WEBVTT - Selects: Agatha Christie: Queen of the Murder Mystery 0:00:00.960 --> 0:00:03.840 Hey, everybody, it's Meat Josham. For this week's Select, I've 0:00:03.920 --> 0:00:08.200 chosen our episode from twenty twenty on Agatha Christie. It's 0:00:08.240 --> 0:00:11.800 a neat little episode about who is possibly the greatest 0:00:11.840 --> 0:00:16.680 selling writer of all time by far, and may inspire 0:00:16.720 --> 0:00:19.880 you to get into Agatha Christie's books. And they're definitely 0:00:19.960 --> 0:00:22.960 worse things you could do with your time, So grab 0:00:23.000 --> 0:00:26.040 a cup of tea, a nice little blanket and enjoy 0:00:26.120 --> 0:00:27.720 this cozy little episode. 0:00:32.200 --> 0:00:41.120 Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio. 0:00:41.880 --> 0:00:44.640 Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's 0:00:44.720 --> 0:00:47.920 Charles w Chuck Bryan over there, and this is Stuff 0:00:47.960 --> 0:00:54.040 you should Know. I'm I don't know if we're gonna 0:00:54.040 --> 0:00:56.000 be able to get used to Jerry being round again. 0:00:57.000 --> 0:00:57.640 Is she fired? 0:00:58.480 --> 0:01:00.800 I don't think so. She made a fire yourself, though, 0:01:00.960 --> 0:01:04.240 I have better things to do than hang out with 0:01:04.280 --> 0:01:06.640 you cool cats and kittens. 0:01:06.800 --> 0:01:09.360 Well, and it's kind of like, what's the point of 0:01:10.000 --> 0:01:12.279 just sitting there? And I can't imagine any more boring 0:01:12.319 --> 0:01:15.720 than listening to us on headphones. Wait a minute, that's 0:01:15.760 --> 0:01:16.200 our show. 0:01:16.880 --> 0:01:20.920 Yes, there are people doing that very thing right now. Chuck, 0:01:20.959 --> 0:01:22.880 and you have just mocked their existence. 0:01:23.000 --> 0:01:25.119 Oh, I've just met for Jerry's sake, you know. 0:01:25.920 --> 0:01:28.240 Yeah, I know Jerry's not a fan. No, she's not 0:01:28.880 --> 0:01:34.360 or a listener. So I have a question for you, Chuck. 0:01:35.240 --> 0:01:37.840 You ever read a book? No? 0:01:37.840 --> 0:01:43.640 No, don't be ridiculous, Chuck. Have you ever met Agatha Christy? 0:01:47.440 --> 0:01:49.840 Yeah? I met her when I was three. Oh? 0:01:49.920 --> 0:01:53.000 Really, do you have much of a memory of that encounter? 0:01:53.160 --> 0:01:55.080 A little bit? She was, She was nice enough. She 0:01:55.160 --> 0:01:59.320 signed my Murder on the Orient Express copy, first edition. 0:02:00.200 --> 0:02:02.680 Oh wow, that's gotta be worth some money. 0:02:02.720 --> 0:02:03.400 It's pretty neat. 0:02:04.040 --> 0:02:07.559 Yeah. Do you still have that hot Nah? 0:02:07.960 --> 0:02:10.480 I did some spring cleaning here a couple weeks ago, 0:02:10.520 --> 0:02:13.519 and I didn't even recycle or put it in a 0:02:13.560 --> 0:02:15.120 little free library, just do it in the trash. 0:02:15.600 --> 0:02:18.280 Did you? Didn't you say once that your brother has 0:02:18.400 --> 0:02:21.320 like a copy of Number one Superman or something nuts 0:02:21.360 --> 0:02:25.600 like that. No, I thought he has something some valuable 0:02:25.639 --> 0:02:30.200 comic book. No, huh, No, we must be confusing you 0:02:30.240 --> 0:02:32.560 with my other co host, Chuck. 0:02:33.320 --> 0:02:36.560 Now, we weren't big comic book people. We don't have 0:02:36.560 --> 0:02:37.640 anything valuable like that. 0:02:38.040 --> 0:02:41.880 I gotcha. Well, having met I get that Christie. When 0:02:41.880 --> 0:02:43.800 you were a kid, I feel like you probably have 0:02:43.840 --> 0:02:48.400 a lot to bring to this one. I was. I 0:02:48.440 --> 0:02:52.120 have never met her still to this day, probably never will. 0:02:52.639 --> 0:02:56.080 And I have read a couple of her things and 0:02:56.160 --> 0:02:58.160 seen a couple of movies based on her stuff. But 0:02:58.280 --> 0:03:03.239 I would never consider myself of like a a rabbit 0:03:03.280 --> 0:03:06.720 Agatha Christie fan. But I do appreciate her work a lot. 0:03:07.480 --> 0:03:09.119 You picked this one. 0:03:09.200 --> 0:03:13.480 Why we have this series of books, children's books about 0:03:15.639 --> 0:03:20.800 awesome women in history, from Freda to Coco Chanel to 0:03:21.600 --> 0:03:25.680 Amelia Earhart to Agatha Christie. And so I was reading 0:03:25.720 --> 0:03:29.600 this one the other night and thought, hey, let's do 0:03:29.639 --> 0:03:31.640 you want an Agatha Christie that haven't read any of 0:03:31.639 --> 0:03:33.760 her work, seen a couple of her movies, loved the 0:03:33.840 --> 0:03:39.720 genre though yeah as films. I've never read mystery murder mysteries, 0:03:39.840 --> 0:03:41.080 although I'm going to now. 0:03:41.680 --> 0:03:45.560 I started reading The Mysterious Affair at Styles, which I 0:03:45.560 --> 0:03:49.200 think was her first published work, last night, and it's 0:03:49.320 --> 0:03:51.920 just great. She just sucks you right in, like you. 0:03:53.080 --> 0:03:57.040 She does what's She creates a lot of books, not 0:03:57.080 --> 0:03:59.240 all of them, but she creates what's called a cozy 0:03:59.280 --> 0:04:03.119 mystery with a S because it's British, and i'd never 0:04:03.200 --> 0:04:07.000 heard that term before until this article, But when I 0:04:07.040 --> 0:04:08.960 came across it, I was like, Yes, I love that 0:04:09.040 --> 0:04:11.760 kind of thing. And that's exactly what I love about 0:04:11.840 --> 0:04:14.080 murder she wrote. Like the murder she wrote where she 0:04:14.120 --> 0:04:16.560 goes to like Broadway or Paris or something like that, 0:04:16.760 --> 0:04:19.240 I can take her leave. They're fine. But it's the 0:04:19.240 --> 0:04:22.440 ones that are set in tiny little cabot cove that's 0:04:22.520 --> 0:04:24.320 just isolated from the rest of the world, and it's 0:04:24.320 --> 0:04:26.800 cozy and small and it's like a village and all that. 0:04:27.240 --> 0:04:29.880 Those are the murder she wrotes that I love the most. 0:04:30.279 --> 0:04:32.719 And I think that's what I like about Agatha Christie 0:04:32.760 --> 0:04:35.240 mysteries too, is they're very typically cozy mysteries. 0:04:35.520 --> 0:04:41.839 I've never seen that show what we what this conversation before. 0:04:42.000 --> 0:04:45.239 No, that would be seared into my brain forever. 0:04:45.480 --> 0:04:50.240 Now we have because you said that the first time. Yeah, 0:04:50.240 --> 0:04:52.960 I've never seen it. But I'm a huge fan of 0:04:54.200 --> 0:04:59.680 murder mystery movies, especially cozy mysteries like Clue is one 0:04:59.680 --> 0:05:02.240 of my fa favorite films, and this year's or last 0:05:02.279 --> 0:05:04.960 year's Knives Out was one of my top like three 0:05:05.200 --> 0:05:06.200 or four films of the year. 0:05:06.600 --> 0:05:09.040 I've not seen it yet it's still like seven dollars 0:05:09.080 --> 0:05:11.560 on Amazon Prime. So I haven't rented yet. I'm waiting 0:05:11.560 --> 0:05:12.840 for the price point to drop. 0:05:14.120 --> 0:05:15.880 I can known you a couple of bucks if you need, 0:05:17.120 --> 0:05:20.000 all right, sure, three three ninety nine, All right, now. 0:05:20.000 --> 0:05:23.560 Three ninety nine. It's still a lot for a rental. 0:05:23.760 --> 0:05:27.320 I mean, that's a lot. Do you think three ninety 0:05:27.400 --> 0:05:29.839 nine is manageable? Four ninety nine and up, that's a 0:05:29.880 --> 0:05:31.960 lot of That's a lot of mood law for a rental, 0:05:32.000 --> 0:05:35.640 if you ask me. Wow, yeah, this is I'm taking 0:05:35.680 --> 0:05:36.400 a stand on this. 0:05:36.640 --> 0:05:39.240 All right. Well, film professionals out there, please do not 0:05:39.279 --> 0:05:40.720 take offense to all your hard work. 0:05:42.000 --> 0:05:45.080 So I have a question for you. Have one more question. 0:05:46.000 --> 0:05:50.520 Have you seen that Agatha Christy film adaptation of Crooked 0:05:50.560 --> 0:05:52.520 House that came out in twenty seventeen. 0:05:52.800 --> 0:05:55.200 No, I think you'll like it. 0:05:55.200 --> 0:05:57.480 It was big budget, but it also looks like British 0:05:57.560 --> 0:05:59.280 made for television big budget. 0:05:59.279 --> 0:05:59.680 It's great. 0:06:00.560 --> 0:06:03.960 Jillian Anderson Danas Gully is in it, okay, because you 0:06:03.960 --> 0:06:07.320 know the Brits are nuts for her, are they? Oh? Man, 0:06:07.760 --> 0:06:09.920 She's like their favorite person in the world and has 0:06:10.000 --> 0:06:13.560 been for years. I don't know why. Nothing against Gillian Anderson, 0:06:13.600 --> 0:06:15.839 but like she just never hit it as big over 0:06:15.880 --> 0:06:19.280 here as she did there. Terrence Stamp, isn't it? 0:06:19.520 --> 0:06:19.880 Love him? 0:06:20.320 --> 0:06:23.680 Glenn Close? She's great, and I was like, this is 0:06:23.760 --> 0:06:26.200 really good. So I was reading little synopsies of it 0:06:26.240 --> 0:06:29.120 and all that stuff, and it seemed like that's It's 0:06:29.120 --> 0:06:32.479 widely regarded as one of her best, most ingenious and 0:06:32.560 --> 0:06:36.679 inventive works. House Cricket House. I believe that's on Amazon 0:06:36.680 --> 0:06:38.120 Prime for free. 0:06:38.640 --> 0:06:41.520 Well, yes, do you actually do the math of how 0:06:41.600 --> 0:06:44.520 much you pay for Amazon Prime to see how much 0:06:44.520 --> 0:06:45.560 you're paying for that movie? 