Nikola Tesla

Welcome to Phil and Ted's Sexy Boomer Show. Yeah, get on the microphone. You've been away too long. Oh, hi. Oh, there I am. There you are. There I am. It was just ten feet away. Yeah, that's right. Hi, Phil. Hi. Hi, Ted. Well, how was your summer? Uh, it's over. Yeah, it sure is, isn't it? Yeah. It's good to be here.

Welcome to the fourth season. I can't believe it. Of Phil and Ted's Sexy Boomer Show. The fourth. I'm sneezing. Yeah. Wow. It's amazing. And what, do we still have an election? We still have it. Yeah, right. I don't know what happened. I must have left the planet. But Trump is still neck and neck. So yes, pencil neck to neck.

Yeah. And wow, it's it's it's horrific. Unbelievable. It is unbelievable. Shocking. Yeah, you know, I read a book called Autocracy Inc. It's very popular right now. It's only 160 pages. Autocracy is very popular. Autocracy is very popular too. And very populist. And I have to say, if you want to kind of understand contextually why we're in the situation we're in.

Yeah. Because of the, the state of the world and how autocracies are gaining on democracies and that it accounts for, do you know the money in autocracies, the dark money, it accounts for about 10 percent of the global GDP. Yeah, and I understand that if you buy the book, that money goes to the dark money fund.

Speaking of money, because it's our fourth season, we have a new show, we have a new budget. Yeah. Come here. I want to show you something. Because we're doing a show today about Nikola Tesla. And we have two guests today, too, to kick off the show. Yes. Because there's a show. Dan Duling and Michael Arabian.

And they're responsible for a show about Tesla. Yeah. Who people are all fascinated by. And we're going to talk about that. You know, and they have a, they have, they're, they're promoting the fact that they have a Tesla coil. Yeah. That they're ex, what do you mean? You know the machine, the, yeah. You know, you see in science fiction films, so they have one where, and since not everyone's gonna be able to get to the show.

We have it here. You brought it here. I brought it here because did they know that? I didn't tell them. It's very hard to find them anyway. You want to try it? I plugged it in and I want, I thought we'd do a stunt, you know, to start the season with. Okay. Which is, we'll fire up this Tesla coil. And to celebrate the four season, here's a cigar.

Oh. Oh, thank you. And I thought maybe you, you should light this cigar with the Tesla coil. This, this is a Cuban cigar. Oh no, it's a Cigar Cubano. Oh, oh, oh. I, that's right. It's a Cubombo. See? So should we do it? Well, whatever. I'm gonna light the cigar on the Tesla. Yeah. Let me wrap first. We gotta start.

Okay. Hold on. Do you have a quarter? Do you have a quarter? What's a quarter? Really, what is that? Wait a minute. It's coin op. Alright. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I do. Oddly enough. Just drop it in the slot. Yeah. Okay. Now pull the lever. There you go. Now get the cigar ready. That's a cigar. Go ahead. Now stick the cigar.

Try to light it, so not too close. Your beard is on fire. No, no, no, no, no. Try it. Try it one more. Wow. Oh wow. That blew up in my hand like a, like a pager. Like a bad gag. Well, that was ridiculous. That was a bad, that was a bad gag. Boy. What a mess we're gonna clean up here. We, we're gonna have to raise some money next week.

But we really are gonna be talking about Nikola Tesla and Tesla coils. Actually, talking about Tesla coil, let me just throw this in before we forget. The largest one in the world, I think in the world, is the observatory. Up in Hollywood. Oh, really? And they, they, they run that thing every day. Really? It's, as soon as you enter the main entrance.

Uh huh. It's in a huge glass booth up to the right. Uh huh. And they fire that thing up. And it's totally within this glass. So the electrodes that go off, the electricity goes all over that space. Ooh. But it can't travel outside the little room that it's in. This is Michael Arabian, our guest today, who is directing the show.

Tesla, a radio play for the stage, written by Dan Dooling, our other guest. There he is. And it's, uh, Caltech is presenting it, their Open Doors series. Correct. And it's only running for, for three days. I've been wanting to see this show since you did it years ago. With me. Yeah, that's right. That's right, you were in it.

Yes. I play the I love it. Thank you so much. Evil genius. I'm Thomas Edison. So fabulous. And you were fabulous, Phil. Thank you. I was fabulous. So what we're going to talk about today is not only the play and what it, how you're, how you're presenting Tesla's life, but also we're going to talk about Tesla himself, the great enigma, the great mind of the 20th century.

