Author Erik Larson — Serious Jibber-Jabber with Conan O'Brien | CONAN on TBS

alright Conan O'Brien here welcome to serious jibber-jabber I'm sitting here with the author of five national bestsellers most notable among them the devil in the white city in the garden of beasts and his latest right here dead wake the last crossing of the Lusitania which debuted at number one it's a fascinating telling of the events that led to and followed the sinking of the famed Liverpool bound British ocean liner by a German u-boat during World War one I'm extremely happy to be joined by Erik Larson thanks for being here Erik to like in my small little set it's so nice to have you I told you this before the show and I meant it you may be the only author I can say this to I've read all of your books I've read everything I think it's you and the guy who ever wrote encyclopedia brown I'm sure my wife can say that so that's good yeah no I'm a huge fan of your work I love the way you write I also love the time period that you seem to be fixated with is also the time period that I have long been fixated on let's let's in general I know you you deviated a little bit in garden and the beasts boat mostly we're talking about when yeah well for me I am particularly drawn to the period essentially from about 1890 to about 1920 mm-hm being the the nexus between essentially the Gilded Age and the Progressive Era and I love that era being caught for a number of reasons one is that I do think America was very different back then there was a real sense of optimism this idea that we could do anything we set our minds to whether or not we could but I'm talking about the Panama Canal the New York City subway system anything like massive that you wonder what were they thinking they just took on and wherever you have that kind of that kind of hubris wherever you have hubris you're gonna have tragedy you can have really compelling stories so that's one thing but there's another very practical reason why I love that era and that it was the the the advent of the typewriter people typed their correspondence and believe me it's a big deal when you're doing for three or four years so I love that aspect as well it's I am fascinated with that era long have been I own old typewriters own Underwood's and a royal there are World War One era and I type letters to my friends on stationery to anime and when I type them I type them in this voice of someone it's an I know it's an affectation but I I typed him in the voice of someone in 1910 so there's a lot of hail fellow well met okay and I send out these dispatches to people and I do it I love the texture I love the sound but everything about that era I don't know if you've been to Teddy Roosevelt's home boy stur Bay I have been to Teddy Roosevelt's home that is when I walk in that house I think this is one I I love this era of home the idea of a pneumatic tube or whatever when I was a kid growing up on Long Island we used to ride bikes to to his home and we were just you know tore the house and walked the grounds it was just terrific and you really feel like he's there you feel like he is there especially in the case of that house yeah okay so which brings us to Lusitania is the topic that you chose for this book why the Lusitania complicated so it begins with the fact that I've always had this I've always had a thing for maritime history you know who doesn't really especially I guess little boys you know I mean I was always a yeah I was always enthralled by the mysteries of like the Mary Celeste and the Flying Dutchman and all that stuff when I was a kid and I've always always had this interest I would have done a book about Titanic if you know Cameron and Celine Dion haven't done it to death already you know it's it's it's Celine Dion's my book is fantastic by the way forgive them but but the Lusitania was always there in my mind I was wondered what's you know what really happened the thing I learned in high school was hey Lusitania sunk World War one we're in that's it but I knew that there there had to be something more I was put off though by the fact that I'm you know there seemed to be a lot of other material that had been done about the Lusitania but I just kept being drawn to it and the first time I started doing some preliminary reading in the subject I was a blown away and you know it was just really really fascinating still I was reluctant though because that's not enough I mean it's it's it's fine to be blown away but then there still was this other trailing see if you will of other things that have been done but was when I went to an archived for it I like to parachute into an arc I'm just gonna see what's there and I realized that there was something maybe I could bring to this party because the textured nature of the archival resources so much deep rich terrific stuff unlike anything I had for any of my previous books was available for this for this subject and I was just in a small arc up I knew there was much more elsewhere and I realized that what I can bring to the story is suspense I could I could hopefully I succeeded but but I saw this suddenly as being a very different kind of work on the Lusitania focused on trying to make people really cent feel as though they were aboard that ship with these people real-life suspense yeah you did pull that off it is a great it's the best account of actually what it was like to sail on one of those ships in that era you get that from the book you also I know that you were tweeting on the anniversary of the sinking of and you at one point linked to footage there's great there's actual footage of people getting out of their cars and going in to board the Lusitania lots of footage that runs for quite a long time you're used to seeing little snippets of footage from that era in 1914 long footage and you really got the sense that I feel like I'm there and very powerful stuff and and yeah interestingly the cinematography of the time was a stationary camera so any motion is actually the ship backing out of yeah out of this which at first was really throwing me it was thinking we were which which hand is which what's happening here with the camera but the amazing thing was first of all the guy one of the guys getting out of the cab walking into the into the terminal right up in front of the camera you saw him now I don't know who he was the odds are he did not survive right about how amazing that is to see him and then as the as the ship is moving out of its birth to see all these passengers it frankly was like the start of the the Titanic film guys real right now right to the point where one of the stewards comes out of a door on the on one of the upper decks and delivers something to a passenger and then walks back into the into the cabin I mean it's just like it's too good to be true yes well he was the real deal well here's let's talk about here's what most kids learn in school they learn there's a World War America's not involved it's the first big world war America's not in it Woodrow Wilson's gonna keep us out German u-boats sinks the Lusitania Lusitania sinks there's a lot of Americans on board a lot of innocent all innocent civilians the world is shocked America says we are not going to stand for this and goes to war and then with our help the British and the French triumphs and what you know and we're their allies