The Writing Life

Guarantee Human. I'm Bailey Taylor, and this is Icarol. This podcast is all about going deeper with the women shaping culture right now. Yes, we will talk about the style and the success,

but we are also talking about the pressure, the expectations, and the real work behind it all.

As a woman in the industry, you're always underestimated.

So you have to work extra hard in a way that doesn't compromise who you are in your integrity. You know, I like to say I was kind of like the silent ninja. Listen to it, girl, with Bailey Taylor on the "I Heart Radio" app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

I'm Nancy Glass, host of the burden of guilt season 2 podcast. This is a story about a horrendous lie that destroyed two families. Late one night, Bobby Gumpride became the victim of a random crime. The perpetrator was sentenced to 99 years

until a confession changed everything. I was a monster. Listen to burden of guilt season 2 on the "I Heart Radio" app. Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey there, this is Josh from "Stuffy Should Know"

with a message that could change your life.

“The stuff you should know, "Think Spring Podcast Playlist"”

is available now, whether spring has sprung in your neck of the widget or not. The stuff you should know, "Think Spring Playlist" will make you want to get your overalls on, get outside, and get your hands in the dirt.

You can get the stuff you should know, "Think Spring Playlist" on the "I Heart Radio" app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Let's go! Our "I Heart Radio" musical words are coming back.

Thursday, March 26th, live on Fox. Watch as we honor the biggest stars from all genres of music that you love listening to all year long on your favorite "I Heart Radio" station and the "I Heart Radio" app. Hosted by Budacris.

I kind of ordered recipient, John Mellon Cam. Innovator, ordered recipient. My name is Cyrus. With performances by Alex Warren. Kalani.

"Lany Wilson." "Vitacris." "Way." "TLC." "Soul and Kavo."

"And invoke."

Plus, Taylor Swift makes her first award show appearance this year.

Also, Gold Medal Olympian Alyssa Liu. Neo, Nicole Shersinger, Nikki Glaser, Somber, Weiser, and more. Watch live on Fox Thursday, March 26th, at 877 Central.

And listen that "I Heart Radio" stations across America and the free "I Heart" app. We've come a very long way together this season. Roll doll has gone through a lot. And when you look back at all of our episodes, all the different stages of doll's life,

a pattern does begin to emerge. I think doll's entire life, like for so many of us, was about a search for who he really was and where he belonged. And when you really think about it,

“that may also be the key to understanding his work.”

Matilda is entirely about her search for identity. The same could be said about Charlie, it about James and Sophie, and so many of the others. And what they all seem to figure out by stories end is that their true selves come to fruition

not from conforming to other people's expectations, but from embracing the thing that makes them unique. Which, as we've heard, is also exactly what doll discovered in his own life. But it took him trying on all these different masks, all these different personas, in order to get there.

He was the ambitious young businessman with Shellwail, the courageous fighter pilot in the war, a playboy spy in DC in New York, a disgruntled screenwriter in LA, and her veins sophisticated author publishing in the New Yorker,

and finally, the world famous children's author,

who championed the underdog and weaponized Miss Jeff, while spouting views that could have made him an antagonist in one of his own stories. For my hard podcast, Imagine Entertainment, and Paralax, I'm Aaron Tracy,

“and this is the secret world of "Roll doll."”

Episode 10. So, we're each of these stages necessary in doll's evolution. Certainly, they all contributed to him living one of the biggest, noisiest lives of his century. But I guess what I'm trying to figure out is if that's necessary,

or even advantageous for a writer. I want to bring in Jesse Stern on this question. Jesse is maybe the best TV writer I've ever worked with, and he is a knack for writing these massive global hits, like the CBS show NCIS,

or the video game Call of Duty Modern Warfare. He's also spent the last year studying Hemingway in Challenger, authors of Dolls Generation, for a project that he's writing. I asked Jesse about the importance to these writers, of going out, experiencing the world, and having big adventures.

By the way, it's a theme, Jesse very much incorporates into his own life. While I'm sitting in my bathroom, but home in Brooklyn right now, I caught up with Jesse, where he's living these days, in Santa Eulalia, in the north of Abiza.

as it is, you know, you have to get some discomfort. You have to get into the unknown. It becomes really easy to convince yourself that you have enough exposure to the universe already.

“I think it's crucial to find the balance between those two things,”

exploring outer space and exploring inner space. I got so fascinated between the relationship between Hemingway and JD Sanctuary, who, guys, who definitely saw the world, and one decided I had enough of it,

and I was spent the rest of my life in a bunker in my yard, exploring in their reaches of my own mind, and another who basically spent every day fishing, boating, fighting, hunting, barking, if you could. You know, when you get into a new environment,

you get into a place you've never been before.

