Doug Brunt

May 19, 2026 · 1 hr 4 min · 20 segments

Douglas Brunt: Negroni (1 ounce gin, 1 ounce sweet vermouth, 1 ounce Campari, garnish with orange rind and Luxardo cherry) Elliot Ackerman (best selling author, former special forces and intelligence officer) guest-hosts Dedicated, including bartending, to interview Doug about THE LOST EMPIRE OF EMANUEL NOBEL. They discuss the world's century-long quest to capture oil, Russia and Ukraine from the time of Nobel and Stalin that mirrors the present day, Rasputin and the Romanovs, the differences between fiction and nonfiction writing (Elliot and Doug have each published both), and how to make a good cocktail. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See [pcm.adswizz.com](https://pcm.adswizz.com) for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Speakers: Doug BruntHostElliot AckermanGuest

Top entities: Emanuel Nobel×90 Young Stalin×27 Russia×72 Ludvig Nobel×12 Alexander III of Russia×15

Subscribe and follow Dedicated0:00 – 0:17

Doug BruntHost0:00

Don't miss a thing from Dedicated.

Doug BruntHost0:01

You can subscribe to the show on YouTube at Dedicated With Doug Brunt to watch the latest interviews and clips from the show, as well as watch me make the drinks for our guests in studio.

Doug BruntHost0:10

You can also subscribe to Instagram, X and Facebook to keep up with all the latest news, pictures and updates from the show.

Show opener and premise0:17 – 0:36

AdvertiserAd0:17

[instrumental music] Welcome to Dedicated with Doug Brunt.

AdvertiserAd0:20

You have just gained access to an exclusive insider's look at the lives and works of some of your favorite authors, and to hear conversations with the world's greatest writers as they discuss their writing lifestyle, creative process, latest work and behind-the-scenes revelations.

Guest host flips the script0:40 – 2:21

Elliot AckermanGuest0:40

Welcome to Dedicated.

Elliot AckermanGuest0:42

If you are a regular listener, you know how this show works.

Elliot AckermanGuest0:46

Doug Brunt sits in that chair right there that he's sitting in today.

Elliot AckermanGuest0:50

He fixes you a cocktail and spends an hour talking with writers about their work, their process, and the books that made them.

Elliot AckermanGuest0:58

Today, we are flipping the script because Doug has a new book out, and it's my turn to ask the questions.

Elliot AckermanGuest1:05

Uh, he is a New York Times best-selling author whose work spans fiction and narrative non-fiction.

Elliot AckermanGuest1:11

His novels include Ghosts of Manhattan, The Means, and Trophy Son, and his non-fiction debut, The Mysterious Case of Rudolf Diesel, was a New York Times Bestseller.

Elliot AckermanGuest1:22

His new book is the second work of...

Elliot AckermanGuest1:25

His second work of non-fiction, and it is called The Lost Empire of Emanuel Nobel: Romanovs, Revolutionaries and the Forgotten Titan Who Fueled the World.

Elliot AckermanGuest1:36

Uh, it's the story of Emanuel Nobel, who along with his family, built the Russian petroleum industry into an operation that at its peak surpassed even Rockefeller's Standard Oil, and whose name has been almost entirely erased from history.

Elliot AckermanGuest1:52

Working in those same oil fields at the same time was a young Georgian revolutionary named, you guessed it, Joseph Stalin, and it's the story of what happens when those two worlds collide.

Elliot AckermanGuest2:03

It's the engine of this book, which is a gripping, fast-moving piece of narrative history, and I'm glad that we will have the chance to dig into it today.

Elliot AckermanGuest2:12

And I am Elliot Ackerman, novelist, journalist, and when I am with Doug, day drinker.

Doug BruntHost2:18

[laughs]

Elliot AckermanGuest2:18

So once again, welcome to Dedicated, and Doug, welcome to your own show.

Cocktails and camaraderie2:22 – 4:03

Doug BruntHost2:22

Elliot, this is awesome.

Doug BruntHost2:23

Thank you so much for doing this, and critical in my thinking to who could come in and host this was it has to be someone who knows t- how to make a great drink.

Doug BruntHost2:30

And having spent some time with you, I know you are that man.

Elliot AckermanGuest2:33

Okay, so-

Doug BruntHost2:34

So that's why we're here.

Elliot AckermanGuest2:34

[drum music] What's the great drink, Doug? What are we making?

Doug BruntHost2:37

Negroni.

Elliot AckermanGuest2:38

Okay.

Elliot AckermanGuest2:38

So I got the, uh, I got the, the goods right here, and, um, my question to you while I get to work, Doug, with our two Negronis, uh, is why a Negroni?

Doug BruntHost2:50

Well, let's see.

Doug BruntHost2:51

It w- it was not like a college drink at all for me.

Doug BruntHost2:54

In college, it was more like if things were good, Jim Beam, if things were really good, maybe Maker's Mark.

Doug BruntHost2:59

But more recently, I have come across the Negroni.

Doug BruntHost3:01

I have to say that in the evenings at dinner, like the drink before you get the meal, I would most often get a Manhattan.

Elliot AckermanGuest3:09

Mm.

Doug BruntHost3:09

Rye Manhattan up.

Doug BruntHost3:11

But it's, you know, it's a little earlier in the day, I gotta stretch this into our, our dinner for later.

Doug BruntHost3:16

I thought a Negroni is a perfect, you know, sort of mid to late afternoon cocktail.

Elliot AckermanGuest3:21

It is a great...

Elliot AckermanGuest3:22

It's actually one of my, my truly favorite drinks.

Elliot AckermanGuest3:24

I need to pause just for a second.

Doug BruntHost3:26

[laughs]

Elliot AckermanGuest3:26

Uh, 'cause as I am doing this, Doug is hosting me, so he brought the, the, the flatware here, and I have to note we have these very elegant Jack Carr tumblers that we are making this Negroni in.

Elliot AckermanGuest3:37

Um, a-

Doug BruntHost3:38

I was gonna leave that to see if your eagle eye intel-

Elliot AckermanGuest3:40

[laughs] I caught it

Doug BruntHost3:41

... your old intelligence eyes would pick that up, which you absolutely did.

Doug BruntHost3:43

If you, if you didn't, I was gonna point it out, but I was highly confident that you would.

Doug BruntHost3:46

And I- Jack's a good mutual friend of ours, and he actually told me I, uh, this may not be for air, but he said you guys are considering this very cool project, uh, together at some point.

Elliot AckermanGuest3:56

Yeah.

Elliot AckermanGuest3:56

We're, uh, we're, we're hoping to maybe, maybe hit the road together here, uh, soon.

Elliot AckermanGuest4:01

Um, but more details possibly forthcoming.

Doug BruntHost4:03

All right.

From Diesel to Nobel: the research journey4:04 – 7:28

Doug BruntHost4:04

Good.

Elliot AckermanGuest4:04

Um, so, you know, I, I listened to the episode of this show that you did with your book, Rudolf Diesel-

Doug BruntHost4:12

Mm-hmm

Elliot AckermanGuest4:12

... where, uh, Chris Pojalian hosted.

Doug BruntHost4:14

Yeah.

Elliot AckermanGuest4:14

So I'm, I'm honored to, uh, start, to be the, the second host in what I think will be a, a grand tradition of, uh, of you bringing your own books on the show.

Elliot AckermanGuest4:22

And in that, you talked about your life, your journey as be- to being a writer, and I don't wanna force you to go over that again.

Elliot AckermanGuest4:28

I would encourage listeners to check out that episode.

Elliot AckermanGuest4:30

But I was hoping you could talk a little, because so much of this is about, like, the writer's journey.

Doug BruntHost4:34

Mm-hmm.

Elliot AckermanGuest4:34

If you could talk a little bit about the journey between your book about Rudolf Diesel into this book, uh, about the Nobels and Emanuel Nobel, um, because-

Doug BruntHost4:46

Elliot AckermanGuest4:46

...

Elliot AckermanGuest4:46

in reading the two, I c- I can clearly see there's, like, plenty of overlap.

Doug BruntHost4:50

There is.

Doug BruntHost4:50

It, the Diesel book took about five years to put together, and it also required a lot of learning for, you know, how to write non-fiction.

Doug BruntHost5:00

And my editor, Peter Borland at Simon & Schuster-

Elliot AckermanGuest5:02

Doug BruntHost5:02

...

Doug BruntHost5:02

I gotta give a lot of credit.

Doug BruntHost5:03

He was so good, and I learned a lot going through that process.

Doug BruntHost5:06

I just, being a constant student of life in any, in anything we do, uh, I learned a lot about writing non-fiction in that book.

Doug BruntHost5:14

So when I came at Nobel, I was a lot better at the process.

Doug BruntHost5:17

I was a lot smarter about keeping my source notes and, and materials together.

Doug BruntHost5:21

Um, but it also had a lot of overlap in the research.

Doug BruntHost5:25

So the Nobel story has the same atmosphere.

Doug BruntHost5:27

It's that same turn of the century period of time, the sort of early Downton Abbey years.

Elliot AckermanGuest5:32

Yeah.

Doug BruntHost5:32

And Nobel and Diesel were actually colleagues and friends and business partners.

Doug BruntHost5:36

And so while Diesel took five years or so, I was able to leverage a lot of that atmospherics and foundational research in the work on Nobel.

Doug BruntHost5:45

And so I would say the Nobel to- book took more like three years really, and I'm actually working on a third down the line that's, will sort of complete a, a trilogy of these companion books all in the same time.

Elliot AckermanGuest5:56

Ooh.

Elliot AckermanGuest5:56

Do you want, do you wanna talk about that now? Like-

Doug BruntHost5:58

I, I-

Elliot AckermanGuest5:58

Let, let's save it till like the end of the episode

Doug BruntHost5:59

... that'll be for another time.

Elliot AckermanGuest6:00

Okay.

Doug BruntHost6:00

Haven't actually said, uh, what that will be yet, but it's, it's getting, uh, pretty far along the way in, in terms of the concept and the structure.

Doug BruntHost6:08

The Nobel book was so fun.

Doug BruntHost6:10

It, I actually...

Doug BruntHost6:11

It was, had a couple of elements in the Diesel book.

Doug BruntHost6:14

It was like there was a footnote in the Diesel book-About the Nobel story and the death of Ludvig Nobel that was mistaken in Paris for Alfred Nobel, who was the uncle of...

Doug BruntHost6:25

There's a lot of Nobels here.

Elliot AckermanGuest6:26

Mm-hmm.

Doug BruntHost6:26

But Emanuel Nobel's uncle is the very famous Alfred Nobel, who invented dynamite and is the founder of the Nobel Prizes.

Doug BruntHost6:32

And there was a footnote in the Diesel book about that story that I found so fascinating.

Elliot AckermanGuest6:36

Yeah.

Doug BruntHost6:36

So when I got the Diesel book to a point where, all right, I'm sending this off to Simon & Schuster, they're gonna look at it.

Doug BruntHost6:40

I've got sort of, you know, a month of breathing room while they're reviewing and coming up with some notes, so I can do some outside reading.

Doug BruntHost6:46

So I gathered everything I could on the Nobels in Russia, which is a totally paved over story, which we'll get to-

Elliot AckermanGuest6:53

Mm-hmm

Doug BruntHost6:53

...

Doug BruntHost6:53

I'm sure, for, you know, why it's so paved over by the communists.

Doug BruntHost6:57

And I found what I could.

Doug BruntHost6:58

A lot of it was in Russian language or in Swedish.

Doug BruntHost7:02

I figured out where the archives were that had some of the information.

Doug BruntHost7:05

I made relationships with people in the archives, and I started gathering troves of information even while doing Diesel.

Doug BruntHost7:11

And then Diesel comes back and I'm back on Diesel fully.

Elliot AckermanGuest7:13

Right.

Doug BruntHost7:13

But I had started the process with Nobel just to explore, is there enough in here for a book? And there, as it turns out, way more than I even knew.

Doug BruntHost7:23

The deeper I got into it, the more gold I was finding.

Elliot AckermanGuest7:26

Can I ask you something a little bit on process? By the way, here is your Negroni.

Negroni cheers and writer anxieties7:29 – 9:21

Doug BruntHost7:29

Oh, yes.

Elliot AckermanGuest7:29

Um-

Doug BruntHost7:29

Elliot, thank you.

Elliot AckermanGuest7:30

And if it is not cold enough, we have a lot of ice cubes here.

Doug BruntHost7:33

[laughs] Thank you, sir.

Doug BruntHost7:34

This is awesome.

Elliot AckermanGuest7:34

Cheers, man.

Elliot AckermanGuest7:35

Congratulations again on the book.

Doug BruntHost7:36

Great to see you.

Doug BruntHost7:36

Thank you.

Doug BruntHost7:40

Mm.

Doug BruntHost7:41

Oh.

Elliot AckermanGuest7:41

Nailed it, just as I had hoped.

Doug BruntHost7:43

Fuerte.

Doug BruntHost7:43

[laughs]

Elliot AckermanGuest7:44

Um, so you knew, you sort of knew in the Diesel writing-

Doug BruntHost7:49

Mm-hmm

Elliot AckermanGuest7:49

... like at a certain point, I think it's gonna be, uh, Nobel.

Doug BruntHost7:53

Yes.

Elliot AckermanGuest7:54

Um, did that make you feel sort of like... 'Cause as a writer, I feel, I f- I feel very relaxed if I know what I'm doing next.

Doug BruntHost8:02

Totally.

Elliot AckermanGuest8:02

It allows me to let go a little bit from this thing I've been so obsessed with.

Elliot AckermanGuest8:05

Was that sort of like when you saw that footnote, you know, like this is the breadcrumb to my next thing, did it make it easier for you to sort of finish and then let go of the Diesel book?

Doug BruntHost8:13

It did.

Doug BruntHost8:13

It did.

