October 5, 2025 • 30 mins
In this episode we talk to thriller writing legend Patricia Cornwell about her career and her most famous character, Kay Scarpetta, star of novels from the game changing Postmortem to her latest, Sharp Force - and a soon to be aired TV series featuring Nicole Kidman and Jamie Lee Curtis.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Murder Junction everyone. This week on the show,
we are talking to crime writing royalty, a legend, a superstar,
an inspiration, the queen of the forensic thriller. I have
run out of superlatives. We are talking, of course, to
Patricia Cornwell, creator of the case Scarpetta series, amongst others. Patricia,
welcome to the show.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
Thank you. It's my great pleasure to be here, and
hello to everybody.
Speaker 3 (00:26):
Isn't this amazing that we have Patricia Cornwell on our show?
I mean, when you started out writing two hundred years ago,
vas and you were unsuccessful for so long, did you
ever think you would reach the stage where you'd be
interviewing Patricia Cornwell.
Speaker 1 (00:42):
No. And I'm sure you get a lot of this
fan stuff whenever you're doing these kind of interviews, But
do you know what I'm going to tell you A
true story. I think I read Post more than about
fifteen or sixteen years ago, and like millions of other readers,
I was immediately sort of taken away by the story.
But for me, because I have spent twenty years working
(01:04):
at a research university in a crime and security department
where I work with forensic scientists, on the cutting edge
of the research. It's something that I took straight to heart,
and it's why I have a forensic scientist as a
co protagonist in one of my series. So for me,
it really is a real fanboy.
Speaker 3 (01:20):
So you're stealing Patricia Cornwell's material. Sorry, Patricia, I really
apologize for fast stealing your stuff. Is that what you're saying?
Speaker 1 (01:27):
Vast absolutely, But let's start at the beginning, Patricia. Let's
start with you. For those who don't, the few people
on earth who haven't heard of you or radio books,
where did you grow up? Well?
Speaker 2 (01:39):
I was born in Miami, Florida, but for the most
part I grew up in the hills of North Carolina,
Western North Carolina, which is why I can saynd like
this and say on real country if you want me to.
But I try not to because then people change their
opinion of me. And I did tell the producers for
the Scarpettit TV show that Nicole Kidman did not need
(02:00):
to develop a Southern accent for this, because Scarpetta does
not have one, even if I do so, she does
not sound like me when you when you see her
in the show. But I grew up in North Carolina,
went to college in North Carolina. But the big thing
that helped get me where I am today is that
when I graduated from college and I didn't know what
(02:22):
I was going to do, but I knew I liked writing,
and it was the one thing that I seemed to
be able to do. And I wasn't very good at
much else, it seemed like. But I became a journalist
and I went to work for the Charlotte Observer and
they gave me the police beat, and that is when
I know, you know that I had never read a
murder mystery. I had no interest in crime at all.
(02:44):
When I got that police beat and I thought, how
can they do this to me? They're going to make
me go right around in a staff car from four
to midnight looking for crimes and bad things. I thought
it was horrifying and I hated the thought of it.
And then guess what happened the minute I started getting
into it. I got a snake bit by it. And
they a very successful investigative journalists for them in a
(03:08):
very quick period of time. But the one thing I
could never figure out is when I would get to
the crime scene, the homicide scene, the body was gone
and I thought, what are they doing with it? This
was way back in like nineteen seventy nine, nineteen eighty,
as you know from my skinny little slim back there.
I've been around for a long time, but I thought,
(03:30):
what are they doing with it? So roll ahead. I
won't bore you with all of the minutia of how
I got there. But when I began to do research
for crime novels, I started reading a few murder mysteries
because I've never read any read P. D. James, Agatha
Christy and Dorothy Sayers. I went to a second Head
paperback shop and spent maybe a dollar on all three.
And then I went to the local medical examiner's office.
(03:53):
Someone got me in with the deputy chief. She gave
me a tour, and this was in Richmond, Virginia, because
i'd gotten married and we'd moved. And that's when I thought,
I'm going to write books about crime and have a
medical examiner in it. And of course we all know
what happened to Scarpettit took over everything.
Speaker 1 (04:14):
Well, three books for a dollar. Times have changed, and
it's lucky you're not my colleague there. Who's the Scotsman?
Speaker 3 (04:20):
And he I was going to say I haven't changed
that much. I can still sell three of mine for
a dollar.
Speaker 1 (04:24):
My colleague here is a Scott and he would have
asked for change out of that dollar.
Speaker 3 (04:27):
That's true, I would have. I would have a dollar
three books I want for that's a wonderful story. You're
a wee bit like a real life Angela. That's pretty
aren't you?
Speaker 2 (04:37):
On bart?
Speaker 3 (04:39):
She wrote, So you started off looking at crime and
now you're writing crime, and it's just does crime still
follow you about?
Speaker 2 (04:47):
Well? The other thing is, in addition to starting to
write about crime, because I worked in the real medical
Examiner's office, and I also became a volunteer police officer.
And you you know, you can see this is my
here's my hat from way back then when I with
a little crooked badge, when I was a volunteer cop,
(05:08):
and I would go out direct traffic during parades and
send people the wrong way because I have no sense
of direction. I was really good at lighting flares. I
loved lighting flares. I would light them even if you
didn't need one, because I just thought it was so
much fun. And then I would one time I was
out of matches, and of course I've smoked cigarettes with
all the cops, so I decided it would be a
(05:28):
good idea to light my cigarette with a flare. That
was not a good idea. I do not recommend anybody
doing that unless you don't want bangs and you want
your eyebrows to go away.
Speaker 1 (05:38):
You could be a copy in any city in India
because they're very good at sending people the wrong way.
Speaker 3 (05:43):
I'm impressed by this whole fire flair incident. You know
that that shows real flare.
Speaker 2 (05:48):
I must say, you know the other thing shouldn't do
when you're in a four way intersection and you're directing
traffic and you recognize the driver, don't wave at them.
Not good either, and suddenly every buddy's going all you know,
horns blaring and traffic lights being so because I had
that happen too, I mean like, oh hey, yeah, I'm
(06:08):
down and visiting.
Speaker 3 (06:09):
And before this started, if you told me that Patricia
Cornwell would make me sneeze tea out my nose with
a story like that, I would never have believed you.
But ladies and gentlemen, I have tea all over my
microphone now because Patricia Cardonwell. I have a vision of
Patricia Cornwell, the directing traffic.
Speaker 2 (06:30):
But you know, when I wanted to see an autopsy
for the first time, the medical examiner, doctor Fierro. I mean,
I'd come down there and do research. This is before
I started working there, but they let me only really
go in the library, or I could I cruise the
forensic labs all the time. You know that that was
excellent that they were in the same building. That's how
I was able to learn all that. But so doctor
(06:51):
Fierro said, look, if you want to see an autopsy,
you've got to have a legitimate reason that you can
be in the morgue. And I said, well, what would
be legitimate reason besides me showing up in a body bag,
which I don't want to do. And she said, well,
she said, you know, if they have a volunteer police
thing at the department, you could become a volunteer cop.
