The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Machinehood by S.B. Divya Interview

Episode Date: February 25, 2021

Machinehood by S.B. Divya Interview From the Hugo Award nominee S.B. Divya, Zero Dark Thirty meets The Social Network in this science fiction thriller about artificial intelligence, sentience, and labor rights in a near future dominated by the gig economy. Welga Ramirez, executive bodyguard and ex-special forces, is about to retire early when her client is killed in front of her. It’s 2095 and people don’t usually die from violence. Humanity is entirely dependent on pills that not only help them stay alive, but allow them to compete with artificial intelligence in an increasingly competitive gig economy. Daily doses protect against designer diseases, flow enhances focus, zips and buffs enhance physical strength and speed, and juvers speed the healing process. All that changes when Welga’s client is killed by The Machinehood, a new and mysterious terrorist group that has simultaneously attacked several major pill funders. The Machinehood operatives seem to be part human, part machine, something the world has never seen. They issue an ultimatum: stop all pill production in one week. Global panic ensues as pill production slows and many become ill. Thousands destroy their bots in fear of a strong AI takeover. But the US government believes the Machinehood is a cover for an old enemy. One that Welga is uniquely qualified to fight. Welga, determined to take down the Machinehood, is pulled back into intelligence work by the government that betrayed her. But who are the Machinehood and what do they really want? A thrilling and thought-provoking novel that asks: if we won’t see machines as human, will we instead see humans as machines?About S.B. Divya S.B. Divya is a lover of science, math, fiction, and the Oxford comma. She enjoys subverting expectations and breaking stereotypes whenever she can. Divya is the Hugo and Nebula nominated author of RUNTIME and co-editor of Escape Pod, with Mur Lafferty. Her short stories have been published at various magazines including Analog, Uncanny, and tor.com. Her collection, Contingency Plans For the Apocalypse and Other Situations, is out now from Hachette India, and her debut novel MACHINEHOOD is forthcoming from Saga Press in March, 2021. She holds degrees in Computational Neuroscience and Signal Processing, and she worked for twenty years as an electrical engineer before becoming an author. Find out more about her at www.sbdivya.com or on Twitter as @divyastweets.

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms and legs inside the vehicle at all times. Because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain now here's your host chris voss hi folks this is voss here from the chris voss show.com the chris voss show.com hey we're coming here with another great podcast oh my gosh because wow another podcast who knew we'd be doing another one? I mean, there's like hundreds, 700 plus of them. Who knew that we would do just one more?

This is the last one, though. We're going to stop after this. No, I'm just kidding. We have a lot of great guests coming up for the Chris Voss Show. You'll see some announcements on Instagram. You should check that out. If you want to see the video version of this wonderful author we have on today, go to YouTube.com, Fortuness Chris Voss.

You can see the video there probably the next 48 hours. You can go to Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, follow the Chris Voss Show and all those different platforms. There's a ton of different groups on there. You can check them out as well. Today, we have a most brilliant author. She's written a lot of different material and she's highly intelligent from a science background. Highly intelligent? Is that even? Clearly, I went to public school. But her name is S.B. Divya. She's written this wonderful book that we've been sent from Simon & Schuster. You can see we've got the special advanced print copy, Machine Hood.

She's a Hugo and Nebula Award finalist. She holds degrees in computational neuroscience and signal processing. She worked for 20 years as an electrical engineer before becoming an author. See, I told you she was smart. She is the Hugo and Nebula nominated author of Runtime and co-editor of the podcast Escape Pod with Murr Lafferty. Her short stories have been published at various magazines, including Analog, Uncanny, and Tor.com. Her collection, Contingency Plans for the Apocalypse and Other Situations, is out now from Hatchet India, and her debut novel, Machinehood. This one we'll be talking about today is coming out March 3rd, 2021 from Sager Press. You can go ahead and order that up,

