R.L. Stine (Goosebumps novelist)

[0] Welcome, welcome, welcome to our armchair, expert, experts on expert.

[1] Hi, Monica.

[2] Hi, Dax.

[3] Hey, you know, I did write it in the comment section, but some people are curious about it.

[4] I just want to explain to them.

[5] You may notice we have different colors happening for Mondays, Thursdays, and Fridays.

[6] The reason for this is that we have so much content flying off the shelves nowadays that we want to make it easier for you to find whatever your kink is.

[7] So if you just love Armchaired Anonymous and you want to get right to it, just look for the red.

[8] You like experts?

[9] Some people tell me, I only like experts.

[10] I don't care about celebrities.

[11] I'm all right, go crazy.

[12] Look for the blue.

[13] So that's the new scheme.

[14] Kudos to that brilliant idea because we do have a lot of stuff and it just helps keep things organized.

[15] It's good for my Virgo brain.

[16] What a brain it is.

[17] We love it.

[18] Speaking of big brains, R .L. Stein.

[19] R .L. Stein is our guest.

[20] yesterday, he created and wrote all of the goosebumps books, which up until Terrence Posner was the most successful children's book series of all time.

[21] Get his book a world record.

[22] I mean, insane amount of books.

[23] So listen, he wrote goosebumps, Fear Street, Rotten School, mostly ghostly, the nightmare room.

[24] And he's got a new book out now, Goosebump's Slappy World, Haunting with the Stars.

[25] He was so cute.

[26] He was, and I just think, like, he's still going.

[27] You know, like, he's not satiated, and I find it so admirable.

[28] He's written three books since we talked to him.

[29] Yeah.

[30] That's for real.

[31] He's a machine.

[32] It's so impressive.

[33] It really is.

[34] I was about to make a goosebumps joke, but I'm better than that.

[35] Wait, do it.

[36] This episode's going to give you all the goosebumps.

[37] Please enjoy our own.

[38] L. Stein.

[39] Wondry Plus subscribers can listen to armchair expert early and ad free right now.

[40] Join Wondry Plus in the Wondry app or on Apple Podcasts.

[41] Or you can listen for free wherever you get your podcasts.

[42] He's an armchair expert.

[43] I'm Dax.

[44] This is Monica.

[45] Hi.

[46] I beg your forgiveness for my tardiness.

[47] I'm wearing new pants.

[48] I think that's what threw me completely off.

[49] They're really nice, though.

[50] Oh, thank you.

[51] so much.

[52] They're a comfortable summer select.

[53] Does that not happen too often?

[54] It doesn't.

[55] Well, he's a creature or a habit.

[56] A new experience for you?

[57] It's a very new experience.

[58] They were advertised as a jogger pants, so they're kind of thin and airy.

[59] Cuffed at the ankle.

[60] Summary.

[61] Do I call you Bob?

[62] Yeah, Bob is fine.

[63] No one in the world ever called me R .L. Okay.

[64] Never happened.

[65] You have to live in Texas to be R .L. Right?

[66] You do.

[67] Well, Ralph Lauren, do you think anyone ever called him R .L?

[68] Maybe.

[69] It's possible.

[70] I'm going to force you to listen to one more novel thing that's happening to us today, Bob.

[71] We have very enchanting weather in Los Angeles today.

[72] That never, ever happens.

[73] No, he said it was raining.

[74] We woke up to thunder, which never, occasionally we get rain, but we don't ever get lightning and thunder.

[75] So we're all really percolating with enchantment today.

[76] I didn't know was thunder.

[77] I was like, something's going on.

[78] Yeah, it might have thought it was a bomb or something.

[79] Yes.

[80] Something bad.

[81] Yeah.

[82] Yeah.

[83] Are you upstate New York?

[84] No, I'm in Long Island.

[85] I'm in the Hamptons.

[86] Oh, wonderful.

[87] Yes, I was gathering context clues from just over your shoulder out the window.

[88] I see green.

[89] It's raining here, too.

[90] Oh, it is.

[91] How much time do you spend in Long Island?

[92] Last year, we spent five months.

[93] Normally, we're in New York City.

[94] I'll probably be out here until September.

[95] Okay.

[96] This is my great curiosity with you, knowing that you've written 300 books.

[97] I'm really interested in process with you.

[98] Do you have a set routine?

[99] Is it flexible?

[100] No, it's it's factory work.

[101] It's factory work.

[102] Yes.

[103] I sit down 10 o 'clock every morning and I try to write 2 ,000 words a day.

[104] Okay.

[105] That's about 10 pages.

[106] When I hit 2 ,000 words, I just stop no matter where I am.

[107] That's it.

[108] I've done my work for the day.

[109] What time a day is that generally and what breaks do you allow yourself while writing?

[110] I assume you put your phone and everything else out of your orbit.

[111] No, I'm too stupid to turn off the email and everything.

[112] Otherwise, I could do more pages, but I keep going back and forth.

[113] It's a ridiculous habit.

[114] Yeah, we all have it.

[115] When do you wrap up?

[116] Between one and two, tough hours, you know, four hours a day.

[117] That's tough.

[118] We have very similar hours.

[119] We can relate.

[120] Yeah, but creative output is different than regular time.

[121] I think it doubles.

[122] Doubles?

[123] Okay.

[124] Yeah.

[125] So then I'm putting in an eight -hour day?

[126] Yes.

[127] You've not ever roofed a house in Michigan for eight hours, Monica.

[128] Well, agree to disagree.

[129] I love these people who talk about how hard writing is.

[130] I'm always on an author panel, and some author will say, writing is so hard, it's so hard, I have to lock the kids in the garage.

[131] Writing isn't hard.

[132] It's nothing hard about it.

[133] This is great.

[134] We could dance, you and I. I think it's hard, so let's debate.

[135] Here's what I think is hard.

[136] A, I have to do what you're saying.

[137] I have to leave my family and go to a hotel for three days at a time, and I have to get in that hole.

[138] I know what you're going to say, you don't have to.

[139] I won't.

[140] It's lonely.

[141] For a couple hours, you can't be by yourself.

[142] That's fair.

[143] Look, you don't have to wear special shoes.

[144] You don't need a hard hat.

[145] He's saying exactly what you just said five minutes ago.

[146] I know, you're right.

[147] No heavy lifting.

[148] Well, occasionally you'll have to bring a printer into another room or the original typewriter you found at eight years old.

[149] Probably for that little eight -year -old Bob.

[150] Yeah, I haven't seen a typewriter in 20.

[151] years.

[152] Kids don't know what they are, of course.

[153] They see them in museums.

[154] Right.

[155] And I feel so guilty because I have sold more typewriters in the last four or five years than anyone in the country.

[156] Because in the Goosebump's movies, Jack Black playing me uses a typewriter.

[157] Okay.

[158] And he's banging away on a typewriter and me. And now all these parents write to me and they say, my son wants to be like you, what kind of typewriters should I buy for him?

[159] And I'm selling all these typewriters.

[160] It's ridiculous.

[161] They shouldn't be buying typewriters.

[162] I feel bad.

[163] I know, but do you know where to get a good ink well and a quill?

[164] Because I'm going to go back even further and some parchment paper.

[165] That's when I was a kid.

[166] When I started out, there were no books.

[167] It was just parchment.

[168] We just did parchment.

[169] We enrolled them.

[170] It's hard to find your place in that kind of Did you ever in your career, though, fetish -sized the machine?

[171] Did you ever have a favorite typewriter?

[172] All the authors I've glamorized romantically.

[173] A lot of them had love affairs with certain machines.

[174] Did you?

[175] I didn't.

[176] There was a time when I would have a typewriter everywhere I went.

[177] Heavy lifting.

[178] Strange to think about now.

[179] It's kind of cool.

[180] I like that.

[181] That says wherever I'm at, I need to be able to do this.

[182] Well, it's sort of like carrying your phone around.

[183] Yeah.

[184] Okay, so you've already pushed back on many of the things that I hold.

[185] I was going to ask you about this.

[186] You'll probably disagree.

[187] There's a great quote I always like from Lawrence Kasden, who wrote all the Jaws movies.

[188] And he said, writers are people who have agreed to do homework for the rest of their lives.

[189] Do you like that?

[190] No, I totally agree.

[191] Oh, okay.

[192] Okay.

[193] You have to be nuts.

[194] Every week, every month, you have to turn in another assignment.

[195] Yeah.

[196] Most people leave school.

[197] They never have to write another word.

[198] They're so happy.

[199] They You don't have to turn in anything.

[200] And if you write, there you are.

[201] Every month, another one.

[202] And it's getting graded.

[203] Well, and it's getting graded objectively.

[204] You can't even charm the teacher.

[205] People are going to buy it or they're not.

[206] We're going to know for sure.

[207] Also, I'm married to my editor.

[208] Do you know what that's like?

[209] You have any idea?

[210] I can't.

[211] It's a nightmare.

[212] You're married to the teacher.

[213] Yeah.

[214] You owe her the draft.

[215] I know.

[216] It's the only thing we ever thought about.

[217] Plots.

[218] Because I would say, Jane, the next one will make sense.

[219] And I never got away with that.

[220] Were you, are you able to go away on vacation and not write?

[221] I'm pretty good on vacation.

[222] Someone once asked me, how long can you go without writing?

[223] And I thought, well, I can go a week to 10 days without writing.

[224] And they said, obviously, it's an addiction.

[225] Instead of losing houses and family members from the addiction, you've acquired houses and family members.

[226] So it's kind of an inverted addiction.

[227] Yeah, true.

[228] But I was asking other writers how long they can go without writing.

[229] Do you know Ian Rankin, he writes the Inspector Rebus novels?

[230] I'm embarrassed to say no. No, they're wonderful, really great thrillers.

[231] They told me he was going to take a year off.

[232] I said, what are you going to do all day?

[233] He said, oh, I'll go down to the pub.

[234] Okay, yeah.

[235] You can really fill up your time at the pub.

[236] Yeah, you don't hear about too many writers taking a year off.

[237] Well, the habits of Hemingway always fascinating me, Because similarly, he would wake up quite early in the morning.

[238] He would write for five hours, and then the rest of the day was for drinking.

[239] Or fishing, I guess, but while drinking, I assume.

[240] Yeah.

[241] Every once in a while a writer will retire.

[242] Lee Child retired from Jack Reacher books, and he turned those books over to his brother.

[243] And his brother writes them now.

[244] I was talking to Lee.

[245] I said, no one told me writers could retire.

[246] And he said, I'm English.

[247] I'm lazy.

[248] And is his brother, is the work comparable?

[249] I don't want to say.

[250] Yeah, okay, great.

[251] Come on, I have to be nice.

[252] I know, I know, I know.

[253] He's a friend.

[254] Although at what stage of your life are you allowed to be dead honest?

[255] That's got to be approaching, right?

[256] No, probably never for me. Okay.

[257] I never say an honest word.

[258] Okay, great.

[259] That's probably the recipe for being married for so long.

[260] Partly.

[261] What you just told me about that writer reminds me of Gallagher.

[262] Do you remember the very popular comedian in the 80s?

[263] Yeah, of course.

[264] Do you know that at some point that was his brother?

[265] and we just didn't know that, that he sold the whole routine to his brother, and his brother just had the same hair and everything.

[266] He became Gallagher?

[267] He became Gallagher.

[268] Oh, that's wild.

[269] No, I never knew that.

[270] Yeah, it's incredible.

[271] Okay, I'm from a Detroit suburb in Michigan.

[272] Hey, I'm from Ohio.

[273] No wonder we don't agree on anything.

[274] Yeah, that's why it's a little sticky.

[275] No wonder, Michigan.

[276] Yes, Monica, if you don't know, our great rivalry, U of M plays Ohio every year.

[277] It's a big deal.

[278] Listen, the rivalry between Ohio and Michigan started before football.

[279] The militias from Michigan and Ohio almost went to war over Toledo.

[280] I know this, and do you know what the casualty was?

[281] No. A single farmer's pig.

[282] There was one casualty in that conflict, and it was a pig.

[283] Oh, that's great.

[284] Yeah.

[285] Okay, so listen, we may be acting like adversaries, but look, we grew up in a very similar situation.

[286] Ohio and Michigan, no one from either of those states would know the difference.

[287] other than us.

[288] That's true.

[289] But what we have in common is you grew up pretty poor and you were in the shadow of a pretty wealthy community.

[290] Boy, you did research.

[291] I'm so impressed.

[292] You weren't impressed that I knew you got your first typewriter at eight?

[293] That should have been the one that blew your mind.

[294] No, no. Okay.

[295] I'm not even sure that's true.

[296] A lot of these stories aren't true, you know.

[297] We had to make them up.

[298] Of course.

[299] To make things more interesting.

[300] Yeah, I never let facts get in the way of a great story.

[301] Actually, I wrote an autobiography.

[302] called it came from Ohio, and I sent a copy to my mother after it came out, and she read, she said, hey, we didn't have an attic?

[303] What are you talking about?

[304] You didn't do that in the garage?

[305] That wasn't true.

[306] She was horrified.

[307] My family was very poor.

[308] We lived literally three doors from the railroad tracks, and we lived on the edge of this very wealthy suburb of Columbus.

[309] The governor's mansion was one block from us.

[310] And I always felt like an outsider.

[311] All the kids at school were very wealthy.

