PRODOS: Talking and thinking - think and talking. With the world's most fascinating, successful, honorable individuals, here at Prodos.com, on line daily.

Dear listeners, have you ever read a book that seemed to have been written just for you? I never have. Not until last week. I've read books that changed my life forever - for example, Edward DeBono's PO: Beyond Yes And No, a book on Lateral Thinking. And of course, Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead, Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged.

When I read Dr. Andrew Bernstein's new novel, Heart of A Pagan, I was truly quite taken aback. It talked about the physical body, the soul, about religion, about heroism, about inspiration and personal development, overcoming obstacles - enormous obstacles at times - it talked about sop many other issues in a way that I'd often thought about, but not every quite found the words to express.

I want to confess something more, and that is that the most embarrassing thing about this book is that I felt I had been exposed ... as a religious person.

I don't mean religion based on faith, but the religion of reverence of human ability and potential. But more broadly, the lead character, whose name is Swoop, is on a mission from the gods, the pagan gods of the ancients, to inspire physical, mental and moral excellence.

I think that really sums up the mission of my next guest, the author of Heart Of A Pagan: The Story Of Swoop, Dr. Andrew Bernstein. Lovely to have you on the show, thank you for your time!

DR. ANDREW BERNSTEIN: Great to be here, Prodos.

PRODOS: Andy, the book itself is divided into thirteen chapters, and, the way you've titled these chapters, is itself very interesting, because there is a strong religious theme throughout this book. And yet, Swoop ... Swoop is not a priest, he's not a monk, he's not even a soldier. What is he? He's a basketball player! A basketball player, on a mission from the gods. As I'm talking, I just happen to recall, an article of yours years ago, a couple of years ago, Andy, and that was on Michael Jordan, also I remember coming across another article, by Mike Menzer. Obviously, athletics, and the physical body are of great interest to you personally, is that so?

DR. BERNSTEIN: Yes, that's absolutely true. I think, in the field of athletics today, is perhaps the one last bastion, in our Western society, where you can get Heroism in an undiluted form. Where it's not undercut my cynicism, or altruism, or the idea that you have to sacrifice yourself to help the weaker. In sports, you're still admired for winning championships, and for winning the gold medal, and for being the best you can be, and achieving excellence. So, even though the basketball game itself, or the soccer game, or the Olympic gymnastics, or skiing - in and of themselves, they mean very little, they're only games, it's not like curing cancer, or something, you know, of great importance - but what they stand for metaphorically is the quest for excellence, and that's why, I think, people are very often inspired by athletes, as I was, as so many people have been by Michael Jordan - to pursue excellence in our own lives.

PRODOS: You've actually raised quite a number of issues there, Andrew Bernstein, and we'll try and get to all of them.  It's interesting that you admit that sports - including that sport that Swoop, the lead character of Heart Of A Pagan, plays, are games. In other words, in a sense, they're not real, they're a kind of abstraction. A modeling, a microcosm of the world. And I cannot help thinking about the connection with art. Because, isn't art a kind of essentialized view of reality, and of Man. And sports seems to do that as well. It seems to take an abstract, essentialized element of human life, and put it before us, unfolded, almost like theatre in a way. But it's happening live.

DR. BERNSTEIN: Again, I think that's the great virtue of sports. I would stress, I think people have to recognize that the gamer in itself means very little. What difference does it make, who wins the Super Bowl, or who wins the World Cup? But...

PRODOS: So, is the fact that sports are not actually real make it, perhaps, easier to abstract, the performance, and endurance, and the skill ... you know what I mean, like, otherwise, if it was a real issue, we'd be mixed up in the issue, whereas, since it's a game, maybe it makes it easier to abstract those other qualities.

DR. BERNSTEIN: Yes, sports, at their best, are a metaphor for heroism, and for the quest for excellence, and what I love about sports is that, unlike warfare - and during war, you also see great heroism on the part of human beings - but war is all devoted to death and destruction, whereas in sports, nobody has to get hurt, never mind get killed.

