50. DR. TRAVIS LANGLEY & DR. WIND GOODFRIEND: Exploring the psychology behind The Handmaid's Tale

I've been a fan of Dr. Travis Langley's work in the Pop Culture Psychology series for years, but this one is close to my heart. Book 16 in the series focuses on Margaret Atwood's classic novel, "The Handmaid's Tale", the sequel, "The Testaments", as well as both the TV show and movie based on her work. Dr. Langley co-edited this book with Dr. Wind Goodfriend, and they asked me to write a little blurb for it, so if you pick up a copy using the links below, you'll get to see my name in print! I'm very excited about that little detail, as you can imagine, but I'm also eager for people to read this book because of the depth it will add to your watching and reading experience, like all of the books in this series do.

This conversation is a bit heavier than my normal author chats due to the weight of the topics involved in the story. Please take care of yourself while listening.


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Transcript

00;00;00;04 - 00;00;17;21
Speaker 1
Hi and welcome to Literary Hype. I am Stephanie, your literary hype woman back with a author conversation that is both a returning guest and someone new all at the same time. Well, it's really fun to get to bring a new guest on to the show to bring back a returning guest that I've loved chatting with over the years.

00;00;18;03 - 00;00;41;08
Speaker 1
This conversation does deal with some heavier topics because the book is The Handmaid's Tale Psychology. Seeing off read the coeditors of this book are Dr. Travis Langley and Winn, good friend. And so these two are both psychologists who really know what they're doing. They're digging into the issues, the values, the topics that these that the book and the show and also the movie.

00;00;41;08 - 00;01;08;28
Speaker 1
They even touch on the movie in this. They all discuss and present for us. So there's a lot to learn both from this conversation and this book. So without any further ado, here is my conversation with Dr. Travis Langley and Dr. Wayne, good friend well, welcome to Literary Hype. I'm so excited to have you guys on to talk about Handmaid's Tale psychology, seeing off Red Alert books.

00;01;09;23 - 00;01;10;13
Speaker 2
Means over there.

00;01;12;21 - 00;01;27;07
Speaker 1
Oh, this is a very special book for me because you guys included me in the process on this in a really special way. Did you know before you asked me to blurb this book that I had put blurb a book on my vision board for the year?

00;01;28;09 - 00;01;30;21
Speaker 3
No, I did not.

00;01;31;06 - 00;01;33;06
Speaker 1
So that worked out really well for me.

00;01;34;07 - 00;01;52;13
Speaker 3
Well, I mean, you're one of the regulars that we've been asking for a while. Would you like to see a review, copies of these books and but, you know, I suspected that I really need to make sure to get this one to her, but no, I had no idea that blurb a book. And you're the first one.

00;01;52;19 - 00;01;56;07
Speaker 1
I have not yet seen the finished copy. I'm still waiting on them to come into my store.

00;01;56;07 - 00;02;13;25
Speaker 3
Oh, you still? OK, so here's the still the RC. Mm hmm. First person on the on on the first page there, Stephanie Kerr. So now the first page, it says literary hype. Is that a literary hype woman? I think they did that. So it wouldn't sound like it was somebody paid to work for us.

00;02;14;24 - 00;02;19;22
Speaker 1
You know, that's a valid point. But Literary Hype is the name of the YouTube channel of the podcast. So.

00;02;20;02 - 00;02;36;03
Speaker 3
So that would be why yeah, because that would be why they they did it that way. There's a quote from one of the earlier books in here and there. It says, Literary Hype Woman. But that first one it says Literary Hype. And and I get why they really wanted to just go with literary hype.

00;02;36;12 - 00;02;40;13
Speaker 1
That was a total surprise to me, too. When I got the art, I was like.

00;02;41;05 - 00;02;41;18
Speaker 3
Yeah.

00;02;42;27 - 00;02;54;25
Speaker 1
You're too good to me. But for anyone who has not already seen Handmaid's Tale Psychology Online, tell us a little bit about what this book is about and how you guys decided that this was the next project to work on.

00;02;54;28 - 00;02;59;06
Speaker 3
Well, when we wanted to do it, whether I would or not. So let's start with Win.

00;02;59;12 - 00;03;02;04
Speaker 2
I did have to kind of convince you to do this one time.

00;03;02;06 - 00;03;15;28
Speaker 3
You did because 11. OK, I said start with win and we go right to my answer, but you did have to sell me on it. I think in terms of the audience. And I knew it was not going to be the kind of fun most of these books are.