that's what people know not the case that was even in when I was a kid one of my favorite movies was Yankel Yankee Doodle Dandy and in that movie Jimmy Cagney is playing George M Cohan and he's walking down the street and there's a big commotion and someone he picks up a newspaper and says Lusitania sunk and he says this means war and goes right to enlist right right and not true that said not it's a two-year two-and-a-half years span or something between the sinking of the Lusitania two full years and you know it's funny what while I was doing my research I would ask that a few number of people in my in like my circle who knew what I was working on I would say okay so how long do you think it took between the time of the sinking and the time we got into the war and the estimates range from two days to two months when I found that it was two years frankly I had had this thing built into my brain or driven into my brain so long from high school and so forth that I wasn't even sure that I was right you know I had to really just just really look very carefully and make sure yes in fact it was not for two full years and then even more amazingly when Wilson finally asked Congress for a declaration of war or more accurately a declaration that a state of war existed never mentioned the Lusitania because so much else had happened you it it was not Pearl Harbor there's natural Harbor I think people think often that Lusitania was to World War one what Pearl Harbor was to World War two Pearl Harbor were attacked it's dramatic it happens on December 7th you know within a half a day or a day Franklin Roosevelt's on the radio and and a day that will live in infamy and everybody is going to war right this was a very different situation what's fascinating and what you do in this book that I was just absolutely loved is you set up how many things and this is true of many tragedies how many small things had to happen to culminate in the tragedy small things the the ship for this ship and the u-boat to meet was a complete it was almost an accident there was an accident and swaggered the u-boat am I saying it correctly swagger speaker speaker the u-boat captain has pretty much given up on finding a good ship and he's leaving the area he doubles back he's going home he's going home he's headed home and the Lusitania is not on schedule it was delayed first of all because the captain delayed for a couple of reasons yeah one Wow well one was that the captain had his niece and actress aboard and she was still aboard when the when the the dock crew pulled the gangue planks away and ship of course couldn't leave with her aboard so there was that 15 or 20 minute delay but the bigger delay was it was a two-hour delay caused by the fact that another ship the Cameroonian was suddenly requisitioned by Britain's Admiralty to be used as a as a as a military vessel and so all the passengers had to be transferred a number of those passengers were were transferred to the to the Lusitania and so there was that two-hour delay while all their stuff was brought over from the airship and aboard now that 2 hours and even the 2 hours and 15 minutes and frankly even just the 15 minutes could have made the difference between life and death for the shipping for this chance complete change chancer because because you know when they did encounter each other there was there was prior to the encounter there was heavy heavy fog and in heavy fog a submarine stays under underwater deep so it doesn't get run over by a ship they would never have seen each other the fog happened to break just at the time that these two ships almost miraculously almost miraculously because not only did the fog lift the day became one of the most perfect flawless spring days you could imagine with the sea as absolutely smooth as glass yeah the other thing is that the ship Lusitania was very fast but it's running on three funnels not four because they're trying to save cold yes the ship had had four funnels and its maximum speed with all those all the associated boiler rooms the four boiler rooms and in operations maximum speed was 25 or 26 knots but because they wanted to save money they shut down one of the boiler rooms so that left only three operating that meant the top speed was only 21 knots so I think okay it's not a big difference it's like four knots well it's the difference between it's a full day's difference and if that boiler had been in operation if it had been operating at its published speed the speed by the way that most people believed it was still running when they got aboard definitely there would've been no chance that the submarine and Lusitania would have would have encountered each other now here is the biggest question I think a lot of people don't realize this war exists between Germany and England at the time and there's an all-out war so these are passengers taking a British ship from New York to England the day the ship sails the German government runs a giant notice that says attention just we're letting you know if we if we see any ship flying the British flag enter British waters which the Lusitania had to we we may fire upon it we're just letting you know that now think today and they're also saying that that it doesn't necessarily have to be a word ship could be any ship because you know essentially accidents happen it's all on this right there pretty much saying stay away from the British Islands or you could die now you sail at your own risk you sail at your own risk now can you imagine today if you were about to get on an airplane and as you were getting on they handed you a pamphlet and it said the destination you're going to just let you know that the the country you're headed to we've been warned that we might get shut out of the sky so you fly your own risk and that's in today's newspaper most people get off the plane why did people still get on the Lusitania yeah you know that's what I think and again that kind of cuts to one of the reasons that I love that that era they kind of ship because they had confidence that the ship was too big too fast to be caught by a German submarine they'd also been assured there is there is considerable evidence that they've been assured by canard that the ship would be escorted by the British Navy once it reached British waters but beyond that there was also this confidence or this belief that maybe the old rules of maritime warfare were still in play and those rules very explicitly when they had been agreed by all the seafaring nations you know forbade any attack on a passenger liner they also orchestrated very carefully attacks on cargo ships as well what World War one did and what the submarine did was it began and then thoroughly completed the process of discarding those rules well World War one introduces us to trench warfare gene guns gas poison poison gas April of april of 1915 just a series of air bombardment pretty much all of the worst things that we came up with in the 20th century with the exception of the atomic bomb they come up with in in World War one and submarines one of them and it's stunning to me that people got on that ship and you described it very well in the book they had a kind of gallows humor nobody made jokes well I hope we make it I hope we make it but I don't see anybody in today's climate getting on an airplane or a ship that's been warned like