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Selects: Agatha Christie: Queen of the Murder Mystery · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, it's Meat Josham. For this week's Select, I've
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: chosen our episode from twenty twenty on Agatha Christie. It's
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: a neat little episode about who is possibly the greatest
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: selling writer of all time by far, and may inspire
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: you to get into Agatha Christie's books. And they're definitely
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: worse things you could do with your time, So grab
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: a cup of tea, a nice little blanket and enjoy
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: this cozy little episode.
• 0:32
  Speaker 2: Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: Charles w Chuck Bryan over there, and this is Stuff
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: you should Know. I'm I don't know if we're gonna
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: be able to get used to Jerry being round again.
• 0:57
  Speaker 2: Is she fired?
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: I don't think so. She made a fire yourself, though,
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: I have better things to do than hang out with
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: you cool cats and kittens.
• 1:06
  Speaker 2: Well, and it's kind of like, what's the point of
• 1:10
  Speaker 2: just sitting there? And I can't imagine any more boring
• 1:12
  Speaker 2: than listening to us on headphones. Wait a minute, that's
• 1:15
  Speaker 2: our show.
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: Yes, there are people doing that very thing right now. Chuck,
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: and you have just mocked their existence.
• 1:23
  Speaker 2: Oh, I've just met for Jerry's sake, you know.
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I know Jerry's not a fan. No, she's not
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: or a listener. So I have a question for you, Chuck.
• 1:35
  Speaker 2: You ever read a book? No?
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: No, don't be ridiculous, Chuck. Have you ever met Agatha Christy?
• 1:47
  Speaker 2: Yeah? I met her when I was three. Oh?
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: Really, do you have much of a memory of that encounter?
• 1:53
  Speaker 2: A little bit? She was, She was nice enough. She
• 1:55
  Speaker 2: signed my Murder on the Orient Express copy, first edition.
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: Oh wow, that's gotta be worth some money.
• 2:02
  Speaker 2: It's pretty neat.
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Do you still have that hot Nah?
• 2:07
  Speaker 2: I did some spring cleaning here a couple weeks ago,
• 2:10
  Speaker 2: and I didn't even recycle or put it in a
• 2:13
  Speaker 2: little free library, just do it in the trash.
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: Did you? Didn't you say once that your brother has
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: like a copy of Number one Superman or something nuts
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: like that. No, I thought he has something some valuable
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: comic book. No, huh, No, we must be confusing you
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: with my other co host, Chuck.
• 2:33
  Speaker 2: Now, we weren't big comic book people. We don't have
• 2:36
  Speaker 2: anything valuable like that.
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: I gotcha. Well, having met I get that Christie. When
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: you were a kid, I feel like you probably have
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: a lot to bring to this one. I was. I
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: have never met her still to this day, probably never will.
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: And I have read a couple of her things and
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: seen a couple of movies based on her stuff. But
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: I would never consider myself of like a a rabbit
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: Agatha Christie fan. But I do appreciate her work a lot.
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: You picked this one.
• 3:09
  Speaker 2: Why we have this series of books, children's books about
• 3:15
  Speaker 2: awesome women in history, from Freda to Coco Chanel to
• 3:21
  Speaker 2: Amelia Earhart to Agatha Christie. And so I was reading
• 3:25
  Speaker 2: this one the other night and thought, hey, let's do
• 3:29
  Speaker 2: you want an Agatha Christie that haven't read any of
• 3:31
  Speaker 2: her work, seen a couple of her movies, loved the
• 3:33
  Speaker 2: genre though yeah as films. I've never read mystery murder mysteries,
• 3:39
  Speaker 2: although I'm going to now.
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: I started reading The Mysterious Affair at Styles, which I
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: think was her first published work, last night, and it's
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: just great. She just sucks you right in, like you.
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: She does what's She creates a lot of books, not
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: all of them, but she creates what's called a cozy
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: mystery with a S because it's British, and i'd never
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: heard that term before until this article, But when I
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: came across it, I was like, Yes, I love that
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: kind of thing. And that's exactly what I love about
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: murder she wrote. Like the murder she wrote where she
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: goes to like Broadway or Paris or something like that,
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: I can take her leave. They're fine. But it's the
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: ones that are set in tiny little cabot cove that's
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: just isolated from the rest of the world, and it's
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: cozy and small and it's like a village and all that.
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: Those are the murder she wrotes that I love the most.
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: And I think that's what I like about Agatha Christie
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: mysteries too, is they're very typically cozy mysteries.
• 4:35
  Speaker 2: I've never seen that show what we what this conversation before.
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: No, that would be seared into my brain forever.
• 4:45
  Speaker 2: Now we have because you said that the first time. Yeah,
• 4:50
  Speaker 2: I've never seen it. But I'm a huge fan of
• 4:54
  Speaker 2: murder mystery movies, especially cozy mysteries like Clue is one
• 4:59
  Speaker 2: of my fa favorite films, and this year's or last
• 5:02
  Speaker 2: year's Knives Out was one of my top like three
• 5:05
  Speaker 2: or four films of the year.
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: I've not seen it yet it's still like seven dollars
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: on Amazon Prime. So I haven't rented yet. I'm waiting
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: for the price point to drop.
• 5:14
  Speaker 2: I can known you a couple of bucks if you need,
• 5:17
  Speaker 2: all right, sure, three three ninety nine, All right, now.
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: Three ninety nine. It's still a lot for a rental.
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: I mean, that's a lot. Do you think three ninety
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: nine is manageable? Four ninety nine and up, that's a
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: lot of That's a lot of mood law for a rental,
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: if you ask me. Wow, yeah, this is I'm taking
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: a stand on this.
• 5:36
  Speaker 2: All right. Well, film professionals out there, please do not
• 5:39
  Speaker 2: take offense to all your hard work.
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: So I have a question for you. Have one more question.
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: Have you seen that Agatha Christy film adaptation of Crooked
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: House that came out in twenty seventeen.
• 5:52
  Speaker 2: No, I think you'll like it.
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: It was big budget, but it also looks like British
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: made for television big budget.
• 5:59
  Speaker 2: It's great.
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: Jillian Anderson Danas Gully is in it, okay, because you
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: know the Brits are nuts for her, are they? Oh? Man,
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: She's like their favorite person in the world and has
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: been for years. I don't know why. Nothing against Gillian Anderson,
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: but like she just never hit it as big over
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: here as she did there. Terrence Stamp, isn't it?
• 6:19
  Speaker 2: Love him?
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: Glenn Close? She's great, and I was like, this is
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: really good. So I was reading little synopsies of it
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: and all that stuff, and it seemed like that's It's
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: widely regarded as one of her best, most ingenious and
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: inventive works. House Cricket House. I believe that's on Amazon
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: Prime for free.
• 6:38
  Speaker 2: Well, yes, do you actually do the math of how
• 6:41
  Speaker 2: much you pay for Amazon Prime to see how much
• 6:44
  Speaker 2: you're paying for that movie?
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: I don't want to do that. I just don't want
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: to do that. Pennies, Why did you do that to me?
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: All right, so, Charles, let's let's get into this because
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: I know that this one could be a little long
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: if we're not deliberate, and I would say, maybe considerate
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: of our time.
• 7:10
  Speaker 2: All right, Well that's an eight minute intro. So so far,
• 7:13
  Speaker 2: so good.
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 7:15
  Speaker 2: She is perhaps again it's kind of hard to tall
• 7:19
  Speaker 2: with book tell with book sales because they can be
• 7:21
  Speaker 2: a little dodgy. But she is often quoted as the
• 7:24
  Speaker 2: or scene as the best selling novelist of all time
• 7:28
  Speaker 2: and I did a little check to compare, Like, I thought, well,
• 7:31
  Speaker 2: Stephen King sold a book or two. Sure, they tag
• 7:34
  Speaker 2: his book sales at about three hundred and fifty million.
