The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – The Gambler’s Game: Based on the True Story of the Man Who Broke the Bank at Monte Carlo by James Charles Darnborough

Episode Date: February 20, 2024

The Gambler's Game: Based on the True Story of the Man Who Broke the Bank at Monte Carlo by James Charles Darnborough https://amzn.to/3UHQaWF Based on the True Story of the Only American to Break the Bank at Monte Carlo. ★★★★★ " . . . a riveting exploration of a remarkable life." - Readers Favorite "Darnborough brings his grandfather's extraordinary story to life." - Frances Osborne, author of The Bolter, A San Francisco Chronicle Best Book of the Year "(Darnborough) has managed to paint the grey, foggy expanses between factual, chronological events with vivid dialogue and gripping imagery." - Booknerdection In the twilight of the 19th century, as the Old West collides with the opulence of the Gilded Age, one man embarks on a journey that will redefine his life. The Gambler's Game is a captivating historical fiction saga that follows the extraordinary life of a mid-western baseball player turned high-stakes gambler. His audacious spirit leads him from the dust chocked plains to the refined ambiance of English garden parties and the allure of Belle Epoque Monte Carlo. This romantic and fast-paced tale will transport you to a time when anything was possible, where dreams were chased, and risks were taken. This is a story of self-discovery in a rapidly changing world. The Gambler's Game lures readers into a realm where the echoes of gunshots meet the clinking of champagne glasses, and the magnificent network of railways and steamships takes the reader on grand adventures. Bill ultimately finds himself torn between his love of gambling and a woman who might make him give it all up. Bill and Frances' characters are featured in the movie Downton Abbey: A New Era (Carnival Films, 2022).

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast. The hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show. The preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries, and motivators. Get ready. Get ready. Strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms, and legs inside the vehicle at all times. Because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hi, folks. This is Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com.

There you go, ladies and gentlemen. There are ladies singing to that mix to the fifth show. Welcome to the big show. We certainly appreciate you guys coming by. As always, we have ladies and gentlemen, that makes it official. Welcome to the big show, we certainly appreciate you guys coming by. As always, we have the most amazing minds that come on the show, and we recommend that you refer the show to your family, friends, and relatives. Go to goodreads.com, 4Chest, Chris Foss, linkedin.com, 4Chest, Chris Foss, Chris Foss 1 on the tickety tockety, and all those crazy places around on the internet. Today we have an amazing author on the show.

He's the author of the latest book that's come out February 12th, 2024. It's called The Gambler's Game, based on the true story of the man who broke the bank at Monte Carlo. And the stuff that goes into this is going to be very interesting, and some of the twists and turns of the tale from a family story, etc., etc. So we're going to do it here in a second as we have the author on the show. James Darnborough joins us on the show with us today. And he grew up in London, has lived in and worked in the media business in South Africa, Australia, London, and New York. He currently lives in Los Angeles, California, and his investigations for his book, The Gambler's Game, have taken him to

Colorado, Illinois, Mexico City, London, and Monaco, where he met with the Casino D Monte Carlo directors. Welcome to the show, James. How are you? Good morning, Chris. I'm very well, and it's a great pleasure to be here. A great pleasure to have you as well. Give us your dot coms. Where do you want people to see you on the interwebs? The easiest is the website, which is the gamblers game.com. Otherwise we're very active on Instagram and Facebook and everything else. Just look for the gamblers game. There you go. So give us a 30,000 over 000 overview what's inside your book this is the story of the only american to break the bank playing roulette in monte carlo at 1910 and the story follows him from small town illinois he was born on a farm in a near little town called Lebanon in southern Illinois. And he was a pitcher, baseball pitcher, incredibly talented and very, very fast.

And he played in the Midwestern League against these amazing teams with incredible names like Minneapolis Millers and the Omaha Hogs and all these things. And all the time he was learning how to play roulette. And so the story is written in the present tense, and we follow him as he becomes better and better and better. And eventually he ends up in Monte Carlo, where he lived for eight years. There you go. And evidently broke the bank as well. So there you go.