And so it's all about heroism, and the quest for excellence, the quest for champions, without having hurt anybody, never mind kill anybody. So that's why, I think, a lot of people ... why sports is so popular in Western society today. Where you mentioned art: notice in movies, and literature, and drama, it's the Era of the Antihero, where human individuals, are very often portrayed as weak, as the plaything of social forces by the Marxists, they're victimized by the Capitalist system, they're exploited. So we don't get much heroism in art anymore, in literature, and so people need that, for inspiration. I think that's why people like Michael Jordan became a worldwide phenomenon. As he himself stated, "I'm just a basketball player!" But it's what he stood for as a basketball player, the quest to achieve personal excellence, that's what inspired so many people. We don't get that from art that much anymore.

PRODOS: Right. Now, Swoop, the main hero of your novel, Heart Of A Pagan, is a basketball player, but he's also put forward as the World's Greatest Athlete. And he's become that ... he's self-made, basically, isn't he?

DR. BERNSTEIN: Well, he's like someone like Michael Jordan, he's obviously born with tremendous physical talent.  Remember Thomas Edison's famous definition of Genius, as one percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration? I think he's right, but the one percent inspiration has to BE there. That talent level. I mean, Ayn Rand, no doubt, worked enormously hard to write her novels, but she was also born with an extraordinary genius. You put those two together, and you get this magnificent writer/philosopher.

So, Swoop is born with an extraordinary amount of physical talent, beyond what most of us have, but, yes, the 99 percent perspiration is there. He has put in an enormous amount of work to develop his talent, the same way Michael Jordan did it in real life.

PRODOS. All right. And yet, what's interesting here, is that the secondary character, who is actually the narrator of the book, Diggs, he does not have a natural physical aptitude, he's physically abnormal, if fact, he's a cripple. If art is a selective recreation of reality, in accordance with an artist's metaphysical value judgments - I hope I've got that right - then, you have chosen a cripple as your narrator. You have given the reader the view of the world, and of heroic Swoop and his adventures, through the eyes of a cripple.

DR. BERNSTEIN: Right. And the point there was to show that, on the one hand, Diggs, the crippled narrator, admires Swoop enormously because Swoop had the physical health, the vitality, the robustness that Diggs lacks. [Diggs is] the trainer of the basketball team in the story. 

And on the other hand, there's an envious kind of resentment, a resentful quality, you know, that Swoop can do all the kinds of things that Diggs can't do. And so the question for Diggs is, am I going to hate Swoop, and join the forces against him that hate him because he's proud, and boastful, and arrogant, and try and cast Swoop down? Or, am I going to take a much more rational, more positive approach to Swoop and let his ability, and his work ethic ... let him change my life, transfigure my life so can I join Swoop on his crusade for personal excellence and begin to develop my bodily health, and my physical robustness and vitality to be the best I can be in the physical area as well as in the intellectual one? That's the question for the narrator.

PRODOS: Yes, and that seems to be one of many very deep and personal philosophical issues that are confronted throughout this novel. Practically on every single page. So, in fact, Diggs, the narrator, is faced with a moral choice.

And he can go one way or the other, and what's interesting because he's a cripple; he also has the burden of other people's pity. And there's no greater burden than pity. I mean, there's nothing more debilitating. You can be missing an arm or a leg, but having pity is very hard to handle.

DR. BERNSTEIN: Yes, that's true.

PRODOS: It's a destructive force.

DR. BERNSTEIN: You're absolutely right, and I think a great artistic dramatization of that was in William Gibson's play, The Miracle Worker. The story of Helen Keller, the blind, deaf and mute young girl who was pitied by her family. And Annie Sullivan, the teacher, comes in and says to the family, the worst affliction she has is not that she's blind, deaf, or mute, it's your pity! You have to respect the mind she has, and consequently the talent, you know, that's latent in there, and can be developed. And the play, and the movie, The Miracle Worker shows that superbly. There's a similar point in Heart Of A Pagan in that, whereas many of the ... the story takes play in rural Iowa, in the Midwest United States, and there's many very religious Christians there, and they pity ... of course, their pity just reinforces his own self-deprecating assessment that he's incapable of achievement in the physical realm.

PRODOS: We should mention that he ends up hating them as well. I mean, he truly despises being pitied. So it's mutually assured destruction, really.

