- [Narrator] Funding for
Overheard with Evan Smith
is provided in part by the
Alice Kleberg Reynolds
Foundation and Hillco Partners,
a Texas government affairs
consultancy, and by
KLRU's Producers Circle,
ensuring local programming
that reflects the
character and interests
of the greater Austin,
Texas, community.
- I'm Evan Smith.
He's one of the best-selling
children's author's
in history and one
of the most prolific.
With more than 300
books to his credit,
including the Goosebumps
and Fear Street series.
His latest is Young Scrooge:
A Very Scary Christmas Story.
He's R. L. Stine,
this is Overheard.
Let's be honest.
Is this about the ability
to learn or is this about
the experience of not
having been taught properly?
How have you avoided what has
befallen other
nations in Africa--
You could say that
he made his own bed,
but you caused him
to sleep in it.
No, you saw a problem
and over time took it on.
Let's start with the sizzle
before we get to the steak.
Are you gonna run for president?
I think I just got an
F from you actually.
(audience applauding)
R. L. Stine, welcome.
- Thank you.
- Very nice to meet you.
- So nice to be here.
- I seem to remember the actual
Christmas Carol being scary.
Why is it necessary to write
a scary version of this?
- I know, and nothing like
stealing from the best, right?
- Right, well, but you
understand it's like when I hear
that we're gonna do a scary
version of A Christmas Carol,
that's like a musical
version of Rent.
I thought it was a musical.
- No, you're totally right.
- Why this now?
- I had never written a
Christmas book before.
- [Evan] Oh is that right?
- Yeah.
- [Evan] In all the books you're
written, hundreds of books.
- I thought no, this is
inappropriate for Christmas
I thought, and then I
realized the most popular
Christmas story ever
was a ghost story.
- That's true.
- Yeah.
- Multiple ghosts.
- Then I had this idea,
well what if there was
a 12-year-old Scrooge,
or what was Scrooge
like when he was 12?
- [Evan] Right.
- And I wrote this book
about this kid who's
the meanest kid in school.
- Right, and in fact
that's one of the things
I found most remarkable
about this book
is not the point at which
the ghosts materialize,
but the character of
this kid at a time when
we talk about bullying
in this world.
I hope that people understand
this is fiction, right?
- Well I love writing bullies.
- You do?
- Yeah.
- You're pro-bully?
- Yeah, I think I was a bully.
- Do you?
- Yeah, especially to my
brother, my kid brother.
I always knew how
to make him cry.
- Are there elements in this
book of your own experience?
- Well you can't help but do
that I think when you write.
Not intentionally.
I just like writing bullies.
I think he's a very
funny character.
He does horrible things
to all the other kids
and he thinks it's funny.
He says they have
no sense of humor.
- [Evan] Right, it's all on
them, it's their problem.
- They're losers.
- [Evan] Right.
- He's just a horrible kid.
My favorite scene in the book,
if you want to talk
about the book.
- I wish you would, please.
- Is the principal calls him in
and shows him a film
about a horrible
school bully, and
then says to him,
his name's Rick Scroogeman.
- [Evan] Rick Scroogeman.
- Yes.
He says, what do you think
of that guy in the film?
He said, he's awesome.
- Right, he loves him.
It's a role model.
- Yeah, and he's awesome.
- Right.
- So I love that part.
You write things, there
are parts you like.
- It's a great book,
and let me offer you
a back-handed
compliment, for somebody
who produces so many books
over a period of years,
just churns them out, they
don't read like you're just
checking a box.
They don't read as some
authors who produce a lot do,
that they're just basically
formulaic, or that no
thought went into it.
Every one of your books
individually feels like,
and I know this is your
process, that you actually
line out the characters,
and you know the ending
always when you sit
down and write a book.
- I outline every book.
- You're very explicit
about your intentions
before you sit down.
Every book feels like
time and preparation
went into it, which
shouldn't be surprising.
- What a nice
compliment, thank you.
- But I'm not sure that
most people appreciate that.
- Well I think every
author, when you sit down
to write, you don't say,
well I'm going to write
a mediocre book today.
- No.
- I'm going to knock one
out, I've got another one,
let me knock it out.
- Right.
- I don't think any
author ever does that.
- Where's my paycheck?
- I try to write
every book and make it
as good as I can,
whatever my talent is.
- At the same time though,
I think one difference is,
while nobody sets out to
write a mediocre book,
not everybody sits down
knowing the fullness
of the story in advance.
