Cussler Hustlers

Nancy's deep-dive expose into the seedy underworld of pumpkins nearly died on the cutting room floor. Every time she started talking about Palantir, our connection started cutting out! I'm sure that's JUST a coincidence! Join us for fun pumpkin facts, horrible pumpkin facts, attempted pumpkin murders, and the end-stage capitalist corporatization of your food supply. It's a whimsica...

Sorry, eh! We couldn't pull this one together. Travel, injuries, dental disasters, emergency vet bills... you know, the usual. Still, some announcements to be discovered within! For just two minutes a day, you too can sponsor a poor white podcast host.

RESOLUTION! Every plot line comes together in the Super Big Happy Ending, with only five or six permanently life-altering injuries. The USA and Mexico are bestest buddies forever. The Zolars find out why you never double-cross academics. Giordino was horny once, and it changed his life forever. Doctor Shannon gets off on being the Other Woman. Miles is also here. Rudi enjoys a nice breeze. Pitt ho...

VIOLENCE! Dirk returns to his primal element: the water! He sneaks up on the bad guys from behind, while Billy Yuma sneaks up on the bad guys from the front. Loren and Rudi join in the violence, but no-one seems to notice. Giordino ends up several inches shorter. Dirk gets another limp wrist. Tupac takes a spin in the lazy river. A bunch of mooks get memory holed. You can't have shit in Cerro...

A slightly shorter episode this week, but we make up for it by being highly caffeinated! It's reunions all around. The bad guys get together to discuss how AWESOME everything is going, how they'll divvy up the treasure, and of course who is going to backstab who for a larger cut. The good guys (sand Loren and Rudi) get together to discuss how bad everything is going, how America simply can...

Things are accelerating! The Good Guys and The Bad Guys finally encounter each other, circling hesitantly and shyly like a couple kids at a high school dance. The metaphor breaks down when the Zolars kidnap, beat and torture most of Team America, but Pitt leaps to their heroic rescue and... uh... dives into the water and swims to freedom. I mean, it wouldn't be a Pitt book without having someo...

THE DEMON OF DEATH! Twelve thrilling chapters of action and adventure, but the only ones to experience it are a pair of extremely calm archaeologists. Dirk discovers charcuterie. Loren hangs with some bikers. Al and Rudi charter a boat for a three hour tour. Tupac Amaru engages his active listening. Joseph Zolar hosts a fabulous showcase showdown. Billy Yuma discovers Chevy-based teleportation. Ga...

A shorter episode this week, but five of the best chapters Clive's ever written! Fun, creative, descriptive, evocative, and of course chock full of stupidity. Dirk does some manscaping. Shannon does some Incan decluttering. Giordino ponders the mystery cheese. The Zolar crime family hires some very smart idiots. Clive discovers white-people spice. Enhance. Enhance. ENHANCE!!! Twitter: ⁠https:/...

The plot thickens! Clive adds a few dollops of extra villains, complete with sumptuous meals just to highlight how evil they are. America wants to bring some greasy, oily FREEDOM to Peru. Dirk blows out his hole. Shannon gets wet. Al gives a hard jerk. Rudi is getting too old for this shit. Saint Julien absolutely, positively needs it delivered overnight, guaranteed. Oh, and don't do drugs, ki...

Better late than never, right? Our 100th Episode Spectacular kicks off by being a full day late, mostly because we didn't want to take attention away from America's 250th Birthday. They need all the help they can get right now. Kinda like Sexy Doctor Shannon and The Evil Miller Doppelganger! Dirk Pitt pulls a Mel Gibson on some South American mercenaries. Al blames Dirk for a shark attack....

Book Twelve! Episode One! The book I kinda had in mind when we started this whole dang podcast. The book I re-read half a dozen times. The book that seemed the absolute pinnacle of action and adventure for me. Will it hold up on a modern re-read? So far... kinda! Our heroine is a voluptuous blonde professor with impulse control problems! Al operates the transporter for the away team! Dirk gets suc...

CAUTION: This episode contains 0% of your Daily Dirk Allowance. In spite of that, Nancy and Topper sit down ostensibly to talk about remote obscure islands, but the story of so many of them was intensely repetitive (Europeans showed up and fucked its shit). So, we start talking cars, and how much we hate them. There are some bright spots, though! Fan mail and LGBTQIA2S+ ahoy! A BETTER podcast just...