that no III don't see that as we live in a different era now you live in a different era maybe maybe there would also be an element of the fact that today frankly getting a plane if you story says they're gonna shoot you down these weapons that exist today are so accurate you have no doubt that it would happen there's no 747 that is that is so big and so fast that it's going to elude it you know a SAM missile so let's get in side the head if we can of the u-boat captain Tiger Shriekers figure I'll never get that right the rest of this I've heard it both ways yeah I'm gonna call him Joe Joe figure you can call him Walt yeah Walt this the the the u-boat captain he sees what is clearly a luxury liner in his sights and he proceeds to put a torpedo into it right one of the things that made it so deadly was that the ship sank pretty much instantly it sank 18 minutes 18 minutes there was no time for people to get into lifeboats so incredible number of cat what are the number of casualties gosh like 1,200 1,200 1,200 casualties men women children and a record number of children and infants aboard yes just horrible sank and end and then Viger leaves the scene he knew what he was doing what I mean did he did he have a conscience about this let's first let's go into that a little bit you know what what he what his war log tries to suggest is that he did not know that it was the Lusitania nobody believes that that's the kid well I won't say nobody nobody believes that's the case because the Lusitania was so recognizable a four funnel ship moreover because of a super-secret agency room 40 that was intercepting most if not all of German naval wireless key patience everyone knew that the German broadcasting station at Nordic on the North Sea coast of Germany was broadcasting the comings and goings of Cunard ships including the Lusitania right so it stretches credibility to think that he didn't know I think that he didn't know so he dies a year later in combat so we don't know God that fleeing fleeing a fleeing a particular kind of at least to the best that anybody can can can reconstruct fleeing a particular kind of cleverly built British warship fleeing into a apparently into a sea mines zone and then having his submarine blown up with all hands he he dies do you think had he lived I mean the crew and I think she Peter were were awarded that the German government rather than distinct in distancing themselves from what this u-boat had done praised them right and said in fact they struck a medal and said commemorating this great thing that you did which is really hard to believe because you know when but the met the medal is a fairly contentious issue has historically speaking but this is suffice it to say that the what we know absolutely beyond doubt because it was intercepted by the British and I've seen the actual the actual intercept is that after Schrager reported his sinking of the Lusitania and and and bragging a bit that he did with one torpedo the the naval command sent him a very complimentary note saying we're very proud of you and so forth Germany the German populace was overjoyed that he had sucked this ship this is this paragon of British naval or British maritime success yeah but that was the nature of the war you know the for the Germans they thought they thought this was the miracle weapon that was going to you know end the carnage in the trenches at some point and you think about it in most of the big world war one world war two we're carpet bombing cities we're killing a lives were killing a lot of civil that just became that was a new concept that that came along in the 20th century which is you decimate civilian populations that's hey you want to go to war that's what you do right you make civilians part of the part of the war landscape and that's what the Germans did at the very start of World War World War one with their march through Belgium and taking civilians captive and executing them as a way of trying to tamp down resistance the big question this is one question I want to ask it's an incredible hypothetical if she figures survives the war do you think he is tried do you think he is criminally prosecuted I think figer if he had survived the war he would have been classified as a war criminal how they proceeded at that point I don't know yeah and yeah I think I think it's pretty obvious that that would be the case because because frankly there were people who had committed lesser crimes that were also classified as war criminals there is some great historical characters in dead wake that all play different parts one of them is Churchill all right Churchill is the First Lord of the Admiralty right Churchill is aware that the Lusitania is at risk Churchill is getting information from room 40 which is their secret service let's let's qualify this a bit too we want to be absolutely accurate about what Churchill knew and didn't know there is no there is no smoking memo there's nothing that indicates there's nothing nothing in Churchill Sam no no cable no memorandum that says Churchill knew this was happy well we do know is that is that elements within the Admiralty did know that the Lusitania was got everybody knew the Lusitania was coming because of this the controversy over this German advertisement that wasn't like nobody in the Western world nobody who read newspapers could have could could have been you know blind enough not to realize the Lusitania was coming right but what what was the question is how much information that rule 40 had was actually disseminated elsewhere they knew the folks in room 40 knew exactly when the submarine u20s figure submarine why left Germany they knew within the first four 24 hours exactly its position exactly its position because Shri Gers wireless man reported the position so they they had all those I've seen the intercepts they're all just perfect and you can even plot them on Google Earth and see exactly where the summer is going but more importantly they knew what his orders were and what his destination was which was a patrol zone right off the mouth of Liverpool Harbor all that material at hand you would think they would have done something to protect the ship but nothing was done so then it has given rise to the really the main lingering question of Lusitania is why was that ship allowed to enter those waters without protection well the obvious answer if you're gonna be at all cynical is that and and it's a healthy dose of cynicism but it's right there England desperately wants America in the war that is beyond doubt desperately Churchill and you it's in the book there's a moment where Churchill's speaking to someone and I think he says look it wouldn't be the worst thing in the world if the Germans accidentally or intentionally killed a bunch of America well he's writing a letter to Britain's Britain's Board of Trade saying that we need all the traffic we can get from America and if some of it gets into trouble all the better all the better all the better so although the Lusitania is sinking didn't immediately lead to America going to war against the Germans it certainly helped certainly grease the grease the skids so it was a point of some frustration for the for the British that here was Lusitania sunk and still we did nothing there was alive a lot of like oh my god what are you what are you thinking why are you not entering