Speaker 1: From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
Speaker 1: riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
Speaker 1: learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
Speaker 1: production of Iheartrading.
Speaker 2: Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt,
Speaker 2: my name is Noel.
Speaker 3: They called me Ben. We're joined as always with our
Speaker 3: super producer Paul, Mission Control decand most importantly, you are here.
Speaker 3: And that makes this the stuff they don't want you
Speaker 3: to know, Folks. This may be the beginning of an
Speaker 3: ongoing series and ongoing journey. We're looking at mysterious inventors,
Speaker 3: their claims, the allegations of conspiracy surrounding them, and maybe
Speaker 3: taking a crack of what happened to a few of them.
Speaker 3: At the end, we'd love to hear from you. We
Speaker 3: are only going to get to a few today, which
Speaker 3: is why we'll need to do more episodes in the future.
Speaker 3: Let's talk a little bit about invention. It's like the
Speaker 3: human superpower. Here are the facts.
Speaker 4: Humans, it turns out, are not the only animals that
Speaker 4: use tools. It's something that exists in the proper animal kingdom. Otters, crows, elephants,
Speaker 4: for example, dolphins, All of these creatures. These crafty creatures
Speaker 4: have the ability to use parts of their environment in
Speaker 4: ways that assist them in their daily lives, in completing tasks,
Speaker 4: and oftentimes will spontaneously attempt to make tools to.
Speaker 3: Solve a problem in the while.
Speaker 4: Think of an elephant perhaps gripping a stick with its
Speaker 4: trunk to you know, gouge out a hole of some kind,
Speaker 4: or to you know, move something around, you know.
Speaker 3: To extend its reach of fence. Right, that's going around.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, But we've seen octopuses do some weird stuff
Speaker 2: with stuff right for their own purpose that we can't
Speaker 2: yet really fully understand. But can we get an idea like, oh,
Speaker 2: maybe that was the goal there. But humans are the
Speaker 2: ones that have an idea like that, Right, use a
Speaker 2: stick for something? You go, well, what if this stick
Speaker 2: was attached to this other thing? Well what if that
Speaker 2: was attached to this you know, creating a sophisticated tool,
Speaker 2: and you know, all the way up to creating the
Speaker 2: phone that you're listening to this.
Speaker 3: On, or you know. Yeah, I think in thematic terms,
Speaker 3: at some point it's like what if I make a
Speaker 3: stick large enough to smack the planet? Classic human? I
Speaker 3: think there's even there are multiple Simpsons references and stuff
Speaker 3: like that. It's true, right, the human drive for invention
Speaker 3: is so ubiquitous and so natural that if you're listening
Speaker 3: and you are human this evening, then you probably have
Speaker 3: some sort of invention rattling around in the back of
Speaker 3: your mind. And it happens so often. We've talked about
Speaker 3: this in the past, that humans independently will often create
Speaker 3: similar things near simultaneously, Like how many people invented the typewriter?
Speaker 3: A bunch of people did. I only know about that
Speaker 3: because when I went to the Mark Twain house, the
Speaker 3: guide took particular pleasure and shouten Freud in saying Mark
Speaker 3: Twain was terrible with money. He invested in the wrong
Speaker 3: form of typewriter.
Speaker 2: Dude, Well, some people invented typewriters and built factories to
Speaker 2: build their to build their own typewriters that never went anywhere,
Speaker 2: but they still made enough money within that time period,
Speaker 2: that short time period to buy an island. I'm just
Speaker 2: thinking you want in particular, But it's just it's crazy
Speaker 2: to think that inventing something, if you do it right,
Speaker 2: even if it's just short lived, it can be insanely lucrative.
Speaker 3: MM yeah, agreed. Even if the invention itself doesn't pan
Speaker 3: out in its initial application, right, there's still sometimes there's
Speaker 3: a heist about it. It depends on the motivations of
Speaker 3: the inventor. And I mean, look, there's also this thing
Speaker 3: that I think we continually returned to, which is that
Speaker 3: humans are very good at inventing things and also very
Speaker 3: very good at losing things. So something maybe invented some
Speaker 3: sort of technique like Damascus steel or what have you
Speaker 3: in the past, or Greek fire, and you might forget
Speaker 3: about it as a civilization for hundreds or thousands of years.
Speaker 3: Then you reinvent it later. Like I think people just
Speaker 3: recently figured out how some Greco Roman communities made really
Speaker 3: good cement or concrete.
Speaker 2: We made a video on Damascus steel, and I think
Speaker 2: I can't remember we talked about that form of concrete
Speaker 2: or not.
Speaker 3: We talked about the Bagdad battery, that's for sure. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and it Yeah, it's ah man, it's so cool. These
Speaker 3: things sometimes get called anachronistic inventions because later researchers will say, well,
Speaker 3: why does this anti Cathera mechanism exist in this time period,
Speaker 3: et cetera, and sort of like as though it were
Speaker 3: unstuck in time, or at the very least a super
Speaker 3: prescient thinker is behind it, and maybe there wasn't even
Speaker 3: a proper application for it at the time, but then
Speaker 3: later it sort of comes back around to a time
Speaker 3: where it's necessity becomes clearer. There's a great Mitchell and
Speaker 3: Web sketch about Leonardo da Vinci. I don't want to
Speaker 3: spoil it, but everybody check out that show. I mean,
Speaker 3: it's true though, too. Like we like to think of
Speaker 3: inventors as a single person making some great arriving at
Speaker 3: some great epiphany, but often they're improving upon previously existing ideas,
Speaker 3: and for the big inventions, some of the early real
Speaker 3: world changing and shaking stuff, we're never going to know
Speaker 3: who invented or discovered it. It's going to be mysterious.
Speaker 3: It might as well be mythical, like who was the
Speaker 3: first person who looked at fire and was like, I
Speaker 3: should take that into where I live in a way
Speaker 3: that doesn't burn everything down. Well, it's like a puzzle piece,
Speaker 3: you know.
Speaker 4: I mean, you can't necessarily claim to be the first
Speaker 4: one that ever solved a puzzle, you know, because there's
Speaker 4: a certain intuition behind it. And that can happen among
Speaker 4: multiple parties that have never met each other before. I
Speaker 4: believe it's called parallel thinking and a lot of these
Speaker 4: very quintessential, kind of intuitive uses of environment. That environment
Speaker 4: was present everywhere, and all it took was someone to
Speaker 4: kind of poke the right thing or make the right
Speaker 4: little stumble and accidentally figure out that you could strike
Speaker 4: these surfaces together and create sparks.
Speaker 3: So it's right, It is nearly.
Speaker 4: Impossible, and oftentimes when you get into more specific kind
Speaker 4: of inventions, it becomes the source of a lot of
Speaker 4: debate and litigation.
Speaker 2: Mm hmm. It was Brongthar, by the way, she was
Speaker 2: the first pyromancer. She figuredured out the whole fire.
Speaker 3: Thing in her area. I was thinking about, like, you know,
Speaker 3: to that point, let's say a wildfire sweeps through an area,
Speaker 3: Like how did humans learn to cook? Did a wildfire
Speaker 3: sweep through an area? Someone finds a dead animal and
Speaker 3: they're like, wow, this is pretty crispy actually, and they
Speaker 3: invent the word crispy, and then it's off to the
Speaker 3: races and now we have Michelin stars. But it's true
Speaker 3: too about the idea of where who can be ascribed
Speaker 3: as the inventor like Archimedes screw. We've talked about a
Speaker 3: little bit. Uh, this is still a common myth. Archimedes
Speaker 3: didn't invent that, or if he did, he wasn't the
Speaker 3: first person. It's like, who's the first person who figured
Speaker 3: out to be quite crass, you should wipe your butt
Speaker 3: after you defecate. It was a crapper guy, Thomas crapper.
