Episode Transcription

00:02 I ever notice how much your toe your fingers look like toes. That's so weird. You got short stubby fingers. Look how bad your fingers are. Dude, those are weird. Put your hands next to each other. Is your left hand shorter? Look at how whoa your left fingers are shorter than your right. They're the same. You know the Alex. No, no, no, no, put the palms equal buddy. They are equal. That is 00:28 totally shifted. You shifted the right way further. These are equal. You, when you shift them, when you shift them, look at how high the right ones are like that. They're different, if you, as long as you keep up normal, they're not a weird hand. Oh my gosh. You have a weird, you got a weird dance here. Nobody's got weird. Hey, he's got five fingers. I've got seven shows. The end of April in Las Vegas. Come hang out. If you're in Vegas, that'd be great. 00:56 and now we're you know. I don't know if I'm supposed to promote those. It's at Brad Garrett's Comedy Club, which is kind of cool because I'll get to hang out with Brad Garrett. I know who that is. You do know who he is. He's he's the brother and in the everyone loves everybody loves rain. Oh yeah, the deep voice one yeah that's Brad Garrett cool and so cool. Nice 01:19 and he's not bitter at all that you know who Ray Romano is, but you don't know who he is. Well, it's because the show is everybody loves Raymond named it after him. Yeah, that was the thing to do too, like even like the the Cosby show was called the Cosby show, but he played Doctor Oxtable. Well, what's interesting? What's interesting is like I was thinking about that the other day because I saw a picture of Al Borland and I was like it's weird that he just his character's name and Tim the tool man Taylor was just out yeah and Tim's name was Tim. 01:47 Yeah, like they gave him different last names, but they had the same first name and they did that with all their characters as weird that that was the thing that they did in ninety sitcoms. Well, it was because it was built around that character like celebrities were a different. So it's a different thing than man. Yeah, yeah, we have a different culture. So anyway, what's the episode about? Have you ever heard of Alfred Noble? 02:12 Yeah 02:20 Okay, I'll stop, stop. No, thank you for stopping, that would be great. I won't do it again. I've spent my whole life bombing and now it's time to love bomb. Things I learned last night. 02:40 Yeah, from the show he plays Alfred, but they change his last name. mean, I need please Al Alfred Nobel Noble. Is it in OBL? Yeah. Oh, so Nobel Nobel Alfred Nobel. Okay, so for for people who are not watching and are just listening, this is a painting. This is a pain. Yeah, this is a painting of him. So this is an older and older. He's this guy's probably in his like later fifties early sixties. 03:06 and he's wearing like a suit. He looks like an inventor in the eighteen hundreds yeah, okay, eighteen hundreds inventor. Yeah, this is the nobel if he's price guy. If if I think this would be, I think you you said it wrong on purpose just to try to throw off. What do you okay? Look, he's got beakers and he's got no. If you're an audio and audio listener, 03:30 picture if the neighbor who shoveled snow and home alone was a scientist. That is true. He does look just like that guy and here's the here's. Let me can I guess the story based on just this picture yeah okay, so he's a science teacher who gets cancer and so now he's got to figure out how to pay for it and so now he's listed one of his old students and they bought an rv and now he's in the woods out here just making meth. Did this guy invent meth? 03:54 So here's another picture of them. This is this. It looks like might be a photograph. Yeah, this might be a picture. This might be a ears are huge. Yeah. Well, yeah, that was that was a thing about being a man back then. You got big ears, you got tiny ears, tiny ears. I'm looking at you man. I'm talking to you. I didn't see you have tiny ears. The way that the the headphones because look how tiny those headphones looking at my ears. Can you guys say hey Robert, can you zoom in on this 04:24 All right, show em 04:52 Oh my gosh, I think something happened in the middle of between episodes today where you're just like, want to make Tim insecure. This episode, I think this is what you said. I think you sat down. Are you an AMC member? An AMC stuff. Remember, are you a member of the AMC stop hub? No, are you should be with those stubs. Oh my gosh. 05:14 I don't, we could not allow this to become a bit. What do you just clap at your own jokes? That is so insane. And I do not want that to become a thing. I do not want that. 05:31 I don't know dude. I feel like the last episode was like it was a kind of like a hey, the world's full of bad people and so I'm trying to make this a little more light hearted yeah. Well, there was good people in that story. All the people who exposed the true and then they died in car bombs. Okay, welcome to the pot. So Alfred Nobel, he was born in eighteen thirty three in Stockholm, Sweden. Okay, so I nailed it. That's eighteen sixties. Yeah, his dad, a Manuel was a lifelong inventor uh which 06:01 I listened to uh Notebook LM uh podcast about this uh and the way they put it was uh they said he was a lifelong inventor, which means he was bad with money. They said that? That's what they said. And we keep saying they, you know, for a listener, we've covered it before, but if you don't know what Notebook LM is, it's where you can put documents into Google and then it'll generate a podcast. Based on the documents you And it sounds like the co-hosts have 06:31 chemistry. Yeah, they have chemistry. They make little jokes. You can hear them breathe. Yeah, they they have like dull mispronounced things and then like re pronounce it like they try to make a sound real human. Yeah, they literally go though. They'll do this where they're kind of starting a sentence and then they'll change their mind and yeah and no and they'll stumble and change the way