this war is it a potentially dark it's a it's a murky chapter Churchill's such a fan he's might be my favorite 20th century figure just the moat might be the most impressive 20th century figure to me in so many different ways yet there this chapter is murky and dark and maybe I read it and it's hard for me not to be a little suspicious that it's possible well knew and didn't do anything here's here's here's here's how I you know I'm again in the absence of a smoking memo and I would have found it frankly if if one existed here's the way I look at it there is a body of evidence that if you if you presented this to a court of law and you wanted a jury to vote you know without a shadow of a doubt that Churchill had done this given the available evidence there's a lot of it but it's all that's all you know again there's no direct there's no direct connection to Churchill the jury would most likely not be able to come to a to a guilty verdict however if you turned it around and did what scientists do they try to prove the null hypothesis that is to say you try to prove that something did not happen you can't do that either yeah that's the fascinating thing and that's why I kind of I hang it truthfully I hang it out on a quite prominent British historian actually historian of British naval intelligence who initially felt that the reason the ship was in there unprotected was was an accident it was it was a mistake as he called it a monumental cock-up but then later in life and there's an interview of fascinating interview with him in the files of the Imperial War Museum in London and in that later in his life he changed his mind he said you know I there's so much evidence and so much more has come out he said I cannot think of anything to explain it except a plot of some sort right but even there he stopped he said I don't know who was behind it I don't know who you know what elements knew of this I don't know if there's Churchill but there had to be a plot and he says something very sort of tantalizing he says if anybody can tell me otherwise please do you know one of the things that leads you in that direction - and it's that you point out in your book is that most other ships many other ships entering in the British waters and those circumstances were being escorted by destroyers right right many passengers on the Lusitania thought that was going to happen right under the impression that will be when we get near Ireland will be met by destroyers and will be led into Liverpool Harbor so it was a perception of people traveling it was it was the the the sort of modus operandi for a lot of other ships didn't happen mm-hmm and so the fact that that didn't happen seem to me incredibly suspicious yeah no that's not it's not that every ship had write a script before but a number of ships including you know the captain was Captain William Thomas Turner including including a ship that he had been the cat right if he had been escorted and in fact it's funny that at what really adds to the damning element of the whole thing at nights on Thursday night passengers saw a British warship passing them at very high speed and they they thought okay this is this is this evidence of the fact that we're being escorted well in fact that ship was racing home because it had gotten alerts that the that the Lusitania had not gotten that there were submarines in the vicinity and I was just going to get the hell out of there right so that was another interesting element Woodrow Wilson another character who's in the book and I loved it because Wilson fast I am loved presidential history and reading trivia and these characters Woodrow Wilson's a fascinating character to me and it some of his presence in the book and sometimes almost play like comedy because everything else you know you see all of these dark forces coming together you know what's coming you know we all know what's going to happen to the Lusitania but you see things slowly moving together and the whole time it's happening Woodrow Wilson who is depressed he's lost his wife he's a widower he's very sad he meets this woman Edith bullying Galt and comically falls in love and starts you know in almost a sitcom kind of head over heels now let's let's be careful about comically I mean the poor guy was smitten yes he was absolutely smitten this is you know I'm I come from a different world yeah I apologize and and you know I mean he he has just absolutely fallen in love with this woman in a way that if you were going through it you would not find comical at all miss miss guy was lost to follow up I mean he write in love with this woman and you know he had been you know deeply lonely I mean to the point where one day he's in New York he's taking a walk with a friend and advisor in Kenya walk in Manhattan that's how different times are notice the President of the United States yeah they're just walking down the street you know and when he comes back he was on the one hand really delighted by being with just to get out but he also tells his friend he says you know you know I can't help feeling that I wish somebody had had killed me yeah okay you know this guy was really depressed right so along comes this this 40-something widow often seen Dupont Circle in the in Washington tooling around her elective car apparently quite glamorous by standards of the of the era he falls totally in love and he writes these these amazing love letters you know very very passionate passionate and and just pouring his heart out about his loneliness his need is this that she's holding him off at first she's like whoa what what's going on here is the bread of the United States I'm not ready to get married you know that kind of thing and it has really it when she turns him down for marriage get throws him into a tailspin and boom just about the same time loose dingus well here's in the book it almost plays as if he's distracted but you know that that he's that the focus of his life at that point is this woman has completely he's completely enthralled with her not that he would have made a difference one way or the other in in you know what happened eventually to the Lusitania or their or maybe even maybe more in the response to what happened to Lusitania but he's a character in the book who he is the leader of the United States and he's going through this very particular time in his life when he's completely head over heels in love well there was no question that he was deeply distracted by this yeah whether it changed his reaction to the sinking Lusitania you know he was fully aware of what was happening in world events he was fully aware of the implications of the potential implications of Lusitania he was he was absolutely even then committed to keeping America out of the war but there is no question that he was distracted in fact there was a speech he gave in Philadelphia and he says at one point he says in a letter to Edith that that when I was there I was so he was in such turmoil over there what had happened in their relationship that he almost didn't really he had almost forgotten what city he was in right and so and it's interesting I've gotten some feedback about about that and people are sort of I heard from a guy who was kind of appalled that I had revealed this the secret side of Wilson's life in in the book and I found that really surprising because to me to me a