Ham’s Heaven with Ori Gersht

Summary

Podcast Summary: “Ham’s Heaven with Ori Gersht”
New Books Network — September 11, 2025

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Main Theme & Purpose

This episode of the New Books Network features a deep, searching conversation between host Uli Baer and celebrated photographer and visual artist Ori Gersht, who has just published his debut novel, Ham’s Heaven. The novel is a fictionalized account of Ham, the first chimpanzee sent into space by NASA in the early 1960s, and the emotionally charged, ambiguous relationship between Ham and his handler, Bradley. The conversation weaves together history, ethics, art, the boundaries between species, and the implications of progress. Gersht discusses his transition from photography to fiction, the philosophical and visceral foundations of his writing, and the broader questions his novel raises about empathy, memory, and the human condition.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Origin of Ham’s Heaven

• Genesis of the Book (04:17–08:30):
  • Gersht unexpectedly began writing the novel while working on a VR project. Daily writing exercises led him to research the story of Ham the chimpanzee.
  • Gersht describes a chilling detail from Ham’s training: copper wires woven into shoes that deliver electric shocks as a training method. This lingered in his mind, raising questions about how we evaluate others’ pain and the educational use of punishment.
  • “Something really caught my attention and refused to let go... How do we really evaluate the pain of others?” – Ori Gersht (05:00)
  • His background in conceptual and documentary photography shaped his cold, observational narrative approach.

2. Historical and Narrative Context

• The Space Race and Human Ambition (09:49–12:36):
  • The novel situates Ham’s story against the backdrop of the Cold War and the US-Soviet space race.
  • Gersht examines how ambition, fear, and the desire for dominance created an environment where “in the name of progress, we sacrifice the things we love.”
  • Discussion of Hannah Arendt’s concept of the “banality of evil”—people complying with bureaucratic or institutional directives without awareness of the larger ethical implications.
  • “The fear of the Soviet Union... mixed with great ambition and national pride are driving the whole thing.” – Ori Gersht (13:54)

3. The Human–Animal Relationship

• Bridging Empathy and the Limits of Understanding (17:01–24:22):
  • The relationship between Bradley and Ham is central: Bradley finds a deep affinity with the animal, believing he can nurture and protect him in an environment of relentless technical training.
  • Gersht deliberately avoids anthropomorphizing Ham or assuming direct access to the animal’s subjectivity—he writes from observation, physical experience, and reflection, avoiding emotional manipulation.
  • “We can never assume or imagine what goes on in the chimp’s mind.” – Ori Gersht (18:22)
  • The narrative continuously interrogates the abyss—the unbridgeable gap—between animal and human, suggesting that all relationships (not just cross-species) are shaped by such gaps.

4. The Motif of Separation and Loss

• On the Abyss Between Selves and Species (24:22–28:26):
  • Gersht connects the impossibility of returning to an unselfconscious, shared animal existence to the biblical expulsion from Eden, and the tragic desire to reconnect.
  • The story becomes an allegory for all relationships: attempts to bridge existential divides—whether with animals or other humans—often end in tragedy or frustration.
  • “At the center is not a relationship, but a gap or an abyss that we cannot bridge...” – Uli Baer (24:23)

5. Childhood, Empathy, and Transformation

• The Loss of Innocent Identification (28:26–31:03):
  • Both Gersht and his protagonist Bradley recall childhood experiences of imagining themselves as animals, only to lose this innocence with age.
  • There is a mournful ambivalence about “false empathy”—the inability of adults to fully inhabit the experience of the other, animal or human.
  • “The beauty of that is more than just fantasy. It’s actually an ability to lose yourself in the name of loving something so much rather than dominating it.” – Uli Baer (29:14)

6. Literary and Philosophical Influences

• Kafka’s “Report to an Academy” and the Tragedy of Adaptation (30:50–32:43):
  • Gersht draws significant inspiration from Kafka’s story of an ape who transforms himself into a human as a means of survival—an allegory for adaptation at the cost of one’s origin.
  • “There are no other options... all the doors are closed. This is the only way to make his life bearable.” – Ori Gersht referencing Kafka (31:47)

7. Fame, Disposability, and Aftermath

• The Rise and Fall of Ham (37:00–44:00):
  • The conversation parallels Ham’s brief national heroism—being on the cover of Life magazine—to the tendency of societies to discard those who have served their purpose, both human and animal.
  • The novel’s realism shines a light on the constructed, often absurd nature of fame and disposability.
  • Gersht relates this to the present media landscape: “It’s also very relevant to the time we live in today with... the end-all idea of fame.” (36:15)
  • The harrowing aftermath: Ham’s years in isolation, unfit for relationships with other chimps after his ordeal—a metaphor for trauma and alienation following extraordinary or damaging events.

8. The Subtle Magic in Human Violence

• The Ambivalence of Progress and Transcendence (44:00–47:33):
  • The “sublime wish” for transcendence that underlies humanity’s greatest (and often most violent) achievements is acknowledged, held in tension with their cost.
  • Gersht’s artistic sensibility recognizes the brutal absurdity and magic in such dreams—sending a chimpanzee to space is both perverse and inspired.

9. Writing Trauma and Afterlives

• After the Spotlight: Post-Trauma and Disconnection (51:02–56:11):
  • After his ordeal, Ham—like many traumatized individuals—cannot return to “normal,” unable to connect with others or form relationships.
  • The novel’s second half is built largely on imaginative reconstruction, filling the archival silences with fiction to “remember this ape in a different way that has been forgotten.”
  • “When you go through an experience that is so extreme... most people are screwed for life if they’ve been through those extreme situations.” – Ori Gersht (53:45)

10. Literature, Empathy, and Morality

• Fiction as a Space of Uncertainty and Compassion (59:03–64:06):
  • Baer suggests that literature’s virtue is creating space for attention, empathy, and not-knowing, rather than enforcing simple moral prescriptions.
  • Gersht emphasizes that his novel is not a plea for animal rights or moral condemnation, but an exploration of “tragedy, violence, misfortune,” and the entanglement of noble aspiration and harm.
  • “There is something about the ruthlessness and brutality that is part of the gentleness... all part of the fabric...” – Ori Gersht (60:28)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Analyzing Pain and Training:

