The Megyn Kelly Show - The TRUTH About Emanuel Nobel, Russia's Communism Rise, and Tom Brady's Viral Catwalk Debut, with Doug Brunt ｜ Ep. 1320

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00:01:00.540 Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, live on Sirius XM channel 111 every weekday at New East.

00:01:12.240 Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show. Oh, do we have a fun show for

00:01:16.480 you today with a special, special guest. Happens to be my spouse, Doug Brunt. He is here to discuss

00:01:23.860 his new book and some of the latest culture headlines as well, including Meghan Markle's

00:01:28.240 big speech over the weekend with zero crowd. I mean, literally almost no one was there. It was

00:01:35.160 amazing. And the reaction from the people in the background speak for us all. And Doug's also got

00:01:40.280 thoughts on Tom Brady's all leather look on the Gucci cruise runway show. What he was wearing

00:01:46.680 would never be worn by any man on any cruise anywhere, but we'll get Doug's take on it.

00:01:51.300 He's got a very interesting opinion on Tom Brady, shall we say. Joining me now, Doug Brunt. He's

00:01:57.540 author of the brand new book out today called The Lost Empire of Emmanuel Nobel, Romanov's

00:02:04.180 revolutionaries, and the forgotten titan who fueled the world.

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00:03:26.320 Duggar, hi.

00:03:27.380 It's great to be here.

00:03:28.380 It's great to have you.

00:03:29.500 I'm gonna fix your earpiece there.

00:03:30.680 Thank you. Thank you. How's it going? Great. Congrats. Good start. Here's the big book. I love the cover, The Lost Empire of Emmanuel Nobel. I have to say, every single word was poured over, and I really like who fueled the world. The Forgotten Titan who fueled the world is supposed to rule the world, but he literally did fuel the world.

00:03:53.180 He built an oil enterprise that was the largest in the world.

00:03:56.240 By the time the Great War started, World War I started, his oil enterprise was larger than Rockefeller.

00:04:01.840 He essentially pioneered the Russian oil industry down by the Caspian Sea in Baku, which is now Azerbaijan, but at the time was part of the Russian Empire.

00:04:10.900 And he took the whole oil market by storm.

00:04:14.600 They pioneered the very first oil tanker.

00:04:17.980 So they started distributing oil around the world and shocked even Rockefeller.

00:04:20.760 Okay, before we get into the details of how he did it and what happened to him, because basically the book revolves around two central figures.

00:04:28.440 There's a young man named Emmanuel Nobel, and it starts even before Emmanuel was born with his grandfather, who's also, he's I-Manuel, like Emmanuel, but spelled with an I.

00:04:41.840 And we start to hear about this guy in Sweden and his multiple sons.

00:04:47.120 And the one son that I, Emanuel, had was Ludwig.

00:04:51.340 And then Ludwig had Emanuel, our star.

00:04:54.280 But at the same time, eventually, our star, Emanuel, was coming up.

00:04:58.440 So was another little boy in Georgia, right? 0.74

00:05:02.460 Right off of Russia.

00:05:03.860 Yep.

00:05:04.520 In southern Russia, in the country of Georgia, right by the Caspian Sea,

00:05:08.420 where Emanuel Nobel is building his oil empire. 0.76

00:05:11.380 is this, you know, young Georgian who becomes Joseph Stalin. 0.95

00:05:15.520 Yes. 0.94

00:05:16.080 And so he's, you know, right by, he's just adjacent to this whole oil empire.

00:05:21.740 And he actually worked in the oil fields of Nobel.

00:05:24.560 And the other large Russian oil company at the time was run by the Rothschilds.

00:05:29.120 And so Stalin, as a youth, worked in the oil fields for the Rothschilds and the Nobels, which is crazy. 0.50

00:05:33.900 So like when he was young and coming up, Stalin, he was nothing. 0.55

00:05:36.820 Like he was, nobody ever thought he was destined for greatness.

00:05:39.160 He had no connections to power whatsoever. 1.00

00:05:41.420 He was like a working class kid.

00:05:44.040 And then what the book is basically about is the rise of these two titans and the pending

00:05:48.520 clash between them that the reader can see coming, but neither man can see coming.

00:05:53.940 And it's almost, you know, a battle of good and evil, not to boil it down too simply,

00:05:59.320 but it kind of is.

00:06:00.580 You know, one who wanted to do things in a way that would be very familiar to most Americans

00:06:04.500 and build his fortune and work hard and treat people right and, you know, foster a capitalist

00:06:08.780 approach to the world that could benefit everybody and one who with brute force wanted to steal all

00:06:14.960 of that for himself and eventually his country. Zibi Owens, who does a lot in the book world,

00:06:20.940 she had a great review of the book where she was really making it, she took it as like a family

00:06:25.080 drama because it is generations of the Nobels. And Emmanuel Nobel is the nephew of Alfred Nobel.

00:06:29.660 That's the Nobel that we all know about in the West. What happened in Russia to Emmanuel Nobel

00:06:34.860 and his father has been buried from the West.

00:06:38.740 We'll get to this, I guess, a little bit more later,

00:06:40.740 but what Joseph Stalin and the communists did 0.91

00:06:43.040 to Emmanuel Nobel was the inspiration

00:06:46.080 for George Orwell's 1984.

00:06:48.400 You know, the scene in 1984 where they talk about

00:06:50.400 they changed the street names,

00:06:51.680 they tore down the statues,

00:06:52.760 and they rewrote the history. 0.86

00:06:54.140 That's exactly what Stalin and the communists did

00:06:56.200 to Emmanuel Nobel and his oil enterprise.

00:06:58.920 He also, in the north by St. Petersburg,

00:07:00.740 had the empire's largest munitions and machine factory he was the largest manufacturer of diesel 0.92

00:07:07.020 engines he built rifles and under nobel did all this nobel did all this stalin and the communist

00:07:12.080 took it all and that the practice of what the communists did during that takeover after the

00:07:17.340 bolshevik revolution was orwell's inspiration uh so that that whole story um is is insane you know

00:07:24.040 we'll get to that it's crazy that it's real that it actually happened so yeah but i was gonna say

00:07:27.560 Zibi sort of took it as like a family drama.

00:07:29.740 So we get this broad canvas, huge events of World War I and the Russian Revolution and

00:07:35.380 the Russian Civil War, but we experience it through this family and through this individual.

00:07:40.420 And halfway through the book, then you realize, oh my gosh, this guy, Emmanuel Nobel, that

00:07:43.440 I'd never even heard of, was the most powerful industrialist in the world. 0.52

00:07:47.120 And the only reason I don't know about him is what Stalin did. 0.63

00:07:49.780 He took over these businesses.

00:07:50.500 That's the thing.

00:07:50.960 Everybody knows the name John D. Rockefeller.

00:07:52.720 I mean, Rockefeller is ubiquitous across the world as a super famous guy.

00:07:57.560 Nobel, we know about the Nobel Prizes. That's what we know. Nobel Prizes. And that's Alfred Nobel, who's this guy's uncle. Alfred's the brother of Ludwig, Emmanuel's dad. And that's what people know. And I don't think most people don't even know beyond that, that Alfred basically invented dynamite and that the family was big into munitions.

00:08:15.140 I mean, if you're over in Sweden, you know that.

00:08:16.680 But here in America, you just kind of know the Nobel Prizes.

00:08:18.780 I don't know what it is.

00:08:20.020 But this guy, Emmanuel, who was the nephew of Alfred, was the biggest Nobel of all and

00:08:26.840 was greater in power and success than the Rockefellers.

00:08:31.120 And for a long time, he built it.

00:08:33.400 He considered it.

00:08:34.200 He founded it.

00:08:35.400 He refined it.

00:08:36.200 He is the reason that John McCain famously said.

00:08:40.260 Russia is an oil of gas station, an oil company masquerading as a country.

00:08:43.940 Yeah, so it's because of Emmanuel Nobel.

00:08:45.900 He pioneered all of that.

00:08:47.060 But nobody knows about him because of a man named Joseph Stalin. 0.74

00:08:50.740 But during World War I, they did.

00:08:52.500 Everyone was going for Nobel's oil.

00:08:54.240 World War I was our first mechanized war.

00:08:56.560 We had tanks and trucks and planes and ships running on fuel oil.

00:09:00.660 So all of a sudden, we needed petroleum more than any other conflict in the past.

00:09:04.120 Suddenly, petroleum is more important than food for these armies and navies.

00:09:08.640 And everyone was coming for Nobel's oil.

00:09:10.600 And toward the end of World War I, Russia had already pulled out.

00:09:13.680 They'd had the revolution. They're in the midst of a civil war in the middle of World War One, still happening. Everyone needs oil to fuel their armies. They're all coming for Nobel's oil in Baku in southern Russia. The Red Army, the communists are fighting their civil war. They're trying to get to the oil to stay alive.

00:09:29.960 Now, Emmanuel is sort of a refugee at this time, but he's writing letters to the British Foreign Secretary, Balfour, who's in Versailles, sort of concluding the peace terms of World War I.

00:09:38.900 And he says Stalin is coming for the oil in Baku.

00:09:42.300 Baku is presently held by about a thousand British troops, which is nowhere near enough to defend it.

00:09:47.100 And he writes to Balfour and he says in the spring of 1919, and he's saying if by August Lenin and Stalin and the Reds haven't gotten here to Baku to take the oil, they're done. 0.74

00:09:58.420 They will choke out for lack of oil, but they're coming, and you don't have enough people here 0.63

00:10:02.560 to defend it.

00:10:03.320 You need to reinforce with more British troops.

00:10:06.240 Balfour basically says, we have no appetite for that.

00:10:08.860 We've just fought this four-year war.

00:10:10.600 We haven't spent anything on social programs in four years.

00:10:13.020 It's been all for the war.

00:10:13.740 I can't muster 100,000 troops, which is what Churchill says.

00:10:17.420 Churchill and Nobel are saying the same thing.

00:10:19.040 Churchill says, if we get 100,000 troops in there, we nip communism in the bud.

00:10:23.340 Stalin and Lenin are done, and they don't send the troops, and everything happens

00:10:27.700 exactly as Emmanuel Nobel predicted.

00:10:30.220 The troops came down by August.

00:10:31.740 They took Baku, they got the oil, 0.88

00:10:33.980 and the Reds won the Civil War. 0.75

00:10:35.880 It was like communism could have died in its crib.

00:10:37.840 Yeah.

00:10:38.180 And the British didn't take the opportunity,

00:10:40.660 even though people like Winston Churchill

00:10:41.980 were jumping up and down saying,

00:10:43.360 you should, you need to,

00:10:44.400 and Nobel jumping up and down saying,

00:10:46.220 we should, because if they ran out of oil, 0.88

00:10:49.020 then the Bolsheviks,

00:10:50.140 which is what the Communist Party used to be called,

00:10:53.220 would fall.

00:10:54.160 And what the book makes clear is that

00:10:56.060 when there was this revolution, because like the revolution happened in 1917. First,

00:11:02.120 there was one in 1905, but really this one got underway in 1917. And for like a little while

00:11:07.440 there, there was a hope of a capitalist future in Russia. And the reason that didn't happen

00:11:13.660 is basically Lenin and Stalin and Trotsky, right, who had their own ideas about what Russia's future

00:11:20.320 should look like. But it wasn't going to be easy, and no one took them seriously, because

00:11:24.880 it was like this weird band of rebels and brute thugs and they didn't think they could do it so 0.98

00:11:30.380 no outside country was like we should help these more capitalist like russians stop the takeover 0.97

00:11:38.060 because they were like look at these losers they're never going to be able to take over

00:11:41.160 and russia's in good hands and that turned out to be totally wrong totally wrong yeah no one thought 0.95

00:11:46.700 stalin lenin trotsky they'd never run anything in their lives let alone this crazy huge empire so

00:11:52.380 the british and others thought well we don't even need to send troops in there because these guys 0.95

00:11:55.640 are going to fall on their faces in a few months anyway no one predicted the bolsheviks who had

00:11:59.540 very little support they had far less support than the mensheviks or other parties now the

00:12:03.320 mensheviks as i understand because i learned this from your book they were more like they were also

00:12:07.980 socialist but they were more um less radical they were willing to work within the system a little

00:12:13.920 bit like if they got concessions they would take it whereas the bolsheviks didn't want concessions 0.75

00:12:18.460 They wanted only war and blood and revolution. 0.76

00:12:20.740 They're not looking to— 0.85

00:12:22.120 Bolsheviks represent, in my mind, exactly what I think of when I think of Stalin. 0.77

00:12:25.160 Yeah. 0.99

00:12:25.440 Just brute force.

00:12:26.380 Brute force.

00:12:26.860 You don't want anything to do with them.

00:12:28.280 Yeah.

00:12:28.560 And it's true communism.

00:12:30.180 Yeah.

00:12:30.460 Like Lenin, Marx, Stalin.

00:12:32.140 And the book, it goes back to, you know, the czarist era as well, because Russia has had

00:12:38.340 this cycle of reform, repress, reform, repress over and over.

00:12:42.160 Like Tsar Alexander II, he's the one who freed the serfs two years before Lincoln freed

00:12:46.940 the slaves in America.

00:12:47.800 He was almost a sort of model for what Lincoln ended up doing.

00:12:51.100 You know, he was an autocratic czar.

00:12:52.920 Which it was like 20 million of them, right?

00:12:54.840 It was some huge number of slaves.

00:12:57.260 And he tried other liberal reforms around freedom of assembly and freedom of press.

00:13:02.280 And then, you know, the sort of subversive groups did organize and come together and

00:13:07.080 then they assassinated him.

00:13:08.300 So then his son comes in and is like, we're rolling back all those liberal reforms.

00:13:12.120 He comes in with a very oppressive regime.

00:13:14.380 it's the same kind of cycle that we got from, you know,

00:13:16.240 Gorbachev into Lenin, into Putin.

00:13:19.320 So, but before we would get there,

00:13:21.080 it would happen again in the early 1900s

00:13:22.960 where you had a weak czar, Nicholas II, who was in power.

00:13:28.020 And our audience may know this guy, Nicholas II,

00:13:30.120 because this was the last czar.

00:13:32.160 And his death has been portrayed

00:13:36.020 over and over and over again in modern movies,

00:13:39.120 modern TV shows, and modern literature,

00:13:41.000 because it was so brutal.

00:13:43.060 So he was like teetering before we get to his death and the death and the murder of Nicholas II and his wife and his family.

00:13:50.260 Let's just step back one second because he came to power and he wasn't ever very strong, right?

00:13:56.360 He wasn't ever very strong.

00:13:57.700 And it was his wife that befriended Rasputin.

00:14:03.480 Yes.

