Douglas Brunt, The Lost Empire of Emanuel Nobel + Ben Mezrich, CHECKMATE
[0:00]Hi, this is Zibi Owens and you're listening to Totally Book to the Zibi.
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[0:45]Today I have a really exciting, double episode.
[0:48]If you love great narrative nonfiction, this is the episode for you.
[0:53]You will learn, you will be entertained, and these two men are incredibly charming, bright,
[0:59]and have already launched many best-sellers, and these are following quickly in their
[1:04]footsteps.
[1:05]As I record this now, Douglas Sprint's The Lost Empire of Manual Noble, Romanov's
[1:11]Revolutionaries, and the Forgotten Titan who fueled the world has just hit the USA today
[1:15]best-seller list.
[1:17]Douglas Sprint, who has been on this podcast several times, is the New York Times best-selling
[1:21]author of the Mysterious Case of Rudolph Diesel and now The Lost Empire of a Manual Noble.
[1:26]He is the host of the top-rated Sirius XM author podcast, dedicated with Doug Brunt.
[1:31]He was nice enough to have me on the show.
[1:33]A Philadelphia native, he lives in Connecticut with his wife and three children.
[1:37]Ben Mezrech is the author of Checkmate, Genius Lies Ambition, and the biggest scandal
[1:42]and chess.
[1:43]This has been second time on the podcast the first time was five years ago, so lots of
[1:46]change.
[1:47]The reigning cowboy of narrative nonfiction with a writing career spanning 30 years.
[1:52]Ben Mezrech has authored 30 books, major international and New York Times best-sellers
[1:57]with well over 11 million copies sold.
[2:00]The genre he has created, cinematic and unique true stories of young geniuses battling
[2:05]their way through the gray area between right and wrong and succeeding at all costs,
[2:09]includes the wildly successful, bringing down the house, the inside story of six MIT students
[2:15]who took Vegas for millions, which spent 63 weeks on the New York Times best-seller
[2:20]list.
[2:21]It adapted into the hit motion picture 21.
[2:24]The accidental billionaires, the founding of Facebook, a tale of sex, money, genius, and
[2:29]betrayal, spent 18 weeks on the New York Times best-seller list, and appeared on hit best-seller
[2:34]lists in over a dozen countries.
[2:36]It was adapted into the critically acclaimed movie The Social Network, which was nominated
[2:40]for eight Oscars winning three, including Best Adapted Screenplay, and One Golden Globes
[2:46]for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Score.
[2:50]I mean, how do you go on from there?
[2:52]But he did.
[2:53]Mezrech and Aaron Sorkin share prestigious scripture award for Best Adapted Screenplay as
[2:58]well.
[2:59]Mezrech is the only nonfiction author to have two adaptations open at number one at the
[3:04]box office.
[3:05]Mezrech's book, The Anti-Social Network, was an international best-seller and a top film
[3:10]and theaters, dumb money, starring Pete Davidson, Seth Rogen, and America Ferrera.
[3:15]By the way, dumb money was produced by my brother, Teddy, and his company, Black Bear
[3:20]Pictures.
[3:21]So I actually saw Ben at the screening for this tip in Toronto, which is very cool.
[3:28]Anyway, Mezrech was a writer and consulting producer for Seasons 5 and 6 of the TV show
[3:33]Billions.
[3:34]And basically, I am a huge fan.
[3:35]Welcome, Doug.
[3:36]Thanks so much for coming back on totally books, at this time, to talk about the lost
[3:40]Empire of a manual noble, Romanov's revolutionaries, and the forgotten Titan fueled the
[3:46]world.
[3:47]Congratulations.
[3:48]Thank you.
[3:49]It's great to be with you.
[3:50]Thank you.
[3:51]Well, I have a guess as to how you picked this topic only because you referenced Diesel
[3:56]in the middle.
[3:57]And I was like, is that how he got here?
[4:00]How did you get here?
[4:01]That is exactly how I got there.
[4:02]I didn't really know much about the Nobel's and Russia.
[4:04]I knew about Alfred Nobel as does everyone.
[4:08]In the same way, everyone knows the name Diesel, but didn't know about Rudolph.
[4:10]Diesel was the same kind of thing.
[4:12]When Diesel came out with a diesel engine in 1897, his way of going to market was to
[4:17]give exclusive license to manufacture and market by regional territory.
[4:22]And the person who took the Diesel license for Russia for the Russian Empire was a manual
[4:26]Nobel who was the leading industrialist in the Russian Empire.
[4:29]He had a machine and munitions factory in the north by St. Petersburg.
[4:33]He'd also established the world's largest oil concern in southern Russia along the
[4:39]Caspian Sea in what was at that time part of the Russian Empire as well in Vacu, modern
[4:43]day, Azerbaijan.
[4:44]So he was this famous, massive industrialist in Russia.
[4:49]And so it was just a little footnote in the Diesel book.
[4:51]And my editor and I was sometimes joking and many do that one author's footnote can be
[4:56]another author's whole book.
[4:57]And in this case, it was my footnote that became my own next book as I kind of pursued
[5:02]the Nobel story after the Diesel book came out.
[5:06]So now I have to take guesses to which footnote in this book is going to become your
[5:10]next book.
[5:11]There is.
[5:12]There is.
[5:13]So I have just sort of realized what the third book will be.
[5:16]And I'm a little bit down, you know, it's a long process, but I've decided what I want
[5:20]to do next.
[5:21]And it's going to work as a trilogy of sorts.
