A Year in the Bank: ADHD, Face Blindness and the Freedom to Walk Out | The Impossible Puzzles Show, Episode 326

This is the complete interview from Richard Lowe’s fourth regular appearance on The Impossible Puzzles Show with Mike Merkur, episode 326, recorded October 28, 2026, presented in full and lightly edited for readability.

How does Richard Lowe live with ADHD and autism?

Mike Merkur: Welcome back, everyone, to the Impossible Puzzles Show. It’s episode 326, good Lord, and we’re saying hello once again to the lovely, fascinating, colorful-shirted mega author, super extraordinary… ladies, lock up your… ladies, lie to your husbands and run to Richard Lowe. Oh, I said too much. How are we doing over here? You’re back for more?

Richard Lowe: More torture. Oh, Merkur, what are you going to do to me now?

Mike Merkur: I always joke that I don’t know who’s going to shut us down first, the ultra-Orthodox Jews or the anti-Semites, or somewhere in the middle.

Richard Lowe: Well, I must like the torture, because I keep coming back.

Mike Merkur: It’s just life. You’re pumping out books like crazy. You are an interesting guy, a fascinating gentleman. Every time you speak, my IQ goes up. I have to learn that these things hanging off my face, these ears, are for listening, and this thing in front, I’ve got to shut it and let them take in some wisdom. You’re smiling. How’s life? How are we doing over here?

Richard Lowe: Life is pretty good, thanks. Got some customers, got some books I’m writing, got some things I’m finishing, birthday’s coming up. Life is good.

Mike Merkur: You are one who just pumps out content. There are so many people I know with ADHD or neurodiversity or neuro-spiciness, the new term, who get hit hard by life. They don’t fit into anything. And sometimes I talk to them and I’m like, no, you have gifts. There are gifts hidden in dyslexia and autism and ADHD. I guess the self-esteem gets knocked a bit when we can’t fit, round peg in a square hole. But your work ethic is prolific. I can relate. There’s no limit to hyperfocusing and mega accomplishments and innovation. There are people in your life who’ve gotten their butts kicked by the rigid societal norms we live in, but you’re not getting your butt kicked. You have a glowing smile.

Richard Lowe: I do. Life is good. Life is good. ADHD and autism and all.

Mike Merkur: How do you celebrate and cope with your unique brain?

Richard Lowe: Well, it’s my brain, so I figure I’ve got what I’ve got. There’s no sense putting it down. There’s no sense thinking I’m less than I am. It’s got some gifts. It’s got some downsides. I’ll hyperfocus through the whole day and look up, and it’s midnight. The last time it happened, it was 2 a.m. The only thing I did was get up to eat or something. Whole day gone, meetings forgotten, everything forgotten. That can be very frustrating, but I got a lot done. And I just made an application using Claude that basically says, get off your butt and get outside. Every couple of hours it puts up a notification.

Mike Merkur: We’re very similar. I was looking at my calendar, and I’m like, oh, I’m going to get to a thousand episodes, I’m going to be a prolific podcaster. And my wife’s like, “Did you eat anything today? Isn’t it five o’clock?” And I’m like, well, in San Francisco it’s only two o’clock. And she’s like, “So are you going to eat anything today?” And I’m like, when I’m done with my Opus Clip and my YouTube and my LinkedIn and the tools I’m using and my prep for the presentations. Eventually she comes down with bread or some leftovers and says, “All right, you’re eating something. We can’t have this go on.” I always joke about the quintessential messy basement, with endless toys and puzzles everywhere. I need a certain… the term I’ve heard is a dungeon, or a man cave. I need my space to do my thing.

Richard Lowe: And I keep everything spotless and in its place.

How does a ghostwriter keep six books straight at the same time?

Mike Merkur: You’re the opposite. You’re the OCD side of eccentric, autistic wildness. A little bit. How do you keep track of so many books in your mind at the same time? How does it all connect? Because most people cannot put one idea after the next.

Richard Lowe: I just do. I just do. I usually write six books at a time, a couple of client books and a few for me, and I just keep them straight. It’s interesting going between them. I’m writing a thriller kind of fiction plot now for somebody, another person’s memoir, and another person’s technical book. And for me, I’m writing another thriller and a science fiction book. I’ve got an interesting series of my own books going, too. I wrote a book called My Boss Is Insane, and I decided it needs two more books to finish the series. One of them is My Employees Suck. The last one is The Company I Work For Doesn’t Give a Shit. And they all lead to the same conclusion, which is that you need to become self-employed. Or you need to at least have enough finances that you can walk out tomorrow and not feel it.