Doug BruntHost8:14

And in fact, on the, the book tour for Diesel, Diesel was super fun to run around and talk about.

Doug BruntHost8:18

I had this great slide presentation.

Elliot AckermanGuest8:20

Yeah.

Doug BruntHost8:20

So I enjoyed all those things.

Doug BruntHost8:21

But as the book tour continued to go, 'cause it, it was doing well and had sort of a long tail, so I kept getting asked to do other, you know, little events.

Doug BruntHost8:29

Nothing major, but lots of events at clubs and libraries and things like that, which I was happy to do, and it's good for the book.

Doug BruntHost8:34

But toward the end I'm like, "I gotta stop doing this.

Doug BruntHost8:35

I gotta get on Nobel." I'm, you know-

Elliot AckermanGuest8:36

Yeah

Doug BruntHost8:36

...

Doug BruntHost8:36

I really wanted to pour myself fully into it, and the more I read about it, the more I got obsessed with the story.

Doug BruntHost8:42

Started having dreams about it, and I needed to stop the Diesel dog and pony show-

Elliot AckermanGuest8:48

Mm-hmm

Doug BruntHost8:48

... and get fully on Nobel.

Doug BruntHost8:49

But after the Diesel book came out, it did, you know, sales-wise, S&S was happy, and so I signed a two-book deal.

Doug BruntHost8:57

But kind of to your point, I'm like, "I don't know if I can sign a two-book deal.

Doug BruntHost9:00

I, I might not have anything after Nobel."

Elliot AckermanGuest9:01

Yeah.

Doug BruntHost9:01

Like, I know I want to do Nobel, but I'm a total blank after that.

Doug BruntHost9:05

So it actually gave me some anxiety just signing a two-book deal, you know, knowing it's sort of like [laughs] what, well, what's gonna come next?

Elliot AckermanGuest9:11

Yeah, what's next?

Doug BruntHost9:12

Since then, of course, like something has come along that I'm equally thrilled about, so I feel good about that, but I'm back to having anxiety about what the next one will be.

Elliot AckermanGuest9:19

Yeah.

Doug BruntHost9:20

Uh, so.

Elliot AckermanGuest9:21

That's great.

Themes and erased titans9:21 – 11:54

Elliot AckermanGuest9:21

I mean, I, I, I wouldn't put words in your mouth, but I can see, like what do you, if you had to say, is the through line between these two books? If you wanna take it through the third book, you can, but you don't have to.

Elliot AckermanGuest9:31

Uh, in terms of like themes, 'cause there are definitely, you know, some real thematic connections between Diesel-

Doug BruntHost9:37

Yeah

Elliot AckermanGuest9:37

... and Nobel.

Doug BruntHost9:38

Both of them, and, and the third will have the same thing, there is a very clear through line through what will be all three books, which is experiencing history in the microcosm of a family or a person-

Elliot AckermanGuest9:51

Yeah

Doug BruntHost9:51

... against the broad canvas backdrop of these huge world events, World War I, and in this case, the Russian Revolution, Russian Civil War.

Doug BruntHost10:00

And then when you get history in a, in a textbook in school, it's just like an itinerary of events.

Doug BruntHost10:04

It's kinda meaningless unless you know, well, how did this affect a family and a person day to day? Like, when I went to bed that night and this happened, I woke up the next day, like how was life different? And if you experience history as a narrative, as a story through a person, who then as you get into the story, you realize, oh my God, this person I've almost never heard of before was hugely influential on all these events.

Elliot AckermanGuest10:25

Right.

Doug BruntHost10:25

I mean, Nobel was probably the most powerful industrialist in all of the Russian Empire.

Doug BruntHost10:29

Largest oil concern in the world-

Elliot AckermanGuest10:31

Yeah

Doug BruntHost10:31

... and one of the largest machine factories and munitions plants in the world, certainly in the Russian Empire.

Doug BruntHost10:37

So he has this, he, he, you know, he's a, a person of huge consequence.

Doug BruntHost10:40

Same with Diesel, like kind of erased from history.

Doug BruntHost10:43

So in both cases, it's, uh, you know, a microcosm sort of experience through the narrative of big events in history through a person who has been largely forgotten and erased.

Elliot AckermanGuest10:53

Mm-hmm.

Doug BruntHost10:53

And by the end of the book, you realize exactly why they were erased.

Doug BruntHost10:58

You, you know, in part it's the famous, you know, the, the winners of the war write the history.

Elliot AckermanGuest11:02

Right.

Doug BruntHost11:02

These guys were kind of on the losing side in one way or another.

Doug BruntHost11:05

You know, it, it, the world knows about Rockefeller and Morgan-

Elliot AckermanGuest11:08

Right

Doug BruntHost11:08

... and others because we've always been winning and, and-

Elliot AckermanGuest11:11

Right

Doug BruntHost11:11

... uh, so those are the ones who get the headlines.

Doug BruntHost11:12

But every country had their own Rockefeller or so, you know, something, uh, comparable.

Doug BruntHost11:18

Nobel was actually bigger than Rockefeller in Russia, but-

Elliot AckermanGuest11:20

Yeah

Doug BruntHost11:21

... uh, was basically had his whole legacy paved over, and then Stalin painted a new history on top of it that was totally false.

Elliot AckermanGuest11:29

Well, and you know what I thought was so interesting too is it's like it's not that they've been forgotten.

Elliot AckermanGuest11:33

It's like they're lying there in plain sight.

Doug BruntHost11:35

Yeah.

Elliot AckermanGuest11:36

It's like we say their names, you know, like, you know, I say Diesel every day, and you don't know what, you know, and something.

Elliot AckermanGuest11:39

This is actually what you're saying, like oh my God, that's amazing.

Elliot AckermanGuest11:41

Like we say, like most people know, oh yeah, Nobel, like that's the prize.

Doug BruntHost11:45

Mm-hmm.

Elliot AckermanGuest11:45

And, and you talk about, you know, that wing of the Nobel family.

Elliot AckermanGuest11:49

Uh, but could you just give us, 'cause I, I bet you listeners just don't have any sense of all of the Nobels.

The Nobel family saga and Baku’s oil boom11:54 – 16:53

Doug BruntHost11:54

Mm-hmm.

Elliot AckermanGuest11:54

Like just a quick overview of that family lineage and how it winds up with Emanuel, but also some of the other Nobels who are, I mean, equally fascinating.

Doug BruntHost12:02

Yes.

Doug BruntHost12:03

So there's a grandfather, and the, you know, the whole family starts in Sweden.

Doug BruntHost12:07

The grandfather faces bankruptcy in Sweden and migrates over to Russia.

Doug BruntHost12:11

And he's-

Elliot AckermanGuest12:12

And he was an inventor, right?

Doug BruntHost12:12

He's an inventor.

Elliot AckermanGuest12:13

Yeah.

Doug BruntHost12:13

He's, he's developed these undersea mines.

Doug BruntHost12:15

He invents all sorts of things.

Doug BruntHost12:16

Like, he's, he's also sort of an architect and a...... builder of bridges and things like that, but the main thing was these undersea mines that he sold to the tsar that were used in the Crimean War.

Elliot AckermanGuest12:24

Yeah.

Doug BruntHost12:25

And, uh, his first three sons are Robert, Ludvig, and Alfred-

Elliot AckermanGuest12:28

Mm-hmm

Doug BruntHost12:29

...

Doug BruntHost12:29

Nobel.

Doug BruntHost12:29

So those are the three sort of core sons of that generation.

Doug BruntHost12:33

Uh, they face bankruptcy again after having all the success with-

Elliot AckermanGuest12:36

Yeah

Doug BruntHost12:36

...

Doug BruntHost12:36

these mines in Russia, and so the father and Alfred, the youngest of the three brothers, move back to Sweden.

Doug BruntHost12:42

Alfred goes on to invent dynamite, becomes a millionaire, and that's the one that we know who's out of Russia at this point.

Doug BruntHost12:49

He's back in Sweden, then lives in France.

Doug BruntHost12:51

The two brothers that stay in Russia reinvigorate the munitions factory, and so not only are they building mines, but now they're building rifles and engines, diesel engines-

Elliot AckermanGuest13:01

Yeah

Doug BruntHost13:01

... steam engines, and boilers.

Doug BruntHost13:03

And they're really one of the most successful, uh, factories in Northern Russia, near St. Petersburg.

Doug BruntHost13:08

And so this crazy thing happens where they get an order from the tsar for 100,000 rifles, and they need wood to do the shoulder stocks of these rifles.

Doug BruntHost13:17

So Ludvig Nobel sends his older brother Robert, who's this sort of irascible adventurer type, a little, little more difficult to work with-

Elliot AckermanGuest13:23

Yeah, he's like, he's like bad boy.

Doug BruntHost13:24

He's-

Elliot AckermanGuest13:24

Like the whole time, like I'm getting real bad boy vibes.

Doug BruntHost13:27

[laughs]

Elliot AckermanGuest13:27

Like he-

Doug BruntHost13:27

And-

Elliot AckermanGuest13:27

He's having like a lot of Negronis every night.

Doug BruntHost13:29

Totally.

Elliot AckermanGuest13:30

I think.

Elliot AckermanGuest13:30

Yeah.

Doug BruntHost13:30

Totally.

Doug BruntHost13:30

He's sort of irascible, and he's the oldest, which i- is, kind of furthers the tension-

Elliot AckermanGuest13:34

Right

Doug BruntHost13:34

... really in a way, but, 'cause his younger brothers are doing better.

Elliot AckermanGuest13:36

Yeah, like a Fredo, maybe Fredo vibes.

Doug BruntHost13:38

A little Fredo-ish, yeah.

Elliot AckermanGuest13:39

Yeah, a little Fredo.

Doug BruntHost13:39

Slightly Fredo.

Elliot AckermanGuest13:40

Yeah.

Doug BruntHost13:40

Um, so he goes down to this area in the Caucuses of Southern Russia, near the Caspian Sea, where there's known to be these big walnut trees, and he's gonna buy all the wood for the rifles to fulfill the order for the tsar.

Doug BruntHost13:52

And, uh, Ludvig gives him 20,000 silver rubles to go buy all the wood they need.

Doug BruntHost13:56

He goes down there, and he gets into this, you know, sort of mythical land of w- you know, Jason and the Argonauts.

Doug BruntHost14:02

This is all that sort of Southern Russia, Caspian, Black Sea-

Elliot AckermanGuest14:04

Right

Doug BruntHost14:05

... area that's in the Greek mythology, and the land of the eternal flame, and he sees, you know, pools of petroleum on the surface.

Doug BruntHost14:13

Um, you know, the eternal flame, there's...

Doug BruntHost14:15

Things are-

Elliot AckermanGuest14:16

Talk about that, 'cause it's super-

Doug BruntHost14:17

... busting

Elliot AckermanGuest14:17

... interesting.

Elliot AckermanGuest14:17

I didn't even know about it.

Elliot AckermanGuest14:18

Like, so it's, the eternal flame is literally-

Doug BruntHost14:20

It's like, it's gas leaking out through fissures in rocks-

Elliot AckermanGuest14:22

Yeah

Doug BruntHost14:22

... that is lit, and you can go there and, like, light your cigar on it.

Elliot AckermanGuest14:25

[laughs]

Doug BruntHost14:25

It's, it's wild.

Doug BruntHost14:26

But back then, there's no technology.

Doug BruntHost14:28

At this time, you know, people are skimming the oil off the surface, and then they use it for, you know, lubricants or salves, and, and it's, you know, there's a little bit of distilling for kerosene for illumination and things like that.

Doug BruntHost14:40

This is in the 1870s.

Doug BruntHost14:41

The combustion engine doesn't really exist as a market for fuel.

Doug BruntHost14:45

There is a market for fuel, though.

Doug BruntHost14:47

Like, you, kerosene for illumination is just getting going.

Doug BruntHost14:49

Standard Oil was founded in 1870.

Elliot AckermanGuest14:51

Right.

Doug BruntHost14:51

This trip Robert makes is in 1873.

Doug BruntHost14:54

So he's down there and says, "I'm not buying wood.

Doug BruntHost14:57

I'm spending this 20,000 rubles on land and oil infrastructure." So he does-

Elliot AckermanGuest15:02

And he doesn't tell his brother.

Elliot AckermanGuest15:03

I thought that was fascinating.

Doug BruntHost15:04

After the fact-

Elliot AckermanGuest15:04

Yeah [laughs]

Doug BruntHost15:05

...

Doug BruntHost15:05

he goes, "Hey, guess what I did?" And the brother's like, "Oh my," you know, like, "I knew you were gonna screw it up."

Elliot AckermanGuest15:08

Robert.

Elliot AckermanGuest15:08

Yeah.

Doug BruntHost15:09

But then he takes a closer look at what Robert's done, and he's like, "Whoa, m- you know, maybe this is actually is a great idea, and what a, what a stroke of luck." So they get into the oil business.

Doug BruntHost15:17

18- so fast-forward a few years, 1888, um, Ludvig passes away, and his 29-year-old son, Emanuel, takes over the business, and it goes to the moon.

Doug BruntHost15:28

Em- Emanuel's just a brilliant operator, brilliant financier, the right man at the right time for a company that was looking to sort of get to a grander scale.

Elliot AckermanGuest15:37

You know, and as family stories go, too, it's, like, sort of rare that you have, like, a third generation.

Elliot AckermanGuest15:42

I'm reading your book, and I know what...

Elliot AckermanGuest15:44

You know, I'm like, "Okay, Nobels.

Elliot AckermanGuest15:46

I think there's, like, a prize and some dynamite somewhere in here."

Doug BruntHost15:48

[laughs]

Elliot AckermanGuest15:48

But, like, that's sort of what I know, and as I'm reading, I'm like, "I know I'm gonna learn more." And then I'm like, you know, "Oh, it's the mines.

