754 - East of Eden with Zoe Kazan

19:45And I think his intention was to have Adam be the protagonist and I think she really becomes the protagonist in this weird way. And then I feel at least him kind of wrestling power back from her. If you want to get really deep on process, he kept these journals. He wrote longhand. He would write his pages for the day on the right-hand side and he would write letters to his longtime editor in front, Pascal Covici on the left-hand side. And then they were published after both men died in this book called Journal of a Novel, Letters from Eden. So you can really read his intent. And when he first starts talking about her, he's like, I'm going to write a monster unlike any you've ever seen.

20:20John August:Well, she describes herself as a monster. Right. And then as he's going, he's like, maybe we all have a little monster blood in us. And then he's like, maybe I am the monster. Like, it's like this funny slide. I feel like he sort of loses control a tiny bit because of her clarity of selfishness. So I think that that quality, she justifies everything she does by whether or not it's good for her. Yeah, she's the center of the universe. She's not just main character energy. She's like kind of the only character. There's a solipsism there that is important to her. Talk about the next card you pulled, which is Shapeshifter.

20:52So I think that she sort of, one of the things I find really interesting about her is that she is incredibly deceptive, but she's actually not a liar.

21:01John August:Yeah. That if you just like go via what she says in the book, she's often telling the truth to people about who she is. It kind of reminds me of that Max Frisch play, The Arsonists or The Firebugs. Do you know that play? I've heard of this. I don't think so. It's incredible. It's like, I mean, it's all a parable for the rise of fascism, but it's like, there's a small town. There have been these arsons. These two men show up at this house and they're like, hey, we're the arsonists. We need a place to stay actually. And they're like, well, we can't believe that no one would actually do that. And it would be so bad of us as like humans to believe that they're the arsonists who will give them a place to stay and then they ask for matches and they ask for fuel and they burn the house down at the end.

21:39That's a little bit what I think about Kathy, which is that she's always telling people who she is and what her intentions are, but like they don't always believe. And I think that she has gotten through life by sort of reading what people want from her and giving parts of herself. But I think she's like, there's a deep unwillingness to look deeply into herself until the very end of the book.

22:02John August:So each of the cards has a little description about sort of what it is. And like the top half shows like the more positive aspects that the bottom half has more negative aspects. For Shapeshifter, we're saying positively, social chameleon always matches the vibe, but still keeps it real. I don't think she quite does that. No, but she aspires to. I think she's looking to... I think she's reading what people want and using it to her advantage. The negative sides, no true form can become whoever they need to be to get what they want. Listen, I am an actor, so. Yeah, that's fair. And so in your conversations with Florence about the character, I suspect there's the same thing happens with Elle Fanning in Welcome to Yourself's movie, where she's an actress playing an actress is always a challenge.

22:44John August:As you're talking with Florence, what do you want the camera to see? What do you want the audience to see? Do you want them to be able to pierce the veil? I just want to say, so I saw Florence in Midsommar, and that was the thing that I was like, she has to play Kathy Ames. I just had this strong feeling. I don't know what her process is. She is a mysterious actor. She is so extraordinary. And I think like a true genius. And like the questions that she had for me about text were things like, can I use this word instead of this word? Because it's easier with the accent because she's doing an American accent.

23:18Like we never really spoke about the character because she seemed to sort of just get hurt from our first conversation. So I don't know. Yeah.

23:28John August:Well, it's a weird thing that happens too, because there's a handoff. As the writer, you are all the characters and they're assigned off to other actors one by one. And it's a handoff that doesn't even really go through the directors. Like I was playing all these characters. Now you're playing this character. And like you ask any questions you need to ask. And I've had actors who just want to be in the room with hours for me digging through all the stuff. And you don't know. You never know. As an actor, how often are you asking the writer questions about things? Tell us about that. So many times.