It exposes all these different sides about the experiences that you've had. It shows you all these things that you've been taking for granted. It shows you things that you thought were low-bearing and essential. But oh, there's other ways of doing that.

There's other ways of being. And also it pushes you to expand your own consciousness of what you're capable of and in that what anybody is capable of. And I think that that broadens not just the imagination, but you sense of empathy.

That's when you read these stories of great heroes or great leaders or great adventurers throughout time, there's a certain aspect to it that feels impossible, that feels like how did they do that? And when you have just a little bit of exposure

to process the process of climbing a mountain, even if it's not the biggest mountain, you start to learn a little bit about what it takes to go up, what it takes to keep going up. What it feels like to get to the top and the experience of coming down.

And you get to find a way that you can relate a little bit more to kind of impossible porous historical figures.

“And it helps you, I think, to get into the mindset of what human beings”

are capable of and how they do it one step at a time, even in the most incredible achievements. I think in Doll's situation, there's an aspect of necessity. He's not just pursuing adventures.

These are things that were essential,

becoming a pilot joining RIF, fighting in the war. It was essential. There was merely not much in the way of choice given to, you know, 24-year-old man in England in 1940, you had to.

It was a matter of survival, which makes it even more infuriating that he can't find some form of empathy with the Israelis. I guess he just doesn't acknowledge that that place also spiked skirt survival.

You know, and then talking about the invention for his son, again, that was out of necessity. It wasn't that he just, you know, decided one day to become a medical inventor. Thomas Jefferson was the same way. You know, he wouldn't have to do it.

“Just buying solutions, creative solutions,”

to challenges that surrounded him, whether it was building his own violin or designing pocket doors and monitor cello or writing for the decent documents. We're going to come back to Jesse.

But first, I want to talk a little bit about

where and how Doll wrote his own pretty decent documents. Because they were the only reason we cared all about the adventures Doll had, right? Doll's writing process is completely fascinating to be. How did a guy who was used to flying aerial battles in the war

and playing spy games in DC? How did that same guy find the ability to sit quietly in a room for years on end and produce mountains of writing? Here's Doll in a random house video, The Author's Eye,

from 1888, two years before his death. He gives maybe the best analogy for the writing process that I've ever heard. What are you writing? It's rather like going on a very long walk

across valleys and mountains and things and you get the first view of what you see and you write it down. Then you walk a bit further. Maybe up onto the top of the hill

and you look down and you see something else and you write that. And you go on like that day after day getting different views of the same landscape, Bradley. And the highest mountain on the walk is obviously

the end of the book. But because it's got to be the best view of all and when everything comes together and you can look back and see everything you've done and it all ties up.

But it's a very, very long slow process. How great is that? It really gives the Anlemauts bird by bird to run for its money in terms of finding the poetry and the act of writing.

The writing life is clearly a subject all thinks about a lot. Many of his most celebrated books are sort of extended metaphors for what it means to be a writer. Like my favorite of dolls adult works,

the wonderful story of Henry Sugar, which we talked about last episode. That story is maybe the most revealing mirror

On the surface,

it's about a wealthy narcissist

who discovers a way to literally see through the backs of playing cards using meditation techniques. But strip away the magical realism

“and it's about a man who locks himself away”

day after day, year after year, pursuing a single skill with monastic devotion. Just like doll did with his writing. Learning to see through playing cards is just a more dramatically interesting version

of learning to write well. And the practice completely changes Henry Sugar. It makes him a more generous, more enlightened, better man. Which I think is probably what doll hoped the writing life would do for him.

One doll decided to devote his life to his craft in his late 40s. His routine, like Henry Sugar's, became one of almost religious ritual.

Here's Dawn, his first memoir.

Boy, discussing the challenges of choosing life as a writer. Recreating his voice as we did in previous episodes. The life of a writer is absolute hell compared with a life of a businessman.

The writer has to force himself to work. He has to make his own hours and if he doesn't go to his desk at all there is nobody to scold him. If he is a writer of fiction,

he lives in a world of fear. Each new day demands new ideas. And he can never be sure

“whether he's going to come up with a more not.”

Two hours of writing fiction leaves this particular writer absolutely drained. For those two hours he has been miles away. He has been somewhere else in a different place with totally different people.

And the effort of swimming back into the normal

surroundings is very great. It is almost a shock. The writer walks out of his workroom in a days. He wants a drink.

He needs it. It happens to be a fact that nearly every writer a fiction in the world drinks more whisky than his good for him.