(07:11):
And then if you're there in a defense attorney or
someone says what she doing in here, said, well, she's
a volunteer police officer. So I went to the little
volunteer academy and at the Richmond Police Department and I
did you know what you're supposed to do? It was
only a couple of weeks long, and then I was
so excited when I went to the uniform store. Now
here's a true fact. I have uniform envy. I want
(07:35):
a badge, I want uniforms. I like stripes on my pants.
And I used to make things like that for Halloween costumes.
I would dress up like a soldier from the seventeen
hundreds or something, and then you know all these ridiculous things.
But so I loved this me and my little uniform.
So I was going to go ride in one Friday
(07:57):
night with this sergeant of the Homicide Division and I
just got in my spanky new uniform. So I got
all dressed up, I had it on, had everything just right,
the whistle showing the way it's supposed to you name
it all exact. And I can walking into his office
and he sits me down. He said, so tell me,
He said, where do you live in the city. I said, oh, no, sir,
(08:17):
I live in hen Ryko County. He said, okay, well
that's all right. He said, to tell you what, We're
going to go get in the car and we're going
to go to your house. And I said why, I said,
because you're going to go home to change your clothes
because I'm a detective and we don't ride around in uniforms.
I said, Oh, so, my very first time out with
the police, the homicide detectives. He had to take me
(08:38):
home to take my little uniform off and put on something.
So you know, I have I have. I'll show you this.
I don't know if you can see it, but here's
a little This is a picture of me in my uniform.
Speaker 3 (08:50):
Yes, we need to put that on the website. We
need to put this picture of website.
Speaker 2 (08:55):
It is like from nineteen eighty three or something.
Speaker 3 (09:00):
But you're like Cagney and Lacy. I'm impressed with But
it was.
Speaker 2 (09:07):
It was just the best learning. I mean, you can
learn so much from AI and Google and all of that,
but I'm telling you, if you have an opportunity to
go out and do something for real, go ride with
the police, go to a lab and watch watch what
they're doing so that you begin to understand it and
reality informs you in ways that nothing else can. The smells,
(09:32):
the sounds, just a weird feeling you have when you
you know when you're doing something and you get the
unexpected surprise, and I know you both know what I'm
talking about, but it's really important to try to do that,
and it's the memories will last forever.
Speaker 1 (09:48):
And well you heard it here first, Patricia Comwell recommends
cruising the local morgue if you're going to be a
crime if you're going to be a crime writer. All
of this, of course, is leading up to post Mortem,
which I don't think it's overstating the case to say
that it genuinely changed the face of crime fiction and
practically invented the forensic forensic thriller. Tell us a little
(10:12):
bit about how that book came about, and then about
the first event that you did for that book, because
there's a great story attached to that.
Speaker 2 (10:18):
Well, you know, for people people who think that I
had some kind of instant success, I absolutely didn't. When
I started at the Medical Examiner's office in nineteen eighty
four and I started working on a mystery, and then
of course there was a minor character who was doctor Scarpetta.
Speaker 1 (10:36):
She was the.
Speaker 2 (10:37):
Medical examiner that the main character, who was a male detective,
would you know, confer with well that book. After about
a year, that one was circulated and it was rejected,
and I wrote a second one, and that one was
rejected a year after another year, and then I wrote
a third one and that one was rejected. And by
now I felt like jumping off a bridge if there
(10:58):
was a high enough one in the seither or I
might do that. I mean, I was really felt terrible.
And here I am. I'm every day going to the morgue.
Now this is my job I was, you know, I
took over. They got a computer, nobody knew how to
work it. I had to learn all that I became.
I was well on my way to a full time
employee at the Medical Examiner's office. So but in nineteen
(11:20):
eighty seven, in the fall of nineteen eighty seven, after
my third book was making the rounds and being rejected,
as these serial killings began in Richmond, the South Side
strangler and one of the victims was one of the
early victims was a magazine writer editor in the city.
And then a woman neurosurgeon who was a resident at
(11:42):
the medical college there. And here's the weird thing about that,
I'd been to the medical college earlier with doctor Fierro.
She was doing a wet lab where you have organs
like the brain that's been fixed and formally because they
want to do a brain cutting to look for anomalies
that they use in teaching. So doctor Fierro was there
(12:02):
with the neurosurgeon residence, and I was feeling very awkward
because I didn't know a lot of what they were
talking about, and I didn't like the smell of formaline.
And I'm standing there taking notes and I've had three
books rejected already, feeling like such a loser. And I've
looked up. I felt somebody looking at me, and there
was this woman, young woman in her white lab coat
(12:22):
with long red hair. She was looking at me and
she looked, she met my eyes and she smiled, just
this warm kind smile like relax, you're okay, whoever you are.
I never forgot it. And that was Susan Hallam's who
was the South Side strangler's neurosurgeon victim. I saw her
and she smiled at me. About a year before she
(12:44):
was tied up in duct tape and rope and horribly
murdered in her own apartment, her own house. And those
cases shook me to my core because I was working
in the office when they were going on. I didn't
participate in them. I never saw the autopsies and look
at anything. I wasn't supposed to look, but I was thinking,
what would Scarpetta do if this was happening in her jurisdiction,
(13:07):
Because there was the first victim, and then the second victim,
and then there was a high school girl who the
guy climbed through the window and murdered her in her
own bed with her parents downstairs watching TV. They didn't
even know what had happened till they couldn't get her
door open in the morning. Can you imagine that? So
this and there were others that this guy killed, and
(13:28):
that was the inspiration for post Mortem. An editor told
me that I was writing fanciful stories that couldn't possibly
be what I saw in the morgue, and I said,
you're right, because I don't like looking. I don't want
my imagination to grasp what I see in the morgue
in at crime scenes. I'm not sure what it would
do to me. But then I thought, if you're going
(13:48):
to really write about this, you've got to show it
for what it is. So let's tell the story from
Scarpettit's point of view, and let her work a case
like this and let's see what happens. So that's how
postmarrtim was born, which seems like a contradiction in terms,
but anyway, post Mortem that is how that happened. And
you know, that book made the rounds for the better
(14:10):
part of a year and started getting rejected all over
again by everybody. And it wasn't until January of nineteen
eighty nine that Scribner, then editor recognized at Scarpetta. She said,
I like this character, this works for me, and they
took it on. So it's the only book, it's the
only Scarpetta book that's never been on the bestseller list.
(14:32):
Because it was only six thousand first printing, no one
had heard of it. And then it started winning all
the awards and doing all the things it did, and
maybe maybe a lot of people will read it who
never did win. The new show airs next early spring
because the first season, as largely the modern story is Autopsy,
(14:53):
which is the book that came out five years ago.