Elliot AckermanGuest15:54

I forgot the mines.

Elliot AckermanGuest15:54

That's where they make all their money." They're like, "No, that all goes bankrupt." And then, you know, and I'm kind of like, you know, trying to follow, you know, where do they kill it?

Doug BruntHost16:00

Mm-hmm.

Elliot AckermanGuest16:01

And you know, and it's, and it's with Emanuel, like, in this third generation.

Elliot AckermanGuest16:04

Like, I think it's-

Doug BruntHost16:05

Yeah

Elliot AckermanGuest16:05

... just, like, really, you know, fascinating as, as, as a story.

Elliot AckermanGuest16:08

You don't often see that.

Elliot AckermanGuest16:10

Usually, like, the bust comes much earlier to-

Doug BruntHost16:12

That's right

Elliot AckermanGuest16:12

... sort of peak of the third generation.

Doug BruntHost16:12

It, it, expression, shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves.

Elliot AckermanGuest16:14

Exactly.

Doug BruntHost16:15

Like someone crushes it-

Elliot AckermanGuest16:15

In three generations

Doug BruntHost16:16

... someone sort of, like, does okay, and then the third generation, they just blow through the whole thing.

Elliot AckermanGuest16:19

Caput.

Doug BruntHost16:19

'Cause they never saw how the, the money was first made.

Doug BruntHost16:21

They never sort of learned that ethic or the, you know, the drive to do it in the first place.

Elliot AckermanGuest16:26

Yeah.

Elliot AckermanGuest16:26

Um, well-

Doug BruntHost16:27

This does defy that, to your point.

Elliot AckermanGuest16:28

Totally defies it.

Elliot AckermanGuest16:29

So things are going swimmingly oil-wise, so they're, you know, they're building all these, like, in, you know, the...

Elliot AckermanGuest16:34

I read the galley, and I just came in here and saw the finished book, which has great photos, and it-

Doug BruntHost16:38

Yeah

Elliot AckermanGuest16:38

... gives you a sense of, like, the scope of these wells and how insane they are.

Elliot AckermanGuest16:42

Can you just talk, uh, are the...

Elliot AckermanGuest16:43

Not the wells, the w- the derricks, right?

Doug BruntHost16:45

Yeah.

Elliot AckermanGuest16:45

Where, like, you know, they're, like, wood, you know, and they're...

Elliot AckermanGuest16:48

I mean, can you talk a little about the mechanics of how, like, just gnarly it is to do-

Doug BruntHost16:52

Very gnarly

Elliot AckermanGuest16:52

...

Elliot AckermanGuest16:52

this type of work?

Engineering and logistics innovations16:53 – 20:58

Doug BruntHost16:53

It's cr- there are so many crazy stories.

Doug BruntHost16:55

One of the great things to do in doing research for a book like this is to go back and read first-person accounts, the memoirs of people who were there-

Elliot AckermanGuest17:02

Mm-hmm

Doug BruntHost17:02

... at the time.

Doug BruntHost17:03

It's, you know, little offhand comments they make about this or that add so much color-

Elliot AckermanGuest17:08

Mm-hmm

Doug BruntHost17:08

... to the story for the reader, and that's one of the things I wanna bring onto the, to the page for the reader.

Doug BruntHost17:13

So I hadn't really, I, you know, I'd never been around an oil gusher, like the eruption that happens.

Elliot AckermanGuest17:19

You didn't work with one of those in high school? [laughs]

Doug BruntHost17:21

But Stalin did, which is one of the crazy things of these things.

Elliot AckermanGuest17:24

Yeah, that's what I'm saying.

Doug BruntHost17:24

When Stalin was a kid, he was out there in the oil fields of Baku working these rigs and, and hating Nobel and hating the Rothschild family, which was another big oil player in the region, in Russia.

Doug BruntHost17:34

But these wooden oil derricks of that era, you know, before the Nobels got there, they were digging by spade.

Doug BruntHost17:39

You know, digging up oil that way.

Doug BruntHost17:41

So they come in with the technology that they've developed in Northern Russia, in St. Petersburg, with their manufacturing plant.

Doug BruntHost17:47

So they're, i- the real derrick would have an engine, often a diesel engine, drilling the bit down and tapping into the underground reserve of petroleum.

Doug BruntHost17:56

When these things hit, the explosion is unbelievable.

Doug BruntHost18:01

I had no idea, but you read these first-person accounts-

Elliot AckermanGuest18:03

Yeah

Doug BruntHost18:03

...

Doug BruntHost18:03

in these memoirs.

Doug BruntHost18:05

It throws tons of sand and dirt and rock, all the drilling equipment, way up into the air.

Doug BruntHost18:11

It goes hundreds of feet in the air.

Doug BruntHost18:12

It spreads out for many feet in diameter.

Doug BruntHost18:15

The concussion is so loud that the people working the rig go deaf.

Doug BruntHost18:19

It blows out their ears.

Elliot AckermanGuest18:20

Yeah.

Doug BruntHost18:21

And then the technology for capping wells was pretty rough at that time, so it might, that might go on for weeks, you know.... fortunes of oil blasting into the air, and then coming back and soaking the sand, so every- you're just walking in puddles of oil.

Elliot AckermanGuest18:34

What was amazing to me is these scenes you describe.

Elliot AckermanGuest18:37

I mean, I feel like the best visual of those, you know, like there's, like in There Will Be Blood, which is a movie-

Doug BruntHost18:40

Yeah

Elliot AckermanGuest18:40

...

Elliot AckermanGuest18:40

I love, you know, and you have like-

Doug BruntHost18:42

Yeah

Elliot AckermanGuest18:42

...

Elliot AckermanGuest18:42

the eardrums of, uh, the protagonist's son get blown out in one of these gushers.

Elliot AckermanGuest18:46

But then it's like, so that's happened, and you describe how these workers then, you're, they're, the oil is hemorrhaging into the ground.

Elliot AckermanGuest18:52

I mean, that's like huge fortunes.

Doug BruntHost18:55

Mm-hmm.

Elliot AckermanGuest18:56

And so can you describe... 'Cause then they have to go, it's so insane, cap it, which seems, like ins- incredibly dangerous.

Doug BruntHost19:02

Yes.

Elliot AckermanGuest19:02

Like figure out how to stop the gusher.

Doug BruntHost19:04

Yeah.

Elliot AckermanGuest19:05

The mechanics of this blew my mind.

Doug BruntHost19:06

Yeah, the, the piping is in there.

Doug BruntHost19:07

They've got to sort of get the cap on it.

Doug BruntHost19:10

S- super dangerous.

Doug BruntHost19:10

People die often trying to do this.

Doug BruntHost19:13

They borrowed a lot of...

Doug BruntHost19:14

In this case, the Nobels borrowed a lot of...

Doug BruntHost19:16

They were not shy about borrowing technology where-

Elliot AckermanGuest19:18

Yeah

Doug BruntHost19:18

...

Doug BruntHost19:18

it was existing and good.

Doug BruntHost19:20

So they, they actually had a book that, uh, that sort of recounted how Rockefeller had been so successful with drilling, uh, capping, and distributing oil.

Doug BruntHost19:32

Like he, he'd already built out a network of piping to bring oil from the fields to the refineries, and so they replicated that.

Doug BruntHost19:39

Um, but not only did they replicate that, where Rockefeller hadn't done it, they invented it.

Elliot AckermanGuest19:44

Mm-hmm.

Doug BruntHost19:44

So L- uh, Ludvig Nobel has this idea for the oil tanker, right?

Elliot AckermanGuest19:50

Yeah.

Doug BruntHost19:50

And at the time, they're putting the oil in these wooden ca- wooden barrels basically.

Doug BruntHost19:54

Like don-

Elliot AckermanGuest19:55

Like donkeys, right?

Doug BruntHost19:55

With, yeah, with donkeys-

Elliot AckermanGuest19:56

Yeah

Doug BruntHost19:56

... taking them on a little, little trailer down to a ship, and they load it on the deck of a, of a ship, steamship.

Doug BruntHost20:02

The wooden barrels are bouncing around as the ship goes through the waves, so they're constantly breaking or leaking.

Doug BruntHost20:07

And so he says, "There's b- there's a better way." And with all of his experience as an engineer, building engines and boilers for steam engines, he says, "Let's build an oil tanker with steel cisterns inside the hull of the ship, and we'll fill those with oil, and we won't have all these problems with breakage and leaking and, and, and other things." And so he takes it around to all the other oil...

Doug BruntHost20:27

He was like, "Well, let's do this together.

Doug BruntHost20:29

Like, we'll share the expenses.

Doug BruntHost20:30

We'll, we'll develop the, the ship, and then we'll build some together." They're all like, "I don't believe this will even work." So he designs it himself.

Doug BruntHost20:37

He contracts with a shipbuilding, uh, firm, and builds it himself, and pioneers the world's first oil tanker that first is, uh, usable up the Volga River-

Elliot AckermanGuest20:48

Right

Doug BruntHost20:48

... to take oil into Northern Russia from Southern Russia, but then ocean-going as well, with diesel engines again.

Elliot AckermanGuest20:52

Mm-hmm, yeah.

Doug BruntHost20:52

I mean, the, the overlap with Diesel-

Elliot AckermanGuest20:53

It's a lot

Doug BruntHost20:54

... yeah, for any fan of Diesel, like this is such a companion book.

Elliot AckermanGuest20:58

Yeah.

Czarist Russia: reform, Rasputin, and Nobel’s standing20:58 – 32:04

Elliot AckermanGuest20:58

Let's talk a little bit about like, 'cause like Russia is a very big character in this book.

Doug BruntHost21:03

Yeah.

Elliot AckermanGuest21:03

Um, and pre-revolutionary, like, you know, late 19th century-

Doug BruntHost21:08

Elliot AckermanGuest21:08

...

Elliot AckermanGuest21:08

Czarist Russia, and I kind of...

Elliot AckermanGuest21:11

You know, I, I actually learned that it w- you know, it w- it was not...

Elliot AckermanGuest21:15

Just describe it, 'cause it was not actually...

Elliot AckermanGuest21:16

I mean, s- some of, some of my preconceptions of what the business atmosphere was like, what some of the, Nicholas II's goals were-

Doug BruntHost21:24

Yeah

Elliot AckermanGuest21:24

... like sort of ser- I was like, "Yeah, oh, you know, you're right.

Elliot AckermanGuest21:26

This wasn't kind of what I assumed in terms of, you know, how, how business-friendly they might've been." I'm just wondering if you could kind of talk about the atmosphere that Immanuel Nobel is working in as he's setting up his oil empire.

Doug BruntHost21:36

It's interesting, and, and let me go back even a bit-

Elliot AckermanGuest21:38

Yeah, please

Doug BruntHost21:39

... um, farther than that because Russia, to this day, like e- even as we go from, you know, the Cold War and Kennedy and the Cuban Missile Crisis to Gorbachev, and it's, "Oh-

Elliot AckermanGuest21:48

Yeah

Doug BruntHost21:48

... it's good now, but no, it's bad again," that cycle of reform, repress-

Elliot AckermanGuest21:53

Yes

Doug BruntHost21:53

... has been going on from early Romanovs.

Elliot AckermanGuest21:55

Yeah.

Doug BruntHost21:55

You know, there were czars who were like, there was Alexander II, right? [laughs]

Elliot AckermanGuest22:00

Right.

Elliot AckermanGuest22:01

Yeah, I guess so.

Doug BruntHost22:01

There's so many, right?

Elliot AckermanGuest22:02

Yeah.

Doug BruntHost22:03

But he was the, he was the czar liberator.

Elliot AckermanGuest22:04

Right.

Doug BruntHost22:04

So he freed the serfs a few years before Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves here.

Elliot AckermanGuest22:08

Right.

Doug BruntHost22:08

Like, Lincoln sort of got a blueprint in a way from Czar Alexander II, if you can imagine that.

Doug BruntHost22:14

And then Lincoln supported, or sorry, Czar Alexander II supported Lincoln in the Civil War.

Doug BruntHost22:18

They were, you know, they were, uh, on good terms.

Doug BruntHost22:22

So the Russian czars even were trying to sort of reform and, and move, you know, not, they weren't going all the way to, like, Great Britain of the-

Elliot AckermanGuest22:30

Mm-hmm

Doug BruntHost22:30

... constitutional monarchy, but they were looking to have, uh, reform in a more sort of modern Western style of government.

Elliot AckermanGuest22:36

And that works out great for them, right?

Doug BruntHost22:38

Yeah, [laughs] right.

Elliot AckermanGuest22:39

[laughs]

Doug BruntHost22:39

So, so it, it turns out, like Russia maybe is a little more Eastern than Western-

Elliot AckermanGuest22:43

Right

Doug BruntHost22:43

... uh, in the, in the sort of hardcore, you know, like Japan, where the, the Emperor Hirohito is, like, observed as sort of a deity.

Doug BruntHost22:51

It's the same in Russia.

Elliot AckermanGuest22:52

Right.

Doug BruntHost22:52

You know, not only is he the head of the church, he's actually viewed as more of a demigod, like he's really God's person on earth, and, and is, is more of like a demigod.

Doug BruntHost23:00

They're trying to sort of modernize, be a little more Western in their, in their, uh, government, but every time they do that, that just seems to sort of open up the door for subversives-

Elliot AckermanGuest23:08

Right

Doug BruntHost23:08

... who are fully opposed to any kind of monarchy at all, which is ultimately what Marx and Engels and then Lenin and Stalin come to be for the czar.

Doug BruntHost23:18

It's sort of, uh, this evolving thing.

Doug BruntHost23:20

By the time it gets to Nicholas II and Nobel, um, Nicholas is a feckless, weak ruler.

Elliot AckermanGuest23:28

Mm-hmm.