big thing that that what I love about history is that you got to go with what the record gives you you know nuance warts and all there are no heroes no unalloyed heroes everybody's got you know warts and I just felt that it humanized Wilson in a way that I think he he historiographical he speaking could have used I mean I always thought I always thought of Wilson as yes a great president but kind of a stiff yeah I know he's the guy in the high collar with Ponce Nez yes and he's got the the his idealistic plan to bring peace to the world and he's very rigid and these letters are not just love they're their sensual he's like you can see him as like a sensualist he's there's almost an erotic quality to have almost yeah and actually given given the nature of the time you read between the lines there there there is an erotic quality tab although he's not I mean you know somebody writes the same letter for they would get to the point a lot quicker and probably I probably be texting a photograph whatever but you know 1915 so if only if only Wilson had had access to an iPhone exactly who knows what could have happened what is I I'll repeat this again well let me ask quickly before I move on to that captain Turner yes captain Lusitania William Thomas Turner I read your book and I think he got a raw deal because he is seems like a very efficient captain he really knows his business he stayed with the ship when it was hit absolutely he did and happened to just be very dramatically he tried to go down with the ship but was washed out of the bridge well whether he tried it down with ship remember the facts point is he was there on the bridge with his life jacket on and the ship just sank from beneath them yeah if you can imagine that it's fun to try to fun and it's interesting to try to picture that kind of a moment because there you are you're on the ship right there you are this is your ship it has you know this is like the catastrophe of your life of the world you're on this thing and the waters are so clear and so still you had to be able to see this thing fall away from you yeah you know what an amazing moment and and my opinion he did nothing wrong but there was this attempt to someone has to be responsible so I think the the Admiralty I think there's an effort to say Turner well he should have been zigzagging he you know he he he could have done something different and there was he was actually there was a trial were they well within 24 hours the Admiralty had decided for for various reasons which are kind of interesting to contemplate that Turner was going to be the one to blame and that's fascinating because first of all the the publicity value of the propaganda value of simply blaming Germany and the submarine commander was huge right that's that you know that's in fact there had been a an inquest already in kinsale in Ireland you know jumping the gun on the Admiralty and they had come to that conclusion that it was the fault of the German Navy and the dryin effort so why pass up that opportunity that propaganda opportunity to blame a British citizen a sea captain I mean this it defies logic yeah and it almost leads you to believe that they're trying to distract you from something they are they yes and that and that's one more of the little bits and pieces of evidence that make you think about plot or conspiracy but again it's circumstantial but but I believe I believe that the point of this this this attempt to attack Turner and and the head of the inquiry later referred to it as as a dirty business you know and and that he resigned his his post but I believe the the attempt to blame Turner had a lot to do with trying to keep to maintain the secrecy of the super-secret entity this room forty even to the point where it was allowed the verdict was allowed to hold that the submarine was sunk the Lusitania was sunk by two torpedoes yeah it was not some point to Tokyo I know that beyond a doubt because figure and one of the intercepted telegrams tells us he used only one torpedo and yet that was kept secret it is it remain secret even when even when Churchill wrote his amazing history of World War one which is really actually mmm-hmm I agree with you Churchill is one of the most amazing characters I've ever come across not only did he lead a life of action that rivals and everything Indiana Jones could have you know come up with here's a terrific writer yeah terrific writer not a bad painter either but anyway even a raconteur and I mean he's he's everywhere he's the Zelig yeah he's everywhere and a world one kind of a screw-up yeah yeah oh yeah yeah but but even in that history you know decade after the after the war he's still insisted on saying two torpedoes yeah well I there's a very poignant part in the book where some number of years later Turner his career never recovered even though I think he did nothing wrong just that was my opinion and he comes across as a you know fantastic captain and he did everything he could he's the captain you would want and and yes if you saw him as that Saturday morning when you're getting on the Lusitania about to leave New York if you saw Turner up there in the bridge yeah be like all right no no he was the guy he is you know he is the the maritime equivalent seems to me of a Sully Sullenberger exactly because he's very I like this guy and and he has all the great qualifications this happens not his fault but he has to pay the price for it and there's a very poignant moment you'll correct me because I won't get this quite right but years a number of years later someone sees him and he's driving like a garbage scow Oh what happens is ya know it's very touching they're a bunch of ship news reporters and this was an era when when you know New York Times everybody had a reporter stationed at the war if the track ship traffic cuz it was so much traffic right so this was a hot day in New York the war was still under way and a bunch of reporters Harbor pilot incited a bunch of reporters to just take an excursion to go up up the Hudson River because he was going to take this ship I think was called the wasn't the altona I can't remember the name of the ship so they go up there and and and first of all the ship is this ship is while it's tied up into war if it's doing something very odd it seems to be moving on its own because the waters are very still that's because it is packed with horses for the war and it was something that actually had a name was called a horse storm when something spokes to horses they would all move side to side yeah and so the ship would seem you know this so they pull up next to the ship and the the side cargo door opens and there's a man standing there clearly the captain and it turns out to be Turner Turner is the captain of this horse scow if you will and he's wearing sort of a soiled soiled you know uniform but it still has his hat cocked at an angle and he still has the presence of the old Turner but he went from sailing one of the fastest biggest most luxurious ships in the ocean to within to about two years he's shuttling horses raina rusted out Hulk and and that like glad to be doing it glad to be doing it because the last thing he wanted to be was on land right I'm curious as I said in the beginning I've read all your books I I love the subjects I also love the way you write and I'm sure guess what your process is which