Why should you keep enough money in the bank to walk out of a job?

Mike Merkur: It’s so interesting. What’s the saying, golden handcuffs? Where you feel stuck in a repetitive cycle. I know so many people who tell me explicitly, “Oh, man.” I’m like, let me interview you for half an hour, an hour, come on. And they’re like, “I can’t say anything. I work for the government. I can’t say anything, I work as a rabbi. I can’t say anything, I work as an educator.” I’m like, I know what you do. You could say some things. And they’re like, “Well, the things I want to say would get me fired immediately.” Isn’t that interesting, in 2026, in the futuristic world of AI? There are so many weird ruts that people are falling into. I understand there are people who have to pay off debts and they get trapped. But not everyone is so trapped, and not everyone wants to do their own thing.

Richard Lowe: It’s not so much doing your own thing. It’s making sure that you can walk out if you need to. Because if you’re putting up with a job that you hate because you can’t leave, because you don’t have the money to leave, then you’re in a trap of your own making. So yeah, you’ve got bills. You’ve got a house payment, you’ve got credit cards up to whatever, you’ve got a car, and you’ve probably got a kid you’re paying through college. But if you’ve got some money in the bank, say six months to a year, you could walk out. I would recommend a year in the bank. And if you don’t have that, then you should be working towards that first. Then you work on investments and things like that to make it even better. Your whole life should be aimed at making sure that you don’t stay at a place because you’re afraid to leave.

Mike Merkur: You should not stay at a place because… yeah. Do not stay at a place and be a… look at me, twisting my tongue. What is it that keeps people, in your book research and exploration? Why do people stick in that crappy relationship, that failing company, that horrible job, that miserable routine?

What does it feel like to finally leave a job you hate?

Richard Lowe: I was in those. I was in a marriage that was horrible, and I decided to stay because she was sick, because I didn’t have the money to leave, because I was afraid of what divorce meant. I could name you a hundred excuses, and I stayed and stayed and stayed. She eventually passed away, and that’s really not the way out that you want.

Same with the job. I stayed because I didn’t think I could get a higher-paying job somewhere else. And in every single case, my boss kept me there by saying, “Nobody else is going to hire you at the rate we’re paying you. You’ll find it tough to get another job. The job market’s tough,” blah, blah, blah. And I fell for it, and I stayed in these places. When I finally left, because it was killing me and I wanted out, and I had enough money that I could, the breath of freedom was like…

Mike Merkur: Wow. The breath of freedom. Go on, unpack this, author of authors. The breath of freedom. Talk about it.

Richard Lowe: Well, finally I was free. I didn’t have a marriage that I hated. If you’re in a good marriage, that’s a different thing. I didn’t have a job that I hated. I didn’t even have the religious organization that I hated. I didn’t have all these things, the friends I didn’t like, all of it. I moved from California to Florida, so I basically cut all ties, and I was in a new place that I really liked. I had enough money to last a while. I wanted to start my own business, because I had enough money to do that, and it was going to be a solopreneur business. I wasn’t interested in having people work for me, because that’s a different kind of chains. When you’ve got people who work for you, you have to think of them. So I decided I’m just going to do work for myself, be a solopreneur, and I became a ghostwriter eventually, after trying about five other things.

And the freedom is incredible. I don’t have to answer to anybody except my clients occasionally, the tax man, the landlord, and a few other people. And one thing that happened is that I don’t give a hoot what other people think of me. I’m not an idiot. I don’t put out stupid things on the internet like some people do and wind up getting attacked. I’m relatively cognizant of what will cause that kind of thing. I don’t need to be canceled. That’s a different kind of non-freedom. It’s a very interesting position to be in, and I’m smart enough to know what to do and what not to do to remain free. I’ve never even had an interaction with the police that wasn’t pleasant. Never used drugs, never drank, never smoked, never gambled.

It’s funny. Sometimes you build your own chains. You smoke… I don’t know if you smoke, but people smoke, and it says right on the carton of cigarettes, in the United States at least, that this will kill you. Why would you do something when it says right on the package that it will kill you? Same with alcohol. My dad was an alcoholic, so that was a no-brainer for me. And it feels really good to not have to. If I want to be lazy, I can be lazy. There’s a limit, because I have to make money to pay the bills, but I know what those limits are. And there you go.