Speaker 4: But that's of debate right right the toilet because it's
Speaker 4: the better story. And Archimedes invented so much other stuff.
Speaker 4: He was the biggest name. He gets lumped in with
Speaker 4: a lot of stuff that he I mean, not even
Speaker 4: a diss on him, like he was just grabbing on
Speaker 4: everyone's ideas. It's just more the way history likes to
Speaker 4: put a little bow on everything.
Speaker 3: You know, we love a brand, we love a franchise,
Speaker 3: Shout out cosmics. You know, he probably did dig the
Speaker 3: concept of the screw, the water moving device, but he
Speaker 3: certainly wasn't the first person to invent it. That's why
Speaker 3: we're saying all this to give you the background, folks.
Speaker 3: Invention itself is an inherently mysterious pursuit, even if all
Speaker 3: the research is transparent. The problem itself. What you're attempting
Speaker 3: to solve is a mystery, and this becomes dangerous. We'll
Speaker 3: probably get into scientists, I hope in a future episode,
Speaker 3: but we've talked about this. Governments and other organizations have
Speaker 3: close eyes on recent search and invention in certain genres,
Speaker 3: and as we're recording right now, there are hundreds of people,
Speaker 3: this is not hyperbole, hundreds of people in the United
Speaker 3: States who invented something that Uncle Sam took control of
Speaker 3: and they cannot legally speak about it for the rest
Speaker 3: of their lives.
Speaker 2: Dude, Ken, I kind of just bring up one thing
Speaker 2: that we found in the research here. There's a fascinating
Speaker 2: story of a scientist who I think in nineteen eighty three,
Speaker 2: moved to Huntsville, Alabama, started working with the university there,
Speaker 2: and was working specifically on anti gravity technology. And this
Speaker 2: is early like anti gravity isn't maybe the right word,
Speaker 2: gravitational field manipulation technology in the eighties, and she was
Speaker 2: working on it, getting grants, publishing papers on the stuff
Speaker 2: having it has to do with superconductors way back then
Speaker 2: about how to like just manipulate fields of gravity. Then
Speaker 2: she kind of falls off the radar, not publishing anything,
Speaker 2: and it's when she gets I think it's a DoD
Speaker 2: contract to begin, she like, she left the university, started
Speaker 2: her own business to try and monetize this tech that
Speaker 2: she wanted to build, right the DD came in and
Speaker 2: then nobody has heard from her in a long time.
Speaker 2: It's an ongoing mystery that you can check out right now.
Speaker 2: There's a great YouTube video from Barely Sociable about it
Speaker 2: from like twenty twenty one. But anyway, it's weird because
Speaker 2: she's alive. She seems to be fine, but she can't
Speaker 2: talk about what she's doing because now it's for the government.
Speaker 3: And what's the name of the scientist for.
Speaker 2: Nam Lee nig dash l I.
Speaker 3: That's quite a long time to be off the grid,
Speaker 3: isn't it.
Speaker 2: Mm hmm? Though the last communications were like the early
Speaker 2: two thousands.
Speaker 3: I'm sure she talks with her handler on a semi
Speaker 3: regular basis. Right, So we're talking about things like the
Speaker 3: Invention Secrecy Act of nineteen teen fifty one. Check out
Speaker 3: our episode on that. And the question is, like, this
Speaker 3: is something doctor Lee is probably wondering as well. What
Speaker 3: happens if you're one of these inventors, let's say you
Speaker 3: because you don't know what your end result will be.
Speaker 3: When you start experimenting, you can aim toward things. But then,
Speaker 3: just like the guy who invented the microwave, you get
Speaker 3: in situations and then you're onto something totally different. I mean,
Speaker 3: like you could start working on something innocuous, like the furrito,
Speaker 3: which is this brilliant combination or I should say, quite
Speaker 3: ambitious combination of fa broth in the typical burrito. Now,
Speaker 3: some people say it can't be done.
Speaker 2: You got to thicken that thing up, right, I've.
Speaker 3: Got a lot of stuff going on.
Speaker 4: You a soup sandwich.
Speaker 3: Oh right, I wanted to save this one. I wanted
Speaker 3: to save furrito for this, but because I was thinking
Speaker 3: the same thing all the soup sandwich. But but yeah,
Speaker 3: I'm onto stuff. But what if that accidentally leads like
Speaker 3: this innocuous research initially, What if it leads to something
Speaker 3: that all of a sudden would be world changing.
Speaker 4: It happens all the time. You know, what was it
Speaker 4: the chocolate bar melting in the pocket? You know that
Speaker 4: was a total accident that basically led to the invention
Speaker 4: of the microwave. And then the microwave is sort of
Speaker 4: obviously there's a very you know, home friendly use of that.
Speaker 4: But then the technology has applications well beyond that, like
Speaker 4: you know, in terms of radiation studying radiation and how
Speaker 4: you know, how it interacts on the body, and there's
Speaker 4: all kinds of other uses of microwave microwave technology, you know,
Speaker 4: for military applications.
Speaker 3: Percy Spencer shout out, Ben.
Speaker 2: Look, I'm going to say this really quietly, and I'm
Speaker 2: so sorry. Fu Heata.
Speaker 3: All right, no judgment, there's no judgment in brainstorming. Uh Fucksidilla?
Speaker 3: All right, well, fuck you, Sadilla. We've got ways to go,
Speaker 3: you know. But what happens if you are one of
Speaker 3: those inventors? We tell you again, without hyperbole, fellow conspiracy realist,
Speaker 3: this is but one of what will probably be a
Speaker 3: recurring series because, as it turns out, there are many,
Speaker 3: many inventors who have a lot of mystery surrounding their invention,
Speaker 3: and some of them may have died as a result.
Speaker 3: Here's where it gets crazy. Just cars, even just to
Speaker 3: the world of cars. It's nuts. Like when you think
Speaker 3: of someone who invents, you know, the catalytic converter, or
Speaker 3: when you think of, you know, the guys working at Mercedes,
Speaker 3: Benz and stuff. You don't usually think of a lot
Speaker 3: of intrigue, right like what if?
Speaker 2: What if it could have twelve v's arrest this man.
Speaker 3: There's too many v's, you know. We talked like Stanley
Speaker 3: Meyer allegedly invented a water fuel cell and he it's
Speaker 3: been dismissed as a perpetual motion machine. But of course
Speaker 3: there are tons and tons of different theories about how
Speaker 3: that went down. There's a guy, Tom Ogle who will
Speaker 3: talk about who unfortunately, well we'll get to him. But
Speaker 3: maybe we start, just for an example, the case we're
Speaker 3: laying out for these future episodes, maybe we start with
Speaker 3: Rudolph Diesel. You guys can tell I've got a little
Speaker 3: bit of a horse in the race or a little
Speaker 3: bit of piston in the machine, because my name for
Speaker 3: today's recording is hashtag Justice for.
Speaker 4: Diesel, which is kind of very techno, kind of banger
Speaker 4: of a name.
Speaker 3: I love that.
Speaker 4: So, what's the deal with Diesel, this guy who invented
Speaker 4: the diesel engine? And why is his case so kind
Speaker 4: of shrouded in mystery. It's not as so he invented
Speaker 4: a weapon of mass destruction. I mean, you know, diesel
Speaker 4: is a fuel. It is something that promotes you know,
Speaker 4: commerce and productivity. Obviously, a lot of large vehicles that
Speaker 4: that you know, help ship and receive all of the
Speaker 4: goods and stuff that we rely on that they use diesel,
Speaker 4: So that's a big deal. So he's definitely kind of
Speaker 4: a captain of industry in that respect, not as though
Speaker 4: he invented some sort of world annihilating you know, bomb
Speaker 4: of some kind. So his name Rudolph Christian Carl Diesel,
Speaker 4: which isn't the longest name we're going to have.