But when you go back in time, because there's two
timelines in the show, the early story is the post
mortem story, which is really I think people are really
going to like.
Speaker 1 (15:03):
I was wondering when I looked at the cast and
it said, you know current Kay and younger k. I mean,
you've got an amazing cast. They're not just Nicole Kidman
and Jim Believable.
Speaker 2 (15:14):
And Jamie Lee Curtis. She completely transforms Dorothy Scarpettit's sister.
I mean, we'll talk about she's quite the show stealer.
But then Jamie always is. We know that. But I
think people are gonna I hope they'll have fun with it.
Don't expect it to be identical to my books, expected
to be had the DNA of my books, but be
something in addition.
Speaker 1 (15:34):
Well, us us diehard fans, we'll obviously tune in because
we just love the characters and it will be wonderful.
But even after that book was published, you said it
was a while before it took off and your first event,
Oh well, I did a grand total of what was it? One?
Speaker 2 (15:50):
Nobody? Nobody? I mean I had first of all, when
it came out in Richmond. When it came out, I
mean the Richmond Paper gave the first review, and it
was monstrous. It was more nastier than the killer in
my book. I think, nasty, nasty, nasty review. He didn't
like me, he didn't like Scorpatt, he didn't like anything
I heard later he was a failed mystery writer. Don't
(16:12):
know if that's true, but that's not book reviewers sometimes
they can have being not exactly objective, but boy, that
book really disturbed him. This guy. Then I'm sitting at
my desk in my office, which is right across from
the elevator, and when the door's open, I always get
the lovely ambiance of the morgue floating up and coming
right into my office. So the first thing you see
(16:33):
when you would visit me is my can of Lyesol
on my desk. So I'm sitting there with my can
of Lyesol and the phone rings and I answer it,
and it's the owner of this very prominent independent bookstore
in Richmond. And I'm thinking, oh my god, I'm going
to get invited to do a book signing. Who would
ever have thought it? And so he announces, he said,
he's sorry to let me know that he's not only
(16:55):
not going to carry my book, that he's banning it
because it's too violent and it remind you too much
of the real cases. And so he that went because
he banned it and told the media that he had
banned it. That went out over the ap the wire
that book banned in Richmond. The truth is you can't
pay for better publicity than that. Everybody wants to read
(17:18):
the book. This nobody wants to carry, so it got banned.
I was uninvited from anything that women's clubs that had
asked me to do something. I had one signing downtown
at a religious bookstore named Cokesbury, where I made a
deal with the owner that if he would do with
signing and put all my books in the window, I
would give him my free case of post mortem. So,
(17:41):
because he didn't have enough books to put in the window,
he said so, I gave him twenty copies, which later
on will work like two thousand dollars apiece first editions.
But so he filled his window and I took my
lab coat off. I walked down to the bookstore during
my lunch break at the Morgue, I went in sat
there for an hour. Nobody showed up except one man
(18:03):
who I'm not sure might have been that book reviewer,
because he came in like a luster of angry hot air.
You picked up a copy of it and threw it
down on the stack and went boiling out. That was
my only visitor except a lady who gave me a Kleenex,
wondering if I could throw it away for her because
she thought I worked in the store. And so I
went back to the moor, not having sold a single
(18:24):
copy and having lost twenty that were now in the
window I didn't own anymore. And I said, you better
get a business manager because you're not very good at
transactions here, because this is a big lose, lose if
there ever was one. So things didn't they didn't start,
especially I.
Speaker 1 (18:39):
Did read somewhere that you had an event where the
only attendee wanted a cookbook, but this later inspired you
to write a couple of your own cookbooks. So do
you have a recipe for us here, us Brits with all?
Speaker 3 (18:53):
What's the recipe for success?
Speaker 2 (18:54):
Is it getting bonned that will help?
Speaker 1 (18:57):
No?
Speaker 2 (18:58):
I tell you the recipe for success is don't do
it for that reason. Don't write books because you want
to be successful or a bestseller. Write books because you
must because you have a story to tell you or
you want to tell a story because that seems that's
who you are. And if you are that, don't be
discouraged if it doesn't work at first. Because I'm a
(19:18):
I mean I've sold over one hundred and twenty million
copies of books now, And like Marcela Fierro used to say,
you couldn't even get arrested when you're working for us.
You know nobody wanted anything you did.
Speaker 3 (19:31):
I think there's a lot of truth in that that
you've got it. You've got to be motivated by what
you're writing. You've got to feel the urgency of what
you're writing. You can't write to a recipe, as you say,
tell us note about the new one, tell us about
Sharp Force.
Speaker 2 (19:45):
Well, Sharp Force is a is a high tech ghost
story that includes your your Halloween virgin slasher film all
rolled into one. Because basically, you have somebody that is
able to get into people's resid and when the victims
are murdered in their own beds. I mean, really lovely
story to be repeating here, But this is preceded by
(20:09):
they're haunted. First, there is this phantom that will appear
in their window or actually in their bedroom. This man
in old clothing with these red eyes, and he's gotten
a big knife he's waving around. I know it sounds hokey,
but I promise you everything I tell you in this
book can actually happen because this is a hologram, and
there's hologram technology today where holograms can start becoming a
(20:32):
lot more animated in the sense that they can be
used as listening devices. They can go through walls because
it depends on what kind of electromagnetic energy that you're using.
Radio waves can go through walls even if an optical
light can't. So trust me when I say that something
could come in. There's music, creepy music playing. Someone wakes up.
(20:55):
There's this thing floating saying death becomes you. Death becomes you,
an awful, awful thing, and that is the precursor for
the killer showing up himself. And then when he does,
it's nothing fake about it. You find these people that
have been stabbed multiple times in their bed a little
bit like that. One of the things that made me
think of it was the Idaho case in America where
(21:17):
those four college students were stabbed in the beds, in
their beds in the same house. And you think that's
one place you should be safe is your own bed.
So this killer is very technically savvy, and he knows
how to defeat alarm systems. He knows about signal jammers,
he knows how to access places, and this is what
(21:41):
Scarpett is up against. And of course i'll tell you
one creepy scene. She's driving home and it's foggy, it's
Christmas time, and there's snow, and she's in her driveway.
Marinos just dropped her off at her old house on
this old estate where she lives, and she watches him
in the security camera his truck driving away. She sees
the two little red tail you know, red tail lights disappearing,
(22:04):
and she's watching the red tail lights as she's gone
through the entrance gate and she goes, how come those
tail lights are moving this way? Now, well, they're not
tail lights. Oh, she's these red light glowing eye tail
lighty things are floating through the fog up towards her house.
