Last note

Cyborgs and androids are nowhere to be seen in the new USA show Mr. Robot. Instead, the drama is centered on a very human interior — the mind of Elliot, the unlikely hacker hero. From his first words — "Hello, friend" — his voice-over keeps audiences squarely inside his world.

"Elliot is sort of an internal, isolated guy who can't really interact with people socially, in real life, but online he can hack them and knows all the intimate, private details of them," Sam Esmail, the show's creator and executive producer, tells NPR's Arun Rath.

Elliot, played by actor Rami Malek, is a cybersecurity engineer by day and vigilante hacker by night. He uses his hacking skills to influence the lives of those around him without leaving a trace.

One day, he stumbles upon a secret society run by a man called Mr. Robot, played by Christian Slater. The group wants to destroy the modern economic system by wiping out all debt. Elliot is pulled into a web of anarchy and danger where all the moral lines are blurred.

"Who's good and who's bad in this show? I don't know," Esmail tells Rath. "I mean, you really can't pinpoint the clear-cut morality here, who is the person I should be rooting for or not. I think it's more interesting when it's messier 'cause I think it's just more true to life."

Interview Highlights

On putting the audience inside Elliot's head with voice-over

Taxi Driver was a huge inspiration. One of the things about Taxi Driver that's so great is that it's just a pure character piece. Obviously there's a plot and there's a story, but just — you are purely inside this guy's brain.

And when I went to write Mr. Robot, I just knew in order to really pull off this really tricky thing, to see the world through this guy's point of view, I needed just to immerse the audience.

Voice-over gets a bad rep a lot of times in screenwriting because people think it's lazy, whatever it is, but when it is done really well, it just adds this other dimension. It creates this sort of intimate relationship with the audience that you really can't do just with dialogue and scene.

On whether the "alienated young techie" character was inspired by people like Edward Snowden or Chelsea Manning

No. ... Look, teen angst I think has been around since Holden Caulfield. ... I think it's kind of interesting that now it's associated with techies, I think it's a lot older than that, but it's cool the association has become more popularized with technology. ...

You know, it's weird, it's like the nerds are having their moment right about now.

On portraying the hacking world and making people typing at keyboards exciting

So I was a nerd growing up, and I was a big techie and I watched all of those terrible movies and all those terrible television shows. And it was actually, I think, more work to portray it as poorly as they did because they forced all these CGI graphics and all this ridiculous stuff to force the drama there. One of the rules I have on my show is that we don't green screen ... anything. So everything you see that we filmed is real. And so the actors, I really wanted them to react to what is actually going on on-screen.

But I gotta be honest, I'm not some genius over here, I'm just actually going through what a programmer or coder or cybersecurity engineer would do in a certain hack. And the funny thing is, even though people don't completely understand it, they get it. And it's almost like when you watch a medical drama, or a legal drama or whatever, I don't necessarily understand all of the terminology, but I get what's going on emotionally, I get what the stakes are.

On the positive feedback about the show from hacker groups

You know how much of a risk that is to not only do a show about technology and about hackers, but then to kind of ... reference hacker groups. There's a popular Twitter feed for Anonymous and it's all, you know, unofficial, but when they gave us kudos, I was in heaven.

I mean, that's a real huge endorsement. And look, if it went the other way it would have been totally bad.

On potential misconceptions about Filipino workers

There's an over-arching sense of [overseas Filipino workers] as the heroes and saints of their families, who are making this huge sacrifice — which, of course, they are — of being apart from the people they love in order to support those same people. And I was curious about where some of these characters ... hew to that narrative and where they kind of go off script as well.

On unlikely friendships among migrants

When people are sort of thrown together in a place that's strange or foreign to them, Filipinos who maybe would not have socialized with each other back in Manila spend all their free time socializing with each other and kind of lean on each other and feel a responsibility to each other.

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On writing in the second person

I think the second person is just polarizing for understandable reasons. People don't like being told that they are someone they're not, or that they're doing something that they definitely aren't. It can come across in ... almost an aggressive way.