[5:23]So this next figure actually appears in both the Diesel and the Nobel books.
[5:26]And I'm trying to guess who it could be.
[5:29]It's not going to give me a hint.
[5:32]I haven't said anything yet, but we'll take it off on you.
[5:35]Okay.
[5:36]It really covers the exact same decades, this sort of turn of the century period of
[5:39]the quarter century leading up to World War One.
[5:43]And this one actually will go a little beyond that.
[5:46]And I will say it returns back to Germany as the primary focus of this figure.
[5:51]I really feel like I learned so much from all your books that and you write it in a way
[5:57]that is so captivating that it doesn't feel like a history lesson.
[6:01]It's like, oh, I'm reading a family story.
[6:03]Like this to me, it felt like a family saga with, you know, extortion and loss and highs
[6:10]and lows.
[6:11]And I mean, there were all the all the fields essentially in this book while you're feeding
[6:16]us so much history as well.
[6:18]And I'm like, oh, I'm learning about Lenin and Stalin in a whole new way.
[6:22]Look at how he got us here, you know, it's pretty pretty cool.
[6:25]Thank you.
[6:26]I love what you said.
[6:27]I had a comment online about the book and you said it needs to be a movie and it needs
[6:32]to be taught in schools.
[6:33]And that's the best comment I've ever gotten.
[6:36]I love that.
[6:37]That's exactly what I want to do is make it fascinating, you know, there are a lot of great
[6:41]ripping yarns out there.
[6:42]The shipwreck stories are so fun and I want it to have that kind of a feel like I am
[6:47]tearing through this.
[6:48]I got to turn the page, but at the same time I'm learning something important.
[6:51]I want it to be an important book and valuable history to learn.
[6:55]So that's, that's really what I'm shooting for.
[6:57]There's this great, uh, Roger Kipling line of history we're taught in the form of stories
[7:01]that would never be forgotten.
[7:03]Yes.
[7:04]History should be fun.
[7:05]I sometimes I see the kids coming home from school and they've got the textbook and they're
[7:07]like, ah, the Byzantine Empire.
[7:09]This is a dragon.
[7:10]No, this should be, this should be so cool and fun.
[7:14]And some of the history textbooks can feel more like an itinerary of events.
[7:18]It's, it doesn't connect with you, like, okay, I'm just sort of learning facts, like
[7:21]you're learning the names of the bones in the skeleton or something.
[7:23]It doesn't move you in a way.
[7:26]So in the way that narrative history can and the way I've been thinking about this is to
[7:30]tell it in microcosm in a way, like you identified it exactly at your, your alongside
[7:36]a person or a family.
[7:38]And then when, you know, bloody Sunday and St. Petersburg happens in 1905, well, how did
[7:42]that affect people one day to the next?
[7:44]If you learn it, you know, experientially through a family or a person, then you're like,
[7:48]oh my gosh, like this is how life changed one day to the next and it becomes indelible.
[7:53]History actually starts to matter in a more personal level.
[7:56]And in both the diesel and the Nobel books about halfway through the book, he realized,
[8:01]oh my gosh, this person I've never heard of is actually enormously influential.
[8:04]The word diesel is everywhere in the world today and no one knows the back story of how
[8:08]it happened and what happened to that person and why we kind of lost that piece of history.
[8:13]And same with the manual Nobel, he was one of the wealthiest people in the world at that
[8:17]time and the Russian Empire's main industrialist.
[8:21]And yet he's lost to history and we come to understand why.
[8:26]And the reason, the way that Stalin and the communist government treated a manual Nobel,
[8:31]what happened to a manual Nobel as the Russian Empire was transitioning to Soviet Russia was
[8:36]the inspiration for George Orwell's 1984.
[8:39]All the street names were, were renamed and the plaques and the statues were torn down
[8:43]and history was rewritten.
[8:45]Stalin really paved over the story of Nobel and the Nobel family in Russia and just painted
[8:52]on a new history.
[8:53]And so we don't know the name.
[8:54]We only know the name Alfred who was living outside Russia.
[8:57]And turned out, Ludwig, it could have written this whole book about Ludwig because
[9:01]I feel like he was a hugely central character.
[9:05]And a manual yes came after because he was younger, next generation, whatever.
[9:09]But I feel like the ups and downs of Ludwig's life and even that you give us this picture
[9:13]of him and he's like this dashing guy and I feel like I really got to know him and all
[9:19]the, the loss of his life and how he was able to keep his, what started with his dad
[9:26]and like, iterated it and made it so much better and then passed it down and every, at
[9:32]every step there were all these obstacles and it felt like, oh my gosh, are they going
[9:36]home to Sweden now or are they going to stay like, what is going to happen?
[9:40]And then he lost his wife and that was so sad.
[9:42]I mean, there was just so much that happened to each one of them and their effect on history
[9:48]obviously is super important.
[9:50]But also just how they were able to keep their family together and all of those loyalties,
[9:55]I found absolutely fascinating.
[9:57]It is interesting to see a three generation family.
[10:00]And the progression of how each developed something
[10:03]and sort of furthered the family story,
[10:05]the pioneer of Emmanuel de Bell,
[10:07]leaving bankruptcy in Sweden and joining the Russian Empire.
[10:10]And then he and his sons are laying under sea mines
[10:12]in the Baltic Sea during the Crimean War in the 1850s
[10:16]to bankruptcy again.
[10:17]And he and Alfred leave Ludwig as an engineer in genius.