He does it to give himself faith, hope, and encourage. A person is a fool to become a writer. His own compensation is absolute freedom. He has no master except his own soul

and that I'm sure is why he does it. I love that.

“Doll manages to make the act of writing alone in a room”

just as brutal, terrifying, and filled with adventure as his life in Africa will shell oil or as a fighter pilot or as a spy. But it's all worth it because of the freedom it offers. So let's talk more about Doll's particular act of writing.

If you ask 50 different authors about their process, you'll get 50 different answers. I really can't get enough of this stuff. Tony Gilroy, who wrote Michael Clayton and more recently created the Star Wars series Andor,

talks about initially setting up his writing office so his chair faced outside. But it soon felt like his ideas were flying out the window and he had to rearrange the furniture. Here's Doll in Thrillmaker, interviewed by Peter Wallace,

speaking about his own office. Then a ten-thirty, I fill a thermos with health coffee and take a mug in my hand and walk up to my work hut, which is away from the house. I've been the apple orchard about 150 metres from the house.

Could that sound any more idyllic? A writing hut in an apple orchard? A separate studio is actually pretty common among well-to-do writers. Doll's hut was modeled on one built for the poet Dylan Thomas. Playwright Arthur Miller wrote a lot in Brooklyn Heights,

but also escaped to a sparse little seven-by-ten-foot hut on his property in Connecticut. No decoration, no distractions. The novelist Philip Roth also built himself a hut and constructed it with a standing, lecturing-like desk

so he could confront his characters on his feet, either eye. Virginia Wolf built a small garden lodge in Sussex, her famous room of one's own. Tony Morrison transformed a boat house on the Hudson River in which to do her wedding.

As I record this, I'm in my house in Brooklyn two doors down from the brownstone where Norman Miller wrote his most famous books. Mailer didn't exactly have a hut, but he renovated the top floor of his house, his office, to look and feel exactly like a ship with a long haul and slanted windowed ceilings,

which is as crazy looking as you're imagining. Apparently, Mailer was afraid of water and working all day in what felt like a boat forced him to confront his fears, which I guess he found helpful in his writing. John Cheever, the torture check-off of the suburbs,

created maybe the most surreal office and morning commute of any writer I can pick up. Every day, Cheever would put on a suit and tie as if heading to Wall Street. He'd exit his apartment, take the elevator down with the other commuters heading to work,

but he'd continue past the lobby to the basement of his building. He'd unlock a small storage room, stripped down to his underpants, and right all day, surrounded by pipes and electrical boxes. When he was done, he'd get dressed and go back upstairs.

Like I said, every writer does something unique. Here's Dahl, again, from Thrillmaker, on his set-up inside his writing studio. And I go into this splendid room, which I really enjoy, because it's so comfortable as an armchair.

And I put my feet up on a trunk,

“which I filled with wood to make it hard.”

And the trunk is tied to the legs as a chair, with bits of glass, and I can put my feet on the trunk like that and push, and it won't go away. Writing can be so scary. Laying back with your feet up, helps you relax. Stephen's on time, the greatest writer of musical theater,

wrote while fully laying down on his couch with a drink in his hand. David Milch, the brilliant creator of Deadwood and other TV shows, would away with his back flat on the floor and his trailer, and dictate all of his scripts to an assistant. Here's more of Dahl, with Peter Wallace on Thrillmaker.

And so I get up there, and I get really comfortable, and I take a writing board, which I've made myself, and I put it on the arms of the armchair. And underneath it, I put a roll of thick paper, so the writing board slopes exactly where I want it.

And I have six pencils, and I sharpen them, and I almost have a coffee, and I feel very comfortable. Whenever possible, Dahl wouldn't go back into the main house during his writing sessions.

If someone in the house needed him, they would flash out lamp from a switch in the nursery. One flash meant someone was asking for him, and two flashes meant an emergency.

The only time the late to never flash twice

was the day Olivia died, according to writer Barry Farrell. All of this elaborate setup, of course, is in service of trying to get lost in his writing, which is the goal of pretty much every writer, to lose time, to get into a flow state.

Dahl also used music to try to get there. Here he is, on the long running British radio show, Desert Island desks from 1979. I never used to start writing in the morning before putting on some very great music,

like a Beethoven quartet, and sitting listen to it in the hopes that some of this greatness would rub off on me, and that I would write better. As a matter of fact, it helped quite a lot,

because it is impossible after listening to great music to write absolute rubbish.

