The young adult author who thinks kids have 'lost the right to be young'

Summary

Podcast Summary: Settle In with PBS News
Episode: The Young Adult Author Who Thinks Kids Have 'Lost the Right to Be Young'
Date: May 19, 2026
Guest: Soman Chainani
Host: Amna Nawaz

---

Overview

In this thought-provoking episode, Amna Nawaz sits down with bestselling author Soman Chainani, creator of the hit "School for Good and Evil" series, to delve into his latest, dramatically different book "Young World." Chainani explores the shifting landscape facing today’s teenagers—particularly their lost "right to be young"—global youth activism, political imagination, and the challenges and hopes of writing for a new generation. The conversation ranges from personal reflections on identity to a visionary declaration: young people are due a revolution both in fiction and real life.

---

Soman Chainani's Early Life and Identity (00:15–06:37)

• Background & Upbringing

  • Grew up as one of the few Indian Americans in Florida, feeling different both racially and physically.
  • "My grandparents were the first Indians in Florida. Like, there had been no other Indians." (B, 01:32)
  • Early experiences of otherness drove him into the world of fantasy.

• Disney Influence

  • Raised on Disney VHS classics—Little Mermaid, Lion King, Robin Hood—often rooting for the villains, especially the women.
  • "I was always rooting for the villain…especially the female villains. I love them." (B, 03:41)
  • Connected more to the villains than blonde protagonists due to appearance and outsider status.
  • Recognized how few memorable female villains existed, yet they left the strongest impression.

• Emerging Distrust of Adult Narratives

  • College exposure to grim original fairy tales (not Disney) “radicalized” his view toward sanitized, adult-approved stories.
  • "Adults were making decisions for kids that were not necessarily in our best interest." (B, 06:38)
  • Critique: American fairy tales push a simplistic 'good always wins' narrative, which Chainani ties to broader political polarization.

---

Becoming a Writer: Pathways and Rebellion (08:35–14:31)

• Early Writing Encouragement

  • Dedicated a book to his 7th grade English teacher who saw his creativity.

• Parental Pressure

  • "When you have Indian parents, you have to have a real job." (B, 09:08)
  • Initial career as a pharmaceutical consultant—fired repeatedly due to passion for writing—and a pivot to film school.

• Film School Detour

  • Worked for filmmaker Mira Nair before finally getting into film school.
  • Hollywood experience led to frustrations with dilution of creative vision due to executive feedback.

• Turning to Novels

  • Wrote "School for Good and Evil" as a reclamation of creative control.
  • "I just wanted to write something that was mine. I didn’t care if it got published." (B, 14:18)

---

The Success of "School for Good and Evil" (14:33–21:34)

• Road to Publication

  • Rejected by 17 out of 18 publishers; succeeded because one editor at HarperCollins took a risk on a romantic plot for middle grade kids.
  • "The bet was, let's try romance in middle grade." (B, 15:50)

• Living the Life of a Bestselling Author

  • Rigorous cycle: writing a 700-page book each year, followed by extensive touring.
  • "It felt like being, you know, almost like a musician on tour." (B, 16:27)
  • Career and fame often eclipsed personal life—until finishing the series and the Netflix movie adaptation allowed for a pause and reevaluation.

• Writing for and About Girls, and Expanding Audience

  • While the series was initially “female fantasy,” boys became part of the readership as the books gained popularity.
  • Exploration of both “female voice” and now, with "Young World," “male voice.”

---

Transition to "Young World" — Inspiration and Concept (21:45–26:53)

• Post-Series Reset

  • Moved from New York to St. Louis for love and to find the quiet needed to write something new.
  • The need for change: "It required a change of everything." (B, 21:48)

• Noticing a Change in Kids

  • Observed kids lose their free-spiritedness ("champagne fizz") after COVID; increased anxiety and disengagement.
  • "There was a heaviness… a low hum of anxiety… they always felt like a little wired, but also tired and bored." (B, 23:48)

• New Book Origin

  • Desired to make the real world feel as wondrous as fantasy.
  • The concept: A political revolution by young people, symbolized by neon orange—a color Chainani whimsically connected to youth, vibrancy, and rebellion.
  • "That color was going to be for a political party, you know, and that's where the whole book started." (B, 25:14)

---

"Young World": Story, Themes, and Political Vision (26:53–38:41)

• Premise (27:45–28:16)

  • Protagonist: Benton Young, a teenager who accidentally becomes President after a viral rant encapsulating youth political frustration.
  • "Politicians are so old and corrupt, they'll never fix anything because they know they're gonna die before this shit storm hits them in the face like the rest of us." (Benton’s quote, read by A, 27:53)
  • Imagines a plausible youth-driven revolution spreading globally.

• Central Message

  • "You have lost the right to be young. And they took that from you… if you let the adults decide for you, you're in Disneyland where it’s not the right ending." (B, 29:01 & 38:15)
  • Highlights the generational theft of innocence, leisure, and optimism.

• Book's Unique Structure & Reception

  • Multimedia, visually striking, designed to appeal to non-readers and especially boys who have disengaged from reading.
  • "To get to watch them come to this book, which looks so different… kids who have never read a book tear through it because it looks like their life." (B, 31:18)
  • Teachers using the book to explain the electoral map and political processes.

• Youth Political Power & Age Gating (32:24–38:41)

  • Argues it’s more crucial to remove age limits for presidential candidacy than to just lower the voting age.
  • "When you're 18… you can take out a credit card, a mortgage, you can get married, you can vote, you can fight for your country, you can die for your country. But then you can't ask your country in a democracy if you can lead it." (B, 34:18)
  • Cites global trends and young leaders, underscoring the alienation that rigid age thresholds cause.