And I sort of decided that I was OK, in this particular story, with aggressively insisting that the person reading identify with [the main character], whose real-life counterpart might not have time to read a literary short story collection.

I think the second person kind of speaks to the desire to have someone identify with this character, and also the impossibility of it.

Read an excerpt of In the Country

Philippines

New York state's Seneca Lake is the heart of the Finger Lakes, a beautiful countryside of steep glacier-carved hills and long slivers of water with deep beds of salt. It's been mined on Seneca's shore for more than a century.

The Texas company Crestwood Midstream owns the mine now, and stores natural gas in the emptied-out caverns. It has federal approval to increase the amount, and it's seeking New York's OK to store 88 million gallons of propane as well.

That's definitely not OK for a growing movement opposed to the plan. Since October, nearly 300 people have been arrested for blocking entrances to the storage site.

"These fossil fuels will not leave us with a viable future and certainly our lake is in immediate jeopardy," says Regi Teasley, who recently joined the action.

Late last year, Gov. Andrew Cuomo banned hydro-fracking in New York state. But fracked gas is still present in the state, part of the nationwide distribution system. Crestwood executive Bill Gautreaux says the new project will relieve the propane shortages that in recent years have hit the northeast hard.

"Every time that happens it dramatically drives up the price for consumers," he says. "So the demand for this facility is really, really high."

Crestwood adds that those price spikes cost New Yorkers $100 million in 2013.

But opponents cite problems or accidents at other facilities. They fear gas could escape or the lake be ruined by leaking brine. A tanker truck or train might explode. They also question whether the caverns could collapse.

But even short of catastrophe, the project will industrialize the area, says Joe Campbell.

"This isn't just a hole in the ground they're going to pump gas into," he says. "There's a whole lot that goes with it."

The addition things include a six-track rail siding, two large brine ponds, and a 60-foot flare stack. Campbell and others say these will hurt a growing tourism-based economy. Nearly 130 wineries now dot the region, and Wine Enthusiast magazine recently named the Finger Lakes one of the world's 10 top travel destinations.

Will Ouweleen is getting ready to expand his Eagle Crest Vineyard. He says the Finger Lakes' climate and soil allow fine European grapes to thrive. So he has joined with other wineries urging New York to reject the plan.

"Why mess with an economic engine that continues to grow at double-digit rates creating local, sustainable jobs and giving everyone in the region something to be proud of?" he asks. "Why take the risk?

Natural gas and propane are already stored in the area. Still, more than 300 business owners have signed a petition opposing the project. But not Jim Franzese. He owns a bed and breakfast and small motel right next to the site.

"If anybody should be concerned, it would be me," he says. "They've been storing gas right up the street from me for years and years and years, since I was a kid. And we've never had any troubles. So I just don't think it's a major deal."

Crestwood admits it underestimated the reaction to the project, but Bill Gautreaux insists many opponents are misinformed.

"It's simple from a technical standpoint, very low risk on the spectrum of risks," he says. "It would be more dangerous to get in your car and drive to work."

Crestwood says the project will create up to 12 jobs and several hundred thousand dollars in annual tax payments. Gautreaux believes the fossil fuel industry can co-exist with wineries and tourism.

But the plan's opponents hope to convince state officials to sign on to a different future.

new york state

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In his 33 years on earth, rock critic Lester Bangs left behind tens of thousands of pages of writing. He died of a drug overdose in 1982 — but this month, at the Kirk Douglas Theatre in Culver City, Calif., Bangs and his ideas are coming to life on stage in the new one-man play How to Be a Rock Critic.

It's a held in a small space, and it's meant to feel like the audience is in Lester Bangs' living room. There are albums sprawled everywhere, along with magazines, beers, pills, a typewriter — and, of course, Bangs himself, played by actor Erik Jensen.

Jensen and Jessica Blank, a married duo, wrote the play together. They spoke with NPR's Arun Rath about the show and the man who inspired it; hear their conversation at the audio link and read an edited version below.

Arun Rath: So, first off, why is Lester Bangs worthy of the one-man show treatment?

