Joy, a Podcast. Hosted by Craig Ferguson - Lawrence Block

Episode Date: August 5, 2025

Meet Lawrence Block, American crime writer best known for two long-running New York-set series about the recovering alcoholic P.I. Matthew Scudder and the gentleman burglar Bernie Rhodenbarr. Block was named a Grand Master by the Mystery Writers of America in 1994. We had a lovely conversation and I hope you enJOY!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. performance that keeps up with your business, not the other way around. Whoa, this thing moves. Stop hitting snooze on new tech. Win the tech search at Lenovo dot com. Unlock AI experiences with the ThinkPad X1 Carbon powered by Intel Core Ultra processors so you can work, create and boost productivity all on one device. The stuff you should know, guys, have made their own summer playlists of their must-listen podcasts on movies. It's me, Josh, and I'd like to welcome you to the stuff you should know summer movie playlist.

What screams summer more than a nice darkened air conditioned theater and a great movie playing right in front of you. Episodes on James Bond, special effects, stunt men and women, disaster films, even movies that change filmmaking and many more. Listen to the Stuff You Should Know Summer Movie playlist on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Hey everyone, it's Jay Shetty,

and on today's episode of On Purpose, I'm joined by four-time Grand Slam champion Naomi Osaka. What I was dealing with at the time, feeling ashamed, going against everything an athlete stood for. Cranked as number one in the world in women's singles. A four-time Grand Slam tennis champ, Naomi Osaka. Listen to On Purpose with Jay Shetty on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever

you get your podcasts. I'm Bob Crawford, host of American history hotline, a different type of podcast. You the listener, ask the questions, did George Washington really cut down a territory, JFK and Marilyn Monroe having an affair, and I find the answers. I'm so glad you asked me this question. This is such a ridiculous story. You can listen to American history hotline on the iHeartRadio app,

Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is me, Craig Ferguson. I'm inviting you to come and see my brand new comedy hour. Well, it's actually about an hour and a half, and I don't have an opener because these guys cost money. But what I'm saying is I'll be on stage for a while. Anyway, come and see me live on the Pants on Fire tour in your region. Tickets are on sale now and we'll be adding more

as the tour continues throughout 2025 and beyond. For a full list of dates, go to thecraigfergusonshow.com. See you on the road, my dears. My name is Craig Ferguson. The name of this podcast is Joy. I talk to interesting people about what brings them happiness. Welcome to the Joy podcast. Welcome to the Kids Super Studios here in Brooklyn. I am your host, podcast's Craig Ferguson. My guest today is a great American writer. If you don't know his work, you're in for a treat.

And if you do know his work, you're in for a treat. His name is Lawrence Block. He's a friend of mine, but more importantly than that, well, it depends how you look at it, but he's just a great writer. And you should read him if you like to read. And if you don't like to read, then just listen to him talking today.

And if you do like to listen to people talking and like to read, I'll let you get on with it. Here's Larry Block. Now you told me, like five minutes ago, 10 minutes ago maybe, when we were walking outside in the intense heat while we've got a lot of beverages, right? five minutes ago, 10 minutes ago, maybe, when we were walking outside in the intense heat, while we, why we've got a lot of beverages, right?

Because we had got the dates wrong for this recording. Specifically, you said it was Thursday. I said it was the 18th, but Thursday is the 17th. And so you were right about Thursday and I was right about the 18th. I think we can agree that that's fair. We're here now. That's the main thing.

All right. There you go. So you said to me outside as we were walking towards the subway to maybe go home and come back tomorrow, that you are retired. You're not going to write anymore. Is that right?

That's true. I haven't written in, gee, it's just about three years now. I feel like I've heard that from you before though. No, no, no. No? There have been times I thought I was probably done writing novels and that,

but this is categorically different. And it's curious in that in 2022, I wrote two novels in the course of the one year. I wrote a book called The Burglar, The Burglar Who Met Frederick Brown, which is a nice way, I think. I haven't read that one. Oh, well, what a treat you have in store for me.

I have a treat I have in store. Don't tell me, no spoilers, all right. No spoilers. But it's a fitting volume, I think, to conclude the series on. The Bernie series? The Bernie series, yes. Yeah, yeah.

And you've done with Scudder. Scudder, you finished a while back, right? No, I wrote a final volume of that in 2022 also. I haven't read that either. I thought the Scudder one that you finished with was a drop of the hard stuff. That had been the last one, but then... So that's why I thought you'd retired before, because you said, okay, that's Scudder done now. Well, it seemed to be, but this, the new book,

I thought I'd send it to you and I clearly did not, sorry. Maybe I go, I'll get it tomorrow. It's called The Autobiography of Matthew Scuddery. I do not have that. And what it is, is a fellow had approached me about doing a short, like a three or four thousand word biography of Scudder to write about the character. And I thought I don't want to do that.

