Selects: Agatha Christie: Queen of the Murder Mystery

Agatha Christie was a great writer of murder mystery novels and is probably the best selling author of all time. Listen in this classic episode to learn her story. See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:04Josh Clark?

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• 1:06Josh Clark?

  Hey everybody, it's me Josh. And for this week's select, I've chosen our episode from 2020 on Agatha Christie. It's a neat little episode about who is possibly the greatest selling writer of all time by far, and may inspire you to get into Agatha Christie's books. And there are definitely worse things you could do with your time. So grab a cup of tea, a nice little blanket and enjoy this cozy little episode.

• 1:37Speaker 03

  Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.

• 1:47Josh Clark?

  Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant over there and this is Stuff You Should Know. I'm, I, I don't know if we're going to be able to get used to Jerry being around again.

• 2:02Speaker 04

  Fired?

• 2:04Josh Clark?

  I don't think so. She may have fired herself, though.

• 2:06Speaker 04

  I don't think so.

• 2:08Josh Clark?

  I have better things to do than hang out with you. Cool cats and kittens.

• 2:12Speaker 04

  Well, and it's kind of like, what's the point in just sitting there? And I can't imagine anything more boring than listening to us on headphones. Oh, wait a minute. That's our show.

• 2:22Josh Clark?

  Yes. There are people doing that very thing right now, Chuck, and you have just mocked their existence.

• 2:28Speaker 04

  Oh, I just meant for Jerry's sake, you know?

• 2:31Josh Clark?

  Yeah, I know. Jerry's not a fan.

• 2:33Speaker 04

  No, she's not.

• 2:34Josh Clark?

  Or a listener.

• 2:37Josh Clark?

  So I have a question for you, Chuck.

• 2:40Speaker 04

  You ever read a book?

• 2:42Josh Clark?

  No.

• 2:43Speaker 04

  Oh.

• 2:43Josh Clark?

  No, don't be ridiculous. Chuck,

• 2:45Speaker 04

  Uh huh.

• 2:46Josh Clark?

  Have you ever met Agatha Christie?

• 2:53Speaker 04

  Yeah, I met her when I was three.

• 2:55Josh Clark?

  Oh, really? Do you have much of a memory of that encounter?

• 2:58Speaker 04

  A little bit. She was, she was nice enough. She signed my Murder on the Orient Express copy, first edition.

• 3:05Josh Clark?

  Oh, wow, that's gotta be worth some money.

• 3:08Speaker 04

  It's pretty neat.

• 3:09Josh Clark?

  Yeah. Do you still have that?

• 3:12Speaker 04

  Nah, I did some spring cleaning here a couple of weeks ago. I didn't even recycle or put it in a little free library. I just threw it in the trash.

• 3:21Josh Clark?

  Did you, didn't you say once that your brother has like a copy of Number One Superman or something nuts like that?

• 3:27Speaker 04

  No.

• 3:29Josh Clark?

  I thought he has something, some valuable comic book.

• 3:32Speaker 04

  No.

• 3:33Josh Clark?

  Huh.

• 3:34Speaker 04

  No.

• 3:34Josh Clark?

  I must be confusing you with my other co-host, Chuck.

• 3:38Speaker 04

  No, we weren't big comic book people. We don't have anything valuable like that.

• 3:43Josh Clark?

  I got you. Well, having met Agatha Christie when you were a kid, I feel like you'll probably have a lot to bring to this one.

• 3:50Speaker 04

  Oh, really?

• 3:50Josh Clark?

  I, I was, um, I have never met her, still to this day, probably never will. And I have read a couple of her things and seen a couple of movies based on her stuff, but I would never consider myself like a Rabbit Agatha Christie fan, but I do appreciate her work a lot. You picked this one, why?

• 4:15Speaker 04

  We have this series of books, children's books, about awesome women in history from Frida to Coco Chanel, to Amelia Earhart, to Agatha Christie. And so I was reading this one the other night and thought, hey, let's do one on Agatha Christie. Haven't read any of her work, seen a couple of her movies. Love the genre, though.

• 4:40Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 4:41Speaker 04

  As films. I've never read a mystery, murder mysteries, although I'm going to now.

• 4:47Josh Clark?

  I started reading The Mysterious Affair at Styles, which I think was her first published work last night. And it's just great. She just sucks you right in. Like you, she does what's, she creates in a lot of books, not all of them, but she creates what's called a cozy mystery, with an S, because it's British. And I'd never heard that term before until this article. But when I came across it, I was like, yes, I love that kind of thing. And that's exactly what I love about murder she wrote. Like the murder she wrote, where she goes to like Broadway, or Paris, or something like that, I can take her leave, they're fine. But it's the ones that are set in tiny little Cabot Cove, that's just isolated from the rest of the world, and it's cozy and small, and it's like a village and all that.

• 5:32Josh Clark?

  Those are the murders she wrote that I love the most. And I think that's what I like about Agatha Christie mysteries, too, is they're very typically cozy mysteries.

• 5:40Speaker 04

  I've never seen that show.

• 5:43Josh Clark?

  What?

• 5:44Speaker 04

  We've had this conversation before.

• 5:47Josh Clark?

  No, that would be seared into my brain forever.

• 5:50Speaker 04

  No, we have, because you said that the first time.

• 5:55Speaker 04

  Yeah, I've never seen it, but I'm a huge fan of murder mystery movies, especially cozy mysteries, like Clue is one of my favorite films. And this year's, or last year's Knives Out, was one of my top like three or four films of the year.

• 6:12Josh Clark?

  I've not seen it yet. It's still like $7 on Amazon Prime, so I haven't rented it yet. I'm waiting for the price point to drop.

• 6:19Speaker 04

  I can loan you a couple of bucks if you need.

• 6:22Josh Clark?

  All right, sure. $3.99.

• 6:24Speaker 04

  $3.99, all right.

• 6:25Josh Clark?

  $3.99. It's still a lot for a rental. I mean, that's a lot.

• 6:30Speaker 04

  You think?

• 6:32Josh Clark?

  $3.99 is manageable. $4.99 and up, that's a lot of, that's a lot of moolah for a rental, if you ask me.

• 6:38Speaker 04

  Wow.

• 6:40Josh Clark?

  Yeah, this is, I'm taking a stand on this.

• 6:42Speaker 04

  All right. Well, film professionals out there, please do not take offense to all your hard work.

• 6:47Josh Clark?

  So, I have a question for you. I have one more question. Have you seen the Agatha Christie film adaptation of Crooked House that came out in 2017?