00:14:03.940 And that's another name that I'm like, how do I know that?

00:14:06.980 I know that.

00:14:07.660 And what does Rasputin do?

00:14:08.740 But I would say he is one of the most, if not the most, colorful character in the book.

00:14:13.260 Again, we're speaking to Douglas Brunt on his new book, The Lost Empire of Emmanuel Nobel.

00:14:19.280 Buy it today.

00:14:20.620 Your copy can be in the mail today because it just hit the publishing circuit today.

00:14:24.760 And the audio is read by Doug, if you prefer an audio book.

00:14:27.920 But let's spend a minute on Rasputin because we've got to set the stage for what's going to happen.

00:14:32.560 We had Emmanuel.

00:14:33.420 He's growing up.

00:14:34.180 He's still, you know, at this point, he's got his oil business and it's flourishing in Russia.

00:14:38.740 But there's government turmoil because this czar is kind of weak.

00:14:42.340 He's tied in well with the government, which he had to be.

00:14:44.760 But this czar is kind of weak sauce. 0.86

00:14:46.600 And his wife is kind of weird.

00:14:48.820 And she befriends somebody even weirder, Rasputin, who would actually prove to be very important to what's about to happen in Russia. 0.60

00:14:56.500 Yeah.

00:14:56.740 So Rasputin, he comes from eastern Siberia.

00:14:59.220 I mean, he's so far away from Petrograd and Moscow.

00:15:02.700 Petrograd is?

00:15:03.960 St. Petersburg.

00:15:05.440 Yeah, they changed the name in World War I.

00:15:06.960 And he makes it all the way out there, and he's sort of this charming, weird—you know, there was questions about whether he was even literate in his early years, but he's just got that, like, cult leader personality where he just manages to charm himself into every room.

00:15:21.400 He charms himself all the way into the Winter Palace where he meets the Tsar and Tsarina.

00:15:25.660 That's in St. Petersburg.

00:15:27.020 And their kid, the only male potential heir, has the—oh, my gosh, what's the disease that Queen Victoria had?

00:15:34.800 Hemophilia.

00:15:35.240 He's a hemophiliac, which every monarchy around Europe has it because Queen Victoria had the gene and she's the grandmother of Europe.

00:15:41.460 So all these monarchs all over Europe are hemophiliacs, including—

00:15:44.740 Roger Ailes had that.

00:15:45.860 I was just about to say—

00:15:47.380 I wonder if he had any lineage.

00:15:48.900 To Queen Victoria, yeah, maybe.

00:15:50.600 There is a—so he is known as a healer.

00:15:55.920 So he comes in and when the Tsarevich is having a bout of pain—

00:16:00.380 The prince, basically.

00:16:01.540 is the czar-to-be, is suffering from a terrible bout of it. You bump yourself a little bit,

00:16:07.180 and the bruise won't stop bleeding internally, and you're in terrible pain, your joints ache,

00:16:10.540 and he comes in, and he says he's going to be fine. And the next morning, he is fine. He sort

00:16:14.300 of talks soothingly to the boy and heals him. So then the czarina is convinced that Rasputin

00:16:19.100 is a healer and that her son needs to have him. So he's got sort of like a green light to be in

00:16:24.860 the palace at all times. And he comes to be a person of huge influence. They think of him as

00:16:30.740 a man of God, and they trust his advice, not just on their son, but on politics and military

00:16:35.560 issues. 0.54

00:16:36.520 But you write in the book, so he's like six foot six, and that he smelled like a goat.

00:16:40.500 Yeah.

00:16:40.840 I remember that line from the book. 0.99

00:16:42.140 Yeah, like stringy, greasy beard and hair, and smelled terrible, but he was having sex 0.99

00:16:46.320 with half of the aristocrats in Russia. 0.99

00:16:47.980 Oh, okay. 0.95

00:16:48.760 And there were rumors that he was having sex with her.

00:16:51.440 There's a line in the book from Rasputin to the effect of, how can we seek redemption

00:16:56.680 if we have not sinned?

00:16:59.120 Oh, yeah.

00:17:00.000 So he was a bit of a poet.

00:17:01.200 Yeah.

00:17:02.260 But she loved him.

00:17:03.280 I get it.

00:17:03.840 If you get this weird guy who smells like a goat who you think has cured your child of a devastating disease or of near-death experiences that he's having over and over, you want that guy around all the time.

00:17:14.480 Yeah. 0.97

00:17:14.920 And so he won the favor of the Tsarina and therefore of the Tsar as well.

00:17:19.100 But the rest of the aristocracy and the government minister is like, I can't believe that this lunatic charlatan monk is influencing the Tsar.

00:17:27.400 And it really destabilizes the government. And this is why it's important for the Nobel story. Like it's the context of how even Lenin said, if it weren't for the feckless leadership of Nicholas II and Rasputin, who destabilized the monarchy even further, there could have been no revolution.

00:17:43.140 Wow. And that's in the story of Emanuel Nobel, who was, you know, basically thriving beyond anyone's imagination in the Russian Empire with his munitions and machine factory and his oil empire.

00:17:56.600 How that the only way that could collapse is if communism, which doesn't exist anywhere in the world, somehow enters the Russian Empire.

00:18:04.200 And so this kind of context in telling Nobel story, the context is the story in a way like you can't understand what happened in Nobel without understanding Rasputin.

00:18:12.600 and Nicholas II and, you know, the czars that came before it all sort of folds together

00:18:17.580 into how Stalin and Lenin and the communists are introduced into the empire as well.

00:18:22.740 It's like incredibly bad luck for poor Emmanuel. Like of all things, imagine building an oil

00:18:28.360 business bigger than Rockefeller's and it's lost through no fault of your own because you happen 0.79

00:18:34.480 to live in Russia and Joseph Stalin took over who wants your entire business and that of every 0.58

00:18:39.800 private industry. And to bring it to present-day stuff, the more things change, the more they stay 0.70

00:18:45.200 the same because the effort to capture the sources of energy is the story of our times. You open up

00:18:50.780 the newspaper today to almost any section of the newspaper, and that's part of the story in one way

00:18:56.340 or another. The price of gas, the price of milk, the price of a book to ship around, the Strait of

00:19:02.160 Hormuz, Venezuela, it's all capturing our sources of energy. And this story, this is like the first

00:19:07.980 oil war. Look what they're arguing over right now in the Strait of Hormuz, right? It's like oil.

00:19:13.600 That's really what we're upset about. The Iranians want to ship it. We don't want to let them. We're 1.00

00:19:17.640 blocking their ports. They know if they can stop others from going through that same strait and

00:19:21.440 exporting their oil, they hold all the cards. We're still arguing over it. Yeah. And Baku has

00:19:26.080 been the most abundant source of it, you know, for the first half of the 20th century, even in

00:19:30.520 World War II. And explain what Baku is again. Where is it? That's not part of Georgia. It's

00:19:34.880 like part of southern Russia? It's modern day Azerbaijan, right on the coast of the Caspian

00:19:38.760 Sea, the west coast of the Caspian Sea. Oh, that doesn't help me. It's between the Caspian Sea and 0.91

00:19:42.260 the Black Sea. Okay. But southern Russia? Southern Russia, basically. I mean, it's not

00:19:46.380 Russia anymore. It's Azerbaijan, but it was the Russian Empire then. And that's where Nobel built

00:19:51.520 his oil fortune? In Baku. The oil fields all around Baku and the Caspian Sea. So from the

00:19:55.940 Caspian Sea, you could take the Volga River north into Russia, or you could take, they built a train

00:20:01.720 that could go from the Caspian to the Black Sea, and from the Black Sea, you could get out into

00:20:04.860 the Mediterranean and the rest of the world. But Baku has been sought after not only in

00:20:10.660 Emmanuel Nobel's time, but in World War II. Hitler was trying to get down to Baku to get the oil.

00:20:17.200 He's like, my Nazi army needs oil. The only way to get it is to get down into Southern Russia and 0.81

00:20:21.300 get that oil. So when he was, what we now know is the Battle of Stalingrad, where the Nazis 0.58

00:20:26.260 actually stalled out, they were on their way to Baku. The Battle for Stalingrad is sometimes called,

00:20:30.400 Really, it was the battle for Baku

00:20:31.960 because that's where Hitler was going to get there.

00:20:34.440 Was Stalin, what was, what was Stalingrad?

00:20:37.300 Wasn't that also St?

00:20:38.820 Tsaritsyn.

00:20:39.480 It was, everything's been renamed.

00:20:40.840 Okay, yeah, I know, it's hard to keep track.

00:20:42.600 Yeah.

00:20:43.200 But Leningrad was also St. Petersburg, wasn't it?

00:20:46.100 Yes.

00:20:46.320 Okay, I can't keep track,

00:20:47.100 but St. Petersburg has been named everything.

00:20:48.980 Yes.

00:20:49.440 Petrograd and Leningrad,

00:20:51.140 and it's St. Petersburg now,

00:20:52.620 and it's got the Winter Palace

00:20:53.520 where I actually have been.

00:20:55.620 I actually had the team tee this up.

00:20:57.260 I went to Russia a couple of times to interview Putin.

00:20:59.460 The first time was in 2017, and I met him at a different palace that's used by the royals, or used to be, and now is used by heads of state.

00:21:08.560 And that's where I met both Putin and Prime Minister Modi of India.

00:21:13.180 Here's a little bit, a quick look at where we met.

00:21:15.840 This is in St. Petersburg, steps from the royal, from the winter.

00:21:29.460 Twitter? Are you on Twitter? Yes.

00:21:34.560 Vladimir Vladimirovich.

00:21:35.940 Vladimir Vladimirovich.

00:21:37.680 You'll kind of grill us with questions.

00:21:41.880 That's right. I'm looking forward to that.

00:21:45.180 Are you ready for me?

00:21:47.500 Okay, so that was just sort of like a basement entrance to this

00:21:52.880 big palace where Putin stays in St. Petersburg, but it's where he was born.

00:21:57.420 It's where he feels like closest to.

00:21:59.880 It's the city in Russia that's nearest and dearest to his heart.

00:22:02.460 It's where the Winter Palace is.

00:22:04.240 And the Winter Palace would be used by Catherine the Great and all these Russian rulers, including ultimately Stalin and others.

00:22:14.440 And also in Moscow, not too far away, is where the Kremlin is.

00:22:18.460 And Stalin also lived there.

00:22:20.200 I actually looked that up.

00:22:20.800 Peter the Great founded St. Petersburg in around early 1700s.

00:22:24.380 And then he made it the capital.

00:22:25.920 And it was the capital.

00:22:27.080 all the way through until Lenin took over.

00:22:30.200 And he actually moved from St. Petersburg to Moscow

00:22:32.020 because he was worried about the German army

00:22:33.240 coming to get them in St. Petersburg.

00:22:35.480 So he shifted the top.

00:22:36.160 You're right on the coast there on St. Petersburg.

00:22:37.980 It's actually beautiful.

00:22:39.160 It's like a mixture between Paris

00:22:41.580 and all the bridges and the Seine

00:22:43.800 and I don't know, maybe Florence.

00:22:46.760 It's just got a ton of charm.

00:22:48.300 It's actually very sad to me that you can't go there,

00:22:50.740 obviously, given the war

00:22:51.820 and it would have been dicey even before that,

00:22:53.360 but someday maybe.

00:22:54.300 It is beautiful and charming.

00:22:55.160 It actually reminds me of a cool part of the book, because there's some fun, you know, the whole book isn't about war and petroleum and communism.

00:23:01.820 It's a lot of it, and also the American interests to sort of dive into Russia after all the chaos of the Civil War for our sort of Wall Street economic interests.

00:23:11.300 But there are some charming detours in the book, particularly around, like, St. Petersburg.

00:23:15.360 Nobel was the largest customer of Fabergé, and so when he had a big banquet, he'd have all these dignitaries.

00:23:21.580 one event in 1911, he was having 50 dignitaries to host in St. Petersburg. And so he went to

00:23:27.940 Fabergé and he had, you know, he'd been a customer of Peter Carl Fabergé for years.

00:23:32.280 And he said, I want to get a piece of jewelry when for all these dignitaries and their spouses,

00:23:37.620 he wanted to put for every woman coming a piece of jewelry in their napkin. So he goes over there

00:23:43.140 and they have this meeting and Peter Carl Fabergé's greatest designer is this young woman named Alma

00:23:48.440 Peel. She's 22 years old. She's already identified as the star jewelry designer. And he says, I want

00:23:53.460 to give a piece of jewelry to them that sort of reflects the spirit of St. Petersburg. So they

00:23:58.160 have this big meeting. He leaves. Alma Peel sits down at her drafting table with her sketch pad as

00:24:02.180 the sun's coming up. It's a freezing February morning in St. Petersburg. The window is frosted

00:24:06.600 with ice crystals. The sun hits it. And she's like, that's it. The sun's like glintering through

00:24:11.640 the thing. So she designs this winter motif that becomes the main design that they're going to use.

00:24:16.420 and she makes these little pieces of jewelry

00:24:20.540 out of diamonds and platinum and silver. 0.61

00:24:22.360 Coaches, right?

00:24:22.900 Amazing, yeah. 0.99

00:24:23.560 And every napkin gets one.

00:24:25.720 It's unbelievable.

00:24:27.080 Yeah, and then so then they have,

00:24:28.300 and there's a photo of it in the book.

00:24:29.400 There's some really cool photos in the book.

00:24:32.080 One of the Nobel ice eggs.

00:24:34.220 So the Romanov did these imperial eggs,

00:24:37.680 Easter eggs that they would give away,

00:24:38.840 these famous, you know, priceless things.

00:24:41.620 There it is.

00:24:42.120 And they're a handful.

00:24:43.040 That's it there, yeah.

00:24:43.920 And it's in the book too.

00:24:45.340 There are a handful that are considered—

00:24:46.660 What are we seeing there?

00:24:47.260 One looks like a silver football, and then there's something a little lower.

00:24:49.940 Yeah, the egg is on the left, and it's on a pedestal there.

00:24:52.540 And then on the right is a surprise pendant watch, and the surprise is that that fits inside the egg.

00:24:57.720 And so there are a few imperial eggs and others that are considered imperial quality, the Nobel ice egg.

00:25:03.140 So it's really beautiful.

00:25:05.520 It has this winter motif that because Nobel contracted with Fabergé for it, he owns the motif.

00:25:11.820 And Tsar Nicholas II was like, Emmanuel, this is so beautiful.

00:25:15.060 Like, do you mind?

00:25:15.960 And so he's like, sure, Tsar.

00:25:17.600 And so Tsar Nicholas II also made a winter imperial egg for his wife.

00:25:22.140 But imagine showing up at a dinner party.