And I thought about it a little more and I thought, if anyone's going to write Scudder's biography, it should be the man himself. Right. And I thought about it a little more and realized that what I wanted to do was a full length book and it would be Scudder telling his story. And the premise was that I've been approached to do this, that I, that Lawrence

Block for years has been writing books about Matthew Scudder, which have represented slight fictional, fictionalizations of his cases and that. fictionalizations of his cases and that. And this is Scudder giving his own memories. Do you go back over the books that you wrote for Scudder before? Not particularly. Some of them are referenced, certainly. But it's more filling in blanks than about his life

and background and everything else. It's, it may be the most enjoyment and satisfaction I've ever had sitting down and writing. And it's, you know, it's kind of meta, which is a word I generally avoid using because I don't think I or anyone else knows exactly what it means. It doesn't stop anyone else using it. No, it doesn't. And once it became the Mark Zuckerberg's new name for Facebook, it was even more reason not to use the word. But that kind of is what it is conceptually. It's a device I've seen before though a few times.

People use it from time to time in literature. I remember Kurt Vonnegut used it with Kilgore Trout, didn't he? The other way around. Kind of, yeah. There was an awareness that way, but I think this is, I had thought that this was the first time that a writer had, who after a longstanding series had turned

the, I think it probably is not quite. Oh, it turned out that Seminole did something similar with McGray. Yeah. I got a hold of a copy of that to see what it was like. And fortunately, well, fortunately for my ego, it was lousy. It was a, it wasn't really, a lot of those Maygray books, I'm like, you, that could use a rewrite.

Yeah, a lot of a mess. You're jumping out like one a week. But this wasn't, it wasn't terribly interesting. But anyway, I did have a good time with it. And when I finished, I thought, well, gee, that was nice. I wrote two books in the course of a year. I'm pleased with both of them. I had a good time doing them.

I'll probably write more. And as the weeks passed, it became clear to me that I was wrong about that, that I was done, that I felt really complete. This was a nice capstone for the Scudder series. It was a nice ending to the Bernie series. And I didn't want to write anymore. I've been doing this all the time for 65 years.

I've written more books than anybody should read, let alone have written. Have you any idea how many there are? Do you know? Yes, because a fellow has done a marvelous job compiling a bibliography for me, and his list of book titles, individual volumes of mine, which includes anthologies

that I edited and that, and there are probably about close to a dozen of those. But it came to about 210 titles, something like that. That's a lot of books. That's a lot of books. It's enough. You know? I feel, I've written four.

Yeah. I think that's enough. Yeah. I think four is enough. Well, come to think of it, if I'd made that decision early on, I'd have saved myself a lot of work. A lot of work.

But it's interesting, these two characters, Bernie Rodenbarger, who's the kind of gentleman burglar, and Matt Scudder, who's the, in many ways, an archetype for a lot of detectives who came after the you know, the hard-bitten New York reformed drunk bad-passed detective. Both of these guys have a long history with you. When did you start writing? Because like you started writing these guys in your 30s, right?

I thought you meant the 1930s. The 1930s, did you start writing them in the 1930s? Say I'm a detective, say. Right. I started writing about them in the mid 70s. It's interesting because I was a huge fan of Scudder right away and Bernie was a slower burn for me. Because Bernie felt like it was a little more kind of almost PG Woodhouse and his kind of like light on his feet type fun character. And because I'd come to you through Matt Scudder, I was like, oh, the grimey, the New York streets and the bad people and stuff. And then Bernie was, I was kind of looking for that there and it wasn't there. And it wasn't till, I had the same thing with Woodhouse though.

The first couple I read, I was was like what the hell is this? And then once you get into it you go this is actually great and actually in a weird way. Woodhouse is brilliant. Unbelievable right? And contains an odd skewering of the British upper classes that I didn't spot at first. I mean, but it's amazing. It's so wonderful. Yeah. The kind of like the way he cuts up the kind of Downton Abbey set is fantastic. Yeah. He also, he evidently had a real resentment against older female relatives. Yes, for sure.

Do you do that in books? Do you put people in books that you're angry at? Like if you run across somebody, do you ever do that with Bernie or with? No, no, I don't think I ever have. If I have, it's slipped my mind. There's so many things too. It happens.

Do you ever read a book and have no recollection of writing it? No. Um, well, that's not entirely true. Early on, I did a lot of, uh, Oh, erotic paperbacks, you know, under pen name. I did tons of those. That was a way to earn money, right? It was like your only fans page. No, it was, uh, you liked writing erotica?

It was what I did. And you know, it was, it was to make money, but they're all to make money. Yeah, I guess. It's your job. That's what you do. But some of those in later years, because I'm shameless and because Ego and Avarice are my two motivators. They're stoking horses for sure. Yeah, absolutely. I've reprinted both electronically and in printed form all my early work.

