Things Neal Stephenson Has Said on Podcasts

“I think we are embodied creatures, and I think that bypassing the body, I just don't understand it. I write with a fountain pen on paper. The full engagement of the body, not just the abstract stuff up here, but the motor cortex and down the arm to the hand. That is all part of thinking to me. It's not that there's thinking, which is this separate thing up here, and then this chunk of meat attached to it that's kind of dumb and stupid.” — Neal Stephenson, Core Memory

Ashlee Vance expected Stephenson to be fascinated by brain-computer interfaces. He says he isn't, apart from their value for conditions like ALS, because for him thinking includes the hand holding the pen.

Core Memory · 2026-10-28 Permalink → Listen →

Core Memory

Neal Stephenson

…words back into concepts. So the interface of letters on a page is what I like. It's where I'm happy. I've never felt any particular desire to have something different. So I've tended, I guess, not to pay super close attention to that stuff just because I don't see how it's applicable to my life.

Ashlee Vance

It's so different that I would have pictured in my head. I just thought you'd be obsessed with all this stuff and where it was at.

Neal Stephenson

I mean, it's still a little too abstract for me, I guess. So if I could look at specific examples of what people are doing with it, then maybe it would be more something I could react to. But I think we are embodied creatures, and I think that bypassing the body, I just don't understand it. I write with a fountain pen on paper. The full engagement of the body, not just the abstract stuff up here, but the motor cortex and down the arm to the hand. That is all part of thinking to me. It's not that there's thinking, which is this separate thing up here, and then this chunk of meat attached to it that's kind of dumb and stupid. It's all, you know, we're all one big kind of brainified, you know, creature. So, I mean, I guess it's an interesting thought experiment to think about bypassing the body, but I can't get any real traction on it myself.

Ashlee Vance

I read you talking about this and how you write. I was envious when I was younger in my teenage years. Always had the notebook and was writing short stories and things like that. But my handwriting is so bad that I could barely read it then. Couldn't read

Neal Stephenson

your own handwriting. I mean,

Ashlee Vance

like, you know, that's pretty bad. No, I mean, like, okay, but I wouldn't want to write an entire book and then have to transcribe what I've done. But I like that sensation you're talking about, I do miss that. I feel like I am totally a different, I think, quite differently writing than I do just…

Speaker names come from our own diarization. The position is estimated from where the line sits in the episode.

“I follow the teachers' subreddit and a bunch of other channels of information where actual teachers and actual classrooms talk about the problems they face, none of which can be solved by giving them a piece of technology. Okay, I mean, that is at the bottom of their list in terms of what they actually want.” — Neal Stephenson, Core Memory

Stephenson was asked about the Young Lady's Illustrated Primer, the AI tutor from his novel The Diamond Age, which he says is now hot the way the metaverse once was. He is wary of edtech that ignores what teachers say they need.

Core Memory · 2026-10-28 Permalink → Listen →

Core Memory

Ashlee Vance

we describe

Speaker 3

what it is?

Neal Stephenson

…that teaches kids that just it's an educational system. And the so this is now hot in a way that the metaverse was like five or six years ago. So I hear about it every day. I mean, I've been thinking about it a lot, I guess, is the first thing to say. You know, I'm actively thinking about this stuff. What I have been doing is I'm trying to pay attention to what teachers actually want. So like I follow the teachers' subreddit and a bunch of other channels of information where actual teachers and actual classrooms talk about the problems they face, none of which can be solved by giving them a piece of technology. Okay, I mean, that is at the bottom of their list in terms of what they actually want. So I think it's fine to think about ed tech, but I think it's really important to go about it in a way that is observant of the fact that there have been many ed tech initiatives, you know, down through the years that haven't worked out and that don't address the pressing issues that teachers actually have to deal with day to day.

Speaker 3

And this is all meant to be directed to you. I'll say one thing. One of the most read stories I've done recently, I had this experience. I was with this 22-year-old and I was hanging out with him. He had built a nuclear fuser in his bedroom using only Claude as his guide. He'd never built a…

Neal Stephenson

So one of the questions, like the first question that comes up when you seriously start talking about this is, okay, you know, we don't want to just make a gadget that is going to serve a small privileged population, you know, that doesn't need it because they're going to be fine anyway. No, we…

Speaker 3

Okay. I'll leave you with this last one. I mean, I was going down this road before. There's just a million things. I mean, this must be so frustrating because people see you as some kind of oracle. I mean, talking to you has been different than I thought it would be in some ways. Like, I thought…

Speaker names come from our own diarization. The position is estimated from where the line sits in the episode.

“My theory is that the big bang of this was the last shot of Planet of the Apes, where you see the Statue of Liberty, it's fallen over… it's a super powerful image, but a very inexpensive one, right? So, I mean, they got a model of the Statue of Liberty and they kicked it over and threw some dirt on it… Whereas if you're trying to show a more positive kind of future, you know, you do have to do some pretty hard imagining.” — Neal Stephenson, Core Memory

Stephenson's theory of why films and TV default to dystopia: a ruined future is cheap to film, while a hopeful one takes real imaginative work. It came up in a discussion of efforts to get more optimistic science fiction made.

Core Memory · 2026-10-28 Permalink → Listen →

Core Memory

Neal Stephenson

…or series of little side projects that doesn't, you know, I mean, it could have some kind of constructive effect. It could, you know, maybe help some writers or filmmakers, you know, get some traction somewhere. And, you know, like you say, a lot of people in the tech world are keen on the idea. So

Speaker 3

clearly make the worst films, though.

Neal Stephenson

Yeah. Well, so, I mean, this is a kind of hobby horse of mine for a long time, but I do think that my theory is that the big bang of this was the last shot of Planet of the Apes, where you see the Statue of Liberty, it's fallen over, you know, and it's a super powerful image, but a very inexpensive one, right? So, I mean, they got a model of the Statue of Liberty and they kicked it over and threw some dirt on it. And, you know, so that was a really cheap and easy way to make a very powerful image. And so you kind of see this in a lot of post-apocalyptic dystopian movies. You see examples where they've just taken something that exists today and sort of, you know, bang it around and throw some dirt on it. And, you know, it looks cool. And it doesn't require a big imaginative investment. Okay. Whereas if…

Ashlee Vance

Okay. Okay. So they have to try harder,

Speaker 3

be more creative.

Neal Stephenson

Yeah, I think so.

Speaker names come from our own diarization. The position is estimated from where the line sits in the episode.

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