they say exactly like that. It's very strange. So weird. They're trying to make it feel human and it feels and it's close. It's not. There's only moments where there's sometimes where something happened. You go. Oh yeah, this isn't real. 07:00 Yeah, but like it is, it's like, it's like right on the edge of the uncanny, candy Valley Valley where you're like, so I know it's close. It's Oh, it's weird. Anyway. Yeah. But yeah, the fact that he said he was an inventor, which is, which just means he was bad with money uh because it said, said, I'm not going to start referring to the notebook LM podcasts hosts as they 07:28 Thank you. yelled, I had to call Hertz rental car the other day and I yelled at the thing because I said, hi, I'm Haley. I'm here to help you. I can help you with this, this. And I said, your name is not Haley. You're not a person. And I was just in a Panda Express parking lot yelling on speakerphone, you're not real. 07:59 Okay, so so I know for real though. You know what it hurts to seize this out there in the world. I hate that yeah. Use an AI assistant. I don't care. Do not try to give them names and then try to be like it sounded like real person and then it started going to the options and I went oh no you're not real you're not real you're not real you're not real you're not real. 08:24 You can't hurt me. You can't hurt me. You can't hurt me. man. Hey, we got a new company that moved in next door and so they're just finding out how loud we are. So yeah, do they do? Again, drove the therapist out of town. Their appliance repair, appliance repair. That's right. Yeah. So, uh, Emmanuel, his dad, consulating, vetting stuff, starting little businesses, but constantly going bankrupt. Uh, cause he can't like, 08:50 run the business. He really was about he has some decent. It wasn't as a joke. They were like they were they were giving you the back story yeah like he has decent ideas, but he can't run a business. What's he trying to invent a lots of different random things? It really is kind of like we talked about it in another episode like the like nineties infomercial people where it's like yeah random products that whatever so we were talking about that in it was the balloon. Oh I'm really proud of you. 09:18 Vitamin D baby. Yeah, I don't like a bit where you do that at the end of the things. 09:26 I don't like where you go full honeycomb cereal character. Okay. 09:42 Okay, I'll stop. I'll stop. think you were stopping. That'd be great. Do it again. Sorry, that was a mistake. I had to do that on the show. I made a joke. I made a joke on one of my shows. I wrote a cancer joke and it doesn't work. It does kind of work. It's funny to some. It's not funny to other people. Yeah, yeah, yeah, and I did it at the show in Dallas. They did not like it. Also, there was a person at the Dallas show 10:09 who said when I walked in the lobby was like Jaren's light is my might and I need you to know I was not rushing like because I just went ha ha good to see you. I was late to get to this gig because of the rain and stuff, so I was just I wasn't trying to be like don't talk to me. I'm sorry if that's because I wait. I was trying to find you after the show yeah to be like hey and I know you listen to the podcast. I was trying to find you after the show to be like hey, I just see you. Thanks for listening to the podcast. 10:34 and then you left. So I didn't want you to think that I didn't want to talk to you. I want you to know if I ran into you in public and you said jaren's light is my mind. I would have stopped and I would have talked to you no matter how late I was. I to know I'd be late that if we're in front of you you say that to me, I will if you're a public and you say that to me, I will in your face go 10:58 and all your friends that you're with will be like what the heck is that guy? Yeah, it's just a weird trigger phrase. God, he's like Jason Bourne, dude. You you say his trigger phase and then he turns into the turns in order. That is serial in early two thousand. So yeah, so he wasn't going money. He was inventing. No, were in the middle of your story about your bad joke. You never finished. Yeah, I don't. I told a joke. It didn't work and then I you know and what happens in stand up is if a joke doesn't work, 11:27 You just got to keep you got to keep going and so I go to a different joke and then I die joke wasn't working. I literally had to be like I feel like I lost a lot of you on that last joke. I'm really sorry. I said I'll never do it again. I'm sorry and then at the end of the show I opened it up for questions. I was like hey, we got any questions late in the front row goes yeah, I don't do the cancer joke and I went okay, got it understood totally won't do it again. 11:54 and then a couple other people started raising their hands and be like we actually we actually really like that joke and I was like wow, we got conflicting opinions and then another kid. Another person was like as a person whose mom had cancer. I'm like hey, hey, hey, see we have any questions that aren't about the joke. I did I was like you guys are really focused on twenty seconds of my show that didn't go well. It's been an hour. Can we go questions about any other fifty eight minutes that I did? Oh, I was so bad 12:24 people are like what's the joke? I can't do it. It's a good joke. It's a good joke, but it's a bad, but it's a bad and that's a bad joke. That's the whole thing is I'm trying to set it up. The joke is that it's a bad joke because the real joke is that I do the I do the joke and then and then people get mixed reaction. Some people laugh, some people go oh and then I go yeah. See, I told my wife that joke this week. I thought of it and she went Jaron. Yeah, you cannot say that, which is why I had to say it. 12:53 and then that's like the joke and then I do a little bit more about how it's funny that like I know I'm doing something really funny or I said on the podcast to when me and my wife listen to episodes were driving. I know that I've got a really good bit when she goes jail in yeah. You know if I make her laugh, that's fun, that's fine, but if I make her go chair and that's too far, then I know I'm right on the mark. 13:16 The setup of the joke is the joke to set up the fact that the joke is. Yeah, and that's what I'm saying. So it's a bad joke. need to write a... Different bad joke. I think it's too far. I think it's just past the acceptable line of edginess for me. You got to tip toe. I got to find a way to bring it back. that's like, and not to do too big of a tangent, that's what I love about standup. Finding that But usually audiences give you a little bit more grace than I got in Dallas. All right? 