“The other most important decision for a writer”

is how long a stretch to write for. According to Barry Farrell, again, Dahl rarely ever worked in the evening. Dahl's ideal schedule was a session from 10 a.m. to noon in the morning,

and another from three to six in the afternoon. Two good stints with a solid break in between. Here's Dahl again on the author's eye. The great thing, of course,

is never to work for too long at the stretch,

because after about two hours, you are not a jaw-highest peak of concentration. So you have to stop. When I was trying to break in as a writer, I would write all day.

Thankers hours. But over time, you realize so many of those hours are just wasted. My favorite thinker on this subject is Oliver Burkeman.

In his essay on the three or four hours rule

“for getting creative work done, he writes,”

"You almost certainly can't consistently do the kind of work "that demands serious mental focus "for more than about three or four hours a day." He continues quote, "It's positively spooky how frequently

"this three to four hour range crops up "and accounts of the habits of the famous creative." Charles Darwin at work on the theory of evolution, 12 for two 90 minute periods, and one one hour period per day.

Thomas Jefferson, Charles Dickens, Virginia Wolf, Ingmar Bergman, and many more all basically followed suit. The lesson here is to ring fence three or four hours of undisturbed focus.

Ideally, when your energy levels are highest, just focus on protecting four hours and don't worry if the rest of the day is characterized by the usual scattered chaos, Burkeman explains,

and you'll be shocked at how much you get done if you just consistently put in three to four hours a day,

which is precisely what doll always did.

Let's turn now to what dolls will deliberately fought out writing process actually led to. I want to speak to someone who can talk a little more specifically about the books, because that dolls like I see, right?

That's fascinating as dolls life was. I successful as the film and TV adaptations have been, and as much ink has been spilled on the charges of anti-Semitism. If people are still thinking about role doll a hundred years from now,

he will be because of the books. Well, my name is Mark West. I'm an English professor at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. And my specialty is children's literature,

a young adult literature and the history of childhood. Mark is one of the world's experts on this subject. I asked him to start off by talking a little bit about how exactly doll changed the landscape of children's literature. But when he came on the scene as a children's author in 1961,

children's books during that 1950s time period and before, tended to be books that authors tried to make sure were quote-unquote good for children.

if not a more or less age,

they were upstanding in a way.

“What are the things that role doll brought to the old children's literature scene?”

Was he was trying to write children's books that appealed to children's sense of humor and the way they look at things, which is somewhat different from the way in which adults look at things. He was not interested in being preachy. There's nothing more holistic or diabetic about his books.

But in a sense of humor that runs through so many of his children's books, it's the kind of humor that children have, but the kind of humor that some adults find off putting. They find it a little crude in a way. Sometimes he's accused of breaking caboos in some ways,

playing into the things that kids find funny, such as things that are kind of gross in a way. There's a real odd discrepancy in the world that children's literature. A lot of there are award-winning children's books. Aren't books that adults like,

but kids sometimes don't like as much. Conversely, a lot of books that are really best selling books that kids love are not sometimes the books that adults love. adults like kids books for somewhat different reason than kids do. adults that like to read children's books,

and there are lots including me. Look for books that kind of bring them back to that sense of nostalgia, the childhood, in a sense, the sense of the good old days. But kids don't look at the world that way.

Kids are never nostalgic about childhood.

They're always ready to kind of push the envelope a little bit. One of the things that Roll Doll did in this books is he kind of played up the slightly adversarial relationship between kids and adults. Creating adversarial relationships is, of course, a major theme in dolls personal life, too. Mark actually got to spend some time with Doll, not long before Doll's death.

He asked Doll about paving the way for the explosion of children's lit that came in his wake. One of the things that he said to me when we were talking about writing for kids is he said, "Well, the kids sometimes see adults as the enemy." And by that he meant that he thought that in some ways kids think of adults as these big people, powerful people, who are trying to civilize that.

But in some ways kids don't want to be civilized in some ways that famous wine from signified civilization in this discontence. Well, in some ways kids are part of that discontence business in some ways kids are reluctant to be civilized. And you see that play out in children's sense of humor.

So when Doll became successful, first with James in the giant peach, and then Charlie in the chocolate factory, and then the other books that came after that, he kind of opened up the door for other children's authors to write children's books that really appealed to children's tastes rather than the tastes of adults. But of course, very few other children's authors ever achieved anything close

to Doll's commercial or critical success.

When the Guardian came out with his list of the 100 best novels ever, not children's novels, just novels. Doll's the BFG came in at number 88, only a little bit behind classics by Salbello and Gabriel Garcia Marquez. I asked Mark how Doll's work evolved over time,

and especially how his characters changed.

