Small Talk With Mo Rocca: 'Mobituaries' and Perspective on Historical Crimes

have you here. I am a longtime fan. The Presidential Pets book is a favorite. Yes, mine too, mine too, Yes, I am truly howled not a lot of people bought that book. Well, it's sold like hotcake at my house, right, big hit in my world. Thank you. I mean, you have a lot of great stuff under your belt. You have a I'm time Emmy because she wrote the six or fourth annual Tony Awards, which is amazing. That was,

And you have been a CBS Sunday Morning correspondent. You do a lot of stuff, but I love that you are working so much in history. Right now, today we're going to talk a little bit about your show mobituaries and all of the interesting ways that you encounter history through this lens. So it's such a specific but really

smart way I think to talk about history. Was there a specific person or topic that was the inspiration for this, and then once you realize you were going to do it, was there an obvious best choice of where you were going to start telling these stories? Holly first of all, and Maria, I'm so happy to be here. I do have to say. You mentioned that I won an Emmy for writing for the Chinese and I'm thinking that if I could win a Grammy singing about the oscars, that

gave me an ego. It's a technical egot, and that's the most important. Yes, it's the hardest type to have. I thought of the idea for obituaries before I had a specific person in mind. But I will tell you the very person that we did, which was not my idea. It came to me through my then producer Meg and Marcus was on Meter, who was this wildly famous for the time impersonator of John of Kennedy, then President, whose

career died when the president was assassinated. And it was one of these boards where it combined politics with pop culture. It was a dramatic story. It really what my appetite for doing more of this. It just felt like you could get through history and so many different ideas through a you know, it's a really grim topic in an

entertaining way. We did an episode on the Rural Courge about when really popular sitcoms of the sixties, which were almost all about rural America Greenaker's Petticoach jump and replaced in one health group by more urban sitcoms, and there was a real history story there wasn't just about fun sitcoms. We also are pretty curious what that research and prep

processes like after that. I know, we go through a lot ourselves coming up for others, and there's always those little, those spiders stories that don't quite make it into what you're doing, but they're one or two sentences that are always really interesting about someone or your research process changes, I think constantly. But I'm curious how yours is too. I mean, the rabbit holes are really fun, pulling yes

little threads. So when we were researching one on from this pain, I was actually listening to the audio book of our experts, Biography of Pain, written by a guy named Craig Nelson, not to be confused with Nelson Couch, but there was literal parenthetical, at least it sounded like a parenthetical on the audiobook. It was one line that mentioned a museum exhibit in Hamboard in seventeen fifty five where Swedish spotmissed Carl Linnaeus disproved the thousands year long

belief in dragons. And I thought, well, what is this right one sentence like the author at that point was talking about the Enlightenment, and just toss decide that Carl Linnaeus, the Swedish spotmiss was in Hamburg to look at a seven headed high draw on exhibit and realized it was a faith, thus disproving the existence of dragons. I wasn't going to let it just fly by, Like I'm not a big Game of Thrones person, but I know a

lot of dragons fly. But anyway, so that's part of the fun of it, is when you stump something and you stumble on a little detail and it leads you in the whole of the direction. So that kind of leads me to my next question because I know, I mean, Maria and I both know history is full of little surprises and you think you're talking about one topic and

it turns out to be actually something completely different. And I wanted to talk to you about your episode Death of a Name Mildred, Bertha and Todd, where you talk about names and how they shift. Mildred Gallars, who is known as access Sally, who kind of parallels some stories we've told. I'm wondering what your biggest surprises were when you were researching her, and at what point you were like, wait, this woman was tried for treason in the US and

was the first woman to be so. And I suspect because I know you did an episode right on Douglas Chandler, is that right, who also was tried for treason or convicted of it? So you're going to know more than I. But I think that there aren't a lot of people who have been convicted of treason. And so when one of the producers of the Names episode gave me a list of Mildred's, my eye went right towards Mildred Glars.

And so when I went to visit my fifth grade teacher, Mildred Venisi, and we were talking about different Aldred, I knew that it would be a fun thing to bring up this woman convicted of treason who was a propagandist for Nazi Germany. I was surprised that I didn't know about this woman in learning about her that after her prison terms she ended up teaching music in Ohio. I'm wondering what she taught the kids, and obviously her career changed.