part of the process you're writing okay let's say let's say you already have the idea right what you want to write about and you've done your research I'm just curious the actual writing that fascinates me well how much do you do a day what how does it work here's how it works the the research I try to get as much research done as possible in an ideal world I would have it all done before I started but you can never do it because what happens at least for me is okay I'll be working on the research for two years and I love the research phase I really do it's like a detective story every day so you can't you know work on this for two years and there always comes a point where it's like you know this story wants to come out my wife who's a neonatologist intensive care for babies and also a mother of three daughters she always equates it to she says she says you know she says you know it's probably a lot like you know childbirth you always get to appointment you're carrying a child we realize this baby has to come out right you know and so that's how it is it's like I gotta start writing then I go into whatever do is my page add a mode and I get it very early for issue you get up it I want to know if this this is the part I want to know exactly you get up at 4:00 4:30 5:00 somewhere in that range depends on how much wine I've had the night before over dinner right no but I try to get up very early and this is something that started back when I had toddlers now my kids are all in their 20s but when we had toddlers you know you're trying to carve out that space this is before anybody got up so I get up very early and I write one page that's my goal at this point one page it's to it's to to quash that that person to me that says I got to start writing get that get that out it's always one page even if I feel like I got two or three or four more pages to go in me that I could just easily do because I'm a big believer my secret weapon if I have one is stop while you're ahead because the toughest part about writing is getting up the next morning and starting again and I I write when I'm in the writing will actually try to do this all the time I was writing something it's you know seven days a week you gotta get up there get that thing going except for Christmas like I cut myself some slack on Christmas but it's one page I stop even if sometimes in the in the middle of the sentence sometimes in the middle of a paragraph because I know that the next morning what I get up and I sit down at my computer and I have my cup of coffee and my double stuffed Oreo 1f not too what and ice you have one double stuff with your coffee that's that's on a good day a bad day it's too okay so I can tell the chapters where you've had to cook I'm sure you can yeah it's really your prose is over the top it's over the top so anyways so so but but I I can sit down and finish that sentence or finish that paragraph so I am instantly productive but it's more than that because of the beauty of the human brain when you leave something incomplete on some level somewhere in your mind your brain is finishing that that thing whatever it is and in my case it's finishing that sentence but the beauty of it is it's not just finishing that sentence it's taking it out another three four or five pages and and I just absolutely swear by it something I stole from Graham Greene you know I think Graham Greene may have stolen it from Hemingway in in a moveable feast Hemingway talks about he's it's about his years in Paris and he's talking about his process and he says I get up very early in the morning and I write and he said I know I have this much in the tank and he says I stop when I have some left in the tank so that I'm not staring at the blank page the next day and so it might just be it's the way to go I mean it's certainly working for you it's a universal I guess the worst thing the worst thing a writer can do and I often have from time to time I'll teach a writing course and you know I hear people who sort of wait around for inspiration and then they write for like ten hours right binge writing is the absolute worst thing you can ever do as a writer because then you are done the next day you are you you know it's gonna be you know a week before you can get back into it's also write to me when I've had to write things I there's a certain amount of dread in the process whenever someone tells me I just love writing give me my I have I've had people say that to me I love writing I like I just sit down at my keyboard and I I could do that all day long and I think no no if you don't have if there's not an element of dread there has to be just I'm not talking about pure dread but I'm talking about a there needs to be a dash of dread in there Joan Didion had the perfect word to phrase to describe that she referred to looking at the office looking at her office door with a sense of low dread yeah low dread but but I mean it you know you can love writing I mean I love writing I love paint you know it's that's yeah that's the thing but really it's it's you know I can truly say that I love writing but but it is a painful process it is a scary process there is a lot of dread so what do I love about it I don't know I mean it's like satisfying it's just deeply deeply ties into something in your core and if you're not a writer you know it instantly you can't do it you can't you can't you can't cut it anyway the I just want to briefly mention the devil in the White City I absolutely love that book and I love all your books devil in the White City was kind of a revelation to me because it was all the things I loved in one book that era every single character I grew up in Brookline Massachusetts and Frederick Law Olmsted his office is a five less than a five it's a two-minute walk from the front door of my tunnel that I grew up in and and you describe you know his part in the book helping to set up the World's Fair in Chicago he was my favorite character by the way yeah just a fantastic character also we've got our first serial killer HH Holmes you've got you've got it seems to be an area that you really love if I'm getting this right which is we're a young vibrant optimistic nation but there's evil in the world and in Holmes's case you have it's the first time a serial killer can exist because people are leading a killer of a certain kind yeah I like the prototypical urban serial killer I mean some would argue that some of the Wild West heroes were it was but anyway yes and and and and that's actually what what what drew me to the project i mean i how i came to do as a business a ridiculously long straight i won't bore you with it but bottom line is i knew about homes in advance because i was looking for a murder to write about had taken out a book from my library in seattle the encyclopedia of murder doesn't I'll just tell you I love this is gonna sound creepy out of context I love murder I'm and fascinated by serial killers and then you have this era and it's historically accurate and I'm just it's a love note to me and so it's a and I meant it that way but you know I came across Holmes early in the process and I didn't want to do him because he was too over-the-top bad I don't want to do crime play I wanted to do something more evocative of an age more full of you know like the film Gosford Park that comes yeah yeah but I heard later as