• 7:37
  Speaker 2: Her sixty six novels and fourteen collected works of short
• 7:41
  Speaker 2: stories supposedly have sold to the tune of two billion.
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: I saw four billion in one place, and I think
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: after you hit the billion mark, you can just start
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: tossing around whatever number you want. I think, so that's
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: like a for example, we've had seventy billion downloads. Now
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: I just decided, oh great, that's a lot of downloads.
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: But think about it, Stephen King, how many books has
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: that cat written? How many is he sold all around
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: the world? And it amounts to three hundred and fifty million,
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: and he's one of the best selling authors of all time.
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: A lot of people say that Agatha Christie's numbers hit
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: two billion, Like you said, that's astounding.
• 8:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that is. That is a ton of books. It's
• 8:22
  Speaker 2: I don't think our stuff. You should know book will
• 8:24
  Speaker 2: approach those numbers.
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: No, you never say never, though it's a lofty goal,
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: Never say never. I also saw that she's the most
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: widely translated author of all time too, that so forty
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: five languages. I was like, this thing's a little low.
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: So then somewhere else I saw one hundred and three.
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: So let's go with that.
• 8:44
  Speaker 2: So let's talk about this cozy mystery or just mystery
• 8:48
  Speaker 2: novels in general. They are very much formulaic, which Ed
• 8:53
  Speaker 2: helped us put this together. Ed points out that's why
• 8:55
  Speaker 2: people like them, because the familiarity and it's sort of
• 8:59
  Speaker 2: a comfort thing, like a good beach book. You know
• 9:02
  Speaker 2: what you're gonna get.
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, yeah, yeah, there's and there's surprises and everything
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: woven in. I mean, the whole thing is meant to
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: be a surprise. It's a mystery. And part of the
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: mystery and the allure of the mysteries that Agatha Christie
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: not only wrote, but actually the whole genre she helped
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: to develop, is that you are ostensibly able to figure
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: out who the culprit is in the murder. It's almost
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: always a murderer, and so there is like, there is
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: surprise involved, that's the point. But there's also a tremendous
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: amount of familiar familiarity, and that's that formula you were
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: talking about, and that's what really has sucked generations of
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: people into this whole genre her sixty six plus books.
• 9:44
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so you've got that murder. You usually don't see
• 9:49
  Speaker 2: this murder occur. She doesn't usually, and in general, in
• 9:53
  Speaker 2: murder mysteries, you don't see the murder. That's kind of
• 9:56
  Speaker 2: not the point of how grizzly or gruesome the act is.
• 10:00
  Speaker 2: It's sort of all about finding that body. And I
• 10:04
  Speaker 2: won't have a bunch of knives out things to say,
• 10:06
  Speaker 2: but I won't say any of them now. But then
• 10:08
  Speaker 2: you've got your detective that arrives on the scene, and
• 10:12
  Speaker 2: I will say this knives out very much follows this
• 10:14
  Speaker 2: formula very smartly. So you've got this master detective who
• 10:20
  Speaker 2: usually arrives upon the scene, but they may already be there,
• 10:24
  Speaker 2: and they are generally very eccentric and sort of they
• 10:29
  Speaker 2: always have these quirky sort of characteristics. In Christie's case,
• 10:33
  Speaker 2: we have the very formidable Hercule Poirot, and then Miss Marple,
• 10:39
  Speaker 2: Jane Marple. In Hercule's case, he's Belgian and has this
• 10:44
  Speaker 2: big mustache and it's just sort of eccentric and Belgian.
• 10:48
  Speaker 2: Just you know, he's not French. There's something about being
• 10:51
  Speaker 2: Belgium that makes it slightly different. Sure, and Miss Marple
• 10:54
  Speaker 2: apparently it's just a very ordinary and people underestimate her
• 10:59
  Speaker 2: and that's how she sort of wins the day.
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: Yeah, because for Hercule Poirot was a retired Belgian police detective,
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: so he has some measure of authority still to question
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: people and interrogate people as he wishes. With Miss Marple,
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: she's just kind of a quiet old lady who sews
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: and knits a lot, and she just has a very
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: keen eye for detail and an interest in solving, you know,
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: the murders that seem to happen around her, Like Angela
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: Lansbury basically, yes, but rather than interrogate people directly, Miss
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: Marple's thing is she just kind of quietly is there
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: and people tend to confide in her, and she kind
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: of quietly helps them along and gives them She gives
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: them the rope to hang themselves with. That's how she
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: interrogates people or figures out who who the murderer is.
• 11:54
  Speaker 2: Right, So you've got your setting in the cozy mystery setting.
• 11:58
  Speaker 2: Like you said, it's usually like in a state or
• 12:01
  Speaker 2: a home, maybe a hotel, maybe it might be a
• 12:04
  Speaker 2: small English village or an express obviously is on a
• 12:09
  Speaker 2: train another sort of confined space. By the way, have
• 12:13
  Speaker 2: you seen Trained to Busan?
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: I confuse that with Snow Piercer. I think I've seen both,
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: but I can't remember which ones, which.
• 12:25
  Speaker 2: They're kind of very similar. But bon is Zombies on
• 12:29
  Speaker 2: a Train Korean film.
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: No, then I think I've just seen snow Piercer.
• 12:33
  Speaker 2: You should check out Trained to Busan. If you think
• 12:36
  Speaker 2: you've seen it all with the zombie genre, then think again, dude.
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: That's saying something because that genre has gotten a little tired. Tale. Hey,
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: let me ask you this. Have you seen I know
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: you've seen it. You had to have Ozark? Oh sure,
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: I'm just started it.
• 12:52
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm a couple of episodes into the latest season.
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: Okay, yeah, you me and I just started at season one,
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: and I'm like, all I want to do is sit
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: her own and watch os Ark. It's amazing.
• 13:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I love it. That's like hartwell you know, oh no,
• 13:06
  Speaker 2: I didn't know that. Yeah, smart. I've tried to get
• 13:11
  Speaker 2: Bateman and Laura Lenny on movie Crush and it's always
• 13:14
  Speaker 2: thank you no.
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, Hey, you're giving responses. That's that's a
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: big step forward.
• 13:20
  Speaker 2: It's nice to be told no, and just not ignored.
• 13:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah right, all right, so you've got your setting. With
• 13:25
  Speaker 2: Agatha Christie, she did include her travels in some of
• 13:30
  Speaker 2: her later novels when they became like super popular, but
• 13:34
  Speaker 2: it was still not like a globe trotting like James
• 13:37
  Speaker 2: Bond kind of thing.
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: No, that's that's the point. So like in a espionage
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: thriller or something that locals are all over the place,
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: and you know, the characters constantly moving in these cozy thrillers,
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: like even if they're in an exotic local, they're still
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: set in a small part of that exotic local.
• 13:58
  Speaker 2: That's right, you got your suspect. They are questioned by
• 14:02
  Speaker 2: the detective. They usually all have a motive, They usually
• 14:06
  Speaker 2: all have the means because everyone, you know, in a
• 14:10
  Speaker 2: great novel like this, everyone's got to be a suspect
• 14:13
  Speaker 2: from the beginning. And then you can kind of quickly
• 14:16
  Speaker 2: whittle or slowly whittle that list down.
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: Right. And here's the thing what I was saying with
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: the with the kind of mystery that Agatha Christie wrote
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: and really established, you are part of the mystery, like
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: you're either the investigator. The detective has an assistant that
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: they explain things to very much like Sherlock, Holmes and Watson. Sure,
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: or if the detective is working solo, say like Miss Marple.
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: Miss Marples might write a list of suspects and their
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: motives and little clues down as part of the narration,
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: and you're let in every step of the way, So
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: you're part of the working towards solving the mystery. And
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: as it's very frequently put, it kind of pits you
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: in a competition with the author to see if you
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: can figure out who done it before the end of
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: the book.