DR. BERNSTEIN: Yeah, definitely, there's a rational part of Diggs that wants to develop. He's a very brilliant philosophy student; he's very highly developed in the intellectual realm. But not so in the physical realm, and there's that healthy, rational part of him that wants to achieve the physical development to match his intellectual development, on the line of the ancient Greek credo of a healthy mind, and a healthy Body, or a sound mind, and a sound body. And Diggs, as an Aristotle scholar, a Classical scholar, he understands that, he wants to live it out. And so Swoop respects him, Swoop sees the potential there, Swoop wants him to work out, and develop his physical side, whereas the Christians pitied him, they don't see the potential there, they don't encourage him to workout, and strengthen his legs, build up his body.

PRODOS: That's interesting, because sometime back, on this show, we did an exclusive with Chet from Calcutta, who'd been studying about Mother Theresa, and the missionaries of charity. And they've got some place there for people who are dying. And, in fact, what this chap uncovered was that Mother Theresa's people were just simply helping people to die and accept death. They did not provide any medical aid or any sort of therapy for people, they just simply helped them to die, and accept that, in the name of this religion. So this is a very real thing that's happening today, it's not just a story that we're talking about. There is a choice. Either we can fight, and overcome the obstacles, or we can surrender.

Now, what's interesting to me, is that you've come in with a novel that is on every page, about moral and philosophical issues, but it's done through the body, it comes through the physical action. I just find that truly extraordinary. It's almost like the physical body is the last vestige of Free Will. Why did you choose an athlete, why did you choose the body?

DR. BERNSTEIN: Yes. But, I would just point out what I think...

PRODOS: I mean, it's about heroism, and about sports ... I'm just going to interject here because, I got a few quotes ... because the human body comes up quite a bit in philosophy, amazingly. I checked through my notes, and, for example, here's Ayn Rand. "Just as man can't exist without his body, so no rights can exist, without the right to translate one's rights into reality, to think, to work, to keep the results, which means: the right to property. " Now, see, we've got a strong connection between the mind and the body, freedom and the body. And John Adams: "Liberty can no more exist without virtue and independence than the body can live and move without a soul." But of course, it works the other way, too. You can't have a soul without the body.

So, you've come into it through Swoop, and Heart Of A Pagan, through the body. And, developing the body, and using that as a kind of focal point for developing the mind and the soul. 

DR. BERNSTEIN: In a certain way, the human body, at it's healthiest and best, as celebrated in Swoop's glorious vitality, in a certain way, the human body is the actual hero of the novel.

PRODOS: Ah ha. And is that what you intended?

DR. BERNSTEIN: Yes. I think I figured out later on, but I realize at a subconscious level that's really what I was doing, and then I consciously identified it when I was in the act of writing it. 

PRODOS: The human body is the hero of the novel.

DR. BERNSTEIN: Yes, the human body at it's highest and it's best I would say is the actual hero of the novel, because, as you pointed out, Swoops athleticism, his extraordinary human gifts, and how hard he works to develop it, is really celebrated in this story.

But, having said that, I would never the less point out that this is not a materialistic, Marxist kind of tract. The major theme in the story is this conflict between Swoop, who represents the classical Greek pagan values of pride, excellence, and prowess, in conflict with Christian values of humility, faith and charity. That's really what the book is about. Never the less, there's an important sub-theme here about mind/body integration.

I think a lot of people will like the character of Diggs, because he is this outstanding student, but, he's kind of the nerdy, geeky, non-physically-developed type. Very very smart, a great student, but he throws off... While embracing the mind, the intellect all the more, he's going to be a PhD in philosophy, he's going to be an Aristotle scholar, he's very gifted, and very hardworking in the intellectual realm. While holding on to that, and even increasing it, he also embraces bodily development, so Diggs becomes like a poster boy for mind/body integration. The healthy mind and the healthy body. Which Swoop already, in a way, is, because although it's true, his physical gifts dwarf everything else, he's also very intellectual in his own way, in that he's very literary. You know, he loves Greek mythology, he loves poetry and literature, and he himself points out that he has drawn his inspiration though his life from the great heroes of world literature.

So the book definitely celebrates the potential of the human body. And hopefully will motivate many people to exercise and strive for bodily fitness but certainly not at the expense of the mind. A major sub-theme is the importance of what they call the Hellenistic Ideal, of a healthy mind and a healthy body.