[312] Maybe that's one reason I like to stay in my room and write all the time.

[313] Yeah.

[314] I have to imagine that is similar to Michigan in that you had really clearly defined strata in high school, in junior high, where there were jocks, there were burnouts, there were tough guys.

[315] And in those days, when kids turned 16, their parents all gave them Thunderbirds.

[316] Right.

[317] They're all driving around in the Corvettes and Thunderbirds.

[318] We had this beat -up old Ford.

[319] Yeah, so you felt like an outcast, I imagine.

[320] Yeah, except I was funny, and I was the class class.

[321] I was always disrupting the teacher and getting in trouble and being funny, and kids like that.

[322] I chose the same path.

[323] Okay, so I similarly, I had single mother, was a janitor on night shift, and I just coveted money so much.

[324] There were shoes I wanted, I wanted a dirt bike, I wanted this and that and this and that.

[325] And so when I've gotten money, I think from the outside, it looked kind of curious to people.

[326] And I just wonder what it was like to have had none.

[327] And then I would imagine Covenant and then all of a sudden have it.

[328] This is a bizarre experience, isn't it?

[329] No, it was very nice.

[330] I loved it.

[331] Yeah, it worked a long time.

[332] Finally, things took off and it worked out.

[333] But do you have a chip on your shoulder about rich people like I do?

[334] No, it doesn't bother me. Do you feel like money fixed your problems?

[335] We ask that to most people, and a lot of people say no, but a few people are, I think, honest and say, yeah.

[336] It makes for a happier life.

[337] I live in New York.

[338] I was able to get a really big apartment, that kind of thing.

[339] It makes your life easier.

[340] I'm out here in Sag Harbor.

[341] I have my own water park in the backyard.

[342] Whoa.

[343] That's the dream.

[344] I have this huge pool with three waterfalls and a 30 -foot water slide in the backyard.

[345] That is so fun.

[346] Everyone wondered what we do with our money, you know.

[347] Yeah.

[348] Some people thought maybe cocaine.

[349] Instead, we built this huge swimming pool in our backyard.

[350] You have a wet and wild.

[351] So that's nice.

[352] It makes me sort of uncomfortable to talk about money.

[353] Of course.

[354] Years ago, at the height of goosebumps, there was an article about me in People magazine, and I was like an idiot, and I said, well, yeah, the money's great.

[355] How many times can I put my son through college?

[356] And then I started getting calls from all his friends' parents saying, well, you could put my son through college.

[357] You've got so much with all the stupid things to say, right?

[358] Well, maybe if just one time on this interview you could say, how many Ferraris can I buy?

[359] And then I'll be someone who calls you and says, you know, just get any one.

[360] I don't ask you that to embarrass you.

[361] It's just something that I talk about a lot because I think it is interesting.

[362] If you don't grow up with any experience with it, I've done weird things like I virtually have collected all those things that I wanted when I was a kid and couldn't have.

[363] Did you go through a phase of that?

[364] No, no. Not really.

[365] The nicest thing is not having to worry about money and to be able to be generous and not have to think about it.

[366] To be able to give people money, to give money to different organizations.

[367] Yeah.

[368] I was interested to see that you always been writing.

[369] You went to college at Ohio State.

[370] I was the editor of the humor magazine for three years.

[371] That's all I did in college.

[372] I never went to class.

[373] And it paid my way to New York.

[374] And then when you got out, you pursued writing immediately, you wrote humor books under the name Jovial Bob Stein.

[375] Created magazine bananas.

[376] Everything that ever happened to me was an accident.

[377] How so?

[378] I came to New York wanting to write funny novels for adults and got nowhere with that.

[379] I love magazines.

[380] I wanted to work on a humor magazine.

[381] But I ended up writing for Junior Scholastic and my wife had this magazine called Dynamite, which was the biggest kids' magazine in the 70s and 80s.

[382] And her Her magazine was so popular, they let me do mine bananas.

[383] And that was like my life's dream.

[384] I don't know what kind of life that generates having two magazines that are popular, but were you guys fine?

[385] You were safe during that period?

[386] Yeah, a lot of work, but we loved it.

[387] Yeah.

[388] What I was shocked to find out is that your horror novel, your first one, you were 43, I think.

[389] I was already old when goosebumps came out.

[390] It was terrible.

[391] I was 49 years old when goosebumps started.

[392] So I find this to be really inspirational.

[393] By the way.

[394] So I'm 47.

[395] So in my mind, when I read that this morning, I was like, well, I got 18 months to come up with goosebumps.

[396] It should be inspirational to people.

[397] Yeah.

[398] I wrote for 20 years.

[399] Nobody noticed.

[400] Yes.

[401] I just kept going.

[402] It doesn't happen right away.

[403] I think writing in particular, a lot of people are drawn to it.

[404] Maybe they think they can't do it.

[405] Maybe getting the fundamentals of how you sit down and do it, how you create a schedule for you, all these little obstacles.

[406] And I would imagine it's really easy to throw in the towel at some point.

[407] Well, I don't really understand.

[408] why people want to be writers.

[409] And I sure don't understand why anyone would want to write for adults.

[410] The kid's audience, my audience of 7 to 12 -year -olds, it's the only great audience.

[411] I get them the last time in their lives they'll ever be enthusiastic.

[412] That is true.

[413] That's it.

[414] They turn 12.

[415] They discover sex.

[416] They have to be cool.

[417] And they're lost.

[418] Seven to 11.

[419] They're great.

[420] They want to know you.

[421] They write to you.

[422] You hear from them.

[423] They want to buy stuff.

[424] It's the best audience.

[425] It's probably why so many people are so nostalgic over goosebumps because it's the last moment of innocence.

[426] Yeah, right.

[427] But how would you like to be nostalgia?

[428] I'm nostalgia or all you people.

[429] It happens to me. I was in this movie call Without a Paddle.

[430] It was humongous for young kids.

[431] I meet full -grown adults with children now.

[432] The guy's got a beard and he says to me, oh my God, you made my childhood.

[433] And I'm like, oh.

[434] Right.

[435] When people say that to you, it's always so nice.

[436] You don't get tired of hearing it.

[437] No. But at the same time, it's a little hard to be considered nostalgia.

[438] Yeah, yeah.

[439] It's a little tough.

[440] It took me a while to get used to that.

[441] But my original readers, they're so nice to me. I hear from them on Twitter and on Facebook, and it's almost too nice.

[442] Suspicious?

[443] No, no, no. I wouldn't be a librarian today if it wasn't for your books.

[444] I wouldn't be a writer today.

[445] Thank you for getting me through a hard childhood.

[446] I hear that all the time, and it's very touching.

[447] Reading is a safe haven for the misfit, for the outcast.

[448] It's the only place they can go to find someone to connect with or to relate to.

[449] You know, you'd hope it would be a safe haven for everybody, not just outcasts and misfits.

[450] But there's something sweet about that.

[451] No, it's nice, and it's nice to be able to do something meaningful for those people.

[452] Back in the day, at the height of goosebumps, we got everybody.

[453] I don't know how.

[454] It's this amazing, lucky thing.

[455] couldn't explain it.

[456] I was going to quiz Monica.

[457] I was going to ask, guess how many books he has sold?

[458] Total?

[459] Yeah, total.

[460] I know the number.

[461] I don't want you to have to brag.

[462] 400 million books.

[463] Wow.

[464] Yeah, but who counted them?

[465] I did.

[466] This morning.

[467] It took me all morning.

[468] I don't know about that number.

[469] I'm not surprised.

[470] At the book fairs, the goosebumps was always the first to go.

[471] You read the goosebumps, right?

[472] I was of that age.

[473] My son was the right age, too.

[474] His claim to fame is that he never read one.

[475] Oh, sure.

[476] That's horrible, right?

[477] No, I like it.

[478] Just to make me nuts.

[479] Uh -huh.

[480] Just to get dad.

[481] He never read one.

[482] I respect it a lot.

[483] Once I was on the Today Show and I taped it back then for my son when he got home from school to watch it.

[484] And I said, Matt, hey, you're here.

[485] Look, I'm on the Today Show.

[486] And I started the tape and he picked up a magazine and started to read.

[487] Oh, wow.

[488] Wow.

[489] Wow.

[490] It's nice, right?

[491] But I'm sure he's really enjoying that water slide.

[492] Yeah, I bet he was interested in goosebumps when he was on the water slide.

[493] Yeah.

[494] He's a musician?

[495] No, he's a sound designer for Broadway musicals.

[496] Oh, cool.

[497] He won a Tony last year for Mullah Rouge.

[498] No way.

[499] And he was music producer of Beetlejuice on Broadway.

[500] He actually has a career.

[501] That's amazing.

[502] Yeah, we like to see him working.

[503] Did it surprise you that he was drawn to music?

[504] No, he was always into music and playing guitar and everything.

[505] And we took him to plays from when he was really little, so we weren't surprised.

[506] Okay, but it never showed any interest in writing?

[507] I didn't want him to.

[508] Why?

[509] You've just described it as easy.

[510] No, it's terrible.

[511] If you're a kid and your father is a famous author.

[512] Yeah.

[513] I always worried about David Updike and, you know, Dmitri Nabokov.

[514] He spent his whole life just translating his father.

[515] You know, that would be horrible.

[516] Well, Susan Cheever.

[517] Are these real names, are you just making them up?

[518] These are big authors.

[519] No, I know that.

[520] Are you making up the name of the children?

[521] No, I'm saying it's really tough to be the child.

[522] Right, because I could just start saying like Bill Proust and Sammy Salinger.

[523] No, I wasn't making it up.

[524] Okay.

[525] Anyway, he was a good writer, but luckily he went into something else.

[526] Yeah.

[527] Okay, so once you started writing the...

[528] Goosebump's novels.

[529] In my understanding, were you writing one a month?

[530] Is that possible?

[531] Well, actually, I had the other series for teenagers going at the same time.

[532] Fear Street.

[533] We were killing off teenagers every month.

[534] Yeah.

[535] People like to see teenagers get killed.

[536] They love that.

[537] Well, most people want to kill a teenager that they've met.

[538] Right.

[539] I don't know how I did it.

[540] But I was writing a Goosebump's book and a Fear Street book every month.

[541] What?

[542] I was doing two books a month.

[543] Don't blow by that.

[544] Hold on.

[545] You must have had a different writing schedule during that period.

[546] It couldn't have been from 10 to 2.

[547] Yeah, well, I didn't get out much during that period.

[548] In those days, I could write 20 pages a day.

[549] And Goosephum's books are short, so I could write a goosebumps book in 8 to 10 days.

[550] Oh, my God.

[551] That's what I did.

[552] But it's more than just the time.

[553] This is what I was saying.

[554] Creative energy is different.

[555] No one else can do that.

[556] No one else can just write a book in 10 days, and then the next day, start another, but I mean, maybe someone else on Earth, but it's very rare, and it's not just about the time, it's about what you're capable of.

[557] Well, I was much younger, but also, I'd never had this kind of success before.

[558] Yeah.

[559] And I think having that kind of success was so exhilarating.

[560] It kept me going.

[561] It's good fuel.

[562] Yeah, right.

[563] Sometimes I'm naming people in a screenplay, and that can be the most laborious thing, is coming up with all these different names, right?

[564] So one of my tricks was I always wrote out of town in Palm Springs generally.

[565] I'd go have breakfast somewhere, and I would get the local real estate guide, and it had the best names in it.

[566] Every page was a different real estate person.

[567] I'd just cherry pick from all those.

[568] Did you have a source for names?

[569] Yes, I did.

[570] I had my son's school directory.

[571] Oh, that's great.

[572] I used the name of every kid in a school.

[573] How fun for them!

[574] I know.

[575] That was so easy.

[576] Every Goosebum's book starts all over again with a whole new cast.

[577] I needed a lot of kids' names.

[578] There'd be like five or six kids in every book.

[579] My son, who never read them, used to sell parts to his friends.

[580] I know, I know.

[581] He would come home.

[582] He'd say, Dad, you have to put Jamie in the next one.

[583] Dad, you have to put Will.

[584] And I know they were paying him $10 to be in the book.

[585] Good for him.

[586] Yeah, I like him.

[587] Very industrious.

[588] Did it make him popular at school?

[589] Probably.

[590] Well, I saw a picture of him on your Instagram feed, or maybe it was your Twitter feed.

[591] Very handsome.

[592] Very handsome boy you got.

[593] He's all right.

[594] So that's one little bit of how the sausages made.

[595] Names become a hurdle.

[596] What other things?

[597] What becomes laborious in that output?

[598] Almost all of the goosebumps stories take place in a suburb like where I grew up in Ohio.

[599] Sort of like Spielberg.

[600] They don't take place in a medieval castle in Europe.

[601] They take place in the kitchen and in the backyard.

[602] I'm not good at description.

[603] I've been writing some comic books, which is great, because I don't have to describe it.

[604] The artist has to fill it all in.

[605] And I've stopped describing my characters pretty much.

[606] Intentionally, or you just don't enjoy it?

[607] No, I've stopped.

[608] I mean, I was always criticized for not having much characterization.

[609] But my idea is that if I'm going to scare you, you have to imagine yourself as the protagonist in the story.

[610] And if you're picturing yourself as a protagonist, it's much scarier for you.

[611] So I don't do much description at all now.

[612] Oh, so it's kind of tactical.

[613] Yeah.

