- I wanna help out England.
I didn't bust my nuff (chuckles),
I didn't bust my nut enough in England.
Oh, I still didn't do enough.
- Stephenson was like, "Well, you know,
"there is other stuff you can do."
So Dahl was hired into a dark propaganda section,
referred to as the BSC,
which stands for the British Security Council.
(dramatic instrumental music)
Hello, today we're gonna talk about Edgar Allen Poe
and his rivalry with Rufus Griswold,
one of America's first pieces of (beep).
(haunting instrumental music)
Okay, this is the 1800s and no one has any money.
Like people are like sweeping the streets
and maybe you'd find like a crust of bacon and you'd eat it.
Edgar Allen Poe, he's one of the great American poets,
completely disrespected by everyone
he ever came in contact with.
He was always broke,
and he came into contact with a fellow by the name
of Rufus Griswold.
So Griswold says to Poe, "Hey, I'm making this book
"called 'The Poets and Poetry of America'
"so give me some of your poems and if I like 'em,
"I'll put 'em in."
He knows if he puts him in the book,
then Edgar Allen Poe will be likely to write a nice review.
So Poe's like, "Okay, I'll give you some of my poems.
"So here's my poems."
So books get booket.
The book gets published.
Poe's, three of Poe's poems are printed.
Griswold has printed 50 poems by one of his friends.
50!
Poe's sitting there with the book in front of him,
flipping through the book, flip, flip, flip, flip, flip.
"What the (beep)?
"Are you (beep) serious?
"This (beep) sucker hack loser ass (beep)
"has put me in the very back of this book.
"I have been hornswoggled by (beep)."
Griswold comes to him.
He's like, "Edgar, what do you say that you write
"one of your wonderful reviews of my book
"and I'll give you $100 for it."
It's basically bribery and Poe's like "Sure, no problem.
"I'll take your money and write a review of this, this book.
"No problem.
"No (beep) problem, Rufus."
(laughing) So, so he, so he writes the review.
Now Griswold has been telling his friends, you know,
"Poe's gonna write this great review of my (beep)."
Then when he reads the review that he paid for, like,
"No one should read this.
"None of these poets are gonna be remembered except for me.
"It's a waste of time to even look at this thing.
"All this is crap, Edgar Allan Poe."
He's like, "Really?
"I gave you money to write a (beep) review of a book
"of poetry that I put you in, you ass (beep).
"Game on."
So Poe starts hearing that Griswold is now like
is talking (beep) about him.
So he goes on a tour of America.
I mean like, "Hey, what's up guys?
"You guys know about Rufus Griswold, right?
"The guy who wrote this (beep) book of poetry
"where he only put three of my poems in.
"You know about this guy, he's like a hack,
"just like a stereotypical, basic bull (beep) ass (beep).
"He has no talent at all.
"And if you give Griswold a hand job
"he'll put 20 poems in his (beep) book.
"He is a vile holographic piece of (beep).
"Holograms don't even exist yet,
"and I'm calling him a (beep) hologram."
Very important note, the anthology,
despite Poe talking all this (beep) is massively successful.
Poe goes to his job at this magazine
and seated at his desk is Rufus (beep) Griswold.
He's like, "Oh, I'm sorry.
"While you were gone, I got your job.
"And I'm getting paid more than you got paid.
"So I win.
"Goodnight."
So Poe's like, "What the (beep)?"
He's like, "What the (beep)?"
His worst enemy has taken his job and he's (beep).
He's (beep).
He goes on drinking binges.
He's a drunk, he's a drunk.
He's a lunatic.
He's like wandering the streets.
(sweeping instrumental music)
Right around that time, his wife dies
and Poe goes insane and starts taking laudanum,
which is this like downer
but it makes you high as a (beep) kite.
And that's it, man.
Poe continues to spiral down into an (beep) oblivion.
They find him laying in a gutter in Baltimore.
They take him to a hospital where he dies.
So Poe's dead.