23:58I mean, listen, I think that there's like a little shade in this, but also love that when I did the plot against America, David Simon afterwards, he gave me a writer's room T-shirt. But like what I felt in that set is that I was like, okay, I'm playing Philip Roth's mother. Philip Roth, like I think pretty famously like worshipped his mother and you read like Patrimony or something like his memoir about his father. And like he's very critical of his father, can think critically about him. He does not think critically about his mother. And like David Simon also loved his mother. I was like, okay, I'm with a bunch of men who love their mothers.

24:30And like, it's my job to think that she's a person and to advocate for her personhood. And like, it's not like these people aren't also thinking that they're thinking of her as a person. But like, I am a mother and I am also a person. And I don't know. I think that there's a kind of like, I love asking questions. I come from the theater. So the playwright is king and you spend a lot of time talking with the playwright in the room. And then I also think that there's like, I've done a lot of plays of like dead people's plays. I feel like some strange communion with Chekhov, you know, where I'm like, all right, I never met Chekhov, but I know what Chekhov was.

25:09John August:Yes. You know, there's this feeling. I mean, I think it's the same thing that makes me love to read novels is that like, I mean, I love writers. I love writing. I love reading between the lines and figuring out what was going on here. Let's talk about one more of those cards. Let's talk about victim, because I think one of the things you do so smartly in this is make it clear that you're showing us what happened in Kathy's early life that kind of got her on this track. And like by any modern standards, she was a victim of shitty sexual behavior by adult men. And boys. And boys, and boys. And at the same time, that is not a get out of free.

25:48No.

25:48John August:card. And I don't think she thinks of herself as a victim. Exactly. And I don't think she wants to be thought of as a victim. Although the first minute we're seeing her, the first frame of the story is she's a victim. Absolutely. She's had her face bashed on. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I find it a really interesting color in this picture. I think part of what the book is about is like how do people react to the things that have happened in their lives and the circumstances that they were born into and And I think that her viewpoint, which is like articulate, I don't, it's not just that I think this. She articulates this viewpoint that the world is bad and people are either evil or stupid.

26:28And I find it a really interesting, not to quote my therapist too much, but like two things can be true. She can be a person that had terrible things happen to her. And she can also be a person who does terrible things and they don't cancel each other out. Or like, I don't know.

26:44John August:Yeah, but it's too simple to say, hurt people hurt people. Yes, I think it's way too simple. Because it's like, you know, there's a calculation behind some of her choices too, that it's not just the simplest way through a scenario. I will say that there are things that I think that I understand as a girl that Steinbeck maybe didn't understand or that we read really differently. Sure. And I think one of the things that made me feel like I had some lassitude to emphasize the things that happened to her in her childhood is that very late in the book, she starts sort of recounting how when she was very little and she was frightened or hurt, that she would imagine that she was growing smaller, that she was like with Alice in Wonderland and that they had both drunk the potion and were growing smaller and smaller.

27:34And I thought, oh, this is a portrait of disassociation. And I understand that. And I've also, like, I was a very charming and precocious child, and I got a lot of unwanted attention. I know what that feels like. I know what it does to your brain. But I didn't kill anybody, you know? But I think that, like, you know, my life experience provides me a different reading on that than maybe Steinbeck's did. Yeah.

28:02John August:Yeah. So thank you for doing this exercise on the archetypes here. It's fun. And I think what we're talking about with an actor's questions is that Philip Roth's mother is not just a mother. She's actually a whole character who's a whole bunch of different things. And so you pulled a card that just said, mother, well, that doesn't kind of tell you anything. That's only one aspect of who the character is. And even if the scenes that are in the storytelling are about her role, her function as a mother, that's not the entirety of who she is. That's not how she organizes her life. It's not her self-conception.

28:33Or if it is, that's a choice.

28:35John August:That's a choice too, yeah. Like one of the things that was on that, one of the things that was incredibly useful to me was to go to Philip Roth's childhood home, which is obviously very, or maybe not obviously, it's in Newark. It's a very different neighborhood than it used to be. And we quit. I was like, oh, she is in a house that is a half a block away from his elementary school. She still would have him come home for lunch every day and she still volunteered for the PTA. Like the closeness that she demanded from her sons is very interesting. And like, that's just a thing for me to know. It doesn't have to come into the writing, but it colors it.