“You'll see a progression. And one of the things that I think is interesting about that progression”

is you'll see child characters, the central characters getting more and more agency. So in the very first children's books, like James and the giant peach and Charlie in the chocolate factory, you have really imaginative situations, a very clever writing, but the central characters are kind of passive. Things happen to them, things happen to James, things happen to Charlie,

and they're good kids, but they're not really taking a lot of action in the context of their plots. But as you work your way up ending up with Matilda, Matilda has so much agency, and some ways Matilda actually has more power in terms of her interactions with adult characters than the adults do. She outwits the adults. She outwits the teacher who runs the school.

She is much more clever than her parents, even though her parents think of themselves as being very smart and whatnot, Matilda is much smarter than they are. So that was something that I think Roll Doll showed that children's books and have characters where the kids really make a difference, where they have agency, but they can make decisions that matter, or they can outwit adults.

“That way I think he sort of similar to Mark Twain.”

There's a lot of connections between Mark Twain and Roll Doll and my opinion. But I think for Roll Doll, you showed us Kyle characters that you can root for

You see that actually plants stuff out and another really popular series

“that I think has connections to Roll Doll, and that is the Harry Potter series,”

where Harry and Hermione and the other kids in the Harry Potter books have in some ways more agency are able to do things that the adults are not able to do.

In some ways the kids are able to solve problems that the powerful gifted adults

around them are not able to solve. So in some ways the agency that you see with the character like Harry Potter, I think goes back to some of the characters that you would see in some of Roll Doll's children's books. [music] I'm Bailey Taylor, and this is It Girl.

You may know me from my It Girl series I've done on the streets of New York over the years, while I've got good news. I am bringing those interviews and many more to this podcast. Yes, we will talk about the style and the success, but we are also talking about the pressure, the expectations, and the real work with the women shaping culture right now.

As a woman in the industry, you're always underestimated.

“So you have to work extra hard, and you have to push the narrative in a way that doesn't compromise”

who you are in your integrity. You know, I like to say I was kind of like a silent ninja. Each week I have unfiltered conversations with female founders, creatives, and leaders to talk about ambition, visibility, and what it really takes to build something meaningful in the public eye. Because being in a girl isn't about the spotlight, it's about owning it.

I think the negatives need to be discussed, and they need to be told to people who maybe don't do this every day, just so they know what's really going on. I feel like pulling the curtain back is important. Listen to It Girl with Bailey Taylor on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

I'm Nancy Glass, host of the burden of guilt season 2 podcast. This is a story about a horrendous lie that destroyed two families. Late one night, Bobby Gumpride became the victim of a random crime. He pulls the gun, tells me to lie down on the ground. He identified Chamaine Hudson as the perpetrator.

Chamaine was sentenced to 99 years. And like Laura, this can't be real. I thought it was a mistaken identity. The best lie is partial truth. For 22 years only two people knew the truth.

Until a confession changed everything. I was a monster. Listen to burden of guilt season 2 on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I kind of orders to be in John Melancham, Innovator Award recipient.

My name is Cyrus. With performances by Alex Warren. Kaylani. Laney Wilson. Vittacris.

TLC. Shulton Kappa. An invoke.

Plus Taylor Swift makes her first award show appearance this year.

I was born. It's a bit Taylor's. It's a bit for me. It's a bit for all. So gold medal Olympian Alyssa Liu, Neo, Nicole Shersinger, Nikki Glaser, Sumber, Weiser, and more.

What's live on Fox? Thursday, March 26th, 7th, 7th, and listen to my heart radio stations across America and the free I heart app.

“Hey there, this is Josh from Stuff You Should Know, with a message that could change your life.”

Stuff You Should Know, Think Spring Podcast Playlist is available now, whether spring is sprung in your neck of the wood yet or not. The stuff you should know, Think Spring Playlist will make you want to get your overalls on, get outside, and get your hands in the dirt. You can get the stuff you should know, Think Spring Playlist on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And I also talked about the charges of bigotry against all, and what some have described as doll's volatile personality.

Markson's doll was equally volatile in his work. If he get like what he wrote, he oftentimes would just burn it, I mean literally burn it. He had this little spot outside his garden shed, which was made out of stone, where he would ritualistically burn it so that he couldn't be tempted to go back and try that that's enough. Because I know, this doesn't pass my test, we're going to burn it. He was a very theatrical over the top sort of person, and I think in some ways, when people look at rolled all of some of the things that he said, they don't really understand that he wasn't some ways, a very over the top sort of person, a person who would say things that might be considered certainly offensive.