• 6:58Speaker 04

  No.

• 6:59Josh Clark?

  I think you'll like it. It was big budget, but it also looks like British made for television, big budget.

• 7:04Speaker 04

  That's great.

• 7:06Josh Clark?

  Gillian Anderson, Dana Scully is in it.

• 7:08Speaker 04

  Okay, love her.

• 7:09Josh Clark?

  Because you know, the Brits are nuts for her.

• 7:11Speaker 04

  Are they?

• 7:12Josh Clark?

  Oh, man. She's like their favorite person in the world and has been for years. Don't know why. Nothing against Gillian Anderson, but like she just never hit it as big over here as she did there. Terence Stamp is in it.

• 7:25Speaker 04

  Love him.

• 7:25Josh Clark?

  Glenn Close.

• 7:26Speaker 04

  She's great.

• 7:28Josh Clark?

  And I was like, this is really good. And so I was reading little synopses of it and all that stuff. And it seemed like that it's widely regarded as one of her best, most ingenious and inventive works.

• 7:39Speaker 04

  Crooked House?

• 7:40Josh Clark?

  Crooked House. I believe that's on Amazon Prime for free.

• 7:44Speaker 04

  Well, yes. Do you actually do the math of how much you pay for Amazon Prime to see how much you're paying for that movie?

• 7:52Josh Clark?

  I don't want to do that. I just don't want to do that.

• 7:56Speaker 04

  Probably pennies.

• 8:00Josh Clark?

  Why'd you do that to me? All right. So, Charles, let's, let's get into this because I know that this one could be a little long if we're not

• 8:11Josh Clark?

  deliberate and

• 8:13Josh Clark?

  I would say maybe considerate of our time.

• 8:16Speaker 04

  All right. Well, that's an eight minute intro. So so far so good.

• 8:19Josh Clark?

  Okay.

• 8:21Speaker 04

  She is perhaps, again, it's kind of hard to tell with books, tell with book sales because they can be a little dodgy. But she is often quoted as the or seen as the bestselling novelist of all time. And I did a little check to compare. Like, I thought, well, Stephen King sold a book or two.

• 8:38Josh Clark?

  Sure.

• 8:39Speaker 04

  They they tag his book sales at about 350 million. Her 66 novels and 14 collected works of short stories supposedly have sold to the tune of 2 billion.

• 8:52Josh Clark?

  I saw 4 billion in one place, and I think after you hit the billion mark, you can just start tossing around whatever number you want.

• 8:58Speaker 04

  I think so. That's a lot of books.

• 9:00Josh Clark?

  For example, we've had 70 billion downloads now. I just decided.

• 9:04Speaker 04

  Oh, great. That's a lot of downloads.

• 9:08Josh Clark?

  But think about it. Stephen King, how many books has that cat written? How many has he sold all around the world? And it amounts to 350 million, and he's one of the bestselling authors of all time. A lot of people say that Agatha Christie's numbers hit 2 billion, like you said. That's astounding.

• 9:25Speaker 04

  Yeah, that is. That is a ton of books. It's I don't think our Stuff You Should Know book will approach those numbers.

• 9:31Josh Clark?

  No, you never say never, though.

• 9:34Speaker 04

  It's a lofty goal.

• 9:36Josh Clark?

  Never say never. I also saw that she's the most widely translated author of all time, too.

• 9:41Speaker 04

  I buy that.

• 9:41Josh Clark?

  I saw 45 languages. I was like, this seems a little low. So then somewhere else I saw 103. So let's go with that.

• 9:49Speaker 04

  So let's talk about this cozy mystery or just mystery novels in general. They are very much formulaic, which Ed helped us put this together. Ed points out that's why people like them, because the familiarity and it's sort of a comfort food thing, like a good beach book. You know what you're gonna get.

• 10:08Josh Clark?

  Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's and there's surprises and everything woven in. I mean, the whole thing is meant to be a surprise. It's a mystery and part of the mystery is the allure of the mysteries that Agatha Christie not only wrote, but actually the whole genre she helped to develop is that you are ostensibly able to figure out who the culprit is in the murder. It's almost always a murder. And so there is like, there is surprise involved. That's the point, but there's also a tremendous amount of familiarity. And that's that formula you were talking about. And that's what really has sucked generations of people into this whole genre and her 66 plus books.

• 10:50Speaker 04

  Yeah, so you've got that murder. You usually don't see this murder occur. She doesn't usually and in general in murder mysteries, you don't see the murder. That's kind of not the point of how grisly or gruesome the act is. It's sort of all about finding that body. And I won't, I had a bunch of Knives Out things to say, but I won't say any of them now.

• 11:12Josh Clark?

  Thank you.

• 11:13Speaker 04

  But then you've got your detective that arrives on the scene. And I will say this, Knives Out very much follows this formula very smartly.

• 11:21Josh Clark?

  Okay.

• 11:22Speaker 04

  So you've got this master detective who usually arrives upon the scene, but they may already be there and they are generally very eccentric and sort of, they all, they always have these quirky sort of characteristics. In Christie's case, we have the very formidable Hercule Poirot and then Miss Marple, Jane Marple.

• 11:46Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 11:47Speaker 04

  In Hercule's case, he's Belgian and has this big mustache and is just sort of eccentric and Belgian, just, you know, he's not French. There's something about being Belgian that makes it slightly different.

• 11:58Josh Clark?

  Sure.

• 11:59Speaker 04

  And Miss Marple, apparently, is just a very ordinary and people underestimate her and that's how she sort of wins the day.

• 12:07Josh Clark?

  Yeah, because Hercule Poirot was a retired Belgian police detective. So he has some measure of authority still to question people and interrogate people as he wishes. With Ms. Marple, she's just kind of a quiet old lady who sews and knits a lot. And she just has a very keen eye for detail and an interest in solving, you know, the murders that seem to happen around her.

• 12:35Speaker 04

  Like Angela Lansbury?

• 12:37Josh Clark?

  Basically, yes, but rather than interrogate people directly, Ms. Marple's thing is she just kind of quietly is there. And people tend to confide in her and she kind of quietly helps them along and gives them, she gives them the rope to hang themselves with. That's how she interrogates people or figures out who the murderer is.

• 13:00Speaker 04

  Right, so you've got your setting in the cozy mystery setting. Like you said, it's usually like an estate or a home, maybe a hotel. Maybe it might be a small English village. Orient Express, obviously, is on a train, another sort of confined space. By the way, have you seen Train to Busan?

• 13:24Josh Clark?

