Episode 23: Brad Meltzer, Bestselling Novelist With Insights To Inform Your Business Strategy

Informing your decisions with intelligence, analysis and insight. Brought to you by the team@ooda loop.com hello, Brad.

Welcome to our Oodacast.

Oh, I like being here. Thank you for having me.

Yeah, Brad, before we get started, I wanted to give my version of your bio and then, of course, give you time to correct the record if I get stuff wrong.

I was going to say, I'm so excited for your version, but just make me sound even more excited as a person.

Yeah, you are a creator is the way I would put it. You're creative and you create things that are compelling and interesting. You're a storyteller. You have written works of fiction that are incredible. Page turners, thrillers with the drama that we like to read. And frequently you weave history into your fiction. And I want to talk about some of those that were really exciting to me. You're also a nonfiction writer where you have written about history and done that in a way that pulls people into history and makes the people of old real and brings lessons forward. And I want to talk about a couple of those books, too. And you've also written nonfiction biographies, including a wonderful series for kids that I want to talk about.

And I will. I don't need to correct that record. I think that's good record.

Before we get into it, though, I always like asking people the kind of foundational question, what. What started you along this path of a writer and creator?

No, Bob, it started in ninth grade for me. And I really can credit it back to my 9th grade English teacher, of all people, a woman named Sheila Spicer. She changed my life with three words. She said to me, you can write. I was like, well, everyone can write, right? And she said, no, no. You know what you're doing. She tried to put me in the honors class. I had some sort of conflict. She said, here's what we're gonna do. You're gonna sit in the corner for the entire year. Ignore everything I do on that blackboard, Ignore every homework assignment I give. You're gonna do the honors work instead. And what she was really saying was, you're gonna thank me later. Sure enough, a decade later, I went to her classroom. When my first book came out, I knocked on the door. She said, can I help you? I said, my name is Brad Meltzer. I wrote this book, and it's for you. And she starts crying. And I said, why are you crying? She said, I was going to retire this year because I didn't think I was having an impact anymore. And I said, are you kidding me? You have 30 students. We have one teacher. And so that was really where I got the bug. We all have that first person who tells us we're good at something. And for me, it was an English teacher, of all people, who really put that bug in my head.

That's wonderful. And then she stayed with you for your life and helped you get through college and helped you keep creating and writing, and that's wonderful.

Well, you know, again, that first person, whoever, whether it's the person who gave you your first real job, the first gave you your first real promotion, whoever it might be, you owe that person. And I know for some people, because you. It's not just your parents, right? It's the person, the first stranger out there who does it just has a marked, you know, impact on your life. In fact, I did an event. It was probably a year and a half ago now, but I was doing the event, and someone asked me that question. And then what I didn't know was she was at the event, and she surprised me. And there's no better moment than when you get to say thank you again to that person who changed your life.

That's wonderful.

Great story.

And, Brad, I want to fast forward to the first time you and I had a conversation, because it was surprising to me. You had a question about one of your books, and to give me context, you asked me a question. You said, bob, have you ever heard of the Culper Ring? And I had been in the intelligence community for decades. I know many heroes. I know a lot of our history. And I think my reply was, no, I don't think I ever heard of the Culpa Ring. And it was such an important part of the intelligence history, I wondered why I hadn't. Since then, I read your books, and I read so much more of the history about that ring, and it was so incredible. And part of me wants to ask you, why was that such a secret all the way up to today? This ring that President at the time, General Washington, created for espionage?