00;03;15;29 - 00;03;45;02
Speaker 2
Usually we do like superheroes you know, that kind of thing. And and they are really action packed, light hearted, happy ending, you know, feel good types of media. And this, I guess, got some action. There are feel good moments, but that's really not the vibe. Right. But I've loved the world that Atwood created since I was in high school.

00;03;45;19 - 00;04;10;12
Speaker 2
And there's so much attention right now because of the Hulu show, because of this sequel, prequel, sequel, kind of mix. That was second book. And I think also because of the attention that the book has gotten due to the election, I really wanted to focus on it because it's something that I've cared deeply about and because I think it's something that people are talking about right now.

00;04;10;23 - 00;04;23;02
Speaker 2
And I knew that really we could say a lot about the psychology in Atwood's world and and I knew that Travis would be into it as soon as he kind of listens to my advice.

00;04;24;09 - 00;04;47;14
Speaker 3
I had to think about it. So the thing was, OK, I went months to do this, you know, regardless, and it's and I want it to be the best it can be because it's important material important things that we were talking about in here. Carney, Carney, since Eastman, who has been she was my original editor on Batman and Psychology.

00;04;47;14 - 00;05;14;29
Speaker 3
She was the editor who started the anthologies we were doing with Sterling Publishing. And even after she left them independent editor, she wound up being a copy editor and or online editor on all the more recent books because I told the publisher, you need to get Comey involved. She's the there is no going to be there's going to be no publishers editor who understands what we're doing on these books better than Connie and and Connie.

00;05;14;29 - 00;05;33;17
Speaker 3
So she has seen all these books all along the way. And she she has said she thinks it's one of our best. And she also thinks it certainly has the what was the word she was she was fishing for the word the which used was consequential in terms of the importance of the subject matter.

00;05;33;23 - 00;05;42;28
Speaker 1
I was only going to ask why now for this book to come out, especially with an Election Day release and a very heated, tense election year.

00;05;43;03 - 00;05;51;03
Speaker 3
The number one reason on why now had to do with win win was going to have a sabbatical. That's what we felt. That's what it started with.

00;05;51;07 - 00;06;10;09
Speaker 2
That's true. I did have a sabbatical. My university was very generous and gave me a sabbatical last year in the fall, which is when we asked our contributors to have their chapters initially due to us. And so just in terms of the timing of when we were able to co edit the book, the timing really was helpful to me.

00;06;10;17 - 00;06;15;20
Speaker 2
So we didn't know what was going to come out on Election Day. That was just a coincidence, really.

00;06;15;23 - 00;06;41;12
Speaker 3
Something that a publisher did. I don't know if it was deliberate or not. It seems like it must have been deliberate. I haven't asked them as like why in the world are you releasing on Election Day instead of six weeks earlier? They do try to time these things to coincide with some sort of public event, like, oh, it should come out, you know, a month before the start of a new season of Supernatural or right before.

00;06;41;23 - 00;07;03;26
Speaker 3
So we know from the history of these books that they definitely do better if there's some kind of tie, any event like when some TV shows new season got delayed, but the publisher stayed on schedule the book did not do as well as others. So there are. But the Hulu show was the main thing. They were just gambling and not knowing and they were ready to delay it.

00;07;03;26 - 00;07;26;07
Speaker 3
If we found out when the new season would come out, we still don't know. And by the time they know, there might not be enough time for the release. But yeah, the Election Day, I honestly had hoped that releasing on an Election Day would seem like the dumbest decision in the world because the fall because within one day this would be just an irrelevant book.

00;07;26;07 - 00;07;36;28
Speaker 3
I really wanted our book to be irrelevant on its second day and it's dead. And unfortunately, it is terrifyingly more relevant than it was before.

00;07;37;05 - 00;07;45;16
Speaker 1
What is your mental space like with this book coming out with the timing and how the world is reacting to what's going on right now?

00;07;45;21 - 00;08;24;25
Speaker 2
I have to say I personally have been very troubled for the last couple of weeks, very anxious, very depressed because of how I see things changing where I live. I'm very worried about the future and the way that I can sort of assuage my own anxiety and depression. And concern about the future is by telling myself hiding in my bed is not helping.

00;08;25;05 - 00;08;52;15
Speaker 2
So what can we do? And books like this are something that we can do helping people understand the psychology, the dynamics of a fictional dystopia, trying to make parallels between how this affects people's real lives. It's at least something that we can do to try to have some kind of effect on the world.