et cetera, et cetera. Welcome to the show, Divya. How are you? Thank you so much. I'm good. It's a bright, sunny morning here in Southern California. There you go. There you go. Congratulations on your new book. Congratulations on the upcoming launch. Tell people where they can find you and order it up on the interwebs. The best place to find me generally is on Twitter. My handle there is at Divya's tweets. And you can find out all about Machinehood and my other fiction at my website, sbdivia.com. There you go. So this is your very first novel. You've written a lot of different stuff. Tell us what motivated you on to write the book. This book is really an exploration of things that have interested me for a long time,

and that is specifically artificial intelligence and cybernetics and the intersections of those two things. That's a large part of the computational neuroscience degree, but also much of the electrical engineering that I have studied plays into sort of this interface between human beings, machines, the machines we have inside our bodies, as well as the ones we rely on outside of ourselves. And the advancements that are happening in machine learning and the steps we're taking forward in artificial intelligence. And this book really explores the intersection and almost collision, competition, and cooperation that happens between people and the intelligent machines that surround us. Oh, so is this set in the future or is this set in now times? This is set in 2095. So it's

what I consider relatively near future. And it is not a dystopia, though some people might see it that way, depending on how they feel about the events of the story. It's really intended to be a realistic depiction of what I think 2095 might feel like if you live then. So can we hold you to this? If I get to 2095 and I pull out the book and I go, Divya, I didn't see the Planet of the Apes or whatever. No, I'm just kidding. Yeah. You know, I can hold you to that. I think A, I would love to live till 2095. That would be i'm gonna be well over 100 by then uh b yeah i think one of

the funnest parts of writing near future science fiction is getting to try to predict and play with what the future is going to look like and see what you get right and what you will inevitably get wrong there you go so the title of the book i thought was interesting machine hood because i've heard of motherhood fatherhood what's what's what's involved with the title and the book I thought was interesting, Machinehood, because I've heard of motherhood, fatherhood. What's involved with the title and what does it mean? It's a little portmanteau, a word I made up that combines machine intelligence and personhood, which is what this book is really examining. At what point does AI become a person and at what point do we start treating robots and artificial intelligences as people? So I kind of smashed together machine and personhood to make machinehood.

So are we going to be dealing with robots in the book or just AI machines like a HAL from 2001 or whatever? Definitely robots too. The book is largely involved in looking at the labor conflicts between humans and AIs and therefore the physical nature of robots taking over certain forms of labor is an important aspect. There you go. That's, I'm all for kind of robots. I have one of those robot vacuums. So is your book going to be about how it's going to take over and it's going to go like full Terminator on me?

It's interesting that you should say that because one of the reasons I wrote this book was I got really tired of the Terminator narrative, which has carried forward in a lot of pop culture movies. And I'm like, I don't think that's the way robots are going to go because, frankly, we're designing them. And while software always has bugs and issues, I'm pretty sure we're going to put in fail-safes because everyone's scared of the robots taking over. I suspect more likely that the robots are going to be the ones suffering at our hands in the long run. But even then, I don't think they're going to rebel because we're not going to put that in their code, right? They're not going to be that in their code right there they're not going to be able to i hope so i saw the one movie was the one movie gene simmons and the pi guy pi magnum dude sellers and like the bad guy gene simmons he like writes some special code to make killer robots turn into stuff but no that's it's really interesting you're taking a different slant

so in the book the ai robots are fairly the good guys, maybe, or like... Neutral. They're really tools. I didn't go so far as making Terminator style robots that really think for themselves the way we think we think for ourselves or animals think for themselves. And so these robots are really just very, very highly capable, highly skilled machines. And there's also software AIs, people have personal agents, I really want one of the agents from my book today, or at least tomorrow, who will help you keep track of your meetings, answer your emails, remind you that you need to buy a birthday present for your niece, because that's next week, all the stuff that we try to keep track of in our brains, but we would all really like a personal assistant to help us navigate our lives. And those are AIs of pure software that are kind of an extension of Alexa or Siri or Google right now, right? But again,

we might think of them almost acting like people, but in reality, most AI software is not that self-aware, right? It's just a really, really complicated piece of software. And we might find it hard sometimes to understand exactly what it's doing but it's not going to jump up and be like hey i want to vote in the next general election because we never put that in the code and it's not general purpose enough like a human brain to be able to come up with that idea on its own and the founders clearly they're robots out of the constitution for that very reason so there's that yeah i think it was an oversight. Yeah, every time I watch those Boston Dynamic videos with the dog doing flips and stuff, I always have the theme song from Terminator going through my head.

