The Secret World Of Roald Dahl, with Aaron Tracy, Part Two: the Man Behind the Author

Summary

Ridiculous History – “The Secret World Of Roald Dahl, with Aaron Tracy, Part Two: the Man Behind the Author”

Release Date: February 5, 2026
Host: Ben Bowlin (Noel Brown absent)
Guest: Aaron Tracy (writer, producer, creator of “The Secret World of Roald Dahl” podcast, founder of Parallax)

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Episode Overview

This episode continues Ben Bowlin’s deep-dive conversation with Aaron Tracy on the complex, fascinating, and sometimes troubling life of Roald Dahl—the iconic children’s author, RAF pilot, spy, and notorious spinner of tall tales. Tracy shares insights from extensive research, revealing how fact and myth blurred in Dahl’s stories about himself, his complicated legacy (including Dahl’s documented antisemitism), and the influence of mentors on a writer’s path. The episode concludes with Aaron Tracy discussing his own career in writing, his creative inspirations, funny Hollywood war stories, and the importance of mentoring in the arts.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Roald Dahl the Storyteller—or Self-Mythologizer?

[01:14–06:57]

• Dahl’s 'Irregulars' Past:
  Dahl’s service in the “Irregulars”—a shadowy intelligence group—is real, but many details in his wartime stories veer into embellishment.

  “We know a ton of it is true... but... into the specific details, you’re right that some of it might have just been Dahl’s storytelling.” – Aaron Tracy [02:47]

• Whimsical Memoirs:
  Dahl’s accounts of his RAF crash, for example, are factually based but altered for drama—he omits a copilot and changes causes.

• Social Circles:
  Dahl really did charm the Roosevelts and spent time at Hyde Park. However, stories of mixing martinis for FDR or being close confidants are likely enhanced for narrative effect.

  “I have no idea if that’s true or not. It feels a little bit like Dahl is just boasting...” – Aaron Tracy [06:57]

• Dahl and the 'Creative Spies’:
  Many in Dahl’s circle were writers and creatives moonlighting as spies—Noel Coward, Ian Fleming, David Ogilvy—encouraging mutual myth-making and narrative exaggeration.

2. The Contradiction at Dahl’s Core—War Hero and Antisemite

[08:06–13:08]

• Dahl’s Later Bigotry:
  Despite fighting the Nazis, Dahl became “unapologetically anti-Semitic” in later life, especially criticizing Israel during the Lebanon war and hurling broad anti-Jewish slurs.

  “He said in this interview, ‘There is a trait in the Jewish character that does provoke animosity. And even a stinker like Hitler didn’t just pick on them for no reason.’” – Aaron Tracy [09:50]
  “He could not separate his hatred for what the Israeli government was doing to the Lebanese with his feelings for Jews everywhere.” – Aaron Tracy [10:53]

• Host Reflection:
  Ben stresses the importance of distinguishing regimes from peoples:

  “The government of a place is more often than not, not the representative, not the full picture of the people of the place.” – Ben Bowlin [11:22]

3. Aaron Tracy on the Writing Life & Hollywood Strangeness

[13:44–20:17]

• Becoming a Writer:
  Tracy describes moving to LA, abandoning acting for writing, and the absence of a “clear path” into the industry.

  “There’s no one way to do it, unfortunately... you just find your own way.” – Aaron Tracy [14:53]

• ‘War Stories’ From Scriptland:

  • Adapting the board game Risk into a TV show, despite its lack of characters.

    “When you think about it for a few seconds, you then remember that there’s a pretty big obstacle, which is that there are no characters in Risk.” – Aaron Tracy [15:54]

  • Writing a TV pilot for USA with Oscar-winner Tom McCarthy acting, resulting in serious imposter syndrome.