PRODOS: This is interesting, because typically, we think of mind/body, most people think: yoga, meditation, Eastern religion. That's what most people would think. And that usually means being calm, it usually means "letting go." Now, the way the mind/body integration happens in this novel via Swoop and the [other] characters in this novel is the exact opposite. They are not letting go, it fact, they are working their butt off! They're not separating from the real world, they're in there competing, trying to win. Trying to win their national championships, trying to win the girl of their dreams.

That's really interesting, too, what you're done there, Andy. That you've actually shown that to integrate the mind and the body is not a case of letting go. To achieve spirituality, we can do it through the body, through developing the human body. And what's amazing is, we actually own the body, each of us owns one.

DR. BERNSTEIN: [Laughs] Nicely put, Prodos. And many of us don't take such good care of it, sadly. Especially in the United States, where I could point out that many of us are really overweight and out of shape.

PRODOS: Right. Well, why? I wonder, because to me, you've hit something that's very, very interesting in this novel, Andrew Bernstein. The body... I used to go out with this lovely girl, Anita, who was an artist, a sculptor, and she often would show me, in pictures, how the lines on the face and the shape of the body actually express ... you could tell a person's ideas from the way they held their face and grown by the time they were 30-40-50 years old. So, the body tells all.

DR. BERNSTEIN: Yes.

PRODOS: You know, the body is actually so... it's far more intimately connected to our soul than we have ever realized.

DR. BERNSTEIN: Yes, that's true, and I would say that joyous living resides exclusively in a life of achievement. And part of, a major sub-theme here, in Heart Of A Pagan, the major sub-theme of mind/body integration, is that that achievement needs to take place both intellectually and physically. That if we simple develop our mind, as many intellectuals do, but not our bodies, then we're on the promise of a ghost, we're kind of a disembodied spirit. And if we focus exclusively on our body, to the neglect of our mind, like, unfortunately some body builders and athletes do, then of course we're making ourselves into an animal, not a human being. But true pride, and joy, and joyous living - that is the spiritual side of it - resides in this hard work to achieve excellence and accomplish at a high level, both intellectually and physically, which is why Diggs, who's the brilliant student, who's going on the get a PhD in philosophy, and give lectures, and write books, why he's working so hard lifting weights, and running, to be in great physical condition, and why Swoop, the athlete extraordinaire, is a very serious student of literature who draws his inspiration from the great heroes of world literature, and who wants to write an undated, twenty-first century colloquial English translation of Homer.

Because Homer's heroes, Odysseus in particular, in The Odyssey, can still be very meaningful to people today, his heroism, his determination to achieve his quest and get home to his wife from the wars - that kind of a quest to reach his goal can be enormously inspiring to people today and it's been inspiring to Swoop and he realizes it can be inspiring to others. So Swoop's life is about inspiring people in every possible way to achieve their potential in both the intellectual and the bodily realms.

PRODOS: And I said in the introduction that Swoop's goal is also Dr. Andrew Bernstein's goal. Because it seems to me, Andy, that's your mission too, isn't it...

DR. BERNSTEIN: Yes.

PRODOS: ...to inspire people in that way?

DR. BERNSTEIN: Absolutely. And that's why I couch the story in quasi-religious terms. Swoop doesn't literally believe in the gods of Mount Olympus. He's not literally a Pagan, he doesn't believe in any gods, but it's a metaphor.

PRODOS: Isn't religion, properly read, a metaphor?

DR. BERNSTEIN: There may be a way in which that's true - I think rational people like us need to be careful with that because religion, fundamentally, means other-worldliness, it means supernaturalism over this world, faith over reason, and we, rational men like us want to strongly disassociate ourselves from that. But, and certainly Any Rand uses it in her novels that way, when, you know, Howard Roark in The Fountainhead, one of the characters tells him, "you're a deeply religious man in your own way," which is true. I think, as a metaphor, I think what religion means, as you mentioned at the top of the show, is a recognition that something in life is sacred. Is reverential, it has to be revered.

And I think what Heart Of A Pagan is about is showing that Man at his highest and best in both the intellectual and the bodily realm, that is the Ideal, that ... the human potential to achieve excellence, that is what's hallowed, that is what's sacred, that's where meaning in life comes from. So religion is used as a metaphor in that way to stress the reverence of Man's quest for achievement and excellence both intellectually and physically.

