From Western Sound in Aikas Studios, this is the score, the Bank robber diaries.

I'm Benadare and I'm back with another bonus episode.

Last time we heard a really great interview with Piper Kermin about how Joe Loya was actually quite instrumental in her writing her book

Orange is the New Black, which of course went on to become a really big hit Netflix TV show.

Today I want to play for you the full interview we did with Richard Rodriguez. Richard appeared in the main narrative of the show a few times. He was really instrumental

in Joe's development as a writer

when they started corresponding while Joe was in prison. Richard at that time

had written two books that he had become quite famous for one was called Hunger of Memory,

another was called Days of Obligation.

At the time he was doing a series of really wonderful video essays for PBS news hour. Joe saw them on TV and decided one day to write Richard a letter.

And that began a very unique and very vital

correspondence.

Talking with Richard was really just and very vital correspondence.

Talking with Richard was really just such a pleasure. He said so many interesting things, not just about Joe, but about writing and story. I thought I'd play for you guys a much longer version of the interview.

Not quite the full version but almost. We edited it a little bit for length and clarity.

Hopefully you'll get as much out of this as I did.

I think you're really going to like it.

Joe was raised, I think, in an evangelical Protestant household

and although he is very proud of his atheism and his great

hero when I knew him was Christopher Hitchins who was ultimately encouraging America into the war in Iraq and telling us Americans

that there is no God. Nonetheless, Jao retains a certain kind of narrative energy from his fundamentalist Protestant days

that he got from his father.

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