    “Here I am trying to write dialogue for the reigning Oscar winner for Best Screenplay. I was so humiliated.” – Aaron Tracy [17:11]

4. Favorite Writers and Creative Inspiration

[19:08–22:04]

• Post-Dahl Detox:
  After finishing his podcast, Tracy is eager to shelve his Dahl books for a while.
• Literary Tastes:
  Enjoys Patricia Highsmith, Aaron Sorkin, William Goldman, Nora Ephron, Noah Baumbach, and Richard Linklater.
• Host’s Pick:
  Ben recently rediscovered Etgar Keret, whom he calls “the new Kurt Vonnegut.” [20:17]

5. Rob Reiner: Mentorship, Legacy, and Creative Lineage

[22:04–25:04]

• Reiner’s Impact:
  Tracy praises Rob Reiner as a mentor—caring, generous, and prodigiously talented.

  “He was such a great mentor figure for me... He would take me and my co writer Andrew out to lunch all the time, and just regale us with stories...” – Aaron Tracy [22:34]

• Castle Rock Anecdote:
  Reiner’s office had shelves of every script draft—Tracy secretly photocopied the first draft of When Harry Met Sally, originally titled Words With Love.
• Reiner’s Directorial Hot Streak:
  Tracy posits that Reiner’s run from the late 1980s–early 1990s (including When Harry Met Sally, The Princess Bride, A Few Good Men) rivals Hitchcock.

6. Lessons from ‘The Secret World of Roald Dahl’

[25:04–29:52]

• Sympathy and Tragedy:
  Tracy hopes listeners see Dahl as a complicated figure—a product of both triumphs and tragedies, and ultimately someone searching for identity.
• The Power of Mentorship:
  Tracy draws a parallel between Reiner and Dahl—both had crucial mentors (Norman Lear for Reiner; Charles Marsh and William Stevenson for Dahl).
  • Dahl’s postwar career might have faltered if not for Marsh, who funded him and introduced him to top editors.
• Mentorship in the AI Era:
  Tracy, who teaches at Yale, stresses the urgent need for mentorship, particularly as AI blurs the boundaries of creative entry.

  “When you break down the barriers to what it means to become a writer, mentorship becomes so much more important. It becomes essential...” – Aaron Tracy [28:36]

7. Aaron Tracy’s Upcoming Projects

[30:16–31:27]

• The Honeymoon Period:
  Tracy’s new audio-only novel for Macmillan, featuring a full cast, available soon via audiobook platforms.
• Find His Work:
  Portfolio available at listentoparallax.com.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Dahl’s Self-Mythologizing:
  “He’ll never pass up the opportunity for a really good story when he can.” – Aaron Tracy [03:41]

• On Creative Espionage:
  “These are all creative writers who are somehow caught up in the spy game.” – Aaron Tracy [07:38]

• On Dahl’s Contradictions:
  “How did he go from fighting Nazis to agreeing with their horrific ideology?” – Ben Bowlin [09:20]

• On Mentorship and AI:
  “We need mentors more than we ever have, I would argue. And so I think Dahl and Reiner are really good reminders about how important mentors are.” – Aaron Tracy [29:26]

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Key Timestamps

• 01:14 — Start of deep dive: separating truth from myth in Dahl’s stories
• 04:29 — Dahl and the Roosevelts: what’s verifiable, what’s inflated
• 08:06 — Discussion of Dahl’s wartime exploits and his anti-Semitism
• 13:44 — Aaron Tracy on becoming a writer in Hollywood
• 15:36 — Hollywood ‘war stories’: Risk adaptation; Tom McCarthy pilot
• 19:08 — Favorite books and writers; 'breaking up' with Roald Dahl
• 22:04 — Rob Reiner’s mentorship and body of work
• 25:04 — ‘Secret World of Roald Dahl’ takeaway: complexity, tragedy, and mentorship
• 30:16 — Aaron’s upcoming audio novel and where to find his work

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Final Thoughts

This episode paints Roald Dahl as a complicated, larger-than-life figure—both a mythmaker and a man flawed by bigotry. Through vivid anecdotes, thoughtful reflection on the relationship between fact and fiction, and personal tales from the world of screenwriting, Aaron Tracy and Ben Bowlin explore the messy intersection between creative invention, historical memory, and personal legacy. The need for mentorship—especially in an era of AI—emerges as a vital throughline, connecting not just the world of Dahl and Reiner, but all creative journeys.