13:46 Hey, don't do the cancer joke anymore. And then I said, I said, you want me to biopsy the joke? got you. And I was I'm doubling down, It's, yeah, not a good joke. So his dad, Emmanuel, was like this disgraced inventor, constantly making new things, constantly going bankrupt. And so the family was very poor. The children, they begged in the streets for money because they just had nothing. And so that was what they did all day. He was born chronically ill, constantly sick. 14:14 throughout the course of his life. Alfred was? Yeah, Alfred was. And then his dad, Emmanuel, um in the early or late 1830s uh moves to St. Petersburg, which in Russia. uh To like rebuild himself. This is during the Enlightenment in Russia, right? I think so. I'd have to double check dates, but I think you're right. um And so he he moves to St. 14:44 St. Petersburg, he starts inventing things. And then while he's there, he has a pretty big idea. And he says, we've got mines. What if we found a way to put mines in water and make them float? uh And so that way boats can't. Mines? Oh, like, oh. Like bombs. Yeah. Yeah. He's like, we got those. What if we can come up with a way to make them float? And so he invents naval mines um and he goes to the Russian government and he's like, check this out. And they were like, 15:14 give us so many of those we need just enough. wanted so many of those who was the head of Russia at this time. It was Nicholas the first okay, the Tsar of Russia at the time he was right between the Alexander's, I was going to the first and second was on both sides of him ah really of his reign yeah and so who was before Alexander the first 15:37 Alexander the zero. No, who was before Alexander the first? Give me the whole run down here. I'm gonna okay, so Alexander the first was before him was Paul the first and then before Paul was Catherine in the second yeah Catherine the second death in the second yeah. I just think Catherine the great that was Peter the third Peter. Okay, so we need to do an episode because Catherine overthrew Peter her husband. Yeah, yeah and then they had pole 16:06 Yeah, I'm trying to see when the first Catherine was, but when was Catherine the great the Catherine the second? What was her reign? Oh, I am way hold on your way too far. You're too deep looking for Catherine one. Yeah, hold on. Let me just yeah. I can't. I remember I've I've been scrolling looking for Catharines before back when I was single and I'm just on tender and I was like give me a Catherine Catherine Catherine. She was seventeen sixty two to seventeen ninety six. Oh, okay, yeah, I knew she'd rain for like thirty years. Yeah, good for her 16:37 So he goes to St. Petersburg, a manual Nobel. And he invents the mine. Russia is like, need as many of those as you could possibly make. And then once you make as many as you possibly make, make a lot more. And so he opens up a factory building Making mines. Making mines. 16:54 a very rich, very, very rich, like overnight. And that's the key. If listen, if you ever want to get rich, make something for the government that could kill a lot of people. That's like though that's been the secret for centuries. Yeah, yeah. I mean, look at the people who are rich now. They're making technology that could wipe out a lot of people. Yep, yep. uh So in 1842, family wouldn't believe the ideas like God, uh 17:25 In 1842, he moves the family to St. Petersburg with them. And they're all now very wealthy. And so Alfred gets a really good private education. And so during this time, he learned Swedish, French, Russian, English, German, Italian. He gets proficient in poetry. Just learns all these different things. Learns sciences, all like really like a Renaissance man. Still sick, but... 17:53 Like not like a good sick, you know, like still physically sick, but sick intellectually also. Sick. Bro, you're intellectually so sick. So he gets very intelligent. And in 1850, he moves to Paris where he goes to study science more professionally and become a chemist. And there he meets a guy by the name of Asiano Sobrero. This is him. 18:22 And so Brero is famous because I think we need to bring back these little bow ties. You know what saying? Yeah, those are like they're like the KFC bow ties. They're barely bow ties. Honestly, what they look like. Stick with me for a second is the ties on trash bags. Yeah, yeah, I can see that barely bow ties. Yeah, and they look good and they look good. I like look good. 18:52 yeah, just go rip off a little black tie on your your glad trash bags. Yeah, the username brand trash bags. No, didn't think so. Of course, I don't. Why would I? Why would I splurge for name brand? I'm I'm able to do that. Oh okay, because I invented it. mass war. It's crazy. So I invented. What you invent? What's your contribution to the world? 