  • “I was thinking about places like Guantanamo Bay... everything is happening behind closed doors and we hear about something, but we have no way to access them.” — Ori Gersht (06:20)

• On Empathy’s Limits:

  • “I try to be as much as I could consistent... not to overstep. Our emotions as human readers always somehow come from outside.” — Ori Gersht (18:22)

• On the Illusion of Understanding:

  • “There is a famous photo of Ham... there is a big smile on his face. In newspapers that’s described as proud... but actually for chimpanzees this is a sign of real anxiety.” — Ori Gersht (21:42)

• On Progress and Origin:

  • “The missile that Ham is going into space is a Mercury Redstone... based on the V2 missile... developed by slave labor... now they represent advancement and human achievement. A chimp, caught inside this whole thing... is sent into space.” — Ori Gersht (39:00–43:30)

• On Trauma’s Aftermath:

  • “It’s not just that you’ve been forgotten... you don’t have the capability to engage with anyone.” — Ori Gersht (53:45)

• On Writing as Witness:

  • “My writing is a little bit of an effort to remember this ape in a different way that has been forgotten, that was famous for a brief moment... But your book is saying, let's not forget too quickly...” — Uli Baer (52:36)

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• [03:41] Introduction of Ori Gersht and Ham’s Heaven
• [04:17] Gersht explains the origin of the novel
• [09:49] Detailing the narrative’s historical backdrop
• [13:54] Fear, ambition, and the machine of progress
• [17:01] The psychology of Bradley and his bond with Ham
• [21:42] Empathy, animal personhood, and anthropomorphism
• [24:22] The tragic, unbridgeable gap at the heart of all relationships
• [28:26] Childhood and the fleeting ability to become “the other”
• [31:03–32:43] Kafka’s influence and the tragedy of adaptation
• [37:00] Fame, disposability, and the aftermath for Ham
• [44:00] The dual forces of human destruction and aspiration
• [51:02] Solitude, trauma, and the impossibility of returning to normal
• [59:03] Literature’s role in cultivating empathy and uncertainty
• [62:39] Competing desires, tragedy in love and power

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Closing Reflections

Gersht’s Ham's Heaven and this insightful conversation stand as an invitation to witness rather than to judge. The tragedy is not only Ham’s or Bradley’s but is embedded in the human condition and our endless striving—sometimes for transcendence, sometimes power—often at a terrible cost. The episode – and the book – leave listeners with a profound meditation on the gaps between beings, the price of progress, and the fragile, ambiguous nature of empathy itself.

Transcript

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To the New Books Network.

[A]

I'm excited about today's episode with Ori Gerst, a very well known photographer who's just published his first work of fiction. It's called Ham's Heaven and it's the fictionalized story of the first ape that NASA sent into space to test whether humans could make it in the space race with the Soviet Union in the late 1950s and early 60s. Ori imagines that story of this chimpanzee that was trapped in the forest of Cameroon and then brought to America and his handler Bradley. And in this bond between this animal and this trainer, something very beautiful and also very disturbing emerges. How in the name of progress, we sometimes sacrifice the things we love. It's a story of an animal. It's a story of rockets. It's a story of human ambition and also human disappointment. I'm happy you're joining us today on the Think about it podcast to talk about this book, which was just published by Worbla Press in September 2025. Welcome to Think About It. Check out our other episodes. And I also had Ori as a guest on my other podcast that I co host with my friend Caroline Weber called the Proust questionnaire where we asked Orey 36 questions about his creativity. If you want to check that one out, I'll put the link to that other podcast in the show. Notes. Welcome to Think About It. Think About It. Deep conversations with Uli Bear on big ideas and great books. So I'm really very happy to welcome everybody to Think about it podcast and to have a special guest, Ori Gerst, today. Ori, first of all, thank you for making time to speak with me today about your new book called Ham 7.

[B]

Hi, Holly. Very happy to be here and discuss the book.

[A]

Yes. So this is a relatively short novel and this is your first real book of fiction. So I'd love to hear a little bit about sort of the origin story. How did you come up with the idea for the book or the idea to even write fictionalized story because you're otherwise really well known. And we've talked on my other podcast about your work as a photographer, visual artist, you know, kind of conceptual. You've written other things, but I think this is your first work of fiction. Really.

[B]

Yeah, right, absolutely. And it came in a very organic and natural manner. So I never planned to write it.

[A]

And.

[B]

I was working on a very different project to do with VR and collaborated with a writer for the narrative of the project. And at some point he suggested that every day, in order to refine in our focus and enrich our dialogue, he suggested that every day I'll write just one page short story and I'll send it to him. So we start ping pong like this. And every day I wrote something over, you know, so I wrote about seven stories on daily basis. And there were certain premises of, you know, it, it is to do with some sort of memories of books and it has to be a personal, you know, so some sort of a biographical. Evoking some sort of biographical memory. So I was doing this and while writing I was also and, you know, searching on the computer and occasionally kind of going into one rabbit hole and then another. And I came across this story about the chimpanzees and the training of the chimpanzee that was sent to space. And one thing really kind of caught my attention and refused to let go. And it was this part in the training, when I read that they attached soles to his feet and in those soles, the weaves, copper wires. And while they were training him, every time he made a mistake, they were able to release an electric poles. And when I read it, everything was quite gentle. It felt as if those poles were just educational Pulses and they didn't do any damage. But I couldn't get this off my mind. And I starting, how do we really evaluate pain of others? And then this whole idea of educating with punishment and with electricity, all these things just was resonating. And I was thinking about places like Guantanamo Bay or places where investigation and torture is happening and everything is happening behind closed doors and we hear about something, but we have no way to access them. So I start to write about this. At the beginning it was very raw about this training and to read more about those training. And slowly it kind of developed into this image in my head as if I'm a fly on the wall. You know, I'm a photographer and I come from this background. So my work doesn't appear to be documentary. It's all based on documentary premises. Everything that I do, despite the fact that it looks sometime kind of spectacular, unreal, based on camera recording a real event or something that was actually there. So these are the premises. And I start to write about those training and then read more and more about them and about training of animals in space or experiment with animals that were sent to space. And in my head it was. I have to be very descriptive and very cold minded about it. So I'm not trying to evoke any emotion. I'm just trying to reimagine this experience of training that happened behind closed doors, that no one had access and anything could have happened there. That's where the whole thing started. And then I kind of start to think, you know, these chimpanzees, how did they arrive there? They were all caught by poachers. And I start to think about the absurdity about the chimpanzees that was caught in the rainforest of Cameroon, you know, a baby chimpanzee and three years later find itself in space. How likely is that? And this sort of surreal superimposition, you know, between a spectacular, you know, impossible event of a chimpanzee in space. And then the harsh reality of the training became kind of a sort of the. The premises for the book. And I'm very interested in the. The sort of the duality and the tension that exists between free choice and destiny. And the whole book is kind of exploring, I think, exploring these ideas. Obviously the chimpanzee doesn't have free choice. Everything is dictated. So we kind of follow a certain path. But then there is the protagonist, Bradley, because the book is about the relationship between Bradley and the chimpanzee. And Bradley do have ability to choose, but also is being kind of Pushed by the storm. It's kind of in Walter Benjamin, angel of History by the storm of history that is, you know, propelling both of them into a particular inevitable kind of future.