(22:27):
And she's home alone. Of course, so I won't tell
you what happens after that. You'll have to see. But
what I wanted to do was just take all the
fun stuff that would scare the hell out of me
when one still does actually, but make it all technically
up possible, nothing that this is something that could really happen,
(22:48):
and what she going to do about it. And of course,
one of the settings is a century's old creepy hospital
on Mercy Island. Well, anything called Mercy anything probably isn't
and so and of course it's not.
Speaker 1 (23:02):
You. And this approach that you use throughout the series
twenty nine novels now in the series. And yeah, you
know you're approaching your thirtieth which is just an incredible achievement.
But you spend a lot of time researching these scientific developments,
cutting edge forensic techniques. Do you still enjoy that aspect
of it and putting those in and coming across amazing
(23:24):
discoveries that you have.
Speaker 2 (23:25):
I love it. I love it. I love it. I
love it because if you know enough about technology, you
can turn it on its head and have it tell
something that misleads everybody. If you want a really great
buried clue or red hairing, all that good stuff that
murder mystery people are such experts at, including the amazing
Agata Christie, who's my favorite. If you really study technology,
(23:48):
you can do all those tricks. You can have DNA
that sends people way off this away when it's really
right in front of them. You can have if I
don't want the cameras to work, I can have reasons
that the that they don't so that you can't see
who did it. I mean, it's I have so much
fun with coming up with ideas that will fool people,
so that Scarpetta shows up at something and it looks
(24:10):
like this is what happened. But then if she starts
skating into it, or she looks at trace evidence on
the scanning electron microscope, she goes, what the hell are
snake skin snake cells? I mean, why are there snake
skin cells in this trace evidence? Or why is there
stuff from a bat or monkey stuff? What is this?
What are we talking about here? And of course there's
(24:31):
always a reason. Like one of my best good a
scientific friend of mine, specialized in trace evidence, and he said,
you don't know the mysteries of life till you look
at a dust bunny under a scanning electron microscope and
you see what's in it. You know, that little thing
that's floating around from corner to corner in your house,
it's a little vacuum cleaner for stuff that you can't see.
(24:53):
It has your DNA, it has paint flex, it has fibers,
it has pet hair. I can tell if I look
at your dust bunny under a big microscope, like an
sem I'm going to know almost everything about you. I
might even know who lived in the house before you did. Universe.
I love that. I think it's fascinating.
Speaker 1 (25:14):
In abvious case, probably the people he's murdered to.
Speaker 3 (25:17):
Move in they're not murdered. They're in the basement. I've
told you before. They're perfectly happy.
Speaker 2 (25:23):
I think we checked out his dust bunnies, don't you.
Speaker 1 (25:27):
Before we finish? Patricia, you are what we would call
a good egg in Britain because you also give back
a lot, not just to other write but in general.
You know, you fund various initiatives and charities and literacy programs.
So what's high on your list of passion projects at
the moment?
Speaker 2 (25:47):
My on my list is helping people understand more of
the technologies that we are confronted with, including AI that
we may joke about, but it's not really funny because
it is already changed life and ways that we never
have imagined. And I feel like I've always tried to
help people like hold hands as they walk through the
(26:09):
along the path of life, whether it's autopsies are forensic science,
the things they hear about in court were now AI
or UFOs or whatever it is, where we're facing a
future of Are we at an age where we're about
to see things that almost don't seem possible? Are we
living almost in a science fiction movie? And there's a
(26:29):
lot of fear and angst about this because of the unknown.
And my high on my list, which is beyond just
trying to help with charitable things, is to help people
understand all this and live with it and not be afraid.
And I think that that comes from explaining it, and
so that I feel is what my mission is. And
(26:51):
as I write these new books, I want them to
be the good old stories that we've always loved. But
like I tell people, I'm going to show, you're going
to it's the same stories you've always loved. You're just
going to get there a little differently because we don't
live in that same world. And once you understand it better,
you might take AI and make it as a friend
and a tool. I mean, I talked to AI. I'm
(27:12):
trying to learn more about it because fear is the enemy.
Fear is the enemy, which seems like a strange thing
for me to say, because I spent all my time
making people scared and I'm scared of so many things myself,
but fear will get in your way.
Speaker 3 (27:28):
So right fear. It's ignorance of things that leads to
fear and prejudice. And when you explain things, when you
see how things work, it changes opinions. We're going to
ask you for one more thing that to put on
your charitable list. Now I wasn't going to do this.
We very rarely come up with find a guest who
makes us laugh in the way that you do. And
(27:49):
we are both of South Asian extraction, so we have
to adopt you. So we have We have Dean Kuntz
who is our uncle Denesh now and we'd like to
adopt you as our auntie. But we need to give
you an Indian name. What do you think, Parisha. That's
a good Indian name, isn't it. Will you be our
anti Parisia?
Speaker 2 (28:07):
Absolutely?
Speaker 3 (28:09):
That means we can come to you on your sofa
with great honor.
Speaker 2 (28:14):
So yes, and maybe maybe we will all talk in
person when I am in the UK next spring, you know,
so I'll tell you here you can announce it first.
I have written my memoir and that's amazing. It is
coming out probably in May, and you'll well, and you're
(28:34):
going to learn all kinds of things that you never
knew about how I got where I am and and
all the silly things I've done in life and my
crazy childhood. So we'll have and I'm sure I will
be over in the UK, and so we'll have to
all sit down in person now that I am related.
Speaker 3 (28:51):
And if it's anti Parisia, be our honor to host
you in the in person and we look forward to it.
That's fantastic news. We used to do that.
Speaker 2 (29:01):
Well.
Speaker 1 (29:01):
We used to do this podcast at ABBA's mom's house,
and we used to our guests whenever they used to
come around. But then he decided to move out of it,
and it became a little bit trickier.
Speaker 3 (29:11):
But maybe we I wasn't living at my mom's I
should point out we were living quite close to my mom,
and then my wife decided we should live further away
from my mother, so we live further away. But anyway,
my mother prefers you to me anyway, So that's life.
Speaker 1 (29:25):
Maybe we can get the band back together. I'm sure
if your memoirs even half as entertaining as you are
in person, it is going to be an absolutely fabulous
fabulous read, really lovely and you know, quite he eyed
inspiration for me personally to have you on this, this
podcast our pleasure. I'm going to leave Abba to lead
us out well.
Speaker 3 (29:47):
Thank you so much, Auntie Premisia. It's been an absolute pleasure.
Ladies and gentlemen, that's all we have time for today.
If you've enjoyed the show, please do leave a review
on your favorite podcast at and please do spread the
words the same count you. Where shall we take Anti
Paritia when she comes to the UK. Where do you
(30:08):
think is good?
Speaker 2 (30:10):
Not a morgue? No, no, not the Morue, please everybody there?
How about a pub?
Speaker 3 (30:17):
Pub is great? We will do that.
Speaker 2 (30:19):
We will do that, and on that again, and then
we can visit the morgue after we have too much
to drink. That we can do both.