[10:22]He pioneers the world's first oil tanker,
[10:24]which really shocks Rockefeller.
[10:26]They're suddenly distributing petroleum around the world
[10:28]in markets that Rockefeller thought he was going to have access to.
[10:31]And suddenly the Nobel's are out in front of him
[10:32]due to Ludwig's engineering genius.
[10:35]So that there are many twists and turns
[10:36]not to mention the Faberge stuff is so charming.
[10:38]Yes, that was great too.
[10:41]And like Dostoyevsky is just like thrown in there.
[10:43]Like, oh, look at this.
[10:44]He was like at this, it's amazing how everything tracks
[10:49]and also how you show us these parallel timelines.
[10:52]So you introduce Stalin as a character, sort of midway through.
[10:55]And then we watch as his life progresses.
[10:58]And I didn't think I'd ever feel completely sympathetic
[11:01]towards Stalin.
[11:02]But you show us, like, this is how he grew up.
[11:06]And this is a horrible loss that he sustained.
[11:09]And he was so depressed as peers, like,
[11:11]didn't think he was going to make it.
[11:13]And then he came back and you show us why, perhaps,
[11:18]people become the way they do, lead the way that they do,
[11:21]and enable us to put ourselves in their shoes.
[11:25]Not to say it's OK, but, oh, well, maybe now I understand
[11:29]the motivations of this person a little bit more.
[11:32]Thank you.
[11:32]I was hoping that could happen with Stalin.
[11:35]Clearly, he's one of the most brutal tyrants
[11:38]of the 20th century and horrific.
[11:40]But he was once a boy, and growing up
[11:42]in these hard-scrabble streets in the country of Georgia,
[11:45]amazingly, to history, studied to be a priest of all things,
[11:50]Stalin was starting to be a priest,
[11:52]and did have a very difficult upbringing,
[11:55]adjacent to the uber-wealthy oil
[11:58]barons in Baku.
[12:00]So he basically, he actually worked on the Rothschild
[12:03]and Nobel oil enterprises in the neighboring area
[12:07]of what is now Azerbaijan.
[12:10]And you do see his journey.
[12:12]It's very easily easy to make Stalin
[12:13]a sort of one-dimensional figure of he's evil and bad
[12:16]and did horrible things all true.
[12:18]But he became that way through many twists and turns
[12:22]that are explored in this book.
[12:24]And so you do, as you say, get a bit of a feel
[12:26]for how it all happened.
[12:27]And you see him in more than just one dimension.
[12:30]You also explain how the Nobel Prize came to be
[12:34]and how actually the other inheritors, potentially,
[12:39]of the Nobel fortune really did not want this prize.
[12:42]They thought he was having a deathbed change of heart
[12:45]because he had written hand-written a new will,
[12:48]while obviously handwriting, notice on there.
[12:50]Anyway, very close to the time of his death.
[12:53]And then the rest of the family was like,
[12:55]wait, what about us?
[12:56]Like, are you sure you really meant this
[12:59]to be for this random prize?
[13:01]And yet, thanks to the advocacy of Ludwig, right?
[13:04]That's how it, a manual, a manual, sorry.
[13:07]A manual is advocacy.
[13:08]That's how the prize came to be.
[13:09]And we didn't even know.
[13:10]Tell that story.
[13:11]That was really interesting.
[13:12]When Alfred Nobel passes away,
[13:14]there's sort of two phases of the story, actually.
[13:16]Initially, because when Ludwig passes away,
[13:17]the manual's father in 1888,
[13:20]he is a global celebrity.
[13:21]He's got a very large oil concern in Russia
[13:24]that we don't, as we said,
[13:26]been a little bit underappreciated in history,
[13:28]but when he passes away, it's well known.
[13:29]And so newspapers around the world record his death,
[13:31]but in France, where Alfred lives, they mess it up
[13:34]and they publish reports of Alfred's death, not Ludwig.
[13:37]So Alfred wakes up alive and well,
[13:39]and France reads the newspaper and reads his own obituary,
[13:41]which just slays him, says he's,
[13:44]as the inventor of dynamite, he's a merchant of death,
[13:46]and he's caused more death and destruction.
[13:48]Bob, so he's like, my gosh, this is not
[13:49]how I want to be remembered.
[13:51]So as you say, he rewrites his will
[13:53]to establish the prizes.
[13:54]When he passes away in 1896,
[13:57]he's got about 33 million crooner,
[13:59]which when you convert it,
[14:00]there are various ways to sort of mark things
[14:02]to present day value.
[14:03]Inflation is really undervalued things.
[14:05]If you look at it as a percentage of GDP
[14:07]or real-time wages from the two periods,
[14:10]it's many billions of dollars.
[14:12]So he takes his 33 million crooner,
[14:15]31, go to establish the prize,
[14:17]two go to his, he had no children,
[14:19]but many nieces and nephews and others.
[14:22]So the rest of the family's thinking,
[14:23]two million crooner, we were counting on a whole lot more
[14:26]than this, so they opposed the will.
[14:27]They opposed the changes of the will
[14:29]to establish the prize,
[14:30]but Emmanuel Nobel, who's Alfred's nephew,
[14:33]is the custodian of the process.
[14:34]And the literal translation of that in Russian
[14:38]is custodian of the soul,
[14:40]which is a role that Emmanuel takes very seriously.