29:13John August:Well, talk to me then about an actress preparation. You have the text and the actress preparation thinking about like, okay, now embodying the character. What research am I going to be able to do that's actually going to help inform my choices on the day and help me bring something to the scenes? I'm not going to be changing greatly, but like to perform the scenes as written, what have you found to be helpful for yourself? Well, it's so individual, right? And it depends on the project. I had this teacher once who was like an acting teacher who said, if it doesn't spark your imagination, it's not useful.

29:47That was really helpful to me because I'm such an A student that I think as a young actor, I was doing a lot of homework that I didn't need to be doing. Full dossiers and everything.

29:55John August:Yes. Exactly. And I think I felt like if I check all these boxes, then I'm a good actor, right? Or if I check all these boxes, I'll be prepared. I think a lot of preparation is just so that you don't freak out when you get to set. But like, I don't know. I think it's like all about getting to a really complex and unconscious imaginative place. And I think that that's very similar as a writer too. Like I did, I mean, I read those journals of Steinbeck's. I read two biographies of Steinbeck. Like I did all this stuff around it, and it mostly was because I respected the text so much that I knew that I would be embroidering.

30:32And there are things that, especially as you're taking a novel and turning it into something dramatic, you have to turn something that's internal into an externalized image or action or dialogue. I just wanted to make sure that I was really respecting his impulse. And I think one of the things that you see in the book is that there's actually quite a lot of racism and misogyny. And yet, I think Steinbeck's viewpoint is really humanist. And I think like that's a really important distinction and a way for me to understand what I'm going to be doing with that racism and misogyny, right? Which is to contextualize.

31:06John August:Absolutely. So if you're trying to foreground it in a way that sort of called extra attention to itself, that's not necessarily being fair to Steinbeck or to your audience. This is not the story they sign on to. So you have to put it in the right context. Right. Yeah. So let's talk about, as the writer, we're writing all the characters and we sort of have a sense of we're keeping each of their brains separate in our head. We understand why they're doing what they're doing. Once these roles are assigned off to actors, you are responsible for yourself or you're responsible for yourself. But because you're interacting with other characters in the scene, you have a set of expectations about what those actors are going to do with those things and they may not be matching up with what yours are.

31:43It feels like one of the challenges

31:45John August:coming into set as an actor or as the director who has a view for how these people are going to fit together is trying to get everyone playing the same tune, trying to make sure that they have compatible views on things. What have you learned about getting people to the same place? I mean, plays have rehearsals. You probably didn't have rehearsal in the same way on this kind of show. So talk to us about that. What a great question. I mean, I think some of it is just in casting, right? Like for me, one of the things that was really important as we cast this was to like trouble the binary a little bit.

32:16But to go back to the question of archetypes, there are two stories that kind of form the spine of this book. And one is the story of Adam and Eve and one is the story of Cain and Abel. And so those are two of the most archetypal stories you could possibly be working with. And I think sometimes the book falls into a kind of schema around those things. And I felt like, okay, I want to preserve these people as archetypes, but they're also real people. They have to feel really real. And like, especially since it's a period piece, I really want, like, you know, I said to every department, like, we can't have people walking away from this talking about how great the costumes are and how beautiful the wigs are.

32:53Like, then we'll have really missed the boat, right? And so I really like tried to find actors that could have played their opposite part. Right. So like, our Adam is, the Adam in the book is like the picture of goodness. And we cast Chris Abbott, who has played a lot of villains, right? Or like when we were casting the second pair of brothers, Cal and Aaron, and we were reading all these young actors, I had them all read both parts because I felt like you really want actors that could have played the opposite role. So I think some of it is just like you cast properly and then you let them do their thing.

33:30John August:Yeah. One, I think, good example of what I think I learned on set was there's a kind of intimate scene at the end of episode two. And our actors had worked with our intimacy coordinator on it. And I think they hadn't quite come to a picture yet of what they wanted to happen between them. And I had written it lots of different ways with their input. And I think we had sort of gotten ourselves in a bind between what does this character want and what does that character want? And we hadn't quite come to like an agreement about what should happen. And it was coming out on set in a like not great way.

