WEBVTT

1
00:00:04.040 --> 00:00:09.320
This is Later with Lee Matthews,
The Lee Matthews Podcast More what You Hear

2
00:00:09.519 --> 00:00:15.519
Weekday Afternoon's on the Drive. Lars
Jacobson is a writer and executive producer of

3
00:00:15.759 --> 00:00:20.960
the future Novakane in production at Paramount, It'll Star Jack Quaid, An Amber,

4
00:00:21.120 --> 00:00:25.000
mid Thunder with a Safe House and
Film Nation producing. But he's also

5
00:00:25.280 --> 00:00:31.320
the producer of a podcast called Fodor's
Guide to Espionage, heard on the iHeartRadio

6
00:00:31.359 --> 00:00:37.640
Appen everywhere you get podcasts. Lars
Jacobson, welcome, thank you very much,

7
00:00:37.719 --> 00:00:44.079
pleasure to be here. Let's start
with who is Eugene Fodor the topic

8
00:00:44.159 --> 00:00:50.000
of this scripted podcast. Yeah,
what an amazing figure, I mean,

9
00:00:50.000 --> 00:00:54.280
what an amazing character. Yeah,
he's a real guy, really a revolutionary

10
00:00:54.320 --> 00:00:59.200
of the travel guide business, one
of the first and greatest, and so

11
00:00:59.240 --> 00:01:03.479
he kind of a rich need the
travel guide process very early when jet setting

12
00:01:03.560 --> 00:01:07.400
and travel was just kind of a
burgeoning business. He wanted to open up

13
00:01:07.400 --> 00:01:11.359
the world to travel and his belief
was if people, you know, learned

14
00:01:11.359 --> 00:01:15.840
about other cultures, that it was
a lot harder to go to war with

15
00:01:15.879 --> 00:01:19.040
one another. But then in that
process he was also traveling through Europe and

16
00:01:19.079 --> 00:01:26.079
he witnessed the terrible effects of Nazi
Germany and the results on Europe and how

17
00:01:26.280 --> 00:01:30.400
it was growing, and he decided
Joe was a quote of his, that

18
00:01:30.439 --> 00:01:33.159
he was not going to return to
Europe again unless it was in uniform.

19
00:01:33.640 --> 00:01:38.599
And even though he wasn't a born
American citizen, he enlisted. He worked

20
00:01:38.599 --> 00:01:42.480
for the OSS as a frontline interrogator
because he spoke so many languages, and

21
00:01:42.599 --> 00:01:46.959
he was also very you know,
he was a geographer, his father was

22
00:01:47.000 --> 00:01:49.959
a geographer. He understood the land, he understood, you know, how

23
00:01:51.000 --> 00:01:53.920
to get from place to place,
and also understood the cultures. So he

24
00:01:55.000 --> 00:01:59.000
was really effective in you know,
helping the US win the war. And

25
00:01:59.040 --> 00:02:04.200
then afterwards, it wasn't actually discovered
until the Nixon trials in the seventies,

26
00:02:04.280 --> 00:02:08.599
but it was revealed that he was
working as a CIA agent, using his

27
00:02:08.639 --> 00:02:13.400
cover as a travel writer to kind
of assist in with the CIA during the

28
00:02:13.400 --> 00:02:17.240
Cold War, which I just thought
was incredibly interesting but also made a lot

29
00:02:17.240 --> 00:02:22.879
of sense because a travel writer really
has all the best qualities of the spy.

30
00:02:23.159 --> 00:02:25.599
You know, they can blend in
with the local community, they can

31
00:02:25.680 --> 00:02:30.199
move freely without suspicion, they can
conduct surveillance. They understand he speaks.

32
00:02:30.319 --> 00:02:35.840
He spoke I think up to eleven
languages. So he really was kind of

33
00:02:35.840 --> 00:02:39.000
the ideal spy. And although we
don't know exactly what he got into,

34
00:02:39.879 --> 00:02:44.840
it was kind of the perfect avenue
for me to inject him into all the

35
00:02:44.879 --> 00:02:47.360
greatest moments of the Cold War,
And so that was kind of the impetus

36
00:02:47.400 --> 00:02:51.560
for the show. Well, he
sounds a lot like many of the I

37
00:02:51.599 --> 00:02:53.400
love this kind of stuff, by
the way, I love the real life

38
00:02:53.400 --> 00:02:57.520
stuff that happened, particularly during World
War Two that seemed to be the golden

39
00:02:57.560 --> 00:03:02.400
age of espionage exactly. And that's
what was so interesting to me. I

40
00:03:02.400 --> 00:03:06.599
mean, I've always loved those sixties
era spy shows, you know, I

41
00:03:06.800 --> 00:03:10.120
Spy and Man from Uncle and Mission
Impossible, and of course the Bond movies.