Doug BruntHost23:28

He's undermined a bit by the intrusion of this phenomenal character.

Elliot AckermanGuest23:32

Yeah.

Doug BruntHost23:32

For all of history, Rasputin, I mean, no one can get enough Rasputin.

Elliot AckermanGuest23:36

I li- I wish we could like cue Boney M.'s Rasputin disco beat right now.

Elliot AckermanGuest23:40

[laughs]

Doug BruntHost23:41

[laughs] Let's edit that in if we can, guys.

Elliot AckermanGuest23:43

Yeah, post-production, that'd be good, yeah.

Doug BruntHost23:43

That would be so good.

AdvertiserAd23:44

Ra, ra, Rasputin, lover of the Russian queen.

AdvertiserAd23:48

There was a cat that really was a guy.

Doug BruntHost23:50

And so he, he is trying to be business...

Doug BruntHost23:52

They're trying to, like, welcome foreign investment.

Doug BruntHost23:55

Uh, they, like there's a lot of French money from the Rothchilds that's coming in.

Elliot AckermanGuest23:59

Yeah.

Doug BruntHost23:59

And they welcome that, and so they actually, like, kind of...

Doug BruntHost24:02

The Rothchilds are Jewish, and they make some gifts.

Doug BruntHost24:04

Like, "Oh, we'll sort of lighten these Jewish, you know, bias laws."

Elliot AckermanGuest24:06

So there's this sense that they want to modernize and Western...

Elliot AckermanGuest24:08

Like isn't that always an undercurrent in Russian society, a little bit like, you know, the Europeans look down their nose at us Far Easterners, and we have to-

Doug BruntHost24:16

Yes

Elliot AckermanGuest24:16

...

Elliot AckermanGuest24:16

I mean, is that sort of...

Elliot AckermanGuest24:16

I've got a, I got those vibes reading the book.

Elliot AckermanGuest24:18

Like there's this sort of tension that s- exists with the old ways, but also the new ways inside Russia.

Doug BruntHost24:25

Yes.

Doug BruntHost24:25

They kind of knew...

Doug BruntHost24:25

Like Queen Victoria, for example, of Great Britain, looked down her nose at the, as, to use your phrase, at the, at the Russians.

Doug BruntHost24:31

They, she, they were like barbarians, you know?

Elliot AckermanGuest24:32

Yes.

Doug BruntHost24:33

Like these uncouth barbarians.

Doug BruntHost24:34

Like I would neverBut then they're all, they, you know, they all become afraid of the Germans, and so they actually start getting a little bit more cozy.

Doug BruntHost24:40

But the British always look down their noses at the Russians.

Doug BruntHost24:42

The Russians of course know that.

Elliot AckermanGuest24:43

Right.

Doug BruntHost24:44

They can sense that.

Doug BruntHost24:45

But Nicholas is ...

Doug BruntHost24:46

So, and, and they have a bit of a chip on their shoulder to try to sort of become a little bit more prestigious and...

Doug BruntHost24:51

I mean, the, the language in the Russian court is French.

Elliot AckermanGuest24:53

Mm-hmm.

Elliot AckermanGuest24:53

Right.

Doug BruntHost24:53

You know, like who...

Doug BruntHost24:54

I mean, it's crazy.

Doug BruntHost24:55

So-

Elliot AckermanGuest24:55

I honestly-

Doug BruntHost24:56

...

Doug BruntHost24:56

they want to be Western a little bit, but not-

Elliot AckermanGuest24:58

Mm-hmm

Doug BruntHost24:58

...

Doug BruntHost24:58

but they don't want to give up their power, but they'd like to have a thriving economy, so they welcome someone like the Nobel family, and Emanuel Nobel, who's actually doing w- all of a sudden...

Doug BruntHost25:09

So w- for example, when Ludvig Nobel dies in 1888, Tsar Nicholas, at this, at, uh, sorry, at this point, Tsar Alexander III, the father, the second to last tsar-

Elliot AckermanGuest25:18

Yes

Doug BruntHost25:18

... his son is Nicholas II to go.

Doug BruntHost25:19

So Alexander III is this big bear-like Russian, recognizes that not only is he exporting wheat and, and, and coal, but they have one of the most sophisticated oil, petroleum operations in the world.

Doug BruntHost25:34

So he goes to make a royal visit down in 1888 to visit Baku and the Nobel factory-

Elliot AckermanGuest25:39

Mm-hmm

Doug BruntHost25:39

... which is just unfathomable, you know.

Doug BruntHost25:41

So the whole royal entourage comes down to Baku-

Elliot AckermanGuest25:44

Yes

Doug BruntHost25:44

... all along the Caspian Sea, uh, to it.

Doug BruntHost25:47

So they're very supportive of these kinds of industrial, uh, titans within the empire, and they, they wanna promote that.

Elliot AckermanGuest25:54

And I was, you know, very interested in, like, details like, you know, the, I mean, the Nobels are a Swedish family, so I felt like sort of...

Elliot AckermanGuest26:00

And, and th- the, the overlaps of all the history is fascinating.

Elliot AckermanGuest26:03

Like for instance, the assassination attempt on Alexander II, and we mentioned he's sort of like a demagogue, and although he survives these assassination attempts, the damage is sort of done-

Doug BruntHost26:14

Yeah

Elliot AckermanGuest26:14

... because, you know, God cannot be hurt, and they see they hurt him.

Doug BruntHost26:18

Yeah.

Elliot AckermanGuest26:18

And one of the tools is dynamite.

Doug BruntHost26:20

It's so ironic.

Doug BruntHost26:22

So prior to that, I mean, there were plenty of tsars getting killed, but it was always by a family member.

Elliot AckermanGuest26:27

Right.

Doug BruntHost26:27

So I guess a god can kill a god maybe, but-

Elliot AckermanGuest26:29

Yes

Doug BruntHost26:29

...

Doug BruntHost26:29

but yeah, you're right.

Doug BruntHost26:30

So Alexander II gets, uh, has an attempt, and p- this, this draws in so...

Doug BruntHost26:34

There's so many, like it's, it's a little weird to say given the topic, but charming offshoots in the book.

Doug BruntHost26:43

One is to Dostoevsky, the, you know-

Elliot AckermanGuest26:44

Yes

Doug BruntHost26:44

...

Doug BruntHost26:44

the famous author, who is on and off again with the tsars.

Doug BruntHost26:48

Like, at one point he hates them and he's writing against them, then he's nearly assassinated, then he's spared.

Elliot AckermanGuest26:51

Right.

Doug BruntHost26:52

Then he comes back, becomes more friendly with the tsar, and laments the fact that there was an assassination attempt, and because, as you say, it sort of pierces this veneer of godlikeness.

Elliot AckermanGuest27:04

Mm-hmm.

Doug BruntHost27:04

You know, h- who could take a shot at the tsar? So there's a, a failed assassination attempt.

Doug BruntHost27:09

The tsar survives, but Dostoevsky's like, "But they shot..." Like, th- just the very idea that, you know, a non-family member, a non-deity would take a shot at the tsar is just, like, a very big change in Russian society, that a s- a civilian, a, you know, any citizen, any person in Russia, a common person could try to kill the tsar.

Elliot AckermanGuest27:29

Yes.

Doug BruntHost27:29

Was a, was a big shift.

Doug BruntHost27:30

Pri- I mean, tsars were getting killed all the time.

Doug BruntHost27:31

[laughs]

Elliot AckermanGuest27:32

Mm-hmm.

Doug BruntHost27:32

They were the...

Doug BruntHost27:32

It was, like, terrible to be a Romanov, 'cause most likely, like, your cousin or brother, like one, one tsar was killed by his son.

Elliot AckermanGuest27:38

Right.

Doug BruntHost27:38

I mean, it's just, like, you know, really brutal.

Elliot AckermanGuest27:40

Yeah, there's not a lot of dying in bed.

Elliot AckermanGuest27:42

Um.

Doug BruntHost27:43

[laughs]

Elliot AckermanGuest27:44

But then I also thought what was fascinating too is that, uh, Emanuel Nobel sort of has this, like, trump card he gets vis-a-vis his business competitors, um, which is, and I think it's on the visit that you mentioned, he, for his services to the petroleum industry-

Doug BruntHost28:01

Mm-hmm

Elliot AckermanGuest28:01

... is offered, he gets Russian citizenship.

Doug BruntHost28:03

That's right.

Doug BruntHost28:03

So after Alexander III comes down to Baku, 29-year-old Emanuel Nobel, who's taken over for this company in 1888, they give him the offer, which I think is, you pretty much have to take, I suppose-

Elliot AckermanGuest28:15

Right

Doug BruntHost28:15

...

Doug BruntHost28:15

if it's offered.

Doug BruntHost28:15

But they offer him Russian citizenship.

Doug BruntHost28:19

So he accepts and becomes a Russian citizen, the only Nobel ever to do so before or since-

Elliot AckermanGuest28:25

Mm-hmm

Doug BruntHost28:26

... uh, to become a citizen of Russia.

Elliot AckermanGuest28:28

Right.

Doug BruntHost28:29

And that's a huge leg up, because there were laws.

Doug BruntHost28:32

There were, they were, they were trying to promote domestic success of their industry.

Elliot AckermanGuest28:36

Yes.

Doug BruntHost28:36

So there were laws, at least one board member has to be a Russian citizen.

Doug BruntHost28:39

There was, there were plenty of laws against Jewish people, which has made it hugely uphill for the Rothschilds.

Elliot AckermanGuest28:45

Right.

Doug BruntHost28:46

But he does have this trump card.

Doug BruntHost28:48

He, he lives mainly in St. Petersburg, so he's-

Elliot AckermanGuest28:50

Mm-hmm

Doug BruntHost28:50

... very proximate to the ministers of industry, and the royal court, and government.

Doug BruntHost28:55

Um, but being a citizen also legally changes things for him for the better in Russia.

Elliot AckermanGuest28:59

Right.

Elliot AckermanGuest28:59

And I assume, you know, being a Russian citizen in the middle of the Russian Revolution, like, what could possibly go wrong? [laughs]

Doug BruntHost29:05

[laughs] Yes.

Doug BruntHost29:05

Uh, s- later, being a friend of the tsars is not so good.

Elliot AckermanGuest29:08

Right.

Elliot AckermanGuest29:09

So with that note, maybe we kind of back up a second to the oil fields of Baku.

Elliot AckermanGuest29:15

So now Emanuel Nobel is a Russian citizen.

Elliot AckermanGuest29:18

He's in tight with the tsars, assumingly the, the oil fields in Baku are, like, a great place to work, good dental, good health insurance.

Doug BruntHost29:26

Oh, yeah, of course.

Doug BruntHost29:26

Yeah, yeah, nice, you know, uh, corporate housing, the whole-

Elliot AckermanGuest29:29

Right

Doug BruntHost29:29

... yeah, yeah.

Elliot AckermanGuest29:30

So sort of what late 1800s, what's sort of the, what are the...

Elliot AckermanGuest29:32

Late 1800s into the early 1900s, sort of what are the, what are the political vibes in Russia, in Baku? Uh, what's sort of stirring in the pot?

Doug BruntHost29:42

Well, h- here is a place where Emanuel Nobel really separates himself.

Elliot AckermanGuest29:45

Mm-hmm.

Doug BruntHost29:46

He is very forward-thinking.

Doug BruntHost29:48

He's, he's a much more enlightened sort of Western European, al- almo- even beyond that really in terms of taking care of his employees.

Doug BruntHost29:55

He builds employee housing.

Doug BruntHost29:56

He's got, uh, a library and a gaming hall.

Doug BruntHost30:00

It, there's...

Doug BruntHost30:01

It, it, it's a good place to work, so much so that the employees proudly call themselves Nobelites.

Elliot AckermanGuest30:07

Mm-hmm.

Doug BruntHost30:07

And it's, it's the place to work.

Doug BruntHost30:08

The other owners, there's a great line, it's in, uh, uh, Simon, uh, Sebag Montefiore.

Doug BruntHost30:14

Am I saying that right?

Elliot AckermanGuest30:15

Yes.

Elliot AckermanGuest30:15

Yes.

Elliot AckermanGuest30:15

Mm-hmm.

Doug BruntHost30:15

Montefiore? Yeah.

Doug BruntHost30:16

So he's got a, he's got a line that I quote in the book that, you know, it's, "It is known that in all of Ba- Baku," he sort of compares Baku to a cross between a, a Western town and, uh, I, I can't even remember the quote, but it like-

Elliot AckermanGuest30:28

Was it, like, Dante's Inferno or something or?

Doug BruntHost30:30

Basically.

Doug BruntHost30:30

It was-

Elliot AckermanGuest30:30

Yeah

Doug BruntHost30:30

... basically, yeah.

Elliot AckermanGuest30:31

That's the quote, yeah.

Doug BruntHost30:31

And he said there's only known to be, you know, like, 10 honest people in the entire area.

Doug BruntHost30:36

W- you know, eight Azerbaijanis or something-

Elliot AckermanGuest30:38

Mm-hmm

Doug BruntHost30:39

... and, and Ema- the Swede, Nobel.Uh, so he, he's very good to his employees, whereas most other petroleum owners and operators are cruel and, you know, basically sucking the, the, as much profit out of it as they can, where he's a little bit more forward-thinking.

Doug BruntHost30:53

Like, if they wanna work here, they're gonna be more productive.

Doug BruntHost30:55

It's, it's gonna be the place to be, which is super smart, unless some- something upends all of Russia, which-

Elliot AckermanGuest31:00

Mm-hmm

Doug BruntHost31:00

... you know, of course he's, he's very forward-thinking in, in sort of developing his own enterprise there in, in Southern Russia, which works all the way through to, uh, the revolution of 1905, which I think is kind of where you're going because the Marxist doctrine is spreading like-

Elliot AckermanGuest31:17

Right

Doug BruntHost31:17

... wildfire, and ironically, it's spreading through the distribution, the very distribution networks that Nobel creates.