[614] And then you fill in the ancillary characters with your friends or people you know, and you fill out the whole world with you and your buddies going through it.

[615] Yeah.

[616] Stay tuned for more armchair expert, if you dare.

[617] We've all been there.

[618] Turning to the internet to self -diagnose our inexplicable pains, debilitating body aches, sudden fevers, and strange rashes.

[619] Though our minds tend to start.

[620] spiral to worst -case scenarios, it's usually nothing, but for an unlucky few, these unsuspecting symptoms can start the clock ticking on a terrifying medical mystery.

[621] Like the unexplainable death of a retired firefighter, whose body was found at home by his son, except it looked like he had been cremated, or the time when an entire town started jumping from buildings and seeing tigers on their ceilings.

[622] Hey listeners, it's Mr. Ballin here, and I'm here to tell you about my podcast.

[623] It's called Mr. Ballin's Medical Mysteries.

[624] Each terrifying true story will be sure to keep you up at night.

[625] Follow Mr. Ballin's Medical Mysteries wherever you get your podcasts.

[626] Prime members can listen early and add free on Amazon Music.

[627] What's up guys?

[628] It's your girl Kiki and my podcast is back with a new season and let me tell you it's too good.

[629] And I'm diving into the brains of entertainment's best and brightest.

[630] Okay, every episode I bring on a friend and have a real conversation.

[631] And I don't mean just friends, I mean the likes of Amy Polar, Kel Mitchell, Vivica Fox, the list goes on.

[632] So follow, watch, and listen to Baby.

[633] This is Kiki Palmer on the Wondery app, or wherever you get your podcast.

[634] Knowing that you draw so much on your childhood, I find it so curious, I wonder if you do.

[635] If you look at your timeline of life, you were in this suburb feeling that way for maybe eight years, I don't know.

[636] Yet it is the endless bottomless well that you're still dipping your bucket in.

[637] Isn't that kind of fascinating?

[638] Yeah, not something I ever thought about, really.

[639] You know, I love this age group, and so I'm sort of stuck with this seven to 12 age group, and so I have to create their world over and over again.

[640] I would imagine you are much more in touch with that period of your life than your average person is.

[641] Well, maybe.

[642] A hard part of the job, I have to keep up with kids.

[643] Yes.

[644] I spent a lot of time spying on kids.

[645] When my son was the right age, I would be listening to their conversation, and figure out how they talk and so looking at what they wear now and what they listen to, that kind of thing.

[646] Now my grandson is eight, he's the right age.

[647] He's your new muse.

[648] Yeah, it's more important than remembering back to, you know, 195, more important to keep up with the kids today.

[649] Well, but what you've said is you know the feeling in 1955 of walking in a dark basement.

[650] That feeling of panic.

[651] But now I've written so many scary books.

[652] I know how to be scary now.

[653] Do you get scared when you're writing them?

[654] No, never.

[655] He doesn't get scared in movies either.

[656] Really?

[657] Yeah, I've said this before.

[658] There's something missing in my brain.

[659] Horror makes me laugh.

[660] Oh, that's kind of like Dax.

[661] Yeah.

[662] I'm very easily scared, but he doesn't find anything scary.

[663] No, I read, you know, Stephen King novel or something.

[664] It makes me laugh.

[665] I go to a horror movie.

[666] The shark comes up and he's chewing up the teenager.

[667] I'm the one in the theater who's like, laughing.

[668] I wonder what that is.

[669] I wonder if you share this with me. I also find Scorsese movies to be hysterical.

[670] Usually.

[671] Yeah.

[672] I find the violence to be so comedic.

[673] I love violence.

[674] Me too.

[675] Did you have trauma growing up?

[676] I had horrible parents.

[677] When I was in junior high, I knew I was the grown -up.

[678] So it wasn't traumatic.

[679] I was the grown -up.

[680] I knew it.

[681] Well, hold on, though.

[682] That's horseshit.

[683] Yeah, what do you mean they were terrible?

[684] Why did you have to be an adult so young?

[685] They were horrible.

[686] I don't think I ever a five -minute conversation with my father.

[687] We had nothing in common.

[688] Honestly, in his whole life, he never read a word I wrote.

[689] He had no interest.

[690] And my mother was one of these horrible, embarrassing, I guess now they call them helicopter parents.

[691] Don't climb that tree.

[692] You'll break your leg.

[693] Don't sit up there.

[694] You'll fall over.

[695] Don't go swimming.

[696] You'll drown.

[697] One of those totally inhibiting people.

[698] Yes, you had a smothering parent, and then you had an absent parent.

[699] He was there all the time, but you know, yeah.

[700] Well, emotionally enough.

[701] present, I imagine.

[702] It's sort of like horror not scaring me. It's like comedy material.

[703] I can do an hour of funny stories about my mother that other people who think are horrifying.

[704] Yeah.

[705] Give us one.

[706] Yeah, give me one.

[707] I'd give you maybe one of the worst.

[708] Yeah.

[709] My brother Bill and his wife were out visiting my parents and my mother took Bill's wife aside and she said, you know, I never could warm up to Bill.

[710] Oh.

[711] Oh, wow.

[712] her own son.

[713] That's bad, right?

[714] It's very Don Rickles of her.

[715] Yeah.

[716] My parents were married for 66 years.

[717] They hated each other.

[718] And on their 66th anniversary, I called, and I said, mom, 66 years, that's amazing.

[719] And she said, the first year was pretty good.

[720] Oh, yeah.

[721] Well, at least she's being honest.

[722] That's a great line.

[723] That's a very good line.

[724] Did you get your sense of humor from her?

[725] Do you think she was kind of sardonic?

[726] No, I don't know where.

[727] Probably came from some grandparents somewhere in Russia.

[728] Okay.

[729] So all the things you just described as, A, what it was, B, maybe character building, C, a source of humor.

[730] We would now look at as trauma.

[731] So I wonder, do you find it pathetic that my generation and myself included as interested in trauma?

[732] What, that you're such whims?

[733] Yeah.

[734] It must feel that way.

[735] I'm a totally insensitive person.

[736] I like it.

[737] So I don't understand why everyone is walking around offended today.

[738] There's so many things I can't do in goosebumps that I could do 10 years ago, that I can't do now.

[739] I can't use the word crazy in goosebumps.

[740] That's crazy.

[741] I can't say, what a crazy idea.

[742] I can't say, don't get me started on this.

[743] I can't say, what a lame joke.

[744] That's a really lame.

[745] I can't use the word lame.

[746] Oh, because it has some inference to a handicap?

[747] Yeah.

[748] I wanted to do a goosebumps book called Morons from Mars.

[749] It's a great title.

[750] It certainly is.

[751] And my editor at Scholastic said, no, you can't do that.

[752] You'll offend the morons.

[753] Well, okay.

[754] Oh, wow.

[755] Talk about a great line.

[756] I was going to bond with you over this.

[757] So I have a seven - and a nine -year -old.

[758] And I said, stupid.

[759] And one of them said, you can't say stupid.

[760] And I said, well, hold on.

[761] I understand we shouldn't call another human to their face stupid.

[762] But we must agree there's stupidity on planet Earth.

[763] Right.

[764] Some things are stupid.

[765] And some people do stupid things.

[766] We can't pretend that there's nothing stupid anymore.

[767] Or crazy.

[768] Or crazy.

[769] People go fucking crazy, Bob.

[770] They go nuts.

[771] To me, it's an amazing age that we've gone back so far.

[772] People are way over -sensitive, I think.

[773] I mean, in many ways, it's wonderful that people are sensitive to others.

[774] They never used to be.

[775] People used to be cruel to all kinds of people.

[776] And now they have to think.

[777] twice.

[778] That's wonderful.

[779] I agree.

[780] I have a joke book coming out next year, a monster joke book about two monsters, honey and funny.

[781] And the first line of the book is, honey and funny are monsters.

[782] Honey is big and funny is small.

[783] And the editor circled that and said, we're trying to get away from size comparisons.

[784] Do you believe that?

[785] I said they're monsters.

[786] There's a monster advocacy group out there?

[787] I say this all the time, like, I'm a recovering alcoholic, right?

[788] I like making fun of alcoholics.

[789] How else do we know this is not at a desirable state to be in?

[790] Like, we have to be able to make fun.

[791] Yeah, you used to be able to joke about anything.

[792] But I want to parse it out.

[793] So really quickly, so I agree with you.

[794] I think there is 2 % of the country that is going around looking to be offended.

[795] And I do think, unfortunately, they are moving editors that are driving you crazy.

[796] And I think they're being overrepresented in how we behave.

[797] So that part I agree with you on.

[798] But now back to the trauma thing.

[799] What I have to imagine is you raised your son much differently than you were raised.

[800] Well, I had the perfect bad example.

[801] We raised him just the opposite.

[802] But what we must conclude from that is you do care.

[803] It is important if you have shitty parents.

[804] It is important if you're loved and nurtured and supported and celebrated.

[805] Absolutely.

[806] Yes.

[807] And that is an aspirational agenda for us to have.

[808] And I think it's okay to recognize, oh shit, we didn't really get the thing that ideally we should have got.

[809] Yeah, right.

[810] But then what?

[811] Then move on.

[812] Well, that's fair.

[813] No, then forget about it.

[814] Well, look, I'm still doing shit.

[815] I'm also saying it wasn't ideal.

[816] Also, you probably didn't end up with as many isms, maybe, as I did out of it.

[817] Like, where I myself had a lot of behavioral patterns, I had to break and I needed some explanation and understanding, if you've been in a lot of trauma, you've had a lot of arousal.

[818] I crave arousal states.

[819] Okay, that's curious.

[820] It's nice to know.

[821] these things.

[822] It doesn't mean I have to sit on the couch in the fetal position and quit on life.

[823] Absolutely.

[824] Well, also it is interesting to hear that your mom was so fearful.

[825] That's maybe in the soup as to why you find, quote, scary things funny and not scary, because you're like, that is silly.

[826] Yeah, it's probably always looked silly.

[827] You're probably right.

[828] I never thought of that.

[829] It's very good.

[830] Thank you.

[831] All right, now back to the stuff you like to talk about.

[832] But by the way, Bob, that was fun.

[833] What a great excursion.

[834] Thanks for doing that.

[835] You wrote Comedy First, Then Horror.

[836] Now, in the movie business, we see those things as very related.

[837] And I imagine you see them as related, too.

[838] They're nearly identical, right?

[839] They both give the same visceral reaction, comedy and horror.

[840] It gives this example a lot.

[841] But when you sneak up behind somebody, a baby or anybody, and you go, boom, what happens?

[842] They scream, then laugh.

[843] It's all connected.

[844] It is.

[845] Or I think you pointed out, too, if you listen, you stand next to a roller coaster, you hear the whole thing.

[846] screaming and laughing at the same time.

[847] Yeah.

[848] Also, there's a structural component that is similar, right?

[849] Well, you know, the chapter endings in goosebumps, there's like a cliffhanger at the end of every chat.

[850] Those are punchlines.

[851] It's the same as writing a joke.

[852] You're just leading up to this big shock at the end of every chapter.

[853] I'm lucky I get to write funny stuff too, you know.

[854] I just did three books about the Garbage Pail Kids this year.

[855] Did you invent Garbage Pail Kids?

[856] No, no. Garbage Pail Kids are from 19.

[857] I collected them.

[858] So to my son.

[859] He recently found a whole box of them from when he was a kid.

[860] He was born in 1980.

[861] Oh, think about those.

[862] Those couldn't come out now, large marge.

[863] Oh, no. I had to pick 10 characters from all the Garbage Pail kids.

[864] And believe me, you couldn't do half of them now.

[865] Right.

[866] They're all offensive.

[867] Yeah.

[868] I had to find ones that I could make acceptable now.

[869] For the 2 % I'd say, how about this?

[870] Don't get playing cards called Garbage Pale Kids.

[871] Get some trading cards that are like, angelic children.

[872] You know, if you get Garbage Pale Kids, it was right in the description that it's going to treat humans like garbage.

[873] Yeah, that's fun.

[874] Okay, so they were the training cards, and then you took that IP and made books out of them.

[875] And I figured out how to use them as characters and novels, and I did three Garbage Pale Kids books.

[876] That was fun.

[877] I didn't have to be scary.

[878] I could be funny.

[879] Do you know how many books he's written?

[880] We're back into the quiz portion of this interview.

[881] Well, I don't know.

[882] I do.

[883] I do.

[884] Don't worry.

[885] Okay, but if once a month, including two books.

[886] Well, he wrote three today, so we're not counting the shit that he wrote in the last six months.

[887] I was like, wait, what?

[888] He already wrote three.

[889] Since we've been talking, he's probably written a couple.

[890] His hands are moving on the laptop.

[891] Okay.

[892] I'll tell you.

[893] 300.

[894] I was going to say 300.

[895] You were?

[896] Yeah, but I got scared.

[897] Wow.

[898] Yeah, I guess.

[899] I don't know.

[900] Isaac Asimov, the science fiction writer.

[901] He lived in my neighborhood in New York.

[902] Back in the day, you had to mail off your manuscript to the publisher, and he'd be ahead of me in line, and he had three or four under his arm every time.

[903] He wrote 550 books.

[904] Oh, my God.

[905] I'll never catch him.

[906] Was he an ophetamine user, do you think?

[907] I didn't know him.