Yeah. So. And I'll tell you how I found it. I went, I got a call, and I don't know if I told you this part, but I got a call a number of years ago from the Department of Homeland Security asking me to come in and brainstorm different ways that terrorists could attack the United States. And my first thought was, if they're calling me, we have bigger problems than anybody thinks. Right? I mean, they were going to call a novelist, of all people. But I was honored to do it. I went in and it was Called the Red Cell program. They would pair me with a Secret Service agent and a chemist and give us targets, and we would destroy. But I was like, why'd they pick me? Why would they pick a writer, of all people? And I traced it back through history, traced back to a man, as you said, named George Washington. And George Washington, of course, had, you know, all the people that were. Were in the military. He had his, you know, his generals, his lieutenants and everyone else. But he knew the British, knew those people. He could see in their uniforms who those people were. But he also, at the time, created his own secret spy ring made up of regular, ordinary citizens. And you want to know why? As you know, I know you know this, but because no one looks twice at an ordinary person. No one will ever look twice at an ordinary person. So he created the culprit. And the reason that they. It's funny, when I first started researching them, someone told me this story that no one knew who the culprit, first of all, that it even existed until a century later. And why? Because they were really good at keeping their mouth shut. And the other thing, even beyond keeping their mouth shut, is they didn't all know. No one knew exactly who was in it. So maybe the head person knew everyone, but everyone just knew one other member. And it's a brilliant espionage move, right? So that way if you get one person and you. No matter how much you torture them, no matter how much you have on him or her, they can only tell you one other person that's in it. So no one has the full list. And I remember, you know, as you know that outside of CIA headquarters, Well, I think it was when Casey took over, he saw that there was a statue outside of Nathan Hale. And Casey apparently said, why do we have a statue of Nathan Hale? He's the spy who got caught. He's the spy who hanged. Why would we have him? And apparently at the time he said the person we should have out here is Benjamin Talmadge, was one of the heads of the Culpa Ring. And the reason why is no one knew Talmadge was in it until he was long dead. No one knew it even existed until he was long gone. And I love the fact that it lasted until, I think, like the 19th century, until people figured out what the culpring was. And that's why no one knows them, because they were the ones who actually kept their mouth shut.

Well, I tell you, I love the way you.

By the way, I have to say one thing. I was gonna say, but the key part of it is I went to my friend in Homeland Security. I forgot. The end of the story is I went to my friend in Homeland Security and I said, wouldn't it be cool if you found out that George Washington's culprit, the secret spy ring, still existed to this very day? And I'll never forget, they said to me, what makes you think it doesn't? And that's when I was like, I got a good idea for a book, and that's when I met you, is I went around saying to people, you know, could the culprit exist? And all the people in the espionage community came helping me build it. Yeah.

And I tell you, it was a wonderful hook for a great thriller that brought the past into the present. It was a good series.

Thank you. I appreciate it.

Let me switch now to some of your nonfiction because that was also very moving and lots of lessons for the business community and others today. The First Conspiracy is one. The First Conspiracy brings us back to a time when the Revolutionary War was just kicking off, and it could have gone either way. There were some dark days for the patriots. And you bring us right into that in a way that makes it seem like you're there and there was a conspiracy.

There was. You know, in. I found this story in the footnotes of all places, and I saw it said something like a secret plot to kill George Washington. I was like, is that true? Is that Internet nonsense? What is it? And it was true. In 1776, there was a secret plot to kill George Washington. When George Washington found out about it, he gathered up those responsible, built a gallows, grab one of the main co conspirators, and he hanged him in front of 20,000 people. It was, at that point, the largest public execution at that point in North American history. George Washington brought the hammer down, was like, do not mess with me. I am George Washington. I'm gonna be on the money one day. But what. What was fascinating to me, and we did this nonfiction book, as you said, called the First Conspiracy. But what I loved about the story was you can see George Washington learning the ropes, right? We all tell the story of George Washington, greatest general ever lived. And, you know, he took down the British, the greatest fighting force at that point that it ever lived. And it's a great story. It's a wonderful story, but that's not the real story. George Washington, you know, in the first battles, gets out generaled by the British generals, doesn't have the experience that he has later in the war. And one of the Things he realizes as this is happening, as he hears about this plot, is he knows that he has a great offense, he's building this military, that he's trying to make this ragtag group into something that's cohesive. But what he learns because of the secret plot is he also needs great defense. He needs espionage. He needs to find out what the other side is doing before it happens. And he creates a group called the Committee on Conspiracies, is what their eventual name is. It starts as a bigger group, but it narrows down to basically three people. And it wounds up being led by our first Supreme Court justice, a man named. Come on, you gotta get it.

I don't know.

Anyway, basically, I'll skip apart the story. But what I love about it is that you see in this plot and in this Committee on Conspiracies that George Washington starts basically building what becomes America's first counterintelligence agency. They are slowly, you know, little by little, kicking indoors, taking people out, trying to find out what happened. And, you know, that is the first counterintelligence movement. Yeah.

One thing that became clear as I read that book was that good people can be tempted to do bad things. There were people in his inner circle, his guard, that were tempted to become part of this conspiracy.