[14:43]And so not only do his family members oppose the will,
[14:46]but so does the king of Sweden,
[14:47]saying that Alfred was unduly influenced by pacifists
[14:50]who wanna lay down all the arms
[14:51]and he's like, let's not do this peace prize
[14:53]and he's other prizes.
[14:55]You really should just take care of your family.
[14:56]So he opposes the king and he calls a big family meeting
[15:00]of which he is now the patriarch and he says,
[15:02]what we've got to honor what Alfred wanted to do.
[15:05]So through many meetings with family and kings
[15:07]and lots of legal wrangling,
[15:09]he sees it through to establish the prizes,
[15:12]which give their first prize in 1901.
[15:15]But in typical fashion for Emmanuel,
[15:17]he always kind of stays in the background.
[15:18]He puts Alfred's name forward first.
[15:21]And so even though he's very involved with
[15:23]the prize committee and making sure the prize functions
[15:26]properly until he passes away many years later,
[15:29]you never really know the name of Emmanuel Nobel.
[15:31]It's always Alfred that he puts forward to honor his uncle.
[15:33]Wow.
[15:34]And then it said Stalin actually won the Nobel prize.
[15:37]Is that true?
[15:38]He was nominated twice.
[15:40]Nominated, okay.
[15:42]He never did actually win, but he was nominated in 45
[15:45]and I think again in 47 or eight, something like that.
[15:48]But just for, you know, helping to resolve World War II,
[15:52]which is a world that he started with it, Larry.
[15:55]You know, Hitler and Stalin invaded Poland
[15:58]almost simultaneously in 39 to get the whole thing going.
[16:03]And the irony that Stalin was really persecuting
[16:07]in a bell family for many years.
[16:09]And then was an aggressor to begin the second World War
[16:15]is nominated for the peace prize.
[16:16]It's just this bitter irony for all, especially the Nobel's.
[16:19]This book didn't come out that long after the other book.
[16:22]Like how can you do all this research,
[16:25]put it all together, the writing?
[16:28]What does this whole process look like for you?
[16:30]Tell me more about that.
[16:32]It's an obsession, first of all.
[16:33]It's been constantly reading and organizing
[16:35]and thinking about it.
[16:37]It's a companion book to D.
[16:38]So they're totally independent.
[16:40]You can read one and not the other.
[16:42]You can read in any order, but they're related.
[16:44]The atmospheric research is the same.
[16:47]It's the same years.
[16:48]Both books sort of drive toward World War I.
[16:51]And so there was a lot of foundational overlap
[16:54]in the research, I would say.
[16:55]And of course, D. so in Nobel war business partners
[16:57]and friends and colleagues.
[16:58]And the D. so book was about five years,
[17:00]a little more start to finish.
[17:02]But in the last couple years of the D. so book,
[17:05]I'd already decided I wanted to do
[17:07]a Nobel next.
[17:07]And so I was reading everything I could find.
[17:10]I'm reading a lot of, one of the great places to start
[17:13]is contemporaneous memoirs, the ambassadors,
[17:17]the French ambassador in St. Petersburg
[17:19]or people who worked in different companies,
[17:22]finding those memoirs written at the time
[17:24]that's so much color and helps me
[17:27]to bring the period to life on the page.
[17:29]And then I did get to Stockholm.
[17:31]There's the Center for Business History in Stockholm,
[17:34]Sweden that has a treasure of Nobel history documents
[17:38]that were pulled out of Azerbaijan,
[17:40]that explained what was going on
[17:42]in the Baku operations of the Nobel Petroleum Company,
[17:45]a lot of what they were doing in St. Petersburg.
[17:46]But I think they're software that helps you organize stuff.
[17:48]But I just use note cards.
[17:50]These are just like, I'll write down information on these.
[17:53]And then I'll have stacks of note cards.
[17:56]And then in the end,
[17:57]once the research is completed,
[17:59]it's more of like an organizational challenge.
[18:01]The reference bringing along different storylines together,
[18:06]doing that in a way that's easy to read and follow
[18:08]is a little tricky because you've got like four
[18:10]or five different stories you want to advance.
[18:11]You can't make a 20 year run on one.
[18:14]And then go from 1910 back to 1890
[18:16]in a 20 year on the other.
[18:17]It's too whiplashy for readers.
[18:19]So trying to bring them together in a way
[18:22]that's smooth reading can be a challenge
[18:24]and take some rewriting because somebody's like,
[18:26]I'm getting confused, you know,
[18:27]but then you go back and comb it out again.
[18:29]Has this always been an obsession of yours?
[18:31]History, I've always loved history.
[18:33]I've always loved narrative history books
[18:35]like an Eric Larson style of book.
[18:38]And so, you know, you read those and I want to deliver that.
[18:43]I want to make people feel the way I felt reading this book.
[18:46]And history has always just been an exciting topic for me.
[18:49]So being able to write it in a way that delivers some history
[18:52]in an exciting way is the goal.
[18:55]Amazing.
[18:56]Well, again, thank you for the history lesson
[18:59]in a way that, I guess, per Roger Kibbling,
[19:02]I am not gonna forget because now all the people
[19:04]are actual people and it just changes
[19:08]all the common dialogue.
[19:09]Like, who is winning the Nobel Prize?
[19:11]Like, no, no, now I see what they look like.
[19:14]And but the grandfather was like
[19:16]and it's an interesting sort of layer in frame
[19:19]to put on modern life when you really deeply understand
[19:22]what has happened in the past.
[19:24]So I found it super interesting and I learned a lot.
[19:27]And thank you for that.
