The Jon Cryer produced podcast The Man Who Calculated Death has won a Gracie Award for its tale about a scientist who built the first cruise missile for Adolf Hitler.
The nine-episode, true-life podcast was penned and hosted by Suzanne Rico, a journalist and former anchor of KCBS-TV in Los Angeles. It’s produced by Novel and Discount Sushi, Cryer’s production company that he co-founded with his wife/journalist, Lisa Joyner. It’s available on Wondery+ and PodcastOne.
Rico, who won the Gracie for writing the podcast, tells the story of how her dying mother requested that she and her sister Stephanie finish what she started: an in-the-works memoir about how their grandfather, scientist Robert Lusser, built the first cruise missile for Adolf Hitler and what link, if any, it had to do with the mysterious death of their grandmother.
The podcast also nominated for an Ambie Award for Excellence in Audio.
“Suzanne and my wife [journalist Lisa Joyner] are old friends, and Suzanne was throwing a dinner party,” recalled Cryer about how he first conceived the podcast. “She and I struck up a conversation because she knew that I was a big fan of the space program and was really deep into the history of the space program. She mentioned offhandedly that her grandpa worked on the space program before tossing off, ‘oh, and before that he worked for Hitler.’ She went on to another subject, and I was kind of like, ‘wait, wait. Slow down. You’re going to have to take me back to the Hitler part.”
Rico ended up “investigating the level of complicity of her grandfather” for the podcast, Cryer said. “You’ll see a very nuanced exploration of how a good family possessing no particular bigotry, slowly get pulled into the incredible evil of a Nazi regime. And that, unfortunately, is a very timely piece because it’s the story of how a family survives their family as their country sinks into authoritarianism.”
Rico was no only able to solve the mystery of how her grandmother died but she discovered that the missile was partly assembled in a concentration camp.
“She actually was able to locate a survivor who worked on her grandfather’s missile,” says Cryer of Rico. “There’s an extended interview in the podcast, and it’s astounding. The podcast is an amazing piece of work.”
This is Cryer’s third podcast. He guest-hosted several seasons of Undisclosed that investigated wrongful convictions and the U.S. Criminal Justice system, and produced and narrated Lawyers, Guns and Money about the Iran-Contra scandal.