0:06:47.279 --> 0:06:50.640 I don't want to do that. I just don't want 0:06:50.640 --> 0:06:55.440 to do that. Pennies, Why did you do that to me? 0:06:57.080 --> 0:07:00.720 All right, so, Charles, let's let's get into this because 0:07:00.760 --> 0:07:02.600 I know that this one could be a little long 0:07:02.640 --> 0:07:09.280 if we're not deliberate, and I would say, maybe considerate 0:07:09.720 --> 0:07:10.440 of our time. 0:07:10.760 --> 0:07:13.200 All right, Well that's an eight minute intro. So so far, 0:07:13.320 --> 0:07:13.720 so good. 0:07:14.160 --> 0:07:14.560 Okay. 0:07:15.920 --> 0:07:19.600 She is perhaps again it's kind of hard to tall 0:07:19.600 --> 0:07:21.440 with book tell with book sales because they can be 0:07:21.480 --> 0:07:24.520 a little dodgy. But she is often quoted as the 0:07:24.760 --> 0:07:27.040 or scene as the best selling novelist of all time 0:07:28.120 --> 0:07:31.000 and I did a little check to compare, Like, I thought, well, 0:07:31.000 --> 0:07:34.280 Stephen King sold a book or two. Sure, they tag 0:07:34.360 --> 0:07:36.880 his book sales at about three hundred and fifty million. 0:07:37.960 --> 0:07:41.400 Her sixty six novels and fourteen collected works of short 0:07:41.440 --> 0:07:45.880 stories supposedly have sold to the tune of two billion. 0:07:46.600 --> 0:07:48.800 I saw four billion in one place, and I think 0:07:48.840 --> 0:07:51.080 after you hit the billion mark, you can just start 0:07:51.120 --> 0:07:54.280 tossing around whatever number you want. I think, so that's 0:07:54.320 --> 0:07:57.600 like a for example, we've had seventy billion downloads. Now 0:07:57.640 --> 0:08:01.880 I just decided, oh great, that's a lot of downloads. 0:08:02.640 --> 0:08:05.640 But think about it, Stephen King, how many books has 0:08:05.720 --> 0:08:08.600 that cat written? How many is he sold all around 0:08:08.640 --> 0:08:11.239 the world? And it amounts to three hundred and fifty million, 0:08:11.320 --> 0:08:13.520 and he's one of the best selling authors of all time. 0:08:14.400 --> 0:08:17.280 A lot of people say that Agatha Christie's numbers hit 0:08:17.280 --> 0:08:19.679 two billion, Like you said, that's astounding. 0:08:20.240 --> 0:08:22.640 Yeah, that is. That is a ton of books. It's 0:08:22.680 --> 0:08:24.840 I don't think our stuff. You should know book will 0:08:24.840 --> 0:08:26.040 approach those numbers. 0:08:26.640 --> 0:08:30.160 No, you never say never, though it's a lofty goal, 0:08:30.640 --> 0:08:32.840 Never say never. I also saw that she's the most 0:08:32.840 --> 0:08:36.520 widely translated author of all time too, that so forty 0:08:36.559 --> 0:08:39.040 five languages. I was like, this thing's a little low. 0:08:39.280 --> 0:08:41.360 So then somewhere else I saw one hundred and three. 0:08:41.559 --> 0:08:42.400 So let's go with that. 0:08:44.000 --> 0:08:48.160 So let's talk about this cozy mystery or just mystery 0:08:48.200 --> 0:08:53.760 novels in general. They are very much formulaic, which Ed 0:08:53.840 --> 0:08:55.880 helped us put this together. Ed points out that's why 0:08:55.960 --> 0:08:59.360 people like them, because the familiarity and it's sort of 0:08:59.360 --> 0:09:02.040 a comfort thing, like a good beach book. You know 0:09:02.080 --> 0:09:03.439 what you're gonna get. 0:09:03.360 --> 0:09:06.480 Right, Yeah, yeah, yeah, there's and there's surprises and everything 0:09:06.520 --> 0:09:08.320 woven in. I mean, the whole thing is meant to 0:09:08.320 --> 0:09:10.920 be a surprise. It's a mystery. And part of the 0:09:10.960 --> 0:09:13.959 mystery and the allure of the mysteries that Agatha Christie 0:09:14.240 --> 0:09:17.280 not only wrote, but actually the whole genre she helped 0:09:17.280 --> 0:09:22.560 to develop, is that you are ostensibly able to figure 0:09:22.600 --> 0:09:26.240 out who the culprit is in the murder. It's almost 0:09:26.240 --> 0:09:29.640 always a murderer, and so there is like, there is 0:09:30.200 --> 0:09:33.440 surprise involved, that's the point. But there's also a tremendous 0:09:33.440 --> 0:09:37.120 amount of familiar familiarity, and that's that formula you were 0:09:37.160 --> 0:09:40.880 talking about, and that's what really has sucked generations of 0:09:40.920 --> 0:09:44.559 people into this whole genre her sixty six plus books. 0:09:44.800 --> 0:09:49.040 Yeah, so you've got that murder. You usually don't see 0:09:49.200 --> 0:09:53.360 this murder occur. She doesn't usually, and in general, in 0:09:53.440 --> 0:09:56.320 murder mysteries, you don't see the murder. That's kind of 0:09:56.320 --> 0:10:00.200 not the point of how grizzly or gruesome the act is. 0:10:00.240 --> 0:10:04.400 It's sort of all about finding that body. And I 0:10:04.440 --> 0:10:06.000 won't have a bunch of knives out things to say, 0:10:06.000 --> 0:10:08.520 but I won't say any of them now. But then 0:10:08.600 --> 0:10:11.800 you've got your detective that arrives on the scene, and 0:10:12.640 --> 0:10:14.559 I will say this knives out very much follows this 0:10:14.640 --> 0:10:19.720 formula very smartly. So you've got this master detective who 0:10:20.080 --> 0:10:24.040 usually arrives upon the scene, but they may already be there, 0:10:24.160 --> 0:10:29.079 and they are generally very eccentric and sort of they 0:10:29.120 --> 0:10:33.680 always have these quirky sort of characteristics. In Christie's case, 0:10:33.760 --> 0:10:39.200 we have the very formidable Hercule Poirot, and then Miss Marple, 0:10:39.280 --> 0:10:44.400 Jane Marple. In Hercule's case, he's Belgian and has this 0:10:44.480 --> 0:10:47.280 big mustache and it's just sort of eccentric and Belgian. 0:10:48.440 --> 0:10:51.000 Just you know, he's not French. There's something about being 0:10:51.040 --> 0:10:54.720 Belgium that makes it slightly different. Sure, and Miss Marple 0:10:54.800 --> 0:10:58.959 apparently it's just a very ordinary and people underestimate her 0:10:59.000 --> 0:11:01.520 and that's how she sort of wins the day. 0:11:02.120 --> 0:11:07.360 Yeah, because for Hercule Poirot was a retired Belgian police detective, 0:11:07.400 --> 0:11:11.400 so he has some measure of authority still to question 0:11:11.600 --> 0:11:15.440 people and interrogate people as he wishes. With Miss Marple, 0:11:15.559 --> 0:11:20.480 she's just kind of a quiet old lady who sews 0:11:20.520 --> 0:11:24.160 and knits a lot, and she just has a very 0:11:24.240 --> 0:11:27.360 keen eye for detail and an interest in solving, you know, 0:11:27.400 --> 0:11:30.680 the murders that seem to happen around her, Like Angela 0:11:30.760 --> 0:11:35.679 Lansbury basically, yes, but rather than interrogate people directly, Miss 0:11:35.679 --> 0:11:39.920 Marple's thing is she just kind of quietly is there 0:11:40.480 --> 0:11:42.880 and people tend to confide in her, and she kind 0:11:42.920 --> 0:11:47.800 of quietly helps them along and gives them She gives 0:11:47.800 --> 0:11:51.199 them the rope to hang themselves with. That's how she 0:11:51.240 --> 0:11:54.000 interrogates people or figures out who who the murderer is. 0:11:54.640 --> 0:11:58.200 Right, So you've got your setting in the cozy mystery setting. 0:11:58.600 --> 0:12:01.160 Like you said, it's usually like in a state or 0:12:01.160 --> 0:12:04.880 a home, maybe a hotel, maybe it might be a 0:12:04.920 --> 0:12:09.000 small English village or an express obviously is on a 0:12:09.040 --> 0:12:13.520 train another sort of confined space. By the way, have 0:12:13.559 --> 0:12:16.920 you seen Trained to Busan? 0:12:19.679 --> 0:12:22.520 I confuse that with Snow Piercer. I think I've seen both, 0:12:22.559 --> 0:12:24.679 but I can't remember which ones, which. 0:12:25.000 --> 0:12:29.079 They're kind of very similar. But bon is Zombies on 0:12:29.120 --> 0:12:30.800 a Train Korean film. 0:12:31.280 --> 0:12:33.280 No, then I think I've just seen snow Piercer. 0:12:33.440 --> 0:12:36.000 You should check out Trained to Busan. If you think 0:12:36.000 --> 0:12:40.280 you've seen it all with the zombie genre, then think again, dude. 0:12:40.280 --> 0:12:46.719 That's saying something because that genre has gotten a little tired. Tale. Hey, 0:12:46.800 --> 0:12:48.280 let me ask you this. Have you seen I know 0:12:48.320 --> 0:12:51.199 you've seen it. You had to have Ozark? Oh sure, 0:12:51.320 --> 0:12:52.679 I'm just started it. 0:12:52.880 --> 0:12:55.680 Yeah, I'm a couple of episodes into the latest season. 0:12:56.040 --> 0:12:58.400 Okay, yeah, you me and I just started at season one, 0:12:58.480 --> 0:13:00.160 and I'm like, all I want to do is sit 0:13:00.200 --> 0:13:02.240 her own and watch os Ark. It's amazing. 0:13:02.480 --> 0:13:06.040 Yeah, I love it. That's like hartwell you know, oh no, 0:13:06.160 --> 0:13:11.000 I didn't know that. Yeah, smart. I've tried to get 0:13:11.320 --> 0:13:13.800 Bateman and Laura Lenny on movie Crush and it's always 0:13:14.559 --> 0:13:15.000 thank you no. 0:13:15.840 --> 0:13:19.320 Oh yeah, yeah, Hey, you're giving responses. That's that's a 0:13:19.320 --> 0:13:20.280 big step forward. 0:13:20.360 --> 0:13:22.400 It's nice to be told no, and just not ignored. 0:13:22.880 --> 0:13:25.640 Yeah right, all right, so you've got your setting. With 0:13:25.760 --> 0:13:30.280 Agatha Christie, she did include her travels in some of 0:13:30.280 --> 0:13:33.840 her later novels when they became like super popular, but 0:13:34.000 --> 0:13:37.480 it was still not like a globe trotting like James 0:13:37.480 --> 0:13:38.280 Bond kind of thing. 