Yeah, no, that's the. You know, George Washington had his own private bodyguards. There was no secret service back then. And he had what they called the General's Guard, what they called, you know, but what they were eventually known as is the lifeguards. And they were the ones. Because part of their job was to guard George Washington's life. And one of the things that you see happen is, as you said, a couple of the guards switched sides because it wasn't so clear we were going to win the war. And when you had some of these guards that George Washington hand picked himself, he said to all of his troops, he said, you know, he said to all of his top military people, give me your three of your best men. And he got them from all different regiments, and then he handpicked about 50 of them that became the lifeguards. But guess what happened is suddenly they started to realize, wait, we may lose this battle. The British may be the ones who win, and no one wants to be on the losing side. So the former governor of New York who goes onto the British side, the former mayor of New York under British rule, they basically start approaching some of the guards and saying, you know what we can make. You can make a lot of money if you give us some information.

Yeah, There are lessons for today.

Yeah. I mean, that's a lesson of espionage. Right. It's just. You have an opportunity. You can change everything.

Right. You know, I want to keep moving because there's also this incredible work you did around Lincoln in the Lincoln Conspiracy. Very surprising to me. That, too, was a page turner, a thriller that you just can't put down. But it's all based on truth. It's historical, helpful truth. It was a page turner for me because this is a part of Lincoln that I never knew. You guys showed a real human being there instead of this picture of Lincoln that I always had in my head, for one. And also, you painted the axe around him in a way that just made it more real. Like, history is not just this connection of disjointed things that, you know, form a linear event. This could have gone a different way.

I mean, this.

He could have been killed. And if it wasn't for these other people, like Pinkerton, Another talk about them.

Yeah, I mean, you're 100% right. I mean, and that's what it. That's what. You know, again, like, in the first book, in the first conspiracy, we did George Washington and we did John Jay again, the first Supreme Court justice. Sorry to quiz you on that. I can't help myself. It's just the history nerd in me, because I know you. You and I had spoken about him at one point. And so what we wanted to do is take that kind of similar story and see, oh, my gosh, you know how else. This is not a novel idea. It happens again. To Abraham Lincoln. Abraham Lincoln. We all know the story of how Abraham Lincoln is eventually killed at Ford's Theater. But this was the story of a plot to kill Abraham Lincoln at the start of his presidency. Because in order to be sworn in as the 16th president, Abraham Lincoln had to take a train ride from his hometown in Springfield, Illinois, to go to Washington, D.C. where he'd raise his right hand and be sworn in. But the only way to get there back then is you had to go through Baltimore. And Maryland at the time was a slave state. So the plot to kill him was very simple. A secret society planned to murder Abraham Lincoln as he came through Baltimore and ended his presidency before it even began. And as you said, we all know the story of Abraham Lincoln, right? The guy who wins the Civil War. The Emancipation Proclamation frees the slaves. Arguably the greatest president we've ever had. That's the end of his story. What I love is when you read the Lincoln Conspiracy is that you see Him. At the beginning of his story, you see Abraham Lincoln, you know, you know what Abraham Lincoln's doing when he finds out he's going to be the nominee for the presidency? He's in an alleyway playing handball. Just a guy, right? He's so hated at the time. We all know Lincoln is so loved today, but he's so hated at the time that in 10 different states they didn't even put him on the ballot because they hated him so much. In the southern states, 10 states won't even put his name on the ballot even though he was a rightful nominee. Hated so much that three days after he's elected, that's how long they give him. Three days. South Carolina passes a resolution that say they want to secede from the Union. He's so hated that there's a plot to murder him. And you see in this plot as he's on this train ride racing from one to the other, you see Abraham Lincoln doubting himself and not knowing what to do and knowing he's hated by half the country and half the country hates him and thinks that the other side are horrible, awful people. Does that sound familiar to you, Bob?

Yeah, it does.

That's exactly where we are today, right? A house divided, completely divided. But it takes great leaders like Abraham Lincoln to remind us that we're our best when we're united.

Yeah, I did see in that book that you showed this side of Lincoln that does have self doubt and wonder. But you also see this guy that rises above that and with his words is always saying kind things about other people and not letting anger out in his words. And he must have been seething inside a lot, but it didn't seem that way.

Yeah, no, listen, when Abraham Lincoln goes to deliver his first inaugural address, it's like a month after they plot to murder him again. Hated by half the country. They try to kill him, they leave him off the ballot. They're, you know, writing hate mail every day that he's getting, calling them the N word and horrible things and all these, you know, terrible things. You know what he says in this first inauguration? We should be friends, not enemies. That's what he says. In the face of all the hate, we should be friends, not enemies. We need to defer the better angels of our nature. We all need that advice today. We all need that advice. Like we need more of that Abraham Lincoln thinking in our lives than just hating the other side and saying that they're awful, horrible people. That gets us nowhere as a country, Right?