[19:29]Thank you. Thanks, Debbie.
[19:30]Okay, I'm gonna keep guessing on who the next one is.
[19:33]Send me a text.
[19:34]I'll confirm we're denied, but only for you.
[19:36]Okay.
[19:37]All right, bye, Doug.
[19:39]Bye.
[19:40]Welcome, Ben.
[19:41]Thanks so much for coming on totally books.
[19:43]Who's talk about checkmate.
[19:45]Thank you for coming on and for discussing
[19:47]and for giving me hours of entertainment
[19:50]as I learned about the inner workings of the chess world,
[19:53]which I knew nothing about today.
[19:56]Thank you for having me, you know, I'm a big fan of yours
[19:58]and I'm happy to.
[20:00]Try and talk my way through the chess world, which I'm a stranger to too, but it's it's wild and fantastic and made for a great thriller. So yeah, totally. Well, it definitely has two key starring roles of these two very different by both chess obsessed men slightly different ages.
[20:20]Yeah, the seated mass, you know, the rating champ and the the up and comer and the cheating scandal and all all the making of a of a drama. Why don't you tell it more about it? Sure. So the story revolves around the biggest cheating scandal in the history of chess. You've got Magnus Carlson who is basically the greatest chess player in history. He is considered the Mozart of chess. He coming into this specific match. He had one or not lost 53 straight matches for
[20:50]two solid years. He's just on a whole other level of chess. And his opponent was this 19 year old kid named Hans Neiman, who is known as the bad boy of chess. This is a kid who's trashing hotel rooms in Miami. He had given a bunch of bizarre interviews. He's not on the level of a Magnus Carlson. But anyways, he gets into this battle and ends up winning. And he wins in a way that Magnus just can't see as possible. I mean, the kid is chewing gum during the match.
[21:20]being attention. You know, he's acting very strangely. He wins and Magnus accuses him of cheating. And this causes sort of an earthquake in the chess world. No accusation at this level has ever been made before. And Magnus is about to be bought by chess.com, which is the multi billion dollar now. It's basically the center of all chess. And they put out a report.
[21:50]He kind of moment and ensues them for $100 million. And it kind of launches into the stratosphere. So it's the big scandal. But to me, it's a generation battle, generational battle between the old world of chess and these new young streamers. And it's also about AI because, you know, any 12 year old with an iPhone can now beat Magnus, which basically puts into question, well, what are we doing here? I mean, what does it mean to be the greatest in the world? It's something that now any computer can beat.
[22:20]So there's a lot of levels to it. And a lot of really great characters. I loved, by the way, this reminded me when you said the thing about suing for $100 million that you included the text exchange with his business school classmates, Danny's business school classmates. I think about he's like, hey, anyone else here been sued for $100 million? Got any advice? I know. It's one of those moments. Danny described it to me where it's like, you know, you're sitting there and you get this lawsuit. And it's an amount of money that he doesn't have. It's this crazy amount of money.
[22:50]he's out to his friends. And he's like, any of you been sued? And it's a big moment. I mean, none of this is sort of, it's couched in a kind of absurdity and comedy because it all revolves around. The reason it became so well known was the method he may or may not have used to cheat became something very viral. But the reality of it is there's this young kid who feels like he's being attacked by this mafia of chess. Hans calls them a chess mafia that they're aligned against him.
[23:20]but everyone involved is a real person who is going through stuff of their own. So yeah. Well, I found myself unsure of the truth, which I think is probably what you want, right? Because nobody was sure. Like, Magnus was convinced that Hans was cheating without a doubt. And yet after the multi-day investigation, there was no proof, right? I mean, am I giving too much away? No, that's good. I mean, I think it's, you know, people ask me all the time, well, what do you think? I spent a year with Hans.
[23:50]Magnus with all of the characters. There's a lot of details from the match itself that hasn't come out before. You know, there was an Netflix talk about it. But I really, I got to the photographer who was in the room and there's a lot of interesting things that happened there. And there's a lot of reasons why Magnus accused Hans that go beyond, oh, this could couldn't beat me. And, and, uh, chest.com did a very thorough investigation. And though they don't have a smoking gun about what happened at that particular game. I think readers can piece
[24:20]it together themselves, whether they think he cheated or not. I think part of the fun is, you know, half the people reading the book will decide he definitely cheated. And half will say he definitely didn't cheat. And everyone will kind of agree that it doesn't really matter. Because the bigger point is that if you sit down against someone now in a chess game, you're already having all these suspicions in your head. And it's very hard for someone like Magnus to play someone like Hans because of what Hans has done in the past. And because everything is second guest. You're second guest.
[24:50]I'll remove you make on that chess board. Did this kid just cheat here? So I don't know. I don't, I don't, you know, I have my suspicions about what really happened in that game. And I think everyone coming out of the book will too. I think there are things that haven't previously been sort of out in the open yet. And I think when people read the book, they'll, they'll come to their own conclusions. Yeah. I mean, I guess it's hard to tell if someone's cheating if the rules keep changing. And even though the rules of chess are so old school and it's been around for, you know,
[25:20]over many years or thousands of years or never. I think you referenced it one point how long it had been around. But now I can't remember. Years. Yeah.
[25:26]But if AI is changing everything and computers are changing everything, what does that mean? What are the rules? What is allowed? What isn't allowed? And so like you said, it's a whole new landscape. And I mean, I think that's the way Hans looks at it. So Hans is from the streaming generation. He's a, he's, he's gotten famous streaming chess, you know, on Twitch, on TikTok, on Instagram, on Reels and all this kind of stuff. And to him, you know, as a kid, he admits to cheating a number of times online when he played online. And most of chess is now played.
