Speaker 1: What's murdering my chickens. I'm Robert Evans hosted Behind the Bassards,
Speaker 1: the show where we tell you everything you don't know
Speaker 1: about the worst people in all of history. And I
Speaker 1: was just talking about Zanku Chicken in Los Angeles, which
Speaker 1: has a dark past, with our guest today, a comedian
Speaker 1: and director, the Los Angeles based Sarah June. Hello, thank
Speaker 1: you for having me. Thank you for not attack Amy
Speaker 1: over that pretty bad introduction. That's not one of my
Speaker 1: best ones, have you. Oh yeah, that's nice to hear. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know you're not the worst. Is that good? That's
Speaker 1: my thing? Yeah, that's my goal. This is leaving dark podcast,
Speaker 1: so I feel like I can be very gray with
Speaker 1: my compliments. Hey, that wasn't terrible. You're not the worst? Well,
Speaker 1: I mean as a person, that's always my goal when
Speaker 1: I like leave a social interaction is that everyone agree, well,
Speaker 1: that's not the worst person. Yeah ever talk to Yeah,
Speaker 1: so hey, man, shoot for the moon even if you miss. Yeah,
Speaker 1: hopefully people won't hate you and talk about how much
Speaker 1: they hate you right after you leave. That's definitely not
Speaker 1: happening because no one does that. To Neil Armstrong, who
Speaker 1: did shoot for the Moon. I don't know that guy
Speaker 1: did a lot of bad stuff. I think Neil Armstrong.
Speaker 1: Uh no, I'm thinking of buzz Alder. Okay, let's just
Speaker 1: leave that at that. I'll just I'll tease that about
Speaker 1: I'll tease that about Neil Armstrong. Time's up, Neil Armstrong,
Speaker 1: no further comment. Yeah, yeah, we will slander an astronaut
Speaker 1: and then just move right on without explaining it. I
Speaker 1: like this idea. Yeah, beautiful, perfect, that's right, you're on blast.
Speaker 1: I had a friend talk to me like a year ago.
Speaker 1: I was like, oh, I'm going to put you on
Speaker 1: a show with this guy. And he's like, oh, that
Speaker 1: guy And I was like, yeah, what's up with him?
Speaker 1: He's like, oh, that guy sucks. And I was like,
Speaker 1: oh my god, what are you talking about. Who did
Speaker 1: he hurt? And he was like no, I just mean
Speaker 1: like he's like really awkward and not funny. I was like,
Speaker 1: you can't in this environment, you can't just say oh,
Speaker 1: that guy sucks and expect me to not assume that
Speaker 1: means he raped one of your friends. Yeah. I had this,
Speaker 1: not this specific. When somebody's just annoying, just be like, oh,
Speaker 1: that guy's really annoying. Don't be like, oh, that guy sucks,
Speaker 1: because I think it's something much worse. Yeah. I had
Speaker 1: a year's long running joke about hating Will Wheaton and
Speaker 1: would make cryptic comments about how terrible he is and
Speaker 1: the awful things he's done. And it was just like
Speaker 1: a joke because he just seemed like the most harmless,
Speaker 1: possible like person to make fun of. Yeah, and then
Speaker 1: but then times being like, what do you know about
Speaker 1: Will Wheaton? Did he attack somebody? I was like, oh, no,
Speaker 1: this is not I didn't want to. Yeah, you can't
Speaker 1: do that anymore. Yeah, but then he wound up kind
Speaker 1: of defending a guy who did do a bunch of
Speaker 1: fucked up shits. So there you go along. Yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: a hero. Is he speaking of heroes? No, we are
Speaker 1: talking about a fella named Napoleon Hill. Have you ever
Speaker 1: heard of Napoleon Hill? No? Have you ever heard of
Speaker 1: a book called Think and Grow Rich? Oh? Yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: there we go. Everybody's seen. Everybody listening to this. If
Speaker 1: you don't have a copy of the book, you have
Speaker 1: a friend er family member who has this somewhere on
Speaker 1: their bookshelf. It's like secret. Yeah, it's very very much
Speaker 1: proto this secret. This is my problem with Mary and
Speaker 1: Williamson is like she's funny and all, and she talks
Speaker 1: about governing with love and all. But then like I
Speaker 1: read her book and it's kind of thinking grow rich. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And that's what part of why I want to talk
Speaker 1: about thinking Grow Rich today because Napoleon Hills sort of
Speaker 1: founded the the He wasn't like the first self help author.