- Well I always tell kids this,
and kids hate this advice.
Everyone hates to outline,
and I think most kids
think if you write a book, you
sit down, you start writing.
- [Evan] And it will
come out of you, right?
- Yeah, and a lot of kids
say, I get bogged down
in the middle, what do I do?
I never quite get to the end.
Then I say well I figure
out the end first.
I can always get to the end.
- Isn't that right?
You do, you know
the ending first.
- Yes.
- Right, and you in some
ways work backwards.
- Then I know how
to fool the kids
and keep them from
guessing the ending.
The hardest part of a book
to write is the middle.
It's impossible, middles.
- [Evan] It's where all
books die, or many books die.
- So if you have an outline,
if it's all planned,
you don't have to
worry about it.
Kids hate this advice.
(audience laughing)
They hate it, no
they just hate it.
- Kids hate a lot
of advice, right?
- Well yeah.
- Newsflash, right?
- Right.
- This is not as far as
it goes, no disrespect,
a scary story, but in
fact it's in the same vein
as many of your books, and in
fact almost all your books.
It has that sort of
scary/horror edge to it.
- I added the scary.
It's basically a funny book.
- Why horror?
I know that you started out
actually as a humor writer.
- Writing joke books.
- You eventually
moved into doing this.
I'm interested in why horror
is so interesting to you
and how over time your
notion of what is horror,
and how horror
itself is effective
and not effective, has changed.
Because we live in a different
world than when you started.
- Yeah, to answer
that part first.
- Yeah, sure.
- But our fears don't change.
Only the technology has changed.
- How's that?
- Well for one thing, cell
phones have ruined every story.
- [Evan] Because?
- They've ruined
every plot I have.
A girl is getting
frightening phone calls.
Who's calling me,
who's doing this?
Now she looks down,
oh that's who it is.
- Right.
- Story's ruined, it's over.
- Called I.D. has
ruined everything.
- Trapped in a cabin and
there's a killer there.
What do we do?
Oh, pick up the phone, call
for help, story's over.
(audience laughing)
You have to get rid
of the cell phones.
- What I'm thinking
though is that kids today,
I have a 16 year old,
my youngest is 16.
So if I think about
my 16 year old and how
he reacts to scary things,
he'll say I'm going
with my friends to see
The Purge, or we're going
to see Saw, or something
like that, right?
- Saw.
- These movies, and they're
totally desensitized.
Kids that age are
desensitized to this stuff.
It's harder to scare
kids of that age today
than it was say 25
or 30 years ago.
I wonder if that's because
technology has sped up
things to the point
that 16 is the new 25.
- They see more.
- Right.
- They see more sooner.
- Yeah.
Doesn't that make
it harder on you,
as you're trying to craft?
- My stuff is all the
same, it's the same.
We're all afraid,
afraid of the dark,
afraid of being in
a strange place,
afraid of finding
yourself somewhere
you don't know where
it is, afraid that
something is under your
bed and is gonna grab
your ankles, that's
all the same.
I was a kid in the 50's,
and my brother and I
used to go to horror movies,
scary movies every Saturday.
- What do you remember?
What horror movies scared you?
- Oh Creature From
The Black Lagoon.
It Came From Outer Space.
The Brain That Wouldn't Die.
We saw them all, and I
think, like Goosebumps,
that's what Goosebumps is,
they're 50's horror stories.
- Just updated, or presented
in a more modern way.
- Not even updated that much.
(audience laughing)
- It's basically the same thing.
- It could have been
written when I was a kid.
But no one did it.
- But people who do horror
as entertainment today
feel the need most
definitely, unlike what
you're saying, to come
up with all these--
- Well they want to
go farther and farther
but I don't do that
because I don't really
want to terrify kids.
See I like books like
Young Scrooge that
are basically funny.
My main goal, to be serious,
is to get kids to read.
- And this just happens
to be the magnet.
It's the plots, the narratives
happen to be the magnet.
- It's really motivation.
The books are very easy
to read, the chapters
are short, the reading level
is fourth or fifth grade.
I learned all about reading
level and how to write
to different levels,
and I keep it simple,
and the idea, they
like scary stuff,
so I do scary stuff,
but the main idea
is to get them to read.
When people say to
me, I learned to read
on your books, my
kid learned to read,
that's just thrilling to me.
- Happiest moment for you.
- It is, it's wonderful, and
never get tired of hearing it.
- I guess it occurs
to me that the people
who are doing horror
as entertainment today,
when they say they feel
the need to change it up,
they make it more gross,
graphic, disgusting.