As opposed to Elon Musk. Elon Musk did name the company. Well, he, he was, he didn't buy the company. I mean, he didn't originally start the company. Yeah, started, started with somebody, two people. He didn't, he did not name it Tesla, right? It was purchased, he purchased it as Tesla. That's right. And, uh, thank goodness for that.

And then nobody would even know about Tesla. You think? No, I think, I think Tesla's evolutionary interest value, Had really has picked up in the last 20 years. Sure. Regardless. Regardless of what Elon Musk did. Yeah. Tesla. What do you think accounts for him suddenly becoming popular or, or better known, I should say?

Well, one of the theories that I have, Nikola Tesla, by the way. No, isn't no eye in it, is it? It's Niklas. Nicola Nikola. Yeah. Yeah. Nicola. You say Nikolai. I say Nicola. I say Nicola . But I was gonna say is when, when I was originally. Researching it. The way I best could describe the relationship between Edison and Tesla was that Edison was an inventor who was creating appliances for the 20th century, while Tesla was experimenting and imagining the technology of the 21st century.

And so much of that has come to bear. And the, greater interest in Tesla that has happened in the last two decades, coupled with a couple of films with, uh, you know, an American masters series with much more coverage in the Wikipedia entry. None of that was available to me when I was starting my research except his writings and his writings were the source for really the Impulse.

Impulse to want to do it. Well, not only did he invent alternative current, which made life and electricity much more practical. Right. Practicalities. But he was in competition with Thomas Edison, because he was a contemporary, and he was, uh, DC. Right, and the War of the Currents is a big part of the play.

It's at least a third to half of the play is that relationship and antagonistic battle between Edison's, um, attempt to take control of the power business. We could have done an elephant gag. Yeah, it's radio. Well, the GOP is, is like, Well, it's horrible. Of course, I'm referring to that grotesque smear campaign.

Yes, when, when Edison was, was definitely despicable, and, uh, it was borne out later in some of his attempts to monopolize the film business, basically by shutting down anyone. Yeah. And essentially, He claimed complete ownership of the motion picture industry. He created Hollywood by virtue of people escaping.

Yeah, otherwise we'd be doing this from Fort Lee, New Jersey. Well, you're still doing it on radio, so. The War of the Currents, that's a good title. The War of the Currents. I didn't, I didn't make it up. It's, it's been used. Oh, well, yeah. People were going, what the hell was the elephant thing about? Okay. One of the grotesque things that Edison did, um, to smear.

What to say the Tesla's technology was dangerous, right? He wanted to make the case that AC as opposed to DC was really dangerous to humans and and other forms of life. And so he went on a campaign to draw public attention to the dangers of alternating current. Essentially, Purely for making a case that his DC, which was very ineffective and inefficient to, uh, blowing up, you know, there were frequent explosions in New York caused by, you know, the, the AC, I mean, the DC current, uh, production just being overwhelmed by, uh, the way it was designed.

But when it came down to. Edison versus Tesla, one of his most outrageous stunts to say that this is dangerous was to take an elephant and have a public event where they attached electrodes to manacle chains around the legs of the elephant and electrocuted the elephant to make the case that alternating current is much more dangerous.

Whereas that was, and they also, uh, created the first electric chair also as another way of making the case for that's how the electric chair chair came about. It was, it was part of the evolution of the electric chair and it was, was a, you know, it was another thing that Edison saw the chance to make a public spectacle of just how dangerous he wanted to.

People who used a AC were Dumbo's. It's been a long, long four months, hasn't it? Born in a trunk, you know. I've been waiting to say that for four months. We have a video, actually, in the, in the, in the show of the, The elephant being electrocuted. Oh, no. So audiences actually get to see it. Oh, geez. So Edison was in the early stages of developing motion pictures.

So he did. And they, they filmed it. Filmed it. They filmed it. Good grief. I mean, it's, it's a, it's a archival footage. It's not great shape, but it's, it makes the point and it's certainly Sure does. Uh, wow. A moment in the show that audiences rarely forget if they weren't aware of it already. Maybe as a, as a stepping off point to talk more about Tesla, because he was such an interesting cat.

I mean, just what a, what a life. Yes. And, uh, but, you know, how do you package such a huge story into a play that the conceit, Michael, is it's like an old fashioned radio play? Well, not old fashioned. No, this is an old fashioned radio play. What Michael is doing is a little bit more modernized. That's what I'm doing.