Short episode this week, due to illness and horrible schedules. However, this is a good time talk to YOU... the PEOPLE. Or, the opposite? We want to HEAR from you! 100th Episode Mailbag questions are now open, so feel free to ask us anything or tell us anything! There's also a couple specific things we'd like to know, so... just hit play and listen, ok? It's not even three minutes long...

Hi, howareya? It's Sahara: The Podcast Episode Of The Film Of The Movie Of The Book! Nancy and Topper have a lot of confused, delighted, ambivalent opinions about this hundred-million-dollar epic adventure. On the one hand, they managed to compress nearly every single plot point from a very large book into a movie... but somehow leaving out Abraham Lincoln is a step too far. On the other hand,...

It's over! We're done! We made it! All seventeen plots come to a satisfying fruition. Dirk Pitt uses his Boyscout skills to roast men alive. Giordino pulls a Jesse James. Eva Rojas becomes bored of golf. Massarde acquires a taste for doctors. Kazim doesn't know how to drive a stick shift. Abraham Lincoln's ears survive the Reconstruction. Another case of boys will be boys. Join us...

 Just when he gets out, they pull him back in... to the Sahara! The top United Nations black ops kill team escorts Pitt and Giordino back to Tebezza, with sexy results. St Julien Perlmutter busts into the story like the Kool-Aid Man. Eva Rojas hopes you won't think she's wanton. Our heroes become forklift certified. Melika dies with dignity. Kitty Mannock finished her stroll. Twitter: ⁠htt...

"Unfortunately, this part is really well-written". Do you like dehydration? Starvation? Exhaustion? Pastoral lithography? Then have we got an episode for YOU. Nancy shares some fun facts about mass suicide events. Topper is an assault to aerodynamics. Giordino throws in the towel. Sandecker says to never tell him the odds. Melika is going to get reprimanded at the office. Pitt finds the...

Dirk and Al bravely escape their captors... and are then almost immediately recaptured when they break into the high-security inescapable fortress of villainy. Honestly, they should have seen this coming. Sandecker convinces the President using only facts and logic. Massarde is reminded that billions of dollars won't actually protect you from a bullet. Our heroes take in an unexpected donkey s...

Dirk Pitt finally runs into something he truly didn't expect and cannot handle: a villain who knows more than he does! Hala Kamil's rebound dooms the planet. Al Giordino takes one on the crotch. Sandecker has to make Sophie's Choice for dumbasses. Eva and Hopper discover the only thing worse than North African warlords... white capitalists. On the plus side, we discover a fuel-efficien...

BREAKING! A once-in-a-century weather event happened again, making recording this week logistically impossible. So, to tide everyone over, here is the REMIXED AND REMASTERED Season 1 of Cussler Hustlers, The Mediterranean Caper in its entirety! Well, not COMPLETELY in its entirety... the biggest digressions, wanderings, meanderings, off-topic diatribes and pet noises have been removed. But the sou...

At last, the Promise of the Premise had arrived! Major characters arrive in the desert, but unfortunately they miss out on all the searing hot cannibal-on-cannibal action. Our nominal heroes successfully complete A Science, and are immediately ensnared by the unfortunately competent military forces of a corrupt West African warlord. Pitt takes his ball and goes home. Giordino tries to add a blonde...

Our saga continues with... meetings! Dinner dates! Evil conferences! Sweaty detente! Political palaver! It's... it's... ok, it's kind of a lot of exposition, but we paused right before West Africa explodes into nightmarish violence absolutely not instigated by a couple of white men who don't know how to ask politely. Dirk refuses the call to action. Giordino gets black pilled. Eva...

IT BEGINS! Sahara, the long-awaited start to the Modern Pitt Era. Not one, not two, but THREE prologues set the stage for a mystery that seems... well, not that mysterious, to be honest. They basically tell us directly who the bad guy is, and what the evil plot is, but there's so many unanswered questions floating around and it's clear Clive is having a blast. Marvel at the competent story...

A much delayed Pitt Stop this week! Nancy was originally going to host a How It's Made about adhesives, but she got pulled down a new hyperfixation during her research, so MOST of this week's episode is about Diseases That Present As Madness! Get ready to get bummed out about rare diseases, and HOPEFULLY excited for all the great advancements being made in the medical world! In an episode...

This week we take a distracted detour through the land of parallel fiction and meet Cussler Hustler's iconic new action hero! Fitzroy Scott is the scion of a billionaire tech magnate, he's the sexy man all the ladies want... and he works at the post office! When a random parcel from 200 years ago sets off his radiation detector, Fitzy is pulled into a world of tropical intrigue, deadly oli...