All Posts

The site of the 1945 bombing that killed my grandmother. Helllo friends of The Man Who Calculated Death! If you've listened to the podcast, you know it's a deeply felt, deeply investigated piece of my family ancestry and as I work on the second half of the story, I continue to process the first half. And I wondered: what would happen if I just wrote off-the-cuff chapter-ettes that explored it in more detail, as only long form writing can . So I started a Substack. I write fas

Ever heard of Sophie Scholl? Seen here with a daisy tucked into her lapel, she was a University of Munich student in the 1940s—a kid, really, my son’s age. A kid with convictions and a moral compass stronger than most adults ever find. At 21, Sophie and her brother Hans, 24, joined Der Weisse Rose—The White Rose—a non-violent, intellectual resistance group that dared to call out Nazi crimes at the height of Hitler’s power. They distributed anti-Nazi leaflets, painted defiant

Hey friends. I want to say thank you for voting for The Man Who Calculated Death in the Signal Listener's Choice award because not only did the podcast win that one, it also won the Signal Gold for Best Indie! And if that wasn't good enough, we also brought home a win in the Best History/Biography series at the W3 awards. Now, granted, this is not a Pulitzer, but these awards do recognize the best of the best in the podcast medium and I am proud to be among winners like Trav

The Man Who Calculated Death has been selected as a finalist in the Signal Awards, which celebrate the best of the best in the...

That jet you took last week??? You may think Lusser’s Law only applies to space shuttles and submarines, but here’s the truth: it applies to you . Every single day.  Your car? Thousands of parts. Your smartphone? More transistors than stars in the galaxy. The jet you took to Vegas last weekend? Over six million components.  Lusser’s Law says that if even a handful of those parts are unreliable, your entire system—your vehicle, your gadget, your plane—can fail in ways that are

Down to the Titanic.... In June 2023, a submersible named Oceangate Titan dove toward the wreck of the Titanic—and imploded under 6,000...

Robert Lusser, c. 1956 People think my podcast is called The Man Who Calculated Death because—well—my grandfather was a Nazi engineer who led a secret project to build a flying bomb.  Well, that’s wrong.  It’s actually because he developed an engineering formula that could predict the failure of complex systems—machines with thousands of parts, each one with its own little chance to ruin everything.  It’s called Lusser’s Law of System Reliability, and this picture is of my gr

Where is Robert Lusser? This is a hard photograph for me to look at. My grandfather sits at the head of the table, looking... smug? Content? Full? I believe many of the group of men he's with are military, given the Iron Cross medals that hang from their lapels. My grandfather also has something hanging around his neck, called The War Merit Cross with Swords. This was one of the highest honors the Nazis gave to civilians: the swords version recognized bravery not directly c

Jon Cryer, Lisa Joyner, and Suzanne Rico with Gracie Award Happy Friday. I just finished Bonus Episode 4, called The Soul of the Story,...

What I wouldn't give for one more hug... I meant to write this on Mother's Day. But it doesn't really matter because I think about my mom all the time. She's this constant presence, so real sometimes that I still go to pick up the phone to call her when anything good or bad happens in my life. And boy did I want to call her last night, when I won a Gracie Award for Best Writing for The Man Who Calculated Death. The Gracies have been around for 50 years (named after the legend

What happened to the Lusser children later in life?

Hilde Lusser, c 1930, 9 years before the start of World War II. I never met her, but I feel I know her. She died at 41 years old, her neck broken in an instant when a bomb hit the remote farmhouse where she'd taken refuge. Legend has it she was reading poetry by Soren Kierkegaard when she died, trying to keep her spirits up as she parented 5 children alone (her husband working far away on a flying bomb) and waited for the interminable war to be finally over. The end was only