[908] I just saw him in the post office.

[909] Yeah, it smells like doping to me. I mean, I don't know how you get to 500.

[910] And his books were, you know, big.

[911] My are a little tiny books.

[912] How do you feel about the parallel between you and Stephen King, in that he too, crazy prolific, same genre, different age group.

[913] Also, everything's about Maine.

[914] You're everything's about this suburb of Columbus.

[915] Yeah.

[916] He retired a few years ago, Stephen King, after his accident.

[917] And since he retired, he's written 12 novels.

[918] For real?

[919] Yeah.

[920] And they're huge, 12 novels since he retired.

[921] You know, I've always been called Stephen King for kids.

[922] And I have only met him once because he never leaves Maine.

[923] And I met him at the Edgar Awards, the Mystery Writers' Awards banquet, and went over, and we had a nice talk.

[924] And I said, you know, Steve, a magazine once called me a literary training bra for you.

[925] And he said, yes, I know.

[926] Do you have literary heroes?

[927] Oh, a million.

[928] I read all the time.

[929] I have authors I love.

[930] Some of them are bad for my horror image.

[931] You know the science fiction writer, Ray Brown.

[932] Of course.

[933] He changed my life.

[934] When I was a kid, I read only comic books.

[935] I didn't read books at all.

[936] I was nine years old.

[937] My friends and I carried around these huge stacks of comic books.

[938] And we read comics, that's all.

[939] And one day, my mom dropped me off at the little library on Main Street.

[940] And the librarian was waiting for me. And she said, Bobby, I know you like comic books.

[941] I have something else I think you will like.

[942] And she took me to a shelf of Ray Bradbury's stories.

[943] And those stories, I couldn't believe them.

[944] They were so imaginative and so surprising and so beautifully written and all had great twist endings.

[945] And Ray Bradbury really turned me into a reader.

[946] Then I started reading him and all kinds of science fiction and fantasy.

[947] Thanks to that librarian and to Ray Bradbury.

[948] So he was a real hero of mine.

[949] Now, I'll tell you this story.

[950] It's a little self -aggrandized.

[951] Good.

[952] You deserve it.

[953] Well, come on.

[954] Many years later, I had a chance to meet Ray Bradbury.

[955] It was at the LA Times Book Festival.

[956] In those days, it was on the UCLA campus.

[957] My wife and I were walking at the book festival, and there was Ray Bradbury in a publisher's booth eating a hot dog.

[958] My wife said, go up and introduce yourself.

[959] I said, no, I couldn't.

[960] I couldn't do it.

[961] I just can't.

[962] She said, go over.

[963] He was so important to you.

[964] Go over and say hi to him.

[965] So I went over.

[966] I was so nervous.

[967] I was shaking.

[968] I was like a kid.

[969] And I walked up to him and I stuck out my hand.

[970] I said, Mr. Bradbury, you're my hero.

[971] And he turned around and he shook hands and he said, well, you're a hero to a lot of other people.

[972] Oh, come on.

[973] This amazing moment.

[974] Talk about Too Nice.

[975] Oh, man. I'm so happy you had that moment.

[976] Oh, my God.

[977] You'd hope every brighter would have that moment.

[978] Whatever authored is that turns you, on to reading.

[979] It's almost like who you lose your virginity to.

[980] They're just going to be in a special pocket in your heart.

[981] For me, it was Bukowski.

[982] I recognize how he hasn't really aged well.

[983] But that made me on fire to read, and I didn't think that was ever going to happen.

[984] It was my first experience of being lost in something and craving to get back to read and wishing I could be by myself.

[985] Yeah, it's a special feeling.

[986] For someone to give that to you, it's a life -changing experience.

[987] Yeah, so nice.

[988] You've done that for like a cabillion people.

[989] Well, if we believe these That's 400 million people.

[990] But most people don't have to write 400 million books in order to sell that minute.

[991] You are a Guinness Book of World Record Holder, as you know.

[992] Well, I was until J .K. Rowling came around.

[993] That's what I was going to ask you about.

[994] So, yeah, when I read that, I was like, more than, okay, so tell me that.

[995] No, I was number one.

[996] I was the best -selling children's author in history.

[997] And then Harry Potter, she just wiped me out.

[998] Listen, Bob, that's who you lost Monica to.

[999] I do think it's wonderful that, honestly, the richest woman in the world is a children's author.

[1000] Yeah.

[1001] It's so cool.

[1002] I love it.

[1003] She's richer than the queen.

[1004] She should be.

[1005] She did some.

[1006] Have you met her?

[1007] No. She hasn't been over here in years.

[1008] She was in the city, and I invited her to bring the kids out for a swim.

[1009] To your water park?

[1010] To your wet and wild?

[1011] Yeah.

[1012] She didn't answer me. Well, no, really quick, because this is just a stupid, trivial thought I had.

[1013] J .K. Rowling, R. L. Stein.

[1014] What's our thing?

[1015] T .S. Eliot.

[1016] Why do we like this structure?

[1017] The only reason, you know, I was jovial Bob Stein, and that's not good for horror.

[1018] I had to change my name.

[1019] That would look terrible, right?

[1020] And at that time, S .E. Hinton was really popular.

[1021] Yes, I read them all.

[1022] Yeah, the outsider.

[1023] When you were talking about Thunderbirds, I was picturing the Soci's.

[1024] Yes, right.

[1025] I thought it would really be helpful to me if readers didn't know if I was a man or a woman.

[1026] Oh, that's smart.

[1027] And so because of S .E. Hinton, I used my initials.

[1028] And it really worked.

[1029] Yeah, so it wasn't an accident.

[1030] And then I wonder why J .K. Rowling went, same thing.

[1031] Maybe she did it after.

[1032] Well, isn't it that she didn't want people to know she was a woman?

[1033] I honestly don't know.

[1034] Oh.

[1035] Okay.

[1036] But that's a good hack.

[1037] Yeah.

[1038] And what about Tolkien?

[1039] What's his first initials?

[1040] J .R .R. How about George R .R. Martin?

[1041] Yeah, that's confusing.

[1042] Yeah, it's very confusing.

[1043] All right, so now we're going to talk about Goosebump's Slappy World Number 17, Haunting with the Stars.

[1044] This comes out June 28th.

[1045] Has the Goosebump's franchise Ever Gone Dark?

[1046] We did take a break.

[1047] I did some other series.

[1048] I did a book series for Harper called The Nightmare Room, which was a short -lived TV show.

[1049] And I did a funny series for kids in that time called Rotten School, about a really rotten boarding school.

[1050] And then we came back.

[1051] We had to start Goosebumps Up again.

[1052] Yeah.

[1053] In that interim, of course, Jack Black plays you in goosebumps the movie.

[1054] Hey, Jack and I are like twins, right?

[1055] Yeah, the physical, the bounding all about, the frenetic energy.

[1056] Yes, right.

[1057] He was great.

[1058] What an amazing thing to be a character in a movie.

[1059] Really?

[1060] That's not anything I ever expected.

[1061] Okay, back to the trauma piece you don't want to talk about.

[1062] When that movie came out, Jack Black, one of the biggest stars in the world, is playing you.

[1063] Who did you want to go back in time to Columbus and go, look at this, motherfucker.

[1064] Take a look at this right now.

[1065] No, I'm not like that.

[1066] No, I wouldn't do that.

[1067] We actually showed the movie in the little tiny movie theater that my brother and I used to go to every Saturday afternoon to watch Tom and Jerry cartoon.

[1068] Oh, man. I talked at that theater and showed the movie.

[1069] It was a thrill to be back there.

[1070] Yeah, were you also just like, dad?

[1071] Dad.

[1072] Dad, hello.

[1073] Yeah, maybe Dad.

[1074] Could we include Dad?

[1075] You'd want him to at least walk by and see?

[1076] Yeah, come on.

[1077] Dad was dead.

[1078] Yeah, we lost Dad at that point.

[1079] He's still dead.

[1080] He's still dead.

[1081] Okay.

[1082] Jack was fabulous.

[1083] What an amazing thing.

[1084] He's just a great guy.

[1085] There's a handful of comedians where the humor is coming from a beautiful place, and it's really just he and Will Farrell.

[1086] I don't know how they got there.

[1087] That's really true.

[1088] We had a great time together.

[1089] I bet.

[1090] Okay.

[1091] This is a sincere one, so don't brush this off.

[1092] Okay.

[1093] How do you sustain the hunger?

[1094] With so much success, I still love doing it.

[1095] And it's more of a challenge for me now, since I've done every story a human can do, it's more of a challenge to say, oh, I can do new chapter ending I haven't done before.

[1096] I can come up with titles I haven't done.

[1097] Every morning, I'm here at 10 o 'clock on the computer.

[1098] I still enjoy it.

[1099] Do you have a list of ground rules with your wife?

[1100] So I tell my kids, like, unless one of you literally has a broken arm, Let's go over what you're allowed to enter this bedroom over.

[1101] And so I have some ground rules.

[1102] Is there any standing rules in your home?

[1103] No, they know I'm going to be gone for three or four hours a day.

[1104] And what time do you wake up in the morning?

[1105] Well, the dog's been getting me up at 7 .30.

[1106] I thought maybe when the time changed, then the dog wouldn't realize it was daylight time and the dog would sleep an hour later, but it didn't work.

[1107] Okay.

[1108] He still gets me up.

[1109] Do you meditate or anything?

[1110] No. Okay.

[1111] That was a hard now.

[1112] I don't do anything.

[1113] Okay.

[1114] Listen, I'm not encouraging you to tinker with anything.

[1115] It's wildly successful.

[1116] Whatever you're doing that you don't know you're doing.

[1117] Yeah.

[1118] Keep the recipe.

[1119] Yeah.

[1120] Okay, so Goosebump, Slappy World, Number 17, Haunting with the Stars, comes out.

[1121] June 28th.

[1122] Is there anything about this installment that you want to tell us about?

[1123] No, it's a great title.

[1124] It sure is.

[1125] Slappy World?

[1126] Haunting the Stars.

[1127] It's not one of the great books, but it's a great title.

[1128] Come on, they can't all be fabulous.

[1129] But later, To celebrate the 30th anniversary, we have the first hardcover goosebumps book coming out in August, I think, called Slapy Beware.

[1130] It's a special origin story of Slapy, and it's illustrated, which we've never done before.

[1131] Oh, how cool.

[1132] That's coming out later in the summer.

[1133] This is how crazy I am.

[1134] I'm starting a new book series of short stories called Steintinglers.

[1135] So these will be amusing short stories?

[1136] They're like 10 scary short stories That's coming out this summer Oh, you know what?

[1137] That might be a good starter book to get my girls They're just getting open to the notion of being scared intentionally Yeah, it might be They're nice and short the stories And of course they're not that scary, you know Yeah, you told me in your world In the Fear Street series about teens, you're allowed to kill them But in goosebumps, no one ever dies Yeah, but did you see the Fear Street movies?

[1138] I did not We slaughtered teenagers They sliced them.

[1139] They were R -rated.

[1140] This is on Netflix?

[1141] Yeah, the three movies.

[1142] I've never had an R -R.

[1143] Even my life isn't R -rated.

[1144] Right.

[1145] Here were these three movies where we're just slicing up teenagers.

[1146] Someone wrote to me and said they weren't gory enough.

[1147] Oh, my.

[1148] Okay.

[1149] Oh, there are a lot of sick people out there.

[1150] My God.

[1151] More slicing and dicing, please.

[1152] Yeah.

[1153] Have you enjoyed when you come out to Hollywood to have that facet of the business?

[1154] Yeah, I love it out there.

[1155] Most people don't talk about how beautiful it is, for one thing.

[1156] Well, especially New Yorkers.

[1157] New Yorkers think that we're in a war.

[1158] Yeah, no, it's not a war.

[1159] Oh, what kind of pizza you got?

[1160] You call it pizza out there?

[1161] It's like, hold on, buddy.

[1162] Hold on.

[1163] We know you have good pizza.

[1164] We know pizza's a religion.

[1165] We get it.

[1166] Wait, so I didn't realize there were no hardbacks of any of the goosebumps.

[1167] No, there are some collections where they put like three books together, that kind of thing.

[1168] No, it's all paper.

[1169] I'm a paperback guy.

[1170] This will be your second, right, of all time?

[1171] Yeah, that's right.

[1172] But, see, I like to do paperbacks because then kids can afford them.

[1173] Yeah, that's great.

[1174] And they're less cumbersome in your backpack.

[1175] And hardcover children's books cost too much.

[1176] I don't like kids to be able to go in a bookstore or go somewhere and buy three or four of them.

[1177] Yeah, I like that.

[1178] Well, Bob, this has been great.

[1179] I hope you've enjoyed getting to know us as much as we've been enjoying getting to know you.

[1180] This is really fun.

[1181] Feel free to use Dax as a character name in a book.

[1182] Well, I never have.

[1183] Do you want to be good or bad?

[1184] Oh, bad, of course, bad.

[1185] Bad?

[1186] Yeah.

[1187] Well, this has been so much fun.

[1188] I hope everyone gets for their little ones.

[1189] Goose bumps, Slappy World Number 17, haunting with the stars June 28th.

[1190] It's been a pleasure.

[1191] I hope you have a wonderful rest of your summer and it warms up out there.

[1192] My pleasure.

[1193] I enjoy talking with you both.