Speaker 3 (30:28):
That sounds like a winner. And on that libatious note,
ladies and gentlemen, we've been your friends. The Red Hot
Chili writers on Murder Junction
Welcome to Murder Junction everyone. This week on the show,
we are talking to crime writing royalty, a legend, a superstar,
an inspiration, the queen of the forensic thriller. I have
run out of superlatives. We are talking, of course, to
Patricia Cornwell, creator of the case Scarpetta series, amongst others. Patricia,
welcome to the show.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
Thank you. It's my great pleasure to be here, and
hello to everybody.
Speaker 3 (00:26):
Isn't this amazing that we have Patricia Cornwell on our show?
I mean, when you started out writing two hundred years ago,
vas and you were unsuccessful for so long, did you
ever think you would reach the stage where you'd be
interviewing Patricia Cornwell.
Speaker 1 (00:42):
No. And I'm sure you get a lot of this
fan stuff whenever you're doing these kind of interviews, But
do you know what I'm going to tell you A
true story. I think I read Post more than about
fifteen or sixteen years ago, and like millions of other readers,
I was immediately sort of taken away by the story.
But for me, because I have spent twenty years working
(01:04):
at a research university in a crime and security department
where I work with forensic scientists, on the cutting edge
of the research. It's something that I took straight to heart,
and it's why I have a forensic scientist as a
co protagonist in one of my series. So for me,
it really is a real fanboy.
Speaker 3 (01:20):
So you're stealing Patricia Cornwell's material. Sorry, Patricia, I really
apologize for fast stealing your stuff. Is that what you're saying?
Speaker 1 (01:27):
Vast absolutely, But let's start at the beginning, Patricia. Let's
start with you. For those who don't, the few people
on earth who haven't heard of you or radio books,
where did you grow up? Well?
Speaker 2 (01:39):
I was born in Miami, Florida, but for the most
part I grew up in the hills of North Carolina,
Western North Carolina, which is why I can saynd like
this and say on real country if you want me to.
But I try not to because then people change their
opinion of me. And I did tell the producers for
the Scarpettit TV show that Nicole Kidman did not need
(02:00):
to develop a Southern accent for this, because Scarpetta does
not have one, even if I do so, she does
not sound like me when you when you see her
in the show. But I grew up in North Carolina,
went to college in North Carolina. But the big thing
that helped get me where I am today is that
when I graduated from college and I didn't know what
(02:22):
I was going to do, but I knew I liked writing,
and it was the one thing that I seemed to
be able to do. And I wasn't very good at
much else, it seemed like. But I became a journalist
and I went to work for the Charlotte Observer and
they gave me the police beat, and that is when
I know, you know that I had never read a
murder mystery. I had no interest in crime at all.
(02:44):
When I got that police beat and I thought, how
can they do this to me? They're going to make
me go right around in a staff car from four
to midnight looking for crimes and bad things. I thought
it was horrifying and I hated the thought of it.
And then guess what happened the minute I started getting
into it. I got a snake bit by it. And
they a very successful investigative journalists for them in a
(03:08):
very quick period of time. But the one thing I
could never figure out is when I would get to
the crime scene, the homicide scene, the body was gone
and I thought, what are they doing with it? This
was way back in like nineteen seventy nine, nineteen eighty,
as you know from my skinny little slim back there.
I've been around for a long time, but I thought,
(03:30):
what are they doing with it? So roll ahead. I
won't bore you with all of the minutia of how
I got there. But when I began to do research
for crime novels, I started reading a few murder mysteries
because I've never read any read P. D. James, Agatha
Christy and Dorothy Sayers. I went to a second Head
paperback shop and spent maybe a dollar on all three.
And then I went to the local medical examiner's office.
(03:53):
Someone got me in with the deputy chief. She gave
me a tour, and this was in Richmond, Virginia, because
i'd gotten married and we'd moved. And that's when I thought,
I'm going to write books about crime and have a
medical examiner in it. And of course we all know
what happened to Scarpettit took over everything.
Speaker 1 (04:14):
Well, three books for a dollar. Times have changed, and
it's lucky you're not my colleague there. Who's the Scotsman?
Speaker 3 (04:20):
And he I was going to say I haven't changed
that much. I can still sell three of mine for
a dollar.
Speaker 1 (04:24):
My colleague here is a Scott and he would have
asked for change out of that dollar.
Speaker 3 (04:27):
That's true, I would have. I would have a dollar
three books I want for that's a wonderful story. You're
a wee bit like a real life Angela. That's pretty
aren't you?
Speaker 2 (04:37):
On bart?
Speaker 3 (04:39):
She wrote, So you started off looking at crime and
now you're writing crime, and it's just does crime still
follow you about?
Speaker 2 (04:47):
Well? The other thing is, in addition to starting to
write about crime, because I worked in the real medical
Examiner's office, and I also became a volunteer police officer.
And you you know, you can see this is my
here's my hat from way back then when I with
a little crooked badge, when I was a volunteer cop,
(05:08):
and I would go out direct traffic during parades and
send people the wrong way because I have no sense
of direction. I was really good at lighting flares. I
loved lighting flares. I would light them even if you
didn't need one, because I just thought it was so
much fun. And then I would one time I was
out of matches, and of course I've smoked cigarettes with
all the cops, so I decided it would be a
(05:28):
good idea to light my cigarette with a flare. That
was not a good idea. I do not recommend anybody
doing that unless you don't want bangs and you want
your eyebrows to go away.
Speaker 1 (05:38):
You could be a copy in any city in India
because they're very good at sending people the wrong way.
Speaker 3 (05:43):
I'm impressed by this whole fire flair incident. You know
that that shows real flare.
Speaker 2 (05:48):
I must say, you know the other thing shouldn't do
when you're in a four way intersection and you're directing
traffic and you recognize the driver, don't wave at them.
Not good either, and suddenly every buddy's going all you know,
horns blaring and traffic lights being so because I had
that happen too, I mean like, oh hey, yeah, I'm
(06:08):
down and visiting.
Speaker 3 (06:09):
And before this started, if you told me that Patricia
Cornwell would make me sneeze tea out my nose with
a story like that, I would never have believed you.
But ladies and gentlemen, I have tea all over my
microphone now because Patricia Cardonwell. I have a vision of
Patricia Cornwell, the directing traffic.
Speaker 2 (06:30):
But you know, when I wanted to see an autopsy
for the first time, the medical examiner, doctor Fierro. I mean,
I'd come down there and do research. This is before
I started working there, but they let me only really
go in the library, or I could I cruise the
forensic labs all the time. You know that that was
excellent that they were in the same building. That's how
I was able to learn all that. But so doctor
(06:51):
Fierro said, look, if you want to see an autopsy,
you've got to have a legitimate reason that you can
be in the morgue. And I said, well, what would
be legitimate reason besides me showing up in a body bag,
which I don't want to do. And she said, well,
she said, you know, if they have a volunteer police
thing at the department, you could become a volunteer cop.