---

The Struggle to Reclaim Reading — Especially for Boys (39:37–42:47)

• Literacy Crisis and Boys’ Disengagement
  • Chainani designed "Young World" to break the mold, reduce intimidation, and "meet you where you are."
  • "Boys who don't read anymore were finishing the book." (B, 40:43)
  • Posits that social media has recently perfected how to undermine boys’ confidence and focus.
  • "They've been swallowed by this plague… all their freedom of thought and will that they used to have is suddenly gone." (B, 42:47)

---

Personal Wisdom, Family Support, and Final Reflections (42:58–46:09)

• Family Perspective

  • "Both of my brothers work for my dad now. And he just calls me his wild card. He’s like, anything can happen with him, good or bad." (B, 43:11)
  • Embraces unpredictability and derives courage from his father's immigrant story.

• Purpose of the Book

  • Chainani sees "Young World" as a "fun, maximalist version" of youth revolution, but with tangible relevance to real-world change.
  • "The message, if teenagers read it… is that there are just these rules in the way… the rules of the game can be changed." (B, 44:46)

• Future Plans

  • Hopes "Young World" launches a series, but places equal value on in-person engagement with readers to coach them back into books and imagination.

---

Notable Quotes & Moments

• On Villains and Identity:
  "I also thought female villains in Disney… they didn’t have weaponry, they didn’t have brute strength. It was all about intelligence, manipulation, seduction. All the things that make a villain kind of so delicious." (B, 04:29)

• On the Disney Good/Evil Binary:
  "Disney says the good guy always wins and the good guy's always identifiable, and whoever stands in the good guy's way… will be destroyed." (B, 07:14)

• On the New Crisis Facing Youth:
  "You have lost the most important right that is not in the Constitution… the right to be young. And they took that from you." (B, 29:01)

• On Writing for Boys:
  "I think I was trying to get teenage boys back… bringing them back from the dead-eyed stare." (B, 40:43)

• On Systemic Change:
  "If teenagers read it… they start to think to themselves… the rules of the game can be changed, right? Politicians do it all the time." (B, 44:46)

---

Key Timestamps

• 00:15–06:37: Soman’s upbringing, Disney, rooting for villains
• 06:38–08:35: Realizing adult story control and political implications
• 08:35–14:31: Writing journey and challenges; film school detour
• 14:33–21:34: The making and consequences of "School for Good and Evil" success
• 21:45–26:53: Move to St. Louis, noticing generational anxiety
• 26:53–38:41: "Young World," its plot, and its challenge to the political status quo
• 39:37–42:47: Reading crisis among boys and re-engaging youth
• 42:58–46:09: Family reflections, role of fiction in inspiring real-world change

---

Tone & Language

Chainani is characteristically witty, sharp, and earnestly frustrated about the state of youth. Both he and Nawaz keep the conversation lively, full of cultural references (Taylor Swift, The Little Mermaid, political memes), with a sense of urgency and hope. The episode is both an intimate author portrait and a clarion call for youth empowerment—fulfilling for listeners of all ages, even those unacquainted with his work.

Transcript

[A]

Hi, everyone, it's Amna. Welcome to another episode of Settle In. My guest today is best selling author Soman Chainani. And even if you don't know him by name, you definitely know his hit series, the School for Good and Evil, which was also turned into a hit Netflix movie. We talked to him today about his new book, though, which is a bit of a departure from the fantasy world he wrote about previously. It's called Young World. It imagines a world right here in which a teenage boy suddenly gets swept. Swept into power and becomes President of the United States. There's a great story behind that. We talked about how that teenager manages the presidency. We talked about why Soman has always found female villains to be way more interesting than the men. And we also talked about the challenges he faces now as an author, talking to teenagers, trying to get them interested in reading and young boys in particular. What he has to say is fascinating. So settle in and enjoy my conversation with with Soman Chainani. Soman Chainani, welcome to Settle In. Thanks for being here.

[B]

Thank you so much for having me. I mean, this is a real pleasure.

[A]

It's a real pleasure to have you here. I'm such a fan of the book. I tore through it in just a couple of days. I know I'm not your intended audience.

[B]

Everybody's the intended audience for this one. The whole country is the intended audience.

[A]

Okay. Before we get into the books, we always like to hear a little bit about the person we're gonna hear from. I wanna know about you, about how you got to be you. So let's start with that. You grew up in Florida, right? Right.

[B]

Key in Florida.

[A]

Tell me about your family. Tell me about growing up there and what a young Soman was like.

[B]

It was a fascinating sort of upbringing there because my grandparents were the first Indians in Florida. Like there had been no other Indians.

[A]

Literally the first.

[B]

Literally the first. There's streets named after them in Ocala and Daytona. Like no one had ever seen Indian people before. And so my family lived there ever since. But when I grew up, you know, I grew up in Miami, went to school there. I was, I felt like I was pretty, ironically, one of the only Indian kids around. Really old.

[A]

Even in your generation?

[B]

Even in my generation. You know, Miami now is such a hotbed for Indians. It was not when I was younger.

[A]

So what was that like? Did you feel like you stood out? Was that hard in any way?

[B]

Yes, there was. I felt very different. I went to a prep school where there weren't many, you know, people of color. And I think I just always felt different also. I was built differently. I was extremely skinny in that way that a lot of Indian teenagers are. You go to India and you see them and you're like, oh, I'm totally normal. But in the US you feel so scrawny, you know, So I felt small, I felt skinny. I was, you know, struggling with my sexuality. So I just had so many differences. And I think that led me to escape. I needed to, in the way that, you know, children did, especially back then, disassociate into fantasy worlds of their own.

[A]

So you started that back as a child. Did you start writing back then?

