The Megyn Kelly Show - The Mysterious Case of Rudolf Diesel, and How Reading Helps You Think, with Doug Brunt

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00:00:30.620 Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show.

00:00:32.520 Your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations.

00:00:42.240 Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly.

00:00:43.740 Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show.

00:00:45.460 Today, we're taking a little break from the news cycle

00:00:47.880 for a conversation with someone I've had on this show once before

00:00:51.080 and have talked about many more times.

00:00:55.160 Doug Brunt.

00:00:56.300 Doug is the host of the SiriusXM podcast

00:00:58.700 dedicated with Doug Brunt

00:01:00.380 and the best-selling author of several books.

00:01:03.560 And he is out with his first nonfiction book today

00:01:06.620 titled The Mysterious Case of Rudolf Diesel.

00:01:11.320 Genius, power, and deception on the eve of World War I.

00:01:16.040 He is also, as you probably know by now, my husband.

00:01:19.300 And he's here right next to me in studio for the full show.

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00:02:44.940 I'm excited to bring this to you because I lived this firsthand.

00:02:48.740 Honey, welcome to the show.

00:02:49.860 Great.

00:02:50.280 In the new studio and everything.

00:02:51.400 This is awesome.

00:02:52.020 I know.

00:02:52.440 This is exciting, right?

00:02:53.360 Like you helped build this studio kind of,

00:02:55.040 like not with your hands.

00:02:56.100 I remember, you know, it's just the studs and the walls.

00:02:57.980 We saw it from the very beginning.

00:02:59.560 I know.

00:03:00.060 It's cool to be in here, right?

00:03:01.520 It's kind of just fun to have this as an offshoot of our whole life.

00:03:05.100 Yeah.

00:03:05.700 Okay.

00:03:06.060 This is not where Dedicated is shot, however.

00:03:08.240 You've got a separate secret studio for that.

00:03:10.320 My own gig going there.

00:03:11.480 Yeah.

00:03:11.720 But on Doug's show, Dedicated, you should know that he does make cocktails.

00:03:16.400 And I did this with David Zweig.

00:03:18.280 You made us cocktails because I don't know why.

00:03:21.360 Because we decided that I should have a signature drink if I'm having a guest in studio.

00:03:25.400 So you've made martinis again today, which we will bust out momentarily.

00:03:29.740 But first, let's just kick it off.

00:03:31.380 I want to get right into the book because it's truly amazing.

00:03:34.460 It's getting incredible reviews.

00:03:36.060 I say that not just because I'm his wife.

00:03:38.180 Yes, I'm his wife.

00:03:39.000 But I would tell you the truth.

00:03:41.180 If it stunk, I probably just wouldn't promote it.

00:03:44.260 And all the reviews have been absolutely stunning.

00:03:46.760 I'll just give the audience a flavor.

00:03:48.720 Publishers Weekly calls it a thrilling investigation.

00:03:51.800 Brun's audacious yet surprisingly tenable theory makes for a wildly enjoyable outing.

00:03:57.440 Kirkus said the author's interest in history and politics shines through on his well-researched,

00:04:04.040 engaging book, fascinating, a worthy read.

00:04:07.420 Publishers Weekly gave it a starred review as well.

00:04:10.740 I could go on and I will throughout this podcast, but I'll just give one more.

00:04:15.160 Zibby Owens, who hosts Moms Don't Have Time to Read books.

00:04:18.700 She's great.

00:04:19.620 And she's also the author of bookends.

00:04:21.200 She said, a riveting, impressive, history-changing book, could not put it down, gasped at the

00:04:27.340 conclusion, Diesel is in the History Hall of Fame.

00:04:31.060 Okay, so take us back.

00:04:33.220 September 29th, 1913.

00:04:37.100 Where are we?

00:04:37.880 North Sea.

00:04:38.400 Explain where that is and why anybody should care about a man named Rudolph Diesel who was

00:04:44.040 on a boat back then.

00:04:44.980 Okay, so September 29th, 1913.

00:04:46.920 Rudolph Diesel is traveling from Belgium to Great Britain on an overnight passenger ferry

00:04:51.180 across the North Sea, which is the body of water, you know, leading as you go south to

00:04:54.680 the English Channel, basically separating Western Europe from the British Isles.

00:04:59.240 And he's traveling allegedly with two companions.

00:05:02.680 They have dinner in the evening and they make plans to meet in the morning.

00:05:06.440 And in the morning, he's gone.

00:05:09.080 He's disappeared overnight.

00:05:10.420 And so they hold the ship at sea.

00:05:11.980 They search the ship and all they find are his hat and his coat neatly folded by the

00:05:17.240 rail at the stern of the ship.

00:05:18.580 And he's gone.

00:05:20.000 And so at this time, it's hard to imagine now because the history of Diesel has really

00:05:23.720 been paved over in the last century.

00:05:25.720 But at that time in 1913, it would be like Elon Musk suddenly disappearing off a ship.

00:05:31.100 So headlines of newspapers in New York, all throughout Western Europe and in Russia are

00:05:35.960 splashed with headlines about Diesel's disappearance.

00:05:38.780 And they follow it.

00:05:39.460 They stay on the beat for weeks and weeks and weeks.

00:05:41.980 And, you know, it was impossible that it was just an accidental fall.

00:05:45.800 It was a windless, calm night.

00:05:47.340 The seas were calm.

00:05:48.860 So that was dismissed.

00:05:50.060 Nor would, and you put this out in the book, nor would an accident result in his hat and

00:05:54.140 coping neatly folded by the rail.

00:05:55.620 What a weird little prop to sort of mark where he went over.

00:05:59.020 So the prevailing theory, what to this day is in the Encyclopedia Britannica, is suicide,

00:06:04.260 that he jumped off the ship in the night.

00:06:05.680 But there were two other theories that emerged having to do with murder.

00:06:10.000 And one was that Kaiser Wilhelm II, the emperor of Germany, sent agents to kill him.

00:06:15.300 The other was that Rockefeller or agents of big oil had sent, you know, like a Pinkerton

00:06:21.380 detective thug to kill him.

00:06:23.740 And both had motive to do it.

00:06:26.320 Both viewed Diesel and his engine as an existential threat, which kind of sets up the murder mystery

00:06:30.920 caper of the book.

00:06:31.900 All right.

00:06:32.080 Let me pause you there, because many in the audience at this point may be saying, who the

00:06:36.420 hell is Rudolph Diesel?

00:06:37.620 Because I always say, because Doug is very superstitious about writing his books, about

00:06:41.700 sharing anything.

00:06:43.100 He doesn't want any, our best friends, he'd just be like, you know, or something around

00:06:47.340 World War I.

00:06:48.040 That was it.

00:06:49.000 But I knew, of course, it was always going to be about this guy named Rudolph Diesel.

00:06:51.920 And when we first heard about Diesel, it just was amazing to me, because literally everybody

00:06:57.400 in this audience sees his name probably every day, at a minimum every week, at the gas station

00:07:04.220 and elsewhere.

00:07:05.640 And most people have no idea it's actually a man.

00:07:08.840 So, you know, you set up sort of the caper, the mystery around him, and we'll get into it

00:07:13.600 in more detail.

00:07:14.380 But Rudolph Diesel was, he was an inventor.

00:07:17.040 He was a guy whose name we should know as well as we know names like Alexander Graham Bell.

00:07:21.220 Yeah, it should be up there with Tesla, Edison, Ford.

00:07:24.360 And, you know, as I realized getting into the book, I've been misspelling Diesel with a

00:07:28.720 lowercase d all this time.

00:07:30.380 When's the last time you saw Ford with a lowercase f?

00:07:33.220 And I should say that I'm guarded with my book information early days, partly out of

00:07:37.860 superstition and partly out of like social preservation.

00:07:40.060 Because if I tell everybody about this book and then I see them two years later, like, whatever

00:07:43.280 happened to that book you were talking about?

00:07:44.440 Oh, it was a piece of crap.

00:07:45.480 Never went anywhere.

00:07:46.180 I couldn't get it to work.

00:07:47.660 So it avoids awkward social situations if it is a piece of crap and doesn't go anywhere.

00:07:53.040 It creates them, too, as our best friends are like, you don't trust me with the information.

00:07:56.520 You think I'm going to steal your book?

00:07:59.520 But he was a very important inventor in that time.

00:08:04.180 So this was mid-industrial revolution and we're in the steam age.

00:08:09.100 So the way, actually, it was your suggestion to sort of paint this vivid picture in the book

00:08:12.920 of what it was like by drawing on that scene from the movie Titanic with Leonardo DiCaprio

00:08:18.260 when they that scene where they go down into the belly of the ship and you see dozens and

00:08:22.000 dozens of, you know, men sweaty backs shoveling coal into these orange fiery furnaces, tons

00:08:28.700 of coal, rooms full of coal used to power a ship.

00:08:31.640 It goes into a furnace that just burns the coal to heat a big vat of water.

00:08:36.560 I mean, literally the same concept as a pot on a stove.

00:08:39.560 It's just fire to heat water to create steam.

00:08:42.380 The steam pressure then turns the gears of the engine.

00:08:45.000 I mean, it's just crazy rudimentary technology.

00:08:47.040 This is the way it used to be done.

00:08:48.560 Diesel saw this and recognized there was a better way to do it.

00:08:51.500 We've actually queued up that clip just so the audience can be reminded of what Doug's

00:08:55.560 talking about.

00:08:55.940 This is the way it used to be done before a man named Rudolf Diesel.

00:08:59.460 Okay, so keep going.

00:09:12.640 That's great.

00:09:12.960 I didn't know you had that.

00:09:14.200 This is what a what a first class operation this is.

00:09:17.600 I could have saved all those words.

00:09:20.720 Yeah.

00:09:21.220 So the diesel engine comes along and it's way more compact.

00:09:24.320 There's no furnace.

00:09:25.480 There's no vat of water.

00:09:26.480 There's no chimney apparatus to get that huge amount of smog and smoke and partially burnt

00:09:31.860 particles of coal out of the ship.

00:09:34.440 The diesel engine just draws liquid fuel automatically down from a tank.

00:09:37.900 So you don't need dozens and dozens of men shoveling coal.

00:09:40.400 You don't need to feed them on the ship or give them a place to sleep or have a room full

00:09:43.740 of coal to do it.

00:09:44.560 And then still island hop to get more coal for the ship so you can circumnavigate the globe.

00:09:48.900 The fuel efficiency of the diesel engine is such that you can circumnavigate the globe

00:09:52.640 without stopping for fuel even once.

00:09:54.440 That's amazing.

00:09:55.160 And no, none of these guys shoveling coal in.

00:09:57.920 So it's way more compact.

00:09:59.620 And diesel's initial idea was that it would be a power source for rural economies.

00:10:04.740 His father was a bookbinder and worked with leather goods.

00:10:07.680 And that was in an age where a steam engine was the size of his whole shop.

00:10:11.780 So he had no power source.

00:10:12.980 His hope was that it could be used for woodworking and dentistry and other small businesses out

00:10:18.100 in rural areas and alleviate some of the labors that were born by men and women in the industrial

00:10:26.620 age.

00:10:27.000 And we're going to get into Diesel's background in more detail in just a bit, but just sticking

00:10:30.580 with sort of the crux of the book, The Mysterious Case of Rudolf Diesel.

00:10:34.460 And we went back and forth on the title many, many times.

00:10:37.480 You want to tell them what the earlier title was, which you liked, but I was like, it's

00:10:41.540 too focused on a certain word.

00:10:43.620 Yeah.

00:10:43.920 Yeah.

00:10:44.100 So my, my editor and I, and you and I had many conversations about the title as sort

00:10:49.140 of a working title all the way along.

00:10:50.540 And we're like, we're going to figure this out over a bottle of wine one of these days.

00:10:53.400 And then we had engines and empires, which was every man loved.

00:10:57.720 Yeah.

00:10:57.880 Every man loved.

00:10:58.680 And my editor and I loved it.

00:11:00.120 We thought that was the one.

00:11:01.060 And then in the 11th hour, I was traveling in California or something.

00:11:04.260 I get a call from my editor and he's like, Hey, I just had this pitch meeting at SNS.

00:11:07.880 I mean, the book is done.

00:11:08.660 He's pitching it to the team to get everybody supportive in internal at Simon and Schuster.

00:11:14.100 And educating the sales force on this book, coming down the pipeline.

00:11:18.200 And Jonathan Karp, the CEO was in there as well.

00:11:20.880 And he said, it was a great meeting.

00:11:22.960 Everybody loves the book.

00:11:24.020 We're all really supportive.

00:11:24.920 It's exciting.

00:11:25.900 Except the title.

00:11:27.140 I'm like, what?

00:11:28.020 We're, we're revisiting the title now.

00:11:30.020 Like we're about to have galleys.

00:11:31.500 And he said, well, you know, diesel should be in the title.

00:11:34.220 And, you know, it's a mystery.

00:11:35.400 It's really a caper.

00:11:36.300 I mean, one of the reviews calls it the greatest caper of the 20th century.

00:11:39.540 And so they wanted to capture that in the title.

00:11:41.560 So we, and you know, I'm not going to get in the way of the sales team.

00:11:44.320 If they want the mysterious case of Rudolph diesel, they can have it.

00:11:46.700 This is what, see how, this is why I love the sales team at Simon and Schuster, because

00:11:49.820 this is how, what brought me to the book as much as I love engines.

00:11:54.320 Um, I was like, okay.

00:11:55.860 And if anything, I'm responsible for shortening the parts about the engines.

00:11:58.940 And I'm like, but I think we also like pressed to, to make it clearer.

00:12:02.840 You know, I'm sort of Doug's, I'm just going to tell the audience a quick story.

00:12:06.120 I recently asked Abigail to go back and get my high school transcript.

00:12:10.880 I just kind of want to see like, how, how, how, I don't think it was very good, but I,

00:12:15.060 I don't think it was terrible.

00:12:15.780 So let's go back and take a look at it.

00:12:17.460 It was horrible.

00:12:18.720 It was absolutely terrible.

00:12:20.620 And, um, so I said to Doug, I would show it to you, but I think you'd be stuck asking

00:12:24.320 yourself, what did I marry?

00:12:27.180 And, but the one thing I'm good at though, it is not apparently testing in school is taking

00:12:32.380 large amounts of information and condensing them into small digestible bits.

00:12:36.340 You're even better at that than I am.

00:12:38.580 No, you are.

00:12:39.520 You've taken such complex matters in this book and you revised it over and over and over again

00:12:45.400 till you got to the point where it's easy for anyone to understand engines and empires.

00:12:52.440 You, anybody could read, but what I was loving about the book was the mystery.

00:12:56.380 It is a mystery.

00:12:57.640 It is about a caper.

00:12:58.540 And as some of these reviews are pointing out, uh, I'll quote Lee child.

00:13:03.560 It has a conclusion worthy of James Bond.

00:13:06.720 It is unputdownable says Brad Thor.

00:13:10.100 That's how I felt too, because once you fall in love with diesel, you have to know what

00:13:14.540 happened to him.

00:13:15.280 Once you realize he did not commit suicide, you cannot rest until you know what happened

00:13:20.400 that night.

00:13:21.300 And then when you learn what happened, it really is jaw dropping.

00:13:23.880 And I don't want to say more than it wasn't suicide.

00:13:26.880 Um, but you're, you're kind of say that you're, you are the best at taking complex stuff and

00:13:31.600 making it digestible.

00:13:33.340 But the book does do a lot of different things and I think does it well, but it's in part

00:13:38.740 a biography of this man.

00:13:39.900 It's in part, many biographies of the prime suspects in the murder investigation, Wilhelm

00:13:45.260 and Rockefeller.

00:13:46.160 It's a primer on 19th century diplomacy in that gilded age.

00:13:50.260 It's sort of the decades leading up to world war one, which is like the Downton Abbey, the early

00:13:53.940 years, you know, which was a time before that hinge in history of world war one, in which

00:13:58.540 we, we live totally differently before and after the war.