I always hear that whenever I see that. So that's good. So is largely the plot between some of the human characters in the book and some of their interactions, is there a relationship? Give us an idea of some of the core players that are in your book and what they're up to. Yeah, so the main character is Welga Ramirez. Her actual name is Olga, but everyone calls her Welga for reasons. She is an ex-Special Forces military soldier who's gone into sort of private security and she protects these wealthy funders of business so in my version of 2095 the corporation has

mostly gone the way of the dodo bird and everything is gig and contract based including research development manufacturing so she's protecting one of these people that holds the purse strings for a lot of these contracts. And she gets drawn into a deadly fight with, as it turns out, this shadowy organization that's calling themselves the Machinehood. And they have threatened the world that if they don't stop their reliance on bots and on these smart drugs that everyone takes to keep up with the machines, that they're going to cause further violence and chaos. And so Welga decides to help protect her family and also her country and society that she needs to kind of get involved in, in stopping the machine hood. And then on the other side of the globe, there is Welga's sister-in-law,

Nithya, who's in Chennai, South India. And she is a family person. She's a mom, she's a wife, she also works as a biogenetic researcher. And she's really just trying to keep her household together. And she's the way that I kind of examine the lens of daily life in 2095. What does it feel like not to necessarily be the super action hero, which is Welga, but to be the person who's having to deal with all this stuff at home, the way many of us are having to deal with, for example, this pandemic crisis at home. I feel like a lot of thrillers and even science fiction don't bother themselves with ordinary life. But to me, I think that's an important part of feeling like you live in this future reality. So the two main characters are

female, right? Yes, that is correct. And why did you choose females to be in your thing? That's always, I always ask that topic, whether it's male or female. What motivated you to pick that choice and move forward? I picked two females, especially in roles that are not traditionally given to female characters, in part because those are the paths I've been paving myself in my own life between being a science fiction reader since I was 10 years old and then going into science and then technology and engineering. I am often one of the only women around in many of these fields. And so I like seeing women and non-binary people and people of other genders being put into roles where you don't traditionally see them.

And so I chose for this action heavy science fiction to make my action hero a woman and especially special forces because that's still someplace. That's one of the areas where women are still trying to really break in and establish that they can be players there. That's pretty awesome. Of course, who's the female role in Terminator? I know your book is about Terminator, but you know. Oh, Sarah Connor. Sarah Connor. She's a badass, man. She didn't take anything from anybody. That's awesome. So have you taken a lot of your, I would imagine you've taken a lot of your training or a lot of your degrees and stuff in science and machines and stuff and, and utilize them in this book. And how has that worked out for you in, in, in exercising that? If so, it was a lot of fun, honestly, to research the science and technology in this book and to kind of come up with this vision of the future.

I definitely drew on my background, which happens to have physics. I started out as an astrophysics major, and then I switched to computational neuroscience. So a lot of biology and electrical engineering and put all of that together to kind of look at what's happening in cutting edge research in the labs at universities. I follow like the Science X newsletter and there's a lot of great stuff on phys.org where you can go and read up on these things. And then if you want to go deeper, these days you can find journal paper abstracts. And so I think my science and engineering background helped me be comfortable navigating some of those spaces and really thinking about, well, if I was going to

turn this into a commercial product, right? So take it out of the lab where it is now and make it something that is part of people's everyday lives. What could that look like? And so, yeah, I had a lot of of fun both with developing some of these fun technologies like the smart drugs people take which are these pills that are not chemicals like the drugs that we take today but are actually filled with tiny micro machines and nano machines that spread around your body and do various things to help you move faster, to focus better. It just kind of gave me the shivers there for a second because I was imagining a bunch of stuff running around. It is, but you know, there's a bunch of stuff running around your body already,

