This is Later with Lee Matthews, The Lee Matthews Podcast More what You Hear
Weekday Afternoon's on the Drive. Lars Jacobson is a writer and executive producer of
the future Novakane in production at Paramount, It'll Star Jack Quaid, An Amber,
mid Thunder with a Safe House and Film Nation producing. But he's also
the producer of a podcast called Fodor's Guide to Espionage, heard on the iHeartRadio
Appen everywhere you get podcasts. Lars Jacobson, welcome, thank you very much,
pleasure to be here. Let's start with who is Eugene Fodor the topic
of this scripted podcast. Yeah, what an amazing figure, I mean,
what an amazing character. Yeah, he's a real guy, really a revolutionary
of the travel guide business, one of the first and greatest, and so
he kind of a rich need the travel guide process very early when jet setting
and travel was just kind of a burgeoning business. He wanted to open up
the world to travel and his belief was if people, you know, learned
about other cultures, that it was a lot harder to go to war with
one another. But then in that process he was also traveling through Europe and
he witnessed the terrible effects of Nazi Germany and the results on Europe and how
it was growing, and he decided Joe was a quote of his, that
he was not going to return to Europe again unless it was in uniform.
And even though he wasn't a born American citizen, he enlisted. He worked
for the OSS as a frontline interrogator because he spoke so many languages, and
he was also very you know, he was a geographer, his father was
a geographer. He understood the land, he understood, you know, how
to get from place to place, and also understood the cultures. So he
was really effective in you know, helping the US win the war. And
then afterwards, it wasn't actually discovered until the Nixon trials in the seventies,
but it was revealed that he was working as a CIA agent, using his
cover as a travel writer to kind of assist in with the CIA during the
Cold War, which I just thought was incredibly interesting but also made a lot
of sense because a travel writer really has all the best qualities of the spy.
You know, they can blend in with the local community, they can
move freely without suspicion, they can conduct surveillance. They understand he speaks.
He spoke I think up to eleven languages. So he really was kind of
the ideal spy. And although we don't know exactly what he got into,
it was kind of the perfect avenue for me to inject him into all the
greatest moments of the Cold War, And so that was kind of the impetus
for the show. Well, he sounds a lot like many of the I
love this kind of stuff, by the way, I love the real life
stuff that happened, particularly during World War Two that seemed to be the golden
age of espionage exactly. And that's what was so interesting to me. I
mean, I've always loved those sixties era spy shows, you know, I
Spy and Man from Uncle and Mission Impossible, and of course the Bond movies.
And this guy with this was a real life Bond. But he wasn't
just Bond. He was Bond meet Anthony Bourdain. And so for me to
tell a story that gets to take the audience on an exotic vacation and globe
trot and at the same time take them on a high stake spy mission,
it was just as a storyteller, it just couldn't be more compelling. And
I love history, so to also be able to inject the series with real
history, real people, real locations, so got It's filled with fun facts
and history and it's just a lot of fun. And not to mention the
fact that he was married to the woman that he ran the company with,
Blosta, who was also extremely talented lasta Fodor, and so it's a very
interesting dynamic of your husband and wife running a business and kind of functioning in
this world. So we got to kind of play with those relationships as well.
The podcast is Fodor's Guide to Espionage. It's about a travel writer who
had a secret life working for the CIA, or what became the CIA,
started out as the OSS. Lars Jacobson is the writer and producer of it.
This character also reminds me of many of the other real life spies of
that era that I've read about, one most notably Tricycle, who spoke many
different languages, was able to blend in and out of cultures without any problem,
was able to talk his way in and out of any even enduring a
five hour grilling from the Gestapo, and emerged highly credible quote unquote. This
guy sounds very similar, only Tricycle was a triple agent. This was true
patriotism for the Allies. He really was, And that to me is also
what's so interesting is those people back of that era. It wasn't all about
technology and facial recognition software and all this stuff which it is now. It
was really you know, trade craft, and it was boots on the ground
and high stakes, you know, personal missions, and they required a lot
of ingenuity, and you know the effects of that was of course essential to
the success of the Cold War and to revealing you know, even the course
of this story, we jumped from city to city. But in nineteen sixty
one, when all of this is taking place, in the heart of the
Cold War, leading up to the Cuban Missile Crisis, all of these these
huge historic moments, the building of the Berlin Wall and the exposure of the
Portland Spiring, which was the biggest intelligence breach in British history, Like all
of these events were all happening around the same time. Assassination attempt on Charles
de Gaul, which was the kind of the subject matter of Day of the
Jackal, Like all of these things were happening all within Europe, all within
the same year, and Eugene Fodor was I'm sure central to a lot of
it, or we at least got to inject him into these events in a
really fun way. Scripted podcast is Photor's Guide to Espionage. It's about Eugene
Fodor, who is a jet setter and globe trotter who worked for the CIA,
and Larsh Jacobson is the writer and producer. I'm amazed this has not
been a movie or a book in its own right, or has it.
You know, it's very interesting because I was surprised too. I first came
across it when I was doing research on another project, and I was so
surprised that no one had ever done this. And I actually had at one
point set it up as a TV series with a big name actor and the
idea of kind of putting it out as a TV series, And I think
that is still the idea of what's great about a podcast is you can put
out an entire season and you know, it's a perfect proof of concept.
It kind of shows exactly what the series could be. And I think it
really is ideal for a TV series because it is truly international. It is
you know, it's Bond meets Ordaine. It's you know, like I said,
an exotic vacation at a high stakes spy mission, which is really fun.
Well, a podcast is certainly cheaper to put together, easier to put
together, but in some ways more challenging because what you have to do is
create pictures with words and sound rather than the pictures themselves. For me,
it's more fun, it really, is it really? And they do they
say, you know, uh, you know, the limitations, you know,
the absence of limitations or the enemy of art or something like that.
So we have, you know, because it's just a radio play essentially.
But what was so great about having Eugene Phodor as a character is we use
his narration as a narrative device to kind of bookend the series. So we
get to you know, he gets to tell us about the location, he
gets to take us to the restaurants, he tells us about the historic places.
He also touches on the history of Vespa in Italy and Gelato, and
so we get to have a lot of fun with the history and using his
voice to explain the world. So, in addition to the spy mission,
the Diti vacations, you're going to get all kinds of fun anecdotes and information.
And so next time you're traveling through Europe, and maybe there'll be more
travels to come, but this time in Europe, hopefully we'll hit on some
spots that everyone kind of recognizes and introduce them to some new places. Lars
Jacobson. He is the producer of Fodor's Guide to Espionage. It is a
scripted podcast about the incredible life of Eugene Fodor and his jet setting around and
spying around the world. Thank you for gining this is an unknown character we've
not heard about so large. Jacobson. Thank you for bringing him to us
and for joining us today. Thank you so much. It's really great to
be here. Thanks for listening to Later with Lee Matthews, the Lee Matthews
Podcast, and remember to listen to The Drive Live weekday afternoons from five to
seven and iHeartMedia Presentation