00;08;52;27 - 00;09;22;10
Speaker 3
Yeah, it is. There's this phrase I've been using for a long time about this filter of fiction that we can look. It's very real human nature and very real concerns through the fictional examples because it's easier to talk about them than of some equivalent things in real life. You can talk about a zombie outbreaks far more easily than Ebola.

00;09;22;17 - 00;09;45;24
Speaker 3
You can't have fun with Ebola. You know The Handmaid's Tale. You're getting into some some tough subject matter there. I've always found The Handmaid's Tale fascinating. That's the first book. The second book. The second book is a different kind of story. The sequel is a different kind of story. It's more adventurous. It's looking at different kinds of people.

00;09;45;24 - 00;10;10;07
Speaker 3
It's not look, I mean, the handmade victims, they're practically mythological from the perspective of the characters in the Testaments and who is going to do a series of the Testaments, which I look forward to that that's buy. So but there are some things as I, I don't want to analyze it, even if, even if it is something that I could still talk about.

00;10;10;17 - 00;10;32;01
Speaker 3
I mean, we had done a number of YouTube videos, several that we were talking about, The Handmaid's Tale back before or after during the previous season of the show, or maybe it was two seasons ago during lockdown. It must been you know, it was hours earlier we were doing this. We did several four wizard world. So we talked about them, analyze them.

00;10;32;05 - 00;10;55;26
Speaker 3
But a book is a different issue because a book is one where you're dedicating a big portion of your life to living in this topic. And I would often tell people it's like, yeah, I had fun writing this for two weeks, but been working on it all year. I love the writing process. I love every aspect of it.

00;10;56;04 - 00;11;33;03
Speaker 3
And there's some things like we had I'm not use names, but we had one or two of our writers who had chapters that were going to do that. They could not bring themselves to write in the end. I had one of those myself I really wanted to do a chapter on psychology of slavery, and Vanessa Hince helped me brainstorm about this and again, as that goes, I had it figured out and I could just if I'd had another month, I think, I think I would have written the chapter, but I had already had all these other months that I hadn't written it.

00;11;34;24 - 00;12;11;12
Speaker 3
I mean, you look at the the table of contents in there. I write some of the more upbeat stuff in the book works, but it is important. There is hope all throughout The Handmaid's Tale. There is hope even when the character, the unnamed protagonist of the novel, when she's in that darkest moment you know, when she says it's like, you know, my I'm not my real name, I am afraid when she's in that moment is when she's at her most hopeless that doesn't last.

00;12;12;01 - 00;12;33;05
Speaker 3
It's this is it's not that many pages later when she refers to her real name because she knows often it is not her real name. It's what Atwood did says she did not intend for it to be June, but process of elimination still suggested it was June. It's there is hope. There's one of the things I've been doing since the election.

00;12;33;16 - 00;12;58;24
Speaker 3
Some of my social media has been more don't say things that are dismissive of people feelings and fears. Don't say it'll be all right. It might not be. Yeah, it might eventually be all right. Some things will be all right, but just say, Oh, it'll be all right. That's that's what we call toxic positivity. That's dismissive of people's feelings, just dismissive of the things that is not taking it seriously.

00;12;58;24 - 00;13;21;01
Speaker 3
Enough by trying to be upbeat and you can be upbeat when talking about the worst things, but it's a matter of how you do it and what you're talking about. You know, one of the chapters I go through is like, what are people strengths? What are psychological strengths that we see in these characters that we see in real people that are necessary for for making things better and for us to have hope?

00;13;21;13 - 00;13;36;03
Speaker 3
Or I think I commented the other day, which I've said before, that within The Walking Dead book, which was the first of the anthology piece, I mean, I was the sole author on the Batman book, but the first of these anthologies were pulling different people together. The first one was The Walking Dead Psychology, Psych of the Living Dead.

00;13;36;12 - 00;14;04;16
Speaker 3
And there was this comment I had in there about how, you know, when things are hopeless, you at least make hope for hope itself. You hope you can find a reason to hope and you know, when you've even lost that hope, that's like that's a different level. So there are different there are levels of hopelessness and there are a lot of focus I have been making comments about how they they want to hope that's OK.

00;14;04;16 - 00;14;22;10
Speaker 3
Well, that's the thing I'm talking about. And there are the strengths that can help us through those. And I think it's important. Well, I think it's important to finish the book on some of the things that give us a future. So like the next to last chapter, I'm talking about the strength, the last chapter, I'm talking about the future.