So now there's some origins to this story. It's a historical fiction book. Tell us about some of the origin of the characters in this book. It is very much like a lot of fictional tales. Like, for example, the Russian writer Dostoevsky wrote a story called The Gambler in 1860-something, I believe. And it's extraordinary because this is remarkably like that. It's about a guy who's nobody special. He's just from a small town. And he seeks fame and fortune. And then, then of course it's all about does he get the girl does does he not get the girl and there's all these twists and turns and adventures and everything else so you've got to remember that this is a time when you know the frontier in

terms of anything beyond the rockies was still pretty untamed. Gambling was everywhere. And the saloons was where it was at. But it was a pretty risky and certainly, you know, unpredictable life, full of treachery. And, you know, who do you trust and the answer is nobody except yourself and so that's yeah right so that's the story what was fun for me was finding out you know i mean in the book i've got all the all the baseball teams and i thanks to you know the internet i can i know all their names where they were from, how much they weighed,

how tall they were, how magnificent their mustaches were. And so what I wanted to do was to give them an opportunity to talk to each other so we could see what they were really like. And that's the experience. Yeah. There's some family members in this book as well. Tell us a little bit about that. Well, he is my grandfather. So I know I'm English. However, that is because he eventually emigrated from the States to Monaco and then to the United Kingdom, where he spent the remainder of his days. And in fact, he's buried in a little village in the Chilton Hills between Oxford and London, in our little village where we still live. And so it's just him. I mean, that's the thing is that he, you know,

he really escaped from the little town because, you know, the baseball players were like the movie stars of today. They were really, really famous. The newspapers, baseball was it. That was it. It was nothing else. Exactly. And there was nothing else. There was no American football. There was no radio. That was it. America's best time. Exactly. And there was nothing else.

There was no American football. There was no radio. There was no TV. There was no cinema, nothing. So the newspapers really reported every single game, ball by ball. And so the guys, especially the pitchers, they were famous. And he wanted that. He wanted to travel.

And being part of a baseball team is the best way to travel unless you're you know like a snake oil salesman in the old west so that's that's what he did and the trains were amazing you know the trains in those days the trains were like a spider's web of railroads across the whole of north america And so he took full advantage of that. And then he started playing roulette and kept on traveling. So now was this a story that had been kind of passed through your family and stuff and you became aware of it? How did you come across the story and decide this is something you wanted to tell the story

on? This is something you wanted to tell the story on. Well, you know, like any family, we have legends and myths and stories that have, I'm sure, exaggerated themselves through each generation like everybody. It's like when you search on Ancestry.com, you look for the heroes and villains, don't you? And it's a case of making sure that you can verify the facts. And thanks to the millions and millions of people around the world who scan in newspaper archives. So I've got newspaper clippings going back to the 1880s from tiny little towns in Colorado. And also the New York Times and the London Times and the San Francisco Chronicle I mean a lot of these papers that still exist but a lot don't but you can find them and incredibly easily now you remember we used to have to go to libraries and go through microfeatures oh yeah I know now you can just open up your laptop and so that's amazing now i don't trust all journalists i mean especially

in the 1890s and 1900 so it's good to get a few facts and then you know try and build on that because i wanted it to be as true to the actual real life events as possible so all the people are real i mean 90 95 percent of the characters in this story are real people and i thought that was that was very very important to make it as real as possible and there was some overlap of the um of the downtown abbey show and your family and also the characters in the book tell us about that how bit about how that played out. Yeah, I can't really explain how this happened, but Downton Abbey, A New Era is the latest film. And in it, in case you haven't seen it, there is a film crew who arrive at Downton Abbey to make a film.

And it's a silent film. I mean, this is like 1920 or something. And Downton Abbey agreed to do it because they'll get the money to pay for the roof. And it's really quite a lovely little story. Anyway, the film within the film is called The Gambler. And it's about this woman who is trying to stop the main character playing roulette because she's in love with him, but she doesn't want to marry a gambler.

Anyway, so her name is Miss Erskine, which is my grandmother's name. And his name is Bill, which is my grandmother's name and his name is bill which is my grandfather's name so wow so julian fellows who created the story he so i i checked this because um i actually hadn't seen the film when i heard about it so now i've got the script because i wanted to check everything and my editor in la is a longtime family friend of the fellows family and he, this is quite normal. Julian Fellows takes real people from real life, from, you know, history, and then changes the characters a little bit.