00:25:24.540 And by the way, the general custom is you bring the host a gift.

00:25:29.420 The host doesn't give you a gift.

00:25:30.540 But instead, you get a gift from Fabergé.

00:25:33.620 And it's some exorbitant brooch.

00:25:36.440 Diamonds and platinum.

00:25:37.500 Yeah, from one of the richest men, if not the richest man in the world, Emmanuel Nobel.

00:25:41.020 And these things must be out there somewhere

00:25:43.020 because it's actually very interesting.

00:25:44.900 Vladimir Putin gave me a couple of gifts

00:25:47.080 when I went over to Russia.

00:25:48.920 And one of them was a caviar dispenser,

00:25:52.740 which we still have,

00:25:53.840 which has these beautiful designs on it

00:25:55.980 and these knives.

00:25:57.060 In the design of an egg.

00:25:58.320 In the design of an egg, 1.00

00:25:59.260 which is very Russian

00:26:00.420 and like an homage almost, I guess,

00:26:02.300 to like some of the history there.

00:26:04.920 But this was like,

00:26:06.540 this Fabergé thing was huge with Emmanuel.

00:26:08.420 He loved it.

00:26:09.360 He loved giving people gifts.

00:26:10.500 And he had money coming out of his ears.

00:26:14.920 Yeah, yeah.

00:26:15.720 I mean, was he the richest man in the world?

00:26:17.400 It's hard to know because sort of pulling together the financial documents of czarist Russia and then into the revolution is really hard to know.

00:26:26.860 But certainly one of, if not, he was probably the richest in Russia outside the czar and could have been one of the richest in the world.

00:26:33.320 So let's take a step.

00:26:34.080 He controlled more than half of Russian oil at the time of World War I.

00:26:38.280 It's insane.

00:26:38.960 And that was the biggest supply in the world.

00:26:40.640 Again, we're talking to Douglas Brunt about his new book, The Lost Empire of Emmanuel Nobel.

00:26:45.580 Let's take a step back and talk a bit about how he got there.

00:26:49.280 Because the family Nobel is very interesting.

00:26:53.160 It's like they had a bunch of overachievers.

00:26:55.980 I talked about I-Emmanuel, who's Emmanuel's grandpa.

00:27:00.640 He had these three sons who you write about.

00:27:04.280 There was Robert.

00:27:05.480 There was Ludwig, who's Emmanuel's dad.

00:27:07.720 And there was Alfred, who we know about from the dynamite and the Nobel Prizes.

00:27:11.420 But Robert plays a critical role in the birth of the oil fortune, too.

00:27:15.300 He was sort of the curmudgeonly ne'er-do-well.

00:27:17.880 I mean, he was smart, but he was his own worst enemy.

00:27:21.240 I don't know.

00:27:21.700 I think he might have had Asperger's.

00:27:23.060 Like, he didn't do well socially.

00:27:24.380 He did not.

00:27:24.960 He sort of—he rubbed everybody the wrong way.

00:27:27.260 But he was this adventurous, free-spirited guy.

00:27:31.140 And so I'm in.

00:27:32.320 Well, the grandfather came over.

00:27:33.480 He was sort of this inventive, genius tinkerer.

00:27:35.600 he designed undersea mines and he was a chemist and dealt with explosives. So it kind of got the

00:27:40.580 family started down that track. But he had been bankrupt. Like he didn't start off with a lot of

00:27:44.760 He escaped bankruptcy in Sweden and went alone to the Russian empire in the 1840s and left his

00:27:50.540 family behind. And then once he got a contract selling undersea mines to the czar, sent for the

00:27:54.960 rest of the family and they all come over to Russia near St. Petersburg as emigrants from Sweden.

00:28:00.180 and then he goes bankrupt again after the crimean war you know they they actually are using the

00:28:05.360 mines in the crimean war they mine the baltic sea to to fight but then the russians lose the war

00:28:12.140 and all the contracts that nobel had with the czar are not honored and so he goes bankrupt again and

00:28:17.380 he returns to sweden but his son ludwig and robert stay and they rebuild a munitions uh factory and

00:28:23.280 an engine factory and they get another contract so now europe of course is rearming again by the

00:28:28.520 1860s. You know, it's like it's off and on again. And they get a contract for 100,000 rifles.

00:28:34.760 And so Ludwig, who's the boss, sends his brother Robert down to the Caucasus by the Caspian Sea,

00:28:40.480 where these huge walnut trees, because they need wood for the shoulder stocks of the rifles.

00:28:45.420 So Robert goes down there with 20,000 silver rubles to buy a bunch of wood. And he gets down

00:28:49.420 there and he gets into this area along the Caspian Sea that is also, it's like the land of the

00:28:55.980 eternal flame where natural gas is seeping through fissures and rocks and ignites and has an eternal

00:29:00.900 flame there there's so much oil in the ground that it's puddling up on the surface of the ground

00:29:05.780 and people just skim it there's no drilling there's no technology they just skim the oil

00:29:09.600 off the surface did they know it was liquid gold at that time they used it for like a um a lubricant

00:29:15.460 or a solve or something like that but they weren't really uh you know drilling or refining it in any

00:29:21.580 big way and uh robert gets down there's like oh my god like forget the trees i'm buying land for oil

00:29:27.820 which he does he takes the 20 000 without telling his brother doesn't buy the wood buys land and a

00:29:32.660 refinery and the nobels who've been building engines and you know they have tons of technology

00:29:37.100 and resources they come down this is 1873 so three years after standard oil was founded in america

00:29:43.360 they take the american playbook and they put it into play in baku but i love it just sorry to

00:29:48.880 interrupt, but I love it in the book because it's called The Lost Empire of Emmanuel Nobel.

00:29:52.620 You write about how Robert's down there. And again, he's sort of the ne'er-do-well brother

00:29:58.040 of the three. And he's been given this mission. He's been entrusted by Ludwig, who does know

00:30:02.600 what he's doing. And instead of doing the one thing he was told to do, which is get the wood,

00:30:08.880 the walnut for the shoulder stocks, he blows the whole fortune on oil, which is not the family

00:30:13.960 business yet. No, it hasn't been approved. They can't text. They can't call. A letter would take

00:30:19.760 six to eight weeks. There's just no way to get an approval. So he's like, I'm doing it. I'm making

00:30:25.100 an executive decision. And at first, they're like, you did what? Yeah, he gets back up north,

00:30:30.960 and Ludwig's like, you did what? He's like, my God, my crazy brother, can you do anything right?

00:30:35.300 And then he starts looking at a little bit. He's like, wait a minute. This may be like a crazy

00:30:39.460 stroke of luck through my wild brother i don't know if you have the photo of that mule cart where

00:30:44.140 they will put it in or you know delivering the oil in that way but literally there was no drilling

00:30:49.500 it was just people digging with shovels and skimming and putting the oil in wooden crates

00:30:53.900 and dragging around by mules it looks like something out of little house on the prairie 0.76

00:30:56.880 so it still looks like ancient times when the nobels get there yeah and then that's how people

00:31:00.840 were collecting oil at the time yeah they put it in a barrel and put it on a back of a mule cart

00:31:04.940 like that and wheel it around and then you get your delivery and you know the wooden barrels are

00:31:09.260 leaky or they break altogether so the nabels come down with money and technology and expertise and

00:31:15.040 suddenly they're on the map as one of the major oil companies in the world because there's just

00:31:18.760 such abundant reserves of oil in the ground not that many people are doing it so they figure out

00:31:22.820 how to refine it the laws of the czar were really backward then like you couldn't actually own the

00:31:26.520 land it was a four-year lease system so no one's going to build a bunch of infrastructure on land

00:31:30.860 that they may or may not be able

00:31:32.160 to renew the lease in four years.

00:31:34.100 And in 1873-

00:31:34.560 Oh, the irony.

00:31:36.440 In 1873, just as the Nobels arrived,

00:31:38.640 they changed that law

00:31:39.600 and they're really trying to encourage business

00:31:41.360 and infrastructure building.

00:31:43.760 So they buy the land and they own it

00:31:45.340 and then they really invest

00:31:46.380 and build a great enterprise.

00:31:47.860 So it takes off

00:31:48.740 and Emanuel really is the one who winds up, 0.79

00:31:51.340 I mean, Alfred and the other Nobels are doing it,

00:31:53.440 but Emanuel winds up being the one

00:31:55.440 to really expand it and make it a huge thing

00:31:57.560 and take it next level.

00:32:00.280 And part of his story, it's not unlike Rudolf Diesel, who's the star of your last book, which is a huge New York Times bestseller.

00:32:06.920 Thanks to all of you guys listening in part.

00:32:09.800 It did so, so well.

00:32:11.760 And that was about the mysterious case of Rudolf Diesel, who is the guy behind the diesel engine.

00:32:16.720 Most people don't even know that it's a proper name.

00:32:19.320 Diesel gas is spelled with a lower D still at the gas station.

00:32:22.260 But that came from Rudolf Diesel, a man, who invented the engine.

00:32:29.540 And the reason I say they're similar, Rudy D and Emmanuel is they were both good men.

00:32:36.220 Like they actually cared about the product they were investing in or inventing in Rudy's case and the workers who would come work for them.

00:32:45.600 Like this was something in a country in which, you know, Lenin and Stalin would push the workers like we need a revolt, burn it all down, F the man, you know, all power to the Soviet, whatever.

00:32:59.540 And it was hard to sell that to the workers who were in the employ of Emmanuel Nobel who loved him.

00:33:07.020 Yeah, yeah.

00:33:07.720 God, there's so much amazing stuff packed in this book.

00:33:09.660 I wish I could, like, go into all of it.

00:33:11.140 But that's exactly right.

00:33:12.740 The people who worked for Nobel, Baku in general, was a terrible, dangerous place to work.

00:33:17.660 People who would get lowered into the oil mines, half the time you're not coming back out.

00:33:21.900 It was very dangerous.

00:33:23.360 When they hit a gusher, it was like an explosion.

00:33:26.660 People working the rig would go deaf.

00:33:28.900 The concussion was so big, you could go permanently deaf.

00:33:31.360 It would blast sand and rock hundreds of feet into the air.

00:33:35.060 The oil would shoot up for weeks sometimes before they could contain it.

00:33:39.980 If there was even a spark, the whole thing just turned into a firebomb and killed many people.

00:33:43.860 So it was a very dangerous place to work.

00:33:45.740 Beyond that, the living conditions in Baku were terrible.

00:33:48.320 There was dirt floors and crime and violent crime.

00:33:52.260 But Nobel was different.

00:33:53.120 He built employee housing, schools, hospitals.

00:33:57.400 He built, you know, things for leisure, pastime play, you know, like it wasn't called bowling, but it's sort of like bowling.

00:34:05.780 He had a bunch of those kinds of things for people, libraries.

00:34:08.640 And so the employees proudly called themselves Nobelites.

00:34:11.040 It was the place you wanted to work.

00:34:12.500 It was it was had a reputation as a benevolent place to be.

00:34:16.980 and so when you mentioned the 1905 revolution when there was insurgency or or you know when

00:34:23.760 there was worker agitation often done by stalin personally in baku he was constantly agitating

00:34:30.300 the workers in southern russia nobel got off easy because the workers say actually he's not he's not

00:34:36.380 the capitalist pig he's not the one we want to go after he's actually a good guy like my boss 1.00

00:34:40.380 yeah and the people who got it worse but the rothschilds are jewish they got it the worst 0.99

00:34:45.280 um but because of anti-semitism anti-semitism was terrible throughout europe in russia was

00:34:51.400 particularly bad i mean laws on the books making it hard for jewish businesses at that time so as

00:34:56.480 it was a as a bad time to be running a business as a as a jewish person the rothschilds were so

00:35:02.100 influential they could sometimes overcome that a little bit but it was pretty uphill for them even

00:35:07.220 um but then you know when the when the real uh things hit the fan there in 1917 and the revolution

00:35:15.120 when they were literally dragging capitalist business owners out,

00:35:19.380 throwing him some kangaroo court and then hanging them or imprisoning them,

00:35:23.360 Nobel's workers were protecting him.

00:35:25.500 You know, they were like, this is not the guy to go after.

00:35:28.040 You know, we feel loyalty to him.

00:35:29.180 And they really helped him in that period.

00:35:30.500 So this, I mean, he really, he was both noble and Nobel, to quote Karine Jean-Pierre.

00:35:37.580 He was, he was a good man.

00:35:39.220 And he actually was trying to do things the right way.

00:35:41.360 And he did everything right.

00:35:43.160 He he worked with the Russian government. This is czarist, the czarist government before Stalin and Lenin and all that and got a government title.

00:35:51.520 Eventually, he was Swedish, but he eventually became a Russian citizen.