(07:11):
And then if you're there in a defense attorney or
someone says what she doing in here, said, well, she's
a volunteer police officer. So I went to the little
volunteer academy and at the Richmond Police Department and I
did you know what you're supposed to do? It was
only a couple of weeks long, and then I was
so excited when I went to the uniform store. Now
here's a true fact. I have uniform envy. I want
(07:35):
a badge, I want uniforms. I like stripes on my pants.
And I used to make things like that for Halloween costumes.
I would dress up like a soldier from the seventeen
hundreds or something, and then you know all these ridiculous things.
But so I loved this me and my little uniform.
So I was going to go ride in one Friday
(07:57):
night with this sergeant of the Homicide Division and I
just got in my spanky new uniform. So I got
all dressed up, I had it on, had everything just right,
the whistle showing the way it's supposed to you name
it all exact. And I can walking into his office
and he sits me down. He said, so tell me,
He said, where do you live in the city. I said, oh, no, sir,
(08:17):
I live in hen Ryko County. He said, okay, well
that's all right. He said, to tell you what, We're
going to go get in the car and we're going
to go to your house. And I said why, I said,
because you're going to go home to change your clothes
because I'm a detective and we don't ride around in uniforms.
I said, Oh, so, my very first time out with
the police, the homicide detectives. He had to take me
(08:38):
home to take my little uniform off and put on something.
So you know, I have I have. I'll show you this.
I don't know if you can see it, but here's
a little This is a picture of me in my uniform.
Speaker 3 (08:50):
Yes, we need to put that on the website. We
need to put this picture of website.
Speaker 2 (08:55):
It is like from nineteen eighty three or something.
Speaker 3 (09:00):
But you're like Cagney and Lacy. I'm impressed with But
it was.
Speaker 2 (09:07):
It was just the best learning. I mean, you can
learn so much from AI and Google and all of that,
but I'm telling you, if you have an opportunity to
go out and do something for real, go ride with
the police, go to a lab and watch watch what
they're doing so that you begin to understand it and
reality informs you in ways that nothing else can. The smells,
(09:32):
the sounds, just a weird feeling you have when you
you know when you're doing something and you get the
unexpected surprise, and I know you both know what I'm
talking about, but it's really important to try to do that,
and it's the memories will last forever.
Speaker 1 (09:48):
And well you heard it here first, Patricia Comwell recommends
cruising the local morgue if you're going to be a
crime if you're going to be a crime writer. All
of this, of course, is leading up to post Mortem,
which I don't think it's overstating the case to say
that it genuinely changed the face of crime fiction and
practically invented the forensic forensic thriller. Tell us a little
(10:12):
bit about how that book came about, and then about
the first event that you did for that book, because
there's a great story attached to that.
Speaker 2 (10:18):
Well, you know, for people people who think that I
had some kind of instant success, I absolutely didn't. When
I started at the Medical Examiner's office in nineteen eighty
four and I started working on a mystery, and then
of course there was a minor character who was doctor Scarpetta.
Speaker 1 (10:36):
She was the.
Speaker 2 (10:37):
Medical examiner that the main character, who was a male detective,
would you know, confer with well that book. After about
a year, that one was circulated and it was rejected,
and I wrote a second one, and that one was
rejected a year after another year, and then I wrote
a third one and that one was rejected. And by
now I felt like jumping off a bridge if there
(10:58):
was a high enough one in the seither or I
might do that. I mean, I was really felt terrible.
And here I am. I'm every day going to the morgue.
Now this is my job I was, you know, I
took over. They got a computer, nobody knew how to
work it. I had to learn all that I became.
I was well on my way to a full time
employee at the Medical Examiner's office. So but in nineteen
(11:20):
eighty seven, in the fall of nineteen eighty seven, after
my third book was making the rounds and being rejected,
as these serial killings began in Richmond, the South Side
strangler and one of the victims was one of the
early victims was a magazine writer editor in the city.
And then a woman neurosurgeon who was a resident at
(11:42):
the medical college there. And here's the weird thing about that,
I'd been to the medical college earlier with doctor Fierro.
She was doing a wet lab where you have organs
like the brain that's been fixed and formally because they
want to do a brain cutting to look for anomalies
that they use in teaching. So doctor Fierro was there
(12:02):
with the neurosurgeon residence, and I was feeling very awkward
because I didn't know a lot of what they were
talking about, and I didn't like the smell of formaline.
And I'm standing there taking notes and I've had three
books rejected already, feeling like such a loser. And I've
looked up. I felt somebody looking at me, and there
was this woman, young woman in her white lab coat
(12:22):
with long red hair. She was looking at me and
she looked, she met my eyes and she smiled, just
this warm kind smile like relax, you're okay, whoever you are.
I never forgot it. And that was Susan Hallam's who
was the South Side strangler's neurosurgeon victim. I saw her
and she smiled at me. About a year before she
(12:44):
was tied up in duct tape and rope and horribly
murdered in her own apartment, her own house. And those
cases shook me to my core because I was working
in the office when they were going on. I didn't
participate in them. I never saw the autopsies and look
at anything. I wasn't supposed to look, but I was thinking,
what would Scarpetta do if this was happening in her jurisdiction,
(13:07):
Because there was the first victim, and then the second victim,
and then there was a high school girl who the
guy climbed through the window and murdered her in her
own bed with her parents downstairs watching TV. They didn't
even know what had happened till they couldn't get her
door open in the morning. Can you imagine that? So
this and there were others that this guy killed, and
(13:28):
that was the inspiration for post Mortem. An editor told
me that I was writing fanciful stories that couldn't possibly
be what I saw in the morgue, and I said,
you're right, because I don't like looking. I don't want
my imagination to grasp what I see in the morgue
in at crime scenes. I'm not sure what it would
do to me. But then I thought, if you're going
(13:48):
to really write about this, you've got to show it
for what it is. So let's tell the story from
Scarpettit's point of view, and let her work a case
like this and let's see what happens. So that's how
postmarrtim was born, which seems like a contradiction in terms,
but anyway, post Mortem that is how that happened. And
you know, that book made the rounds for the better
(14:10):
part of a year and started getting rejected all over
again by everybody. And it wasn't until January of nineteen
eighty nine that Scribner, then editor recognized at Scarpetta. She said,
I like this character, this works for me, and they
took it on. So it's the only book, it's the
only Scarpetta book that's never been on the bestseller list.
(14:32):
Because it was only six thousand first printing, no one
had heard of it. And then it started winning all
the awards and doing all the things it did, and
maybe maybe a lot of people will read it who
never did win. The new show airs next early spring
because the first season, as largely the modern story is Autopsy,
(14:53):
which is the book that came out five years ago.
But when you go back in time, because there's two
timelines in the show, the early story is the post
mortem story, which is really I think people are really
going to like.