00:14:01.800 And it's also a bit of a combustion engines for dummies book.

00:14:05.680 I mean, you have to understand why diesel and most people that era and even today don't

00:14:10.720 understand why it's such a fundamentally different engine and why, why it completely

00:14:14.740 changed the game.

00:14:15.600 And believe it or not, even for the ladies out there, sorry to be a sexist pig.

00:14:18.960 It is interesting and we'll, we'll talk about why it's so special and why it's used on all

00:14:23.360 these Navy vessels and virtually like every vessel on the sea, practically still to this

00:14:27.440 day, not to mention the larger ones on the road.

00:14:29.520 There are really good reasons for it, which I never even, I never even knew that diesel

00:14:32.560 was an engine.

00:14:33.320 I saw it as a gasoline, some sort of gasoline at the, you know, it's like I always draw,

00:14:37.060 drove a smaller car.

00:14:38.440 It wasn't relevant to me.

00:14:39.780 The big trucks would go to the diesel.

00:14:41.340 I would go to the regular, get the unleaded, but it's an engine and it's an engine created

00:14:46.300 by a really special man whose name we don't know for a reason.

00:14:50.700 All right.

00:14:50.880 But I'm tabling that too, because I want to get through, I want to stay on the mystery

00:14:54.160 of it.

00:14:55.040 So you say it up front, you have a couple of main suspects on a possible murder theory.

00:15:01.440 And this is part of what's fun about the book, because if you want to take in history as I

00:15:05.740 do, especially 20th century history, it's the best.

00:15:08.980 But without feeling like you're in a class, you know, a feeling like you're hearing it through

00:15:12.800 a story.

00:15:13.820 That's what I love about this book and other books like this, where you can hear a fun story

00:15:17.580 or fun mystery, but it's set, as you say, in the Gilded Age with this cast of characters

00:15:21.020 whose names you know.

00:15:22.620 And one of those names that becomes very important is Rockefeller.

00:15:26.360 So talk about him for a minute.

00:15:28.620 Rockefeller at the time of the disappearance was the richest man in the world.

00:15:31.180 He had founded Standard Oil in 1870.

00:15:34.020 And in the years from 1870 to the turn of the century, he and Standard Oil came to dominate

00:15:39.260 the petroleum industry.

00:15:40.640 The interesting thing about it is he was really in the illumination business.

00:15:45.080 At that time, they distilled the petroleum, the rock oil, out of the ground for kerosene.

00:15:48.800 And the gasoline was this useless byproduct that they would throw away.

00:15:52.820 So he was in the illumination business selling, you know, kerosene lamps.

00:15:56.600 And he had basically demolished the whaling industry because we had previously used whale

00:16:02.380 blubber for illumination.

00:16:03.800 And then by the turn of the century, the electric light bulb came along.

00:16:06.860 Edison and others were developing a new form of illumination that was going to do to Standard

00:16:11.740 Oil what Standard Oil had done to the whaling industry.

00:16:14.800 So in the early 1900s, the prospects for Standard Oil were pretty grim.

00:16:18.960 He had lost his main source of revenue and he was vulnerable to where he was going to

00:16:25.060 be finding markets for petroleum going forward.

00:16:27.400 So he needed the internal combustion engine running gasoline to be his new market.

00:16:33.820 And diesel was a threat to that because he did not need gasoline or petroleum of any kind.

00:16:38.360 He could run his engine.

00:16:39.220 He won the Paris World's Fair in 1900 on a diesel engine running nut oil.

00:16:43.180 And he was advocating that every nation with agriculture can just grow its own fuel.

00:16:49.240 You don't need petroleum at all.

00:16:50.860 And he, in 1912, on a trip through America, he said, I can break the American fuel monopoly

00:16:55.080 and I don't need a law to do it.

00:16:57.060 I don't need the Sherman Antitrust Act to do it.

00:16:58.960 I can do it through the power of this diesel technology.

00:17:01.940 It's amazing.

00:17:02.700 So John D. Rockefeller viewed him as a threat, as an existential threat.

00:17:06.480 Yeah.

00:17:06.760 And he was not a nice man.

00:17:10.320 Right.

00:17:10.900 I mean, like some of the stories in the book, the earlier version had like all these stories

00:17:14.960 about him, but what's what landed in the final version is powerful enough.

00:17:18.400 He was not somebody you'd want to have tea with and piss him off.

00:17:22.980 Right.

00:17:23.180 And his his tactics and the tactic he used in China earlier around the illumination business

00:17:27.920 is similar to what he was trying to do and ultimately kind of did with the combustion

00:17:31.800 engine on gasoline.

00:17:32.660 But he wanted to get China using his kerosene product.

00:17:35.200 So he floods the market with free kerosene lamps and then people in China had previously

00:17:40.160 used natural gas or oils for illumination for centuries and centuries.

00:17:44.320 But he comes along with his fancy, good looking, free kerosene lamp and cheap kerosene.

00:17:49.420 And so everyone starts adopting the kerosene lamp and using kerosene around China.

00:17:53.080 And then the price slowly goes up and he's got the market sort of addicted to his his product.

00:17:58.580 It's a case of the supply sort of controlling the demand side of it.

00:18:02.080 And that's what he needed to have happen with the combustion engine.

00:18:05.600 So he has cheap gasoline.

00:18:07.060 He allows it to be easily acquired by people and wants adoption of gasoline burning engines

00:18:13.520 as opposed to diesel.

00:18:14.700 And, you know, amazingly, the diesel engine today mainly does run on a form of petrol diesel.

00:18:21.820 We are burning crude oil in the diesel engine today, although that was not Rudolf Diesel's

00:18:26.460 initial intention.

00:18:27.280 Yeah, that's one of the questions I had, like, which was if he started it on vegetable

00:18:31.560 oil, why aren't we filling our tanks with vegetable?

00:18:35.560 Why isn't that semi truck in front of me at the gas station filling it up with vegetable

00:18:39.000 oil?

00:18:39.400 He's diesel fuel and diesel engines have sort of a bad rap is just as big a polluter as

00:18:44.320 the regular.

00:18:45.240 So what happened?

00:18:46.760 I mean, in short, it's the same concept of what happened in China with the kerosene lamp.

00:18:52.060 Rockefeller made sure that gasoline was readily available or a form of petrodiesel was readily

00:18:56.460 available because it would take an enormous amount of infrastructure to have the agricultural

00:19:01.060 business and the refining business to generate enough vegetable or nut oil to power all the

00:19:06.600 engines of the world.

00:19:08.100 But it can be done.

00:19:08.560 But it can be done.

00:19:09.140 And in fact, in like 15 years ago or so, Willie Nelson was out on tour on his tour bus with

00:19:15.000 a diesel engine running recycled kitchen grease.

00:19:18.020 So that can happen with diesels today.

00:19:19.980 And Willie Nelson is running around saying, hey, we can grow our own fuel here.

00:19:22.840 We don't need to run around fighting a war for it.

00:19:25.140 Think about that.

00:19:25.600 Like you really could do it if you were so inclined.

00:19:27.800 You could grow, you get a diesel engine, you could grow what, corn?

00:19:30.520 I don't know.

00:19:31.080 How would you?

00:19:31.400 I think probably corn or I mean, it can be nuts.

00:19:34.240 It can also come from coal.

00:19:35.980 The coking process with coal creates coke, which is a fuel that's sometimes used for heating

00:19:40.240 in Australia.

00:19:40.820 It's more common.

00:19:42.120 Coal gas and tar, coal tar.

00:19:45.280 And that it's like a thick, sludgy tar from coal.

00:19:48.920 And that is a great diesel fuel.

00:19:50.340 And that's what he was advocating because around, you know, getting to the World War I era

00:19:54.080 stuff, Great Britain, Germany did not have petroleum in the ground.

00:19:57.460 And they're all freaking out because we're moving toward an oil economy.

00:20:01.140 Churchill is freaking out trying to figure out where they're going to get oil.

00:20:03.400 And he starts prospecting in the Middle East.

00:20:05.700 But diesel was saying, you guys have plenty of coal in the ground.

00:20:07.800 You have all the fuel you need.

00:20:08.920 Just you turn into, you know, gas plants and you do the coking process and you have coal

00:20:13.640 tar to power every energy need you have.

00:20:16.540 All right.

00:20:17.040 So the Rockefellers are looking at this guy, Diesel, this German guy.

00:20:20.420 And we'll get into his background again.

00:20:21.460 But thinking we don't like it.

00:20:23.560 This is a serious problem.

00:20:25.360 And there was something called the Ludlow Massacre.

00:20:27.520 But the Rockefellers, they hurt some people on their way up.

00:20:30.920 It wasn't like a gentle rise.

00:20:32.360 They did.

00:20:32.780 There were a couple of agencies.

00:20:33.980 The Pinkerton Detective Agency is the most famous of them.

00:20:36.200 But there's also Baldwin Feltz.

00:20:38.240 And in this era of strikes, they often acted as sort of the paramilitary wing of big business,

00:20:44.160 whether it's steel or tobacco or sugar or oil.

00:20:48.360 And Rockefeller, the Ludlow Massacre, you mentioned, was in Ludlow, Colorado.

00:20:53.300 The strikers, they wanted better conditions for that.

00:20:57.320 They wanted the eight-hour work week and various other things.

00:20:59.760 Work day.

00:21:00.120 Sorry, work day.

00:21:01.060 And so they had gone on strike and in came the Baldwin Feltz detective agency.

00:21:07.060 And it ultimately ended in an enormous gunfight and a fire where about, I think, 30 in total strikers and family members were killed.

00:21:16.700 So, you know, if you wanted the eight-hour work day, that was not going to go over well with Rockefeller.

00:21:21.280 And he, you know, he fought tough.

00:21:23.420 But I think this is important to know just because you need to understand the ruthlessness of the characters who were involved and why it's not completely implausible.

00:21:32.220 Because if you think about, you know, comparing Diesel again to, like, Elon Musk, if he were to disappear tomorrow and we were talking about the likely suspects, it would be just absurd to think about, you know, one of our major power brokers killing off Elon Musk.

00:21:44.600 You know, like, what, Mark Zuckerberg?

00:21:46.100 They're going to have their stupid little fight at the Coliseum.

00:21:48.400 But that was all in good fun.

00:21:50.560 This would be the equivalent of saying, yeah, no, Mark Zuckerberg killed off Elon Musk.

00:21:55.900 But in this particular case, the Mark Zuckerberg of our story actually was extremely ruthless, the Rockefeller family and John D. Rockefeller, and didn't get that money easily.

00:22:06.200 That's why he vaulted right.

00:22:07.580 The Ludlow massacre actually happened in 1913.

00:22:09.840 It was over a period of months, but it was concurrent with Diesel's disappearance.

00:22:12.880 And so you can draw the straight line of why he wound up in the newspaper headlines.

00:22:18.560 Yeah.

00:22:18.720 Why was he on the short list?

00:22:20.000 Yeah.

00:22:20.340 So then here, this brings us to one of the fights that Doug and I have had about the book from the beginning.

00:22:26.340 The second big suspect, and his name was?

00:22:29.820 Kaiser Wilhelm II, originally of Prussia.

00:22:33.220 Okay.

00:22:33.920 Would you like to explain why we've been arguing over that?

00:22:37.080 She's like, nobody knows what Prussia is.

00:22:38.880 Stop saying Prussia.

00:22:39.840 You're going to just confuse everyone.

00:22:42.020 I'm right.

00:22:42.880 I know I'm right.

00:22:43.600 In the 1870s, Germany, as the state that we've come to know it in the 20th century, did not yet exist.

00:22:48.260 It was 39 different kingdoms and states and tribes and things like that.

00:22:52.740 See, I went to public school.

00:22:53.820 I don't remember ever really being taught that.

00:22:55.840 So it was not always Germany.

00:22:57.480 It was a bunch of different sort of regions.

00:22:59.820 Yes.

00:23:00.020 And one of them was Prussia.

00:23:01.120 Prussia.

00:23:01.400 And so Berlin is inside the kingdom of Prussia.

00:23:05.020 Rudolf was from Bavaria.

00:23:06.700 Munich is inside the kingdom of Bavaria.

00:23:08.800 So they had, you know, they were all Germanic in origin, but they were different in their appeal.

00:23:13.460 Prussia was much more the militaristic, you know, clipped speech and clicking the heels sort of military pomp and circumstance of the Germans, whereas Bavaria was more of the artistic and science side of the Germans.

00:23:26.600 But they fought together.

00:23:27.780 That's Rudolf's place.

00:23:28.100 And that's Rudolf's place.

00:23:29.340 They fought together in the Franco-Prussian War.

00:23:31.460 At the end of that war in 1871, all of the German tribes, kingdom, states, whatever, united in the German state as we have come to know it under really Prussian leadership.

00:23:42.380 So the Kaiser was, which is the emperor, was Prussian in origin while Rudolf was Bavarian.

00:23:48.620 And this guy, Kaiser Wilhelm, was very interesting, like the physical problems that he had, the family he came from.

00:23:56.020 Can you talk about him a little bit?

00:23:57.260 He's an interesting character in the book.

00:23:59.000 He was the favorite grandson of Queen Victoria of Great Britain.

00:24:03.040 So the bloodlines between Germany and Great Britain were the same.

00:24:06.520 And he visited her all the time.

00:24:08.640 It was his favorite grandmother.

00:24:10.820 Queen Victoria's oldest daughter was his mother.

00:24:13.420 She had married a German prince.

00:24:14.620 And so that's how the line got going over to Germany.

00:24:17.460 But the weird thing is, if you look at the, you know, the 15 years leading up before World War I, it was far more likely that Germany and Great Britain could be fighting together.

00:24:27.200 Great Britain and France had been at war for centuries and centuries.

00:24:30.560 Nobody really liked the Russians.

00:24:33.120 It was almost like a game of musical chairs.

00:24:35.800 But the key thing that was going on at that time was a, it was a very, it was a time of heightened nationalism, heightened militarism.

00:24:43.020 And there was a naval arms race, the German Anglo naval arms race.

00:24:49.280 Germany was growing leaps and bounds.

00:24:51.020 Their industry was growing.

00:24:52.500 And they felt that in order to feed their growing industry, they needed an imperial structure.

00:24:56.640 They needed colonies around the world to bring natural resources back to the, to the homeland.

00:25:00.760 And in fairness, Great Britain had a huge, uh, imperial structure.

00:25:05.740 They had many colonies around the world.

00:25:06.960 So did, you know, France and Italy and others did.

00:25:08.620 So Germany, in order to do this though, felt they needed a strong Navy.

00:25:12.740 And Great Britain as this island nation, they had been dominating the seas ever since the time of defeating Napoleon in like 1815.

00:25:19.660 Great Britain controlled the seas.

00:25:21.200 But Germany wanted to have a strong Navy.

00:25:23.660 So that was a threat.

00:25:24.640 And you had this really cutthroat naval arms race.

00:25:27.360 And that drove a lot of the diplomatic, you know, complications of that era.

00:25:33.760 And Diesel was right in the middle of it.

00:25:35.480 So Diesel becomes highly relevant because he's Bavarian, meaning German, and should technically be loyal to Kaiser Wilhelm and should be, you know, providing his engine to all of them.

00:25:46.460 But why was he on that boat crossing the North Sea on the night he disappeared?

00:25:51.700 Now, that is a great question.

00:25:53.040 He's on his way because he is co-founder and board director of a new diesel engine manufacturing company in Great Britain, whose mandate it is to build diesel engines for the Royal Navy submarine program.

00:26:06.580 For the Brits.

00:26:07.280 For the Brits.

00:26:07.880 And at this time, the diesel engine had emerged as the only option for the submarine or the U-boat gasoline.

00:26:14.560 Certainly, the steam engine is not going to work.

00:26:15.960 Gasoline and kerosene engines did not work.