Doug BruntHost31:22

They put pamphlets on cargo ships that travel throughout Russia, and trains that travel throughout Russia.

Doug BruntHost31:28

So the tsar's wondering like, "How the hell are these communist pamphlets getting all over the empire?"

Elliot AckermanGuest31:33

Yes.

Doug BruntHost31:33

And they're, they're sending them on the very distribution networks that the oil and wheat and other things are, are traveling on.

Doug BruntHost31:41

But Baku, because of this very disparate gap between the most wealthy and the most poor and the most sort of oppressed, is the widest, becomes really the hotbed for the communist doctrine.

Elliot AckermanGuest31:52

Mm-hmm.

Doug BruntHost31:52

So while St. Petersburg and other areas of the empire are moving a, a, a little more, um, I, I guess calmly, Baku becomes a hotbed for communist insurrection.

Elliot AckermanGuest32:04

Right.

Midroll break music32:04 – 32:11

Elliot AckermanGuest32:04

[upbeat music]

Doug BruntHost32:05

We're gonna take a short break, and we'll be right back.

Doug BruntHost32:07

[upbeat music]

Young Stalin and revolutionary ferment32:13 – 37:06

Elliot AckermanGuest32:13

So let's talk about Stalin, 'cause he's sort of the other great character slash, I don't wanna go as far as say villain, but his, his sort of presence looms large as, you know, the Nobels are thriving.

Elliot AckermanGuest32:25

He kind of wanders onto the page.

Elliot AckermanGuest32:28

Like, what is the, what is the young Stalin like? Kinda what is he getting up to? Um, you know, like is, is his star always shining brightly, or is this sort of a uncertain proposition as terms of what he's gonna do?

Doug BruntHost32:40

Stalin might be the most unlikely person ever to become the man he became.

Elliot AckermanGuest32:45

Yeah.

Doug BruntHost32:45

You know, this crazy, uh, maybe most, uh, deadly dictator of the century.

Doug BruntHost32:50

He's born in this hardscrabble, really rough situation in the country of Georgia.

Doug BruntHost32:58

His father's a shoe cobbler who's an alcoholic and basically abuses him and then abandons him.

Doug BruntHost33:02

His mother, as a result, at least emotionally abuses him, probably physically abuses him a little bit, and also becomes a prostitute, although that's more sometimes in an effort to, you know, have enough money to support him-

Elliot AckermanGuest33:15

Right

Doug BruntHost33:15

...

Doug BruntHost33:15

in a way.

Elliot AckermanGuest33:15

Right, right.

Doug BruntHost33:16

But, uh, her idea for him, she's a very, uh, involved mother, so she's, she's, uh, got a plan for him, and she puts him in the seminary.

Doug BruntHost33:25

Like Stalin, if you can believe it, was meant to be a priest.

Doug BruntHost33:29

He went-

Elliot AckermanGuest33:29

Could you imagine if Stalin was your priest [laughs]? I mean-

Doug BruntHost33:32

Giving c- Totally

Elliot AckermanGuest33:33

... confession to Stalin.

Doug BruntHost33:34

[laughs] Which-

Elliot AckermanGuest33:35

I mean, it's, I guess many people however are forced to give confession to Stalin, but my God.

Doug BruntHost33:38

I mean, it's like, what a sliding door.

Elliot AckermanGuest33:39

Yeah, yeah.

Doug BruntHost33:39

It's the most amazing thing if he actually became a priest.

Elliot AckermanGuest33:42

Crazy.

Doug BruntHost33:42

He, I mean, I shudder to think at the, at the church of the, if that had happened.

Doug BruntHost33:46

But he, so he's in a seminary studying to be a priest for many years.

Doug BruntHost33:49

He does become exposed to Marxist doctrine at that time, and so in his later years of studying at the seminary, he kind of abandons that track and becomes, you know, more than a, a rebellious schoolchild, but becomes a full-blown revolutionary connected to Lenin, and, uh, ultimately becomes Lenin's sort of main man in Southern Russia.

Elliot AckermanGuest34:09

Mm-hmm.

Doug BruntHost34:09

So he's, he's from Georgia and that whole Azerbaijan region where Nobel is establishing his oil concern and, as we mentioned earlier, worked for Rothschild's and Nobel, and, um, basically becomes a gangster in Southern Russia.

Doug BruntHost34:24

He's like Lenin's gangster and source of funds from Southern Russia.

Elliot AckermanGuest34:28

If I can interrupt you for a second, 'cause that's something I also, you know, the- this book really reminded me is, I mean, you know, the three big guys of that period, you know, Stalin, Trotsky, Lenin.

Doug BruntHost34:39

Mm-hmm.

Elliot AckermanGuest34:39

Uh, you know, both Lenin and Trotsky are, you know, they're pretty blue-blooded.

Elliot AckermanGuest34:44

I mean, they're from sort of intellectual families.

Elliot AckermanGuest34:46

If I mess this up, Lenin's, was it his older brother was implicated in the plot to kill Alexander II? So there's-

Doug BruntHost34:54

That's right.

Elliot AckermanGuest34:55

Yeah, so there's some, you know-

Doug BruntHost34:56

Yeah

Elliot AckermanGuest34:56

... obviously antipathy there.

Elliot AckermanGuest34:58

But then Lenin is sort of not in Russia for, like, quite some time.

Doug BruntHost35:03

Yeah.

Elliot AckermanGuest35:03

And Sta- Stalin is living this sort of like, of the three of them, the sort of more authentic, like, uh, you know, Baku gangster's paradise life.

Doug BruntHost35:12

[laughs]

Elliot AckermanGuest35:12

Um, whereas the others are sort of, you know, writing their papers.

Elliot AckermanGuest35:14

I mean, Stalin is writing, right? He's printing these, you know, he's very-

Doug BruntHost35:16

Yes, but he's, like, in Finland or Sweden.

Doug BruntHost35:18

He's all over the place.

Elliot AckermanGuest35:19

He's all over the place.

Doug BruntHost35:19

He's not in Russia for, from, like, 1900 to the revolution, 1917, he's almost never in Russia.

Doug BruntHost35:24

Like, he dips in and out a couple of times.

Elliot AckermanGuest35:27

Right.

Elliot AckermanGuest35:27

So as this, like, political sort of ferment is going on in the early 1900s, sort of how does Nobel dealing with it? How are other industrialists dealing with it? Does it feel inevitable that all of the Russian Empire is gonna go off this cliff if, you know, and all of Russian industry will go off a cliff in 1911, '12, or does that seem, would seem, would that seem like a very far-fetched proposition?

Doug BruntHost35:50

Far-fetched, I think, yeah.

Doug BruntHost35:51

So 1905, that revolution, which 1905 is, is Bloody Sunday in St. Petersburg.

Elliot AckermanGuest35:56

Yeah.

Doug BruntHost35:56

There's a, a huge upheaval in Baku as well, where much of the oil infrastructure is destroyed.

Doug BruntHost36:01

Nobel got off easy because of the Nobelites.

Doug BruntHost36:04

You know, he, he was a, a very, um, known to be a, a kind employer, and so the people who were ransacking and burning and tearing down all the infrastructure largely left him alone.

Doug BruntHost36:16

He had some damage, but nowhere near the rest of what happened in Baku.

Doug BruntHost36:20

The Russian oi- And it takes many years for the Southern Russia and the Russian oil industry to come back online to levels that were prior to 1905.

Elliot AckermanGuest36:27

Right.

Doug BruntHost36:27

That really set them back in a, in a large way.

Doug BruntHost36:29

But by the war, by 1914 and the, and the years preceding the war, Nobel's back, and not only is he back, but after a couple of sort of attempted takeovers of things, i- including b- a conglomerate run by the British, he's controlling more than half of all of Russian oil, which is-... mostly back online by this time.

Doug BruntHost36:49

So he, he more than any other single person in the world, he controls more oil than anyone by the, by the outset of the war, largely through his brilliance as a business manager.

Elliot AckermanGuest36:59

Right.

Elliot AckermanGuest37:00

And so First World War kicks off, that changes everything.

War, revolution, and the scramble for Baku37:06 – 42:31

Elliot AckermanGuest37:06

I'm not gonna make you spoil the book, but can you kind of tease the last third of the book, and then I got some other questions for you.

Elliot AckermanGuest37:11

So where is this all, where, you know, what is the cliff that we're kind of heading for with Stalin and Nobel and the empire that he's created as we sort of head into the First World War?

Doug BruntHost37:22

Good.

Doug BruntHost37:22

So I won't spoil the book-

Elliot AckermanGuest37:23

Yeah

Doug BruntHost37:23

... because the, the ending is just totally insane.

Doug BruntHost37:26

But as everyone listening knows, World War I happens.

Doug BruntHost37:30

What Russia has a revolution.

Doug BruntHost37:32

Uh, there's the February Revolution, which is basically the tsar abdicates, then there's the October Revolution only months later, where the Bolsheviks throw out the, the government that came in in February, now we've got a communist Bolshevik regime run by Lenin.

Doug BruntHost37:47

And at this point, it's total bedlam in Russia.

Elliot AckermanGuest37:50

Right.

Doug BruntHost37:50

This kicks off the Russian Civil War.

Doug BruntHost37:53

The entire world is focused on Nobel's oil.

Doug BruntHost37:56

You've got the odd...

Doug BruntHost37:57

Because World War I is still happening.

Elliot AckermanGuest37:58

Yeah.

Doug BruntHost37:58

So you've got this Russian conflict going on in the midst of World War I. I mean, it's totally nuts.

Doug BruntHost38:04

And all the prizes in Russia, which is, by the way, wheat, tons of munitions, tons of oil and coal and other raw mater- uh, minerals that you, you need copper and bauxite and all these other things to sort of run a war, not to mention, you know, a couple million, like, German POWs.

Elliot AckermanGuest38:23

Yeah.

Doug BruntHost38:24

Um, so it's a big deal of what Russia's gonna do.

Doug BruntHost38:28

Lenin is nominally in charge only, but just, he's barely in charge.

Elliot AckermanGuest38:33

Yeah.

Doug BruntHost38:33

I mean, it is like the communist regime, the Bolsheviks, are hanging on by a thread.

Doug BruntHost38:37

So everyone's really diplomatically playing very carefully with them, because the Germans don't wanna be too hard with Lenin and have him call up the British and say, "Hey, let's get together because these Germans are really being tough on me." And the British feel the same way.

Doug BruntHost38:49

They, they've, they've gotta do kid gloves with Lenin 'cause they don't wanna throw him into the arms of Germany.

Doug BruntHost38:54

And so he manages to thread this crazy needle.

Doug BruntHost38:57

He's got barely any power.

Doug BruntHost38:58

He's got no military really to speak of.

Doug BruntHost39:00

He certainly couldn't take on a foreign power.

Doug BruntHost39:02

And yet everyone's careful with him because he is nominally in charge of the treasures of Russia, which are mostly composed of Nobel's oil-

Elliot AckermanGuest39:12

Right

Doug BruntHost39:12

... down by the Caspian Sea.

Doug BruntHost39:14

Uh, so it's just a, a crazy thing.

Doug BruntHost39:16

Nobel, meanwhile, is trying to say, "I still have this oil.

Doug BruntHost39:20

It's mine.

Doug BruntHost39:21

Like, I built this whole thing." And the Bolsheviks have other ideas.

Doug BruntHost39:25

And so from there, this crazy ending ensues of what's gonna happen, not only with Stalin and Lenin and the communists and Nobel, but the whole international community.

Doug BruntHost39:36

The British, Baku is crawling with spies.

Doug BruntHost39:39

Crawling with British-

Elliot AckermanGuest39:40

Yeah

Doug BruntHost39:40

... spies and Ameri- the Japanese.

Elliot AckermanGuest39:41

People, people forget-

Doug BruntHost39:42

It's all over the place

Elliot AckermanGuest39:43

... and they, so yeah, the Americans are like, "We're there-"

Doug BruntHost39:45

Yeah

Elliot AckermanGuest39:46

... "in Russia."

Doug BruntHost39:46

Yeah.

Elliot AckermanGuest39:46

You know what I mean? They're there at the end of the First World War.

Elliot AckermanGuest39:48

There are American soldiers, like, in Russia in the midst of all of this.

Elliot AckermanGuest39:52

Um, it's the most insane jump ball, geopolitical jump ball-

Doug BruntHost39:55

[laughs]

Elliot AckermanGuest39:56

... that like I, you know, have, have ever-

Doug BruntHost39:58

That's a great line.

Doug BruntHost39:58

Yeah

Elliot AckermanGuest39:58

... have read about it, you know? And, and, and like to think about it happening today, like, it blows your mind that there's so many competing interests.

Doug BruntHost40:03

It really does.

Doug BruntHost40:04

And it, uh, there are people like Winston Churchill saying, "With 100,000 troops..." This is, this is sort of like going forward a little bit to the end of World War I.

Doug BruntHost40:12

You know, they're all in, in France and they're talking about the, the peace negotiations of how we're gonna wrap all this, this whole thing up.

Doug BruntHost40:17

By the way, the Russians aren't invited because it's the communists, not the tsar, and the communists pulled out of the war, so they're like, "Well, screw you, you're not part of the peace talks because you pulled out of the war," did this separate peace.

Doug BruntHost40:27

And Churchill's saying, "With 100,000 troops, we go in there and we nip this thing in the bud.

Doug BruntHost40:33

There will be no communism." There was no communism anywhere in the world until Lenin put it into play in like-

Elliot AckermanGuest40:41

Yeah

Doug BruntHost40:41

... 1917, '18.

Doug BruntHost40:41

Before that, it was just Marx and Engels talking about these ideas over beers and smoking clay pipes in pubs.