[B]

I didn't write, but I lived in kind of the Disney world. I was presented with all the Disney movies when I was young. My grandparents used to collect them on vhs. And so we used to take them back to my house. And back then it was like you would watch them over and over and over again until the tape burned out. And so I felt like I was raised by Disney. I just remember coming home from school and watching the whole movies so many times to the point of even now, so many years later. I know every scene, you know, every frame. I know everything about Disney.

[A]

So growing up that you're a child of the 80s and 90s like I am, what movies are we talking about here? It was like Little Mermaid.

[B]

Oh, Little Mermaid, Lion King, Robin Hood, Alice in Wonderland. You know, Sleeping Beauty was a big one in our house. So, I mean, these were the movies I was watching. And what was interesting about it is I was always rooting for the villain.

[A]

Really?

[B]

Even though I felt like I was such a good kid, like, I always hated getting in trouble. I was like the golden boy. Like, and here I am rooting for Maleficent and Cruella, especially the female villains. I love them.

[A]

Why? Why do you think that is?

[B]

I think there were two things. One, when I looked at all the villains, they looked a little bit more like me because they were that sort of, like, slinky frame that I had, you know, that are very tiny. I felt like there was something about them that reminded me of myself or how I would like to be interesting, you know, so. So there was something that I associated with them. I saw none of myself in the kind of blonde, beautiful heroes. The villains were always slightly darker. And so I think I saw myself in them. I also thought female villains in Disney, which is so fascinating, because I think at the time, if you look at all the classic movies, there were, like, 52 villains and only seven were female.

[A]

Is that Right.

[B]

Those are the ones we remember. Right. If you ask people to name villains, they start naming the seven females. So I think it's that they. They didn't have weaponry, they didn't have brute strength. It was all about intelligence, manipulation, seduction. All the things that make a villain kind of so delicious.

[A]

Which is kind of more evil in a way, right?

[B]

100%. I think it just. There was a glamorousness to them, and I think I started to feel that kinship with them. But as I got older and studied those movies, more and more started to realize that Disney, the logic was often wrong and that the hero would win in these movies without deserving to. And so some. I started to realize that I was right to root for the villains because they actually deserve to win in a lot of stories that they lost. And Little Mermaid is, of course, the classic, because if you. If you watch the Disney film, you're watching a heroine who has so many flaws, she's disobedient, she knows nothing about

[A]

the princess, she's impetuous, she's headstrong, she's

[B]

shallow, she's a traitor to her father. By going to Ursula, she's like and everything. Then she signs a contract that she could have read, doesn't read it, and then spends the rest of the movie trying to get out of it. So, like, there's nothing about Ariel that's, to me, redeeming.

[A]

So you are cheering for Ursula.

[B]

I feel like Ursula does nothing wrong in the Disney version of Little Mermaid. She is just chilling in her cave, eating her little people, doing nothing.

[A]

So that is what we call a hot take. Please continue.

[B]

I'm watching this. And then I ended up going to Harvard undergrad where, long story, I end up in a fairy tale seminar, me and 12 girls, and we're studying all the original stories. And that was the first time in my life I ever learned the original fairy tales. I had never read the Grimm's Tales, never knew the Hans Christian Andersen version of Little Mermaid. And I think that shock of. Of learning that all those stories that I learned as a kid were sanitized, corporatized, you know, and really a lie, I think, is what radicalized me in some shape or way or form.

[A]

Radicalized you?

[B]

Radicalized me in starting to realize that adults were making decisions for kids that were not necessarily in our best interest, you know, and that kids everywhere else, because you go to Europe, they learn the original stories, they know the Disney versions are wrong. And so there was something uniquely in the way we learned fairy tales in America that Felt off to me. And it was an adult's way of sort of making us believe in this happily ever after myth.

[A]

You were like, it can't be this simple. It can't be the good guys and the bad guys. It can't be that clean.

[B]

I think it's the seed of our political problems.

[A]

Honestly, you're jumping far ahead, but please go ahead.

[B]

I, I believe this. When I was talking about the School for Good and Evil, and I used to tell kids this, I said, our country's getting more polarized. We're starting to demonize each other in different ways. And I said, I think it comes back from to Disney, because Disney says the good guy always wins and the good guy's always identifiable, and whoever stands in the good guy's way, no matter what, will be destroyed at the end.

[A]

Right?

[B]

And that's the bad guy, and that's the bad guy. And so we all think we're the good guy in our story, right? Everybody is.

[A]

Everyone's the hero of their own side.

[B]

Both sides think they're the good side. So as long as you have 100% conviction in that, you're going to think the other side has to be destroyed. Anyone else who grew up with Grimms and Hans Christian Andersen, those fairy tales, it has nothing to do with if you're the good guy or bad guy. It's 100% based on what you do. So in some versions of Red Riding Hood, she dies at the end because she's a moron. In others, she's clever and escapes the wolf. Right? It's just about what you do and are you clever enough to escape. And there's this gray area to it, and it's the idea that a happy ending in a real fairy tale depends on what the kid did, not what adults decide for them. And so I think the whole act of writing the School for Good and evil, which was 13 years of my life, was this attempt to rewrite my childhood and create an alt fairy tale universe.

[A]

So when did the writing in earnest begin? How did you come to the School for Good and Evil?

[B]

Ultimately, I think I always processed my emotions by writing. So, you know, I had a seventh grade English teacher who I dedicated one of the first School for Good and Evils to, who told me I would be a novelist one day. She's like, because anytime I give you an assignment, you try to turn it creative. You're always trying to not do the assignment and do something else. She's like, you're going to write books one day. And I Never considered it. Seriously?

[A]

Never did?

[B]

No. Because I think a few things. One, I had Indian parents. And when you have Indian parents, you have to have a real job.

[A]

Well, I was going to ask you about this because your parents were born and raised here, right?