00:26:18.320 Didn't have the range.

00:26:19.280 They were too fumy.

00:26:20.020 They had spark ignition.

00:26:20.860 There were constant boat fires.

00:26:22.600 But with the diesel engine, you had four times the range of other options.

00:26:26.540 So you could get out into the open sea lanes and control the oceans.

00:26:30.180 There were no boat fires.

00:26:31.620 It was a very reliable, high-torque engine that worked for the submarine.

00:26:35.600 It was the only way to have a submarine fleet that would be worth anything.

00:26:38.780 And so the navies of every major power were scrambling for diesel expertise.

00:26:43.920 And the engine was still young.

00:26:44.780 In 1913, it really had only become applied in like 1901, 02.

00:26:49.480 And so to make it work for the exacting requirements of underwater use, you still really needed to tap into the creator, Rudolf himself.

00:26:58.500 And so actually, the cover of the book is a World War I-era submarine.

00:27:02.260 I see.

00:27:02.660 Let's hold it up so people can see it.

00:27:05.380 I love it.

00:27:06.240 It's absolutely beautiful.

00:27:07.200 Keep going.

00:27:07.740 What were you saying?

00:27:08.380 The cover of the book?

00:27:09.180 It's a World War I-era submarine just surfacing.

00:27:13.040 So it kind of brings the dark and stormy World War I stuff.

00:27:17.080 But that's why Kaiser Wilhelm was so upset.

00:27:19.320 He wanted to keep that technology in country and certainly to go right across the North Sea.

00:27:26.240 I mean, it's only like 500 or 600 miles from Berlin.

00:27:29.460 He's over in Great Britain building a diesel engine manufacturing company to help the Royal Navy.

00:27:34.920 It's a no.

00:27:35.820 It's a no.

00:27:36.320 Yeah.

00:27:36.720 To quote Carrie and Britt, it's a no.

00:27:40.800 Yeah.

00:27:41.180 So you can see why Kaiser Wilhelm did not want that alliance, did not want diesel going over there.

00:27:46.020 You can see why John D. Rockefeller did not want diesel's rise to fame to consider to continue any more than it already had.

00:27:52.560 And you can see why accident smelled like a complete lie given, you know, the facts around the seas that night and his hat and his coat and all that.

00:28:01.480 So where does that leave us?

00:28:03.040 Well, we're going to take a break and we'll be right back.

00:28:06.400 He's not going to do the big reveal on this show because we want you to buy the book, The Mysterious Case of Rudolf Diesel.

00:28:12.980 But there's much, much more to discuss and you're going to love it.

00:28:16.060 So stay with us.

00:28:17.100 More with Doug ahead.

00:28:17.720 My guest today, Doug Brunt, author of the brand new book, The Mysterious Case of Rudolf Diesel.

00:28:29.340 Happens to be my husband as well.

00:28:31.580 So thrilled to be bringing him and this book to you today.

00:28:34.480 I keep wanting to call it a novel.

00:28:35.640 It's not a novel.

00:28:36.300 This is your first work of nonfiction.

00:28:38.680 Before we get to any of that nonsense, let's have a cocktail.

00:28:41.200 Yes, I've been dying.

00:28:42.940 So we're doing the, we've decided that the signature drink of our new studio is the martini, which is all you should need to say because we looked this up.

00:28:51.760 I did.

00:28:52.460 If you just say a martini, they should serve you gin with a twist.

00:28:56.900 That's the martini.

00:28:58.280 And if you want any alterations after that, then you start to specify, I want vodka instead or I want it to be dirty, et cetera.

00:29:04.320 But I love, this is underrated.

00:29:06.400 This is the classic martini.

00:29:07.460 It's so good.

00:29:08.020 Cheers, honey.

00:29:08.600 Cheers.

00:29:08.980 To The Mysterious Case of Rudolf Diesel.

00:29:12.380 That is tasty.

00:29:14.620 That is good.

00:29:15.120 What kind of gin is that?

00:29:16.460 Bar Hill gin distilled in Vermont.

00:29:18.620 Oh, is that the Chris Bajalian?

00:29:20.460 That's right.

00:29:20.940 Oh, very nice.

00:29:21.980 So actually I should take a moment to plug Doug's podcast, which is called Dedicated with Doug Brunt.

00:29:26.720 It's really good.

00:29:27.320 And on his podcast today, author Chris Bajalian, who did The Flight Attendant, among other great works, interviews Doug.

00:29:34.720 Ah, and Dedicated.

00:29:35.600 And this is one of their things is Doug always gets the favorite cocktail of a well-known author.

00:29:40.340 And then we've actually discovered some fun drinks that way.

00:29:42.860 Yeah, some great ones.

00:29:43.160 The French 75.

00:29:44.220 That was Lee Bardugo.

00:29:45.180 I love the French 75.

00:29:46.820 What's in that?

00:29:47.540 You always make it when we have it at home.

00:29:48.320 Oh my gosh, it's gin and champagne and lemon juice, I think, are like the main things.

00:29:56.180 It's, I don't know, there's something very festive about the French 70s.

00:29:58.740 It just feels like a level up.

00:30:01.320 And it's actually named after a World War I French artillery gun.

00:30:05.120 So there you go.

00:30:05.760 There, it all comes together.

00:30:07.060 This is how we spend our evenings, trying out new people's.

00:30:09.220 And I should say, I mean, this is, it's a little awkward, but on last week's debut, because

00:30:15.900 he's just now in season two of Dedicated, he premiered with our friend Meryl Gordon, who

00:30:21.260 we both love.

00:30:22.060 And she's an extremely accomplished author.

00:30:25.160 I mean, she is the real deal.

00:30:26.560 And she made a bunch of news because she had some criticism for someone, even though I hate

00:30:32.420 everybody in the mainstream media for the most part, we both like Anderson Cooper.

00:30:35.360 Yeah, I'm fond of Anderson Cooper.

00:30:36.340 Yeah, he's a nice guy.

00:30:37.740 But he did something in his new book that is a little questionable, and Meryl made some

00:30:43.080 news on it.

00:30:43.720 Yes.

00:30:44.400 He cited her book 39 times.

00:30:47.440 So they both wrote a book on the Astors.

00:30:49.120 And Meryl's was mainly on Brooke Astor, but she's 105 years old.

00:30:52.900 So it covers 100 years of the Astor family.

00:30:54.760 Mrs. Astor Regrets.

00:30:56.020 Mrs. Astor Regrets.

00:30:57.040 And it's a terrific book.

00:30:58.060 Meryl's written a number of books in that kind of genre, one on Bunny Mellon.

00:31:01.600 And anyway, Anderson wrote a book about the Astor family in follow-up to his book on the

00:31:06.480 Vanderbilt family, of which he's one.

00:31:09.460 And in the book, he also has a co-writer.

00:31:12.500 I can't remember her name, but he has a co-writer.

00:31:13.800 And in Anderson's book, he cited Meryl's book 39 times in 31 pages, which is a lot.

00:31:23.180 It's a lot to lean on one source.

00:31:25.580 It's not plagiarism, but it's considered, as I heard somebody say, it's not honorable.

00:31:30.880 Yeah.

00:31:31.380 Yeah.

00:31:31.620 So nothing illegal about it.

00:31:32.720 It's just kind of lazy.

00:31:35.120 So you...

00:31:35.760 Catherine Howe is the co-writer.

00:31:36.620 And the other complaint that Meryl had was most of these people are living.

00:31:41.680 I mean, Anderson interviews people for a business.

00:31:43.360 He ought to get out there and call them up and have the interviews himself and do some

00:31:48.540 original research rather than completely rely on all of her...

00:31:51.580 Many were personal anecdotes through her process of doing these interviews.

00:31:54.740 She did 230 interviews, whereas apparently Anderson did one.

00:31:59.740 And so, you know, you just don't want to rehash someone else's work.

00:32:02.420 Right.

00:32:02.660 It's one thing to sort of cite it a few times as like a definitive treatise, but it's quite

00:32:06.580 another to just kind of copy it and keep citing it.

00:32:09.740 And yeah, because the thing is, he's a lot more famous than Meryl.

00:32:12.920 And if he gets a, you know, book to film offer or so on because he is a Vanderbilt, because

00:32:18.700 he's Anderson Cooper, where does that leave Meryl, who wrote this amazing book with so

00:32:23.040 much elbow grease into it?

00:32:25.040 She should definitely be recognized in some serious way.

00:32:28.680 But in any event...

00:32:29.280 She was rightly upset.

00:32:30.520 Yeah.

00:32:30.840 And Meryl is not a complainer.

00:32:32.380 She is in no way...

00:32:33.480 My God.

00:32:34.020 I mean, for her to have even said that, I think it caught you by surprise.

00:32:36.380 So in any event, Team Meryl, and by the way, her book too, Mrs. Astor Regrets, is a great

00:32:41.620 read.

00:32:42.180 I just listened to the audio on it because, you know, that's how I like to consume my

00:32:44.840 books.

00:32:45.340 But let's spend a minute on the research because you, like Meryl, I mean, like the number of

00:32:50.620 interviews you did, the number of resources that you had to tap into.

00:32:54.480 Your guy was...

00:32:55.400 He lived 100 years ago, so it was hard for you to do first-person interviews.

00:32:59.780 But you did so much research.

00:33:01.600 There are so many footnotes in the book to reflect the vast array of sourcing that went

00:33:06.780 into this book.

00:33:07.600 Yeah.

00:33:07.840 Yeah.

00:33:07.980 I actually did find two living descendants of Rudolf Diesel.

00:33:10.800 That alone was hard to sort of unart those two.

00:33:13.480 That was really sweet.

00:33:13.900 Yeah.

00:33:14.880 But tons of research.

00:33:16.260 I mean, I was in archives, you know, just down the rabbit hole for almost a period of

00:33:20.120 five years.

00:33:20.920 And some of it was during COVID.

00:33:22.340 And so I had to make these remote relationships with people inside the archive who could copy and

00:33:27.280 scan things and send it to me.

00:33:28.800 But there are some great resources in Germany, Great Britain, and even here in the U.S.

00:33:33.640 Because, you know, getting back to the cast of characters of the Gilded Age story that

00:33:38.720 we have here, the person who took the exclusive license to manufacture and market the diesel

00:33:43.820 engine in North America was Adolphus Busch, the founder of Anheuser-Busch.

00:33:47.240 We call them Tranheuser-Busch on this show.

00:33:50.160 Well, you know, he'd be rolling over about all the stuff going on in the last few years.

00:33:54.720 He would not approve of the direction.

00:33:56.340 Yeah, Adolphus, I don't think anyone in the Bush family is really keen on what's happening.

00:34:00.320 But he was this great pioneer.

00:34:02.460 You know, he pioneered the first refrigerated freight trains for brewery and beer distribution,

00:34:07.380 which is why they became the national beer.

00:34:08.660 They could ship it around.

00:34:09.700 And he used the diesel engine initially to pump water in his breweries and to power refrigeration.

00:34:17.100 But he also had a separate business building diesels for the U.S. Navy and the submarine

00:34:20.640 fleet.

00:34:20.900 But anyway, back to the research, it was fascinating stuff.

00:34:25.820 And it was like finding, you know, because it was old, there's 100 years plus going back

00:34:30.840 even to his early days, you'd find something in an archive.

00:34:33.880 And out of the context of this story, it wouldn't mean much at all.

00:34:37.320 But then you'd, in the context of it, and I think right now, I know more about Rudolf

00:34:42.120 Diesel than anyone on the planet.

00:34:43.580 And I'd find some piece of paper.

00:34:44.980 And I'd think, oh my gosh, he said this like the day before Churchill said that or something.

00:34:50.180 And you'd draw the connections and it would be a piece of treasure.

00:34:54.260 You know, it's just incredible to find these things and piece it all together.

00:34:57.880 And the research is different now too.

00:34:59.120 I spent, you know, eons in newspaper archives in a way that you never could 100 years ago

00:35:03.560 or even 40 years ago.

00:35:04.680 Because many of these old newspapers, you know, back in the years right after his disappearance,

00:35:10.220 you know, 1920, to go compare newspaper articles from Germany and Great Britain and America

00:35:16.540 and try and piece it all together would be so hard.

00:35:19.460 They're like sitting in a cabinet somewhere.

00:35:20.640 But now many of these things have been scanned.

00:35:22.920 And so you can do, you know, what I would call library research, just sitting in your chair

00:35:26.360 on a computer.

00:35:26.820 And you can go through scanned archives of old newspapers with keyword searching and other

00:35:31.420 things and you can compare and sleuth some of this stuff out.

00:35:35.280 So it was a lot of fun.

00:35:36.240 And then, of course, we had our trip to Paris where we found Diesel's childhood home.

00:35:39.960 Everybody's, first of all, all our friends, we go with our friends to Paris.

00:35:42.600 All our friends are going out there like, okay, we're going to go shopping.

00:35:45.580 We're going to get Chanel bags.

00:35:47.240 We're going to go see the Eiffel Tower.

00:35:49.040 I went to an engine museum.

00:35:51.060 Yeah.

00:35:51.340 I was at an engine museum, people.

00:35:53.420 You are a good sport.

00:35:54.420 Like, honey, I've got a great plan.

00:35:55.700 We could go.

00:35:56.140 And then it was like, so I actually brought this in case we, in case it came up.

00:35:59.480 It's in the third rondesmont.

00:36:00.880 I don't know if people can see this, but this is a very cool museum.

00:36:03.840 And as you can justify, it had like old hair dryers and typewriters.

00:36:07.740 And it's a technical museum.

00:36:08.940 I'm only pretending to complain because it was actually very cool what they had in there,

00:36:12.140 like the very first telephones.

00:36:13.740 I mean, sadly, it was like stuff that we grew up with now.

00:36:16.160 That's how old we're getting.

00:36:17.220 And the only other people there were like third graders from schools,

00:36:20.380 French schools in Paris around us.

00:36:22.340 You know, it's like us in a third grade trip, but really cool stuff.

00:36:25.220 And had one of the earliest diesel engines, had old airplanes.

00:36:28.300 I mean, really, really cool stuff.

00:36:29.600 Yeah.

00:36:29.740 And we did see his childhood home, but it was kind of sad.

00:36:33.480 That reflects the deficit of appreciation for Rudolph Diesel as much as anything.

00:36:39.040 So we go by the address of his old home.

00:36:41.440 I'm like, I wonder what will be there.

00:36:43.100 And there's a plaque on a wall.

00:36:45.240 It's above your eyeline.

00:36:46.300 So you could easily just pass right underneath it.

00:36:48.300 It's, you know, a foot by a foot.

00:36:50.240 And it just says, this is the childhood home of Rudolph Diesel.

00:36:53.120 And all around it is graffiti and stickers on the wall.

00:36:55.980 I mean, and this is the guy whose engine power, it's the most important power source

00:37:02.220 over the last hundred years in the world and continues to be our most important power source.

00:37:07.520 When you consider a piece of fruit grown in a tropical region, all of the farm equipment

00:37:12.500 used to grow that fruit is diesel powered.

00:37:14.780 It gets loaded onto a truck.

00:37:16.580 Anything larger than a passenger car, and a third of the passenger cars also, is diesel powered.

00:37:21.620 It goes down to port where a crane, diesel powered, loads it onto a cargo ship.

00:37:26.440 A hundred percent of cargo ships.

00:37:27.760 I think there's one Russian nuclear cargo ship that doesn't really work well.

00:37:31.760 Cargo ships are all diesel powered.

00:37:33.080 It goes across the oceans into a port, back onto another truck to a train.

00:37:36.960 Almost all trains are diesel powered and have been through the 20th century.

00:37:39.780 So nothing moves without the diesel engine.

00:37:43.260 It completely powers our global economy.

00:37:45.140 We wouldn't look anywhere near what we look like today without diesel.

00:37:48.960 And all he has is like the one little foot by foot plaque.