00;14;22;19 - 00;14;44;01
Speaker 3
It's more about the sequel. It's more about the daughters of the final word. Had to be wins. She's she wrote the afterword and and you wrote the the first of our two intros, you know, win. And I each wrote an introduction so I made sure, by gosh, a dude was not going to get the first and last word in the book, The Handmaid's Tale Psychology.

00;14;44;11 - 00;14;54;21
Speaker 1
What are some of the topics that are included in this book that really resonated with you as coeditor coeditors and authors and researchers?

00;14;54;27 - 00;15;28;25
Speaker 2
Yeah, I'll start. So Travis mentioned a couple of the chapters that he wrote himself. I'll mention the two that I wrote myself. And then I'll also mention a couple that other people wrote that I really enjoyed reading so I coauthored one chapter with a colleague of mine here at the university that's on basically the importance of freedom of speech and what it feels like to be silenced and have that freedom taken away, but not just the effect of you as an individual when your speech has been taken away, but how that affects this whole society?

00;15;29;04 - 00;16;07;24
Speaker 2
How when you take away a particular group's ability to speak or basically the civil rights of that, that it has negative effects that kind of permeate out. I also wrote a chapter on my one of my research areas is domestic violence. And so the psychological abuse that happens in a domestic violence situation, in a individual relationship, how if you took that microcosm and extended it to the macrocosm of a dystopian society, how The Handmaid's Tale reflects that kind of psychological abuse that we see in that world.

00;16;07;24 - 00;16;37;24
Speaker 2
So things like isolating people, economic abuse, gaslighting, things like that. Some of the chapters that other people wrote that I found really interesting were we have a chapter on the leadership in in the government and the propaganda and the authoritarianism that we see and how that kind of leads to fascism. So I found that a particularly engaging chapter and one that I think is relevant to many governments around the world right now.

00;16;38;16 - 00;17;01;18
Speaker 2
I also really found the chapter on evolutionary psychology particularly interesting and how people sort of use evolutionary instincts sometimes as justification for bad behavior. So they say like, well, I can't help it. I I just have this instincts to be bad, or, you know, I have an instinct to, you know, spread my genetic seed or something like that.

00;17;01;18 - 00;17;12;01
Speaker 2
And so you can, you can be, you can have crimes basically, and then justify your crimes by saying, well, it's just human instinct. That's another fascinating argument.

00;17;12;10 - 00;17;41;00
Speaker 3
The chapters on morality struck a nerve with me growing up in the southern United States in maybe next, not the buckle of the Bible Belt, but somewhere nearby. Some of those issues where people tie moral issues into religious issues because those are separate issue. Morality is not the same as religion, even though for some people they'll be tied up.

00;17;41;10 - 00;18;16;07
Speaker 3
And I know people who don't unders you don't understand somebody having morality without religion. The chapter is talking about those those issues. They Daniel Hans chapter and some of those others. I mean, we've got a couple of chapters with racial issues being brought up and the erasure yeah. Honestly, because of because of who we're making sure to have a much more diverse cast, which of course they did erases the racial issues, even though, say, you guys like The Handmaid's Tale wasn't about racial issues.

00;18;17;02 - 00;18;39;11
Speaker 3
Yeah. And that was part of the problem. And they even because it was a white supremacist nation, you know, they sent all the they they sent every African-American off to someplace in Colorado where you weren't sure if they had all been exterminated or not. And then there's there's there's there's like there's a shot of it in the movie.

00;18;39;22 - 00;19;16;05
Speaker 3
Um, but so yeah, you have you have the racially diverse cast, and that is important. But you end up losing the fact that white supremacy ism by supremacism. White supremacy. Well, they're both words, you know, includes very much racism. You know, it's you end up being when you're so focused on the sexism because that is absolutely essential for the him aids tell you you can still touch on the fact that that extreme sexism often goes hand in hand with racism.

00;19;16;19 - 00;19;47;07
Speaker 3
And it is kind of ironic that having a racially diverse cast meant you dropped a racial issue um, that I absolutely understand why Hulu had to do that and they're great actors throughout the show. But the, the racial even in the sequel, The Testaments, there's a reference to a committee looking at the genocidal crimes that were going on.

00;19;47;13 - 00;20;10;25
Speaker 3
It's still just a passing reference, but then that gets some acknowledgment. Yeah, there was extermination going on racially based, but these are characters who were living in in their very limited involvement in The Handmaid's Tale. In the first novel, Her World is tiny you know, there's a big world, so much us going on. But she is so isolated, so lonely, so much of the time.

