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Bill Koch: How a "hick from Kansas" won the America’s Cup

There’s a ranch in Kansas where the land rolls like waves and the grass that grows on it, called bluestem, is five feet tall. A young boy sits up on one of those grassy hills one hot summer’s day pretending to be a pirate or the captain of a ship, watching the wind puffs, studying the shape and colours of them as they fall among the ever moving, ever changing landscape.

He is in his own private world, where he is happiest. More comfortable in his own company than that of others, recalcitrant some might even say. He’s often being told by those closest to him that he isn’t very smart, that he’s clumsy, but he knows that’s not true. He knows one day he’ll prove them all wrong.

Now that young boy is all grown up, an adult. He is powerful, successful, has three degrees from MIT and more money than Croesus. What would you do if you were him?

What Bill Koch did is defy his critics, thumb his nose at the establishment and do what he always dreamed of: become the captain of his own boat. Not just any boat, but America³ , the boat that, against the odds, won the 1992 America’s Cup with her owner, the self-proclaimed “hick from Kansas”, at the helm.

I first met Koch after the 2013 America’s Cup with my husband, Ben, in West Palm Beach. We were sailing on a mutual friend’s yacht and afterwards Koch invited us to have lunch at his home. While there, we toured his extraordinary and extensive collections of wine, art and, of course, America’s Cup memorabilia. He has the largest private collection of half models and models outside of the New York Yacht Club.

Yet years later, as we sit across from one another once again at the home he shares with his family a few doors down from The Donald’s Mar-a-Lago Country Club, he tells me: “Initially I hated the idea of the America’s Cup. On the maxi circuit I could have a few drinks with the crew and the opposition and it was a friendly environment.”

So why do it in 1992? “Because I’m a contrarian. I like to prove a point and I get great satisfaction out of accomplishing what other people say you can’t do.” No one thought he could pull it off. “They said I was a nutty chemist from Kansas, a buffoon, somewhat of an idiot.”

Koch was a chemist from Kansas but he certainly wasn’t a buffoon or an idiot. He believed that science could win the America’s Cup and he had the resources to prove it.

“My doctorate degree is in fluid dynamics so I understood science extremely well. I had also discovered what makes a boat go fast and what makes a boat go slow. I’d set up a research programme at MIT to do exactly that. We looked at it for five years and we came up with the fastest boat in the world.

“When I decided to compete for the America's Cup, everyone thought that what you needed to design a boat was a great naval architect. I said ‘bullshit’. Naval architects are good for ideas but they are not scientists.”

Koch knew he was on to something, especially when Dennis Conner [the yachtsman who has won the trophy four times] came calling with a request. “All the America’s Cup guys came to me when they saw how fast our boat was and they all wanted the technology, so I asked them what was in it for me. Dennis Conner said I could have breakfast with the crew! Everyone wanted my technology but they didn’t want me. Why would I finance someone else’s ego trip? Better to finance my own, be on the boat, and do what I want. So that’s what I did.”

Koch calculated his odds and decided he had a very good chance of winning. Still, the criticism came. “I got tremendous abuse in the press for thinking I could sail against the great Dennis Conner and his ilk. All I cared about was doing it my way, and winning.”

Doing it his way meant having no superstars, just team players, in the America³ line-up. “The essence of winning is teamwork. That model allowed me to beat some of the best sailors in the world. I didn’t want any superstars. We rated everyone in three categories: attitude, teamwork and ability. They had to be tens in attitude and teamwork.

“I had three guys who were tens in sailing but twos or threes in the other categories. I cut them all. People asked me all the time why I was on the boat. I told them I was on the boat for three reasons. One: I’m not that bad a sailor, not the best, not the worst, but I can sail. Two: if I’m putting up all the money I’ll do what I damn well please. Three: if I’m on the boat I can see what’s going on. There’s only one ego, the ego of the boat.”

Koch pushed the boundaries in all manner of ways in his pursuit of glory. “A lot of people make assumptions. I find it’s always good to challenge your assumptions, which is why I did so much testing. We also understood the science, which no one else did, and we were the ultimate in spying.

“We hired divers and we picked up people’s garbage. We did everything we could within the rules and the law but we pushed it to the edge. When we picked up garbage, we found where all the keels were being made. We had a guy who needed a new keel working for us so we sent him up there. He went out into the backyard and took photos, he even got his ruler out. We tested those designs in the tank.”

What Koch and Co came up with in America³ was a winning formula as well as a winning boat. That must have felt pretty special, crossing the finish line and lifting the America’s Cup, I suggest. “I’ll tell you what I told the reporter who asked the same question straight after we’d won. I said: ‘Honey child, it’s like having a thousand orgasms.’ Now I wish I’d saved a bunch.”

If it felt that good, why not go again in 1995? “I didn’t defend it myself because I had nowhere to go but sideways. I asked myself what I could do for the sport, and how I could be contrarian. So I came up with the idea of a women’s team. We fulfilled the goal of making the sport more popular and we showed that women can compete directly with men.”

The women’s team on board Mighty Mary won the first round of the four-month contest, defeating all the male teams and, although they did not go on to win the Cup, they certainly won over the critics.

So what does the contrarian, scientist and billionaire think of the new look America’s Cup boats, the foiling catamarans that will race in Bermuda’s Great Sound this month? “There’s a Spanish saying: ‘The only beast at the bullfight is the crowd.’ These types of boats play to the audience and I think that’s exciting for the viewers. From a commercial point of view the foiling multihull is the way to go.”

Koch says he will watch the America’s Cup with interest to see which way it goes, that he will miss it while he is watching it, but then afterwards he will thank God he’s not involved any more.

As I’m leaving I ask if he’d like to visit the Land Rover BAR base in Bermuda before the serious stuff starts, perhaps hitch a ride on the raceboat during a practice session, and his eyes light up. That kid from Kansas watching the wind puffs across the bluestems is daydreaming once more.

First published in the June 2017 edition of Boat International

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Meet Bill Koch, the other Koch brother (w/video)

• Alex Leary | Times Washington bureau chief

"I'll let Mr. Koch know you're here," says the man at the door.

Coffee or juice, he asks, then disappears. A small black orb protrudes from the ceiling — a security camera watching over artworks that would make a museum director drool: Monet, Picasso and Renoir. Sunlight animates an atrium in the distance, a statue of a nude woman rising from a pool.

The owner of these riches, William I. Koch, has one of the best-known surnames in American politics, and he's running late for a rare interview to discuss his life and his tumultuous relationship with his brothers. When Koch appears 15 minutes later, he has this on his mind:

"You know why a shower makes you feel so good?" asks the man with wet hair and three degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "It's because — this will tell you what a nerd I am — the nozzle squirts the water and separates the ions. It washes the positive ions down the drain, and the negative ions stick to your body and give you a slight charge."

Koch, charged and casually dressed on a Saturday morning in a western-style shirt and tan slacks, has planned an extensive tour of his Palm Beach home and its amazing collections. But he is nervous about something.

Koch leads the way to a western-themed room filled with cowboy revolvers, spurs and American Indian dresses, and eases his 6-foot-4 frame into a brown leather couch. Zorro, his English springer spaniel, hops up next to him.

"Just don't make me look crazy," Koch says.

The man worth $3.2 billion — comfortably in the top half of the Forbes list of the 400 richest Americans — is worried about how he will come across.

Koch, 74, is the founder of Oxbow Carbon, a multinational company that is the world leader in distribution of petroleum coke, an oil refining by-product. He employs 1,200 people. He owns one of the most diverse private art collections in the world. He keeps homes in Florida, Massachusetts and Colorado, where his Aspen ranch is on the market for $90 million. He's building an Old West town a couple of hours from the ranch. In 1992 he bankrolled an improbable victory in the America's Cup sailing race. He spent $60 million to start a private high school in West Palm Beach that has received widespread acclaim.

Yet for all his wealth and accomplishments, Koch seems haunted by the reputation he gained during a nearly two-decade feud with his better-known brothers.

The brothers called him crazy in court, contending he was driven by inferiority and jealousy. He was the klutzy, stormy kid who didn't measure up in school or sports, or with girls, someone who once said of himself, "For a long time, I didn't think I was worth s---." Even today he is relegated to "the other Koch" status. Charles and David Koch (tied for No. 4 on the Forbes list with $41.5 billion) have become such influential, polarizing political figures, they are known simply as the Koch brothers. Bill Koch is one of the biggest political donors in Florida but is barely known, his ideology hard to pin down.

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He may not be crazy. But his life in some ways is defined by conflict — with family, business associates, himself — a relentless quest to prove his value.

"One of the reasons I'm talking to you," he says, "is to show that I'm my own man."

If Bill Koch had his way, Koch (pronounced coke) would probably not be a household name. But he's also directly responsible for putting the family in the spotlight years ago.

In the 1970s, Charles Koch took over the family oil business and began turning it into a much larger and diverse enterprise. (Today Koch Industries is the second-largest private company in the United States, with $115 billion in annual revenue, 60,000 employees and interests in oil, chemicals and paper.) Charles also was wading into libertarian politics, helping start the Cato Institute and encouraging David, Bill's twin, to run in 1980 as the vice presidential nominee for the Libertarian Party. Bill, who was angling for greater responsibility, complained that not enough money was being returned to shareholders.

"Our disagreement in Koch Industries was basically about for whose benefit was the company being run," Koch said on his couch in Palm Beach. "Was it being run to make the shareholders wealthy or to sponsor a libertarian revolution? I thought it was properly libertarian to let the shareholders spend their own money."

Charles saw his younger brother as lazy, ungrateful and a bad decisionmaker. Koch staged an unsuccessful coup and was fired. In 1983, Bill Koch and his oldest brother, Freddie, sold their interests for $470 million and $320 million, respectively. But two years later, Bill Koch, believing his stake was greatly undervalued, filed a lawsuit. Freddie joined in, but it was Bill's fight, a grownup version of the boxing matches he had had with his brothers when they were boys.

The litigation dragged on for 16 years, with more than 10 lawsuits before two dozen judges and countless millions spent. Despite mounting setbacks Koch kept going, hiring teams of investigators to dig up dirt. A fight that supposedly began over money became so much more. Forbes called the battle "perhaps the nastiest family feud in American business history."

Charles and David argued that Bill was insecure and vindictive, noting in court that Koch Industries had paid for him to see a psychologist. Even their mother, Mary, took sides, warning Bill not to tear the family apart and later writing him out of her will. Bill Koch's lawyers once subpoenaed her weeks after she had a mild stroke.

Growing up in Wichita, Kan., Koch said, he struggled to find his place in a competitive household. "I was a skinny, goofy, nerdy kid." Things were so bad that Charles, who is four years older, was sent to military school. "We had to get Charles away because of the terrible jealousy that was consuming Billy. Bill has always been too emotional," Mary Koch told the New York Times in 1986.

At home in Palm Beach 28 years later, Koch is still reeling from the "Billy story" his brothers cultivated. "They said the whole thing was based upon personal envy. But it was really based upon money. Billions of dollars. You're damn right I would fight for that. I thought I was being cheated."

What Koch describes as perseverance, his brothers called an obsession. "Whatever victory he gets, it pumps him up and he wants more blood," Charles said long ago. "This will be a lifetime thing."

Bill Koch got up from the couch, carrying a bottle of berry-flavored water, and led guests downstairs to a room that held a stunning array of model sailboats, all the entrants in the America's Cup since it began in 1851. He began sailing in the mid 1980s, and his entree into the America's Cup, sailing's highest prize, was greeted by laughter from sailing veterans and the media. Koch assembled a team from MIT that tested 40 boat designs and 250 keel shapes. He required his crew to read Robert Axelrod's The Evolution of Cooperation and to be always in uniform, shirts tucked in. And he broke protocol for an owner by becoming a hands-on crew member.

"Bill doesn't do anything at half throttle," said David Rosow, a friend who was part of the team. He recalled ordering wine for a team party and Koch — whose wine collection exceeds 40,000 bottles — spitting it out as inferior and demanding better. Koch a few years ago prevailed in a $25 million legal war against people who sold him fraudulent wine. "Maybe it's because of my relationship with my brothers," Koch said, standing in his vast, climate-controlled cellar. "I can't stand to be cheated."

His $68 million quest for the America's Cup included some mischief. Koch's eyes lit up when he talked of sending an ex-Navy SEAL underwater to gather information about his competition's keel, the kind of gamesmanship then rampant in the sport. He also had employees pick up other teams' trash. "We were shocked," he said. "We found budgets. We found designs. We found invoices."

After Koch's America3 beat the boat captained by famed yachtsman and four-time America's Cup winner Dennis Conner, the self-described "hick from Kansas" proclaimed: "This is a triumph for America and American technology and American teamwork."

He told the author of a book he commissioned that the experience was life changing. "People ask me for autographs, ask me to speak. And winning — proving we were right — was gratifying. I learned I could do a lot more than I thought I could."

Even as Koch basked in success — even holding a celebration in Wichita, Charles' hometown — he kept up his court fight. He also continued to lose money and face. A 1994 profile in Vanity Fair, which a public relations agency prodded him to do, painted an unflattering portrait of "Wild Bill Koch."

In it, a one-time friend described him as becoming Howard Hughes-like, full of paranoia. "He would have two different hotel rooms so Charles couldn't bug his phone," the friend said. Bill Koch denied that, but gleefully told the writer about an investigator he hired, a mysterious man said to have had an Israeli military background. "Welcome to the mad, mad, mad, mad world of Bill Koch, a man whose closet is free of skeletons in large part because they all seem to be turning somersaults in his living room," the story read.

Twenty years later, over a lunch that included hamburger made from expensive Japanese cattle he owns, Koch still fumes. "A very nasty hit piece," he says.

The next stop was his "politically incorrect room," where he displays his hunting trophies: a polar bear, a leopard and many African animals. On the wall is a massive Cape buffalo, shot by his father. Fred Koch was a hard-driving man, Koch said, "like John Wayne." He made the boys work on his ranches, digging ditches, fixing fences. They earned 50 cents an hour, and when their father wasn't around, they went into town to drink with the working men.

"He taught us if you want something out of life, you've got to do it yourself. You've got to work your tail off," Koch said. "The worst thing about my father was he wasn't around enough."

Fred Koch got rich helping Russia develop its oil fields in the late 1920s. He returned home alarmed by the rise of communism and later was a co-founder of the right-wing John Birch Society. Mary Koch was an elegant woman who instilled in her sons an appreciation of art. But she was not very nurturing, delegating parenting to house staff, Koch said.

Later in life, he said, "I went after these extremely beautiful women that were like my mother to see if I could get them to like me, because I tried to get my mother to like me. Finally I realized I'm going down the wrong road. Why not get someone who just likes me?"

It wasn't easy. He has been married three times. In 1995 he treated Boston to a torrid spectacle when he tried to evict an ex-girlfriend, model Catherine de Castelbajac, from his penthouse at the Four Seasons hotel. The couple were pioneers in electronic flirting, sending racy faxes Koch later introduced in court as evidence to support claims she was trying to extort him. In one, de Castelbajac described herself as a "wet orchid" and said she wanted honey drizzled on her body. "I cannot describe how much I look forward to seeing you again," Koch wrote. "It is beyond calculation by the largest computers."

Koch had broken off the relationship and married the mother of his 9-year-old son, but de Castelbajac, who rang up tens of thousands of dollars in charges, said he had promised to take care of her. "Please do not compel me to seek legal advice," she wrote. Koch fired back a fax from Palm Beach: "I cannot be, nor should I be, held ransom or responsible for your pleasures or your extravagances." He went full bore as usual, hiring investigators who dug into her past. "If I give in," he told the Boston Herald, "I am a sitting duck for everybody else." A jury ruled in his favor, but he had still not found happiness. His marriage fell apart. A subsequent one also was rocky.

Today, the father of five children ages 8 to 28, is married to Bridget Rooney Koch, a member of the family that owns the National Football League's Pittsburgh Steelers. She is an aunt to actors Kate Mara and Rooney Mara. On the day reporters visited him, Bridget, 52, made a brief appearance, walking through his western room after a bike ride. Their 8-year-old daughter, Kaitlin, sneaked up on him and shouted "Boo." She came back with a huge stuffed bear and plopped it down next to her father, who broke into laughter.

In the hunting room, a framed letter sat on a bar top between two sheathed knives. It was written by Koch's father when he was establishing trusts for the boys. "It may be either a blessing or a curse," reads the neat cursive. "You can use it as a valuable tool for accomplishment or you can squander it foolishly. If you choose to let this money destroy your initiative and independence then it will be a curse to you and my action in giving it to you will have been a mistake. I shall regret very much to have you miss the glorious feeling of accomplishment and I know you are not going to let me down."

Koch pondered the meaning. "It's been a blessing because it gave us resources to achieve what we want out of life," he said. "It's been a curse because it's torn our family apart."

In court, Koch had been racking up losses and bad publicity. But in the 1990s, his incessant drive, and his team of investigators, landed him his biggest weapon: evidence suggesting Koch Industries was stealing oil from American Indian reservations and federal land. Koch gave the file to the U.S. Senate Indian Affairs Committee, which investigated. Koch figured if he could prove Charles was cheating in that case, he would prevail in proving Charles cheated him in the family business.