Nobody's done what I'm doing, actually, before. Uh, radio is really, you're in a studio, and you've got actors moving about, and you've got sound effects that are creating all the atmosphere, everything that's going on. So it's for just a listening audience. Right. And it's a great art form, and I love it. So here we're doing it for a live audience, but it's still written as a radio play.

So I'm doing a lot more staging behind the microphones. We still have the actress behind microphones as if they are on radio. And, uh, but I'm doing a lot of theatrical staging. But behind the mics, we've got projections because the script is written like a screenplay. We go to many different locations, many different characters.

Oh, cool. We have six actors playing over 50 parts. Wow. Wow. So to help the audience know what location we're in, we have projections that show those locations. Right. And then of course we have a live sound effects artist on stage doing all the sound effects slides. Who is that? Who is it? What did you have?

Uh, Tony, uh, Palermo. Tony Palermo is still at it, eh? Yes, I'm so glad. I was afraid he was going to retire after the, uh, you know. But it's really, it's, it's really extra fun because I, I had two agendas. It's a great combination. With, with this decision to make it into a radio play. One, I had seen David Mamet's The Water Engine, which is also set in a radio, uh, studio where they are doing a live show.

And I saw that The, the theatricality of the special effects performance, as well as the ways in which it has the natural interest value. And you can also compress time or accelerate time because you're in, you're having that double illusion of Well, we're supposed to be just hearing it. Yeah, we're listening.

Right. But we're actually seeing what's going on as well. Yeah. And what, as, as the writer, what is your, uh. Take away for the audience. What is it that you're wanting to them to walk away that I want them to walk away with a sense that this was one of the most unique individuals to ever walk this planet.

And yet his story ultimately is very human and very, uh, in some ways tragic, but also he suffered from a tragic flaw as well. And and you you want it. The audience to come away going wanting to know more about Nikola Tesla, and I think Because it's such a vast story, and there are so many elements of it one of the things that initially intimidated and almost overwhelmed me was when the story of his life is told from beginning to end, it has a wonderful arc upward to his most notoriety and, you know, celebrity in the early 20th century to a spiral downward to the last 17 years of his life, essentially being a recluse, an eccentric, and someone who was marginalized.

So someone who was as famous as Edison in 1900 was completely forgotten by the time he died. Amazing. I mean, he was in the New Yorker Hotel. Yes. He was a recluse there. He had a love affair with a pigeon. Well, yes, that would be the height of his eccentricity and there have been stories and theories because he was compelling and at the same time, He is he was attractive to people who like he was in his prime.

He was a bon vivant He was he was in the New York scene incredibly charismatic very charismatic and he had ideas like wireless power Transmitting power wirelessly. I mean, I think that's his greatest enigma right and I still I've read books I still don't quite understand the whole story I mean, I know that He attempted to do this in, on Long Island.

Right. With the Wardenclyffe. With the Wardenclyffe, which didn't last. Didn't last and was, the money was pulled out from under it before it had a chance to fully test, but I don't think it would have worked entirely successfully because he was focused on transmitting it, transmitting power through the ground and being able to get it around the world through the ground.

And he had two of his real. Mistakes, I guess you would call them. Were focusing on what you could do in transmitting through water and what you could do in transmitting through ground. But he imagined the idea of wireless power. Mm-Hmm. through the air as well, but the technology really wasn't there for that.

And he was, he was in many cases trying to imagine. The fully technological realization of something that didn't have the technology to support it. So you're, you know, you're really a dreamer at that point. Science fiction. Didn't he develop something for boats though? The boats were able to communicate?

Well, that was part of his story was that the battle for, uh, basically J. P. Morgan wanted to have the first wireless telegraphy between, uh, boats at sea. Essentially, he wanted to be able to communicate with his yacht out there and and back on on ground. Marconi had an idea. Tesla had an idea. Tesla was not interested in this little scheme that that Marconi was trying to pull off.

He wanted to do Something that would show even greater potential, you know, it was like, that's a stunt. But Tesla was looking at the bigger picture and what would be possible to literally make communication with Europe possible, to make communication with the other side of the world possible. Using Morse code?

Well, Morse code was going to be the initial way that it would take its form, but in his, ambitions for Wardenclyffe and other ways of, of making his cases for this, he wasn't focused just on the win. And J. P. Morgan, not unsurprisingly, as one of the great capitalists of America, was focused on the win. And when he didn't win, Morgan Essentially pulled the rug out from under it and it's, it's not just, it's not as simple to say that he was driven by his ego because he wasn't doing it just to try to beat Marconi.