00:37:53.140 It's sad.

00:37:53.820 And honestly, like one intrepid author slash reporter, investigative reporter, that's what

00:37:59.540 you've been these past few years, who took the time to actually look into this guy.

00:38:03.300 That's one of the mysteries is why?

00:38:05.440 Why did he not only die, but his legacy was absolutely wiped out?

00:38:10.660 It was like his name should not be spoken to the point where, as you point out, we both

00:38:13.900 came into this thinking diesel was not a proper noun.

00:38:17.640 We didn't understand it was a man's name.

00:38:20.200 And there are reasons behind that, which the book thoroughly explores.

00:38:24.080 But before we move off of the research, there were some unbelievable intel sources, which have

00:38:30.820 been very intriguing.

00:38:32.200 And when Doug would dig deep on the intel sources, we would have dinner and drinks like these

00:38:38.320 and just like our minds would be blown as we started to learn more and more.

00:38:42.960 I don't.

00:38:43.300 So none of this is in the book because I don't know what to say about it other than I don't

00:38:49.180 exactly have it, but I spoke with members of the CIA, of police detectives, FBI, and also

00:38:57.860 people who have worked in British intelligence at very high levels and connected to the people

00:39:03.540 whose job it was to look at documents as they're released from the 50-year rule.

00:39:09.640 This stuff is going to be under wraps for 50 years, but now it's going to come up and be

00:39:13.380 open for public consumption.

00:39:14.920 But we need to redact things that go to sources and methods.

00:39:16.800 So the person who redacts.

00:39:18.660 And so this guy that I came to know, who's the former British intel, would call me, he's

00:39:23.100 like, mate, you've stored up a hornet's nest.

00:39:25.240 You know, like everyone's, you know, I think you've got something, but, you know, they can't

00:39:28.240 let it out and everyone's, you know, freaking out.

00:39:30.240 And, but, you know, you've got it.

00:39:32.180 And, and so I'm like, well, get me something, like some document that I can show.

00:39:35.560 And so frustratingly, it never, but exciting, but exciting.

00:39:40.360 And it's always good just to find out if you're on the right path or not for, you know, and

00:39:44.700 it's, it's not, wasn't, you didn't rely on any of this for the book, but as an outside

00:39:48.500 lean, it's always good to have somebody there saying, keep going.

00:39:51.560 It's like your deep throat.

00:39:53.000 Yeah.

00:39:53.200 And there are people cited in the book from the intelligence community, both U S and British

00:39:56.740 who say a hundred, this is exactly what happened.

00:39:59.320 But I don't have like the, the smoking gun out of some archives saying, you know,

00:40:02.860 here's what you need to know.

00:40:04.180 Doug solved the mystery.

00:40:05.300 The mysterious case of Rudolph diesel is far less mysterious.

00:40:08.660 Thanks to Doug Brunt and this book, and you watch it unfold with your very eyes and you

00:40:13.560 can decide for yourself whether he's got it, but there's absolutely no other conclusion

00:40:16.700 than the one you reach.

00:40:18.120 I mean, it's a circumstantial case, but as you know, and from Kelly's court, you know, most

00:40:23.060 murders are solved as circumstantial cases.

00:40:25.680 It's very rare to have a murder case where there's a witness that says, I saw the knife go

00:40:30.620 in and he did it and, you know, case closed.

00:40:32.860 And by the way, the witness testimony in those things is the most unreliable of evidence

00:40:38.620 pieces anyway.

00:40:40.100 In addition though, there is some, in the newspaper recording, there are several eyewitnesses who

00:40:44.820 weigh in on the case.

00:40:46.100 So there, there actually is some eyewitness testimony in here that conflicts with the

00:40:50.720 accepted Encyclopedia Britannica conclusions.

00:40:52.560 Well, that's what's, that's what's so part of what makes it so hard to solve, even though

00:40:56.480 you've solved it, which is like the misdirection was appearing in a couple of different places.

00:41:00.600 Like you're getting a different story from the guys Rudolf Diesel was on the boat with

00:41:03.700 versus the newspaper headlines versus people who knew Diesel.

00:41:07.840 And then we've skipped over what happened 10 days after September 29th, 1913, because

00:41:13.760 keep in mind the day after he went missing, he was missing.

00:41:16.680 It was like, where's Mr. Diesel?

00:41:18.860 What happened to Mr. Musk?

00:41:19.940 Right.

00:41:20.140 He's gone.

00:41:20.820 Right.

00:41:21.160 And then it was worldwide headlines.

00:41:23.640 And then 10 days later, what happened?

00:41:25.360 Yeah.

00:41:25.540 So the New York times, all the papers through Britain, Germany are on the beat daily with

00:41:29.780 updates on, you know, the board meeting of that company.

00:41:32.560 He was coming over to Great Britain to co-found and be a director of, they had their board meeting

00:41:36.260 without him.

00:41:36.740 And so there were updates in the news from those guys too.

00:41:39.620 10 days later though, there's a pilot steamer, a little steam ship that's meant to sort of patrol

00:41:43.860 the coast along, um, at Holland, the Netherlands.

00:41:48.660 That's another one I don't like.

00:41:51.060 Where the Dutch live.

00:41:52.640 Why is it called the Netherlands and Holland?

00:41:54.820 It makes no sense.

00:41:55.920 Keep going.

00:41:57.080 And so it's a Dutch steamer and it finds a corpse floating in the water along, it's the

00:42:04.240 shelled river empties into the North Sea.

00:42:06.780 So in the estuary where the, where the river meets the North Sea.

00:42:10.220 So it's along the European coast, they find this body floating in the water.

00:42:14.480 And apparently it's very stormy.

00:42:16.120 And so they managed to pull it alongside and rifle through the pockets where they find

00:42:21.260 four things, but they mysteriously and suspiciously throw the body back into the waves and just

00:42:25.760 keep the four things, which is not the common practice of the time.

00:42:28.400 I mean, when the Titanic went down, they sent out search vessels.

00:42:32.040 You recover the body, you give the family a burial and you get the body back.

00:42:35.680 And so when the Titanic went down, they were searching the seas for weeks, you know, not

00:42:38.700 even finding bodies, but still searching.

00:42:40.640 And not necessarily searching for the most famous man in America.

00:42:43.660 Or in the world, not just America.

00:42:45.140 Right.

00:42:45.340 Not, not, they may not have known it was diesel, but they did remark that the clothes were,

00:42:49.240 you know, were finely dressed.

00:42:50.740 It was a finely dressed corpse, you know, and they found these things.

00:42:53.660 So anyway, they come back to port with the four items and someone at least knew quickly

00:42:58.280 enough that it could be diesel because they call his son over from Germany to the Netherlands

00:43:03.380 to look at these four things.

00:43:05.700 And they're personally identifying also kind of like weirdly personal identifying, but,

00:43:09.940 you know, it's his, uh, his pill, an enameled pill box where he kept his medications and

00:43:16.180 eyeglasses and things like that.

00:43:18.180 So they, he says, yes, this is definitely my dad, Rudolf Diesel stuff.

00:43:21.480 So that must be the body, but they don't have a, there's never a body in evidence.

00:43:24.500 There's never a body.

00:43:25.300 And he never did have a proper burial at all.

00:43:27.580 Right.

00:43:28.000 Yeah.

00:43:28.280 I mean, like, okay, so that's the son comes over to say, yes, that's my, those are my dad's

00:43:33.920 things.

00:43:34.260 And then, you know, the, the, the fact that we're talking about how it's a, what's the

00:43:39.120 subtitle there?

00:43:39.780 Like, uh, read the subtitle.

00:43:41.320 Genius, power, and deception on the eve of World War I.

00:43:44.140 On the eve of World War I becomes rather relevant to why the digging doesn't necessarily

00:43:50.680 continue.

00:43:51.160 And he doesn't stay on the front page of the newspaper.

00:43:53.780 I mean, World War I, I think 39 or 40 countries declare war, 40 million casualties.

00:43:58.680 It just wiped everything else off the front page.

00:44:00.820 And then, you know, to my earlier research point, you know, who's going to go back and

00:44:03.680 figure out who was reporting what in which country on which day and try to reconcile

00:44:07.620 all the conflicting reporting in the two weeks after his disappearance.

00:44:10.660 But he basically got, he got wiped from history.

00:44:13.600 And then I think, you know, in addition to the reasons explored in the book about why that

00:44:17.660 could have been on top of that, because it was suicide, there's just something about

00:44:21.600 that that's forgettable.

00:44:22.800 Like you just, you know, so, you know, I think, as I said before, the deficit of appreciation

00:44:28.840 for what he accomplished and what he's done over, you know, what his engine has done over

00:44:32.660 the last 120 years.

00:44:33.700 What was the, when did World War I start?

00:44:36.160 1914.

00:44:37.080 So like the Sarajevo assassination was in July.

00:44:41.440 And by August, second or third, Great Britain was in.

00:44:44.340 And then it was, you know, it was on.

00:44:45.760 Yeah.

00:44:45.920 So it was less than a year later.

00:44:47.940 Yeah.

00:44:48.240 So, yeah, exactly.

00:44:48.800 And the tensions were rising.

00:44:49.880 And that, of course, would have taken over the front page of any newspaper, bouncing

00:44:54.920 off any, any theories being discussed about why this very famous man went, went missing.

00:45:00.020 And yeah, you're right.

00:45:00.900 Then there's this sort of the thought of, well, if it's a suicide and who wants to spend

00:45:04.340 time on that?

00:45:05.000 It's just sort of, and there, and there is some evidence that you discuss in the book

00:45:07.880 that Diesel might have had some sadness, some depression.

00:45:12.520 It wasn't like all rainbows and unicorns in his life.

00:45:15.580 Yeah.

00:45:15.700 He had stress.

00:45:16.220 I mean, it was a normal, he introduced the engine in 1897.

00:45:19.520 And from 1897 until 1901, that was almost as stressful as the time when he was building

00:45:24.540 the prototype, because now it was out in market.

00:45:26.820 He had all these people paying him.

00:45:27.940 Adolphus Bush paid him a million marks for the rights to the engine.

00:45:31.980 And he was getting money like that.

00:45:33.360 The Nobel family took the exclusive license.

00:45:35.440 I believe we call it noble.

00:45:37.040 That's what Karine Jean-Pierre has told me.

00:45:39.600 The nobles.

00:45:40.320 Oh, God.

00:45:40.960 Is that, yeah.

00:45:41.860 See, I had my head down on diesel.

00:45:43.280 I didn't even know that.

00:45:45.120 The noble prize.

00:45:46.280 That's what she calls it.

00:45:47.140 You've heard that sound by Karine Jean-Pierre.

00:45:48.960 You're the noble prize.

00:45:50.380 Sorry, I digress.

00:45:52.140 So Alfred Noble of dynamite fame had two older brothers.

00:45:57.680 And incredibly, this is another situation where the history has been scrubbed a bit,

00:46:02.580 because he had two older brothers who were more successful, more famous at the time.

00:46:05.520 They founded the Russian oil industry.

00:46:07.620 I mean, it's incredible.

00:46:08.360 And in addition to having one of the largest oil empires in the world that rivaled, and

00:46:14.100 at time, 1904, it was even bigger than standard oil.

00:46:17.400 They also had a munitions and engineering company that built engines.

00:46:22.420 So they took the license for the diesel engine, and they built it to power pumps for their oil

00:46:25.960 fields and also to build ships for the czar.

00:46:29.460 Right.

00:46:29.960 But they're not suspects.

00:46:32.440 No, but they were, they're just sort of in that whole, you know, that ilk.

00:46:36.000 But so Diesel had a lot to worry about.

00:46:37.820 And the book chronicles, like, he wasn't the happy, and he didn't have the happiest child,

00:46:42.240 my God, to, you know, I'm understating it.

00:46:44.840 Yeah.

00:46:45.000 But he really didn't have a very good childhood, which I do want to talk about, because his

00:46:48.600 background is one of my favorite things about the book.

00:46:50.880 I'll save that till we come back after the break, because it's a longer discussion.

00:46:54.740 But let me get to a little bit more of the positive reviews, because I want to ask you,

00:46:58.400 because these are household names.

00:46:59.880 Have a drink while you read reviews.

00:47:00.700 Have a drink, yes.

00:47:02.380 All right.

00:47:02.700 I want to do, let's see.

00:47:03.840 Hold on.

00:47:04.360 We've got, oh, well, here's Jay Winnick.

00:47:07.080 Okay.

00:47:07.460 New York Times bestselling author of 1944 FDR and the Year That Changed History.

00:47:10.920 I mean, the names of the people who have weighed in on this, Duggar, even our friend Dan Abrams,

00:47:29.840 who, you know, Dan's not usually that flowery in his language, but he wrote a page-turning

00:47:35.820 crime thriller that also delivers a significant new understanding of the forces that shaped

00:47:40.000 the outcome of World War I and beyond.

00:47:41.840 This fascinating story told in the most vivid fashion about a name so many recognize has

00:47:46.640 been missed by true crime aficionados and historians alike until now, an important addition

00:47:52.300 to 20th century history.

00:47:54.820 Thanks, Dan.

00:47:56.240 That's the thing is like, I know you felt the pressure of being a newfound historian, but

00:48:02.200 you took it very, very seriously and you consumed information like a Hoover.

00:48:05.980 You were just like a Roomba when it came to World War history and everything around it.

00:48:10.700 I mean, and I always have been around that period.

00:48:14.240 I've always loved that and read everything I could find about it.

00:48:16.320 And I've always done a lot of research, even for my novels.

00:48:18.560 You know, that's something that people have noticed.

00:48:20.660 They had that same gift in that they would give you an understanding of a certain thing,

00:48:24.040 even though the novel itself was fiction, you'd come to understand the financial crisis

00:48:27.360 better or the world of competitive athletics better or politics.

00:48:30.520 Yeah.

00:48:30.720 And I think it can come down on the page with more force if you've really done the research

00:48:34.320 to make it true to life, even in fiction.

00:48:36.380 And of course, in this case, and I love that review from Jay Winnick, the equal parts Isaacson

00:48:41.140 and Sherlock Holmes, because it has a very Sherlock Holmes feel.

00:48:43.980 I mean, it even gets the era correctly.

00:48:45.740 That's like that Agatha Christie, Sherlock Holmes feel, because it really is an investigation in

00:48:50.160 the end.

00:48:51.220 And you provide sort of the evidence as we go and the reader's sort of coming to a natural

00:48:55.920 conclusion.

00:48:56.460 And then when you see how Doug lands it, you're like, oh, my God, I'm going to agree

00:49:01.060 with Zibby Owens and what she said here.

00:49:03.400 Hold on.

00:49:03.840 I loved hers.

00:49:05.040 A.

00:49:05.700 Yeah.

00:49:06.460 She said, couldn't put it down, gasped at the conclusion.

00:49:09.780 You will gasp at the conclusion, too, and you will love that you spent the time on it.

00:49:17.180 All right.

00:49:17.700 So let's talk about Rudolf Diesel, because if you know his background, it becomes no mystery

00:49:22.720 to you, notwithstanding the name of the book, how he wound up inventing such an important

00:49:26.920 thing.

00:49:27.920 Tell us where he was born and how he was raised, because we talked about his time in Paris,

00:49:31.800 but we've already told the audience he was Bavarian or German.

00:49:34.800 So explain.

00:49:36.220 So parents from Germany, they emigrated from Paris to Paris in 1850.

00:49:40.820 He's born in 1858.

00:49:42.160 In 1870, anyone Germanic is kicked out of Paris because of the Franco-Prussian War.

00:49:47.160 So they run penniless, like just the shirts on their back because there's rioting, mobs and

00:49:51.440 looting going on in Paris, they take a ship over to London.

00:49:54.840 So he arrives in London in 1870 and lives in the exact same neighborhood as the setting

00:50:01.680 of Charles Dickens' Oliver Twist.