42
00:03:10.159 --> 00:03:14.120
And this guy with this was a
real life Bond. But he wasn't

43
00:03:14.159 --> 00:03:17.159
just Bond. He was Bond meet
Anthony Bourdain. And so for me to

44
00:03:17.240 --> 00:03:22.840
tell a story that gets to take
the audience on an exotic vacation and globe

45
00:03:22.879 --> 00:03:25.719
trot and at the same time take
them on a high stake spy mission,

46
00:03:25.879 --> 00:03:30.520
it was just as a storyteller,
it just couldn't be more compelling. And

47
00:03:30.599 --> 00:03:34.719
I love history, so to also
be able to inject the series with real

48
00:03:34.800 --> 00:03:38.800
history, real people, real locations, so got It's filled with fun facts

49
00:03:38.840 --> 00:03:44.280
and history and it's just a lot
of fun. And not to mention the

50
00:03:44.280 --> 00:03:47.360
fact that he was married to the
woman that he ran the company with,

51
00:03:47.520 --> 00:03:53.560
Blosta, who was also extremely talented
lasta Fodor, and so it's a very

52
00:03:53.560 --> 00:03:58.560
interesting dynamic of your husband and wife
running a business and kind of functioning in

53
00:03:58.599 --> 00:04:01.039
this world. So we got to
kind of play with those relationships as well.

54
00:04:01.360 --> 00:04:05.560
The podcast is Fodor's Guide to Espionage. It's about a travel writer who

55
00:04:05.919 --> 00:04:10.680
had a secret life working for the
CIA, or what became the CIA,

56
00:04:10.800 --> 00:04:15.319
started out as the OSS. Lars
Jacobson is the writer and producer of it.

57
00:04:15.680 --> 00:04:19.759
This character also reminds me of many
of the other real life spies of

58
00:04:19.800 --> 00:04:25.879
that era that I've read about,
one most notably Tricycle, who spoke many

59
00:04:25.920 --> 00:04:30.360
different languages, was able to blend
in and out of cultures without any problem,

60
00:04:30.680 --> 00:04:34.279
was able to talk his way in
and out of any even enduring a

61
00:04:34.480 --> 00:04:45.319
five hour grilling from the Gestapo,
and emerged highly credible quote unquote. This

62
00:04:45.399 --> 00:04:51.680
guy sounds very similar, only Tricycle
was a triple agent. This was true

63
00:04:51.680 --> 00:04:57.800
patriotism for the Allies. He really
was, And that to me is also

64
00:04:57.839 --> 00:05:01.040
what's so interesting is those people back
of that era. It wasn't all about

65
00:05:01.079 --> 00:05:06.639
technology and facial recognition software and all
this stuff which it is now. It

66
00:05:06.720 --> 00:05:11.680
was really you know, trade craft, and it was boots on the ground

67
00:05:11.800 --> 00:05:15.480
and high stakes, you know,
personal missions, and they required a lot

68
00:05:15.519 --> 00:05:23.519
of ingenuity, and you know the
effects of that was of course essential to

69
00:05:23.879 --> 00:05:28.319
the success of the Cold War and
to revealing you know, even the course

70
00:05:28.360 --> 00:05:31.879
of this story, we jumped from
city to city. But in nineteen sixty

71
00:05:31.879 --> 00:05:33.879
one, when all of this is
taking place, in the heart of the

72
00:05:33.879 --> 00:05:38.759
Cold War, leading up to the
Cuban Missile Crisis, all of these these

73
00:05:39.279 --> 00:05:43.279
huge historic moments, the building of
the Berlin Wall and the exposure of the

74
00:05:43.279 --> 00:05:46.439
Portland Spiring, which was the biggest
intelligence breach in British history, Like all

75
00:05:46.480 --> 00:05:50.959
of these events were all happening around
the same time. Assassination attempt on Charles

76
00:05:51.000 --> 00:05:55.079
de Gaul, which was the kind
of the subject matter of Day of the

77
00:05:55.160 --> 00:05:59.800
Jackal, Like all of these things
were happening all within Europe, all within

78
00:05:59.879 --> 00:06:04.360
the same year, and Eugene Fodor
was I'm sure central to a lot of

79
00:06:04.360 --> 00:06:09.920
it, or we at least got
to inject him into these events in a

80
00:06:09.959 --> 00:06:15.040
really fun way. Scripted podcast is
Photor's Guide to Espionage. It's about Eugene

81
00:06:15.040 --> 00:06:17.920
Fodor, who is a jet setter
and globe trotter who worked for the CIA,

82
00:06:18.040 --> 00:06:23.759
and Larsh Jacobson is the writer and
producer. I'm amazed this has not

83
00:06:23.959 --> 00:06:27.600
been a movie or a book in
its own right, or has it.