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Listen to Aaron Tracy’s work and learn more at listentoparallax.com
Check out “The Secret World of Roald Dahl” podcast for more in-depth stories.

Transcript

[A]

Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartradio. Welcome back to the show, fellow ridiculous historians. Thank you as always, so much for tuning in. This is part 22222 of our continuing conversation with none other than Aaron Tracy, the award winning writer, the founder of Parallax, a producer who's done pretty much everything, including creating the new hit podcast, the Secret World of Roald Dahl. That is our super producer, Max the Gobstopper Williams. Max, how are we doing today?

[B]

Hello. I'm doing well. I am excited for the second half of this interview. It is absolutely amazing. It is great to have Aaron on here with his excellent knowledge and takes and so, yeah, excited for the second part.

[A]

And our pal Noel is on an adventure currently, but will be returning very soon. So in the meantime, if you haven't checked out part one of this interview, do that first. We'll wait. We'll still be right here on your app or on your phone or whatever. And then get back to us and join us. We're going to dive right in. This is an iHeart podcast, Guaranteed Human. We also know, and the story of the Irregulars is something you explore pretty early on in the podcast. We also know that we can prove he was in the Irregulars, but as you have pointed out in the course of your extensive research, you found that Dahl was first and foremost a committed, immaculate storyteller who maybe zhuzhed things up a little bit. What he's talking about his past. Could you tell us? I'm trying to think of a diplomatic way to say this. So just to put it bluntly, because Roald Dahl is not with us on the show today, How much of what he said about his past escapades was true and how much of it was more like a good story?

[C]

Yeah, I mean, it's a great question and impossible to answer, of course, but we know a ton of it is true. We know sort of the foundation is all true. I think when you get past the foundation, into the specific details, you're right that some of it might have just been Dahl's storytelling. If you look at his first couple memoirs about his childhood, they're written very much in the style of his children's books. And so there's almost like a kind of a wink, wink. I think that these are so whimsical, so fantastical, it's like, yes, these are memoirs, these are autobiographies, but come on, it's not like every detail is true. So there's a bunch of examples of him exaggerating, like in his Memoir. He talks about his crash when he's flying for the raf, and he talks about being alone and the circuitry malfunctioning and crashing in the desert. In truth, what we know is that there was another pilot with him. And it wasn't just that the circuitry in the plane malfunctioned. It was that Dahl had run out of fuel. But he likes the story, and we see that sort of throughout his life that he's always sort of. He'll never pass up the opportunity for a really good story when he can.

[A]

Okay, so not necessarily lying or making things up entirely out of whole cloth, but. But kind of painting himself perhaps as a bit more of a heroic figure.

[C]

Yeah. Okay, here's another example. As a spy, Dahl was getting close to the Roosevelts. Eleanor was a huge fan of that story that I mentioned that Dahl wrote the Gremlins, and she used to read it to her grandkids and she invited him over to the White House. And because everyone loved Dahl, as I mentioned, he was charming and handsome and dashing and a great storyteller. He charmed the Roosevelts and they invited him, invited him up to Hyde park, their weekend retreat, and he went up several different times. So we know that that's all true. What we don't know for sure is everything that Dahl put in his memoir and talked about in interviews, which is that FDR would ask him to mix martinis and FDR took him for a joyride in his specially made car. And that they just became like incredibly close friends. Hard to know, right? But Dahl definitely did spend time with the Roosevelts and definitely did write a 12 page report after the first weekend that he spent with them over the July 4th weekend in 1940 and sent back to Churchill about everything Churchill was dying to know about fdr. Namely, does FDR want to help us? Does he want to enter the war? What's his current thinking on the situation? So all of that is absolutely true.