00:50:04.400 So if you can imagine that movie, that's where he lives, and he's there at the same age as

00:50:09.060 the title character, Oliver Twist.

00:50:10.580 He's 12 years old, living in this tenement housing in the guts of the Industrial Revolution.

00:50:15.980 And when he's there, he's there for only about nine months.

00:50:17.860 When he's there, there's this scene that becomes family lore in the Diesel family because his

00:50:23.000 son writes a family biography that includes the story that Rudolph used to tell.

00:50:26.820 He was crossing the London Bridge, and he's looking across the city of London, which really

00:50:32.920 is the heart and the beginnings of the Industrial Revolution.

00:50:35.880 And everywhere he looks, there's steam and smog rising from factories and ships and cranes

00:50:41.020 and things like that.

00:50:42.380 And I was talking with Charlie Cook at National Review about it.

00:50:44.420 It's like, it's like Mordor, it's like Frodo looking over Mordor to go Tolkien, which I

00:50:48.500 told him I was going to steal that, but I credited him.

00:50:50.160 By the way, Charles C.W.

00:50:51.180 Cook says he feels like this book was written for him.

00:50:54.220 He absolutely loved it.

00:50:55.260 He was raving, but keep going.

00:50:56.980 We had a great discussion about it.

00:50:58.700 And so that's where he lives.

00:51:00.720 And that makes an indelible impression on Rudolph.

00:51:03.540 And he has this moment of thinking, I can, I can maybe do something better.

00:51:06.760 He was already spending his years, you know, back in Paris, looking at these old steam

00:51:11.680 machines and things in the technical museum that we talked about, and has an idea that

00:51:16.120 maybe it can be better.

00:51:16.900 And he wants to build a power source for his dad's rural business, like a woodworking

00:51:20.980 shop or leatherworking shops and things like that.

00:51:23.860 So that becomes one of his motivations.

00:51:25.860 He soon after gets this sort of lifeline from a distant relative back in Germany.

00:51:31.520 Big time.

00:51:32.000 It was like some uncle or some long lost whatever who takes him, just him out of all the kids

00:51:37.500 right back to go to this special school there.

00:51:39.780 Yeah, I mean, in a little bit, it's like the unspoken misogyny of the time, because

00:51:43.220 his sister was very smart and a very talented pianist.

00:51:46.680 But he gets this offer to go to a trade school in Augsburg, Germany, which is the family's,

00:51:52.740 you know, hometown of origin, and to study there with his uncle, who is also a math teacher

00:51:59.220 at the school.

00:51:59.940 And he just hits it.

00:52:02.240 Everyone knew he was a pretty smart, bright kid.

00:52:04.400 But he goes there and he works like a desperate guy, knowing that if he doesn't make it happen

00:52:09.660 here, he's going back to the London tenement housing.

00:52:12.980 And so he also has that sort of hardworking ethic of those, you know, Germanic people,

00:52:18.880 not to make huge generalizations, but it's a known thing of that sort of Swabian way.

00:52:26.140 They were very hardworking and humble, and he just worked his butt off.

00:52:28.960 And within 10 years, he's inhabiting the most revered circles of German engineers.

00:52:32.780 But prior to that, when he was still with his mom and dad, like, where did his love of

00:52:39.680 the arts come from?

00:52:40.520 Because he was also creative and artistic and kind of beautiful, in addition to this

00:52:46.960 hard science side of him.

00:52:48.240 Far more from the mom's side.

00:52:50.920 She was a governess working in Paris, also from Germany originally.

00:52:55.940 And back then, a governess was a little bit different from what we think of today as like,

00:52:59.520 you know, daycare.

00:53:00.200 They were really charged with, you know, of a wealthy family.

00:53:04.000 They would put the child's entire education into the hands of a governess.

00:53:07.220 So they would teach music and language and art and other things.

00:53:10.540 And so she was a very smart, cultured woman who was very into the arts and music.

00:53:14.060 So she taught him an appreciation of, you know, physical art, sculpture and paintings, but

00:53:17.920 also taught him music.

00:53:18.940 And he was a very gifted piano player himself.

00:53:21.800 And his letter, so he had this, it was also part of the time that engineers had felt that

00:53:26.440 they should have this dual role of engineer and social theorist who could think through

00:53:30.900 the ways that their innovations would be applied in society, I mean, and for the betterment

00:53:35.580 of society.

00:53:37.000 So he was, he was a social theorist on top of his work as sort of a, you know, pencil on

00:53:41.700 paper, scratching out numbers engineer.

00:53:43.360 But he also wrote beautiful letters to his wife and his sister, Martha, Martha, Martha

00:53:49.580 Diesel.

00:53:50.260 She's the wife.

00:53:51.340 And he was deeply in love with her, which is another piece of evidence in the book as

00:53:57.160 to why you do not believe this was a suicide.

00:53:59.840 He was, I mean, this is actually kind of fun.

00:54:01.620 Speaking of your research and your process, you had to go get those lovely, got your hands

00:54:04.960 on the love letters and you had to go get them translated because they were in German.

00:54:07.820 Yeah.

00:54:07.980 So I reached out to a friend at my old high school who put me in touch with a German teacher

00:54:13.220 there who then translated reams and reams of amazing stuff out of the archives.

00:54:19.100 These diaries he had, one from each of his two trips to America, one in 1904 and one in

00:54:24.160 1912, where there are some hilarious observations, letters, professional documents, documents related

00:54:30.560 to his research.

00:54:31.580 So I just had troves of treasure to go through there.

00:54:35.120 He was a romantic.

00:54:36.360 He loved his wife.

00:54:37.800 He loved his children.

00:54:38.940 And it was kind of a surprising turn only because his dad seems kind of like an asshole.

00:54:44.360 All right.

00:54:45.040 His dad was very hard.

00:54:46.880 It was tough love from his dad.

00:54:48.160 There's a story when he was young that they were walking.

00:54:51.240 They were taking a walk in Paris is back in the early days.

00:54:53.800 He was probably only eight or eight or so.

00:54:56.800 And they had just seen something very disturbing.

00:54:59.400 There was a corpse hanging from a tree, which was a suicide.

00:55:02.060 And so they're walking along this hill and his dad shoves him and he falls down the

00:55:06.320 hill into this mucky pond at the bottom of the hill.

00:55:09.440 He gets up and he's like, what was that all about?

00:55:11.700 And they're onlookers looking at, you know, why this guy had shoved a son down.

00:55:15.520 And his dad told him it was a lesson in the hard knocks life had in store.

00:55:19.700 Wow.

00:55:20.020 I guess who am I to judge?

00:55:21.020 They were growing up in a different time and he did need to prepare him for some hard

00:55:24.160 moments in life.

00:55:24.780 Is, am I the only one thinking about what you did to Thatcher at our pool right now?

00:55:31.300 That, you know, I had not put those two together, but I said, even though I did it, you were

00:55:35.880 really behind it.

00:55:36.540 I was 100% the person who orchestrated it.

00:55:38.900 Yeah.

00:55:39.080 So our son Thatcher, we had a swimming pool and we had this crazy fence around it.

00:55:43.960 So, you know, he was only, I think four.

00:55:46.340 I don't know how old was it.

00:55:46.580 Yeah.

00:55:46.840 He was like three or four.

00:55:48.280 So we had a fence that no one could get through.

00:55:49.780 And it was just this giant fence around the pool, which we were dying to get rid of because

00:55:52.460 it's a real pain, but we didn't want Thatcher to have a problem.

00:55:55.580 We need, it was a safety thing.

00:55:56.640 And so we decided we'd only get rid of the fence if Thatcher could, could get out of

00:56:02.860 the pool, having been fully clothed and gone in by surprise as though he slipped.

00:56:07.060 Cause he would only go in with his swimmies and his goggles and he had to be perfectly

00:56:11.500 ready for the swimming.

00:56:12.880 And you know, you wouldn't be if you falled in accident accidentally.

00:56:15.780 Keep going.

00:56:16.100 So he's walking along in his sneakers, fully dressed.

00:56:18.240 And I snuck up behind him, just grabbed him in the armpits and like tossed him right into

00:56:22.280 the deep end.

00:56:23.380 And he did get himself out.

00:56:24.900 No problem.

00:56:25.460 But he was pissed.

00:56:26.780 I mean, he, he didn't forgive me for so long.

00:56:29.580 I felt so bad.

00:56:31.340 Even though it was my fault, but then you made it up to him.

00:56:33.420 Yes.

00:56:33.660 I think ice cream and video games.

00:56:35.520 Triple scoop.

00:56:36.140 Yeah.

00:56:36.400 Yeah.

00:56:36.700 Which he, but you know what?

00:56:37.780 Then we got rid of that hideous black fence because we knew he could handle it just in

00:56:41.880 case he fell into that pool without a little, little diesel here too.

00:56:45.180 Yeah.

00:56:45.320 Just a touch, just a tad where we needed it.

00:56:47.720 Um, so he meets Martha, he falls in love and then how many kids did he have?

00:56:51.980 Three.

00:56:52.920 And Eugene is the one who went and identified the remains.

00:56:56.580 So here's another funny part of the research.

00:56:58.020 It's, it's E-U-G-E-N.

00:57:00.240 And I'm talking to someone in the, the Deutsches Museum over and over again about Eugene, Eugene,

00:57:06.000 Eugene.

00:57:06.240 And I can almost feel through the phone.

00:57:07.740 She's like wincing.

00:57:08.400 As I said, she's like, I know like the fourth one's like, it's Eugen, Eugen.

00:57:12.700 I'm like, Oh, I've been pronouncing it wrong all this time.

00:57:14.780 So apparently it's Eugen diesel, but it's spelled as though if you're speak English,

00:57:19.160 it's spelled as though it's Eugen.

00:57:20.720 Okay.

00:57:21.380 And, uh, you get to know about the kids, you get to know about the wife and the love, but

00:57:25.280 those letters, as you just referenced, also reflect a real appreciation for the United

00:57:30.080 States of America, where he visited twice.

00:57:32.120 Talk about that.

00:57:32.940 He, he went in 1904 and 1912.

00:57:37.320 And when he first went, he was just appalled at the state of, at the poor state of the

00:57:43.360 infrastructure in these cities.

00:57:44.400 He came from Paris where by 1900, there was a subway, there were underground sewers big

00:57:49.720 enough to, to row a boat through, you know, a city made of stone and, and marble that could

00:57:55.560 house a million people.

00:57:56.820 And he goes to these cities in America that would spring up almost overnight and almost

00:58:01.840 everything was made of wood, you know, like, and, and actually another interesting thing

00:58:05.840 on that in great Britain, where there was coal everywhere, their whole rail system really

00:58:09.620 ran on coal.

00:58:10.740 They'd burn coal and the steam engines to drive the trains in America.

00:58:13.120 They burned wood.

00:58:14.060 Wood was everywhere.

00:58:14.780 They just chop it down.

00:58:15.580 And that's what they use to power the trains.

00:58:17.300 The early rails were burning wood for fuel, but all this, all the cities were made of wood.

00:58:22.440 And the number one fear of America at that time, as you read the newspapers or old diaries

00:58:26.040 and letters, the number one fear was fire.

00:58:29.400 So everywhere you go, there's vats of water or metal staircases going out the second floor

00:58:33.940 window of a house.

00:58:35.140 And even still whole neighborhoods would just burn up all the time.

00:58:38.660 It was just so commonplace.

00:58:41.560 Our eating habits were amazing to him, like canned fruits.

00:58:44.800 He was like, first of all, that's disgusting that you're eating fruit out of cans.

00:58:47.840 Typical European.

00:58:48.760 And ice cream.

00:58:49.480 He's like, my God, these Americans, they eat ice cream at every meal.

00:58:51.720 Sometimes twice in a meal.

00:58:53.220 Like, he couldn't get over that.

00:58:54.820 But he also loved the opportunity that America presented.

00:58:58.780 Back in Europe, all the roadways are made over the ancient pathways of the Romans.

00:59:04.940 And so you sort of have to fit what's there.

00:59:07.380 Whereas in America, it's like, you get to start from scratch.

00:59:09.140 Put the roads wherever you want it, wherever it makes the most sense.

00:59:12.600 And he loved the meritocracy of it.

00:59:14.800 He loved that our leaders and our great thinkers were humble.

00:59:18.320 And he felt that that humbleness in our leaders would beget humbleness throughout the people.

00:59:23.660 You can see us now.

00:59:25.000 And he also, he did not like the class system in Europe and how rigid the class system was,

00:59:31.180 how focused they were on that.

00:59:32.560 In America, it didn't exist.

00:59:35.240 I mean, we've kind of developed a weird little class system of our own these days,

00:59:38.820 wherein, you know, the Yale lawyer marries another Yale lawyer.

00:59:41.740 And we have this sort of intellectual thing that seems to happen.

00:59:44.740 And there's a lot of writing on that.

00:59:45.840 But it doesn't compare to what Europe was like in that regard.

00:59:49.280 So he felt like it was more hopeful for a guy like him.

00:59:52.080 Yeah.

00:59:52.420 And he recognized that America was bound to be a great power.

00:59:56.060 Many recognized in 1912 that America was certainly an up-and-comer.

00:59:59.380 But he felt America was going to be the dominant superpower.

01:00:02.520 And not everyone felt that way in 1912.

01:00:04.300 By the end of World War I, people are thinking, oh, well, maybe America.

01:00:07.400 But it was obvious to him.

01:00:08.580 He really was a genius.

01:00:09.560 And he met and hung out with another genius, one of our own, Thomas Edison,

01:00:14.080 which is, it's just so kind of delicious.

01:00:16.780 Remember when we went to Paris and we saw that, you know,

01:00:19.760 on the top of the Eiffel Tower, wasn't that?

01:00:21.440 Yes.

01:00:21.680 Wasn't that?

01:00:22.120 Edison was up there with Eiffel.

01:00:23.500 Yeah.

01:00:23.900 It was Eiffel, Gustave Eiffel with Thomas Edison.

01:00:27.340 I told the audience this when we got back.

01:00:29.120 I didn't know that there was this like little mock-up of

01:00:31.400 Gustave Eiffel's apartment at the top of the Eiffel Tower.

01:00:34.800 But there is.

01:00:35.260 Anybody can go up there and see it.

01:00:36.520 And the person he's depicted with, because he actually did meet him up there,

01:00:39.460 was Thomas Edison, who got around because he spent time with Rudolf Diesel stateside, too.

01:00:44.540 Yeah.

01:00:44.840 It's another indication of what a massive celebrity Diesel was at the time,

01:00:48.580 because Edison was his sort of counterpart in being a huge thing.

01:00:51.260 But, you know, there was this famous journalism in Great Britain at the time, W.T. Stead.

01:00:55.660 He called himself the Pope of Journalism or something like that.

01:00:57.980 But he had just written in 1912.

01:00:59.540 He actually died on the Titanic, this guy Stead.

01:01:02.940 But he had written that diesel was the genius of our time, that he had basically revolutionized

01:01:07.340 power, that the diesel engine basically quadrupled mankind's ability to generate power from natural

01:01:13.100 resources.

01:01:14.180 Winston Churchill had looked at a brand new cargo ship running diesel power.

01:01:18.420 And because of what the diesel engine meant for it, you know, you didn't have smokestacks.

01:01:23.860 It was just the diesel engine not releasing giant smog through furnaces.

01:01:27.360 It didn't need coal.

01:01:28.660 It basically transformed merchant marine shipping.

01:01:31.460 So he toured this first diesel ship in 1912 and called it the greatest maritime masterpiece of the

01:01:36.260 century because of diesel and Edison.

01:01:39.300 So so diesel goes to visit Edison in 1912.

01:01:41.780 And they have this hilarious meeting.

01:01:43.420 And in fairness to Edison, I have only diesel's accounting of it.

01:01:48.380 They didn't exactly get along.

01:01:50.540 Edison didn't drink.

01:01:51.420 Diesel enjoys some wine here and there.