0:13:39.720 --> 0:13:43.040 No, that's that's the point. So like in a espionage 0:13:43.120 --> 0:13:45.600 thriller or something that locals are all over the place, 0:13:45.640 --> 0:13:50.880 and you know, the characters constantly moving in these cozy thrillers, 0:13:50.920 --> 0:13:54.800 like even if they're in an exotic local, they're still 0:13:54.840 --> 0:13:57.760 set in a small part of that exotic local. 0:13:58.480 --> 0:14:02.840 That's right, you got your suspect. They are questioned by 0:14:02.840 --> 0:14:06.880 the detective. They usually all have a motive, They usually 0:14:06.960 --> 0:14:10.080 all have the means because everyone, you know, in a 0:14:10.080 --> 0:14:13.079 great novel like this, everyone's got to be a suspect 0:14:13.760 --> 0:14:16.040 from the beginning. And then you can kind of quickly 0:14:16.080 --> 0:14:18.080 whittle or slowly whittle that list down. 0:14:19.000 --> 0:14:21.880 Right. And here's the thing what I was saying with 0:14:21.920 --> 0:14:26.000 the with the kind of mystery that Agatha Christie wrote 0:14:26.440 --> 0:14:30.520 and really established, you are part of the mystery, like 0:14:30.720 --> 0:14:36.040 you're either the investigator. The detective has an assistant that 0:14:36.040 --> 0:14:40.520 they explain things to very much like Sherlock, Holmes and Watson. Sure, 0:14:41.440 --> 0:14:44.720 or if the detective is working solo, say like Miss Marple. 0:14:45.040 --> 0:14:49.640 Miss Marples might write a list of suspects and their 0:14:49.680 --> 0:14:53.840 motives and little clues down as part of the narration, 0:14:54.600 --> 0:14:58.760 and you're let in every step of the way, So 0:14:58.960 --> 0:15:02.680 you're part of the working towards solving the mystery. And 0:15:02.680 --> 0:15:05.160 as it's very frequently put, it kind of pits you 0:15:05.160 --> 0:15:07.920 in a competition with the author to see if you 0:15:07.960 --> 0:15:10.560 can figure out who done it before the end of 0:15:10.560 --> 0:15:11.000 the book. 0:15:11.240 --> 0:15:13.640 Yeah. I mean that goes back to Encyclopedia Brown. The 0:15:13.640 --> 0:15:15.560 whole point is to try and figure that stuff. 0:15:15.320 --> 0:15:18.560 Out, right, Man, I love those Those are so great. 0:15:18.640 --> 0:15:22.000 Encyclopedia Brown. I remember he busted one dumb kid who 0:15:22.000 --> 0:15:23.520 did something bad. I can't remember. 0:15:24.240 --> 0:15:24.960 Was it bugs meaning? 0:15:26.280 --> 0:15:29.280 Oh man, good memory. It may have been bugs meaning 0:15:29.400 --> 0:15:31.200 was he kind of a big dumb o who'd like 0:15:31.240 --> 0:15:32.560 beat up on chipmunks? 0:15:32.640 --> 0:15:32.880 I think? 0:15:32.920 --> 0:15:37.200 So, okay, he busted bugs once because bugs had tears 0:15:37.200 --> 0:15:40.440 coming out of the the outside corners of his eyes, 0:15:40.840 --> 0:15:43.840 a freakazoid by the inside corners. 0:15:45.080 --> 0:15:47.320 That's good. But see, the great thing about those books 0:15:47.360 --> 0:15:51.640 is that a twelve year old doesn't really necessarily always 0:15:51.680 --> 0:15:52.600 pick up on those clues. 0:15:53.520 --> 0:15:54.120 Oh I did. 0:15:54.720 --> 0:15:56.680 I wasn't that great. I'd be curious to see if 0:15:56.680 --> 0:15:59.640 they would stump me now No, no, I mean. 0:15:59.640 --> 0:16:03.440 Specif with the outside of the eye thing. But yeah, no, 0:16:03.520 --> 0:16:05.280 I'm sure there are plenty that I missed. 0:16:05.440 --> 0:16:08.200 But she cried a lot when you were a boy, 0:16:08.800 --> 0:16:13.480 I knew while the mirror tears came from uh. And 0:16:13.560 --> 0:16:15.360 so then at the end, to wrap up the little 0:16:15.400 --> 0:16:19.040 genre sort of summary, you've got this great ending usually 0:16:19.480 --> 0:16:23.160 where everyone's gathered together and the detective kind of walks 0:16:23.200 --> 0:16:25.920 everyone through the big reveal of exactly how the killer 0:16:25.960 --> 0:16:28.920 did it right, And in her case, she did not 0:16:29.920 --> 0:16:32.960 like when the killer is revealed, they didn't turn around 0:16:33.040 --> 0:16:37.000 and shoot them in the face like it's usually pretty nonviolent. 0:16:37.040 --> 0:16:39.720 They would be wrestled to the ground or arrested, or 0:16:39.760 --> 0:16:42.840 maybe they might run away and you hear later that 0:16:42.920 --> 0:16:44.800 they had killed themselves or something like that. 0:16:45.320 --> 0:16:48.920 Sure, there was rarely a grand finale where they would 0:16:48.960 --> 0:16:50.960 be pressed to death in front of a crowd. 0:16:51.280 --> 0:16:52.680 Nah, who needs it? 0:16:53.320 --> 0:16:55.520 So that? I mean, that's it like bing bang boom. 0:16:55.640 --> 0:16:57.960 That was when you started on page one of an 0:16:57.960 --> 0:17:01.040 Agatha Christie novel, you knew exactly how everything was going 0:17:01.120 --> 0:17:03.600 to play out. And then one of the other things 0:17:03.680 --> 0:17:06.800 is because this thing was so formulaic, there was also 0:17:06.960 --> 0:17:09.560 room for this for the author to kind of play 0:17:09.600 --> 0:17:14.520 with you, the reader in using things like bluffs and 0:17:14.600 --> 0:17:18.439 red herrings, I think are basically the same thing. But 0:17:18.520 --> 0:17:22.160 the idea is that so the author in this case, 0:17:22.200 --> 0:17:24.800 I get said Christy would say something like, you know, 0:17:25.080 --> 0:17:28.560 early on in the book, a suspect would come running 0:17:28.560 --> 0:17:32.359 out of the house looking shaken and pale, and you 0:17:32.480 --> 0:17:34.560 the reader would be like, well, that's just way too obvious. 0:17:34.600 --> 0:17:36.359 She's not going to name She's not going to point 0:17:36.359 --> 0:17:39.440 out who the murderer is at the beginning of the book, 0:17:39.720 --> 0:17:42.520 so I can disregard that person or this very obvious 0:17:42.560 --> 0:17:45.359 clue or something like that. That was just kind of 0:17:45.359 --> 0:17:48.240 part of the interplay between author and reader. But then 0:17:48.240 --> 0:17:50.480 it could go even deeper to where she would say 0:17:50.520 --> 0:17:52.840 something like, well, I know that you think that this 0:17:52.920 --> 0:17:54.879 is too obvious, so I'm going to actually make this 0:17:54.960 --> 0:17:57.560 the actual murderer, which she did in some cases, which 0:17:57.600 --> 0:18:00.359 was like a double bluff. Apparently could just keep going 0:18:00.359 --> 0:18:02.480 on and on and on, but it was this kind 0:18:02.480 --> 0:18:08.119 of wrestling match or maybe slap fight between Agatha Christie 0:18:08.160 --> 0:18:10.560 and you, her reader, which made the whole thing all 0:18:10.600 --> 0:18:11.400 the more delightful. 0:18:12.520 --> 0:18:15.920 That's right, And she ed takes great pains to point 0:18:15.960 --> 0:18:19.080 out that she did not invent this genre. There were 0:18:19.119 --> 0:18:22.320 people like Arthur Conan Doyle obviously and Poe before her 0:18:22.440 --> 0:18:24.879 that sort of established some of these rules. But she 0:18:25.160 --> 0:18:27.640 was very popular. She's very good at what she did. 0:18:28.160 --> 0:18:28.280 Ye. 0:18:28.640 --> 0:18:30.920 She wrote about what she knew. And we'll talk about 0:18:30.960 --> 0:18:34.200 her life coming up in a little bit. But these 0:18:34.320 --> 0:18:37.240 manor houses in these estates, and these English villages and 0:18:37.280 --> 0:18:41.000 even the exotic locales and these train trips and things 0:18:41.000 --> 0:18:44.560 were things that she actually experienced. And you know, a 0:18:44.600 --> 0:18:46.280 lot of people are great at making stuff up, and 0:18:46.280 --> 0:18:48.159 a lot of people are great about writing what they know. 0:18:48.720 --> 0:18:50.800 And it seems like she was really great at writing 0:18:50.800 --> 0:18:51.359 what she knew. 0:18:52.080 --> 0:18:57.639 Yeah, And for some reason, either it was the time 0:18:57.880 --> 0:19:01.320 or maybe because of her I'm not sure. It was 0:19:01.440 --> 0:19:03.360 kind of a chicken or the egg thing, but she 0:19:03.480 --> 0:19:06.199 happened to write about stuff that a lot of people 0:19:06.240 --> 0:19:11.040 wanted to read about, these small, you know, English villages 0:19:11.080 --> 0:19:15.080 and you know, quaint mannerisms of the upper middle and 0:19:15.160 --> 0:19:20.560 upper class English society set in this period of time 0:19:21.119 --> 0:19:23.840 that and for some reason, it just captured everybody's attention. 0:19:23.920 --> 0:19:28.640 And apparently when she started expanding, like I think after 0:19:28.720 --> 0:19:32.840 World War Two, to some slightly more exotic locales like 0:19:32.960 --> 0:19:37.920 Egypt or Mesopotamia, you know, for like Death on the 0:19:38.040 --> 0:19:40.080 Nile was a very famous wonder in this time, or 0:19:40.119 --> 0:19:46.240 the Orient Express that really catapulted her into superstardom, international 0:19:46.240 --> 0:19:47.240 superstardom too. 0:19:48.000 --> 0:19:50.720 Yeah. I don't have a super firm read on the 0:19:50.800 --> 0:19:53.280 history of literature, but I get the idea that this 0:19:53.440 --> 0:19:57.080 is sort of aligned with the beginnings of pop lit. 0:19:58.240 --> 0:20:01.880 And like I call it the beach Book. I don't 0:20:01.920 --> 0:20:03.479 know if there had been a ton of stuff like 0:20:03.520 --> 0:20:06.720 this that was just sort of pure comfort food and 0:20:06.840 --> 0:20:08.520 entertainment up to this point. 