Speaker 1: He wasn't like the first business advice author, but he
Speaker 1: was the first guy to kind of, in a modern sense,
Speaker 1: do this sort of quasi almost spiritual approach to like
Speaker 1: business and personal like life advice, where like you're mixing
Speaker 1: in success advice on like how to run a company
Speaker 1: with like weird metaphysical theories. Like he was the guy
Speaker 1: who invented that. Yeah yeah, yeah. He was the one
Speaker 1: who brought you know, the the idea of the law
Speaker 1: of attraction to Wall Street. Yeah yeah, and yeah, that's
Speaker 1: the guy that we're talking about today. But before we
Speaker 1: get into him in his life, I want to talk
Speaker 1: a little bit about the New Thought movement. Now, whether
Speaker 1: or not you've heard of it, the New Thought movement
Speaker 1: has had a big impact on your world. The central
Speaker 1: idea of the movement was that your thoughts and your
Speaker 1: affirmations can materially alter the nature of reality. That's megic.
Speaker 1: It's magic. It's magic, but it's magic for people who
Speaker 1: like who want like, yeah, because they're Christian or whatever,
Speaker 1: they just like, don't they see weird? Yeah, or they're
Speaker 1: atheists and they want to like come up with a
Speaker 1: scientific justification, Like new Thought contains multitudes. There's Christian chunks
Speaker 1: of it, there's atheists chunks of it. The secret you
Speaker 1: can Christian chunks are trying so hard. The Christian chunks
Speaker 1: are trying so hard to not be considered witchcraft. It's
Speaker 1: pretty funny. Yeah, I I I. One of my favorite
Speaker 1: things is like people who are like hardcore fundamentalist Christian
Speaker 1: and hate witchcraft but also talk the same way that
Speaker 1: my friends who are into Alister Crowley do about certain things.
Speaker 1: Like Alex Jones was just talking about on info Wars
Speaker 1: how Donald Trump's fourth of July speech was a ritual
Speaker 1: ritual magic. But he said he like he had to
Speaker 1: emphasize it's Christian ritual magic. But like he's still talking
Speaker 1: about like it's just so baddy, but this is this
Speaker 1: is this is less baddie than that, which is the
Speaker 1: point of it is that it's supposed to be. They're
Speaker 1: supposed to be arguing that like this isn't magic. This
Speaker 1: is just like like part of how the physical world works, right,
Speaker 1: it's but create reality magic for sad nerds. So the
Speaker 1: Secret would be one example of a modern day descendant
Speaker 1: of then Thought movement that's sort of on the more secular,
Speaker 1: not necessarily atheistic, but certainly secular Oprah side of things.
Speaker 1: The Secrets meant for anybody. Yes, Now, Prosperity Gospel Christianity
Speaker 1: would be in another descendant of the New Thought movie Wow,
Speaker 1: one of my favorite things in the world. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: Like it's absolutely abhorrent if you haven't lived in the
Speaker 1: Deep South or watched that one John Oliver special. Prosperity
Speaker 1: Gospel Christians are the folks who essentially will like get
Speaker 1: on their TV stations and beg little old ladies to
Speaker 1: take on credit card debt in order to make thousands
Speaker 1: dollar of dollars in donations to their church. Then they'll
Speaker 1: use those donations to buy like fancy private jets and
Speaker 1: mansions and stuff. And the claim that they make to
Speaker 1: these people they're fleecing out of money. Is that God
Speaker 1: needs them to show their faith by making a seed
Speaker 1: donation that will magically cause God to bless them with
Speaker 1: even more money. So the prosperity gospel is another descendant
Speaker 1: of the New Thought movement, and by it's more widespread
Speaker 1: than you'd guess. By some count seventeen percent. You're just selling,
Speaker 1: selling God's love. You're like, you got to invest in
Speaker 1: godspel right now, this is gonna climb, trust me, babe.