• 15:11
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean that goes back to Encyclopedia Brown. The
• 15:13
  Speaker 2: whole point is to try and figure that stuff.
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: Out, right, Man, I love those Those are so great.
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: Encyclopedia Brown. I remember he busted one dumb kid who
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: did something bad. I can't remember.
• 15:24
  Speaker 2: Was it bugs meaning?
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: Oh man, good memory. It may have been bugs meaning
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: was he kind of a big dumb o who'd like
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: beat up on chipmunks?
• 15:32
  Speaker 2: I think?
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: So, okay, he busted bugs once because bugs had tears
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: coming out of the the outside corners of his eyes,
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: a freakazoid by the inside corners.
• 15:45
  Speaker 2: That's good. But see, the great thing about those books
• 15:47
  Speaker 2: is that a twelve year old doesn't really necessarily always
• 15:51
  Speaker 2: pick up on those clues.
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: Oh I did.
• 15:54
  Speaker 2: I wasn't that great. I'd be curious to see if
• 15:56
  Speaker 2: they would stump me now No, no, I mean.
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: Specif with the outside of the eye thing. But yeah, no,
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: I'm sure there are plenty that I missed.
• 16:05
  Speaker 2: But she cried a lot when you were a boy,
• 16:08
  Speaker 2: I knew while the mirror tears came from uh. And
• 16:13
  Speaker 2: so then at the end, to wrap up the little
• 16:15
  Speaker 2: genre sort of summary, you've got this great ending usually
• 16:19
  Speaker 2: where everyone's gathered together and the detective kind of walks
• 16:23
  Speaker 2: everyone through the big reveal of exactly how the killer
• 16:25
  Speaker 2: did it right, And in her case, she did not
• 16:29
  Speaker 2: like when the killer is revealed, they didn't turn around
• 16:33
  Speaker 2: and shoot them in the face like it's usually pretty nonviolent.
• 16:37
  Speaker 2: They would be wrestled to the ground or arrested, or
• 16:39
  Speaker 2: maybe they might run away and you hear later that
• 16:42
  Speaker 2: they had killed themselves or something like that.
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: Sure, there was rarely a grand finale where they would
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: be pressed to death in front of a crowd.
• 16:51
  Speaker 2: Nah, who needs it?
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: So that? I mean, that's it like bing bang boom.
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: That was when you started on page one of an
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: Agatha Christie novel, you knew exactly how everything was going
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: to play out. And then one of the other things
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: is because this thing was so formulaic, there was also
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: room for this for the author to kind of play
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: with you, the reader in using things like bluffs and
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: red herrings, I think are basically the same thing. But
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: the idea is that so the author in this case,
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: I get said Christy would say something like, you know,
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: early on in the book, a suspect would come running
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: out of the house looking shaken and pale, and you
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: the reader would be like, well, that's just way too obvious.
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: She's not going to name She's not going to point
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: out who the murderer is at the beginning of the book,
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: so I can disregard that person or this very obvious
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: clue or something like that. That was just kind of
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: part of the interplay between author and reader. But then
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: it could go even deeper to where she would say
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: something like, well, I know that you think that this
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: is too obvious, so I'm going to actually make this
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: the actual murderer, which she did in some cases, which
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: was like a double bluff. Apparently could just keep going
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: on and on and on, but it was this kind
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: of wrestling match or maybe slap fight between Agatha Christie
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: and you, her reader, which made the whole thing all
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: the more delightful.
• 18:12
  Speaker 2: That's right, And she ed takes great pains to point
• 18:15
  Speaker 2: out that she did not invent this genre. There were
• 18:19
  Speaker 2: people like Arthur Conan Doyle obviously and Poe before her
• 18:22
  Speaker 2: that sort of established some of these rules. But she
• 18:25
  Speaker 2: was very popular. She's very good at what she did.
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: Ye.
• 18:28
  Speaker 2: She wrote about what she knew. And we'll talk about
• 18:30
  Speaker 2: her life coming up in a little bit. But these
• 18:34
  Speaker 2: manor houses in these estates, and these English villages and
• 18:37
  Speaker 2: even the exotic locales and these train trips and things
• 18:41
  Speaker 2: were things that she actually experienced. And you know, a
• 18:44
  Speaker 2: lot of people are great at making stuff up, and
• 18:46
  Speaker 2: a lot of people are great about writing what they know.
• 18:48
  Speaker 2: And it seems like she was really great at writing
• 18:50
  Speaker 2: what she knew.
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah, And for some reason, either it was the time
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: or maybe because of her I'm not sure. It was
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: kind of a chicken or the egg thing, but she
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: happened to write about stuff that a lot of people
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: wanted to read about, these small, you know, English villages
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: and you know, quaint mannerisms of the upper middle and
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: upper class English society set in this period of time
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: that and for some reason, it just captured everybody's attention.
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: And apparently when she started expanding, like I think after
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: World War Two, to some slightly more exotic locales like
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: Egypt or Mesopotamia, you know, for like Death on the
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: Nile was a very famous wonder in this time, or
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: the Orient Express that really catapulted her into superstardom, international
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: superstardom too.
• 19:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I don't have a super firm read on the
• 19:50
  Speaker 2: history of literature, but I get the idea that this
• 19:53
  Speaker 2: is sort of aligned with the beginnings of pop lit.
• 19:58
  Speaker 2: And like I call it the beach Book. I don't
• 20:01
  Speaker 2: know if there had been a ton of stuff like
• 20:03
  Speaker 2: this that was just sort of pure comfort food and
• 20:06
  Speaker 2: entertainment up to this point.
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm not sure either. Nothing that I'm familiar with
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: I can say.
• 20:12
  Speaker 2: But they were very entertaining books. They were humorous, a
• 20:15
  Speaker 2: very dark sense of humor. Great dialogue, all these verbal
• 20:21
  Speaker 2: jousts between the detectives and the suspects is really key
• 20:24
  Speaker 2: to that genre. Something nis Out did really really well.
• 20:28
  Speaker 2: It was one of my favorite scripts of the year,
• 20:30
  Speaker 2: maybe my favorite script. Wow, but just really really good
• 20:34
  Speaker 2: sharp writing. And it's no sort of no accident that
• 20:37
  Speaker 2: she became so hugely popular.
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: No, And that's something like if you're not really familiar
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: with Agatha Chrissy and you just kind of look her
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: up and passing. One of the things you'll be confronted
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: with is that a lot of people, a lot of
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: critics say she was a hack. And what they're talking
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: about is that formula that she followed to almost like
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: a soul les Lee rational degree, Like that was the formula,
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: that's what she followed. But that really misses like the
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: fact that she had a really great eye for detail
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: and the dialogue. Like you were saying, like she was
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: a good writer and she could just crank workout. I
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: think during the decade of the twenties she wrote a
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: book a year. It might have even become more prolific
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: later on in the thirties and forties too.
• 21:26
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and she was a business person, you know, like,
• 21:30
  Speaker 2: there's nothing wrong with saying, wow, people love this stuff
• 21:34
  Speaker 2: and they sell a lot. And although it took a
• 21:38
  Speaker 2: while for that to happen, as we'll see, but there's
• 21:40
  Speaker 2: nothing wrong with any of that. I think people that
• 21:42
  Speaker 2: call her a hack. Can go fly kite?
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah, go fly it with extreme prejudice.
• 21:47
  Speaker 2: Should we take a break.
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: I think so, man, we'll come back and talk about
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: her life. Great, okay, Chuck.
• 22:17
  Speaker 2: So.
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: Agatha Christie was born in eighteen ninety in England, in Devonshire,
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: in Torquay, which I always wanted to say, Tanga Rey, Devonshire. Sure,
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: And it's in the southwest of England. So Torquay is
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: kind of like our Devonshire is like our Arizona, basically,
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: that's my impression.
