Welcome back to Stone and Signal. If you haven't heard the first episode yet you can find information on Episdoe 1 here.
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Tales That Touch The Earth
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I didn’t plan to write this. Like many of the stories that find me, it arrived less as an idea and more as an ache. A pressure behind the ribs. Not urgent in the way headlines are urgent, but persistent, like something just below the surface asking to be named.
In times of upheaval—personal, planetary, or both—I return to stories. Not the ones engineered to soothe or distract, but the ones that stay. Stories that don’t demand to be decoded, only lived with. The ones that surface years later in the pause before sleep, or on a quiet walk, or in a moment of grief when no facts will do.
These are not stories of escape. They are stories of return.
I believe there are some truths we can only approach sideways. Direct language fails them. Arguments flatten them. But stories—honest ones—let us circle what hurts. What haunts. What matters. They help us metabolize what the world tries to feed us too quickly.
Facts are vital, of course. They orient us. They show us where we are and what’s at stake. But they rarely show us who we are. Or what we carry. Or why we care.
That’s the work of story.
Writing now—writing in a collapsing world—feels different than it used to. There is always the question of usefulness, of relevance, of speed. Of whether art matters when so much is burning. And yet, story resists the burn. It holds a longer timeline. It whispers instead of shouts. It doesn’t try to win. It tries to connect.
The stories I write come from this space. They aren’t designed to resolve, but to reveal. Not to instruct, but to accompany. Fingerprints in the Water was born from mourning—from sitting with the quiet violence of microplastics and the grief of contaminated oceans. But it was also born from love. From awe. From the desire to hand younger readers something deeper than doom: the possibility of witness, of agency, of kinship with the Earth.
Earlier stories, like The Life of Phi, came from a different current. That book asked me to surrender certainty. To let the water speak—not as a backdrop or a resource, but as a presence. An intelligence older than judgment. There was no conclusion waiting at the end of that book, only a kind of silence. And sometimes silence is the most honest response we have.
If there is a thread through everything I write, maybe it’s this: stories are not products. They are invitations. They are vessels. Not every one will reach its reader. Not every one will be understood in the moment it’s encountered. But the ones that matter find their way. They settle in the body. They echo back when they’re needed.
And sometimes, long after the telling, something shifts. A sentence surfaces. A rhythm returns. Not with fanfare, but with familiarity. As if it had been waiting there all along.
That is the quiet work of story. To mark. To hold. To remind.
And if something in a story stays with you—if it opens something unnamed or offers a shape to your wondering—I hope you carry it gently. Not as an answer. But as a companion. A flicker of signal in the deep.
Even in the dark, that’s enough.
Stone and Signal – Episode 2: Tales That Touch The Earth - Transcript
Welcome to Stone and Signal. I’m Lawrence Nault.
Today, I want to talk about stories. Not just the ones we read or write, but
the ones that hold something—the ones that
carry land and loss and longing in their bones. The kind of stories that grow
like roots through us and remind us who we are, even when everything else feels
like it’s shifting beneath our feet.
Stories are how I’ve always made sense of the world. Especially in times of
collapse. When the ground feels uncertain—politically, ecologically,
emotionally—I return to stories. I write them. I read them. And sometimes, I
sit quietly and let them find me.
Why Stories Still Matter
Facts can tell us what’s happening to the
planet and the world around us. But stories?
Stories go deeper than that.
Stories help us feel it.
They aren’t just escapism. They aren’t just a respite from the busy world.
They’re emotional knowledge.
They’re how we process what the facts alone can’t hold.
“The point of a story can penetrate deeper than the point of a bullet.”
Because now, the noise is everywhere.
The urgency is relentless.
And sometimes, the hardest thing to do is feel something all the way through
without shutting down.
They let us linger in complexity.
They let us sit with characters who are flawed and afraid and still trying.
They remind us that we’re not alone in our ache—or our hope.
Not just stories for the sake of telling them. But stories that carry
something.
Stories shaped like offerings.
Stories that don’t chase attention—but wait for the listener who needs them.
If the facts feel like too much—or not enough…
Maybe what you need isn’t more information.
Maybe it’s a story.
One that just lets you feel your way forward, for a little while.
That’s what this space is for.
There are studies and statistics about climate
change, biodiversity collapse, and pollution. The graphs are stark. The numbers
are terrifying. We know the science—if we want to know it. But even then, the
science isn’t always easy to hold. It changes as new discoveries are made. It
asks us to understand probabilities, uncertainties, evolving models. It demands
a kind of precision that can feel distant, even disorienting.