He wasn't in the least bit surprised. Wow. You know, because, I mean, it's funny, because in those days, I mean, this guy, Bill Darmbra, was incredibly famous. And, you know, they still write about him now in you know in dark gambling corners of the internet they're still trying to work out how he did it wow this is pretty amazing story and you've got quite the overlap there the famous films and all that good stuff so tell us a little bit about yourself is this your first book what got you

wanting to write I think you do a few other trades like acting and et cetera, et cetera. Tell us about how you grew up and what it was like and got you down the field and roads you are today. and everyone around me you know a life of a life of poverty and disappointment this is really not what this is all about and you know I I that just happened so I got into the media business and I was a magazine publisher and I published my first magazine in I left England went to South Africa I was really young 19 and I published my first magazine was a PGA golf magazine in South Africa. And because they didn't have one. So I made one for them. And that was, and it sort of went from there. And I did one for the Rugby World Cup in South Africa, which is the one where Mandela handed

the World Cup trophy to Francois Pienaar, the captain of South African rugby team. And that was extraordinary because, you know, I was right there, front row seat, because I'd done the official magazine. And this was a moment that changed the world. When Mandela was released from prison and became president, that was wonderful. But honestly, this rugby match changed not only South Africa.

And we had no idea what a big deal it was. You know, I think there were 40,000 or 50,000 of us in the stadium in Johannesburg. I didn't know that 2 billion people were watching it on TV, apparently. And I didn't even know there were 2 billion televisions in the world at then. It was in 95. Very good. And I carried on doing magazines. I moved to Australia.

I was in South Africa in my 20s, Australia in my 30s. Then I came to California because, you know, London is wonderful. It was great to grow up there. And I love visiting. I moved to South Africa in my 20s, Australia in my 30s, then I came to California because London is wonderful. It was great to grow up there and I love visiting. I go all the time. I've just come back from seven weeks in London. It's like a lot of big cities. Visiting and living and working there are two completely different things.

I'm very, very lucky to be now in Southern California. I've been here for 10 years. There you are. I love it. It's raining, really, really raining today. Yeah. One of my friends sent me a video, and this looks like a hell of a storm again. Crazy what's going on with the weather there.

It's getting a little hard if you're a climate change denier to deny it anymore. Even I was kind of skeptical, but now it's just just it's crazy what's going on but i don't know i guess i better quit burning my fossil fuels in the backyard all the time so you're an actor i know you do some artist work too on your website here yeah i did i you know we all did weird things in lockdown, and I'm no exception. You know, it was either learn Mandarin or, you know,

sit around watching box sets of whatever on Netflix. I just happened to see a guy on YouTube doing pendulum painting, and he just had this amazing contraption. He hung it from the ceiling. So I cleared out the garage, and, you know, you'd find me three days later, and there was more paint on me than on the actual canvas i did giant canvases on the on the floor of the garage and then had this you know pendulum paint flow going and doing these amazing cylindrical patterns just basically using gravity and it just got it got bigger and bigger and i kept doing it and kept doing it and now you

can get them on you know phone cases and bags and i don't know even yoga mats apparently but people buy the prints occasionally but it was it's just one of those nice creative things to do yeah there you go you feel like you've made something from scratch that's going to outlive you um yeah i like that i like the quick silver one that's really cool looking and then the the multi-people mover quadrophenia ones those are really cool to look at they're just interesting they seem simple in your the format but then you're like no that's really you get in there anyway i might be looking at it too hard here so you do all these different things.

So when did you start writing the book for this? This was a complete accident. So there was a guy in England who was writing a book about U.S. air bases in England during the Second World War. And my father had made a movie using one of these bases back in the 50s. And so this guy was researching. He got in touch with me. My father passed away a long time ago. Got in touch with me and said,

can you give me any more information? And we exchanged a few emails. And then in a very English sort of way, one email arrived and he goes, I hope you don't mind, I Googled you. And he's been in England too long. And he said, you're the grandson of Bill Darmbra, the man who broke the bank of Monte Carlo, the baseball player. And so you're in L.A.

And he said, you're in the property business, so you must know all the film guys in L.A. And I'm thinking, sure, I've got Chris Nolan on speed dial. I don't know anybody in the film business. But he said, why don't you write a screenplay it'll be a blockbuster it's got everything it's got all the ingredients HBO will snap it up yeah okay I've never written a screenplay and actually my wife said when I pronounced this is what I was going to do she said no no no you don't get away with it this easily this is kind of what you've been waiting for it's the push that you need to actually write the whole