• 22:41
  Speaker 2: I think it is very much like Arizona, right, the
• 22:44
  Speaker 2: legendary Devonshire cactus.
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: Right, so which stalks the moors, that's right. And she
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: was one of three kids, and I think her older
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: brother and sister were both at least a decade older
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: than her. So she had like a very solitary childhood,
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: which appears to have made her fairly happy. She didn't
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: go to school. She was raised by governesses and educated
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: by governesses. Spent a lot of time reading and just
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: hung out around her family's estate.
• 23:13
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean they had some dough They were not
• 23:16
  Speaker 2: wealthy wealthy, but they were definitely upper middle class. They
• 23:19
  Speaker 2: got an inheritance from her paternal grandfather, such that her
• 23:24
  Speaker 2: dad didn't need to work. Apparently, she is on record
• 23:28
  Speaker 2: as saying that her dad wasn't around much. Didn't really
• 23:31
  Speaker 2: impact me once much. So he can go fly a
• 23:34
  Speaker 2: kite as well. Right, it's a lot of kite flying.
• 23:38
  Speaker 2: And she loved being out in the garden. She wasn't
• 23:42
  Speaker 2: I get the impression. She wasn't like reclusive or anything,
• 23:44
  Speaker 2: but she very much enjoyed time with herself alone, but
• 23:48
  Speaker 2: also had friends and stuff when she eventually did go
• 23:50
  Speaker 2: to school once her father passed and they couldn't afford that.
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: Governess, right, but she was a very very shy person.
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: The novelist Joan neck Sella says that even as an adult,
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: she was so shy that sometimes she wouldn't go into
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: shops because she would have to interact with the shopkeeper.
• 24:11
  Speaker 2: So it's just ast. You know how many novelists are
• 24:15
  Speaker 2: the life of the party and super outgoing.
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: You've never met Philip Roth, apparently.
• 24:20
  Speaker 2: I just I don't know, you kind of picture like
• 24:22
  Speaker 2: the Stephen Kings, just locked in an attict somewhere and
• 24:26
  Speaker 2: not like, well, let me write a little bit, then
• 24:28
  Speaker 2: I'm gonna go, you know, go to a party.
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: Right, go play some pickup basketball and maybe volunteer at
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: the local food bank act.
• 24:35
  Speaker 2: I don't know it just it's sort of solitary pastime.
• 24:38
  Speaker 2: So that. Sure, there are examples of extroverted authors, but
• 24:42
  Speaker 2: I think she kind of fits the mold that you
• 24:45
  Speaker 2: generally think of, especially for a lady mystery writer.
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and you know, I think not only fits the mold,
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: the more I learned about her, she made the mold true.
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: Basically everything we take her for granted as far as
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: writing and mystery writing goes like she basically made it up.
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: It's pretty impressive stuff.
• 25:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah. So she, like we said, she did some pretty
• 25:06
  Speaker 2: to us dumb dumbs in America seem like exotic traveling trips.
• 25:11
  Speaker 2: But if you lived in England at the time, it's
• 25:13
  Speaker 2: no big deal to go to Egypt and check out
• 25:16
  Speaker 2: the Pyramids. That was if you had a little dough
• 25:18
  Speaker 2: that was a pretty common vacation that you might take.
• 25:21
  Speaker 2: So she did stuff like that, and she was exposed
• 25:23
  Speaker 2: to exotic locales and use those in her work. In
• 25:27
  Speaker 2: her very first novel, Even Snow Upon the Desert, she
• 25:31
  Speaker 2: wrote when she was like twenty two or twenty three
• 25:33
  Speaker 2: years old, I think, and you know, she had a
• 25:37
  Speaker 2: hard time getting published at first because she was a
• 25:39
  Speaker 2: young woman.
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah, she was rejected out of hand. And apparently also
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: she'd started writing because her sister told her that she
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: probably wouldn't be able to write a mystery novel, yeah,
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: which I love, So she did. She wrote the what
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: was it? Snow on?
• 25:57
  Speaker 2: What? Snow upon the Desert?
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: Snow upon the Desert? And she was very young then.
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: And in between the time she wrote Snow upon the
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: Desert and The Mysterious Affair at Styles, which would be
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: her first published book, I believe she wedged a lot
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: of life in there in the form of getting married
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: to a guy named Archibald Archie Christie. And one of
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: the things about Agatha Christie is that she never she
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: wasn't a born writer, even though she did write as
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: a younger person, like you were saying, like, she wasn't
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: like a She just didn't want to be a writer
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: as a kid. And she ended up writing really seriously
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: after she and Archie Christie got married, because Archie Christie
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: wasn't particularly wealthy and couldn't necessarily care for her himself,
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: so she started writing to make money, which some people
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: suspect is the reason she got into mystery writing in
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: the first place, because it was a very very popular genre.
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: Even though yeah, well it makes sense, so she had
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: the skills to pay the bills.
• 26:57
  Speaker 2: It turns out that's right. They were married nineteen fourteen.
• 27:01
  Speaker 2: He was kind of promptly sent to fight in the
• 27:05
  Speaker 2: Great War in France, and she worked at a pharmacist
• 27:10
  Speaker 2: at a war hospital during that period, and this is
• 27:13
  Speaker 2: where she learned a lot about potions and poisons and
• 27:17
  Speaker 2: pharmaceuticals and things that would there's a lot of poisoning
• 27:20
  Speaker 2: that goes on in her books. Yeah, and she later
• 27:23
  Speaker 2: in her career, I think she actually would consult with
• 27:25
  Speaker 2: doctors and stuff like that because she wanted everything to
• 27:28
  Speaker 2: be really medically accurate. But early on she learned a
• 27:31
  Speaker 2: lot about this stuff from her work in the pharmacy.
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: Which is kind of cool and ghoulish, you know, She's like, h,
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: how exactly would a person die from this bottle that
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: I'm holding? So yeah, and apparently most of the deaths
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: in her books are poisonings, and like you were saying,
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: like you very rarely see the person die. They just
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: come upon the body. And most of the times of
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: poison body. Sometimes there was violence visited upon them, but
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: for the most part, a body that was found poisoned
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: to death.
• 28:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and that's a good vehicle for a mystery novel
• 28:06
  Speaker 2: because you know there's no murder weapon per se. There
• 28:11
  Speaker 2: I guess there's the poison bottle. But it can often
• 28:14
  Speaker 2: be very vague a poisoning death, like could it have
• 28:18
  Speaker 2: been a heart attack? Like you have to kind of
• 28:20
  Speaker 2: suss out at first whether or not it was even
• 28:23
  Speaker 2: a murder. It's not like an obvious thing where there's
• 28:25
  Speaker 2: a bullet hole in their chest or something like that.
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: Right, right, Yeah, So poisoning is what she went with typically.
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: Another example also, Chuck, I think of like her writing
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: what she knew too, Yeah, at least writing what interested her.
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: And she wrote in I believe nineteen twenty no during
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: during World War One, so while she was working at
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: the dispensary and Archie was off flying in France. I
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: believe she wrote The Mysterious Affair at Styles and it
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: was that's the one I started reading, and I don't
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: understand how it was rejected at first, but it's a
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: really interesting book just right out of the gate in
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: that it pulls you right into this little country English
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: estate and all the people on it, and you realize
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: just after a couple of pages that you're already invested
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: in them, which is pretty amazing. And this is like
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: not her first book, but it was her first serious
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: work that wasn't published immediately. It wasn't published until nineteen twenty,
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: and I think even after it was published, it wasn't
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: an immediate catapult to success for her, but it was
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: a remarkable first book to be published.
