment, because she moved in with me. But I was telling her about an argument I had with a character named Slanned.

23:50 It's a character in The Brittle Writers, and in the argument Slanned, the character wanted a more prominent place in the book. I was using him as comedy relief and in my head, I want her to be more And when I was done with the argument Flanned one, I ended up rewriting a big trump of the book to make him a bigger character, and I never regretted it, but yeah, I get uh. So she's used to me arguing with my imaginary friends and losing, so she's put up with a lot with me. Well that is cool. Joke cooke joked joke. Shag dish shivers day, we gonna pause. He left, dish shiverfday, we gonna sit potage. He's like dish shivers day. And you know you don't give up.

24:33 You're like fifty Yeah, I do. Actually, all right, let's he was born in August the fifteenth Well, Napoleon Well, he was born Napoleon Bona Hart and Corsica, France, in seventeen sixty nine. After raising hell all over Yurope, he ended up dying in exile in eighteen twenty one at fifty one years old. So he either died of stomach cancer arsenic poison. So these aren't sure, they're just not telling. Actress Rose Murray. She was born in Manhattan, New York, in nineteen twenty three. She's most known for playing Sally Rogers on The Dick Van Dyke Too. I was a little kid. She actually had success as a singer, and then she did vaudevielle. This is one of the first women to do stand up comedy. She married once for twenty years. Her husband died and they had a daughter, Rose. She died in twenty seventeen at ninety four years old.

25:19 Tom you know more. That was Bill Pickney singing for of that Drifters. He was born in Dalzell, South Carolina, in nineteen twenty five. He helped formed the Drifters in nineteen fifty three. He left to go solo in nineteen fifty eight. But I think, well, no, that never works out, especially for him. He'd only sing lead on two songs for the Drifter, Steamboat and Someday You'll Want Me to Want You. But he's still in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of the Drifters. He died in two thousand and seven at eighty one years old. So to pick the name of the Drifter, Bill and the other four guys they all got together wrote down what name they want and they put it in a head One that was drawn was drifter. Makes sense, But the guy who put it in he will He was talking about the hummingbird, the Drifter.

26:06 Ingle Bell, jingle Bell, Jingle Bell, jingle bells ring and jingle bells ring, no one and no one. Now the jingle. Jingle bell, jingle bell, jingle bell Now. Bobby Helms. He was not Jewish, but the guy who wrote the song was Bobby. He was a pretty devout Christian with your stories selling skills. Do you ever do any like work with the church. Oh? Yeah, Actually I'm a Sunday well. I was recently a Sunday school teacher for eight years at our church. Been involved with youth groups in our neighborhood. I'm kind of active, you know. I mean, I'm not leading any sermons or anything. But I'm not a I'm not a preacher.

26:49 I'm not a minister. I'm just just this person likes to help. Like working with the kids. I do. I do like where kids are. Honest, man, they're not gonna lie to you when you walk intore like, mister Bill, that's a horrible haircut. They're not being mean, They're just letting you know. Man'd get a comb, dude, get a comb. You were out a little late last night, weren't you, mister Bill. We don't discuss that with the four year old. No, no, no, no, no, no, true, we were talking about something we could make with grape truth for the Sunday school and I wasn't even paying attention. I was just like half awake, and I went, yeah, I just be a lot better with vodka in it. It was ten o'clock on a Sunday morning with a room full of kids. At least Bobby at least vodka didn't never smell so all right, Bobby House. He was born in Helmsburg, Indiana, actually in nineteen thirty three. No, it wasn't named after his family. He was a country singer, but his biggest hit was the one we play on the Christmas song Jingle Bell Rock Now. It is one of the top ten Christmas songs of all time, so that makes it one of the top fifty songs of all time. Some of his country HiT's are Fraudlene, My Special Angel, just a Little Lonesome Now. He's in the Rockabilly Hall of Fame.

