Welcome to the Not Old Better Show, we are host Paul Volkossang. Happy holidays to everyone

and today's show is in the holiday theme. I really think you're going to enjoy this.

Charles Dickens is well known for a Christmas carol, especially this

time of year, but also for his gripping plots, vivid characters, and penetrating

social commentary. The prolific author of Oliver Twist, David Copperfield, Great Expectations,

A Tale of Two Cities, as well as a Christmas Carol, enjoyed unprecedented popularity

during his lifetime and remains one of the world's most beloved storytellers.

Today we are with actor Scott Sader who will later in the show be reading a special Dickens selection chosen by he and author Daniel Stashauer, who's also with us.

Daniel Stashauer is an award-winning author and has researched Dickens digging deeply into Charles Dickens' life and legacy.

It's a tremendously interesting life as well as career and one of the things that for me has been so enjoyable about digging deeply into Dickens' background

to prepare for this presentation is seeing the way in which many of the events from his life and particularly

his early life are played out again and again in the pages of books that we know so well today.

That of course was our guest today award-winning author Daniel Stashauer who, along with Scott

Sader, will be appearing at the Smithsonian Associates Program, December 5th at the Ripley Center.

This program, by the way, is sold out, but if you'd like to get on the waiting list,

please check out the Not Old Better website for more details.

As part of our Smithsonian Associates Art of Living series, we are joined today via Skype with Daniel Stash Hour and Scott Sader.

Daniel Stash Hour, Scott Sader.

Happy holidays to both of you and welcome to the program.

Thank you.

Thank you. Daniel, my first question really is for you and in my research I found books about

Houdini, books about Arthur Conan Doyle and you've won awards for your mystery novel the adventure of the

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