0:20:09.000 --> 0:20:12.000 Yeah, I'm not sure either. Nothing that I'm familiar with 0:20:12.080 --> 0:20:12.760 I can say. 0:20:12.840 --> 0:20:15.159 But they were very entertaining books. They were humorous, a 0:20:15.240 --> 0:20:21.520 very dark sense of humor. Great dialogue, all these verbal 0:20:21.600 --> 0:20:24.400 jousts between the detectives and the suspects is really key 0:20:24.440 --> 0:20:27.879 to that genre. Something nis Out did really really well. 0:20:28.359 --> 0:20:30.040 It was one of my favorite scripts of the year, 0:20:30.280 --> 0:20:33.960 maybe my favorite script. Wow, but just really really good 0:20:34.000 --> 0:20:37.760 sharp writing. And it's no sort of no accident that 0:20:37.840 --> 0:20:39.520 she became so hugely popular. 0:20:40.200 --> 0:20:42.680 No, And that's something like if you're not really familiar 0:20:42.720 --> 0:20:44.800 with Agatha Chrissy and you just kind of look her 0:20:44.880 --> 0:20:47.800 up and passing. One of the things you'll be confronted 0:20:47.840 --> 0:20:49.600 with is that a lot of people, a lot of 0:20:49.640 --> 0:20:53.680 critics say she was a hack. And what they're talking 0:20:53.760 --> 0:20:57.320 about is that formula that she followed to almost like 0:20:57.359 --> 0:21:03.120 a soul les Lee rational degree, Like that was the formula, 0:21:03.320 --> 0:21:07.919 that's what she followed. But that really misses like the 0:21:08.000 --> 0:21:10.120 fact that she had a really great eye for detail 0:21:10.119 --> 0:21:12.000 and the dialogue. Like you were saying, like she was 0:21:12.080 --> 0:21:15.439 a good writer and she could just crank workout. I 0:21:15.440 --> 0:21:19.560 think during the decade of the twenties she wrote a 0:21:19.760 --> 0:21:23.640 book a year. It might have even become more prolific 0:21:23.680 --> 0:21:25.480 later on in the thirties and forties too. 0:21:26.200 --> 0:21:30.760 Yeah, and she was a business person, you know, like, 0:21:30.800 --> 0:21:34.240 there's nothing wrong with saying, wow, people love this stuff 0:21:34.760 --> 0:21:38.000 and they sell a lot. And although it took a 0:21:38.040 --> 0:21:40.200 while for that to happen, as we'll see, but there's 0:21:40.200 --> 0:21:42.040 nothing wrong with any of that. I think people that 0:21:42.119 --> 0:21:44.320 call her a hack. Can go fly kite? 0:21:45.080 --> 0:21:47.800 Yeah, go fly it with extreme prejudice. 0:21:47.840 --> 0:21:49.160 Should we take a break. 0:21:49.200 --> 0:21:51.160 I think so, man, we'll come back and talk about 0:21:51.160 --> 0:22:17.800 her life. Great, okay, Chuck. 0:22:17.920 --> 0:22:18.000 So. 0:22:19.240 --> 0:22:25.720 Agatha Christie was born in eighteen ninety in England, in Devonshire, 0:22:26.320 --> 0:22:31.040 in Torquay, which I always wanted to say, Tanga Rey, Devonshire. Sure, 0:22:32.200 --> 0:22:35.080 And it's in the southwest of England. So Torquay is 0:22:35.200 --> 0:22:38.960 kind of like our Devonshire is like our Arizona, basically, 0:22:40.840 --> 0:22:41.800 that's my impression. 0:22:41.960 --> 0:22:44.720 I think it is very much like Arizona, right, the 0:22:44.840 --> 0:22:47.960 legendary Devonshire cactus. 0:22:47.840 --> 0:22:53.240 Right, so which stalks the moors, that's right. And she 0:22:53.440 --> 0:22:55.480 was one of three kids, and I think her older 0:22:55.480 --> 0:22:58.000 brother and sister were both at least a decade older 0:22:58.040 --> 0:23:01.600 than her. So she had like a very solitary childhood, 0:23:01.600 --> 0:23:04.240 which appears to have made her fairly happy. She didn't 0:23:04.280 --> 0:23:06.760 go to school. She was raised by governesses and educated 0:23:06.760 --> 0:23:10.560 by governesses. Spent a lot of time reading and just 0:23:11.000 --> 0:23:13.080 hung out around her family's estate. 0:23:13.600 --> 0:23:16.600 Yeah, I mean they had some dough They were not 0:23:16.760 --> 0:23:19.320 wealthy wealthy, but they were definitely upper middle class. They 0:23:19.320 --> 0:23:23.920 got an inheritance from her paternal grandfather, such that her 0:23:24.000 --> 0:23:28.359 dad didn't need to work. Apparently, she is on record 0:23:28.400 --> 0:23:31.320 as saying that her dad wasn't around much. Didn't really 0:23:31.359 --> 0:23:34.879 impact me once much. So he can go fly a 0:23:34.960 --> 0:23:37.639 kite as well. Right, it's a lot of kite flying. 0:23:38.400 --> 0:23:41.160 And she loved being out in the garden. She wasn't 0:23:42.280 --> 0:23:44.560 I get the impression. She wasn't like reclusive or anything, 0:23:44.680 --> 0:23:48.000 but she very much enjoyed time with herself alone, but 0:23:48.080 --> 0:23:50.639 also had friends and stuff when she eventually did go 0:23:50.680 --> 0:23:53.119 to school once her father passed and they couldn't afford that. 0:23:53.160 --> 0:23:58.080 Governess, right, but she was a very very shy person. 0:23:58.640 --> 0:24:03.440 The novelist Joan neck Sella says that even as an adult, 0:24:03.560 --> 0:24:07.320 she was so shy that sometimes she wouldn't go into 0:24:07.440 --> 0:24:10.680 shops because she would have to interact with the shopkeeper. 0:24:11.880 --> 0:24:15.119 So it's just ast. You know how many novelists are 0:24:15.240 --> 0:24:17.400 the life of the party and super outgoing. 0:24:18.280 --> 0:24:21.160 You've never met Philip Roth, apparently. 0:24:20.920 --> 0:24:22.479 I just I don't know, you kind of picture like 0:24:22.600 --> 0:24:26.320 the Stephen Kings, just locked in an attict somewhere and 0:24:26.359 --> 0:24:28.080 not like, well, let me write a little bit, then 0:24:28.560 --> 0:24:31.280 I'm gonna go, you know, go to a party. 0:24:31.520 --> 0:24:34.280 Right, go play some pickup basketball and maybe volunteer at 0:24:34.280 --> 0:24:35.400 the local food bank act. 0:24:35.600 --> 0:24:38.000 I don't know it just it's sort of solitary pastime. 0:24:38.119 --> 0:24:42.919 So that. Sure, there are examples of extroverted authors, but 0:24:42.960 --> 0:24:44.920 I think she kind of fits the mold that you 0:24:45.200 --> 0:24:48.000 generally think of, especially for a lady mystery writer. 0:24:48.640 --> 0:24:50.800 Yeah, and you know, I think not only fits the mold, 0:24:50.880 --> 0:24:53.560 the more I learned about her, she made the mold true. 0:24:53.760 --> 0:24:57.000 Basically everything we take her for granted as far as 0:24:57.040 --> 0:24:59.800 writing and mystery writing goes like she basically made it up. 0:25:00.160 --> 0:25:01.600 It's pretty impressive stuff. 0:25:02.040 --> 0:25:04.959 Yeah. So she, like we said, she did some pretty 0:25:06.200 --> 0:25:11.000 to us dumb dumbs in America seem like exotic traveling trips. 0:25:11.000 --> 0:25:13.320 But if you lived in England at the time, it's 0:25:13.400 --> 0:25:16.280 no big deal to go to Egypt and check out 0:25:16.320 --> 0:25:18.359 the Pyramids. That was if you had a little dough 0:25:18.400 --> 0:25:20.600 that was a pretty common vacation that you might take. 0:25:21.400 --> 0:25:23.480 So she did stuff like that, and she was exposed 0:25:23.480 --> 0:25:27.919 to exotic locales and use those in her work. In 0:25:27.960 --> 0:25:31.040 her very first novel, Even Snow Upon the Desert, she 0:25:31.119 --> 0:25:33.239 wrote when she was like twenty two or twenty three 0:25:33.320 --> 0:25:37.840 years old, I think, and you know, she had a 0:25:37.840 --> 0:25:39.760 hard time getting published at first because she was a 0:25:39.760 --> 0:25:40.280 young woman. 0:25:41.640 --> 0:25:45.280 Yeah, she was rejected out of hand. And apparently also 0:25:45.400 --> 0:25:49.600 she'd started writing because her sister told her that she 0:25:49.680 --> 0:25:52.440 probably wouldn't be able to write a mystery novel, yeah, 0:25:52.440 --> 0:25:56.280 which I love, So she did. She wrote the what 0:25:56.440 --> 0:25:57.159 was it? Snow on? 0:25:57.320 --> 0:25:58.800 What? Snow upon the Desert? 0:25:59.119 --> 0:26:01.640 Snow upon the Desert? And she was very young then. 0:26:03.000 --> 0:26:05.720 And in between the time she wrote Snow upon the 0:26:05.720 --> 0:26:08.600 Desert and The Mysterious Affair at Styles, which would be 0:26:08.600 --> 0:26:12.560 her first published book, I believe she wedged a lot 0:26:12.600 --> 0:26:15.520 of life in there in the form of getting married 0:26:16.040 --> 0:26:19.399 to a guy named Archibald Archie Christie. And one of 0:26:19.400 --> 0:26:24.280 the things about Agatha Christie is that she never she 0:26:24.400 --> 0:26:27.640 wasn't a born writer, even though she did write as 0:26:27.680 --> 0:26:29.800 a younger person, like you were saying, like, she wasn't 0:26:29.840 --> 0:26:32.720 like a She just didn't want to be a writer 0:26:32.840 --> 0:26:36.359 as a kid. And she ended up writing really seriously 0:26:36.440 --> 0:26:39.760 after she and Archie Christie got married, because Archie Christie 0:26:39.800 --> 0:26:44.680 wasn't particularly wealthy and couldn't necessarily care for her himself, 0:26:44.960 --> 0:26:47.840 so she started writing to make money, which some people 0:26:47.840 --> 0:26:50.000 suspect is the reason she got into mystery writing in 0:26:50.000 --> 0:26:53.560 the first place, because it was a very very popular genre. 0:26:53.680 --> 0:26:56.359 Even though yeah, well it makes sense, so she had 0:26:56.400 --> 0:26:57.560 the skills to pay the bills. 