27:54 He had four children from his first wife, four children from his second wife. He's married his third wife for two months when he died in nineteen ninety seven at sixty three years old from emphysema. After Deborah Messaying, she is fifty seven. She was born in Brooklyn, New York in nineteen sixty eight. Best known for TV, she played Grace on the sitcom Will and Grace. Before that, she was Stacy on Nedd and Stacy Summer Movies, where she played Mary, Magdalene and Jesus, and then she was in the Mothsman Prophecies. Along came Polly wedding Date. She married once for sixteen years and it has a son from it. So have you always been in Chicago your entire life? Ah, that's not a quick quite Other than when you're on the record of music, I've pretty much kept an address in Chicago my entire life. But I've lived on well like five different continents in different countries for extended period of time, sometimes in some really fancy places, and sometimes like wow, look let's not stay here. But I've traveled quite a bit. Yeah.

28:48 I know, you said for music you were on the road all the time. I just wondered. I was kind of asking if Chicago was always kind of your home base. It is it is. I mean, at one point I went just under eighteen months without having a permanent ad dress. I simply didn't need one. I was just living in buses. Actor Ben Affley like he's fifty three. He's one of Berkeley, California. Moved to Massachusetts when he was three. He's won two Oscars, one for riding Goodwill hunting and the other for acting in Argo. He's best known for Days Or He first got known for Dazed and Confused. Now he's done a lot of acting of theirs, but he's actually done a lot a lot of stuff behind the scenes, directing, producing, writing, and that kind of thing. His first wife was actors Jennifer Garner, and they had two dollars and one son, and he married Jennifer Lopez for three years. Actor Casey Affleck. Yeah, that's his little brother. What kind of movies when you're not watching sci fi do you like?

29:36 I like action adventure films, but I'm you find me a good like the history of patent or anything involved with the war, different war efforts throughout history. I will probably park my butt in front of them. Some docu dramas I like, I just I get upset when they started taking a lot of liberties with the truth. Well that's another subject for another day. But you know they're like and this person, he was always wonderful. It's like they show Alexander the Great. They always talking about Alexander the Great, that he was like this great guy and he you know, he had different wives and everything, that he had a boyfriend on his whole life. He the one guy who died. That's when he cried, That's when he mourned. That's when he erected the temple course for his boyfriend. Alexander. He wasn't out hunting women anyway. That makes me nuts and so on and so far throughout history.

30:24 But I do like, I actually like a variety of everythation. My wife likes comedies and she likes some romances. Neither one of us are big into romances. We've got ourselves. We don't need any more romance than that. That's right and. Thank you. And I don't know. There's a variety of different stuff I like. If it's well done, I'll just pay attention to it. I will watch it. Actor Anthony Ederson. He was born in nineteen seventy and Compton, California, and he's fifty five. He started out doing stand up but he decided he sucked, so hes any better concentrate on acting. He hit really big on TV on Blackish. Then after Blackish, He only did a couple episodes because he's too busy to being the executive producer of Mixed Dish and Grownish. Some of his movies are barbershop movies, Malibu's Most Wanted Scary Movie, three and four, Transformers. Him and his wife. They divorced after twenty four years. They had a son and that daughter. So do you like like the Transformers and X Men and that kind of stuff.

31:17 The first Transformers movie, yes, I liked a lot. That was just a thrill ride. X Men, Yeah, I do. I'm actually kind of blessed now to know several people who were involved in the creation of those movies, so I get a lot of behind the scenes stuff that's kind of fun to know. Hugh Jackman is the nicest guy on the planet. You can learn that from me. It's fun, you know, being in the industry, even tangentially, is like you get to know people. You meet the wardrobe person from Justice League or something like that, and it's like they just know stuff that other people don't. So I do watch those kind of movies. I do like them. So when they make your book in the movie, do you have pictured who you kind of want, what kind of actors. Your dream actor would be to play the parts.

31:58 I was asked to do that, and I put it together, and I will not curse it by naming anyone on the radio. I did have some people that I wanted, but we're pulling pushing it pretty hard. And everyone I talked to about this, they're like, they don't think we need multiple name actors. Maybe we find one that they found Peter Dinkley for a Game of Thrones, you know, find one name that people know that they've seen at least more than once, and then build around that. Because the story is so in depth, you don't have people to pay attention to that, right. That's true. And actually a lot of the big name actors you think about when you have a really good show, you have a bunch of actors and that nobody heard about, and then all of a sudden, you look back, man, they had all these big names back then.