• 29:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and this is the one that introduced the world
• 29:42
  Speaker 2: to her chief detective for a lot of those novels,
• 29:46
  Speaker 2: mister Poirot, like we mentioned, And later on they asked
• 29:50
  Speaker 2: her why he was Belgian, and she said why not? Basically,
• 29:56
  Speaker 2: I don't think a whole lot of thought went into it.
• 29:59
  Speaker 2: It turned out to be a really good choice because
• 30:01
  Speaker 2: he had this kind of interesting accent and everywhere he went,
• 30:04
  Speaker 2: I don't you know, they were never set in Belgium,
• 30:07
  Speaker 2: so everywhere he went he was this sort of sort
• 30:11
  Speaker 2: of strange foreigner that would come into town with this
• 30:15
  Speaker 2: accent that no one quite understood, and he just had
• 30:17
  Speaker 2: this sort of larger than life presence I think because
• 30:20
  Speaker 2: of that. So it turned out to be a really
• 30:21
  Speaker 2: smart choice.
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah. He was also a well known dandy who was
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: very vain about his appearance, and he apparently said in
• 30:31
  Speaker 1: one of the later books that he plays up his
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: foreignness and his dandiness to disarm suspects when he's interrogating them,
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: to make them take him less seriously than they otherwise might.
• 30:46
  Speaker 2: Man, I want to talk about knives out so.
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: Much you cannot. I appreciate you not doing that.
• 30:53
  Speaker 2: So she had a daughter, we should mention, in nineteen
• 30:55
  Speaker 2: nineteen named Rosalind, and that's the only child she ever had.
• 30:59
  Speaker 2: And it was in nineteen twenty a year later that
• 31:02
  Speaker 2: they finally did publish The Mysterious Affair at Styles after
• 31:06
  Speaker 2: she agreed to change the ending. They said, we don't
• 31:09
  Speaker 2: like Poirot revealing all this evidence in court, so she
• 31:13
  Speaker 2: changed the ending. They said great. That's when she went
• 31:16
  Speaker 2: on to publish that novel every year for about ten years,
• 31:20
  Speaker 2: very very big books. But they weren't They were popular,
• 31:24
  Speaker 2: but she wasn't like a superstar internationally at this point yet.
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: No, not yet. Again. She really catapulted later on because
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: she moved to some of these more exotic locales. But
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: one of the things that cemented her legend as a
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: mystery writer in addition to all of the work she did,
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: in addition to her prolificness and her extreme talent at
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: this formula that she had worked out was what still
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: today is considered an unsolved mystery. In fact, it was
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: featured on a nineteen ninety four episode of Unsolved Mysteries,
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: which I just randomly happened to see recently, and she disappeared.
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: There's a whole sub plot to Agatha Christie's life that
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: was really surprising, especially compared to how boring and normal
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: and just kind of plotting with these instead of teas
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: her normal life. Was the fact that she has this
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: grand mystery plunk down in the middle of it is
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: pretty impressive.
• 32:28
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's so. Here's the backstory. She and Archie were
• 32:33
  Speaker 2: not meant to be together. As it turns out, he
• 32:36
  Speaker 2: revealed that he was having an affair with a lady
• 32:39
  Speaker 2: named Nancy Neil who was a friend of the family,
• 32:42
  Speaker 2: and obviously that was the end of their marriage. So
• 32:46
  Speaker 2: at the end of nineteen twenty six, they decided they
• 32:50
  Speaker 2: were going to take a trip together a weekend, or
• 32:53
  Speaker 2: Archie went to be with his friends instead. And then
• 32:56
  Speaker 2: she vanished into seemingly thin air. They found her car
• 33:02
  Speaker 2: near a rock quarry, with her fur coat and her
• 33:04
  Speaker 2: driver's license there and no Agatha Christie.
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: No, and her car wasn't just near the rock quarry
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: according to some reports like one of the wheels is
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: hanging over the edge of this.
• 33:14
  Speaker 2: Cliff and still spinning right.
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: So, but she was gone. They couldn't find her. And
• 33:23
  Speaker 1: so within a couple of days, this massive search, depending
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: on who you ask and depending on when you ask them,
• 33:30
  Speaker 1: ten like ten thousand plus people were searching for probably
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: more likely a couple thousand, which is still really remarkable
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: for this tiny little area in the southwest of England
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: at the time in nineteen twenty six. So that really
• 33:46
  Speaker 1: kind of demonstrates she was already a well known writer.
• 33:50
  Speaker 1: She wasn't legendary yet, but is this disappearance is the
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: mechanism by which she becomes legendary, I think. And this
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: goes on for a good week, I believe. Right when
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: did she disappear? December?
• 34:03
  Speaker 2: What I think December third is when they were going
• 34:05
  Speaker 2: to take that trip.
• 34:06
  Speaker 1: So she was gone almost two weeks, and by gone
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: we mean just vanished. She left behind that car. She
• 34:12
  Speaker 1: left behind the driver's license in the fur like you said,
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: she was gone. Her husband had came to be known
• 34:19
  Speaker 1: to have asked for a divorce already, so people were like,
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: well did he bump her off? And she's a mystery
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: writer known for generating stuff like this, So even at
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: the time, some people were like, is this a publicity stunt,
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: because it's a pretty good one if it is.
• 34:33
  Speaker 2: Sure it worked, And there was a band at this
• 34:37
  Speaker 2: place called the Swan Hydropathic Hotel in Yorkshire, which kind
• 34:42
  Speaker 2: of just sounds like a bit of a Kellogg Brothers
• 34:46
  Speaker 2: type of joint.
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: Have you seen a Cure for wellness?
• 34:50
  Speaker 2: Well? We talked about that in that podcast.
• 34:53
  Speaker 1: Did we? I can't remember. Have you seen it?
• 34:55
  Speaker 2: I never saw it?
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: Have you yet? I still have not seen it, missing
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: that much, but it is pretty interesting. It's it's worth
• 35:02
  Speaker 1: seeing at least once.
• 35:03
  Speaker 2: I might check it out, okay, but any rate, they
• 35:06
  Speaker 2: had a band here, because what hydropathic hotel does not
• 35:10
  Speaker 2: have a house band, And they came forward and said, Hey,
• 35:14
  Speaker 2: that's Agatha Christie lady. She's been staying here for a week.
• 35:19
  Speaker 2: She's been in the electric light bath cabinet and getting
• 35:23
  Speaker 2: yogurt enemas and having a grand old time. So they
• 35:27
  Speaker 2: went to the cops, and the cops went to the
• 35:29
  Speaker 2: lead detective and said, no, no, no, she has been
• 35:32
  Speaker 2: murdered and we're trying to find out the killer.
• 35:35
  Speaker 1: I'm sure of it.
• 35:36
  Speaker 2: Eventually, this detective said, well, let me tell her husband.
• 35:40
  Speaker 2: And husband Archie went out to check it out on
• 35:42
  Speaker 2: the fourteenth of December. There she was. She was in seclusion,
• 35:47
  Speaker 2: and that was sort of the end of this mystery.
• 35:50
  Speaker 2: It wasn't so much a mystery, you know. She by
• 35:54
  Speaker 2: all accounts, it seems like she went there because she
• 35:58
  Speaker 2: had thought about or maybe tried to drive her car
• 36:02
  Speaker 2: into that quarry and kill herself because she was upset
• 36:06
  Speaker 2: about her marriage ending. Yeah, and then it didn't happen,
• 36:10
  Speaker 2: and she just kind of goes on a walk and
• 36:12
  Speaker 2: ends up at this place. May or may not have
• 36:15
  Speaker 2: invented an amnesia story, or it may have actually happened
• 36:19
  Speaker 2: to some degree. She didn't talk about a lot, so
• 36:22
  Speaker 2: we don't really know exactly what went down with the amnesia.