PRODOS: At one point, Diggs says to Swoop, when Swoop is giving him a bit of a pep talk, "But I'm an atheist." And Swoop replies, "The most religious men are." So, that's in what you just explained...

DR. BERNSTEIN: Absolutely. Swoop's recognizing there that if we take religion in it's metaphorical sense, the only way in which religion has any value in life is that it's stressing that something's got to be sacred, something's got to be reverential. Swoop's stressing to Diggs here, that only atheists can do that. Not all atheists do, some do, and I think you find that in Objectivism ... some recognize that Man as his highest and best, he's the only object in the world worthy of reverence. So that's what Diggs is saying - the people who really understand what it means to be sacred, who worship the human potential for greatness and excellence, they're the most religious individuals, in that sense.

PRODOS: I like the idea of being religious - not faith based, but based the idea of sacredness, because it's very positive. A lot of us who are, and I know, probably most listeners of this show, are very ... takes philosophy and ideas very seriously, and we use ideas as tools for criticism. Whereas, what Swoop is doing - he's using philosophy constructively. He's using philosophy to focus his energy. And to take him to heights that he couldn't otherwise go.

He's using it as a tool. And I like that, I like that positive, constructive way of using philosophy.

DR. BERNSTEIN: Yes. You're absolutely right. The idea of admiring classical Greek cultures is ... because what the Greeks understood, is that human life is about achieving happiness, you know, as Aristotle put it.

And the way to achieve happiness is not by giving up your mind to blind faith, and renouncing this world for a fantasy higher world, or by believing that we're born into sin, but is by working hard to achieve this-worldly values, to achieve secular values, and thereby being proud of yourself and joyous. And living. 

And that's why the Greeks stressed both the mind and the body, because that's what human beings are. We're part mind and part body. We can't deny either one. We have to develop each in order to be healthy, in order to be happy, in order to be proud. And that's why Swoop recognizes that, and he's using those moral principles, those philosophical principles as a means to, like you said, achieve very positive goals in his life, and achieve happiness.

PRODOS: And you use ... Swoop consciously uses his own ... what he does is, he sets a goal, which obviously he's through his own thinking ... including philosophy ... and including science and knowledge... He sets a goal, which seems, which a normal person could not achieve. And he couches it in quasi-religious terms. Then he proceeds to achieve his goal. And it's ... like, we're talking about extraordinary goals here, and I know it's fiction, but this is ... there ARE Michael Jordan's in the world, there are heroes in the world, people who are achieving extraordinary things against the odds.

And what he's doing is, he's like, in science, we set up a hypothesis, we carry out an experiment, and check our hypothesis. Well, here, he's setting up a philosophical principle, setting up a goal, which he's going to achieve by use of the philosophical principle, then he proceeds to demonstrate the principle in action through his own body and actions.

Now, that's a very interesting thing in itself. I suppose that's what they call Leadership, isn't it?

DR. BERNSTEIN: Yes, Leadership ... and Inspiration. Swoop's goals, of course, in the story, are multiple. One, he wants to take this tiny school, this backwater place from nowhere to be the National basketball champions. But more important than that, I deliberately set it in Iowa. If people know anything about the United States, in American sports, they'll know that Iowa was one of the ... it's a rural state, there's a lot of religion there, but it's also a basketball-crazy state. Basketball's a big sport there. Swoop knows that too. He comes from New York, but he deliberately goes there, because he wants the acclaim that he will receive as a superstar athlete - he wants to use that to transfigure people's thinking regarding moral and religious issues. He wants them to repudiate the faith-based, original sin stressing beliefs of Christianity to accept the reason-based man-glorifying beliefs of the pagan Greeks. And he wants to basically transfigure the town's fundamental philosophy, then. So he really wants to bring about a philosophical moral religious revolution, that's the real goal. And I grant you that that's really outrageous.

PRODOS: Naughty, it's very naughty, actually. [Laughing]

DR. BERNSTEIN: Very naughty. Journalistically it may even be impossible. But we're dealing here with... I wouldn't say it's impossible, because, like you say, people have done the most extraordinary things, and Swoop mentions it all through this story, you know, Hannibal getting his army over the Alps, things like that.

PRODOS: ... Alexander leading his troops...

DR. BERNSTEIN: Yeah, forty thousand guys to conquer the mighty Persian Empire. That's right!