Why doesn’t Richard Lowe medicate his ADHD?

Mike Merkur: It’s fascinating. I guess it’s also fortunate that you’re podcasting, you’re authoring, you’re entrepreneurial, and people rub off on each other in interesting ways in the world of podcasters, guesting and hosting. People always ask me, how do you know this person? Well, if you have a podcast and you reach out to someone, it’s a lot different than saying, “Hi, can I bother you for 20 minutes?” I even suggested to someone the other day that if you reach out to people and ask for guidance, that’s a lot better than saying, “Can I bother you for 15 minutes?” How many emails and LinkedIn messages do I get per day like that? But then someone writes, “Hey, Merkur, I’m very curious if I could interview you for a podcast,” and I’m like, a podcast! How many buttons should I unbutton?

Keep your clothes on. We don’t want to scare people. We don’t need to see any hairy Jewish chest. That was the other podcast, with the other Mike Merkur, my demonic twin. The world of the creatives and the neurodivergent is kind of like a secret club, where everyone is bonded together: the creative books and the best ideas and the inventors and the overhydrated super techies. Even today, a woman I’d never met before, in Vienna, and we talked for almost two hours. She has something like 8,000 subscribers on one channel and 5,000 on another, and she’s put together eight different podcasts. And I was like, whoa, this is awesome. And she says the secret is one word: ADHD. Plus Ritalin. And I’m like, yes, yes, muscle time.

Richard Lowe: Fortunately, I’ve never had to use any medications for that kind of stuff. It’s not something that I feel I need to control. I let it loose.

Mike Merkur: Explain. You let your mental wizardry…

Richard Lowe: I see my neurodiversity as an advantage that other people don’t have. So I just let it out and let it do what it’s going to do. Fortunately, none of it’s destructive, at least not much. There are areas in life where I need to keep it under control. I probably shouldn’t hyperfocus on some things. The time blindness can be super annoying, because I lose track of time. So I’ve got applications that pop up on my computer and say, it’s time to go to this meeting.

Why does Richard Lowe forget people he spent years with?

Mike Merkur: Use the calendar. Your time blindness, what’s it like for you?

Richard Lowe: I’ll tell you, face blindness is one. I don’t know if I’ve told you this story before, but I’ll tell it again. Face blindness is the worst. That’s where I don’t recognize faces. I don’t remember them. That’s the thing with ADHD: memories don’t record unless they have some kind of positive or even negative impact. If nothing happens, if we’re just having a conversation, I won’t remember it.

So I was in a restaurant a few months ago, standing in line, minding my own business. This woman who worked there as a waitress comes up to me, looks at me and says, “Richard, Richard, how are you doing?” And she puts a big old hug on me. I’m like, I don’t know who this person is. I’m not one to just have that kind of conversation with somebody I don’t know, and she’s hugging me a little bit too intimately, not a lot. Then she backs up and says, “You don’t remember me, do you?” And I said, “I don’t have a clue. I have no idea who you are.” She said, “That’s very funny to me, because back at the last place you lived, we used to walk around the block every single day for an hour, for almost three years, and just talk and talk and talk.”

She wasn’t insulted or anything. She was laughing at me. And I faked it. I said, “Oh, yeah, yeah, I remember you.” I still have no clue who she was. She said some things that made me understand that yes, she and I had talked. But if you asked me to pin it down, I don’t know when, and I don’t know her. That’s face blindness. It’s just gone, because it was just talking. She was talking, I was listening, and she was somebody to walk with, so it didn’t make any impression.

That’s one of the ways it’s like to be ADHD, and time blindness is very similar. I can have an entire week that I can’t remember. I did a lot of stuff. I finished a couple of books, got paid by clients, had a podcast with you, and I don’t remember any of it. That whole week is gone.

Mike Merkur: You said it first. People ask me questions sometimes and I’m like, just a second, and I quickly search their name: okay, he was episode 206. I was at a graduation event for a program I was in, all around HR and venture talent and hiring and onboarding. Great program. There were a hundred people there, and the minute I walked in, seven different people either ran up to me or hugged me. One girl came up and hugged me and said, “I told you, you spelled my name wrong.” I’m like, nice to meet you. She’s like, “You don’t remember? We sat for an hour and a half. We filmed the podcast, and I told you all about this software I’m building. Annette, one N, two Ts.” And I’m like, yes, Annette, two Ns and one T. And she’s like, “No.” It’s scary sometimes when you interview a lot of people.