I guess if she had taught them eight old vice it wouldn't have been It might have been a little loaded. But the um again one of those kind of ancillary benefits of doing these deep dives on a topic like names that seemingly just a lot of fun, and it is. But then suddenly to learn about someone picked of treason and Mildred, Oh, treasonus Mildred, that's the Mildred that we were looking for. That would be a great name for

a pet. Treesonus Mildred to the Treasons Mildred. Also like, you know, just maybe you're getting a Christmas card from military lars and seeing trees and greetings something like that. I swear you just launched like a new business model. You get royalties from that, right, This kind of still

builds on that idea of surprises. Our entire premise of this show is that we're looking at historical crimes because a lot of the time, when you see them in the rear view mirror, you realize that some historical criminals look actually pretty sympathetic, others that maybe heroes don't look as great all the time. Have you had your expectations

or assumptions subverted by any of your subjects. I had expectations subverted, as it's such a great point that things that we think of as terrible times almost seemed sort of sad and kind of limp in pathetic, and heroes of course change. I knew that I would sympathize with Billy Carter, with the younger brother of Jimmy Carter, going

into it, I didn't realize how much I would. I think that's maybe a process of I don't want to say necessarily falling in love with the subject, But I think the deeper you get into search on somebody, the more you do tend to empathize. I can't think of somebody who I ended up disliking. Maybe I'm a little bit of a chunk um. I felt more deeply for them, And that was certainly the case of Billy Carter, who played sort of the entertaining goofball. But the more we

got into it, the more it became a parent. That what a situation to be placed in. He was a father of six, I think before he was forty and his wife they were raising a big family in this very small town. Even in n national and international media. Was a big deal to descend on this tiny town

in Georgia, and he placed under that microscope. I'm just gonna plant this seed because I actually think you could do an entire episode on baby Brothers, because you talking about Billy makes me think of Lester Hemingway, who I don't know how much you know about him, but Ernest Hemingway's little brother had absolute like idolized his big brother and kind of lived in his shadow and tried to do all these crazy things to try to like make

a name for himself, including establishing his own country on an island by using that loophole that if an island had enough back guano, the U s could claim it because it was a necessary fuel and fertilizer at the time. But there are a lot of I the younger siblings that are really interesting in history. I think he just gave me three episodes and one right. For the Mombenturies book, we did do something on siblings and the Bronte's brother,

Brandon Bronte. I can't remember. It's not Brandon, but it's something like that. And you know those Bronte sisters, I mean they were really productive. I mean they were really talented helping their little brother. You know, it's so interesting that you brought up sjuana. President Franklin Pierce one of his big accomplishments. I mean, he helped tear the country apart and let us into the Civil War, but he also monopolized the international supply iguana, like hasting the guano islands,

and it really was a very valuable prolizer. Yeah, there's a there's actually a three line there that you could probably pursue, telling you do a whole season that's to animal poop likes as long as it tid gently touches the subject. He could. For a long time, I couldn't feel I said guano was actually poop. I understood that penguins pooped, but I thought the guana was just this paste that they kind of admitted. I love this idea that you think there's a secondary cloac situation happening where

they just like they make up pace. Oh that's no fertilizer gland? Did you not know fertilizer gland? Exactly? I'm dying. Fertilizer does sound a lot more romantic to say Guando than I think. Yeah, I'm gonna laugh about Guano for a minute, Um, Maria, were you about to go? Actually? I was gonna make a joke about Douglas Chandler and Paul Revere, but then I decided not. He used to refer it in I did look a little bit. I knew I did not know anything about Douglas Chandler. Chandler

is an interesting kind of guy. Holly and I talked a lot about this on all of these people, like where did this really come from? What grew in his life that got him to the point where he was taking the five point summary of propaganda points from the Germans? You know, what we traced him back to was losing his wealthy family and all of his money in the depression,

and he blamed it all on the Jewish community. And he just went from there and he went to Europe and everything that he saw there pleased him because it wasn't American, really he stayed. He did many broadcasts anti US broadcast, but Chandler, I think was one of the stories where I found him looking at someone else. Actually, I believe I might have been researching as a Pound and his propaganda as repound speaking, and I think that's when Douglas popped off, because his was actually similar in

that radio broadcast shortwave radio format. He's an interesting guy who doesn't get a lot of name attention, but who is exactly in that Nazi propaganda hole that I wanted to try to avoid the entire season, that we didn't treasonist, and yet here we were with Douglas Chandler. Yes, sort of a lightweight as a Pound, which would make him Ezra Bunch. That's a great cartoon character, as he's not really very good at verse, but he tries real hard.

