Latest / Stuff You Should Know / Agatha Christie: Queen of the Murder Mystery

Transcript

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

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