Griswold wanted Poe to seem like a monster
so (beep) Griswold proceeds to write
the scathing biographies of Edgar Allan Poe.
"He was a drunk.
"He was always in debt.
"He sucked.
"He was awful.
"Forget about him, forget about him!"
(bird cawing)
But everyone in America read this and they're like,
"Wait, what?
"Drunk crazy guy who wrote about ravens?
"Where can I get his book?
"That sounds awesome."
It ended up making Edgar Allan Poe 50,000 times more famous,
and he's considered to be one of the great writers
of our time.
Later in his life, Griswold comes down with tuberculosis
and dies alone with a picture of Edgar Allan Poe
on the wall watching him like,
"Look at you, man.
"where are you now?
"Look at Griswold, all you people out there.
"I don't care what you do.
"What'd you do?
"Guess what?
"No one's gonna remember it.
"You're, you're silly attempt to disguise a (beep)
"history show in like people getting drunk, it's failure.
"No one cares.
"No one's buying it, man.
"Forget it, we're all getting sucked into the void."
Ugh. (thuds)
(Derek laughing)
(dramatic instrumental music)
- Uh, my name is Lucius Dillon.
Today, we're gonna talk about Roald Dahl (spits),
his life as a British spy.
World War II, Roald Dahl was a fighter pilot for the RAF,
the Royal Air Force, and he loved fighting them Nazis.
And he's like, "Ah, this is great."
And so he had to go and fly to a base in the desert.
He ran out of gas, hit the ground at 75 miles an hour,
cracked his skull.
He had to drag himself out of the plane
before the gas tanks exploded.
(dramatic instrumental music)
So he pretty much was like invalided out
of the Royal Air Force.
But then a famous author, C.S. Forester,
went to interview him about his crash.
Dahl was like, "Okay, you know what?
"My mind's a little spotty.
"Let me just, let me just write down some notes for you."
Forester's like, "Okay, send them to me later."
So Dahl sat down to kinda write it
and his mind was kinda muddled
because he went through a crash,
but he wrote like a really good story.
Send it to Forester and Forester wrote back, he's like,
"Okay look, you're supposed to give me notes,
"not write a full (beep) story.
"This, this is great.
"This is amazing.
"I, I'm not changing a word.
"I'm sending this straight to the Saturday Evening Post."
So that got sent and was actually really popular
and he realized like, "Okay, I can tear a pretty good yard,
"or I don't know if that's the right term, but (laughs)
"I can, I can write a pretty good story."
(spits) See, you gotta tickle it.
You gotta know... (laughs).
- Just keep going.
- Uh, yeah, he was the talk of the town.
And so he was invited to a lot of these parties.
He met up with a really cool guy called Bill Stephenson,
and Bill Stephenson's just like,
"Hey, what's going on with you?"
And Dahl is just like, "I wanna help out England."
"I didn't bust my nuff (chuckles),
"I didn't bust my nut enough in England.
"Oh, I still didn't do enough."
Stephenson was like,
"Well, you know, there is other stuff you can do."
So Dahl was hired into a dark propaganda section
referred to as the BSC,
which stands for the British Security Council.
A lot of other people were hired.
Noel Coward, who was a famous playwright and actor,
and also Ian Fleming, who some people might know
as James mother (beep) Bond.
Stephenson was like,
"Let's put you into some good political parties
"and meet everyone you (beep) can
"and report everything back to us."
He was like, "Okay."
So here's Roald (beep) Dahl, tall, handsome mother (beep),
long-ass face, eloquent-ass tongue,
but every time when he was at the party,
like he'd be eavesdropping on newspaper people, politicians,
and then secretly just like scribbling, you know,
little things on like napkins and reporting it to England.
He would also get into finding information
through pillow talk.
He had a list of ladies that he would go through,
like Cissy Patterson had her claws
into the Washington Herald Times, and she's like,
"You wanna see the boudoir?"
And he's like, "Yes, please."
So he (beep) the (beep) out of her for a while
and got whatever information that he could.
