Mark West

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We've come a very long way together this season.

Roald Dahl has gone through a lot.

And when you look back at all of our episodes, all the different stages of Dahl's life, a pattern does begin to emerge.

I think Dahl's entire life, like for so many of us, was about a search for who he really was and where he belonged.

And when you really think about it, that may also be the key to understanding his work.

Matilda is entirely about her search for identity.

The same could be said about Charlie and about James and Sophie and so many of the others.

And what they all seem to figure out by story's end is that their true selves come to fruition not from conforming to other people's expectations, but from embracing the thing that makes them unique.

Which, as we've heard, is also exactly what Dahl discovered in his own life.

But it took him trying on all these different masks, all these different personas, in order to get there.

He was the ambitious young businessman with Shell Oil, the courageous fighter pilot in the war, a Playboy spy in D.C.

and New York, a disgruntled screenwriter in L.A., an urbane, sophisticated author publishing in The New Yorker, and finally, the world-famous children's author who championed the underdog and weaponized mischief while espousing views that could have made him an antagonist in one of his own stories.

For My Heart Podcast, Imagine Entertainment, and Parallax, I'm Aaron Tracy, and this is The Secret World of Roald Dahl.

Episode 10.

So, were each of these stages necessary in Dahl's evolution?

Certainly they all contributed to him living one of the biggest, noisiest lives of his century.

But I guess what I'm trying to figure out is if that's necessary or even advantageous for a writer.

I want to bring in Jesse Stern on this question.

Jesse is maybe the best TV writer I've ever worked with, and he has a knack for writing these massive global hits, like the CBS show NCIS or the video game Call of Duty Modern Warfare.