01:01:53.960 He also enjoyed the distinction that all of Edison's inventions were power consuming,

01:01:58.100 you know, the phonograph and other things, whereas diesel's invention was power producing.

01:02:02.040 So I think that was a distinction that he he kind of enjoyed.

01:02:04.420 But they it's a very it's a hilarious scene in the book.

01:02:08.280 His contemporaries were like it's a who's who of world history.

01:02:12.460 And the World's Fair is fun to look back on.

01:02:15.320 I mean, you you've read a few books about the World's Fairs that are there set in and around

01:02:19.200 the World's Fair.

01:02:19.800 You love that Eric Larson book, right?

01:02:21.640 The Devil in the White City.

01:02:22.700 Is that what it was?

01:02:22.980 The Chicago World's Fair.

01:02:24.040 Had me read that one.

01:02:25.180 And I only read fiction if Doug gives it to me.

01:02:27.260 Otherwise, I'm neck deep in news.

01:02:29.440 And the way you set up what happened at the World's Fair is kind of cool.

01:02:33.300 I mean, he so this kid, I guess before before we get to that, let's just finish up how he

01:02:37.040 went from the kid who got the opportunity from the uncle back in Germany at this special

01:02:41.540 school where his beautiful brain was really expanded and had opportunity to diesel who

01:02:47.560 invented the engine.

01:02:48.320 Let's talk about those years.

01:02:49.620 He does so well at that trade school that he it's noticed up in Munich.

01:02:53.320 So at that time, he's in Augsburg.

01:02:54.460 It's noticed in Munich, which is a short train ride away.

01:02:57.820 He's offered a scholarship to go to university in Munich.

01:03:00.840 And there, you know, Germany by this time is really the hotbed of engineering.

01:03:04.380 You know, in the past, it's been France and England.

01:03:06.520 And now, you know, Germany is sort of coming on.

01:03:08.940 And so they're brilliant engineering minds there.

01:03:11.180 He studies under Karl von Lind at the university, who's a pioneer in refrigeration.

01:03:17.420 And also chocolate.

01:03:21.020 Different Lind, I think.

01:03:23.180 I think.

01:03:24.180 And then so he ends up he graduates top of his class again, takes it.

01:03:29.080 He works for Lind then in Paris in refrigeration.

01:03:31.840 So it's still thermodynamics.

01:03:33.500 It's still connected to a combustion engine.

01:03:36.220 He's still working with gases as fuels and things like that.

01:03:39.420 But even though he's managing a plant for Lind, he's still working this side project of his

01:03:43.420 idea, because when he was in class with Lind, he was looking at at the history of steam engines.

01:03:48.440 If you go back to James Watt in the 1770s, which is really the beginning of steam technology

01:03:53.760 as an industrial application.

01:03:55.600 What did he do?

01:03:56.140 What did Watt do?

01:03:57.000 Watt built the first.

01:03:58.060 So steam technology has existed even since the ancient Egyptians.

01:04:01.420 They would use steam power to sort of move heavy doors and things.

01:04:03.920 But Watt developed the first engine that could be applied in commercial use.

01:04:08.660 And if you look at a unit of fuel, the James Watt steam engine could get about 2% of energy

01:04:15.400 out of a unit of fuel.

01:04:16.820 But back then, the metallurgy was so rudimentary.

01:04:19.420 They were getting seals on pipes with rope and leather and things.

01:04:22.880 Like if you imagine how much heat and pressure is lost with that.

01:04:25.860 By the time diesel is around 100 plus years later in the 1880s, the metallurgy is much

01:04:29.740 better.

01:04:30.040 You can have tighter metal castings to maintain pressure and heat.

01:04:35.520 So he's looking at, and by the time he's in school, it's like engines are getting like

01:04:38.780 6% to 8% efficiency.

01:04:40.480 But he's still like, this is crazy low.

01:04:42.080 And why are we even using water as the intermediary substance?

01:04:45.440 Why are we heating water to have steam move it?

01:04:48.360 Like let's do internal combustion is his hope.

01:04:51.700 And so while working for Lind through the 1880s and into 1891, he's sort of working the

01:04:58.720 side hustle.

01:04:59.280 But 1891, he moves to Berlin and he and Lind kind of break up.

01:05:02.600 Lind loves him and supports him and advocates for him, but recognizes like, you're not going

01:05:06.920 to work for me.

01:05:07.360 You're going to go do your own thing and helps him find partners in, um, in Krupp, which is

01:05:13.420 a huge German arms manufacturer and, uh, Messina Fabrik Augsburg Augsburg.

01:05:19.040 So they become his partners from 92 to 97.

01:05:21.680 He's building a prototype 97.

01:05:23.780 He announces it, but those first years are a little rough because it kind of goes into

01:05:27.060 market maybe sooner than it should.

01:05:28.740 But by 1902, he's humming and he's got an engine out there that everybody wants.

01:05:32.480 And that, and so it was, it was the 1900 world fair where he exhibited it.

01:05:36.380 Yeah.

01:05:36.820 So the 1900 world's fair, he wins the first grand prize for his diesel engine running

01:05:43.860 nut oil.

01:05:44.780 Wow.

01:05:45.380 That's amazing.

01:05:46.080 I mean, to win first prize before it's fully cooked, you're right.

01:05:49.300 It's like still kind of in the beta phase a little bit.

01:05:51.960 So he wins the whole thing.

01:05:53.100 So that, I mean, that would at that time make him an international celebrity in and of

01:05:56.720 itself.

01:05:57.120 That got a lot of attention, particularly because, um, some of the, some folks in the, in

01:06:02.720 the Navy began to realize that, um, this is sort of a geeky thing, but the, the initial

01:06:08.100 engines were stationary and vertical.

01:06:09.560 So the piston would go up and down and then they realized for a ship, we can go horizontal

01:06:13.720 and it won't go pounding against the hull of the ship.

01:06:15.920 It's going to go sideways.

01:06:16.860 So he then has a horizontal version of the engine that works for marine applications.

01:06:22.400 And then, you know, France was actually very early in using it on barges, like shallow

01:06:27.700 draft barges that would go through their canal systems or some of the first diesel engines

01:06:31.600 on the water.

01:06:32.420 And now you point out it's in virtually every vessel, everything like on the ocean, maybe

01:06:37.760 not the smaller ones, but like an 18 foot Boston whaler that has a gas powered outboard

01:06:42.520 engine, but you know, bigger boats, any big fishing trawler, any, any big cargo vessel.

01:06:48.780 I mean, some, some military craft and submarines these days are nuclear powered, but, but every

01:06:53.600 large ship that you see on the surface is really diesel.

01:06:56.720 The rule is diesel.

01:06:57.320 And there's a reason for that.

01:06:58.560 It's diesel.

01:06:59.240 I know I always say diesel, but it's diesel.

01:07:01.440 I've learned that in listening to you with like a soft S.

01:07:04.080 Um, there's a reason for that.

01:07:05.920 And this is what brings us to you writing this book.

01:07:08.900 You, we both had no idea who diesel was that diesel was a, he a man at all.

01:07:14.180 A person, uh, like I said, just sought the name of the gas station and moved right on.

01:07:18.080 But then was it 2015 that we bought our boat?

01:07:21.220 I think that's right.

01:07:21.940 2015.

01:07:22.560 We bought this boat.

01:07:23.380 We decided to name it triumvirate because that means a powerful three.

01:07:26.900 And we thought that would be a sort of sweet message for our children used to be used to

01:07:30.620 mean powerful three men, uh, males.

01:07:33.140 And then we, you know, it's been modernized, right?

01:07:35.980 Uh, cause we have a daughter too in any event.

01:07:37.980 So we buy this boat and tell the story of what happened.

01:07:41.100 Oh, nice.

01:07:41.460 Got that photo.

01:07:42.040 Yeah.

01:07:42.420 So I figured you'd want a beauty shot of the boat.

01:07:44.840 You know, it's Doug's girlfriend.

01:07:46.000 Yeah.

01:07:46.400 Yeah.

01:07:46.720 So I got some nice ones up for you.

01:07:49.320 So it's an older boat.

01:07:50.860 And I was talking to a guy at the boat yard about what we should do to fix it up.

01:07:54.600 And he said, well, the first thing you should do is repower these old gasoline engines

01:07:57.640 for diesel.

01:07:58.900 And, you know, like you and I, and probably most listeners at that time had no idea it was

01:08:03.180 a different engine in some way.

01:08:04.880 I'm like, well, why diesel?

01:08:05.660 And he launched into his thing that a hundred percent of boat fires come from gasoline engines,

01:08:09.960 none from diesel.

01:08:11.100 You'll get four times the range on this 200 gallon fuel tank.

01:08:14.620 You can go four times as far.

01:08:16.920 The fuel is stable.

01:08:18.400 It doesn't have fumes.

01:08:19.660 It doesn't even work on spark ignition.

01:08:21.500 And you can take a lit match and drop it into a vat of diesel fuel.

01:08:24.720 Nothing will happen.

01:08:26.520 So, you know, we repowered to diesel and, um, it was only a few years later and less

01:08:32.100 than that.

01:08:32.380 A couple of years later, I was in between novels and one of the things I sometimes do

01:08:36.980 then is just goof around on the internet and follow threads for different things and stories

01:08:41.960 to find interesting stuff that might give me an idea on something.

01:08:44.880 And I came across this list of mysterious disappearances at sea and on the list was

01:08:49.380 Rudolph diesel.

01:08:50.000 And I'm thinking, wow, I wonder if the irony has some connection to these new diesels we

01:08:53.620 just bought.

01:08:54.280 Yeah.

01:08:54.620 And then I clicked on the thing, September 29, 1913, diesel's on the North Sea.

01:08:58.700 And I think about it, it really is ironic if you think that this is the guy who's powering

01:09:02.040 virtually all the vessels that are on the sea right now and his disappearance began

01:09:06.460 allegedly at sea, right?

01:09:08.500 It's like, there's sort of a, I don't know, it's kind of perfect if you think about it.

01:09:11.780 Um, so you, you came to this idea.

01:09:14.480 I was there, I witnessed it during the pandemic.

01:09:17.520 Yeah.

01:09:17.900 We were out in Montana where we'd gone for spring break.

01:09:20.380 And then like the rest of the world, everything shut down and we were like, well, we're just

01:09:24.160 going to stay here.

01:09:24.740 We're not going back to New York city in the middle of this thing.

01:09:26.760 So we stayed in Montana.

01:09:28.360 You'd been toying around with the idea.

01:09:30.520 You'd been doing some deep dives on it thinking this could make a great idea for a book.

01:09:34.720 And it was the first nonfiction because you've written fiction before you wrote ghost of

01:09:38.700 Manhattan, which is an absolutely beautiful novel about this one man struggling to save

01:09:42.520 his soul in the midst of the financial crisis and the financial world down on wall street.

01:09:46.580 I love, love, love the ghost of Manhattan followed by the means.

01:09:49.620 Uh, and we'll put some pictures up of us celebrating the birth of these books.

01:09:53.740 Cause when you get the, the hard cover before it hits publicly, like today's your pub day,

01:09:57.860 it's so fun.

01:09:59.260 So we got ghost of Manhattan.

01:10:00.180 That's when you became an author.

01:10:01.220 Then you got, you got the means, which is politics and media meeting.

01:10:04.320 And that's got another jaw dropping ending.

01:10:06.920 And then trophy son, which is about what we're doing to our children in athletics.

01:10:10.560 And it's that against a fictional story, but it gets into a real issue.

01:10:14.440 Yeah.

01:10:14.840 Um, and then you decided to do nonfiction because of, you talked about the boat and so on and

01:10:19.780 so forth.

01:10:20.280 So just describe how different it was to get a nonfiction book deal.

01:10:25.200 What went into it?

01:10:26.180 What was different in applying for, you know, or seeking publication agreements and then

01:10:31.560 what was different thereafter?

01:10:32.780 Yeah, it's, it's a totally different process.

01:10:34.400 And as you say, I had been toying with the idea even before the pandemic and I was thinking

01:10:38.300 about doing it as historical fiction.

01:10:39.620 And I'd even written some drafts and done a lot of research and I, but there's so little

01:10:43.540 on the English language about Rudolph diesel.

01:10:45.520 And I was like, Oh, I'll just make up the dialogue and it'll be, you know, make it happen.

01:10:48.620 But then I found more stuff and I had a clear vision of what it could be as a nonfiction

01:10:52.660 book.

01:10:53.180 And so I decided to do it as nonfiction when we were out in Montana.

01:10:57.680 And it is a totally different publishing process on the novel side with fiction writing.

01:11:01.980 You tend to write the whole book.

01:11:03.240 You have a manuscript, you submit it, and it's probably 95% of the way done.

01:11:07.380 You might do some polishing with your editor, but what you sell is a finished book for the

01:11:11.640 most part, a finished first draft pretty much on the nonfiction side is very different.

01:11:15.900 You don't sell a finished book.

01:11:17.160 You sell a proposal and there's a standard look for proposals.

01:11:20.520 It's roughly a 30 page document.

01:11:22.220 There's a very detailed chapter outline.

01:11:24.080 There's usually a sample chapter so they can get a sense of the writing.

01:11:27.020 There's a discussion of books in market and, and a discussion of, you know, the cast of

01:11:33.680 characters and, you know, so there, there are all these elements that go into a book proposal

01:11:38.920 for nonfiction, which I didn't even know about.

01:11:42.000 So I had a new agent on the nonfiction side kind of coach me through, here's what we need.

01:11:46.620 And a lot of it was done because I had done so much writing about it when I was initially

01:11:50.460 thinking of it as a historical fiction book.

01:11:52.740 Um, so put that together with my agent and then, you know, did the, and again, this is

01:11:58.360 all during COVID.

01:11:59.120 So I haven't even sat in a room with many of these people were doing it like, it was

01:12:03.240 all zoom, just crazy.

01:12:04.540 We're trying to get museums in Germany to answer your calls in the midst of the pandemic.

01:12:08.600 It's like, nothing's open.

01:12:10.000 Yeah, it was nuts.

01:12:11.120 I mean, nobody, some people would go in, but no one other than an employee could go in

01:12:14.720 these archives and, and even the employees weren't going in very much.

01:12:17.780 Um, but yeah, so finish the proposal and send it around, held the whole auction over zoom

01:12:22.940 and normally you sort of meet editors and, and then, you know, they participate in an

01:12:27.140 auction, but, uh, all the editor meetings were over zoom.

01:12:30.320 I was very happy to, uh, to have the book land with Peter Borland at SNS, who's a terrific

01:12:35.600 editor who I knew only by reputation prior.

01:12:37.940 He's great with this era and he's a huge believer in the mysterious case of Rudolph

01:12:42.040 Diesel.

01:12:42.560 Yeah.

01:12:42.760 Big, big believer.

01:12:43.700 He's been very helpful.

01:12:44.580 I have to say like, he's great.

01:12:45.860 He challenges you.

01:12:46.640 So, um, I, I think I'm your first reader, right?

01:12:49.560 Your first reader, number one, and most trusted feedback, um, particularly on like what, you

01:12:54.840 know, what's losing the reader, you know, you got, no, you got to bring it back over

01:12:57.340 here.

01:12:57.800 You know, you're great with that.

01:12:59.120 Peter was very helpful in particular with structure because the book needs to follow

01:13:03.120 the diesel thrust.

01:13:04.980 But they're like, one thing I've gotten a lot of feedback in is the footnotes.

01:13:08.520 There are so many little gems of information that can bring the era to life and, and give

01:13:13.460 you some extra perspective, but you can't have too many of it because it's kind of

01:13:15.760 a pain in the neck to be like reading, reading, reading, and then go down to the footnote

01:13:18.340 and then back up.

01:13:19.160 That's annoying.

01:13:20.380 Uh, so they have to be special.

01:13:21.740 I wanted to have only the ones in there that made you kind of look forward to the footnote.