34:11It felt like a lot of ideas. And I made the decision to like shut down the set for 45 minutes so we could talk about it. which I think as showrunners, like a terrifying thing to lose that time. And I think it was one, it was pretty early in our filming. And I think letting everybody speak about what was important to them allowed the actors to then go away and figure it out between the two of them. And then they immediately came up with a kind of synthesis of all of these things. And it's now one of my favorite scenes in the series. And I think it like really speaks to director, showrunner, actors all working together.

34:53Intimacy coordinator, we had an incredible intimacy coordinator. But it's like one of the things that at the time I thought like, this is terrifying and I don't know if I'm doing the right thing here. And I think it's a really weird balance. Like I've never showrunned before. And I think because I come from an actor's standpoint, I have like a lot of respect for actors and a lot of respect for directors. and I think it was really hard for me to learn to like be a boss.

35:20John August:Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Let me say this back because it's crucial that each of the actors feels that they have ownership over their characters, their choices, their bodies, what they're doing on that scene. It's crucial the director has a sense of this is visually how I'm telling this moment, this is where it's at, this is how it's fitting into the scene before, scene after, all these things. But you as a showrunner, you are ultimately the author of this whole moment. And so if the scene didn't meet your needs, why are we even doing the scene? So it's tough to sort of fit all those things. You want to make sure everyone's feeling happy and right.

35:55John August:But you also have to say no, which means sometimes it's shutting down the sun. Well, like one of the things that you asked earlier that we were in the middle of another question, but you said, like, I want to know what you learned. I think for me, the greatest learning process on this was like to learn how to disappoint people and make people unhappy. Yeah. And like, I think especially coming from 20 years as an actor, like your job is to make people happy and like, or at least like to give them what they want and learning how to, and also I'm just like such a people pleaser and I want to make people happy and like, I want to take care of people and really learning how to like sit across tables and say, you're not going to get what you want.

36:34I know this is really hard. Here are the set of circumstances that aren't going to change. And how can we figure out a better solution? And that was like being tossed into the deep end and having to learn how to do that while dog paddling. But it has really transformed my life, the ability to do that. I'm a much better parent, I think, for it.

36:55John August:Yeah, absolutely. Let's take a step back from that clip there, the scary moments too, the comfort of just being at the keyboard writing this story. Let's talk about dialogue. And so a thesis that I have is that all dialogue in our film and TV and plays as well exists on a spectrum between naturalistic, what people would actually really say in that moment, and heightened, which is this optimized, particular, peculiar, special to your world kind of lingo. And all dialogue is going to be somewhere on that spectrum. and you can pick any point on that spectrum and it's all valid if it fits the tone and style of the story that you're telling and we believe the characters are saying it.

37:36John August:Where I see people running into troubles is they're really naturalistic and then they try to go heightened at a certain moment. It's like, oh my gosh, that line sticks out. Something doesn't fit. Or they start really heightened and then they get kind of naturalistic and then it just feels flat. It feels like we're not in the same world or movie. And I was thinking about it in terms of your series, because I'm not going to put words in your mouth because we're talking about words in people's mouths, would you describe it as naturalistic or heightened? I think that the language in the book is pretty heightened.

38:08John August:Yeah. I think that part of my job as an adapter here was to preserve some of the poetry and make it feel like people talking. Yeah. I think you did that. Thanks. So I would say that in the present day storyline, and obviously the present day storyline line moves along. But in the present day storyline, the characters are talking largely the way that we would expect them to talk with the natural pauses and their thoughts aren't fully formed before they start speaking. It's sort of a mark of naturalism to me. And it's in the past episodes, the flashbacks as we're going to, where characters speak in a little bit more heightened register.