00:35:55.040 He was trying to, like, you know, lean into his new community and take care of the people and really did not see this particular threat coming his way, which who could. 0.79

00:36:03.960 but the other half of the book that we learn all about Emmanuel and the Nobels is we learn all 0.80

00:36:10.540 about little little Joey Stalin and what a terrible man he was in so many ways and for so

00:36:18.780 much of his life now I will say there was one thing a couple of things that jumped out like

00:36:22.300 you did a good job of humanizing him yeah in some in the ways that were available and I thought it

00:36:27.580 was very interesting that even the greatest villains of the 20th century were little boys

00:36:31.300 at one time you know and you learn about his really brutal childhood and he his genuine love

00:36:37.240 for his first wife like he was yeah crazy about his first wife like genuinely in love and also

00:36:43.580 a poet what was it he was into the arts in some way i'm trying to remember i mean he was a big

00:36:47.680 reader he was a singer um so he a lot came out about stalin after the fall of the soviet union

00:36:54.220 in 91 some archives become became more available so we learned a little more about the the young

00:37:00.040 Stalin years. In fact, there's a book called Young Stalin by Simon Sibag Montefiore, which is very

00:37:04.380 good. And he grew up in these hardscrabble streets of the country of Georgia. He was basically in a

00:37:11.820 street gang. He was getting his butt kicked almost daily coming home from school. He injured his 0.99

00:37:16.940 arms. He had one arm that was kind of a little withered and smaller than the other arm. Not good

00:37:22.600 if you're getting to street fights every day. And then he was, of all things, Stalin was studying to 0.51

00:37:27.440 be a priest for many years. He was studying to be a priest, and he was a big reader, and he was

00:37:33.040 singing in like the choir. But in those years, he also did get access to Marxist thinking and

00:37:40.860 writings. And as he was leaving, he abandoned the priesthood as a path. And just as he did that,

00:37:46.480 he started writing for a Marxist paper. And he stayed in southern Georgia, and he essentially

00:37:52.820 became like a gangster he would run protection racket schemes and he would rob you know payroll

00:37:59.900 wagons going to banks and things like that so that he could take that money and send it up to

00:38:03.480 to lenin and fund the bolshevik party and he became lenin sort of like gangster his main

00:38:09.860 henchman in southern russia so he was the guy in the baku area can you give us a little bit on

00:38:14.760 lenin just for people who don't we all know that name but like how did he emerge and become the

00:38:20.960 the future leader he was the first leader before stalin of well it would become the soviets but

00:38:26.900 you know the bolsheviks to begin from like hard scrabble background his mother was a sometimes 0.62

00:38:32.400 prostitute to pay the bills his dad was a this is all stalin his dad was an abusive alcoholic

00:38:37.440 lenin came from a much better his his parents were more academic and like not exactly nobles but

00:38:44.320 close, noble adjacent, I guess. But his older brother was, you know, just as Alexander II

00:38:51.760 was, you know, introducing these reforms, his brother was one of those people who was an

00:38:56.340 insurgent who was organizing and taking advantage of free assembly and free press to write

00:39:01.940 revolutionary, you know, doctrine and sort of follow, you know, this sort of like urban

00:39:08.780 overthrow the czar movement and he did attempt to assassinate uh the brother or lenin's older

00:39:17.020 brother lenin's older brother and he was caught in an assassination attempt and he was hung they

00:39:22.580 hanged hanged hanged thank you he had one of my pet peeves uh and so as a young boy uh vladimir

00:39:29.600 lenin watched his older brother get hanged um and so that kind of sent him on a very radicalized

00:39:35.560 radicalized path. And then he started reading Karl Marx. Yep. And he became a disciple of

00:39:41.660 Marxist doctrine and founded the Bolshevik party. So when, when Lenin started getting political,

00:39:47.300 was it like, was his goal from the beginning to turn Russia communist? Was that the goal? Like,

00:39:52.820 I want to get rid of the monarchy. I want there to be a revolution and I want communism here and

00:39:58.420 worldwide. That's my goal. Yeah. Yeah. The international play was, was big. Like,

00:40:03.080 And that was one of the knocks on them after the October Revolution.

00:40:08.000 There were some people are saying, you know, it's almost like today.

00:40:10.420 It's like, is it Russia first or communism first?

00:40:13.820 And a lot of people are saying, look, let's they're using Russia as just sort of a stepping stone for what was called the communist international common turn.

00:40:22.960 Because they were trying to foment revolution in Germany and Britain and America.

00:40:27.400 There was a communist. 0.95

00:40:28.600 And you're saying these Russian citizens are like, I want to take a vacation. 0.88

00:40:32.540 I want to put food on my table. 1.00

00:40:33.800 Can we worry about Russia first? 0.99

00:40:35.300 Like, we'll do communism here 0.98

00:40:36.660 if you say that's going to work better,

00:40:37.940 but can we worry about Russia?

00:40:39.140 Exactly.

00:40:39.780 And they had bigger goals.

00:40:42.020 Yeah.

00:40:42.380 And they did get their literature

00:40:44.100 into American universities.

00:40:45.400 You point this out in the book,

00:40:46.540 The Lost Empire of Emmanuel Nobel.

00:40:48.440 Yeah.

00:40:49.120 Yeah, there was a whole communist sort of office

00:40:51.760 set up here in New York City.

00:40:52.940 The NYPD raided it and took the files out.

00:40:56.900 But yeah, it was very much of an international movement

00:40:58.920 in those early days,

00:41:00.360 which is why everyone around Europe was like,

00:41:01.720 oh my god these communists are a nightmare like it's a lot it's why it's also why and this is

00:41:06.340 covered a little bit in the crown but it's why the british monarchy didn't rescue nicholas the 0.93

00:41:11.940 second you know they had the same great thing like that could be my head and a bad let's set

00:41:15.060 that up so nicholas the second again just because there's so many names that's the guy who was the

00:41:18.880 last czar who was married to the czarina who was fascinated with rasputin who had the hemophiliac

00:41:23.920 son he was the last czar of russia when he went down he wound up advocating because he was pushed

00:41:29.240 out like they were like you're you're done no one respects you you're gonna have to go so he went

00:41:33.980 and then that was 1917 in the context of the revolution and then they doesn't escape russia

00:41:38.940 sort of yeah so they went to like i exile yeah and then in 1918 some very bad news came his way 0.97

00:41:44.840 so he's like out of power it's not going to happen for him these bolsheviks you know they're going to 0.93

00:41:49.280 be soviets are taking over russia you know it's not going to happen for your hemophiliac son or 0.97

00:41:54.860 for you. If you can get out of this thing alive, it's going to be a miracle. And so there's like 0.98

00:41:59.860 basically in the basement of a castle, like, well, this sucks. Now what? And he gets an idea. He's 0.96

00:42:06.800 like, I have a card to play. I've got a very famous, powerful cousin. Yes, there are cousins.

00:42:15.120 Yeah. Kaiser Wilhelm II, Nicholas II, and King George IV. Fourth? Fifth? Fifth? Fifth are cousins.

00:42:24.860 Okay. They're all cousins. That's great. That's what a wonderful family tree. So I don't have

00:42:30.380 to stay in this basement. I'm going to write King George a letter saying, could you please get me

00:42:34.640 and my family out of here? Because I'm not sure what these rising guys are going to do

00:42:38.400 if they get their hands on me. Because I'm still, you know, I abdicated, but I still have a lot of

00:42:42.440 power. And that, this is all portrayed in the crown. And we've managed to pull the scene so

00:42:48.180 that. Oh, you did? Yeah. That's so great. Yeah. So we can show the audience. So here's,

00:42:51.540 First, we're going to show you the fictional portrayal of King George receiving the letter

00:42:58.180 from the exiled Tsar, who is very scared for his life.

00:43:03.300 Your Majesty, Your All Highness, a letter from the Prime Minister.

00:43:07.820 Can't it wait?

00:43:08.920 Concerning their imperial majesties, the Tsar and Tsarina of Russia. 0.64

00:43:14.000 The government is willing to send a ship to bring the Romanovs to safety here in England.

00:43:19.740 The Prime Minister does not wish to do so without your support,

00:43:24.380 public perception, and so forth.

00:43:28.400 The war.

00:43:41.900 Shall I go back with a yes?

00:43:46.280 To their rescue?

00:43:49.740 Show it to your mother

00:43:54.100 Her judgment is unfailingly

00:43:58.260 Better than mine

00:43:59.240 The queen's having a look at the letter

00:44:07.640 Begging for their help

00:44:08.620 What say you my love

00:44:10.380 Do we send the ship

00:44:19.200 No

00:44:19.600 shaking her head no possible one might come to regret it

00:44:24.300 so they say no yeah i mean the czar was so unpopular at this time and they knew it was

00:44:34.280 going to be an unpopular move domestically and jeopardize them everyone was worried about

00:44:38.880 worker uprisings and you know the quote-unquote proletariat and they just were worried about the

00:44:45.320 PR of rescuing this enormously unpopular autocrat. Wow. And then, okay, so viewer warning, we pulled

00:44:52.400 the second scene. I actually just watched this. I told my team to pull it and then I looked it

00:44:56.440 online in my office and I feel the need to give you a viewer warning because it's, I didn't realize

00:45:01.920 the crown really went that explicit, but it's a very explicit portrayal of what then happened

00:45:06.420 not long thereafter to the czar, the czarina and their children. It wasn't good. It was

00:45:14.960 absolutely brutal. And viewer warning, it's portrayed here in this second scene from The

00:45:19.960 Crown. Who is this Duggar doing the killings? These are communist guards. You can see the 0.88

00:45:32.580 children. You can see the family sitting there looking scared. In view of the fact that your

00:45:36.400 relatives in Europe continue to attack Soviet Russia, the Ural Executive Committee has sentenced

00:45:43.980 you to death. This is for the workers, for the revolution. And Lenin was forced to do this

00:45:55.540 because the czar could be a rallying point for the white army in the civil war. The Russian

00:46:01.020 civil war is happening as this is all going on. It's the red army and the white army and

00:46:05.420 the white army is the establishment. It's the, it's, it's basically the, they're only 0.52

00:46:10.280 united by hating communism some want the czar back some want more of a democratic government 0.92

00:46:14.420 it was a little disorganized which is why they didn't win really but they all hated the reds

00:46:19.240 the white army okay and you were saying lenin was forced to do this why because the czech legion was

00:46:24.180 coming in from from the east they were where the czar was being held prisoner the czech legion who

00:46:29.300 opposed communism the czech legion it's a it's a military outfit from czechoslovakia that was still

00:46:35.400 fighting from world war one and they hated the communists too and if they got to where the czar

00:46:41.780 was being held he could have been freed and so as they started getting closer lenin just put in the 0.68

00:46:45.720 kill order you know to take him out because if he gets free then it's going to rally the whites and

00:46:49.660 then we're going to be in a much worse shape jeez i wonder whether the king of england had any second 0.84

00:46:54.440 thoughts about his decision i mean reportedly he did he did i think because he then you know he was

00:46:59.680 actually advised so he's sort of advised not to save the czar and then after the czar was killed

00:47:04.740 they held a public ceremony in London to honor the czar, and he was advised not to attend,

00:47:10.760 but he did attend anyway. Oh, sweet. What a guy. Really stuck his neck out. Oh my gosh. It's

00:47:15.760 crazy how the crown portrayed it. It was very brutal. They not only shot all the family,

00:47:21.140 but they bayoneted them. Yeah. Yeah. And then they throw them in a pit and pour gasoline,

00:47:27.780 you know, it's like burn them. They were really determined to make sure that they were good and

00:47:32.300 dead. And it was not ambiguous. And meanwhile, Emmanuel Nobel, all that's happening while

00:47:37.260 Emmanuel Nobel is a refugee trying to hang onto his oil empire and preserve it from the Red Army 0.59

00:47:42.660 as well. So he and some other more like of the Russian elite go take exile. They're not leaving, 0.95

00:47:50.840 they're not out of Russia, but it's very difficult. I had to learn this for the audio

00:47:54.700 Kislevodsk. They go to Kislevodsk. And he's hanging out there because, again, no one really

00:48:02.800 thinks these Bolsheviks are going to be able to hold on to power. It's been quite a revolution. 0.74

00:48:07.140 We get it. Lenin and Stalin have got a bunch of tricks. We underestimated them. But there's no

00:48:12.040 way these street thugs and bank robbers and so on are going to be able to actually govern Russia.

00:48:17.020 So we'll bide our time. They'll fall apart and we'll return to the way things used to be. 0.83

00:48:22.320 Yeah. And so he's hanging out in this resort refugee town where there are other members of aristocracy and industrialists. They're all sort of buffered by a little bit of the white army there in this southwestern part of Russia. And they run out of rubles. And so Nobel sort of takes over and says, all right, well, we need another currency because they're all running around with like diamonds and stocks and hard assets. But they need to buy like eggs and things from the thing. So you can't just put a bag of diamonds on the table for your eggs. 0.85

00:48:48.400 so he comes up with this idea of nobel notes that's what the town calls it he comes up with

00:48:52.640 a new currency and they call it nobel notes in honor of him so they develop a new currency so

00:48:57.380 that they can actually sort of live and transact there in this town because it goes on for a while

00:49:01.940 and lenin is up in the new capital moscow and stalin saying we got to nationalize take over

00:49:08.240 the oil and so he's in lenin's ear saying that they need to do this lenin hesitates doing it

00:49:13.300 because he's like well look we can take it over but there's no one in the communist government

00:49:16.360 who knows how to run an oil business.

00:49:17.920 This is like you and I taking over.

00:49:19.640 Actually, you now could run an oil business

00:49:21.180 after writing this book.

00:49:22.220 But yeah, they're like,

00:49:23.240 wait, I don't know how to run an oil business.

00:49:24.740 You?

00:49:25.120 Yeah, so they'd have to secure

00:49:26.480 the cooperation of Nobel in order to do this.

00:49:29.420 And he's sitting in Kivlovich.

00:49:31.520 Like, I'm not sure I want to go there 0.70

00:49:34.160 given what just happened to the czar and the czarina.

00:49:36.160 Yeah, so he gets summoned.

00:49:37.060 They send a note to Citizen Nobel,

00:49:39.020 you know, please come to Moscow

00:49:40.000 so we can talk about how we're going to run

00:49:41.260 the oil business after we take it over.

00:49:43.660 And the Nobels are all,

00:49:44.540 there's a great line from them.

00:49:45.820 I'm like, they're asking us to drive the hearse

00:49:47.620 at our own third-class funeral.

00:49:49.220 Oh, wow.

00:49:50.480 So it's-

00:49:51.740 They were too smart for that.

00:49:52.780 Yeah, Nobel is like, there's no way I'm going to Moscow.

00:49:54.780 But that would begin the next phase

00:49:56.860 of a very, very powerful dance 0.94

00:50:00.260 that Nobel and Stalin would do,

00:50:03.540 all documented in Douglas Brunt's

00:50:05.960 The Lost Empire of Emmanuel Nobel.

00:50:08.700 The subtitle is Romanovs.

00:50:10.460 Like, that's what the czar was last named.

00:50:12.200 His last name was Romanov.

00:50:13.580 This had been all the czars prior to him

00:50:15.640 for, I don't know how long.

00:50:16.760 300 years.

00:50:17.340 Yeah.

00:50:18.040 Romanov's revolutionaries

00:50:19.420 and the forgotten Titan

00:50:20.840 who fueled the world.

00:50:23.320 Fueled, not ruled.

00:50:24.700 That's Emmanuel Nobel.

00:50:26.180 That one of the,

00:50:26.980 this is Jug's specialty,

00:50:28.200 like famous people

00:50:29.840 whose names you know,

00:50:31.460 but whose story you don't.

00:50:33.680 You and Mike Rowe bonded over

00:50:35.280 an affinity for these kinds of stories.

00:50:37.020 He tells them on his podcast

00:50:38.040 and his shows,

00:50:38.960 and you tell them longer form

00:50:40.500 in your books.

00:50:41.940 And this one is so fascinating.

00:50:43.220 You learn so much about Russia,

00:50:44.860 about our world, about communism and how it came to be. It's still influencing, unfortunately,

00:50:50.460 young American radicals to this day. And now there was this brief window where we might have stopped

00:50:55.620 it and we didn't. The consequences of that and all about these historical figures like Stalin,

00:51:01.160 like Lenin, like Marx, like Trotsky. I didn't, I mean, I knew that name, but I didn't know

00:51:04.640 anything about him. And the Nobels. And it replays today, like the epigraph of the book,

00:51:09.060 that line by the playwright, Eugene O'Neill, there is no present or future, only the past

00:51:14.720 happening over and over. That is so perfect. The parallels to this, the effort to capture

00:51:21.000 our sources of energy plays out again and again. You read this and you're like, oh my God, it's

00:51:24.980 happening again today. Well, not only that, I know you're going to go on Jesse Kelly's show,

00:51:29.540 but when I first read The Lost Empire of Emmanuel Noel, I thought about Jesse Kelly like every other

00:51:34.520 page because he's constantly calling the very far leftist base in this country communists.