84
00:06:29.600 --> 00:06:31.920
You know, it's very interesting because
I was surprised too. I first came

85
00:06:31.959 --> 00:06:36.120
across it when I was doing research
on another project, and I was so

86
00:06:36.160 --> 00:06:40.279
surprised that no one had ever done
this. And I actually had at one

87
00:06:40.279 --> 00:06:44.600
point set it up as a TV
series with a big name actor and the

88
00:06:44.639 --> 00:06:46.319
idea of kind of putting it out
as a TV series, And I think

89
00:06:46.319 --> 00:06:50.560
that is still the idea of what's
great about a podcast is you can put

90
00:06:50.560 --> 00:06:56.680
out an entire season and you know, it's a perfect proof of concept.

91
00:06:56.759 --> 00:07:00.360
It kind of shows exactly what the
series could be. And I think it

92
00:07:00.399 --> 00:07:04.000
really is ideal for a TV series
because it is truly international. It is

93
00:07:04.279 --> 00:07:08.800
you know, it's Bond meets Ordaine. It's you know, like I said,

94
00:07:08.879 --> 00:07:12.279
an exotic vacation at a high stakes
spy mission, which is really fun.

95
00:07:12.480 --> 00:07:15.720
Well, a podcast is certainly cheaper
to put together, easier to put

96
00:07:15.720 --> 00:07:18.399
together, but in some ways more
challenging because what you have to do is

97
00:07:18.480 --> 00:07:23.959
create pictures with words and sound rather
than the pictures themselves. For me,

98
00:07:24.000 --> 00:07:29.040
it's more fun, it really,
is it really? And they do they

99
00:07:29.079 --> 00:07:31.399
say, you know, uh,
you know, the limitations, you know,

100
00:07:31.560 --> 00:07:33.879
the absence of limitations or the enemy
of art or something like that.

101
00:07:34.040 --> 00:07:39.160
So we have, you know,
because it's just a radio play essentially.

102
00:07:39.519 --> 00:07:43.639
But what was so great about having
Eugene Phodor as a character is we use

103
00:07:43.720 --> 00:07:46.399
his narration as a narrative device to
kind of bookend the series. So we

104
00:07:46.519 --> 00:07:48.839
get to you know, he gets
to tell us about the location, he

105
00:07:48.879 --> 00:07:53.600
gets to take us to the restaurants, he tells us about the historic places.

106
00:07:53.759 --> 00:07:58.319
He also touches on the history of
Vespa in Italy and Gelato, and

107
00:07:58.439 --> 00:08:01.560
so we get to have a lot
of fun with the history and using his

108
00:08:01.720 --> 00:08:05.759
voice to explain the world. So, in addition to the spy mission,

109
00:08:05.839 --> 00:08:09.600
the Diti vacations, you're going to
get all kinds of fun anecdotes and information.

110
00:08:09.800 --> 00:08:13.480
And so next time you're traveling through
Europe, and maybe there'll be more

111
00:08:13.519 --> 00:08:16.839
travels to come, but this time
in Europe, hopefully we'll hit on some

112
00:08:16.879 --> 00:08:20.839
spots that everyone kind of recognizes and
introduce them to some new places. Lars

113
00:08:20.920 --> 00:08:24.680
Jacobson. He is the producer of
Fodor's Guide to Espionage. It is a

114
00:08:24.720 --> 00:08:31.120
scripted podcast about the incredible life of
Eugene Fodor and his jet setting around and

115
00:08:31.159 --> 00:08:37.320
spying around the world. Thank you
for gining this is an unknown character we've

116
00:08:37.360 --> 00:08:41.080
not heard about so large. Jacobson. Thank you for bringing him to us

117
00:08:41.159 --> 00:08:45.639
and for joining us today. Thank
you so much. It's really great to

118
00:08:45.639 --> 00:08:50.080
be here. Thanks for listening to
Later with Lee Matthews, the Lee Matthews

119
00:08:50.080 --> 00:08:56.000
Podcast, and remember to listen to
The Drive Live weekday afternoons from five to

120
00:08:56.080 --> 00:08:58.360
seven and iHeartMedia Presentation