That's one of the greatest lessons from that book. And I also found myself thinking, wait a second, the telegraph was starting to be fielded right at that time. What if it had been fully deployed? And then I started thinking, what if they had cell phones back then? It would have been a different kind of plot. And then I started thinking, how would that occur today? You know, they would be in Facebook groups, secret Facebook groups of the different sides.

Listen, it is happening today. You know it's happening today. That's what's happening. We see it now. It happens to every presidency. You know, I love the story because that first scene, you know, you're on a train in the middle of the night. On the train. I mean, you tell me this is an Espionage 101 on the train there's all these passengers, three that we're focused on. There's a businessman, there's a woman, and she's with her brother who's an invalid. And none of them are who they say they are. The man, the businessman, is actually a man named Alan Pinkerton, head of the famous Pinkerton Detective Agency. The woman is Kate Warren, America's first female private eye. And her so called brother isn't her brother. And he's certainly not an invalid. His name is Abraham Lincoln. They put him in disguise, they dress him up, they whisk him away in the middle of the night to make sure that the secret society can't murder him. And I just ruined chapter one of this, of the Lincoln conspiracy. But that's chapter one for you. But that's what the book opens with. And when I saw that, I was like, this is an espionage story for all time. You know, the idea of using a fake identity, using misinformation, as you said, when they were, you know, on the teletype, they basically, to make sure no one could communicate, just pulled it all down because it was so new as a technology. They just took it all down. They took the teeth out of it. And again, these are great lessons in s manage the same as John Jay back then in 1776 with Washington, the same as the Pinkerton's used with Lincoln. The technology changes, but the ideas remain the same. And the execution of those ideas is so similar too.

Brad, I want to ask you a couple other questions and I'm going to link to these books for those people who don't know how to find them in our write ups for the podcast and the video cast here, of course. But I want to talk about your other series that your publisher says is for kids, but I think is for Adults. This wonderful series. 30 books now, I think, for children that are talking about these heroes that all of us need to learn more about.

No, I appreciate it. So I. I was tired of my own kids looking at reality TV show stars and people who are famous for being famous and thinking that that's a hero. And I thought, I want to give them heroes who stand for generosity, who stand for kindness, who stand for perseverance. How do I teach my kids that? And I started by trying to tell my daughter, you know, about Amelia Earhart. I was like, if I can teach her Amelia Earhart. She flew across the Atlantic Ocean. My daughter said to me, big deal, dad. Everyone flies across the Atlantic Ocean. But when I told my daughter this true story, that when Amelia Earhart was seven years old, she built a homemade roller coaster in her backyard. She took a wooden crate, put roller skating wheels in the bottom. She shoved it up to the roof of her tool shed, came flying down the side, crashed, and said, that was amazing. Or whatever she held at the time. My daughter said, wait. Now, Amelia Earhart's, you know, not some old figure in a history book, but she's just like her. She's bold and she's daring, and most important, she's fun. So we started writing illustrated biography kids books. We did I am Amelia Earhart. I am Abraham Lincoln. I am Rosa Parks. I am Albert Einstein for my son who loves sports. I said, look at this guy. Meet Jackie Robinson. We did I am Jackie Robinson. And we did I am Lucille Ball for my daughter. So she'd have a female entertainment hero who wasn't just famous being thin and pretty. Lucy stood for the idea. It's fantastic to be different. We did I am Helen Keller. We put real braille into the book where kids could close their eyes and feel and find their names in the braille. But, Bob, something amazing happened as the 2016 election approached. Last year. Sorry, in 2016, the last election approached, I should say is two of our books started selling more than any others. And they were, I am Martin Luther King Jr. And I am George Washington. And it was a time when Hillary and Donald Trump were arguing every single day on tv, ripping each other apart. But what we saw was happening. It wasn't a Democrat or Republican thing. It was that parents and grandparents were so tired of turning on the TV and seeing politicians, but they wanted to show their kids were leaders. And we all know there's a huge difference between a politician and a leader. And I love that people, to this moment, use our books to fight back against the Divisiveness in the country, Republicans and Democrats, there's no difference, right? I go on Fox News with these books and I can go on NPR with these books. I've been to Glenn Beck with these books and CNN with these books. Like there's no politics to it. That just reminded us when America was its best version of itself. And I love the fact that people use our books to build libraries of real heroes for their kids, their grandkids, their nieces and their nephews.

That is great. And Brad, I mean, these books are really needed right now. And another question I wanted to ask you is, as you've written all these, do you see common traits across all of them? It seems like every one of those individuals is different and they have a different trait. You know, persistence, honesty, creativity, daringness, bravery. Or are they all different? Or do you see common themes between all these heroes?