Speaker 3: In this Evening's episodes.
Speaker 4: So yeah, not by a long shot, and I look
Speaker 4: forward to the next one, which is one for the books.
Speaker 4: But he was born on March eighteenth, eighteen fifty eight
Speaker 4: in Paris. He wanted to be an engineer since he
Speaker 4: was a very small German boy living in Paris.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and what so that's when was he born.
Speaker 3: Eighteen fifty eight?
Speaker 2: It's fifty eight and then the first engine officially is
Speaker 2: like thirty a little less than thirty years later, is
Speaker 2: that correct?
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, it's around thirties. So like he's in his
Speaker 3: mid thirties by the eighteen nineties, and he's super deep
Speaker 3: into fuel and engine efficiency experiments in particular, and he
Speaker 3: has a couple of patents and he's got one in
Speaker 3: eighteen ninety two, I think. And then he goes back
Speaker 3: and corrects himself because he's figuring out his theory. He's
Speaker 3: cooking live and he doesn't really invent the concept of
Speaker 3: this engine, but he makes it viable, right. He vastly
Speaker 3: improves it such that it works, and that's why they
Speaker 3: call it the diesel engine. Now you can see the
Speaker 3: first diesel engine that was ever successfully tested over in
Speaker 3: Munich today it burst in creativity. It's called the Motor
Speaker 3: two fifty four hundred. He does that in eighteen ninety seven.
Speaker 3: So like to your point, Matt, yeah, he's he's in
Speaker 3: his thirties, he's still a young lad.
Speaker 2: Well yeah, well, I guess what I mean is the
Speaker 2: first car engine that was ever developed by Mercedes Benz
Speaker 2: is eighteen eighty five. So it's interesting that he's I'm
Speaker 2: certain he's aware of that as a thing, right, the
Speaker 2: views of that invention has come across. So he's do
Speaker 2: you guys ever think of the word tinkerer like you
Speaker 2: would take an engine like that and you just make
Speaker 2: small adjustments. See what happens, and then okay, well what
Speaker 2: if this occurred, What if we switch this piece out
Speaker 2: right and then add another piece in between these two
Speaker 2: major functioning parts. It's just really interesting. And that's the
Speaker 2: way I'm maybe picturing this this person.
Speaker 3: I think you're absolutely right, dude, because we also we
Speaker 3: have to remember that in this context, yes, motors exist,
Speaker 3: steamship steam engines exist, they're all woefully cartoonishly inefficient, especially
Speaker 3: compared to modern standards. So the diesel engine is revolutionary,
Speaker 3: and it clearly anybody worth their salt in any number
Speaker 3: of industries, they clearly know this can apply to them
Speaker 3: and it could change the game. And so by nineteen twelve,
Speaker 3: there are more than seventy thousand diesel engines all around
Speaker 3: the world. Mostly they're working for in generators or they're
Speaker 3: working in factories. Business is super good. And if you
Speaker 3: are anybody but Rudolph Diesel and you hear about his
Speaker 3: life and his invention, you think this guy is basically
Speaker 3: Jeff Bezos, you know, or like Dean Kyman level. You
Speaker 3: think he is super super duper wealthy. You think that
Speaker 3: he has no no issues other than making time to
Speaker 3: sign all those autographs and checks but uh.
Speaker 2: Way are we saying he wasn't what he was? Probably
Speaker 2: crazy wealthy, right.
Speaker 3: Dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun. Okay,
Speaker 3: So let's fast forward. It's nineteen thirteen September twenty ninth.
Speaker 3: Our boy Rudy is going on a trip. That's right.
Speaker 4: Diesel gets on a ship, the s S. Dresden and
Speaker 4: Antwerp on his way to meet a group called the
Speaker 4: Consolidated Diesel Manufacturing Company in London. And while he's kicking
Speaker 4: it with these folks, they attend a groundbreaking of a
Speaker 4: new diesel engine plant and he has another little errand
Speaker 4: to ron. While he's out there, Diesel is going to
Speaker 4: meet with members representatives of the British Navy and talk
Speaker 4: about installing his engines in their submarines.
Speaker 2: Hold up, pull up. So this is fascinating to me.
Speaker 2: Where the manufacturing plant we're talking about here is actually
Speaker 2: building the engines themselves, right, This isn't a plant that
Speaker 2: is using the engines, it's creating them, right, yes.
Speaker 3: Yeah, absolutely, And they have an annual meeting, so that
Speaker 3: is there's nothing sketchy about that. That's just good pr Yeah.
Speaker 2: But still he's got a huge manufacturing engine that's building engines, right,
Speaker 2: and then uh, he's meeting with the Navy, which could
Speaker 2: be not only lucrative, but like you just think about that,
Speaker 2: even that just that first handshake deal. I well, let's develop,
Speaker 2: let's let's work together. We like you Diesel, let's see
Speaker 2: what you can do for our sums.
Speaker 3: We like the we like the cut of your jib,
Speaker 3: we like the pumpy your fuel which sounds weirdly like
Speaker 3: in your window. And maybe there was some at play,
Speaker 3: but he so, like you said, he's he's talking with
Speaker 3: the he's talking with this private industry, uh congloberate basically,
Speaker 3: and they are going or consortium, I should say, and
Speaker 3: this is going to be really good for business. This
Speaker 3: is also really good pr for them. But he has
Speaker 3: he as a guy with German roots, is also very
Speaker 3: well aware that Germans marines are already using diesel engines.
Speaker 3: And so this second meeting is maybe a little less publicized.
Speaker 3: That's not the big headline grabber. He hangs out with
Speaker 3: some folks who are on the boat with him, and
Speaker 3: the way that they put it in the New York Times,
Speaker 3: which reports on this, he has he's just out there.
Speaker 3: They're in a good mood. They're like chain smoking and
Speaker 3: talking whatever the early nineteen hundreds version of trash talk
Speaker 3: is or small talk, I guess. And then round about
Speaker 3: ten pm, one of the guys says, well, okay, well
Speaker 3: let's knock it off, you know, let's go to bed,
Speaker 3: and so he agrees one of his last statements, or
Speaker 3: he agrees. He goes into his cabin and then he
Speaker 3: comes back out and he hasn't changed his clothing or anything.
Speaker 3: He shakes hands with his compatriots. He tells one of them,
Speaker 3: all right, I'll see you in the morning, and he
Speaker 3: sets away wake up call with the crew for six
Speaker 3: fifteen am. What do you say? We pause for a
Speaker 3: word from our sponsor. What you're here?
Speaker 2: What? Okay?
Speaker 4: Cliffhangerer Man relaxed.
Speaker 3: He hats for a cruise line and we've returned. So
Speaker 3: let's say fast forward deeply. It's six fifteen am. He
Speaker 3: gets the wake up call. What happens.
Speaker 4: Well, in the morning, his cabin is empty and his
Speaker 4: bed has actually not been slept in at all. His
Speaker 4: bed was not bed clothes, bed closer sheets, but his
Speaker 4: night his his night shirt, his bedtime attire, were neatly
Speaker 4: folded and laid out, and his watch had been left
Speaker 4: where it could be seen from the bed, not to
Speaker 4: mention that his and overcoat are also neatly stowed beneath
Speaker 4: the after deck railing, which I guess is sort of
Speaker 4: a kind of like a you know, like in a
Speaker 4: hotel room where you might have like a little closet
Speaker 4: built into the wall.