00:51:40.480 And he's done a lot of study on communism and communists. And it's all over every page of

00:51:45.400 this book, like what they want, this true revolution, like burn it down, seize the

00:51:48.920 means of production. It really is explained in this book how they got that way, what they really

00:51:53.360 do want, what the end goal is. And it's no bueno. All right, stand by. We've got to take a quick

00:51:58.240 break. We will be back on the opposite side with Douglas Brunt, the author of the brand new book,

00:52:03.340 The Lost Empire of Emmanuel Nobel. Order yours now on Amazon, or you can download the audio and

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00:53:44.500 Back with me now, Doug Brunt. He is host of Dedicated with Doug Brunt, which is a podcast

00:53:49.380 he does with other authors. And he is the author of the brand new book out today, The Lost Empire

00:53:55.260 of Emanuel Nobel.

00:53:58.020 Yes, there it is on your screens.

00:53:59.400 The Lost Empire of Emanuel Nobel. 0.99

00:54:02.020 Romanov's revolutionaries

00:54:03.080 and the forgotten Titan

00:54:03.860 who fueled the world.

00:54:05.000 And in the meantime,

00:54:05.960 in our break, honey,

00:54:07.320 our staff has gone.

00:54:09.020 Yes.

00:54:09.400 We've gotten a little Prosecco

00:54:11.280 to toast.

00:54:12.420 Pub day for your novel.

00:54:13.860 Not your novel, your book,

00:54:15.520 which is nonfiction.

00:54:17.420 Thank you.

00:54:18.180 Here's to our new friend, Noby.

00:54:20.700 Cheers.

00:54:21.260 Thanks, honey.

00:54:21.800 Cheers, honey.

00:54:23.920 Now I feel right.

00:54:25.060 now we're talking yeah i mean it really is like it is like giving birth to a baby in a way yeah

00:54:29.720 you know it's i mean there are many little milestones along the way you finish the rough

00:54:33.660 draft and send it in you get the galley but getting the hard cover and pub day like that's

00:54:38.680 that's the big that's the big uh money day oh it's a sweet thing too like when we got the first

00:54:44.420 galley which is the soft cover where simon schuster just sends you here's your book with

00:54:49.120 the mocked up cover but it's got it doesn't look official yet but it's the closest thing that's

00:54:53.340 It goes out to press and reviews and things.

00:54:55.280 So that, when you got that, we opened it

00:54:57.400 and the kids got to see it.

00:54:58.920 We had a moment.

00:54:59.620 And then when this hardcover came,

00:55:01.380 we get it obviously before the population gets it.

00:55:04.700 That's another moment, like holding it up with the kids.

00:55:07.020 It's so great for them to see

00:55:08.060 because they, like I, have lived with you

00:55:11.300 while this was just an idea,

00:55:13.860 while you were kicking around.

00:55:14.900 Diesel was a huge success.

00:55:16.100 For you, like our trip to Sweden

00:55:17.220 when I was in the archives in Sweden.

00:55:18.900 We were there as a family,

00:55:20.000 but I took a day out and did a bunch of stuff.

00:55:21.900 We should show that actually.

00:55:22.840 There's a picture of Doug that I took when we were in Sweden, and explain what they're seeing here that's relevant to Nobel.

00:55:29.540 On photo left with the green roof, that's the original Grand Hotel in Stockholm that's owned by the Wallenberg family and Vester AB.

00:55:36.240 It's this incredibly successful Swedish family.

00:55:39.420 The building just behind my head is the Belinder Palace.

00:55:42.640 It was the Royal Auto Club for many years, for like 50 years, but that's now also part of the Grand Hotel.

00:55:47.940 And when we stayed there, we stayed in a room that's like right behind my head.

00:55:50.900 my head's actually blocking the windows of the room we stayed in and then the red roof all the

00:55:54.940 way over my left shoulder on photo right is the bermanska palace which is also now part of the

00:56:00.560 grand hotel so the entire thing now is the grand hotel in stockholm they host every nobel laureate

00:56:05.520 since 1901 the first year of the prizes they've all stayed there it's an incredible beautiful

00:56:10.540 hotel and nobel was there our nobel well yeah i mean we don't want to like he did we won't say

00:56:15.480 exactly when or how because like a huge chunk of the book is this wild scenario of what

00:56:20.820 plays out with Nobel and Stalin. But Nobel did actually stay in the red roof part of the Grand

00:56:26.760 Hotel, the Bermanska Palace, which is now part of the main hotel. And you can stay there. If you

00:56:30.780 go to Stockholm, you should totally stay there. It's so cool, though. It's like when you were

00:56:34.720 writing Diesel, we went to France, and we found in Paris, and we found this little tiny plaque

00:56:42.060 with graffiti nearby. And that was kind of all the homage to Rudolf Diesel. This guy who, as you

00:56:49.760 explained and has become so relevant with our gas price and our diesel prices so up right now

00:56:53.640 fueled the world that that guy as well you know he created this amazing engine which won the

00:56:58.680 world's fair in 1900 and to this day powers everything around the globe every cargo ship

00:57:03.560 you know any anything on the road larger than a passenger car that's all diesel and but like

00:57:08.780 forgotten forgotten and doug's first book first non-fiction uh explains why that happened to

00:57:14.360 diesel and now this one with with another homage to another world figure whose whose name not just

00:57:21.620 nobel because that's nobel prizes and it's alfred um but this guy emmanuel nobel should be known the

00:57:27.300 way rockefeller is known and that the last third of the book really explains why yeah and it all

00:57:33.760 comes together in the it's it's the more things change the more they stay the same it's the

00:57:37.960 original oil war that we've seen it play out a hundred times through the century this is where

00:57:43.440 it started. I feel like these dead titans at some somewhere out in the ether, Duggar, are going to

00:57:49.260 be grateful to you for like setting the record straight about who they were, what they did,

00:57:53.860 and remembering them in the way they would have wanted. I hope so. I feel like they're kind of

00:57:58.020 buddies now. I've spent five years with Diesel, several years with Nobel, and also, you know,

00:58:02.400 Nobel is part of the Diesel story too, and it was how I came across Nobel, and I do feel a connection

00:58:07.900 to them so so now you we're not going to say what the you're working on a third in this trilogy yes

00:58:14.340 right now you there is a third character who's just like these guys in a way yes and it'll be

00:58:20.160 and that'll sort of complete it in my in my mind but it's it's like a i'm thinking of it as the

00:58:24.900 turn of the century trilogy because it's this really charm it's a brutal time to live of course

00:58:30.360 with the world war one but this quarter century leading up to and then including world war one

00:58:35.760 is this amazing, kind of charming time to live.

00:58:39.620 It's like Downton Abbey, the early years.

00:58:41.840 The world lived in a totally different way.

00:58:43.560 There were all these empires that crumbled

00:58:45.840 as a result of World War I.

00:58:47.320 The Russian Empire, German Empire, Austrian Empire,

00:58:49.580 Ottoman Empire, it's all different afterwards.

00:58:52.620 And it's a fascinating hinge point in history

00:58:55.120 that World War I completely disrupted.

00:58:59.420 And then just as we're starting as a human species

00:59:04.860 to sort of look back on what happened there,

00:59:07.200 World War II comes along and it just gets paved over.

00:59:09.300 So there's so much about that time period

00:59:10.960 that's really unexplored.

00:59:12.300 I want to tell the author or the audience

00:59:14.440 that one of the people who blurbed this book

00:59:18.960 and loved this book is somebody,

00:59:22.480 it was the first thing Tucker texted me about

00:59:24.440 when he saw your book.

00:59:26.420 And it's the thing you were so proud of

00:59:28.500 when this guy agreed to read it and blurb it.

00:59:31.000 And our learned audience-

00:59:32.500 This is becoming a funny family story.

00:59:33.440 Yes, our learned audience may know the name Daniel Juergen, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Prize, The Epic Quest for Oil, Money and Power, and The New Map, Energy, Climate, and the Clash of Nations.

00:59:44.700 Okay, so Doug asked this guy if he would blurb the book, read the book, and boy, did he ever. He loved it.

00:59:50.020 And he wrote the following.

00:59:51.600 Douglas Brunt tells the extraordinary story of the Nobels, not Alfred of the Nobel Prize,

00:59:56.460 but his brother Ludwig and nephew Emmanuel, who built one of the world's greatest industrial

01:00:01.140 enterprises of the 19th century and a giant oil company that rivaled Rockefellers, only to see

01:00:06.800 it all shattered in their fatal collision with Joseph Stalin and the Russian Revolution, a

01:00:12.000 haunting elegy for a very different Russia that might have been. So every man I've talked to 0.57

01:00:18.900 to about this. That scene that the Daniel Juergen blurb and the fact that he got involved in this,

01:00:24.180 Duggar, has been so impressed. Why do you love Daniel Juergen so much, and why did that mean

01:00:28.960 so much to you? That book, The Prize, came out, I think, in 1991, and I studied it in college. I

01:00:33.340 had a course that was dedicated to The Prize, which is the epic quest for oil. And so I love

01:00:40.780 that book. I've kept it on my bookshelf ever since. And then when that blurb for the book came

01:00:46.460 in that he, you know, and he and I, my first email to him was like, dear Mr. Juergen, you know, and

01:00:50.380 he, so now, but now it's Dan. All right, nice. Email Dan and Doug now. So that's huge though,

01:00:55.640 to come from a college student studying a Pulitzer Prize winning book by Daniel Juergen to now like

01:00:59.860 having a, an emailing relationship with him where he loved the book. And, and he got it too. It is

01:01:05.340 a haunting elegy of a Russia that might have been. Yeah. It's a, it's maybe the craziest, what, you 0.97

01:01:11.200 You know, what happens with Stalin and Emmanuel Nobel is maybe the craziest sliding doors moment in history.

01:01:17.380 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:01:18.320 Imagine a 20th century in which there's no communist Russia, China, Korea, Cuba, Vietnam, none of it.

01:01:23.500 Wow.

01:01:23.700 It would have been a totally different thing.

01:01:24.880 And it's only by like a, you know, the eye of a needle that Lenin and Stalin got through there.

01:01:29.500 And what you see after, you know, we've set up the conflict for you in our preview of the book, The Lost Empire of Emmanuel Nobel.

01:01:36.580 but what you see is sort of at the precipice

01:01:39.320 where Emmanuel's getting called by Stalin to go meet

01:01:43.920 and he's got a choice to make

01:01:46.060 and both men have choices to make

01:01:48.360 and those choices will wind up affecting the world.

01:01:51.140 It will wind up affecting the world

01:01:52.420 that you live in right today.

01:01:53.940 Like what they decided to do

01:01:55.320 and what would happen to both men

01:01:56.460 would truly change the course of history.

01:01:58.480 It's documented in Doug's book

01:02:00.260 and I don't wanna give it all away.

01:02:01.460 And of course like Morgan and Rockefeller

01:02:03.980 and Wall Street interests

01:02:05.240 also play a huge part in how that all plays out it's like it's very dramatic conclusion

01:02:11.580 yeah to for lack of a better term um but i will tell funny story so you were you were very excited

01:02:19.580 about the daniel jürgen blurb and actually one morning we were getting ready in our bathroom and

01:02:24.080 we have dual sinks so you're at yours and i was at mine and you were like oh all the other oil

01:02:29.180 historians are going to love this and i i looked and just kind of laughed at you like the uh all

01:02:37.420 the other all those guys it's very difficult which ties into another very nice endorsement

01:02:44.020 and review i got from this organization called history nerds united who i'm my they're my

01:02:49.940 compadres now it's like people like you are why we had to unite in the first place

01:02:53.940 because i mocked you and i bullied you that's so wrong so wrong i've got my posse we're good

01:03:01.580 i love that all the other oil historians are gonna love that sure those four guys are gonna

01:03:11.260 they're gonna run to not walk to the nearest store sorry so mean but it's not just for oil

01:03:18.860 historians however the oil historians are united are excited in their love for the book because

01:03:23.780 All history nerds are excited.

01:03:25.260 All of them.

01:03:25.980 And those of us who just dabble.

01:03:27.760 Yeah.

01:03:28.160 This is a pivot.

01:03:29.520 Started with Diesel.

01:03:30.280 This is the second nonfiction from fiction, which you did for your first three books.

01:03:34.820 And how have you been enjoying that?

01:03:37.920 I actually prefer narrative.

01:03:39.680 This is narrative history.

01:03:40.920 It's sort of like an Eric Larson style book.

01:03:42.980 So it's history, but told in a novelistic way.

01:03:45.600 Which is like getting back to what Zibby Owens said about it.

01:03:47.820 It's also like a family saga.

01:03:50.880 And it needs to be told as a story.

01:03:53.400 And when you experience it as a story, it's actually indelible in that way.

01:03:57.220 History textbooks are brutal.

01:03:59.620 We know from our kids it can be tough.

01:04:01.460 It's not interesting.

01:04:02.640 It's like just an itinerary of events.

01:04:05.560 Yes, right.

01:04:06.320 And that's not meaningful unless you understand how did it change day to day.

01:04:09.360 Like if you're looking at a person who's on the streets of St. Petersburg after the October Revolution, like, well, what was happening on the streets?

01:04:15.660 How did their lives change Monday to Tuesday as that happened?

01:04:18.740 There are people standing on the sideboards of cars that they've taken over with rifles and pitchforks, and they're in the streets.

01:04:25.460 There's blood in the streets.

01:04:26.420 Crazy stuff is happening.

01:04:27.960 When you hear it, like reading the memoirs of the ambassadors who were in St. Petersburg when that was going on, they'll have little details that aren't things that would show up in a history textbook.

01:04:36.640 Again, just the itinerary.

01:04:37.960 They're like, this happened on this date.

01:04:39.320 They're like, okay, this is something I need to memorize.

01:04:41.360 But when you experience it through a person or a family and you get the narrative of what happens, you're like, oh, my God, I'm there.

01:04:48.220 The page comes to life.

01:04:50.020 And that's what I'm trying to do here is like bring it to life on the page.

01:04:54.060 And then you never forget it.

01:04:55.440 It's that Rudyard Kipling quote that I love that if history were taught in the form of

01:04:59.220 stories, it would never be forgotten.

01:05:00.880 And this is the way to get history.