[A]

Okay, so then we have. So we know at the core that that kind of initiative is successful, which is great to hear. So the important parts, at least in that instance, are true. But I've got to say, it reminds me of something that I've seen happen in Los Angeles where somebody is at a restaurant and they cite a celebrity across the dining room. And then later they go to their friends and they say, oh, Robert De Niro. Yeah, I know him. We have dinner together sometimes.

[C]

That's great.

[A]

So maybe there's a little bit of that kind of showmanship. Yeah.

[C]

He's also 26 years old, right. So who doesn't boast and exaggerate a little bit when they're 26, especially when you're in these kinds of. When you're running in these kinds of circles. There's another story where he says that he went back to his superiors after dating Clare Bouffelus for a little while and said he couldn't do it anymore. She was just too voracious. He couldn't take her anymore.

[A]

Wow.

[C]

And he makes up this whole story about how the Ambassador says to him, you got to go back. You got to do it. Remember that Charles Lawton movie about Henry viii, where Charles Lawton sort of turns the camera and says, the things I've done for England, you got to suck it up. You got to do that yourself. I have no idea if that's true or not. It feels a little bit like Dahl is just boasting about Clare's appetite for him. He would later go on to put the things I've done for England line into Sean Connery's mouth in James Bond. So these guys, they like exaggerating. They like a good story. I mean, I don't think it's necessarily a coincidence that the irregulars that I mentioned that Dahl is hanging out with are all creators. They're all creatives. Fleming, the writer of James Bond, David Ogilvie, who would go on to write, to create out of whole cloth, like, original, the most influential advertising campaigns. Noel Coward, the playwright. These are all creative writers who are somehow caught up in the spy game.

[A]

And I also love the idea of Roald as a reluctant Lothario. You know what I mean? Like Casanova with regrets. He's just so beloved is the thing. So, yeah, this takes us to another aspect of his wartime years that we have to return to, because it's something that I know obviously profoundly disturbs us, and it disturbs everyone in the audience as well. We know, or I hope, which is a strange contradiction in his ideology and his perspective. One of the biggest questions I had is, okay, this guy fought for the Allies in World War II against the Axis powers, against the Nazis. He has that infamous series of infamous interviews where later, despite putting his life on the line for the Allied powers and to combat the horrors of the Axis powers, he does later, just because there's no way around it, he's inarguably, unapologetically anti Semitic, and he doubles down on it throughout his later life. Is there some context that could explain this apparent contradiction? How did he go from fighting Nazis to agreeing with their horrific ideology.

[C]

Yeah, I mean, I think you're right that they're connected. He saw himself as well as everyone he was fighting with in the 1940s as sort of saving the Jews of Europe. In later years, he became incredibly enraged at the. What Israel was doing, specifically what Israel was doing in Lebanon. And so the most famous example of Dahl's bigotry coming out is this interview he gave to the New Statesman in 1983. And the reason he gave that interview is because he had just written a book review about the Lebanon war. And in that book review, he was really critical of. Of Israel. But what he did was this sort of classic anti Semitic trope. Instead of criticizing the leadership of the Israeli government and the military, he criticized all Jews everywhere. So he said in this interview, there is a trait in the Jewish character that does provoke animosity. And even a stinker like Hitler didn't just pick on them for no reason. He did later say in an interview, I've become anti Semitic. He could not separate his hatred for what the Israeli government was doing to the Lebanese with his feelings for Jews everywhere.