book yeah and so I started and I started doing you know four hours a night I was working during the day and I was doing four hours a night and then suddenly it became two three in the morning and then it just took over my whole world and i spent the next three years putting it together and refining it and refining it and editing it and and here we are here we are today watching the book and i think what's really cool about this story is that you know it's based in fact it's based on something that happened knowing when you say break the bank can you tell us what the actual breaking the bank means specifically it's it's not what you'd expect it's actually a very clever marketing ploy that francois blanc came up with and he's the guy that started the casino de monte carlo in the 1860s and what happens is if you're playing roulette and you deplete all the funds of the

table you win all the funds all the chips that they've got in reserve you win all of it then the chef de party who is like a uh like a pit boss right in casinos in the states he has to signal for more money to come to be brought to the table so play can continue so in those days it was about 70 70 000 francs it's quite a lot anyway so if you then win all of that as well then it is called breaking the bank and they had this amazing ceremony where they would come out from the director's office with this black cloth. And it was sort of like some kind of a funeral or something. They would drape this black cloth over the entire grid and the wheel of the roulette table and say the table is closed and the bank has been broken.

And so people from all over would come and see what's going on because this is a big big spectacle and of course the newspapers were right about it which meant publicity for the casino and it's just you know you know a lot of lotteries use this line it could be you and that's exactly i mean francois blanc was a genius and things like this he also i don't i don't know if you have you ever been to monte carlo i haven't have you seen have you seen pictures of the cars outside the casino right okay he said he did this so in 1911 they had the very first rally in monte carlo and this was the precursor to the formula one which we all know now and he was the first person in the world to put tarmac outside on on the ground and so above the asphalt he had

tarmac and he said right all the cars at the end of the rally park out the winners at least park outside the casino steps and that's how that tradition started so again you know it's again you look at these cars you look at these ferrari's and lamborghinis and aston martin you think i might go in this room because i might be able to win that car yeah so you know marketing genius park park the nice cars up front yeah and then the allure of the story you know it's i mean james bond was always seem to be in monte carlo sometimes you know there's always that allure of that whole thing i love the boats that go into monte car. You see the boats. Oh my God. It's crazy.

Well, it seems pretty small. I know it's actually, it's a, it's a tiny place. It's the biggest, the biggest central park. Yeah.

And really, you know, yeah. And it's all because of the casino that it came to things happen. The casino was built and then a railway was built from Nice. And that's how you, there were no roads i mean they're kind of you know old rutted roads that are left over from roman chariots but

the the railway just like in the states they're all everywhere in the world really the railway changed everything so people no one in monaco is allowed to gamble in the casino oh really yeah so everyone had to come from france so they come across the across the border not far you know from east or italy from the other side of menton you know from milan and places and yeah and but otherwise if you're jp morgan you would come on your yacht so he he had a yacht a steam yacht with two funnels, and it was called the Corsair. And he used to go there a lot. But it was Russian dukes and French counts and Italian contests and British lords and ladies.

I mean, it was an incredible time. But the casino itself hasn't changed much. It's still got these amazing chandeliers. It's still very quiet. You have to dress well and all that. They won't let me in, that's for sure of course they will chris chris you've got a suit somewhere i yeah there's a suit somewhere but i'd be trying to show up in flip-flops and the shorts they throw me out of my ear i'm sure and then they'd be like hey where's the where's the 50 cent bedding table or 50 cent, uh, bedding table. Um, you know, that's funny that they do that whole drama thing with the, you know, draping

over the roulette wheel and, you know, the whole, the, the bank has been broken, you know, here in Vegas, you know, when you, when you, you know, do that well at a table, they just give you, uh, you know, two tickets to Britney Spears and, you know when you when you you know do that well at a table they just give you uh you know two tickets to britney spears and you know a cheap steakhouse and they comp you for the night right or they or they take you around the back and ask you what's going on we've all seen that scene in in casino from the thing with the hammer yeah there's a lot of that that goes on sometimes in vegas it doesn't end well. I've known people that have ended up in the black book. I'm like, really?

Seriously? You can't go into a casino? Fuck. What did you do wrong? Who hurt you? Or who'd you hurt? But yeah, it's a funny town. It's funny when you win a lot in Vegas now, they kick you out too.

