A History of Marketing / Episode 5

This week, my guest is author Larry Tye, who is best known for his biographies of iconic figures of American history. Tye's book "The Father of Spin" is the definitive biography of Edward L. Bernays, who is often called "The Father of Public Relations."

This excerpt from The Father of Spin provides a glimpse at the historic life of Bernays:

”Edward Bernays almost single-handedly fashioned the craft that has come to be called public relations. Bernays was the man who, more than any other, got women to smoke cigarettes, put bacon and eggs on the breakfast table, Ivory in soap dishes, books in bookshelves, and Calvin Coolidge back in the White House. Although most Americans have never heard of Edward Bernays, he nevertheless had a profound impact on everything from the products they purchased to the places they visited and the foods they ate for breakfast.”

Larry Tye is a New York Times best-selling author who penned biographies of Bobby Kennedy, Joe McCarthy, Satchel Paige, and Superman. His latest book, The Jazzmen: How Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, and Count Basie Transformed America, was published in 2024 to great reviews.

Larry joined me for a deep dive into his book, The Father of Spin, which is an excellent biography of Edward Bernays.

Listen to the podcast: Spotify / Apple Podcasts / YouTube Podcasts

In this conversation, we explore the amazing life of Bernays, including:

* Eddie’s close relationship with his uncle, Sigmund Freud and how psychoanalysis influenced his PR campaigns

* Marketing cigarettes to women under the guise of a feminist movement

* His propaganda campaign against the government of Guatemala on behalf of his client, the United Fruit Company, leading to a military coup backed by the CIA

* And much more!

Read the interview transcript, enhanced with links, images, and videos:

Note: This text is from a recorded conversation transcribed with AI. I have read it to check for mistakes, but it is possible that there are errors that I missed. I’ve also added images and helpful links in the transcript.

Introduction to Edward L. Bernays

Andrew Mitrak: Larry, thank you so much for joining us.

Larry Tye: Great to be with you, Andrew.

Andrew Mitrak: Today, we're going to travel back in time to your first book, The Father of Spin, which you published in 1998. It's the definitive biography of Edward L. Bernays, a truly fascinating man who's often called the father of public relations. I knew a little bit about the story of Bernays prior to reading your book and prior to doing this podcast. He's one of the reasons why I actually wanted to start this because this is a story that is not very well known today. So, how would you describe Bernays to someone who's never heard of him before?

Larry Tye: He was a guy who took his uncle Sigmund Freud's ideas on why people behave the way they do and used it to try to transform that behavior on behalf of clients who ranged from American Presidents to the biggest corporations in the world to foreign leaders. He was somebody who developed all the skills of the art and the science of public relations in a way that reflected the best and the worst of that profession.

Andrew Mitrak: That's right. You really packed a lot in there. So we'll, of course, talk about his uncle Sigmund Freud and some of the best and the worst of his career as well. And so for you personally, prior to writing this book, you were a reporter working for the Boston Globe, and this was your first full-length book. Why Bernays? Of all the things you could have chosen to spend, I'm sure, years on to write your first book, why did you choose Eddie Bernays?

Larry Tye: So, I could give you the high-minded answer, which was that as a journalist, I was always fascinated by public relations. At times in my life as a journalist, I would depend on PR people on a deadline to get me to the right sources and to get my story completed, and at times I spent running away from PR people. So I was trying to understand the two ends of that profession. That would be the high-minded answer.

The truthful answer is that I was doing this incredible year-long fellowship called the Nieman, which is where 12 American and 12 overseas journalists are invited to spend a year at Harvard doing essentially anything they want. And at the end of that year, we were all in panic mode. And the panic was because we had been told for a year that we were Cinderella, and we were about to be going back to work and becoming char ladies again. And so we all wanted to try to figure out a way of making that magical year go on.

I was at one of the things that we learned to do pretty well during that Nieman year, which was go to cocktail parties. And I was at a cocktail party at my creative writing teacher's home. And the creative writing teacher was a woman named Anne Bernays, and her husband was a Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer named Justin Kaplan. A couple beers into that evening, I heard Justin say if his father-in-law wasn't his father-in-law, he would be writing his biography. And I wanted to know something about who his father-in-law was. And the next morning, I was at the doorstep of 102-year-old Edward Bernays.

He was taking me on a tour of his house, and I was contemplating the notion of being his biographer, only partly because I thought he was a fascinating character, but more because I thought writing a book would be a way of my getting to take another special year off doing what I wanted to do. And about three months after that visit to Edward Bernays, I had signed up a book agent, and my book agent was in the process of signing up a publisher, and I was on my way to getting another year off.

Meeting 102-year-old Edward Bernays

Andrew Mitrak: Well, let's jump to this about your encounter with Bernays. As I was researching Edward Bernays and in your book, I was looking at YouTube videos of him, which are amazing. They're preserved, recorded in the late '80s, so not quite at 1...