38:46John August:They're more polite, partly because it's a past time, but it's also I think we as an audience have an expectation that the past is more formal and it's more heightened and that there's just a, and it thinks it can sound a little more written and it doesn't bump me. It's just, it feels natural. Totally. I mean, I think that also, like, I think part of what you're responding to is that the flashbacks in episode two to Kathy's childhood, like, exist within a really, like, bourgeois middle class. Like, I think part of her viewpoint is that these people are phonies. And so I think that there's a little bit of that in there too.

39:19But, you know, like, Like, Tony Kushner is kind of a friend because I worked with him. And he read these scripts really early for me. And he was like, you just have to, like, people in, like, older times talk the way we do. Yeah, it's true. And, like, it made me pull out some of the, I think there's some language that I invented and some from the book that feels a little more formal that I tried to, like, soften a little, especially in the first half of the series. But like, I think that there's a, like one of the most famous lines from the book is a line late in the book when Lee tells this character, Abra, now that you don't have to be perfect, you can be good.

39:57And it's like one of these things that people quote and they put it on a magnet and they put it on the fridge. And like that line is not in our series. Partially because I felt like the series sort of bridges us into the 20th century. And by the time we get into like the 19 teens, I felt like they really have to feel contemporary. I don't mean like they're saying like using contemporary language, but I just felt like the distance between the audience and these people has to feel like much slimmer than it does at the beginning of the story because 50 years has gone by. And I felt like this is too formal for this part of the series.

40:34Like by the time we land in 1917, I can't have Lee saying this.

40:38John August:Well, one of the challenges is that that line, the character isn't discovering that while they're saying that. It's a preformed thought. And so I have a similar situation in Big Fish. There's a line of, we'll talk about voiceover, but like the line of voiceover where I say, my father and I were like strangers who knew each other very well. Great thought. And it can exist in voiceover because voiceover is by its nature kind of heightened. But if I needed to have that character say that in the scene itself, I would have to break that up thought differently because it's the full thoughts already formed.

41:09John August:The character is not discovering it at the time they're saying it. So you would have had to do a similar kind of, you know, slicing job to make that work. Yes, and already this character is sort of like a fount of wisdom in a way that I am trying to take the like, forgive me, like exoticism off of, right? That I'm trying to make him be a person who has really deep thoughts about people and is an observer and not like the Asian American fount of wisdom. Oh God, that's the issue. I think I want to stress about naturalism though is it doesn't, naturalistic dialogue is still optimized. You're still picking like what is the, what is the right word that actually does the thing that I need to do that gets me to the next line.

41:52John August:And that's the fine line. It's not exactly what we would actually say in real life because it's still, it's moving things forward in a way that normal conversations don't quite get. Yeah, well, and then also it's like the medium of film is allowing you to need language less than you do in a play. For sure. And it's one of the great joys, I think, of being in the edit room. I was in the edit room with Paul, my partner who wrote Wildlife with me, and I got to be a part of that process. And I think it helped prepare me for this, which is that no matter how spare you think you've written this, it's like you're going to lose half your language in the edit, and that that's a good thing.

42:34But yeah, I just think an actor's face can do so much. And it's like that part is miraculous to me. Like, I don't know. I just find it so fascinating that what a look can do or even just like just the person's face existing on screen.

42:48John August:I have a project right now where the script is heavier than it will ultimately be just because people are asking for things. And in my heart, I know like, the person's face is going to cover 90 % of this and we're going to be able to lose all these lines. And that's okay. That wasn't a failure on my side. I think it helps the actor sometimes, right? Yeah. And I think you get the look because you have the line and then the line goes away. Let's talk about the lines themselves because something I'm always aware of is that Steinbeck, when he's writing this book, characters can say anything because it's not being read aloud, really.

43:23John August:So you can string together words that are actually very difficult for a person to say in a book, whereas an actor on stage or an actor in front of the camera, those words just don't fit together. As you as the writer, also thinking about you as the actor, you're always thinking about mouth fit. You're always thinking about like, how can you get from that word to that word? And it's just not a thing I hear people talking enough about. Oh my gosh. I mean, like this is a thing I think all the time about and I have so much curiosity about writers who don't act and how do they figure that out? Because I feel like not just having acted in things for 20 years, but having auditioned for 20 years, You've read so much and you've tried it all out in your mouth and like you've auditioned with great material and terrible material.