[1194] Thanks so much.

[1195] Bye.

[1196] Take care about it.

[1197] Stay scary.

[1198] Stay tuned for more armchair expert if you dare.

[1199] And now my favorite part of the show, the fact check with my soulmate Monica Padman.

[1200] Oh, wow.

[1201] Back in person.

[1202] It's so nice.

[1203] I was really looking forward to this.

[1204] Me too.

[1205] And this one is unedited.

[1206] Oh, my gosh.

[1207] Oh, that's really scary.

[1208] We were just chatting about the fact that I've returned.

[1209] Do I look more European?

[1210] I guess that's the first question.

[1211] Yeah, you have cuffed pants, which is new.

[1212] Which is funny, because those are.

[1213] arrived while I was gone.

[1214] And so now I just put them on this morning.

[1215] But yeah, they're pretty Euro -looking.

[1216] They're nice.

[1217] They're thin and wide.

[1218] I forgot your shorts.

[1219] Oh, that's okay.

[1220] I'm going to drop them off later today because you'll probably want to wear them tomorrow.

[1221] Mm -hmm.

[1222] I'm going to wear them tomorrow.

[1223] But I have 10 pounds lighter than I, when you last saw me. I'm under 200.

[1224] Wow.

[1225] I know.

[1226] I don't know.

[1227] I don't like.

[1228] It makes me nervous.

[1229] This is fascinating, though, because you don't look smaller and muscle.

[1230] You look a little skinny or in your face.

[1231] Yeah, yes.

[1232] Because I haven't had testosterone in like a month.

[1233] But you also have been eating your way through Europe, and it's such a mixed message.

[1234] It's mixed.

[1235] Because, okay, so, you know, to remind everyone, before I left, I was really militant on, I was down to a cup of coffee a day and one diacoke a day.

[1236] And that had been for, I don't know, five, six weeks.

[1237] Yeah.

[1238] Also, I hadn't had gluten since January.

[1239] Yeah.

[1240] What else?

[1241] Some others, it doesn't matter.

[1242] The point is I guess.

[1243] get to Europe and it's on.

[1244] Right on the airplane, right, I start smashing Diet Coke and then your jet legs.

[1245] So I'm pounding espresso and double shots of this and that.

[1246] Yeah.

[1247] So the whole trip, I was like heavily caffeinated eating right on the airplane on the way there.

[1248] I'm like, I'm fucking, you know what?

[1249] Vacation.

[1250] Well, and I'm going to eat pasta in Italy.

[1251] So I just work backwards from that.

[1252] Like, what are we waiting for?

[1253] Yeah.

[1254] Well, an airplane bread's the best bread.

[1255] It isn't, it isn't.

[1256] If they get it hot enough and they trick you before it gets cold and it hard.

[1257] Yeah, it was a little underwhelming.

[1258] Point is, it was just carbs all day every day and shots of this and that.

[1259] And then, funny enough, of course, I felt fine.

[1260] Your arthritis was fine.

[1261] Until...

[1262] Uh -oh.

[1263] Like, the last couple days, I started feeling my wrist started hurting, my hand.

[1264] So anyways, by the time I was on the airplane yesterday, terrible food options, too.

[1265] I ate exclusively bread.

[1266] I must have had 12 rolls on the world because it was like, Do you want salmon with this, cod with that?

[1267] I don't know.

[1268] It was like a pirates flight home.

[1269] It was all seafood.

[1270] Uh -huh.

[1271] Not your favorite.

[1272] No, no, no. And I like shrimp, but not on an airplane.

[1273] Sure, I get that.

[1274] I would steer clear of that as well.

[1275] Yeah, and then I ate some weird faucacia sandwich at the Italian airport, and I think it had a ton of garlic in it.

[1276] So about mid -flight, all my skin started peeling off my face.

[1277] Yeah.

[1278] And I had pet dander in my eyebrows.

[1279] It was a mess.

[1280] So now I'm back.

[1281] And I'm back to square one.

[1282] So today was one cup of coffee in the morning.

[1283] And no more bread for daddy.

[1284] Oh, okay.

[1285] I'm not here to tell you what to do.

[1286] No, tell me what to do.

[1287] No, I just, I want you to be able to enjoy some things not on vacation.

[1288] Yeah, that's true.

[1289] So like take a break.

[1290] Well, what we did discover.

[1291] Well, what we did discover.

[1292] Yes, with the bun.

[1293] With the bun.

[1294] With the bun.

[1295] Well, what we did discover on this trip is that Lincoln loves bowl and ice.

[1296] Oh, just like me. Yes, my favorite.

[1297] It's such a staple.

[1298] It's so good.

[1299] But she's not big meat eater and we can never get protein in her.

[1300] Anyways, so I decided, you know what?

[1301] My commit one I got back was like, I got to pick up my bologna's game.

[1302] I got to start making spaghetti more often.

[1303] That includes you.

[1304] Please.

[1305] Yes.

[1306] And so, yes, I think however many times a month I'm going to make spaghetti, maybe two or three times a month.

[1307] Oh, my God.

[1308] I'll eat some noodles on those days, I guess.

[1309] Okay, I like that.

[1310] You know, me, I have a hard time moderating.

[1311] So if I did it once, it's just off to the races.

[1312] It's much easier.

[1313] for me to just do nothing than to do something once a week.

[1314] Yes, and I think I've learned that I shouldn't try to tell people to try moderation.

[1315] Because like some people just can't.

[1316] And that's okay.

[1317] I don't think it's in me. Yeah.

[1318] Yeah.

[1319] Although I was moderating my coffee right before I left.

[1320] So, yes.

[1321] That's true.

[1322] That's about me. What about you?

[1323] You look great.

[1324] You look very tan as I commented on the walk up.

[1325] The staircase.

[1326] You look like you've been in the sun quite a bit.

[1327] Very nice, rich Carmel.

[1328] Thank you.

[1329] It's been hot, so I've been, I guess, tanning inadvertently.

[1330] Because you're scantily clad to beat the heat.

[1331] Exactly.

[1332] Yeah.

[1333] And I guess I saw you, the last time I saw you saw you, was right before we went to Temecula, and I did get a lot of sun there.

[1334] Of course.

[1335] Because I was in my suits.

[1336] Outdoor living at its best.

[1337] Yeah, and then my facialist commented when, as soon as I walked in.

[1338] Oh, you got some sun.

[1339] Oh, like, is a terrible thing.

[1340] Well, I know.

[1341] And then I was like, oh, yeah.

[1342] I felt immediately guilty.

[1343] Shame rid?

[1344] Yes.

[1345] And then she was like, no, no, it looks good.

[1346] We are going to take some of it off.

[1347] Oh, she can just take it off?

[1348] She can because of her spells.

[1349] Oh, my God.

[1350] She put an anti -sun spell on you?

[1351] And she really did.

[1352] She took some of it off my face.

[1353] So just your face was bright, white, and then your body was dark, dark, rich.

[1354] My face was Caucasian.

[1355] You were in white face.

[1356] Yeah, I was.

[1357] Okay.

[1358] But I didn't.

[1359] Did it on purpose.

[1360] She did it.

[1361] And then...

[1362] And sincerely, you noticed it was lighter?

[1363] Well, yeah, and so then when I went to do this photo shoot in New York, the makeup art, incredible makeup artist, she was like, okay, I'm going to make you a little bit darker so that your face matches your arms, because right now it doesn't.

[1364] And I was like, that's because she took off my face tan.

[1365] Your witch, removed your tan.

[1366] Yeah.

[1367] That's right.

[1368] You just had tan removal.

[1369] Exactly.

[1370] Anyway, but it's been hot, it's been nice.

[1371] There was a sim moment we got to get to.

[1372] Okay, let's get to it.

[1373] Because this is for R. L. Stein.

[1374] Oh, right, goose bumpies.

[1375] Goose bumps.

[1376] By the way, I didn't understand your post.

[1377] You did?

[1378] Okay, this is what I'm talking about.

[1379] Okay, okay.

[1380] Okay, so yesterday we posted about a flightless bird football.

[1381] David's football episode.

[1382] Yes, where he learned, he kind of learns about football.

[1383] Didn't learn about football.

[1384] Didn't learn anything.

[1385] Learn they chew gum.

[1386] And he's wearing a goose bump sweatshirt.

[1387] Oh, is that what that was?

[1388] Yes.

[1389] And who is wearing a goose bump sweatshirt shirt?

[1390] goosebumps sweatshirture in this day and age.

[1391] He bought it on that trip too.

[1392] Oh, he did?

[1393] Yeah, yeah.

[1394] Did he know it was a goosebumps sweatsh?

[1395] Yeah, he did.

[1396] Does he like goosebumps?

[1397] Yeah, I think so.

[1398] I bet he loved this episode.

[1399] Cinnamon loves goosebumps.

[1400] Yeah, he still reads them.

[1401] He likes to get scared, Cinnamon.

[1402] But how crazy is that?

[1403] That is really wacky, that that shirt would be photographed and come out the day before.

[1404] Yes.

[1405] Same week, I mean.

[1406] Lazy, lazy, lazy, lazy.

[1407] Recorded that, like, three months ago, too.

[1408] I know.

[1409] And the fact that it's coming out.

[1410] The photos, the photos were three months ago.

[1411] No, that makes it even more sim.

[1412] It's like the week we're putting out this and that was three months.

[1413] You're right.

[1414] Crazy.

[1415] Also, I posted about this too, but it's worth us talking about because it's huge news.

[1416] Okay.

[1417] My dentist.

[1418] Okay.

[1419] My fancy dentist who I love.

[1420] Yes.

[1421] You go to what a couple times a month?

[1422] Well, I'm going to start going every day because guess who else they see?

[1423] C. Matt Damon.

[1424] Olson Twins.

[1425] What the fuck?

[1426] How'd you find that out?

[1427] Another crazy thing.

[1428] So my, I like listening to this podcast called Second Life and also who what where.

[1429] It's the same person, Hillary Kerr, shout out Hillary Kerr.

[1430] And she had my dentist on her podcast.

[1431] Oh my God.

[1432] That's my dentist.

[1433] Then I was reading the description.

[1434] And it was like listing the people, his clients.

[1435] Isn't that unethical?

[1436] No. What?

[1437] Yes, it's got to be.

[1438] No, I wish I was on the list.

[1439] I was so annoyed.

[1440] Well, yeah.

[1441] I understand from your point of view, you're pissed you weren't on the list.

[1442] But I also understand, like, you should have a level of privacy of who your doctor is, right?

[1443] Well, no. I guess they're not a doctor.

[1444] No, he is.

[1445] He is a doctor.

[1446] He is.

[1447] But he's a celebrity dentist, I guess.

[1448] A dentist to the stars.

[1449] A dentist to the stars.

[1450] Who else was listed?

[1451] I wonder if I want to start going now.

[1452] I think Spike Lee.

[1453] Oh, he's in New York.

[1454] How's that work?

[1455] Okay, so they have multiple offices.

[1456] And so are the Olson.

[1457] The twins, I know.

[1458] But they were also here.

[1459] They were in Los Angeles.

[1460] I saw them shopping online.

[1461] No. I mean, I didn't see them.

[1462] On the internet.

[1463] There was a picture of them shopping, and I'm pretty sure I was wearing the same shirt that, they were wearing masks.

[1464] I couldn't tell who was who, but one of them was wearing a tea.

[1465] And I was pretty sure I was wearing a tea.

[1466] The mask wouldn't help as much as their posture is much different.

[1467] Okay.

[1468] I'll point out to you.

[1469] Did you know, did you notice which one it was?

[1470] I didn't.

[1471] All I said to you is they're still in masks.

[1472] Yeah.

[1473] That was my big takeaway.

[1474] You're gonna, do you know about this?

[1475] What?

[1476] They're bringing it back.

[1477] What are you talking about?

[1478] The mask mandate?

[1479] No. In L .A.?

[1480] No. No, they're not.

[1481] Probably end of this month, they're saying.

[1482] No. Well, I'll drive the rest of the people out of the state.

[1483] I know.

[1484] Even, even me, I was like, really, come on.

[1485] I got a hunch people aren't going to fucking do it.

[1486] They might not.

[1487] And they might not.

[1488] get enforced, but that is on its way's back.

[1489] Because I guess this wave has been so crazy.

[1490] Yeah, but everyone, no one's dying from it this wave.

[1491] And also everyone had it, right?

[1492] But if you're not, people aren't dying from it.

[1493] You know, people get sick.

[1494] By the way, another quick update.

[1495] So there's been this thing, you know, you've witnessed it.

[1496] So I got it.

[1497] Yeah, yeah, I got it.

[1498] Yeah, yeah, I got it.

[1499] You finally got it.

[1500] It got you.

[1501] Yep.

[1502] And what's really funny is the only people I knew that were as braggy about not having gotten it were my other family members right like carly magically never got it either and she was around the girls as i was we thought it was a actual genetic thing yeah yes and then my brother who works in a car dealership and was in Vegas every weekend he never got it well no he never like unplugged from anything right and he never got it so all leading me to think like yeah maybe we have some weird i believe i i signed on to that theory at the end i was like they he can't get it he's immune.

[1503] So I went down and of course I didn't care about telling any of y 'all that I went down but I was like yeah I can't believe I got told carly I got it right so I told carly I'm like it's just you now kid and then to my great I don't know comfort three days later she sent me a positive picture of a positive test which I loved and then my brother's currently got it yes and I said feeling okay?