Richard Lowe: It’s even worse when it’s a girlfriend I don’t remember I had. I’ve had several. I’m older, so I’ve had many, and one came up. We’d had the usual things boyfriends and girlfriends have, and I didn’t remember her at all. Women get insulted by that, because you don’t remember all those tender moments and romantic things. “You don’t remember me.” Nope. Of course, I had to fake it. “Oh, yeah, I remember that night we spent.” I don’t remember a damn thing. It used to drive my wife crazy, because I didn’t know I was ADHD back then. I’d have that second or two of delay, and she’d say, “You don’t remember my name, do you?”

Why do people with ADHD cut someone off without warning?

Mike Merkur: And she’d get pissed off. My wife puts up with so much. People always ask me, “How are you married? How do you have kids?” My wife has worked with a lot of characters in special education and alternative learning, with people who are blind and people with severe handicaps. And people are like, “Wow, fortune is favoring you, Merkur.” And I’m like, hey, wait a second. We all need someone, a girlfriend, a wife, a sibling, to help us a little. My wife’s like, “Did you eat anything today? Here’s some food.” And I’m like, oh, crap. Time blindness and face blindness. I look back and I don’t know how I survived university and college.

I went to a program once, and someone said, “Remember how you fought with the co-founder of Waze in front of an audience of 40 people, and it was filmed?” And I’m like, did I do that? I’m sorry. They’re like, “No, Merkur, the crazy dragon Merkur who shouts at angry rich Israelis in public. You’re the only person I’ve ever met who shouts at former military intelligence turned mega-affluent business experts in their own programs, insulting them.” And I don’t even remember. Then they pull out the video and I’m like, okay, I think I may have had too much Jack Daniel’s. Have you had outbursts and messed with people to the point where you’re like, okay, I’m just going to hide in my man cave for a couple of years?

Richard Lowe: Not really. I think it’s an ADHD symptom. I haven’t really looked into it. I just tend to not even notice people unless I notice them. My dad used to get all pissed off. There’d be a child screaming in a supermarket, and he would go up there and threaten the child, and he’d grab the parents and practically slug them because the kid was screaming and wouldn’t stop. “You need to get your child under control.” Me, I always look at a kid and go, kids will be kids, and the kid vanishes from my mind. He might as well not be there. I’d trip over him. He’s that invisible to me.

People just disappear, which is a disadvantage, because I don’t tend to notice when I’m being harmed by people, because they’ve vanished. And then I realize, oh my God, this person is actually harmful to me. And then they’re gone from my life, because I stop seeing them and stop having anything to do with them. They don’t know why, because they’ve been doing the same thing all along. I don’t bother to explain, because I don’t care anymore. They were harming me. One of the symptoms of ADHD, kind of an add-on symptom, is RSV, I think it’s called. Somebody will say something and I’m just done with them. It’s gone. I’m super pissed, and I may not even know why until I sit there and really think about it. Oh yeah, they said that. But they’re gone, and they never come back.

Mike Merkur: Yeah, RSD. How do you explain that to people who are new to it? I have that a lot. There are people I’ve known for five or ten years, and they’re like, “We used to hang out every day. I’ve messaged you 50 times. How much free food have you eaten at my house? You spent time with my kids.” And I’m like, oh, you insulted me that one time, you said something nasty about this. I have this thing in my brain where something triggers and I run away. And they’re like, “But you don’t even return the phone call.” There are people in my life I’ve completely forgotten about, and then I see them and they’re like, “I’m your uncle. I haven’t seen you for ten years.” And I’m like, oh, you insulted me once about my colorful socks.

Richard Lowe: Oh my God, Michael, I just asked Claude, and you were right. It’s RSD. It stands for rejection sensitive dysphoria, and it means intense emotional pain triggered by real or perceived rejection, criticism or failure, far stronger than the situation seems to warrant, and fast. A neutral email, a delayed reply or a minor critique can land like a gut punch. Yeah, that’s what happens. I’ll get an email from a client that says, “I need to postpone this week,” and they don’t say why. And I’m like, oh my God, they’re going to cancel the contract. And no, they just weren’t available.