So it may well be possible, what Swoop's attempting, although barely, but in fiction, of course, it doesn't have to be journalistically accurate or possible, it has to be an artistic projection of the human potential and in that way, Swoops attempt and ultimate success at achieving these extraordinarily difficult goals, I think, will help inspire readers to recognize that they can achieve very difficult goals in their life. Which goes back to what you said before about my quest to really strive home to people just what the human potential is, and, in recognizing what the human potential is, each one of us can recognize what my potential is, how much is possible to me personally.

PRODOS: Yes. Also, Swoop's strategy, his revolutionary strategy is actually not to destroy the current system, he's in a sense performing a very subtle kind of abstracting and selecting, and going to the heart. There are a couple of characters who are very religious, even to the end of the novel. They're not condemned ... there are some bad religious people, [and] it's interesting how the novel separates good religious people from bad religious people...

DR. BERNSTEIN: Most of the Christian characters are presented in the story as men of integrity. There are only one or two who are evil.

PRODOS: Yeah, but they're a minority. And they're pretty destructive. Swoop does overcome them, of course. But what's interesting is that Swoop does not directly criticize religion and Christianity. What he does is, he kind of subverts it, he redirects it, he's saying ... he kind of attacks the momentum of a particular idea, and restates it ... I've got some examples here ...

DR. BERNSTEIN: If I could just interject here a moment Prodos ...

PRODOS: Sure.

DR. BERNSTEIN: Swoop's attitude toward Christianity is to condemn it not because it's religious, but because it's NOT religious.

PRODOS: Ah...

DR. BERNSTEIN: It's anti-religious.

PRODOS: So, Christianity is not religious.

DR. BERNSTEIN: Yes, it's not religious enough, it's anti-religious.

PRODOS: I'm going to quote you on that, Andrew Bernstein!

DR. BERNSTEIN: Yes, because Swoop's point is that -

PRODOS: Christianity is not a religion!

DR. BERNSTEIN: Well, as Swoop says, it's not religious enough, it's anti-religious, because Swoops point is that the only being worthy of reverence is Man at his highest and best. It's Man's quest to achieve healthy, rational values, and Christianity undercuts that in many ways, but the most obvious one is in stressing than Man is sinful and needs to be on his knees seeking forgiveness from God. So, Christianity worships false gods. Not just Christianity, but Judaism, Islam, all these monotheistic faiths, they project this fantasy being, in transcendent realm, who doesn't exist, as being noble.  And us - we're sinful!

And his point is, you're denying the true gods, and only beings worthy of reverence - Man at his best. And that's why he condemns Christianity. Not because it's too religious, it's because it's not religious enough.

PRODOS: Right, great point. I'm speaking with Dr. Andrew Bernstein, dear listeners, her on Prodos.com, the author of Heart Of A Pagan: The Story Of Swoop, one of, probably THE most inspirational novel that I've read since The Fountainhead. I highly recommend it. You'll see a link right there where you're listening, where you can find out more about purchasing Heart Of A Pagan.

Andy Bernstein, you know, free will, free will is about initiating and moving and thinking, as it were, I can just use a sort of layperson's language. It's a kind of a mental exercise. But in fact, the sense of free will, the concretization of it, to a large extent, through this novel, is demonstrated by physical exercise and sport. What I mean is that, the approach that Swoop, and Diggs, and the Swoop Troop, the people that Swoop is leading and inspiring forward, the way they do their exercise, and the amount of effort and energy that they put into it - the effect it had on me is that it kept reminding me that I can make choices NOW, right now. Because there's a section in the novel ... I don't want to preempt any of it ... but it's a section where we read about very rigorous training. Every single moment is filled with training. Now, to train your body requires a physical effort, but physical effort is backed up by a mental effort. And that is an abstraction for free will. Let me just cut to the chase: In a sense, you kind of glorify the whole process of free will, through the physical representation.

DR. BERNSTEIN: You're absolutely right, you're obviously a very discerning reader to pick that up, because I think that where volition, or free will is most strongly dramatized and glorified in the story is in the character of the narrator, Diggs, who truly changes his life. Diggs' life is certainly not empty. He's filled with this passion for philosophy, so his life already has enormous values. But in the physical realm, he feels inadequate, he has a sense of inferiority, he's scared to do physical things, of course it affects his romantic relationships (he's in love with a girl, yet he's so physically underdeveloped that he's very shy about approaching her because obviously, romance, a part of it's physical, and he's very insecure in that area). And Diggs grabs the bull by the horns. He decides he's had enough.