[B]

So my mom was born in New York, My dad was born in India.

[A]

Okay, so you had some of the. For our generation, first generation American, typical South Asian parent pressure type stuff, which is like doctor, lawyer.

[B]

But then Indian parents who are born here I think are worse.

[A]

You think they're worse?

[B]

I think they are. Why? I think they have memories of what their parents, like, pressured them and they become even more. I feel like they're like trying to

[A]

one up their parents.

[B]

The pressure from my mom to have like a proper job was actually, I think, you know, even stronger than from my dad. So I think there was this feeling of, you know, you need a real job. And back then there were only a few established tracks, you know. So I went into business after Harvard. I worked as a pharmaceutical consultant. I'm trying to say that without bursting out laughing.

[A]

Really?

[B]

Can you imagine?

[A]

And how were you at that job?

[B]

I entered the recruiting portal at Harvard and that was the only place that would take English majors. I think they were desperate. And I would sit in the corner working on my novel. I was writing a fairy tale novel that ultimately was not the school for good evil. But clearly my head was going there. And I got fired, and then I got fired from the next thing. And it was very obvious that this was not working. This was not working. And so my dad's like, you have to do something different. And so I still wasn't committed to being a novelist. Something about it felt too lonely, scary, self determinative in a way that I wasn't ready for.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And so I went to film school.

[A]

You did? Why film school?

[B]

I felt like, you know, I don't know, other than it felt collaborative. It felt like there was a storytelling engine to it.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And I felt like, you know, I could go the screenwriting route or the directing route. And at the time, this is when independent cinema was huge. It was just so glamorous also. So it just felt like the safer place to go rather than sit in a room and try to write a novel.

[A]

Which sounds really terrifying if you've never written one before, right?

[B]

Absolutely.

[A]

So how did you do it?

[B]

So then I went to film school. Came out sort of a hot commodity out of film school. Well, here's the other interesting detour before we get to film school. Right. Before I went to film school. They wait listed me and said, you don't have any experience, you know, in film. You're just, you know, coming straight out of your pharmaceutical consulting job. That's great. You know, reapply when.

[A]

That's a tough segue.

[B]

Yeah. Reapply when you have some film experience. Yeah. So I applied for a job as Mira Nair's assistant.

[A]

Really? Legendary filmmaker Mary Nair, and also the

[B]

mother of Zoran Mamdani.

[A]

Correct. It all comes back to our current politics.

[B]

This is what's wild. So I got a job as her assistant, her personal assistant. So for about a year, I think it was 2004, 2005, Zoran was maybe 12, 11, 12. Always around, always, you know, he just was part of life, you know, I was running around helping her right at the sort of peak of her career, and. And I was learning a ton. You know, I was just. I felt like I might be there for a very long time. And then they took me off the waitlist and I had to make the decision whether to go or stay working for her.

[A]

Wow.

[B]

I just knew I had to go. So I went and remember working for her on a, you know, Sunday and being in film school on Monday. So, yeah, it was kind of crazy.

[A]

So did the film schooling help when you finally said, okay, I think I have a world in my head. I need to get down on paper.

[B]

So I came out of there sort of a hot commodity because of the fact I think I had worked from here and knew what it took to be a director. So I came out of film school with two scripts, you know, a short film that was getting a lot of attention and going to film festivals. And so I got offered a TV job. They wanted to make my. They were funding my debut feature. Like, there was a lot of stuff happening. And so for about two years, all those things were happening, and everything was sort of taking place at the same time. But then two things happened. One, I was getting a lot of notes from executives that I never liked taking. It felt like I was always diluting the vision of whatever I was working.

[A]

No to feedback on your work.

[B]

Feedback. It's just the typical Hollywood thing of sort of dumbing everything down at the same time. The financial crisis had happened, and a lot of these studios were losing funding. Projects were shutting down, and everything that had come so quickly started to close down in terms of all those projects, one by one, the boilers turned off. And so there came a time where I think. And I had the School for Good Evil in my head as, like, a movie, like I'd always thought of it as, you know, I'll write it as a screenplay or something like that. And I think there came a time where I was like, I can't handle anyone else, like telling me what to do or having control over my future. And that's when I started to actually write it. I think that it was out of this desire to, after all these years of being ping ponged, the pharmaceutical consultant, film school, and then working for all these people, I just felt like I wasn't in control and I just wanted to write something that was mine. I didn't care if it got published. And I think that's where it started.

[A]

I mean, it did get published.

[B]

It did get published.

[A]

How many books in your series got published? As you mentioned, over 10 years. 13 years of your life. 13 years went to this series. Over four and a half million copies sold, translated into dozens of languages, made into a hit Netflix movie. Could you have seen all of that when you first put the first book out there into the world?

[B]

I mean, no, no one can ever see any of that stuff. The only thing I would say is 17 out of 18 publishers rejected it for the same reason and they all gave the same reason of this is a highly romantic story and romance is not allowed in books for nine and up. You can do it in young adult 14 and up, but not in what's called the middle grade market, okay? And I thought, that's ridiculous. Every time I hang, you know, see, nine and ten year old girls, like all they're doing is talking about their crushes and things and you know, making up fantasy romances in their head. I'm like, and you look at Taylor Swift's fan base, now it's all 10 year old girls. So I thought that's absurd. And there was one publisher, one editor at HarperCollins, who just decided to swim upstream and said, let's try. What's the worst that happens? And that was the bet. The bet was, let's try romance in middle grade.

[A]

I mean, feels like it was a good bet.

[B]

That was a good bet. Now then a lot of people do it, but back then it was definitely against the grain.