Jessica Blank: He basically, I think, invented modern rock journalism. You know, part of the tragedy of Lester was that he never saw himself as an artist while he was alive — he always thought he was a guy that wrote about artists. But he actually invented a new form of writing. He had a mind like no one else's, and he had a voice like no one else's, and the man probably wrote about 20 pages a day and had a ferocious appetite for culture and for life.

Erik Jensen: And drugs.

Blank: And for drugs. I mean, for everything! He was a wild man. As a character, he's compelling on so many levels.

Jensen: Also, he was a big champion of ineptitude in art, and the mistake in art, at a time when there was a lot of prog-rock happening. He was a fan of noise and garage rock and the fact that rock 'n' roll was something that anybody could do. And I think Lester recognized that the whole cultural idea of picking up a piece of junk and turning it into something new was as beautiful as any symphony that a classical composer could write.

Rath: There's a line Lester says close to the top of this play, and it's very sad — it's something like, "Yo, nobody ever comes up to you in the street and says, 'Hey man, that review of Three Dog Night really just changed my life.'" But the thing is, if he'd lived a little bit longer, that would have happened to him.

Jensen: We're actually saying that with this play: Lester, you changed our lives.

Blank: And it may be that nobody ever came up to him in the street and said that because they might not have recognized him. But I think the fact is that his reviews did change lives.

Jensen: And also, I think, he was completely flummoxed by crap. I mean, we live in a world of Auto-Tune now, where mistakes aren't respected. I think that that sort of punk ethos is something that everybody could benefit from. Now, you'll have to excuse me if I'm getting a little circular, because having 32 pages of text — out of the 15,000 that we gleaned through to make the play — memorized in my head creates kind of a Lester filter through which I see the world.

Rath: I mean, you're physically exerting yourself in this thing. You kind of have a breakdown in this room; you sort of trash the apartment. Are you tired after doing that?

Jensen: Oh man, I'm exhausted. I actually was saying to Jessica this morning, I started off the play feeling like a young John Belushi and ended up feeling like a very old David Byrne. I just kind of want to sit in a chair and not talk to anybody.

Rath: There are words in the play that seem like familiar from his reviews, things that definitely sound like Lester Bangs-isms. How much is this taken from his own writing?

Blank: The play is an adaptation directly from Lester's writing. Our playwriting background, prior to this, has primarily been in documentary theater. With that kind of work, we are fairly strict with ourselves, and we're transparent about any time we throw in a joke or something like that. This [play] is not that strict: We gave ourselves a little more latitude, because we're adapting the play from 15,000 pages worth of, primarily, criticism. Criticism is not inherently a narrative form, so we have to construct a story and tell the story of Lester's life as well as sharing his writing with the world. There are places where we constructed some connective tissue, sort of in the style of Lester. But largely, the play is adapted from his body of work.

Rath: I'm curious, Erik, about having Lester Bangs in your head and living as him. There's a funny side, but also, he was a self-destructive person.

Jensen: When I'm in Lester mode, it's hard to be a husband. It's actually pretty easy for me to be a parent, because he's fairly playful. I'm not the most method guy in the world; I can go in and out. But your whole metabolism changes when you get a guy like this in your head. I'm exhausted at the end of the show. I couldn't get to sleep until 2 in the morning last night. I think that Lester's brain was switching radio stations often, loudly. I've become a lot more sensitive. I'm a lot more paranoid right now. I want to do a lot of drugs, but I don't.

Rath: Stay away from the cough syrup.

Jensen: Yeah, exactly. And there's a lot of self-questioning that goes on when Lester's in my head, that I don't usually engage with: Is this good? Am I doing the right thing? Does this have value?

Blank: Well, that's the critic.

Jensen: That's the critic, yeah. But I would like to get back to the point where I can have a conversation with my wife that doesn't circumnavigate the globe.

Mindy Kaling started out as the youngest writer on the staff of NBC's The Office and ended up being a star, producer and director of the show. She went on to create her own sitcom, The Mindy Project and now, she's the voice of Disgust in the new Pixar movie, Inside Out.

Since Kaling was the star of The Mindy Project, we're going to ask her to play a game called "The Home Improvement Project" — three questions about do-it-yourself projects.

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