[A]

This is such a tremendously important point. History is always closer to that. It looks in the rearview mirror. We like to say, and I think you're bringing to light something important and powerful, that the government of a place is more often than not, not the representative, not the full picture of the people of the place. Most people around the planet, they want to know that they're going to eat something later that day. They want to have a safe place to sleep. They want their kids to have a better life, and they want to be successful. And I think it's something that, especially in these divisive times, we all could do well to remember. It's a shame that Dahlia fell so hard. But this. I agree with you that at least in my limited experience, not being a scholar in this regard, in my limited experience, I didn't clock stuff like that. I was probably in his work when I'm reading it. Like you, I didn't clock anti Semitism, but also I was kind of a dirtbag kid. So all the times I saw somebody called fat ugly, I thought it was hilarious, you know? So maybe not the best judge.

[C]

Yeah, no, I get you.

[A]

There's something else we want to get to a bit of a plot twist in our conversation here now, folks. Right now you can check out the Secret World of Roald Dahl, available wherever you find your favorite shows. But we don't want to end our conversation there. We have been Talking a lot about one writer, Aaron, but if I could beg a little bit more of your time, I'd like to ask you about another writer, a guy named Aaron Tracy. You. Is that okay? Is that too much?

[C]

I'm happy to talk about my writing. Yeah, of course.

[A]

Awesome. Okay. Thank you so much. So one of the questions that I know a lot of current writers or budding writers in the audience tonight are gonna have is how did you become a writer? What Drew, and what draws you to the written word?

[C]

So I've always been, I think, like you, a giant movie buff and TV buff, too. And so I wanted to do that. It's not so much that I just wanna. That I just wanted to write. It's that I wanted to be involved in movies and TV as a kid. And so at first I thought I could be an actor and. And then quickly realized I did not have the talent for that or the interest in that. And so the next best thing was being the storyteller. So, just like Dahl, just like millions of other people, I moved to Los Angeles after school and just sort of tried to make it, and there's no one way to do it, unfortunately. It's not like a apprenticeship like in the old days, or even in a professional.

[A]

Like a trade.

[C]

Yeah, exactly. There's no clear path, and so everybody just finds their own way. And for me, I just wrote a bunch of scripts until I had a couple that I was willing to show people at least, and then just got my first job and kind of moved up from there.

[A]

That's awesome. And it's going to be inspiring for a lot of our fellow ridiculous historians to. To hear about this journey. Next question on this subject. Okay, man. What is. To the degree that you're comfortable sharing on air, what is the strangest project you ever found yourself in? Have you ever had one of those moments where you looked around and thought, holy smokes, how did I get here?

[C]

Oh, my God, so many. I mean, anybody. Anybody that spent enough time writing TV and movies is going to have just banana stories. I mean, the first one that comes to me is a writing partner and I, my friend Andrew, we were working with Lionsgate on a project, and then they teamed up with a toy company, and they brought us the board game Risk to try to adapt into tv, which was, I mean, incredible, right? Like, it's. It's got so much name recognition, it's been around forever. People really know it. But when you think about it for a few seconds, you then remember that there's a pretty big Obstacle, which is that there are no characters in Risk, so you have to make up everything. I mean, it's completely nuts. It's like the new. You know, it's not so much new anymore, but for. For a while, and still, to a large degree, IP is everything. Can you get a cereal box? Can you get a board game? Can you get comic book? What can we do that's already in the public consciousness? What can we take and turn into a show? And so Risk was a truly crazy one for me. We spent a lot of time on that. I'll say another just kind of totally surreal moment in my career was I wrote a pilot for the USA Network, and we ended up making it, which was great. We cast an amazing writer who was also an actor to play one of the essential roles in the pilot, and that was Tom McCarthy. And Tom McCarthy had just come off winning the Oscar for Best screenplay. And so here I am writing for this guy. I'm like, you know, I'm so insecure about my writing. All writers are insecure about their writing, Right? But, like, this is my first big pilot to get made, and here I am trying to write dialogue for the reigning Oscar winner for Best Screenplay. I was so humiliated. I was just so insecure. That was a very tough Hollywood experience for me. But he couldn't have been sweeter, and he didn't constantly tell me what an idiot or what a bad writer I was. So I would chalk that up as a win.