Right. And I figure why not? There are people who like them and that's fine with me. But doing that, I've had to determine what books were mine and there was a stretch there where I engaged other people to write books under my pen name. Really? Yes, yes.

This was back in the early to mid sixties. Okay. And some of those, you know, I don't remember immediately if I've written them or not. I don't remember immediately if I've written them or not. But it never takes more than reading a page for me to know whether it's my work or not. Whether you wrote it or not. Yeah, I suppose if your output is,

like it's a fairly prolific output. You can't remember all that. I look at old episodes of late night shows, if something comes up from my old late night show on the internet, I'm like, I have no recollection of that. I look at old episodes of late night shows. If something comes up from my old late night show on the internet, I'm like, I have no recollection of that. None. I remember most of them, but there were stretches late in the game in say 1964 or so when I,

it was one time when my second daughter, my daughter Jill was born and I had to pay the obstetrician. This was long enough ago so that people did not routinely have insurance and so that you could live without it. Yeah, right. So I had to come up with $1,000 to pay the obstetrician.

Now, of course, that would be the co-pay if you had really excellent coverage. If you had excellent coverage, yeah. So I called my then agent and I said, how can I earn $ thousand dollars in a hurry? Cause I want to pay this fellow's bill. And he said, well, I think Bill Hamling, who was a publisher of mine at, uh, on outfit called nightstand books. He said, I'm sure he'd take an extra book for me this month.

So, uh, I found three days and wrote it. You wrote a book in three days? I did. Was that any good? I have no idea. Were you, were you taking any stimulants? It was the sixties. Did you?

No, no, I, I did occasionally, but not, not then. It was a little later there that I started using Dexamyl occasionally when I wrote. But then this time I wasn't using any stimulants and I just went to the office and typed for about eight hours the first day and about eight hours the second day and about five or six hours the third day and then the book was done. That's amazing.

By 20 minutes after the book was done, I'd forgotten the names of all the characters. I mean, they didn't occupy space in my head for very much time. There was no way to remember them. Do you remember the name of the book? Cause I'd like to read it. I don't know which one that was. Oh, cause I feel like that would be a fascinating kind of almost like automatic writing.

You know, the old spiritualist automatic writing thing. That may be kind of a real, be an interesting exercise. Well, a lot of them were written at, not at that speed, but frequently in a week. I find that fascinating cause they're complex, but, but frequently in a week. I find that fascinating. Cause they're complex, especially the detective books in particular, very complicated. The plots are complicated.

Oh, well these were not detective books by any means. Hello, this is Craig Ferguson. And I want to let you know, I have a brand new standup comedy special out now on YouTube. It's called I'm So Happy. And I would be so happy if you checked it out. To watch the special just go to my YouTube channel at The Craig Ferguson Show. And it's right there. Just click it and play it and it's free.

I can't, look, I'm not going to come around your house and show you how to do it. If you can't do it, then you can't have it. But if you can figure it out, it's yours. The Stuff You Should Know guys have made their own summer playlist of their must listen podcasts on movies. It's me, Josh. And I'd like to welcome you to the Stuff You Should Know summer movie playlist.

What screams summer more than a nice darkened air conditioned theater in a great movie playing right in front of you. Episodes on James Bond, special effects, stunt men and women, disaster films, even movies that change filmmaking, and many more. Listen to the Stuff You Should Know Summer Movie playlist on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,

or wherever you listen to podcasts. Hey everyone, it's Jay Shetty, and on today's episode of On Purpose, I'm joined by four-time Grand Slam champion, Naomi Osaka. What I was dealing with at the time, feeling ashamed, going against everything an athlete stood for. After I pulled out of the French Open, I flew. Pranked as number one in the world in women's singles. A four-time Grand Slam tennis champion, Naomi Osaka.

We would be constantly on the tennis court and I would watch other kids go to summer vacation and I would always think, dang, like, I kind of want to be someone else. What was the feeling like when you won your first Grand Slam at the US Open? When I was growing up, I had dreams of playing Serena in my first Grand Slam final. It felt like a dream came true.

I was just reading comments of people saying that I didn't deserve to win. Listen to On Purpose with Jay Shetty on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. American history is full of wise people. Well, women said something like, you know, 99.99% of war is diarrhea and 1% is glory. Those founding fathers were gossipy AF and they loved to cut each other down. I'm Bob Crawford, host of American History Hotline, the show where you send us your questions about American history and I find the answers, including the nuggets of wisdom our history has to offer.