[A]

I mean, when you take in such a, a unique path to that place of success and suddenly it's upon you and it's everything around you and it's, I assume, becomes sort of a driving life force, right? It's like one comes out and then you think, okay, there's going to be another one and there's another in the series and you're Making a Netflix series, next Netflix movie. You're a best selling author. How does that land with you? Like, how does that success sit with you?

[B]

I think I felt pressure for each book to be better. Not for them, but for me. It was this feeling of like, how, how good can I make something? And I wanted each book to be better than the next and to satisfy the audience more than the next. So I never felt like I got to enjoy any of it. Also, because you have to remember, I was delivering a 700 page book almost every year and I was touring for two or three months a year. So there was very little in terms of a normal life. Yeah, it felt, felt like being, you know, almost like a musician on tour. Like you're either producing an album or you're touring with an album and you can't have kind of a normal life. And you know, I was living in New York, I was, you know, dating, trying to find somebody, but at the same time I felt like they always came second to the work. Like the career was the boyfriend, you know what I mean? And it was only when I finished, when I finished the last book and the movie came out that I was able to like take a breath. I was like, I think that's it. I feel like there's nowhere else to go. Like we hit the peak. Anything else from here is just gonna be, you know, it's gonna feel like an anti climax.

[A]

I mean, I mentioned to you my girls are fans. They've read the whole series. For anyone unfamiliar, I don't want to oversimplify it here, but you have two female leads, right? There's sort of a classically like pink clad pretty one, Princess and Sophie. And then Agatha, who's more unpopular and kind of wears all black, is very brooding. And they end up in the opposite school they'd intended to. A school for good and the school for evil, where they make villains in one and they make heroes in the other. But it's this focus on female leads that fascinate because you mentioned a little bit about how the female villains really fascinated you. But I wonder, when you're writing like, are you writing for young girls? Do you find boys who read these books too? This always fascinates me.

[B]

Lots of boys read it too. I think over time the audience just expanded because it became known as just one of those books that when you're in middle school, if you're a good reader, you read and there's not that many of them, so I feel like that became one of them. I think to me yes. If I look at all those books now, they are sort of a female fantasy. Right. It is female id. And I think that's why it caught on so much with, you know, girls of all ages, honestly, because they are the powerful ones. The boys are often objectified and don't quite have it together in the head most of the time. And the girls are just kind of the rock stars of that world, you know, which is funny then, because when, you know, I came to this new book, it flips. And it's very much a book about teenage boy.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

And I think a lot of it is just exploring different sides of myself and being able to say, I have both sides. Right. I have a female voice I can inhabit, and I also have a super kind of male voice I can inhabit. And to enjoy that balance and to be able to work in both worlds, you know.

[A]

How did you know when you were done with the series?

[B]

I think the movie coming out felt like, now it's a different thing because there's, you know, you have to remember books and movies. The scale is so different. Like, we're talking. Yes. Four and a half million books sold. 110 million people watch the Netflix movie. So it's just. I totally. Now everybody has a different view of what the story is because the movie casts different people. So in a way, as an author, you're just like, I can understand why George R.R. martin doesn't want to finish those books because you're kind of like, there's just too much in the subconscious of the audience that's visual to. Then it just becomes very difficult. You feel like, okay, let me step back. If I ever come back to this world, it'll be in a different form, but I've done it, like, difficult for

[A]

you to manage, like, to meet their expectations or.

[B]

I think it's more a confusion, like, in my head, because I had also been on the movie set and there were a lot of changes made to the movie. And so you just start to get a little confused in your own head

[A]

because it's appearing now in real life, maybe not in a way that perfectly aligns with the way it's been yours.

[B]

And you're getting a lot of fan art and a lot of fan reaction, and you're getting a lot of commentary on the movie. And, you know, I also haven't looked in the books in a while, so, like, your head starts to get very confused. And so I just thought, I knew I was done. I knew I was done. And at the same time, I had fallen in Love and had my first kind of real relationship. And I ended up moving from New York after 22 years to St. Louis. Where did you move to St. Louis? I fell in love with a farmer who, when I met him, was a goat farmer and now has no goats and only has cows. So, yeah, I moved to St. Louis, a city I had never been to, after only three dates.

[A]

You moved to Missouri after three dates?

[B]

Three dates. I just knew. Wow. I think he was my getaway car. Another Taylor Swift reference. I think I was ready to start life over.

[A]

So you. Did you write this book from St. Louis?

[B]

Yeah. I could not have written it in New York. It required three and a half years of just silence and getting to know myself in a different way and starting over. It required a change of scenery. It required a change of headspace, a change. It required a change of everything.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Because the book is so different.

[A]

It is so different. So let's lay this out for people now. It's called Young World.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

The central character is a teenage boy. It has a neon orange cover. It signals like. Just seeing it, it signals like danger and revolution and sort of uncertainty and fear. How did this book idea come to you? How did that percolate?

[B]

I think the feeling was I was gonna be fairy tale guy forever, right? I was gonna get Alfred millions of dollars to do a series on Neverland or Wonderland or whatever next land was gonna be. And the thing that kept coming back to me anytime I tried, because I did start another fairy tale series. And after a few weeks, I never looked at it again because I kept coming back to the idea of kids were changing. Like, I had been to over 500 schools over those 13 years. When I first started, every time I went to school, the kids were like. They felt like champagne fizz. Like they were curious and weird and goofy and awkward. And they'd come up to me and ask me, like, strange questions and what's your dog name? I'm like, I don't have a dog. Like, you know, I mean, just the usual things. And I just found them fun. And over the course, especially after Covid, I just felt the change. There was a heaviness, you know, to them. There was, like, this low hum of anxiety. And they always felt, like, a little wired, but also tired and bored. It was this strange contradiction. And I would see it in their stares, like, the way they just hollowly stare at you, like when you go into a crowd and you would see it almost in any age. And the question.

[A]

That's wild, though.