01:05:03.360 I feel like when I read it and then reread, I've read it many times now, but I wished

01:05:08.640 that I had had the opportunity to read it before I went and met with Putin.

01:05:12.640 I wish that I had had all that knowledge in my head because I do think it helps you

01:05:16.440 understand Vladimir Putin a lot better.

01:05:18.220 It's not about Vladimir Putin. He gets one mention in the book, but I think, but not much.

01:05:24.660 But you come to understand exactly why he rules the way he rules, who he's like in history, who might be his mentors, the style of leadership, what about it is attractive to him and to the Russian people.

01:05:37.960 Here, this is they're showing a picture of me sitting across from Putin.

01:05:41.520 That actually is in Kaliningrad, where we had a very long sit down, which is where they keep their nukes.

01:05:45.780 But we also went to Moscow, which is absolutely stunning.

01:05:48.840 I have to tell you, like, again, if this war ever resolves and we get back to somewhat normal relations with them, Russia is a place everybody should go if they can.

01:05:57.140 It's the Russian people are absolutely lovely.

01:05:59.640 You know, I'm not making excuses for Putin and what's happening in Ukraine, but the Russian people are absolutely lovely.

01:06:05.340 They love America.

01:06:06.480 They love Americans.

01:06:07.300 I was in the streets of Moscow. 0.97

01:06:08.520 Here I am freezing my ass off. 0.56

01:06:09.580 It's like 30 below zero here.

01:06:12.120 But that's Red Square.

01:06:13.440 And it's just every place you go there is stunning.

01:06:17.860 The architecture is absolutely beautiful.

01:06:20.520 I gave my team some pictures of inside the Kremlin.

01:06:23.900 And you can see the ornate chandeliers and the art on the walls.

01:06:31.500 And just no detail was spared.

01:06:33.100 This is just a couple of shots as I got ready for a live shot.

01:06:36.160 And the listening audience, you can check this out at 12 after the hour.

01:06:39.260 But look at this.

01:06:39.740 I mean, like, the Kremlin is like a spectacular castle, where I also interview Putin here.

01:06:47.860 And it's got such history in it.

01:06:50.140 That's why I looked up to see, did Stalin live in the Kremlin? 0.72

01:06:52.460 And indeed, he did. 0.62

01:06:53.320 He did for a time. 0.55

01:06:54.420 And then eventually, he wanted to live in his DACA, which is like summer house, kind 0.85

01:06:58.280 of, where they go, but look at this.

01:06:59.300 This is just some random room not being used at all.

01:07:02.500 That's the life Nobel was leading, that kind of gilded, amazing life.

01:07:06.860 And the street thug that was robbing banks, Stalin, eventually was too in a building like that.

01:07:13.100 But to your point about understanding the Russian people and the style of leadership there, Russia is sort of this weird combination of east and west.

01:07:20.640 You know, the czar is much more like a eastern, you know, Japanese emperor where they're sort of a deity on earth.

01:07:28.120 That's how the czar was.

01:07:29.180 He was the, you know, the eastern orthodox church, but he was God's deputy on earth.

01:07:34.840 And there's a great line from Nicholas I was teaching Alexander II, this is going back a few czars, but he was talking about Napoleon and he's saying, you know, Napoleon, he says, you know, to rule, sometimes you are kind and you're helpful and you give, and then other times you're the lion, you know, and he was saying to his son, he was advising him about how to become the czar.

01:07:54.660 He was saying that works in Western Europe,

01:07:56.360 but in Russia, you can be only the lion.

01:07:59.700 And it kind of plays out 0.64

01:08:00.720 because every time a Russian leader

01:08:02.340 has tried liberalizing reforms,

01:08:06.800 a couple of years later,

01:08:08.220 someone tries to assassinate them. 0.78

01:08:09.600 It's like the advice that Nicholas I

01:08:11.800 gave to Alexander II

01:08:12.860 kind of made some sense. 0.83

01:08:15.000 You can be only the lion in Russia. 0.83

01:08:16.720 And it also does like,

01:08:18.600 the Russian people like a strong leader.

01:08:21.700 They like a strong leader a lot,

01:08:23.360 especially the women, they like a lot of the women love Vladimir Putin and they're very attracted to him.

01:08:28.020 Yes. I mean, I asked him that when I interviewed him in the Kremlin.

01:08:30.960 I said, what's with all the shirtless photos? And he said, I give the people what they want.

01:08:35.380 I was like, oh, wow. But they love a strong leader.

01:08:38.560 So it's like so often we should try the Tron Beatty leather outfit.

01:08:42.240 Oh, yeah, we'll get to him. But we we we impose our own value judgments on foreign countries,

01:08:47.880 whether it's Russia or Iran or what have you.

01:08:50.500 And it's like, no, no, no, they don't want some soft, you know, overly feminized new leftist version of American leadership.

01:09:00.020 You know, I imagine I speak of Barack Obama or Pete Buttigieg.

01:09:04.400 You're like, never.

01:09:05.340 They would never want that.

01:09:06.840 That person would be eaten alive if they were ever elevated.

01:09:09.800 So it's like, you know, a couple of years ago, we were talking about regime changing Putin out of there.

01:09:14.680 Like, could somebody assassinate him after the Ukraine war was started?

01:09:18.420 It's like, careful what you wish for, because the reason we have Vladimir Putin is because the people wanted a Vladimir Putin.

01:09:24.920 I always use the example of Jeb Bartlett.

01:09:27.020 There's no Jeb Bartlett in the wings, nor do they want that. 1.00

01:09:30.320 I don't think the Iranian people want that.

01:09:31.900 I don't think the Russian people want that.

01:09:33.800 That's an American judgment that we—

01:09:35.660 Yeah, we're looking at it through a Western lens when we see that.

01:09:38.760 I mean, the czar was basically a demigod, and that's a 20th century thing.

01:09:43.780 You know, Nicholas II was the sort of semi-godlike figure ruling Russia all the way into 1917. 0.68

01:09:51.440 So it's like 100 years ago.

01:09:52.540 They still thought of it that way.

01:09:53.980 Yeah, you could have had it.

01:09:54.760 That level of autocracy.

01:09:55.720 Yeah.

01:09:56.680 Okay.

01:09:57.220 So, well, you mentioned Tom Brady, so that's a good place to—

01:09:59.760 Oh, here we go.

01:10:00.180 Yeah.

01:10:00.560 Before we do, don't forget to go and buy your copy of The Lost Empire of Emmanuel Nobel by Douglas Brunt.

01:10:06.800 You will not be sorry you did.

01:10:08.160 You will be entertained, and you will learn something, and it's actually stuff that's very relevant to everything that's going on in the news today.

01:10:13.780 not necessarily Tom Brady, but maybe, I mean, you kind of made the connection. So maybe it is,

01:10:18.540 maybe we can make the case. Tom Brady, who we've met a few times. I don't think he's a bad guy.

01:10:25.320 I don't think you think he's a bad guy. However, there is something weird about Tom Brady.

01:10:29.640 Something's happening. Something's happening. And we've also talked about this many times

01:10:32.540 in our private life. What's happening with his looks? Okay. We were not sure, but he recently

01:10:38.460 walked the runway at the Gucci cruise fashion show in New York. It's all leather.

01:10:46.540 Yeah. It doesn't look like anything any man would want to wear on a cruise. I don't understand what

01:10:51.900 man would wear head to toe leather on any sort of a cruise. No, that seems off to me. And it has led

01:10:59.460 to the following comments online. Why is he walking like Robocop? Why is he walking like the Tin Man?

01:11:04.940 He appears to be in some physical pain just walking.

01:11:07.420 Did he learn nothing from Giselle?

01:11:09.880 And on and on it goes.

01:11:11.480 I would say something else jumped out

01:11:13.140 to both you and me about him

01:11:15.280 not having to do with the leather.

01:11:17.540 Care to take it from there?

01:11:19.020 So I remember meeting him one time

01:11:21.140 that there was that period where,

01:11:24.720 this was a very brief intersection in time

01:11:26.760 where the Met Gala people would invite you

01:11:29.140 and you were in a period

01:11:31.740 where you would be willing to go.

01:11:33.180 It's like a nanosecond intersection in time

01:11:35.680 where those two things actually met and overlapped.

01:11:38.460 So we did go and it was a year

01:11:39.900 when he was hosting with Adam Winter.

01:11:41.900 So he's like up there greeting everyone who comes in

01:11:43.920 along with like Federer and a few other people, I think.

01:11:47.040 Maybe Taylor Swift, I think that year too.

01:11:48.720 It was like an amazing year of hosting.

01:11:50.820 And he was so gracious and charming.

01:11:52.760 Like he's got the it factor, but this was 10 years ago.

01:11:56.120 And he was handsome.

01:11:57.820 Like he should have like held right there.

01:12:00.080 I don't know what we're seeing.

01:12:02.980 here and i'm a fan of tom brady i got he's not the greatest athlete but he's a great athlete

01:12:07.520 but he's always gotten better results than anyone because he's like i will outwork you and he's

01:12:12.500 mentally tough and all this stuff so i'm a fan but i don't know what is going on here it's like

01:12:17.440 kind i hate to say it because i'm a fan but i'm getting caitlin jenner vibes

01:12:21.180 nobody i hate to say it i don't know why no one's saying it though like am i

01:12:27.620 the only one seeing that or is everyone seeing it and everyone's not saying go ahead and write

01:12:31.840 didn't let us know answer doug's question you can email me megan at megankelly.com um his space

01:12:38.480 somebody online put the two side by side tom brady like at the beginning of his career and tom brady

01:12:43.920 now and look maybe he just lost a lot of weight i don't think so i think and i actually asked one

01:12:51.740 of my dermatologists about this and he too said i see feminization surgery going on like it's some

01:12:58.080 Is that a thing? That's a category of thing?

01:13:00.220 Yeah. Well, I mean, he hasn't examined Tom Brady for the record.

01:13:03.300 This is just his armchair opinion in looking at the differences.

01:13:06.900 But look, everything is sharper, more angled.

01:13:11.840 And there is a question about whether that's just weight loss

01:13:14.960 and a difference in, like, workout routine

01:13:17.420 or whether there's some, you know, professional surgery involved there

01:13:22.480 to try to make him look just a little more feminine slash looks maxi.

01:13:28.640 I don't know, but I don't think Tom Brady is a stranger to the plastic surgeon's office.

01:13:34.240 That's just my own armchair belief.

01:13:36.880 I don't think that evolution we're watching there happens naturally.

01:13:39.700 It's a lot.

01:13:40.500 He doesn't need to do that.

01:13:41.860 It's a lot.

01:13:44.500 You and I have been, it's hard for us to watch TV because we just don't have a lot of time.

01:13:49.200 And then we make the mistake of starting a TV show with our kids.

01:13:52.480 and then we're dead because it's like getting all of us together is impossible it's so hard

01:13:56.340 like you can't watch a series with the kids anymore it's just so hard every between everybody's

01:13:59.420 schedule but one of the ones we gave a shot to we did watch um yellowstone yep not all of it yeah

01:14:05.780 but a lot of it um wait were the kids doing no no they weren't they were not that was not

01:14:11.120 appropriate for the kids um and and that would become relevant in your other job which is hosting

01:14:16.760 dedicated with Doug Brunt where you have on very famous authors it's like been all of the most

01:14:21.560 famous authors on earth have swung by except for stephen king because he's weird and probably too

01:14:27.760 far left he's welcome yeah he probably looked googled you and was like it's a no i don't know

01:14:32.380 if he leaves maine or florida i don't know he probably has a compound he doesn't leave much

01:14:36.100 although you get you get lefty authors you get righty it doesn't like it's not a political show

01:14:40.000 it's not a political show so on dedicated with doug brunt which you guys should download that's

01:14:43.900 his podcast um they have a cocktail they have the writers whose doug doug is hosting their favorite

01:14:49.980 cocktail and they talk about maybe that author's book and maybe just the process by which they

01:14:55.520 wrote it and write their books in general and what their life is like so like if you're a fan

01:14:59.420 of james patterson or let's say or lee child it's like sitting in a bar next to him and having a

01:15:03.800 conversation and learning all about them yes so do you want to set up this clip is this cj box yeah

01:15:09.140 yeah uh so cj box great writer um he writes these joe pickett novels where joe pickett is a

01:15:16.420 park ranger uh kind of heroic figure out and cj box also lives in wyoming but that's largely where

01:15:23.600 the books take place on these ranches and uh parks out west and so he's in we're having cocktails i

01:15:30.140 guess we're like this episode's coming out this this tuesday a week from today a week from today

01:15:34.160 it'll be out sorry keep going um so but we just recorded it uh in new york and so we're a couple

01:15:39.440 bourbons in and we're we're talking about you know things in the genre generally of which the

01:15:43.960 tell taylor sheridan shows are are you going to show some of the clip yeah i'll just say yeah so

01:15:48.100 the the idea of taylor sheridan and those shows comes up which are very much in the wheelhouse

01:15:53.360 of these number one best-selling books that cj box writes okay let's let's take a look at this

01:15:58.600 clip from dedicated with doug brunt sought one what do you think of all the taylor sheridan stuff

01:16:03.280 is that accurate you know the yellowstone and um i uh i don't know how accurate it all is um it's

01:16:12.020 certainly popular i mean it's everybody we know watches all the shows um i have trouble with some

01:16:18.800 of it and some of the renderings um ranch stuff that you know is not really true but um but it's

01:16:24.900 also has to suspend disbelief and one thing taylor sheridan has done is is reintroduce modern

01:16:30.320 westerns to modern audiences yeah you know it's wildly popular yeah so i guess that's good i find

01:16:35.580 after about episode five i'm like i think i've seen enough it's starting to feel the same to me

01:16:39.920 But I love the first few, like even with Landman, I kind of, I tapped out after about five episodes because some of the, particularly the female characters, they're like caricatures of themselves. 0.65

01:16:49.220 And they're just, they're so ridiculous in every scene.

01:16:52.180 It's like, okay, it's starting to, it was so amped up all the time that amped up has now felt kind of flat. 0.88

01:16:58.420 I mean, I echo everything you said.

01:17:00.980 I was kind of holding back earlier, but I agree with what I thought you were going to say.

01:17:05.520 And here's my friend Taylor over here.

01:17:07.280 Oh, no, no, no.

01:17:08.060 Some of those are, we have the same thing.

01:17:12.300 I can't say we hate-watch them, but we watch enough that we can talk to our friends about it because they're always talking about it.

01:17:19.420 Yeah.

01:17:20.240 Yeah.

01:17:21.000 I mean, at some point, you start enough with it.

01:17:23.820 You've got like nine shows going at one time.

01:17:25.920 It's like, well, whatever.

