#86 Carl Bosch and Fritz Haber (A Genius and a Doomed Tycoon)

**David Senra** (0:00)
I want to tell you about a one time only limited event that I don't think you're going to want to miss. I am doing a live show with Patrick O'Shaughnessy from the Invest Like the Best podcast in New York City on October 19th. Patrick has interviewed over 300 of the world's best investors and founders for his podcast. I've read over 300 biographies of history's greatest entrepreneurs for my podcast. We'll be talking about what we learned from seven years of podcasting, sharing our favorite ideas and stories and doing a live Q&A. There will also be special event-only swag. If you live in New York City, I think it's a no-brainer. But if not, I think it's a great excuse to fly in. I've already heard from a bunch of people that bought tickets. They're flying in from other cities. Some people are flying in from other countries. That's setting the bar really high. So I will have at least four shots of espresso or four energy drinks before or during the show so we can make it a night that you'll never forget. If you're interested in attending this unique live event, I will leave a link down below. I highly recommend you get your tickets today. And I hope I get to see you in New York on October 19th.
This is the story of two men who invented a way to turn air into bread, built factories the size of small cities, made enormous fortunes, helped engineer the deaths of millions of people, and saved the lives of billions more.
Their work stands, I believe, as the most important discovery ever made. See if you can think of another that ranks with it in terms of life and death importance for the largest number of people.
Most people do not know the names of either the men or their invention.
Their work lives today in the form of giant factories, usually located in remote areas, that drink rivers of water, inhale oceans of air and burn about 1% of all the earth's energy.
If all the machines these men invented were shut down today, more than 2 billion people would starve to death.
Carl Bosch led me into this story. I learned quickly that he was a man of contradictions, a business mogul who won a Nobel Prize, and an ardent anti-Nazi who founded and led a most infamous Nazi firm. Bosch is one of the great mystery men of the 20th century.
He kept a very low public profile, avoided meetings, seemed to prefer machines to people, and hid away as much as possible in his villa, which he turned into a private playground equipped with personal laboratories, museum-quality collections, and a research-grade astronomical observatory.
Fritz Haber was as public as Bosch was private, a scientist who reveled in attention, sought glory, drank, smoked, partied, hobnobbed with royalty, and loved making an impression in his hand-tailored military uniform. But he too had his mysteries. How could a man who helped feed the world also be attacked as a war criminal after World War I?
What was he doing in his secret laboratory hidden on an ocean liner?
These men were giants of science. Their careers took off after their invention of the air-to-bread machine, and they both attempted even bigger things. They pioneered new ways of doing science, built city-sized factories, controlled world markets, and made life-or-death decisions.
Haber and Bosch are in many ways responsible for creating the modern chemical industry.
Okay, so that is an excerpt from the book that I read this week, and the one I'm going to talk to you about today, which is The Alchemy of Air, a Jewish genius, a doomed tycoon, and a scientific discovery that fed the world, but fueled the rise of Hitler. And it was written by Thomas Hager.
So this is one of the most unique, complicated, engrossing stories I've ever read. I couldn't put the book down. It's like 300 pages long and I read it in two days. And something happened to me. So I'm gonna jump into the book in a minute, but I gotta tell you what happened to me, which is unusual. This is the third try of me attempting to record this podcast. And the first two, and I guess the odd thing is that I'm kind of nervous, and I'm not usually nervous, and I couldn't figure out why. Like why did I start recording two other podcasts and then stop? Because it just didn't sound right, it didn't feel right. And I think it's because there's so much going on in this book that I don't know if I'm good enough to do the book justice. So I figured, you know what, let me just tell you that right up front, and hopefully I'm able to create a podcast that you learn from and you actually enjoy. But I am nervous, and I don't like that feeling.