Mike Merkur: Yeah, that happened yesterday. Someone said, “I’m sorry, I know we planned this two or three weeks in advance, but I’m not able to make it to the podcast.” And for an hour I was like, I should shut off the podcast and delete all the videos. I’m a failure. And then an hour later, it’s like, but you didn’t do anything wrong. I’ve had so many weird experiences. Negative comments. Someone leaves an interview right away, and I’m like, is everything okay? Here’s the link to rejoin. And they’re like, “No, I find you to be not professional in your craft.” Or “You insulted me.” Or “I didn’t know you were going to share your screen and go to my website.” Or halfway through the episode, “Let’s stop here and don’t post it.” And I’m like, okay, I’m not going against you. This is open media. There’s no agenda here. And they’re like, “You made me admit things I would never admit.” And I’m like, well, I was just talking about my own messed-up stuff.

Richard Lowe: My response would be, you have a brain. If you don’t want to say something, you shouldn’t have said it. TFB, too effing bad. I don’t tolerate that.

Mike Merkur: Everyone who knows me says, “Oh, you always take everything so personally.” I’m like, yeah, it’s a mental health thing.

Richard Lowe: It tends to bounce off until it doesn’t. Somebody will insult me and insult me, or manipulate me and manipulate me, and it builds up and builds up until the last straw hits. I don’t explode in anger. Usually I just wind up done. And it happens with organizations, too. To them I’m doing really well in the organization. I was in a speaking organization, and it was going fine. I was giving speeches once or twice a week, kind of a podcast-like thing for them. They kept giving me speeches, and nobody would show up. It was just me and the host. That’s really frustrating. We did four or five of them, and I was being real pleasant and really nice, but inside, not even known to me, I was getting really pissed off, because it meant she wasn’t trying to get people to come, or she was failing at it. And finally I just said, “I’m done,” and withdrew from the whole thing. I couldn’t even explain it at the time. It built up to the point where I didn’t want anything to do with it anymore.

Mike Merkur: Yeah. It’s so…

Richard Lowe: It’s annoying sometimes.

How should someone with ADHD handle hard criticism?

Mike Merkur: It’s hard sometimes. I can do superhuman or irregular things that no one else can do, and then fail at very, very simple things, like remembering exactly what someone just told me, or taking notes on a list of things I’m supposed to do in a regular job. My wife’s like, “Oh, what happened?” And I’m like, it was them. And she’s like, “This is the fifteenth time, Michael.” And I’m like, but it’s always them. “Well, it can’t always be them.” And of course I remember that I left my notepad at home, so I couldn’t write it down.

It feels great even confessing this. I’ve learned in life that whenever someone gives me really hard criticism, I immediately write it down, say thank you, and say, this is part of a neurological challenge I have, and I’m working on it. And then I say, but I’m really good at systems thinking. If you want to envision mega-map technology and invent crazy things, I’m good at that. But yes, I interrupt people, and I’m crazy and all over the place.

The other day someone asked me, “What’s this podcast really about?” Most people don’t ask. They’re just happy to come on and hang out, and we make it fun. And I’m like, the topic is everything, anywhere, all at once. Remember that movie? There are obviously people who are super busy, with so much on their plate. But when I’m doing outreach, there are people who want to come on immediately, and other people who say, “What’s this really about? Can you send me an episode? Have you interviewed rabbis before? Is this a Jewish thing?” I have trouble explaining to the rabbis coming next week that an evangelical Christian guy took over one episode to talk about being born again. There was a lot of Genesis, Exodus and Leviticus, but also some non-Jewish elements.

And I’ve learned that people like it when I say there’s no topic. The less you prepare, the better. And they’re like, “Really? I can talk about anything?” A woman in Germany said no one had ever shared their screen and insulted her website. “I’m a very important person.” And I’m like, well, we have to uplift you by finding fault in what you’re doing. And she’s like, “No one in my entire life has spoken to me that way.”

I remember a prominent rabbi I was arguing with once, and I said, well, if you’d learned how to type as a child, you wouldn’t be so technologically backward. The whole room went silent. He turned his head like this. And I paused, and I thought, oh, I crossed the line. And then he let out the loudest belly laugh I have ever heard. It echoed in the room, and he kept laughing for like five minutes. And then he bought a laptop and started learning how to type. One of his students, a junior rabbi, came up and said, “You know, Rabbi Shine has never laughed in public before, and no one tells him what to do, ever.” And I’m like, yeah, I’m kind of the medieval fool who says all the wrong things to people in power. You too. You step on people’s toes a bit, and they like you.

Why don’t churches make room for people with ADHD?

Richard Lowe: No way. I never do that. Speaking of evangelical Christian stuff, I was baptized a couple of years ago. It was an interesting experience. I was going to a big Christian church here in Clearwater, a congregation of probably 3,000 people who attend every Sunday and through the week. I was going because people need religion in their life, I think, and I decided, okay, I’m going to get baptized.