01:13:25.980 And I would say over the past three and a half years from the day you cut that deal to

01:13:30.360 now pub day, you've, we've kind of fallen in love with Rudolph diesel.

01:13:35.500 Like he's become a real character in our lives.

01:13:38.860 Like we talk about him.

01:13:39.920 Yeah.

01:13:40.140 It's around the dinner, even the kids, you know, they all know elements of the case and

01:13:43.320 what happened and what he did, his letters to his wife and how, you know, the many sides

01:13:49.280 of his life.

01:13:50.820 And he is this three-dimensional person walking around the house.

01:13:53.540 I kind of miss working on the book.

01:13:54.840 I mean, as much as I'm excited to talk about it, I'm sad that it's past the phase of spending,

01:13:59.800 you know, eight hours a day with Rudolph.

01:14:01.460 Yes.

01:14:01.720 I remember this is how I felt after Ghost of Manhattan published.

01:14:05.100 Nick Farmer was the protagonist in this book.

01:14:07.180 And I, I've been begging you since you published that in 2012, right?

01:14:11.560 I think to write a follow-up to that book.

01:14:14.060 I want Nick Farmer to live again.

01:14:15.560 And, you know, Rudolph diesel, you've covered it.

01:14:17.340 So, I mean, he will not live again, though he kind of does.

01:14:19.720 Thanks to you.

01:14:20.600 There, there hasn't been a, you know, a spate of books coming out about Rudolph diesel.

01:14:25.040 You know, you're one of the first to really do a deep dive into this really important man.

01:14:30.900 And how, what kind of contact has there been from his descendants or anybody who's connected

01:14:36.740 with him or anybody who knows about him?

01:14:39.600 There, I, there are, there's a man and a woman and the woman was descended from Rudolph's

01:14:46.560 daughter.

01:14:47.340 And she actually came over to America.

01:14:49.020 It was a Connecticut for a period of time and, uh, spoke to her briefly, but she didn't

01:14:54.480 have like troves of information.

01:14:56.080 And, you know, she was, it's, it was long enough ago that she didn't really have any

01:14:59.100 papers or, or big perspective on, you know, the disappearance, but she did talk about him

01:15:05.240 and the family lore.

01:15:06.060 And that, that was a lot of fun.

01:15:07.460 And then there was a man who lives in France and I think he's actually not even a direct

01:15:13.120 line of diesel.

01:15:13.800 It was like diesel's uncle.

01:15:16.440 He comes off of that line, but his last name is diesel, Jean-Philippe diesel.

01:15:20.460 And, uh, he works in healthcare and he actually had done some of his own sleuthing around

01:15:26.760 Europe.

01:15:27.380 So he pointed me to an archive that I had not yet been in touch with in Denmark, um, and

01:15:33.540 one in the Netherlands and, um, that had some great old photos.

01:15:38.360 I must've been so happy to find out somebody's actually doing a deep dive.

01:15:41.300 Yeah.

01:15:41.500 I just mailed him a book.

01:15:42.540 So he should get that any day.

01:15:44.360 So now, I mean, here we are, you know, I mean, I guess four years after you first started

01:15:48.620 kicking this around and the book is born mysterious case of Rudolph diesel.

01:15:54.960 What's your takeaway on him?

01:15:56.600 I know, I know you care about him.

01:15:58.580 I know you respect him, but you know, for the listeners at home, what kind of guy was

01:16:03.280 he?

01:16:04.620 He was ahead of his time in a lot of ways.

01:16:06.980 He, he didn't consider himself a German or a Frenchman.

01:16:09.700 He, he had all this, he had Slavic roots.

01:16:12.980 He'd lived in Paris.

01:16:13.880 He lived in London.

01:16:14.660 He had German background, but he considered himself sort of a man.

01:16:18.620 Man of the world, like in terms of his, you know, where he belonged in a time of really

01:16:23.880 heightened nationalism and militarism.

01:16:26.420 So he was in general, peaceful.

01:16:29.020 He was looking for peaceful applications of the engine.

01:16:32.540 Um, and, uh, but he recognized that military strength was an important thing.

01:16:37.800 His, his life was really bookended by European wars.

01:16:40.540 And it was in an era of social Darwinism, which, you know, everyone, it was a popular

01:16:46.020 construct at that time to think that it was not only okay to invade a weaker neighbor.

01:16:52.860 It was a moral obligation.

01:16:53.980 If you're the stronger society, you should go invade and take them over and make them

01:16:58.640 more like you.

01:16:59.360 It was that social progress would evolve in the way biological progress did.

01:17:04.120 So social Darwinism meant like survival of the fittest and it's a moral obligation to

01:17:07.500 actually go do it.

01:17:08.380 He did not believe in that.

01:17:09.640 He was more peaceful, but he believed in a, in a military to kind of ward that off.

01:17:15.100 And, uh, you know, he just, he, uh, I don't know.

01:17:19.780 This is where I sip the martini.

01:17:21.240 Cause I'm going to take a little pause.

01:17:22.380 And think about your friend, but do you think he'd be proud of what has been done with his

01:17:29.460 engine today?

01:17:30.260 The vegetable oil is kind of not a thing.

01:17:32.500 That was the terrible been military militarized a lot.

01:17:36.140 Yeah.

01:17:36.520 I mean, the, the submarine was the first terrible stealth weapon in history, you know, because

01:17:42.640 the submarine technology enabled by diesel came about at about the same time as the first

01:17:47.940 really functional torpedoes came about.

01:17:49.480 So suddenly you have this terrible weapon on the seas and it contributed more toward

01:17:53.600 centralization, economic centralization and urbanization, which he was also against.

01:17:57.660 So all the things that he set out to do with the engine, the opposite happened.

01:18:02.160 The power source for rural economies turned out to be more Tesla's electric motor, not

01:18:06.920 the, not the diesel engine.

01:18:08.140 So that was this great irony of his life that his, his vision turned out to be kind of flipped

01:18:14.500 upside down.

01:18:15.500 But I mean, my God, if he were alive today and actually getting, you know, royalty

01:18:19.440 policies on his invention, he would, he would make Elon Musk look like nothing.

01:18:23.920 I mean, he would be clearly the richest man in the world.

01:18:27.260 We're going to talk about Doug's background, about whether this is going to be made into

01:18:30.760 a movie and we're going to take your calls next.

01:18:38.260 Let's just talk about your background, honey, because I know it, but if you were a normal

01:18:42.260 author coming on to talk about your book, I'd be asking about it.

01:18:44.900 Uh, born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to a psychiatrist and a well-educated mom who

01:18:53.660 was helping him and taking care of you for, uh, at the office.

01:18:57.440 They, they met at the office, right?

01:18:58.920 She was, that's right.

01:18:59.860 Yeah.

01:19:00.060 She was working at Philadelphia Institute and he was, he would go there for research and

01:19:04.040 then kept going there for research and going there for research.

01:19:06.300 And pretty soon they were dating and then runs in the family that the urge to research.

01:19:09.860 Um, so you're the third, sorry, you're the, yeah, you're the third of four.

01:19:13.840 Hello.

01:19:14.540 You're the third of four, but they were kind of more in two groupings because it went

01:19:17.200 Diane, Bill, and then how many years?

01:19:18.960 And then six and a half years.

01:19:20.080 And then me and then your, your younger brother, Ken, and you're, you're tight with

01:19:24.340 your siblings.

01:19:24.760 I mean, especially like you and Ken, who's only two years apart.

01:19:27.240 He was just here for a visit.

01:19:28.580 Yeah.

01:19:28.840 We, he and I went to high school together, college together.

01:19:31.020 And so, you know, countless, you know, memories together and, uh, yeah, just here for a

01:19:36.300 visit.

01:19:36.520 So, but one of the sweet things about you, I'm, I hope that our listeners and

01:19:39.820 our viewers are thinking, my God, Doug is so intelligent.

01:19:42.600 He's so articulate.

01:19:43.260 He's, you know, he spins a story so well, but you, for the first 12 years of your life

01:19:48.160 basically didn't speak.

01:19:50.660 Well, it wasn't that, uh, crippling, but yeah, I was very shy.

01:19:54.900 I was actually just telling this story to somebody else.

01:19:56.380 Cause we're talking about summertime and enjoying the beach and the sand and, and all that.

01:20:00.720 And I was like the one kid down at the beach who like on a rainy day, it was like kind

01:20:04.640 of happy, like, Oh, like, cause there was this little library I used to love to go

01:20:07.980 to, to read.

01:20:09.320 And, uh, you know, so I was a little bit of a nerd and mama's boy that way.

01:20:12.920 And then I had friends who'd love to play dungeons and dragons.

01:20:14.900 So on those rainy days, I would go down there and play dungeons and dragons, which kind of

01:20:19.420 reinforces the nerd theory here.

01:20:21.180 Um, but yeah, pretty shy.

01:20:24.200 And, um, you know, that kind of lasted.

01:20:27.380 I, I, I'm to this day more of an introvert than an extrovert.

01:20:30.260 So things like this, you know, take my energy rather than, you know, I'm not like feeding

01:20:34.160 on a moment like this.

01:20:35.120 It's like taking some work.

01:20:37.140 This is a good, a word to all parents out there.

01:20:39.500 Then came the moment with sweet Will Tucker.

01:20:42.880 I love Will Tucker.

01:20:44.240 I will always be grateful to Will Tucker, even though I wasn't there when it happened, but

01:20:47.420 I've met him since.

01:20:48.700 Can you tell it?

01:20:49.300 Tell the story.

01:20:49.740 So I, from K to six, I went to this Quaker school, Haverford friend school.

01:20:54.120 And my best friend from K all the way through is Will Tucker.

01:20:57.520 And I can't remember if it was probably third grade or something like that.

01:20:59.960 But when it came to recess, I was, you know, again, shy.

01:21:03.740 So I'd sit on the sidelines and I wouldn't play and be like, come on, Doug, play.

01:21:06.560 And, and, uh, but I didn't want to, I was too nervous to do it or, or whatever.

01:21:11.140 And one day Will came over and like, kind of just made me do it.

01:21:15.220 He's like, come on, let's go.

01:21:16.560 It's going to be really fun.

01:21:17.440 I want you to do it.

01:21:18.220 And so I did.

01:21:20.020 And I think we were playing soccer or something like that and, and, um, had fun, you know,

01:21:23.940 I turned out to be okay at it and had fun and continued to do it.

01:21:26.820 So that was actually a big step in me, like at least getting off the sidelines a little bit.

01:21:30.080 Yes.

01:21:30.600 He literally got you off the sidelines and onto the playing field.

01:21:34.140 My God, it's like a metaphor for life, but it was the beginning of you speaking and making

01:21:40.340 friends and becoming the Doug Brunt who we're talking to today.

01:21:43.980 It, it only takes one, right?

01:21:45.640 You only need the one friend really in life at all.

01:21:49.020 And then to help you like put yourself out there a little bit.

01:21:51.760 Yeah.

01:21:52.320 Yeah.

01:21:52.560 You know, we talk about that with our kids who I would say, um, our eldest, I would say

01:21:57.460 is more reserved.

01:21:58.280 He's not shy, but he's more reserved, more like you.

01:22:00.680 Then there's Yardley who's big personality.

01:22:03.200 He's our bull.

01:22:04.300 And then there's Thatcher who's like super giggly and fun.

01:22:07.020 He's our youngest.

01:22:08.180 Yeah.

01:22:08.500 It's amazing how different they each are.

01:22:10.080 Isn't it?

01:22:10.440 Their own thing going.

01:22:11.720 And it's like nothing.

01:22:13.020 I mean, we're, it's not like they're eight years apart.

01:22:15.180 I mean, we've been roughly the same for the three of them.

01:22:18.180 They have each other.

01:22:19.140 So I guess that's different.

01:22:19.840 Yates had nobody else.

01:22:20.640 And then Yardley had Yates and then Thatcher had Yard and Yates.

01:22:23.260 But, you know, they, uh, it's like in there, it's in their, in their mix.

01:22:29.380 Well, that's one great thing about your career now as a writer is it allows you to have great

01:22:34.540 time with them.

01:22:35.920 And without that setup, I couldn't be doing what I'm doing either.

01:22:39.360 You know, it's like that.

01:22:40.000 Our balance has worked out perfectly.

01:22:42.620 Um, wait, we're getting some calls.

01:22:43.920 I want to get to, Oh, Felix is right here in Connecticut.

01:22:46.080 Like we are Felix.

01:22:47.680 Hi, thanks for calling.

01:22:48.640 What's your question.

01:22:50.680 Hi, Megan.

01:22:51.520 Um, I knew nothing about diesel and I love history and I can't wait to get the book.

01:22:59.000 Um, and what I love is, and I want to ask Doug about is the tie-in really, uh, because

01:23:05.760 it seems like a lot of this was driven by what Eisenhower would have described, although

01:23:11.040 it was back in the day of the, uh, military industrial complex and how the military, uh,

01:23:17.760 and these big corporations, uh, really drive us into war.

01:23:21.600 And maybe he could, uh, talk about a backstory about, you know, how the sinking of Lusitania

01:23:27.860 and how the British really in Winston Churchill drew us into world war one and how it is interconnected.

01:23:34.200 Wait, wait, that's enough.

01:23:34.820 I can't remember it all.

01:23:35.620 Cause Doug doesn't have headphones on.

01:23:36.780 So I got to have to repeat what you just said.

01:23:38.600 Felix, thank you.

01:23:39.660 My memory's not as long-term as I'd like it to be.

01:23:42.000 So he's asking about whether this is sort of the beginning of the military industrial

01:23:45.120 complex and the sinking of the Lusitania by the Brits.

01:23:48.180 And does that play in at all?

01:23:49.900 Like just, cause didn't you look at the Lusitania a little bit and some of those early big ships

01:23:54.340 going down?

01:23:55.000 I, you know, so that happened after the Lusitania, I think it was 1915 and Eric Larson wrote

01:23:59.060 a great book on that called Dead Wake.

01:24:00.440 Um, the, the, the, the, the co-opting of technology for military use has always been around.

01:24:08.780 And one great example I can give of that is the exhibit we saw at this museum.

01:24:13.400 It had Cougneau's steam car in it.

01:24:15.820 So it was a very early, like sort of James Watt era version of steam technology.

01:24:21.140 It was, it looked like a giant teapot and then a, like a tricycle with a giant teatop.

01:24:26.020 But the thing was, you know, what you saw is 25 feet long, 30 feet long.

01:24:29.480 And, uh, the whole thing weighs about three tons.

01:24:31.940 It moves about two miles an hour.

01:24:34.220 And so it was, you know, this guy Cougneau had, had developed it maybe for agriculture,

01:24:39.180 for farming.

01:24:40.360 And then the King of France, Louis says, we're going to take this thing.

01:24:44.040 So he gets it and wants to use it to haul cannon and, you know, really heavy loads.

01:24:48.220 And the thing kind of went out of control at one point and crashed into a wall and destroyed

01:24:51.400 this huge wall.

01:24:53.320 Um, so it really didn't get used much.

01:24:55.660 And again, it was so inefficient, like this giant steam pod.

01:24:59.100 And so it, it wound up in this museum, but, um, that was another example of societies

01:25:04.540 like Germany and France at that time under King Louis, where they found technology and

01:25:08.280 like, let's, this is for the military.

01:25:09.800 Let's bring it in.

01:25:10.980 So diesel thing wasn't the beginning of that.

01:25:13.540 It's been going on, I think probably throughout history.

01:25:16.640 But all I'll say is Felix, you're onto something.

01:25:21.080 Read the book.

01:25:21.900 That's all I'm going to say.

01:25:23.480 Certain things get illuminated that are right up your alley in the mysterious case of

01:25:27.340 Rudolf Diesel.

01:25:27.840 Let's, uh, let's go to Julie in Pennsylvania.

01:25:30.400 Hi, Julie.