0:26:57.560 --> 0:27:01.560 It turns out that's right. They were married nineteen fourteen. 0:27:01.960 --> 0:27:05.439 He was kind of promptly sent to fight in the 0:27:05.480 --> 0:27:09.640 Great War in France, and she worked at a pharmacist 0:27:10.359 --> 0:27:13.080 at a war hospital during that period, and this is 0:27:13.080 --> 0:27:17.199 where she learned a lot about potions and poisons and 0:27:17.240 --> 0:27:20.400 pharmaceuticals and things that would there's a lot of poisoning 0:27:20.400 --> 0:27:23.920 that goes on in her books. Yeah, and she later 0:27:23.960 --> 0:27:25.879 in her career, I think she actually would consult with 0:27:25.920 --> 0:27:28.439 doctors and stuff like that because she wanted everything to 0:27:28.440 --> 0:27:31.280 be really medically accurate. But early on she learned a 0:27:31.320 --> 0:27:33.760 lot about this stuff from her work in the pharmacy. 0:27:34.000 --> 0:27:37.919 Which is kind of cool and ghoulish, you know, She's like, h, 0:27:37.960 --> 0:27:40.879 how exactly would a person die from this bottle that 0:27:41.000 --> 0:27:45.480 I'm holding? So yeah, and apparently most of the deaths 0:27:45.480 --> 0:27:49.760 in her books are poisonings, and like you were saying, 0:27:49.760 --> 0:27:52.720 like you very rarely see the person die. They just 0:27:52.760 --> 0:27:55.200 come upon the body. And most of the times of 0:27:55.240 --> 0:27:58.959 poison body. Sometimes there was violence visited upon them, but 0:27:58.960 --> 0:28:02.480 for the most part, a body that was found poisoned 0:28:02.520 --> 0:28:02.920 to death. 0:28:03.200 --> 0:28:06.840 Yeah, and that's a good vehicle for a mystery novel 0:28:06.960 --> 0:28:11.480 because you know there's no murder weapon per se. There 0:28:11.520 --> 0:28:14.359 I guess there's the poison bottle. But it can often 0:28:14.400 --> 0:28:18.840 be very vague a poisoning death, like could it have 0:28:18.880 --> 0:28:20.600 been a heart attack? Like you have to kind of 0:28:20.720 --> 0:28:23.040 suss out at first whether or not it was even 0:28:23.080 --> 0:28:25.680 a murder. It's not like an obvious thing where there's 0:28:25.720 --> 0:28:29.399 a bullet hole in their chest or something like that. 0:28:29.760 --> 0:28:33.240 Right, right, Yeah, So poisoning is what she went with typically. 0:28:33.800 --> 0:28:36.320 Another example also, Chuck, I think of like her writing 0:28:36.359 --> 0:28:39.800 what she knew too, Yeah, at least writing what interested her. 0:28:41.160 --> 0:28:47.560 And she wrote in I believe nineteen twenty no during 0:28:47.760 --> 0:28:50.120 during World War One, so while she was working at 0:28:50.120 --> 0:28:52.680 the dispensary and Archie was off flying in France. I 0:28:52.720 --> 0:28:58.840 believe she wrote The Mysterious Affair at Styles and it 0:28:58.960 --> 0:29:01.040 was that's the one I started reading, and I don't 0:29:01.160 --> 0:29:04.800 understand how it was rejected at first, but it's a 0:29:04.880 --> 0:29:08.680 really interesting book just right out of the gate in 0:29:08.720 --> 0:29:13.320 that it pulls you right into this little country English 0:29:13.440 --> 0:29:16.440 estate and all the people on it, and you realize 0:29:16.560 --> 0:29:18.920 just after a couple of pages that you're already invested 0:29:18.920 --> 0:29:21.040 in them, which is pretty amazing. And this is like 0:29:21.320 --> 0:29:24.200 not her first book, but it was her first serious 0:29:24.240 --> 0:29:28.440 work that wasn't published immediately. It wasn't published until nineteen twenty, 0:29:29.400 --> 0:29:32.200 and I think even after it was published, it wasn't 0:29:32.400 --> 0:29:37.720 an immediate catapult to success for her, but it was 0:29:37.720 --> 0:29:40.480 a remarkable first book to be published. 0:29:40.920 --> 0:29:42.880 Yeah, and this is the one that introduced the world 0:29:42.880 --> 0:29:46.400 to her chief detective for a lot of those novels, 0:29:46.680 --> 0:29:50.120 mister Poirot, like we mentioned, And later on they asked 0:29:50.120 --> 0:29:55.360 her why he was Belgian, and she said why not? Basically, 0:29:56.960 --> 0:29:59.360 I don't think a whole lot of thought went into it. 0:29:59.360 --> 0:30:01.840 It turned out to be a really good choice because 0:30:01.840 --> 0:30:04.760 he had this kind of interesting accent and everywhere he went, 0:30:04.840 --> 0:30:07.040 I don't you know, they were never set in Belgium, 0:30:07.320 --> 0:30:11.840 so everywhere he went he was this sort of sort 0:30:11.880 --> 0:30:15.120 of strange foreigner that would come into town with this 0:30:15.280 --> 0:30:17.959 accent that no one quite understood, and he just had 0:30:17.960 --> 0:30:20.160 this sort of larger than life presence I think because 0:30:20.160 --> 0:30:21.480 of that. So it turned out to be a really 0:30:21.520 --> 0:30:22.280 smart choice. 0:30:22.640 --> 0:30:26.200 Yeah. He was also a well known dandy who was 0:30:26.560 --> 0:30:31.440 very vain about his appearance, and he apparently said in 0:30:31.440 --> 0:30:34.680 one of the later books that he plays up his 0:30:34.920 --> 0:30:43.160 foreignness and his dandiness to disarm suspects when he's interrogating them, 0:30:43.200 --> 0:30:46.400 to make them take him less seriously than they otherwise might. 0:30:46.880 --> 0:30:48.840 Man, I want to talk about knives out so. 0:30:48.840 --> 0:30:52.680 Much you cannot. I appreciate you not doing that. 0:30:53.000 --> 0:30:55.360 So she had a daughter, we should mention, in nineteen 0:30:55.440 --> 0:30:59.240 nineteen named Rosalind, and that's the only child she ever had. 0:30:59.320 --> 0:31:02.560 And it was in nineteen twenty a year later that 0:31:02.640 --> 0:31:06.680 they finally did publish The Mysterious Affair at Styles after 0:31:06.760 --> 0:31:09.520 she agreed to change the ending. They said, we don't 0:31:09.560 --> 0:31:13.360 like Poirot revealing all this evidence in court, so she 0:31:13.480 --> 0:31:16.520 changed the ending. They said great. That's when she went 0:31:16.560 --> 0:31:19.920 on to publish that novel every year for about ten years, 0:31:20.680 --> 0:31:24.520 very very big books. But they weren't They were popular, 0:31:24.560 --> 0:31:28.560 but she wasn't like a superstar internationally at this point yet. 0:31:29.320 --> 0:31:34.560 No, not yet. Again. She really catapulted later on because 0:31:34.600 --> 0:31:37.280 she moved to some of these more exotic locales. But 0:31:37.400 --> 0:31:41.120 one of the things that cemented her legend as a 0:31:41.160 --> 0:31:43.880 mystery writer in addition to all of the work she did, 0:31:43.920 --> 0:31:48.760 in addition to her prolificness and her extreme talent at 0:31:48.920 --> 0:31:53.720 this formula that she had worked out was what still 0:31:53.760 --> 0:31:56.240 today is considered an unsolved mystery. In fact, it was 0:31:56.240 --> 0:31:59.680 featured on a nineteen ninety four episode of Unsolved Mysteries, 0:32:00.480 --> 0:32:05.120 which I just randomly happened to see recently, and she disappeared. 0:32:05.360 --> 0:32:11.160 There's a whole sub plot to Agatha Christie's life that 0:32:11.320 --> 0:32:15.960 was really surprising, especially compared to how boring and normal 0:32:16.120 --> 0:32:19.840 and just kind of plotting with these instead of teas 0:32:20.400 --> 0:32:23.680 her normal life. Was the fact that she has this 0:32:24.200 --> 0:32:26.840 grand mystery plunk down in the middle of it is 0:32:27.560 --> 0:32:28.400 pretty impressive. 0:32:28.720 --> 0:32:33.800 Yeah, it's so. Here's the backstory. She and Archie were 0:32:33.840 --> 0:32:36.000 not meant to be together. As it turns out, he 0:32:36.120 --> 0:32:39.160 revealed that he was having an affair with a lady 0:32:39.240 --> 0:32:41.320 named Nancy Neil who was a friend of the family, 0:32:42.240 --> 0:32:45.800 and obviously that was the end of their marriage. So 0:32:46.240 --> 0:32:50.520 at the end of nineteen twenty six, they decided they 0:32:50.520 --> 0:32:52.880 were going to take a trip together a weekend, or 0:32:53.920 --> 0:32:56.680 Archie went to be with his friends instead. And then 0:32:56.720 --> 0:33:01.680 she vanished into seemingly thin air. They found her car 0:33:02.160 --> 0:33:04.120 near a rock quarry, with her fur coat and her 0:33:04.200 --> 0:33:07.600 driver's license there and no Agatha Christie. 0:33:08.200 --> 0:33:10.600 No, and her car wasn't just near the rock quarry 0:33:10.720 --> 0:33:13.720 according to some reports like one of the wheels is 0:33:13.760 --> 0:33:14.880 hanging over the edge of this. 0:33:14.920 --> 0:33:18.160 Cliff and still spinning right. 0:33:19.320 --> 0:33:22.960 So, but she was gone. They couldn't find her. And 0:33:23.000 --> 0:33:27.560 so within a couple of days, this massive search, depending 0:33:27.600 --> 0:33:30.280 on who you ask and depending on when you ask them, 0:33:30.800 --> 0:33:34.720 ten like ten thousand plus people were searching for probably 0:33:34.720 --> 0:33:38.520 more likely a couple thousand, which is still really remarkable 0:33:38.600 --> 0:33:41.720 for this tiny little area in the southwest of England 0:33:42.480 --> 0:33:46.720 at the time in nineteen twenty six. So that really 0:33:46.800 --> 0:33:49.920 kind of demonstrates she was already a well known writer. 