right? There's red blood cells and T cells and all of these things that you think of as being a natural part of your body. They are really just tiny biochemical machines in a, in a lot of ways. Right. So there's a Taco Bell burrito machine. I think that's running around right now. It's having its way with me. I don't know. Yeah. I'm going to say that one, that one's probably dealing with your gut. It's not helping. I'm just kidding. Um, so did you, in using a lot of these technologies and stuff that you've, you're, you're, you're aware of and you're in, in science and stuff like that, I would imagine it really helped you with the, the four looking aspects of your book for predicting the future. I think so. I hope so.

Definitely my, my background in AI, I think helped me ground the story a lot more. So rather than kind of running with Hollywood's version of AI, I tried to make it a little bit more realistic, what I think we will plausibly achieve in 75 years. Similarly with, yeah, with a lot of this biotechnology, one of the professors I knew back at Caltech was doing chip implants in monkeys and chimpanzees specifically back in the 90s and 2000s. And eventually that's come into human trials where we can put brain implants that take signals from the motor cortex of your brain and bypass any severed nerves if you become paralyzed from an accident. And there's another chip somewhere like in your arm or your hand that then talks directly to your brain so that you can actually move your arms and legs again. And yeah, this is something that's been in development for a while. So again, I was kind of thinking about this and I was like,

nobody likes surgery, right? And all of these things require us to be cut open. So what if instead of having to do surgery for these things, we could just take pills? Everybody knows how to swallow pill. It's not a big deal. Who doesn't like pills? Exactly. We're all popping them right now. So if we could do those kinds of things, if we can achieve those same effects, but with a little pill that, hey, now your kitchen of the future can print right out of your fridge or your cabinet, then yeah, I could see us taking these every day, right? Sure. Can I get some now, please?

Yeah, exactly. And so that's what happens to the society. Everyone's, wow, these pills are great. I can do so much more with my body. So why not? And so it becomes a whole industry. The one question I had here, let me get this off my little notepad here. One thing I was going to ask you about is what's your favorite science fiction? Because you said you were influenced by some of your early readings of science fiction. What was some of your favorite science fiction, maybe books or authors, if you want? Yeah. So from my teenage years, which is probably the most formative reading I've done. And so I'm going to go back ways to older books and say, my two favorite authors from that period were Frank Herbert and CJ Cherry. So that's Dune. There's a new Dune movie coming out this year. And CJ Cherry has written lots of wonderful books, but my favorite

of hers is probably Cytine. I don't think she's gotten any Hollywood treatment. It's too bad because she writes great, very realistic stuff too. And then more recently, I have really enjoyed this book called Nine Fox Gambit by Yoon Ha Lee. And it is a mind trip. It is a very far future story, kind of like Dune, but mostly set in space where math intersects with belief systems to basically drive technology. Yeah. Like I said, it's a mind trip. It's really cool. I pray to the number four every night. So there's that. And that's why your life is so good, right? Something like that. I don't know. I'm thinking about switching to five. I really don't feel that I'm losing my faith in four. So might go to five. I don't know. I'm still, the jury's still out on that one.

I'm still praying. So Alan Dean Foster was mine. I loved Alan Dean Foster books when I was a kid. They were pretty cheesy to write. They were kind of like that Western guy who used to write all the Western books. He seemed to be putting a book out like every month or something for a while.

What was it? Louis Lamar, right? Louis Lamar, yeah. My grandfather used to read those books and he was a security guard at a golf resort where they were building houses on the golf resort. So he'd make sure no one messed with the buildings. But he also collected golf balls, and he'd read his Louis Lamar books. And so he'd have a whole pile of them in the back of his big Chevy, the ones with the giant seats and stuff. And there'd be like 50 of them in the back.