[B]

You felt that I Felt it. And I had a. I definitely had a good sample size. I didn't have polling, I didn't have expert data or, you know, any of that stuff. But the people on earth who get to see the most kids in the most context are young adult authors. Because we're on the road and we're like, you know, I'm in almost every state and I'm just seeing the consistency of that flatness and the questions are changing. So when we get to questions, normally all the hands go up and they ask, how'd you come up with this idea? How'd you become a writer? Do you ever have bad ideas? You know, how do I become a writer? Just like all the curious questions that kids would have now, even fifth, sixth grade, it'll be dead silent. And then someone will raise their hand and say, how much money do you make? Or how many TikTok followers do you have? Or, if I write a sequel to your book with AI, will you sue me? This is like fifth and sixth grade. So there is an awareness of everything that's happening in the world, and it's there and it's haunt. And I can see, feel the cloud. And so I started to think, like, how can I take them into more fairy tales? Like, to keep telling them to escape doesn't seem like the right thing to do. It's almost like I need them to understand that this world can be as wondrous as those fantasy and fairy tale worlds, you know, and so you kind

[A]

of have to meet them where they are too. Right?

[B]

This idea of transforming this world became sort of the. The feeling I was having. How do I make this world feel like one they want to live in? You know, because I think at the base of everything, they went from curious to. To now, I think they fear and kind of distrust the world and adults and this feeling of like, especially the high schoolers, they feel like they are graduating into doom. You know, they're everything about it. They're going to take on these student loans, they're not going to be able to pay back, they're not going to get a job. They don't know what to do with AI social media skills, like everything they know, everything, climate, school shooting drills, everything. So they feel it. And so I thought to myself, what do I do? And that's when I started to think about neon orange. And I started to have these kind of like, not visions necessarily, but every time I saw the color, I was like, wouldn't that be cool for a book? I didn't know what it meant. But I would see it on traffic cones and construction signs and grocery price stickers and this color. And I thought, wouldn't that be just if you just had a book that had no title on it, no author, nothing, and it was just this neon orange brick, what would it be about? And then I realized that color was going to be for a political party, you know, and that's where the whole book started. I said, if it's a political party, who's the leader of it? I'm like, red for Republicans, blue for Democrats, and neon orange for. And then I was like, young people. And I realized where I was going. I was going to create a third party that actually was sustainable, that had the numbers to compete with red and blue because it was all young people.

[A]

So this perfectly leads up to this one piece of the book I wanted to share for folks. So the hero of your story, if we want to call him that, is a guy named Benton Young, right? He's a teenager, Pretty typical teenager who posts this rant online, really, because he's accused by a girl that he likes that he's not caring enough and isn't into enough serious stuff in the world. And he says, in part this. He says, I care that a presidential election's happening with two old swamp trolls playing the greatest hits. States rights, gay rights, gun rights, whatever rights will bribe your vote rather than acknowledging our world is going to hell. I care that our climate is f ed, the debt is F'd, the system is F'd. Politicians are so old and corrupt, they'll never fix anything because they know they're gonna die before this shit storm hits them in the face like the rest of us. This is in the opening pages. You capture all of this frustration from Benton Young, who basically tells people, go out and vote for whoever you want because it doesn't matter. And they sweep him into power by saying, this is our guy. And it's led by young people showing up in numbers like they never have before. And I don't want to give away too much of the book, but his win in America leads to several other teenage leaders being swept into power in other countries around the world. It is this revolution unlike anything we've ever seen. And yet not totally unbelievable.

[B]

No, I think it actually, we're starting. I finished the book in December 2024, and then within, like, six months, Nepal's government got taken by youth. Madagascar, Morocco, Kenya. You know, it's happening in South America. You start, like, whatever I was feeling the energy was starting. And it's Funny, as you read that, I could feel my own body starting to like vibrate because when I go into high schools now on tour, I go to two or three high schools a day, talk to two to 300 kids at a time. And I'm just like, I feel myself almost like a preacher at the pulpit being like, you have lost the most important right that is not in the Constitution, which is, yes, you have life, liberty, pursuit of happiness, Great, you can have freedom of speech, but you have lost the right to be young. And they took that from you. And I had it. All the adults around you have had it. All the adults in power had it. They got to be kids. They had their own little protected bubble. Like you do not, you know, for many reasons. And I go through all of them and I'm basically like, this is the right you have lost and they will not give it back to you. So what are you going to do? Like to either get it back for yourself or your kids or otherwise it's gone forever. So to me, the only option they have is to unite and start figuring out how to accrue political power as a cohort. So it's a, it's a pretty like it's an aggressive message, but I think it's a hopeful one. And that's what the book is. It's an aggressive book, but it's a hopeful book.

[A]

How is it being received? Do you go out and you talk to these kids now? Are they starting to read it and what are they telling you?

[B]

I think what's awesome is a lot of teenagers gave up on reading, right? And so it's not because they don't want to read, it's the silence of reading creates anxiety for them because they're just to sit there with their own thoughts is very difficult. And so they ping pong between the anxiety of the silence of their own thoughts or going into their phone and immediately being in an adult space. Anytime they open their phone, they're in adult spaces. You know, TikTok and Instagram, like they're basically seeing adult posts. You know, half their feed is AI and porn. Like there's no escaping like the adult world, which is part of what I'm trying to help them with. And so to me, like to get to watch them come to this book, which looks so different from any other book because it's so visual, it's multimedia, it feels like the way they process information now it's full color. I'm able to go to them and be like, this is not a normal book. Like, this is. You know, and somebody's like, but I don't read books. They'll say. I'm like, it's not a book. It's the future. And then they'll buy it because they just. They want something to be able to get ahold of. And kids who have never read a book tear through it. Cause it looks like their life. You know, all the memes and texts and visuals and things like, it just reminds them of their. It's not intimidating.