19:21 Explosive devices. Cool. So Sobrero is famous because he discovered nitroglycerin and it wasn't intentional. It was an accidental discovery. He discovered it was explosive. He then brought that as a scientific discovery. Right. Somebody else found out about it, started making bombs with it. And in 1847, he actually like expressed deep regret about discovering 19:50 all these people do same thing with Oppenheimer. They all are like he says when I think of all the victims killed during nitroglycerin explosions and the terrible havoc that has been rate, which in all probability will continue to occur in the future. I'm almost ashamed to admit to be its discoverer, and that's the thing is he didn't he didn't like proliferate it. He just discovered it, wrote a paper, but is the argument that someone else would have you know. I mean maybe, maybe so he works under Sabrero 20:19 and Sabaro and him, he learns everything about nitroglycerin and Sabaro is, 20:27 French? Yeah, yeah, in Paris. Okay. And at what point in his lineage did they open the mall? 20:36 food court. I think that was like the eighties. It was like his great great grand got it. His great great great granddaughter opened a pizza play in the mall and it's underwater. She's selling slices at the mall. I'm really good singer. 21:03 Thank you Blair. Thank you Blair. I'll be here all week. 21:12 Hey, thanks for listening to this episode of things. I learned last night. If you like this show, we would love to see in our Patreon. It's a great way to financially support the show. We don't make money from this. It just helps us to pay the people who do make money from this. Like Alex and Robert, her editor and maybe one day, one day me and Tim, maybe one day, know, but only if you join, only if you join, can't wait. We can't get paid until you pay. Can't feed Tim's kid until you join. He's so 21:54 so he I ordered something on Amazon to go to Tim's house and then Tim's wife was like. Why did he do that? 22:03 What do mean? Why do do that? She was like just ordered to your house. Your wife will get it and I'm like yeah, but I need I'm on the road. I need it now yeah and that's we have the ability. Yes, I think about that so often you just used to order stuff and then be like no get that in a couple weeks yeah or in the eighteen hundreds whenever in like a few months, two months yeah and now it's like literally like last night on the plane. I ordered that yeah last on the plane 22:31 and you were like you're like it'd be convenient if I could have that tomorrow. It'd be great if I could have that tomorrow and it got to your house and then your wife was like I don't like that he did that well, Breen, if that is your name. 22:46 So he so I'm nervous to listen to this Alfred. I can say whatever I want about your wife. not my wife listens to this show nervous. My wife loves our show because she loves me. Your wife doesn't listen to the show. What does that say about you and your little nub fingers? uh So your no bell Alfred Nobel fell in love with nitric glycerin. He was like this stuff is sick. uh It blows up 23:15 and it blows up really easily. Yeah, it's like very like su too easily too easily. Yeah, you like move it just a little bit. It'll explode and he loved that about it and this guy's who we named the Nobel Peace Prize after 23:32 so he goes back to. know that it is. I'm just trying to hear how we got here from the bomb, so he he learns in Paris about nitroglycerin and all and his and this is Alfred right. Yeah, this is how he's a my dad invented bombs, one minds, naval mines. He didn't invent bombs, but he invented naval mines. Yeah, my dad, my dad was the bomb guy. My dad is bomb boy. That's what he calls himself bomb, bomb, but we yeah he has bomb, but he has these ads that run during the football games on the weekend. 24:02 and it's like it's like in that little local ad slot where it's like usually like a friend and they're like right dude. We got we should make a commercial that is so local ad looking that's how I'm to promote my special. That's really local ad just yeah, that's a better idea. There's like a bunch of like weird like there's like a slide that comes in tiger and it's clearly like just they and there's some of these people are still using clip art logo. Yeah, it's crazy. Yep and so 24:31 He moves back to uh St. Petersburg in 1853 at the ah beginning of the Crimean War. And he says, Dad, you're never going to believe what I learned about. And he's like, stuff called nitroglycerin. We can make really better bombs with this stuff. So they start using nitroglycerin to make better bombs. And Crimean War kicks off, becomes a huge deal. They're working on these bombs. They're manufacturing a lot of them. And ah they keep using this over and over and over again. 25:01 1864 comes around ah and there is a factory that they have that is preparing nitrochlorin and it accidentally explodes ah and it kills uh five people. Okay. Including Alfred's younger brother, Emil, who was 21 years old at the time. Alfred is this kind of Rex Alfred. This honestly, Rex, like the whole family, a manual only a couple of years later, like a manual went into like a deep depression. 25:28 And a couple of years later, he dies from a stroke. And a lot of people say that it was like the stress of that whole event, like his actual death. ah And uh Alfred then kind of vows, like, have to come up with a way to make nitroglycerin safe because it was so dangerous to handle because it was so ah sensitive. Literally, like if you just bumped it just right, it'll blow up. And so he was like, we got to come up with a way to make this safer. It's a liquid, right? 25:58 uh Well, I think in at this time, I believe it was a gas the way the okay at this time and my liquid. makes it not as crazy? I mean, I saw I said, it well what he does is he he gets this island in the middle of this lake and he says I'm going to use I'm going to build a lab and I'm going to go there by myself. I'll be in the center of this lake and I'm going to find a way to make this safe and so he spends years 26:28 boating out to center of this lake where he then works. 