[A]

Yeah. And let's. Let's stay with this. So the crux of the story is really a very deep and also unusual relationship between this young man, Bradley, who has an affinity for animals and becomes the trainer of this young chimpanzee who's trained by NASA to be sent into space. Right. And what are the years, roughly, that you discovered all this is happening? This is.

[B]

It's 1960. 1961.

[A]

So this is the storm you're referring to. Also is the kind of space race where America is trying to catch up with the Soviet Union. And so there's a kind of. Kind of enthusiasm for progress, for doing the unthinkable, sending humans to the moon, et cetera. All of this is behind. So there's a kind of energy fueling all this. But you're.

[B]

And fear. Fear is really important.

[A]

Fear. Interesting. Fear and hope. Both. Yeah, interesting fear. And both, like the competitive nature of those two empires is not just benign. We're going to discover something, but we want to dominate this new territory. And then you bring it right down to a very granular level of this young man and this chimpanzee. But as you said, you. You're trying to account for this relationship as if you're observing it and trying to see what is happening between the two of them. Yeah, yeah.

[B]

Khrushchev and Kennedy are in the background and, you know, and Kolio and Fon Brown. So kind of people are playing on the bigger stage, international stage. And there are. I mentioned them and I write about them in the book because they're kind of, you know, they're affecting the action of those two inverted coma. Insignificant participant that for a moment, particularly ham. The. The chimpanzee become a national hero and appear on the COVID of Life magazine and very quickly being forgotten again. And. Yeah, so I think that the reason I mentioned fear, there is ambition and fear. I'm thinking about, you know, Hannah Arendt about when she talks about the banality of evil when she. Around the Eichmann trial and how people, in certain circumstances, when standards are being set, are operating within those standards and within those sort of moral boundaries. And sometimes they have no ability to have to raise above and have a real perception on the action and on their involvement in what seems to be. Could be inhumane or even criminal.

[A]

I wonder if you can stay with this for a moment. So I think. I'm not sure. I think what Arend is also trying to say in the 60s, it isn't just, which would be complicated enough. People carrying out orders. They may be amoral or unconscionable orders like soldiers or policemen or people who have to take orders. She says a bureaucracy can become so automatic or autonomous that people do things because they are expected to do them at a desk, that nobody gives them a direct order anymore. It's not this. You can resist and become a, you know, a conscientious objector or something. He wanted to, I think, take all this drama out of it and say people just doing their jobs and are refusing or unable to look how this part of the job fits into a larger machine that is really morally just nefarious and horrible. And I think what you're describing is also these two people, this, this ape, the chimp and this trainer, they're just doing what they are expected to do. They're not looking up and thinking, what's the space race? What's the Soviet Union? Where's politics? They're just doing. Doing what they're. And as you said, either expected to do or can't resist doing because they are an animal trapped in a. Yeah.

[B]

So the chimp has no choice, so he's doing what he was forced to do. You know, he. He was caught and he was brought and there is no consideration whatsoever. But Bradley is part of this machine. And the reason I mentioned fear, because I think that the fear of the Soviet Union and then mixed with a great ambition and a kind of national pride are driving the whole thing. I mentioned early in the book that because everyone was, you know, the Sputnik was already hovering in space, and in the United States, people were convinced that the Soviets are looking at them at every given moment, you know, in the kind of, you know, Panopticon way. And this is going to give him motivation to overtake them, to do something. So the training of the chimpanzee, I just. Maybe I should. It's important to mention the reason they decided to send the chimpanzee to space was because the real ambition was to send humans into space. They didn't. It was difficult to perceive how human will react in zero gravity. And because a chimpanzee is the closest to human being, they decided on this kind of, you know, wild idea to take a chimpanzee to training, to train him to do actions that are not chimpanzees action, but human actions. So, for example, they will flash light and the chimpanzee in sequences. And the chimpanzee will have to pull levers in according to the light source in zero gravity that we'll be able to see if he can actually keep his concentration and respond quickly and so forth. So this was the whole idea. And when Bradley trains him, he feels the real vitality. It's really important things to do. So even when he face situation where he's doing something like the electric shock and he sees the reaction of the chimpanzee, or when they take the chimpanzee into parabolic flights where they drop them, where an F100 plane is going up to space and then drop free falling in order to kind of experience zero gravity. Bradley kind of, he feel very uncomfortable, but he also understands that it's a necessity and all the commanders are insisting on that. And so that's kind of giving and slowly. What happening through the book is not through a rational analysis because Bradley think Bradley is a little bit almost on the spectrum. And emotionally, the way things unraveling there is a kind of a slow pace and he realize things from within, but not always manage to kind of process those realization. So things are unfolding until they're kind of erupting and forcing him to take certain action.

[A]

But I want to stay with Bradley. As you said, you allow the reader to kind of gradually realize what Bradley realizes, what his connection to this chimpanzee is. Initially, he is deeply touched by this animal who seems to respond to him. And there's a very, very strong bond. And Bradley feels a real connection and feels, I think he can be the caretaker, the caretaker who this ape really trusts. And therefore he can provide security and love and affection in a situation that doesn't really allow for that because it's purely technical. He's just supposed to be trained to become this trained ape that can do things that humans can do. But I think Bradley feels I can kind of shelter him a little bit because I'm also being taken care of and seen. And Bradley finds his calling. He's an animal trainer. He has this particular bond. So there's something very moving about this bond. And the person Bradley may think I can help this ape survive this in a better way. The ape we don't know because you didn't write a book where you're going into the ape's mind and you're writing from the perspective of the chimp. You're just saying I can go as far as we can to imagine empathically, but we don't know.

