Drinkers With Writing Problems

Travel to places where drinking culture and creative legacies collide. This series reveals how the histories of beer, wine and spirits are linked to the work of trail-blazing writers. Roving on both sides of the Atlantic, a veteran journalist follows in the footsteps of a few famous scribblers – meeting cutting-edge bartenders, brewers, distillers, winemakers, novelists and booksellers along the way.

Writing the Mob and endings in Las Vegas 11/18/2024

Writing the Mob and endings in Las Vegas It's a city that doesn't flinch - or forgive. Las Vegas found its halcyon days at the end of skimming rackets and growing criminal ambition, but the writers who tried to make sense of its story faced a wavering desert mirage of America's secrets. That reflection remains strong in the city's cocktail bars and craft distilleries, while its smokier rooms are haunted by memories of creative outcasts on a collision course with their own demons. /episode/index/show/drinkerswithwritingproblems/id/33965947

Soldiers, spies and misfits of Gibraltar 03/13/2023

Soldiers, spies and misfits of Gibraltar Have a drink with the only troop of wild monkeys in Europe. The Royal Crown colony of Gibraltar remains one of the Old World’s enigmas – a cauldron of cultures and empires simmering together under the low-lit flame of History itself. Gibraltar is also a port where weary sailors, restless soldiers and drifters engaged in espionage have found themselves stranded over time. Episode 9 explores how the contours of this colony intersected with the lives of three drink-loving writers, as well as how the legacy of cider, sherry, spying and warfare connects with their stories that were penned about a high rock over the sea. /episode/index/show/drinkerswithwritingproblems/id/26214690

England's Lake District 10/26/2022

England's Lake District Come along on a hike and pub crawl through the most spell-binding landscape in Britain’s northwest: Writers have been gravitating to the Lake District for generations, their imaginations enthralled by its serene and stunning views, their senses on guard for the blustery, foreboding power of its skies. The district’s dynamism fostered one of Literature’s greatest partnerships; but the restless, drink-loving half of that duo eventually started veering through darker doorways of the human mind. /episode/index/show/drinkerswithwritingproblems/id/24811866

Boomtowns of the American West 01/19/2022

Boomtowns of the American West Season 2 opens with a return to the California Gold Rush and Nevada Silver Strike, exploring how these past discoveries lured every kind of drifter and dreamer to America’s lawless edge of the world. Through the dusty violence and ominous mineshaft darkness, three writers emerged to capture a brazen, boom-and-bust spirit of the age. Their own drink-soaked stories – inspiring, funny, tragic – have now seeped into the bones of bars, saloons and hotels that remain from northern California to western Neva /episode/index/show/drinkerswithwritingproblems/id/21827195

Lost in Lorca's Spain 10/19/2020

Lost in Lorca's Spain Season 1 ends with a sojourn to the southern corners of Iberia, chasing the elusive memory of one of the greatest Spanish writers to ever take up the pen. He was a literary folk hero in the wine-splashed tapas bars from Seville to Granada; and when forces within the Spanish Civil War caused him to disappear, it set the stage for a national haunting as dark as any of his poetry. Travel to the barrios and hill towns that he called home, and to the place where some are still searching for his body to this day. /episode/index/show/drinkerswithwritingproblems/id/16466186

Los Angeles & Old Hollywood 06/29/2020

Los Angeles & Old Hollywood In a place known for dark alleys, dream factories and California sunshine, there are a few bars and hotels that hold the secret to how one city captured the world’s imagination. Take a stroll through those surviving landmarks, the places where a handful of writers watched Los Angeles rumble to life: They were hard-drinking personalities; and their typewriters were blazing as they challenged the censors, crystalized the city and worked under the shadow of an ever-entrancing murder. /episode/index/show/drinkerswithwritingproblems/id/15001025

The City of New Orleans 03/25/2020

The City of New Orleans Welcome to The City that Care Forgot, the place where an exiled teen once returned to study a spilling kaleidoscope of cocktails as he re-vamped gothic literature. Then, explore how gin-distilling went legit in the birthplace of Jazz – and how it fueled a wordsmith who channeled the lonely beauty of a night in New Orleans. Finally, venture down a rabbit hole in search of the Big Easy’s lost genius of comedy, who drank, wrote a masterpiece and wandered the same streets as a presidential assassin. /episode/index/show/drinkerswithwritingproblems/id/13691021

Edinburgh & Islay 01/22/2020

Edinburgh & Islay When a son of Scotland’s most-medieval city channeled its legacies of vice and bloodshed into popular tales, he took inspiration from the link between its shadowy pub culture and innovations in urban brewing. Further off shore, Scotland’s whisky island is holding a book festival, including inside its legendary distilleries. Between cold winds and drams of Scotch, visitors can see how this isolation helped one writer conjure a vision of the future that’s become more haunting with every passing year. /episode/index/show/drinkerswithwritingproblems/id/12847685

Dublin & Belfast 12/14/2019

Dublin & Belfast In Dublin, the story of an I.R.A. insurgent-turned-writer leads to historic watering holes where the city’s oldest whiskeys flow. The man who first declared himself “a drinker with a writing problem” understood what distilled spirits mean to a culture’s identity; but it was his understanding of how to overcome a violent past that makes his words especially relevant. Meanwhile, in Belfast, a small but daring group of crime novelists are using timeless pubs and pints of Guinness to confront decades of real-life killings in their city. /episode/index/show/drinkerswithwritingproblems/id/12397640

Drinkers With Writing Problems

TOPICS