26:34 And then he works all day trying to mix different compounds together to make nitroglycerin safe. his original idea is like, if I can make it a solid, it will be more stable. I've got to figure out how to make this a solid and make it still like have the function of being an explosive and have the same yield, but be stable. Sure. And he tries all sorts of different materials to mix with it, to turn it into a salad or a solid. Yeah. 27:04 ah And nothing is working until he ah finds, what is the material that he finds here? Let me see if I can find this. 27:16 hold on to me. Okay, while you're doing that, hey, this week sponsor is this guy's nineteen eighty five Chevy C ten. He's got a listed for ten thousand five hundred dollars. It's got seventy five thousand original miles. That's not that bad. That's pretty low three or five with automatic transmission. Pretty much brand new tires, fully loaded Silverado, very reliable truck, newly redone interior. Let's take pictures. Let's look at the interior real quick. 27:39 Wow, that looks pretty sharp. So if you're interested in that, this guy's out in Overland Park, uh, message Jace and I'm just going to message right now. Let them know, Hey, just promoted this on the pod. 27:54 ask him if they heard of us when they buy it with who buys it as you sell it. Good luck. All right, use code Dylan when you buy. Yeah, here's here's the money also telling so I love this is such an insane. So you just tell him you heard about it from this podcast. You know, that's really funny. So you should laugh. 28:28 So at this point in time, they were using nitroglycerin as a liquid. It was a liquid state. And he said, OK, if I mix it with some other material, I could make it into a solid. And he tried a lot of things, sand, powder charcoal, wood shavings, brick dust, cement, all sorts of different things. Couldn't find a material to use for it. But in a twist of fate, because he was working in the middle of this lake, there was this microscopic 28:56 microscopic dust that would float around the lake in the mornings. And he's like, what is this? And so he ended up collecting some of it and finding out that this was actually this substance called Kieselger, which is a fine powder that is the fossilized remains of very tiny organisms called diatoms. And it's very poor. The fossils are very porous. We found if he mixes these this powder, which is fossils with liquid nitroglycerin, 29:25 the pores would absorb the liquid nitroglycerin into tiny, tiny, tiny little pores. And that separation of the liquid nitroglycerin in the pores of that was enough to make it stable because they never made contact with each other. So you could then have essentially this powder version of nitroglycerin because it was each of those little molecules or little kernels of that powder was full of nitroglycerin was now stable. But 29:52 there was nothing that caused it to detonate. So he actually invented the first detonator, which interestingly enough was a essentially small unit of just a little bit of liquid nitroglycerin that you would detonate. And then that detonation would trigger a train reaction through all the powder because it would then catch all the rest of the nitroglycerin. Gotcha. And so it was this weird twist of fate that because his brother died in that explosion and he went to this specific lake, he discovered that powder. 30:20 sure and mix that powder with it to make an actual functional powdered version of nitroglycerin. Okay, and he used so when they when we in the old timey cartoons and stuff when they're pushing that handle down, that's the that's that that's that detonation. Yeah, okay, and he then took this powder and he invented dynamite. Yep and this was grime. This was dynamite 30:51 Yeah, actually it was dynamite. Well, because this is how they start blowing, you know, holes into sides of mountains. Yeah. Coincidentally, this the timing of this invention was very significant because at the same time, like almost like months before this, the pneumatic drill was invented. And so it allowed them to drill into mountains, a hole just big enough for you to drop a stick of dynamite in there and then blow up the mountain. 31:17 And what was really interesting about this is gunpowder existed before this. was other explosives. How powerful is dynamite? Well, here's what's interesting. Gunpowder and all that existed before this. was explosives before this. But gunpowder, the way it moves is it's a chain reaction explosion. Right. And so it actually moves slower than the speed of sound. And what it does is the way that they describe it is it separates rock, but it doesn't pulverize rock. Where? Dynamite. Dynamite, nitroglycerin, it moves faster than the speed of sound. So it pulverizes rock. 31:47 and it turns it into like a dust where where the if raise your explosions would break it apart, you got a big boulder to move and things like that. Yeah, turn it to dust right and so and this is sixty four and sixty four eighteen sixty four was when that explosion happened. Oh, so it's a couple years later when when dynamite actually entered eighteen sixty seven. Oh wow he patented dynamite and then they start manufacturing it. He 32:16 starts his business, Dynamite Nobel, which is what brings dynamite to the world. He actually what's really interesting about this. Okay. His why'd you say noble at the beginning? His whole just to throw it off a little bit. His whole thing, his whole thing, a little bit, his whole thing was I want to make safer nitroglycerin. Whole thing was my dad was the bomb daddy. But that was the bomb daddy. I need to be the 32:45 I'm baby, I'm the bomb baby, I'm the no, no comma. I'm the bomb baby, baby, Mr Bombastic. So he he was like, he's like, I have to make a safe version of nitroglycerin. His his brother died from it and it wasn't just his brother. There was multiple explosions happening at the right across the country. And so he's like, I need to make a safe version of this. His original brand that he put together for the dynamite was Nobel safety powder. 