[B]

Yeah, because it's impossible. So we can never, you know, assume or imagine what goes in the chimp's mind. But so the way I chose to kind of develop the relationship is through, you know, a more broadly kind of reflections and certain kind of physiological descriptions. And it was very important, you know, not to, and I hope that I managed to, to be very consistent with it, but not to overstep. So our emotions are coming always as readers, human readers, always somehow from outside, from the physical reaction, the physical training, the interaction between Bradley and the team. And I try to be, I, I, I try to be as much as I could consistent with that. And that's why also in the training, I try to be quite cool in my descriptions. I'm not trying to make any emotional pleading and I'm not, I didn't want to kind of get into bringing whatever my thoughts or emotion about these. But actually through the interaction and action, and action, I think, was in the first part particularly, it's very, of the book and is, is very important to kind of create the settings. Later on in the second part of the book, there are space for much more introvert, I think, introspective maybe and a little bit more introverted kind of engagement with Bradley and, and with the chimpanzee.

[A]

I, I want to stay with this for a moment. You, you said you, you try to get close to what the chimp is feeling or thinking, but we can't know. There are many other books which are quite remarkable, sort of from Jack London, Call of the Wild, to, I read recently, Henry Hoag, Open Throat, which is about a queer mountain lion in Los Angeles who sort of dealing with going and looking, watching all the tourists from Los Angeles go by. It's a really remarkable book written entirely from within the perspective of an animal. So those books exist. You did not write that kind of book then. There's a whole other tradition, really remarkable, of animal rights philosophers and other philosophers. One of my colleagues at nyu, Jeff Szabo, he has been leading this, where he's been convening philosophers who make an argument that chimpanzees have the standing, the moral standing of personhood, legally speaking. So there's a lot of philosophers who work on this sort of human rights kind of, or animal rights. Peter Singer is one of those names. But you, how did you, when, when you were writing it, you had to also realize that we project constantly onto especially an ape, all sorts of things, because we don't look at an animal and just say, observe the reaction. We think, oh, he must feel pain he must feel joy, he must be happy to see me. He must be frustrated, he must be exhausted.

[B]

So, so yeah, so I. Okay, so first I did describe those interactions and reactions.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

I also kind of hinted. Because a lot of the time we get them wrong. So there is a famous photograph of Ham, the chimpanzee, when he came back from space and they gave him an apple and there is a big smile on his face. And in the newspapers that describe this as a proud or epic return from a successful flight in space. And actually for chimpanzees this is a. An anxious sign of real anxiety. So there is us, you know, we tend to project ourselves and it was important. So that's why they kind of. When there is a binary, the relationship between a human and a chimpanzee. And what I kind of felt that the chimpanzee was chosen because it's the closest animal to human beings and they wanted, they wanted to train him to do human like action.

[A]

Right.

[B]

And then the human is that I chose. It's quite difficulty to interact with other humans. So we find actually a relationship with the chimpanzee, with animals much more comfortable. But then there is an abyss. And I think that that's what kind of I was trying really to explore in the book.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

From the moment we gained consciousness, we separated ourselves from. From what in versus comma, what we perceive as kind of the animal kingdoms. And you know, and I don't say nature because it's not accurate term, but from the animal kingdom. And we always have a desire because part of us, I believe, feel that we are still part of this kingdom, but we can never return to it. We were, you know, kind of the fall from the Garden of Eden symbolize this kind of moment of separation. And throughout the relationship, you know, Bradley, it feels like Bradley had the desire to get much closer to him, but there is always this kind of gaps that he can never breed. And every time you take an action to change those circumstances to help him, something more disastrous is happening. It's kind of the. Something in the relationship can never be resolved. And as much as the human is trying to bridge or to get into this the space, the consequences are disastrous. And. And the old book is about. It's kind of sometimes that maybe it's almost like a love relationship, you know, it kind of this relationship and there is a. A tragedy that is kind of seated at the core of who they are and they will never be able to. So.

[A]

And I stay with this for a moment. I'm really interested what you're saying about this at the center of the book is I said earlier, there's a relationship, a deep relationship between this ape and the trainer who are in this NASA facility with this background of the space raider trying to shoot this ape into space to test something. And then you just said no, at the center is not a relationship. At the center is a gap or an abyss or something that we cannot bridge between. And then I think the book was so interesting to me because it's not just about a specific relationship between an ape and its trainer, which is interesting and historically significant and gripping. But can we ever actually bridge this gap between us and anybody or anything alive itself? And you're saying there are many efforts to do this in the book, sometimes well intentioned, sometimes very brutal to. Just like the technicians are basically saying, we're going to bridge this gap and turn this monkey into a kind of obedient machine for us. Like then we erase this gap. It's in our service, it's like a servant or something. And Bradley said I can try to bridge this with love and care and tenderness. But there's a limit to that because the ape's interest is maybe not to be loved by Bradley, but something else that we don't know what that is. Maybe it's.

[B]

But also moment of action which are really important. He knows that he's doing it. I don't want to spoil it, so I won't say what he's doing. And later in the zoo and each one of these action which is an attempt to really change circumstances and direction, there, there is some sort of open optimism and then there are inevitable consequences. I want to say about the. What we're talking about something that is, I think it's quite telling and important on the first page I describe of the book, or first or second page of the book, I describe a Bradley as a young boy and I describe them in the. Sitting at the. On the back seat of his parents car when they drive through the wet street of New York. And our Bradley loved to open the window and stick his head out and pull his tongue out and pretend that he was a dog. Now this was me as a child and I have this very, very vivid memory. I was always. I had a deep affection to animals and I wanted animals. And throughout my upbringing I had a donkey and chickens and so many dogs. And I used to pick injured dogs and bring them home and, and. But before that I used to imagine, I remember this sitting in my parents car and put my tongue out and believe that Everyone was looking at us in the car, believe that we have a dog, and I was the dog. And as I grew older, of course, these great ability to transform so easily disappeared, evaporated. And I think that there was something about this. And I think that it's kind of a. You know, very much about the relationship between Bradley and Ham. They are the same, and at the same time they are separated by an abyss. And I think that this sort of relationship broadly have deep affinity. And sometimes you feel that Hamilton is so, so close to him. Sometimes you almost think that they are the same person. And we made more clear separation. But originally, when I wrote it, sometimes I didn't. You know, when you read through, it was not clear if I'm talking about Ham, about Bradley, because I say I won't mention the name. So it will just. Story will flow. And there is something about this, about a blaring and blending those boundaries, about.