But in terms of when he was trying to provide for children, I think he was very sincere about that. I think he wanted to provide kids with books that they would like to read books that would appeal to their tastes.

And books that would in some ways provide it with examples of kids who cope with difficult situations, but come out on top.

And some of them, and you see that, and almost all of these children's books.

“I think in some ways, people don't really understand that side of rolled all. Somebody who's kind of a commudgeon.”

Sometimes say things to no, they will get a rise out of you. He kind of didn't enjoy doing that. Some people say, oh rolled all was an SLB. Some people say, oh rolled all was the most gracious person you can ever imagine.

Well, in fact, he was both of those things. But you can pick out a quotation here or a quotation there to prove whatever case you want to.

But in some ways, he was just a very complex person and an interesting person. So I'm very grateful that he took the time out to talk to me and in just me to his family and and buy me many drinks.

“Dolls complexity is mirrored in the complex characters he created, especially in his adult fiction.”

Jessie Stern is a big old fan of Dolls Books for adults, especially Dolls in 1979 novel, My Uncle Oswald. I asked Jessie to tell us why.

It's a sense of discovery when you realize that the guy in the same guy who's been writing all these children books that you love also wrote adult books, especially when you're a teenager or a free teenager, whatever I was and think I was at summer camp when I found my uncle Oswald. Right, so you're just starting to read books that have sex in it and it feels like you know, you're getting away with something like you're doing something that's forbidden. It kind of blew my mind that the same person, so do both of these things. There was definitely a time in the development of my own brain where that was incomprehensible.

“How does one guy produces completely different worlds?”

Why would the guy who's trying to make me laugh and smile and feel all these warm feelings, you know, also want to scare the crap out of me or why does the sky want to tell these dirty stories? Definitely in my mind. But I'm the last one. I just love the story. I loved how it was presented. You know, there's this whole introduction to my uncle Oswald where Oswald has died in his left behind this massive trove of his journals, which are so scandalous that it would bring down multiple governments if they were ever released to the public.

And his surviving nephew who's been possessed these stories is sifting through them. And this is the only one he found that is actually readable and it's still so salacious and so scandalous and you won't even believe that it's true. I loved that presentation. I was still I still love that presentation. I loved the fantasy of the massing on encyclopedia's worth of journals by the end of the lifetime, particularly in well-tled stories. And then you get into the story of my uncle Oswald, and it's just a lifefully dirty. It's kind of all these aspects that I love to it.

You know, the stat tracing through real history is in Vienna. They realized that at a certain time in Vienna, you can knock off multiple prominent people in history. Out of figure out how to get second Freud to have sex with his partner and how are they going to get first to have sex with her, you know, which can require dressing her up as a boy. They've got the scare of beetle that makes men, you know, insatiable and they just have to have sex right away. They've basically invented a condom, a dog, a dog, a dog, a dog experience as an animal, such as patriotic, they visit, you know, the mating of a cow on a ball. It's just filthy and hilarious. And it's a good story, you know, it's a sperm-ficed historical sperm-ficed story.

I mean, the idea that this guy could do bulk with the things it presents an opportunity for everyone for the reader to say, "Hey, you can do whatever you want." You can tell whichever stories you want. And it's really a challenge if you're, you know, a creative person to tell any story well, to make any story successful. And once you do, pretty much the response you're going to get from the world around you is he do that same thing again. Once you found a way into this marketplace, let's give them exactly the same thing, maybe a little bit different, but close enough.

They have free writer out there that you know, that is successful. The things that you know of them in terms of their work is just a small sample of what they're capable of. Any great writer could write anything. They only have the time, opportunity, inclination, reason, the right what they have written.

Yes, we will talk about the style and the success, but we are also talking about the pressure, the expectations and the real work with the women shaping culture right now.

“As a woman in the industry, you're always underestimated. So you have to work extra hard and you have to push the narrative in a way that doesn't compromise who you are in your integrity.”

You know, I like to say I was kind of like a silent ninja. Each week I have unfiltered conversations with female founders, creatives, and leaders to talk about ambition, visibility and what it really takes to build something meaningful in the public eye. Because being in Itch girl isn't about the spotlight, it's about owning it. I think the negatives need to be discussed and they need to be told to people who maybe don't do this every day, just so they know what's really going on. I feel like pulling the curtain back is important.

Listen to Itch girl with Bailey Taylor on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Nancy Glass, host of the burden of guild season 2 podcast. This is a story about a horrendous lie that destroyed two families. Late one night, Bobby Gumpride became the victim of a random crime. He pulls the gun, tells me to lie down on the ground. He identified Chamaine Hudson as the perpetrator.