Speaker 2: So hold up, So he is publicly saying good night
Speaker 2: to people at like ten pm, I'll see you in
Speaker 2: the morning, Yeah, see you bye, going in, nobody sees
Speaker 2: him again. That's it. He clearly got ready for bed right,
Speaker 2: or somebody made it to look as though he got
Speaker 2: ready for bed right.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: His disappearance throws the world for a loop. It's not
Speaker 3: the kind of news they can crack down on because
Speaker 3: his upcoming, his upcoming event at that factory was already
Speaker 3: in the public sphere. So we see, even without the
Speaker 3: world of social media, we see this proliferation of conspiracy theories.
Speaker 3: Almost immediately, people say this guy was super rich, you know,
Speaker 3: he had every reason to live. He invented a world
Speaker 3: changing engine. But after his disappearance, as investigations continued, new
Speaker 3: details revealed that his public image was not his real life. Instead,
Speaker 3: the guy had some bad health. We don't know the
Speaker 3: degree of it, and perhaps more importantly, he was in
Speaker 3: serious debt, which, weirdly enough, happens to a lot of inventors.
Speaker 2: So what did he So we know that he made
Speaker 2: a lot of money at some point, and was making
Speaker 2: a lot of money. I guess that money was being
Speaker 2: funneled into places that were then losing money.
Speaker 3: That's the idea, unclear, quite possibly against sketchier though a
Speaker 3: curiouser and curiouser his spouse, Martha diesel shortly after his disappearance.
Speaker 3: She opens a he gave her. Now, everybody, put yourself
Speaker 3: in this situation. Imagine what you would do. Your partner
Speaker 3: is going on a big trip, and your partner kind
Speaker 3: of controls the finances, right, which would be common for
Speaker 3: marriages of that time in that part of the world.
Speaker 3: And then he says, hey, I'm going to leave this
Speaker 3: bag with you. And then you say, okay, you know,
Speaker 3: my dear husband, what's in the bag? What should I
Speaker 3: do with it? And he goes, well, don't open it
Speaker 3: until like next week, and then what.
Speaker 2: And this is just before just before he leaves. Oh, dude,
Speaker 2: this is pseudo side right, come on?
Speaker 3: So she uh, I love it. So she uh she waits,
Speaker 3: she gets the news of his disappearance. She says, all right,
Speaker 3: I'm going to open the bag. It is a bag
Speaker 3: full of cash. It's like a we don't know if
Speaker 3: it was a Duffel bag. It probably wasn't, but it was.
Speaker 3: It was a big It was full of like twenty
Speaker 3: grand in German marks, which is over one hundred and
Speaker 3: twenty thousand dollars today. And then that wasn't all that
Speaker 3: was in the bag.
Speaker 2: Well, wait a minute, German marks. I guess it depends
Speaker 2: on the year, right, because German marks have fluctuated a
Speaker 2: little bit, a bit, a little bit. Oh sorry, my
Speaker 2: brain thinking about that.
Speaker 3: This is you know, this is still before the times
Speaker 3: of their great fluctuations that would come.
Speaker 2: So and Ben, you said the bank accounts were completely empty.
Speaker 3: That's the other thing that was in the bag, Like Jay, yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's nothing in there.
Speaker 3: It's all in this bag, right that they basically have
Speaker 3: pennies in their bank accounts. And then fast forward, you
Speaker 3: know the world is still asking what the heck happened
Speaker 3: to Rudolph? And then on October tenth. Officially, we arrive
Speaker 3: at an answer.
Speaker 4: A Belgian sailor aboard a north sea steamship spots a
Speaker 4: body and the water just drifting, and upon further investigation,
Speaker 4: it turned out that the body belonged to Rootolph Diesel.
Speaker 3: Officially right, officially, I don't know. I think it's a
Speaker 3: fishy explanation. But yeah, so they say they found his body.
Speaker 3: They verified his body, and it looked as though he
Speaker 3: somehow went over over the side of the boat and
Speaker 3: then drowned and his corpse floated for multiple days until
Speaker 3: it was discovered. But what happened?
Speaker 2: Yeah, do do we know who he owed money to
Speaker 2: with his investments at all? Or is that all still
Speaker 2: kind of a mystery?
Speaker 3: Well, there are there are competing theories about this, and
Speaker 3: they get a little wilder and wilder the further out
Speaker 3: we go, Like you'll you'll see people saying that he
Speaker 3: had serious debts with titans of industry like the Rockefellers
Speaker 3: or what have you, or had fallen on the bad
Speaker 3: side of oil interest. But it's still kind of unclear.
Speaker 3: Most people would argue at this time, and even now
Speaker 3: that he took his own life, that he committed suicide
Speaker 3: purposely jumped overboard because of either his dire health or
Speaker 3: his dire finances.
Speaker 2: Got it, geez, I guess just if you did have
Speaker 2: a list of people that he owed money to, you'd
Speaker 2: have a list of people with motive to take him out.
Speaker 3: Yeah, right, And that list should be something that you
Speaker 3: could find, right if this is not suicide, if this
Speaker 3: is indeed homicide. And the problem is that with those
Speaker 3: lists with that idea of documentation, if someone commits suicide
Speaker 3: or pseudo side and they have a partner that will
Speaker 3: still be legally biologically alive, then usually they have come
Speaker 3: some kind of life insurance grift going on, right, And
Speaker 3: it doesn't appear that he made any untoward kind of
Speaker 3: new life insurance accounts, you know, like the day he
Speaker 3: leaves on the dress. So there are a lot of
Speaker 3: theories that argue, no, no, no, no, no, this guy
Speaker 3: didn't take his own life. He certainly wasn't planning to.
Speaker 3: He was murdered. And it makes I gotta be honest,
Speaker 3: not to be credulous, but it makes more and more sense,
Speaker 3: or at least there's I'm still on the fence about it,
Speaker 3: you guys, But the way you look into it, he
Speaker 3: wasn't He wasn't super happy with how his invention was
Speaker 3: being used because very powerful forces wanted it. What are
Speaker 3: you going to tell the German government, No, I have
Speaker 3: a problem with what you're doing. They don't care. They've
Speaker 3: already got the U boats.
Speaker 4: So at this point, the murder theory posits that someone,
Speaker 4: perhaps a German operative, may have engineered his death in
Speaker 4: order to look like a suicide. We know, that's incredibly common,
Speaker 4: you know, I mean, just you put the gun in
Speaker 4: the person's hand, wipe off your prints, et cetera. Or
Speaker 4: feed them an overdose of their own medication something like that.
Speaker 4: There's any number of ways this can be done. All
Speaker 4: of this in the hopes of preventing him from spreading
Speaker 4: his world changing technology to the enemy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the British. It's fascinating to imagine that the same
Speaker 2: technology gets used on two sides of like warrying of
Speaker 2: two warring factions, right, same engine in the tanks that
Speaker 2: are firing at each other. Really weird stuff.
Speaker 3: Yeah, shout out military industrial complex, right Yeah.
Speaker 2: And in the end it's the manufacturers that are like what.
Speaker 3: Especially if you're the only entity manufacturing a specific thing, right, Like, hey,
Speaker 3: prices have gone up. Man, let's just let's you and
Speaker 3: I hope they don't go up again. Now go ahead
Speaker 3: and sign.
Speaker 2: You couldn't need more ammunition, right, like, ah, we got
Speaker 2: just several palettes waiting for you, go ahead, exactly right.
Speaker 3: And what happened to that palette of a billion dollars
Speaker 3: in Iraq straight cash?
Speaker 2: No, it fell from an airplane with a parachute and
Speaker 2: then it got squirreled away somewhere.