[A]

Your experience when you were a child, to sort of imagine yourself for a moment as a dog. It's very beautiful and moving, sort of, that a child can lose himself in an imaginary reality and lose his sense of self and say, I'm a dog. And then we rush in with our adult sophistication. And philosophers would wag their fingers and say, that's false empathy. You cannot imagine what an animal is like. Or people saying, that's just fiction. That's just. And I kind of want to stay with that. When you said, and then you kind of grew up. And I want to say two things about that. And you grew up and you no longer think yourself as of a dog. You don't sit around and sort of, you know, wag your tongue and think, I'm a dog. There's a loss of innocence, of kind of an unmediated sense of reality. I actually think it's quite interesting we should talk about this some other time. Your work, some of the photography you do, you sort of try to get as close into the heart of time as you can. The littlest tiniest fraction, the atomization of a second into a split. Something you want to be in that. Because time will always elude us. Like, we'll grow up, we'll grow out of it. But I want to, rather than talk about this, I want to talk about this. There is a kind of mournful dismissal. We say, when we were children, we have this naivete. We can think, we're a dog, we are bird, we are a lizard, we are a snake or something. And we all have either been this or we've had kids or we have nephews or nieces, or there's a little kid in the restaurant that thinks it's a cat. And you're thinking, really? You're not a cat. Stop meowing. But the beauty of that is more than just a fantasy. It's actually an ability to lose yourself in the name of loving something so much rather than dominating it. So I'm quite interested in this moment that you had. And then you put that in the beginning of the book. Like Bradley had this moment, he thought he was the pet animal for the family.

[B]

Yeah, yeah.

[A]

And what I'm trying to say, it's important and the book is a work of fiction to remind us this moment is important and we shouldn't so quickly dismiss it and say that's presumptuous, that's cognitively wrong, that's categorically a mistake. That's, you know, ethically not. We're legally not tenable. But it happens.

[B]

Yeah. I'm thinking about. And maybe we should have some conversation about Kafka. Report for the Academy. And there. There is these things that you're not sure if you know, there is an ape.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Those chose make a clear decision to become a human because it was the only way, the only pathway. There was no other way. There was. There were no. I always said the. I'm trying to remember the term that kafir use all the time where.

[A]

Where.

[B]

Those. I'm trying to quote and I cannot remember the example.

[A]

So it's in Report to an Academy. There's an A trapped on a ship and he realizes the only way out. He says the escape route, or in German, it's actually realized it's the way out. It's the outbreak. Is the way out is to escape into humanity.

[B]

Yeah. And few times he mentioned that he has no other option. There are no choice. All the doors are closed. So this is the only way to make his life bearable.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

And Kafka is doing it quite often, blurring the boundaries between human and animal.

[A]

Yes, that's right. And in the story with the ape, which is interesting, so the story that you're referring to, there's a moment where the ape realizes becoming human is a way out. It's an escape, but it's not an escape from his animal. It's actually a mode of survival. Because if he starts to behave like a human, the humans will basically not trap and murder him anymore. So he starts to behave like a human, becomes very famous. So humanity for Kafka is not the goal, but it's only the possibility to survive.

[B]

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[B]

Almost always by mistake. The Hulu Original Series Only Murders in The Building premieres September 9th. Streaming on Hulu and Hulu on Disney for bundle subscribers. Terms apply. New episodes Tuesdays yeah, what it force him is to forget his past. And in the story I'm a few times talking about Ham becoming an ape without a past. And slowly and I mentioned it also there is old scene in the zoo and I talk about the lion and the antelopes where they put very close to each other. The cages are very close. And the absurdity and the sadistic nature of this that you don't allow. You know, one has to live with his ultimate fear and the other with his kind of irresistible desire. Want to eat and want to escape until they forget those desire, you know, eventually some sort of banality and circumstances force them to accept the new reality. And that's what need to, you know, happen to Harm. And I was thinking about Kafka quite a lot and not just this. I think that of course, they're very different stories by nature. But despite the fact that I follow a very kind of what feels like a realistic, hard realism in my description and the research that I've done, I also was thinking about the kind of surreal nature of this whole story. And I mentioned earlier on Sending a chimp to Space. And I was thinking about Kafka and about these things because there is a chimp here that is transforming, yeah, into, you know, human like creature and appearing on the COVID of Life magazine, you know, and then it become the. The, you know, the kind of the conversation in every, you know, a U.S. household for a day. And then, you know, everyone moves on. And it's really important. The point where Neil Armstrong, you know, go, you know, go to space and then Harm is being just totally rejected. He become just a sort of a garbage scum, you know, kind of an interest is kind of, you know, I know it's also very relevant to the time we live in today with kind of installed social media. This kind of end of all idea of fame. He never claim any fame. It was imposed on him and he had to pay the circle, the. The consequences, the price for the consequences of being dejected and rejected.

[A]

And, And I like this, the tone of realism, as you said. I like the book that it makes us see things that we absorb on a daily basis and we don't expend a lot of thought that you show how some of those things are so strange and constructed and artificial and weird and we accept them as natural. We just like, well, there's an animal in a zoo and you're saying to put a lion next to a gazelle for their whole lifetime. It's an absurdity and a brutality to their nature to end the subtle allegory of what happens in America. You get snatched from somewhere, you become very, very famous. And then the machine spits you out. And after the fame, you end up being a kind of circus act freak remembered by some people. And you then also have to suddenly fight for your notoriety because that was your livelihood. So it's a really subtle way of describing how this. And behind it, what you said earlier, the absurdity of sending an ape into space, it's absurd. It's also the most amazing thing we can try to do is to go into space. So I'm trying to Sort of see where you're saying, of course it's absurd and it's cruel and it's terrible for this ape, but for humans to transcend gravity and fly into out of the universe, like, that's an amazing thing. So you're putting this, this vector in there that the novel is also propelled not just by fear, by competitiveness, but some of the people who tried to do the most amazing thing.