01:17:27.800 I'm sure I do enjoy the first five episodes in general.

01:17:31.220 And I find some of his themes pretty derivative of my books at times.

01:17:37.400 And I know that he's been a reader, but, you know, that's just one of those things. 0.99

01:17:41.660 Go ahead and option the damn thing. 0.99

01:17:43.340 That's right. 1.00

01:17:45.320 Oh, shots fired.

01:17:47.100 He had something he wanted to get off his chest about Taylor Sheridan there, and he tapped into it.

01:17:51.340 I have to say, he was the nicest guy.

01:17:54.020 His wife was in studio with us as well, and she said she's watched every dedicated episode, which is great.

01:18:00.480 So she loves all the authors who've come through.

01:18:02.540 And he said, I've watched about half, so I'll take it because he's a big star and a busy guy writing lots of books.

01:18:07.520 But he was so nice, and he also has the reputation.

01:18:10.780 So everyone comes through.

01:18:12.180 So whether it's Lee Child or Michael Connelly or all the folks have come through.

01:18:18.200 And CJ's, Chuck, as he goes by off the book title, has a reputation for being the nicest guy.

01:18:25.280 Everyone says you've got to have CJ Box in here.

01:18:27.280 He is the nicest, best guy and a very talented writer.

01:18:31.060 So anyways, but yeah, he's,

01:18:32.980 he's sounds like he's had it with Taylor.

01:18:34.440 I mean, good for him for being honest about it.

01:18:36.700 Cause I don't blame him.

01:18:37.740 I bet it is derivative.

01:18:38.940 It's funny cause you've become,

01:18:40.260 we actually have become friends

01:18:41.680 with a fair amount of the authors

01:18:43.360 who have swung by your podcast.

01:18:46.440 And one of them was just here.

01:18:48.260 He went on your show.

01:18:49.020 He went on our show, went on a lot of shows, Jack Carr.

01:18:51.380 Yes.

01:18:51.920 And so after he was here in the audience,

01:18:53.880 may remember this, he came on the show.

01:18:55.220 We had a great exchange.

01:18:56.660 You guys went to the Hamptons together.

01:18:58.760 And when you came back, I think both you and Jack were hurting severely from having very wrongly been over-served by your hosts out there.

01:19:08.800 It was a good thing Hamptons has Uber.

01:19:10.800 Yeah, we went out to the American Hotel and did not make the mistake of driving ourselves around.

01:19:15.960 Like Justin Timberlake.

01:19:17.040 And hopped in an Uber.

01:19:18.120 Yeah, we shut down the American Hotel.

01:19:19.760 I think they're out of bourbon.

01:19:20.860 Yeah.

01:19:21.200 And then staggered back.

01:19:22.680 And then we had to do an event the next—we also made the mistake, though, of doing that before the event.

01:19:27.640 So I got up on stage with Jack, and I was just like, people could smell us in the front rows.

01:19:31.040 Oh, God.

01:19:31.540 See, he's a Navy SEAL, babe.

01:19:32.920 You shouldn't try to keep up with him.

01:19:34.800 No, that's, you know, it's wrong.

01:19:37.340 It's the wrong standard.

01:19:39.540 Elliot Ackerman is another dear friend of ours.

01:19:41.420 He and his wife, Lee Carpenter.

01:19:42.480 And he interviewed you on your show for this book.

01:19:48.120 Yes, he did a great job, too.

01:19:49.500 I mean, he's also a former Special Forces, Silver Star, Bronze Star, Purple Heart, great guy.

01:19:54.340 He's got it all.

01:19:54.980 And a very talented writer.

01:19:56.040 And, yes, so he turned the tables.

01:19:57.640 So he was the host and made the cocktails, and I was the guest, and we talked about Emmanuel

01:20:02.860 Nobel.

01:20:04.480 Everything is working out so well for you.

01:20:07.540 Yeah, I think that's today in your new writing career.

01:20:11.260 It's like when we met back in 2006, you were running an internet security company.

01:20:18.900 I was a very young reporter at Fox News.

01:20:21.960 I had no money.

01:20:23.900 You were doing very well.

01:20:25.480 You had to pay for my down payment in my first and last month's rent when I moved to New York.

01:20:30.060 That was the best investment I've ever made.

01:20:32.560 But it was like, life was so different then.

01:20:34.920 You enjoyed your job, but it was much more stressful.

01:20:38.800 And there was a lot of tumult going on at the board level and stuff was happening there.

01:20:42.600 But you had been working on this novel for stress relief.

01:20:46.760 And it wasn't until after Yardley was born, we got married.

01:20:50.360 We met in 2006.

01:20:51.440 We got married in 2008.

01:20:52.540 and Yardley was, Yates came in 09

01:20:54.300 and Yards came in 11.

01:20:56.040 And it wasn't until I was pregnant with Yardley, I think.

01:20:58.380 So it was someplace in the 10, 11 range.

01:21:00.200 Yeah, that walk in Central Park.

01:21:01.400 I just did an interview recently

01:21:03.160 where someone was asking about the switch

01:21:05.380 from running a company to writing full-time.

01:21:09.860 And I told that story and how, you know,

01:21:12.540 you read the rough draft of what would be the first novel

01:21:14.900 and you're like, this is actually pretty good.

01:21:16.560 You're like, you know, you should pursue this

01:21:17.640 and get an agent.

01:21:19.380 And so I told that story and he said,

01:21:21.020 what if the feedback had been different like what if she said this is not good you know

01:21:25.640 she didn't like it like would you have been a writer at all i'm like that's actually no one's

01:21:30.360 ever posed it that way i don't know what would have happened but you always are the first feedback

01:21:34.540 on each of the books fiction and non-fiction yeah and great i mean your judgment for story

01:21:40.120 and you know what's compelling is always so good that you're always the sort of first stop for

01:21:45.760 feedback on all these books well i feel like i'm your common man because i you're so well read doug

01:21:50.800 is so well read. And I spend most of my time reading the news. I have to be honest. I'm not,

01:21:54.660 I don't consider myself well read when it comes to the world of literature. Although Doug gives

01:21:58.860 me great recommendations and I pick them up. But you've read everything. You've read it all. And

01:22:04.200 I think you can't be a great writer unless you are a great reader and you love it. So it comes

01:22:09.060 naturally to you, but I'm your every man because I can read it. I mean, like how many times do we

01:22:15.140 go back and forth about some of the terms in the book? You know, like what were we referring to

01:22:19.460 the oil rigs as. And I was like, stop saying that. I don't remember what they're called.

01:22:23.640 Or Prussia. That's another thing. I can't stand Prussia. I can't. I'm like, every time you say

01:22:27.020 Prussia, you have to explain that that was like a German province before we had a Germany. Nobody

01:22:31.200 knows that. Yeah. Yeah. So reading is definitely a key to writing. Well, the other one, I'll tell

01:22:36.360 a really quick story if we have a minute. The other is writing. So one of the other guests

01:22:40.660 that came on dedicated was Diana Gabaldon, who wrote the Outlander series, which became a huge

01:22:45.000 show. And so she would be on the set of the show and everyone loves the books. The books are

01:22:48.860 amazing the show is amazing and the cast the actors in the show would come over to her and

01:22:54.040 of course all the read the books themselves and they say i love the books like how do you write

01:22:57.880 like what's the secret what what advice can you give me and she would say here's what we're going

01:23:02.680 to do for the next 10 days you're going to go write for 20 minutes every day and at the end of

01:23:08.800 10 days come back and we'll talk and guess what happened what no one ever came back what that's

01:23:14.960 the hard part like just the act of writing is hard enough like they no one can do it so if you want

01:23:20.520 to write just as a quick piece of advice read and you have to write you actually have to put pen to

01:23:26.380 paper and it it sounds like simple advice and it doesn't connect with most people they're just like

01:23:31.140 oh whatever but you actually actually you have to do it whether it's a journal entry or a letter

01:23:35.580 or you know a short story or the beginning of novel you have to write every day and i know you

01:23:41.300 try to write the beginning of the first line of the next section before you close up your notebook

01:23:48.560 for the night. Yes, which is like a famous old Hemingway trick, like trying to leave yourself

01:23:53.100 something to grab the next day. You know, leave off with that. You write longhand?

01:23:58.780 With a fiction, yes. With a nonfiction, I've done more just keying it in on the keyboard.

01:24:02.800 You write in our dining room, not in your office. I mean, a little of both. A little of both. But

01:24:07.280 the dining room's a lot brighter. It's brighter and a huge table, because especially with the

01:24:10.960 nonfiction. I'm really spread out. I've got all these source material notes are all over me. So

01:24:15.500 I'm like writing, like, although I'm drowning in paper and books. No, you look like Claire Danes

01:24:20.060 from the, what was it, on Showtime? Oh, that show. Homeland. Oh, yeah. With the number of

01:24:25.460 post-its everywhere and the lines connecting. Yeah, I'm like having a psychotic break as I write.

01:24:29.400 Yeah. As you once joked, God forbid somebody ever go in there with a leaf blower.

01:24:33.980 Everything would be lost. And then you do your own editing on the computer. It's another way

01:24:38.340 to think through. And then this time you read, you read the book, which you did not do for Diesel.

01:24:42.260 And how was that? That was a fun experience. I mean, it's relentless. You know, you got to go

01:24:48.260 through all these, you know, it's 90,000 words and there are many retakes. The crazy thing that

01:24:54.340 was happening to me, and I think it was happening to you a little bit, but I would have coffee when

01:24:57.920 I'd get there. And then my stomach was doing flips, like gurgling. So I'd read and the guy

01:25:02.280 in the sound was like, oh, your stomach. I kind of heard that. Let's do it again. And so, you know,

01:25:06.780 I had to do many, many retakes and finally just grabbed a big pillow, which they had there.

01:25:11.420 Like, I'm not the only person this happens to.

01:25:12.920 They said, grab the pillow.

01:25:13.900 So I grabbed the pillow, put it over my lap, and it sort of muffles my stomach sounds.

01:25:18.660 So people can picture Doug holding his little lovey pillow while he does the read for The Lost Empire of Emmanuel Nobel out today in a store near you.

01:25:28.460 We're going to be right back.

01:25:29.260 We're going to take a quick break.

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01:27:19.260 All right, full-time thoughts.

01:27:22.600 Craig, who stood out?

01:27:23.600 Brazil's lime cheesecake started bright, didn't let up.

01:27:26.120 Nah, for me, Italian cappuccino was the standout in the box.

01:27:29.180 But if we're talking decadent performance, that's all France.

01:27:32.020 Chocolate creme brulee had the richest finishes.

01:27:34.420 Canadian fireworks really showed up big too.

01:27:36.400 And Mexico's caramel churro ice cap.

01:27:38.780 Gave me chills.

01:27:39.920 We are, of course, talking about Tim's taste of the globe lineup.

01:27:42.660 New globally-inspired Timbits and ice cap flavors available at Tim Hortons for a limited time.

01:27:47.160 picks them up today. And while you're at it, check out Footy Prime Daily.

01:28:17.160 Only on the Megyn Kelly channel, Sirius XM 111, and on the Sirius XM app.

01:28:26.320 Doug Brunt is back with me.

01:28:27.880 He's the author of the brand new book, The Lost Empire of Emmanuel Nobel, out today.

01:28:33.180 Go and get it now.

01:28:34.160 It also will make it a great gift as we go into the Father's and Mother's Day season.

01:28:39.480 So check it out and possibly buy it for somebody who you love.

01:28:43.160 And speaking of loving people, I heard the most outrageous set of soundbites on my pal Maureen Callahan's show, The Nerve, on Friday, which is a great show.

01:28:55.040 You should go and subscribe.

01:28:56.820 She actually took the time to listen to this weird new podcast that I don't know if it's a real thing or if they just did it the one time. 0.97

01:29:06.020 But it's these obnoxious, insufferable late-night hosts sitting around patting themselves on the back. 0.64

01:29:11.760 And what they decided to talk about, you know, as all married men want to, is which female guest they've had on their shows who they want to sleep with.

01:29:22.420 Which woman would they like to F?

01:29:24.680 Honestly, this is so inappropriate on so many different levels.

01:29:27.860 And here is Stephen Colbert in SOT 10.

01:29:30.980 Has there been a guest who was so attractive that you found it distracting?

01:29:35.860 I'll tell you who I did not expect to be wildly attracted to.

01:29:39.860 Like, I didn't know what to do with myself, is that I did not, because I don't, I don't, I like this person's work, but I never thought of him as like a bombshell.

01:29:47.540 I could not, I didn't know what to do with my eyeballs when Michelle Williams was on for the first time. 0.99

01:29:52.440 She sat down across from me and I went, fuck, what is wrong with my head? 0.99

01:29:55.500 I cannot, I better not look directly at her for this entire interview. 0.99

01:29:59.140 There was something about her vibe, her face, everything. 0.99

01:30:04.360 That is so disgusting. 0.97

01:30:06.060 That's weird. 0.98

01:30:06.140 That's so gross.

01:30:06.920 I can't imagine watching my husband sitting out there talking like that, where he couldn't even concentrate.

01:30:13.260 All you could do is, like, you were stunned with this person's beauty.

01:30:16.440 And he doubled down.

01:30:18.100 Moments later, thought 11. 1.00

01:30:20.000 I used to have a Rachel Weisz problem.

01:30:21.800 I recovered. 1.00

01:30:23.220 When Rachel Weisz would be on The Daily Show, I would leave the building for fear that I would say something stupid to her. 0.97

01:30:27.780 Even though I would feel like I was afraid I would, like, stand in the hallway and go, hi. 0.92

01:30:32.020 You know, like, you were great in the constant gardener.

01:30:35.740 okay so he was married then he's married now yeah his wife's not flashy and somebody asked him

01:30:44.820 first of all he was bragging about having his hall pass you know how some men talk about they've got

01:30:49.760 they've got a hall pass to like sleep with somebody who's not their wife and here's what

01:30:54.020 he said about that saw 12 we're going on the table once at dinner with some friends of mine

01:30:57.480 and these guys are going like so who's your who's your uh who's your hall pass whatever like that

01:31:01.240 And the guy next to me, he goes, Paulina Portskova.

01:31:04.600 And this was the midway through the Colbert Report.

01:31:06.780 I pulled up my phone, opened the People Magazine app on phone, and I was Paulina Portskova's

01:31:11.780 hall pass.

01:31:12.480 Oh, my God.

01:31:13.520 That's nice.

01:31:14.020 Yeah.

01:31:14.440 What?

01:31:14.660 That was a flex that I've never, ever been able to match.

01:31:18.940 Okay.

01:31:19.380 I just threw up in my mouth.

01:31:20.780 That is so weird and gross.