00;20;11;00 - 00;20;39;27
Speaker 3
And that's it's very personal. It's inside her head, you know, throughout what's going on. As part of the tone for the story, um, and her for her story is the Handmaid's Tale apostrophe s not as apostrophe as about that one handmade, her individual tale, her individual experience and that is very much part of what authoritarian dominators want to do.

00;20;39;27 - 00;21;08;03
Speaker 3
They want to keep everybody isolated. They want to keep people uneducated, they want to I just how far do I go when we start talking about some of the things going on in our world now, when they are interfering with the educational process, our finding ways to make education worse, you know, we're the United States should have the best education system in the world and does not.

00;21;08;20 - 00;21;37;03
Speaker 3
And then there are these inmates who they're not allowed to read. And in the sequel, you get one of the daughters, the one who's grown up in America. She's illiterate, she learns to read. But she reaches her, her teens illiterate. And these are terrifying things. You know, you should have you should want your population to be healthy, fed, educated.

00;21;38;12 - 00;21;47;04
Speaker 3
And there are people and they're actively working against that. And expect to see more blatant efforts against that in the next couple of years.

00;21;47;15 - 00;22;16;06
Speaker 2
I'll mention that. Well, I think that the Hulu show does kind of erase the racism that I Atwood does mention in some in the book. I do think the show does a good job of adding some heterosexism issues and then talking about like the gender traders and the intersectionality of characters like Moira, who has and Emily Wright being lesbian characters.

00;22;16;06 - 00;22;26;11
Speaker 2
And and so it does add that dimension, which I think Atwood didn't really focus on very much in the book. So I did like that addition in the Hulu show.

00;22;26;26 - 00;22;57;16
Speaker 3
Yeah. Moira and Emily, now that she's called Emily in the novel and we were Emily we're each gay, you know, but and that's why, you know, Emily got shipped off and before she's given a name and so they were there. But since that wasn't The Handmaid's, that was the, the Alfred's personal experience. Um, you still only saw some of what was being done to others, to other people, and that feeling where it's like, Yeah, you're not going to focus on it.

00;22;57;16 - 00;23;15;19
Speaker 3
But Hulu does get to explore these characters. We get to see scenes from Moya's point of view. We get to see a lot of scenes from this point of view. I miss Emily, and I've never heard for certain why. I can't imagine Alexis Bledsoe may have reached the point where she just couldn't keep doing that.

00;23;15;24 - 00;23;16;06
Speaker 2
Yeah.

00;23;17;07 - 00;23;37;24
Speaker 3
That's how it was very much about her choice and the showrunner said, We still have more story we want to tell with Emily. She's welcome to come back. Um, and so it was in those regards. She parted on good terms, but it was her herself. That she chose not to continue, and that had to have been hard on a person.

00;23;37;24 - 00;24;02;00
Speaker 3
Like just writing this book is hard you know, working on. There are some of these things, like when I was doing the Joker book, I spent so much time looking at some of the world's worst criminals. I had to take a six month break from working on the books. Um, and I enjoyed most of the process on that, but on that particular book, but still it was the very, very difficult subject matter.

00;24;02;08 - 00;24;29;13
Speaker 3
We're getting into a lot of difficult topics in this one. You're getting into rape. We're getting into abuse. So one of the things I talk about at the beginning of the book, you're not going to see you're not going to see spoiler warnings or trigger warnings yeah. But I'm also telling everybody as you're writing it, you need to make sure you're still conveying the same sense of what people are going to read.

00;24;29;29 - 00;24;42;22
Speaker 3
Your title needs to make it clear. Your opening paragraph needs to make it clear what is about to be there, even if we're not doing the so-called trigger warning. You know, I mean, one argument could be the whole book itself as a trigger warning.

00;24;43;00 - 00;24;53;20
Speaker 1
While you were doing the research for this book and like reading Handmaid's Tale over again, watching the show is there any details that really stood out to you that you didn't notice initially?

00;24;55;03 - 00;25;19;28
Speaker 3
I mean, there are going to be lots of little things that you're catching here in there. There would be there'd be some connections. It's like one line from a later season. It's, oh, that's echoing this thing that was said back then. You know, I've seen it five times then. It is now just now caught that or is rewatching it, rewatching it and rereading the book Close Together.