The more gross, and the
more graphic, the better,
and that actually might
be a disincentive.
If a kid encounters a
book that is ostensibly
for them but it's got
the kind of stuff that
legitimately keeps them
up at night, then they
might not come back
and read the next book.
- Right.
- Right?
- Right.
I think one reason
kids like my books
is they know how far
they're going to go,
they know they're not
going to go too far,
and they're all going
to have happy endings,
which is really important.
Once I wrote a Fear Street
book with an unhappy ending,
just for fun, just for
me, and in the end,
the murderer gets off
scot-free, and an innocent girl
is taken off to prison, and
that's the end of the book.
That's the only unhappy
ending I ever wrote,
and the kids turned
on me immediately.
- [Evan] Did they really?
(audience laughing)
- Yeah, and I got
letters, immediately.
"Dear R.L. Stine, you moron."
(audience laughing)
"How could you write that?"
"R.L. Stine, you idiot."
"Are you going to write a
sequel to finish the story?"
- They couldn't believe
that was the ending?
- They couldn't take it.
I had to write a sequel.
- Is that right?
- Finish the story, yes.
- It seems like any
possible plot that exists
out there, I'm not ending
your career as we sit here.
- It's pretty much over.
- You're getting close?
(audience laughing)
- Yeah.
(laughing)
- The number, I think
it's more than 300 books.
- I know, that's why I
look like this, 300 books.
I'm 35 years old, look
at me, look at me.
- Speaking of horror.
- Yeah.
- You've written how many
Goosebumps books alone
with various permutations?
- Next year is the 25th
anniversary of Goosebumps.
That's a lot of scary stories.
Over 100.
- But it's well over 100, right?
- Oh yeah.
- Have you run out of plots?
- Yes.
- Are you exhausted?
- Oh years ago.
- You have?
- Look at me, I'm
stealing from Dickens.
- Right, exactly.
(audience laughing)
- I'm weighed, yeah I know.
- Young Hamlet.
- Young Hamlet.
That, by the way, is my
favorite movie title,
for real, of all the
movie titles in history,
this movie title is my
favorite, Hamlet Two.
(audience laughing)
Did you see that?
- I did not, no I was
not aware of that.
- Steve Coogan.
- That's very funny.
- Hamlet Two, a great title.
- So I want to know how
you originally decided--
- I haven't run out of plots.
Somehow not.
I'm real lucky,
but you know what?
People always say,
every question,
if we ask for questions,
someone will say,
where do you get
your inspiration?
Where do you get your ideas?
I never try to
think of ideas now.
I only think of titles, I
don't try to think of ideas.
I was walking my dog in
the park and these words
popped into my head,
Little Shop Of Hamsters.
(audience laughing)
- [Evan] That's a book?
- That's it, great
title, great title.
How do I make hamsters scary?
So I'm thinking, do
I do a giant hamster?
Do I do 1,000 hamsters?
- So it's literally
as simple as something
pops in your head, it's a book?
- Yeah.
Well come on, you know, they
don't all lead to books.
Sometimes I'll get an
idea, and I can't think
of a good title, and
I throw out the idea.
- Give me an example of a
title you've come up with
that you've not been able
to do a book, or has that
never happened?
- [R.L.] I won't remember.
- Right, but it's rare though?
It's the rare time
that that's happened?
- Yeah.
Because I pretty much know
if a title is a good title.
- Why did you make
the transition from
humor, to horror?
- Evan this is an
embarrassing story.
- Tell it.
- I shouldn't tell it.
- It's PBS, we have all the
time in the world, go ahead.
(audience laughing)
- Being scary wasn't my idea.
That's embarrassing.
I didn't think of it.
- [Evan] That's okay.
- I did a humor magazine.
- Called Bananas, I
remember this growing up.
- That was my life's dream,
to have my own humor magazine.
- It was kind of in the same
vein as Mad Magazine, Cracked
Magazine, it was in that era
of those humor magazines.
- I wrote the whole thing, I
had a great time, for 10 years.
- [Evan] In fact you wrote
under a different name,
you were like Jolly Bob Stine?
- I was Jovial.
- Jovial Bob Stine,
right, I remember that.
- Not a good name
for a horror writer.
I had to change that.
- The Jovial was a problem.
- Yeah, that was bad.
So I'm writing all
this funny stuff
and I was writing
all kinds of things.