He wasn't interested in Marconi. One of the things he said when Marconi was given credit for the invention of radio was, of course, he wants to be able to do radio. So he's using seven of my patents. And later after he died. And I find this yet another of the many ironic twists of Tesla's life. The U. S.

government, shortly after he died, awarded the invention of radio not to Marconi but to Tesla. And the reason being that they owed all of these royalties to Marconi that during the war, because he died during World War II, they It effectively wiped away all of those debts owed to Marconi, and Tesla was dead.

I, long ago, I interviewed Marconi's granddaughter, and she was very adamant that her grandfather, I believe it was a grandfather, it was certainly a relative, grand niece or father, Granddaughter, and she was adamant that of course that her grandfather invented radio. Right, right. Of course, of course. I mean, it was not even a discussion.

But, he, that wasn't the case. And didn't, didn't, uh, Tesla just didn't seem interested in ego like that. I mean, didn't he sign over so much of his interests over to, uh, was it Westinghouse? Westinghouse, yes. He hitched his wagon, shall we say, to Westinghouse's house. belief in alternating current. This was to, to, to bolster him against Edison's pushback.

Right. And also to win the first big power contract at Niagara Falls so that they could then make that the basis of a national, uh, attention and promotion of accelerating current. And when, when Edison, uh, started to put the screws on in terms of competition. He was also going after Westinghouse's sources of funding.

And Westinghouse was in the catbird seat for a short time and had made all of these promises to Tesla, which would have effectively guaranteed him the monies to do the research that he'd always wanted to do for the rest of his life. Wow. But Edison managed to make it. The environment, the financial environment that Westinghouse was trying to survive in, so intolerable that Westinghouse went to Edison and said, uh, to Tesla and said, I can't do this.

Do this as much as I would like to, but we're going to lose all the money and, and you won't be able to do any of the things that we had hoped to do together. Whereas if you can agree to eliminate these promises that I made to you as far as the funding of Alternating Current, we might still be able to battle with, with Edison.

And And this was one of those pivotal moments where Tesla's loyalty to Westinghouse and appreciation of the loyalty that Westinghouse had shown to him made him make the decision And Essentially tear up all of his contracts with Westinghouse and and it's I mean Edison was such a bully I mean, do you think that Edison is primarily responsible for Tesla's?

lack of success He wasn't primarily. He was certainly competitive initially. Must have had a terrific psychological effect on him, you know. Absolutely. And, and, and I think it was much more of a competition for Edison feeling the pressure of, of here's, here's a real genius versus here's someone, I, I think it's really this, Edison would use trial and error.

He would pick up the piece of straw in the haystack and say no, that's not it. Where's that needle? No, that's not it. Whereas Tesla would create a machine that would track the magnetism of the of the needle of the needle So he was a visionary a futurist Absolutely. Yes, he was a little bit too far ahead of his time.

Oh And he paid that price to again. Yeah. No he came from Eastern Europe You Yes, he was, he was a Serbian who was born in a village in Croatia, and he was very proud of his Serbian, Serbian heritage. And just in terms of the extraordinary mental capacity that he had, he always gave his mother and his three sisters major props for their both mental faculties and also for the, the ability, which he believed they all shared, of being telepathic and having the ability to communicate with one another.

He went to Europe largely because he got a message, picked it up, You know, in his mind that she was unwell and he wanted to be there for her and, and throughout his life, he credited the women in his family as being really the, the true gifted, truly gifted ones. So we're talking about Extrasensory perception.

Extrasensory perception as well. I knew you were going to say that. That he was going to try to create practical applications. Was he trying to merge, was he trying to bridge that? No, no, that really, that really was just a personal thing. He took that as a personal gift. Uh huh. A gift of, you know, his mental power.

ability that he had inherited from his family. And, you know, he was, he was also not a perfect human being in terms of his, you know, ambitions to use his skills for, he practically got thrown out of school for basically playing poker throughout his college career until they said, you know, you're going to have to leave the school.

How did he get over to America? I don't know. He came over with the, uh, recommendation of one of Edison's, uh, Partners in Europe. He came over. He came over to get working with it. Yes. Yes. I was hoping to work with him, right? So he had a reputation in Europe at that time, right? And and and basically Edison's partner in Europe sent him to the United States with a letter to Edison saying that interesting, you know Yeah, there are two men in that I've known who have extraordinary abilities One is you Thomas Edison And the other is this young man.

Wow. And, and so Edison eventually invites him to work for him. And then, That's the first person that he runs into, sort of, the darker side of capitalism. Does he, does he realize, Edison, that Tesla is more of a threat because of his brilliance at that point? Not at that point, because he's always being, Sort of inundated with new young genius.