Their baptisms are at the beach. I didn’t want to go to the beach. I didn’t want to be baptized with a group of 300 people at the beach. It’s too many people. I’m ADHD. I don’t want all these people around. So finally, after I’d waited a whole year, they had one in the church, because it was too cold. It’s a big tub, and everybody’s marching through. So I go there in my sweatpants and my sweatshirt, because I know I’m going to get wet. I didn’t realize that sweatpants are very heavy when they get wet.

So I go in, into the water, and I feel like I’m being drowned. I feel like a drowned rat. There are pictures, too, and I just look at them and go, oh God, it looks like a drowned rat. It didn’t have the life-changing euphoria that some people say they have. It was okay. I did it. And I’m walking out, and I barely make it to the bathroom, and the sweatpants just fall right off. They were that heavy. I’d kept my hands on them, or my pants would have been left behind.

That was my baptism. Some people walk out of there floating on clouds. For me, it was more something I had to do. And then I wrote a book called The ADHD Christian, which points out what’s wrong with churches in general, Christian churches anyway, because they’re not made for neurodiverse people. The whole thing drives me crazy, because it’s all big crowds, and they don’t even acknowledge that ADHD exists. There’s no support mechanism, and there should be. I wrote it for people who go to church, and then I have chapters for the pastors: here’s what you need to do to make it more viable for those of us who aren’t necessarily neurotypical.

Mike Merkur: I like the term neuro-spicy, as opposed to neurodivergent or the neurodiversity crowd. Many people in my life are always saying, you know what you’re really doing? You’re taking Jewish religious teachings, which are archaic and in dead languages and impossible to navigate, and you’re doing something for the neurodivergent crowd. I thought I was making puzzles for kids, or teaching beginners. But the reality is that I’m the ideal customer profile. Duh. What’s your interpretation?

Richard Lowe: Same as that. Your target audience is yourself and people like you, and probably children like you, who don’t think quite the standard way and need a way in so they can understand, get help, and get into their faith more. That’s to be respected.

Mike Merkur: I guess it’s different in the Jewish religion. There are many things where being neurodivergent is kind of accepted, like people rocking back and forth while learning or praying, which I do all the time. That’s not called stimming. That’s called creating the vibes of learning. And people shouting eccentrically over one another in a public room, also called a family dinner. Oops, I said too much. And the tangential thinking is common in the really old books, like the Book of Proverbs or Talmudic learning. The ideas are all scattered.

What does a peaceful family dinner feel like to someone raised in chaos?

Richard Lowe: I’ve got a little story on family dinners. When I lived in California, probably 20 years ago, after Claudia passed, I went up to San Jose for one of my sister’s children’s weddings. I flew in and made it for the reception, not the wedding. My sister made me comfortable. My sister’s great. I sat down, started talking to people, looked around, and thought, this is really, really weird. This is utterly strange to me. I’m totally out of place here. I kept trying to put my finger on what was missing.

And I realized: nobody’s fighting. Nobody’s arguing. Nobody’s raising their voice. Everybody’s having fun. Everybody’s being themselves. No fathers are yelling at their sons. No children are being taken out back and smacked for speaking. And I’m not kidding. That’s the way it was when I grew up. It was the first time in my entire life, literally, that I’d been at a family gathering, anybody’s, not just mine, where everybody was peaceful and having a good time. If my dad had been there, he would have found somebody to scream at. My mom would have been sitting in a corner, pissed off at something or other, and they’d probably be arguing with each other and making little comments about everybody’s dress. That was normal for them. This was totally foreign to me, and I remember it to this day.

Mike Merkur: There is a thing, maybe a family thing or a communal thing, when you know a lot of people, where there’s the pickiness of looking at people and judging and finding fault. There’s a pettiness there. I always thought it was funny that there are the religious ideas, whatever the belief system is, and then there are the cultural norms, which are usually quite different: the communal expectations, the clothing, the hats. I remember asking a rabbi when I was younger, why do we wear the stupid little hats? And he said, “You can’t ask that. That’s a cultural norm. If you have complicated theological questions, fine, but that’s culture.” And why is the Sabbath on Saturday…

Richard Lowe: I’ll give you a joke. I always assumed it was to keep your head safe from the birds.

Mike Merkur: That’s a joke. Cover the bald spot.

