There are two key public relations figures that I've gone back and forth on including

in this season.

They didn't spend a ton of time working directly for oil companies, but they did work for the

industry somewhat, and they certainly influenced all of our other madmen.

So I want to touch on that influence and their stories today.

I'm Amy Westerville, and this is Drilled Season 3, The Mad Men of Climate and Oil.

The first person I want to talk about today is Edward Bernays.

We mentioned him briefly in our Ivy League episodes at the start of the season.

Bernays and Lee worked together during World War I when Lee was handling publicity for

the American Red Cross and Bernays was the film guy on the US War propaganda team.

The two became fast friends and Lee generally considered Bernays his only real equal in

the publicity room.

Shortly before he died, Lee and Bernays went to lunch and Lee expressed his concern that

public relations would die with the two of them, that it would just be a flash in the

pan, a brief trend.

Bernays was not about to let that happen.

Like Lee, Edward Bernays was an expert in behavioral psychology, but he'd come about that knowledge

in an unusual way.

Well, my mother was his younger sister, and my father was the brother of his wife.

That's right.

He was Sigmund Freud's double nephew.

He was the daughter of the odds.

...