[1504] Well, okay, so the text I had with it, he, like, copped to it.

[1505] Yesterday he texted me. He's like, all right, well, no one's left.

[1506] And I said, well, all you have left to do now for your pride is just to pretend like you don't experience any of it at all.

[1507] That's what you got left now is you got to downplay anything you're feeling like I did.

[1508] Oh, my God.

[1509] So I think that's the method he's using right now.

[1510] So I don't know how bad he has it or not.

[1511] Okay.

[1512] He's just going to walk that.

[1513] Stoic Road.

[1514] All right.

[1515] He and I was just a positive test.

[1516] I mean, that's, how else would we have known?

[1517] Sure, sure, sure.

[1518] You definitely weren't sick at all.

[1519] Well, yes, Carly.

[1520] Did you have any communication with her about it?

[1521] I did because I, we came to do the water test, the taste test on water.

[1522] Oh, right, right, right.

[1523] David and I were meeting, and I realized I didn't have any cups.

[1524] So then I ordered some from Instacart But then they canceled the order So I then texted Carly And I was like, hey, this is so weird I'm so sorry, is there any way That you have like Dixie cups or something at your house I could come run by and grab And she said, well, I have COVID It must have been hard for her to say that Well, oh, we're not editing Okay First she said no No, no, no She said, she said, well, I have Kristen's COVID.

[1525] Oh, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good.

[1526] And I said, oh, no, I'm so sorry.

[1527] And then she said she was going on a trip and she was really hoping she'd be negative by then.

[1528] And I hope she was, think she was?

[1529] Yeah, yeah, yeah, my mom went to Mexico and had a blast.

[1530] That's good, that's great.

[1531] Yeah.

[1532] But anyway, so, so, yeah, so I heard about hers.

[1533] By the way, what was the result of the water test?

[1534] Because it wasn't in the first video.

[1535] I know.

[1536] I posted another video.

[1537] I know, but I heard of it.

[1538] already complained, so then I didn't watch the resolution.

[1539] Okay.

[1540] Because I couldn't imagine going through the whole thing I'd already seen to then find out.

[1541] It was torture.

[1542] No, it wasn't torture.

[1543] I just, whatever I was doing that day, it was like, I don't have six minutes to find out the end.

[1544] I get it.

[1545] I only got one right.

[1546] Oh, and which one was it?

[1547] Arrowhead.

[1548] Oh.

[1549] Because it was yucky.

[1550] Oh, okay, okay.

[1551] But you didn't hate Desani the way you thought you were going to.

[1552] I didn't.

[1553] I knew it.

[1554] I liked Desauny.

[1555] are crazy.

[1556] No, and then something really bad happened.

[1557] Should I, am I bringing this back up?

[1558] This is crazy.

[1559] Smartwater, you didn't make it?

[1560] No, Smartwater and Fiji.

[1561] Did you put them into groups you didn't like and like?

[1562] No, David mixed and Matt, like I left.

[1563] He put them all in cups and then I came.

[1564] It took like 25 minutes or something.

[1565] He said it took way too long.

[1566] I don't know what he was doing here.

[1567] But then I had to.

[1568] You don't think he put any of us.

[1569] Semen?

[1570] Yeah.

[1571] No. No, I don't.

[1572] Cinnamon would never do that.

[1573] No, he's too pure.

[1574] Anyway, I had to then...

[1575] My whole claim was that I could tell what was what.

[1576] Yep, yeah.

[1577] So that was what I was doing, deciding what was what.

[1578] And then I only got one right.

[1579] I got Arrowhead right because it was yuck.

[1580] Okay, I like Arrowhead right because it was for the record.

[1581] I know.

[1582] And then, okay, this was really sad.

[1583] Your nails look great, by the way.

[1584] Thank you.

[1585] Yeah, they're popping so much.

[1586] Like when you put your hands forward facing, it's like, bang, bam, because your pants are white and your nails are white.

[1587] Summer white.

[1588] Man. Okay, so Smartwater in Fiji.

[1589] were the best ones and they were I was like these are the best I mix them up okay but but they were the two best ones and you gave smart water Fiji in Fiji smart water okay well I can live with that yes yeah we were happy with that so you know I drink Zen water that's my favorite water yeah I love it uh huh and I brought it you called it Desani yeah oh you did I guess that is that what you did yes oh my god you labeled your favorite one your most hated one this is definitely Definitely just saw me. Oh, my God, this is awesome.

[1590] I couldn't believe it.

[1591] And then I was kind of mad at David because I wasn't supposed to include Zen water because I pretty much drank it all on my walk here.

[1592] Well, and he hadn't supplied that.

[1593] You just threw that in the mix at the last minute.

[1594] It was last minute.

[1595] Right.

[1596] And I do blame it a little bit on the cup because it was the only one in the...

[1597] We're not editing.

[1598] Great one for not editing.

[1599] It was the only one.

[1600] only one in a mug.

[1601] And I mean, like, it could have been so many factors.

[1602] Contaminated.

[1603] And I've been drinking Zen water still ever since.

[1604] I still love it.

[1605] I love it.

[1606] I love it.

[1607] It's all I drink.

[1608] I think he might have made a mistake too.

[1609] Well, that's great.

[1610] How fun.

[1611] It was really fun.

[1612] The only thing I could really do that with would be Diet Coke and Diet Pepsi and probably Coke zero.

[1613] I would know, yeah.

[1614] I would bet, I'd bet my life of my family on that.

[1615] It'd be worth it.

[1616] The water is a little trickier.

[1617] You know, when people say I would bet my family, what would you get if you make it?

[1618] It's a weird bet.

[1619] Like, oh, what's the positive?

[1620] Yeah.

[1621] You get someone else's family in this?

[1622] Oh, wow.

[1623] Like, what's up?

[1624] What's on the table?

[1625] You get the Obama girls.

[1626] Oh.

[1627] Sasha, Malia?

[1628] I think it's just the stakes of your certainty.

[1629] Yeah, I know, but it's a weird thing to wager because what are you, just keeping what you already got.

[1630] That's right.

[1631] That's my point.

[1632] Sasha, William.

[1633] Oh, but you.

[1634] Sasha and Malia against Lincoln, Delta, and Kristen.

[1635] Oh, wow.

[1636] For Michelle, Sasha, and Malia.

[1637] Oh, my gosh, that reminds me a little bit.

[1638] I don't know if I'm allowed to say, but we're not editing.

[1639] I did Chelsea Handler's podcast yesterday.

[1640] It was so fun.

[1641] That makes me so happy.

[1642] Me too.

[1643] I was so flattered.

[1644] Was it a blast?

[1645] So fun.

[1646] Yeah.

[1647] She's, I love her.

[1648] She's kick -ass.

[1649] Yeah.

[1650] And did you guys give advice to people?

[1651] Yeah.

[1652] How'd that go?

[1653] It went well.

[1654] Of course, the first question had to do with a dog.

[1655] Oh, great.

[1656] And I was like, just get rid of that dog.

[1657] Easy.

[1658] Easy.

[1659] Anyway, what else do we have to say before we get into some fackies?

[1660] Okay, well, one thing I thought of, because I asked if he put his semen in your water.

[1661] You're returning back to that.

[1662] Because when I said that it reminded me that Eric on this vacation, Eric Richardson.

[1663] Everyone knows crazy, crazy.

[1664] We had so much fun.

[1665] Let's start there.

[1666] It's really funny because I don't have the moral high ground to say this because I'm over there going, bumissimo.

[1667] That's not even the word, right?

[1668] Right.

[1669] But I'm never doing it to an Italian.

[1670] So when Eric would order, he would say, like, he'd be trying to pronounce the name of whatever pizza he wanted.

[1671] He's like, can I get the gorsaroni?

[1672] Like he was.

[1673] But he was probably sincere.

[1674] I know, but he was so sweet.

[1675] What do you be like?

[1676] Well, the, this thing he's pointing, you know, this one with that far promotion, like, he would do it to a degree where when the waiter left, I said, you know, he's going to shit in your pizza.

[1677] Uh -huh, uh -huh.

[1678] They already don't like us.

[1679] It sounded like you were mocking him in that, which is crazy because I don't think of myself is mocking anyone.

[1680] But at any rate, I was nervous a couple different times that Eric was going to get.

[1681] excrement or something in his pizza pie.

[1682] Well, that was a kind of nice taste of your own medicine, if we want to call it that, or you got to see it from the outside.

[1683] Well, the other great thing is that I didn't know this about Eric, but he loves tour guides, like the books that you can get, right?

[1684] Oh, like Frommers.

[1685] Exactly, but his guy is Rick Stevens.

[1686] Oh, okay.

[1687] Or Stevens Rick.

[1688] His guy has two first names.

[1689] Okay.

[1690] And Eric always says, I talk to Rick, we got to go to this restaurant.

[1691] So Rick was pretty much in charge of the vacation, all because Eric was talking to Rick all the time.

[1692] Oh, I love this.

[1693] Yeah, it was really fun.

[1694] It was like there was a ninth member of our vacation, Rick, Stevens, or Stevens, Rick Stevens, Rick Steves.

[1695] Rick Steve's plural, wow.

[1696] And he said, oh, Rick said you got to get this here.

[1697] And then he would try to order.

[1698] It was great.

[1699] That's wonderful.

[1700] I know this about Eric because him and I both use similar.

[1701] websites for finding restaurants.

[1702] Oh, Yelp?

[1703] Nope.

[1704] Like eater.

[1705] Oh, okay.

[1706] Yeah, he's a big researcher.

[1707] It's really adorable.

[1708] Yeah.

[1709] We're so different, you know.

[1710] My whole thing is like, I'll just land somewhere with a credit card and we'll see what happens.

[1711] Or on that day, if I want to see something, I'll start looking at Google map or like what's around me. Yeah.

[1712] And Eric has talked to Rick.

[1713] He and Rick have a game plan, and it was pretty adorable.

[1714] I love that.

[1715] There are two types.

[1716] of travelers.

[1717] There's a fly by the seat, you.

[1718] Yeah, shoot from the hip.

[1719] And then there's a planner.

[1720] I'm a planner.

[1721] Sniper.

[1722] Yeah.

[1723] Unless I'm with people who don't like that.

[1724] I can acquiesce.

[1725] But if I'm planning.

[1726] We had a nice push and pull.

[1727] Like there were days where I said, Eric, take us through this city.

[1728] Nice.

[1729] You and Rick show us this city.

[1730] Yeah.

[1731] Saltzburg.

[1732] And then, but then I'd be there on his, a little on the voice on his shoulder.

[1733] Like, we'd already seen seven places.

[1734] And I was saying, Eric, none of us will be upset if we don't see all 12.

[1735] Like, I didn't, oh, and he'd be okay.

[1736] Yeah.

[1737] Because he'd get a little focused on the agenda.

[1738] Itinerary.

[1739] Yes, yes, yes, sure, sure.

[1740] You're like walking by a man on fire to go see something.

[1741] You know what?

[1742] That kind of situation.

[1743] And this happened, boy, God's just got to say, one of the most magical nights is we went, Rick was hellbent on us going to Sienna.

[1744] Rick thinks Sienna is the most beautiful town in Italy.

[1745] Okay.

[1746] People are named after it.

[1747] blah, blah, blah.

[1748] So we went one night.

[1749] We took like a night trip there.

[1750] It was about an hour and a half from the place we were staying.

[1751] And by God, Rick was right.

[1752] That place is fucking beautiful.

[1753] It is so enchanted and beautiful.

[1754] Big shout out to Sienna.

[1755] But Rick wanted us to go to this one piazza.

[1756] And we went to this piazza, and by God, Monica, the Italian Philharmonic, for whatever reason, was putting on a free concert that night.

[1757] Oh, wow.

[1758] So we're sitting at the restaurant Rick Tolls to go to.

[1759] We're having this incredible food.

[1760] We're playing spades.

[1761] The girls are running around the piazza and the goddamn Italian Philharmonic was fucking Oh, God, you would have loved this because I failed.

[1762] I don't like that.

[1763] And there's a video of it.

[1764] Okay.

[1765] So I had a thing where I was conducting, of course.

[1766] I'm trying to entertain everyone.

[1767] The first of when we were just walking around before we picked a place, I did some light conducting.

[1768] Sure, waving your hands around.

[1769] Yeah, and putting on a bit of a show.

[1770] So then there was a moment where I had gone to the bathroom.

[1771] Oh, my God, what a blunder this was.

[1772] I had gone to the bathroom, and then I came back from the bathroom, and it was right at a heightened point of some very dramatic song.

[1773] Okay.

[1774] So I started doing my conducting for Molly and Eric.

[1775] They were laughing.

[1776] A waiter tried to walk by me right when I, like, hit a high note out of a movie.

[1777] I hit this guy's tray.

[1778] Oh, no. It went fucking 10 feet in the air, four cocktails, went all over this nice gentleman.

[1779] I think he was Austrian or German by himself.

[1780] He's fucking caught.

[1781] He has a white shirt on.

[1782] He's now covered in rosé.

[1783] I want to die.

[1784] I want to vanish.

[1785] Like, I finally got caught trying to be cute and funny, and I ruin someone's.

[1786] So now I panic.

[1787] I'm apologizing to the guy.

[1788] All these people have seen it.