  I confuse that with Snowpiercer. I think I've seen both, but I can't remember which one's which.

• 13:30Speaker 04

  They're kind of very similar, but Busan is zombies on a train, Korean film.

• 13:36Josh Clark?

  No, then I think I've just seen Snowpiercer.

• 13:39Speaker 04

  You should check out Train to Busan.

• 13:40Josh Clark?

  I will.

• 13:41Speaker 04

  If you think you've seen it all with the zombie genre, then think again.

• 13:45Josh Clark?

  Dude, that's saying something because that genre has gotten a little

• 13:49Speaker 04

  Tired?

• 13:50Josh Clark?

  stale. Hey, let me ask you this, have you seen, I know you've seen it, you had to have, Ozark?

• 13:56Speaker 04

  Oh, sure.

• 13:57Josh Clark?

  Just started it.

• 13:58Speaker 04

  Yeah, I'm a couple of episodes into the latest season.

• 14:01Josh Clark?

  Okay, yeah, you and me, I just started it season one and I'm like, all I want to do is sit around and watch Ozark. It's amazing.

• 14:08Speaker 04

  Yeah, I love it. That's like Hartwell, you know?

• 14:11Josh Clark?

  Oh, no, I didn't know that.

• 14:12Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 14:13Josh Clark?

  Smart.

• 14:15Speaker 04

  I've tried to get Bateman and Laura Linney on Movie Crush and it's always, mm, thank you, no.

• 14:21Josh Clark?

  Oh, yeah?

• 14:22Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 14:22Josh Clark?

  Hey, you're getting responses. That's a big step forward.

• 14:26Speaker 04

  It's nice to be told no and just not ignored.

• 14:28Josh Clark?

  Yeah, right.

• 14:29Speaker 04

  All right, so you've got your setting. With Agatha Christie, she did include her travels in some of her later novels when they became like super popular, but it was still not like a globetrotting like James Bond kind of thing.

• 14:45Josh Clark?

  No, that's the point. So like in an espionage thriller or something, the locales are all over the place and, you know, the character's constantly moving. In these cozy thrillers, like even if they're in an exotic locale, they're still set in a small part of that exotic locale.

• 15:04Speaker 04

  That's right. You got your suspects. They are questioned by the detective. They usually all have a motive. They usually all have the means because everyone, you know, in a great novel like this, everyone's got to be a suspect from the beginning. And then you can kind of quickly whittle or slowly whittle that list down.

• 15:24Josh Clark?

  Right. And here's the thing, what I was saying with the, with the kind of mystery that Agatha Christie wrote and really established, you are part of the mystery. Like you're, either the investigator, the detective has an assistant that they explain things to, very much like Sherlock Holmes and Watson.

• 15:45Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 15:46Josh Clark?

  Or if the detective is working solo, say like Miss Marple, Miss Marple's might write a list of suspects and their motives and little clues down as part of the narration. And you're led in every step of the way. So you're part of this working towards solving the mystery. And as it's very frequently put, it kind of pits you in a competition with the author to see if you can figure out who done it before the end of the book.

• 16:16Speaker 04

  Yeah, I mean, that goes back to Encyclopedia Brown. The whole point is to try and figure that stuff out.

• 16:21Josh Clark?

  Right. Man, I love those. Those are so great. Encyclopedia Brown. I remember he busted one dumb kid who did something bad. I can't remember.

• 16:29Speaker 04

  Was it Bugs Maney?

• 16:31Josh Clark?

  Oh, man, good memory. It may have been Bugs Meeny. Was he kind of a big dumb oaf who'd like beat up on chipmunks?

• 16:38Speaker 04

  I think so.

• 16:39Josh Clark?

  Okay, he busted Bugs once because Bugs had tears coming out of the the outside corners of his eyes, like a freakazoid, rather than the inside corners.

• 16:50Speaker 04

  That's good, but see, the great thing about those books is that a 12-year-old doesn't really necessarily always pick up on those clues.

• 16:59Josh Clark?

  Oh, I did.

• 17:00Speaker 04

  I wasn't that great of a... I'd be curious to see if they would stump me now.

• 17:04Josh Clark?

  No, no, I mean specifically with the outside of the eye thing. But yeah, no, I'm sure there are plenty that I missed.

• 17:11Speaker 04

  But you cried a lot when you were a boy.

• 17:14Josh Clark?

  I knew.

• 17:14Speaker 04

  While staring in the mirror.

• 17:15Josh Clark?

  I knew where the tears came from.

• 17:19Speaker 04

  And so then at the end, to wrap up the little genre sort of summary, you've got this great ending usually where everyone's gathered together and the detective kind of walks everyone through the big reveal of exactly how the killer did it.

• 17:32Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 17:32Speaker 04

  And in her case, she did not, like when the killer is revealed, they didn't turn around and shoot them in the face. Like, it's usually pretty nonviolent. They would be wrestled to the ground or arrested, or maybe they might run away and you hear later that they had killed themselves or something like that.

• 17:50Josh Clark?

  Sure. There was rarely a grand finale where they would be pressed to death in front of a crowd.

• 17:56Speaker 04

  Nah, who needs it?

• 17:58Josh Clark?

  So that, I mean, that's it, like, bing, bang, boom. That was when you started on page one of an Agatha Christie novel, you knew exactly how everything was gonna play out. And then one of the other things is because this thing was so formulaic, there was also room for this, for the author to kind of play with you, the reader, in, in using things like bluffs and red herrings.

• 18:20Speaker 04

  Oh, sure.

• 18:21Josh Clark?

  Which I think are basically the same thing. But the idea is that, so the author, in this case, Agatha Christie, would say something like, you know, early on in the book, a suspect would come running out of the house looking shaken and pale. And you, the reader, would be like, well, that's just way too obvious. She's not gonna name, she's not gonna point out who the murderer is at the beginning of the book.

• 18:45Speaker 04

  Right.

• 18:45Josh Clark?

  So I can disregard that person or this very obvious clue or something like that. That was just kind of part of the interplay between author and reader. But then it could go even deeper to where she would say something like, well, I know that you think that this is too obvious. So I'm going to actually make this the actual murderer, which she did in some cases, which was like a double bluff. Apparently it could just keep going on and on and on.

• 19:07Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 19:07Josh Clark?

  But it was this kind of wrestling match or maybe slap fight between Agatha Christie and you, her reader, which made the whole thing all the more delightful.

• 19:17Speaker 04

  That's right. And she, Ed takes great pains to point out that she did not invent this genre. There were people like Arthur Conan Doyle, obviously, and Poe before her that sort of established some of these rules. But she was very popular. She's very good at what she did.