Then it went to Evalyn McLean.
She knew every politician in the world
so they (beep) a lot.
So he met Clare Booth Luce.
She was a Congresswoman and they (beep). (laughs)
And he got so much information through so much of his dick,
but after a while, and this is an exact quote,
like he called Ambassador Halifax and he's like,
"Look, I am (beep) out, okay?
"This goddamn woman has (beep) me from one end of the room
"to the other.
"I'm done.
"I can't do it.
"I am squirting dust."
And Ambassador's like,
"Just close your eyes and think of England."
And Dahl's like, "Great, okay, I guess I will."
- Get your chin-
- I'm just, no it's-
- Your chin off my neck.
- No, that wasn't...
My chin wasn't on you at all.
- I feel like we're laying on two muppets.
- (laughs) Yes. (coughs)
- Oh Jesus, is this your death scene?
If you die on the show, we're (beep).
(dramatic instrumental music)
- Okay, so FDR was in his third term.
Britain was like, "Okay, he's getting old.
"We are worried that he's gonna die
"because he's our biggest supporter right now.
"You need to let us know everything that's wrong with him."
And he's like, "Yeah, I'll be right over.
"Uh, and now, I'm here right now."
And so luckily Eleanor Roosevelt was like,
"Hey, I'm a big fan of yours so meet my husband."
And he's like, "Oh yeah, nice to meet you, FDR."
"Nice to meet you too, Roald Dahl."
And they have a lovely time.
They drink a lot.
So he took note of everything,
wrote it all in a 12 page document.
And it worked out very well until FDR died.
And then the war ended,
and Dahl's life as a spy was over.
He was like, "(beep) What can I do now?"
He's like, "Well, I need to make a buck
"so let me just go for the easy money
"and just, I'll just write some (beep) children's novels.
"That'll be great."
So he wrote "James and the Giant Peach", which was amazing.
And then in the same year he wrote
"Charlie and the Chocolate Factory",
which holy (beep) was the best,
and wrote "Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator",
wrote "The Witches", wrote "The BFG",
wrote "Fantastic Mr. Fox".
He's hands down, (beep) Dr. Seuss,
the greatest children's author of all time.
And he was a (beep) spy, literally a (beep) spy.
And because of his dick, England was a better place.
I enjoy jay drinking.
I enjoy jay drinking with you.
- Jay drinking?
- I enjoy day drinking.
- And you're continuing.
(dramatic instrumental music)
- Hello, I'm Alison Rich and today we will be talking
about Agatha Christie. (laughs)
(claps) Okay.
Our story begins in England.
It's 9:45 p.m. December 3rd, 1926.
Famed mystery writer Agatha Christie,
she's kinda like the Stephen King of the 1920s,
packed a small suitcase, walks out of her house,
and she disappears.
Dun dun, dun, mystery.
Um, so the next day a gypsy boy named George Bess
is walking along and then he comes to the bottom of a hill
and he's like, "Whoa, what's this car doing here?
"Cars don't, aren't at the bottom of hills."
And the car has the hood popped and a door is open
and the lights are on.
So he calls the police.
The police come and Deputy Chief Constable William Kenward
was like, "You know what?
"I'm on the case and I'm gonna search the shit out of this."
And he looks inside and there's an expired license
and a piece of paper.
And they say, "Agatha Christie."
It's called vocal fry. (laughs)
Okay.
So he's like, "Oh my God, there's been a mystery
"with our own mystery writer."
So then William Kenward is like, "I'm gonna get scouts,
"I'm gonna get bloodhounds, I'm gonna get divers,
"I'm gonna get planes.
"We've never used plans before to search for someone,
"but you know what?
"I'm gonna (beep) do it."
They (beep) were searching like to the max, but no dice.
They don't find her.
Shit.
So Kenward's like, "Okay, what I'm gonna do is
"we're in the middle of a mystery,
"I'm gonna get two mystery writers to help find her."