You know, the series that. Everyone calls it the I Am Series, but the real title of it is It's My Core Belief. I believe Ordinary People Change the World. I don't care where you went to school or how much money you make, that's nonsense to me. I believe in regular people and their ability to affect change in this world. And it's why I believe in a 7 year old girl named Amelia Earhart or a 10 year old boy named Abraham Lincoln. You always see them when they're little kids and then you see them get older. And that's why we call it the Ordinary People Change the World Series. But the trait that I see beyond them all being ordinary is the trait that's so important to teach your grandkids and teach your kids is they all fail. Every single one of them. No matter what they achieve, they all fail. Abraham Lincoln loses eight elections. Amelia Earhart's first thing crashes, right? I mean, George Washington loses his first election. We always show you their failures. Jackie Robinson doesn't do well in his first at bat. You know, it takes, it takes the ones after that. One of my favorite ones, we do. We did. I am Neil Armstrong. And Neil Armstrong never used the word. I used the word. We. We did this. We accomplished it. And he wasn't just talking about his fellow astronauts. He meant the scientists. He meant the people who sewed the spacesuit together, the mathematicians who did the calculations. Remember, humility was a great American value. We lost that. We need to bring that back again. But the moment that I love about Neil Armstrong is when you see him and he's 11 years old, he used to love climbing trees in his backyard. He's climbing this tree and he grabs a dead branch and the branch snaps and he falls and lands on his back. But the most important thing he does is he gets back up again. You don't get to take the giant leap for all mankind until you take the thousands of little steps and get back up and get back up and see that failure. That's how you learn to fly.

See, Brad, that's why I think this is a series for adults, too, because that's a great lesson for me and it's one I'm really going to take on board. All of us need more of this.

And listen, I write them for my kids, but I need that lesson too. Right. I'm looking for the lessons I need in my own life and I take them from Neil Armstrong and from George Washington and all. We all need those lessons. Good.

And Brad, I want to ask because I take lessons from you, too, and you may have already given me the answer to this, but maybe I just want to ask it a different way. And that is we're all under a lot of stress right now. There's this global pandemic. It's had huge impacts on the economy. Many people out of work. Businesses are under stress and pressure. We're telling a lot of our listeners and readers that you need to do what you can to restart the economy, hire more people, and that's one of the ways out of this. But it's so much stress and pressure right now. And I wanted to ask you for any advice you may have for us as we try to all of us, the big we restart the economy and get things moving again.

Yeah. Listen, I think it and I appreciate you asking that. I mean, I look at pick anyone, any hero that's behind me. I mean, I'll think of one here. The first one that comes to mind. We just. One of our newest books is we did. I was gonna tell you the Walt Disney story, but I actually got a better one. The last book we just did is I am Leonardo da Vinci. Okay, so Disney, I'll tell you two. So Walt Disney, you know why we got Mickey Mouse? He came up with the idea for a cartoon mouse called a Mortimer Mouse. And it's his wife who says, mortimer, that's a horrible name. And she says, what do you think we should call it? And she says, mickey. That's how the world gets Mickey Mouse. Walt Disney's first company is a failure. He goes bankrupt. He's sleeping in a bus station. Mickey, his first cartoon isn't a great success. It's not until it goes on that it takes off. And again, the same thing for Leonardo da Vinci. Leonardo da Vinci invents a tank. He invents scuba gear made of leather. He invents a parachute, even though there's no planes. He invents all these things and every single one of them, Bob, they all fail. Every single one. Then technology takes over, and eventually, centuries later, they all work. But I tell you those two stories, because to me, that's the way out. There is no big dream unless you dream big. So you have to take that failure. You have to get back up again. You have to know that even if we're knocked down now, as long as you're willing to get back up again, as long as you're willing to try it. That's how Mortimer becomes Mickey. That's how the fake flying machine becomes the real one. It's. You know, we are all have that potential to be Renaissance men and women. But the first thing you got to change is right here, right? You got to change your way of thinking.

Great, Brad. Thanks for that. And thanks for this time. I really appreciate it.

So good to be back. And let me say publicly, because I always say it to you privately, but I need to say publicly, you've helped me with so many books, every time I need technology research. So thank you for believing in me, too, and for always helping me. Make me look like I know far more about technology than I really do.

Well, thanks for saying that, Brad.

Great to see you. All right. Thank you. Thanks for listening to this OODA Loop production For the latest analysis on cybersecurity technology and global risks, please visit www.ooda loop.com.