00;25;20;06 - 00;25;27;26
Speaker 3
I was also noticing how many lines from the book are used in the show, though some of those kinds of things.

00;25;29;23 - 00;25;52;18
Speaker 2
I did notice one thing, just because it was sort of an art imitates life and life imitates art connection so we knew we were going to be doing the book, and I had started to think about my chapters and reread the books and watched the show when I was doing a Spanish language immersion with some of my students from the university in Spain.

00;25;53;09 - 00;26;18;11
Speaker 2
And we were touring some old cathedrals and the tour guide told us that sometimes people come to the statue of the Virgin Mary and leave gifts and it made me think of In the Testaments, when people leave gifts to the statue of Lydia and they leave oranges and eggs and things like that, and the eggs are for fertility.

00;26;18;29 - 00;26;38;15
Speaker 3
Travis you know, it's just it's just hit me. It's like, where the hell did that hit me? When I was going through the Testament I read that. I read that book twice and listen to the audio book over and over and never really thought about that being parallel to leaving these things. At those statues like you're talking about.

00;26;38;19 - 00;26;45;04
Speaker 3
Like they're treating her, Lydia, like a living religious figure.

00;26;45;11 - 00;27;11;17
Speaker 2
Right. So so he's explaining that people leave these gifts to the statue of the Virgin Mary, and he says brides have a tradition of leaving eggs. And I, I, no one knows why. There's no explanation for this in the history of Catholicism. And I said, Excuse me, sir, I believe it's because they're young brides and it's a symbol of fertility like an Easter.

00;27;12;14 - 00;27;37;09
Speaker 2
And I know that's a, you know, appropriation of a pagan holiday, but that's why they're associated with Easter, because of rebirth and fertility. And that's why they're leaving eggs if they're brides. And it was like I exploited his brain and he said, I have to change my entire, you know, part of this tour now. And and so it just made me sort of chuckle that that would figure this out a while ago.

00;27;37;22 - 00;27;45;18
Speaker 3
But I was brilliant. She is she's she's an amazing writer, very thoughtful. I love watching interviews.

00;27;45;18 - 00;27;48;18
Speaker 1
With her as she reached out. Are you heard anything?

00;27;48;24 - 00;28;10;10
Speaker 3
No, she she does not is open to people doing things that she she does not yeah. She that's one very specific because so many people have done things analyzing her works. This is she says like they don't ask her and she doesn't reach out. She'll find out.

00;28;10;17 - 00;28;15;12
Speaker 1
What do you hope people learn or take away from this book into their own lives?

00;28;15;20 - 00;28;55;24
Speaker 2
I hope so many things. And it's it's good that I still have hope, as Travis was saying earlier. I hope that it reminds people that we need to be respectful of all people, that people's body autonomy is important, that we can't make choices on behalf of another person, that religion and politics should remain separate that we need to maintain freedom of speech, that we need to maintain civil rights.

00;28;55;24 - 00;29;17;28
Speaker 2
I mean, these are these big picture political hopes so I guess my hope is that when people read our book and watch Atwood's book and watch the show, that it's a reminder of the principles that I think the United States is founded on in terms of the Constitution and why those principles matter.

00;29;18;03 - 00;29;58;16
Speaker 3
Earlier, part of the book in particular, I think, you know, cautions people about, well, you know, two of the chapters are right about can it happen here. One of them that's part of the title, you know, asking, you know, what can happen in our world. And I mean, the entire first section of the book, really, you know, all four of those chapters are getting into that issue of things to be alert for things, reasons to be scared and reasons to reasons to be scared and reasons to hope together, you know, not just scared, you know, because that'll just lead into being depressed.

00;29;58;24 - 00;30;19;21
Speaker 3
You know, somebody who just lives in fear is is going to go, what's the point? And there are a lot of folks out there. There's some Russian bots and means and others, you know, trying to tell you it's pointless. Don't bother voting. There's like, oh, why put your effort into we need a fighting over two guys who don't know anything about you anyway.

00;30;19;28 - 00;30;42;20
Speaker 3
That that just lends itself to whoever is the bigger monster in the group. You know, it's just there there are those out there. There are those out there pushing one candidate, those out there pushing the other. And then there are those trying real hard to suppress the others from voting that apathy and that apathy. Apathy is a defense against the fear.

00;30;44;01 - 00;31;10;09
Speaker 3
There are reasons for for for for some of that apathy because it is very stressful. Hope can lead you to also being very nervous about the future. But as a people who dwell more on the past have higher depression rate, people who dwell more on the future have higher anxiety rate on average. On average, we don't want overgeneralize that.