0:33:50.600 --> 0:33:53.840 She wasn't legendary yet, but is this disappearance is the 0:33:54.480 --> 0:33:58.440 mechanism by which she becomes legendary, I think. And this 0:33:58.600 --> 0:34:02.120 goes on for a good week, I believe. Right when 0:34:02.120 --> 0:34:03.320 did she disappear? December? 0:34:03.320 --> 0:34:05.520 What I think December third is when they were going 0:34:05.560 --> 0:34:06.280 to take that trip. 0:34:06.720 --> 0:34:09.720 So she was gone almost two weeks, and by gone 0:34:09.920 --> 0:34:12.759 we mean just vanished. She left behind that car. She 0:34:12.840 --> 0:34:15.200 left behind the driver's license in the fur like you said, 0:34:15.640 --> 0:34:19.359 she was gone. Her husband had came to be known 0:34:19.480 --> 0:34:21.880 to have asked for a divorce already, so people were like, 0:34:21.920 --> 0:34:24.920 well did he bump her off? And she's a mystery 0:34:24.920 --> 0:34:27.759 writer known for generating stuff like this, So even at 0:34:27.760 --> 0:34:30.960 the time, some people were like, is this a publicity stunt, 0:34:31.000 --> 0:34:32.799 because it's a pretty good one if it is. 0:34:33.280 --> 0:34:37.680 Sure it worked, And there was a band at this 0:34:37.760 --> 0:34:42.759 place called the Swan Hydropathic Hotel in Yorkshire, which kind 0:34:42.760 --> 0:34:46.360 of just sounds like a bit of a Kellogg Brothers 0:34:46.840 --> 0:34:47.520 type of joint. 0:34:48.080 --> 0:34:50.120 Have you seen a Cure for wellness? 0:34:50.640 --> 0:34:53.359 Well? We talked about that in that podcast. 0:34:53.239 --> 0:34:54.759 Did we? I can't remember. Have you seen it? 0:34:55.040 --> 0:34:56.680 I never saw it? 0:34:56.840 --> 0:35:00.279 Have you yet? I still have not seen it, missing 0:35:00.320 --> 0:35:02.759 that much, but it is pretty interesting. It's it's worth 0:35:02.800 --> 0:35:03.720 seeing at least once. 0:35:03.840 --> 0:35:06.080 I might check it out, okay, but any rate, they 0:35:06.080 --> 0:35:09.080 had a band here, because what hydropathic hotel does not 0:35:10.120 --> 0:35:13.759 have a house band, And they came forward and said, Hey, 0:35:14.239 --> 0:35:17.799 that's Agatha Christie lady. She's been staying here for a week. 0:35:19.280 --> 0:35:23.120 She's been in the electric light bath cabinet and getting 0:35:23.600 --> 0:35:27.759 yogurt enemas and having a grand old time. So they 0:35:27.760 --> 0:35:29.440 went to the cops, and the cops went to the 0:35:29.520 --> 0:35:32.759 lead detective and said, no, no, no, she has been 0:35:32.840 --> 0:35:34.760 murdered and we're trying to find out the killer. 0:35:35.280 --> 0:35:36.120 I'm sure of it. 0:35:36.360 --> 0:35:39.440 Eventually, this detective said, well, let me tell her husband. 0:35:40.200 --> 0:35:42.759 And husband Archie went out to check it out on 0:35:42.800 --> 0:35:46.560 the fourteenth of December. There she was. She was in seclusion, 0:35:47.320 --> 0:35:50.560 and that was sort of the end of this mystery. 0:35:50.560 --> 0:35:54.759 It wasn't so much a mystery, you know. She by 0:35:54.760 --> 0:35:57.440 all accounts, it seems like she went there because she 0:35:58.320 --> 0:36:02.839 had thought about or maybe tried to drive her car 0:36:02.880 --> 0:36:06.040 into that quarry and kill herself because she was upset 0:36:06.040 --> 0:36:10.320 about her marriage ending. Yeah, and then it didn't happen, 0:36:10.520 --> 0:36:12.360 and she just kind of goes on a walk and 0:36:12.480 --> 0:36:15.080 ends up at this place. May or may not have 0:36:15.200 --> 0:36:19.840 invented an amnesia story, or it may have actually happened 0:36:19.840 --> 0:36:22.120 to some degree. She didn't talk about a lot, so 0:36:22.120 --> 0:36:24.880 we don't really know exactly what went down with the amnesia. 0:36:25.480 --> 0:36:28.279 She said that. So two years later she gave an 0:36:28.320 --> 0:36:31.440 interview with The Daily Mail and apparently explain the amnesia 0:36:31.480 --> 0:36:33.760 by saying she'd hit her head on the steering wheel, 0:36:34.040 --> 0:36:37.080 but in the same interview she says that she'd let 0:36:37.239 --> 0:36:40.080 go of the steering wheel. So she basically said, like, 0:36:40.520 --> 0:36:43.160 I attempted suicide and it didn't work out. I hit 0:36:43.200 --> 0:36:45.319 my head on the steering wheel, and I wandered off, 0:36:45.320 --> 0:36:49.040 and I had amnesia. But they think that it was 0:36:49.120 --> 0:36:52.760 just a family cover story to save face, this amnesia story, 0:36:52.760 --> 0:36:55.440 and that really she had attempted to take her own 0:36:55.480 --> 0:37:00.640 life and hadn't succeeded and now regretted it was embarrassed 0:37:00.680 --> 0:37:03.160 by all of this because the idea that there were 0:37:03.239 --> 0:37:06.000 thousands of people looking for I think it probably never 0:37:06.080 --> 0:37:08.759 crossed her mind when she wandered away from her car. No, 0:37:09.760 --> 0:37:12.080 and that I remember she was a very shy person, 0:37:12.520 --> 0:37:15.640 so this all this attention was very very hard on her. 0:37:15.920 --> 0:37:18.440 So the family just came up with this cover story 0:37:18.680 --> 0:37:22.000 that she had amnesia, so didn't even bother asking, and 0:37:23.200 --> 0:37:26.200 Archie and she stayed together for another year or so 0:37:26.560 --> 0:37:29.919 and then their divorce finally became finalized in nineteen twenty eight. 0:37:30.719 --> 0:37:33.320 Yeah, so she didn't even mention this in her autobiography, 0:37:33.360 --> 0:37:35.080 which kind of says all you need to know about 0:37:35.080 --> 0:37:36.759 how much she liked to talk about. 0:37:36.440 --> 0:37:39.520 This, right, we should say there was one other thing 0:37:39.560 --> 0:37:42.319 that did this too. It wasn't just Archie asking for 0:37:42.360 --> 0:37:45.040 a divorce. He asked for a divorce a few months 0:37:45.040 --> 0:37:49.239 after her mother died. And I getak, Christie's mother was 0:37:49.360 --> 0:37:52.279 beloved to her. She worshiped her mother. She thought she 0:37:52.440 --> 0:37:55.520 was wonderful. Her mother was the parent that was there 0:37:55.560 --> 0:37:57.439 for her while she was a kid and raised her. 0:37:58.040 --> 0:37:59.920 It was just a very interesting person, it sounds like. 0:38:00.040 --> 0:38:02.879 So she died, Archie asks for a divorce a few 0:38:02.880 --> 0:38:07.360 months later, and then this whole mysterious disappearance happened. 0:38:07.560 --> 0:38:08.000 That's right. 0:38:08.160 --> 0:38:10.600 And then one last thing I read that at the 0:38:10.600 --> 0:38:15.040 Swan Hydro Hotel she was actually playing cards and chatting 0:38:15.080 --> 0:38:18.000 with other guests about this mysterious disappearance that was in 0:38:18.040 --> 0:38:20.520 all of the newspapers, and none of the other guests 0:38:20.600 --> 0:38:24.719 recognized her. It was those band members that you mentioned. Interesting, 0:38:25.320 --> 0:38:27.560 I thought so too, man. So that's everything I learned 0:38:27.560 --> 0:38:32.759 from Unsolved Mysteries. Should we take a break finally? 0:38:33.040 --> 0:38:35.440 All right, let's take our final break, and we'll talk 0:38:35.440 --> 0:39:00.840 a little bit more about her later life and further success. 0:39:02.200 --> 0:39:04.640 All right, So, it's in nineteen twenty eight. At this point, 0:39:05.280 --> 0:39:09.520 she is freshly divorced. She kept that name because you know, 0:39:09.960 --> 0:39:12.399 that's the name that made her famous, so it makes 0:39:12.400 --> 0:39:16.239 a lot of sense. And she kept writing novels. She 0:39:16.360 --> 0:39:20.839 traveled on the Orient Express to Bagdad. She got into archaeology, 0:39:21.040 --> 0:39:24.200 just sort of a hobbyist, and made friends with a 0:39:24.239 --> 0:39:27.680 couple who were archaeologists. Went to visit them in nineteen 0:39:27.719 --> 0:39:30.360 thirty and on that trip met a man named Max 0:39:30.480 --> 0:39:35.280 Malawan who was also an adventurer and an archaeologist thirteen 0:39:35.360 --> 0:39:38.120 years younger, and they fell in love and got married, 0:39:38.160 --> 0:39:40.080 which is a very very sweet story. 0:39:40.680 --> 0:39:43.840 Yeah. Apparently he was giving her a tour of some 0:39:44.000 --> 0:39:48.719 archaeological sites and he got the car stuck, and she, apparently, 0:39:48.800 --> 0:39:51.320 he said later she made no fuss about it, didn't 0:39:51.320 --> 0:39:54.680 blame him or anything like that, and he said, that's 0:39:54.680 --> 0:39:56.800 about the time when I started to begin to realize 0:39:56.840 --> 0:40:00.520 that you are wonderful. And so they got married, and 0:40:00.600 --> 0:40:03.000 she said later on that the good thing about being 0:40:03.000 --> 0:40:05.399 married to an archaeologist is that the older you get, 0:40:05.400 --> 0:40:10.880 the more interested they become interesting. That's kind of cute. 0:40:11.120 --> 0:40:14.000 So this is when Miss Marple comes along as a 0:40:14.840 --> 0:40:18.640 detective in nineteen thirty with the Murder at the Vicarage. 0:40:19.080 --> 0:40:20.080 That was our first one. 0:40:20.239 --> 0:40:23.040 That was the first Miss Marple book, Okay. And then 0:40:23.320 --> 0:40:27.080 she's traveling around, She's doing these archaeological digs and trips. 0:40:27.440 --> 0:40:30.919 She's going to Syria and Iraq. She fell in love 0:40:30.920 --> 0:40:34.240 with Syria and the Syrian people, and she's really cranking 0:40:34.280 --> 0:40:37.040 out some big books at this point in the nineteen thirties. 