• 19:33Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 19:34Speaker 04

  She wrote about what she knew and we'll, we'll talk about her life coming up in a little bit. But these manor houses and these estates and these English villages and even the exotic locales and these train trips and things were things that she actually experienced. And, you know, a lot of people are great at making stuff up and a lot of people are great about writing what they know. And it seems like she was really great at writing what she knew.

• 19:57Josh Clark?

  Yeah. And for some reason, either it was the time or maybe because of her, I'm not sure. It was kind of a chicken or the egg thing, but she happened to write about stuff that a lot of people wanted to read about. These small, you know, English villages and, you know, quaint mannerisms of the upper middle and upper class English society set in this period of time that, and for some reason, it just captured everybody's attention. And apparently, when she started expanding, I think after World War II, to some slightly

• 20:37Josh Clark?

  more exotic locales like Egypt or Mesopotamia, you know, for like Death on the Nile was a very famous one during this time, or the Orient Express. That really catapulted her into superstardom, international superstardom, too.

• 20:52Speaker 04

  Yeah, I don't have a super firm read on the history of literature, but I get the idea that this is sort of aligned with the beginnings of pop lit.

• 21:02Josh Clark?

  Mm-hmm.

• 21:03Speaker 04

  And like, I call it the Beach Book. I don't know if there had been a ton of stuff like this. That was just sort of pure comfort food and entertainment up to this point.

• 21:14Josh Clark?

  Yeah, I'm not sure either. Nothing that I'm familiar with, I can say.

• 21:18Speaker 04

  But they were very entertaining books. They were humorous, a very dark sense of humor. Great dialogue, all these verbal jousts between the detectives and the suspects is really key to that genre. Something Knives Out did really, really well. It was one of my favorite scripts of the year, maybe my favorite script.

• 21:37Josh Clark?

  Wow.

• 21:37Speaker 04

  But just really, really good sharp writing and it's no, sort of no accident that she became so hugely popular.

• 21:45Josh Clark?

  No, and that's something like, if you're not really familiar with Agatha Christie and you just kind of look her up in passing, one of the things you'll be confronted with is that a lot of people, a lot of critics say she was a hack. And what they're talking about is that formula that she followed to almost like a

• 22:05Josh Clark?

  soullessly rational degree, like that was the formula, that's what she followed. But that really misses like the fact that she had a really great eye for detail in the dialogue, like you were saying, like she was a good writer. And she could just crank work out. I think during the decade of the twenties, she wrote a book a year. It might have even become more prolific later on in the thirties and forties, too.

• 22:31Speaker 04

  Yeah, and she, she was a business person, you know, like there's nothing wrong with saying, wow, people love this stuff. And they sell a lot. And although it took a while for that to happen, as we'll see, but there's, there's nothing wrong with any of that. I think people that call her a hack can go fly a kite.

• 22:50Josh Clark?

  Yeah, go fly it with extreme prejudice.

• 22:53Speaker 04

  Should we take a break?

• 22:54Josh Clark?

  I think so, man. We'll come back and talk about her life.

• 22:57Speaker 04

  Great.

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• 24:50Josh Clark?

  OK, Chuck, so Agatha Christie was born in 1890 in England, in Devonshire, in Torquay, which I always wanted to say Tangeray, Devonshire.

• 25:03Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 25:05Josh Clark?

  And it's in the southwest of England. So Torquay is kind of like our, or Devonshire is like our Arizona, basically.

• 25:13Josh Clark?

  That's my impression.

• 25:15Speaker 04

  I think it is very much like Arizona.

• 25:17Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 25:17Speaker 04

  The legendary Devonshire cactus.

• 25:20Josh Clark?

  Right. So, so which stalks the moors.

• 25:24Speaker 04

  That's right.

• 25:25Josh Clark?

  And she was one of three kids, and I think her older brother and sister were both at least a decade older than her. So she had like a very solitary childhood, which appears to have made her fairly happy. She didn't go to school. She was raised by governesses and educated by governesses, spent a lot of time reading and just hung out around her family's estate.

• 25:46Speaker 04

  Yeah, I mean, they had some dough. They were, they were not wealthy, wealthy, but they were definitely upper middle class. They got an inheritance from her paternal grandfather, such that her dad didn't need to work. Apparently, she is on record as saying that like her dad wasn't around much, didn't really impact me much. So he can go fly a kite as well. There's a lot of kite flying. And she was, she loved being out in the garden. She wasn't, I get the impression she wasn't like reclusive or anything, but she very much enjoyed time with herself alone, but also had friends and stuff when she eventually did go to school once her father passed and they couldn't afford that governess.

• 26:27Josh Clark?

  Right. But she was a very, very shy person. The novelist Joan Acicella says that even as an adult, she was so shy that sometimes she wouldn't go into shops because she would have to interact with the shopkeeper. So it is kind of-

• 26:45Speaker 04

  She was a novelist, you know? How many novelists are the life of the party and super outgoing?

• 26:51Josh Clark?

  You have never met Philip Roth, apparently.

• 26:53Speaker 04

  I just, I don't know, you kind of picture like the Stephen Kings just locked in an attic somewhere and not like, well, let me ride a little bit, then I'm gonna go, you know, go to a party.

• 27:04Josh Clark?

  Right. Go play some pickup basketball and maybe volunteer at the local food bank after.

• 27:08Speaker 04

  I don't know. It's sort of a solitary pastime. So sure, there are examples of of extroverted authors, but I think she kind of fits the mold that you generally think of, especially for a lady mystery writer.

• 27:21Josh Clark?

  Yeah, and you know, I think not only fits the mold, the more I learn about her, she made the mold.

• 27:26Speaker 04

  True.

• 27:26Josh Clark?

  Basically, everything we take for granted, as far as writing and mystery writing goes, like, she basically made it up. It's pretty impressive stuff.

• 27:34Speaker 04

  Yeah, so she, like we said, she did some pretty, to us dum-dums in America, seem like exotic traveling trips. But if you lived in England at the time, it's no big deal to go to Egypt and check out the pyramids. That was, if you had a little dough, that was a pretty common vacation that you might take. So she did stuff like that, and she was exposed to exotic locales and used those in her work. In her very first novel, even, Snow Upon the Desert, she wrote when she was like 22 or 23 years old, I think. And, you know, she had a hard time getting published at first because she was a young woman.

• 28:14Josh Clark?