They don't like people who win that are really good at winning. It's kind of weird winning it's kind of weird it's kind of weird it's i think it's the only place where they can ban you for winning too much and you're like what the hell so there you go so people will have to read the novel to find out more of the historical fiction novel and what's inside i think it's cool that has your family in it as well and that so it's a personal story this would make a great screenplay though i i i agree and i'm really hoping that you know hbo or netflix or somebody picks it up it should be eight or ten part but what what's extraordinary is the amount of things that we found so my grandfather was

very my grandmother i should say was very fastidious about keeping things very well organized and she kept everything she's got a a royal enclosure badge from ascot yeah ascot race meeting from 1909 and we've still got it and i've got letters loads and loads of letters from people i'll give you one quick example there was a the guy who invented the machine gun his name's irene maxim and he was an engineer obviously but he was fascinated with roulette because he was trying to work out statistical probability and you know how basically like everybody he wants to know how do you win and he wrote this book which i've got he wrote a book in 1904 called monte carlo facts and fallacies and it's unbelievably complicated how he's got pages and pages and pages

of mathematical calculations, just goes on forever and ever and ever. Anyway, I've got a letter that he wrote to my grandfather. And so he'd been watching him or he'd paid someone to watch him. And he knew exactly how much he'd won, how much he'd lost and what he'd been betting on. And right at the end of the letter he says but

please will you share with me some more details some further information about your system you know yours faithfully sahara maxim now i don't know if my grandfather answered that letter but if i was him i wouldn't have and this is that know, the question I get asked a lot these days is how did he do it? And, you know, and I have a fair idea. It's a lot of patients and, you know,

more patients. But if I knew for sure what his system was, then Chris, I would have invited you down to my super yacht in Monaco Harbor, where we'd be having this chat. And I would have taken that invite. You know, I I've seen, I don have invited you down to my super yacht in Monaco Harbor where we'd be having this chat. And I would have taken that invite. You know, I've seen, I don't gamble a lot. The only gambling I do is with business and being an entrepreneur.

But I've done a little bit of gambling in Vegas when I first moved down there for the first month or two. I was like, let's play. And I remember one time I was in the old desert inn before win bought it and tore it all down and put up his stupid hotels you know stupid there you know whatever but you know when he wasn't poking holes with pens and famous art i should make fun of guy with one bad eye because i have it too so maybe that's why it's funny but i was at the old desert inn and i went in there i was was, I was there with the night. I think I had a girlfriend or something.

Yeah. Yeah. We were there visiting for a weekend or something. And so I was up late and I was at the blackjack table and I, you know, I, I, I can't gamble with the shit, but you know, blackjack and I, you know, you can kind of win a little bit here and there. And I was playing and this guy comes on the table and he just starts running just i mean he just he looks like some kid who i don't know drove in on a

motorcycle and he just starts gambling in a way i'd never seen and never seen since and he's like he's going all in on a hand and you're like that doesn't look like that's that good of a hand. And then sometimes he's just a $5 bet, no fold out. And every time he goes in hard, he wins like heavy, right? And then you'll see him pull back and go light and then lose. And he just kept running this thing. It was like, you know, $500 bet this round, $5 bet, $10 bet the next round. It was insane, the system. And to this day, I have no idea what he was doing.

But it got so bad that he was winning so much just within a very short time period. They tried changing the dealers on us. And then they brought in another dealer. And he started mocking the dealer and it was like extraordinary he started mocking you know started talking shit to the dealer and i'm just like you know can we all just get along and it got to the point the pit boss came over i was trying to get him off the table and he's hey you know you're you know you're running a pretty strong game here you want to you know we can comp you and this guy was balls out something and and you know he's trying to offer

him all these comps and dinner he's like hey you know if you want to take a break you know we'll comp you a few nights so we'd love to have you stay and what are you doing and the guy's just fuck off hey he's cold as ice right and so the so the pit boss goes, what do you want so we can, you know, have you stay at the hotel and you can play for a few days? And he goes, you know, that motorcycle that's in the front lobby and you know how they, sometimes they have a car or something in the lobby. He goes, I want that. And then I'll get off the table. And the boss goes, no, we can't do that. That thing's expensive. He goes, I'm going to keep running your table.

Just an asshole to everybody, except for his players. And I'd never seen it before in my life. And last time I left, he was just running that table, man. He had a pile of chips like a mile long when he got done. So it was just extraordinary to watch the intrigue of it. Yeah. They should have given him the medivac. I think that was what they should have done.