Speaker 3: FI currency is such an amazing invention morality aside, but right,
Speaker 3: so like to what you're saying, No, the idea then
Speaker 3: would be that German operatives got on the boat and
Speaker 3: nipped this stuff in the bud before he could meet
Speaker 3: with British forces. It doesn't stop there, though, because some
Speaker 3: people say, yeah, he was murdered, but it wasn't German
Speaker 3: intelligence or some proxy of the Instead, it was a
Speaker 3: tentacle of big oil interest and that's where the different
Speaker 3: like tycoons of industry come into play. The argument is
Speaker 3: that a few years before he disappeared, he said, you
Speaker 3: know what else about the diesel engine? It can run
Speaker 3: on peanut oil?
Speaker 2: My friends, Oh yeah, oh, my son was just learning
Speaker 2: who is the inventor with all the peanuts here in
Speaker 2: George Washington Carver. George Washington Carver, he just did a
Speaker 2: whole huge lesson on all of the other peanut inventions
Speaker 2: and peanut related things that George Washington Carver worked on.
Speaker 2: Peanut butter is the only thing that he didn't invent.
Speaker 2: He invented there. It was a list of like four
Speaker 2: hundred different things, including peanut oil, like specifically peanut oil
Speaker 2: that could be combustible and used in.
Speaker 3: An engine like this biodiesel.
Speaker 2: Crazy.
Speaker 3: Sorry, It's amazing though, and I feel like Carver would
Speaker 3: be great for ridiculous history too. Maybe. So there's another
Speaker 3: theory on this. So we've got suicide and we've got homicide.
Speaker 3: The other theory certainly more tasty. This has the umami
Speaker 3: of intrigue. What if Diesel didn't die at all? What
Speaker 3: if he did commit pseudo side to your point, Matt,
Speaker 3: what if he faked his death with help from the
Speaker 3: British and emigrated to Canada or Australia some other anglophone
Speaker 3: friendly country and spent the rest of his life in
Speaker 3: obscurity designing submarine engines for the fight against Germany and
Speaker 3: World War One.
Speaker 2: Dude, I mean, I wouldn't put that past like the
Speaker 2: intelligence forces right back then? Was the oss? Even around
Speaker 2: pre World War One? Was there any there must have
Speaker 2: been something like that, some kind of I don't know,
Speaker 2: maybe not the US, maybe it was British.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean you have to be right, even if
Speaker 3: it was just a couple of you know, like friends
Speaker 3: of Queen and country kind of ad hoc thing. Of course,
Speaker 3: those those kind of operations are as old as the
Speaker 3: first time more than two tribes met to each met together. Right.
Speaker 2: Oh. Yeah, the old paper clip goes way back, and
Speaker 2: there was this.
Speaker 3: You know, there would later be these patterns of abducting
Speaker 3: scientists and war criminals or aiding them in some kind
Speaker 3: of escape and keeping it out of the public sphere
Speaker 3: if the news would be bad optics I mean Washington Posts.
Speaker 3: They points out that pseudo side, as we've discussed, it
Speaker 3: asked a lot, It asks a lot of error from
Speaker 3: investigators and to ask a supreme amount of OPSEC from
Speaker 3: the people who are faking their deaths. So they say,
Speaker 3: there are no administrative records, no paper trail at all
Speaker 3: for this possible life in Canada or some kind of
Speaker 3: wit sec thing in Australia. There there's no deathbed confession
Speaker 3: from someone who might have spirited him away. No fellow
Speaker 3: engineers who would have ever worked on anything have said,
Speaker 3: you know, they they told us his name was John Doe,
Speaker 3: but he looked a lot like this Rudolph Diesel guy.
Speaker 3: There's just no there's no hard evidence for this idea,
Speaker 3: as interesting as it is, and it'll probably be a
Speaker 3: mystery for the time being.
Speaker 4: And again, like we were talking about this the other
Speaker 4: day with Glenn Miller, how you know, this guy at
Speaker 4: the peak of his game who had just decided to
Speaker 4: essentially invent the USO and was going overseas to you know,
Speaker 4: bring cheer and joy to the troops, what motive would.
Speaker 3: He have had to commit pseudo sides?
Speaker 4: You know, I think the more likely scenario is that
Speaker 4: something went wrong and that his plane was accidentally shot
Speaker 4: down or was the you know, the victim of a
Speaker 4: of a malfunction of some kind.
Speaker 3: And I think that similarly the case here.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but what if he never got into bed, that is,
Speaker 2: what did he do? You go out for a smoke, night.
Speaker 3: Walk, the night walk the deck on the deck did
Speaker 3: have insomnia, But then also, you know, there are no
Speaker 3: like cameras, there's no strict visitor log. So what if
Speaker 3: someone who happens to be a passenger or happens to
Speaker 3: be on the crew stops by, like just after the
Speaker 3: other folks go and knocks on the door.
Speaker 4: Let me rephrase, pseudo side to me in this case
Speaker 4: makes zero sense. What does make a lot of sense
Speaker 4: is that this guy could have been a target because
Speaker 4: of the power of his invention and what it might
Speaker 4: mean if he took it global.
Speaker 2: I'm just going to keep in mind the thought that
Speaker 2: we discussed where he gets taken somewhere else for some
Speaker 2: kind of military might effort, because to me, weirdly enough,
Speaker 2: that makes a lot of sense.
Speaker 3: Right right, And also it's it's a nicer ending. It's
Speaker 3: kind of like it's kind of like when my parents
Speaker 3: told me our first dog went camping, right, So maybe
Speaker 3: that's what happened. Maybe maybe Diesel went went camping in Canada.
Speaker 3: But if you want to learn more about this case,
Speaker 3: which remains unsolved, by the way, check out the book
Speaker 3: The Mysterious Case of Rudolph Diesel by Douglas Brunt without
Speaker 3: spoiling it. He does not agree with the suicide conclusion
Speaker 3: of the authorities, and it's a heck of a read.
Speaker 3: I think they just made a deal for it to
Speaker 3: be adapted into maybe a film or a mini series
Speaker 3: or something, but keeping keep an eye out for that.
Speaker 3: And most importantly, please no, folks, he is not Diesel
Speaker 3: is not the only mysterious inventor we're discussing today. We're
Speaker 3: going to take a pause for a word from our sponsors,
Speaker 3: maybe a carburetor company, and then go to the story
Speaker 3: of tom Ogel. No, this is the name you were
Speaker 3: super excited about, so we can get back. Can we
Speaker 3: lean on your your German pronunciation today on this one
Speaker 3: I will deign to do you proud.
Speaker 4: And we've returned and Ben, thank you so much for
Speaker 4: this opportunity to flex my young German boy pronunciation. Chops.
Speaker 4: Today we are going to talk about tom Ogel born
Speaker 4: Thomas Hans Vanna Peta Wolfgang Dingle Statt.
Speaker 3: Ogel Okay dingle Stott.
Speaker 4: Though it makes that sounds made up, bro, have you.
Speaker 4: There's this amazing Monty Python sketch. It's about this composer
Speaker 4: whose name was too long. It was so long that
Speaker 4: it was just like absurd and the and that the
Speaker 4: joke becomes every time they say his name, they say
Speaker 4: the whole name, and it's a Johann Gamble, Putty, devon
Speaker 4: aus van splendent, Schlittish, Crossbender, fried Dingle, Dangle, Dongle, Dongle, Burstein,
Speaker 4: von Knacker, Thrasher, Applebanger, Horrowitz, tickle and sick, Grander, naughty, Speltinker,
Speaker 4: grand lik, Grumblemeyer, Spetwasser, curtly himbal Bissen, ban Vaughen, guten bend, bitter, Imnernberger, Bratwustel, Gushputten,
Speaker 4: mitt wach, Luber, hanswat gomberber shandanka krbufly like mitter von
Speaker 4: Olmo because he's he's from Olma. I'm sorry, it's I
Speaker 4: think honestly, that was maybe a joke based on this
Speaker 4: guy's name. Granted, there are many other absurdly long names
Speaker 4: in the German cannon, but yes, Thomas Hans Werner Petter
Speaker 4: Wolfgang Dingles dot Ogel was born in nineteen fifty three,
Speaker 4: truly his full name. Like Diesel, he invented a new
Speaker 4: kind of improvement for engines.