32:45 Yeah. Yeah, you look at Game of Thrones. It's actually a really good example. It's like all these really famous people were in it. Nobody knew who these people were. Jason Momoa was a nobody. Nobody knew who any of these people were when they were in Game of Throne. It's after they were in Game of Thrones, they became famous. And if I can make a whole bunch of actors and actresses famous for being in the Brittle Riders, God bless him. Ride that pony. Take it, take it as far as you can take it, you know, make that money, go for it. I like that. I did. She's done some sci fi actress Natasha Hinstra. She was born in Springdale, Canada in nineteen seventy four fifty one. Today she had Big in her very first movie, and she's starting Species. Now. I'm not gonna go to Species too, but we'll go in the whole nine yards, the whole ten yards Ghost on Mars. She was married for a year. After that she divorced, and she had two sons from another boyfriend, and she married another guy for seven years. What do you think of Species?

33:31 I like Species? Actually, those are those movies. I walked in with absolutely zero expectations, and I walked out saying, Gosh, I get it. I gotta see it again. I enjoyed it. I really did enjoy it. Okay, if I've known you're in such a big rock guy, I would have played a longer clip for this guy. Me combingdensus and stumbling out of bus. Follow you through the dark, you kidding off your meds, tattoo and some I'm a. Main Maybe you know. I'm a sirker for you. The middle of Jonahs brother is Joe Jonas. He's thirty six. He was born in Casta, Grand Arizona, in nineteen eighty nine.

34:11 Now him and his brothers Kevin and Nick. They released the first album in two thousand and six. Some of the biggest hits are burning Up, Sos Sucker. Now Joe and Nick they split the lead singing duties. They're out on tour right now until the middle of November. I think they're gonna be in Chicago in October if you're interested in there. Joey married. I'm busy that day. I'm sorry, Joe. He married actress Sophie Turner for five years and they had two daughters. Thirty five year old actress Jennifer Lawrence. She was born in Indian Hills, Kentucky, in nineteen ninety. She's played Mystic in the Xpin movies. She was Catnus in the Hunger Games movies. Nominated for Oscars for Winter's Bone, American Hustle and Joy won Oscar for Silver Linings playbook.

34:52 She got married in twenty nineteen and they have two kids. Oh God, I dropped the question I was gonna ask for you. Oh. We kind of talked about your website a little bit earlier. You talked about AI. I know there's a lady like Leslie that you kept credits umber all your artwork. Man, it's pretty incredible. Is a lot of that AI? No. No, And by the way, Leslie is a guy. Oh okay, sorry, sorry, Leslie. He's married, he has a couple of kids. His daughter is a fan of my work. So now Leslie is very much a man. Leslie Taguer, he's out of hungry. He's the artist for all the Legends Parallel stuff. All my comic book stuff is done by human artists. About eighty percent of the promo for my novels is done by AI. Because quite honestly, I tried working with some human artists and what I kept getting back was not what I was looking for. I didn't have the kind of control I wanted, and they kept trying to make it look like actors and actresses and costumes. I'm like, no, these are creatures. Developed from my brain that are spewed forth under the earth and they kill every man, woman and child on the planet. I don't want them to be cute, you know. Cute is the last thing I want them to be. So I've been using AI for them.

36:00 I'm just no looking at it. Man. Then, whether you like or not, they put a I can put out some pretty incredible pictures out there. Yeah, it's a it puts out what you know. In the seventies, when computers started first coming up, they had the phrase gigo g i g o garbage and garbage out and that's what AI is. People who look at it as a salvation, those people are stupid. It's a tool. It's a tool that you can use, and right now it's a tool that kind of steals from people. But they're putting some limits on that and hopefully they can get get everything back to where it needs to be because as of like for not for what I do, it's not stealing from anybody because nobody's doing what I do. If it's if it's taking anything in from Greek mythology, which those people have been dead for a while, they're not looking for a royalty check. But but yeah, I mean, AI is a tool and it needs to be treated as such, it needs to be regulated as such, it needs to be built and worked as such.