I was writing Bazooka
Joe bubble gum jokes,
and Mighty Mouse coloring books,
and writing all this stuff.
I had lunch with an editor,
my friend from Scholastic.
She was the editorial director.
She came in to lunch
angry, she just had
a fight with another
young adult horror writer.
She said I'm never
working with him again.
You could write a
good horror novel.
Go home, write a book
called Blind Date
for teenagers, and I wrote
this book Blind Date.
It came out, it was the
number-one best seller.
- [Evan] What was the plot?
Do you remember the plot?
- Yeah it was this boy
Josh who was getting
mysterious phone
calls from a girl.
He doesn't know who it
is and she keeps saying,
I'm your blind date, Josh.
- And because there's
no cell phones,
he can't look at the caller I.D.
- That's right.
I'm your blind
date, it was 1986.
I'm your blind date, Josh.
Then he tries to track
her down, and he finds
that she's been
dead for five years.
- Oh wow.
Good one.
- That was the original plot.
- I'm scared now just listening.
- I know.
I've done that plot
about 10 times.
- You have.
(laughing)
- Number-One best seller.
I thought wait a
minute, what's going on?
Then I wrote a second one,
number-one best seller.
- Blind Third Date?
(laughing)
- Yeah, Hamlet Two.
- [Evan] What was that called?
- It was called Twisted.
- [Evan] Twisted, yeah.
- And I said forget
the funny stuff.
- [Evan] I can do this,
and I can make money
at it probably too, right?
- Kids like to be scared,
they liked it much better.
- You said as a kid, you
and your brother used to
go to horror movies.
I want to go a step to
the side of that and ask
how you decided you
wanted to write?
Because even if it
was humor writing,
the lore is there was a
typewriter up in your attic?
- It's pretty much true.
- Tell the story.
- It's pretty much true.
- That you discovered.
- I dragged a
typewriter into my room.
I have no idea why
I liked it so much.
I was a weird kid, I would
just stay in my room.
- Hard to imagine.
(audience laughing)
- I'm in Columbus, Ohio,
in a nice suburb, quiet.
I had a very nice childhood.
But I'm in my room
typing stories,
typing jokes, making little
joke books, typing, typing.
- And your parents were not
in the business, as they say?
- No my dad was a blue collar
worker, we were very poor.
They didn't understand at all.
My mother would be outside
my door, and I later realized
this was the worst advice
anyone ever gave me in my life.
She would say, stop typing,
go outside and play.
(audience laughing)
Horrible advice, right?
- Honestly, she
was doing her part.
- Yeah.
She would say go outside,
and I would say it's boring
out there, type, type, type.
- Type, type, type.
- Except I only type
with one finger.
I never learned how to type.
- Still?
- Yeah.
I never learned how.
- You still type all these
years later with one finger?
- I'll show you the finger.
(audience laughing)
- Which?
- No, I've written 300
books with this finger,
but look at it, look,
it's totally bent.
It's ruined.
- That's a pretty
successful finger, honestly.
(laughing)
- This is what I
sacrificed for my art.
(audience laughing)
The finger is wrecked.
- [Evan] Is that it?
- Any way, I don't know,
I just knew when I was
nine years old that
I wanted to write.
That's all I've ever done.
- Isn't that amazing?
- It is amazing.
I'm very lucky.
- Do you read other
people's horror writing?
- Yeah I do.
- YA-young adult or kids?
- There isn't that much
YA horror, there is some.
- And Goosebumps, just so
we're clear on the delineation
here, Goosebumps is for
a younger subset, right?
- It's middle grade,
it's seven to 12.
- And Fear Street was?
- It's like 10 to
15, really, 12 to 15.
- Is there a difference
in writing for those two?
- Oh yeah.
- Talk about that.
- Well one is I get
to kill off teenagers.
(audience laughing)
Fear Street, I get to kill.
- [Evan] Couldn't kill off
teenagers in Goosebumps?
- No one dies in Goosebumps.
No one ever dies in Goosebumps.
- [Evan] That was a decision
you made in the beginning?
- If you were a ghost, you were
a ghost like 100 years ago.
- Did you consciously
make that decision?
- Yeah.
- [Evan] Because that
would be too much?
- Yeah.
I keep all reality
out of Goosebumps.
Parents don't get divorced.
- Am I correct that Fear
Street preceded Goosebumps
sequentially, right?
- Yeah it did.
- So Fear Street came first?
- Fear Street came first,
and it was teens in terror.
It was doing really well.
My editors came to me and
said, why don't we try
a younger series?