And I'd be like, can you read all these. And I'd be like, you read all these? He's like, yeah, got nothing better to do. But yeah, Alan Dean Foster is that way. He'd just pump out books. So speaking of Hollywood, do you see a Hollywood future in this book? And if you did, would you want to maybe think what sort of characters might play your heroines? That is on my list of to-do things in terms of who's going to play these people. But it's funny, the Hollywood thing with my novella Runtime, that is even nearer future.

It takes place probably roughly, I never put a year on it, but let's say 20 to 30 years. And is about one of these as basically a cyborg adventure race through the Sierra Nevadas. That did get optioned and is continuing to be passed around in Hollywood by different studios to see if someone actually wants to develop it. I definitely think Machine Hood could get a Hollywood treatment. It's got lots of action, lots of excitement, and I think lots of well-grounded characters, right? These sorts of family ties that drive the emotional drama. Whether someone in Hollywood decides to pick it up is going to terminator it and give it the standard AI robot treatment where everyone's going to turn evil and we got to kill all the robots to let humanity survive. I would hope that they keep the themes of the book somewhat intact. But with Hollywood, you just, you never know. We got to put a car crash in here.

Well, they don't have cars in the future. That reminds me of a bit that what's his face who did who did that oh he he always i think it's kevin smith he did a bit where he was working on a batman screenplay or something like that and he got with the producer and the producer's like we're gonna make a giant robot and then i guess they end up using a lot of it in the wild wild West redo. And we're going to make all this explosion stuff. He's like, no, no, that's not like, what are you doing? And he finally walked from the project. So yeah, Hollywood has that sort of way with things, if you will.

Do the heroines in your story, being female, do they go through, are they going through the same sort of issues that women today are going through, trying to balance family, life, work, murdering or attacking murderous evil governments and all that sort of stuff but just yeah yeah just just your ordinary day work and home yes absolutely they are trying to balance all those things i would say the character of nithya is more dealing with that kind of stuff because she has an eight-year-old daughter She has a spouse. She's the primary earner for her family. So she's juggling a lot of stress and stuff. Meanwhile, I would say Welga, I let her be free of a lot of those things. I wanted her to be more of the typical action hero where she's free to move about in her life and go after

the enemy, not have to worry so much about herself and really just kind of throw herself into her missions and her work. And that was a very conscious decision. I decided in 75 years, hopefully we've made some progress past where we are today in terms of equality for women, but also in terms of the choices they have to make in balancing work and life, which I think are choices we all have to make regardless of our gender. Right. Everyone makes that choice. It's just that society might push you in one direction or the other. And yeah, like you said, with Terminator, Sarah Connor is there to protect her kid. Right. That's her. Her driving thing is she's a mother.

I would prefer if we're going to look at female heroines in action science fiction in Hollywood to look at Ripley from the Alien movies, right? Where she's mostly just looking after herself and her fellow crew members. And so Welga is more of a Ripley, let's say, who can just be a badass. And she has a life partner who's kind of her anchor, but he's not a badass action kind of guy, not at heart. And so he's kind of holding down the home front and he's her emotional anchor from that standpoint. notice that your Jack Ryans and your Jason Bournes, all these guys, they've always got like a wife or girlfriend or someone who's kind of their solace, right? Like when they're stressed out about whatever it is they're trying to do in terms of espionage. And so let's flip that particular thing on its head and say that in 75 years, men are allowed to be the ones who just want a quiet home life. They don't have to be the ones who just want a quiet home life.

They don't have to be the ones who are ambitious and out there. I'm like that now. I just want to nap most times, especially near winter. But no, it's really interesting. We've had a lot of authors on. That's why I was asking, well, you know, white people writing the heroines the way they are. I've had a lot of authors that are writing, they flipped, they wrote previous series or stuff in the past where they had a strong man role. And then now they're writing about women. And I think it's brilliant. I think it helps change some of our dynamics.