[25:56]But to him and to kids of his generation, cheating online doesn't seem like that big a deal. It's like you're playing a video game with someone. I mean, who isn't cheating. And it actually turns out that the first game they catch him for cheating, he was cheating and the other person was cheating. So it was really to a guy.
[26:13]Computers playing each other. Nobody was playing fairly. And so you can assume that there's a lot of cheating online. But then you have over the board chess where it's two guys basically in a room. People are watching them. They've been frisked. They've been, you know, wound it down. But it is live streamed, you know, and if there's not a delay on the live stream, it's still happening and continuously online. And it's very easy to cheat in that situation.
[26:36]So it does call into question sort of what is how do we want people to play chess, you know, Hans says, I'll strip naked and play magnets. And we're moving towards that kind of situation if we really want it to be just a person playing a person.
[26:49]But yeah, I think it is all blurred now, especially online. Although interestingly enough, the chess.com guy say that cheating online is now probably safer than cheating over the board.
[27:01]Because they can monitor every move you make. They can see what you're looking at our impute and computer. So it's not just are you are you cheating, but are you flipping over to other windows on your computer. They can see all of that while you're playing, which is kind of interesting.
[27:16]So they can actually try to keep the arena safe online in ways that over the board can't. So it's kind of wild. And a lot of it is data analysis is, you know, if you're playing fair, you take a long time to make a first move, but every move after that happens quickly because you're running down.
[27:33]a sort of a path. But when you're cheating, the first move comes quickly. And then the other moves come slower. And so there's ways to analyze and play that, you know, it's circumstantial, but it gives some sort of evidence to how it is your play.
[27:47]Well, the way you wrote it and I read other books of yours. So I know this is the way that you write, but I had to like remind myself that these were real people and real situations.
[27:56]And that you had to somehow get all of the information about, you know, the father son dynamic and this hotel room and this.
[28:04]You know, all the little details like you were there. And I was like, how was he been doing that? I stopped halfway through the book to Google the people because I was like, wait, they're not even fictional people. Like I have to see what do these guys look like. And I was like, oh, that's exactly how I picture them. Yeah.
[28:17]I spent a lot of time. I mean, I write cinematically as I can. I think it's no secret that my goal is movies. You know, I write books to be platforms for movies or television shows.
[28:28]And I set out trying to, I spent a lot of time with the characters. I spend it, you know, as much as I can researching. And this one, there was a ton of material, both legal documents and interviews and that kind of thing.
[28:39]But then when I create the scenes, I want you to feel like you're watching a movie or you're in a middle of a movie. And so I attempt to describe it as actively and dramatically as possible, you know, putting in dialogue there that really puts you in the moment.
[28:52]So yeah, thank you. I, my goal is that you see it as you, as you go through it. And this one was interesting because the characters are such larger than life. I mean, Hans is a trip. This kid, you know, you're sitting and interviewing him.
[29:03]And in the middle, like he starts ranting, you know, ranting like full on paranoid rant about how Danny wrenches the devil how these people are, are a mafia trying to destroy him. How could they do this to a poor kid? And he gets tears in his eyes. I mean, the emotion.
[29:19]And then you interview Magnus and Magnus is a wall in so many ways. I mean, he's a genius. He's Mozart, but he's he's he's he's he knows he's the greatest in the world. I mean, he said it many times he sits down and he knows one thing that the person across from is not as good as him.
[29:37]He knows this. And it's it's it's really very different personalities. And I try to capture it as much as I can. Yeah.
[29:43]Wow. And then I was so shocked. I almost fell off the couch when I got to the chapter that you wrote about yourself. I was like, wait, are you allowed to do this?
[29:51]I might love it. It's like, oh my gosh, I couldn't believe it. I didn't get that chapter because you're like, and then Ben, the writer is in the campaign.
[29:58]I was like, what is that?
[30:00]Yeah, so I've heard a lot of reasons why I did that, but so the scene takes place in Paris. So they end up having a rematch a year later
[30:07]It's the first time they've met and they meet in Paris for a battle of a chest.com event
[30:12]So it's the first time when I'm writing a book where all the characters end up in a room together and in Paris right across
[30:18]Malooves, so it's kind of perfect and so I go to Paris to follow them around and do it and then I decided you know what if
[30:25]I'm gonna write this scene. I'm gonna write it from my perspective. I'm here. I'm part of this story now and
[30:30]And so I just dove in and wrote it from my perspective and one of the points I'm making is that
[30:34]There's a lot of unreliable characters in this story. I mean do we believe Hans do we believe Magnus?
[30:39]Do we believe Danny Ranch do we believe you know the photographer do we believe any of these characters?
[30:44]And do we believe me and over my career? It's been a question asked of me many many times
[30:49]You know Janet Maslan to the New York Times has attacked me ruthlessly in many and many reviews
[30:54]But I think she enjoys it, but she you know falls into question. What am I writing?
[30:59]What kind of nonfiction am I writing and I feel like you know, I'm putting it out there
[31:03]You may or may not believe me as a narrator either
[31:06]But I'm telling you this story from my perspective from their perspective
[31:10]This is from the points of view of each character as you go through the book including myself
[31:14]And so also in that scene I was able to put in sort of
[31:18]Certain, you know pieces of evidence that maybe I couldn't put in through the eyes of any of the characters that I have to couch in terms
[31:25]You know for legal reasons that may or may not you know be important or not whether there's this other person of interest in the story
[31:32]Who may or may not have been involved in cheating?