Why don't we try a scary series
for seven to 12 year olds?
I said no.
- You said no?
- Yeah, that's the kind
of businessman I am.
(audience laughing)
I didn't want to do Goosebumps.
- Well you didn't
know if it would work.
- I thought it would
mess up Fear Street,
the younger audience,
and they kept after me,
and kept after me, and
finally I said all right
we can try two or three,
let's try, if I can
think of a good
name for the series.
- Who came up with
Goosebumps, you did?
- Yeah I did.
I'm reading TV Guide,
and in those days,
they had all the TV
listings in the middle.
- In the old days, right.
- And I'm reading through,
and there's a little ad
on the bottom, I'm in
New York, and it says,
it's goosebumps
week on channel 11.
- Goosebumps week?
- Yeah.
- And you went, that's it?
- I just started at it.
It's perfect.
- You knew it?
- It's perfect.
It's funny and it's scary.
- What I love about how
you're describing your work
and the journey you've
been on, which doesn't seem
to have taken you to a
ton of different, I mean
you've sort of been on one
path, is that you don't
get too complicated or
caught up in all, oh I'm
agonizing about this or that.
You just basically do it.
Sometimes the simplest
approach is the right approach.
- Yeah, that's the
only thing I'm good at.
You can ask my wife.
(audience laughing)
Really, it's the only thing
that I'm competent at.
I'm always confident
when I sit down to write.
I know I can do it.
- But if Jonathan
Franzen were here,
or a novelist who
writes fewer books,
and writes them
at greater length,
with more complexity
in the narratives,
they might say it's the
only thing I'm good at also.
But the difference
between a Jonathan Franzen
and R.L. Stine, is that
R.L. Stine doesn't make it
more complicated
than it needs to be.
He knows what the task
in front of him is,
he sits down, and he does it.
Doesn't mean that the
product is any less valuable
or less embraceable.
- I'm a good commercial writer.
- Relatively straightforward,
but not commercial
in the sense, I come back
to what I said in the
beginning, these are not
books that you're just
churning out of
the assembly line.
- Most writers, I'm
on panels all the time
with authors, and most
writers talk about
how hard it is to write.
- [Evan] Yes, they do, right.
- 90 percent of them.
- That's how you
know I'm a writer,
the hardest thing in the world
there is for me to do is write.
- It's so hard, I tell
the kids to stay out
of the room, I go up in a
tower and I write in the dark
with a candle, and it's so hard.
I always said that's ridiculous.
- What scares you
after all these years?
- I have no good answer
to that question.
- [Evan] Nothing scares you?
- I have normal human
scares, but something
missing in my brain
when it comes to horror
because when I read a scary
Stephen King, terrifying novel
or go to a scary
movie, I always laugh.
(audience laughing)
- You think it's funny?
- I think horror is funny.
- Yeah I don't understand that.
- When I write these books
it's with punch lines.
- Let me ask the question
in a different way.
So there's a hierarchy
of things that might
be interesting or scary to you.
So there is audio fear,
things that you hear.
Like I actually have a
memory when I was a kid
of the first, is it John
Carpenter that did the
Halloween movies?
- Yes.
- The music in that movie,
I remember for years
and years just absolutely
scaring the stuffing out of me.
Just the sound of it, I
didn't have to see anything.
Then there's the visual
scaring, and then there's
actually scaring that is
neither audio, oral nor visual
where it's just a sense, the
anticipation of something.
Like so if you go to one
of these like Disneyland
or one of these amusement
parks, and they've got
these things where the
person is going to jump
out at you, in some ways the
anticipation, not actually
seeing it or hearing
it, but just worrying.
So there are different
ways that you can be scared
as a grown up, let
alone as a kid.
- When you write, you
try to use all of those.
- Which of those is more
problematic for you?
- Here's the scariest
moment of my life.
A magazine invited
me and another guy
to tour the haunted
houses that pop up
at Halloween time in New York.
I showed up and there
were three different
haunted houses they
wanted us to comment on
and go through.
The other guy turned
out to be the head
of the Satanist Church.
(audience laughing)
- [Evan] The other guy with you?
- Yeah.
- Didn't tell you
this beforehand?
- He looked just like the devil.
He had his eyebrows
curled like this,
and he had a little
goatee, and I thought
here I'm a children's
author, this is not
a good thing here.
- [Evan] Right.
- It was the Satanist
Church, and we went through
this haunted house, and
they had an area where
you push through, and you find
yourself in total blackness.