33:15 whoosh. Good thing he did it go with that because I don't think that that would have float as well right and so he used dynamite. He took that from. I don't remember if it was a Greek or Roman uh God. I think it was Greek uh for like explosive wow and so dynamite ended up being the name of that name stuck ah and this ended up being just a dynamite. It is the biggest and that was the biggest invention of that. It was a massive invention. It in so many things 33:45 His family's probably still making money from it too. It made him extraordinarily wealthy. Right. And so he continued inventing things. He actually, for years after that, would invent different versions of explosives. He actually invented this thing called Jellonite, which is very similar. It's exactly what it sounds like. It's basically like a hair gel that blows up. So that was in 1876. He also invented 34:14 Ballastite, which is very interesting because there was you might have heard of the term like fog of war and this era gunpowder was smoky. Yeah, smoke everywhere and then you couldn't see anything and also everybody saw exactly where that shot came from because there was so much smoke. Right. And so there was a big market for it. We need to find a way to make this do this be a gun without smoke. He invented the material ballastite. 34:41 which is the powder that is in bullets again to this day. If want to get rich, just invent things that other people can kill people with. That's the secret. And so that's still used in a lot of explosives and rocket propellant to this day. um Okay. And so the he's creating weapons of war is what he's creating. Right. That's what I'm saying. And it's a big deal. This is also at the same time there are there's a big the really the first 35:10 anarchist movement kicks off. uh And this was before uh the term anarchy, like we see it today. And they call themselves the anarchists. They existed in the United States uh and the anarchists, they would use dynamite to blow things up and do terrorism. And so before this moment, before this invention really, terrorism wasn't really a thing because there was no 35:38 efficient way to kill a lot of people at the same time. Right. If you wanted to do something like that, you would have to go do it by hand and you'd usually get stopped before you could cause a lot of damage. Right. But this was the first time that it was really easy. Accessible. Yeah. For people to just go do terrorism. And so Nobel effectively invented terrorism. I don't know about that. I don't know about that. I mean, listen, listen, if someone buys a car, 36:06 and uses that car to rob a bag yeah, so uh he throughout the course of his life. uh He was very focused on his work didn't uh didn't put much effort into his social life or into relationships or anything of that nature yeah, and as he got older uh he started to feel lonely and so in his late forties 36:36 in okay in his late he always early for the forties in and when he was forty three years, I've spent my whole life bombing and now it's time to love bomb and in it was forty three years old in eighteen seventy six. Okay, let get this actual age difference. Did he marry a fourteen year old? No, no. I want to get like the word for word. What this advertisement said? Oh, he put on an advertisement for himself 37:06 he put out a pay is in the paper. He said, do you like Pina coladas and getting caught in the rain? Alex left his mic on my heard Alex go and that it was rewarding, so he was forty three years old, eighteen seventy six. He took took out an ad in the paper and he said he said I'm a wealthy, highly educated, ultra elderly gentleman seeking a lady of mature age versed in languages and that to be a secretary and a manager of my household. 37:36 he took out that ad and put it in the paper and a secretary and manager of the household. Yeah, he was looking for someone to fall in love with, but he was a little bashful, but he was also kind of like you gotta be useful. That's crazy. So I show the other night in Houston. There was a couple who sat like up front. They wanted to talk a lot yeah and they had been married for nine months yeah and then they got divorced and they've lived together for the past nine years. Oh wow, 38:04 and uh and I was talking I so they took up the whole show because I was like what does that mean yeah and so she had moved out then kovat happened and she moved back in and they live in different rooms and I said so do you pay who owns the house well he owns the house he pays the mortgage I said okay do you pay rent and she goes no I do all the cooking and cleaning. 38:28 and I said so you guys are married and she and she goes no. I said are you dating other people? She goes no. What are we doing here? That's great. It sounds like you're the secretary and manager of the home. You're the secretary of the sustain that he's a wealthy guy and is always a wealthy elderly gentleman. Well, it's crazy as he called himself elderly is forty three. That's what I was thinking to 38:54 we should just start referring to ourselves as elderly. It'll make it. It'll make a sting, Loi less when we finally do get there and so coincidentally, a woman by the name of Bertha, knee, kinsky response to the ad. Okay, and she said I'll come 39:25 Oh boy, am I sick? I sure do need Tim stones. Get well quick trick. And what is it? It's simply chug an entire gallon of orange juice. Wow. I forgot. And then this shirt reminded me, I'm so glad that I have this shirt as a public service announcement, a public health service to other people around me. Do your part. Get this shirt. 39:54 shop.tillam.com 40:03 Yeah, so I like a black and white photo hot. Her name is Bertha Bertha Bertha, Neek, I love a girl named Bertha, so so she comes to work for him and they immediately hit it off. They they get very close very quickly. They spend a lot of finds out that it wasn't just a secretary job. They go on carriage rides all the time and they have like deep conversations on these carriage rides and she works there for a few weeks. 