[1789] There's no question of why this guy's covered in why.

[1790] And it's not like an honest mistake where we tried to cross each other.

[1791] I was buffooning.

[1792] Yeah.

[1793] So I panicked and I ran all throughout this piazza.

[1794] So it was like 10 .30 at night.

[1795] There's no stores open.

[1796] I find a souvenir shop.

[1797] I buy two shirts immediately.

[1798] I come back to the guy, give him these shirts.

[1799] He's like, oh, no, it's all right.

[1800] Everything is all you.

[1801] And I'm begging him to put on it.

[1802] He doesn't want it.

[1803] He just sits in this wine -soaked shirt, even though I got him two other shirts.

[1804] And then I bought his dinner.

[1805] And he was so, he couldn't understand.

[1806] And I think the reason he couldn't understand why I was trying to make it right so bad is I think he thought it was more of an honest mistake.

[1807] Of course.

[1808] He didn't see me conducting.

[1809] He didn't know that there was a bit gone bad.

[1810] It was a bit gone bad in the worst way.

[1811] And this poor guy was the victim.

[1812] It was still an honest mistake.

[1813] I mean I didn't mean for him to be covered.

[1814] But he must have four or five glasses of wine on him.

[1815] Wait, wait, wait.

[1816] The server?

[1817] No, the server didn't get doused in it.

[1818] It was like, it was the customer.

[1819] This very sweet man who was eating by himself.

[1820] Oh, the rosé landed on.

[1821] on another man. I thought I'm on the server.

[1822] No, that would have...

[1823] And then I was like, why would you buy him a shirt?

[1824] Like, he can't wear that.

[1825] He has to wear his attire.

[1826] No, this was a nice customer who was enjoying the free concert.

[1827] And, you know, it was, it was embarrassing.

[1828] And, of course, I think Eric really enjoyed it.

[1829] It was fun for him to see me fail so epically.

[1830] So he was kind of trying to say how bad it was.

[1831] And, like, Molly is trying to come from me. Eric's like, you ruin this guy's trip.

[1832] You know, it was a whole thing.

[1833] Oh, man, that's...

[1834] That's hilarious.

[1835] That's scary.

[1836] Luckily, the server had earlier said to me, I like cheeps.

[1837] He pronounced chips, cheeps.

[1838] Like I pronounce she.

[1839] Oh, yeah.

[1840] So I didn't feel terrible because the guy liked chips.

[1841] And now we had a story to tell people.

[1842] Like that guy from chips destroyed my.

[1843] That's true.

[1844] Yeah.

[1845] But the guy from Austria didn't know me from fucking a hot rock.

[1846] He's just covered in Rose.

[1847] Oh, me. What were the shirts like?

[1848] They said seeing it on them and they weren't bad.

[1849] They were souvenir shirts.

[1850] Well, you know, it was a souvenir shop.

[1851] Look, I would have loved.

[1852] You bought him an I heart New York shirt.

[1853] Virtually.

[1854] I got a ton of wine spilled on me and all I got is this stupid shirt, this cheap shirt.

[1855] No, I would have walked into like a Gucci or something.

[1856] I would have done anything to erase what I had just done.

[1857] But none of them were open.

[1858] I thought at least a dry shirt's better.

[1859] even if it says Sienna.

[1860] But you're right, you probably would have felt like a pozo sitting in Sienna with a shirt that says C. I did the best I could.

[1861] Oh, that's funny.

[1862] Well, you know, it's bound to happen.

[1863] When you're putting on a show all the time, yeah, you're going to mess up occasionally.

[1864] Just every now and then.

[1865] Yeah.

[1866] I bet R. L. Stein would have liked that story.

[1867] The pop out.

[1868] Now, let me ask you, because would you have been like, it finally happened to him.

[1869] What do you think?

[1870] You would have been in the Eric Camp or the Moll?

[1871] camp well i'm not allowed to be happy about your failures well but there's there's there's there's what you would be and then there'd be what you demonstrated to me in your heart of heart so you've been like okay i'm fine if glad he finally there was some justice with all this showing off no i don't think so i think i just would have been like uncomfortable yeah wish you were with someone else Oh my God I was going to ask you one more thing Well first how was your jet lag yesterday I felt insane when I got home I felt like I was stoned and funny enough I'd text to Eric Because they had to go to a fucking family reunion Yes Immediately oh but yeah because I was up for we woke up at 6 a .m. Florence time Yeah Which I guess would have been 9 p .m. Here yeah So I was up from 9 p .m. until 10 p .m. last night.

[1872] Wow, you stayed up.

[1873] 25 hours.

[1874] I slept one hour on the airplane.

[1875] Wow.

[1876] I feel a need to shout this out.

[1877] Because sometimes people make amazing movies and they just don't get the love they deserve or that doesn't work out for whatever reason and it's heartbreaking.

[1878] So I just want to shout out.

[1879] Not that he needs my pat on the back, but Kenneth Brana, I watched Death on the Nile on the airplane.

[1880] Did you have you seen it?

[1881] It's so awesome.

[1882] It's so beautifully shot and so elegantly directed.

[1883] Shout out to Judy Hoffman, who produced it as well.

[1884] But what a great, brilliant movie.

[1885] And just there were all these, some of the actors went to press because of some of the other cast members.

[1886] It was COVID.

[1887] All these reasons that movie just did.

[1888] It was like he made this incredible movie that should have been huge.

[1889] And it just didn't happen.

[1890] Oh, wow.

[1891] And it's heartbreaking.

[1892] And I just want to say, what a great movie.

[1893] Okay.

[1894] Brana.

[1895] I'll watch it.

[1896] And if you want to come on this show and I'll fly it.

[1897] you about the movie.

[1898] I'm happy to do it.

[1899] It was so good that when that ended, I searched for Death on the Orient Express.

[1900] It was on there.

[1901] I watched that, the other movie he directed.

[1902] Wow.

[1903] He plays the same character, this Agatha Christie novel, you know.

[1904] Agatha Christie.

[1905] Agatha Christie.

[1906] Goosepumps!

[1907] Sim!

[1908] Pop out.

[1909] Duck, Duck, Goose.

[1910] She wrote horror books.

[1911] Yeah, she did.

[1912] Like goosebumps.

[1913] Wow, yeah.

[1914] She was the original goosebumps.

[1915] Like Glassman Boppers.

[1916] Goose bumpers.

[1917] So, um...

[1918] What was I saying?

[1919] So he plays like an agatha.

[1920] Oh, he's like this brilliant detective in all of them.

[1921] Ooh.

[1922] Oh, yeah.

[1923] It's incredible.

[1924] I love a detective story.

[1925] You should watch Death on the Nile.

[1926] Okay, I will.

[1927] Okay, two things to watch.

[1928] One, on my airplane, I watched Worst Person in the World.

[1929] What's that?

[1930] It's a, it's a...

[1931] Doc or a narrative?

[1932] It's a narrative.

[1933] It's a foreign film.

[1934] It's really good.

[1935] And it's really, like, just heartbreaking about...

[1936] I mean, it's just like a woman's journey and it feels like, oh, humans.

[1937] The worst person on earth it's called?

[1938] Worst person in the world.

[1939] It's a Norwegian film.

[1940] Oh, okay.

[1941] Worst person in the world.

[1942] Yes, I would recommend it.

[1943] And have you watched the rehearsal?

[1944] No, what's that?

[1945] Oh, my God.

[1946] It's a new show.

[1947] It's on HBO Max.

[1948] It's Nathan Fielder.

[1949] You know, Nathan for you.

[1950] Oh, yes.

[1951] Oh, I've seen Cinnamon sent us a promo for it.

[1952] like a trailer.

[1953] So I've seen the trailer for it.

[1954] Okay.

[1955] Is it great?

[1956] Oh my God.

[1957] So the first episode, it's once a week, so there's only been one episode so far.

[1958] And so, yeah, the premise is like everything in life should be rehearsed.

[1959] Like if you have something scary you have to do or hard, he helps you rehearse it.

[1960] And he like builds these crazy sets.

[1961] He like builds your house.

[1962] Oh my God.

[1963] Oh, my God.

[1964] So just real quick, the premise of this first episode is there's this guy.

[1965] He loves trivia.

[1966] He plays trivia with the same group for like 20 years.

[1967] And he lied to them and told them he had a master's degree.

[1968] Oh.

[1969] And it's been, it's been like really eating him up.

[1970] And he's trying to figure out a way to tell them.

[1971] This is incredible.

[1972] And so they were, I mean, I haven't laughed out.

[1973] I was like mixing between laughing out loud and just mouth agape the whole time.

[1974] Really?

[1975] You have to watch and we have to talk.

[1976] about it.

[1977] I kind of want to give anything away.

[1978] Okay.

[1979] Rehearsal.

[1980] Wow.

[1981] The rehearsal.

[1982] Wow.

[1983] Please, please check it out, people.

[1984] Did you guys watch, Nathan, for you?

[1985] I watched probably half of them.

[1986] And they're insane.

[1987] Yeah, yeah, they are.

[1988] Like, he's going to help everyone's business.

[1989] Yeah, he is the worst idea.

[1990] Like stupid Starbucks or what a dumb Starbucks.

[1991] I really want to have him on because I am so curious.

[1992] I've thought about that because I'm a huge fan of his, but I also thought, can he be interviewed that was my concern like but i want to know what's a facade and what's not what's a character what's not it's like a borat like who is it sasha is he the prestige is he living the routine or is it him it's tricky because that's kind of like ricky in a weird way yes there's like he he could be that way and know he's funny that's what gets tricky you're like well if you know that this is funny enough to go pitch a show and do a show you recognize that your idiosyncrasies are humorous.

[1993] That doesn't mean they're not real.

[1994] Yeah, exactly.

[1995] It's a lot to unpack.

[1996] It is.

[1997] It's a meta.

[1998] It is.

[1999] Okay, a few facts.

[2000] R. L. Stein.

[2001] Goosebumps.

[2002] Gusbumps.

[2003] David sweatshirt.

[2004] This is the part.

[2005] Well, go ahead.

[2006] No, no. I'm looking at my email.

[2007] Okay.

[2008] Okay.

[2009] Okay, I've gone there.

[2010] Okay, great.

[2011] Okay.

[2012] What were you going to say?

[2013] Well, I was just going to say that this is, generally the part in the editing where we will get right to when you follow that I don't want to make you upset.

[2014] But yeah, this is generally like you, hold on what pages of this?

[2015] I would have edited so much.

[2016] Maybe this is a fun experiment.

[2017] Maybe we release it and then I edit it and then we put out the edited version later this week so people would know, no, I don't want to do that.

[2018] But that would be interesting.

[2019] It would be like your water taste test in a weird way.

[2020] There's like what you think the show is and then there's what the show is.

[2021] And then you end up dissing Zenwater and you don't mean to.

[2022] Yeah, you love Zen Water.

[2023] I love it.

[2024] You'd like to be a spokesperson.

[2025] I would.

[2026] I wouldn't.

[2027] I think I probably lost that op. You go, it's so good, it's bad.

[2028] I like it so much, I think it's Desani.

[2029] By the way, Desani's way better than I thought it was.

[2030] That's what it would be.

[2031] It'd be a covert Desani campaign.

[2032] Oh.

[2033] Like, Desani would secretly hire you as the spokesperson for Zero Water.

[2034] Is that what it's called?

[2035] Zen water.

[2036] Yeah.

[2037] But it'd be a backhanded way for it.

[2038] Anyways, we'll workshop that.

[2039] Aquafina was the biggest surprise.

[2040] It's delicious.

[2041] Because it was better than I thought.

[2042] That's my favorite.

[2043] Aquafina.

[2044] Coca -Cola, man. You can't, right?

[2045] Coca -Cola.

[2046] Cicana is also Coke.

[2047] Coca -Cola.

[2048] I think the packaging, though, does contribute.

[2049] Like, the plastic.

[2050] The plastic is better in a Fiji bottle than, like, Arrowhead.

[2051] Agreed.

[2052] Right.

[2053] And the Fiji packaging can't be beat.

[2054] No, but that's the whole point of the taste.

[2055] test.

[2056] I didn't have those images.

[2057] But I think it tastes different out of a Fiji plastic bottle than an Arrowhead plastic bottle.

[2058] Oh, no, well that's crazy.

[2059] I don't think so.

[2060] This is so much thicker.

[2061] Well, but that doesn't mean that the material that's interacting with.

[2062] It doesn't know the thickness.

[2063] Beer can, like it tastes different out of a can.

[2064] It does, but all beer cans taste the same.

[2065] It's not like Miller's can taste better.

[2066] It's aluminum.

[2067] That's fucking polypermid, polypid, poly whatever.

[2068] It's just a thick Also, we're not, we don't need to try to make Arrowhead.

[2069] Are, am I going to get sued?

[2070] I don't know.

[2071] Let's just drop Arrowhead out of the cameras.

[2072] I know, I like it.

[2073] I like it's delicious.

[2074] Okay, but you love it.

[2075] It's just my opinion that I don't like.

[2076] I know, yeah, yeah, okay.

[2077] And that it's really bad.

[2078] Yeah, okay, I love it.

[2079] It tastes good.

[2080] Give me all your Arrowhead.

[2081] Okay.

[2082] We'd be good roommates.

[2083] Yeah.