A grand jury decided the company had defrauded the government. Koch Industries settled for $25 million, a relatively modest penalty for the company, but the public relations damage was significant.

"It was so devastating to the corporation that they had to resolve this," said Roy Bell, Bill Koch's lawyer, who helped broker a settlement to end the family feud. (The terms have not been made public, and the brothers are bound by a nondisparagement clause. Koch Industries declined comment for this story.)

Bell was at the mansion in Palm Beach in 2001 when the family reunited. "I was taken aback by the normalcy of it," he said. "The brothers were laughing, joking. They hadn't had a meal together in 20 years."

The twins reformed their bond, and David, who resides primarily in Manhattan, has a home nearby in Palm Beach. Koch began to tear up when talking about David, who was his best man in 2005 when he married Bridget.

"My relationship with Charles is friendly, but more or less peaceful coexistence," he said. "We're two totally different people. At times I think he can be incredibly charming and incredibly friendly. Other times he could be extremely tough. It turns out, so can I."

But today, despite all he has done, Koch cannot escape his siblings' shadow. "Some people who don't know me say, 'He's one of those crazy Koch brothers,' " Koch said.

"I think some of the things they are doing are great. I like that they're fighting regulations. I like the fact that they are pointing out a lot of the weaknesses in the Democratic standard positions. I like the fact that they are … putting their money where their mouth is. And I like the fact that they are trying to be very clever, a bit Machiavellian."

It's hard to overstate the reach of David and Charles Koch. They have spent hundreds of millions of dollars building a conservative machine that has helped the tea party grow and has unleashed waves of TV ads against Obamacare. There is no significant U.S. House or Senate race in the country that does not bear their imprint. For this, Democrats have portrayed them as dark puppet masters.

Koch shares his brothers' view that President Barack Obama is making the country socialist. He gave nearly $4 million in 2012 to a super PAC supporting Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, and he has donated tens of thousands of dollars to the Republican Party of Florida. But Koch is socially liberal — in favor of gay marriage, abortion rights and the decriminalization of drugs — and over the years he has given money to Democrats, including Hillary Clinton and Sen. Bill Nelson of Florida. In 1997, he was courted to run as a Democrat against then-Sen. Sam Brownback of Kansas. He's intrigued by Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, a libertarian-minded Republican likely to run for president in 2016.

"It's like choosing the best of the worst. Politics is not a game that I like," Koch said. Still, he plays it. "Sometimes we need to influence politicians, and the easiest way to influence is with money." Records show his Oxbow Carbon has spent more than $3.7 million since 2010 lobbying Congress on energy-related legislation, including fighting Environmental Protection Agency regulation of emissions.

For more than a decade, Koch has poured millions into defeating a 130-turbine wind farm off the coast of Cape Cod, where he owns property, arguing it would ruin the view and drive up electric costs. He's not alone in that thinking, but his wealth and profession give critics ammunition.

"I doubt Mr. Koch is losing much sleep about an energy bill for his fifth compound," jabbed Mark Rodgers, spokesman for the farm, Cape Wind. "Offshore wind tends to be an energy game changer, and he makes his money from the dirtiest end of the energy curve. He says it has nothing to do with it, but I think it does."

Koch stood over a model of the Old West town he's building in Paonia, Colo., about four hours from Denver. The town, which has no residents, is stocked with buildings he bought from Buckskin Joe, an attraction built by the MGM movie studio. He has filled the Victorian-era structures with his collection of western memorabilia, some 2 million pieces: doorknobs, pitchforks, furniture, guns, garter belts. Several years ago he paid $2.3 million for the only known picture of Billy the Kid.

"I've got Custer's rifle. I've got the gun that killed Jesse James. I've got Doc Holliday's gun. I've got Wyatt Earp's gun. I've got a whole s---load of that stuff."

Koch is drawn to the Old West because of the memories of his father, who arrived in Kansas from Texas, and its stand-your-ground code. "It all gets back to trying to create a place where I can enjoy life and enjoy my family and friends without having to worry about my enemies," he told Denver magazine 5280 last year.

But he has found trouble there, too. He has irritated some middle-class neighbors with a plan to swap land he owns for a much smaller strip that would keep the public far from his private town. More seriously, it's the site of his latest legal skirmish. Next year he'll face off in a Colorado court with a former Oxbow executive who has accused him of false imprisonment during an incident that unfolded like a movie: Koch invited the man to town, gave him a helicopter tour and talked about a substantial bonus, then came barreling with allegations of theft and a pink slip.

The ex-employee, Kirby Martensen, who oversaw Asian markets, says he was held as an off-duty sheriff's deputy's vehicle sat nearby, then taken to an airport in Denver (not Aspen, as he wanted) and flown to San Francisco. A court filing contends that Koch retaliated when Martensen raised questions about an alleged $200 million tax dodge using a shell company in the Bahamas. "Any allegations of misconduct by Mr. Koch are simply untrue and stem from Martensen's attempts to divert attention from his own allegations," Oxbow Carbon said in a statement.

Koch saved a mind-boggling end for his tour, leading guests through room after room of masterworks. Remington. Picasso. Dalí. Homer. There is one of Monet's Water Lilies. Modigliani's Reclining Nude. He popped around telling stories like a manic docent.

A giant book sat on a table, and he flipped through its pages, stopping at the signature of Joe DiMaggio. The guest registry had been owned by Marjorie Merriweather Post, who built the famous Mar-a-Lago estate down the road that is now owned by Donald Trump. In addition to Bill's wealthy friends, the book is signed by schoolchildren who are given tours of the mansion.

As the sunlight was beginning to fade, Bill Koch walked his guests outside. He seemed at peace. The nervousness from earlier in the day had seemingly disappeared. Over seven hours, he had made his case. It boiled down to something he had said earlier: an assertion that every bit of family drama, every dollar of the millions he spent in legal fees, had been worth it because it had brought him here. And yet even in that statement, there remained a hint of something unresolved, the yearning of a man who owns everything for something that doesn't come with a price tag.

"One of the best things that happened to me, although it cost me a bloody fortune, was to be fired from Koch Industries," he had said. "I would have never done the America's Cup. I would never have an art collection. I would have never started a school. I would have never built my own western town. … I want to find my own niche."

Times researcher Caryn Baird contributed to this report. Contact Alex Leary at [email protected] or (202) 463-0577.

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Charles koch.

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• An American businessman, Philanthropist, and Political donor, Charles Koch is better known for being the 11th richest person in the world. With his brother, David Koch side, He is the CEO and chairman of Koch Industries whereas his brother served as Vice president. Moreover, he and his brother also became the most influential people from Time Magazine in 2011.  

Quick Wikis

Charles koch’s brother, david koch died cause of death and funeral, net worth, salary, and income, married to wife, liz koch, family, siblings, and parents, body measurements: height and weight, an american businessman, philanthropist, and political donor, charles koch is better known for being the 11 th richest person in the world. with his brother, david koch side, he is the ceo and chairman of koch industries whereas his brother served as vice president. moreover, he and his brother also became the most influential people from time magazine in 2011.  .

Charles Koch was born on 1935 in Wichita, Kansas, the U.S. He celebrated his 83rd birthday on 1st November. He has American nationality and has ethnicity of Dutch descent. Charles was raised with three siblings – Frederick R. Koch, David Koch and Bill Koch by parents Fred C. Koch and Mary Robinson. On top of that, he went to numerous private school but got educated from Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Then, he graduated from Bachelor of Science in General Engineering, Master of Science in Nuclear Engineering and second M.S. in Chemical Engineering.

David Koch, who is known for making a multibillionaire company with his brother Charles Koch, has died at the age of 79 on 23 rd August 2019. David was an influential right-wing libertarian who helped to reshape the American Politics.

Charles announced his brother’s death in a statement which didn’t reveal many details but noted that David H. Koch previously had been treating for prostate cancer.

Furthermore, late David’s funeral information hasn’t been revealed yet.

Initially, Charles family business Koch Industry began in 1940, and his father Fred Koch improved methods of refining heaving oil into gasoline in 1927. Since the Koch industry has been inclining the chart of business leading top business company in the world.

Then, in 1961, Charles started working hand in hand to uplift his father company. Later, in 1967, he became the CEO and chairman of the Koch industries. Moreover, his brother, David Koch, was the vice president. Together, they were able to generate $90 billion in revenue and 2000 time over the growth of the industries. Till 2014, the Koch industries became worth of $41.33 billion.

As for now, the Koch company has over $110 billion in revenues from the business, which includes chemicals, Dixie cups, pipelines, and Stain master carpet.

Nevertheless, Charles net worth estimated at $50.5 billion. With the combination of his brother, David’s net worth; dwells at $100 billion. Moreover, Charles is rank as the 11 th -richest person in the world. Furthermore, Charles owns numerous house in America, a private jet, and a private yacht.

The multi-billionaire is living a happy married life with his beautiful wife, Liz Koch. The couple shared their wedding vows in 1972.

Also, he is now the father of two children’s – Chase Koch and Elizabeth Koch. Moreover, he often keeps his personal life confined but rarely grant permission to share it to media.

The billionaire was born with the real name Charles de Ganahi Koch to parents – Fred C. Koch and Mary Robinson. He grew up in a wealthy family along with three sibling Frederick R. Koch, David Koch, and Bill Koch. His late brother David was the business partner with Charles in Koch Industries. Furthermore, his brothers had had prostate cancer. However, the reason behind Charles to become a billionaire was his father said in an interview

 “My father wanted me to work as if I was the poorest person in the world.”

Charles has White color hair and black color eyes. However, his height and weight remained inside the closet.

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How The Koch Brothers Remade America's Political Landscape

David Koch is one-half of politically and economically powerful duo known as the Koch brothers. He and his brother, Charles, are tied in sixth place on the list of the wealthiest men on the planet. Phelan M. Ebenhack/AP hide caption

David Koch is one-half of politically and economically powerful duo known as the Koch brothers. He and his brother, Charles, are tied in sixth place on the list of the wealthiest men on the planet.

Brothers Charles and David Koch are the subject of the new book Sons of Wichita: How the Koch Brothers Became America's Most Powerful and Private Dynasty . The author, Daniel Schulman, describes the Kochs as having pumped hundreds of millions into remaking the American political landscape, trying to bring their libertarian views into the mainstream.

In addition to backing individual candidates who reflect their views, the Koch brothers have played key roles in the Libertarian Party and in the formation of the Tea Party. Their father, who founded Koch Industries, was also a founding member of the far right group the John Birch Society.

Koch Industries is now the second largest private corporation in the U.S., with $115 billion in annual revenue and a presence in 60 countries. Charles and David are tied in sixth place on the list of the wealthiest men on the planet.

Daniel Schulman is a senior editor in the Washington bureau of Mother Jones , and a founding member of the magazine's investigative journalism team. He tells Fresh Air 's Terry Gross about how the Kochs have contributed to today's political landscape.

Sons of Wichita

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Interview Highlights

On the Kochs' political stances

Their ideology is very much a libertarian one. They are currently considered Republican kingmakers, but there are really a lot of places where their philosophy doesn't jive with the mainstream Republican one. For instance, they're generally anti-war. They're civil libertarians; they are not social conservatives in any sense of the word. David Koch has said he's pro-gay marriage. You wouldn't see these guys advocating against reproductive rights. The area that is the sweet spot for them with today's GOP is really economic issues, and they are staunch economic conservatives — perhaps more hard-line than even the Republican mainstream...Charles has said in past that his view of government is that it really should be a night watchman that only exists to protect private property rights and to preserve the laws of supply and demand.

On the Kochs' political influence

In the Obama era, you've seen their political network grow by leaps and bounds. Part of this was because there was a major conservative backlash to Obama and the Kochs managed to capitalize on that. Part of this, too, was because the Democrats made the Kochs such boogeymen. They essentially drove a lot of Republicans into their arms.

The Kochs have always had an uneasy relationship with the Republican Party, or they traditionally did, because their politics aren't exactly Republican, they're very much more libertarian, and there's only a narrow subset of issues on which they actually agree with Republicans. But by demonizing the Kochs, [Democrats] made them hugely popular within the conservative movement.

On the size of Koch Industries

Koch Industries is massive. ... [It] really started as an oil and cattle ranching empire, but it's grown, really, by leaps and bounds beyond that. They're in petrochemicals. They're the third largest commodities trader in world. They own Georgia-Pacific, so brands such as Brawny, Angel Soft toilet paper, Dixie cups, those things are manufactured by Georgia-Pacific. ... Most people probably don't know the name Koch Industries, but what they don't realize is that every single day they're encountering products that were produced in some way by them.

On the Kochs' position on climate change

Across the board, the Kochs are anti-regulation. They really haven't met a regulation that they liked. In terms of climate change policy, you've seen them fund an array of groups that have sowed doubt about the existence of climate change. They view climate change and any regulation surrounding it as a major threat to their business model, which is a lot having to do with oil and petrochemicals. ... They have certainly funded an array of groups that have tried to create doubt about the very existence of it...

David is a man of science — I consider Charles a man of science too. [Charles] has two advanced degrees from MIT, one in nuclear engineering. These guys are not anti-science in any sense of the word, so to be putting any money towards denying the existence of climate change, where there is a scientific consensus about that, seems wrong to me.

On the Kochs' role in creating the Tea Party

There was this bygone strain of thinking that you saw in the John Birch Society — that their father had founded and of which Charles had been a member — where you really saw socialism around the corner of every move of government. And you really saw that strain of thinking come to the fore in the Obama era, and it really was no accident. The Kochs spent many years funding an intellectual infrastructure through a variety of think tanks. And in terms of actual organizing and financing of the Tea Party, their advocacy group, Americans for Prosperity, really was there at the forefront organizing tea parties and whipping up the movement. So I'd say they played a pretty major role in the Tea Party movement. I know they downplay their involvement.

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On Charles Koch as one of the founders of the libertarian movement

I think the reason we're talking about libertarianism today and the reason that it's a popular ideology owes quite a bit to Charles Koch. His funding of libertarianism really started in the '60s and he has been methodically institution-building ever since then.

The Charles Koch Foundation, in 1977, would be transformed into The Cato Institute, which is the libertarian movement's marquee think tank these days. It wasn't until later that David Koch joined in his brother's ideological projects. One thing I learned when researching this book is that there is quite a big distinction between the philanthropy of David and Charles Koch. David is more of a philanthropist in the classic sense of the word: He funds medical research, science; he funds the arts. Charles' lifelong mission has been to change the political culture and mainstream libertarian ideas and he's been doing this for more than five decades.

On why Schulman wanted to write this book

The Koch brothers, in the 2010 time frame, had become so vilified, I really wanted to understand their origins, their upbringing, the roots of their company, the roots of their ideology. And the more I dug into their family story I found they had just a phenomenally fascinating tale, tragic in some ways. And in a lot of ways this is a family that is much more significant than a lot of people realize, and their impact is going to be felt long into the future.

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Boats, Bottles, and Billy the Kid: The Other Koch Brother

Dave Gilson

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Bill Koch at an America's Cup press conference in 1992. <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Cayard-Koch-Melges.jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a>

Now that he’s given $2 million to the main pro-Romney super-PAC , William Koch has joined his brothers David and Charles as one of 2012’s top conservative moneymen. Bill, David’s twin, also made much of his money from his family’s energy holdings, though he’s not quite as rich as his better-known siblings. Forbes puts his net worth at $4 billion , versus his brothers’ combined worth of $50 billion, the result of a drawn-out legal battle over the family fortune that left Bill and the eldest Koch brother, Frederick, behind.

Though he’s given money to Republicans such as Rep. Allen West (R-Fla.) and has used his company, Oxbow Carbon, to lobby against wind turbines off Cape Cod, Bill has not gotten involved with his brothers’ shadowy political fundraising operation . “Bill Koch isn’t Charles Koch and he isn’t David Koch,” his spokesman told the Village Voice . “He’s not his brother’s keeper.”

What Bill Koch does like to keep: Wine and art. According to Antiques and Fine Art , Koch’s Florida house has a “computerized wine cellar” that provides “easy access” his collection, whose size has been estimated at somewhere between 35,000 and 43,000 bottles. Koch once believed he possessed bottles of French wine signed by legendary oenophile Thomas Jefferson, but he later claimed they were bogus and sued the dealer and Christie’s auction house. Last year, Koch told the Economist that he has spent $4 to $5 million on fake wines . He did not say how much he has spent on his ongoing lawsuits (five at last count) against the alleged purveyors of counterfeit wine.

Koch also has an extensive and eclectic collection of fine art, including works by Monet, Chagall, and Winslow Homer. Not content to let his favorite pieces collect dust, Koch seasonally schleps them to and from his summer home. As AFA explains:

Koch annually chooses artwork from his 400-strong collection to transport from his 40,000 square foot primary residence in Florida to the Cape Cod beach house. At a third of the size, the summer home accommodates only a careful selection. Thus, favorites such as enormous Fernando Botero sculptures, Alfred Stevens’s engaging The Coquette, and much of the maritime collection (excluding over 120 boat models of every defender and challenger in the America’s Cup), travel north while the majority of Koch’s trove stays behind.