36:51 Well, that's on the AI is kind of one of those things that they've been talking about in science fiction from way back every where the machines come up and ruined mankind. Basically, Yeah, the what was the checklist Vokian film robot robot you know from what I forget the guy's name is it anyway, But that was like nineteen twenty nine, you know, when they first used the term robot mechanical being a cybernetic being and to take the place of mankind. And there have been hundreds of examples of people doing that. I did that in the Bridle Writers as kind of a trope that there was AI and then we killed it, and so to get around AI because people didn't want AI anymore, this guy, doctor Edward, he wrote, invented creatures that would do all the work we wanted and be our sex slaves and be our military and be whatever we needed them to be. And everyone said, oh, that's okay, we'll use them then, And that went as well as you would expect, and.

37:43 Here we are now, Ye actually you actually do you it's quite a bit of humor, and it's not like overt but you got a lot of writer humor in your writings too. Yeah, people talk about the humor a couple of times. I have to admit I was talking with somebody that they thought something was just a hysterical joke, and I almost had to have him explain it to me because I didn't realize there was their joke when I wrote. It was just way my headwork. But yeah, I try it. You know, I'm on I'm touching on some really dark themes. And if you can't step back and get a smile with it and lap along with what I'm talking about, this is gonna you know, then you're just gonna put a razor to your wrisk and call it a day. So I want, you know, I want people to think about what I'm talking about. I want people to consider the ramifications to what I'm talking about. I just don't want them to be suicidal when I'm.

38:28 Done, exactly that it could put you in a dark place for the rest of the day. Actually know that, all right, So we definitely want you all to go get The Brittle Writer's Trilogy and we're you can just go to Amazon or pretty much in Walmart, any place to sell the books will happen. But we'll put a link to his website too. And so what else do you want people to follow you on your your blog? Yeah, well, if they go to Bill mcscifi dot com, they can follow my blog. They can follow everything. But here's a bonus for your listeners. If you go to the Bill mc sci fi do blog dot com and you click on novels where all my novels are at clever of me. That way, for the brittle riders, you can download book one for free and nobody will yelly you and you're not stealing anything. Have at it, read it, leave a review if you can. But it's yours, good love and love and care for and enjoying for the rest of your life. So yeah, go to billmcscifi dot com and get all the cool stuff.

39:18 And you'll be hooked. You'll definitely want to get the second and the third, that's for sure. Are you have anything else you want to chat about today? No? I no, I'm good. There's been a lot of fun. All right, thank you for being here. Yeah, it has been. It's been really fun. Okay. Quote of the day, it's gonna come from Will Rogers. You read much Will when I was growing up. Yeah, Will Rogers was a part of the family religion. And he was great. He was totally awesome. Well, he died to day in a plane crash in nineteen thirty five, at fifty five years old. Bill said, there are three kinds of men. The one who learns from reading, the one who learns from observation, and the rest just have to pee on the electric fence for themselves to Thank you all for listening today, and thank you, thank you for being here Bill, and make sure y'all follow us on however you're listening to Son, make sure you don't miss us our country and a ground radio artist of the day. It comes from Shane out in South ben Indiana.

40:06 He wants to hear buck Ford and it's on cold beer. You guys, have an awesome day and we'll talk tomorrow. It all started with a cold beer in the smoky atmosphere, A few words whispered in enery and then me get on now of here. It was down some. Back road in the back seat of close we been. To heat the wrong most. It all started with the cold beer. I remember that night, the plainest day. I dropped the top on my Chevrolet and I picked her up.

40:52 I'm sweet on her. She was cleary of me, and I was all armed. She was uncleased, did not much. I all, how am I gone brave. The eyes. With the girl that's so curty and so nice. It all started with a cold, fear and smoky atmosphere of your word, whispered enter. He can't begin on now here. The dints down some back, rode in the backseat, up close, begin together. Almost year it all started being the cold here