[A]

Yes, I would agree. I think you're being a little hard on yourself, my friend. My spidey sense is telling me that you probably have war stories for days in the trenches of writing so much for TV and film, and thank you for sharing those. Between us, I am convinced that there are probably a couple of stories that are not for the air.

[C]

Maybe we can. Hollywood's a dark place, man. Yeah, it's tough out there.

[A]

We can hang out in the future and talk about some of this stuff, but I love picking the brains of writers of people who have successfully journeyed in this field. Right. And with that, one of the questions we always like to ask when we get together in these kind of circles is, who are some of your favorite writers today? What are you reading?

[B]

What are you doing?

[A]

What are you digging? Are you at the point now after the Secret World of Roald Dahl where you're saying, I need a break from this one author?

[C]

Yes, I'm definitely putting all of my Roald Dahl books in the closet. I've got a stack of them in front of Me. But yeah, as soon as the show's over, they're all going away for a while. Yeah. I mean, I have so many favorite writers. I've been reading in terms of fiction. I've been reading a lot of mysteries lately. Patricia Highsmith, I recently, recently discovered who's just as extraordinary as everybody says. They're great page turners and they make you think. In film and tv. I'm a giant Aaron Sorkin fan. I love William Goldman, I love Nora Ephron. So many screenwriters. But I love Marty Supreme. I love the screenplay there. Noah Baumbach is one of my all time favorite writers. And he's got a new movie this year, Richard Linklater too. He's got two new movies. Yeah. I mean, basically too many to name.

[A]

Yeah. And that's a great spot to be. Right. As a reader, as an audience member. That's the kind of stuff we love. I recently, because I was on some long plane flights, I recently got back into the phenomenal short story writer Edgar Karat. Pretty hard. I. To me, he's like the next or the new Kurt Vonnegut. So it's. Yeah, it's cool. Snappy. Just on the edge of approachable. Surreal, I guess we could call it. I don't know if that's an aesthetic we're just making up on the air. Aaron, One other thing that stood out that I saw you mention often in conversation was that just as Roald Dahl had heroes, you have heroes of your own, one of whom is the legendary Rob Reiner. We were immensely fortunate on one of our sister shows, Stuff They Don't Want yout to know, to interview Mr. Reiner for a podcast he did on the controversy and conspiracy surrounding the JFK assassination. And for my money, it comes the closest to answering some of those unanswered questions, just because I think it would be fun for Rob to have heard us fanboy a little and embarrass him. Could you tell us about why this guy in particular is such a hero of yours?

[C]

Yeah, I mean, we could start the podcast over. I could go another hour just talking about Rob. I absolutely loved him. He was such a great mentor figure for me. He produced a pilot that I wrote and so I got to work in his office at Castle Rock. They put me in the room next door to his office, and so I got to constantly hear him on the phone in the next room and got no work done, of course, but he was just so caring. He would take me and my co writer Andrew out to lunch all the time. And just regale us with stories because he had been in the business for decades and decades and decades and. And knew everybody and everybody loved him. He's also, besides being, I think, one of the great directors of all time, he was a fantastic producer. He and his company produced so many movies that people probably don't even think of in relation to him. Like the Shawshank Redemption comes to mind. But when I talk about Dahl's time in Hollywood in the podcast, I talk a little bit about the various runs by great directors, because Dahl worked with Hitchcock during Hitchcock's great run. And a lot of people think that that was maybe the greatest run by a director of all time, Hitchcock, leading up to Psycho. But I think you could argue that Rob Reiner in the late 80s to early 90s actually had the greatest run of movies ever. I mean, in this very brief period of time, in less than a decade, he made When Harry Met Sally and A Few Good Men and the American President and Stand By Me, the Princess Bride. The body of work is extraordinary. And just how giving he was and how willing he was to share his wisdom and encourage young writers. I had him sign the script that I wrote that he produced, and it's one of my prized possessions. One of my other prized possessions is, and this says a lot about how much Dahl, or excuse me, how much Reiner, really appreciated writers. In the basement of Castle Rock, where I used to sneak down after hours, he had a room that was lined with bookshelves from floor to ceiling. And on those bookshelves, he had every draft of every one of the scripts he ever developed. And so there's like two shelves that are just drafts of When Harry Met Sally, for instance, which is a movie I love all the way back from when it was just called Words With Love. That was the original title.