Speaker 3: Yeah you'll hear it, called the ogol or Ogle engine.
Speaker 3: But what he really claimed to have invented was a
Speaker 3: modified alternative to the typical carburetor, and he was taking
Speaker 3: the carburetor out and using a series of things to
Speaker 3: kind of replace it. And in that replacement he was
Speaker 3: saying he drastically improved fuel economy. And what's more, he
Speaker 3: didn't have to build a special car to do it.
Speaker 3: He could do this with pretty much any car on
Speaker 3: the road that had a carburetor. And if you let
Speaker 3: him tinker to that earlier point with your otherwise normal car,
Speaker 3: all of a sudden, you would get two hundred miles
Speaker 3: per gallon of fuel.
Speaker 2: Oh, don't do that, don't do that. That sounds great, y'all,
Speaker 2: but the oil folks are going to perk their ears
Speaker 2: up real quick they hear that. At least was it
Speaker 2: in secret? And nobody knew about this at least?
Speaker 3: Oh no, they knew. They knew for sure because he
Speaker 3: got Thank you for that set up, Matty. He got
Speaker 3: a lot of media coverage in nineteen seventy nine or
Speaker 3: nineteen seventy seven. And it makes me to your example,
Speaker 3: it makes me think that somewhere in the board of
Speaker 3: Saudi Aramco, a guy stood up and said, there's a disturbance,
Speaker 3: you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he cannot allow this.
Speaker 3: And in nineteen seventy seven, he's based in El Paso.
Speaker 3: He's a very young dude. Nineteen seventy seven, he drives
Speaker 3: to from El Paso to another town, New Mexico called Deming,
Speaker 3: and then he drives back and he only uses two
Speaker 3: gallons of gas. No, allegedly, And you can read like
Speaker 3: plenty of media coverage about this. He was open with it.
Speaker 3: And if any of that's true, it's a game changer.
Speaker 3: It would rock the auto and energy industries. People would
Speaker 3: need far less fuel. People would probably also have I
Speaker 3: don't know, the parts manufacturers, the car manufacturers, they would
Speaker 3: all be scrambling for this. And the guy is just
Speaker 3: twenty four years old at this time.
Speaker 2: This is crazy. I can't believe like one hundred miles
Speaker 2: per gallon average, you know exactly. That's insane.
Speaker 3: That's his claim.
Speaker 4: Yeah, okay, fair enough, fair enough. But he had applied
Speaker 4: for a patent, and while he was waiting for that
Speaker 4: patent to be approved, he continued to tinker and refine,
Speaker 4: you know, and test the system.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 4: Kind of a gaggle of lawyers started to work on
Speaker 4: an agreement between Ogle and the folks backing him regarding
Speaker 4: royalties if the device were to kind of hit the market.
Speaker 4: And we are getting a lot of this information from
Speaker 4: a really fantastic piece by Cynthia Quavas, Isabelle Hernandez, and
Speaker 4: Ruth Viz at EPCC Library Research Guides.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, yeah. This was solid work on their part
Speaker 3: and a great way if you want to if you
Speaker 3: want to get a sense of just the blow by
Speaker 3: blow of media coverage. This is a pretty comprehensive resource,
Speaker 3: So do check it out. I'm pretty impressed with the
Speaker 3: EPCC right now.
Speaker 2: So dude, yeah, Ben, can I just stick on this
Speaker 2: original article from the old Passo Times that you linked use?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is it's just blowing my mind a little bit.
Speaker 2: So there's an article that was written in nineteen seventy
Speaker 2: seven about this by a man named John Dussard I
Speaker 2: think is how you say his name. This is about
Speaker 2: that trip we just discussed right where you got crazy
Speaker 2: gas mileage up here to show a journalist right it is.
Speaker 2: The vehicle is a Ford Galaxy that got around Gosh,
Speaker 2: the gas mileage was about twelve miles per gallon in
Speaker 2: that vehicle and he ten xt to that thing, if
Speaker 2: not like ten point four xt it.
Speaker 4: Like that.
Speaker 2: I just to really understand, if this is true, how
Speaker 2: intense of a shift that could have been if that engine,
Speaker 2: his system were made to go wide in any way.
Speaker 3: And officially, different reporters had examined this. Engineers in the
Speaker 3: area had talked with him. They said they thought it
Speaker 3: was legit. It wasn't a hoax. But as far as
Speaker 3: we know, there were no scientifically rigorous studies of this,
Speaker 3: of this Ocal engine. And that becomes a problem later because, look,
Speaker 3: the guy's very, very smart. He's clearly brilliant. He's also
Speaker 3: very young, and he's not making this in a vacuum.
Speaker 3: He's a gearhead who likes playing with stuff, and I
Speaker 3: think we can we've all experienced some form of that,
Speaker 3: you know, phenomenon. But he is creating this in the
Speaker 3: middle of the US energy crisis, and he gets a
Speaker 3: lot of interest from some high muckety MUCKs, at least
Speaker 3: one oil company, to auto manufact actors. At one point,
Speaker 3: even the US Air Force started poking around, because you know,
Speaker 3: fuel is expensive.
Speaker 4: Yeah. So in June twenty second of nineteen seventy eight,
Speaker 4: El Paso Herald Post had this to say, Ogle sells
Speaker 4: rights to a gas saving device, and the article stated
Speaker 4: that the AFS Advanced Fuel Systems Incorporated rather, which is
Speaker 4: a company in Washington State, had bought the manufacturing and
Speaker 4: marketing rights to the technology, and the contract specified that
Speaker 4: Ogle would receive an unspecified amount of advance money, one
Speaker 4: hundred thousand shares of stock in the company, six percent
Speaker 4: royalty on sales of each device, a monthly salary, and
Speaker 4: the rights to visit AFS at will.
Speaker 2: That's pretty sounds pretty solid. That's some island buying moneys
Speaker 2: are lucky.
Speaker 3: To get one of those, you know what I mean? Like, yeah,
Speaker 3: six percent on sale of every single device.
Speaker 2: It sounds made up.
Speaker 4: Frankly, guys, would that's a bad deal for the people
Speaker 4: actually making the stuff, you know what I mean?
Speaker 3: Speaking his segues, that might be more indicative of AFS
Speaker 3: because two months after they made this deal, which all
Speaker 3: three of us just agreed, is not very smart on
Speaker 3: their part. The SEC came calling and they said, hey,
Speaker 3: Advanced Fuel Systems, you guys make bad deals. As a
Speaker 3: matter of fact, you've done a criminally bad job. You
Speaker 3: have violated federal security laws. And then Ogel is also
Speaker 3: he's playing the field. He's got other stuff going on.
Speaker 3: He has created, He's taken some money, and he's created
Speaker 3: the first of what he hopes will be a chain
Speaker 3: of you call him computerized diagnostic centers. And before the
Speaker 3: year was out he closed down that one store he opened.
Speaker 3: He disconnected his phone, like Ning Lee. He became increasingly
Speaker 3: more difficult to find, and this weirded some people out,
Speaker 3: especially the irs, because in May of nineteen eighty, they
Speaker 3: came calling specifically for him, Tommy Boy. They said, you
Speaker 3: owe us more than twenty grand in taxes, because just
Speaker 3: like Rudolph Diesel, this dude's public image was not the
Speaker 3: same as the actual guy. He was living the high
Speaker 3: life young, you know, young mid twenties, dumb amounts of
Speaker 3: money or people offering you dumb amounts of money. He's
Speaker 3: got a customized limousine he rides everywhere in well.