So he employs the help of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle,
aka the writer of "Sherlock Holmes",
and then this lady Dorothy L. Sayers,
who we don't know. (laughs)
But then somebody comes in and they're like, "Ooh."
Record scratch.
"Oh what, don't worry about it.
"We found Agatha. (laughs)"
So 11 days after she disappeared,
people are waiting, being like,
"What happened to famed mystery writer Agatha Christie?
"Where did she go?"
And she's like, "I don't know.
"I can't, I can't help you."
The police are like, "What?
"Really disappointing.
"We were all searching for her, but she's just here."
Um, so the police were left to just like piece together
what had happened over those 11 days.
So flashback.
Okay, at the time, December 3rd, 1926,
Agatha is having a tough time, okay.
She's 36 and life is punching her in the tits, okay.
Like her marriage is on the rocks and her husband Archie
is being a dick about it.
He was like, "I want to marry my secretary,
"but I'm already married (croaks).
"This (beep) wife of mine. (laughs)"
So she starts to exhibit the signs of a nervous breakdown.
And Archie's like, "Hey, I gonna leave you.
"I'm gonna leave you for my secretary
"because I like her better than you."
And she's like, "Wow, really cool."
She's just like, "You know what?
"I'm gonna go to, I'm gonna leave.
"I'm gonna drive to London."
So she starts driving to London.
Bash, bam, car accident.
She gets into a car accident.
So 24 hours later, very mysteriously,
she arrives at this spa and hotel
called The Swan Hydropathic in Harrogate,
230 miles from where she had been.
She checks in and she's like, "Hey, look at me.
"I'm wearing glasses.
"I wasn't wearing glasses before
"and I have a different hairstyle."
What?
Did she stage her own disappearance?
Or did she have a mental break?
- Whoa. - Right.
And she's like, "My name is Teresa Neele.
"I'm from Cape Town, South Africa.
"I just lost a child.
"Please lay off my back.
"I'm trying to recuperate.
"Um, that's all there is to it. (blows)"
And the hotel people are like,
"Okay, too much information."
And then she's like, "You know what?
"I'm gonna have a great time.
"I'm gonna like live it up."
(cheerful instrumental music)
She gets some beauty treatments, she goes dancing,
Chilling out, maxing, relaxing all cool. (laughs)
And she's reading her own story like,
"Ooh, what's going on in the news.
"This is interesting.
"The weather's going to be 78
"and there's a lady who's missing
"named Agatha Christie. (laughs)"
- So-
- Just be careful with that drink.
- It's fine. (laughs)
So meanwhile, a chambermaid is like,
"Wait, aren't you her?
"Aren't you on this person?"
And she's just like, "I don't know what you're saying."
So the police-
- That's really bothering me.
- Oh, the drink. - I'm so afraid
that it's gonna fall. - No, no, no.
Okay, so, so (laughs).
I got it.
So, so the police, they didn't know what to make of it.
They were like, "This is a publicity stunt
"for her new book, 'The Murder of Roger Ackroyd'."
And some of them are like,
"This is her trying to get back at her husband."
And others are like, "She was in a car crash
"so she had amnesia."
But so Agatha's like, "I don't know.
"You know what, but what I do know is I have a new attitude.
"I'm gonna divorce my husband,
"and I'm gonna go on to write 80 novels,
"and 66 are gonna be mystery novels,
"and I'm gonna be such a bestselling author
"that the only person who beats me,
"or literature that beats me is the Bible and Shakespeare."
And that is exactly what she did.
She was a huge success.
She never speaks of the event again.
Oh P.S., I forgot to say that at one point
Agatha said to her sister,
"I could disappear at any point if I wanted too.
"I would know how to do it.
"I would know all the stuff 'cause I know mysteries.
"So if I disappear, maybe I know how to do it. (laughs)"
Okay, great.
I feel like I could say my, "I'm Alison Rich" now better.
- [Derek] Do you wanna do it?
- Do you want me to say that?
- Yeah.
- (sighs) Hello, (laughs) I'm Alison Rich.
Oh no!