And like you said, the future advancements of who we are and what we do. Was there some of that in you that you wrote into either character or that you kind of, you know, you kind of live vicariously through or put some of you into those characters? I always put some of me into all of my stories somehow. Different aspects. With Welga, I think it was a wish fulfillment. I am like not good at physical stuff. I'm not particularly strong. I'm not particularly well coordinated or agile. I have had to work at like everything. I like adventure sports. I like being outdoors, but I'm a terrible mountain biker. I just go anyway, and I'm a terrible snowboarder, but I just go anyway.

I just fall down a lot, and it's fine. I'm never going to be a superstar in those respects. I'm not going to be a marathoner or a triathlete, but I wish I could. And so I lived through Welga in that sense. She embodies sort of the attitudes and the physicality that I lack. Nithya, on the other hand, I think he was a little closer to my personal experience. She is a science geek. She is a mom. She's juggling all these things. And that is definitely true of my life. I've got two careers that I've been juggling, the engineering and now the writing, which is really a second career I started just a few years ago. And I have an 11-year-old. I have two cats. I have a spouse. I have a house in the suburbs so it's it's a very different life from from that of an action hero and and that was the other reason i i really decided to have her as a point of view character because that's not the type of character you see represented very often in these kinds of stories and i think

there's a lot to to add in terms of the narrative to have that perspective yeah i like how you have the balance of the two different female characters. One that's kind of free and running around doing the adventure stuff, kind of the, I'm trying to think of that Tomb Raider chick sort of thing. Oh yeah, Lara Croft. Lara Croft, that's, and then you've got someone who's trying to balance

the home life and all that good stuff. A lot of women are going through that today. Only the Evil Empire is the homeowners association guy who's always bugging you about your shrubs and then the pta president or something i don't know i'm just making jokes so did you i noticed that you're you have a collection contingency plans for the apocalypse and other situations is that out now in hatchet india is that being put out in india that came out in india a little over year ago, and we are hopefully going to get

wider distribution for that worldwide in the near future. And that is a collection of all my short stories, including my novella runtime. I shouldn't say all, all of my short stories up to a few years ago, and kind of covers a range of subjects subjects it has some historical fantasy some magical realism some near future science fiction that's very tense like machinehood which is actually the the title story contingency plans for the apocalypse and also some really fun sort of far future post-human stuff where human beings aren't even necessarily recognizable as the bodies and people we are today. Does that interest you to make that into a dual market over in India and target things over there that maybe, I'm not sure, is that maybe the agenda there?

It does. I came to the U.S. when I was five and I'm from a fairly large family. My mom is the youngest of eight. And so all of my aunts and uncles, grandparents, everyone were still in India while I was growing up, all my cousins. And so I have a fairly strong attachment still to the country. I have friends there and tons of family there. And so it was gratifying to me to have a book out there first. And I think just generally going forward, I would like to see all of my books be available worldwide, right? To all audiences everywhere. I have fans all over. I've had stuff translated into Vietnamese, into Brazilian Portuguese, into Chinese. And so I think with the internet and with culture today, it's like things are everywhere, right? So

publishing is kind of still in this mindset of we have these print books and we can only ship them so far without it being costly. So we'll, you know, have different rights carved out for different regions. This way, I think the way forward, hopefully, is that we have a lot more global availability of fiction. And I would love to see that be a two-way street. There's Indian authors whose books I've read recently that have come out in India that I'm hoping will get wider distribution here because I think they're fantastic and would be totally appealing to american audiences i know bollywood is like a huge competitor to hollywood in india maybe maybe some of your books or writings might end up in on this on the screen there and then come here or vice versa it seems to sometimes work that way yeah there's not a lot of science fiction

happening in indian films yet it's interesting. I actually did a talk for a university just last week on this particular subject. And it's like India, I think, has this strong tradition still of mythology. Like we've got these ancient stories, the Mahabharata, the Ramayana, that are still very present in people's lives today. And so the fantasy fiction tends to kind of be like retellings and adaptations of those stories set in ancient times. And there's lots and lots of movies made about that stuff, but much less about the future, right? And the things that we typically think of for science fiction, I think there's been like one or two robot type movies. There's been a few superhero movies, but it hasn't caught on quite as much as it has with Hollywood.