[A]

Oh, man.

[C]

And I took that, and I went upstairs and I photocopied it, and I have that in my drawer now, too. I never told him I did that, but, yeah, it was so nice to go down there and be surrounded by the work of writers that Rob shepherded.

[A]

Wow. This is a story that I was totally unaware of. And I think it speaks to this practice of lineage, because it sounds like in that process, you were encountering something very like an apprenticeship to a journeyman position. And I think we could also compare Rob Reiner to Roald Dahl in that he also. Dahl also inspired countless writers, countless folks who would go on to maybe write their own young adult novels, or people who were so Just had their minds so rocked by the worlds that Dahl created, that they went out and creatively fed off of that energy, off of that vibe with that. And thank you for being so generous with your time here with that. What do we hope our listeners will take away from the Secret World of Rule Dahl? Like, we haven't heard all the episodes yet, and we're not going to ask you to spoil them. But when the curtains close and the credits roll on the podcast and we're walking away after we've heard the very last episode, the very last word, what do we hope the audience has learned?

[C]

I mean, in the largest sense, I hope people just get a sense for what an incredibly interesting, noisy life this guy lived and how much he was searching for his identity. And so I hope people will. They'll, of course, be somewhat turned off by the bigotry, but I think that people will also have a lot of sympathy for him. What we didn't get into today is all the tragedies that Dahl experienced, especially with his family as an adult, which directly led to him writing the children's books. So I hope people will have some sympathy for him as well. But you brought up something else as you were talking about Rob Reiner, that I hope people take away from this, which is both Rob Reiner and Roald Dahl had great mentors. Rob talks about Norman Lear, the creator and showrunner of all in the Family, being his great mentor, giving him his job on all in the Family and then financially supporting him when he made the Princess Bride, just absolutely, essentially to his life. And Roald Dahl also had a couple really important mentors. We talked about William Stevenson, but Roald Dahl also had this guy named Charles Marsh, who was an incredibly wealthy newspaper magnate who was instrumental in Dahl becoming a writer. After the war, when Dahl moved back to England and moved into his mother's basement, and it looked like maybe that was going to be it for Dahl and nothing would ever come of him. Charles Marsh said no way. Charles Marsh had met him in D.C. when he was a spy and brought Dahl back to New York, paid for Dahl to be in an apartment, and introduced Dahl to Harold Ross, who was the founding editor of the New Yorker, and really started Dahl's writing career in that way. And I bring these up because I teach. I'm on the creative writing faculty at Yale. And so this idea of mentorship is super important to me. And I think right now, this idea of mentorship is more important than ever because we're living in a period which, because of AI, because of the chatbots, the barriers to becoming a writer are fewer and fewer. We can actually now just ask a chatbot to write a script for us, and it won't be good right now, but at least it will look like a script, and at least it will have a lot of the elements of a script. And so when you break down the barriers to what it means to become a writer, mentorship becomes so much more important. It becomes essential to help writers figure out what their point of view is, to figure out how to translate their sensibilities into their words on the page. Because AI writing can just be so flat and uninteresting. And so we need mentors more than we ever have, I would argue. And so I think Dahl and Reiner are really good reminders about how important mentors are. And that my hope, of course, is that people really seek them out and that people who are further along in their career are more willing to sort of mentor younger writers.