Hamilton pauses and then he says, the greatest man that ever lived was Julius Caesar. And Jefferson writes in his diary, this proves that Hamilton is for a dictator based on corruption. My favorite line was what Neil Armstrong said, it would have been harder to fake it than to do it. Listen to American History Hotline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. What's up guys? Welcome to Agusto Papa, the go-to spot for everything música mexicana. We're proud Mexican Americans who live and breathe this music. We started this podcast to share and discuss our views on musica mexicana. Whether you like peso pluma, los alegres del barranco, Ariel Camacho or

Ivan Cornejo when you get in your feels then this podcast is for you. We deep dive into music reviews. Peso Pluma show last year everything was a 10 out of 10. Fashion and lifestyle inspired by the roots of musica mexicana, the craziest controversies and cheesemists. I don't have nothing against fuerza, you know, and I don't think JOP should be mad at me. Song and artist comparisons, competition in the scene.

There is competition, there is sides to this. There's Peso Pluma, Double P, and there's JOP. Dream Mob. I think at the end of the day, it's business, it's all competition. And of course, our personal stories and opinions along the way. This isn't it's business, it's all competition. And of course, our personal stories and opinions along the way. This isn't just a podcast.

It's a movement for fans who live musica mexicana every single day. Listen to Augusto Papa as part of the MyCultura podcast network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. You have a very emotive style though, even Bernie. First, it was a mistaken identity for me with Bernie, Roden Barr at first, because I thought there was no depth to that. And there's an extreme amount of depth in Bernie.

And I feel like that you are very emotive as a writer. There's big sweeps, big human emotions in there. I remember in particular actually, what was the small town, the one you wrote after 9-11, is an extremely, almost like you were heartbroken when you wrote that book or something, or you were terrified.

I kind of was. Yeah. That was a time that imprinted itself rather deeply on one's consciousness. Were you in New York during 9-11? Did you see it all happen? Yes, actually, we were in line of sight. Yeah, because you're downtown.

Yeah, on a high floor, we saw it. And that book, did that book happen in the aftermath of 9-11? Was it like in the space of weeks, months, days? It was a curious thing because it was a book that I had started before that. Right. And I'd written a chunk of it, introducing several of the, a couple of the characters.

I probably wrote about 120 pages of it before. And then after 9-11, I thought, well, I can throw this away because the world had changed in some fundamental ways. And certainly the city had changed. Yeah. And a little time passed. And sometime, I think it was in the spring of 2002.

So maybe six months after, I thought about it and I thought, because what my object there was was to write for the first time for me, a big multiple viewpoint novel set in New York with as much of New York as I could fit in it. And I thought, gee, I could still do this. I would probably want to rewrite almost everything in the beginning portion,

but there are scenes there that work, and there are characters who I find interesting. And I thought, I don't want to write a book in which 9-11 happens. I want to write an aftermath book. And did, and, uh, and did. And it, it was, uh, no, I, to what extent the book succeeds or fails. I don't know. I'm, I rarely know with my own stuff, but, uh,

what would that, what's the metric you use for that? How do you know if a book succeeds or fail? I don't. So once you write it, it's done, it's out, it is what it is. And there's no kind of judgment on it. Not there isn't really. No, I, you know, I want them to do well. Sure.

You know, you want people to read them. Sure. You want people to read them. I would just as soon they'd be well received. That's incidentally brings to mind a very interesting effect of the retirement of not doing this anymore. Okay. And it's not just that I'm not writing anymore, but that I'm detached from the whole career in a way I wouldn't have anticipated.

Is that a product of aging, do you think? Everything in my existence is to one way or another a product of aging. But also it's, part of it is that my life as a writer feels like a closed chapter. Right. And I'm very grateful that I got to spend those years doing that.

It's like 65 years, right? Yeah. And I'm very grateful that I got to write all those books, The Good, The Bad, and The Indifferent. But I'm detached from them in an odd way. I don't too much care now what anybody thinks of them. I know they won't outlast my lifetime by any substantial margin. Nobody's do really. And, and, and that's fine.

The thing, the thing is that's, that's fine. It kind of, I kind of feel with, with a book. I remember the first time I, when I, the first book I wrote, I remember you were very, very kindly read an early draft of it and, and you let, it was interesting because it's a, it's the only novel I've written so far and it's an unusual book. And you said it's an unusual book. And you sent me a copy of a book that you had written years and years ago, which is also a very unusual book called The Long Walk. Do you remember? Oh, Randall Moore.

Yeah, Randall Moore. Yes, yes, yes. That's right. And the Randall Moore is such a weird, out of time, out of style book for you. Everything, I know. What was going on with that? I mean, it's a very,

it's almost like magical realism or something going on in there. It was something, it was, it was a very strange experience. Yeah. Lynn and I had gone on our first really adventurous trip. We went on a trip that was under the auspices of the Institute for the Advancement

or something of Noetic Sciences, whatever the hell it was. It was an outfit founded by Edgar Mitchell when he came back from the moon. What is noetic science? I don't know. Okay, fine. I forget. I, I... It's fine. Somebody on the internet will know.

That's right. I at one point could have, uh, supplied a definition of the word, but it's, it's remarkable enough that I can recall the word itself. Miles, do you have any idea what neocentric science is? I just read it and I couldn't tell you. All right, okay. So multidisciplinary study that brings scientific tools and techniques together to basically solve the subjective inner knowing study of nature of reality.