But there are people working to change it. Someone did approach me about one of the short stories that's in my collection from the Bollywood side to see if i might be interested in working with them on it so we'll see if that goes anywhere some of their movies are fun to watch i mean i can't understand what's going on but they like the action and the craziness of something like you're like wow yeah indian movies have everything there's every movie has to have a little bit of everything unless you specifically seek out the art house but but the pop stuff, everything's a musical. There's always romance. There's always fighting. There's always family drama.

These things have to be there. It's kind of a requirement. There you go. So in the book, do you see this maybe as the future of a series or a sequel that you might be thinking about writing? This book really stands on its own, I would say. I could see it being like, I could see it being a world that's expanded into other stories set in the universe of machinehood in that same time frame or a few years after. I don't necessarily see it as like a typical series from that standpoint, but maybe linked stories.

If it does really, really well, I'm sure the publisher will come back to me and ask me to write more for fans if that's what they want. But a lot of the authors who write in this type of subgenre, which I would say are people like Cory Doctorow or William Gibson. They tend not to write a lot of series. They tend to kind of explore different ideas set in different standalone novels. So for the time being, I'm kind of following that path. The next novel that I wrote recently is very different. It's like a thousand years in the future. There's a lot of space travel. Are there deadly robots in Terminator stuff? There are no deadly robots, though there are AIs, but they're very different from the ones

in Machine Head. And there's also post-humans, which is an idea I love, which is humans that have merged with technology, but also that are in charge of their own genetic evolution and have moved far beyond Homo sapiens. That's going to be interesting. So you've already had the can and you're working on getting it out or you're just still wrapping it up? I'm working on getting it out. It's in that stage. Yeah.

So wish me luck. Read her book, Machinehood, and you better read it fast because there might be another one coming. So definitely scoop it off of the shelves. Anything more you want to plug about the book, Machinehood, and you better read it fast because there might be another one coming. So definitely scoop it off of the shelves. Anything more you want to plug about the book, Divya? I would just say that it's a thought-provoking book with lots of big ideas and philosophy. But at the same time, it's a fun, fun plot. One of the things some readers have said to me who've gotten advanced copies is that they've stayed up late. They couldn't put it down.

And that's always the most gratifying thing to hear from me, especially writing a thriller. That's what I want. So if you enjoy that sort of thing, definitely check it out. It's definitely a thick book. So you're going to have a lot to grab and run with there and all that good stuff. Yeah. I mean, how many pages are in here? Let's take a look here real quick. It 400 something yeah 401 i think if you don't count

the acknowledgments so definitely a thick book so you're going to get a great read out of it i like i like how you've merged the science background of what you have and you put that into a book so definitely a lot of science technology friends that have are going to be like oh that sounds fun and stuff so thank you very much divya for coming and spending some time with us and sharing us about your wonderful book that's coming out soon thank you for having me it was pleasure thank you very much check out machine hood by sb divya and you can check out some of our other works as well it's going to be coming out let me see if i got the date right here. 3-2-21. March 2nd, which is, geez, almost upon us. It feels like it was just January. What the heck's

going on? So Divya, give us your dot coms where people can get to know you better and follow you in order of the book. Yeah, you can find me on my website,bdivia.com and on twitter as at divya's tweets i do have an instagram but i'm not very active on there and that i believe is at sbdivia author there you go there you go well it's wonderful to have you it's wonderful to have my audience thanks for tuning in guys to see the video version of this which is extraordinary because well divvy's here i don't know if you really want to see me but you can watch the video and it this, which is extraordinary because, well, Divi's here. I don't know if you want to see me, but you can watch the video and it's really cool

at youtube.com where it says Chris Voss. You can also go to LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram where the kids like to be. And you can see some of the different things

we'll be doing. We'll be broadcasting the show live there and, well, a live recorded version and other things as well. So you can follow the show and the groups that are on Facebook and stuff. Thanks for tuning in. Wear your mask. Stay safe and we'll see you guys next

time.