00;31;11;02 - 00;31;23;21
Speaker 3
And so there also needs to be about where are you in this moment? And you stop and think and, you know, be mindful of where you are. But yeah, I mean, it goes back to that combination reasons to fear and reasons to hope.

00;31;24;00 - 00;31;27;20
Speaker 1
What was your guys's process like for editing this book together?

00;31;28;00 - 00;31;42;11
Speaker 3
That is always an issue. I had actually I had one in winter do more of it, but some of it had to do with our timing because of when the production schedule fell relative to her sabbatical, it affected who was going to do more of the editing, at which stage.

00;31;42;16 - 00;32;13;26
Speaker 2
Yeah. So this is our second book that we've co-edited together, actually, the first was the Westworld. We always, I think, negotiate who's going to take the first task that the authors send to us and versus the second and potentially third, depending on sort of where the first draft is. And then there are other negotiations. So things like making sure that's following the formatting or, you know, language punctuation types of things versus more content types of things.

00;32;14;03 - 00;32;19;15
Speaker 2
I think this time around you took the first pass and I took the second pass.

00;32;19;15 - 00;32;24;02
Speaker 3
Maybe, you know, the original plan had been the other way around, but that didn't work with your sabbatical schedule.

00;32;24;12 - 00;32;26;11
Speaker 2
Right? Because it was a sustained, I think.

00;32;26;22 - 00;32;49;02
Speaker 3
Yeah. And even with I mean, we each received all the first pass stuff and all the second pass stuff and even the one who that was that their primary pass would weigh in on some things. Right? As I'm doing the first pass stuff, there would be some in particular, I would ask, when would you please check this because you know, I'm I remember I was wasn't the first pass.

00;32;49;02 - 00;33;03;25
Speaker 3
It was later when it suddenly hit me. It's like I don't think this thing was ever said anywhere in there is I and she and I were both going through and checking there was somebody interpretation of something. It was a racial issue. There's like I don't think from there.

00;33;04;05 - 00;33;21;21
Speaker 2
It was specifically about a comment in terms of like how did Jezebel's look or who was working in Jezebel's. And so then we had to look up every single reference to Jezebels in the book and read that very, very carefully to it was basically fact checking one of the authors.

00;33;21;28 - 00;33;29;05
Speaker 3
And we were further along before that one hit me. Right. You know, as you go through the first and second pass before we realized, hey, we need to check this.

00;33;29;14 - 00;33;32;25
Speaker 2
Right? And it turned out that I think the author was wrong.

00;33;32;25 - 00;33;51;11
Speaker 3
And so the author was wrong. We had to change the wording. There was also that there was a greater racial mix among the women. It Jezebels in the novel. It's like, OK, that's in the show, right? But just like that's not in the novel. There are people, people, some of the clients, it's hard to say customers when they're not paying.

00;33;51;11 - 00;34;02;19
Speaker 3
But anyway, some of the customers say, oh, it was the customers racial mix. That was it. It wasn't it wasn't the women, it was the customers. And I was like, I don't think that's there.

00;34;02;26 - 00;34;09;13
Speaker 2
And I think the costumes were described as exotic costumes, but not the people wearing the costumes.

00;34;09;29 - 00;34;29;07
Speaker 3
Yeah. Yeah. So we have this factual thing in terms of the basic style. This is one. It's like we got to go with what's consistent with how we've done in the previous books and have developed our own style guide that we used from book to book. And then we'll tweak it too, because there could be one thing that this is how we've always done it and decided, no, it needs to be done differently in this book.

00;34;29;26 - 00;34;41;23
Speaker 3
And so, so I've got our own quirky style guide, which OK, follow APA, except for this four page list of things where I say we're not following EPA rule. Actually, a big part of that list is spelling.

00;34;42;22 - 00;34;53;00
Speaker 1
And you guys have a ton of references and notes at the end for people who do want to dig more. What's it like compiling that massive list? And making sure all those studies are correct?

00;34;53;05 - 00;34;55;19
Speaker 3
Time consuming, but I weirdly like it.

00;34;55;20 - 00;35;13;05
Speaker 2
Yeah, I actually agree. I have some weird like thing in my brain where I like to do APA style and like make sure that all the commas are not in italics and like, this is weird. Like I feel a sense of closure when I get it done. So it's, it's sort of like, Oh no, I have to do it.