40:33 And then she just disappears and he doesn't know where she went. Like she just disappears without a trace. Ends up finding out that she ran off with this guy by the name of Arthur Gundasser Von Suttner and eloped with him, um which is very odd. And so she moves to Georgia, the country, not the state, um and and starts a life with him. And this crushes Alfred. Yeah. And um 41:02 for years, she blew up his whole world kinda and he kind of wallows in grief for a long, long time um until one day, how long is a long, time? A couple of years. Let me see if I can see the exact date on this. 41:23 in eighteen eighty eight. So this would have been like a decade later about ah wow and eighteen eighty eight. You're still hung up on that girl. You did some carriage rides with for three months ten years later in eighteen eighty eight. He sees he's reading the paper and it gets the obituary section and this is this is the obituary. This is the actual obituary. Obviously this is not in English, so there's here's a fake version of it that has been put in English and then for some reason they okay on here badly. 41:53 This is what it says. You want to read it? Yeah, the merchant of death is dead. Dr. Alfred Nobel, who made a fortune by finding ways to kill more people faster than ever before, died yesterday and he sees his obituary in the newspaper, but he's obviously not dead. Okay, what happened was the newspaper mixed him up with his brother Ludwig who died the day before, and so they the newspaper saw that they're like. Oh, that's the bomb guy. 42:22 and they wrote this obituary about him, so he sees this obituary yeah and is like I need to change everything about me. Well, he sees his obituary and it changes his life because he's like he's like. Oh, this is what people think of me and he always had this which is we were big fans of a guy who wrote a book, a couple books, but this is what a lot of the self help stuff tells you to do. I don't necessarily think this is bad when I make my annual life plan. 42:50 reading your eulogy like writing your eulogy as part of it. Yeah of like imagining if you died, what would your obituary say? Yeah. And I yeah, I mean if that's if your obituary says the merchant of death. Yeah. Yeah. What do you think? What do you think? What do you think? was honestly the merchant of death goes pretty hard. The merchant of death, the merchant of death bullied me in the Panda Express parking. So this is like this 43:20 This, cause he had long had this argument about the stuff he was building because he had this, and this is going to sound familiar to you. He said, there is no peace council or committee that will bring peace to the world. What will bring peace to the world. He said, what will bring peace to the world is the knowledge that your adversaries have weapons more powerful than anything you could imagine. And so it will stop you from fighting each other. 43:49 because of the threat of the weapons that they possess. And so he said, I need to build the biggest weapons possible to end war. 44:04 But like 44:06 and it sucks because it's true. I mean it's one of those things where it's like yeah, I don't know man. is interesting is like the guys were going to build it. The concept of mutually assured destruction, which is we have today in reference to nuclear bombs, which has been relatively effective because it is true. If really the United States and Russia, every other country, they don't really have an arsenal large enough, but the United States and Russia 44:36 got into nuclear war with each other, the world ends. Yeah. And so it does work in that scenario. Right. But for Alfred Nobel, he was building what we today would call small explosives. And so nothing he was building was big enough to have that effect on people or on me. Right. And we see that throughout history because it was used to kill a lot of people for a long time. Big wars. Yeah. And so 45:05 The idea eventually came into fruition to be somewhat true. and something years later. Yeah. And it's still loosely true. still like, we still don't know if this is true. Like it still might not be true. It's worked for a little bit. It's held for a little bit, but that doesn't mean it's accurate, you know? Yeah. But anyways, so he really believed in that. The irony is he had this pen pal that he talked to who strongly disagreed with that. And this pen pal, 45:33 someone who he's been talking to for years and so he popped off a letter to a right away when he saw this. Okay, this this paper and this pen pal was a woman by the name of Bertha von Suttner, which was his secretary ten years ago that ran. so there men they that they still talked for ten years writing letters to each other and she hey, no, you ran away, but just miss you. People think I'm the merchant of death. 46:03 What do you think about that? Which hey, she's older in this picture. Still hot, still hot. Oh my gosh, how hairy her arms are, but uh, 46:18 but we so she ran off with somebody else and then just kept him on the hook. I kinda I guess that's a bummer. Yes, you could say that just let him on for all those years. She's like no, I'm going to leave him. Well, here's what's interesting. So she goes to Georgia. ah becomes a Baroness and she uh becomes like this advocate for peace and she and him, they write each other, but the the writings that they have for like ten years are debates on 46:48 how to achieve peace. And she thinks that the way to achieve peace is by actually being peaceful. And he thinks the way is building bigger bombs. And so they're debating on that for years. He sees this and he says, I think you might've been right. And so she actually wrote this book called Lay Down Your Arms, which was a novel, but it was kind of like those novels where they have a point. Yeah, there's a point, a message. And so there's a message to it. She also starts uh this international peace committee. 47:15 which ended up being a big thing. So she became world famous as like this peace advocate. And so he sees this and it has this like profound effect on him. And so he sits in his mansion. This is his mansion at the time with his vast wealth. And he calls his executor of his will and he says, he says, I want to update my will. And so the executor says, okay, what do you want to do? He says, I want to take 95 % of my wealth, forget my kids. I don't want them to have it. 47:45 and he says I'm actually going to have. I want this to go on to uh an organization that I want to call the Nobel Prize organization. Okay, and so he puts together this Nobel Prize. So really the Nobel Peace Prize is just him trying to make up for all the death he caused. Is that what we're doing? The Nobel Peace Prize is named after the least peaceful person of the eighteen hundreds. 