Elliot AckermanGuest40:47

Right, right.

Doug BruntHost40:48

You know, it didn't exist.

Doug BruntHost40:49

So if people listened to Churchill at that time in 1919, 1920, we would have a century without communism.

Doug BruntHost40:56

Wouldn't happen.

Elliot AckermanGuest40:57

Yeah.

Doug BruntHost40:57

We sent...

Doug BruntHost40:58

And, and 100,000 troops, that's like rounding error-

Elliot AckermanGuest41:01

Yes

Doug BruntHost41:01

... compared to what they did in World War I.

Doug BruntHost41:03

Of course, the flip side is, like, they had lo- they had just lost so many lives.

Doug BruntHost41:08

Britain was so far in debt.

Doug BruntHost41:10

They hadn't spent money on all the social programs they need because it's been spent all on war and they're still in massive debt.

Doug BruntHost41:15

No one had any appetite for sending 100,000 troops and messing around in Russia.

Doug BruntHost41:19

And everyone also thought that the Bolsheviks were gonna last about a month.

Elliot AckermanGuest41:23

Yeah.

Doug BruntHost41:23

You know? Like, just leave these guys to themselves.

Doug BruntHost41:26

S- Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin, the three you mentioned, they've never run anything in their lives, let alone this multicultural, massive country that's, like, barely stitched together.

Doug BruntHost41:37

Give 'em a few months, they'll fall on their faces.

Doug BruntHost41:39

We'll deal with the next guys.

Elliot AckermanGuest41:40

And they haven't run oil fields.

Doug BruntHost41:44

[laughs]

Elliot AckermanGuest41:44

And Emanuel Nobel is a Russian, and he knows how to run the oil fields.

Elliot AckermanGuest41:50

So with that semi-cliffhanger, 'cause he's got some leverage-

Doug BruntHost41:53

Yeah

Elliot AckermanGuest41:54

... you know, you show us sort of how the story ends.

Elliot AckermanGuest41:57

And I don't wanna spoil it.

Doug BruntHost41:58

Yeah.

Elliot AckermanGuest41:59

So people have to get the book.

Doug BruntHost41:59

I'll just add just one little bit.

Elliot AckermanGuest42:00

Please.

Doug BruntHost42:01

He has summoned Citizen Nobel, please come to Moscow, where they've moved the capital 'cause they're so afraid of St. Petersburg getting taken by the German army.

Doug BruntHost42:08

So now they're now in Moscow, and they say, "Citizen Nobel, please come to Moscow to talk about how we're gonna, like, get these oil production, uh, facilities back online."

Elliot AckermanGuest42:17

Yeah.

Doug BruntHost42:17

And, and there we are.

Elliot AckermanGuest42:18

And there they are, and that takes us into the story.

Elliot AckermanGuest42:20

So my, my, my next question is how excited was your family when you told them that they were gonna spend all of their vacations on very short trips in Baku? [laughs]

Research travel and archives42:32 – 44:15

Doug BruntHost42:32

[laughs] So I, there is an amazing story on that which is not Baku, but it is Stockholm, Sweden.

Elliot AckermanGuest42:37

Okay.

Doug BruntHost42:38

So we took this Scandinavian trip that was so fun, by the way.

Elliot AckermanGuest42:41

Yeah.

Doug BruntHost42:41

If you and Lee, uh, Elliot's beautiful wife, Lee Carpenter, is an, uh, an amazing writer and amazing person.

Elliot AckermanGuest42:48

Mm-hmm.

Doug BruntHost42:48

Mm-hmm.We took a Scandinavian trip, which you guys should do.

Elliot AckermanGuest42:52

Cool.

Doug BruntHost42:52

So we went to Finland and Sweden and, um, Norway.

Doug BruntHost42:57

And we were in, in Sweden.

Doug BruntHost42:58

I had just connected with this terrific, uh, author and, um, journalist named Ingrid Carlberg.

Elliot AckermanGuest43:04

Mm-hmm.

Doug BruntHost43:04

And she wrote this great biography on Alfred Nobel.

Doug BruntHost43:06

So we're gonna get together at the Grand Hotel in Stockholm, and I'm like, "Guys, I'm taking a day out." So they have all these plans-

Elliot AckermanGuest43:11

Sure

Doug BruntHost43:11

... to like go around.

Doug BruntHost43:12

I'm like, "You know, just like a little, little work for dad."

Elliot AckermanGuest43:14

Yeah.

Doug BruntHost43:14

"We're gonna, gonna, uh, splice in here." And so I went to, uh, meet Ingrid, and I also spent some time at the Center for Business History in Stockholm-

Elliot AckermanGuest43:21

Hmm.

Elliot AckermanGuest43:21

Uh-huh

Doug BruntHost43:21

... which is this incredible archive where much of the material, once the USSR sort of collapsed, much of this material was pulled out of Azerbaijan.

Elliot AckermanGuest43:29

All the Nobel material.

Doug BruntHost43:29

All the Nobel stuff.

Elliot AckermanGuest43:30

Yeah.

Doug BruntHost43:30

It's incredible.

Elliot AckermanGuest43:31

Oh, okay, wow.

Doug BruntHost43:31

And, um, it was-

Elliot AckermanGuest43:32

Is it in Russian, or is it...

Doug BruntHost43:34

It's...

Doug BruntHost43:34

Yeah, a lot of it's Russian language.

Elliot AckermanGuest43:36

Yeah.

Doug BruntHost43:36

Yeah.

Elliot AckermanGuest43:36

Okay.

Doug BruntHost43:36

But most of it is in, is in-

Elliot AckermanGuest43:38

Mm-hmm

Doug BruntHost43:38

...

Doug BruntHost43:38

Russian language.

Doug BruntHost43:39

But incredible photographs too, and stuff that I had translated, and I actually put some photos on my website, uh, from being inside the archives.

Doug BruntHost43:46

You can get a, a little bit of a sense-

Elliot AckermanGuest43:47

Cool

Doug BruntHost43:47

... of what it looks like in there.

Doug BruntHost43:49

Uh, so we didn't go to Baku, but so much was in Stockholm-

Elliot AckermanGuest43:52

Yeah

Doug BruntHost43:53

... um, which was super helpful.

Elliot AckermanGuest43:54

And, uh, the Nobel legacy, which is, I mean, it's so interesting to me 'cause it's so much defined by the prize, and you get into the controversy about the-

Doug BruntHost44:01

Yeah

Elliot AckermanGuest44:01

... founding of the prize in the book, which I think is...

Elliot AckermanGuest44:02

I had never, I did not know.

Elliot AckermanGuest44:04

I mean, maybe just touch on that for two seconds-

Doug BruntHost44:05

Yeah

Elliot AckermanGuest44:05

... then we'll, you know, I can wrap us up, but talk about the controversy around the establishment of the prize.

Doug BruntHost44:10

Yeah.

Doug BruntHost44:10

I mean, when you go to Sweden and Stockholm, even there it's all Alfred.

Alfred’s legacy vs. Emanuel’s eclipse44:16 – 46:56

Doug BruntHost44:16

They don't really know, I mean, they know that there was an Emanuel and a Ludwig, and they know that there were Nobels in Russia that did great things, but they don't know the story really in, in any depth, even in Sweden.

Doug BruntHost44:28

And by the way, well, th- this will, this will kinda spoil the story, but, it won't spoil the story, but, you know-

Elliot AckermanGuest44:32

Mm-hmm

Doug BruntHost44:33

...

Doug BruntHost44:33

Emanuel, he, he [laughs] he, uh, he spent some time in Stockholm.

Elliot AckermanGuest44:36

Yeah.

Doug BruntHost44:36

So you, you'd think they might know him a bit.

Elliot AckermanGuest44:37

I got one more for you.

Elliot AckermanGuest44:38

Was there anything that you found that like completely blew you away in your research or made you feel like, you know, you know, like your, a, had like a aha moment?

Doug BruntHost44:49

Hmm.

Elliot AckermanGuest44:49

I know sometimes that can happen, or just took the story in a direction that you did not think it was necessarily gonna go?

Doug BruntHost44:55

There were...

Doug BruntHost44:56

I guess, one, one thing I'll say, I found some State Department documents-

Elliot AckermanGuest45:00

Yeah

Doug BruntHost45:01

... where, um, a- actually it wasn't S- it was from Q in London, and Nobel had been writing to Anthony Balfour-

Elliot AckermanGuest45:09

Huh

Doug BruntHost45:09

...

Doug BruntHost45:09

while they're holding the World War I peace talks, which becomes the Treaty of Versailles to wrap up World War I, and he's basically saying, "I'm, you know, this, all this oil down in, by the Caspian Sea, it's, it's tons of oil.

Doug BruntHost45:25

Lenin needs it." So this is 1919.

Elliot AckermanGuest45:27

Right.

Doug BruntHost45:27

World War I is over.

Doug BruntHost45:28

The Russian Revolution has happened.

Doug BruntHost45:29

The Russian Civil War is on.

Elliot AckermanGuest45:31

Mm-hmm.

Doug BruntHost45:31

So Lenin is in control, but hanging on by a thread.

Doug BruntHost45:34

We've got the Red Army of Lenin and Stalin fighting the White Army, which is this weird mix of varied interests, some for the tsar, some for something else, but they're all fighting the Red Army.

Doug BruntHost45:46

And he said, "If Lenin and Stalin don't get this oil in the next few months, they're done.

Doug BruntHost45:51

They're coming for the oil.

Doug BruntHost45:53

We know it." And there were some British troops r- led by this Lionel Dunster field.

Doug BruntHost45:58

They, they called it the Dunster Force, uh, which was the, about 1,000, 1,000 only, troops from the British sort of protecting Baku, and he said, "It's not enough.

Doug BruntHost46:09

Lenin and Stalin are coming to Southern Russia.

Doug BruntHost46:11

They're gonna take my oil fields, and then they're gonna have enough oil, and then they're gonna be pretty locked in.

Doug BruntHost46:17

So you need to send troops." And he, he's basically saying what Churchill's saying.

Elliot AckermanGuest46:21

Right.

Doug BruntHost46:21

Like, you can nip this thing in the bud right now.

Doug BruntHost46:23

And, uh, so, uh, you know, I found the letters-

Elliot AckermanGuest46:27

Wow

Doug BruntHost46:27

... that Nobel wrote to Balfour, who's in France negotiating the terms.

Doug BruntHost46:31

Of course, the British don't do it.

Doug BruntHost46:32

There's just no s- as, as I discussed earlier, there's just no public support.

Doug BruntHost46:36

There's no budgetary support to do that, and, uh, they also still kind of doubt that Lenin's gonna make it, uh, so they also-

Elliot AckermanGuest46:42

It's amazing how no one can s- you know, to us, we understand the 20th century, we understand the Soviet Union and what it becomes, but they, yes, in like in the book, you really get a sense like no one can get their head around-

Doug BruntHost46:54

Tot-

Elliot AckermanGuest46:54

... what this is gonna be

Doug BruntHost46:54

...

Doug BruntHost46:54

I mean, for us communism's half the world.

Warnings from the archives46:56 – 47:24

Elliot AckermanGuest46:56

Right.

Doug BruntHost46:56

Like, this is, it's dominating settings now.

Doug BruntHost46:58

It's like imagine a world where there, there was no communism.

Elliot AckermanGuest47:01

Yes.

Doug BruntHost47:01

It didn't exist.

Doug BruntHost47:02

And so for Balfour and, and most people, they're like, "What are you worried about? This, this is gonna last like f- two minutes."

Elliot AckermanGuest47:08

"This makes no sense."

Doug BruntHost47:09

Yeah.

Doug BruntHost47:09

[laughs]

Elliot AckermanGuest47:09

Like, "Why, you know, why would you do this?"

Doug BruntHost47:10

[laughs]

Elliot AckermanGuest47:11

Yeah.

Doug BruntHost47:11

Yeah.

Doug BruntHost47:11

So he wa- he was sounding the same alarms that Churchill was, and when I actually saw the letters, like, and you can see the words written, like it's just on a page.

Doug BruntHost47:19

Like, he actually put these words down on a page and sent it to France, and, uh, to no avail.

Lightning round: leaders, prizes, and Rasputin47:25 – 59:15

Elliot AckermanGuest47:25

Right now I'm gonna be the Stalin to your Emanuel Nobel-

Doug BruntHost47:28

[laughs]

Elliot AckermanGuest47:28

... as we enter the lightning round.

Elliot AckermanGuest47:30

[laughs]

Doug BruntHost47:30

I've got just the right amount of cocktail left.

Elliot AckermanGuest47:32

Okay.

Elliot AckermanGuest47:32

Um, so I'm gonna rapid-fire you.

Elliot AckermanGuest47:36

First, Diesel or Nobel, who do you admire more as a businessman?

Doug BruntHost47:41

As a businessman, definitely Nobel.

Elliot AckermanGuest47:44

Nobel.

Doug BruntHost47:44

I think that, you know, Diesel, it's weird.

Doug BruntHost47:47

It, it, it takes a different skill set to, to run a company that's, you know, a startup, zero to 50 maybe.

Elliot AckermanGuest47:52

Right.

Doug BruntHost47:54

And it's a different skill set to run a company that's, you know, 1,000 to 50,000.

Doug BruntHost47:58

And Diesel was more geared toward the first, and, and even with that, he made some, uh, there's documentation he made bad business investments.

Doug BruntHost48:06

He became a, a, you know, a, a very wealthy person, a millionaire.

Doug BruntHost48:10

There is documentation he made bad b- business investments after that.

Doug BruntHost48:14

He certainly could have become a millionaire all over again.

Elliot AckermanGuest48:17

Right.

Doug BruntHost48:17

Because at the time he disappeared, everyone was trying to hire him, from Henry Ford to Baldwin-

Elliot AckermanGuest48:22

Mm-hmm

Doug BruntHost48:22

... to whatever.