Total darkness.
And you don't know
how big the room is,
you don't know what's
ahead of you on the floor,
it's being blind.
I was scared to death.
- Well that's anticipation
in some ways, right?
- Scared me to death, but
also I didn't know what to do.
Could I walk straight,
could I keep going?
- And this has never
happened to you before?
- No, this was the
scariest moment of my life.
The head of the Satanist
Church reached out
and took my hand, and
guided me through.
- [Evan] Wow.
- He was such a nice guy.
(audience laughing)
He was so nice.
- A Kumbaya moment between
you and the Satanist,
isn't that great?
- Right, and that
was terrifying to me.
- Okay well everybody
has their thing.
So I'm wondering,
your books have been
translated into I don't
know how many languages
and they've been available,
all the Goosebumps
books in all kinds of countries.
Do you think culturally
that what is scary
works country to country,
or culture to culture?
- It seems to.
There's also a great interest,
like Goosebumps is hugely
popular in China now, is the
new Mandarin translation.
- [Evan] Why do
you think that is?
- Because there's real
interest in our country.
- Yeah.
I mean it's as simple as that.
- Yeah.
They just have a real interest,
what is it like there?
What are the kids like there?
- What's scary in China,
is the same as what's
scary here, and does it
ever cause you to change
the way that you approach
the writing of these books?
- No.
- Knowing that it's going
to be read elsewhere.
- I never think about that.
It seems to work
cause they like it.
When I was there, I did a
five-city book tour in China
which was wonderful.
Oh I had the best time.
The Chinese kids,
they were great.
But they all said, why don't
you do a story about dragons?
Dragons are actually
good in China.
They're good.
- Yeah.
- I didn't know that.
- So are you going
to a dragon book?
- Maybe.
I haven't thought of one yet.
- We have about a minute left.
I want to ask you
about why these books,
it's not that they
haven't been at all,
but why they haven't
been more prevalent
or more pervasive across
other entertainment platforms?
Why am I unable to see
Goosebumps the television show,
or Goosebumps the movie?
- It's all on Netflix.
They did four years
of Goosebumps TV.
- But you've been doing
these books for a lot longer
than four years and there
are many more books.
I would have assumed
that this was going to be
the franchise to
end all franchises.
(laughing)
- Well we had the
Goosebumps movie last year.
- [Evan] Jack Black
was in that, right?
- Jack Black was me.
- [Evan] You were in it.
- Yeah, Jack and I
are like twins, right?
- Yes.
(audience laughing)
Indeed.
- No but it took them 20
years to do the movie.
We had movie deals for 20 years.
Finally 20 years later,
the movie came out.
- [Evan] What do you think
it was that took so long?
- They didn't have a
script that they liked.
No one could figure
out what to do.
- They should approach
it like you approach it.
Just sit down and write it.
- Yes, I have been
very lucky though.
I've had I think four TV series.
I've had The Haunting Hour
was on for four years.
- You're satisfied that
there's been enough
of an extension of these books?
- Well I would like
to see more movies.
I haven't had much luck there.
I've had a lot of luck, I
just feel I'm very lucky.
How many children's authors
have had four TV series
and a movie that's about them?
- Yeah.
(laughing)
And how many children's
authors have sold as many
books quite candidly
as you have?
Maybe none.
- No.
That's just luck.
It really is.
- Well you say it's
luck, I say you got into
something that you did
exceptionally well,
better than anybody
else, and you've made
something of it.
- Thank you.
- You should get
the credit for that.
Congratulations on this
book, good luck with it,
and everything else you do.
I suspect we're going
to be seeing a lot more.
- I hope so.
- Good, R.L. Stine,
thank you very much, sir.
(audience applause)
- [Announcer] We would
love to have you join us
in the studio, visit our
website at klru.org/overheard
to find invitations to
interviews, Q&A's with our
audience and guests, and an
archive of past episodes.
- Parents in
Goosebumps are useless.
(audience laughing)
The parents never
believe the kids, ever.
They never believe
what's going on.
They're usually totally absent.
The idea of a Goosebumps
book is that the kids
have these horrible,
terrifying problems
and they have to solve
them on their own.
- [Announcer] Funding for
Overheard with Evan Smith
is provided in part by
the Alice Kleberg Reynolds
Foundation and Hillco
Partners, a Texas government
affairs consultancy, and by
KLRU's Producer's Circle,
ensuring local programming
that reflects the character
and interests of the greater
Austin, Texas, community.