44:06And actually those are two totally different jobs as an actor, like what you're what you need to do with that. And I feel like I have this like little like third eye that roves above the page and goes like, well, no actor is going to be able to say that, you know. But then I think that the other thing that's like kind of amazing and particular is that there are lines that I think I know exactly how that will come out. And then that actor, their mouth can't do it. And that is a completely valid thing. Yes. And having to like respond to that and be like, oh, especially over like five months of filming with someone, be like, that actor can't have language like that.

44:49John August:Yeah. And that's like totally fine. And all that means is that I have to think about this. Like, it's almost like you become like a writer for a rep company or something. Yeah, absolutely. What are, how do I make this actor's gifts shine? Yeah, it's very answer of how to do it. Any things we can point to, it's like, okay, these are issues that the writer may not be thinking about, but once you have to try to say the lines, you can't do it. For me, it's like, it's how consonants are stacked together, how one word bumps into the next word. And just the overall prosody, the music of sort of how you go through it, how many beats there are, it matters.

45:23But I'm like, I'm such a, like, I love to rewrite. Like, I think that one of the things I've learned over the years is like, to just give myself permission to write a bad first draft.

45:34John August:Yes. And what really helps me is to know that I then have the ability to make it better, which as an actor, you don't on set. Like, the thing that bothers me the most as an actor is exposition, like exposition dumps. Yeah. And feeling like, I have so many friends who are actors and one of the things that we talk about is like, when you have to like bring extra sauce to something to make it, to hide the impulses of the writing. Yeah. And I think that one of the things that, that's a thing that I try to be really careful about is that information is always being conveyed within character intention and like, But it's like all the stuff, the ABCs of writing.

46:20It's just as you're working, it can be really hard to not put that info dump in. You're like, well, I've lost this location and I've had to put three scenes in and make them one. And so now I have to have somebody talk about the thing that, you know, like you're just like some of it is something that you acquire with skill and time and practice. But some of it is like, I just need you to say these things.

46:43John August:Yeah, absolutely. And that's coming out of that. We're like, this is the thing that needs to happen. You're the only person who can say this thing that can get us this piece of information out into the world. And that's where we're at. And if this were a play that we could be in rehearsals for another three weeks, we might find another clever solution through here. But this scene is shooting now once and the only time we're ever doing this moment. Therefore, we have to do it. I had to lose, so I had to lose a full episode when we were in pre-production and I also had to cut every episode back by like 10 pages.

47:14Oh, that's a lot. Yeah, it was a lot. Because I had just written them really dense and we needed them to be like 52 pages and not 62. But I think in the process of doing that, it actually really helped me because it made me have to think about like what is essential, like what is the most vital part of this scene. And I think I'm just really grateful that I had that time because I know a lot of people are like writing as they're going. And all of my scripts were written by the time we were in production.

47:45John August:Let's do our one cool things. Great. We recommend things to our audience. Zoe, what do you have to recommend? Okay. I know I said I'm really particular about audiobooks, but I have been trying to lower my anxiety level about this show coming out by I'm sewing my children's Halloween costume. while I listen to audiobooks instead of listening to like podcasts about the industry, sorry. And what I've been listening to are Toni Morrison reads her own audiobooks. They're incredible. And like that's on one side of it. And on the other side of it, I've been listening to like Agatha Christie book after Agatha Christie book.

48:21Oh, great. And I've been oscillating between those two things. That sounds great. And that's been really fun and has totally placed me in like the hands of two masters. and yeah, I can't recommend those two kinds of audiobooks.

48:33John August:So for something like Agatha Christie, do you have narrators who are doing a good job evoking the voice of each of the characters? Yes. Well, there's a guy named Hugh Fraser who's a British actor who I think did like a bunch of them. I am new to Agatha Christie. This is a whole world I'm opening up to. Very exciting. Dan Stevens reads some of them very well. Richard Armitage reads some of them very well. You're getting like a plummy British actor doing their best like panto vibes. Like, again, I don't normally love voices, but in these books, they're like casts of 18 and you really are grateful when they give like this guy a Scottish accent.