He Ghoest writes for people on the side. I'm gonna ask you a sort of heady question, MO, When historians of the future right your obituary, what do you hope it includes? What's the thing where you're like, they better tell people that I did X Y or Z. I thought about what I taught my first line to be, and it's all in that opening line in that clause, right, I wanted to be Morocca Comma, who made people interested in things they didn't expect to be interested in. Comma

died today. He was a D seven period whatever. But I actually would love him to include my pets book. Um, I want them to include my cooking show. Oh yes, I forgot to bring this up earlier. I loved that idea. Yeah, and I think, um, for a time, I probably would have wanted the fact that I was a self taught gymnast to be included. But I think at this point I never learned to do a back hand spring unassisted, which had been like a goal. By the time I had thirty, then it was a goal, but I hit forty.

Then by the time I hit fifty, and I just think at this point maybe a cause of death concerned. So what a hundred and seven? That's when you go for it on the backhand spring exactly like I can do this, and do you do it perfectly? What a great way to go out. If I knew that, okay, tomorrow I'm going to die in my sleep, why not just go for the hon assisted backhand spring right then? That will put you in the history books. Right, absolutely, put your camera up and take a little video of it.

Like some person in the future will be reading about like strange deaths and they'll be like, oh, and then that time that Morocca died doing an assistant backhand spring at the age of a hundred and seven, and they'll be like, what we have to do an episode of this guy. Yeah, he didn't stink the landing something like that. We'll make sure you have a good headline, like perfection, Maria. Do you want to ask the most important question we

ask on all of ours. Holly and I have a thing at the end of our Criminalia shows where we do a cocktail and mock tail. It's related to the topic that we've been talking about, sometimes loosely, sometimes very We were wondering before we let you go for your day, do you happen to have a favorite cocktail or mocktail?

I like an old fashioned because there's a part of me that likes that moment between me and the bartender where the bartender is thinking, really because you've got to get the more the pestle and the cherry and the orange and do the muddling. And it's also kind of like I'm old fashioned such as it isn't like kind of the word muddle anyway, muddling through? Aren't we all just trying to muddle through? But yeah, I like that. But I also have dreams of a cocktail called a

Shirley temple black. Oh yeah, but surely temple black I guess would be ginger ail with grenadine and is it colua? Right, Holly? Yeah? What would make it dark? Listen, here's what I would do, like a black spice drum. No, that's it, that's hitch. Yeah, okay, we accidentally made a cocktail this time, I know, right, So Holly experimented once or twice also with charcoal in her cocktails. I have. You have to be really careful using activated charcoal to darken a drink, as we always

tell our listeners, but I say it every time. Don't give someone a drink with activated charcoal in it if they don't know it, because it will mess up medication absorption and whatnot. That's a quick way to do. You have to be very very judicious. But I think lately I've been trying to figure out other ways to make drinks that are dark. A little black spice drum is

usually my go to. Or another one that I've started playing with lately is to drop a couple of black tea bags in like a mason jar of vodka gin and you get a very dark spirit out of that spice, or do whatever else you want. There's surely temple black well. I like that, he go like the end. A friend of mine, her husband is Scottish and he probably introduced me, I guess, years ago to sort of single malt sculpches and I love I said, I wanted to taste like dirt.

What is that? Kind of what charcoal does do it? It doesn't add a ton of flavor. It really does more to just shift the color. But because charcoal absorbs everything if you're on a medication, also, like nutrients that you eat that day are not going to get to yourselves because they're going with the charcoal. So it's one of those things you have to be very judicious about.

It's the kind of thing if you're doing like a Halloween or some other event where you do a specific cocktail that has charcoal in it, you drink one that's not a this is my drink for the night kind of setup. So yeah, this is I know, I only go with clean coal technology from my lir. Now this is what I'm gonna have a gas based cocktail if

clean burning gas work on that. We've shifted a little away from history, but I want to make sure we thank you Moe for spending this time with this with It's a light a way to to talk about history. Thank you very much. It's just been a lot of fun and I was just I'll go listen to more Douglas Chandler, but I probably won't. Don't do that. Don't do that, but make sure no save Douglas Chandler for

another day. But I want to make sure that you tell our listeners where they can find Mobituaries so they can get more of these very fun stories, and where they can find your book. You can find Mobituaries wherever you get your podcasts, and you can find a Mobituaries book and the audio book wherever you get your books. We're in the middle of our third season now and we have plenty of I hope surprising and engaging stories coming up the podcast. I love it. I will be listening.

I can't wait for the last having my episode. I thank you again Moe for spending this time with us, for our listeners. I also want to thank you, and I really do hope you check out mobituaries. If you love Criminalia, you're going to be addicted instantly, and we will be right back here next week. We're going to talk a little bit more about artists, and then we'll have another cocktail and we'll see right back here. Criminalia is a production of Shonda land Audio in partnership with

I Heart Radio. For more podcasts from Shonda land Audio, please visit the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.