There we are. Wow, there you go. There we are. Anyway, they had this trip to Africa. Right, that's where you go. With just about eight or 10 of us on the whole trip. And we started, we spent a lot of time in Togo. And one thing we did in Togo was we met with

a fellow named Akwete, who was, I think he had a German father and a Togolese mother, and he'd grown up there. He'd gone to school, some in Germany, and at the Sorbonne, he qualified as a doctor. He decided that that wasn't really where he was and he became this spiritual healer and conductor of voodoo type ceremonies in Lome in Togo.

And we met him and he was a powerful personality and he did this whole thing with afterward. One of the things I'd sort of hope for was that a new direction in my writing would come out of this. Okay. So it ended and then we went other places in Africa. We went to Cote d'Ivoire and we went to Mali and we had a good time and we came home. And I had booked a session, a space, at a writer's colony. The first time I'd ever done that, a retreat where you can go for two weeks in a month or whatever it is.

And what do you do? You hang with other writers? Yeah, hang with other writers to whatever extent you want. But what it mostly is is that they supply a room for you to work in, a room for you to work in a room for you to sleep in and three meals a day. And you go there to work. Right. So I've, I've met some people I've become very fond of at Reuters colonies, but that was never the point.

The point always is to go there to work. And I had this space booked and I thought I have to go there. It's my first time at a colony. What the hell am I gonna write? And I thought, well, there was a burglar book I sort of had in mind. Had you started the Bernie series yet?

Oh yeah, the Bernie series had gone on for a while. This would have been 77. Okay. No, pardon me. This would have been 87. Okay. Yeah. And I, so I thought it would be nice if there was something else that I could write that I had more firmly in mind. And I was sitting one day,

we were living in Florida at the time, and I suddenly had this vision of people walking through the mountains across whatever. through the mountains, across whatever. And bits and pieces started coming to me over the next several days. And I thought, well, you know, I don't have a book here

because this is a complicated book, but maybe I've got enough of a beginning so that I can spend my time at the colony, roughing it out, you know, making some sort of outline. And it was about two weeks from that time that I drove up to the colony. It was in Virginia. And, uh, I'd been thinking about the book throughout, and it wasn't so exactly that I'd been thinking about it as things were coming to me.

And I got to the colony. I was assigned my room, I was assigned my office, and I went to sleep. I got up the next day. I went to my office and I wrote 20 pages of a novel. And I did that every day for the next 23 days. That'll do it. 20 pages a day.

That's a lot. Every day I woke up knowing what would happen in the book that day. That's insane. So not necessarily the day after that. And when I was done, that was random walk. I've never had an experience at all like that before or since. It's an interesting thing and it's funny

because the way you describe it, the novel that I'm talking about that was called Between the Bridge and the River that I wrote, it's a very similar experience. I would wake up in the morning, not knowing what was gonna happen, but interested to find out. And so I would have these characters

and there was disparate plot lines. And I was like, I wonder what's gonna happen today. And I would write it down to find out. And it was an odd, excuse me, an odd sensation of not having planned out the book at the end of it. Because anything I've written since then has been autobiographical or anecdotal, with the exception of a short story I wrote for you for that Edward Hopper collection.

And the, so I know what happens because I was there when it happened, you know, and so if I elaborate the story or if I tell a little bit of this and that about it doesn't really, you know, it's me doing what I want to do as I embellish a story which I know has already happened. But I didn't have that experience with that book. It was a very odd thing. And I talked to Stephen King about that experience. And he said that he, when he was writing The Shining, he was also getting sober at the same time.

I didn't know that. Yeah. And it was very interesting because you go back and read that book with him just flippantly saying at the time, I was getting sober at that time, having gone through getting sober myself and I know you were sober too. It's like it takes on a completely different perspective. Even looking at the movie, which I don't think he likes, but it's all very different if you look at it through the lens through the monster of alcoholism. It's like, Oh my God. Yeah. It's, it's fascinating.

But he said about that, that he felt that was all this stuff outside waiting to get through and he just had to kind of get it through for that book. I thought it was a fascinating way to look at it. I wonder how often that happens to people, even like if you write 210 books or whatever it is, and it's happened to you once that way. I frequently don't know where, most of the time don't know when I start a book exactly where it's gonna go when it evolves.