But what moves people—what stays with them—is
often a character, a moment, an image. A single line of dialogue. A breath held
between hope and grief.
Storytelling is one of the oldest forms of
human understanding. Before there were maps, there were myths. Before data,
there were tales passed from voice to voice. Stories carried knowledge. They
carried warnings. They carried dreams. And they still do.
That’s why fiction matters. That’s why poetry
matters.
Stories let us wrap grief in language. They
let us speak of longing without always naming it. They allow us to imagine what
could be—while still honoring what’s already been lost.
There’s a quote of mine that’s circulated for
almost twenty years. It’s simple, but I still believe it:
That line came from a place of deep
conviction. At the time, I was working on a novel that wrestled with political
violence and the power of narrative. And I kept seeing how story could cut
through noise. How it could open something in people—not through argument, but
through empathy.
And that hasn’t changed.
In many ways, it’s only become more important.
Stories can hold space for that feeling.
I think that’s part of what Stone and
Signal is about, too.
So if the world feels too loud to understand
right now…
One that doesn’t demand you believe anything.
And that’s why I keep telling stories.
My Own Stories: Dragons, Youth, and the Earth
In my own writing, I’ve tried to create
stories that carry the weight of the world—but still leave space for light.
In Rephlexions, the world is quietly
infiltrated by an AI system designed by a single organization. On the surface,
everything seems seamless. But beneath it, control is tightening. Yet even in
that world, there’s space—in nature, in analogue art, in the resistance that
begins not with violence, but with imagination.
In Inversion, the Earth is transformed
by a climate shift no one saw coming. Volcanoes erupt, ice swallows the planet,
and ancient worlds begin to surface. But even there—within the upheaval—there
is space. For family. For quiet. For love.
In my Draconim series, I follow a group
of teens bonded to ancient dragons—not through magic, but through shared
purpose. Each teen is connected to an environmental crisis: air pollution,
water contamination, forest fires, habitat loss. They aren’t superheroes.
They’re just young people who care too much to stay quiet—and who find each
other, slowly, across distance and difference.
Their dragons are old—not mystical, not
all-powerful, but wise. Rooted.
The bond is emotional. Spiritual. Intergenerational.
A passing of the torch.
It’s memory.
It’s protest.
It’s prayer.
And loss.
I had Amy’s hands, carving the driftwood.
I had Kai, standing at the shoreline, watching waves that no longer seemed
innocent.
There’s a moment in the third book, Fingerprints
in the Water, where Kai—the teen connected to the ocean—watches his
girlfriend, Amy, carve a piece of driftwood. She shapes it into a version of
Turtle Island, surrounded by dragons and ocean creatures. It’s not just art.
It holds grief. And hope.
That scene came out of a real ache. I’d just
read a news article about whales washing up with stomachs full of garbage. I’d
been listening to youth climate leaders speak with more courage than most
politicians. And I wanted readers to feel that—not through statistics,
but through story.
I remember writing that chapter after reading
about microplastics being found in human blood—and brain tissue. I felt that
sick, sinking pressure in my chest—the kind you don’t have words for. But I had
characters.
Fiction let me speak what I couldn’t explain.
What might not be heard—if it wasn’t told in a story.
And I’ve learned that when I write from that
place—not from a plan, but from that ache—readers feel it too.
The Power of Story in the Age of Collapse
There are days I wonder why I keep writing.
The world feels like it’s unraveling. The
systems we once trusted—governments, institutions, technologies—are showing
their cracks. The climate is no longer whispering in subtle signs. It’s
shouting. Flooding. Burning. Shaking us awake in the middle of the night.
And still, we scroll.
My words often feel lost in an abyss of
thought and commentary, swallowed by the churn of constant content. The speed
of the world makes it hard to be heard unless you shout—or entertain. And I’ve
never been good at either.
In an ocean of books and podcasts and voices,
mine feel like the strange, luminous creatures of the deep—rarely seen,
surfacing only when caught by accident in a trawler’s net, or glimpsed by the
lights of a passing submersible. Down there, I believe they shine. Quietly.
Patiently. But in a culture built on speed and visibility, few dive that deep.
And yet, I still return to the blank page.
To the mic.
To the story that hasn’t yet taken shape, but insists on being told.