He's confronted with alternatives. I could go on in this way being basically half a man, I have half a life of passion, not a full life of passion, or I could change my life and let Swoop transfigure it and turn myself into not only an intellectual specimen but into a physical specimen as well, and then really have the confidence to pursue the woman that I love.

And Diggs, I think, really dramatizes the fact the human beings confront fundamental choices every day of our lives.  And is we want to change our lives in very positive directions, there's nothing - if we live in a free society or even a semi-free society, as the Western world is today - there's no force out there that can prevent us from changing our lives in a very positive way.

PRODOS: And one of the ways to do that is through changing our body.

DR. BERNSTEIN: Yes.

PRODOS: And this is, once again, a constant theme throughout this novel.

DR. BERNSTEIN: Many readers have told me that they book the book down in the middle and ran to the gym - they wanted to start working out. One reader told me that he finished the book, and he ran out of his house, looking for some way to improve his life!

PRODOS: Yeah! Right, OK, that's great. What I ... I suppose we should wrap it up fairly soon, but ... but I could truly talk for hours, because, what you've created here is almost a How-To manual really. I mentioned at the outset, and we haven't white gotten to it yet, the chapter headings, which were very intriguing, like, for example: The Coming. The Pilgrimage. The Crucifixion. The Genesis. The Second Coming. The Holy War. The Armageddon. The Redemption.

You've chosen, obviously, deliberately, religious quest type headings and chapters. And indeed, every chapter delivers each one of those things. The Crucifixion is truly a gruesome crucifixion.

DR. BERNSTEIN: Yes.

PRODOS: And I must say, Dear Listeners, that this novel is ... I've never been into sport myself, and still not basketball, and I don't know whether this will necessarily increase my interest in basketball, probably a little bit. But you don't need to be into sport, you don't even need to be at all into basketball to follow, because every action - it's not about technicalities, it's about the spirit and the soul of the characters, Swoop, and Diggs, and the Swoop Troop. When Swoop flies through the air, you want to leap physically, and you also want to leap spiritually and mentally through the air. My sense of it is, like when he knocks in that goal, at that point, I think, what's my goal today? ...I'll knock a goal through today, now! I want to hit that through. These people are in my way? I'm going to dodge them the way Swoop dodged the opposing team. I could do that. So we get back to the way sports is an abstraction. But in the way you've written it, Andy, you've really spelt out that abstraction, so we don't even need basketball at all, we can take what you've said and apply it almost directly to us.

DR. BERNSTEIN: Yes, well, basketball is only the background to the story. You have to write about something.

Basketball is the background. You've pointed out: what the story is about is people's ability to change their lives and to do so in an enormously positive way. And so basketball is just a vehicle to present that theme of human free will and showing that the classical Greek philosophy enhances that understanding of the human potential, whereas the Judeo-Christian harms it, or undercuts it - that's really what the book's about.

PRODOS: So, would you like people to go and study the classic Greek literature? Is that a good thing?

DR. BERNSTEIN: Well, what I'd really like people to study is Ayn Rand.

PRODOS: Ayn Rand's not even mentioned in this novel. I noticed that - there's no Objectivism, the philosophy of Ayn Rand, it's not mentioned at all, which is interesting in itself, actually.

DR. BERNSTEIN: Well, the novel's fiction, so, in fiction, you create your own little universe, but what I would hope is that ...

PRODOS: But the challenge, for an Objectivist, especially a leading Objectivist, and a recognized international Objectivist, to write a novel that's philosophical, and somehow not mention Objectivism, is actually quite an accomplishment in itself. And yet, of course, it's very consistent with all the principles of Aristotle, and Objectivism, and all the good things.