Speaker 1: This is going to sky rocket. You're going to be
Speaker 1: rolling in money and it's clean because it's all from God.
Speaker 1: Because it's all from God. Baby. Yeah. The term that
Speaker 1: they use a lot is prove God with your donation,
Speaker 1: which is like, seems like it should be blasphemous. Yeah. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm not a Christian, but that seems blasphemous
Speaker 1: to me. Yeah. There's a lot of stuff in the
Speaker 1: Bible about money, and most of the stuff that Jesus
Speaker 1: said is kind of contrary to a lot of the
Speaker 1: other stuff, which is a lot of like rules about
Speaker 1: debt and borrowing and you know what's allowed and not
Speaker 1: allowed and what you have to do to your debt. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that interest is an abomination. Yeah, yeah, I remember him
Speaker 1: beating the shit out of bankers. Yeah, there's a lot
Speaker 1: of that. I remember. If I'm not mistaken, that's the
Speaker 1: only time Jesus beats somebody with a whisp. It was
Speaker 1: real pissed. Yeah. Anyway, So, but the prosperity Gospel Christianity
Speaker 1: is and very ripe for parody, but it's also really popular,
Speaker 1: and it's also incredibly destructive. Yeah, yeah, very destructive and
Speaker 1: very popular. About seventeen percent of all American Christians adhere
Speaker 1: to prosperity theology in some form or another. Wow. Roughly
Speaker 1: one million Americans attend prosperity Gospel preaching churches every single Sunday.
Speaker 1: So this is a sizable movement. There's a lot more
Speaker 1: to say about this stuff, and our current president ties
Speaker 1: into it. But before we get to Napoleon Hill and
Speaker 1: his role in all of this, I want to keep
Speaker 1: on this track for a little bit. So the New
Speaker 1: Thought movement sprang up in the late eighteen hundreds, and
Speaker 1: the name new Thought embodied the belief that, of course,
Speaker 1: thoughts could create reality without the need for prayer or worship.
Speaker 1: The founder of the movement was a Portland, Maine clockmaker
Speaker 1: named Phineas Parkhurst Quimby, which is a great name for
Speaker 1: a guy who founds a weird cult style and make clocks.
Speaker 1: Let's not forget anything. Guy who lived in Maine and
Speaker 1: makes clocks. I already don't trust him. I feel like
Speaker 1: they hand you a clockmaker kit as soon as you
Speaker 1: come out of the womb named Phineas, Like, here's your
Speaker 1: fucking clock. Can't get used to it. Yeah. He focused
Speaker 1: like his teachings focused on like curing illnesses with positive thinking,
Speaker 1: and Phineas theorized that disease could be banished by the
Speaker 1: redirection of thoughts. One of his students was a woman
Speaker 1: named Mary Baker Eddie, who went on to found the
Speaker 1: Christian Science religious tradition Christian Scientists. Yeah exactly. These are
Speaker 1: the folks who like, will let their kids die because
Speaker 1: they try to treat lymphoma or whatever with prayers. They
Speaker 1: don't believe indice. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. I've got a
Speaker 1: lot of I've had a lot of information on the
Speaker 1: New Thought movement and a very solid write up by
Speaker 1: a website called The Conversation, who does some pretty good
Speaker 1: stuff having conversations. Yeah, I love conversations too. Well this, yeah.
Speaker 1: H Their article notes that by the eighteen nineties, new
Speaker 1: thought had morphed away from healing disease and onto helping
Speaker 1: people achieve success through positive thinking. So the starts as
Speaker 1: a guy being like, we're going to redirect people's thoughts
Speaker 1: to make them healthier, and then over the course of
Speaker 1: a couple of decades it turns into like, positive thoughts
Speaker 1: make money. Well, what could be healthier than being super rich? Yeah,
Speaker 1: it is. Statistically the healthiest thing for you is being
Speaker 1: rich as shit. So that article quotes historian Beryl Satter's
Speaker 1: explanation for the reasoning of the thought of New Thought believers. Quote,
Speaker 1: since human thought had creative power, negative thoughts materialized in
Speaker 1: negative situations, while spiritual thoughts could form a positive reality.