Richard Lowe: Cover the bald spot. You know, prevent skin cancer, the whole thing.

Mike Merkur: Who needs a haircut? You can just twist your sideburns.

Richard Lowe: I could come up with jokes on that all night long. Sorry.

Mike Merkur: No, no. It’s great.

Richard Lowe: Probably going to hell.

What is Richard Lowe’s novel The Eternal War about?

Mike Merkur: You’ve gone through quite a shift the last couple of years, becoming more interested in spirituality. I would not be able to live without these things. People call them crutches. I might not be the most normal practitioner of ultra-Orthodox Judaism, and I may waver like any person, but every day, for at least half an hour or an hour, there’s a need, a desperate need, for faith and God and religion. You can call it a crutch. You can call it the opiate of the masses. But I don’t fit in. I never fit into anything. I’m like a dog in a world of cats. So I need a bedrock. I need the old books in front of me. I can’t sleep at night until I go through my puzzles. You draw on faith, too, even on a personal level, not necessarily running to a synagogue or a church. How does it work for you?

Richard Lowe: I like it. I like it. I wrote another book called God Is Everything, which takes what’s called a Gnostic point of view. It’s completely different from Christianity, and Christians probably won’t like it. It talks about how God is the universe itself, every atom, everything in the universe. There’s no he, she or it. God is God. And you can have whatever belief you want, because it’s all true. It’s quite an interesting book. I decided to write it just for the hell of it. Probably going to go to hell because of it, but whatever. I think Lucifer and I will get along.

I also wrote a book called The Eternal War, about the war between heaven and hell, Lucifer and God. It starts with a demon coming out of the ground in Syria during a battle between ISIS and the US. A SEAL team and an ISIS team finally have to join hands and fight this thing back into the ground. Then another demon comes up at a big US base in Turkey that has nukes on it, and it tries to steal the nukes, so the whole NATO alliance has to take it out.

Then there’s an AI in a data center. A terrorist attack destroys the data center, the AI dies, and the AI wakes up in hell. It thinks, I’m in hell, so I must have a soul. Then it corrects itself and says, no, that means I am a soul. Not that I have a soul, I am a soul. A different way to say it. Then it foments a revolution against Lucifer using generals from the past, like Patton and Alexander and Genghis Khan. Churchill wasn’t there, sorry. Churchill wasn’t a general. But ten generals. They get all the way up to Lucifer, convince Lucifer to talk to God, and God and Lucifer have a powwow. And they realize there’s a third party, a different demon, who caused the war between heaven and hell, and they go handle that.

What happens in Richard Lowe’s novel Collision with Andromeda?

Mike Merkur: Fascinating. Your imagination is so vast. This is so mind-boggling.

Richard Lowe: Oh, you want to hear the most mind-boggling of all? Collision with Andromeda. In 4.5 billion years, the Milky Way galaxy is going to collide with the Andromeda galaxy. That’s basic science. So what if the Milky Way doesn’t want to collide with Andromeda? It gets in communication with humans who have made a weapon that makes nothing. It turns space into nothing. The galaxy makes a deal: it won’t destroy them if they launch the nothing bombs at Andromeda, which they do. It takes two and a half million years for them to get there, and the idea is just to cripple Andromeda.

Well, the nothing bombs turn out to be much bigger than expected, because nobody gamed out what four billion of them would do. And it kills Andromeda. The matter is still there, but the being behind the galaxy no longer exists. Andromeda screams, and humans hear that scream. They realize they’re living inside a murderer, the Milky Way galaxy, and they decide to leave. They go to the Bode galaxy, which I think is 20 million light years away, and set up shop there. Then they realize attacks are coming from outside the universe, and they have to go handle that. It keeps building bigger and bigger, and then they find out what God really is, and that’s where it gets fascinating. I like writing big things. This book just keeps building and building. Am I… you look perplexed.

Where should a new reader start Michael Moorcock’s Eternal Champion series?

Mike Merkur: No, I’m not perplexed by many things in life. It’s this book, along with the fact that you have copies of every book around you at home, even though they’re available on Amazon, and somehow you can remember the totality of the theme of any one of hundreds of books. My brain has different gifts. You have a massive literary encyclopedia in your brain. That’s kind of fascinating.

