LISTEN: Writer Aaron Tracy Explores the Life of the Author Who Excited Children’s Imaginations With ‘The Secret World of Roald Dahl’
On today’s episode of “Daily Variety” podcast, writer-producer Aaron Tracy discusses his hugely popular Imagine/iHeart Media podcast “The Secret World of Roald Dahl.” The author of “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,” “James and the Giant Peach,” “Matilda,” “The BFG” and many more classics lived an extraordinarily wild life that Tracy unpacks in his 10-part series.
Listen to the full episode here:
Tracy’s effort analyzes Dahl in warts-and-all fashion — including his unveiled antisemitism — and brings the story to larger conclusions about why the British author’s works still resonate so strongly in popular culture.
“Before Roald Dahl, children’s books were very sweet and saccharine with happy endings. Roald Dahl, partly because of his personality — he was a bigot, he was very prickly to many people, including those closest to him — and I think because of that prickly personality, he brought a lot of that to his writing. His books are not sweet and saccharine, and kids love being told the truth,” Tracy says. At the age that many children discover Dahl, “kids are starting to realize that the world is not a fair place. It is not a meritocracy. Bad things happen. And I think that they really enjoy Roald Dahl taking them seriously and allowing them to realize that there are monsters out there and there are cruel adults out there. And he created characters that tried to fight against those things. that’s a big part of, of why they were so successful. And then so many other children’s authors have followed in his wake,” Tracy says.
Tracy discusses how his career has evolved to encompass podcasting and audio dramas in addition to traditional TV and film projects. He aims to turn “The Secret World of … ” format into a recurring podcast series. And yes, he is thinking about a video expansion of the Dahl story, because it has so many compelling twists and turns. Before finding fame as a writer, Dahl was a British spy assigned to seduce the wives of Washington, D.C. leaders during World War II in order to gather intelligence.
Dahl, who died at age 74 in 1990, “lived this giant, exciting life,” Tracy says. “I started reading everything I could about him, and I think his life was really about a search for identity, trying to figure out who he was. And he went into all of these different, typically male — especially of the period — different worlds: business and fighting and espionage and adult literature. And he was trying to figure out what kind of man he was, but also what it meant to be a man in his part of the century.”
Listen to Daily Variety on iHeartPodcasts, Apple Podcasts, Variety’s YouTube Podcast channel, Amazon Music, Spotify and other podcast platforms.
Listen to the full episode here:
Tracy’s effort analyzes Dahl in warts-and-all fashion — including his unveiled antisemitism — and brings the story to larger conclusions about why the British author’s works still resonate so strongly in popular culture.
“Before Roald Dahl, children’s books were very sweet and saccharine with happy endings. Roald Dahl, partly because of his personality — he was a bigot, he was very prickly to many people, including those closest to him — and I think because of that prickly personality, he brought a lot of that to his writing. His books are not sweet and saccharine, and kids love being told the truth,” Tracy says. At the age that many children discover Dahl, “kids are starting to realize that the world is not a fair place. It is not a meritocracy. Bad things happen. And I think that they really enjoy Roald Dahl taking them seriously and allowing them to realize that there are monsters out there and there are cruel adults out there. And he created characters that tried to fight against those things. that’s a big part of, of why they were so successful. And then so many other children’s authors have followed in his wake,” Tracy says.
Tracy discusses how his career has evolved to encompass podcasting and audio dramas in addition to traditional TV and film projects. He aims to turn “The Secret World of … ” format into a recurring podcast series. And yes, he is thinking about a video expansion of the Dahl story, because it has so many compelling twists and turns. Before finding fame as a writer, Dahl was a British spy assigned to seduce the wives of Washington, D.C. leaders during World War II in order to gather intelligence.
Dahl, who died at age 74 in 1990, “lived this giant, exciting life,” Tracy says. “I started reading everything I could about him, and I think his life was really about a search for identity, trying to figure out who he was. And he went into all of these different, typically male — especially of the period — different worlds: business and fighting and espionage and adult literature. And he was trying to figure out what kind of man he was, but also what it meant to be a man in his part of the century.”
Listen to Daily Variety on iHeartPodcasts, Apple Podcasts, Variety’s YouTube Podcast channel, Amazon Music, Spotify and other podcast platforms.