[B]

So I'll tell you something. I. For a long time before I wrote the book, I started to collect from different newspaper archives images of human and animals in circus, in circuses. And of course now circus animals in circuses are illegal in most places. And I had childhood memory from seeing animals in circumstances. And there is a sequence in the book that I kind of, you know, relate to this. When I start to write the book, I didn't even think about it. It occurred to me later and some of the sequences in the book about the bears based on some photographs that I collected when the Moscow Circus arrived to New York in. In early 60s. And there is something about this. It's very perversive experience, but it's also very magical. Yes, child. You know, without kind of a moral understanding, going back to the Hanar and kind of the idea of, you know, how we behave in certain ways because the circumstances are. Certain circumstances are being created and we're not questioning them. There was one photograph that I collected, the. It's kind of. I made a little animation from it as well and really stuck in my mind. And it's. It's in Milwaukee in 1980, in a circus. There is an elephant sitting on a chair and on top of his head there is a man dressed like Tarzan or Crocodile Dundee doing a handstand. Is his body completely exposed? All he had is this kind of a leopard skin like swimming trunk and his legs are wide open. And I was looking at this photograph and I'm thinking, you know, this is just wild, okay? So sometimes maybe when you are on acid or, you know, you. You wake up to this kind of idea, you know what, I'll go and I'll get an elephant and I'll teach him to sit on a chair. And then I'll take my clothes off and I climb on top of his head and I'll do a handstand and split my legs and I'll invite people to look at me. And then this guy woke up from his trip and decided to actually do this, to go to India, to Africa, to catch an elephant, to bring it over, to go through this Effort to teach him to sit on a chair. And the whole thing. I'm talking partly about the torture the animal need to go through. Sending a chimp to space is not dissimilar. There is an absurdity to it. There is something, you know, in us that is so humble about our engagement with our very intimate environment, with the soil, with the sea, with. And then there is this kind of force burning inside to go to now to go to past the moon and to go to, you know, to Mars and to go. And then even to go outside of the solar sea. And you know, it's this endless destructive element in it. And destructive element will take with it. It's so powerful. It takes with it everything. And there is so much consequences. And the book is very much about this. There is something very humble about the relationship. And constantly I can project outside. Like for example, you know, the missile that Ham is going into space is a Mercury Redstone. And it's based on the V2 missile. And the V2 missiles were developed by the German particularly the head of the program was von Braun. And they were done. Hitler kind of believes that they will be able to decide the war when Germany was under so much kind of so much pressure. So put a lot of money into them. And these V2 were flying. Actually last year I was in a rented flat when we were renovating and One of the V2 fell on one of the houses historically just near the house I was staying. So these missiles were flying and they were ballistic missiles. So they were flying outside of the atmosphere. It was very difficult to anticipate when they both the Soviet and American wanted the secret for this missile. The Americans were the first and they managed to bring von Braun to United States. I write a little bit about it in the book. And they take this V2 and from them they develop the all in kind of Space program. The V2 were developed, were built by slave labor and killed so many people. And then you know, the developed by the Nazis. And all of a sudden the United States are kind of represent liberation and advancement and human achievement. And then a chimp, you know, is caught inside this whole thing and sitting in the middle of this whole thing tied to, you know, and strapped into a chair and just sent into into space. And the first one to feel the. What seems to be as described by astronaut later. And I read a little bit about astronaut experiences. What it's like to be in zero gravity and to float in space and to see sunrise and sunsets and all this kind of, kind of beautiful experience. It's.

[A]

Yeah, but it's interesting. You start by saying it's an absurd dream. It's incredibly. It's insane. It's like an acid trip. It's brutal, it's violent, it has great cost. But it's also a sublime wish to be without gravity, to float like that. There's a recent novel that I think you read, like Samantha Harvey's Orbital, which was just about seeing sunrise, sunset constantly from the space station. But the beauty, the magic that is also in this absurdity. I think why your book works is because as a work of fiction, you allow your reader to acknowledge that even sometimes the very violent dreams are driven by something really magical and mysterious. And fiction allows us to see that. Whereas I think when you're a legal scholar or a philosopher or a moral person, you have to kind of cut that off and say, no, this is wrong. You cannot subject animals to this horrible regime. And the other argument, which is hard to make because it's really not a conceptual argument, is there's an incredible desire for transcendence behind it. And I'm trying to sort of. I read the book and felt there was this kind of hope, even in Bradley. Well, what if actually Ham gets to go in the rocket and he's not in such pain? He will have achieved something amazing. Like there's a weird hope, right?

[B]

Yeah, yeah. It's constant throughout the book. And it's also a little bit because for the people that are sending Ham to space, for them it's the greatest achievement ever. So there is this excitement and enthusiasm, and basically Ham is being forgotten. His personal circumstances are being overlooked by something, by. By a desire, you know, and it's often happen that a lot of people are being crushed by a grand desire that is kind of a swaying assault. I was thinking about the angel of History, of Walter Benjamin, and I was thinking about David Casper, Friedrich, you know, kind of sending this. This idea of the sublime. And I described the. The missile at some point with the sun, sunrise, kind of hitting it, and it. It looks like a. Some sort of ancient religious shrine or monument. There is something about it that is all to adore. You know, it's such an achievement of engineering, of human abilities.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Then you take a chimp and you tie it at the cock pit and just fire it into space. You know, it's a.

[A]

Yeah, it's a good image for the height of human aspiration, which is also folly. It's always. It's a bit. There's a bit. There's a tiny part of these Scientists, they're a bit insane. And that, that is not the explanation, only why they're acting so what a lot of people would consider really badly toward animals. And the debate also that your book raises about animal testing in all domains of medicine, et cetera, has not been settled at all. I don't think we can assume that everybody in the world agrees that animals, you know, deserve.