Yes. Yeah, so so he's unimpressed with Anything the letter from his friend holds a little water But if if this young man is going to prove anything to him It's gonna be by what he can actually do for Edison and eventually they came to loggerheads over something, right? I think Edison Edison Wouldn't embrace what Tesla wanted to do and Tesla just wouldn't stop.

He just wouldn't relent. There was, there was a discussion about ways that, that Tesla could improve the productivity and the effectiveness of Edison's electrical apparatus. And Edison said, well, if you could do that, if you could make all of these improvements, that'd be worth 50, 000. Right. And Nikola Tesla took him at his word and spent the next seven months working night and day to make all of those improvements and basically riding Edison's engineers and saying, no, it can't be close.

It has to be exact. This is the way I have seen how this works. If you're off even this much, you're not going to have the kind of, uh, Reliability and productivity and functionality that you need to have. And when he finally completed that and he brought his findings in and his, his record of everything that they had achieved, Edison was very impressed and said, well, that's, that's really great.

And said, well, I'm ready for my 50, 000. And basically. Edison laughed him out of the room and offered him a small raise. And, you know, there, here was, here was a point where, where, where Tesla had every right to be a bit egocentric about what he had just been through. Was he developing AC current? Was that what it was doing?

No, no, he was, he was just trying to get on Edison's, well, he was doing what he was hired to do by Edison to prove. to Edison that he could be relied upon, that he wasn't, you know, a crackpot, that he was, that he was really a, a, you know, a technological worker, more than a worker, wanting to basically say, and here, now that you know that I can do this, let me show you what I can do with alternating current.

He, he brought it with him. He brought the whole plan that he would convince. Edison that alternating current was the way to go. You're listening to Phil and Ted's Sexy Boomer Show, our first show back. Our guest Dan Duling, the author, writer of the Tesla, the radio play for the stage, which is going to be performed at Caltech's stage, uh, next weekend.

No, the, uh, Fourth year. Fifth and sixth. Fourth and sixth. Fourth and sixth. And our other guest Michael Arabian, who directed the production. Now the production that I was in, was it the Pasadena Playhouse? That was the Pasadena Playhouse. That was a benefit for Caltech. That's right. And just backing up a little bit, in 2013 when I brought the script back, an earlier version of it, but I brought it back as a radio play.

I went. to the first person I thought might be interested in it, which was Brian Brophy at Caltech, the head of the theater program there. And we've known each other for a long, long time, and I said, Here, take a look. Let's give it a read. Tell me what you think. You did that because he has BB initials and you have DD initials.

You just knew it was going to work. That's Phil. Gets to the bottom of all this. That's what BB says. We're all illiterate or we're all illiterate. So Michael, tell us about the cast of the show. It's a very interesting cast. Oh, interesting is such an understatement. Gregory Harrison, Dan Loria, Hal Linden.

Gosh, I worked with Hal so many years ago at the Mark Taper Forum, when they did Monday Nights at the Taper. And he's still doing it, huh? He's still doing it. He's still working. He's 90 something years old. God bless him. He's still working. That's wonderful. One, he really is amazing. Yes, he is. And we did it, uh, after the Pasadena Playhouse reading, they weren't part of that.

No. Phil was only one part of that. Yeah. Then, uh, we got a production. And French, Stewart, yeah. French Stewart, yes. I was gonna get to French. Yeah. French Stewart, yes. Um, he's, I think it was discovered in this series, Third Rock from the Sun. I think that's where it was really discovered. That's right. Um, so, uh, we got a production at the Laguna Playhouse, uh, a couple years after that.

And it was so successful, everybody had such a good time, that when we did this part, This engagement, they all wanted to do it again. What are the ambitions for the show? I mean, is it just going to be a limited thing, or are you hoping to take it another step? Yes, we're hoping that, uh, all the larger theaters in the, in the L.

A. area know about it, and, uh, and they're trying to get there to see it, so hopefully it'll get picked up for a longer run. Wonderful. Yeah. I just like to say because I love the theater and have spent my life there that doing this as a radio play was very cold blooded as far as the theatricality of it because what you can do is you don't have to wait for the You don't have to wait for costume changes.

You don't have to wait for makeup changes. You just blast it through. I call it the, at the speed of Sorkin, because it is a chance to give a modern audience the, the opportunity to play catch up. Because most things, you can get ahead of where this is going, this is familiar, but this, Especially with wonderful actors like this, and, and I will just come back around for a minute to French Stewart, who I had known from small theater here in Los Angeles before his television career really took off.