Chamaine was sentenced to 99 years. And like lower this can't be real. I thought it was a mistaken identity.

The best lie is partial truth.

For 22 years only two people knew the truth until a confession changed everything. I was a monster. Listen to burden of guild season 2 on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hosted by ludicrous.

“I kind of ordered recipient, John Mellon Camp, Innovator of Wardrice at the end.”

My only Cyrus. With performances by Alex Warren, Kalani. The lady will say. ludicrous. Way.

TLC. Shorten cover. And invoke.

Plus Taylor Swift to make their first award show appearance this year.

Also gold medal Olympian Alyssa Liu. Neo. Nicole Shersinger. Nikki Glaser. Sumber. Wezer.

And more. Watch live on Fox. Thursday, March 26th. At 877 Central. And listen to my heart radio stations across America.

And the free iHeart app. Hey there.

“This is Josh from stuff you should know.”

With a message that could change your life. The stuff you should know. Think Spring Podcast playlist is available now. Whether Spring is sprung in your neck of the wood yet or not. The stuff you should know.

Think Spring playlist will make you want to get your overalls on. Get outside and get your hands in the dirt. You can get the stuff you should know. Think Spring playlist on the iHeart Radio app. Apple Podcasts.

Or wherever you get your podcasts. One of Dolls Adult Stories that I love. Is the great automatic Grammatisator from 1853. In the London Review of Books, Colin Burrow summarizes the plot. A couple of jaded men design a computerized rating machine with the aim of cornering the market in magazine short stories.

All the author has to do is press a button. Historical, satirical, philosophical, political, romantic, erotic humorous or straight. And use a style, classical, whimsical, racie, Hemingway, Faulkner, Joyce, feminine, etc. and the machine will do the rest. Sound familiar? It's exactly what's happening today with AI.

Every writer today is grappling with what to do by the fact that the act of writing can now be outsourced to artificial intelligence. My writer friends and I are genuinely terrified that the skill we've spent our lives working on will be completely useless in a few years. And that's exactly what Doll was envisioning in his story written over 70 years ago. Luckily, we're not quite there yet. But in a few years, it's pretty easy to imagine that you'll be able to just open the newest AI bot and say,

"Right me a thriller with the structure of Gillian Flynn, the outrageous characters of the Phoebe Waller Bridge Show, the Woody Dialogue of Billy Wilder, all in the tone of a dark, roll doll story. And in a few seconds, it'll pop out a story that would have taken me a year or more in a rest of the lab. Doll's story is a cautionary tale. It's the antithesis of what makes his work so memorable.

Namely, is incredibly compelling, unique voice that was mined from years of adventures.

Honestly, the fact that he's still everywhere over 35 years after his death is the legacy in itself. I started keeping a list of every time Doll or one of his creations popped up in something random I was watching or reading during the months that I made this show. The list got too long to keep up with. Once you start looking for him, you'll find him everywhere.

Whether it's a song lyric, or a politician's speech, or a TikTok about Matilda, that has tens of millions of views. Even if you just look for Charlie and the Chocolate Factory references, you'd be overwhelmed. A recent obituary I read in The New York Times for a pizza maker described him as The Willy Wonka of Cheese. A profile and vulture of Jay Leno called the comedian's garage "The Chocolate Factory" and he's Willy Wonka. Literally just this morning, I opened an email newsletter that I subscribed to on the science of happiness that referenced a golden ticket to well-being.

I defy you to find anywhere near the same number of references to any other writer with the possible possible exception of Shakespeare.

“Here's what I think Dolls and During Presence and Culture really means.”

The stories we tell our kids are so powerful, so foundational to who we become that will keep them alive no matter what we learn about their creator.

Doll's creations aren't everywhere despite his flaws, they're everywhere because we've decided his flaws don't matter enough to let his stories die. This isn't nostalgia, it's an active, collective moral decision. We're saying some art transcends its creator so completely that it belongs more to us than to them. Dolls' stories have become part of the architecture of childhood itself. Claire Deter, who we heard from earlier in the season, wrote an essay quoting the writer Marthek Galhorn's views on how some great mid-century artists were horrible human beings.

Galhorn wrote from experience, being married to Ernest Hemingway. She was also pals with Doll, and may have been thinking about both men when she said she didn't think an artist needed to be a monster, she thought a monster needed to make himself into an artist. "A man must be a very great genius to make up for being such a load some human being." I think there's a lot of wisdom in that, but I do wonder if Galhorn was maybe asking the wrong question here.