[31:34]You know, what is it we're seeing here? What do we think of Hans?
[31:36]I wanted to put myself in and honestly, it's fun. Listen
[31:40]Indulgent, but I feel like at this point in my career
[31:43]I don't feel it's constrained anymore. I don't know the whole world feels that way doesn't it feel like all of the kind of rules that mattered
[31:51]Don't seem to matter anymore. We're in this kind of world where you do you do take a lot more risks
[31:56]I feel like and I decided listen
[31:58]I'm I'm gonna write this scene from my point of view and tell my story and also Paris has an important point in my life
[32:04]Just because I was obsessed with Hemingway and I was obsessed with the Sun also rises
[32:07]It was like I literally read at the first of every month for years
[32:11]We read that book a thousand times and I went when I used to drink a lot
[32:16]I went to Paris and I decide I'm gonna drink in every spot that they drink in in that book
[32:20]Which by the way is a fool there and you know very quickly
[32:23]I realized you could not successfully do that
[32:27]But but so I wanted you know if it's gonna take place in Paris. I wanted to be there
[32:31]And so you know, we'll see we'll see what people think of it
[32:33]I think it will be a scene that some people like so yeah
[32:36]Well, I I loved it. I couldn't believe it and it's so fun to talk about
[32:41]I you said it's no secret that you write with the intention of books being made into movies most
[32:47]Authors maybe they wouldn't admit that or they would and want that as a goal and they want you know
[32:52]There are all different reasons why people write and why we put content out into the world
[32:57]If the goal is always to make movies and you know, thank you
[33:00]I'm so glad about dumb money and my brother Ted ate everything but
[33:03]If the goal is to make movies why write the books like why sell them as books?
[33:08]Why not sell them as treatments or sell them as screenplays or you know
[33:12]Why buy a great question?
[33:13]I I've been a book writer my whole life
[33:15]So when I was a kid all I want to do was be british in Elisor J. McInerney
[33:18]You know, I read these 80s authors right probably at the wrong time in my life because I was like
[33:22]I'm gonna go hang out in bars and write these stories and you know
[33:25]Constantly I was unable to sell those stories and then I fell in love with Michael Creighton
[33:28]And I really just wanted my goal was never like you know a Pulitzer
[33:32]My goal was a book that had on at that little sticker that said now a major motion picture
[33:37]So I I've always been a book writer
[33:39]You know, I've written some screenplays and some television
[33:41]But really my my heart was always in becoming this rock star author because back then authors became rock stars
[33:48]Then rock star started writing books and they didn't need authors anymore
[33:51]My favorite memory was I was at the BAs back when the BAs
[33:56]Thing and it was one of my early books and I was there and it was I had a little line of people to sign books for
[34:02]And I see this giant line next to me and I'm like which author is this is this like you know some famous author
[34:09]And I was it was Billie Idol
[34:11]It's only it's like I can't compete with Billie Idol
[34:13]I mean that's that's a real rock star, right?
[34:16]And so anyways, I wanted to be a rock star author. I wanted to write books
[34:19]But I loved movies and television that just was my this the cinema was always just something that I live for
[34:27]So I really set out to write books that could grow into movies the book was never the end
[34:33]It was the platform and which could become something larger than life and
[34:38]What's happened is is the industry has pivoted so much that that's actually now a great business model
[34:44]It just became IP became more and more important over the years
[34:49]And I learned with the social network that you know you write a proposal a treatment and that's a selling tool
[34:55]Use that to sell a movie if a movie gets picked up then you sell it as a book and you write the book
[35:01]If I don't sell the movie or it's hell to Joe
[35:02]I won't write the book
[35:04]I'll stop at the treatment and say okay
[35:06]That's a story that isn't going to live beyond a book and so I'm not going to write it
[35:10]So I did very very actively become a writer that writes books to turn into movies right around the time of the social network
[35:17]But I'm a book writer. I'm I do write screenplays
[35:20]But it's not where I feel most at home
[35:23]I feel at home, you know, and there's just something great about having a physical book and reading books and and I mean
[35:27]You know what I do you are you are really I would agree
[35:32]I just think being surrounded by books is is just
[35:35]Of a great feeling and and a great sort of feeling of success in a way
[35:40]Just having a book that you've written is is is you know
[35:43]There's no feeling like it
[35:44]So even when I go to a movie for me, you know
[35:46]It's something like what your brother made and you're standing there and you're and you're watching the movie
[35:50]It's incredible, but to me the fact that then people might buy the book or read the book
[35:55]It's it's it's still the thing that communicate me and communicates with me
[35:59]So yes, I could probably just sell treatments at this point
[36:01]I could just sell short stories or the big thing now everyone's selling short stories
[36:05]But for me
[36:06]I want to write a treatment that they think is going to make a great movie that I will turn into a great book
[36:11]And now it's this weird feedback where like Hollywood comes to me actors come to me directors come to me and say
[36:16]This is a really cool story. Would you be interested at it and and then we'll go backwards
[36:20]Almost is that all all of them pitch it and then I'll write the book while they're developing the movie