And from the beginning, from the minute that there was a chance of doing this, he was my first choice for Nikola Tesla, because he's a comic actor who can do drama. And if you get someone who, who is, you know, proficient at comedy, you just know that they will be wonderful at the dramatic side of things as well.

And he's been developing the Buster Keaton story, which is a perfect blend of those two elements. Yeah, that production was written by his wife, Vanessa Stewart, and Vanessa is also in this cast, and it was in the cast in Laguna as well. And Vanessa is a tremendous talent, both as a playwright and as a director.

And a performer and a singer and maybe we'll be able to have a moment of her singing in the show, which was not in the in the previous production, but it's it's just the opportunities to work with people like this give you a sense of fearlessness and Wanting to take risks. And that is the beauty of radio.

Radio is as fast as the mind can go. There you go. It's the most facile medium. It's an immersive form of entertainment. Tony Palermo's sound effects, he's a master of it and he is a theatrical show in himself. Yes, he is. Audiences have not been at a performance with a sound effects person performing on stage.

That's right. That's right. You are looking at one of the great masters of it. Yeah, he really is. He really brings the show to life. And this is going to be at the Caltech, uh, is it Ramo? Ramo Auditorium, uh, in Pasadena. The Ramo Auditorium? October, uh, October 4th, 5th, and 6th. And also then you're going to the following week and you're going to be up in Big Bear.

Right, their Performing Arts Center up there. Wow. Okay, so how do people get tickets? Go to the, uh, Just go to the website at Caltech. Oh, I see. P P S T dot Caltech dot E D U. PST is Pacific Standard Time, the Getty's, uh, Arts Festival that's going on. So this, this was really an exciting thing that, that Getty picked this piece to, uh, uh, Are you sure it's not Procter's Standard Time, PST?

No, but that was just done working. So let's not forget that. You said that. This is, this is very important. The Getty did this a few years ago. It's a festival that's all over, all over Southern California that they give money to arts organizations and science organizations Oh, wow. to support their theme, which is the collision of science and art.

Wonderful. So Pacific Standard Time. Art and science collide. That's the festival. Wow. And so this is, so they, they have given the financing to Caltech, for example. And the presenter there, Michael Alexander, uh, is producing this, uh, for Caltech, for the Getty. Getting back to, um, Tesla. Okay. Yeah. So, he comes from, uh, Serbia.

He's very tall and lanky. And he, wasn't he? He was a very tall, thin guy. Certainly compared to most of the people wandering around New York City, he was very Outstanding. He was the sort of young man who people would think, Oh, that man really knows how to carry himself. He looks like a gentleman. He behaves like a gentleman.

He speaks fluent English. Actually, he spoke many languages, but it was, again, part of his family's gift to know this sort of thing. He also could read, you know, basically almost do card tricks because he could read the deck and memorize it. He had a photographic memory. Did he ever marry? He never married.

And in fact, my basic takeaway from his reading it is that he, he was far too focused on his work to the point of it's driving him toward his compulsions, which were essentially like, I will walk around this building until my number of steps to get to the front door are divisible by three. That was one of them.

OCD. Yes, essentially, when I started writing this play ACDC OCD! That's my musical choice. Easy for you to say. He, he, he was, he was on the spectrum before people were using the term on the spectrum. But it was so focused on his work, that as long as his work was there, it consumed him. And Kind of like an Asperger's syndrome.

Yes, I think that's, yeah, I mean, I sort of want to resist labels because there were none of those labels then, but what you did see was a man who was driven by his work, and he was, because of his sisters and his mother, He was very much in favor of women's suffrage. He was very progressive in his social ideas.

And when he was in his prime, and when there was opportunity for him to work on what he believed in, he was the most charismatic person in the room. And he proved that whenever he could showcase his latest discovery or his latest work. Now, it must be said in the history of invention and electricity, he was not solely the person responsible for alternating current, but he was the one who made the biggest splash with it.

Sorry, pun intended for Niagara Falls. And, and the Slowly I turn. Because what AC allowed to do, for people who aren't aware, if I understand it correctly, AC allowed the transmission of power over long distances. Yes. Where DC, direct current, did not. And in New York, Tesla had a number Well, didn't Edison have a number of power stations all over New York because the power couldn't travel that far?

No, they had to be close. It was like they were forcing all of this power into a small tube and that's what created a lot of explosions. So he went out to Colorado. Where he blew the town up. Yes, literally. Colorado Springs, what a place. Now why did he go there? What brought him to Colorado Springs and what the hell happened?