Doug BruntHost48:23

But Emanuel Nobel, I, I will give it to him because he grew up, he learned sort of the rules of finance.

Doug BruntHost48:29

He grew up in the highest circles of St. Petersburg society.

Doug BruntHost48:31

He knew all the banking titans, and he knew how to operate with the banks as well.

Doug BruntHost48:35

So he, he did a number of different financial negotiations, not only with the banks in Russia and Germany, but he also was sort of at the table with the Rothschilds and-

Elliot AckermanGuest48:44

Right, right

Doug BruntHost48:45

... and the Standard Oil folks, and getting the better of them.

Doug BruntHost48:49

It was just extraordinary.

Elliot AckermanGuest48:50

Yes.

Doug BruntHost48:50

And then if you go back to 1888, a, a date that we talked about earlier-When his father died at 29, he takes over the business, and months after his father dies, Alexander III, the Tsar-

Elliot AckermanGuest49:02

Yeah

Doug BruntHost49:02

... of all Russia, the demigod, is coming down with his wife and his son Nicholas, who becomes the next demigod, and this whole royal entourage to Baku to explore the facilities.

Doug BruntHost49:12

And he hosts them.

Doug BruntHost49:15

He has days-long, multi-days-long meetings with them, at the end of which they offer him Russian citizenship.

Doug BruntHost49:20

He completely dazzles the Tsar-

Elliot AckermanGuest49:22

Doug BruntHost49:22

... and the royal entourage at 29, newly in the role, running the company.

Doug BruntHost49:26

I mean, it's just extraordinary stuff.

Doug BruntHost49:28

So he was just a, a, a very talented executive, and, uh, so I have to give it to Emmanuel Nobel-

Elliot AckermanGuest49:34

Emmanuel Nobel

Doug BruntHost49:34

... over Diesel.

Elliot AckermanGuest49:34

Okay.

Elliot AckermanGuest49:35

Diesel or Nobel, who do you admire more as a person?

Doug BruntHost49:39

This one's closer.

Elliot AckermanGuest49:40

Okay.

Doug BruntHost49:40

This one's closer.

Doug BruntHost49:41

I, y- as a businessman cer- uh, Nobel over Diesel by a pretty, pretty-

Elliot AckermanGuest49:45

Yeah

Doug BruntHost49:45

... pretty good gap.

Doug BruntHost49:48

As a person, I think I'll give it to Nobel again.

Elliot AckermanGuest49:51

All right.

Elliot AckermanGuest49:52

Okay.

Doug BruntHost49:52

Because...

Doug BruntHost49:53

And th- this, this is actually, um, the story I wanna tell about the Nobel Prize-

Elliot AckermanGuest49:57

Yeah

Doug BruntHost49:57

... and the will.

Doug BruntHost49:59

So when Alfred Nobel passes away, the, the interesting story on this, I- I'll just tell this really quickly.

Doug BruntHost50:05

When, when Ludvig Nobel dies, Emmanuel's father, he's a huge celebrity.

Doug BruntHost50:09

We, the, it's been completely paved over the history of the Nobels in Russia, and then redone and lied about by the communist regime that came after.

Doug BruntHost50:17

But at the time that Ludvig Nobel passed away, he was a huge celebrity, enough that it was newspaper headlines around the world, including France, who got it wrong.

Elliot AckermanGuest50:26

Mm-hmm.

Doug BruntHost50:26

So France, when they hear of this, they think that Alfred Nobel died.

Doug BruntHost50:30

So Alfred Nobel wakes up the following morning alive and well, reads the newspaper, and reads of his own obituary, which then says, "Alfred Nobel is the inventor of dynamite, is a merchant of death, and has caused more death of humanity than anyone in history," and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Doug BruntHost50:44

A terrible review-

Elliot AckermanGuest50:45

Right

Doug BruntHost50:45

... of course.

Doug BruntHost50:46

So he's like, "My God, this is not how I wanna be remembered," so he goes and rewrites his will to establish the Nobel Prizes.

Doug BruntHost50:53

So fast-forward to when he actually dies, which is eight years later in, in 1896.

Doug BruntHost50:59

So now he's dead [laughs]-

Elliot AckermanGuest51:02

Yeah

Doug BruntHost51:02

... and, uh, Emmanuel Nobel is the patriarch of the family.

Doug BruntHost51:05

Our, our hero, Emmanuel, is the patriarch and the custodian of the will.

Doug BruntHost51:10

And in that culture, and in the Russian word actually for custodian of the will, it means custodian of the soul.

Elliot AckermanGuest51:18

Mm-hmm.

Doug BruntHost51:18

So it's a very, it's not really about the assets and the property and the money, it's about the soul, which is something he takes very seriously, and he's an honorable man.

Doug BruntHost51:27

When Alfred dies, he's got about 33 million kroner.

Elliot AckermanGuest51:30

Mm-hmm.

Doug BruntHost51:30

Which I don't know what that equates to now exactly, but many billions.

Doug BruntHost51:34

And of the 33, 31 go to the prize, two go to his various, uh, nieces and ne- he, he never married, so he had no children.

Elliot AckermanGuest51:43

Right.

Doug BruntHost51:43

But he had many nieces, nephews, grandnieces, nephews, in-laws and whatnot.

Doug BruntHost51:47

So the rest of the family of Nobels is like, "Whoa, whoa, whoa.

Doug BruntHost51:50

I was expecting like 15 times this amount"-

Elliot AckermanGuest51:52

Yeah

Doug BruntHost51:53

... "not this sliver and then, then, and almost all of it going off to establish this crazy prize." That was one faction that was against him, against Emmanuel-

Elliot AckermanGuest52:00

Mm-hmm

Doug BruntHost52:01

... who was the custodian.

Doug BruntHost52:02

The other was the King of Sweden, King Oscar-

Elliot AckermanGuest52:06

Right

Doug BruntHost52:06

... who is saying...

Doug BruntHost52:07

He, he pulls Emmanuel into this private meeting and says, "You know, this prize thing that your uncle Alfred wants to do is kinda nuts.

Doug BruntHost52:15

You know, I think he was overly influenced by the pacifists." And, you know, at this time, so by the time they're having all this fight, it plays out over years.

Elliot AckermanGuest52:22

Right.

Doug BruntHost52:22

So we're, we're, we're almost into like the late 1890s, almost 1900, which is the peak of European nationalism-

Elliot AckermanGuest52:28

Mm-hmm

Doug BruntHost52:28

... militarism, and there was a sort of counter pacifist movement-

Elliot AckermanGuest52:34

Right

Doug BruntHost52:34

... saying like, "Lay down all your arms." Like, "Nobody fights."

Elliot AckermanGuest52:37

Mm-hmm.

Doug BruntHost52:37

You know, "We're not gonna do this." And meanwhile, the governments of every country are like, "We need to arm up." Like, the Germans are kinda going nuts with Kaiser Wilhelm II.

Elliot AckermanGuest52:45

Right.

Doug BruntHost52:45

Like, "We need to defend ourselves.

Doug BruntHost52:46

We can't be pacifists.

Doug BruntHost52:47

That's not realistic." Which is, you know, legi- they, they weren't like, not every war chief was not rooting for peace.

Doug BruntHost52:53

You know?

Elliot AckermanGuest52:53

Right.

Doug BruntHost52:54

There were pacifists saying, "No, no war." Then there were people saying like, "Look, I'm not for war, but we gotta be armed," and then there were sort of war hawks.

Doug BruntHost53:02

And the, the Swedish king was like of, uh, more like, "We, we gotta be realistic about this.

Doug BruntHost53:07

We need, we need weapons." And, and Alfred with the Nobel Peace Prize, he thought he was a little more influenced by the people who were saying nothing at all.

Doug BruntHost53:14

So he calls Emmanuel into this meeting and saying, "Listen, your u- your uncle was nuts.

Doug BruntHost53:19

You know, he got overly influenced by these other people.

Doug BruntHost53:22

There should be...

Doug BruntHost53:23

We, we shouldn't do this.

Doug BruntHost53:24

Don't establish this prize."

Elliot AckermanGuest53:26

Mm-hmm.

Doug BruntHost53:26

You know, "Just, just give the money to your family.

Doug BruntHost53:28

It, it's gonna be easier for everybody.

Doug BruntHost53:30

Listen to your family.

Doug BruntHost53:31

Give the full 33 million kroner-

Elliot AckermanGuest53:33

Mm-hmm

Doug BruntHost53:34

... to, to the Nobels-

Elliot AckermanGuest53:34

To the...

Elliot AckermanGuest53:34

Yeah

Doug BruntHost53:34

... and don't do this silly prize." Meanwhile, the Nobels are also famous at this point-

Elliot AckermanGuest53:39

Right

Doug BruntHost53:39

... that it's, this is all playing out in the newspapers.

Doug BruntHost53:42

So Emmanuel a- he leaves the King of Sweden and has a meeting with his relations and persuades them all.

Doug BruntHost53:50

He's like, "Listen, this is what Alfred wanted." He has a very passion, passionate speech saying, "This is what your, your, our Alfred wanted to do.

Doug BruntHost53:59

It is meaningful.

Doug BruntHost54:00

It is important." You know, I, I think, I'm not sure that Emmanuel was really a pacifist in the full sense of the word of like-

Elliot AckermanGuest54:06

Mm-hmm

Doug BruntHost54:06

... "We, we can't..." He might've been somewhere in the middle on all that.

Elliot AckermanGuest54:09

And wasn't, like, the Russian wing of the family sort of concerned that like, you know, "Hey, you don't like...

Elliot AckermanGuest54:13

You can't say no to the king.

Elliot AckermanGuest54:15

You know, you could like-

Doug BruntHost54:15

Yeah.

Doug BruntHost54:15

[laughs]

Elliot AckermanGuest54:15

... lose your head." [laughs]

Doug BruntHost54:17

So, so Emmanuel had his, uh, his valet, I guess-

Elliot AckermanGuest54:20

Oh, yeah, his valet.

Elliot AckermanGuest54:20

Sorry.

Elliot AckermanGuest54:21

Yeah, yeah

Doug BruntHost54:21

... you do in the, in the day.

Doug BruntHost54:22

And he's like, he's used to, like, what happens in Russia.

Elliot AckermanGuest54:24

Yeah.

Doug BruntHost54:24

It's like-

Elliot AckermanGuest54:24

Yeah

Doug BruntHost54:25

... "You just said no to the king of Sweden."

Elliot AckermanGuest54:26

[laughs]

Doug BruntHost54:26

He's like, "We are outta here.

Doug BruntHost54:27

They're gonna come, you know, we're gonna be on the guillotine in five minutes." So he starts packing up in a frenzy and E- [laughs] and Emmanuel's like, "No, no, no, it's fine.

Doug BruntHost54:35

Like, this is Sweden."

Elliot AckermanGuest54:35

It's Sweden.

Elliot AckermanGuest54:36

[laughs]

Doug BruntHost54:36

"We will go there like we're good."

Elliot AckermanGuest54:38

Yeah.

Doug BruntHost54:38

Like, "We'll, we'll, uh, we'll make it out of here alive"-

Elliot AckermanGuest54:39

Yeah.

Elliot AckermanGuest54:39

We do, we do pri-

Doug BruntHost54:39

... "even though I told the king to just, you know..."

Elliot AckermanGuest54:41

Yeah.

Elliot AckermanGuest54:41

"We do prizes in the bikini team.

Elliot AckermanGuest54:43

You'll be okay." [laughs]

Doug BruntHost54:44

[laughs] That's right.

Doug BruntHost54:46

Yeah.

Doug BruntHost54:47

So anyway, uh, I guess Emmanuel on both counts-

Elliot AckermanGuest54:49

Okay

Doug BruntHost54:49

...

Doug BruntHost54:49

but a close call on, as Emmanuel.

Elliot AckermanGuest54:50

On Diesel.

Elliot AckermanGuest54:51

Okay, okay.

Elliot AckermanGuest54:51

Um, all right, next questionNobel, I love this detail in the book.

Elliot AckermanGuest54:56

Nobel gave his loved ones beautiful Faberge eggs.

Doug BruntHost55:01

Mm-hmm.

Elliot AckermanGuest55:01

I'm looking forward to getting mine at the end of the program.

Doug BruntHost55:03

[laughs]

Elliot AckermanGuest55:04

Uh, what's the best gift you've ever been given or received?

Doug BruntHost55:08

Okay.

Doug BruntHost55:09

Sure.

Elliot AckermanGuest55:09

Or sorry, you, you've ever given or received, sorry.

Doug BruntHost55:10

Okay.

Doug BruntHost55:11

First of all, for the book, there's an amazing Faberge tangent where Immanuel Nobel comes up with this whole winter motif.

Doug BruntHost55:16

It's like a charming...

Doug BruntHost55:18

Not everything is like oil and, but it's a super charming part of the book.

Elliot AckermanGuest55:20

Yeah, that's great.

Doug BruntHost55:21

Best gift I've ever received, although, like, the best gift I've ever received is, like, a letter from my wife or from the kids-

Elliot AckermanGuest55:27

Sure

Doug BruntHost55:27

... as they come through years.

Elliot AckermanGuest55:28

Yeah.

Doug BruntHost55:28

Of course, but I can't say that because everyone's like, "Oh my God, please stop it."

Elliot AckermanGuest55:32

Yeah.

Doug BruntHost55:32

So I have a different answer, which is actually a good story.

Doug BruntHost55:35

It is The Mystery of the Blue Train by Agatha Christie, which is a 1928-

Elliot AckermanGuest55:40

Hmm

Doug BruntHost55:40

... novel that she published.

Doug BruntHost55:41

So my grandfather, Jack Bray, he was born in the 1890s somewhere, we don't know exactly because he was a, he was an orphan and went foster home, then ran away, and he served in World War I as a radio operator, and he's over in Europe.