DR. BERNSTEIN: I certainly think so. It's about egoism. About an individual's pursuit of excellence, about his pursuit of achievement, and how true happiness lies in that, so I think it's very consonant with Objectivist principles. But what I would hope is that people would read the book and realize they need a philosophy to completely explain and validate their right to their own life and their ability to change their life, and obviously Heart Of A Pagan is not at that level that it can provide that. But Ayn Rand has already accomplished that. Hopefully, they'll go on and read Ayn Rand's novels, and study Ayn Rand's philosophy, Objectivism. Because that's what will give them the philosophical explanations and validations of the principles that Swoop and Diggs dramatize in Heart Of A Pagan.

PRODOS: Right. And my own recommendation would be to read Ayn Rand, and then, equipped with those ideas, go ahead and read about the heroes throughout history. In fact, that's one of the great things about a philosophy like Objectivism, it allows you to venture into stories and ideas with mixed premises and you can sort the good from the bad out, you're not contaminated by the bad, you can read Karl Marx, and not be contaminated by it.

DR. BERNSTEIN: Right. That's true. And Heart Of A Pagan - you've made the point, I just want to agree with it - Heart Of A Pagan is not an Objectivist novel, it's not a novel that's written to dramatize any movement, or to validate or glorify any movement, it's simple a novel written by Andy Bernstein. But I definitely believe that the egoistic principles dramatized in the novel, they're fully consistent with Objectivist philosphy.

PRODOS: And do you think that a non-Objectivist can benefit from reading this book?

DR. BERNSTEIN: Well, I think that non-Objectivists can benefit the most, because they may not have yet identified what Ayn Rand has shown, and that is that individuals have a right to their own life, and that what life is all about is the attainment of personal happiness. It's not about selfless service to god, or sacrificing to the family or society. It's about taking your own values, and working hard to achieve them being happy. So, I think non-Objectivists are the people who can benefit most from reading Heart Of A Pagan.

PRODOS: There's that scene in Atlas Shrugged where Eddie Willers talks with Dagny Taggart, and he wants some higher purpose. And Dagny Taggart, who is someone who is living the pursuit of excellence at every level, although interestingly, not at the physical level, but in all other ways, materialistically, yes... In Ayn Rand's novels, in fact, every character treats, whether they're an architect or they run a railroad company, they treat it as a religion. They way Swoop treats basketball as a religious crusade.

DR. BERNSTEIN: Yes, in that metaphorical sense. I think Howard Roark even mentions it in The Fountainhead. But I just want to caution readers: In my judgment, The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged are the two greatest novels ever written. They're extraordinary works of one of the great geniuses of history. Hopefully, readers won't expect literary genius from Heart Of A Pagan. The book is not at that level. It doesn't even approximate that level. But having said that, one does not have to write a great book to have written a good book. And I think Heart Of A Pagan, in my judgment - it's a pretty good little book!

PRODOS: I think it's a wonderful book, and I think it's really almost ... if you're interested in success, at every level, and making the most out of your life, physically, mentally and morally, Heart Of A Pagan, I think, is the best read possible today. And there are so many other issues, in religion, and physical development, and moral development, that we could cover.

We've got to wrap it up, but I've got one more thing I would love to ask love, Andy and that is... Of course, you didn't write this selflessly, just as an altruist, because that would be a bad thing. I'd like to know whether it was inspirational for you to create this novel. What did you, personally, get out of doing so?

DR. BERNSTEIN: That's a very good question, Prodos. Aside from the fact that I want to make money, which I think is very rational, and aside from the fact that I hope that it helps people make positive changes in their lives, which would be very meaningful to me, the main benefit is - you hit the nail on the head - it is exactly that, is that I got to live in Swoop's universe during the years of creating the story. It was very exciting to me. And I get to live out these principles, because ... I mean, I exercise strenuously every day, you know, because I want to be physically fit, and promote long term health as much as I can. And if on a given day, I feel tired, I've been teaching classes, or writing, and I don't feel like working out, or it's raining outside, or it's cold, I just remind myself, well, what would Swoop or Diggs do in this situation? I don't need ... you don't have to think about it, I know that ... let me will myself out there and soon, I'll be feeling great, because the physical exercise gets the blood flowing, brings more oxygen into the brain, and you just feel great after a good workout.

If I'm going to write Heart Of A Pagan, then I have to live out the principles. Self development as enunciated in Heart Of A Pagan.

PRODOS: Dr. Andrew Bernstein, thank you for speaking with us, and for delivering to the world, Heart Of A Pagan, and helping us all to go swifter, higher, stronger!