Koch’s other passion is sailing. In 1992, he won the America’s Cup at a reported cost of $68 million . “Financially, I would say win or lose, it’s not worth it,” he told ESPN. “If you asked me…if I knew what I know now, would I do it, the answer to that would be no.”

“Wild Bill” also has a thing for the Old West. In 2010, he quietly purchased Buckskin Joe , a Colorado town/movie set/tourist trap, and relocated its buildings to his ranch. Last June, he spent $2.3 million on the only authenticated photograph of Billy the Kid. That’s still $300,000 more than he’s spent on Romney, one of his cheaper hobbies.

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The Blog of Author Tim Ferriss

Tim Ferriss's 4-Hour Workweek and Lifestyle Design Blog. Tim is an author of 5 #1 NYT/WSJ bestsellers, investor (FB, Uber, Twitter, 50+ more), and host of The Tim Ferriss Show podcast (400M+ downloads)

Charles Koch — CEO of Koch Industries (#381)

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“When goods don’t cross borders, soldiers will.”

— Charles Koch, quoting Frédéric Bastiat

This episode will no doubt surprise people, and my guest came to me through channels I wouldn’t have expected.

Charles Koch received a bachelor’s degree in general engineering and two master’s degrees, in nuclear and chemical engineering, from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 

He is chairman of the board and CEO of Koch Industries Inc. , a position he has held since 1967. He is renowned for growing Koch Industries from a company worth $21 million in the early 1960s to one with revenues estimated as high as $110 billion by Forbes . It’s one of the largest privately held companies in the world, and by revenue, it’s larger than both Boeing and Disney. He has transformed the business into a diverse group of companies that employ nearly 130,000 people—making everything from Dixie cups to components in your cell phone. 

Charles credits the success of Koch Industries to applying proven principles of social and scientific progress, which led to the development and implementation of his Market-Based Management® (MBM®) business philosophy. He describes MBM and its applications in two of his books, The Science of Success and Good Profit .

Charles is now using those principles in philanthropy, as the founder of Stand Together , to tackle some of the biggest challenges in the U.S. Stand Together is partnering with thousands of social entrepreneurs to help them improve their effectiveness and scale at tackling poverty, improving K-12 education, bringing justice to our criminal justice system, and more.

Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts , Spotify , Overcast , Castbox , Stitcher , or on your favorite podcast platform.

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This episode is brought to you by ExpressVPN . ExpressVPN is an app you run on your computer or mobile device that easily secures your Internet connection, hides your public IP address, and lets you bypass regional restrictions on content. ExpressVPN is consistently rated the fastest VPN service on the market, and it’s incredibly simple to use. Just download the app, tap one button, and you’re connected to a secure VPN server. Visit my special link ExpressVPN.com/TIM , and you’ll get an extra three months of ExpressVPN protection for free!

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QUESTION(S) OF THE DAY: What was your favorite quote or lesson from this episode? Please let me know in the comments .

SCROLL BELOW FOR LINKS AND SHOW NOTES…

SELECTED LINKS FROM THE EPISODE

• Connect with Stand Together :

Website | Instagram | Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn

• Connect with Koch Industries :
• Wichita, KS
• What Is Time Preference? From: The Audiopedia
• Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences by Howard Gardner
• Charles Koch Shares the Letter That Guides His Life , ABC News
• Arthur D. Little
• Good Profit: How Creating Value for Others Built One of the World’s Most Successful Companies by Charles G. Koch
• Why Wages Rise by F.A. Harper
• Human Action: A Treatise on Economics by Ludwig von Mises
• Understanding Maslow’s Theory of Self-Actualization , ThoughtCo.
• Science as Falsification by Karl R. Popper, Conjectures and Refutations
• The Republic of Science: Its Political and Economic Theory by Michael Polanyi, Minerva
• Inside Charles Koch’s $200 million quest for a Republic of Science , The Washington Post
• Everything You Need to Know about Occupational Licensing , Vox
• Whole Foods
• Berkshire Hathaway
• Charles Koch on Separating Good Profit from Bad , Wichita Business Journal
• Big River Steel
• Green Steel: How Arkansas Became Home To America’s Cleanest And Fastest-Growing Steelmaker , Forbes
• General Electric
• Personal Knowledge: Towards a Post-Critical Philosophy by Michael Polanyi
• What Is Comparative Advantage? Investopedia
• What Is Creative Destruction? Investopedia
• Kodak Failed By Asking The Wrong Marketing Question , Forbes
• Confirmation of Maslow’s Hypothesis of Synergy: Developing an Acceptance of Selfishness at the Workplace Scale , International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health
• The Koch Institute Is Worried About Free Speech on Campus. But Not in the Way You Might Think. The Chronicle of Higher Education
• Property Rights , The Library of Economics and Liberty
• Defining Decision Rights , The Conscious Leadership Group
• Market-Based Management Guiding Principles , Charles Koch Institute
• Ludwig von Mises and the Human Action Shift in Economics , Charles Koch Institute
• How Liberals and Conservatives Joined up on Prison Reform , CNN
• The Cato Institute
• Tim Ferriss Goes to Maximum Security Prison , The Tim Ferriss Show #323
• How Youth Entrepreneurs Is Transforming the Lives of High School Students , Stand Together
• Youth Entrepreneurs: Breaking Through Barriers , Stand Together
• Youth Entrepreneurs
• The First Step Act
• Hudson Link
• How the Koch Brothers Are Fighting the Opioid Crisis , The Daily Beast
• The Phoenix
• The Declaration of Independence , National Archives
• In an Astonishing Turn, George Soros and Charles Koch Team up to End US ‘Forever War’ Policy , The Boston Globe
• The Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft
• How the Miserable Death of Moammar Gadhafi Factors into Kim Jong Un’s Nuclear Ambitions , CNBC
• Murray Rothbard’s Ideas of Demonstrated Preference and Their Use in Defense of a Free Market , The Rational Argumentator
• The Isle of Grain , The Spectator
• Rice University
• Quanah, Texas
• United Negro College Fund
• Why Free Speech Matters on Campus by Michael Bloomberg and Charles Koch, WSJ
• Congress Must Act on the ‘Dreamers’ by Tim Cook and Charles Koch, The Washington Post
• Unite with Anybody to Do Right by Charles Koch and Michael Lomax, USA Today
• A New Model for Juvenile Justice: Why a Pro-Football MVP Is Helping This Restaurant Go National , Stand Together
• How to Address the Biggest Challenge of Our Time by Charles Koch, Stand Together
• An Inspiring Community Unites to Help the Jobless Secure Jobs , Stand Together
• Charles Koch on Businesses Giving Second Chances to Former Prisoners , Stand Together
• UNCF/Koch Scholars Program: Unexpected Partners Join Forces for the Future , Koch Industries
• Adversaries Unite to Achieve Historic Criminal Justice Reform , Stand Together
• Charles Koch on Failure , Charles Koch
• What is Charles’s history with digging dandelions? [13:30]
• Charles talks about the letter from his father that hangs framed on his wall and why it’s important to him. [17:59]
• On being talked into returning to Wichita after graduating from MIT to run one of his father’s businesses, and how Charles switched from a mindset focused on instant gratification to one of long-term value. [19:49]
• The authors who have had the largest impact on Charles’s thinking. [24:40]
• How does Charles utilize scientific or engineering principles that he learned at MIT for business? Where do Karl Popper and Michael Polanyi figure into the process? [28:26]
• Specifically, how has Charles applied concepts from Polanyi’s “The Republic of Science” to his work? [31:41]
• Virtuous cycles of mutual benefit, creating value for others, and the two components of finding opportunities in this value. [35:15]
• Now that we know what good profit is, what is bad profit — and how does it reduce value and diminish opportunity? [41:17]
• Do Koch companies participate in bad profit? [44:23]
• What are the major market distortions that Charles opposes? [48:39]
• Within the company, how are disagreements hashed out? Is there a framework of principles in place to guide consensus? [49:43]
• Driving principles: personal knowledge versus conceptual knowledge, three-dimensional learning, comparative advantage, synergy, creative destruction, free speech, property rights, decision rights, market-based management, and the human action model. [53:51]
• If these principles seem so obvious, why are they so often ignored by countries, organizations, and companies? [1:02:15]
• What Charles has found to be the three requirements of a good, successful partnership. [1:04:08]
• How has Charles’s approach to policy coalitions changed over time, and what ground has been gained by finding common cause with former adversaries? [1:05:32]
• What is Stand Together, and what does it aim to accomplish? [1:13:18]
• How does Stand Together incorporate market-based solutions that have proven successful for Charles’s other endeavors? [1:16:22]
• A hopeful look forward at Stand Together capturing the national imagination with the same intensity and bipartisan support as prison reform is enjoying today. [1:22:19]
• Is Stand Together still accepting applications from social entrepreneurs? [1:25:37]
• Charles weighs in on capitalism, the ideal role of a business in society, environmental priorities, and politicized corruption. [1:29:33]
• The effect of higher taxes on GDP, the failure of trickle-down economics, and what Charles sees as the best course toward the pursuit of happiness. [1:35:10]
• Does Koch Industries fund propaganda to confuse people about climate change? [1:39:20]
• What does Charles consider to be the most legitimate existential threats to humankind? [1:44:20]
• The cause that unites the seemingly unlikely pairing of Koch Industries and George Soros. [1:46:32]
• For what would Charles be willing to bet his entire personal fortune? [1:48:37]
• What would Charles’s billboard say? [1:49:43]
• After whom was Charles named, and why? [1:50:54]
• Where did the nonintuitive (to most Americans) pronunciation of “Koch” originate? [1:54:15]
• Parting thoughts. [1:56:26]

PEOPLE MENTIONED

• Fred C. Koch
• Howard Gardner
• Frederick R. Koch
• F.A. Harper
• Ludwig von Mises
• Abraham Maslow
• Friedrich Hayek
• Sigmund Freud
• Karl Popper
• Michael Polanyi
• Isaac Newton
• John Mackey
• Richard B. Myers
• Edwards Deming
• David Ricardo
• Joseph Schumpeter
• George W. Bush
• Barack Obama
• George Soros
• Frédéric Bastiat
• John Quincy Adams
• Moammar Gadhafi
• Charles de Ganahl
• Carl de Ganahl
• Michael Bloomberg
• Michael Lomax

The Tim Ferriss Show is one of the most popular podcasts in the world with more than one billion downloads. It has been selected for "Best of Apple Podcasts" three times, it is often the #1 interview podcast across all of Apple Podcasts, and it's been ranked #1 out of 400,000+ podcasts on many occasions. To listen to any of the past episodes for free, check out this page .

Comment Rules: Remember what Fonzie was like? Cool. That’s how we’re gonna be — cool. Critical is fine, but if you’re rude, we’ll delete your stuff. Please do not put your URL in the comment text and please use your PERSONAL name or initials and not your business name , as the latter comes off like spam. Have fun and thanks for adding to the conversation! (Thanks to Brian Oberkirch for the inspiration.)

Love your stuff Bro, and pretty open minded, but not sure on this one

agreed. tim seems to have fallen into this pattern of questions that’s pretty much the same for all his interviews now. i did not hear him push back on anything at all in this — the man with more power and influence than the us president — no hard questions, no follow up.

For anyone late to the party, here’s NPR’s take:

https://www.npr.org/2016/01/19/463565987/hidden-history-of-koch-brothers-traces-their-childhood-and-political-rise

“I think the genius of the Kochs is the magic trick that they’ve really figured out, which is that it’s not just their money funding this; they’ve created a consortium.

Journalist Jane Mayer traces the growing influence of the Koch brothers and other wealthy conservative donors in her new book, Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right.”

Normally I’m all for exploring lots of different arenas…

But, I’m sorry.

The Koch’s are undermining the planet, education, society as a whole.

I just. Can’t.

I don’t want hear anything from the Koch’s.

Ditto. This hurts. Gut punch. I’ve told everyone I know about you…..I’m crazy about you.

Not to mention their companies are horrible to work for. They gove poor excuses year after year as to why they will be delaying raises for an additional 6 mos then 6 mos rolls around so they come up with yet another pathetic excuse. And the cycle continues over and over during what I saw of my spouses 12 year employment with the company. All the while The Koch Brothers see their wealth soar high and higher. They really have no clue how unhealthy their work life balance is taking a toll on the employees who are forced to decide on keeping their jobs vs keeping a family life.

Like the chicken plant that solicited work from illegals, brought them here, treated them like animals including sexual harassment all under minimal wages then lost a legal settlement for ~4 mil? Within a year ICE is on the doorstep of same Mississippi chicken pant to have a record setting round up of 635 persons on the first Monday kids are to go to school. Leaves children destitute without parents and families destroyed.

[Moderator: point of clarification—Koch Industries and Koch Foods are not affiliated.]

Too cynical to think there wasn’t collusion to consider this as payback for taking on the man? In this case the Koch ‘s all philandering philanthropists?

Not pretty Tim. Especially the read as an introduction like this guy does need any help on his image?

Not sure where your “spouses” worked, but my experience working two KOCH companies was amazing. I obtained a position when many companies considered me too old. I was provided tuition reimbursement, training in house and onsite training. Reviews and raises were designed to help personal growth and goals. I was enabled to add value and rewarded when accomplishing group and personal goals that contributed to customer’s bottom line. I was encouraged to take family vacations arranged by Koch travel services. I was glad to be part of KOCH’s ethos in creating better, more efficient, cleaner, producing with a smaller carbon footprint, products and services than the competition. No item ever forced on anyone, company or purchasing government body. Products so popular that it requires 130,000 employees to produce or maintain. Products either direct or as feedstock for products that adds value to even your life. There’s a great chance you come in contact with a computer, car, home, or business that has benefited from parts; even road materials, building supplies, fuel, water filtration, solar panels, windmills and thermal building window glass to name a few.

I totally understand people who shut out opposing views, it is much easier for me to accept my small group’s viewpoint and then seek to reinforce my ‘convictions’ while dehumanizing people I don’t like or agree with, you know the evil “them”. Open minded, except not? Thank you Tim Ferris. I find it rewarding to hear people I don’t agree with, and then make up my own mind. Keep interviewing all sides.

acudocric – The chicken plant is owned by a different company with the same name. There is no relationship to Koch Industries.

Another great podcast thanks for ignoring all of the thought police who may get triggered by this interview!

Expressing an opinion in a comment section isn’t policing other’s thoughts. If it were, you’d be equally guilty of thought-policing by expressing your own opinion here.

People aren’t getting “triggered”, because that would mean that they’re being overwhelmed by emotion. Instead, they’re raising considered, rational arguments as to why they don’t believe that Tim should provide Koch with an even larger platform than he already has. Just because their opinion differs from yours, doesn’t mean they’re stupid or wrong.

Defending free speech and opinion to see both sides of an argument is what Tim is doing here. Tim can provide a forum for whomever he wants and believes will share his message of cultural transparency. Charles Koch employs 130,000 workers and his companies serve millions of customers well. His Stand Together initiative is impressive. No reason why Tim shouldn’t share this news.

I am disgusted that you would feature such a person on your site. He is not only destroying the planet, he is undermining democracy.

“Undermining democracy” would be a good thing.

Won’t be listening to this one.

Don’t care how successful u say or think he is.

Koch brothers are not good for this country.

Shame on you. Koch and his family have no qualms whatsoever about destroying the planet, and you give them this platform to justify themselves.

If your friends thought this was a good idea, I’d say its time to find some new friends.

I am a long-time fan of your podcast and listen to most shows. I have to write to let you know that I am upset and disappointed that you would interview Charles Koch on your show. I know you are an independent thinker and have had controversial guests on before, however, David Koch is pure self-interested evil. Most of what he and his family does is destructive to our representational system of government.

David Koch and the Koch network have used their wealth to jerry rig the electoral process with their deep pockets to the benefit of the wealthy and corporations. Their combined efforts seek to strengthen the power of the wealthy to limit the protections the US government allows our citizens.

Among other things Charles Koch funded interest groups have tried to kill the implementation of the Affordable Care Act (and especially the expansion of Medicaid to poor uninsured adults) in states like Missouri and Tennessee. They have sought to roll back state efforts to address climate change (for instance, in Kansas and West Virginia), and their contributions led to passing massive tax cuts for wealthy individuals and companies (as in Kansas and Oklahoma).

Charles Koch and the millions he and his clandestine organizations spend to protect the rich and powerful are a cancer on our democracy and if left unfettered will eventual lead to the ruin on of our country and our democracy.

I don’t know what to say Tim. I am really disappointed.

Amen my friend!!

Very well written and I agree 100%!

Well stated and so true. Why anyone could see these Brothers as an asset to our country is beyond me. I’m sure Tim felt compelled to go down the Forbes list and was as disappointed to see Charles mame appear as we are.

Great statement you made:

“Charles Koch and the millions he and his clandestine organizations spend to protect the rich and powerful are a cancer on our democracy and if left unfettered will eventual lead to the ruin on of our country and our democracy.”

Yeah, I’m feeling exactly the same way. I’ve always really respected Tim, this is a big disappointment.