• 36:25
  Speaker 1: She said that. So two years later she gave an
• 36:28
  Speaker 1: interview with The Daily Mail and apparently explain the amnesia
• 36:31
  Speaker 1: by saying she'd hit her head on the steering wheel,
• 36:34
  Speaker 1: but in the same interview she says that she'd let
• 36:37
  Speaker 1: go of the steering wheel. So she basically said, like,
• 36:40
  Speaker 1: I attempted suicide and it didn't work out. I hit
• 36:43
  Speaker 1: my head on the steering wheel, and I wandered off,
• 36:45
  Speaker 1: and I had amnesia. But they think that it was
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: just a family cover story to save face, this amnesia story,
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: and that really she had attempted to take her own
• 36:55
  Speaker 1: life and hadn't succeeded and now regretted it was embarrassed
• 37:00
  Speaker 1: by all of this because the idea that there were
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: thousands of people looking for I think it probably never
• 37:06
  Speaker 1: crossed her mind when she wandered away from her car. No,
• 37:09
  Speaker 1: and that I remember she was a very shy person,
• 37:12
  Speaker 1: so this all this attention was very very hard on her.
• 37:15
  Speaker 1: So the family just came up with this cover story
• 37:18
  Speaker 1: that she had amnesia, so didn't even bother asking, and
• 37:23
  Speaker 1: Archie and she stayed together for another year or so
• 37:26
  Speaker 1: and then their divorce finally became finalized in nineteen twenty eight.
• 37:30
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so she didn't even mention this in her autobiography,
• 37:33
  Speaker 2: which kind of says all you need to know about
• 37:35
  Speaker 2: how much she liked to talk about.
• 37:36
  Speaker 1: This, right, we should say there was one other thing
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: that did this too. It wasn't just Archie asking for
• 37:42
  Speaker 1: a divorce. He asked for a divorce a few months
• 37:45
  Speaker 1: after her mother died. And I getak, Christie's mother was
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: beloved to her. She worshiped her mother. She thought she
• 37:52
  Speaker 1: was wonderful. Her mother was the parent that was there
• 37:55
  Speaker 1: for her while she was a kid and raised her.
• 37:58
  Speaker 1: It was just a very interesting person, it sounds like.
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: So she died, Archie asks for a divorce a few
• 38:02
  Speaker 1: months later, and then this whole mysterious disappearance happened.
• 38:07
  Speaker 2: That's right.
• 38:08
  Speaker 1: And then one last thing I read that at the
• 38:10
  Speaker 1: Swan Hydro Hotel she was actually playing cards and chatting
• 38:15
  Speaker 1: with other guests about this mysterious disappearance that was in
• 38:18
  Speaker 1: all of the newspapers, and none of the other guests
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: recognized her. It was those band members that you mentioned. Interesting,
• 38:25
  Speaker 1: I thought so too, man. So that's everything I learned
• 38:27
  Speaker 1: from Unsolved Mysteries. Should we take a break finally?
• 38:33
  Speaker 2: All right, let's take our final break, and we'll talk
• 38:35
  Speaker 2: a little bit more about her later life and further success.
• 39:02
  Speaker 2: All right, So, it's in nineteen twenty eight. At this point,
• 39:05
  Speaker 2: she is freshly divorced. She kept that name because you know,
• 39:09
  Speaker 2: that's the name that made her famous, so it makes
• 39:12
  Speaker 2: a lot of sense. And she kept writing novels. She
• 39:16
  Speaker 2: traveled on the Orient Express to Bagdad. She got into archaeology,
• 39:21
  Speaker 2: just sort of a hobbyist, and made friends with a
• 39:24
  Speaker 2: couple who were archaeologists. Went to visit them in nineteen
• 39:27
  Speaker 2: thirty and on that trip met a man named Max
• 39:30
  Speaker 2: Malawan who was also an adventurer and an archaeologist thirteen
• 39:35
  Speaker 2: years younger, and they fell in love and got married,
• 39:38
  Speaker 2: which is a very very sweet story.
• 39:40
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Apparently he was giving her a tour of some
• 39:44
  Speaker 1: archaeological sites and he got the car stuck, and she, apparently,
• 39:48
  Speaker 1: he said later she made no fuss about it, didn't
• 39:51
  Speaker 1: blame him or anything like that, and he said, that's
• 39:54
  Speaker 1: about the time when I started to begin to realize
• 39:56
  Speaker 1: that you are wonderful. And so they got married, and
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: she said later on that the good thing about being
• 40:03
  Speaker 1: married to an archaeologist is that the older you get,
• 40:05
  Speaker 1: the more interested they become interesting. That's kind of cute.
• 40:11
  Speaker 2: So this is when Miss Marple comes along as a
• 40:14
  Speaker 2: detective in nineteen thirty with the Murder at the Vicarage.
• 40:19
  Speaker 1: That was our first one.
• 40:20
  Speaker 2: That was the first Miss Marple book, Okay. And then
• 40:23
  Speaker 2: she's traveling around, She's doing these archaeological digs and trips.
• 40:27
  Speaker 2: She's going to Syria and Iraq. She fell in love
• 40:30
  Speaker 2: with Syria and the Syrian people, and she's really cranking
• 40:34
  Speaker 2: out some big books at this point in the nineteen thirties.
• 40:37
  Speaker 1: That's why even on archaeological digs, Chuck, can you imagine
• 40:41
  Speaker 1: how uncomfortable it would be to sit and write for
• 40:43
  Speaker 1: hours in an archaeological site.
• 40:46
  Speaker 2: I can't.
• 40:47
  Speaker 1: It would be tough, I would think. And yet she
• 40:49
  Speaker 1: was still just as prolific as ever.
• 40:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah, books like Murder and Mesopotamia and Death on the
• 40:54
  Speaker 2: Nile and Murder on the Orient Express were all written
• 40:57
  Speaker 2: during this period, and this is what really can appulted
• 41:00
  Speaker 2: her into international superstardom as an author.
• 41:04
  Speaker 1: Right. So she and Max stayed together for I think
• 41:09
  Speaker 1: forty six years until her death. Actually yeah, I think, yeah,
• 41:14
  Speaker 1: she outlived him, so it's pretty sweet. But despite all
• 41:19
  Speaker 1: of this kind of adventure and archaeological digs and like
• 41:24
  Speaker 1: visits to the Middle East, most of her life from
• 41:29
  Speaker 1: that point on was in Devonshire, in this tiny little
• 41:35
  Speaker 1: area in the English countryside, in these the quaint little towns,
• 41:41
  Speaker 1: and she gardened and was very involved in local community theater.
• 41:45
  Speaker 1: That was her life. She was also one of the biggest,
• 41:50
  Speaker 1: most well known, most best selling writers of in the
• 41:55
  Speaker 1: world while she was alive, and yet that's what she did.
• 41:59
  Speaker 1: She hung out with community theater group in garden. It
• 42:02
  Speaker 1: was just her life.
• 42:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah. She got the Dame Commander of the Order of
• 42:05
  Speaker 2: the British Empire in nineteen seventy one, and the rights
• 42:11
  Speaker 2: to her novels were held by company that she created
• 42:14
  Speaker 2: for a long time, and then before she died she
• 42:16
  Speaker 2: sold part of that off and that's been sort of
• 42:20
  Speaker 2: bought and sold a bunch over the years, which is
• 42:21
  Speaker 2: kind of how that usually happens. But she did retain
• 42:25
  Speaker 2: enough of the company to have it be worth a
• 42:29
  Speaker 2: ton of money, which she passed down to her daughter.
• 42:32
  Speaker 2: Of course, as her only child. She sort of took
• 42:35
  Speaker 2: care of her mother's works for many many years and
• 42:38
  Speaker 2: then passed that on to her only child and named
• 42:41
  Speaker 2: Matthew Pritchard, who still holds these rights and still sort
• 42:45
  Speaker 2: of manages that today.