[A]

Yeah. At the same time, it's. It's about politics. I would call it a geopolitical thriller for young adults. Right. Someone else described it as a mix between the Hunger Games and House of Cards. Like, it's very smart. You mentioned it's very aesthetically interesting. Right. There's all these text messages and political ads and, like, trending reports, and you can kind of follow things happening in real time as the story unfolds. But is that, like, do kids want to read about geopolitics? Is that something you're finding?

[B]

Well, here's what's really interesting. A teacher told me, I have tried to teach the electoral map in government for many years, and the kids just glaze over. They have no interest in the electoral map because it's just so abstract to them to have to learn how the electoral system works. One of the first things you see in the book is the electoral map. But now Benton's kind of write in campaign for president has started accelerating, and he's actually winning states. So you have the states divided by Republicans and Democrats, but now you have all these neon states on the electoral map that are owned by. By the revolting youth. Now it's easy for.

[A]

Revolting youth is the name of the

[B]

party, the name of the third party. Now it's easy for that teacher to teach electoral politics because he's like, you won that state. You guys won Texas, you won Nebraska, or whatever the states are in the map. And so it's inserting young people into politics, which is why, I mean, we can pivot to this thing, which is that. I think one of the messages of the book is that the age gate on the presidency has to go. I think, to me, the clause in the Constitution that says you have to be 35 to run for president is a huge detriment to the young population, especially now, because the moment you take that off and you let them participate in it, in the idea of the presidency, the fantasy of the presidency, everything changes.

[A]

So in the story, we should. So Benton is 17, right. So he can't even legally vote.

[B]

He cannot vote. He cannot obviously run for president.

[A]

And there's a complicated story I won't get into about a competition, a three way competition in which the Supreme Court has to weigh in and basically says we don't believe in the age minimum anymore. We're reinterpreting this because it excludes too many potential candidates.

[B]

Essentially what they do is they need the Republican Democrat to stop stealing the election from each other. They make him president on a very small loophole for just long enough to get them to work out the compromise. And in that little period, the other governments fall to teenagers and now all hell breaks loose.

[A]

Right? So they have no choice but to leave him as President of the United states as a 17 year old. But the part of the political participation you're getting to fascinates me because we have an 18 year mark for when you can cast ballots in this country. Other countries have revisited this, right, in recent years. You've seen a number of countries in Europe and I think some in South America, I think Australia is considering it lowering the voting age to 16 in a lot of these places. Is that the kind of thing you'd like to see happen here?

[B]

No, I think it's the wrong solution because to me it's about getting to run for president. That to me is the more important thing than lowering the vote to 16. Because lowering the age of 16, it just makes a big gap between the 16 year old and the average age. The median age in the House is 58 and in the Senate 65. So lowering it from 18 to 16 just creates more of this kind of feeling of alienation. Right. Like I think there was a NPR poll that came out that said 70% of young Americans 18 to 29 don't feel like they have anyone in, you know, politics that represents them. And so to me it's more about allowing young people to fantasize about that leadership. Because when you're 18, think about all the things you can do. You can take out a credit card, a mortgage, you can get married, you can vote, you can fight for your country, you can die for your country. But then you can't ask your country in a democracy if you can lead it. Right? And so we allow, we're getting to the point with life expectancy where hundred year olds are going to be in the Senate and the House and potentially the presidency, and yet we can't have, you know, an 18 year old who's allowed to vote also run. You know, it doesn't make sense, but Then we rely on the 18-34s to, you know, energize the base and fill the rallies and volunteer and canvass and make the memes and content like they're running the campaigns. You know, I think when I went to see. I was in New York the day Zoran won the Democratic primary and to see all the. That teenagers in the street and the way it felt like the book. It felt like the book. It was the first time I felt like the revolting youth were real. And yet Mohammedani can't run for president for other reasons. But he also would be age gated from the presidency, which to me is ridiculous because the two most powerful political forces we've had in the last 10 to 15 years were Zoran Mamdani and Charlie Kirk. Both would be age gated from the presidency if either one was allowed to run. You would see all the young people in this country come off the sidelines.

[A]

You think more young people would vote for younger people?

[B]

Absolutely. And it's when I go into schools and talk to kids, like we do this sort of simulation with some test questions as to what you would do if you were president. And without fail, it becomes clear who in that group would run and then everybody supporting them. And you also see like who they would pick as it's just natural. There's always going to be. Not all young people should be president,

[A]

but thank you for clarifying.

[B]

Not only. Okay, But I will say it's funny because I've gotten the question like, do you actually think a teenager should be president?

[A]

Right.

[B]

But then I'm also thinking like, I don't know if the 70 and 80 year olds are crushing it, you know what I mean?

[A]

So do the teenagers you talk to, do they believe the teenagers should be able to run for the highest office in the land?

[B]

There's always one who, yes, they do believe it should be not necessarily them, but there's always one who thinks they could do it, you know. And I think the one who could do it at having that conviction then creates this energy of, well, the other people being like, well, maybe I could run for office at my school, maybe I could run for school board, maybe I could run for town council. So this idea of if you just open up the presidency, I think you supercharge all the downstream races, you know, to young people. And essentially I just want this, this upswell of young people. And I also think it takes an outside voice to be able to, to say it who is not young. Because if it was somebody in that teenage you know, 18 to 22 year old space. No one would take them seriously.

[A]

This is such a departure from your previous books, right? That's fair to say.

[B]

I will say there is a connective thread. Right. Remember I said that the Grimm stories tell you that to get a happy ending, it's whatever the kid does, not when an adult decides for them. Right. And I think it's still the same message here. It's like it's what you're going to do. Because if you let the adults decide for you, you're in Disneyland where it's, you know, it's not the right ending.