  Yeah, she was rejected out of hand. And apparently, also, she'd started writing because her sister told her that she probably wouldn't be able to write a mystery novel.

• 28:25Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 28:25Josh Clark?

  Which I love. So she did, she wrote the, what was it, Snow on what?

• 28:30Speaker 04

  Snow Upon the Desert.

• 28:32Josh Clark?

  Snow Upon the Desert, and she was very young then. And in between the time she wrote Snow Upon the Desert and The Mysterious Affair at Styles, which would be her first published book, I believe, she wedged a lot of life in there, in the form of getting married to a guy named Archibald Archie Christie. And one of the things about Agatha Christie is that she was, she never, she wasn't a born writer, even though she did write as a younger person, like you were saying, like, she wasn't like a, she just didn't want to be a writer as a kid. And she ended up writing really seriously after she and Archie Christie got married, because Archie Christie wasn't particularly wealthy and couldn't necessarily care for her himself.

• 29:17Josh Clark?

  So she started writing to make money, which some people suspect is the reason she got into mystery writing in the first place, because it was a very, very popular genre even then.

• 29:26Speaker 04

  Yeah, well, it makes sense.

• 29:28Josh Clark?

  So she had the skills to pay the bills, it turns out.

• 29:31Speaker 04

  That's right. They were married in 1914. He was kind of promptly sent to fight in the Great War in France. And she worked at a pharmacist at a war hospital during that period. And this is where she learned a lot about potions and poisons and pharmaceuticals and things that she would. There's a lot of poisoning that goes on in her books.

• 29:54Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 29:55Speaker 04

  And she, later in her career, I think she actually would consult with doctors and stuff like that, because she wanted everything to be really medically accurate. But early on, she learned a lot about this stuff from her work in the pharmacy.

• 30:07Josh Clark?

  Which is kind of cool and ghoulish, you know? She's like, how exactly would a person die from this bottle that I'm holding? So yeah, and apparently, most of the deaths in her books are poisonings. And like you were saying, like, you very rarely see the person die. They just come upon the body. And most of the times, the poisoned body, sometimes there was violence visited upon them. But for the most part, it's a body that was found poisoned to death.

• 30:36Speaker 04

  Yeah, and that's a good vehicle for a mystery novel, because, you know, there's no murder weapon, per se. I guess there's the poison bottle. But it can often be very vague, a poisoning death, like, could it have been a heart attack? Like, you have to kind of suss out at first whether or not it was even a murder. It's not like an obvious thing where there's a bullet hole in their chest or something like that.

• 31:02Josh Clark?

  Right, right, yeah. So poisoning is what she went with typically. It's another example also, Chuck, I think of like, her writing what she knew, too.

• 31:10Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 31:11Josh Clark?

  At least writing what interested her. And she wrote in, I believe, 1920. No, during World War I. So while she was working at the dispensary, and Archie was off flying in France, I believe, she wrote The Mysterious Affair at Styles.

• 31:31Josh Clark?

  And it was, that's the one I started reading and I don't understand how it was rejected at first, but it was, it's a really interesting book just right out of the gate. In that it pulls you right into this little country, English estate and all the people on it. And you realize just after a couple of pages that you're already invested in them, which is pretty amazing. And this is like, not her first book, but it was her first serious work that wasn't published immediately. It wasn't published until 1920. And I think even after it was published, it wasn't an immediate catapult to success for her. But it was a, it was a remarkable first book to be published.

• 32:13Speaker 04

  Yeah, and this is the one that introduced the world to her chief detective for a lot of those novels, Mr. Poirot, like we mentioned. And later on, they asked her why he was Belgian. And she said, why not, basically?

• 32:28Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 32:29Speaker 04

  I don't think a whole lot of thought went into it. It turned out to be a really good choice because he had this kind of interesting accent. And everywhere he went, I don't, you know, they were never set in Belgium. So everywhere he went, he was this sort of, sort of strange foreigner that would come into town with this accent that no one quite understood. And he just had this sort of larger than life presence, I think, because of that. So it turned out to be a really smart choice.

• 32:55Josh Clark?

  Yeah, he was also a well-known dandy who was very vain about his appearance. And he apparently said in one of the later books that he plays up his foreignness and his dandiness to disarm suspects when he's interrogating them, to make them take him less seriously than they otherwise might.

• 33:19Speaker 04

  Oh, man, I want to talk about Knives Out so much.

• 33:22Josh Clark?

  You cannot. I appreciate you not doing that.

• 33:25Speaker 04

  So she had a daughter, we should mention, in 1919 named Rosalind, and that's the only child she ever had. And it was in 1920, a year later, that they finally did publish The Mysterious Affair at Styles. After she agreed to change the ending, they said, "We don't like Poirot revealing all this evidence in court." So she changed the ending. They said, "Great." That's when she went on to publish that novel every year for about 10 years.

• 33:52Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 33:53Speaker 04

  Very, very big books, but they weren't... They were popular, but she wasn't like a superstar internationally at this point yet.

• 34:02Josh Clark?

  No, not yet. Again, she really catapulted later on because she moved to some of these more exotic locales. But one of the things that cemented her legend as a mystery writer, in addition to all of the work she did, in addition to her prolificness and her extreme talent at this formula that she had worked out, was what still today is considered an unsolved mystery. In fact, it was featured on a 1994 episode of Unsolved Mysteries, which I just randomly happened to see recently. And she disappeared. There's a whole subplot

• 34:42Josh Clark?

  to Agatha Christie's life that was really surprising, especially compared to how boring and normal and just kind of plotting with these instead of tees, her normal life was. The fact that she has this grand mystery plunked down in the middle of it is pretty impressive.

• 35:01Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's... So here's the backstory. She and Archie were not meant to be together, as it turns out. He revealed that he was having an affair with a lady named Nancy Neal, who was a friend of the family. And obviously, that was the end of their marriage. So at the end of 1926, they decided they were gonna take a trip together, a weekender. Archie went to be with his friends instead, and then she vanished into seemingly thin air. They found her car near a rock quarry with her fur coat and her driver's license there, and no Agatha Christie.

• 35:41Josh Clark?

  No, and her car wasn't just near the rock quarry. According to some reports, like, one of the wheels is hanging over the edge of this cliff.

• 35:48Speaker 04

  And still spinning.

• 35:50Josh Clark?

  Right. So, but she was gone. They couldn't find her. And so, within a couple of days, this massive search, depending on who you ask and depending on when you ask them, 10,000 plus people were searching for, probably more likely a couple thousand, which is still really remarkable for this tiny little area in the southwest of England at the time in 1926. So, that really kind of demonstrates, she was already a well-known writer. She wasn't legendary yet, but this disappearance is the mechanism by which she becomes legendary, I think. And this goes on for a good week, I believe, right? When did she disappear?