0:40:37.239 --> 0:40:40.960 That's why even on archaeological digs, Chuck, can you imagine 0:40:41.040 --> 0:40:43.480 how uncomfortable it would be to sit and write for 0:40:43.640 --> 0:40:45.400 hours in an archaeological site. 0:40:46.120 --> 0:40:46.560 I can't. 0:40:47.400 --> 0:40:49.120 It would be tough, I would think. And yet she 0:40:49.239 --> 0:40:51.160 was still just as prolific as ever. 0:40:51.520 --> 0:40:54.080 Yeah, books like Murder and Mesopotamia and Death on the 0:40:54.160 --> 0:40:56.640 Nile and Murder on the Orient Express were all written 0:40:57.360 --> 0:41:00.520 during this period, and this is what really can appulted 0:41:00.560 --> 0:41:03.400 her into international superstardom as an author. 0:41:04.040 --> 0:41:09.640 Right. So she and Max stayed together for I think 0:41:09.719 --> 0:41:14.840 forty six years until her death. Actually yeah, I think, yeah, 0:41:14.880 --> 0:41:19.200 she outlived him, so it's pretty sweet. But despite all 0:41:19.239 --> 0:41:23.880 of this kind of adventure and archaeological digs and like 0:41:24.000 --> 0:41:29.280 visits to the Middle East, most of her life from 0:41:29.320 --> 0:41:35.560 that point on was in Devonshire, in this tiny little 0:41:35.600 --> 0:41:40.240 area in the English countryside, in these the quaint little towns, 0:41:41.080 --> 0:41:44.800 and she gardened and was very involved in local community theater. 0:41:45.120 --> 0:41:49.080 That was her life. She was also one of the biggest, 0:41:50.000 --> 0:41:55.799 most well known, most best selling writers of in the 0:41:55.840 --> 0:41:59.000 world while she was alive, and yet that's what she did. 0:41:59.200 --> 0:42:02.239 She hung out with community theater group in garden. It 0:42:02.280 --> 0:42:03.160 was just her life. 0:42:03.400 --> 0:42:05.840 Yeah. She got the Dame Commander of the Order of 0:42:05.840 --> 0:42:11.120 the British Empire in nineteen seventy one, and the rights 0:42:11.120 --> 0:42:14.040 to her novels were held by company that she created 0:42:14.040 --> 0:42:16.640 for a long time, and then before she died she 0:42:16.800 --> 0:42:19.799 sold part of that off and that's been sort of 0:42:20.040 --> 0:42:21.719 bought and sold a bunch over the years, which is 0:42:21.800 --> 0:42:25.120 kind of how that usually happens. But she did retain 0:42:25.360 --> 0:42:29.480 enough of the company to have it be worth a 0:42:29.520 --> 0:42:32.520 ton of money, which she passed down to her daughter. 0:42:32.600 --> 0:42:35.600 Of course, as her only child. She sort of took 0:42:35.640 --> 0:42:38.440 care of her mother's works for many many years and 0:42:38.520 --> 0:42:41.640 then passed that on to her only child and named 0:42:41.680 --> 0:42:45.279 Matthew Pritchard, who still holds these rights and still sort 0:42:45.280 --> 0:42:47.719 of manages that today. 0:42:47.880 --> 0:42:53.240 That's right. So everything turned out well for Matthew Prichard sounds. 0:42:52.920 --> 0:42:56.279 Like, yeah, I wish my grandma was Actually I dunt 0:42:56.280 --> 0:42:58.640 because I love my grandma, But sure would it have 0:42:58.719 --> 0:43:00.640 killed her to be an internationally famous author. 0:43:01.320 --> 0:43:04.200 No, it wouldn't, Chuck, and I'm glad we're finally talking 0:43:04.239 --> 0:43:07.160 about it. Been an elephant in the room for a 0:43:07.280 --> 0:43:08.120 very long time. 0:43:08.920 --> 0:43:10.840 So she You know, a lot of these went on 0:43:10.880 --> 0:43:14.760 to be very famous films, TV series. I think Murder 0:43:14.760 --> 0:43:17.400 on the Orient Express has been a couple of big movies, 0:43:18.040 --> 0:43:20.120 in fact, one a couple of years ago that I 0:43:20.160 --> 0:43:20.759 have not seen. 0:43:21.760 --> 0:43:22.839 It's unwatchable. 0:43:23.000 --> 0:43:23.759 Oh was it really bad? 0:43:24.560 --> 0:43:26.680 I'm sorry if you listened to this. Kenneth BROWNO. I 0:43:26.719 --> 0:43:28.600 couldn't make it through the first five minutes. 0:43:28.760 --> 0:43:30.080 Oh wow, it was. 0:43:30.480 --> 0:43:31.200 I didn't like it. 0:43:31.280 --> 0:43:32.480 Okay. Is that all you know? 0:43:32.560 --> 0:43:36.520 I love? Yes? Okay, So that's my report is on 0:43:36.560 --> 0:43:37.680 the first five minutes. 0:43:39.080 --> 0:43:42.200 She very famously has a play called The mouse Trap, 0:43:42.800 --> 0:43:46.080 which is debuted the West End in nineteen fifty two, 0:43:46.600 --> 0:43:48.840 and it is the longest running play in the history 0:43:48.880 --> 0:43:51.040 of the West End, which is remarkable. 0:43:51.560 --> 0:43:54.360 Yeah, and to make that even sweeter, remember her sister 0:43:54.480 --> 0:43:58.520 who said that she probably couldn't write a mystery novel. Well, 0:43:58.560 --> 0:44:02.000 her sister was the first in the family to get 0:44:02.000 --> 0:44:04.480 a play produced on the West End, but it certainly 0:44:04.520 --> 0:44:07.239 wasn't the longest running play on the West End of 0:44:07.280 --> 0:44:09.440 all time. So she got her back doubly so. 0:44:09.719 --> 0:44:11.600 And then she was hit by a train and Agatha 0:44:11.640 --> 0:44:12.799 Christie laughed and. 0:44:12.800 --> 0:44:14.960 Laughed and poisoned her corpse. 0:44:16.239 --> 0:44:18.600 So we need to talk a little bit here at 0:44:18.600 --> 0:44:22.879 the end. We always like to give everyone's give everyone 0:44:22.920 --> 0:44:25.000 the accolades they deserve, but also point out some of 0:44:25.040 --> 0:44:27.160 the things that weren't so great. We don't want to 0:44:27.160 --> 0:44:30.440 whitewash anything. And she used a lot of kind of 0:44:32.080 --> 0:44:36.440 racially insensitive language some would call anti Semitic at times 0:44:36.480 --> 0:44:42.239 anti Catholic through parts of her career, such that the 0:44:42.280 --> 0:44:45.640 Anti Defamation League complained to her agent at one point, 0:44:46.280 --> 0:44:49.360 and because of that, American publishers were given the ability 0:44:49.400 --> 0:44:51.560 to change that stuff out sort of at. 0:44:51.400 --> 0:44:55.680 Will, without any notice given to her. She just she 0:44:55.719 --> 0:44:58.520 didn't know this was going on at all. Yeah, we 0:44:58.680 --> 0:45:01.520 just were like, I don't think the Americans are going 0:45:01.600 --> 0:45:03.680 to go for this. The Brits can barely stand it. 0:45:03.840 --> 0:45:05.959 The Americans definitely aren't going to take this well. 0:45:06.160 --> 0:45:07.719 Yeah, and I read a lot about this, and there 0:45:07.719 --> 0:45:12.359 are different takes. One take is that the old you know, 0:45:12.480 --> 0:45:14.640 she was a product of her time, thing, which people 0:45:15.840 --> 0:45:19.600 you know rightfully point out. Another is that oftentimes she's 0:45:19.760 --> 0:45:25.640 doing this to show characters are sort of underdeveloped as 0:45:25.680 --> 0:45:30.640 humans and sort of backward. So there's that as well. 0:45:30.680 --> 0:45:33.080 But you also can't dance around the fact that she 0:45:33.200 --> 0:45:37.960 did use some pretty bad words, and you know, we just. 0:45:37.880 --> 0:45:40.399 Got were bad stuff out and they were bad even 0:45:40.440 --> 0:45:43.040 at the time. Yeah, like that it wasn't. Yes, you 0:45:43.120 --> 0:45:45.080 can say, like, yeah, a lot of people had different 0:45:45.080 --> 0:45:50.360 social attitudes toward race and racism, and in that sense, 0:45:50.360 --> 0:45:53.160 she wasn't that much different. But there were cases where 0:45:53.200 --> 0:45:58.120 she was standing well outside of the norm, including in 0:45:58.200 --> 0:46:02.560 book titles and care characters and things like that. And 0:46:03.120 --> 0:46:05.840 one book in particular, and then there were none was 0:46:05.880 --> 0:46:09.200 revised many many times, not just in the US but 0:46:09.239 --> 0:46:13.040 in Great Britain as well. And it's remarkable in that sense. 0:46:13.640 --> 0:46:16.040 But in another sense, it is also remarkable in that 0:46:16.160 --> 0:46:20.719 it's considered pretty widely to have given birth to the 0:46:20.840 --> 0:46:22.240 slasher film genre. 0:46:22.600 --> 0:46:26.200 Did you know that I didn't until my bred d say. 0:46:26.080 --> 0:46:28.720 It, I yeah, I look this up a little more 0:46:29.200 --> 0:46:32.799 and on its own, and then there were none. The 0:46:32.840 --> 0:46:36.560 book ends Sorry for the spoiler, everybody, but it ends 0:46:36.600 --> 0:46:39.120 with I think all of the suspects killing one another 0:46:40.920 --> 0:46:44.640 and everyone dies. In the stage adaptation of the play 0:46:44.640 --> 0:46:49.560 that she helped write, The Final Girl, a female character 0:46:49.640 --> 0:46:54.040 is left alive and has out done the murderer who's 0:46:54.080 --> 0:46:56.480 come to get her, which is, you know, for the 0:46:56.520 --> 0:46:59.799 formula for any slasher film whatsoever. But there's a bunch 0:46:59.840 --> 0:47:02.200 of other elements in there too, and they're like, you know, 0:47:02.239 --> 0:47:05.719 even on like horror fan Wikis, they point to that 0:47:05.840 --> 0:47:08.719 as like the genuine birth even more than Psycho of 0:47:08.800 --> 0:47:10.160 the slasher film genre. 0:47:10.360 --> 0:47:10.520 Oh. 0:47:10.560 --> 0:47:13.600 Interesting, Yeah, it is pretty interesting. Who would have ever 0:47:13.640 --> 0:47:17.680 thought that. I guess Christie, with her non violence and 0:47:17.719 --> 0:47:20.960 poison and occasional racism, would have been the one to 0:47:21.360 --> 0:47:22.800 birth the slasher. 