But I mean, he was mocking the dealer. He's, you're an idiot. Oh, you're going to change the dealers on me. I see what you're doing. I'm just like, holy shit, man. I think the Desert Inn might still be run by the mob. I don't know, but it's the 90s. I think back then El Rancho, I think there was only one or two that were still be run by the mob. I don't know, but it's the 90s. I think back then El Rancho,

I think there was only one or two that were still mob run back then. But still, you don't want to go pushing your way around Vegas. There's all sorts of seedy characters, including me there. So imagine what it was like in the old saloons. So imagine if you're in a place like in Nevada, there's a silver town called Eureka. And they had, I think it was called the gem saloon at one point.

And so what, what my grandfather would do is he would turn up at these saloons with his own roulette wheel. So he had his own roulette wheel and a little fold up felt grid for the numbers. And he would sew up. And so they've already got a license because they're playing cards in there. So that doesn't have to worry.

He's not breaking any laws. And he goes straight up to the saloon owner and says, let's have a roulette game going in your saloon and you get a cut. And it'll cost you nothing because he's got his own chips. So he's his own house. And that's what he did for years and years and years. He toured around the saloons. Now, if you think Vegas is dangerous and you've got to watch your language

and what kind of respect you show to the dealers, imagine what it was like in those days when they really would take you right out the back and shoot you and there'd be zero repercussions. I mean, you know, because basically, I mean, there was a point where civility stopped at Denver. You know, anything beyond Denver, you're on your own.

You're on your own. There you go. That'll do it. That'll do it. So any final tease-outs you can tell us that's inside of the book? I think that it's really designed

for anybody that wants to go on a truly remarkable adventure. And I think that this is such an extraordinary story that if it wasn't actually true, you wouldn't believe it. Yeah. There's, you know,

you asked me about the, the family rumors and legends. There was one, which is that Bill went across the Andes with mules with bags full of gold. And I found a letter that someone had written to the New York Times about him being in Bolivia and Chile and Peru, but nothing further. And so it's not in the book. So my point is that i want you to understand that this all really happened there's 190 characters in this book and 90 of them are real people so like all the all the guys and the horses and the saloons like eugene madden ran a saloon in Denver called Madden's Irishman.

And he had a barman called Michael Flaherty. And this is in 1888. I've got Michael Flaherty's photograph. And so that's how that's the lengths that I went to, to make this as absolutely, absolutely true to the facts. And it is an extraordinary story, and I agree it'll make a great

screenplay. But you know, when you go to, I don't know about you, but when you go to see a film and the first line you see on the back screen is based on a true story, I'm hooked. Yeah, that makes it definitely more interesting. Yeah. Because you're like, this really happened. Let's find out what's up. There you go. Well, it's been definitely more interesting. Yeah. Yeah, because you're like, this really happened.

Let's find out what's up. There you go. Well, it's been fun to have you on. People will get a great romp through on the book. I think it's cool to tie in with Downtown Abbey and certainly the historical nature of the history of your family. And everyone loves the good gambling, beating the bank, know anybody who can pull that off story so thank you very much for coming on james give us your dot coms one more time as we go out right so the gamblers game dot com and the instagram is if you search for the gamblers game you'll get it but

it's actually bill underscore darnborough d-a-r-n-b-B-O-R-U-G-H. But if you look for The Gambler's Game, you'll find Dostoyevsky's book from the 1860s and one other, and then mine more recently. And, of course, you can buy the audio book on Amazon and Kindle and the paperback version. The audio guy is fantastic because it's American. It's an American narration.

It's an American character. But he also had to do Russian accents and German and French and Italian and Mexican-Spanish and Scottish and an English lady. And we found this amazing guy. His name is Kevin Clay and he recorded it in Arkansas.

Oh, wow. I couldn't know. It was amazing. We use people from all over the world from this. But Kevin in Arkansas is the only American I know that can actually talk

in different accents. So you've got two people talking to each other. One is Russian, one is German. And he can pull that off. And not many people can do that. I'm very very pleased that we managed to find him fun for audible book readers so thank you very much James for coming on the

show we really appreciate it thanks Chris it's been a real pleasure and I love your podcast there you go thank you I love it too I love it too it's a good podcast I'm going to keep it 15 years I'm going to keep it so thank you very much'm going to keep it. So thank you very much for coming on the show, James. Thanks to our audience for tuning

in. Go to goodreads.com, 4chesschrisfast, linkedin.com, 4chesschrisfast, chrisfast1 on the TikTokity, and chrisfastfacebook.com, wherever people just look for us. Thanks for tuning in. Be good to each other. Stay safe, and we'll see you guys next time.