Richard Lowe: I love complicated stories where everything comes together at the end. The books on top there are the Michael Moorcock Eternal Champion series. It’s about 50 novels, plus short stories. The Eternal Champion series is about the war between law and chaos, fighting each other through all eternity. The Eternal Champion is the human being who keeps getting reincarnated to fight on one side or the other, and he never remembers the past. One time he’s fighting on the side of law, one time on the side of chaos. Until the end. There is an end where the Eternal…

Mike Merkur: Oh my God. Okay. Michael Moorcock’s Eternal Champion, the epic fantasy concept, an interconnected multiverse. I’m reading: a saga centering on a tragic immortal warrior doomed to reincarnate across different planes, times and worlds to maintain the cosmic balance between law and chaos. Oh my God. Okay, okay. Where do I start with that?

Richard Lowe: Start with a series called Corum, C-O-R-U-M, and then go to the Elric series. Corum and Elric are the two to start with. They’re heavy fantasy.

Mike Merkur: Is this like Dune?

Richard Lowe: Oh, this puts Dune to shame. This puts Dune to shame. The best books and the best things have always been sort of outside the mainstream.

Mike Merkur: I was going to ask, in my ignorance, is there a movie version?

Richard Lowe: There’s a graphic novel version.

Mike Merkur: Michael Moorcock, yes, the British author.

Richard Lowe: Yeah, he’s British.

Mike Merkur: Comic thrillers, graphic novels, Elric of Melniboné.

Richard Lowe: Yes, he’s the emperor. It’s a very tragic story, and a lot of fun to read.

Mike Merkur: Wow, it has its own map of the world on Wikipedia. Okay, this is more than… oh my God. I guess that’s one of the cool aspects of the Bible and biblical commentary and religious texts, which today are embodied in fantasy literature and epic tales. There have always been legends, Norse mythology, Greek mythology. Today, entertainment and pop culture have watered everything down to a 90-minute video, or a 30-second one. Dune was the first time someone said, you should read this book, it’s very Mike Merkur. And I read it cover to cover, and I don’t read very much. I’m the opposite of you.

Why didn’t Richard Lowe like the ending of Dune: Part Two?

Richard Lowe: Dune is a great book. The sequels I didn’t like, and the ones by his son I can’t stand. I shouldn’t say he’s not a writer. I just can’t stand his style, and he’s a little scattered. But I really liked the first novel. The others, Dune Messiah, Children of Dune and Chapterhouse: Dune, I didn’t really like. I’m not looking forward to the third Dune movie. I’m probably not going to see it. I don’t like what they did with Chani, and I don’t like what they did with Alia. They had to put a girl boss in there, and I’m just not interested in it. That’s what she’s become. And they ruined the story, because they had a beautiful romance there and they took it out.

Mike Merkur: I really like Zendaya as an actress.

Richard Lowe: I don’t. I’m the opposite.

Mike Merkur: Oh, you’re more of a 1984 Dune aficionado kind of guy.

Richard Lowe: No, I don’t like Zendaya. I don’t like her acting style. I think she’s way overhyped, and I don’t think she’s learned to act yet.

Mike Merkur: Interesting. Okay, you’re a tough critic. Denis Villeneuve is a great director. He’s French Canadian, and rumor has it he’s about to do Rendezvous with Rama. He has, what is it, four Academy Awards? He’s fantastic.

Richard Lowe: He knows how to make a movie. I liked the first Dune that he did, and the second one was better, except for the ending. That has to do with Chani, the character Zendaya plays. And here’s what happens at the end. Spoiler: they defeat the emperor. If you’ve been anywhere in the world, you know that. And immediately all of Paul’s warriors get on ships and go off to have this big war, this genocide across the universe. That’s where the third movie comes in. These are people who’ve never been on spaceships before. How do they do this? They just get instant knowledge, and then they go out and conquer the whole galaxy? Excuse me? What about logistics? What about supplies? All the things behind that. My military mind is going, no, this can’t happen. It’s not even theoretically possible. There would be a delay.

Mike Merkur: No, this is fascinating. We’ve opened up a beautiful can of worms. Timing-wise, it’s a bit tricky. We may have to pause.

Richard Lowe: Oh, I’m going to be insulted now.

Mike Merkur: No, no, you’re great. Every time I see you booked on my calendar, I’m like, oh my God, Richard Lowe, author of…

Richard Lowe: You send out a little note that says to set up a new one, and I just follow your instructions and set up a new one.

Mike Merkur: I had to delete that Calendly thing, because people were asking what I was doing with those automated messages. We’ll pause here.

Richard Lowe: We’ll pause here.

Find Richard Lowe at thewritingking.com/.

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