• 36:35Josh Clark?

  December what?

• 36:36Speaker 04

  I think December 3rd is when they were gonna take that trip.

• 36:39Josh Clark?

  So, she was gone almost two weeks. And by gone, we mean just vanished. She left behind that car, she left behind the driver's license in the fur, like you said. She was gone. Her husband had come, came to be known to have asked for a divorce already. So, people were like, well, did he bump her off? And she's a mystery writer known for generating stuff like this. So, even at the time, some people were like, is this a publicity stunt? Because it's a pretty good one if it is.

• 37:06Speaker 04

  Sure. It worked. And there was a band at this place called the Swan Hydropathic Hotel in Yorkshire, which kind of just sounds like a bit of a Kellogg Brothers type of joint.

• 37:21Josh Clark?

  Have you seen Cure for Wellness?

• 37:23Speaker 04

  Well, we talked about that in that podcast.

• 37:25Josh Clark?

  Did we? I can't remember. Have you seen it?

• 37:28Speaker 04

  I never saw it.

• 37:29Josh Clark?

  Have you yet?

• 37:31Speaker 04

  I still have not seen it.

• 37:32Josh Clark?

  Hey, you're not missing that much. But it is pretty interesting. It's worth seeing at least once.

• 37:37Speaker 04

  I might check it out.

• 37:38Josh Clark?

  Okay.

• 37:39Speaker 04

  But at any rate, they had a band here, because what, Hydropathic Hotel does not have a house band. And they came forward and said, hey, that's Agatha Christie lady, she's been staying here for a week. She's been in the electric light bath cabinet. And getting yogurt enemas and having a grand old time. So they went to the cops and the cops went to the lead detective and said, no, no, no, she's been murdered and we're trying to find out the killer.

• 38:08Josh Clark?

  I'm sure of it.

• 38:09Speaker 04

  Eventually, this detective said, well, let me tell her husband. And husband Archie went out to check it out on the 14th of December. There she was. She was in seclusion and that was sort of the end of this mystery. It wasn't so much a mystery. You know, she, by all accounts, it seems like she went there because she had thought about or maybe tried to drive her car into that quarry and, and kill herself because she was upset about her marriage ending.

• 38:40Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 38:41Speaker 04

  And then it didn't happen and she just kind of goes on a walk and ends up at this place. May or may not have invented an amnesia story, or it may have actually happened to some degree. She didn't talk about a lot, so we don't really know exactly what went down with the amnesia.

• 38:58Josh Clark?

  She said that, so two years later, she gave an interview with the Daily Mail and apparently explained the amnesia by saying she'd hit her head on the steering wheel. But in the same interview, she says that she'd let go of the steering wheel. So she basically said, like, I attempted suicide and it didn't work out. I hit my head on the steering wheel and I wandered off and I had amnesia. But the, they think that it was just a family cover story to save face, this amnesia story, and that really she had attempted to take her own life and hadn't succeeded and now regretted it and was embarrassed by all of this because the idea that there were thousands of people looking for her, I think it probably never crossed her mind when she wandered away from her car.

• 39:41Speaker 04

  No.

• 39:42Josh Clark?

  And that, I remember she was a very shy person, so this, all this attention was very, very hard on her. So the, the family just came up with this cover story that she had amnesia, so don't even bother asking. And Archie and she stayed together for another year or so, and then their divorce finally became finalized in 1928.

• 40:03Speaker 04

  Yeah, so she didn't even mention this in her autobiography, which kind of says all you need to know about how much she liked to talk about this.

• 40:10Josh Clark?

  Right. And we should say there was one other thing that did this too. It wasn't just Archie asking for a divorce. He asked for a divorce a few months after her mother died. And Agatha Christie's mother was beloved to her. She worshipped her mother. She thought she was wonderful. Her mother was the parent that was there for her while she was a kid and raised her. It was just a very interesting person, it sounds like. So she died, Archie asks for a divorce a few months later, and then this whole mysterious disappearance happened.

• 40:40Speaker 04

  That's right.

• 40:41Josh Clark?

  And then one last thing. I read that at the Swan Hydro Hotel, she was actually playing cards and chatting with other guests about this mysterious disappearance that was in all of the newspapers. And none of the other guests recognized her. It was those band members that you mentioned.

• 40:57Speaker 04

  Interesting.

• 40:58Josh Clark?

  I thought so too, man. So that's everything I learned from Unsolved Mysteries.

• 41:02Speaker 04

  Should we take a break?

• 41:05Josh Clark?

  Finally.

• 41:06Speaker 04

  All right, let's take our final break and we'll talk a little bit more about her later life and further success.

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• 43:02Speaker 04

  All right, so it's 1928 at this point. She is freshly divorced. She kept that name because, you know, that's the name that made her famous. So it makes a lot of sense. And she kept writing novels. She traveled on the Orient Express to Baghdad. She got into archaeology, just sort of a hobbyist, and made friends with a couple who were archaeologists, went to visit them in 1930, and on that trip, met a man named Max Malawan, who was also an adventurer and an archaeologist 13 years younger. And they fell in love and got married, which is a very, very sweet story.

• 43:40Josh Clark?

  Yeah, apparently, he was giving her a tour of some archaeological sites, and he got the car stuck. And she, apparently, he said later, she made no fuss about it, didn't blame him or anything like that. And he said, "That's about the time when I started to begin to realize that you are wonderful." And so they got married. And she said later on that the good thing about being married to an archaeologist is that the older you get, the more interested they become.

• 44:08Speaker 04

  Interesting.

• 44:09Josh Clark?

  I thought it was kinda cute.

• 44:11Speaker 04

  So, this is when Miss Marple comes along as a detective in 1930 with The Murder at the Vicarage.

• 44:19Josh Clark?

  That was her first one?

• 44:20Speaker 04

  That was the first Miss Marple book.

• 44:22Josh Clark?

  Okay.

• 44:22Speaker 04

  And then, she's traveling around, she's doing these archaeological digs and trips. She's going to Syria and Iraq. She fell in love with Syria and the Syrian people. And she's really cranking out some big books at this point in the 1930s. That's when-

• 44:37Josh Clark?

  Like, even on archaeological digs, Chuck, can you imagine how uncomfortable it would be to sit and write for hours at an archaeological site?

• 44:46Speaker 04

  I can't.