I was struggling to find my next book idea I remembered that there was a reference to the World's Fair of 1893 and I knew nothing about it I didn't know there was a World's Fair in eighteen or did I know it was so powerful in terms of the national psyche at the time and then I started reading about the fair and that's what drew me to the story and in fact I'll tell you the fact that made me want to do this book it was a fact in a footnote somebody had done an academic book about the World's Fair of 1893 and it's just the driest there's like a Marxist deconstructionist whatever of the German Pavilion you know I don't know but in the footnote what does I always read the footnotes of books because that's where the good stuff always always is there was a footnote about juicy fruit gum that juicy fruit gum was introduced to consumers at the World's Fair of 1893 I'm a big juicy fruit gum fan and for me I was just blown away it's like what this gum is 100 years old and then all the other things that were introduced I realized that day that the story I wanted to do was this story of darkness and light this good and evil Holmes and the fair and the same place at the same time that was going to be the story yeah the title came to me actually that day devil know why sitting and stuff yeah it is now here's a question your books are and I don't know the details you'll tell me I'm sure they've been optioned for the for for for film they seem so cinematic to me would you do you want to see these movies these books made into films is that something you'd like to see it is it I would I would love to see them made into films and in fact to our to our under option I don't want to yeah I don't necessarily want to participate because I think screenwriting I'm gonna paraphrase this very badly but I believe Tom Wolfe once said that when you're dealing with Hollywood you know you take your book to the fence hand it over take the bag of money and run yeah you know because I you know any writer I know except for one or two anybody I know who has tried to subsequently do his or her own screenplay has wound up with a broken heart and you know deeply resenting well your your interest would be different than the you know the people that just done Jurassic world we're now moving on to dead weight are gonna have they're gonna say is it possible that there was a dinosaur on the you 20 and you're gonna say no that they they don't want no dinosaur no but but but the bottom line is that the two books have been have been option one is the devil West City was optioned by Leonardo DiCaprio in which I loved I mean I guess I gather he wants to play Holmes yeah and then in the garden the Beast which is about the US ambassador his wild daughter in the first year of Hitler's rule yeah that's been optioned by Tom Hanks which I love also he wants to play ambassador died now in the case of devil no at City that's an expensive film yeah that's an expensive film and it you know it's been under optional long a long time I don't I hope it eventually had to recreate that era yeah and that amazing fair but CGI that's all I have to say mmm computers well you mentioned in the garden of beasts again there's a book talking about a American a father William Dodd who is been sent by Roosevelt to be the ambassador to Germany and he's living America's first Nazi German to Nazi Germany and he's there and he's supposed to sort of take the temperature and he there's a growing he has this at the book details his growing realization that these people are truly evil right and he's trying to communicate that to Roosevelt Roosevelt doesn't really want to hear it or it isn't convenient for him to hear it or he's busy with other things he's inconvenient for him to act on it act on it and then he has of course his daughter his daughter Martha Dodd and that's fascinating because you're quite explicit about she's very for that era very sexually free very sexually free and which as I found was not that uncommon she was just more out there more open right she's having a lot of affairs and including with the first chief of the Gestapo Rudolf deals yeah that was one of the things that just just astounded made the first of all that there was a first chief of the Gestapo who was in that role for essentially a year and was considered by the diplomatic community to be a pretty good guy who also fortunately for him loses that post and get shuttled aside and so he's I mean had he been had he's kept that post he had have well spaded in a lot of horrific things he'd have been a war criminal he'd have been killed you know well he would have been made to participate in a lot of these things but I don't think we were speculating here I don't think he would have I think he left because he was I mean he was becoming almost ill from the things that they were happening around him and you know suddenly at the Nuremberg trials he testified on behalf of the Allies against the workouts it's funny in a way devil in the White City and is like the photographic negative of the garden of beasts because one is about this great optimistic place that evil enters into and the other is this truly the beginning of Nazi Germany and this very malevolent atmosphere and this really dark environment this pit of vipers and more idealistic people entering it exactly to to very naive and I realistic people yeah and and with dead wake you have the great ship and the u-boat and coming together I mean that's I think that's a story you tell very well oh good good so the question is what's next how do you find your next topic oh god I wish you hadn't asked that you know I don't know what's next I'm looking into a couple of things but that process of finding the next book is the single hardest thing I've done some research from the era that you like so you can kind of come up with some ideas for me I'm gonna pitch you you've got Battle of Little Bighorn it's been written about a lot Custer's a great character but because it's very hard to find McKinley assassination now if you end up doing any of these oh yeah which we have right we have tape of me suggest what's the right situation here no I don't you hate it when in comedy people are constantly throwing ideas out you're like please don't because I might do something that peripherally touches what you're doing and later you're gonna say you stole it from me well mister you don't want somebody coming out of the woodwork especially you know the day that somebody options your film to say hey that was my idea you know right right I basically have pitched two areas if you touch either one of them I want $50,000 okay I think that's fair I'm sure more than fair I think I'll have my intellectual property lawyer I think any court of law this has been you know I do this show because it truly delights me I I find I don't do many of them I only do one of these shows when I really want to do it and the person kindly agrees to do it and I've read all of your books and I've always thought wouldn't it be great to talk to Eric Larson if only that could happen and so this is my wish come true that's nice to hear yeah thank you so much we have an Internet question here on Facebook from brandy Swope wants to know how do you suppose historians will decode the modern past the information age where journals are rare access is limited and the delete button can change