0:47:22.360 --> 0:47:25.160 Film occasional racism. Yeah, and a lot of the racist stuff, 0:47:25.200 --> 0:47:28.480 just to put a final pin on that was a 0:47:28.480 --> 0:47:31.719 lot of it was character descriptions, which can be some 0:47:31.800 --> 0:47:35.400 of the ugliest kinds of stuff like that, because it 0:47:35.440 --> 0:47:39.160 wasn't just like talking about philosophies. It was just like 0:47:39.280 --> 0:47:43.279 literally physically describing a character. Sometimes she would use some 0:47:43.320 --> 0:47:45.160 pretty derogatory language. 0:47:45.520 --> 0:47:49.880 Yeah. So again, it's a bit like exploring Elizabeth Blackwell 0:47:49.920 --> 0:47:53.799 or any historical characters. Always weird little bugs under the 0:47:53.880 --> 0:47:55.080 rocks you turn over. You know. 0:47:55.360 --> 0:47:58.719 I'm glad we're doing our great work in the time 0:47:58.760 --> 0:48:02.000 of wokeness, right, exactly. No, one can never go back. 0:48:02.040 --> 0:48:03.600 I mean we've made missed ups here and there, but 0:48:03.640 --> 0:48:05.719 they can't go back and talk about when Josh and 0:48:05.760 --> 0:48:07.280 Chuck were big racists at the beginning. 0:48:07.960 --> 0:48:11.160 Yeah, no, it's true. But just wait for twenty years 0:48:11.160 --> 0:48:12.879 from now, they'll be like, I can't believe they talk 0:48:12.960 --> 0:48:16.080 about those guys were ageous bastards, you know. 0:48:16.400 --> 0:48:16.800 Probably. 0:48:16.840 --> 0:48:19.480 So there's one other thing I want to say too. 0:48:19.600 --> 0:48:23.760 So when she lived through World War Two, Agatha Christie 0:48:23.960 --> 0:48:26.080 was worried that she was going to die in the 0:48:26.120 --> 0:48:30.400 bombing blitz of Great Britain, and she really wanted Hercule 0:48:30.480 --> 0:48:34.160 poi Row and Jane Marple's to have a final case, 0:48:34.680 --> 0:48:38.080 so she wrote a book for each of them. One 0:48:38.160 --> 0:48:41.239 is called Curtain that's Paul Roe's final book, and the 0:48:41.280 --> 0:48:45.759 other is Sleeping Murder that is Marple's final case, and 0:48:46.800 --> 0:48:48.759 It just kind of explains what happens to them. I 0:48:48.840 --> 0:48:53.839 believe poor Rowe dies and Marple just retires. But when 0:48:53.920 --> 0:48:55.680 she survived World War Two, she was like, well, I 0:48:55.680 --> 0:48:58.000 don't I'm not ready for these guys to be retired yet. 0:48:58.120 --> 0:49:01.360 So she kept those books and had them posthumously published, 0:49:01.360 --> 0:49:04.439 and they were in the seventies. And when Hercule poil 0:49:04.520 --> 0:49:08.000 rose last book came out and he died, the New 0:49:08.080 --> 0:49:11.040 York Times ran a front page obituary for him, the 0:49:11.080 --> 0:49:15.160 only fictional character to have that honor bestowed on them. 0:49:15.640 --> 0:49:17.239 That's crazy, isn't it? 0:49:17.480 --> 0:49:17.680 Yeah? 0:49:17.719 --> 0:49:21.560 And also a very cool good idea to write those 0:49:21.560 --> 0:49:25.280 books early on, just in case, because you never know. Yeah, 0:49:25.320 --> 0:49:29.040 besides the bombing thing. I mean, she could walk off 0:49:29.040 --> 0:49:31.520 a ledge or get hit by a bus, or die 0:49:31.560 --> 0:49:33.759 of natural causes early, like you never know, and then 0:49:33.760 --> 0:49:37.640 you've got this legacy cemented. Right, pretty smart? 0:49:38.239 --> 0:49:40.000 Have you ever seen one last thing? I've ever seen 0:49:40.080 --> 0:49:42.600 murdered by death? I know, I've asked you before. 0:49:43.280 --> 0:49:45.200 I have that DVD sitting on my desk. 0:49:45.680 --> 0:49:48.280 Well, that's amazing that you have that on your desk, 0:49:48.400 --> 0:49:50.879 and you wait, is it on your desk at work? 0:49:51.560 --> 0:49:54.200 It is the wrong place. 0:49:54.520 --> 0:49:56.399 I was going to say, watch it tonight, but don't 0:49:56.440 --> 0:50:00.879 watch it tonight. Wait until everything clear that you're gonna 0:50:00.920 --> 0:50:03.640 love it. No, it's a spoof actually of detective books 0:50:03.960 --> 0:50:07.400 of like Charlie Chan and Agatha Christie and Sam Spade 0:50:07.400 --> 0:50:10.400 and all that that she helped, you know, kind of create. 0:50:10.560 --> 0:50:15.200 But it's actually like a complaint from fans of mystery mysteries. 0:50:15.640 --> 0:50:18.920 It's just a wonderful book. Truman movie, Truman, Capote's in it, 0:50:19.120 --> 0:50:26.400 David Niven, Peter Peter Falkah, a lot of people. James 0:50:27.160 --> 0:50:31.040 Cromwell as a younger man. Oh yeah, James Coco is, 0:50:31.080 --> 0:50:33.399 Hercule poil Row. It's just great. You're gonna love it, man. 0:50:33.920 --> 0:50:35.480 So I guess we should say that she did die 0:50:35.520 --> 0:50:38.879 eventually five years or three years after I met her 0:50:39.600 --> 0:50:42.439 in nineteen seventy six, at the age of eighty five, 0:50:43.080 --> 0:50:47.239 at her home in Oxfordshire or Oxfordshire, and it was 0:50:47.320 --> 0:50:48.720 natural causes, not poison. 0:50:49.520 --> 0:50:53.320 No. Her last words were good to meet you, Chuck, 0:50:55.840 --> 0:50:56.640 you got anything else? 0:50:57.040 --> 0:50:58.719 I do not have anything else? 0:50:59.160 --> 0:51:01.680 Well, friends, that is Agatha Christie. If you want to 0:51:01.719 --> 0:51:03.799 know more about it, the Christie, go start reading. I 0:51:03.840 --> 0:51:06.280 get the Christie books. And since I said Agatha Christie 0:51:06.280 --> 0:51:10.440 like three or four times, it's time for a listener mate. 0:51:11.719 --> 0:51:14.560 All right, I'm gonna call this a letter from a kid, 0:51:14.600 --> 0:51:18.360 because we love reading these letters from kids. Hey, guys, 0:51:18.880 --> 0:51:21.000 I've been listening to your podcast for about eight months now, 0:51:21.040 --> 0:51:23.600 and I'd like to say I am a huge fan. Uh. 0:51:23.760 --> 0:51:25.120 This is Emmett. He's ten years old. 0:51:25.520 --> 0:51:26.760 Oh yeah, I love this email. 0:51:27.040 --> 0:51:29.000 My dad is even more of a fan of you 0:51:29.040 --> 0:51:31.400 guys than me, and he told me about your podcast. 0:51:31.960 --> 0:51:34.560 I am a huge fan of the Atlanta Falcons and 0:51:34.640 --> 0:51:37.600 pretty much everything Atlanta related, including your podcast, which is 0:51:37.640 --> 0:51:42.719 weird because I live in Iowa. I love it. 0:51:42.719 --> 0:51:44.680 It is a little weird, though, amit. You're right? I 0:51:44.719 --> 0:51:46.359 love how self aware this guy is. 0:51:46.400 --> 0:51:48.080 I think you know, when you grow up in a 0:51:48.080 --> 0:51:52.560 place like Iowa with no professional sports, you you know 0:51:52.640 --> 0:51:53.960 you do that thing where you just pick out a 0:51:54.000 --> 0:51:54.720 team in a city. 0:51:55.239 --> 0:51:57.560 Yeah, you're like the Bay City Rollers. You throw a 0:51:57.719 --> 0:51:59.440 dart at a map and go with it. 0:51:59.680 --> 0:52:02.719 That's right. Now, I'm really worried there's a professional team 0:52:02.760 --> 0:52:03.960 in Iowa. But there is not. 0:52:04.440 --> 0:52:07.520 There is not, There are none, right, No need to 0:52:07.560 --> 0:52:08.279 double check that. 0:52:10.040 --> 0:52:12.160 I've been listening to your podcast a ton during this 0:52:12.320 --> 0:52:15.320 coronavirus outbreak to keep me from going crazy, and it's worked. 0:52:15.760 --> 0:52:18.200 My birthday is actually coming up, so I'll not be 0:52:18.239 --> 0:52:20.480 able to see my friends or even have a party. 0:52:20.880 --> 0:52:23.279 It would be totally awesome and make my year if 0:52:23.320 --> 0:52:25.640 you said happy birthday to me. But I want to 0:52:25.640 --> 0:52:27.080 bet you won't read this on the air. 0:52:27.640 --> 0:52:30.080 That's some fine reverse psychology right there. 0:52:30.120 --> 0:52:33.560 Well played, Emmitt. I love your grass podcast, and last 0:52:33.640 --> 0:52:36.759 year me and my best friend Oliver started a long 0:52:36.800 --> 0:52:39.880 care business and I made enough money to buy Beats 0:52:39.880 --> 0:52:42.000 headphones to listen to your podcast on. 0:52:42.680 --> 0:52:44.120 That is full circle right there. 0:52:44.120 --> 0:52:46.120 That's right, he says. I may ture to wrap this 0:52:46.200 --> 0:52:47.799 letter up and spank it all the bottom before I 0:52:47.840 --> 0:52:53.200 sent it, so happy happy big I guess eleventh birthday, Emmet, 0:52:53.719 --> 0:52:58.160 best to your dad, Hello Oliver and everyone there in Atlanta, Iowa. 0:52:59.000 --> 0:53:05.000 Yeah, happy birthday, Emit. That reverse psychology worked. Man. If 0:53:05.040 --> 0:53:06.960 you want to get in touch with us like Emmett did, 0:53:07.600 --> 0:53:09.480 and see if I'll wish you a happy birthday, I'll 0:53:09.480 --> 0:53:12.880 bet we won't. But who can tell them these crazy times? 0:53:13.440 --> 0:53:16.400 You can get in touch with us via email. Wrap 0:53:16.440 --> 0:53:19.239 it up? Spank it on the bottom and send it 0:53:19.280 --> 0:53:25.840 off to stuff podcast at iHeartRadio dot com. 0:53:27.600 --> 0:53:30.480 Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For 0:53:30.560 --> 0:53:34.759 more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, 0:53:34.880 --> 0:53:36.720 or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.