[B]

You know, when Ham was sent to space, I, in the description, there was a slight problem with the angle the missile went up. So as a result of this, he was exposed to 70.17G. And this is a huge gravitational force that's crushing him every time. Every G is double your. Your weight. 17. It's an enormous, it's like pillar that is just crushing. You think jet pilots are exposed to something like 7 to 9. Maybe astronaut can get up to 11 or something like this. It wasn't anticipated. It was not supposed to be exposed to that. So if you just read any report or you really know, okay, so I went into space and maybe exposed to 17G. When you start to kind of undo that and start to imagine what happened to you or what would happen to me if I would have been under such tremendous pressure, crushing my head. And I was trying to get again, not to the psychological understanding of what Ham went through, but just the physiological description of what it means. So you could as a reader maybe feel it, feel it on your own body. I wanted it to be a visceral body like experience. So they, I. So where you identify is with these details that when I read them, like the souls with the copper wires.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

What would it feel like to get an electric shock not to the chimp, but to you? And there is a point when Bradley said he's kind of having a doubt. And then he asked one of the commanders and he said, can I try those shoes? Because he want to feel. And then they dismiss him. And they said there is no need. And you know why we do what we're doing and everything moves on. And, and I think that's where you can really get close to the animal physiological experience that mimicking what time is going through or doing what time is going through. Feel it on through your own body. Because psychologically you could never.

[A]

And right.

[B]

You know, really feel, understand the other. You know this test where you take two of your fingers and you touch each other and one finger doesn't feel what the other finger is feeling. You get a sensation, a different sensation in each finger. And within our own body there is this gap, the inability to really understand so in the story, what I try to do and the way I try to depict is to kind of bring through this kind of physiological.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Training depictions to get you into a space where you can start to feel or you can become the other, you know, through the body. And so I think I. You know, I don't. You can tell me better, but that there is something quite visceral about the description that.

[A]

Yes. Yeah.

[B]

And I really try to hold on to it. In the second part, it's different. It's very, very solitary. Everyone been forgotten. Bradley and Han both being forgotten and both somehow losing the capability to interact with other.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So the whole kind of premises of the writing had to be very different. And it was very much about this kind of solitude, almost anxiety of. Of, you know, kind of being part of a group and. Yeah, yeah.

[A]

Let me. Can I ask you something about the second part? There's a sense of. They both experience a sense of disconnection or alienation, weirdly. Also, they have sort of been dismissed or discharged. They've lost their purpose. So now they have. No. No one has a function. So they're just going to sit out their lives and have no significance, which is kind of the brutality. Also that they're just ignored because they don't serve a purpose in society. Before that, Ham was kind of treated well, in a weird way, like at least he was paid attention to and cared for and all of this. Now he's just stuck in a cage and no one really cares. And I wonder whether. Did you think writing the book, because you said much earlier you started out by just doing these writing exercises and you stumbled across these stories of these apes sent into space. Do you think your act of writing it is a little bit of an effort to remember this ape in a different way that has been forgotten, that was famous for a brief moment, like a comet passing by, then it's passed. But your book is saying, let's not forget too quickly because it may teach us something about today, how we let people just pass by, we glance at it. Oh, something terrible happened and we move on.

[B]

Definitely. So there is a lot of literature around the first part. I have to invent a lot, the training and all this. You don't get the detail, but I was able to collect enough information. I think I'm fairly or pretty accurate. There was. There is literature about all this space program. There is photographs of Ham after he went to space and been forgotten. I found one photograph. There is one letter that I mentioned that a little girl wrote to the Washington Post about him. Very, very little. So it's all to be imagined. It was literally forgotten. There is no coverage. So the all the second part is just, you know, pure imagination. When I mean the first part is pure imagination. But the first part I have a lot more to hold on to to develop from and the second part I have, I have, you know, I knew about the South Carolina Zoo, I knew about the Washington, how many years it was there, but not much more. Another thing I think is important about the solitary stage. Second part, that it's true that there is society, you know, kind of.

[A]

You.

[B]

Know, kind of dejected them and they were forgotten and this is. It's true. But there is also something happened to them. And you know, I'm thinking in terms of post trauma and unfortunately I hear and also meet quite a lot of people with post trauma. And when you go through an experience that is so extreme, what it does to you is change you from within. So you lose this ability. It's not just that you've been forgotten so you are lonely. It's also you don't have the capability to engage with anyone, you know. So for example, being exposed to 17G or coming back from space, there is an assumption that then back you go back to normality. Like when you go and fight in some war and you supposed to come back to normal life and have relationship and everything is fine. No, it's not fine. Most, you know, most people are screwed for life if they've been to those extreme situation. Very few and maybe those are few are becoming later prime ministers or whatever because they like the sensitivity. They come, you know, as, as, as a went in and they can just operate. For most people it's not the case. And I think that what it's really important for me in the book that what happened at the end. Yeah it is partly because they were rejected or forgotten by society but there is also something personal. They losing the ability and capability to engage and then you know.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Never had any, any offsprings.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And you know, and I mentioned it and I write the results in the zoo around this and about you know, kind of an attempt to, to mate him with another female. But if you've been to those extreme training.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So who knows. I don't know but. And I'm not making an assumption but I knew that he didn't have any offspring and I knew that most of his life later he wasn't in the, you know, with big chimp families. He was in live solitary to start with because everyone wanted him to see him because he was so famous and later. I'm spoiling too much of the book maybe. So maybe I'll.

[A]

No, no, it's. It's actually. No, no, no. I think it's important to say the first part is you had some material to rely on to new because there was a huge interest, you know, money, press, media, the nation cared that we're sending. We're trying to sort of win the space age race. And then the second part, it's that aftermath of something amazing that happens, maybe terrible, traumatic, but we don't really know how to account for the aftermath. And as you said, we are and we live in worlds where many, many people have to live in this aftermath and their lives are not forgotten. Their lives are as meaningful as when they were in these ever beforego.

[B]

They will. You know, it's kind of at the beginning I wrote a scene that has to do with Diana Arbus's exhibition in the moment and we kind of edited it out. But they, you know, Diana Arbus in.

[A]

There is this her in the early 70s. She has a big Howard Moma. So it's photographs but what they called unusual uncommon people. But she has a couple. Yeah, interesting. And. Yeah, go ahead.

[B]

There are a lot of moral issues about Dian Albus and her work. But I put this for a moment aside. But she had this sort of relationship with people that were, you know, at the. The margins of society and she kind of. She claims that she adored them. But there are people that because of certain circumstances, you know, through abuse or through engagement in wars or through, you know, they come back and everything continues normal but they can never pick up again. They can never. And usually there is very little sympathy and if there is sympathies because of an event. There was a film about them.