But this was as close as I ever came to having or what you might call a channeled book. Right. It's not as though I felt like I was taking celestial dictation. It was very clear to me that I was making the choices and everything else. It was somehow categorically different

from other writing experiences I've had. ["The Summer Playlist"] The stuff you should know guys have made their own summer playlists experiences I've had. a great movie playing right in front of you. Episodes on James Bond, special effects, stunt men and women, disaster films, even movies that change filmmaking and many more. Listen to the Stuff You Should Know Summer Movie playlist on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Hey everyone, it's Jay Shetty, and on today's episode of On Purpose,

I'm joined by four time Grand Slam champion, Naomi Osaka. What I was dealing with at the time, feeling ashamed, going against everything an athlete stood for. After I pulled out of the French Open, I flew. Pranked as number one in the world in women's singles. A four-time Grand Slam tennis champion, Naomi Osaka. We would be constantly on the tennis court,

and I would watch other kids go to summer vacation and I would always think, dang, like, I kind of want to be someone else. What was the feeling like when you won your first Grand Slam at the US Open? When I was growing up, I had dreams of playing Serena in my first Grand Slam final. It felt like a dream came true.

I was just reading comments of people saying that I didn't deserve to win. Listen to On Purpose with Jay Shetty on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. American history is full of wise people. Well, women said something like, you know, 99.99% of war is diarrhea and 1% is glory. Those founding fathers were gossipy AF and they loved to cut each other down. I'm Bob Crawford, host of American History Hotline, the show where you send us your questions about American history and I find the answers, including the nuggets of wisdom our history has to offer.

Hamilton pauses and then he says, the greatest man that ever lived was Julius Caesar. And Jefferson writes in his diary, this proves that Hamilton is for a dictator based on corruption. My favorite line was what Neil Armstrong said, it would have been harder to fake it than to do it. Listen to American History Hotline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. What's up guys, welcome to Agushto Papa, the go-to spot for everything música mexicana. We're proud Mexican Americans who live and breathe this music. We started this podcast to share and discuss our views on música Mexicana. We're proud Mexican Americans who live and breathe this music. We started this podcast to share and discuss our views on Musica Mexicana. Whether you like Peso Pluma, Los Alegros del Barranco, Ariel Camacho, or Ivan Cornejo when you get in your feels, then this podcast is for

you. We deep dive into music reviews. Peso Pluma show last year, everything was a 10 out of 10. Fashion and lifestyle inspired by the roots of Musica Mexicana, the craziest controversies and cheesemists. I don't have nothing against fuerza, you know, and I don't think J.O.P should be mad at me. Song and artist comparisons, competition in the scene. There is competition, there is sides to this. There's Peso Pluma, Double P, and there's J.O.P, Dream Mob. I think at the end of the day, it's business, it's all competition.

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in some kind of spiritual search at that point in your life. Yeah? Is that where my prudent words in your mouth? I don't know if I was, but it worked, certainly worked out that way. I- Was the process of that trans like state, were there, were there stimulants, were there drugs, were there alcohols?

There was some sort of verbal thing to take, but it, you didn't feel that it was a drug experience. And there were lots of people around in there and dancing and things like that. It's hard for me to remember it all that clearly. But in ways it was transformational, Lynn had had not a delusion, but a sense for years that just out of the corner, in the corner of her eyes, there would be a huge snake.

Okay. And she knew that... Like in her life, she was thinking that all the time? Frequently it would happen. She knew it wasn't there. Right. You know, she, she was never delusional or anything, but she just had the sense of a presence, you know?

Right. And, uh, so she mentioned that to, uh, Akwete. So she mentioned that to Akwete. And he said, you know, he gave her something. He said, take this and participate in the ceremony and you will possess the snake, the serpent, the power, the serpent, the power, whatever. So she did and she never had the sense that there was a-

The snake again? Yeah, and she did feel a kind of empowerment after that, she realized that she hadn't before. So I'm willing to believe that he did things, you know. Yeah, keep an open mind about it. Sure. I wrote a story, the hell did I call it? I wrote a story in which there's a character like, based on a quote. I hardly ever pattern characters after specific people, but here I felt comfortable doing it.

I called them a twaile, I think, in that. And again, it's set in Loma in Togo. And it's sort of a piece of spy fiction somewhat, but it's in my big collection, Enough Rope. I'll send you an e-file of the story. Yeah, I must have read it, because the, give them Enough Rope, I've read that collection.

Yeah, but in context, it might be interesting. Yeah, no, it'd be interesting. Yeah, I'll send that to you. Do you know one that springs to mind as well? And I think this might, this might be a story that's in that collection. The Merciful Angel of Death. The,

Yeah, that was a Scudder story. Right. And it was in the, it was a Scudder short story though, right? Wasn't it? And it was the kind of fascinating look at a period in time. That's why I think your idea that the canon of your work will not outlast you by much is perhaps not as accurate as you think it is from my perspective,

because there is a huge sweep of time, you know, those 65 years that you documented some very, you know, profound moments in the history of that time, the AIDS crisis, 9-11, the changing of this city that goes through the life of Matt Scudder, the detective who's is crushed by a mistake he makes and you know, and like it's, you know, taken in the context of New York and I'm amazed I haven't read the autobiography of Scudder because I've thought I'd read everything. So that is a treat.