• 42:47
  Speaker 1: That's right. So everything turned out well for Matthew Prichard sounds.
• 42:52
  Speaker 2: Like, yeah, I wish my grandma was Actually I dunt
• 42:56
  Speaker 2: because I love my grandma, But sure would it have
• 42:58
  Speaker 2: killed her to be an internationally famous author.
• 43:01
  Speaker 1: No, it wouldn't, Chuck, and I'm glad we're finally talking
• 43:04
  Speaker 1: about it. Been an elephant in the room for a
• 43:07
  Speaker 1: very long time.
• 43:08
  Speaker 2: So she You know, a lot of these went on
• 43:10
  Speaker 2: to be very famous films, TV series. I think Murder
• 43:14
  Speaker 2: on the Orient Express has been a couple of big movies,
• 43:18
  Speaker 2: in fact, one a couple of years ago that I
• 43:20
  Speaker 2: have not seen.
• 43:21
  Speaker 1: It's unwatchable.
• 43:23
  Speaker 2: Oh was it really bad?
• 43:24
  Speaker 1: I'm sorry if you listened to this. Kenneth BROWNO. I
• 43:26
  Speaker 1: couldn't make it through the first five minutes.
• 43:28
  Speaker 2: Oh wow, it was.
• 43:30
  Speaker 1: I didn't like it.
• 43:31
  Speaker 2: Okay. Is that all you know?
• 43:32
  Speaker 1: I love? Yes? Okay, So that's my report is on
• 43:36
  Speaker 1: the first five minutes.
• 43:39
  Speaker 2: She very famously has a play called The mouse Trap,
• 43:42
  Speaker 2: which is debuted the West End in nineteen fifty two,
• 43:46
  Speaker 2: and it is the longest running play in the history
• 43:48
  Speaker 2: of the West End, which is remarkable.
• 43:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and to make that even sweeter, remember her sister
• 43:54
  Speaker 1: who said that she probably couldn't write a mystery novel. Well,
• 43:58
  Speaker 1: her sister was the first in the family to get
• 44:02
  Speaker 1: a play produced on the West End, but it certainly
• 44:04
  Speaker 1: wasn't the longest running play on the West End of
• 44:07
  Speaker 1: all time. So she got her back doubly so.
• 44:09
  Speaker 2: And then she was hit by a train and Agatha
• 44:11
  Speaker 2: Christie laughed and.
• 44:12
  Speaker 1: Laughed and poisoned her corpse.
• 44:16
  Speaker 2: So we need to talk a little bit here at
• 44:18
  Speaker 2: the end. We always like to give everyone's give everyone
• 44:22
  Speaker 2: the accolades they deserve, but also point out some of
• 44:25
  Speaker 2: the things that weren't so great. We don't want to
• 44:27
  Speaker 2: whitewash anything. And she used a lot of kind of
• 44:32
  Speaker 2: racially insensitive language some would call anti Semitic at times
• 44:36
  Speaker 2: anti Catholic through parts of her career, such that the
• 44:42
  Speaker 2: Anti Defamation League complained to her agent at one point,
• 44:46
  Speaker 2: and because of that, American publishers were given the ability
• 44:49
  Speaker 2: to change that stuff out sort of at.
• 44:51
  Speaker 1: Will, without any notice given to her. She just she
• 44:55
  Speaker 1: didn't know this was going on at all. Yeah, we
• 44:58
  Speaker 1: just were like, I don't think the Americans are going
• 45:01
  Speaker 1: to go for this. The Brits can barely stand it.
• 45:03
  Speaker 1: The Americans definitely aren't going to take this well.
• 45:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and I read a lot about this, and there
• 45:07
  Speaker 2: are different takes. One take is that the old you know,
• 45:12
  Speaker 2: she was a product of her time, thing, which people
• 45:15
  Speaker 2: you know rightfully point out. Another is that oftentimes she's
• 45:19
  Speaker 2: doing this to show characters are sort of underdeveloped as
• 45:25
  Speaker 2: humans and sort of backward. So there's that as well.
• 45:30
  Speaker 2: But you also can't dance around the fact that she
• 45:33
  Speaker 2: did use some pretty bad words, and you know, we just.
• 45:37
  Speaker 1: Got were bad stuff out and they were bad even
• 45:40
  Speaker 1: at the time. Yeah, like that it wasn't. Yes, you
• 45:43
  Speaker 1: can say, like, yeah, a lot of people had different
• 45:45
  Speaker 1: social attitudes toward race and racism, and in that sense,
• 45:50
  Speaker 1: she wasn't that much different. But there were cases where
• 45:53
  Speaker 1: she was standing well outside of the norm, including in
• 45:58
  Speaker 1: book titles and care characters and things like that. And
• 46:03
  Speaker 1: one book in particular, and then there were none was
• 46:05
  Speaker 1: revised many many times, not just in the US but
• 46:09
  Speaker 1: in Great Britain as well. And it's remarkable in that sense.
• 46:13
  Speaker 1: But in another sense, it is also remarkable in that
• 46:16
  Speaker 1: it's considered pretty widely to have given birth to the
• 46:20
  Speaker 1: slasher film genre.
• 46:22
  Speaker 2: Did you know that I didn't until my bred d say.
• 46:26
  Speaker 1: It, I yeah, I look this up a little more
• 46:29
  Speaker 1: and on its own, and then there were none. The
• 46:32
  Speaker 1: book ends Sorry for the spoiler, everybody, but it ends
• 46:36
  Speaker 1: with I think all of the suspects killing one another
• 46:40
  Speaker 1: and everyone dies. In the stage adaptation of the play
• 46:44
  Speaker 1: that she helped write, The Final Girl, a female character
• 46:49
  Speaker 1: is left alive and has out done the murderer who's
• 46:54
  Speaker 1: come to get her, which is, you know, for the
• 46:56
  Speaker 1: formula for any slasher film whatsoever. But there's a bunch
• 46:59
  Speaker 1: of other elements in there too, and they're like, you know,
• 47:02
  Speaker 1: even on like horror fan Wikis, they point to that
• 47:05
  Speaker 1: as like the genuine birth even more than Psycho of
• 47:08
  Speaker 1: the slasher film genre.
• 47:10
  Speaker 2: Oh.
• 47:10
  Speaker 1: Interesting, Yeah, it is pretty interesting. Who would have ever
• 47:13
  Speaker 1: thought that. I guess Christie, with her non violence and
• 47:17
  Speaker 1: poison and occasional racism, would have been the one to
• 47:21
  Speaker 1: birth the slasher.
• 47:22
  Speaker 2: Film occasional racism. Yeah, and a lot of the racist stuff,
• 47:25
  Speaker 2: just to put a final pin on that was a
• 47:28
  Speaker 2: lot of it was character descriptions, which can be some
• 47:31
  Speaker 2: of the ugliest kinds of stuff like that, because it
• 47:35
  Speaker 2: wasn't just like talking about philosophies. It was just like
• 47:39
  Speaker 2: literally physically describing a character. Sometimes she would use some
• 47:43
  Speaker 2: pretty derogatory language.
• 47:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah. So again, it's a bit like exploring Elizabeth Blackwell
• 47:49
  Speaker 1: or any historical characters. Always weird little bugs under the
• 47:53
  Speaker 1: rocks you turn over. You know.
• 47:55
  Speaker 2: I'm glad we're doing our great work in the time
• 47:58
  Speaker 2: of wokeness, right, exactly. No, one can never go back.
• 48:02
  Speaker 2: I mean we've made missed ups here and there, but
• 48:03
  Speaker 2: they can't go back and talk about when Josh and
• 48:05
  Speaker 2: Chuck were big racists at the beginning.
• 48:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah, no, it's true. But just wait for twenty years
• 48:11
  Speaker 1: from now, they'll be like, I can't believe they talk
• 48:12
  Speaker 1: about those guys were ageous bastards, you know.