49:09You know who he is when he's talking. Yeah. What about yours?

49:13John August:Well, first off, I need to know what you were sawing for your kids for costumes. Are there spoilers for the kids listening to this? No. My children are three and eight. Thank God they don't listen to this. My three-year-old son wants to be, quote, all the Spider-Men. So I have been cutting up his big sister's old like Spider-Man PJs and Ghost Spider stuff and like sewing them into it. Great, a Franken-spider. A Franken-spider, exactly. And my daughter wants to be a space alien. And I have made her a little space tunic that says, I am your leader because that's very much her personality. There's a thrift store near my parents' house where people dump their unused sewing projects.

49:51So like I got all the materials and sequins and stuff for like$6. Love it. It's pretty great.

49:56John August:That's great. My one cool thing is a blog post by Daniel Frank called Why I Can't Stop Thinking About Papua New Guinea and What I Think Everyone Should Know About It. Do you have any conception of New Guinea, maybe like geographically? Like so barely. Like I went to like progressive Los Angeles schools. I taught new geography. So, I mean, it's the Southwest Pacific Ocean. It's north of Australia. I knew that much. I didn't know nothing else about New Guinea. So obviously, I'll send people to the blog post. But a bit of a teaser, we don't know the population of it. We don't know if it's 10 million or 17 million people.

50:32John August:We just generally don't know how many people live there. It has nearly 1 ,000 distinct languages. It represents about 12 % of all languages on Earth. Wow. Biggest language diversity in the world. And it's because basically people arrived there 50 ,000 years ago. And was it used as a penal colony? No, no, that's mainland Australia. So there's been people living there for 50 ,000 years. We didn't know about it until 1930. Perfect. So in the Highlands, basically we only saw the coast. There were a million people living in the Highlands, different groups, different tribes up there. But they settled at a time back when you could walk between the different islands.

51:07John August:You could actually walk into Australia because like the sea levels were different. Wow. And so the people who were living in the Highlands, they had stuff from the outside world. They didn't know where it came from. So they'd gotten sweet potatoes and other stuff, but it just sort of spread so slowly across that like where it came from didn't really, didn't manifest. They invented agriculture completely separately, independently. It's just a very cool example of, we'll never have this again, this sort of natural experiment, like what it's like to sort of have this whole separate thing that happened.

51:35My mind is blown. Yeah.

51:37John August:And so obviously there's some things that are familiar to us about like, there's not the normal colonialism, there's not the normal terrible things that happens when Westerners arrive, but some of the normal terrible things happen. See, I thought you were going to tell me that like in Papua New Guinea, exactly what happened politically here. I was like, oh, we're going to get one of these where I then have to hit my head against a wall for 40 years. But no, it's fascinating. But the main city is considered one of the most dangerous cities in the world. So it's not a happy ending, but it's just fascinating as a place.

52:11John August:Anthropologically. Anthropologically, come on, great. So cool. What a great thing to have. So Papua New Guinea, who knew? Wow. That is our show for this week. The Script Notes is produced by Meredith Stedman with help from Lauren Loesberg and edited by Matthew Cilelli. Our outro is by Adam Pineless. If you have an outro, you can send us a link to ask at johnaugust.com. That's also the place where you can send questions like the ones we answer often on the show. You will find transcripts at johnaugust.com. And that's also a place where you can sign up for a weekly newsletter called Interesting, which has lots of links to things about writing.

52:41John August:The Script Notes book is available wherever you buy books. Script Notes merch is available at Cotton Bureau. If you'd like to see us, not just listen to us, follow us on YouTube and Instagram. Thank you to all our premium subscribers. You can sign up to becomeoneatscriptnotes.net where you get all the back episodes and bonus segments like the one we're about to record on growing up as the child of two screenwriters, which is a unique situation. Zoe Kazan, congratulations on your show. Thank you for coming on Script Notes. Thanks for having me. I really appreciate it.

53:19Thank you.