Speaker 2: He's so he did get that money with that deal
Speaker 2: with AFS. So he got whatever, at least part of
Speaker 2: that money, even after they came after AFS.
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, he got some money for sure. He had
Speaker 3: more than fifty financial backers, distinct people and companies. Over time,
Speaker 3: and he started living kind of wild guys in nineteen
Speaker 3: eighty one in April, he got a gut shot outside
Speaker 3: of a bar in northeast Alpasso. He survived. No one
Speaker 3: was ever charged, but for some reason, while he was
Speaker 3: in the hospital, the El Paso PD had officers guarding
Speaker 3: his room.
Speaker 4: Usually happens, well, yeah, but you know, I see the
Speaker 4: person of notes who's under threat perhaps, or you know,
Speaker 4: maybe they just decided he deserved a security detail.
Speaker 2: Well see, but here's the other thing. If you're an onlooker, right,
Speaker 2: maybe they're guarding his room because he was just involved
Speaker 2: in a shooting. So maybe they're not necessarily even guarding him.
Speaker 2: Maybe they're like they're in an investigative.
Speaker 3: They're like stakeout, you know, trying to find the purp
Speaker 3: or maybe it's something that the three of us didn't know.
Speaker 3: Maybe you can just always request an armed guard when
Speaker 3: you go to the hospital, that would be cool.
Speaker 4: Or maybe the doc in the box like, yeah, I
Speaker 4: mean I need to get And then the first Godfather movie,
Speaker 4: when there's an attempt made on the Godfather of Vido
Speaker 4: Corleone's life and he's in the hospital, there's you know,
Speaker 4: cops watching his door, but they end up being crooked
Speaker 4: cops and they leave so that the bad man can
Speaker 4: come and kill him. And it's only his son Michael
Speaker 4: that figures out the plot and gets him out of
Speaker 4: there and moves him to a different, different suite.
Speaker 3: I'm just in love with the idea of like going
Speaker 3: anywhere like a hospital or doc in the box and
Speaker 3: being able to say, Hey, I'm here, I've got a cold.
Speaker 3: I need an armed guard right where this appointment Actually three? Yeah,
Speaker 3: check my insurance. Make sure those officers are in network.
Speaker 3: So there's this other stuff. He apparently had run ins
Speaker 3: with the law, like reckless driving, arrest, possession of an
Speaker 3: illegal firearm. These are weird things. He also sued a
Speaker 3: guy because he had lost a bunch of pool games
Speaker 3: to the dude, and he said the dude forced him
Speaker 3: to sign away like twenty two percent of his shares
Speaker 3: in some like in some weird gambling debt thing.
Speaker 2: Well, guys, come on, we know what the saying is.
Speaker 2: We know how it goes more money, more issues? Is
Speaker 2: that how gills money? No problems beclusus. But there's ninety
Speaker 2: nine of them, the problems at least that exist. But
Speaker 2: there's one that isn't right.
Speaker 3: And for jay Z and for Tom and his lawyer
Speaker 3: said something interesting in one of these many legal kerfuffles.
Speaker 3: He says, look, my client is and paraphrasing here, he's
Speaker 3: a twenty six year old kid. He is a target
Speaker 3: for anyone. He is scared by the local I guess
Speaker 3: CD gambling figures of El Paso, and these people are
Speaker 3: getting him drunk and taking advantage of him and just
Speaker 3: fleecing him left and right. So the attorney is painting
Speaker 3: him as a victim, not some kind of like grifting
Speaker 3: con artist who's living too high on the hog shout
Speaker 3: out to the Dale car episode. By the way of
Speaker 3: car stuff. Oh that's a weird one.
Speaker 2: But is that wait, what is that? I don't know that.
Speaker 4: It's another kind of invention that was killed right or
Speaker 4: essentially it was just oh wait, what was the deal?
Speaker 4: Was it kind of a grift in and of itself
Speaker 4: like the car?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 4: Yeah, it was like over promised, mega under delivered kind
Speaker 4: of cinema. Okay, God, and it just got weirder and weirder.
Speaker 4: It's a three part episode. Hopefully it holds up. But
Speaker 4: we don't know what really happened with Tom. We don't
Speaker 4: know what his real situation was, and we probably won't
Speaker 4: know that, at least not publicly for now. Because on
Speaker 4: August nineteenth, nineteen eighty one, he's twenty six years old.
Speaker 4: He dies, he has found, his body is found. He
Speaker 4: collapses at a friend's house. But I think his body
Speaker 4: is found in the desert, and authorities say, Okay, he overdosed.
Speaker 4: He overdosed on alcohol and.
Speaker 3: A tranquilizer called darvon. You guys, I don't know too
Speaker 3: much about drugs, but I assume that would be like
Speaker 3: a common I guess, recreational drug of the time.
Speaker 4: I guess, so I imagine it would be akin to
Speaker 4: something like xanax or like a like a a sedative.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 4: I don't know that it's a thing that has prescribed anymore,
Speaker 4: and it's probably really really powerful, because drugs back in
Speaker 4: those days were, and they were they could be very,
Speaker 4: very dangerous.
Speaker 3: It looks like it's an opioid.
Speaker 4: Is that right? Let's see, Yeah, it's a narcotic.
Speaker 2: Wow, is that interesting pharmaceuticals?
Speaker 4: Yeah, Wow, that's a fun name. Yeah, that's very I
Speaker 4: just yeah, I don't know, I don't know. Let's see dosage,
Speaker 4: But what is that? What is it prescribed for? Looks
Speaker 4: like it treats mild to moderate pain.
Speaker 3: It's a pain kill out of that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, for some reason in my mind, I you
Speaker 4: know where I think I first heard about this drug.
Speaker 4: There's a Chuck Pallink book called Invisible Monsters that involves
Speaker 4: naming of.
Speaker 3: A lot of pills, and that one I think is
Speaker 3: in there at some point, right, Yeah, well, either way,
Speaker 3: don't mix those kinds of drugs or substances, folks. Just
Speaker 3: like with the case of Rudolph Diesel, there are these
Speaker 3: competing theories that spring up overnight, you know, like the
Speaker 3: old myth about soldiers and dragons. Teeth pathologists say, Okay,
Speaker 3: we know it's an overdose. However, based on our evidence,
Speaker 3: we cannot rule whether this was accidental or whether this
Speaker 3: was indicative of suicide. And Tom's friends and the lawyer
Speaker 3: that he's forged the relationship of some sort with at
Speaker 3: this point because they're always hanging out, because this guy's
Speaker 3: always up the hijinks. Everybody who knows the guy says, look,
Speaker 3: did he like to party shore, but he would never
Speaker 3: have taken twenty Darvon pills in addition to raging. And
Speaker 3: I you know, I'm not in that world. But it
Speaker 3: seems like swallowing twenty pills of anything is a lot
Speaker 3: if the pills work right, Yeah.
Speaker 2: Even seriously, even even what what's the most comment like
Speaker 2: if you're going to take ibuprofen or yeah, twenties too many?