[36:25]So it's all kind of hand-in-hand. I don't know and there's also this thrill of writing it knowing
[36:30]There's some director or actor that I'm gonna hand it to and I'm like
[36:34]Are they gonna love it? I like I love that feeling of like having someone
[36:37]I'm looking for that affirmation from someone who who who's invested in the story also
[36:42]So it's just for me it works and not every writer is the same
[36:45]I mean some writers want to just write books and I think that's that's wonderful
[36:49]But for me
[36:49]It's if it can't live beyond that or have the potential of it and beyond that
[36:53]I feel like it's not really the project that I would be best at writing
[36:57]So for checkmate you wrote the treatment sold the same idea so basically I
[37:02]The way I've stumbled on this story was was fairly ridiculous
[37:05]Normally people are pitching me things or I see something
[37:08]Literally dumb money had come out and I needed a new story and I get into this horrible feeling when I'm in between stories
[37:14]Like is it over is it just finished? Am I done and I I googled scams literally wrote scams down and I would looking for something
[37:22]Like bringing down the house that my key story that I wrote years ago and um and I was just moved
[37:28]Just lead reading and reading and reading and reading and then I stumbled on a cheating scandal
[37:32]And I was like well, this is weird
[37:33]I haven't heard about this and people in chats knew about it
[37:36]But this was before the Netflix talk. Nobody had knew this story outside of the chess world and I was like
[37:42]Really caught in Hans
[37:44]I immediately saw Hans and I was like I got to find this kid and I reached out on Instagram
[37:48]I slid into his DMs, you know, and you know
[37:51]He was like come to New York and I start hanging out with this kid
[37:53]I was like well this guy's this guy's nuts. I mean this guy's just such a character
[37:58]He's made to be in a movies young. He's he looks like you know my my high school kids friends
[38:04]But he's really in and he's dark and he wants to be Bobby Fisher
[38:08]And he's so angry and he really believes that Magnus Carlson has just screwed him over
[38:13]And then you have Magnus and reaching out to Magnus was a little bit harder because he's already a celebrity
[38:18]So finding your way to celebrities is always a little bit difficult
[38:20]But I found my way and then the chess calm guys and and I love telling those stories, you know
[38:25]Like Facebook like how does someone go from two kids in a dorm room to being a billionaire or having a billion dollar company
[38:31]And that's a great story itself. I mean when he first pitched it to his friends
[38:35]They thought he said cheese.com and they were like that's a really good idea
[38:39]You know sell cheese on the internet and he's like no chess and they were like no that's not a good
[38:43]So it was really funny. It's just to me. Those are their funny moments
[38:45]So I stumbled into this story
[38:47]I wrote a 10 page
[38:49]Well ended up being like 20 page proposal
[38:51]And we sent it out and I had no idea what the reaction would be
[38:55]But the reaction was explosive. We had everyone in Hollywood trying to get it
[38:59]Like with Ron Howard's of the world Ryan Gosling all these people and then I get on a zoom call and it's Emma Stone and Nathan Fielder
[39:07]and a 24 and and Nathan Fielder is
[39:11]To me beyond a genius. I mean he's crazy, but he's just brilliant
[39:14]I think he's hysterical. Everything he does is awesome
[39:16]And Emma Stone is just awesome and everything and and so we ended up, you know
[39:20]Selling it to them to be a feature
[39:22]So Nathan is directing and writing and Emma will be producing and I don't know whether she'll be in and or not
[39:28]But yeah, it started as a as a movie sale and then I take it out to the book world and and you know
[39:34]Ends it up with her chef my publisher
[39:37]And then I'm off to the races this one took longer than other books for me
[39:41]Normally, it's a three month process for me to write a book
[39:44]But because of the events and I knew this this this rematch was coming at the end of the year
[39:49]I basically spent a year hanging out with everybody all the way and then going to Paris for the finale
[39:54]So it ended up being a year-long process for me
[39:57]Which which is
[39:59]Interminably long
[40:00]I'm like, I'm crazy fast ADO.
[40:02]I don't know what you want to call it,
[40:03]but I can't focus on something
[40:05]for more than two or three months.
[40:06]So for me to extend a focus out 12 months
[40:08]was a tough role, but yeah, it was awesome.
[40:12]It was an awesome process, so here we are.
[40:14]I have another big book that I can't talk about yet,
[40:16]which I just told a big show for,
[40:18]which is a really cool story.
[40:19]And then the sequel to the social network
[40:21]or the social reckoning, which is a companion
[40:24]to the social network is coming out in October,
[40:26]which would be a lot of fun,
[40:28]which Aaron Sorkin wrote and directed,
[40:30]which will be an absolute blast.
[40:31]So yeah, busy summer ahead of writing
[40:34]and preparing for all that stuff.
[40:36]Oh my gosh, so cool.
[40:37]Well, Ben, thank you so much.
[40:38]I learned so much about chess and I wanted adventure.
[40:42]I just feel like it was such a wild ride
[40:44]even though I sat on my couch.
[40:45]So thank you so much for all of it.
[40:47]Oh, I appreciate it.
[40:48]Thank you so much.
[40:49]It's great talking to you again.
[40:49]You too.
[40:50]Love doing it, yup.
[40:51]Okay, thanks Ben.
[40:52]Bye, Zay.
[40:53]Thank you for listening to totally booked with Zibi,
[40:56]formerly mom's don't have time to read books.
[40:58]If you loved the show, tell a friend, leave a review,
[41:02]follow me on Instagram at Zibi Owens
[41:04]and spread the word.
[41:06]Thanks so much.
[41:07]Oh, and bye the books.