284 – Tom Lin & Who Wants to Live Forever?

2026-06-23

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Would you rather die or live on and on and on and on… That’s one of the questions at the heart of Tom Lin’s Babylon, South Dakota. It’s a novel about a Chinese family who inherit an American farm, and whose lives are forever changed when the US military build strange missile silos on their land. It’s weird, inexplicable, deep, epic, sad and joyful and all the other things that make a good book. But it’s also dark. It prompts questions that might keep you awake in the warm depths of the summer night. And Tom and I talk about all of it.

Would you rather die or live on and on and on and on…

That’s one of the questions at the heart of Tom Lin’s Babylon, South Dakota. It’s a novel about a Chinese family who inherit an American farm, and whose lives are forever changed when the US military build strange missile silos on their land. It’s weird, inexplicable, deep, epic, sad and joyful and all the other things that make a good book.

But it’s also dark. It prompts questions that might keep you awake in the warm depths of the summer night. And Tom and I talk about all of it.

Enjoy.

Other books mentioned:

The Thousand Crimes of Ming Tsu (2021), by Tom Lin
“On Exactitude in Science” (1947), by Jorge Luis Borges
“The Library of Babel,” (1941), by Jorge Luis Borges
Her Smoke Rose Up Forever (1990), by James Tiptree Jr.
End of Days: Ruby Ridge, the Apocalypse and the Unmaking of America (2026), by Chris Jennings

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