[2084] Okay, so Gallagher's brother, you said, oh, sold his whole routine.

[2085] Yeah.

[2086] Okay, so in the early 1990s, Gallagher's younger brother Ron asked him for permission to perform shows using Gallagher's trademark sledge -o -matic routine.

[2087] Gallagher granted his permission on the condition that Ron, who shared a strong likeness to Leo and his manager clarified in promotional materials that it was Ron Gallagher not Leo Gallagher who was performing.

[2088] So he was supposed to make that very clear.

[2089] Okay.

[2090] Ron typically performed a venues smaller than those in which Leo Gallagher performed.

[2091] After several years, Ron began promoting his act as Gallagher, or Gallagher T -W -O.

[2092] Gallagher T -O -O or Gallagher T -W -O.

[2093] In some instances, Ron's act was promoted in a way that left unclear the fact that he was not the original Gallagher.

[2094] This and also Ron's off -stage troubles left a stain on Leo's reputation as well.

[2095] Oh, what were Ron's off -stage antics?

[2096] That's what interests me. I know.

[2097] There needs to be a doc about this.

[2098] The Gallagher's?

[2099] Let's do it.

[2100] And then you also pull in all the people that thought they were going to watch.

[2101] a Wonderwall documentary.

[2102] Rob, what is it, what band?

[2103] OASIS.

[2104] OASIS.

[2105] I made this mistake in my research.

[2106] Yeah.

[2107] That'd be cool if Liam Gallagher sold the lead singer role of OAS to his younger brother and no one knew.

[2108] Oh, I mean, OASIS could probably be the soundtrack for the doc.

[2109] That would just be, you know.

[2110] Totally streamlined, vertically integrated.

[2111] Okay, the Michigan, Ohio militia situation.

[2112] So that was the Toledo War.

[2113] Yeah.

[2114] Was I right that only one pig's farmer one farmer's pig was killed um i didn't find the pig part on history dot com there was some violence that ended up happening towards the end more of like a fight in a kmart parking lot well there was a casualty there was okay i'll read it okay no one was killed or injured in the battle of philip's corners but it wasn't long before the toledo war turned bloody in july 1835 Michigan Sheriff Joseph Wood entered Toledo to arrest an Ohio partisan named two Stickney T .W .O. Stickney.

[2115] So many, yeah, wow.

[2116] Failure too.

[2117] A scuffle broke out when the sheriff's posse confronted the Ohioan in a tavern and during the ensuing brawl, Stikney drew a penknife and stabbed Wood in the side, leaving him with a minor wound.

[2118] Sheriff Wood is now remembered as the Toledo War's lone casualty.

[2119] Okay, so it was pretty low -key.

[2120] Yeah.

[2121] Also sounds like it happened at a bar later.

[2122] Yeah.

[2123] They were just drunk.

[2124] Yeah, yeah.

[2125] I thought it was interesting when he was talking, Bob was talking about, yeah, his relationship with his father and mother, but father and like how bad it was.

[2126] And I was putting two and two together with David Sedaris.

[2127] And I was like, yeah, he also had a horrible relationship with his father.

[2128] And maybe that's the.

[2129] Oh, and Hemingway.

[2130] hated his...

[2131] Did he?

[2132] Well, let's see.

[2133] His father ended up having a lot of mental illness and he would go away to hospitals.

[2134] And then actually that made Hemingway hate his mother, but he was really dis...

[2135] He was embarrassed by his father's frailty.

[2136] Oh.

[2137] And then when his father killed himself, he thought he was a complete loser for having done that, wrote about it, thought he was a coward, all these things.

[2138] And then, of course...

[2139] And then, of course, he killed himself.

[2140] Oh, that's awful.

[2141] Apparently his dad was a bully, too.

[2142] violent.

[2143] Hemingways?

[2144] Yeah, sure.

[2145] Yeah.

[2146] So maybe that's a weird through line.

[2147] And I'm a writer and I had problems on 90.

[2148] I know.

[2149] But you love your dad.

[2150] I love my dad.

[2151] That's why I'm not Cedaris or all time.

[2152] I'm just like an okay writer.

[2153] Maybe because your dad wasn't mean enough.

[2154] He wasn't bad enough.

[2155] So it kept me from being a great writer.

[2156] I'm a pretty good writer and my dad's great.

[2157] But yeah, maybe that's the reason.

[2158] I could be so much better.

[2159] I think that's it.

[2160] mad at him.

[2161] Yeah.

[2162] I'll try to get him to betray you.

[2163] The last act of the simulation will be him betraying you.

[2164] I don't know how he does that.

[2165] At this stage, you live on your own and stuff.

[2166] What could he do?

[2167] I guess he could.

[2168] You'd have to get married and you'd have to steal your husband from you.

[2169] Oh, wow.

[2170] You know?

[2171] He could do that.

[2172] He's very powerful.

[2173] He is, yeah, and charming.

[2174] Um, okay, was Isaac Asimov an amphetamine user?

[2175] He was the one that R. L. Stein would see in line and like always have all these you know manuscripts and stuff because very prolific and then you were like oh yes he wrote more thanphetamine user i didn't i didn't find any evidence that he was he never smoked oh that's rare uh -huh um he did dive HIV well they told everyone it was kidney failure but it was HIV um he contracted it from a blood transfusion after After a heart attack.

[2176] Slash shooting meth?

[2177] No. Okay.

[2178] We're not saying that.

[2179] Okay.

[2180] Anyway, so they were keeping that a secret and then they decided it was important to share.

[2181] So they did.

[2182] Have you watched the Magic Doc yet?

[2183] I recommended that, right?

[2184] You recommended it?

[2185] I haven't watched it yet.

[2186] Okay.

[2187] It's great.

[2188] But I will.

[2189] He said Stephen King retired after his accident.

[2190] And I was like, what accident?

[2191] Wasn't he riding a bicycle and got hit by a car?

[2192] He was walking and he got hit by car.

[2193] He took a, like David.

[2194] lots of walking for Cam.

[2195] I wonder how his dad was.

[2196] I do too.

[2197] Rob, look it up.

[2198] Rob, look it up.

[2199] Figure it out quickly.

[2200] We're not editing, Rob.

[2201] It's got to be really quick.

[2202] Oh, yeah, this is definitely a part.

[2203] His father walked out when he was two years old.

[2204] That helps.

[2205] There we are.

[2206] Okay, so remember I made the observation that Rob, we're forcing Rob to be that guy in all the CIA capers that sits in the van?

[2207] I mean, today's really the day.

[2208] Or it's like, we got to get a, what's the code, Rob?

[2209] Yeah.

[2210] Also, we're asking him to be, remember when we used to have that little Google guy we liked?

[2211] Yeah, yeah.

[2212] What was it?

[2213] Hey, Google.

[2214] Yeah, that was it.

[2215] Yeah.

[2216] He was friends with us.

[2217] Yeah.

[2218] Anyway, so yeah, he got hit by a car.

[2219] And I'm hesitant to say that the guy who hit him was dealing with some unruly dogs in his car when it happened.

[2220] Oh, Jesus.

[2221] I'm just saying.

[2222] That is part of the story, and I'm just saying it.

[2223] I'm just saying it.

[2224] Okay, but you know what's funny, you're digging yourself.

[2225] such a deeper hole because you don't you have nothing against dogs but in your defense of not being in love with dogs now you're kind of you're put you're in a position where you're now actively pointing out when they kill people or ruin great writers act like they're just pure angels yeah yeah I have to have to fight back okay I have to fight back on that that there's some unruly dogs in the car you know what the dog lovers will say to that though what the retort it will be is the bozo operate in the car who's at fault.

[2226] No, they'd probably say...

[2227] It's because your dogs aren't really...

[2228] You got to keep watching the road.

[2229] I agree.

[2230] Unless they're biting your neck.

[2231] Do you think they had like him around the neck or something?

[2232] Wow, this could be the ultimate ding, ding, ding.

[2233] What if one of the dogs in the car had been bit and got rabies and become rabid, Coojo, which is a Stephen King story?

[2234] And the man inside had a fucking big St. Bernard around his neck.

[2235] Oh, my.

[2236] Oh my God.

[2237] That would be crazy.

[2238] Google says that's exactly what that's.

[2239] Oh, my God.

[2240] That's what happened.

[2241] A cuckoo dog.

[2242] Oh, my God.

[2243] You reap what you sow.

[2244] Listen, I don't blame the dogs for this, but I do think that a lot of people would be like, no, those dogs were trying to tell the owner that there was a man there to watch out.

[2245] And it's like, no. Maybe they were.

[2246] No. Who knows?

[2247] Nope.

[2248] Okay.

[2249] All right.

[2250] Is J .K. Rolling the richest woman in the world?

[2251] No. The richest woman in the world.

[2252] I can tell you who is.

[2253] Who?

[2254] Tell me. Hold on.

[2255] I got to think.

[2256] Sam Walmart, the daughter of Sam.

[2257] What's her name?

[2258] Salton.

[2259] Walton.

[2260] No. But she got remarried.

[2261] Maybe she took the name.

[2262] Who is it?

[2263] It's Aris Francois Bettencourt Myers.

[2264] Oh, from Myers.

[2265] The Myers' Thrifty Acres in Michigan.

[2266] For the second year in a row on Forbes' list of world's billionaires, the planet's richest woman is L 'Oreal Aris, Francois, Benckin -Court, Myers of France, worth an estimated $74 .8 billion.

[2267] Okay, look up how much Sam Walton's daughter, Rob, has.

[2268] Alice Walton, right?

[2269] Yeah, well, I'll say yes.

[2270] What's her net worth?

[2271] 60 .4 billion.

[2272] Okay.

[2273] She's number two.

[2274] Oh, thank God.

[2275] She's number two.

[2276] Thank God.

[2277] Well, you know the most fascinating thing for years, I don't know where they're at now, but let's say 15 years ago when like the Salt Le Brunei was always number one, when they did the top 10 richest people in the world, five through 10 was the five Walton children.

[2278] Wow.

[2279] Yeah.

[2280] I'm looking to see if there's anyone else we like on here.

[2281] Is J .K. Rowling's only got to have like a couple billion, right?

[2282] She's not on here.

[2283] Yeah.

[2284] He maybe was just speaking hyperbolic.

[2285] No, he said he was happy that the richest woman in the world was an author.

[2286] Oh, yeah.

[2287] And I would have loved that to be true.

[2288] Maybe she was at one point.

[2289] And yes, the reason they, she went by JK is because the publisher thought a book by an obviously female author might not appeal to the target audience of young boys.

[2290] Oh.

[2291] So she had to appeal to the masses.

[2292] You gales, it's uphill battle.

[2293] Tell me about it.

[2294] You should change your name to Mike Padman and just see what happens.

[2295] I should just see.

[2296] Just shakey.

[2297] I should just see.

[2298] I'm starting my egg.

[2299] Tell me about that.

[2300] Where are you at?

[2301] Are you on hormones right now?

[2302] No, I don't, I can't start hormones until the.

[2303] Your birthday's closing in.

[2304] Second day of my period.

[2305] So next month is when I'm doing it.

[2306] Me and Liz, you're doing it.

[2307] You what?

[2308] Me and Liz.

[2309] Oh, you and Liz.

[2310] For race to 35.

[2311] Yes, yes.

[2312] Yes, this is exciting.

[2313] It is exciting.

[2314] Is she all hormoned up?

[2315] Not yet.

[2316] You don't start, so you start your period.

[2317] Yeah.

[2318] Then you go in for an appointment the next day.

[2319] Okay.

[2320] The second day.

[2321] Okay, flies in tow.

[2322] Exactly.

[2323] They should hang some fly paper up in that place before you guys arrive.

[2324] Oh, God.

[2325] And then you start the hormones of it.

[2326] They take some tests and stuff.

[2327] And I already, I already feel.

[2328] Pregnant?

[2329] No. I already feel all.

[2330] these feelings that arise of like competitiveness like a failure yes yeah all these feelings i already have them and i haven't even started wow well you're a stage champ i know i don't know what i was just watching but it made me think of you because they were saying oh the only thing i could get over there was i was watching this series on my ipad at night about scandals which you know i love i fucking love scandals.

[2331] One was this kid who created a Bitcoin exchange in Canada and probably faked his own death with $200 million worth of people's money.

[2332] And then they got into the Seagram's daughter who was funding nexium.

[2333] And the way they would talk about her because she had won a few horse jumping competitions.

[2334] And Vanguard always called her a champion and everyone was supposed to call her a champion.

[2335] And when you're a champion, you're this type of person, blah, blah.

[2336] And they kept saying it, I was like, well, that's Monica.

[2337] I'm like, well, that's Monica.

[2338] I would have got sucked in if everyone was calling me a champion.

[2339] How could you resist?

[2340] You would have given them $100 million.

[2341] I'm only human.

[2342] Yeah, just a human champion.

[2343] It's a modest human champion.

[2344] Well, I love you, and I think this has been a very fun unedited experience.

[2345] Me too.

[2346] Very fun.

[2347] I'm happy you're back.

[2348] I am so happy to be back.

[2349] Like, I'm like dying to interview people and do fact checks and the whole nine.

[2350] Yay.

[2351] Me too.

[2352] All right.

[2353] I love you.

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[2355] You can listen to every episode of Armchair Expert early and ad free right now by joining Wondry Plus in the Wondry app or on Apple Podcasts.

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