Maybe the real question isn't whether or not Doll's genius excuses his cruelty, but how his cruelty informed his genius. Who else could write so convincingly about the casual evil of adults, accept someone who understood that darkness intimately? Quoting a favorite European poet, Doll once said, "When I'm dead, I hope it's said my skins were scarlet, but my books were red." He definitely achieved that. Doll was such a legendary, almost mythic figure by the end of his life, but his death was pretty shocking to people.

Doll passed away at 74 from a blood disease. According to Raider Nadia Cohen, his family gathered round him and played one of his favorite pieces of music, while a nurse injected a lethal dose of morphine. As the needle pricked him, Doll shouted an obscenity. He was the last word he ever spoke. One last thing before we say goodbye, and this feels like kind of a perfect metaphor for any biographical work.

“You should know, Roll Doll is not Roll Doll.”

What I mean is, I haven't said his name correctly a single time over ten episodes. Even as celebrated as he was, Doll remains in many ways a stranger to us.

Here's Doll's first wife, Patricia Niel, from an interview with Arlene Herson, on the correct pronunciation of her husband's name.

Railed rule all of this. I was going to say, "How do you be at it because it's fell? R-O-A-A-R-O-A-O-G-R." In the story, that wasn't coming. It's been a giant pleasure spending this season with you. I hope you've enjoyed it, even a fraction as much as I have.

Now, let's finish the show by hearing from those Doll most wanted to please with his writing. This is from Roll Doll Cover to cover. In 1989 video, where Lily Steiner captured Doll's visit to Melbourne, Australia. Well, I like Roll Doll because he's stories of funny, and I like how long he's books are, and they're really interesting.

“Well, I think he's very interesting, and all right, boy, he presents his books.”

Over 70 years old, and he hunts in Norway. I don't know much about Roll Doll, but I know a lot about his books. Doll, he's a terrific writer, I really like this writing.

I was always surprised because some people say he's like, "Tankers, but he was really nice. He's not me at all."

He makes lots of children happy. Well, he's a nice man, and he's a great storyteller. To come and see Roll Doll is a good excuse for me. The secret world of Roll Doll is produced by a Maginario and Parallax Studios for iHeart Podcasts.

Windhill Studios with editing, scoring, and sound design by Mark Henry Phelps.

Editing by Ryan Seaton, music by AVM. Executive producers, Nathan Clokey, Cara Welker, Brian Grazer, Ron Howard, and Aaron Tracy. Additional voice performances and recreation by Mark Henry Phelps and 11 Laps. If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to rate and review the secret world of Roll Doll. Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Copyright, 2020. Imagine Entertainment, IHeart Media, and Parallax. I'm Bailey Taylor, and this is Icarol. This podcast is all about going deeper with the women shaping culture right now. Yes, we will talk about the style and the success, but we are also talking about the pressure,

the expectations, and the real work behind it all.

As a woman in the industry, you're always underestimated.

“So you have to work extra hard in a way that doesn't compromise who you are in your integrity.”

You know, I like to say I was kind of like a silent ninja. Listen to Icarol with Bailey Taylor on the IHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Nancy Glass, host of the burden of guilt season 2 podcast. This is a story about a horrendous lie that destroyed two families. Late one night, Bobby Gumpride became the victim of a random crime.

The perpetrator was sentenced to 99 years until a confession changed everything. I was a monster. Listen to burden of guilt season 2 on the IHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Let's go. Our IHeart Radio Music Awards are coming back. There's the March 26th live on Fox.

Watch as we honor the biggest stars from all genres of music that you love listening to all year long on your favorite IHeart Radio station and the IHeart Radio app. Hosted by Budakriss.

“I kind of ordered recipient, John Melancham, Innovator of Woodercipian.”

My own Cyrus. With performances by Alex Warren, Kalani. Laney Wilson. Budakriss. TLC.

Plus Taylor Swift makes her first award show appearance this year.

I'm glad I was born. It's a bit Taylor. It's for real. It's for real. Also Gold Medal Olympian Alyssa Liu.

Neo. Nicky Glaser. Sumber, Weiser, and more. Watch live on Fox. Thursday, March 26th.

Friday, 7th Central. And listen to my heart radio stations across America and the free IHeart app. Hey there.

“This is Josh from Stuff You Should Know.”

With a message that could change your life. The stuff you should know. Think Spring Podcast Playlist is available now. Whether Spring is sprung in your neck of the wood yet or not. The stuff you should know.

Think Spring Playlist will make you want to get your overalls on. Get outside and get your hands in the dirt. You can get the stuff you should know. Think Spring Playlist on the iHeart Radio app. Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

This is an iHeart Podcast. Guarantee Human.