01:25:31.160 I'll repeat your question since I told Doug, you didn't have to wear the headphones because

01:25:33.640 they were uncomfortable.

01:25:34.440 Oh, it's kind of not a question.

01:25:36.400 It's just, um, a comment and a kudos.

01:25:39.320 I listen to you every day.

01:25:40.880 I love you so much, Megan, and I appreciate you.

01:25:43.760 And when you talked about Doug's podcast, it got me excited last year.

01:25:48.200 So I've listened to everyone.

01:25:50.340 Um, my daughter, yeah, I told my daughter's a writer.

01:25:53.420 She listens to it as well.

01:25:54.720 I just wanted to tell him how much I liked it.

01:25:57.960 We, we just really love it here.

01:25:59.980 And also how excited I am to read his book.

01:26:02.620 I love fiction.

01:26:03.460 I love history.

01:26:04.260 I love historical fiction.

01:26:05.300 I'm excited that he's decided on, um, a nonfiction subject this time.

01:26:10.480 You are so sweet.

01:26:12.020 Thank you.

01:26:12.720 So Julie is from Pennsylvania, your home state, the Commonwealth.

01:26:15.520 Go Eagles.

01:26:16.080 And she listens to our show every day.

01:26:18.280 And then she heard you promote dedicated your podcast when you came on, I think it was October

01:26:22.760 of last year, 2022 launched in October.

01:26:24.860 Yeah.

01:26:25.060 And what was it?

01:26:25.440 Four 37 number four 37.

01:26:26.840 If you want to listen to that, where we talk about how we met, how we got married, all that

01:26:29.600 fun stuff and his podcast.

01:26:31.720 And, uh, now her daughter who's a writer is listening to it as well.

01:26:35.320 And they love it.

01:26:36.080 They haven't missed an episode.

01:26:37.300 Oh, great.

01:26:38.020 She can't wait to buy the mysterious case of Rudolph.

01:26:39.940 Thank you.

01:26:40.500 Thank you.

01:26:41.320 You're so sweet.

01:26:41.980 Let's go to John in New York, our old stomping ground.

01:26:45.160 We've moved from New York to Connecticut now, and I highly recommend that John, but what's

01:26:49.560 on your mind?

01:26:51.140 Hey, Megan, it's such a pleasure talking to you.

01:26:54.040 Uh, just a shout out real quick.

01:26:55.820 Uh, I went to the forestry college in Syracuse, so we were on the same campus at some point.

01:27:00.920 Oh, nice.

01:27:01.560 He went to Syracuse University's college of forestry.

01:27:04.180 That was like one of the best schools.

01:27:05.580 Yeah, it was fine too.

01:27:09.260 No disrespect to poli sci.

01:27:11.980 But listen, uh, again, your, your podcast is phenomenal.

01:27:16.720 My wife and I listen to it every day.

01:27:18.520 It's, it's, it's a joy.

01:27:20.080 And through your podcast, um, I was introduced to Doug's podcast, which is also an awesome,

01:27:26.100 uh, program.

01:27:27.440 So I, I thank you for that.

01:27:29.000 I just, I wanted to ask Doug, what, what the, what is the best way to get his book?

01:27:34.420 And if there's any chance of getting, uh, uh, an autographed copy of that.

01:27:38.620 Oh, so nice.

01:27:39.680 I love that question, John.

01:27:40.700 So he, uh, is a huge fan of mine and, and also of yours.

01:27:47.420 That's who I am.

01:27:48.660 And he's been listening to dedicated and, uh, we went to college together kind of, and, uh,

01:27:53.960 he wants to know what's the best way of getting a copy.

01:27:57.120 Like, uh, this is an important point.

01:27:59.200 Hopefully the listeners are, are wondering about this.

01:28:01.080 What's the best way we can help you get on the New York times bestseller list.

01:28:05.060 Cause I want to tell the audience out there, you can buy your way onto that list.

01:28:09.340 So like, there's a way you can do, you'll see the little asterisk on somebody's name

01:28:12.920 saying bulk sales.

01:28:14.080 That means somebody bought their way on the, onto the list.

01:28:16.460 That would mean Doug and I, we have some resources.

01:28:18.940 We could go buy his way onto the list.

01:28:20.420 We're not going to do that.

01:28:21.460 It's bullshit.

01:28:22.340 It's fake.

01:28:23.420 And you should always be suspicious.

01:28:24.860 If you see something on that list, that's got that asterisk.

01:28:27.400 So we are not doing that.

01:28:28.660 What we're trying to do is get the word out so that people will love it and experience

01:28:32.600 it firsthand and hopefully get you on the list.

01:28:34.640 Even though we don't love the New York times overall, the list still helps sells books and

01:28:39.320 it still is an honor to be on there.

01:28:41.060 So how can he help you and where should he buy it?

01:28:44.300 Well, I mean, I love the independent bookstores too.

01:28:47.360 So if there's one in your town or, you know, I think that would be the first step.

01:28:51.480 Go to your, go to your local bookstores is great.

01:28:54.260 You know, all, all sales count.

01:28:55.620 Yeah.

01:28:55.840 But all sales, like Amazon's fine.

01:28:57.200 Yeah.

01:28:57.360 I mean, you know, the book's out now, but pre-sales, you know, if you're thinking about

01:29:00.140 other authors, pre-sales are great.

01:29:01.980 So it gets listed on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, other places.

01:29:05.720 So anything you buy prior to week one counts in week one.

01:29:09.160 So that's a great way.

01:29:10.840 If you want to support other authors, I'm, I'm into week one, anywhere you buy it is

01:29:14.120 great.

01:29:14.660 So as we're waiting for, uh, other callers after Will Tucker, God bless him, got you

01:29:19.520 out of your shell and onto the field.

01:29:21.080 It turned out you were athletically inclined.

01:29:23.520 You're, you've always been amazing at athletics.

01:29:25.300 You almost played college baseball.

01:29:27.480 You were great at tennis.

01:29:28.460 That was depicted in the movie bombshell, which we already discussed in your last appearance.

01:29:32.100 Doug was not a huge fan of Charlize Theron.

01:29:33.900 Um, and then you wound up at Duke university.

01:29:38.280 By the way, can you believe what's happened to Duke university?

01:29:41.000 I mean, like they're like the wokest of the woke now.

01:29:42.580 Yes.

01:29:43.060 Yeah.

01:29:43.800 Disappointing.

01:29:44.240 Yeah.

01:29:44.360 Isn't it?

01:29:44.940 Yeah.

01:29:45.180 It's very sad.

01:29:45.820 We don't know where to send our children.

01:29:46.920 It's basically Hillsdale or Liberty of, or Barry Weiss's new college of Austin.

01:29:51.440 That's it.

01:29:51.920 That's all we've got.

01:29:53.100 Or homeschool.

01:29:54.040 Oh, GCU.

01:29:54.840 We could go to gcu.edu, Grand Canyon.

01:29:57.280 Um, but like the options are very, very limited.

01:30:00.520 Uh, so you go to, hopefully it's turning around, you know, but even before you got to Duke,

01:30:03.700 you went to Haverford, which is sort of a private boys, uh, it is a private boys school in a,

01:30:08.940 in a suburban Philadelphia area.

01:30:11.920 And I think that's sort of where your love of books came like deep, deep love of books,

01:30:15.660 right?

01:30:15.780 You had your old captain, my captain moment from dead, dead poet society.

01:30:19.580 Yeah.

01:30:19.820 I mean, one of the things about Haverford, which is the first thing I think you and I both

01:30:23.020 look for in a school for our kids is they teach the kids how to write.

01:30:26.240 It's the most important thing.

01:30:27.980 Like good writing means clear thinking and, and then that shows up in everything you do.

01:30:33.360 And I did have a couple of English professors there who were just amazing.

01:30:36.520 Barry Berg, who's passed away, was my favorite.

01:30:38.820 He was just my favorite teacher in school and taught a love of, of literature, you know,

01:30:45.560 reading, you know, and, and also teaching you how to write well.

01:30:49.460 You should give me a list of the books for people to read because I don't read anywhere

01:30:55.660 nearly as much as you do, because I'm just so tired by the end of the day and I've read

01:30:58.780 so much news, but people are always asking for a great list.

01:31:02.380 That's a good idea.

01:31:02.820 I'll put something on my website, like the books I've read and recommend.

01:31:05.440 I'll, I'll do that.

01:31:06.180 Doug, is it douglasbrunt.com or douglasbrunt.com?

01:31:08.440 Yeah.

01:31:08.900 Douglasbrunt.com.

01:31:09.460 By the way, on that website, there's some great archival photos of diesel in the, you

01:31:13.060 know, in the mysterious case of Rudolph diesel, there are a few photos in the insert,

01:31:16.180 but on my website, there are troves.

01:31:18.380 You can look at diesel's mansion that he built in Munich.

01:31:21.740 Things that the ships of the era that were diesel powered, the first ones, it's just,

01:31:25.760 amazing stuff.

01:31:26.520 Are any of our personal pictures, like our trips on there?

01:31:28.700 Yes.

01:31:28.940 Actually, the picture of, of us in, uh, in Paris when we first look at the, the plaque outside

01:31:33.940 his home that we talked about, pictures from inside the museum that we've talked about.

01:31:37.900 Yeah.

01:31:38.080 All right.

01:31:38.620 Let's get another caller in.

01:31:39.580 Sue down in Florida.

01:31:41.340 Hi, Sue.

01:31:41.900 What's on your mind?

01:31:43.660 Hi, Megan.

01:31:44.420 Super excited.

01:31:45.560 Great show as always.

01:31:47.120 Loved, loved, loved the interview.

01:31:48.820 Thank you so much for bringing this new author on board.

01:31:51.900 I know it's not new to you, new to me.

01:31:53.700 I already bought the book.

01:31:55.600 Um, as soon as I heard, you know, the first half, I went ahead and ordered it online.

01:32:00.260 So super excited, super excited.

01:32:01.800 Give us a gift.

01:32:02.920 Um, loved, loved history.

01:32:04.740 And just the stories, like you said, the stories behind it, if you can read it like a novel

01:32:09.280 or it makes it more interesting.

01:32:10.800 So super exciting.

01:32:12.300 And, um, you know, we need people that are doing research and going to the libraries and

01:32:17.120 really doing this.

01:32:17.800 So super exciting.

01:32:19.120 Best of luck to both of you guys and keep it going.

01:32:23.400 Thank you.

01:32:24.220 So she's God bless you too.

01:32:26.200 So she's offering a word of encouragement saying she's, uh, already ordered the book.

01:32:29.580 Thanks to the interview today.

01:32:30.620 And that, uh, she loves consuming her history this way.

01:32:33.280 I feel the same.

01:32:34.080 Like where you don't, you don't really have to work for it.

01:32:35.840 You know what I mean?

01:32:36.120 Just kind of seeps in.

01:32:37.300 Yeah.

01:32:37.600 Like we learned about the whole pressure thing.

01:32:40.200 So I'll make a book recommendation right now.

01:32:42.000 An author recommendation.

01:32:43.140 Barbara Tuchman is like, she is such a good, she's passed away.

01:32:47.180 She was such a great writer and she is one of the first to start writing in this novelistic

01:32:52.280 way, narrative nonfiction.

01:32:54.140 So it's their history books, but she wrote the Zimmerman telegram, which is amazing.

01:32:57.780 The guns of August, the proud tower.

01:32:59.780 All right, wait, I've got to interrupt you because I want to get this last call her in

01:33:01.980 because we don't have a lot of time, but Lauren in Canada has an important question.

01:33:05.080 I love her question because you'll see why.

01:33:07.420 Hi, Lauren, what's your question?

01:33:09.300 Hey, my question is, well, good morning to both of you.

01:33:11.840 Will the book be out in audible form?

01:33:15.360 Ah, the audio book.

01:33:16.580 I love the audio book.

01:33:17.880 Not only is it coming out in audio, but.

01:33:19.880 Scott Brick, the golden voice is doing the audio.

01:33:22.920 I mean, he's just, there are people who follow, who read books just because he reads them.

01:33:26.840 He's got a great voice and he's a great guy, but he did it.

01:33:29.920 Scott Brick, AKA the golden voice.

01:33:32.380 That was not an easy get.

01:33:33.840 Normally, like this guy's very, very expensive.

01:33:36.400 And, you know, I mean, he'd be doing, I was going to say like a Scott Turow book, which

01:33:40.300 by the way, Scott Turow is your next guest on dedicated.

01:33:43.940 It drops on Tuesday.

01:33:44.880 So subscribe.

01:33:46.800 But he reads the book, which is such a great get.

01:33:49.900 And it's such like a big book.

01:33:51.460 Like I said, the old title of engines and empires.

01:33:53.960 He's the right guy to read it.

01:33:55.700 His voice is mellifluous.

01:33:57.820 You would listen to him, read you the phone book.

01:33:59.860 And reading this book is such a lovely bonus.

01:34:02.360 So check him out.

01:34:04.720 Duggar, thanks for coming on.

01:34:05.880 This was awesome.

01:34:06.720 Cheers.

01:34:07.200 Cheers to you too, babe.

01:34:08.460 Love you, honey.

01:34:08.780 Good luck with it.

01:34:09.480 Love you too.

01:34:12.140 And thanks to all of, thanks to all of our audience too.

01:34:15.620 Honestly, like very grateful to you for helping us, you know, be able to do this, right?

01:34:19.980 To have the studio and bring you our show and bring you Doug's show, though it's from

01:34:23.320 his studio and, uh, and the book, right?

01:34:25.400 It's like, I hope you understand how much we rely on you, how much we value you.

01:34:30.000 Doug feels the same.

01:34:30.940 I know you read all the reviews that they drop on your dedicated podcast.

01:34:33.760 Yeah.

01:34:34.040 Yes.

01:34:34.440 Yeah.

01:34:34.600 Oh, and book reviews.

01:34:36.140 I read all reviews.

01:34:37.000 I'm kind of like, uh, too obsessed with it.

01:34:40.880 And now, and now becomes the kind of fun slash sad period where Doug checks his book ranking

01:34:45.700 every day.

01:34:46.520 So if you could just go ahead and buy a copy or 10 of the mysterious case of Rudolph

01:34:51.260 D's, that would make Doug super happy because, uh, as much as we love Anderson Cooper, we

01:34:56.060 want Doug to top him on the list.

01:34:58.500 Sorry, not to make him the theme Duggar.

01:35:01.620 Thanks again.

01:35:02.280 Thank you.

01:35:02.840 All right.

01:35:03.060 Great.

01:35:03.660 Uh, don't forget.

01:35:04.820 If you read the book, go get the book, mysterious case of Rudolph diesel by Douglas Brunt.

01:35:09.460 Uh, and if you read the book, tell me what you think.

01:35:11.340 I'd love to hear from you.

01:35:12.100 Email me directly.

01:35:13.920 Megan, M E G Y N at Megan, Kelly.com and check out Megan, Kelly.com for behind the scenes

01:35:20.200 content.

01:35:20.880 I actually just gave my producers a bunch of pictures of yours truly and Doug that we had

01:35:24.860 never posted before.

01:35:25.760 Um, and so you can check that out.

01:35:27.620 You might enjoy it.

01:35:28.300 And while you're there, you can sign up for our American news minute email comes out every

01:35:32.560 Friday, getting such great feedback on it.

01:35:34.880 And our numbers are going way up.

01:35:35.900 So people are clearly enjoying it tomorrow.

01:35:37.800 We turn back to the news with national review day plus Dan Bongino later this week.

01:35:46.560 Thanks for listening to the Megan Kelly show.

01:35:48.880 No BS, no agenda, and no fear.

01:35:55.760 No, we Sooner.

01:36:00.440 No.

01:36:00.820 No.

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The Megyn Kelly Show - September 19, 2023

The Mysterious Case of Rudolf Diesel, and How Reading Helps You Think, with Doug Brunt ｜ Ep. 630

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