Manuel Noriega

I mean, but like no service, like, you know, even if I shared my location with family and friends, like they wouldn't be able to tell where I was.

I just told them the name of some little town in Panama.

Like you can barely even look it up.

But anyway, I wasn't terribly worried.

I was actually really excited.

So I started just in my free time just doing loads of different exercises, sort of like reading books and then having myself sort of recount these stories about Noriega.

But I wanted to be prepared for these interviews.

I really was like a blank slate.

I didn't know that much about Noriega or Carlos or anything like that.

But these interviews start in this rural beach house.

I've got this little voice recorder I bought on Amazon for like 40 bucks.

and he starts sort of divulging everything to me.

The translator is sort of there if I need him, so I don't speak Spanish that well.

I can pick up a little bit on conversation, but he's telling me his life story, basically, and then I would stop him and ask Diego sort of what he was saying, and then Diego would relay it to me, and then I would be able to prepare questions based on that.

So we started out like a funnel like this.

It was very wide, like...

his childhood, all that sort of really boring shit that nobody really cares about, but he cares about.

He cares about it the most, right?

Because he saw this book as his legacy.

He really wanted to tell his story.