Second this. Sad to see someone as destructive for the planet as Charles Koch on the show. I’m a long-time listener and have a lot of respect for you, Tim. I just wish you took a firmer stand on people like this.

True. And there’s proof.

There’s a very good book showing what Charles Koch REALLY thinks about undermining democracy. Using his own letters.

See amazon.com democracy in chains

[Moderator: link removed.]

Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America Hardcover – June 13, 2017

by Nancy MacLean

Ah………he interviewed Charles Koch. Kind of takes away your credibility here. Bravo Tim, we need more of this kind of balanced/looking at both sides media. Journalism is dead, we don’t get both sides anymore.

Thank you for the thoughtful comment. I agree 100%.

Total bullshit…. great job Tim. Closed minded minions have no business here and would object to an interview with Mother Theresa for her religious views where she still with us…

Thanks for doing this! Shocking that people who hate the Kochs actually know so little about them. Hope your listeners actually approach this with an open mind instead of with pre-rendered opinions.

Really? The overwhelmingly negative reaction to this interview is due to lack of knowledge? That’s reductionist. Here’s some knowledge about the awful Kochs to open YOUR mind:

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/inside-the-koch-brothers-toxic-empire-164403/

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2010/08/30/covert-operations

Super un-biased websites, Marie … I wonder if you or the rest of the complainy-pants bothered to listen to the interview. I understand it’s tough to shrug of years or decades of liberal propaganda, but maybe give it a try.

sure…and we are supposed to blindly trust and believe Rolling Stone and the New York Times.. now THAT’s reductionist!!

Sorry Tim but there is nothing good about Charles Koch when it comes to his politics..

He is a 100% profit before people capitalist who chooses to use his intellect and fortune to repeal our environmental protections and gives millions to Republicans like Moscow Mitch and Trump. People who in my opinion are simply evil, selfish and stubborn white males of privilege. Due to Republican obstruction, nothing gets done in Washington despite the desires of the electorate.

A simple thing like Universal Background Checks, supported by over 70% of the population of both parties and including many gun owners never gets passed because of people with money like the Koch brothers buying Congress.

If Koch really believed in democracy he’d put his money behind getting big money out of politics and ending Citizens United. But he likes the status quo, where his money buys him influence, even if the majority disagrees with his politics.

Social Democracy has been proven to bring a higher quality of life and happier populations than America’s unregulated capitalism. But the Republicans scare people and lie about the benefits and mislabel it as socialism and communism.

Mr. Koch may be the nicest guy in person but he is on the wrong side of history.

Clearly you did not listen to the podcast. Please do before making your judgement.

Where is the jump in his logic that he didn’t listen to podcast?

Isn’t it amazing how suddenly a hard won reputation for both intelligence and probity can be called into question.

I’ve listened to your podcast for years and have enjoyed many of them. It’s good to see you progressing from pre-canned questions to more questions based on what people are saying.

I’ve noticed how you generally steer clear of politics on your podcast. You don’t seem comfortable. With US politics the way it is that’s understandable.

In this podcast, it’s almost with reluctance that you ask the difficult questions – and then you use the words of your listeners. Even after asking them, you don’t follow up and press on the answers Charles Koch gave you. Sometimes, I wish you would just ask the question and be quiet instead of the qualifying and watering down you occasionally do! Although the questions weren’t softballs, your failure to interrogate the replies meant that the issues were only superficially covered.Good interviewing is not just about batting a ball over the net then letting the person bat the ball back. You can bat the ball back again and not drop the return.

There is a real discrepancy between what many people believe about Charles Koch and, for example, what he says about climate change. This podcast did not clear that up or any of the other controversial topics. As a neutral, I feel you missed an opportunity.

Being nice is good but I think it’s possible to ask (and press on) difficult questions without being adversarial.

I wished this was better. You did your best and asked some good questions. I wonder how he feels about silly things like patents and intellectual property rights? I don’t know how good an idea it would be to have non licensed doctors,pharmacists and engineers.I see where he is coming from but really do not agree with his methods. ( Former libertarian here and now avid democratic socialist) Keep up the good work. I still think he is evil but not 100% evil. Maybe 80%

Great job, glad you were able to get him on. It is strange how the “tolerant” crowd never wants to hear from someone they have been told they should disagree with. Or even discover what they have in common.

One should never be tolerant about evil or criminality.

When did listening become tolerance?

You don’t agree with him so he’s evil?

I can’t believe you didn’t do your homework. The Koch brothers have ruined our democracy by taking out fake ads and dumbing down the American people for their benefit. They literally took over all the television stations in the Midwest and the south brainwashing people to vote for Trump to continue to line their pockets.

he doesn’t like Trump.

Tim, you interviewed one of the greatest threats to our democracy in American. The Koch brothers are pure evil. I’ve always enjoyed your work. This is deeply disappointing an you think you maybe ask some hard questions here but you don’t. You celebrate a man who puts profits above all else.

Unfollowed.

Unbelievable Tim! You are hitting it out of the ballpark once again with your guests. Many people would not have known this titan of industries if it were not for the slightly (lol) negative and biased coverage in the media in recent year . I am saying this as a bipartisan European observers, since a heated debate is already starting.Thanks for the great podcasts in recent years

Best regards

My lesson sadly was that I only have one small power in this world so I’m voting with my feet and unsubscribing to your blog and bullets. There’s a distinct, dangerous and material difference between Charles Koch and many others you have interviewed. I enjoy listening to the views of others but I’m not actively subscribing to a blog that gives a platform to the lies of this dangerous individual who has actively used his money to undermine democracy.

The Koch brothers just had hundreds of families ripped apart last week in Mississippi bc they didn’t want to follow ethical business practices. How can any decent human take them seriously? I don’t care how successful they are. They are doing it at the price of every day people and the environment.

As a child of an immigrant seeing this land in my inbox today was a shock. Really taken back by this one.

Koch Industries and Koch Foods are not affiliated, though the founders share the name.

Yeah, not a fan of the Kochs by a longshot. I’m guessing it must be pure coincidence that some of the workers deported in Mississippi were in the suit against the Kochs, right?

https://www.eeoc.gov/eeoc/newsroom/release/8-1-18b.cfm

https://www.npr.org/2019/08/07/749243985/mississippi-immigration-raids-net-hundreds-of-workers

Koch Industries and Koch Foods are not affiliated.

Tim, Did you read “Dark Money” ( https://amzn.to/2KsMzqT ) as part of your research for the interview. If you haven’t read it, please do.

Charles Koch has a cancerous influence on our democracy (specifically special interest influence buying politicians, voter suppression, allowing corporations to write law, etc etc), the health of our planet, education in this country, workers’ rights and so much more. It is extremely dangerous to be normalizing his influence and I can’t support that. I will be unsubscribing from your newsletter and encouraging others to do the same.

Why would you give a pulpit to one of the evilest persons on the planet today, destroying our planet and lives in the name of power and greed? Tim, what happened to your ethical compass?

No effing way. I’m out. Been following you since 4HWW and have all your books. This is a complete dealbreaker and massive disappointment.

I have followed you and been a supporter of yours since “4 Hour Work Week”. I am a little shocked to see that you’ve done a podcast episode with one of the Koch brothers, actually a little taken aback. The Koch brothers specifically fund “The Bill of Rights Institute” which teaches among other things, a distorted historical view of the inhumane treatment of enslaved people during the slavery.

Sad and disappointed.

Mr. Koch has also poured significant wealth into ending Medicare and Social Security. I’m surprised that you’ve chosen to profile him on your blog.

As valuable as your communications have been for me, I have decided to stop following you due to your support of Mr. Koch.

Ashamed that I would even consider listening to someone who gives this kind of time to a despicable sub-human enterprise such as Koch. What a shame you would damage your otherwise excellent reputation. This enterprise has done more to destroy this country than almost any other in history. Bad choice. I’m unsubscribed.

As others have indicated, Charles and David Koch are not good examples of leaders and don’t deserve this platform. The only thing I can imagine, trying to step into their shoes, is that they are experts in compartmentalization. If they would truly let sink in what impact their decades of climate denial funding has caused… As is well documented in various articles and books. I am afraid the companies are so big, and their lawyers, lobbyists and social media strategists all do the same: they compartmentalize and try to not see in the mirror what a small voice in the back of their mind says. Massive profits may help the compartmentalization. If you add it all up, the cumulative net impact of the Koch brothers and their companies on people and planet is very negative. And there is no way they can be taken seriously on science with this track record.

Well, this certainly caught my attention. I have strong disagreements with the Kochs, but can’t say I’ve spent time listening to any of them. That seems to be the trend these days. We obsess over attacking rather than listening or learning more about a person (what fuels their ideas?). I’m glad you were the one to do this and I appreciate the effort. There are some interesting nuggets in here.

Attack the ideas, not the person.

What should one do when “the person” uses their enormous wealth to force their “ideas” onto the majority, ideas that overwhelmingly do not benefit the majority? We HAVE listened to the Kochs and what we hear is terrible.

Clearly you did not listen, you filtered. Listen and learn.

I’m really disgusted and disappointed that you would give a platform for Koch to spread his agenda. You do realize he is probably using you for PR reasons to make himself and his industries look good in the eyes of younger people and influencers. The actions of the Koch brothers are undermining democracy, destroying the planet, and doing everything they can to give the rich more money and power. Their money helped put Trump into office and other people like him. Please read about their destructive influence and do not give them a platform to spread their ideas further.

Inside the Koch Brothers’ Toxic Empire

[Moderator: two links removed.]

I hear a man, driven by trying to proof to his never satisfied father, that he is good enough. And I hear a man who believes that his state, his abilities and disabilities are somehow made by destiny.

Both is so very sad to me. Both is the sign of the big trauma that actually rules the world in our time.

hey Tim, we don’t like Koch industries for funding climate denial machine. not because of “identity politics” or because we like our “labels”. its condescending to characterize your audience like that

Unbelievable! So sad that this is your what you choose to feature about this man and his companies practices. The 680+ people taken in the ICE raid last week from one of his processing plants in MS because they were willing to do his dirty work in order to feed their families deserve better. This company and others like it recruit and hire these works to increase their profits and when things go badly they get a slap on the risk while these peoples families and lives are torn apart.

Koch Industries and Koch Foods are not affiliated with each other but two separate companies from founders with the same name.

Tim, I’m from the UK so probably less sensitive to the politics, but I can say it was a superb episode. I usually listen when I’m travelling but I had to pause so I could listen properly with a pen and make notes. In my top 5 favourite episodes ever. Great work

Very good episode, thanks. I´m from Chile so also less sensitive to the US politics. But great to get to know the thinking of someone who is so influential. Employing 130,000 people is huge and I´m tempted to think that he has done much more good for the world than bad, despite all the comments here. Worth listening twice I would say.

Wow complete sellout. Of all the people in the world you can be a platform for and this is who you pick? How much did they pay you to interview this guy? And in such a contrived way where you take their talking points at face value- my goodness. Looking the other way is exactly what is leading us into this divisive racially, economically divided world and no one has divided us more than this man. Why don’t you try offering your platform to women and small business leaders that are changing the world on the ground and using their best efforts to make the world a better place? Sad man, your stuff is getting pretty formulaic and I’m out.

Oh Tim…oh man. Ugh. The Koch brothers are not good for this country dude. I like you, I really do, but please do some research before dipping your toe into politics. This is a red flag that maybe you haven’t been paying attention to current events in the past few years. Now I’m also a little alarmed about who your listening to and who has your ear. Nah, I know your smarter than this dude. You just need to read up on this guy a little more to bring yourself up to speed. “Gut punch” is accurate. Did not expect this today LOL.

I’ve only ever heard bad things about the Koch’s. But he’s a good person, I think you made the right call on interviewing him, Tim.

Group think is too dangerous, those who don’t want to listen to this episode do it at their own expense I think.

I work in environmental advocacy. I’ve really enjoyed your stuff, but having Koch on crosses a line. Poor judgement, Tim Ferris. He and his cronies are destroying our planet and our social fabric. I don’t care how wealthy or famous he is he doesn’t deserve air time.

This guy has had more than his fair share of influence on our political system, economy, and planet. He doesn’t need to be heard on your platform. This is disappointing.

For many years, people say he is evil.

You ask them, for what?

They say he funds anti-climate change propaganda.

Well………..that’s generally the extent of it.

Then, the more you look into climate change, you find that it’s truly cyclical.

Very much looking forward to this interview as I will be listening tonight.

Look forward to hearing HIS perspective rather than so many who feel it’s ok to speak for him.

– Ringo –

Yep, I have to agreed. The Koch family is not good for our country/democracy. Don’t really care how smart he might be, he’s using it in the wrong way.

Really disappointed about this one. As others have said below he is not a leader. As a leading funder of climate change denial, he is culpable for the destruction of the lives of many millions of people worldwide, with many hundreds of millions more to come. Shame on you for giving him a platform and for failing to adequately address this. You don’t live in an underground bunker – there is plenty of evidence that is very easy to find, demonstrating the disgraceful activities of the Koch brothers. I’m a longtime listener of your podcast, and buyer of your books. I shan’t be continuing unless there is a public u-turn on this. Koch is an abhorrent man. We can do without billionaire parasites like him.

Why this upset me: yes the Kochs have access to “larger platforms” than the Tim Ferriss show, but shows like Tim’s have their own unique prestige associated with them. Tim does everything he can to make the guests look good. Charles going on here gives him a chance to tell “his side of the story” with a credulous and easy interviewer. I haven’t listened to the episode yet, but in the 100 or so eps of this show I’ve heard, I can’t recall Tim ever challenging a guest on anything political.

For those saying that this is a chance to see how such an influential person thinks about the world, I think you underestimate how bad faith of an actor Charles Koch is. This is a guy who is more responsible for the rise of climate change denialism than probably anyone. ( https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2010/08/30/covert-operations ). If you go into the interview having read Dark Money or otherwise having a well-formed view of what the Koch’s have done to the world, then you may be able to get some valuable info out of this. But for the majority of people who don’t know that much about the Koch bros, this acts as good PR in a way that appearing on Fox News doesn’t. Koch also appeared on Freakanomics Radio and received a puff interview from an actual journalist. These guys are dangerous, and Tim is doing harm by giving them a platform (at least in the way Tim does).

Always appreciate hearing contrary opinions. Suggestions for future shows:

Bashar al-Assad

David Berkowitz

Dylann Roof

Bernie Madoff

Seriously, Tim, I follow your podcast for inspiration and high guideposts in living an engaged and meaningful life. If you would have actually challenged Koch’s grotesque ideologies (think Ted Koppel), the interview might have had some redeeming value. But you didn’t, and it didn’t. A complete disaster.

This is more than a wasted opportunity. It reveals a deep vacancy in your own moral and social compass.

Sometimes I forget how important a really good journalist is and I just want to hear information from a podcast. This is the perfect example of not speaking truth to power. This is not journalism

Is there anyone rich you won’t be obedient to? Disgusting.

Great episode! So many references for reading and great insights! One a side note, I didn’t get why all the controversy about the guest. Is it because of his conservative / liberal orientation? No one seemed to care that much when Peter Thiel was interviewed… or are there other reasons? I’m not from the US, so genuinely interested to understand what is the point…

Yeah, I agree with you. Some of Tim’s audience lives in far left regions of the US on the political spectrum and they’ve been led to believe this man is destroying the world. I think what you are seeing is just people’s preconceived notions of what they’ve heard or read second or third hand. For those that listen to the man with an open mind you get an entirely different picture. Also, look at the comments from the people who actually worked for one of his companies and it’s the complete opposite from the hysteria.

Relatively new listener here, Tim. But the comments here surprise me.

Refusal to even listen to differing viewpoints is the beginning of ignorance. By seeking to understand and find common ground, you’ve set a great example for civil discourse and knowledge.

This idea that we should never even speak or “give platform” to someone with whom we disagree, or even dislike, is harmful and only further entrenches “thought bubbles,” which further polarize society.

Thoughtful, differing viewpoints allow us to challenge our own beliefs and either update or strengthen our own convictions. Thanks for continuing to push these boundaries.

I generally agree with pmo’s comment above.

No one is “evil”. There are different ways of thinking. We should always be considering the whole picture.

That being said, I really wish Tim would have pushed Koch to explain further his support of climate change denial. While I am interested and inspired by much that Koch had to say, there are some huge discrepancies in Koch’s practice that were not addressed. I think many of the listeners were sad that Tim wasn’t strong enough to challenge Koch on that. I would have enjoyed hearing Koch’s answers.

As it stands, Tim let Koch represent himself as just another pro-people American, which is far from a nuanced view.

I have to assume a savvy, thoughtful and self aware person like yourself anticipated some backlash for this podcast. You did it anyway, and I guess you have your reasons.

I just hope this wasn’t something you considered an experiment. This isn’t like trying a new business model. You gave someone that I, and a lot of other people, consider to be an insidiously harmful person time on your platform. To me this episode is a step towards normalization of them. You can’t undo this and just switch the experiment off.

Naturally this is just my opinion, and again I am sure you considered this kind of response before going ahead. I guess all I can really do as someone who has followed you from your very first book is unsubscribe (done now) and steer clear of your platform from now on.