This is also a great story. But it, he, he wanted a place where he could really do some major, large scale It's, you know, electrical experiments to see what we could do and get away with. And there was, at that point, Colorado Springs had more or less unlimited power from its various water sources and other, other sources available.

Oh, so that's what drew him was the, the natural energy. It was, it was also just a place where he could have, you know, Get away from, get away from New York and everything. Right. And did he have, did he have a, a, a, a, a supporter there too? Not really, no. He, he was, He just went out there? He, he pretty much went out there.

There was, there were a combination of circumstances for why he left, including the fire that destroyed his lab in New York. Oh, there's that. There's that. And, and, um, That was a chance to get away and try to do large scale experiments, which he couldn't do in New York. I mean, you're really limited in your space, in your labs.

But here he could take existing buildings or build his own buildings. And that's one of his iconic, famous photographs of him. Right, right. Sitting in a corner reading the paper or something. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Bolts of electricity flying all around him. Without being a spoiler alert, it is a photo that they staged that was a double exposure.

Ah. He was never in that room with that gigantic electrical thing. Yeah. He would have been killed. Right. And, and it was, but it was good PR and, and by that time he had someone who was in charge of PR who then, who had a good imagination. Right. Right. Right. Who, who then also, uh, was there saying, no, don't do it.

When he was saying, I don't care about, you know, competing with Marconi for, you know, getting a series of Morse code dots and dashes to a ship at sea. I'm looking at worldwide power and I want to build something on the scale that can show the what's possible with what we have now. And, and he proceeded.

in Colorado Springs to essentially melt down the entire power grid, such as it was. And that's one of my favorite moments in the play is when he gets an angry call from the person at the power station, cursing them out for their, uh, this was, it was his attempt there to develop wireless global power. Yes.

And he was trying to pump it into the ground and he would have, on hillsides further and further away, essentially bulbs, light bulbs plugged into the ground. And he could see how far the lights would light up when he would just pump this into the ground. It's, it's kind of an absurd, but it was on a scale that was so outrageous.

It's amazing that people weren't. killed in the to say that rabbits weren't exploding all over. I'm wearing my Colorado cowboy hat because I just got back from Telluride and that's a magical state. You know, if he was attracted psychically to any state in the union, Colorado is definitely the place to be.

The lightning that was prevalent in the, in the Hills around Colorado space. Yes, he, that's right. He was fascinated with that and trying to see if there was any way that he could actually, uh, harness. Harness. Okay. Okay. So he was trying to create wireless transmitted power on a global scale. That was his experiment in Colorado.

Oops, blows up the town's power system. From there, he went to Long Island, or, I don't know. Yes, basically, the, the next step was to try to get funding to, to pursue something that was so far beyond what any What was that tower that he built on Long Island? Was that also intended to transmit power through the ground?

Wardenclyffe was actually looking at the possibilities of transmission through the air. And it was, Just done on a scale where, had he been able to finish it and fully test it, he might have come up with some major discoveries, but unfortunately his, his source of funding, in this case J. P. Morgan, um, pulled the plug.

And tore the tower down by like 1907 or something, it was gone. Well, it, it Or 17? It was left in disrepair and decay. There's still things still there to say this is where Wardenclyffe's tower was. And had he succeeded, his name would have been Test La. Thank you. Try the veal. He's here all season. So, is it sort of like what AM radio does in terms of the ionosphere bouncing off electrically and bouncing power?

I mean, do you have any idea what he was thinking? He was, he was thinking that it would be able to transmit. Uh, not so much using, using the clouds as, as just, just direct line of sight, line of sight. And then hopefully beyond that to possibly other, uh, you know, repeaters essentially where, where it would get from here to here and then go.

But the voltage, would it be the voltage intense, you'd have to stay away from the line of sight voltage, would it be lethal, or would it be, I don't, you know, it's just such an extraordinary concept, I can't. It never got beyond the conceptual stage. So it never did happen. So, so there was never a chance for him to even start it and, and see if, see what, what would happen.

Okay, and this, this is now going towards the, the, the end years of his life. Right. Because after that fell apart would. J. P. Morgan, was there any other real successes after that, or was it declined from there? No, and, and as you can imagine, with someone whose mind is racing along decades ahead of what most other people are even thinking about, he was completely lost.

Trying to get federal funding or essentially military funding, uh, through World War II, or just, you know, looking at ways to, uh, develop That's right. Now that, that was another thing that when he died, evidently people went right into his safe that he had in his hotel room because, you know, folklore is that, that, that there were a secret web designed for a death ray.