• 44:47Josh Clark?

  It would be tough, I would think, and yet she was still just as prolific as ever.

• 44:51Speaker 04

  Yeah, books like Murder in Mesopotamia, and Death on the Nile, and Murder on the Orient Express were all written during this period. And this is what really catapulted her into international superstardom as an author.

• 45:04Josh Clark?

  Right. So, she and Max stayed together for, I think, 46 years, until her death, actually.

• 45:14Josh Clark?

  Yeah, I think, yeah, she outlived him. So, it's pretty sweet. But despite all of this kind of adventure and archaeological digs and like visits to the Middle East, most of her life, from that point on, was in Devonshire. In this tiny little area in the English countryside, in these quaint little towns. And she gardened and was very involved in local community theater. That was her life. She was also one of the biggest, most well-known, most bestselling writers of, in the world, while she was alive. And yet, that's what she did.

• 45:59Josh Clark?

  She hung out with the community theater group and gardened. That was just her life.

• 46:03Speaker 04

  Yeah, she got the Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1971. And- The rights to her novels were held by a company that she created for a long time. And then before she died, she sold part of that off. And that's been sort of bought and sold a bunch over the years, which is kind of how that usually happens.

• 46:23Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 46:24Speaker 04

  But she did retain enough of the, of the company to have it be worth a ton of money, which she passed down to her daughter, of course, as her only child. She sort of took care of her mother's works for many, many years and then passed that on to her only child, a man named Matthew Pritchard, who still holds these rights and still sort of manages that today.

• 46:48Josh Clark?

  That's right.

• 46:50Josh Clark?

  So everything turned out well for Matthew Pritchard, it sounds like.

• 46:53Speaker 04

  Heck, yeah. I wish, I wish my grandma was, actually I don't because I love my grandma, but.

• 46:58Josh Clark?

  Sure.

• 46:58Speaker 04

  Would it have killed her to be an internationally famous author?

• 47:01Josh Clark?

  No, it wouldn't, Chuck, and I'm glad we're finally talking about it. It's been an elephant in the room for a very long time.

• 47:08Speaker 04

  Uh, so she, you know, a lot of these went on to be very famous films, TV series. I think Murder on the Orient Express has been a couple of big movies. In fact, one a couple of years ago that I have not seen.

• 47:21Josh Clark?

  It's unwatchable.

• 47:23Speaker 04

  Oh, is it really bad?

• 47:24Josh Clark?

  I'm sorry if you listen to this, Kenneth Branagh, I couldn't make it through the first five minutes.

• 47:29Speaker 04

  Oh, wow.

• 47:30Josh Clark?

  It was, I didn't like it.

• 47:31Speaker 04

  Okay. Is that all you watched?

• 47:33Josh Clark?

  And I love Kenneth Branagh. Yes.

• 47:35Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 47:35Josh Clark?

  So that's my report, is on the first five minutes.

• 47:39Speaker 04

  Uh, she very famously has a play called The Mousetrap, which is, debuted at the West End in 1952, and it is the longest running play in the history of the West End, which is remarkable.

• 47:51Josh Clark?

  Yeah, and to make that even sweeter, remember her sister who said that she probably couldn't write a mystery novel? Well, her sister was the first in the family to get a play produced on the West End, but it certainly wasn't the longest running play on the West End of all time. So she got her back doubly so.

• 48:10Speaker 04

  And then she was hit by a train and Agatha Christie laughed and laughed.

• 48:13Josh Clark?

  And poisoned her corpse.

• 48:16Speaker 04

  So we need to talk a little bit here at the end. We always like to give everyone's, give everyone the accolades they deserve, but also point out some of the things that weren't so great. We don't want to whitewash anything. And she used a lot of kind of racially insensitive language. Some would call antisemitic at times, anti-Catholic through parts of her career, such that the anti-defamationly complained to her agent at one point. And because of that, American publishers were given the ability to change that stuff out, sort of at will.

• 48:52Josh Clark?

  Without, without any notice given to her, she just, she didn't know this was going on at all.

• 48:58Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 48:58Josh Clark?

  They just were like, I don't think the Americans are going to go for this. The Brits can barely stand it. The Americans definitely aren't going to take this well.

• 49:06Speaker 04

  Yeah, and I read a lot about this, and there are different takes. One take is that the old, you know, she was a product of her time thing, which people, you know, rightfully point out. Another is that oftentimes she's doing this to show characters are sort of underdeveloped as humans and sort of backward. So there's that as well, but you also can't dance around the fact that she did use some pretty bad words. And, you know, we just gotta point that stuff out.

• 49:39Josh Clark?

  Then they were bad even at the time, too. Like, it wasn't, yes, you can say like, yeah, a lot of people had different social attitudes toward race and racism. And in that sense, she wasn't that much different. But there were cases where she was standing well outside of the norm, including in book titles and characters and things like that. And, you know, one book in particular, and then there were none, was revised many, many times, not just in the US, but in Great Britain as well. And it's remarkable in that sense. But in another sense, it is also remarkable in that it's considered pretty widely to have given birth to the slasher film genre. Did you know that?

• 50:24Speaker 04

  I didn't until my bread had said.

• 50:27Josh Clark?

  I, yeah, I looked this up a little more. And on its own, and then there were none, the book ends, sorry for the spoiler, everybody, but it ends with, I think, all of the suspects killing one another. And everyone dies. In the stage adaptation of the play that she helped write, the final girl, a female character, is left alive and has outdone the murderer who's come to get her, which is, you know, the formula for any slasher film whatsoever. But there's a bunch of other elements in there, too, and they're like, you know, even on like horror fan wikis, they point to that as like the genuine birth, even more than Psycho, of the slasher film genre.

• 51:10Speaker 04

  Oh, interesting.

• 51:11Josh Clark?

  Yeah, it is pretty interesting. Who would have ever thought that Agatha Christie, with her nonviolence and poison and occasional racism, would have been the one to birth the slasher film?

• 51:22Speaker 04

  Occasional racism, yeah. And a lot of the racist stuff, just to put a final pin on that, was, a lot of it was character descriptions, which can be some of the ugliest kinds of stuff like that. Because it wasn't just like talking about philosophies, it was just like literally physically describing a character. Sometimes she would use some pretty derogatory language.

• 51:45Josh Clark?

  Yeah. So again, it's a bit like exploring Elizabeth Blackwell or any historical character. There's always weird little bugs under the rocks you turn over, you know?

• 51:55Speaker 04

  I'm glad we're doing our great work in the time of wokeness.