It’s good to be reminded that, with rare exceptions, podcasters are just podcasters. I realize I’ve been foolish for expecting much more than that.

Outstanding, more please. Plenty of room for a round two.

Best podcast for a while, after some wishy washy ones, IMO. Think the last one I enjoyed as much as this was with Ken Block.

It’s nice to hear from a Guy who could easily have spent a futile life, and never wanted for anything, but didn’t, and he sounds relatable, and understandable too, with simple, powerful principles.

Sort of goes to show that the mega rich can be self made too, and do good things in the world. Good lesson for some folk in there, I guess.

I’m British European, so I guess I’ve never been subjected to some of the negativity surrounding this guy and his businesses, although I am far from ignorant of the criticisms levelled at them. I suppose I just don’t have that emotional connection to them.

Amazing to me how many folk do feel compelled to express themselves so strongly, though.

What I also find revealing is how diverse an audience Tim Ferriss has, and how polarised it seems to be.

In my ignorance, I thought that, broadly speaking, most the audience would be sat around the same kind of principles and values, without too much of a divide between any of them. Seems not.

Anyhow, I’d love to hear more like this, can you get George Soros on……..?

What a hand you have played! There are gems in this conversation if one was listening. Not a fan of Koch anything, however, you presented a part of your process, and I commend you for it.

It’s regrettable some commenters feel the need to unsubscribe/cancel subscriptions, but that in itself says so much.

Hats off to all you offer, whether I agree or not.

Sorry, I can’t support normalization of someone who’s used every privilege and power he has to undermine fair elections and effective government, and hastened the end of a viable planet for human life. Unsubscribing.

I challenge anyone who is typically triggered by the Koch’s to take a deep breath, relax, and challenge yourself to listen to someone you disagree with.

You have had more positive influence on me than both of my parents combined- so I do listen twice (and thrice) when you say something, or bring a would-be controversial guest on.

After pondering on this a bit I believe you have made a mistake. I agree that we could all learn something about business from C. Koch, but his moral failings are of a sort that cannot easily be disentangled from his strategies for success.

If you would change your stance on this in the future, I think taking this episode down would be a reasonable. Do not see this as “caving in”, or setting a precedent of people feeling they can censor you.

I just feel this is so out of character that you could genuinely change your mind on this. At that point it would be a sort of consistency bias to keep it.

Of course it would be seen as caving in if he takes it down.

Wow, look at all the triggered people in the comments who know nothing about Koch except what the Thought Police have told them they are supposed to say, and who are unwilling to even listen and learn something about him first-hand. It’s a sign of our times that intellectual intolerance is considered tolerant. Tim, congrats on having the courage to bring a controversial guest on despite the predictable blowback you will get from the noisy (but not representative) voices of political correctness. Don’t let these knee-jerk responses sway you from your mission of bringing important ideas to your audience.

This is such a lazy comment. The blowback has nothing to do with political correctness (which I’m sure you blame for everything). It has to do with people having clear opinions on the Koch’s negative influence on politics, climate, etc. Some people can’t overlook those things to learn a couple business lessons.

Thanks Tim.

It’s typical that your left leaning listeners, or “Progressives,” have no open mind for anyone who disagree with them. Even though I disagree a lot of what the Kochs support I can appreciate and listen to what Charles Koch is trying to accomplish.

As someone neutral on politics I’ve looked into the claims about the Kochs and find they are misrepresented, wrong, or highly exaggerated. What little time you had with him disputes a lot that has been said.

Continue to have more guests from this side. It’s fun to see people’s heads explode.

Sorry Tim. Justifications just don’t work for me anymore. I think you were a tool. Giving this guy air time shows poor judgment on your part (and your friends.) You just gave a platform to someone who doesn’t need one- his money makes it possible for him to BUY platforms of his own making (think tanks, etc) to shape “his” vision of how this country should be run. It just so happens that those platforms also are in the process of undermining the foundational principles of our country.

Just because an individual is intelligent doesn’t mean that the individual is using that intelligence for the common good. It was actually amusing to me to listen to him prattle on and on about the values he learned growing up about hard work, and knowing he didn’t want to do manual labor- “dirty jobs” were “dead end.” Maybe he could say that directly to the workers who do those “dirty jobs” in his businesses. But, hey, he’s good with concepts and theories and abstractions. Got it. Translation: “I can’t handle real life. So I will live in my head.” The very premises under which he lives (and promotes) are flawed to begin with. And, sadly, you bought into his narrative. Having money, or having made scads of it doesn’t mean that one is wise. All it means is that you have a lot of money. And influence to burn.

Part of the problem right now in our country isn’t “thought police” or “political correctness.” The problem is that people aren’t showing up and calling out hubris for what it is. We aren’t stepping up and calling out inhumane, self-serving, greedy behavior. Have loved your shows but I’m out. This was a deal breaker for me.

Super disappointed. If your aim was to ask tough questions to a Koch brother, you better study the masters; i.e. Amy Goodman/Democracy Now

If this was a controversial marketing ploy to get comments, that’s even worse.

I’m in two minds about listening. On one hand, it’s good to be open-minded and expose yourself to people who hold different viewpoints and values. On the other hand, Koch is an abuser of power who has degraded this planet and worsened humanity’s condition. I believe Tim has privileged freedom of ideas in making this choice, but I don’t believe that was the best choice. While I want to listen (and I’m sure Koch has some good points to make), I don’t think Koch should be given a platform.

We’ve seen what he does with his power and influence. We’re better off as a society if he has less of of it.

If he’s as influential and powerful as you believe, he doesn’t need this podcast to have a platform.

By that reasoning, if a shop is being looted I might as well join in because it’s already being looted.

Bad things have greater impact the more people join in. Koch’s enormous influence (a bad thing because of how he wields it) has more impact as a result of Tim spreading it further.

I am disappointed that you crossed this line. Not sure if you think the means are disconnected from the ends or that the ends are somehow irrelevant or insignificant. But it doesn’t matter. I am out too.

WTF? I am appalled at your hideous judgement in interviewing C. Koch and trying to pass him off as just a wonderful businessman and philanthropist. Do you know NOTHING about the hideous anti-human agenda the Koch brothers have been trying to inflict upon our country for decades? Or maybe you do know but just don’t care (about the environment? about women’s rights? about workers rights?). Your choice of guests says a lot about your lack of values.

I am unsubscribing from your email and podcast and will encourage Everyone I know to do the same.

The choice to feature someone whose entire career has been spent trying to destroy the little people and the institutions of this country is a tremendous violation of the trust and respect your fans have placed with you. I am embarrassed now that I ever forwarded or shared your work with others.

If Charles Koch is the kind of man you admire or aspire to be, then shame on you.

I’ve been all Tim, all ways for years. But bro you really missed the mark with this one. As others have said, in the big picture the Kochs don’t need a platform. Just because someone is intelligent and successful doesn’t automatically translate into them being a good person. History is littered with examples. Should we be ready to see the likes of Sean Hannity or Rush Limbaugh sometime soon?

Favorite lesson: Any super villain can be made relatable and endearing through the gift of a great interview.

Perhaps you could also help out Harvey Weinstein’s PR or Mitch McConnell? I bet even our great president would love to sit down with you.

This was a true disappointment, Tim.

This was one of your better podcasts ever. I’ve listened to 75% of ’em I bet. I don’t understand those folks who “refuse to listen to it.” Sounds just like the far right crowd who will “only listen to Fox News.” Short-sited. Tribal. After listening I think Mr. Koch is trying to bridge the tribal gap and is doing some amazing ground up, market based philanthropy with Stand Together. Summarized as follows: “Through our philanthropic community, we tackle some of the nation’s biggest challenges so that every person has the opportunity to realize their full potential.”

Many of the listeners who have unsubscribed including me listened with skepticism but after the cupcake interview are making the clean-cut, I think you’re assuming we didn’t listen. No we did listen and it was a joke interview

My opinion is your interviewing style isn’t suitable for controversial guests. Someone like Mr. Koch is an odd fit for your tips, tricks and life hacks themed podcast: there are too many elephants in the room in this interview. Another kind of approach was needed with higher level of preparation.

Though I agree with his general point that shifting our economy and lifestyles may require a careful approach, his answer regarding China came across as self-serving.

Yours is one of my favorite podcasts. However, this guy is at the center of corruption of our political system and trying to hide his deeds. It seems like he is using you to make himself seem presentable.

Long time listener here and while I enjoyed the interview, the comments here are even more entertaining. I knew the crazies would come out with this one and they have not disappointed! Great way to filter out the close-minded segment of your audience.

As an open-minded person, I hope you’ll consider this point: A lot of people will have chosen not to listen because giving Koch a platform conflicts with their values and principles. I’m intellectually curious (as most of Tim’s listeners are) so I was tempted to listen to the interview. However, I fundamentally disagree with the way Koch uses his power and influence, so I don’t want to do anything that will increase that.

With respect, it is unhelpful and facile to paint people as “crazies” for expressing an opinion about Koch’s inclusion in this show.

Read the comments and honestly tell me that these people are intellectually curious and principled. They dislike this man based on what they’ve read or heard in their echo chamber and now they are angry and leaving. If they were truly open-minded they would listen and debate what the man said that they disagree with. From what I heard, Koch is going out of his way to find common ground with people he disagrees with politically to help those in need. But then again I actually listened to the podcast.

As a libertarian, I fear and despise cynical authoritarians like the Kochs. I’m disappointed you promoted the harm he does for our society by giving him a platform. I’m forced to unsubscribe.

I’m sorry but… I have to say this. Charles Koch is FAR from an authoritarian. He is in fact a classical liberal, so more or less a libertarian. If you don’t believe me, just go to his institute’s website. You can read it on there.

Charles Koch is the complete opposite of a libertarian. He is an authoritarian reactionary. The thing about reactionaries is they’re talented at co-opting the rhetoric of other ideologies. I know the Koch’s say all the right things, something that is true of many politicians as well. That is what makes them so influential. They are masterful propagandists.

I judge people by their actions, not their words. As for the immoral and harmful actions of the Kochs, that is well known.

Tim – kudos to you for having the guts to do this interview! It’s incredible that we live in a time period where so many “open-minded” people have a zero-tolerance policy to ideas that are contradictory to their world-view. It’s a bit scary…

Hi Tim – I’d like to thank you for this episode. Not because I’m a supporter of Koch’s but because I had no idea who he was until now (I live in Indonesia so I’m not familiar with him). So thank you for not shouting into the echo chamber and for bringing a bit of controversy to your show. I think the fact that you’ve made people FEEL something (good or bad) is just a sign that you’re doing something right. It’s like Mayor Pete going on Fox news, not because he supports them but because how else is he supposed to introduce people to a different point of view.

Thanks again and I’ll be here for the next one.

Very disheartening to see your attempt to break through partisan group think fail in the comments section. I can only hope that it is the easily outraged that have opted to post, and that this not a representation of the listening majority.

Did not listen to the interview…yet…as it is going to take a little time to figure out how to listen to someone that i don’t agree with…but what I do totally agree with is you having him on the show!!!

Keep up the good work and expanding your skill in communication and trying things totally outside the box…of your box and the box that we have put you in.

My hope is that there is someone on your listener list who can articulate and present the thesis that having him on the show is actual the most long term sustainable way forward…

This may have been the most eye-catching pod you’ve had on your show, I couldn’t wait to listen to it! …I’ve only heard and read all these terrible things about Charles Koch and his companies. More people need to interview and listen (with an open mind) to this guy and others we deem as “evil”. We never know the whole story to a person or a situation, everyone deserves to be heard.

I listened to the episode with an open mind and for a moment I considered reading his book but as the interview went on…it was one after another phony questions/answers..on and on… The problem with this interview is that Tim was doing the interviewing.

Don’t get me wrong, I love Tim’s interviewing, pod guests, books, etc….but he’s never asking hard questions or holding the interviewee to the fire, like ever. Always softballs, which is totally fine with me since his typical guests aren’t lying over and over about all the great stuff they’re doing and claiming high & mighty morals. You can easily fact-check, Koch’s basically done the opposite of everything he’s touting about…for years. Darn, I wish he was actually pressed on some of those BS tangents we went on.

If Charles Koch wasn’t so concerned with getting people’s approval (since he didn’t get it from his father), he wouldn’t have done this interview, & perhaps he wouldn’t have done all the terrible things he’s known for. The lies in this podcast interview are wrong and years of hurting people and hurting the planet for profit is wrong. This is an example of a human, and there are MANY others just like it, trying to get their needs for love and approval met, by any means necessary.

This was also true of the Freakonomics interview with Koch. Softball questions with no follow ups or drill downs. Koch talks a good game and in fact I agree with most things he *says* in these interviews. But when you look at what he *does* in real life with respect to politics and policy, not only do I not agree, but actions are at best not aligned with his words.

A controversial person, whose words and actions don’t align, needs a different kind of interview, or indeed perhaps should be denied a platform. As a business person, Koch is clearly talented and brilliant, but it’s his influence and funding of political work that makes him important. If you don’t drill down on that, it’s not worth talking to him.

Agree, 100%. It troubles me that these platforms/interviewers are OK with putting this kind of stuff out there…really makes me question how much Koch is paying them.

Given our current climate it is appalling you interviewed a Koch and failed to hold him to account.

Seriously, he is not some harmless billionaire philanthropist. This is irresponsible.

Maybe read Dark Money and do a follow-up episode where you attempt to unpick the thread of discontent he has spent a lifetime and billions sewing.

You are privileged enough to have a platform, use it.

Today you seem like a publicist trying to rehab the image of an asshole. You seem like a rich guy that just sold out.

Tim, it’s not that you had a socially immoral human being on your show. Rather, it’s that you didn’t do your homework on the unthinkable damage this man and his brother have brought upon our planet. If you had bothered to study this man’s past and current money spends (anti-UN, anti-climate, anti-constitution, etc.), you would have been morally outraged — and your line of questions would have reflected such outrage (as 90% of these comments reflect similar enlightened outrage).

I’m just going to say it: what did the Koch org pay you (directly or indirectly) for this softball fluff piece?

Needless to say, my opinion of your ethical judgement and maturity just dropped significantly. Humanity’s very existence is suffering under the weight of key global threats. The Koch Brothers are core dealers and lobbyists in some of the worst of these threats. Wake up, my friend. The fact that you didn’t challenge this evil man in the least shows that you’ve been conned, or worse, bribed.

“What you can be, you must be”. I guess that applies to criminals as well…

I have been listening to your podcasts at any given moment for the last week and enjoying them. I even signed up for “Five Bullet Friday.” When I opened my email and saw a podcast with Charles Koch, disappointment overcame me.

The Koch brothers are heirs, not self-made people. They have a history of giving to politics for interests such as tax cuts, increasing their wages/ wealth 6,000%, compared to 3% for the average household since 1982. They aren’t working 6,000% harder since 1982. They have exasperated wealth inequality. Warren Buffett has said, “Dynastic wealth, the enemy of a meritocracy, is on the rise. Equality of opportunity has been on the decline. A progressive and meaningful estate tax is needed to curb the movement of a democracy toward plutocracy.”

Additionally, Charles Koch belongs to groups such as, The John Birch Society, which campaigns against civil rights, and Turning Point USA, which has sent death threats to Princeton professors. He has a history of supporting racist ideology, such as Stephan Molyneux, who preaches certain races have lower IQs and are dumber. I don’t know why you uphold someone who has rigged the rules, bribed politicians, and supports racism.

Greatly disappointed! Why not interview Kim Jong-Un next?

Yes, please do!

The Koch Brothers are destroying the environment, ruthlessly exploiting the planet and ruining the climate for all of us. They are also one of the puppet players behind Trump. They don’t deserve praise, but shame and resistance.

So far I liked most of your interviews, but this is a huge mistake. I am out!

Seriously? Charles Koch?

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/sep/26/koch-brothers-americans-for-prosperity-rightwing-political-group

“Shifting the political terrain

The transformation of Wisconsin from the birthplace of public-sector unionization to a conservative stronghold with a battered labor movement is remarkable on its own terms. But even more remarkable is how the same story is playing out across dozens of other states. To be sure, AFP has not enjoyed the same success in every state as in Wisconsin and has endured some high-profile losses, too – most notably the re-election of Barack Obama to the White House in 2012.

But all told the Koch network has racked up important victories across many policy areas, like stymieing the implementation of the Affordable Care Act (and especially the expansion of Medicaid to poor uninsured adults) in states like Missouri and Tennessee, rolling back state efforts to address climate change (for instance, in Kansas and West Virginia), and passing massive tax cuts for wealthy individuals and companies (as in Kansas and Oklahoma).”

Tim I have listened to quite a few of your podcasts over time and this was a great one. What is more interesting than listening to someone who disagrees with you and believes their are different ways of doing things and looking at things. Please don’t cave into the people on here who do not like hearing from someone they disagree with. Ps I signed up to your 5 bullet Friday.

Thank you so much for doing this one. Very good call.

Thank you so much for doing this. Very brave of you to ignore those in the comments who’d rather censor speech and suppress discussion. “Nuance and texture” is just what we need here. Well done.