• 48:16
  Speaker 2: Probably.
• 48:16
  Speaker 1: So there's one other thing I want to say too.
• 48:19
  Speaker 1: So when she lived through World War Two, Agatha Christie
• 48:23
  Speaker 1: was worried that she was going to die in the
• 48:26
  Speaker 1: bombing blitz of Great Britain, and she really wanted Hercule
• 48:30
  Speaker 1: poi Row and Jane Marple's to have a final case,
• 48:34
  Speaker 1: so she wrote a book for each of them. One
• 48:38
  Speaker 1: is called Curtain that's Paul Roe's final book, and the
• 48:41
  Speaker 1: other is Sleeping Murder that is Marple's final case, and
• 48:46
  Speaker 1: It just kind of explains what happens to them. I
• 48:48
  Speaker 1: believe poor Rowe dies and Marple just retires. But when
• 48:53
  Speaker 1: she survived World War Two, she was like, well, I
• 48:55
  Speaker 1: don't I'm not ready for these guys to be retired yet.
• 48:58
  Speaker 1: So she kept those books and had them posthumously published,
• 49:01
  Speaker 1: and they were in the seventies. And when Hercule poil
• 49:04
  Speaker 1: rose last book came out and he died, the New
• 49:08
  Speaker 1: York Times ran a front page obituary for him, the
• 49:11
  Speaker 1: only fictional character to have that honor bestowed on them.
• 49:15
  Speaker 2: That's crazy, isn't it?
• 49:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah?
• 49:17
  Speaker 2: And also a very cool good idea to write those
• 49:21
  Speaker 2: books early on, just in case, because you never know. Yeah,
• 49:25
  Speaker 2: besides the bombing thing. I mean, she could walk off
• 49:29
  Speaker 2: a ledge or get hit by a bus, or die
• 49:31
  Speaker 2: of natural causes early, like you never know, and then
• 49:33
  Speaker 2: you've got this legacy cemented. Right, pretty smart?
• 49:38
  Speaker 1: Have you ever seen one last thing? I've ever seen
• 49:40
  Speaker 1: murdered by death? I know, I've asked you before.
• 49:43
  Speaker 2: I have that DVD sitting on my desk.
• 49:45
  Speaker 1: Well, that's amazing that you have that on your desk,
• 49:48
  Speaker 1: and you wait, is it on your desk at work?
• 49:51
  Speaker 2: It is the wrong place.
• 49:54
  Speaker 1: I was going to say, watch it tonight, but don't
• 49:56
  Speaker 1: watch it tonight. Wait until everything clear that you're gonna
• 50:00
  Speaker 1: love it. No, it's a spoof actually of detective books
• 50:03
  Speaker 1: of like Charlie Chan and Agatha Christie and Sam Spade
• 50:07
  Speaker 1: and all that that she helped, you know, kind of create.
• 50:10
  Speaker 1: But it's actually like a complaint from fans of mystery mysteries.
• 50:15
  Speaker 1: It's just a wonderful book. Truman movie, Truman, Capote's in it,
• 50:19
  Speaker 1: David Niven, Peter Peter Falkah, a lot of people. James
• 50:27
  Speaker 1: Cromwell as a younger man. Oh yeah, James Coco is,
• 50:31
  Speaker 1: Hercule poil Row. It's just great. You're gonna love it, man.
• 50:33
  Speaker 2: So I guess we should say that she did die
• 50:35
  Speaker 2: eventually five years or three years after I met her
• 50:39
  Speaker 2: in nineteen seventy six, at the age of eighty five,
• 50:43
  Speaker 2: at her home in Oxfordshire or Oxfordshire, and it was
• 50:47
  Speaker 2: natural causes, not poison.
• 50:49
  Speaker 1: No. Her last words were good to meet you, Chuck,
• 50:55
  Speaker 1: you got anything else?
• 50:57
  Speaker 2: I do not have anything else?
• 50:59
  Speaker 1: Well, friends, that is Agatha Christie. If you want to
• 51:01
  Speaker 1: know more about it, the Christie, go start reading. I
• 51:03
  Speaker 1: get the Christie books. And since I said Agatha Christie
• 51:06
  Speaker 1: like three or four times, it's time for a listener mate.
• 51:11
  Speaker 2: All right, I'm gonna call this a letter from a kid,
• 51:14
  Speaker 2: because we love reading these letters from kids. Hey, guys,
• 51:18
  Speaker 2: I've been listening to your podcast for about eight months now,
• 51:21
  Speaker 2: and I'd like to say I am a huge fan. Uh.
• 51:23
  Speaker 2: This is Emmett. He's ten years old.
• 51:25
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I love this email.
• 51:27
  Speaker 2: My dad is even more of a fan of you
• 51:29
  Speaker 2: guys than me, and he told me about your podcast.
• 51:31
  Speaker 2: I am a huge fan of the Atlanta Falcons and
• 51:34
  Speaker 2: pretty much everything Atlanta related, including your podcast, which is
• 51:37
  Speaker 2: weird because I live in Iowa. I love it.
• 51:42
  Speaker 1: It is a little weird, though, amit. You're right? I
• 51:44
  Speaker 1: love how self aware this guy is.
• 51:46
  Speaker 2: I think you know, when you grow up in a
• 51:48
  Speaker 2: place like Iowa with no professional sports, you you know
• 51:52
  Speaker 2: you do that thing where you just pick out a
• 51:54
  Speaker 2: team in a city.
• 51:55
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you're like the Bay City Rollers. You throw a
• 51:57
  Speaker 1: dart at a map and go with it.
• 51:59
  Speaker 2: That's right. Now, I'm really worried there's a professional team
• 52:02
  Speaker 2: in Iowa. But there is not.
• 52:04
  Speaker 1: There is not, There are none, right, No need to
• 52:07
  Speaker 1: double check that.
• 52:10
  Speaker 2: I've been listening to your podcast a ton during this
• 52:12
  Speaker 2: coronavirus outbreak to keep me from going crazy, and it's worked.
• 52:15
  Speaker 2: My birthday is actually coming up, so I'll not be
• 52:18
  Speaker 2: able to see my friends or even have a party.
• 52:20
  Speaker 2: It would be totally awesome and make my year if
• 52:23
  Speaker 2: you said happy birthday to me. But I want to
• 52:25
  Speaker 2: bet you won't read this on the air.
• 52:27
  Speaker 1: That's some fine reverse psychology right there.
• 52:30
  Speaker 2: Well played, Emmitt. I love your grass podcast, and last
• 52:33
  Speaker 2: year me and my best friend Oliver started a long
• 52:36
  Speaker 2: care business and I made enough money to buy Beats
• 52:39
  Speaker 2: headphones to listen to your podcast on.
• 52:42
  Speaker 1: That is full circle right there.
• 52:44
  Speaker 2: That's right, he says. I may ture to wrap this
• 52:46
  Speaker 2: letter up and spank it all the bottom before I
• 52:47
  Speaker 2: sent it, so happy happy big I guess eleventh birthday, Emmet,
• 52:53
  Speaker 2: best to your dad, Hello Oliver and everyone there in Atlanta, Iowa.
• 52:59
  Speaker 1: Yeah, happy birthday, Emit. That reverse psychology worked. Man. If
• 53:05
  Speaker 1: you want to get in touch with us like Emmett did,
• 53:07
  Speaker 1: and see if I'll wish you a happy birthday, I'll
• 53:09
  Speaker 1: bet we won't. But who can tell them these crazy times?
• 53:13
  Speaker 1: You can get in touch with us via email. Wrap
• 53:16
  Speaker 1: it up? Spank it on the bottom and send it
• 53:19
  Speaker 1: off to stuff podcast at iHeartRadio dot com.
• 53:27
  Speaker 2: Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
• 53:30
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• 53:34
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