Right, right. This was, this is, In that gray area of folklore versus reality. Yeah, you have a man who's been living Actually, the New Yorker was where he died, but the pattern that he had gotten into for some time before that was Stay at a hotel until they're ready to kick you out and then move to another hotel.

That's the Orson Welles philosophy. Avoid, avoid paying for your hotel. And that was the last hotel. That's what he was doing. He was skipping bills? He was skipping bills. He was skipping bills while promoting the idea that he was coming up with, you know, uh, a death ray and, and, you know, things for, Uh, weaponizing submarines and that sort of thing.

Was he really doing that or was he saying he was doing that? Mostly I think saying it because all of it required testing on at least some kind of miniature scale and he didn't have the support for that. Also seems to go against his nature to create weapons of mass destruction. Well, there are many sides to Tesla's character.

And what I wanted to write when I was working on it was a, again, because he was largely un unknown and, and had been forgotten, the Forgotten Man of American Science. Uh, I just wanted to encourage people to find out more and want to know more. Mm-Hmm, and see. What might have been or imagine what might have been and he's always had a fringe Fan base and and some of them are looking for ways to just promote their own fantasist dreams, but Tesla deserves better because he was for a time every bit as Influential as Edison and as and far more charismatic and far more interesting and just, uh, everyone wanted him at their big soirees in New York.

He was a bon vivant in terms of, uh, women fawning over him, although he had really no, you know, He had an electrifying personality. Well, yes. It sparked attention. In that case, he was more AC than DC. Are we seeing any of his concepts coming to life in modern society with the technology breakthroughs we're having now?

Well, if you look at his last 20 years when he's throwing out all of these ideas, like I could put something, a communicator, in your pocket that would allow you to communicate with anywhere in the world. Yeah. What is that? That is our, our cell phone. Holding it up right now. And it must be pointed out that cell phones were not even Conceived of.

Conceived of, really, until the 1920s. 80s. I mean, as far as something that wasn't like carrying a suitcase. Exactly. And a, you know, well, Dick Tracy had it. Dick Tracy had it. Yes. You know, okay. So let's go back to the, um, he's referring to the risk. How do you for those youngsters out there? That's paint, paint a picture, if you will, of his last days.

He's, he's emaciated. He's, he was injured in a car accident and never fully recovered from it. Had didn't have, um, How old? Uh, when he died, let's see. He was 86. He was 86. Okay, so now he's had this brilliant life that has been just pretty much beaten down. Completely, yes. And destroyed by competition, uh, egotistical, um, megalomaniacal Edison, and Well, Edison, Edison was too, too busy with copyright court.

Edison. Edison. To be able to do much of anything in his later years. But he had done his damage to Tesla. Yes, but it wasn't, he wasn't responsible for Tesla's downfall. It really was people pulling the financial rug out from under him. And if you are someone who needs a lab in order to do your experiments, and the bigger the experiment, the bigger the lab, and that was where Colorado Springs came in.

gave us a good shot. And this is very exciting. Share about what he, he was trying to get signals from outer space. There was a point where he was listening essentially for signals out there and he heard From space. A three bleep bleep bleep that repeated with no, this was well before most other kinds of communication made anything like that.

And it was impossible for him not to imagine this might be a signal from some other world. Wow. I, I think that unfortunately paints him more as someone on the fringes. But at that point he had no recourse to do what he was born to do. But it was, it's a, it's a wonderful story. He was an incredible character.

To tell his story, I wanted to humanize him and personalize his challenges and, um, with this amazing cast and with Michael's direction, it's going to be a great time. How long have you and Michael been collaborating on this project? Well, we've worked together in 2013 for, um, The performance you were in, and 2017 at Laguna Playhouse, and now resurrected in 20 years.

So Michael, you've really dedicated yourself with your energies and vision to realizing. When you look at the subject matter, it's incredible. It is. But Michael, knowing Michael as long as I have, He's an excellent stage director. And I can't wait to see what you've done with this. We're going to come see it.

We can't wait to see it. And you can too. Wonderful. That one. Thank you. Okay. And we're back and we'll be back again next week. Dan Duling. Thank you, Michael Arabian. Wonderful, wonderful Tesla into the past and the future at the same time. Tesla, a radio play for the stage at Caltech on October 4th through six.

And then in big bear the following week. Don't miss it. Be there or be square. We'll see you next week. More sexy next time. And next time we'll talk about the pageant of the master.