[A]

Do you feel like this is the first in another new series? Are we gonna continue to follow some of these same characters?

[B]

I would love to. I mean, I would happily spe 10 years here, you know, or every four years. Every four years there'll be a new one. You know, it took a very long time because I think it's such an immersive world with all the visuals. There were so many artists working on it. Like, I felt like I was making a movie in a lot of ways, it did feel like an actual production that way. So I would like to do more. But I also think what's important for me is getting to go on the road and talk about it because I think because of the fact that kids are increasingly scared of books, part of the thing with this is not just putting it out. It's convincing people to not give up on a book and give something a chance, you know, and to get to go in there and talk to the audience, I think is super important. So that's been a mainstay of this story.

[A]

I mean, how do you make that case? This is something we talk about a lot on our team too, about literacy rates and where they are and the abysmal numbers of adults, even in America, who are just reading for fun. People don't read for fun, for enjoyment anymore. How do you look at that? I mean, how do you. How do you bring young people back in to this world?

[B]

It's difficult. It's why I needed the book to look different and I needed to deconstruct what a novel looked like so that when I go in front of young people authentically, I can say, this is not like any other book you've seen. It will meet you where you are. It will. If you've never read a book before, if you know you're a big reader, you will be fine. In either case. And we tested it, we gave it to so many kids before it was published. And all I would ask is what day you started and what day you finished. I don't care if you liked it. I don't want to know anything, any reactions. I just want to know if you finished. And we were just reliably getting kids to finish and I felt like especially the boys, boys who don't read anymore

[A]

were finishing the book.

[B]

Were finishing the book.

[A]

And what were they telling you about it?

[B]

They just were like, I've never finished the book, I finished this one. And I was like, I don't need to know anymore, you know. And I think the important thing was in the same way that School for Good and Evil found that kind of female ID this one. I think deep down, without me realizing it, every book you. Only when you're done do you realize what you were actually doing. I think I was trying to get teenage boys back. I think that's what it was. I think it was about getting teenage boys back in the world, back in books, bringing them back from the dead eyed stare.

[A]

Why boys in particular right now? What are you seeing?

[B]

I think it's something, I think with the girls there's a feeling that they almost can snap out of it like that they still have all the capabilities and emotions and emotional intelligence and are still getting the right feedback to be able to make it out of it. Maybe because I feel like the pressures on social media that have affected them have been there for longer. Yeah, social media was trying to go after boys for a long time and they couldn't figure out the formula. And I think they just figured it out in the last couple years and made them insecure about their bodies and made them insecure about their masculinity and just essentially have tormented them into being slaves to social media the way that they used to have the girls. And so it's a more I think, intense threat because I just feel like they've been swallowed by this plague. And that's why the dead eyed stare kind of scares me so much because all their sort of like, you know, that freedom of thought and will that they used to have is suddenly gone. Whereas I think girls know the threat they're under and I sense feeling like they will break through also because I wrote so many books for them and I think a lot of them still find pleasure in reading and escape in reading. And so I keep thinking like, why didn't I choose a girl to be the teenage president? And I think she'd be fine, I think there'd be no book. I think she'd wander into the office have it completely organized.

[A]

She would thrive.

[B]

She would be great. She would be great. But a teenage boy is gonna have to go through some things, which is what Benton does.

[A]

So I have to ask because you mentioned early in our conversation you had some of that pressure to follow a more traditional career path. How does your family look at all this now, where you are now, your work, your success?

[B]

You know, my dad. Both my brothers work for my dad now. And he just calls me his wild card. You know, he's like. He's like, anything can happen with him, good or bad. Like, he. Everyone else's life is like a. Like a. You know, like a. A wave machine. He goes, his is like a sine curve. It's the highest of highs, lowest of lows, you know.

[A]

Does it feel that way to you?

[B]

It does. It does feel that way. You know, it feels like, you know, anything can happen. You know, he always says. He goes, I'm a betting man, but I don't bet on someone.

[A]

Because he says that with love.

[B]

Yes. He's like, anything. Anything can happen. So I always take that as a great sign. Because he moved here, he didn't. Barely knew English. He, you know, became an entrepreneur and figured his way out. And I think I have some of that in me. You know, this. Let's go for it. Let's. I mean, the fact I left fairy tales when I was gonna get so much money and stability and be fairy tale guy forever to write this, I think, again, told my dad that I'm a little crazier than most.

[A]

But everything you're talking about, it feels like you've tapped into something that we cover a lot. We talk about a lot in news world and the culture world, but this is bringing it into the fantasy world. This is sort of a re. Imagining of what all those social ills and pressures and frustrations, what they could lead to in an extreme kind of fantasy form.

[B]

Well, that's the thing. It's a fun, maximalist version of the world in order to get teenagers to read it, right? But to me, the message, if teenagers read it and enough of them read it, they start to think to themselves, like, there's just these rules in the way, right? It's just one line in the Constitution, right. That is preventing this from happening. So I think it starts to make you think, like, the rules of the game can be changed, right? Politicians do it all the time. So, you know, and not just in fiction. So what would it look like if we start putting pressure on some of those rules so to me. That's what a story can do. It can take the maximalist view, but even like one tenth of the maximalist view in the real world would totally change everything. So that's what I'm trying to encourage them to do, is to galvanize them behind their own young cohorts and to spark that one in a thousand, one in a million who will actually go be the next Mandani or the next, you know, there's a 14 year old running for governor of Vermont. There's going to be these outlying kids, and the right one's going to come at the right moment and I think they're gonna have a chance.

[A]

The book is Young World. The author is Soman Chainani. Soman, thank you so much. Such a pleasure.

[B]

This is so much fun.