Speaker 1 (15:03):
I was wondering when I looked at the cast and
it said, you know current Kay and younger k. I mean,
you've got an amazing cast. They're not just Nicole Kidman
and Jim Believable.
Speaker 2 (15:14):
And Jamie Lee Curtis. She completely transforms Dorothy Scarpettit's sister.
I mean, we'll talk about she's quite the show stealer.
But then Jamie always is. We know that. But I
think people are gonna I hope they'll have fun with it.
Don't expect it to be identical to my books, expected
to be had the DNA of my books, but be
something in addition.
Speaker 1 (15:34):
Well, us us diehard fans, we'll obviously tune in because
we just love the characters and it will be wonderful.
But even after that book was published, you said it
was a while before it took off and your first event,
Oh well, I did a grand total of what was it? One?
Speaker 2 (15:50):
Nobody? Nobody? I mean I had first of all, when
it came out in Richmond. When it came out, I
mean the Richmond Paper gave the first review, and it
was monstrous. It was more nastier than the killer in
my book. I think, nasty, nasty, nasty review. He didn't
like me, he didn't like Scorpatt, he didn't like anything
I heard later he was a failed mystery writer. Don't
(16:12):
know if that's true, but that's not book reviewers sometimes
they can have being not exactly objective, but boy, that
book really disturbed him. This guy. Then I'm sitting at
my desk in my office, which is right across from
the elevator, and when the door's open, I always get
the lovely ambiance of the morgue floating up and coming
right into my office. So the first thing you see
(16:33):
when you would visit me is my can of Lyesol
on my desk. So I'm sitting there with my can
of Lyesol and the phone rings and I answer it,
and it's the owner of this very prominent independent bookstore
in Richmond. And I'm thinking, oh my god, I'm going
to get invited to do a book signing. Who would
ever have thought it? And so he announces, he said,
he's sorry to let me know that he's not only
(16:55):
not going to carry my book, that he's banning it
because it's too violent and it remind you too much
of the real cases. And so he that went because
he banned it and told the media that he had
banned it. That went out over the ap the wire
that book banned in Richmond. The truth is you can't
pay for better publicity than that. Everybody wants to read
(17:18):
the book. This nobody wants to carry, so it got banned.
I was uninvited from anything that women's clubs that had
asked me to do something. I had one signing downtown
at a religious bookstore named Cokesbury, where I made a
deal with the owner that if he would do with
signing and put all my books in the window, I
would give him my free case of post mortem. So,
(17:41):
because he didn't have enough books to put in the window,
he said so, I gave him twenty copies, which later
on will work like two thousand dollars apiece first editions.
But so he filled his window and I took my
lab coat off. I walked down to the bookstore during
my lunch break at the Morgue, I went in sat
there for an hour. Nobody showed up except one man
(18:03):
who I'm not sure might have been that book reviewer,
because he came in like a luster of angry hot air.
You picked up a copy of it and threw it
down on the stack and went boiling out. That was
my only visitor except a lady who gave me a Kleenex,
wondering if I could throw it away for her because
she thought I worked in the store. And so I
went back to the moor, not having sold a single
(18:24):
copy and having lost twenty that were now in the
window I didn't own anymore. And I said, you better
get a business manager because you're not very good at
transactions here, because this is a big lose, lose if
there ever was one. So things didn't they didn't start,
especially I.
Speaker 1 (18:39):
Did read somewhere that you had an event where the
only attendee wanted a cookbook, but this later inspired you
to write a couple of your own cookbooks. So do
you have a recipe for us here, us Brits with all?
Speaker 3 (18:53):
What's the recipe for success?
Speaker 2 (18:54):
Is it getting bonned that will help?
Speaker 1 (18:57):
No?
Speaker 2 (18:58):
I tell you the recipe for success is don't do
it for that reason. Don't write books because you want
to be successful or a bestseller. Write books because you
must because you have a story to tell you or
you want to tell a story because that seems that's
who you are. And if you are that, don't be
discouraged if it doesn't work at first. Because I'm a
(19:18):
I mean I've sold over one hundred and twenty million
copies of books now, And like Marcela Fierro used to say,
you couldn't even get arrested when you're working for us.
You know nobody wanted anything you did.
Speaker 3 (19:31):
I think there's a lot of truth in that that
you've got it. You've got to be motivated by what
you're writing. You've got to feel the urgency of what
you're writing. You can't write to a recipe, as you say,
tell us note about the new one, tell us about
Sharp Force.
Speaker 2 (19:45):
Well, Sharp Force is a is a high tech ghost
story that includes your your Halloween virgin slasher film all
rolled into one. Because basically, you have somebody that is
able to get into people's resid and when the victims
are murdered in their own beds. I mean, really lovely
story to be repeating here, But this is preceded by
(20:09):
they're haunted. First, there is this phantom that will appear
in their window or actually in their bedroom. This man
in old clothing with these red eyes, and he's gotten
a big knife he's waving around. I know it sounds hokey,
but I promise you everything I tell you in this
book can actually happen because this is a hologram, and
there's hologram technology today where holograms can start becoming a
(20:32):
lot more animated in the sense that they can be
used as listening devices. They can go through walls because
it depends on what kind of electromagnetic energy that you're using.
Radio waves can go through walls even if an optical
light can't. So trust me when I say that something
could come in. There's music, creepy music playing. Someone wakes up.
(20:55):
There's this thing floating saying death becomes you. Death becomes you,
an awful, awful thing, and that is the precursor for
the killer showing up himself. And then when he does,
it's nothing fake about it. You find these people that
have been stabbed multiple times in their bed a little
bit like that. One of the things that made me
think of it was the Idaho case in America where
(21:17):
those four college students were stabbed in the beds, in
their beds in the same house. And you think that's
one place you should be safe is your own bed.
So this killer is very technically savvy, and he knows
how to defeat alarm systems. He knows about signal jammers,
he knows how to access places, and this is what
(21:41):
Scarpett is up against. And of course i'll tell you
one creepy scene. She's driving home and it's foggy, it's
Christmas time, and there's snow, and she's in her driveway.
Marinos just dropped her off at her old house on
this old estate where she lives, and she watches him
in the security camera his truck driving away. She sees
the two little red tail you know, red tail lights disappearing,
(22:04):
and she's watching the red tail lights as she's gone
through the entrance gate and she goes, how come those
tail lights are moving this way? Now, well, they're not
tail lights. Oh, she's these red light glowing eye tail
lighty things are floating through the fog up towards her house.
(22:27):
And she's home alone. Of course, so I won't tell
you what happens after that. You'll have to see. But
what I wanted to do was just take all the
fun stuff that would scare the hell out of me
when one still does actually, but make it all technically
up possible, nothing that this is something that could really happen,
(22:48):
and what she going to do about it. And of course,
one of the settings is a century's old creepy hospital
on Mercy Island. Well, anything called Mercy anything probably isn't
and so and of course it's not.