00;35;13;05 - 00;35;14;21
Speaker 2
But I kind of secretly like it.

00;35;15;02 - 00;35;36;08
Speaker 3
In the, in writing. I like every step of the process. I know writers who they hate the research or I know who writers they like everything except the actual writing it down like I like I like the planning, the thinking. I love writing a book proposal. I love thinking about what we're going to do and the writing and the editing.

00;35;36;08 - 00;35;39;13
Speaker 3
And I like everything except for dealing with lawyers.

00;35;39;16 - 00;35;47;09
Speaker 1
What was it like getting Yvonne, who played strangely on Hulu show, to be part of this book in a very small fashion?

00;35;47;15 - 00;35;55;22
Speaker 3
Oh, that's just a Jenna. And Bush interviewed her on a red carpet and we were able to use it.

00;35;55;28 - 00;35;58;28
Speaker 1
Travis, what is the next book that you're working on?

00;36;00;06 - 00;36;00;20
Speaker 3
Secret.

00;36;01;00 - 00;36;03;02
Speaker 1
I don't like when you keep secrets from me.

00;36;04;01 - 00;36;29;28
Speaker 3
The next thing I'm doing is going to be a single author book because I need to do one just myself. I I've got a stack of books I want to write myself but is we've got this we've got this group of people. We always have new people. Almost every time we have somebody new joining in the mix. I can't remember for sure if we had somebody completely new on Stranger Things, because I wasn't I wasn't going to recruit people at Stranger Things because we all agreed up front.

00;36;30;04 - 00;36;44;26
Speaker 3
We're not making a set of this. We're donating the money. And it turned out this time, too. But that was after the fact. One of the writers wanted to donate it, and then everybody wanted to donate it. To rain, rape, abuse, incest.

00;36;45;08 - 00;36;48;06
Speaker 2
I wrote it down. It's the Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network.

00;36;48;17 - 00;36;58;26
Speaker 3
That just evolved after the fact. But we always have some different people. We have this this group of people who are eager to do things and and people always throwing ideas at us. Always.

00;36;59;03 - 00;37;03;22
Speaker 1
Well, thanks so much for hanging out talking with literary hype about The Handmaid's Tale psychology.

00;37;03;22 - 00;37;26;15
Speaker 2
Seeing off Red, I'll just say thank you for having both of us. And I just really hope for hope, like Travis said, and I know that this is a difficult book. A lot of my friends have said, Oh, I can't watch the show. Or I can't read the books because the subject matter is so hard. And I completely understand that.

00;37;26;15 - 00;37;47;29
Speaker 2
And people need to protect their mental health. But I would say you also can't ignore these issues, right? You can't bury your head in the sand. And especially with the way I see some of our world going these are relevant issues. These are things that people have to care about. And and if we don't pay attention, it'll be too late.

00;37;48;26 - 00;38;16;13
Speaker 3
I was doing a whole lot of screen characters over here, so I could use one to talk it up. And it's like if you were smiling in too many of these but it's, it's it's what you have to do. You have to be able to find that when you're reading a book where not one character in this entire book ever laughs, not one character in the entire book ever makes a joke that just says something about the writer, it doesn't necessarily mean the writer is humorless.

00;38;16;18 - 00;38;48;23
Speaker 3
It could mean they don't know how to write it, because in any situation, somebody is going to have a sense of humor. It gets harder after a while. It may even just be a sarcastic sense of humor. But any time some you know, some of the most laughter I ever hear is after a funeral, you know, when people are, you know, sharing stories of the person who's who's gone or we're talking about other things, it's yeah.

00;38;48;24 - 00;39;02;04
Speaker 3
Humor is a survival mechanism. Smiling is a survival mechanism. Pushing yourself to smile releases that endorphins that tricks the brain into thinking you were smiling for a visit. It's always good talking to you.

00;39;02;04 - 00;39;23;04
Speaker 1
So thanks to Travis and Wayne for hanging out with me to discuss their books, The Handmaid's Tale psychology and the vast array of topics that that could cover. If you'd like to get your hands on this book, the links to do so are in the show notes for you. And this is one of the few that does have an audio book from Doctor Langley.

00;39;23;07 - 00;39;33;26
Speaker 1
So definitely check that out. If you enjoyed this conversation, don't forget to subscribe to the Literary Hype podcast. Give us some stories and share it with a friend. Thanks so much for listening to the Literary Hype podcast.