But I will send you, do eBooks work for you? Yeah, yeah. I actually read a Kindle now. Yeah, so do I. Yeah. I will send all of those this afternoon. Do you self-publish the stuff now? Yeah.

I think more and more I talk to authors and like, yeah, why would I bother with? Yeah, you know, the big publishing industry now I think may do a good job with commercially important books on a level that I don't play at anyway or didn't and I just found it so much simpler and more straightforward and everything to publish the books myself. And that way, you know, they don't,

you don't make much money that way but you don't make much money anyway. No, I know. It's kind of a thing though that it has rewards of a, it's kind of a thing though, that it has rewards because listen, I think I made as much on that novel as I'd make for a Wednesday night in a casino in Ohio. You know what I mean? But it's, but I don't remember the Wednesday night casino guy. I remember the journey I went on the novel. It's a different, so no, and it's hard sometimes, especially when I think when you're young

and you wanna make your bones, maybe I'm just being for myself, but it's hard to appreciate, or it was for me hard to appreciate the value of something that had no real intrinsic financial value. And I remember you say, you and I had lunch once and I was talking about money. And you said that, cause I was getting hosed down with it at the time. I remember it was during the end of late night and all that kind of stuff.

And you said the danger of having a lot of money coming at you is you start thinking that it's the only thing that matters. And it was for a little while I thought about it and it's kind of stuck with me. Do you ever think I could have, should have, would have made more money or should have been more, but the thing is. I've often had the thought, yeah, because I look at my career

and there were, there never were any big dramatic financial successes. Really? Not even when the Scudder series, like when the Matt Scudder movie, the Liam Neeson and all that. I made a decent living, but never, you know, never. There were no, I think one book. Inched its way onto the Times for a seller list, but that's, that's, that's all, you know, and lots of people whom I've known and been friendly with, you know, have. Have made big money writing. Sure.

To keep it in proportion, most have made nothing. Yeah. And I've thought about that, and one thing that struck me was that if I'd had big early success, I'm sure I wouldn't have kept writing for 65 years. Yeah. Yeah. And also, it's hard to know how much you tell yourself because you want to hear it. But, uh, I'm, I'm, I'm kind of, I'm happy with the way things turned out. I think I reached just about the level of success that was best for me.

Yeah. I understand that. I think, cause I, I, especially people like us who, you know, have taken the kind of the alcoholic Bronco for a while, that I've seen people who succeed so much after they get sober that they don't do so well with it. And there may be, I mean, there's been decisions I've made when I thought, I don't care enough about this and I feel like it might be dangerous. And there have been times when I have been achieving, it's usually some financial or some kind of kudos that makes me forget something I heard in a meeting

in Glasgow when a woman said, an old lady said to me, she's probably the same age as I am now, but like you say, but she said, I son, if you forget what you are, if you forget what you are, it'll not matter who you are because you won't be there. Like, okay. And I think that the idea of the success that's appropriate for what you

can handle is a nice one. It's a, it's a way of maintaining some kind of gratitude and equilibrium, which is a phrase that I picked up in my. Nice one. Yeah. Where did I get that? In that neat, the science thing. What do we call that science thing?

Noetic. Noetic science is my noetic science phrase. Gratitudinal equilibrium. But what about now you said to me when we were hanging around outside, you said that you feel like you're happier now than you've ever been. Is that, you think that's right?

I think I'm having a better time these days than I can recall. And I'm enjoying the life I'm leading in retirement. As I think I mentioned before, I've become an absolute gym rat. I'm at my local gym. What do you do? Do you lift weights and walk around?

I do, I do weights work and I generally put in about a half hour on the treadmill. Wow. And, uh, you know, I'm, I'm in and out in about an hour and a half. Is that something you get into after the old heart thing? No, no, I got into, I don't have many regrets, but one thing I can find myself regretting is that I didn't get into

uh, working with weights when I was a teenager. Because I was a terrible athlete. I was hopeless at sports and all of that, but lifting weights that I could have done and I think I could have enjoyed it and stayed with it and things like that. As it is, I got into it finally when I was about 40. And have, you know, there have been times when we didn't live near a gym or where I didn't go that frequently,

but I've been a member where I am now for about, oh, almost 25 years. I joined this gym shortly after 9-11, and I'd been going to another one in the neighborhood before that, but it closed. And I really enjoy it. And I really enjoy it. You know, I, I, I started lifting weights.

I hadn't done it for years. I really love the sensation of having done it. Yes. You know, the body feels good. It does. It's kind of, it, it has a kind of percocet vibe. You know what I mean? It's like you get to the other end and you go, I feel kind of everything's okay.

Yep. Yep. You don't get high so much. Just kind of like, Oh, okay. I can handle it. Absolutely. And also the feeling of, uh, of serenity that comes after physical exhaustion. It's pretty good. Very true. Yeah.