48:13 and it's just to make up in and it's just so that in his post life he can it can be like oh he actually was peaceful. Are you kidding me yeah? He basically is trying to buy. What about the FIFA Peace Prize? What's the history on that? What did FIFA do? I mean what is crazy? So he he allocates ninety four percent. Hey, we're giving the till in Peace Prize to whichever authoritarian person wants it. You know 48:44 he alligates ninety four percent of the peace prize or else he allocates ninety four percent of his wealth to go towards this. This yeah peace commission and one percent to go to Bertha. He ends up dying in eighteen ninety five that the executive of the will ends up transferring that money to this peace committee at the total of thirty one point two million Swedish Kroner, which adjusted for inflation converted to US dollars. 49:12 is $340 million today. um And so that money goes over. His family was furious and they were trying really hard to get that money back. And what's really interesting is the executor of his will actually smuggled the money out of the country in carriages to get the money out. Cause he was like, this money can't be in this country. His family is going to get it. And so this was before money was digital. And so he had to physically drag all this money out of the country. 49:41 to save it. So he took a revolver. I don't know if it was a revolver. He took a handgun ah and all that money and carriages and smuggled it out of the country away from the family. Started the Nobel Prize committee. And the prizes were in physical science, chemistry, medical science, and then literary work, and then the famous fifth prize is the Peace Prize. And so these were kind of his way to buy his 50:10 the way he would be perceived in the history books. He's that's crazy for you. can just buy the way you're perceived in history books. Yeah, he's been three hundred forty million dollars to change the way he's viewed. So now when you hear Nobel Peace Prize as you think of or when you hear the name Alfred Nobel, the first thing you thought was the Nobel Peace Prize instead of out, die murder, murder, murder, merchant, the merchant of death, the merchant of death who who invented devices that killed more people than anything in history, ah which is crazy. 50:39 So it would be like if we had the Oppenheimer Peace Prize yeah yeah exactly actually and that's crazy. I didn't. Did you know all this in 1901 they gave out the first set of prizes? Sometimes I look at Alex and I just fully expect him to be like. Did you know all this and he goes yeah, you know, like okay, so in 1901 they gave out the first set of peace prizes yeah here. They give these coins with his with him on it yeah. 51:04 uh and so you get this coin you get you even tried to get away from it too, because like I that's he looked really familiar yeah and he looks familiar from the coin and then in 1905 uh birth of on Sutner becomes the first woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize. Okay, um and what's ironic is the description of the Nobel Peace Prize is word for word what she said we need to achieve peace. Yeah is from a letter from her and so he modeled the peace prize after so she gets it and she goes 51:34 thanks. This should be the birth of prize as a work on it. We're calling it the birth of the price birth of peace prize. Yeah, yeah and so what's crazy is there is a ah up until recently his company still in and like operation. This is their current load. The dynamite company is still in business. Dynamite Nobel. They still make explosives and we even doing outside their factory. 52:01 their factory has since moved, but outside their factory, there was this statue that was erected. And in this, this is supposed to be the gate to peace and it's boarded over and there's a plate with holes through it to give you the vision of shrapnel or bullet holes or something like that. The top of the gate says Nobel. And then the bottom there, there's two coffins and on the coffin, the first coffin, this is the total death count from 1901 to 1984 in wars. And so 52:31 between 1901 and 1913 as uh a hundred thousand 1914 to 1918 ten million nineteen nineteen and nineteen thirty nine ten million nineteen thirty nine to nineteen forty five fifty five million yeah forty five to eighty four fifty million and so they're attributing all these deaths to him because he built the explosives and then on the other coffin is every Nobel Peace Prize winner which is crazy up until twenty two thousand two I guess yeah where Jimmy Carter won that one 53:01 Wow, and so it really does make you think differently about the whole Nobel Peace Prize when you realize that it is a guy who recognized his legacy was going to be a bad legacy. Yeah, so he spent three hundred forty million dollars to change his legacy by creating this little coin that he can give to people who were good people, but he still made insane amounts of money off of devices that would be used to kill. Wow, people, that's crazy. That's 53:29 Well, speaking of bombs, we have an episode about Castle Bravo that you should check out and that's an older episode we did. It's about the biggest bomb explosion that they had put off since remember is the biggest bomb. The biggest bomb that the United States ever done. Yeah crazy. So also if you want next week's episode right now, you can join us on Patreon. We don't give any coins or anything. We should. We should make a little patron. Call it a little patron. 53:53 My tour dates, my tour dates as always are on paulrudtheactor.com. Thank you for listening or watching our show. We appreciate a lot. Share this with somebody. Tell somebody about the thing. Tell somebody about it. Tell somebody because it would help us a lot to So we need you to help us blow up, right? Fiddle off.