The Mysterious Circumstances Surrounding Rudolf Diesel's Death, and His Legacy, with Doug Brunt

There were some unbelievable Intel sources, which have been very intriguing. And when Doug would dig deep on the Intel sources, we would have dinner and drinks like these and just like our minds would be blown as we started to learn more and more. So none of this is in the book because I don't know what to say about it other than I don't exactly have it. But I spoke with members of the CIA, of police detectives, FBI, and also people who have worked in British intelligence at very high levels and connected to the people whose job it was to look at documents as they're released from the 50-year rule. This stuff is gonna be under wraps for 50 years, but now it's gonna come up and be open for public consumption, but we need to redact things that go to sources and methods. So the person who redacts. And so this guy that I came to know who's the former British Intel, would call me, he's like, mate, you've stored up a hermit's nest. Everyone's, I think you've got something, but they can't let it out and everyone's freaking out. And, but you've got it. And so I'm like, well, get me something, like some document that I can show. And so frustratingly, it never came. But exciting. And it's always good just to find out if you're on the right path or not. And it's not, wasn't, you didn't rely on any of this for the book, but as an outside lean, it's always good to have somebody there saying, keep going. It's like your deep throat. Yeah. And there are people cited in the book from the intelligence community, both U.S. and British who say a hundred, this is exactly what happened for sure. But I don't have like the smoking gun out of some archive saying, you know. Here's what you need to know. Doug solved the mystery. The mysterious case of Rudolph Diesel is far less mysterious, thanks to Doug Brunt and this book. And you watch it unfold with your very eyes and you can decide for yourself whether he's got it, but there's absolutely no other conclusion than the one you reach. I mean, it's a circumstantial case, but as you know, and from Kelly's court, you know, most murders are solved as circumstantial cases. It's very rare to have a murder case where there's a witness that says, I saw the knife go in and he did it and, you know, case closed. And by the way, the witness testimony in those things is the most unreliable of evidence pieces anyway. In addition though, there is some, in the newspaper recording, there are several eyewitnesses who weigh in on the case. So there actually is some eyewitness testimony in here that conflicts with the accepted Encyclopedia Britannica conclusion. That's part of what makes it so hard to solve, even though you've solved it, which is like the misdirection was appearing in a couple of different places. Like you're getting a different story from the guys Rudolph Diesel was on the boat with versus the newspaper headlines versus people who knew Diesel. And then we've skipped over what happened 10 days after September 29th, 1913, because keep in mind the day after he went missing, he was missing. It was like, where's Mr. Diesel? What happened to Mr. Musk? Right, he's gone. And then it was worldwide headlines. And then 10 days later, what happened? Yeah, so the New York Times, all the papers through Britain, Germany are on the beat daily with updates on, you know, the board meeting of that company who was coming over to Great Britain to co-found and be a director of. They had their board meeting without him. And so there were updates in the news from those guys too. 10 days later though, there's a pilot steamer, a little steam ship that's meant to sort of patrol the coast along Holland, Netherlands. That's another one I don't like. Where the Dutch live. Why is it called the Netherlands and Holland? It makes no sense. Keep going. And so it's a Dutch steamer and it finds a corpse floating in the water along, it's the Scheldt River empties into the North Sea. So in the estuary where the river meets the North Sea, so it's along the European coast, they find this body floating in the water and apparently it's very stormy. And so they managed to pull it alongside and rifle through the pockets where they find four things, but they mysteriously and suspiciously throw the body back into the waves and just keep the four things, which is not the common practice of the time. I mean, when the Titanic went down, they sent out search vessels. You recover the body, you give the family a burial and you get the body back. And so when the Titanic went down, they were searching the seas for weeks, not even finding bodies, but still searching. And not necessarily searching for the most famous man in America or in the world, not just America. Right, they may not have known it was Diesel, but they did remark that the clothes were finely dressed. It was a finely dressed corpse, and they found these things. So anyway, they come back to port with the four items and someone at least knew quickly enough that it could be Diesel because they call his son over from Germany to the Netherlands to look at these four things. And they're personally identifying, also kind of like weirdly personal identifying, but it's his pill, an enameled pill box where he kept his medications and eyeglasses and things like that. So he says, yes, this is definitely my dad, Rudolf Diesel's stuff, so that must be the body. But they don't have a body. There's never a body in evidence. There's never a body. And he never did have a proper burial at all. Right. Yeah, I mean, like, okay, so that's the son comes over to say, yes, those are my dad's things. And then, you know, the fact that we're talking about how it's, what's the subtitle there? Like read the subtitle. Genius, power and deception on the eve of World War I. On the eve of World War I becomes rather relevant to why the digging doesn't necessarily continue. And he doesn't stay on the front page of the newspaper. I mean, World War I, I think 39 or 40 countries declare war, 40 million casualties. It just wiped everything else off the front page. And then, you know, to my earlier research point, you know, who's gonna go back and figure out who was reporting what in which country on which day and try to reconcile all the conflicting reporting in the two weeks after his disappearance. But he basically got, he got wiped from history. And then I think, you know, in addition to the reasons explored in the book about why that could have been on top of that, because it was suicide, there's just something about that that's forgettable. Like you just, you know, so, you know, I think, as I said before, the deficit of appreciation for what he accomplished and what he's done over, you know, what his engine has done over the last 120 years. What was the, when did World War I start? 1914, so like the Sarajevo assassination was in July and by August 2nd or 3rd, Great Britain was in, and then it was, you know, it was on. Yeah, so it was less than a year later. Yeah, exactly. And the tensions were rising. And that of course would have taken over the front page of any newspaper, bouncing off any theories being discussed about why this very famous man went missing. And yeah, you're right. Then there's this sort of the thought of, well, if it's a suicide and who wants to spend time on that? It's just sort of, and there is some evidence that you discuss in the book that Diesel might have had some sadness, some depression. It wasn't like all rainbows and unicorns in his life. Yeah, he had stress. I mean, there was a normal, he introduced the engine in 1897. And from 1897 until 1901, that was almost as stressful as the time when he was building the prototype because now it was out in market. He had all these people paying him. Adolphus Bush paid him a million marks for the rights to the engine. And he was getting money like that. The Nobel family took the exclusive license. I believe we call it noble. That's what Kareem Jean-Pierre has told me. The nobles. Oh God, is that? My head down on Diesel, I didn't even know that, but. The noble prize, that's what she calls it. You've heard that sound by Kareem Jean-Pierre, the noble prize. Sorry, I digress. So Alfred Nobel of dynamite fame had two older brothers. And incredibly, this is another situation where the history has been scrubbed a bit because he had two older brothers who were more successful, more famous at the time. They founded the Russian oil industry. I mean, it's incredible. And in addition to having one of the largest oil empires in the world that rivaled, and in 1904, it was even bigger than Standard Oil. They also had a munitions and engineering company that built engines. So they took the license for the diesel engine and they built it to power pumps for their oil fields and also to build ships for the Tsar. Right, but they're not suspects. No, but they're just sort of in that hole, that ill. Millions of Americans earn and use credit card rewards. A few big box retailers wanna take those rewards away. What the? That's according to the Electronics Payment Coalition, a sponsor of today's episode. Rewards that you may like to use on your groceries or your school supplies, cash back to save on your gas and to grow small businesses, whatever you use that cash back for, and travel miles to make memories. So-called Credit Card Competition Act would eliminate credit card rewards. No more travel miles, no more cash back. 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