It’s not that Tim interviewed a corrupt man. Who cares. The problem is that he didn’t use the interview to call out the myriad evils which embody this man. Tim simply overlooked them. That’s tantamount to being a co-conspirator of this man’s vile acts.

Nobody is asking for censorship or suppression (your words). You’ve jumped to a very shallow conclusion. What we’re looking for in Tim is moral backbone, truth telling, and calling out evil on its face. He failed miserably. Spineless.

Suggest you study up on the Koch brothers and how their money and businesses are fueling climate change, gross social inequality, stark political divisiveness, a hatred of the United Nations, a desire to rewrite the US Constitution, Citizens United, etc.. Learn how their money drives corrupt narratives from “think tanks” such as George Mason economics, Cato Institute, Manhattan Institute, and so many other vectors of special-interest greed.

It was bold of you to have him on, and raising awareness about his social initiatives seems like a beneficial thing. I get the frustration that people have with him providing largely canned answers and sidestepping, but I also come into your podcast knowing that you don’t try and corner people into “good” answers. Some of his points on climate incentives were interesting, and “I don’t have to share a worldview to collaborate on a single shared objective” is a useful mindset.

Thanks for challenging me a bit with this one.

Tim, you are more open-minded than I thought. I’ve heard you say some things, you’ve shown your political cards . . . but we need more people like you that will ‘show’ both sides. Reading Kock-interview comments made me realize that you are supported largely by close-minded idiots. I don’t like all your shows – but I enjoy what I learn from all of them. I now know that the vast number of your listeners are arrogant know-it-alls. They are the epitome of the people they criticize. Perhaps you could lead a revolution to encourage people to open their minds – especially to those whom with they disagree.

Both sides? My friend, I suggest you study up on the Koch brothers and how their money and businesses are fueling climate change, gross social inequality, stark political divisiveness, a hatred of the United Nations, a desire to rewrite the US Constitution, support for Citizens United, Dark PACs, etc.. Learn how their money drives corrupt narratives from “think tanks” such as George Mason economics, Cato Institute, Manhattan Institute, and so many other vectors of special-interest greed.

This isn’t about being “open minded” — Tim’s listeners are among the most open-minded on the planet. It’s about FACING REALITY and calling out evil when we see it. If you don’t see it, or care, then you need to study up.

Nah, its really close-mindedness. Im canadian and I simply do not get all how emotional your politics has become. Listen to both side, agree on some points, agree to disagree on other, shake hand and be thankful for the debate.

Identify politic is another name for fundamentalism, never been good, never will be,

This interview (and more so the response) reminds me of something Tim said on being Polarizing…

“…you’re going to polarize people. And without that polarity, there’s no discussion. Discussion is what I want, which means that I’m fine with the consequences.”

Keep on polarizing and initiating discussion!

I’ve been an avid listener of your podcast since it started up. Been a fan of yours since the book days. I’ve recommended you to people, given your books as gifts, and today you have betrayed the trust you have built with your audience by giving a voice to someone who has worked their entire life to undermine democracy.

This is the last podcast of yours I’ll listen to. For people who want another podcast to try out, I recommend Akimbo by Seth Godin. You’re not going to hear the Koch brothers spewing their propaganda there.

I hope you take the time to read these comments and consider how this episode comes across to your audience. There’s a difference between listening to the other side and giving more of a voice to someone like Charles Koch who can go out and buy elections or purchase unlimited airtime to push his interest.

yo tim it’s pretty terrible that you’re giving a koch a platform here. they’re despicable anti environmental climate deniers. big fan of the podcast but this is incredibly disappointing. makes me want to find a different podcast to listen to today instead of continuing to explore your interviews.

Thanks for a really interesting podcast!

I just want to say that the entire argument that I read in a lot of the comments of the type ”You should not give a platform to person x because y and z” seems a bit flawed. It implies that people are stupid and can not make up their mind.

It is also important to approach things with a mindset of ”Could it be that there are things about the broad picture that I do not understand?” rather than being certain that you know everything about an issue. Remember, on any given issue, about 50% of the population is likely to disagree with you, and they probably have great reasons.

Tim – Thanks for not contributing to the global epidemic of cognitive dissonance that people are experiencing due to a illusion of knowledge.

Koch is obviously a brilliant business person, but what makes him and his brother interesting is their involvement in politics. And the fact that the words they say don’t align with their actions. The interview doesn’t address those two aspects, meaning it’s kind of a fail.

Great episode Tim, congrats. People that label themselves, limit themselves.

I really don’t get you guys who are unfollowing Tim’s blog because of this interview. Finally there is a chance to look deep into that misguided and toxic mind of Koch when he willingly opens up in the (just on the surface) friendly atmosphere of the conversation. And instead of listening and learning how not to do things, how not to treat people and to see what is the plague in our Society, you do the dramatic exit.

Shure it is a pain to listen to, but even Bhudda tells me to spent time with my pain. And it’s not like this guy is talking so often about himself. This is actually the first time I really got to know something about him from him.

So I am somehow grateful.

I’m a forensic software engineer, and I have some thoughts about your recent interview with Charles Koch.

First of all, I appreciate the sentiment of trying to get know Koch as human being instead of the one-dimensional villain he is often labeled as. Making politics less personally toxic is a worthy goal.

But my word, he talked like such a slimeball in that interview! The only existential threat to humanity he could name was the “tyranny of experts” – nothing about wealth inequality or climate change – both of which are in feedback accelerated loops trending toward existential threat. Even meteorites would have been more logical an answer. No, the biggest and only existential threat he could name of is too many people acting under expert advice.

When asked about climate change directly and whether he deliberately misrepresents it, he denied ever doing that then proceeded immediately to represent it 🤦‍♂️ Claiming those supporting strong climate action say “the world ending in ten years” – that’s a nonsensical thing no one is legitimately predicting, which one can only assume is a mixed up and oversimplified version of projected climate change creating feedback loops in the next decade.

That China spin was particularly slimey – if we don’t pollute, the pollution business will go to China where they will pollute worse than we would. Well, if you spin China in the other direction, they’re manufacturing more solar panels than every other county and doing many other innovations to address their well known pollution problems. If you remove the spin, whatever China does or does not do to address the climate crisis does not absolve our responsibility for our actions. If you want to change others, leadership starts with you doing what is right and then trying to succeed so hard that others would be dumb not to copy your actions.

I don’t hate you giving him air time – but I do think it warrants airing other viewpoints to undo damage and earn some redemption. An interview with a clean energy entrepreneur or a green new deal activist of similar stature / credentials to Koch would go far to restore balance.

Thanks Tim!

Before jumping all over Tim take some time to read some to the links Tim provides in the show notes such as Free Speech on campuses, teaming up with Soros on ending US wars. There’s a lot more to the man than the headlines. I didn’t see it in the show notes but Koch was the driving force behind prison reform recently passed by the Trump administration.

The Kochs are shutting down free speech. Everything they do is about destroying democracy. What they are doing on campuses is throwing large amounts of money to buy power and influence over what students are taught. It is about mind control and social control.

Prison reform that the great Obama administration failed us all at.

I’ve read all of your books and listened to hundreds of your podcasts. Many here have put it better than I can. I wish to only add my request that you respond to our concerns about giving this man and what he stands for a platform on your show. Your introduction falls far short of explaining your decision. I await your answer, but am finding it hard to continue following you and your content.

I’m enjoying the comments almost as much as the interview.

Great interview Tim. From the comments, it’s disheartening to see how many people who probably consider themselves “open-minded & tolerant” clearly are NOT, not even close. This man provides tens of thousands of jobs for Americans through great businesses. I disagree with much of his politics, but he’s a level headed man with a perfectly fine point of view. I’m way more afraid of the totalitarians here that want to squelch free exchange of ideas.

Great interview. Lots of negative comments. Always fascinating to hear what successful people have to say. Keep up the great work Tim.

This is extremely disappointing. Have always seen this podcast as mostly a positive force for change but this last podcast is just tone deaf on Tim’s part.

Unfortunately I cannot support this podcast or subscribe.

I started to feel like Tim’s Podcast had become played out and a lot of his billionaire rhetoric is starting to seem like it will land on the wrong side of history. I think the intentions are good but this one jumped the shark.. Sorry Tim, I think you’re out of touch.

Having worked for Koch Industries in the early 1980s I got a first hand look into their philosophy which based on your interview with Charles has evolved into an entire system of egalitarian social empowerment. His “bottom up” inspirational approach to individuals is an exciting effort that directly contradicts the “top down” governmental and policy driven approach in today’s political arena. From every spectrum of the American experience this philosophy, if engendered appropriately with the right incentives could create a movement that unites instead of divides our body politic. Perhaps this is too optimistic to think that “bottom up” organizations can make that much difference; however, small groups have always been the catalyst to all human advancement. Thank you for opening up this thought process through interviewing a controversial yet inspiring leader in Charles Koch.

Tim- Thank you for taking a big risk and recording this interview. I think it’s hugely important to try to find common ground.

Would have loved to see more discussion of campaign financing and climate change for which the Koch brothers have come under fire for.

Having listened to the whole podcast, I’m less sure of what I have heard about the Kochs, as at least Charles doesn’t seem to be climate deniers and support a number of bipartisan causes. Hard to see him as the incarnation of evil I had been led to believe, even if we still disagree on some/most things.

Would also see to see Tim summarized the fallout from this podcast on his blog or future podcast (looking at the comments, there is definitely some fallout)

Thanks again!

I came out of it with the same impression. I’ve heard the guy was polarizing but wanted to listen to him for myself to see what all the fuss was about. The fact he’s going out of his way to find common ground by working with others on the political spectrum is commendable.

Hats off to Tim for going against the grain here. If people really are this sensitive on a guest they disagree with then they need to get out more. They might actually learn something.

I regret recommending your podcast to my friends. Charles Koch is “world class” at undermining democracy and destroying the planet. Giving him a platform and treating him as anything less than a disgusting cancer is why people like him, who lower the standard for human beings everywhere, succeed at what they do. You are not beholden to anyone and do your own research. If you are a decent person, exercise that right and interview someone who hasn’t harmed humanity to nearly the same extent.

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One Koch Brother Forces the Other Out of the Family Business

The retirement of David Koch from Koch Industries will make it easier to see more clearly what has been true from the start: Charles and David Koch, who came to be known as “the Koch brothers,” were equals in bloodlines and in wealth, but Charles has always been the brains behind the brothers’ vast corporate and political operations. Those who know the brothers well predict that David’s retirement will have scant impact, particularly in the political realm, where the Kochs exert enormous influence.

For the past four decades they have tapped their vast fortune from a hundred-and-fifteen-billion-dollar-a-year family business, Koch Industries, to finance a private political machine whose reach and size have been described as rivalling that of the Republican Party. By lavishly underwriting candidates, policy organizations, and advocacy groups—often through untraceable donations —they have pulled American politics toward their own arch-conservative, pro-business, anti-tax, and anti-regulatory agenda, particularly in the environmental area. Although David Koch is also stepping down from his role as chairman of the Americans for Prosperity Foundation, the foundation wing of the Kochs’ main political-advocacy group, their influence isn’t likely to wane anytime soon.

David Koch, who is seventy-eight and the wealthiest resident of Manhattan, is more socially prominent than his older brother. He is often chronicled on the social pages, having donated by his own estimate $1.2 billion to philanthropic causes, including many of New York City’s cultural, medical, and educational institutions, several of which bear his name. In contrast, Charles Koch, an eighty-two-year-old libertarian ideologue who continues to live in the brothers’ home town of Wichita, Kansas, has largely stayed outside of the limelight. But those familiar with the brothers suggest that although Charles is less well-known, he, not David, has long been the driving force behind both the phenomenal growth at Koch Industries and the duo’s ambitious political ventures.

Charles also appears to have dominated David’s decision to retire. According to two well-informed individuals close to the family, David, who has been in declining health for several years, had resisted resigning, but Charles forced him out. A business associate who declined to be identified, in order not to jeopardize his ties to the family, told me, “Charles pushed David out. It was done with a wink, and a nod, and a nudge.” A second longtime family associate confirmed this, saying, “Charles had been pushing him out for quite some time. David kept resisting. It was bad. Charles took control.”

The decision became public on Tuesday, when Charles, who is the chairman and chief executive officer of Koch Industries, sent a letter to employees announcing that David would be retiring as vice-president, a development that he attributed to David’s deteriorating health. “We are deeply saddened by this, as we miss David’s insightful questions and his many contributions to Koch Industries,” Charles’s letter said. The letter didn’t disclose the nature of David’s health problems, but he was diagnosed with prostate cancer twenty-four years ago. Multiple associates say that in the past year or so he had visibly declined, losing weight and losing his train of thought in conversations, as well as occasionally nodding off in meetings and public events. “As a result,” the letter said, “he is unable to be involved in business and other organizational activities.” Charles Koch, meanwhile, continues to work through the weekends, often arriving at Koch Industries’ Wichita headquarters earlier than many other employees. “He’s a workaholic, like Warren Buffett. He lives to work,” the well-informed business associate told me. “It looks like he’s going to be doing this into his nineties.”

It is unclear, however, what will become of David’s ownership of nearly half of Koch Industries, the second-largest private company in the country, which began as oil refineries and pipelines, and has grown into a multinational conglomerate encompassing lumber, paper, chemicals, coal, fertilizer, and sophisticated financial-trading operations. Because the company is private, there is minimal transparency. But Charles and David Koch reportedly own virtually all of its stock, splitting the shares equally among themselves and plowing most of the profits back into the company. Forbes magazine estimates that each brother is worth approximately sixty billion dollars, tying them as America’s ninth-richest men. Steve Lombardo, Koch Industries’ chief of corporate communications, did not respond to questions about who would exercise control of David’s shares, should he prove unable to function. David has three children, the oldest of whom is college-aged. Charles has two children, including a son, Chase Koch, who has assumed a growing role in running the company.

The Kochs’ future prospects are of public interest because of the oversized influence they have exerted in American politics. Beginning in the late nineteen-seventies, the brothers became the primary underwriters of hard-line libertarianism in the country. From the start, though, Charles was the instigator behind their political activism while remaining largely behind the scenes. This dynamic was evident as far back as 1980, when Charles convinced his younger brother David to run for Vice-President on the Libertarian Party ticket. The brothers regarded Ronald Reagan, who was running for President that year, as too liberal. The Libertarian platform called for abolishing all federal income taxes and virtually every federal agency, including the I.R.S., the F.B.I., the C.I.A., the F.E.C., the E.P.A., the F.D.A., and the S.E.C. The party also opposed Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security, public education, and minimum-wage and child-labor laws. Charles and David, former members of the John Birch Society, which their father, Fred, helped found, regarded centralized government as a scourge akin to Communism. At the time, however, such views were considered kooky even by most conservatives. The conservative stalwart William F. Buckley, Jr., called the Kochs’ views “Anarcho-Totalitarianism.” The voters’ verdict was equally harsh. David spent two million dollars of his own money on his candidacy in 1980, but he was trounced. The Libertarian Party earned only one per cent of the vote.

Afterward, Charles told a reporter that he had grown disillusioned with conventional electoral politics but had not given up his quest to advance libertarianism. “Politics,” he told a reporter, “tends to be a nasty, corrupting business.” His interest, he said, is “in advancing libertarian ideas.” Instead of just funding candidates, Charles set out to subsidize an ideology. He aimed to change the way Americans thought by creating and funding an interlocking array of libertarian think tanks, advocacy groups, and academic, legal, and other organizations. Even two years before his brother’s Presidential run, Charles declared, “Our movement must destroy the prevalent statist paradigm.”

Nearly forty years later, many of the Kochs’ policy preferences are now standard Republican orthodoxy, having been promoted from the fringes into the mainstream by the dozens of nonprofit organizations and candidates they funded. Small government, anti-tax, anti-regulatory, and pro-privatization policies, as well as skepticism regarding global warming, are commonplace.

After his 1980 bid for office, David Koch continued to be the more visible of the brothers. He spoke at Americans for Prosperity events and made head-turning political donations. But most of the planning for the Kochs’ political takeover was done by Charles Koch, various sources close to the process told me. It was Charles Koch, for instance, who came up with the idea, in 2003, of pooling political donations with like-minded wealthy conservatives, creating a huge, centrally controlled war chest for what is, in essence, a conservative millionaires’ movement. There are now some seven hundred members of this exclusive club, which meets twice a year at Charles’s invitation and calls itself the Seminar Network. Each member commits to donate a minimum of a hundred thousand dollars, and some donate millions. “David liked to rub shoulders with the other big donors, and to make large donations,” the well-informed business associate told me, “and so that part may now change. But Charles really runs the bus. Only when Charles goes will everything change.”

The election of Donald Trump, the single Republican Presidential candidate whom they had openly opposed, seemed to some to sideline the brothers. Charles had memorably described the choice between Trump and Hillary Clinton as like one between “cancer or a heart attack.” But while the Kochs didn’t get the candidate they wanted, under Trump they have nonetheless gotten many of the policies they wanted. Political allies, many of whom have have been subsidized by the Kochs in one way or another in the past, now fill numerous key Trump Cabinet and administrative posts.