• 52:00Josh Clark?

  Right, exactly.

• 52:01Speaker 04

  No one can ever go back. I mean, we've made missteps here and there, but they can't go back and talk about when Josh and Chuck were big racists at the beginning.

• 52:08Josh Clark?

  Yeah, no, it's true, but just wait for 20 years from now, they'll be like, I can't believe they talked about, those guys were ageist bastards, you know?

• 52:16Speaker 04

  Probably so.

• 52:18Josh Clark?

  There's one other thing I want to say, too. So when she lived through World War II, Agatha Christie was worried that she was going to die in the bombing blitz of Great Britain. And she really wanted Hercule Poirot and Jane Marples to have a final case. So she wrote a book for each of them. One is called Curtain, that's Poirot's final book, and the other is Sleeping Murder, that is Marples' final case. And it just kind of explains what happens to them. I believe Poirot dies and Marples just retires. But when she survived World War II, she was like, well, I don't, I'm not ready for these guys to be retired yet. So she kept those books and had them posthumously published,

• 53:01Josh Clark?

  and they were in the 70s. And when Hercule Poirot's last book came out and he died, the New York Times ran a front page obituary for him, the only fictional character to have that honor bestowed on them.

• 53:15Speaker 04

  That's crazy.

• 53:17Josh Clark?

  Isn't it?

• 53:17Speaker 04

  Yeah, and also a very cool, good idea to write those books early on, just in case, because you never know.

• 53:25Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 53:25Speaker 04

  Besides the bombing thing, I mean, she could, she could walk off a ledge or get hit by a bus, or die of natural causes early, like, you never know. And then you've got this legacy cemented.

• 53:36Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 53:37Speaker 04

  Pretty smart.

• 53:38Josh Clark?

  Have you ever seen, one last thing, have you ever seen Murder by Death? I know I've asked you before.

• 53:43Speaker 04

  I have that DVD sitting on my desk.

• 53:45Josh Clark?

  Well, that's amazing that you have that on your desk and you, wait, is it on your desk at work?

• 53:51Speaker 04

  It is. It's the wrong place.

• 53:54Josh Clark?

  I was gonna say, watch it tonight, but don't watch it tonight. Wait until everything clears.

• 54:00Speaker 04

  Was that one of her books?

• 54:01Josh Clark?

  No, it's a spoof, actually, of detective books, of like Charlie Chan and Agatha Christie and Sam Spade and all that, that she helped, you know, kind of create. But it's actually like a complaint from fans of mystery, mysteries. It's just a wonderful book, Truman, or movie, Truman Capote's in it, David Niven.

• 54:21Speaker 04

  Peter Falk, right?

• 54:22Josh Clark?

  Peter Falk, yeah. A lot of people. James Cromwell as a younger man.

• 54:29Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah.

• 54:30Josh Clark?

  James Coco is Hercule Poirot. It's just great. You're gonna love it, man.

• 54:34Speaker 04

  So I guess we should say that she did die eventually, five years, or three years after I met her, in 1976, at the age of 85, at her home in Oxfordshire, or Oxfordshire. And it was natural causes, not poison.

• 54:49Josh Clark?

  No. Her last words were, "Good to meet you, Chuck."

• 54:55Josh Clark?

  You got anything else?

• 54:57Speaker 04

  I do not have anything else.

• 54:59Josh Clark?

  Well, friends, that is Agatha Christie. If you want to know more about Agatha Christie, go start reading Agatha Christie books. And since I said Agatha Christie like three or four times, it's time for listener minute.

• 55:12Speaker 04

  All right, I'm gonna call this a letter from a kid because we love reading these letters from kids. "Hey, guys. I've been listening to your podcast for about eight months now, and I'd like to say I am a huge fan." This is Emmett, he's 10 years old.

• 55:25Josh Clark?

  Oh, yeah, I love this email.

• 55:27Speaker 04

  "My dad is even more of a fan of you guys than me, and he told me about your podcast. I am a huge fan of the Atlanta Falcons and pretty much everything Atlanta-related, including your podcast, which is weird because I live in Iowa."

• 55:42Speaker 04

  I love it.

• 55:43Josh Clark?

  It is a little weird, though, Emmett, you're right. I love how self-aware this guy is.

• 55:46Speaker 04

  I think, you know, when you grow up in a place like Iowa with no professional sports, you, you know, you do that thing where you just pick out a team in a city.

• 55:55Josh Clark?

  Yeah, you're like the Bay City Rollers, you throw a dart at a map and go with it.

• 56:00Speaker 04

  That's right, and now I'm really worried there's a professional team in Iowa, but there is not.

• 56:04Josh Clark?

  There is not.

• 56:05Speaker 04

  There are none, right?

• 56:07Josh Clark?

  No need to double-check that.

• 56:10Speaker 04

  "I've been listening to your podcast a ton during this coronavirus outbreak to keep me from going crazy, and it's worked. My birthday is actually coming up, so I'll not be able to see my friends or even have a party. It would be totally awesome and make my year if you said happy birthday to me, but I want to bet you won't read this on the air."

• 56:27Josh Clark?

  That's some fine reverse psychology right there.

• 56:30Speaker 04

  Well-played, Emmett. "I love your grass podcast, and last year, me and my best friend Oliver started a lawn care business, and I made enough money to buy Beats headphones to listen to your podcast on."

• 56:43Josh Clark?

  That is full circle, right there.

• 56:44Speaker 04

  That's right. He says, "I made sure to wrap this letter up and spank it on the bottom before I sent it." So, happy, happy, big, I guess, 11th birthday, Emmett. Best to your dad, hello, Oliver, and everyone there in Atlanta, Iowa.

• 56:59Josh Clark?

  Yeah, happy birthday, Emmett. That reverse psychology worked, man.

• 57:05Josh Clark?

  If you want to get in touch with us like Emmett did and see if we'll wish you a happy birthday, I'll bet we won't, but who can tell in these crazy times? You can get in touch with us via email. Wrap it up, spank it on the bottom, and send it off to [email protected].

• 57:28Speaker 03

  Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

• 57:43Josh Clark?

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• 58:15Speaker 02

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• 58:47Speaker 02

  That sound? That's pro squash. Some of the fastest rallies in sport played inches from the crowd. The National Squash League is back in full swing for season four. The sport is heading to the 2028 Olympics for the first time and you can see it up close right now in a city near you. Watch every match for free on YouTube. Search National Squash League and hit subscribe or follow live updates on Instagram at NSL.Sport.

• 59:15Speaker 00

  This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human.