Not because I believe it will change the world overnight.
But because some things need to be said anyway.
Signals sent forward.
Shelters for the truths we’re not yet ready to face.
One line that stays with a reader for years.
One imagined world that helps someone survive this one.
And people, slowly, change the world.
Especially now.
But because I’ve seen what happens when a story meets someone exactly where
they are—and helps them keep going, just a little longer.
That’s everything.
Water, who was here long before us—and will be here long after.
Water, who remembers everything and judges nothing.
Water, who observes—not with detachment, but with permanence.
To the voice of water.
Not because I think it will go viral.
Because stories aren’t just for now. They’re
for what comes next.
They’re messages in bottles.
A story can land in someone’s life years after
it was written—quietly, without ceremony—and still move something. Still open a
door. Still carry a little light into a dark room.
I write because I still believe we can change.
That we must change. That young people can lead us. That grief, when given
form, can become action.
And I know I’m not alone.
There are so many writers and artists and
creators doing this work quietly, without platform or spotlight—planting seeds
in their stories, trusting they will gr ow in unseen places. You might never
know the names of some of them. You might never see their work shelved in a
store. But their words matter.
Sometimes, one sentence is all it takes.
Books change people.
Even now.
So I keep writing.
Not because I always know how, or feel brave
enough, or think it’s working.
That’s enough.
Reflection & Invitation
In The Life of Phi, I did something
different.
I gave the story another voice—an observer.
Not a character. Not a narrator. But something older. Something quieter.
Something elemental.
Water.
The story is set in a near-future world where
an AI—designed to heal the environment—has been released because humanity could
not change course on its own. Our species kept marching down the road of
environmental manipulation and destruction, even as the signs grew impossible
to ignore.
And in this world, the biases of our
societies—so often buried in data, in power, in policy—are made visible through
the lens of the AI itself. What it protects. What it sacrifices. Who it deems
essential. Who it does not.
Religion, too, has shifted. In many places, it
no longer guides belief—it governs it. It becomes a tool of control, not a
vessel of faith.
And through it all… there is water.
Water, who has no side.
In The Life of Phi, water speaks at the
beginning of every chapter. Its voice takes the form of poetry. A rhythm that
flows beside the narrative, reminding us that while humans are busy trying to
control everything, something vaster has always been watching.
I’d like to take a moment now to listen to
that voice.
I invite you to listen with me.
I am the first memory of Earth,
Born in the violent birth of worlds,
When cosmic dust danced with stellar fire
And gravity drew me from the void.
I have been ocean, cloud, and ice,
Flowed through the veins of dinosaurs,
Frosted the wings of ancient dragonflies,
And nestled in the wombs of early mammals.
I remember when I was mountain snow,
And when I was morning dew on the first flower.
I have been tears of joy and sorrow,
Blood in warriors, milk in mothers.
You look at rivers and see separation—
This bank, that bank, here and there.
But beneath the surface, I am one flow,
Moving, merging, always whole.
I have been male sweat and female tears,
Coursed through bodies of all designs,
Been part of those who fit no mold,
And those who transformed like me.
In deserts, I am precious gold.
In floods, I am feared destruction.
In life, I am eternal change,
Shifting forms but never essence.
I have flowed through hearts that love differently,
Through minds that think in varied hues,
Through bodies shaped by nature's artistry—
Each vessel unique, yet each containing me.
You see the surface tension that divides,
The ripples that make patterns strange.
But I have been every kind of water
That has ever been or will be.
I have tasted every difference,
Moved through every form of life,
And let me share this ancient truth:
It is the mixing that makes us strong.
Like tributaries joining the sea,
Like rain returning to the source,
We are all the same water,
Flowing in different streams.
Remember me, for I remember all—
Every shape that held my essence,
Every form that gave me purpose,
Every difference that made me whole.
Let the voice of water sit with you, if it speaks. Or if it simply flows
past, that’s okay too.
It will be here—watching, listening, waiting—long after we’re gone.
Until next time, may your signal find the stones that hold it.
Thank you for listening.
If this resonated with you,
stay. Listen to it again. Share it with a friend. Come back again when you are
ready.
If you'd like to support this work, the best way is through
my books—available wherever you buy yours. They're how I fund the quiet time it
takes to make something like this.
My essays and poems you can find
on my blog at lawrencenault.me.
Just click on ‘Journal’.
Transcripts and reflections are
live on my blog.
Thank you for listening.
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