At the E.P.A. and the Interior Department, for instance, two government agencies that are vital to the profit levels of Koch Industries, top personnel have deep ties to the Kochs. The career of the E.P.A. administrator, Scott Pruitt, in Oklahoma politics was financially supported by the Kochs. Daniel Jorjani, now the acting solicitor in the Interior Department, formerly worked for Freedom Partners, the Kochs’ political-funding group, and at the Charles Koch Institute and Charles Koch Foundation. Dozens of other key Koch-affiliated personnel encircle Trump, including Marc Short, the congressional liaison in the Trump White House; Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who received backing from the Kochs as a businessman and a congressman from Wichita; Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, who was a billionaire donor in the Kochs’ Seminar Network; and Vice-President Mike Pence, whose financial ties to the Kochs run so deep, the former Trump White House strategist Steve Bannon told me, that he worried that if Pence were ever elected “he’d be a President that the Kochs would own.”

Recent news accounts have highlighted differences that the Kochs have had with Trump, including their plans to spend heavily against Trump’s imposition of tariffs on imports, and their opposition to Trump’s restrictive immigration policies. Some cite these fissures as evidence that the Kochs are changing or moderating their views. Frank Baxter, a longtime donor to the Kochs’ political operation, told the Washington Post that the Koch network was “evolving.” But the Kochs have long favored free trade and minimal immigration barriers, both of which are consistent with their free-market beliefs, and also boost the profits of their multinational corporation. What has been evolving is merely their messaging, which casts their industry-friendly immigration and trade stances in terms of helping Dreamers and protecting low-income consumers.

What is often overlooked, and is far more significant, is the large extent to which the Kochs’ policy preferences have prevailed under Trump. Trump’s only major legislative achievement, the tax bill, which reduced corporate taxes from thirty-five to twenty-one per cent, was passed with the support of a twenty-million-dollar campaign by Americans for Prosperity, the Kochs’ nationwide advocacy group. At the same time, the Kochs launched an equally effective political campaign to defeat the mechanism that Trump originally embraced to pay for these enormous tax cuts: a “border adjustment tax” devised by Republican Speaker of the House, Paul Ryan. Despite support from the White House and Republican leaders in Congress, the Koch network killed it. The final tax bill redistributed wealth from the bottom and the middle to the top and created gaping deficits that will likely require additional cuts in government spending, positions the Kochs have long embraced.

Trump’s rollback of the Obama Administration’s environmental policies, crippling of Obamacare, and dismantling of key provisions in the Dodd-Frank financial-services law all have been top items on the Kochs’ wish list. There is no sign that David Koch’s departure from public life will significantly affect any of this. The Kochs’ Seminar Network is promising to spend an estimated three to four hundred million dollars during the this fall’s midterm election. Evidently, even if there is only one Koch brother left at the table, the menu will remain exactly the same, and the tab will be larger than ever.

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No One Needs a Superyacht, but They Keep Selling Them

Billionaires won’t stop buying superyachts. You can even thank Donald Trump .

“Joy,” at sea.  Credit... Bannenberg and Rowell

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By Peter Wilson

• Oct. 8, 2019

L ONDON — The end of summer is a nervous time for superyacht designers, and not because they fear that the owners of their latest creations may be disappointed with the first outings in the Mediterranean.

The worry is about the designers’ next vessels, because this is the time of year when clients whose boats are still in production come back from holidays with a wish list of new features — usually, based on what they saw on their friends’ yachts or at the Monaco Yacht Show , which ended Sept. 28.

“Right now we are quite far down the line in completing a big yacht in northern Europe for one client who has just spent time on a friend’s boat, which is not necessarily helpful,” said Dickie Bannenberg, the head of one of the world’s best-known superyacht design houses, Bannenberg & Rowell . He was in his London studio, an airy two-story space lined with sleek models of its creations.

“The delivery date is in the first half of next year, and that is sooner than it might seem,” Mr. Bannenberg said. “It’s fine when it’s superficial — let’s say they liked the plates or towels on their friend’s yacht — but if you’re not careful it can verge on, ‘Oh, my friend’s gym was like this, can we have something similar?’ or, ‘I would really like to add a submersible vessel.’”

The complex production schedules of these vessels mean shipyards will resist significant changes. “Re-engineering or rebuilding is going to cost a lot of money,” Mr. Bannenberg, 58, said.

Protecting the Picassos

That end-of-summer tension illustrates some inescapable truths about life dealing in the world’s most expensive consumer products and ultimate discretionary purchases. One vessel alone can cost $5 million to $500 million, with annual operating costs of perhaps 10 percent of that.

This is an industry in which problems include protecting the owner’s Picasso collection from salt air, clumsy crew members and faulty sprinklers.

Or maybe you have to decide whether to build one 330-foot vessel (100 meters) or join a trend of the last few years by opting for a “smaller” 200-foot yacht with a 165-foot support vessel to carry a submarine, helicopter, speedboats and other toys. Aviva, a 320-foot yacht launched in 2017, was the first in the world to include a full-size indoor paddle tennis court.

William Mathieson, the editorial and intelligence director of the Superyacht Group, the leading analyst of the industry, said there are about 3,500 active vessels in the world that meet the loose definition of a superyacht by measuring more than 100 feet; just 55 top 330 feet.

Mr. Bannenberg’s father, Jon Bannenberg, who died in 2002, used to say that nobody in the world needs a superyacht, so it was the designer’s task to make them want one.

Jon, a charismatic Australian, is widely credited with inventing the profession of superyacht designer. In the 1960s, he brought together interior and exterior design skills with an understanding of marine engineering to replace what had previously been relatively simple structures sitting on top of hulls designed by naval architects.

He had waves of clients, starting with Greek shipping tycoons in the 1960s. Then came Middle Eastern royals in the 1970s, German and American industrialists in the 1980s, tech titans from the United States in the 1990s and wealthy Russians.

After Jon’s death, Dickie, who had worked as his father’s project manager for 15 years, brought in Simon Rowell, a hotel designer, as the studio’s creative director.

A short walk from Wandsworth Bridge on the River Thames, the studio holds 15 people, who manipulate detailed computer images of planned vessels, pore over design drawings and phone Italy to order marble fittings.

There are usually six or seven projects at various stages of a construction process that takes four to five years, and that often extends to designing stationery and a logo for crew uniforms, as well as commissioning sculptures to go on board. Jon Bannenberg liked to design the cutlery and crockery, flower vases, the light fittings and door handles.

He ran his practice like a Renaissance artist, training a stream of apprentices who now run some of the world’s top studios, and relying on wealthy patrons for commissions.

Those patrons included J. Paul Getty, Malcolm Forbes and Larry Ellison. Projects were discussed with Fidel Castro and the Shah of Iran that never made it to the water.

Almost inevitably, many people rich enough to spend tens or hundreds of millions of dollars on a yacht have proved to be controversial. The Australian billionaire Alan Bond was a Bannenberg customer before being jailed for fraud, and so was the Saudi arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi , who commissioned a 280-foot ship called Nabila. Donald Trump bought that one (and renamed it Trump Princess) in 1987 for a reported $30 million, with a running cost of $2.5 million a year, justifying the expenditure by saying it was “the ultimate toy” and that he hoped it would make other yacht owners feel inferior.

A string of Bannenberg yachts were built for the British businessman Gerald Ronson, who also did jail time for fraud, and the American magnate Bennett LeBow was forced to repay millions of dollars to companies he controlled for loans that were spent on his yachts.

The body of Robert Maxwell, the publisher and fraudster, was found floating off the back of his Bannenberg yacht, the Lady Ghislaine, which was named after his daughter who is now in the headlines over her involvement with Jeffrey Epstein, the financier charged with child sex trafficking.

Mr. Epstein, who died in jail in August, represented the retail tycoon Leslie Wexner during the construction of his 300-foot yacht Limitless, another Jon Bannenberg project.

Five imposing models of Limitless still sit on the walls of the studio. Dickie Bannenberg said he never dealt with Mr. Epstein, though Ms. Maxwell “may have come to a design meeting but I have never met her.”

“It’s a tricky one,” Mr. Bannenberg said. “Legally in any industry you have a requirement to know as best you can the source of your client’s money, so in our contracts our lawyers require us to find the beneficial owner behind the project.”

“The shipyard asks the same questions,” he said. “They won’t just build for Mysterious Corporation of Grand Cayman, they need to know who is behind it.” The ownership of some yachts is a tight secret, with the owner’s passion for privacy and security often extending to teams of private guards in every port.

Adam Ramlugon, a lawyer who specializes in superyachts, said the legal obligations to avoid “dirty money” fall on regulated professions rather than on designers and builders themselves.

“It is the designer’s bank and lawyers who are required to know the source of funds, but any company should be very careful because their bank might decide to stop acting for them if they don’t know the source of some money sloshing around in their bank account,” Mr. Ramlugon said.

Mr. Bannenberg said that “in real life, there is a limit to what we can do.”

He recalled being hired by a Moscow shipyard to do design work for a client whom he and Mr. Rowell met “once or twice including one memorably uncomfortable meeting” in a Majorca villa.

One sign that something was odd was that the meeting was held in what felt like a “safe room.” Mr. Bannenberg said that “a much bigger sign came three years later.”

“After the yacht had been delivered, Simon was a bit terrified to notice a newspaper photo of the client being led away in handcuffs by two Spanish police officers wearing balaclavas. He was allegedly the head of an organized crime gang. How could we know that?”

Mr. Rowell, 50, said that “once or twice” the firm has made its own inquiries and decided to stay away from a potential client, but a lot of these problems, especially white-collar crime, “only become obvious with hindsight.”

Doing More With More

The types of buyers and their demands keep changing. More than a decade of heavy spending by Russian and East European clients began drying up after the Russian annexation of Crimea — “we lost one job half an hour after that,” Mr. Bannenberg said — as Western sanctions on Russian oligarchs have continued to bite.

The rising number of billionaires in mainland China has not yet translated into new buyers, and Mr. Bannenberg believes the Chinese face political and cultural restraints “on being so upfront with your wealth.”

More promisingly, there has recently been a pickup in buying from the United States, Mr. Bannenberg said, “because America still has the most high-net-worth individuals.”

The Trump tax cuts have fueled demand for superyachts, according to industry analysts, and shipyard order books are solid. Notably, this is despite recent softness in top-end sales of art, cars and real estate, amid broader fears of an economic slowdown.

Research by the Superyacht Group shows that after peaking in 2008 and then slumping after the financial crisis, the production of luxury yachts has been stable in recent years, with an annual output close to 150 new vessels.

While Americans remain the biggest buyers, the United States’ own yacht output has shrunk, with the global industry consolidating into fewer shipyards. The Italians now make the most vessels, and Dutch and German builders dominate the top of the market.

The most striking change in the industry is a shift in what the boats are actually for, as a new generation of owners want to do more than show off while anchored off Sardinia.

“The clients that approach us nowadays don’t really want a floating palace,” Mr. Rowell said. “They want a boat they are going to live on and even work on, and use for more than two weeks a year.”

The Microsoft billionaire Paul Allen, who died in 2018, is often cited as an example of a more active owner, as he used his yachts for ocean research and roaming the world.

A 600-foot-long monster called REV that emerged from a Romanian shipyard in August took that trend even further: Its Norwegian owner had it designed to double as a marine research vessel capable of supporting 60 scientists. The world’s largest yacht , REV (short for Research Expedition Vessel) can sail around the world without refueling.

“Owners today do realize that these are extraordinary bits of equipment that can go to pretty exciting places that are really difficult to reach, and that changes the way you design the yacht,” Mr. Rowell said. Modern owners sail everywhere from the Northwest Passage to Antarctica.

There is “still a minority of attention seekers, status seekers, whatever you want to call them, who really are happy sitting off St.-Tropez and Cala di Volpe and the Amalfi Coast,” Mr. Bannenberg noted.

There is a movement, he said, “towards a much greater sense of connection between the yacht and the immediate sea, by which I mean swim platforms, ‘beach clubs,’ folding terraces and hull doors that open up to the sea.”

A growing sense of environmental issues is also having an impact, Mr. Bannenberg said. “There are a few yacht-based movements and marine foundations, which are sometimes labeled as a yacht-owner’s guilt trip, that are part of the whole environmental conversation going on at the moment,” he added.

“It all adds up to a much bigger desire to actually interact with the ocean rather than sitting in a glitzy apartment that happens to be floating.”

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David Koch, billionaire and industrialist who funded conservatives, dies at 79

David Koch, the industrialist and libertarian who used his fortune to transform American politics while also donating more than $1 billion to philanthropic causes, has died. He was 79.

The death was confirmed by Koch spokeswoman Cristyne Nicholas.

Koch, whose net worth of about $59 billion in the Bloomberg Billionaires Index tied him with his brother as the world’s seventh-richest person, derived most of his wealth from a 42% stake in Wichita, Kansas-based Koch Industries, which has annual revenue of about $110 billion. It is one of the nation’s largest closely held companies, and its spectacular growth included the 2005 acquisition of Georgia Pacific for $21 billion.

A resident of New York’s Upper East Side and the city’s richest person, Koch once joked that Koch Industries was “the biggest company you’ve never heard of.” The conglomerate has interests ranging from oil and ranching to farming and the manufacturing of electrical components.

But he and Charles Koch, 83, became better known for pushing their views than their business acumen, pumping millions into conservative causes and candidates. The operation they built includes more than 700 donors who give $100,000 or more a year and a group called Americans for Prosperity that has chapters in 35 states. It’s rivaled only by the Republican Party in its influence on the conservative agenda in the U.S.

The Koch brothers and other wealthy donors were able to expand their influence on elections following the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United decision that paved the way for unbridled spending, both directly and indirectly, by outside groups.

“David Koch’s imprint on the American political scene will endure long into the future,” said Daniel Schulman, who wrote “Sons of Wichita: How the Koch Brothers Became America’s Most Powerful and Private Dynasty,” published in 2014. “The Kochs helped to give rise to the age of the megadonor, an era of unprecedented political spending in which wealthy individuals, as well as corporations, can influence politics as never before. His political legacy is huge.”

Koch money incubated a generation of political figures, including Vice President Mike Pence, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, former Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt, Energy Secretary Rick Perry and Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker.

Yet all those men but Walker worked for President Donald Trump, who has upended the free-market views the Kochs have tried to foster within the Republican Party. That has prompted clashes with Trump, especially on trade and immigration policy.

The brothers didn’t support Trump in his 2016 campaign, although they praised his efforts to cut taxes and regulations.

Koch was the vice presidential candidate for the Libertarian Party in 1980. But as his health failed, he became less prominent in the Koch political operation. Charles Koch has served as the philosophical and hands-on leader, while David was chairman of the foundation that oversees AFP, their flagship political organ.

In June 2018, Charles Koch told company employees that his brother would step down from the business and political empires because of health problems. Charles Koch’s letter didn’t provide details, although he noted that David Koch had announced in October 2016 that he’d been hospitalized the previous summer.

“Unfortunately, these issues have not been resolved and his health has continued to deteriorate,” the letter said.

Koch was diagnosed with prostate cancer more than two decades ago. Through personal donations and contributions from the David H. Koch Foundation, he pledged or contributed more than $1 billion to cancer research, medical centers, educational institutions, arts and cultural institutions, and to assist public-policy organizations, according to his official biography.

“A lot of billionaires make their contribution and their name is on the board of directors, but they have no intention of showing up to the meetings,” said New York philanthropist Adrienne Arsht. “He came to meetings. He was always hands on.”

Arsht said David Koch never acted like Manhattan’s wealthiest person.

“He was most understated,” she said. “There was nothing about anything that he did that made you think he was anything but a man from Kansas.”

But the Koch brothers played a massive role in politics, helping shape state and federal policy.

“By lavishly underwriting candidates, policy organizations, and advocacy groups — often through untraceable donations — they have pulled American politics toward their own arch-conservative, pro-business, anti-tax, and anti-regulatory agenda,” Jane Mayer, who has covered the Koch brothers for the New Yorker, wrote in June 2018.

The brothers were credited with helping underwrite the limited-government tea party movement that helped Republicans take control of Congress in 2010. “They helped to unleash a political insurgency that in turn set the stage for our present state of extreme polarization, an outcome I don’t think they expected or desired,” Schulman said.

The brothers favored ending the minimum wage, eliminating so-called “corporate welfare” for new factories and stadiums and backed union-weakening laws. While their efforts got the most attention in Washington, AFP’s nearly nationwide on-the-ground presence meant their influence was felt in state and local matters that included fights against gas-tax increases and referendums on local projects.

Organizations that the brothers help found or fund, such as the Heritage Foundation, the Cato institute, and the Manhattan Institute, have supported some of their ideas through studies and media interviews given by resident scholars.

Characterizing himself as a social liberal, David Koch was pro-abortion rights when it came to abortion and supportive of same-sex marriage and stem-cell research. Further confounding liberal critics, the brothers supported efforts to free nonviolent prisoners and overhaul sentencing, changes they argued would reduce recidivism, save taxpayers money and remove barriers to opportunity.

