Episode 122
Today we are joined by author, speaker, and podcaster Rob Bell to talk about his new novel "Where'd You Park Your Spaceship". We talk about delighting in our work, a faith that could survive the end of the world, and how a book about spaceships and distant planets has more to do with what it means to be human than anything he's written before.
Rob Bell is the New York Times Bestselling author of fourteen books and plays which have been translated into 25 languages. His visual art can be seen on Instagram @realrobbell, his band is HUMANS ON THE FLOOR, and his podcast is called The RobCast. Rob lives with his family in Ojai, California.
https://robbell.com/
Support this podcast on Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/DowntheWormholepodcast
More information at https://www.downthewormhole.com/
produced by Zack Jacksonmusic by Zack Jackson and Barton Willis
Transcript (AI Generated)
Zack Jackson (00:22.558)Our guest today is the bestselling author of 14 books and plays, international speaker and host of the Robcast.
orb (00:30.161)Okay.
Zack Jackson (00:46.582)He lives in Ojai, California, where he hosts two-day small group gatherings, that which you can and should sign up for right now. Link in the description. It is my pleasure and honor to welcome Rob Bell to this podcast. Hey, Rob.
Ian Binns (01:02.341)Hey Rob.
orb (01:02.45)Hello, fellas. Thanks for having me on.
Zack Jackson (01:05.322)Oh, thanks for spending your morning with us. So I have in my hand this very, um, strange and wonderful novel called where'd you park your spaceship? Which even I know the title still to this day brings a smile to your face. Um, the book starts with the line.
Ian Binns (01:08.122)Yeah.
orb (01:27.205)just to hear you say it, just to hear you say it.
Ian Binns (01:30.62)I loved it.
Zack Jackson (01:32.21)So the first line in the book is, the earth didn't make it, it got brown balled. Which in total caps, brown balled. Then we meet characters named Heen Grubears, Moogie Fallers and Sir Pong. There's a family game like two pages in where you intentionally slam your head into a fork. And then without any explanation, we have a sentence that says,
We took her to the Thrival in our circle that night. So from like the very beginning of this book, I got the feeling that this wasn't going to be a book about a carefully crafted universe or a book about like a message being hammered on over and over again. This was not a carefully crafted universe. This was a novel just stuffed to the brim with delight.
Like your absolute delight in your characters, in their alien world, it just comes through so clearly. Can you maybe just tell us a little bit about your relationship to the story and to the people who live in here?
orb (02:45.69)What a wonderful setup slash question. Yeah, and honestly.
Zack Jackson (02:48.226)Ha ha ha.
orb (02:54.101)All I had was delight. I don't have training as a writer. I don't have a background. I haven't really read science fiction. I guess Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. I don't, other than that, I like, all there was, and my work for roughly 30 years has been explaining. That's what like a spiritual teacher does, which is a very particular engagement of the mind.
And I had some sense that something was ending, something I'd been doing. It was like an achy, angsty, like a death feeling, like a cellular death. Like you've been doing a thing and it's coming to an end. Don't numb the pain, just let it die. And this story came roaring in. And the only way it worked was what happens next. Like a very innocent, tender, who appears? What are they wearing? What's their name?
and that explaining energy. Well, obviously, if you watch a movie and it's clear what the point of the movie is, you're like, ugh, we say heavy-handed, on the nose. You know what I mean? We're out. So it was like taking all of these muscles that I've built up over the years. Like a number of my earlier books, like Love Wins is a the