Speaker 3: Twenty's too many? They should redesign the dosage.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 3: So, so now people are saying, did someone have a
Speaker 3: motive to the point about diesel? Did someone do something
Speaker 3: to take this guy out? As we mentioned, you have
Speaker 3: more than fifty different financial backers who are left to
Speaker 3: fight over his estate. And then as as the time
Speaker 3: wends on, his invention fades from national interest and his
Speaker 3: story joins the ranks of other tech suppression tales. There's
Speaker 3: a documentary about this in late two thousand twenty ten
Speaker 3: called GasHole that highlights his invention, as well as several other,
Speaker 3: let's call them controversial inventions in the world of petroleum
Speaker 3: and automotives. I don't know, man, I watched it. They
Speaker 3: have a horse in the race too. They are strongly
Speaker 3: of the opinion that large oil and manufacturing interest shut
Speaker 3: down inventions that might threaten their current status quo.
Speaker 2: Like the old EV one.
Speaker 3: Like the old ev one bought up and oh, you
Speaker 3: could only lease them, right, and then at the end
Speaker 3: of the lease, the company took them all and destroyed them.
Speaker 2: Woo electric cars in the early two thousands, and.
Speaker 3: I believe the first car ever made was also electric,
Speaker 3: that's right, yeah, or electric carriages. Excuse me, they weren't
Speaker 3: there you go.
Speaker 2: That's by the way, that first motor and Mercedes Benz motor.
Speaker 2: I think that motor was invented the same year the
Speaker 2: Piedmont Driving Club was founded.
Speaker 3: Oh nice, isn't that fun as a celebration.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they didn't need the horses and carriages anymore. They
Speaker 2: had Mercedes Benz engines. And it's been that way ever since.
Speaker 3: I love the coincidence game. That's like, say, it's like, oh,
Speaker 3: Tom Ogle died just a few days after I was born. Coincidence.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, no coincidence there. I just sorry my brain.
Speaker 3: It's fascinating, though, how many things occur in step in history,
Speaker 3: you know. I also found a list. I was thinking
Speaker 3: we might check this out off air, but I found
Speaker 3: a cool list from Popular Mechanics about the quote unquote
Speaker 3: greatest inventions per year. So you can find the biggest
Speaker 3: invention on the year of your birth. Pretty neat stuff
Speaker 3: worth checking out. But this is not the end of
Speaker 3: the story. I can't believe we we're toward at the
Speaker 3: end of an episode. We've talked about just two inventors,
Speaker 3: both of whom died under mysterious circumstances, both of both
Speaker 3: of whom one of whom invented something that definitely changed
Speaker 3: the world, and one of whom invented something that he
Speaker 3: certainly thought could change the world or would have would have.
Speaker 1: Uh, it's.
Speaker 3: So it's kind of doubter because those guys both died.
Speaker 3: Do we want to do We want to maybe tease
Speaker 3: someone we're going to explore in a future a future
Speaker 3: installment of this episode.
Speaker 4: Someone Who's got was Oh yeah, I think this one
Speaker 4: was pretty near and dear to Matt's heart. Matt, you
Speaker 4: want to bless us with a tease?
Speaker 2: Well, if this is an inventor slash just all around
Speaker 2: pretty brilliant person that we've been following for several years now,
Speaker 2: we've mentioned him a couple of times. Yeah, you may
Speaker 2: have heard his name, Dean Cayman. I guess connected to
Speaker 2: the invention of this thing called a segue, that weird
Speaker 2: little people mover thing. But before he did that. He
Speaker 2: invented other stuff too, right, Yeah.
Speaker 4: He actually invented like a bionic arm, very ahead of
Speaker 4: its time. It was called the Luke Arm, like named
Speaker 4: after Luke Skywalker, who you know, obviously spoiler alert gets
Speaker 4: his arm chopped off by doth Veda and then has
Speaker 4: a bionic arm moving forward in the series.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, Well, the guy is a prolific inventor of things,
Speaker 2: mostly in the like biomedical field, so stuff associated with
Speaker 2: autoinjector systems for you know, people with diabetes and all
Speaker 2: kinds of other different ailments like that. Pretty prolific stuff.
Speaker 2: He's got a bunch of different companies. But the reason
Speaker 2: why I think we wanted to talk about him, and
Speaker 2: we'll talk about him again in the future, is because
Speaker 2: he diesel. Like anybody who makes an important invention, gains
Speaker 2: the interest of militaries and governments, and lately, I think
Speaker 2: since twenty sixteen twenty seventeen, he's been working on something new.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we're talking about this off air. He's been quite
Speaker 3: a busy, busy guy. He reminds me a lot of
Speaker 3: Buckminster Fuller, kind of a New Age renaissance man, a
Speaker 3: fasterist as we right, Yeah, quite so. And he got
Speaker 3: an eighty million dollar grant from the DoD the Department
Speaker 3: of Defense in twenty seventeen, and he's working on something
Speaker 3: he calls ARMY, but it's spelled with an I.
Speaker 2: What does that mean? Man, it's the Advanced Regenerative Manufacturing Institute.
Speaker 2: What what's it's It's a facility that's going to be
Speaker 2: built on a place that's going to be fairly isolated.
Speaker 2: It's a one hundred thousand square eaters at a place
Speaker 2: called the mill Yard in Manchester, maybe New York. It
Speaker 2: seems really interesting because, at least according to ABC News
Speaker 2: reporting in Gosh November first of this year, they're saying
Speaker 2: this place and the partners there at that facility, whatever
Speaker 2: it becomes, are going to quote gross sells tissue and
Speaker 2: bones and even manufacture replacement human organs. Guys, it feels
Speaker 2: like a direct connection to some of our earlier episodes
Speaker 2: on the future of humanity and living forever and all
Speaker 2: of that stuff. And if the DoD is paying for it, yeah,
Speaker 2: it feels like a soldier enhancement situation.
Speaker 4: By the way, Manchester's in New Hampshire, Massachusetts. There's also
Speaker 4: one in Massachusetts, so we'll have to get to the
Speaker 4: bottom of that part.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I just need to go back to the
Speaker 2: full article. Sorry about that. It's a place called Manchester.
Speaker 3: Great accept no substitutions, and this gives us an excuse
Speaker 3: to go on the road. And of course we know
Speaker 3: these kinds of grants don't result in just single single
Speaker 3: issue missions. Right, We're looking again at at innovations that
Speaker 3: lead to applications of which we may not be fully aware.
Speaker 3: Even Cayman might still have some questions about how these
Speaker 3: things can be applied. But fascinating, fascinating stuff, and so
Speaker 3: good to end with a mysterious inventor who wasn't possibly
Speaker 3: murdered by powerful forces.
Speaker 2: Oh, he's doing fine. He is isolated. Dude has his
Speaker 2: own private island. It's called North Dumpling Island, and well
Speaker 2: he didn't successfully secede from the US, but he has
Speaker 2: an official document signed by George hw Bush I think. Oh,
Speaker 2: and also in his own little island nation that he
Speaker 2: has his own currency for like pretty it's ben Buck
Speaker 2: City right there, and the founders of Ben and Jerry's
Speaker 2: ice Cream are officially the quote minace of ice cream
Speaker 2: of his island nation, which is freaking dope.
Speaker 3: Ty, I'm picturing like a Walter Noble figure from Fringe. Yeah,
Speaker 3: you know how that guy was always about big scientific breakthroughs.
Speaker 2: And then snacks lots of ice cream.
Speaker 3: I get it.
Speaker 1: Man.
Speaker 3: We're gonna call it a day, but we want your help, folks.
Speaker 3: We'd love to hear more about inventors you would like
Speaker 3: us to cover in the future. This is an iterative episode,
Speaker 3: so it will recur. We also want to hear your
Speaker 3: thoughts on what could have happened to Diesel, What could
Speaker 3: have happened to Tom, What is Dean came in up
Speaker 3: to over on Dumpling Island? Let us know, is there
Speaker 3: something more to the story? Things that remain the stuff
Speaker 3: they don't want you to know on the modern day.
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