[A]

There was.

[B]

Or something like this. But on the mundane, very banal day to day existence, these people are kind of left. Left adrift.

[A]

Right.

[B]

Very much then in the book I'm kind of trying to.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

To write about this and to think about it. And then I'm trying to bring also moment of Cathartis. So there is, you know, toward the end there is another attempt to kind of bring everything and to bring everything to happy ending and you know, then another drama kind of come. I have to say that the book very much written also in a pace of. There is a. It's a. It's a kind of. There is the slow parts but a lot of very dramatic action. Yeah. And very kind of. I would say a violent and charged moments that are driving the narrative.

[A]

Yeah. People try to break out of their situations. And then the second part. I do think it's useful for people to read right now because we all participate in this sort of incredible, sort of sped up attention economy that we pay attention to something or somebody or something terrible or exhilarating, and then the next day it's gone because it's all passing by so fast. And this book, I think, allows you to think a bit about who are the characters in these situations that get incredible attention. What is my relationship to them? How do I participate? Maybe there's a bit of voyeurism, a bit of interest, a bit of empathy, a bit of compassion. How do you navigate all these things when we're subjected to moving on? I think literature gives you space to experience these things and not already know your answers. To say, I'm supposed to be empathic toward this, supposed to be outraged by that. I'm supposed to have understood this. But literature gives you away. I don't really know what to say about this situation because I can't know what an animal really thinks or feels. But here's a way to sort of in. And Bradley is a way in. And it will not succeed, but it's a way in. And at least the effort is actually maybe what we can make like, do it right.

[B]

And I was hoping that empathy is coming through action, not through my.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

Position. You know, I didn't want to impose myself. It was really important that. And I was trying to figure out the relationship while I was writing, rather than to take any moral stand or to preach to anything. I. I was not sure the whole thing. And, you know, I experienced this with animals. I experience it with, you know, and. And again, you talk about childhood, but sometimes you go and, you know, you fish and you see a fish jumping out of the water and you have. And you know, and they die in your end. And you, you know, it's kind of. You do the. There is something about ruthlessness and brutalities that is part of the gentleness. And they're all kind of part of the fabric of how we navigated and. And in the story, what I tried to do. It's not that I'm, you know, it's not at all. Emily, Family, a family animal rights book. Not at all. It's not about preaching and saying, don't do this or look out for. It's not about it in any way. And I never thought about it in the book. I thought about, you know, there is tragedy, there is a lot of Violence. There is a lot of misfortune. There is in some of the behavior there is an upset. I mean I'm bringing actually quite a few historical anecdotes that are weaving into about the relationship that human has with ape. And some of them are so atrious that it's difficult to comprehend. But the people who did them have other ambitions as they overseed animals. It wasn't like, you know, there are some crazy people who want, you know, fear manic. Who will go and lit cat alive just because they of the sadistic need. It's not about this. These all motivation and the brutality is coming as a result. Like you mentioned, other desires to go into space and blinding all the participants. So all small. You know, I kind of. I think that I mentioned screwing screws in this kind of big machine being screwed up really.

[A]

Right. It's actually interesting. It's like they are competing desires. And instead of saying this is wrong, we have to acknowledge people don't stop doing this because they're heartless and horrible. But because they're driven by other desires. And it's not sadism. That's not the interesting one here. But this is a desire to transcend the human condition to go into space.

[B]

But it also happened in intimate relationship. People are obsessed with their desire and sometimes oversee companions. You know, all those sort of thing happening as well. It's kind of how.

[A]

But yet what you want is not always what's good for the other person. Yeah.

[B]

And sometimes even you can feel, you know, you impose on the other person kind of your. Through your desire. You impose on them horrific name experiences and consequences.

[A]

Or you distort them. It's like in raising children or being a teacher. Like if you think your desire is the other's desire, you distort what they want. And you may get everything wrong because that's not what they want.

[B]

Yeah. And this is a tragedy. When I put two fingers and one finger it's me. But still something slightly different. And this gap of inability to truly understand or bridge.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Particularly when it's the chimpanzee and the human. You know, I think that's. That's make it.

[A]

Yeah. But I love that you wrote a book kind of out of this gap or abyss that we experience with that we have within our own sensory experience and how we make sense of it and with the experience with others. So the book is written in this space. But I found it really deeply engaging. I really cared and I cared and I wanted to know what happens to the chimp. What Happens to Bradley. What happens to somebody after you lose your purpose and you lose a very, very deep relationship. Not because of what they did, but the circumstances didn't allow it to continue. Like how do you. How does someone go on with life when their life is suddenly sort of void of the meaning that they thought.

[B]

It had and because the two of them are actually one.

[A]

Yeah, yeah.

[B]

And when they lose each other, they also lose themselves. So there is this, you know, and. And when they are together, they can never over. They can never breach the abyss. So there is a constant tragedy within oneself almost. Bradley is harm and element in Bradley. They are kind of weaved together and they're within sort of tragic relationship that they cannot exist separately, but when they're together they cannot really engage or integrate into one. So there is a. I mentioned futa. I think it's written in the book. There is when Bradley played chess against himself and you feel as if the two side of his brain are about to split and these all ideas that he play against himself. It's also. It's not playing against another opponent. And this is the ham brother relationship. So the pieces of the chess, they are one player play both of them and constantly moving around. It's against each other, but it's also the same.

[A]

Valoria, I want to thank you for writing Ham's Heaven. So it's called Ham's Heaven. H A M apostrophe as Heaven. About one of the first chimps that's sent into space by NASA and his trainer.

[B]

Not one of the first, the first.

[A]

The first. The very first famous ape who goes into space. The very first ape. And it's a sort of fictionalized account of that two story. Beautiful book. Congratulations. I guess, you know you wish it well. It's like a child going off into the world now a little toddler. So let's see. Hope it does well. And I'm really happy to have you as a guest on Think about it today on the podcast about big ideas and great books and you know, I hope people will, you know, also get in touch with you about that book. You've been on my other podcast, the post questionnaire about your photographic work and I think late nova, late September, you will be in New York City at Yancy Richardson's gallery to talk about the book. So I'll put that in the show notes as well. This, this episode will be online forever. But it's September 2025. The book is out now and people can see you talk about it. Great. Thank you.

[B]

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[A]

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[B]

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