And I still, I find myself even now, I've been sober, you've been sober longer than me. I've been sober 33 years. I don't know. You've been sober like, I don't sober, you've been sober longer than me. I've been sober 33 years. I don't know, you've been sober like, I don't know, 100 or something. 47. 47 years. Right, so the- Pardon me, 48. 48 years. It's a long time.

It's a long time for anything. Yeah, it really is. But you know what the thing is about it is that even now, after all this time I don't know about you, like if I have to go and get any kind of medical procedure done, which kind of, as one gets older, you know, it kind of like clicks up. When they have that moment when they're going to put you under, but I can see the drip in my arm and the anesthetist says, okay, you're going to feel a little dizzy or woozy, or you'll feel this, I want you to count backwards. That moment, when that drop goes into the IV,

I live for that fucking moment. I live for that fucking moment. So even they say, oh, you're going to need a scope or a thing, I'm like, OK, is the propofol involved? Because I'm there. And that, when they drop that thing, because I can't have it. You know, I can't have it unless I, you know. But when they drop that, I remember,

I even said to the guy, the last time I had it done was a couple of years ago, I said to the anesthetist, he said, OK, I'm just going to drop this in. Why don't you come backwards? And as the drop went in, I said to the anesthetist, he said, okay, I'm just gonna drop the sand, why don't you come backwards? And as the drop went in, I said, can I stay here? Just before I left. It's funny. I still feel the call of it, you still feel it.

It's not the call, no booze doesn't call to me, not in that kind of a way, but the idea of some kind of relief sometimes calls to me. But, but the idea of some kind of relief sometimes calls to me. Some sort of altered state. Yeah, a little bit. Yeah. Like maybe I, maybe it's time for me to go to Togo and, and transit out. Oh, he's gone.

Jeez. So let me ask you now then, because we're about out of time, but I, but just before we go, I want to ask you, what does, given the fact you wrote books for six, or story, you wrote everything for 65 years and now you don't write at all. What do you do? Well, as I said, I go, of course, go to the gym. I read. I listen to music. I go, of course, go to the gym. You go to the gym? I read. I listen to music.

I hang out with my wife. Who's a lovely woman. So that makes sense. Yes, indeed. That's a delight. Patient, I would imagine as well. Patient woman. Oh, she would have to be. Yeah, she fucking would.

She would have to be a saint fucking would. She would have to be. A saint. She is kind of. Yeah. And we travel. We travel quite a bit. Not as adventurous as in the past. No Africa trips more or what?

Mostly cruises. Right. But we spent, I think, two weeks in Tasmania on a cruise around Tasmania earlier this year. That's a long flight. earlier this year. That's a long flight. Yes. And, uh, I decided that even though it was a perfectly comfortable flight, and we had a decent enough time, I hate flying. I hate airports.

I hate the whole experience. I mean, I love it and hate it. It's weird. And, and this one was, I don't know, 16 hours, however long it was. I thought, I don't think I have hours, however long it was, I thought, I don't think I have to do that again. Yeah. Yeah. Especially if you get to somewhere,

I've never been to Tasmania, but I can imagine you could probably get a similar effect geographically by not leaving the continental United States. Am I right? Probably, we did like Tasmania. I'm not saying it's a bad place. I must say, Hobart's a very livable city and we enjoyed the cruise and everything, but

it's too far away. Not for the Tasmanians, let's be fair. From their point of view, it's right there. It is. It's right there. They're fine. Larry, it's great to catch up with you, pal. I have more power to you. I keep going to the gym.

And I'll speak to you soon. Excellent. It's so good to see you. It's lovely to see you. in the heat of battle, your squad relies on you. Don't let them down. Unlock elite gaming tech at lenovo.com. Dominate every match with next level speed, seamless streaming, and performance that won't quit.

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summer playlists of their must listen podcasts on movies. It's me, Josh. And I'd like to welcome you to the Stuff You Should Know Summer Movie Playlist. What screams summer more than a nice, darkened, air-conditioned theater and a great movie playing right in front of you? Episodes on James Bond, special effects, stunt men and women, disaster films, even movies that change filmmaking, and many more.

Listen to the Stuff You Should Know Summer Movie Playlist on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Hey, everyone, it's Jay Shetty, and on today's episode of On Purpose, I'm joined by four-time Grand Slam champion Naomi Osaka. What I was dealing with at the time, feeling ashamed, going against everything an athlete stood for.

Pranked as number one in the world in women's singles. A four time Grand Slam tennis champ, Naomi Osaka. Listen to On Purpose with Jay Shetty on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Bob Crawford, host of American History Hotline, a different type of podcast. You, the listener, ask the questions.

Did George Washington really cut down on charity? Were JFK and Marilyn Monroe having an affair? And I find the answers. I'm so glad you asked me this question. This is such a ridiculous story. You can listen to American History Hotline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.