Speaker 1 (23:02):
You. And this approach that you use throughout the series
twenty nine novels now in the series. And yeah, you
know you're approaching your thirtieth which is just an incredible achievement.
But you spend a lot of time researching these scientific developments,
cutting edge forensic techniques. Do you still enjoy that aspect
of it and putting those in and coming across amazing
(23:24):
discoveries that you have.
Speaker 2 (23:25):
I love it. I love it. I love it. I
love it because if you know enough about technology, you
can turn it on its head and have it tell
something that misleads everybody. If you want a really great
buried clue or red hairing, all that good stuff that
murder mystery people are such experts at, including the amazing
Agata Christie, who's my favorite. If you really study technology,
(23:48):
you can do all those tricks. You can have DNA
that sends people way off this away when it's really
right in front of them. You can have if I
don't want the cameras to work, I can have reasons
that the that they don't so that you can't see
who did it. I mean, it's I have so much
fun with coming up with ideas that will fool people,
so that Scarpetta shows up at something and it looks
(24:10):
like this is what happened. But then if she starts
skating into it, or she looks at trace evidence on
the scanning electron microscope, she goes, what the hell are
snake skin snake cells? I mean, why are there snake
skin cells in this trace evidence? Or why is there
stuff from a bat or monkey stuff? What is this?
What are we talking about here? And of course there's
(24:31):
always a reason. Like one of my best good a
scientific friend of mine, specialized in trace evidence, and he said,
you don't know the mysteries of life till you look
at a dust bunny under a scanning electron microscope and
you see what's in it. You know, that little thing
that's floating around from corner to corner in your house,
it's a little vacuum cleaner for stuff that you can't see.
(24:53):
It has your DNA, it has paint flex, it has fibers,
it has pet hair. I can tell if I look
at your dust bunny under a big microscope, like an
sem I'm going to know almost everything about you. I
might even know who lived in the house before you did. Universe.
I love that. I think it's fascinating.
Speaker 1 (25:14):
In abvious case, probably the people he's murdered to.
Speaker 3 (25:17):
Move in they're not murdered. They're in the basement. I've
told you before. They're perfectly happy.
Speaker 2 (25:23):
I think we checked out his dust bunnies, don't you.
Speaker 1 (25:27):
Before we finish? Patricia, you are what we would call
a good egg in Britain because you also give back
a lot, not just to other write but in general.
You know, you fund various initiatives and charities and literacy programs.
So what's high on your list of passion projects at
the moment?
Speaker 2 (25:47):
My on my list is helping people understand more of
the technologies that we are confronted with, including AI that
we may joke about, but it's not really funny because
it is already changed life and ways that we never
have imagined. And I feel like I've always tried to
help people like hold hands as they walk through the
(26:09):
along the path of life, whether it's autopsies are forensic science,
the things they hear about in court were now AI
or UFOs or whatever it is, where we're facing a
future of Are we at an age where we're about
to see things that almost don't seem possible? Are we
living almost in a science fiction movie? And there's a
(26:29):
lot of fear and angst about this because of the unknown.
And my high on my list, which is beyond just
trying to help with charitable things, is to help people
understand all this and live with it and not be afraid.
And I think that that comes from explaining it, and
so that I feel is what my mission is. And
(26:51):
as I write these new books, I want them to
be the good old stories that we've always loved. But
like I tell people, I'm going to show, you're going
to it's the same stories you've always loved. You're just
going to get there a little differently because we don't
live in that same world. And once you understand it better,
you might take AI and make it as a friend
and a tool. I mean, I talked to AI. I'm
(27:12):
trying to learn more about it because fear is the enemy.
Fear is the enemy, which seems like a strange thing
for me to say, because I spent all my time
making people scared and I'm scared of so many things myself,
but fear will get in your way.
Speaker 3 (27:28):
So right fear. It's ignorance of things that leads to
fear and prejudice. And when you explain things, when you
see how things work, it changes opinions. We're going to
ask you for one more thing that to put on
your charitable list. Now I wasn't going to do this.
We very rarely come up with find a guest who
makes us laugh in the way that you do. And
(27:49):
we are both of South Asian extraction, so we have
to adopt you. So we have We have Dean Kuntz
who is our uncle Denesh now and we'd like to
adopt you as our auntie. But we need to give
you an Indian name. What do you think, Parisha. That's
a good Indian name, isn't it. Will you be our
anti Parisia?
Speaker 2 (28:07):
Absolutely?
Speaker 3 (28:09):
That means we can come to you on your sofa
with great honor.
Speaker 2 (28:14):
So yes, and maybe maybe we will all talk in
person when I am in the UK next spring, you know,
so I'll tell you here you can announce it first.
I have written my memoir and that's amazing. It is
coming out probably in May, and you'll well, and you're
(28:34):
going to learn all kinds of things that you never
knew about how I got where I am and and
all the silly things I've done in life and my
crazy childhood. So we'll have and I'm sure I will
be over in the UK, and so we'll have to
all sit down in person now that I am related.
Speaker 3 (28:51):
And if it's anti Parisia, be our honor to host
you in the in person and we look forward to it.
That's fantastic news. We used to do that.
Speaker 2 (29:01):
Well.
Speaker 1 (29:01):
We used to do this podcast at ABBA's mom's house,
and we used to our guests whenever they used to
come around. But then he decided to move out of it,
and it became a little bit trickier.
Speaker 3 (29:11):
But maybe we I wasn't living at my mom's I
should point out we were living quite close to my mom,
and then my wife decided we should live further away
from my mother, so we live further away. But anyway,
my mother prefers you to me anyway, So that's life.
Speaker 1 (29:25):
Maybe we can get the band back together. I'm sure
if your memoirs even half as entertaining as you are
in person, it is going to be an absolutely fabulous
fabulous read, really lovely and you know, quite he eyed
inspiration for me personally to have you on this, this
podcast our pleasure. I'm going to leave Abba to lead
us out well.
Speaker 3 (29:47):
Thank you so much, Auntie Premisia. It's been an absolute pleasure.
Ladies and gentlemen, that's all we have time for today.
If you've enjoyed the show, please do leave a review
on your favorite podcast at and please do spread the
words the same count you. Where shall we take Anti
Paritia when she comes to the UK. Where do you
(30:08):
think is good?
Speaker 2 (30:10):
Not a morgue? No, no, not the Morue, please everybody there?
How about a pub?
Speaker 3 (30:17):
Pub is great? We will do that.
Speaker 2 (30:19):
We will do that, and on that again, and then
we can visit the morgue after we have too much
to drink. That we can do both.
Speaker 3 (30:28):
That sounds like a winner. And on that libatious note,
ladies and gentlemen, we've been your friends. The Red Hot
Chili writers on Murder Junction
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