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“He believed he had a responsibility to a world that had given him so many opportunities to succeed,” his family said in a statement Friday. “David’s philanthropic dedication to education, the arts and cancer research will have a lasting impact on innumerable lives.”

He opposed the Affordable Care Act and was skeptical about the need for government to deal with global warming, giving money to groups that raised questions about the scientific consensus that climate change is occurring. In 2011, David Koch called then-President Barack Obama “the most radical president we’ve ever had as a nation,” pointing to damage he thought Obama had done to the free-enterprise system.

“David was smart, really smart,” said Frayda Levin, a Koch network donor and former New Jersey book distributor who served with him on the board of Americans for Prosperity. “He could hone in on any issue and ask insightful questions.”

David Hamilton Koch, whose grandfather was a Dutch immigrant, was born on May 3, 1940, in Wichita to Fred and Mary Robinson Koch. Their father, after helping Soviet dictator Josef Stalin develop oil-refining plants, became an early supporter of the anti-communist John Birch Society. That group was often in conflict with the movement conservatism that fueled the rise of figures like former President Richard Nixon, so the family’s politics have long been an uneasy fit in the Republican Party’s mainstream.

David and his twin brother, William, were the youngest of four siblings. David and Charles successfully fought Fred and William in court for control of the company.

David Koch attended Deerfield Academy in Massachusetts. He went on to study engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, earning a bachelor’s degree in 1962 and a master’s a year later. Koch, who was 6-foot-5, averaged 21 points per game on MIT’s basketball team and held the single-game scoring record of 41 points that stood for 46 years, according to his official biography. He also played for the Boston Rugby Football Club.

Koch worked initially as a consultant and engineer for firms such as Arthur D. Little before joining the family business in 1970. Charles had taken over following the death of their father three years before.

The company then was an oil-refining business worth about $70 million. The brothers turned it into an industrial behemoth with interests in oil refining, pipelines, commodities trading, ranching and paper and pulp products that include brands such as Dixie cups and Brawny paper towels.

While Charles ran Koch Industries from Wichita, David opened the company’s New York office in 1970, rising to executive vice president as his brother reigned as chairman and chief executive officer.

Using his New York base, David lavished money on museums and arts institutions such as the $100 million he gave to the New York State Theater at Lincoln Center, which was renamed the David H. Koch Theater.

He also supported medical research, especially after he survived a USAir accident in 1991 at Los Angeles International Airport. Shortly afterward, he discovered he had prostate cancer, a disease that afflicted his brothers.

“When you’re the only one who survived in the front of the plane and everyone else died — yeah, you think, ‘My God, the good Lord spared me for some greater purpose,” he told portfolio.com.

The David H. Koch Charitable Foundation gave $150 million to the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center to build a state-of-the-art outpatient medical facility, the largest single gift the institution had then received. He gave $100 million to MIT to create the David H. Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research.

In 1996, at age 56, he married the former Julia Flesher, a former assistant to designer Adolfo. They had three children: David Jr., Mary and John.

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Lunch with the FT: Charles Koch

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Stephen Foley

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Eleven o’clock is not my definition of lunchtime but that is when Charles Koch makes his daily descent to Café Koch, the staff canteen in the headquarters of his multi-billion-dollar industrial empire in Wichita, Kansas, so that is when I find myself queueing up for a square polystyrene box containing one of the day’s specials.

Koch may run the second-largest private company in the US, with interests spanning oil refining, chemicals, electronics and consumer products, and have used his $43bn fortune to become one of the most potent power-brokers in the Republican party , but he is not one for long, lavish lunches. “I don’t ever go out,” he says, explaining how his routine has been designed with maximum efficiency in mind, something that has been even more important recently because the 80-year-old is recovering from foot surgery that has made getting around more time-consuming.

We had been chatting amiably in the elevator down from his office about his wife’s “Nurse Ratched” attitude to helping him in and out of the shower with his foot in a cast when, suddenly, on hitting the canteen, he was off, speeding to the counter at a rate quite startling for a man using a walking frame.

“It gets real crowded and I don’t like to waste a minute,” he says, when we are back in sync. “I’ve got a lot to do, so I come down right at the start. Either there’s no line, or I will go to the least occupied line. That’s how I am about everything. For example, it takes me eight minutes to get to work and I play books on tape in those eight minutes because there’s so much to learn and so little time. So, you see what a nerd I am.”

“Nerd” may not be a word that springs to many people’s minds when they think of Charles Koch. There’s nothing threatening about a nerd. Not that there is anything obviously threatening about a grandfather in Midwestern business-casual, sitting down to eat a pulled-pork sandwich out of a box. But this is the point. Koch would like us to get to know him. Or, more accurately, he has been persuaded that staying silent is counterproductive both politically and, increasingly, for his business.

Koch Industries is a corporation with $115bn in annual revenues built on the back of transporting and refining crude oil, and its drive to limit environmental regulation and disrupt policies aimed at dealing with global warming is widely seen as self-serving. Koch’s absolutist free-market ideology runs deep, however: he insists he is just as opposed to “corporate welfare” for Koch Industries as he is for others.

At his annual performance review — everyone at the company gets a grilling to discuss how much value they have created; the boss included — Koch agreed that he ought to be more public. “I was told I needed to get out and present who we are and what we stand for,” he says.

“We’re being attacked every day by blogs, other newspapers, media, people in government, and they were totally perverting what we do and why we do it. We have had other people answering it,” he says of the criticism, “but I’m the evil guy, so I need to come out and show who I am, like it or not.”

“Café Koch was rated in the top 10 restaurants in Wichita, by the Wichita Business Journal. I’m not kidding,” Koch declares as we sit down.

Indeed, he is not. The reviewer gushed that locals should suck up to any Koch Industries employees they know and beg for an invite. Not that it is very easy to gain access: the Koch Industries campus has just installed security gates for fear of protesters or worse; and visitors must now scan an emailed QR code to gain entry. Koch himself says he has received death threats. He adds that the criticism “goes with the territory”.

We’re being attacked every day by blogs, media, people in government, and they were totally perverting what we do and why we do it

While Charles and his younger sibling, David, feature as boo-hiss villains in Democratic candidate speeches, their activities concern those of all political hues who fear the unchecked power of private wealth to influence the US electoral system. The Koch brothers have pushed for and used new freedoms such as those opened up by the 2010 Citizens United Supreme Court decision, which removed limits on corporate political spending, to fundraise at large scale and in relative obscurity. Their network of organisations — a panoply of think tanks, campaign groups, voter registration and opposition research arms as well as political action committees — employs 1,200 people in 107 offices nationwide, about three and a half times the current staff of the Republican National Committee, according to an analysis by the politics news outlet Politico.

Koch’s staff have told him they expect to marshal close to $900m from conservative donors. The money will be spent trying to influence this year’s elections in favour of rightwing ideas; around a third of it on directly funding political campaigns against Democratic candidates.

With the field crowded and voting still a way off, Koch has declined several times to endorse a Republican primary candidate or even to provide much of a commentary on the race. But with a certain other billionaire businessman riding high in the polls, it is impossible to skirt the issue of The Donald.

I ask about the rhetorical turn the race has taken when it comes to dealing with Islamist terror, and about Trump’s assertion that the US could require all Muslims in the country to register with the government.

“Well, then you destroy our free society,” Koch says of the idea. “Who is it that said, ‘If you want to defend your liberty, the first thing you’ve got to do is defend the liberty of people you like the least’?”

He then expounds on the war on terror. “We have been doing this for a dozen years. We invaded Afghanistan. We invaded Iraq. Has that made us safer? Has that made the world safer? It seems like we’re more worried about it now than we were then, so we need to examine these strategies.”

It’s a view that also contrasts with that of another Republican frontrunner; Ted Cruz’s plan to carpet-bomb Isis strongholds is anathema to Koch. “I’ve studied revolutionaries a lot,” he says. “Mao said that the people are the sea in which the revolutionary swims. Not that we don’t need to defend ourselves and have better intelligence and all that, but how do we create an unfriendly sea for the terrorists in the Muslim communities? We haven’t done a good job of that.” With about 1.6bn Muslims worldwide “in country after country. What,” he asks, “are we going to do: go bomb each one of them?”

These particular views could almost have come from the mouth of Bernie Sanders, the socialist challenger to Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination and a regular basher of the Kochs.

Although Koch now calls himself a “classical liberal” — citing William Gladstone as a political hero for opposing Corn Law trade tariffs and political patronage in 19th-century Britain — today’s libertarian Republicans and leftish Democrats may find intriguing common causes. The Kochs have also financed efforts — to roll back harsh sentencing laws, reduce the US’s prison population (the highest in the world) and make it easier for felons to be reintegrated into society — more commonly associated with Democrats.

We dig into our food. I chose the tilapia over the catfish. Buried under a crust of mild spices, it may as well not be fish at all, but the whole is delicious. The accompanying broccoli is too mushy but the flavour has not been boiled away. The fries are cold and chewy. Koch describes his pulled-pork sandwich as “skimpy” but leaves his sweet potato fries almost untouched.

“Usually I have a little more but I need to stop eating as much because I can’t work out as much with a bad hoof here,” he says, pointing to his foot. “I still work out with my weights and then I do leg exercises, but I can’t put much weight on that. I have ankle weights so my legs don’t totally wither.”

Where the Kochs and the left are never likely to see eye to eye is on the environment. Over lunch, Koch positions himself not as a denier of climate change but rather as sceptical that it justifies drastic government intervention. “Over the past 135 years, the ground temperature has warmed — there’s some debate on this — around eight-tenths of a degree centigrade. In the atmosphere [the temperature change] has been slightly less, but not enough to argue much about. A big driver is most likely man-generated CO2, but what we see is that this increase is much less than has been projected. So, the indications are that the temperature isn’t as sensitive to increases in CO2 concentration as was thought. I don’t see the evidence that there’s an immediate catastrophe or even one in the future.”

The level of climate change, says Koch, does not justify penalising the use of cheap fossil fuels or subsidising alternative energy companies. Tax breaks and other incentives to use solar panels, he explains, cut the cost of energy for homeowners who can afford to install them, at the expense of higher bills for the rest.

“It’s the poor people subsidising the rich people, which is what happens with this corporate welfare everywhere.”

Through our conversation, there seems to be no issue to which smaller government, freer markets and unfettered competition is not the solution. “Our worst example in this country is the way we’ve treated Native Americans,” he says at one point. “A great portion of the property of the American Indians is held in trust by the Bureau of Indian Affairs. They are not allowed to control their own.” Citing the high rate of unemployment among Native Americans, he says, “This is what this whole philosophy of control and dependency does. How do you have a life of meaning? It’s hopeless. So, you’re, oh well, they’re a bunch of alcoholics.* Well, no kidding.”

Koch’s latest book, Good Profit , is partly an attempt to show that competition and markets can be applied within a company, too. Under Koch Industries’ “market-based management”, employees are graded on how much value they create, while central functions such as human resources and accounting must compete for business in an internal market. The book has an undercurrent of disappointment that underlings have so much trouble implementing the ideas in practice, and I sense the same frustration that the world at large has not been seized by the obvious rightness of laissez-faire capitalism.

Is Koch’s monomania hereditary? His father, Fred, became a virulent anti-communist after his experience building refineries in the Soviet Union in the early days of his business career. He saw conspiracies everywhere and raged against the “crucifixion” of Senator Joe McCarthy. Of his four sons, only David and Charles have worked to exert the influence he also dreamt of having on the political climate.

Their brothers have largely channelled their fortunes elsewhere: Freddie, the eldest, into the arts, and Bill into a victorious America’s Cup effort. The legal feud between the two pairs of brothers — following a 1983 deal to buy Bill and Freddie out of the company for $1.1bn — is one of the most epic in business history; it was settled finally in 2001 on undisclosed terms.

It is not clear that Charles Koch’s two children — Elizabeth, a writer and publisher in New York, and Chase, an executive in the agricultural arm of Koch Industries — have any interest in taking up a political mantle, despite his efforts to school them as children.

“On Sunday evenings after dinner we’d go back in my library and I’d play tapes about Aristotle or Maslow or Milton Friedman or Hayek,” he says. “I’d only play it for 10 minutes and then we’d discuss it. Elizabeth was on to this stuff even back then but Chase wasn’t. He’d fall asleep in the middle but then, in the discussion, he couldn’t get away with that. It’s amazing the amount they absorbed.”

The company was nearly torn apart in the feud over the distribution of Fred Koch’s wealth, but Charles and David prevailed in keeping it together and investing in growing it. He hints that a similar arrangement might be achieved, less fractiously, in the next generation.

“As interest in a business is passed down, and more and more people have ownership who aren’t directly committed to building the business but more interested in taking money out of it, then you get in this syndrome of killing the goose that laid the golden egg. When my father died we could have liquidated and . . . no one would have a fraction of a thousandth of what they have today.

“If we had a thousand prominent stockholders, then it would be different,” he goes on, warming to his theme. “We’d have a problem. You need a way to keep narrowing that down and so we’ve done it in this next generation. It’s going to be up to them what they do for the next, so I can’t guarantee that. We have two little grandsons but I don’t know what they’ll be like. I think they’ll probably be wonderful, but I can’t guarantee it.”

Café Koch — brightly lit, spacious and boasting a huge TV wall at one end showing a half-dozen different news channels — is filling up as we come to the end of our meal. Partly because of the palaver involved in getting back in line, I make no suggestion of pudding and neither does Koch. He usually skips dessert anyway, he says, indulging instead with a chocolate bar later, after dinner.

An employee is summoned to help him back up to his office but, before we get up to go, I ask again about politics. He says he is “disappointed” by the current crop of Republican presidential candidates, and resigned to having to support one with whom he agrees on only some issues. “It is hard for me to get a high level of enthusiasm because the things I’m passionate about and I think this country urgently needs aren’t being addressed.”

The Kochs’ political machine has presented all the candidates with a list of issues it wants on the agenda but, says Koch, “it doesn’t seem to faze them much. You’d think we could have more influence.”

So does the man that the left believes has too much influence in politics believe he in fact has too little? “I’m pleased that I can still speak and I’m pleased that it isn’t worse,” he says. “They haven’t nationalised all the industries like happened in the UK when the Fabians took over.”

I ask him to put his businessman’s hat on and to tell me whether he thinks his political spending is generating a positive return on investment. “I’m not confident,” he says. “I’d say there are some benefits. Ask me in 10 years.”

Stephen Foley is the FT’s US investment correspondent

Illustration by James Ferguson

* In a comment about alcoholism among Native Americans, Mr Koch was referring to the views of others rather than his own. The quote has been amended.

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Exiled russian oligarch’s 257’ superyacht amaryllis seen towed through palm beach.

The Amaryllis being towed past the former mansion of Henry Flagler, built in 1902

By John Jannarone and Alan Hatfield

The 257’ superyacht Amaryllis apparently owned by exiled Russian oligarch Andrey Borodin was towed past Palm Beach, FL on Friday morning, according to a visual account by CorpGov .

The yacht, whose owner is frequently cited as Mr. Borodin by enthusiast publications, moved slowly through the Lake Worth lagoon where bridges were raised for its passage. A towboat with flashing lights about 150 feet ahead pulled the Amaryllis , built by German shipyard Abeking & Rasmussen in 2011.

While CorpGov could not officially confirm Mr. Borodin as the owner of the vessel, his wife, socialite Tatiana Korsakova, has posted dozens of Instagram photos and videos aboard the Amaryllis. A yacht broker interviewed by CorpGov confirmed that Ms. Korsakova is indeed aboard the Amaryllis in the photos and videos.

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Tatiana Korsakova (@tati_vk)

The sighting comes as billions of dollars in Russian-owned yachts have been seized around the world as a result of international sanctions. CNN has published an extensive list of seized vessels, which were taken in harbor cities including Mallorca, Spain and London.

However, it is unclear if the Amaryllis was being seized or voluntarily towed. Very large yachts often choose to be towed because bridges are required to raise for them, according to the yacht broker.

The former Bank of Moscow chief was granted political asylum in the UK in February 2013 after fleeing what he alleged to be politically-motivated fraud and embezzlement charges. Mr. Borodin would go on to be tried and convicted in abstentia in Russian Court in 2018, but not before managing to enlist a number of prominent American lawmakers to lobby Washington for a U.S. visa. Despite Russian extradition requests to the UK government, Borodin’s controversial attempts to make large donations to the NHS, and the uncovering of an assassination plot against his life, the fugitive banker remains overseas, having been granted access to his Swiss bank accounts and having made several notable London real estate purchases during his time in exile.

Mr. Borodin is widely listed as a billionaire, but his total wealth remains difficult to confirm accurately, with the governments of Switzerland and the Bahamas having been asked to help the Russian government in its legal case. In 2012, Borodin purchased the UK’s then-most expensive home, an 80-hectare 18th-century estate in Oxfordshire, for upwards of $217 million. In 2017 he was granted access to personal Swiss accounts holding a reported $378 million. The Amaryllis was purchased for a reported $120 million.

Mr. Borodin did not immediately respond to an emailed query from CorpGov , while the FBI declined to comment. An emailed query to The Department of Homeland Security was not returned.

www.CorpGov.com

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Twitter: CorpGovernor