Doug BruntHost55:53

He actually learns about the armistice before it's announced, he and his radio partner, and their boss is like, "If you breathe one word of this, you're both getting court-martialed." And so this, this story comes out about 10 years later in newspapers in New York when he gets, you know, back in the States and tells the story.

Doug BruntHost56:09

So there's...

Doug BruntHost56:09

I have, I have a newspaper clipping of him telling the story of all this.

Doug BruntHost56:12

But after the war, becomes a, a traveling salesman for RCA.

Doug BruntHost56:16

He's in Europe and Singapore and other parts of Far Asia, and so he buys The Mystery of the Blue Train by Agatha Christie.

Doug BruntHost56:24

And in 1932, he's in Berlin, he write- he finishes reading it, and he writes, "Jack Bray, Berlin, 1932," and he hands it to a buddy.

Doug BruntHost56:34

And he says, "This is the deal, though.

Doug BruntHost56:37

When you finish reading it, wherever you are, whenever that is, write your name under mine, where you are, and the year and the, and the date-

Elliot AckermanGuest56:45

Yeah

Doug BruntHost56:45

... and give it to someone else with the same instruction." So this book zings around the world through the '30s, the '40s, the '50s, the '60s, until in 1972 someone reads it who also knows my mother, and writes the name, the place, the date, finds my mother, and gives it to her.

Doug BruntHost57:04

And so she reads it and writes, "Jackie Brunt," who is the daughter of Jack Bray.

Elliot AckermanGuest57:11

Hmm.

Doug BruntHost57:11

And then she gave me the book, uh, you know-

Elliot AckermanGuest57:14

Wow

Doug BruntHost57:14

... decades later.

Elliot AckermanGuest57:15

That's amazing.

Doug BruntHost57:15

She gave me the book, like, you know, 10 years ago, so I have it.

Elliot AckermanGuest57:17

That's an awesome gift.

Doug BruntHost57:17

So it's a special book.

Elliot AckermanGuest57:18

That is an awesome, that's an awesome gift.

Elliot AckermanGuest57:20

Books make the best gifts.

Elliot AckermanGuest57:21

Um, okay, a detail from your book that you love but that wound up on the cutting room floor.

Doug BruntHost57:26

Uh, on this one I will say that it's not a specific detail exactly, but Rasputin.

Doug BruntHost57:31

I mean, I could've gone on for a freaking hour.

Doug BruntHost57:34

There's a new book about-

Elliot AckermanGuest57:35

Cue the, cue the Bonnie M. [laughs]

Doug BruntHost57:36

[laughs] Hey, once more.

Doug BruntHost57:37

Ba-boom.

Elliot AckermanGuest57:38

Yeah.

Doug BruntHost57:38

Uh, there's a new book about Rasputin by Anthony Beevor, who's great, and, uh-

Elliot AckermanGuest57:42

Yeah

Doug BruntHost57:42

... that, that, if you want more Rasputin, go there.

Doug BruntHost57:45

I could've done another 100 pages on it.

Doug BruntHost57:47

Some I did cut 'cause, you know, you just gotta stay on the thrust of Nobel and what's happening around him.

Doug BruntHost57:52

There's an amazing sequence in the Nobel book about Rasputin and his murder, which is, like, just gold.

Doug BruntHost58:00

I mean, it's so good and so crazy.

Elliot AckermanGuest58:02

Yeah.

Doug BruntHost58:02

You can't believe this stuff's happening.

Doug BruntHost58:03

He might be one of the most fascinating figures in history, and so, you know, could've done more there-

Elliot AckermanGuest58:08

You, you-

Doug BruntHost58:08

But you gotta, you gotta clip somewhere

Elliot AckermanGuest58:09

... yeah, you mention in the, you mention in the book the, the fellow who killed Rasputin, and I'm blanking on his name.

Doug BruntHost58:14

Hmm.

Elliot AckermanGuest58:14

But it sent me down a rabbit hole 'cause I looked up and he wrote a book about killing Rasputin.

Doug BruntHost58:20

Yes.

Doug BruntHost58:21

Yeah.

Elliot AckermanGuest58:21

Uh, and I was like, that's ame- I mean, it's, you know, it's a-

Doug BruntHost58:23

There's a footnote that talks about, that mentions the name of that book.

Elliot AckermanGuest58:25

Yes.

Doug BruntHost58:26

Oh my God, it's the, Prince Yus-

Elliot AckermanGuest58:29

I don't know.

Doug BruntHost58:30

Oh my God, what was his name?

Elliot AckermanGuest58:30

I looked it up, and then on the cover he's, like, 60 years old, like, sitting in a beautiful room.

Doug BruntHost58:34

Yeah, he wrote it many years later.

Elliot AckermanGuest58:35

Yes, I, I killed Rasputin.

Elliot AckermanGuest58:36

I mean, it's, yeah.

Doug BruntHost58:36

And some of the facts in his account are potentially dramatized-

Elliot AckermanGuest58:40

Are they just beauty

Doug BruntHost58:40

... or suspected to be a bit drama- Yusupov.

Doug BruntHost58:42

Prince Yusupov.

Elliot AckermanGuest58:43

Yusupov.

Elliot AckermanGuest58:43

Yeah.

Doug BruntHost58:43

Yeah.

Elliot AckermanGuest58:43

Prince Yusupov.

Doug BruntHost58:44

And, um, that, but it's a fascinating tale, and so, but some of what is in his account has to be with a, with a grain of salt.

Doug BruntHost58:51

But he escaped, along with some of the Romanovs, out of, uh, Odessa or something, uh, off the Crimean, uh, Peninsula there at the end.

Elliot AckermanGuest58:58

Yeah, that whole time period is just cr- it's just crazy.

Elliot AckermanGuest59:01

Um-

Doug BruntHost59:01

Yeah, but, uh, yeah, that, that sequence on Rasputin in the book is just amazing.

Doug BruntHost59:05

But you gotta s- you know, it's, it's a book about Immanuel Nobel, not Rasputin.

Elliot AckermanGuest59:07

No, it is.

Doug BruntHost59:08

But there's a lot of Rasputin in there, which is awesome.

Elliot AckermanGuest59:10

And I'm glad to know about that Beevor.

Elliot AckermanGuest59:11

I missed that one.

Elliot AckermanGuest59:12

Um, okay, one piece of advice to today's titans of business.

Advice to today’s titans59:16 – 1:02:08

Doug BruntHost59:16

A piece of advice to them today would not, i- it's not exactly, like, how to, otherwise I would be one myself.

Elliot AckermanGuest59:24

Sure.

Doug BruntHost59:24

Um, it's more of an observation that I've had over the last two books, both Diesel and Nobel, that's a, a bit of a caution.

Elliot AckermanGuest59:32

Mm-hmm.

Doug BruntHost59:32

Which is that the inventor is not always the decisive factor-

Elliot AckermanGuest59:39

Hmm

Doug BruntHost59:39

...

Doug BruntHost59:39

in the way that his invention will be used.

Elliot AckermanGuest59:42

Yes.

Doug BruntHost59:43

And with the diesel engine, that's 100% true.

Elliot AckermanGuest59:45

Yeah.

Doug BruntHost59:45

I mean, Diesel in the 1880s had this list of potential uses for the diesel engine to power these rural factories of artisans, and it was gonna be this decentralized economy enabler for all these businesses that couldn't have a giant steam engine at that time-

Elliot AckermanGuest1:00:00

Right

Doug BruntHost1:00:00

...

Doug BruntHost1:00:00

the size of a room.

Doug BruntHost1:00:01

And of course, that's not what happened.

Doug BruntHost1:00:02

It became the engine of big business.

Doug BruntHost1:00:04

It became the engine for huge implements of warfare like submarines and, and surface ships of war and, and other things.

Doug BruntHost1:00:12

And in Nobel it's the same thing too.

Doug BruntHost1:00:15

Um, when they first founded their oil petroleum business in 1873 all the way to 1900 when it became the biggest oil concern in the world-

Elliot AckermanGuest1:00:25

Mm-hmm

Doug BruntHost1:00:25

... again, bigger than Standard Oil.

Doug BruntHost1:00:27

Standard Oil had the same track.

Doug BruntHost1:00:28

Standard Oil was 1870, in, uh, founded in 1870.

Doug BruntHost1:00:32

This was an illumination business.

Doug BruntHost1:00:34

Like, they were drilling p- oil, raw crude oil, to distill kerosene for illumination, so that, that's great.

Doug BruntHost1:00:41

Like, we can see at night.

Doug BruntHost1:00:43

That extends the productive time of humanity.

Doug BruntHost1:00:45

We're more productive now.

Doug BruntHost1:00:46

That's important.

Doug BruntHost1:00:47

But it wasn't until aft- 1900 that the combustion engine really came into bloom and petroleum was distilled for gasoline.

Elliot AckermanGuest1:00:53

Right.

Doug BruntHost1:00:53

Which was prior just a waste product that was thrown away.

Elliot AckermanGuest1:00:56

Yep.

Doug BruntHost1:00:57

S- all they wanted was the kerosene, not the gasoline.

Doug BruntHost1:00:59

Now all of a sudden we want the gasoline for these engines.

Doug BruntHost1:01:03

And-Then we have World War I, which is our first mechanized war.

Doug BruntHost1:01:08

We have submarines and trucks and planes and, and other things.

Doug BruntHost1:01:14

So gasoline suddenly, and petroleum and oil, becomes like more important than food almost.

AdvertiserAd1:01:19

Right.

Doug BruntHost1:01:20

And this was all in Nobel's time.

Doug BruntHost1:01:23

You know, he went from ta- you know, his father founded in 1873, he takes over in 1888.

Doug BruntHost1:01:27

We're still an illumination company basically at this time, all the way through the war, where suddenly this is like huge national security, and the, the importance of what he's doing becomes crazy, uh, like a, a multiple of what it was before in terms of like national security.

Doug BruntHost1:01:45

And so things change.

Doug BruntHost1:01:46

Uh, so for Elon Musk, he's like launching satellites into space.

AdvertiserAd1:01:49

Yeah.

Doug BruntHost1:01:49

It's like, well, all of a sudden that's like really important in this Ukraine war.

AdvertiserAd1:01:52

Mm-hmm.

Doug BruntHost1:01:53

Or, or, you know, other things he's doing could be used in ways that even he may not have anticipated.

AdvertiserAd1:02:01

Yeah, and the multi-variable nature of any success, but particularly business suc- success just like boggles the mind.

Family, gifts, and hard-won lessons1:02:08 – 1:03:48

Doug BruntHost1:02:08

Yeah.

AdvertiserAd1:02:09

And, uh, and, and you definitely capture it here.

AdvertiserAd1:02:11

And lastly, so the Nobel story is a family story.

AdvertiserAd1:02:14

What's one piece of advice that you give your kids?

Doug BruntHost1:02:18

The main piece of advice that I give my kids is that hard work beats talent.

Doug BruntHost1:02:25

You know, I would say in general, we don't give a lot of sort of like blanket advice.

AdvertiserAd1:02:28

Yes.

Doug BruntHost1:02:28

It's more like we're there to talk.

Doug BruntHost1:02:29

But as you know, like every time you give it, like you, you have that friend from college or whatever, it's like, "You really shouldn't be dating that person," they're gonna do the opposite.

AdvertiserAd1:02:36

Yes.

Doug BruntHost1:02:36

Like no advice works as well as fucking up-

AdvertiserAd1:02:40

Yeah

Doug BruntHost1:02:40

... works.

AdvertiserAd1:02:40

Yes.

Doug BruntHost1:02:41

You know, uh, to change behavior.

Doug BruntHost1:02:43

But, um, I think that that's one that we can sort of drill into them a little, and there are, there are parenting tips I would have around trying to drill that in, or just like habits really.

Doug BruntHost1:02:54

Um, like for example, we, we always, my wife and I always praise the effort, not the result.

AdvertiserAd1:03:00

Right.

Doug BruntHost1:03:01

You know?

AdvertiserAd1:03:01

Mm-hmm.

Doug BruntHost1:03:01

Like, "I'm so proud of how hard you worked on that.

Doug BruntHost1:03:03

You, you know, who cares about the B? I know you, you were grinding," you know, and that sort of thing.

Doug BruntHost1:03:08

But I think I also see that with Diesel and Nobel.

Doug BruntHost1:03:11

I mean, these were hardworking people.

Doug BruntHost1:03:13

They were so passionate about their dream.

Doug BruntHost1:03:14

In their journals, you can read like the toil and the effort that both of them put into climbing that mountain.

AdvertiserAd1:03:22

Yeah.

Doug BruntHost1:03:22

You know? Uh, so I would say that, that, uh...

Doug BruntHost1:03:24

And, and of course the dream is h- so hard work beats talent.

AdvertiserAd1:03:28

Mm-hmm.

Doug BruntHost1:03:28

But if you can work hard at something in which you have talent-

AdvertiserAd1:03:32

Yes

Doug BruntHost1:03:32

... like that's the dream, then you're all good.

AdvertiserAd1:03:34

Well, I'm sure this book was a lot of hard work, Doug, but it exhibits your talent.

AdvertiserAd1:03:40

The book is The Lost Empire of Emmanuel Nobel.

AdvertiserAd1:03:45

Doug Brunt.

AdvertiserAd1:03:46

Go get this book, everybody.

Doug BruntHost1:03:48

Oh, Elliot, thank you so much.

Where to listen and watch1:03:48 – 1:04:17

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Thanks, my friend.

Doug BruntHost1:03:49

It's a lot of fun.

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You can now listen to Dedicated on the Megyn Kelly channel, channel number 111 on your dial, Saturdays at 11:00 AM.

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You can also catch our video on YouTube and the audio portion anywhere you get podcasts.

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[outro music]

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