the truth it's a really good question all I can say is the National Archives is archiving tweets that was really but you know it's it's it's an interesting question because you know one of the things that and a very compelling question one of the things that I rely on you know deeply is the correspondence of these area this is another reason I love that area it's sort of the the Golden Age of letter writing and and not just you know a simple two-page missive I'm in the case of Dwight Harris for example in this book you know a 12-page detailed letter to his mother Theo de Pope a 20-page detailed letter to her mother you know invaluable details well that's all gonna go away that's gonna disappear but the question is what else will there be to allow a writer like me to create a sense of music we laugh at Twitter and tweets and so forth but why do I is when something significant happens I know this now from because I'm fairly active with with with Twitter you start seeing it unfold and you see it and there's there's a real telegraphic sense of urgency you know it's it's typically grossly in error but there is that so that's that's not not a bad thing people also blog so maybe that's a source maybe that's the that's going to be the future analog to detailed correspondence I don't know but there's also know people love to keep Diaries and journals now Journal journaling you know scrapbooking and all that stuff so I don't know I mean I'm not I'm not deeply pessimistic I'm concerned but but historians will find a way iMovie yeah I'm always of the how is that the philosophy that it changes it transforms and transmutes but it doesn't necessarily it's a mistake to say it used to be great but now it's going to be in the future it'll be terrible there will be a different kind of history there's a lot of disadvantages to the tweeting and the texting and the emailing but one of the advantages is people are usually doing it immediately and the most exactly the most accurate the most accurate accounts of anything are when people are asked in Dealey Plaza immediately afterwards what happened right when you give them three days that's when they start 20 years or 20 years oh and and the other another component of that is not only are you gonna have the immediate tweets you're gonna have photographs you're in a video yeah you know and that's gonna be really powerful there is a great book that I found once called I saw Lincoln shot and it's written accounts of you know there were 120 people or 210 people whatever in Ford's Theatre that night they all wrote accounts of what they saw they are ridiculous now you read through them and you read I think like 75 accounts and they range from the very ones that are clearly someone recounting who is it's just saw it and they've recounted it fairly quickly afterward and they said I was watching the play then I heard in muffled noise I looked up there was a scuffle a man jumped down and he ran away and you think that's there are accounts by people there who say okay here's what happened there was a shot then a man descended on a rope and you know he threw down a bomb that made smoke and then he did this and they're fantastic they're they're insane they're absolutely insane but some time has gone by and they've thought about it and they've told it a bunch and bars and now suddenly it's become Lincoln fought booth for a long time they had swords and so maybe wait like a dog was there thinking the dog was there well that's that's why I like in the case of one of the things that drew me is a dead wake and the Lusitania is because there were a lot of accounts that were taken right away yeah depositions statements and so forth a lot of really detail corresponds I'm deeply leery of family accounts further down the road yeah because then suddenly it's like no not only was the ship you know torpedoed by the u-20 but u-20 surfaced and the crew came out and laughed yes I've heard that repeatedly right it didn't happen they threw tomatoes at us yeah that's that's yeah that's I think you know i-i-i i think that there will be advantages to the immediacy yes yeah yeah yeah that'll counterbalance something that's missing from response but right there will be histories they will be dynamic they will be very good and they'll be very interesting but you won't get to do though is pick through old I mean I know that's what I love is I love old pages and to think that future historians are just gonna be looking at screens well little I'll tell you you know two moments like in in two moments in the garden of beasts one was when you know the first three three of Martha Dodds seventy four first files of her 7700 linear feet of documents of the Library of Congress we're calling cards which were the sort of social currency of the era and at first I just said of an okay fine we're gone I thought Wayman so I started going down one by one by one through these cards and suddenly here's a here's a card from Hermann Goering okay so what is that wait a minute this is a card that he gave to her mm-hmm and that she has now in her file and you hold that card and you're allowed to you if you do this the research you pick this thing out of the thing you're holding that card that this this killer had in his hand but the best was you know I knew she had had an affair before going to Germany with Carl Sandburg he was 55 she was you know 20 or something and I didn't really sort of believe that that could possibly be the case I never lots of evidence that said it was and in her files I came across two lakhs of Carl snipers here - lots of Carl's networks there and it really was that white it's very coarse it was very cool that's amazing yeah yeah she went on a date with Hitler well call it a date she was set up by a point of Hitler's confidants to have to sort of be there for lunch and he was to meet her his grand plan was that they would meet and fall in love and I wouldn't that be exciting to have the leader of Germany being married to the daughter of the years of masseter didn't happen you know probably for a lot of reasons that yeah deeply darkly psychopathic on Hitler's part yeah just the icon except if my bad date with Hitler I know it's a short film I think a very short film all right well this has been an absolute treat for me thank you for my pleasure for doing this for more episodes of serious jibber-jabber go to team koco.com slash serious and the book which is my favorite book in quite a while dead wake the last crossing of the Lusitania it's out there right now and you're a fool if you don't buy this book and read it because it's a page-turner it's a thriller and it's fantastic thank you so much thank you yeah this was a really fun you

Channel: Team Coco

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Keywords: Conan, Conan (TV Series), Conan O'Brien, Erik Larson, Serious Jibber Jabber, TBS (TV Channel), Team Coco, andy richter, best moments of conan, celebrity interviews, coco, comedy, comedy sketches, conan best, conan best moments, conan brien, conan classic, conan funniest moments, conan funny moments, conan o'brian, conan obrien interview, conan obrien podcast, conan on tbs, conan remotes, funny moments on conan, late night show, talk show, talk show hosts, tbs, top 10 conan

Id: aTerrIBBV58

Length: 63min 1sec (3781 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 03 2015