[A]

Just, what a phenomenal way to bring everything together. At the end of the conversation, I paused for a second and hopefully Max cut out that slight silence, because I was just hypnotized when you're making these points. And then I forgot for a second that we are on air and supposed.

[C]

To be doing the show.

[A]

But this leads us all to our very last question. Where can people learn more about your work outside of the Secret World of Roald Dahlia? And if you're game for it, could you give us a little teaser about an upcoming audio novel called the Honeymoon Period?

[C]

Oh, yeah. So I'm writing a novel for macmillan. It's actually going to be my first novel, so I'm excited about that. And, yeah, it'll never be available in print. It is for audio only. So I'm writing it as a novel, but we're going to have a full cast and record it, and so you'll be able to listen to that wherever you go. Audiobooks. And that's very nice. If anybody wants to know about my other work, they can go to my website, which is my company is called Parallax. And so it's Simply listen to parallax.com and people can see all of the audio dramas that I've written with lots of different actors over the years for Audible and for iheart. And my novel will be up there, too.

[A]

And there you have it, folks. The Secret World of Roald Dahl with Aaron Tracy. This is available now. Wherever you find your favorite shows, we would love for you to check it out. We are on the edge of our seats, actually, because we came in, I'LL confess, we came in like some other folks, doubtlessly who thought we knew a lot about Roald Dahl. Spoiler. Folks, you're going to be astonished by how much you. You don't know just yet. So tune in, let us know your thoughts. Ed, Aaron, thank you so much for joining us.

[C]

Thank you so much. This has been truly a pleasure. This has been great.

[A]

And there you have it, folks. Friends, neighbors, countrymen. Max, there's so much we didn't get to, and there is so much that I think you and I and the audience alike learned just from talking to Aaron.

[B]

Yeah, there was so much to get to. I mean, it would be amazing if there was another podcast for people to go listen to where a guy like Aaron Tracy would break down these details in much greater and robust ideas. What do you think about that? Wouldn't that be something you'd want to listen to?

[A]

Yeah, that's an amazing point, Max. It would almost be like a secret world all its own. A secret world of Roald Dahl. We should text Aaron with that. We should pitch that name to him.

[B]

I guess we'll just be wanting until somebody does it, right?

[A]

It is available now. This is the kind of show where you don't have to pay for the whole seat because you're only going to need the edge. We're excited to hear about your favorite Roald Dahl books. Please hit us up on our Facebook group, ridiculous historians, et cetera, et cetera. In the meantime, big, big thanks to Our super producer, Mr. Max Williams, and tune in soon, the very next week after this. We are going to bust some myths about ancient history and the shape of the planet.

[B]

Turns out this Earth is actually just flat.

[C]

Mm.

[B]

Yeah, the conspiracy is at its round. No, no, no, no. That's not the conspiracy we're talking about. A special shout out to my actual facts quote Lauren Vogelbaum brother, Alex Williams, for this slappin beep you are listening to right now.

[A]

And big, big thanks to Dr. Rachel Big Spinach Lance AJ Bahamas Jacobs, and.

[B]

Oh, do we have to thank him, the omnipresent villain of our podcast, Mr. Jonathan and doesn't wanna ride the glass elevator. Strickland.

[A]

Mm. He's our very own Bond villain. And actually, just off mic, he's the nicest guy. I know we roast him at the end, but sometimes I feel a little bad and I send him a text to check it.

[B]

Last time I saw him, we sat in the office and we talked about video games for an hour straight.

[A]

Yes, well, every conversation with him is about an hour straight.

[B]

And between the two of us, we have about 24 inches of hair.

[A]

So there's a reason that is hilarious, folks. We'll tell you when the Quizzter appears on the show again in the near future. In the meantime, thanks so much for tuning in. As Noel Brown, my brother in podcast combat, always says, we'll see you next time, folks.

[C]

Foreign. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

[A]

This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human.