01:31:22.940 And as Maureen pointed out, not the brag he thinks it is, not the flex.

01:31:27.520 With Rick Ocasek.

01:31:28.480 Yeah.

01:31:29.880 Not a stunning guy. 0.97

01:31:30.940 that's like a political comment where she's like you know there's no way she's uh and there's no

01:31:35.260 way that he actually just opened up the people magazine app on his phone you know he has that

01:31:40.280 at the ready like in his saved photos he's this is it's very weird these are like grown men around

01:31:44.660 my age i don't think i've had a conversation like that since college yes yes no one i know

01:31:50.040 no guy i know especially no married guy sits around talking about the hall pass conversation

01:31:54.780 are they all gay you know how like you've explained to me many times that the people 0.84

01:31:58.000 who talk like this are gay uh i don't know i don't know like like a gay man's idea of how a 0.79

01:32:03.680 straight man there is that for sure like we we've discussed several incidents of that um i don't 0.96

01:32:09.860 know if this is a gay thing or just a loser thing or what i but no no no normal guy i know talks 0.64

01:32:15.280 like that or publicly about how you could barely function in the face of this other woman's beauty 0.97

01:32:20.260 that you definitely want to sleep with yeah that's the the topic as it was delivered to you

01:32:24.640 and then okay there's the hall pass thing and listen to this is the worst one of all

01:32:28.960 uh i won't set it up just watch sat 13 evie knows all this who is hers evie doesn't have a tv show

01:32:36.020 i guess i needed to set it up they were asked who they were asked about his wife evie and who's her

01:32:41.880 hall pass and he said evie doesn't have a tv show oh my god yes what in the absolute f she better

01:32:52.660 get one that's like the laurence taylor quote when we better put that in coach she better go

01:32:57.400 get a tv show and then she's off and running can you believe that wow that's uh that's someone 0.59

01:33:03.620 needs to get a comment from her about this i feel like tell me you have a loveless marriage without 1.00

01:33:07.360 telling me you have a loveless marriage that's what that whole exchange ought to be labeled 0.98

01:33:11.540 yeah um pathetic and it's not entertaining this is their excuse for entertainment as they sit 0.97

01:33:17.440 around licking their wounds that everyone's show either got canceled or almost canceled and 0.99

01:33:21.420 and nobody's got the ratings that they used to have and so on.

01:33:23.780 Which leads me to Meghan Markle.

01:33:27.820 Doug, she traveled to Geneva, Switzerland,

01:33:30.900 to give some speech about the dangers of social media.

01:33:33.960 She posted on social media before she went a picture of herself

01:33:40.180 surrounded by designer clothing and Lilibet down at her feet,

01:33:46.260 staring up at her mother.

01:33:48.400 Here you can see it.

01:33:49.500 It's just me.

01:33:50.640 it's me admiring me as my daughter admires me in my closet of designer clothes. This is how I want

01:33:59.680 you to understand how relatable I am. And then she went all the way over to Geneva

01:34:05.360 from Los Angeles, California, or wherever they are, just north of LA, and gave this speech.

01:34:11.460 She wants to be taken seriously. She's humanitarian. She started Archwell Foundation,

01:34:15.220 which already closed. She flies all the way over there. And would you take a look

01:34:19.700 at the crowd that showed up or didn't stand by okay we sped it up just so you can see

01:34:27.140 like literally nobody is on the side they have all the ropes up to protect her from crowds coming

01:34:32.640 there's one woman in the background no one is there you just keep watching because we we panned 0.99

01:34:38.700 the camera we found the shots to show like okay were were there tons of people in front of her

01:34:42.700 there were not were there tons of people on the other side no it reads no child lost to social

01:34:47.300 media. No one is listening to her. We have video of a woman behind her who basically is like

01:34:53.760 putting the jacket on or all like taking a yawning, stretching. This is the crowd, Doug.

01:35:01.660 The guy in Central Park we've seen blow those enormous bubbles. It gets a way bigger crowd

01:35:08.660 than this. It's lost even the train wreck appeal. She's already had about 10 train wrecks. So now,

01:35:13.720 you know you think oh sorry here's jacket lady look at her she looks riveted doesn't she she's 0.99

01:35:18.540 like i'm near a princess oh boy no she couldn't care less she's not interested and it's the 1.00

01:35:24.560 public's verdict on we don't give a shit about you shut up and go live your life and stop bothering 1.00

01:35:31.380 us with your fake profundities and fake title yeah yeah she's she's lost all appeal it could be like 1.00

01:35:38.040 the train wreck thing would happen here and there and that could still get some audience but she's

01:35:41.060 had a few of those already even that's not interesting from her anymore look at her like

01:35:44.980 no one cares it's like a it's smattering you know how they say smattering of applause this is a

01:35:49.360 smattering of audience members it's officially over over um now you and i spent the weekend

01:35:57.500 doing something really fun and interesting i thought which was we watched our oldest child

01:36:03.220 yates who's 16 engage in a tennis tournament with his classmates and it was some of the most

01:36:10.980 riveting stressful fun nail-biting time that we have had in recent memory match points all over

01:36:19.520 the place going both ways you know tie breakers it was kind of you gotta get workout getting a

01:36:24.520 full body workout as you're sort of like jerking along to each shot of the match yes and i asked

01:36:29.820 you because you play tennis i don't play tennis but you do and our kids do is it worse to be the

01:36:34.940 guy in that situation because i've watched you in a lot of these matches too where it's like

01:36:38.380 point point point counterpoint back and forth back and forth nobody can really get the leg up

01:36:43.300 and then like who could win it could go either way and it's very very stressful for the watcher

01:36:48.360 yeah and i was asking which do you prefer do you prefer to be the player in that moment who's like

01:36:52.540 got to perform with all these people watching you and like titles on the line or do you prefer to be

01:36:57.720 the the dad watching somebody else do it you know like our son do it way prefer to be playing

01:37:02.900 it's much easier to be the one on the court because you're sort of in control then and you can

01:37:06.580 you can you know control the moment when you're watching up there and you're watching your kid or

01:37:11.900 or even like a good friend it's i can't even watch it i have to i have to walk away sometimes i can't

01:37:17.220 even stay there for it it is so stressful now i feel like you understand my world yeah so i've

01:37:21.640 watched you play in these tournaments one of which wound up in the movie bombshell is actually quite

01:37:26.020 funny um but you do play tennis i've watched you play in a lot of these tight tight games and it

01:37:31.240 is very stressful it's any parent out there can relate or spouse if you're if your spouse is

01:37:35.640 athletic to watching your loved one put it all on the line and it could it could go one way or the

01:37:41.420 other you just pray to god that it works out it's like yeah got it all the self-talk i had to do i

01:37:46.480 prayed i prayed to god then i did deep breathing i'm like this is what i gotta calm down this is

01:37:51.160 like a high school tennis match fortunately yates is so mentally tough all three of our kids really

01:37:55.120 are so you you kind of have that sense like he's got this he is going to do it and then he does and

01:37:59.740 it's it's easy but like the other day when we were watching that lacrosse game and you saw you were

01:38:04.380 standing next to the couple whose son ended up scoring the last second goal to win it and they

01:38:08.940 were tearing up oh you know they're really wonderful moments and we were so happy over

01:38:13.300 the weekend watching it was so beautiful that lacrosse so our school also had a lacrosse game

01:38:17.640 and we went just to support our friends and um it was one of these things there's overtime is

01:38:22.860 double overtime and in lacrosse that sudden death and um could have gone either way same thing the

01:38:28.860 other team was excellent but a guy on our team shot the winning goal and we did have the privilege

01:38:35.420 of just so happening happening it just so happened that we were standing right by that kid's parents

01:38:40.900 he was a senior and the mom and the dad were right in front of us and the mom was like a couple steps

01:38:45.620 down from the dad we were like on the bleachers she was a couple steps down and so you had the

01:38:50.500 moment you can see you could see the mom had her hands over her face like yeah you know how you do

01:38:55.380 and you're overwhelmed with emotion.

01:38:57.300 And the dad had his hands like on his head,

01:39:00.260 which can signal relief or despair,

01:39:04.240 or I can't believe it.

01:39:05.880 But in this circumstance had to be like relief

01:39:08.240 and I can't believe it.

01:39:09.440 And she turned around to look at her husband

01:39:11.600 and she had tears in her eyes and he did too.

01:39:14.940 And they just had this moment about their son.

01:39:18.240 I could tear up now who scored the winning goal.

01:39:20.860 It's like, it doesn't matter who you are in this world.

01:39:24.480 that moment can dwarf all the moments. Those are the pure moments in sports that are always still

01:39:28.180 there. I mean, there's so much perversion around sports with money and how you get into college and

01:39:32.180 things that are screwing it all up, but it survives because sports still delivers those moments.

01:39:37.700 Yes. It's really awesome. And don't you think, you know, I don't play tennis, but I do think

01:39:41.880 tennis, and I'm sure a lot of these other sports, and now I know tennis better than a lot of the

01:39:45.800 other sports since I know nothing about the others. It's such an opportunity for growth

01:39:51.720 and character development for these kids.

01:39:53.900 Like, that's what I've seen.

01:39:55.380 You know, I looked at Yates and these other boys too out there.

01:39:58.580 You are alone on that court.

01:40:00.940 Yeah, tennis is tough.

01:40:01.800 Like, it is just you and all the eyes are on you.

01:40:05.840 You will make or break your own fortune, your adversary.

01:40:08.960 This was like the finals of this thing.

01:40:10.380 So it's like, he's going to be amazing.

01:40:12.500 You're not going to get any passes.

01:40:14.800 It takes such temerity for these kids to go out there and do it.

01:40:17.920 I think the same when we go to like the plays.

01:40:19.840 Yardley likes to do the plays.

01:40:20.740 It doesn't matter whether Yardley's on stage or somebody else is on stage.

01:40:23.680 As soon as that curtain goes up, I start crying.

01:40:26.020 Because it's like these young girls and young guys putting it on the line, risking embarrassment.

01:40:32.120 You know, they could fall on their faces, but they do it.

01:40:34.960 They say the lines, they sing.

01:40:37.140 I had to just bring something up in me of like the zest of life and risking, taking risks and hopefully getting a huge payoff.

01:40:44.700 Yeah, it's great to see.

01:40:45.520 I mean, that's what I love about high school.

01:40:47.080 there's so many different things you can sort of get into a lane behind it, whether it's drama or

01:40:51.580 different sports, or even if it's like, I don't know, a debate team, you know, you get out there

01:40:56.040 and you, you put your best self forward and you compete. You never did drama. No, no, I didn't do

01:41:04.560 drama. I never did drama either in my school. Like it's, it's cooler now. It's definitely

01:41:09.900 cooler now. In my high school, if you did drama, that was like, that was. Yeah. In my school,

01:41:14.340 you were called a creamy you were the creamies did the drama no offense to the creamies out there

01:41:18.320 you guys were great i loved it and i tried to be a creamy the truth is i tried i auditioned for the

01:41:21.920 show and i didn't make it i wish i did it didn't make any more i should have done it yeah i was

01:41:25.400 triggered remember yardley had to sing somewhere over the rainbow to try out for this music group

01:41:29.640 and i was like trigger that was the song i had to sing i did not they gave you the hook i didn't

01:41:36.360 make the chorus i didn't make a lead role i made nothing they were like we don't want you this

01:41:40.640 play back to cheerleading yes that's basically what happened but i still admire them so uh and

01:41:46.200 just like the raw display of talent you know tomorrow patrick mackinroe is coming on the show

01:41:50.200 awesome yeah the brother of john mackinroe and he's been railing about he's been running usa 0.98

01:41:55.060 tennis for a long time he's raising a really good point we are letting in all these foreigners

01:42:00.340 into our colleges who are taking all the spots of the americans yeah it's hard to develop our 1.00

01:42:07.340 american tennis program yes if there's if we're you know icing out half of the spots in american

01:42:12.520 colleges it's true in tennis it's true in other sports too it's like and now we got president

01:42:16.600 trump talking about letting 500 000 more chinese in the universities okay it's like it chinese is

01:42:21.740 chinese american is one thing chinese is a totally different thing um so i really hope that the

01:42:27.060 president changes his mind on that and i hope patrick mackinroll can make him in any event

01:42:31.000 we'll see um what else did you feel like it went well today yeah no but yes i was thrilled to be

01:42:38.620 able to chat about my buddy emmanuel nobel that's right and it's like 50 50 actually as i talk to

01:42:43.600 people they're like emmanuel noble i'm like yeah i'm like so the nephew of alfred nobel and then

01:42:49.100 they you know they get it like kareem jean pierre yeah exactly the noble prize it's very noble if

01:42:53.820 you can win it you're noble oh my god it's so humiliating no i learned a lot and i think the

01:42:58.060 audience is going to love it the lost empire of emmanuel nobel you were saying this morning you

01:43:01.860 went on with rosanna scotto who's amazing she is awesome she's the best and uh second best and

01:43:07.800 people from uh simon and schuster showed up yeah and how'd that go it was great they were doing all

01:43:12.900 the blocking and tackling for me you know you don't always get you know uh a team from the

01:43:17.860 publicist uh group when you go out to do these things but we went into the green room like this

01:43:22.060 green room it's not nice enough for dub we need to find another green room like no no no this is

01:43:26.120 good i'm very happy to be here don't need a nicer green room let's not be those people was down the

01:43:30.560 hall you know the country music guy and basically the same green room so i was good were you satisfied

01:43:34.840 with your green room here uh yes yeah actually it was coffee water champagne yeah did you get

01:43:39.520 the star treatment from everybody yeah your green room budget is higher than fox you know i told

01:43:44.600 them to roll out the red carpet outside the red studio for you babe well honey i'm really proud

01:43:48.940 of you cheers again cheers it's like the birth of a baby i love you too love the book i'm really

01:43:54.080 proud of you. Drinking our Prosecco at two in the afternoon. Thanks to all of you so much.

01:44:00.500 You supported Doug and his first book and we're both very grateful. And I think you're going to

01:44:03.660 love this one too. Again, it's out today. The Lost Empire of Emmanuel Nobel, Romanovs,

01:44:09.300 revolutionaries, and the forgotten Titan who fueled the world. Doug, thank you. We're back

01:44:15.440 tomorrow with Patrick McEnroe and others. Now our friends from RCP will be here as well. See you

01:44:20.780 them. Thanks for listening to The Megyn Kelly Show. No BS, no agenda, and no fear.

The Megyn Kelly Show - May 19, 2026

The TRUTH About Emanuel Nobel, Russia's Communism Rise, and Tom Brady's Viral Catwalk Debut, with Doug Brunt ｜ Ep. 1320

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