Speaker 1: So you can see how that could be a harmless
Speaker 1: thing for just like, I don't know, you're the lady
Speaker 1: who lived like one of your friend's moms growing up,
Speaker 1: who was always into like weird books about self help, Like,
Speaker 1: you could see how it could be harmless, but you
Speaker 1: could also see how those beliefs could lead to kind
Speaker 1: of toxic attitudes towards the poor. Yeah. Yeah, because if
Speaker 1: you just have to think yourself into a better situation.
Speaker 1: Then you're kind of blaming people who are poor and
Speaker 1: sick on their sickness and their poverty. Yeah, it's just
Speaker 1: because they didn't vibe high enough. And it removes all
Speaker 1: of societal organization as a factor for why someone might
Speaker 1: be poor, you know, or just you know. It removes
Speaker 1: the idea that that social class is like not entirely
Speaker 1: your choice, which is kind of I thought that was
Speaker 1: the whole point of class, was that you didn't really
Speaker 1: get a choice, you know, and if you wanted to jump,
Speaker 1: it was gonna be like almost impossible. But they were like, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: poor people, they're just not thinking enough about money. They
Speaker 1: don't want it really. Yeah, they don't want it really,
Speaker 1: and that's why they're poor. And it's no coincidence that
Speaker 1: the New Thought movement, this shift in the New Thought
Speaker 1: movement towards this sort of more toxic attitude happened in
Speaker 1: the Gilded Age, which which is the previous period in
Speaker 1: American history that's most like our current period in American history.
Speaker 1: I'm going to quote again from that Conversation article, quote
Speaker 1: a book that illustrates the New Thought movement shift towards
Speaker 1: individual prosperity is Ralph Waldo Trene's In Tune with the Infinite.
Speaker 1: A popular writer and lecturer, Trene taught that one's ability
Speaker 1: to channel positive thoughts would lead to success. Published in
Speaker 1: eighteen ninety seven, the book sold millions of copies and
Speaker 1: gained Tren a wide following, including from the automobile industrialist
Speaker 1: Henry Ford. So. Trene was one of the first people
Speaker 1: to really push the idea that happiness was the product
Speaker 1: of positive thinking, not brain chemistry or your physical circumstances.
Speaker 1: He wrote in his book quote, if one holds themselves
Speaker 1: in the thought of poverty, they will be poor, and
Speaker 1: the chances are that they will remain in poverty. If
Speaker 1: one holds themselves, whatever present conditions may be, continually in
Speaker 1: the thought of prosperity, they set into operation forces that
Speaker 1: will sooner or later bring them into prosperous conditions. Hmm, yeah,
Speaker 1: hold on, I'm thinking really hard about everyone femoing me
Speaker 1: six dollars. I'm thinking about yeah, yeah, how bad I
Speaker 1: want to manifest so hard? Yeah, I gotta check my vemo.
Speaker 1: I'll check it at the end of the episode June
Speaker 1: ye venmo mey six dollars. If you believe in the secret. Yeah,
Speaker 1: your seed donations to Sarah June will be uh will
Speaker 1: be given back in kind by the gods. Yeah. The
Speaker 1: seed donations that you give to me will manifest in
Speaker 1: my purchase of weed. Uh and and that is how
Speaker 1: your your investment will blossom. Here. In fact, me getting
Speaker 1: high is in a way a proof of God through
Speaker 1: your donation. So prove God by donating Caronjuana money to
Speaker 1: Sarah June. Yeah. So yeah, I think it's time now
Speaker 1: to uh to get into our main subject for today.
Speaker 1: I just thought some of that background would be would
Speaker 1: be you very helpful? So. Oliver Napoleon Hill was born
Speaker 1: in eighteen eighty three, the son of an unlicensed dentist
Speaker 1: slash moonshiner and a woman named Sarah, who I'm sure
Speaker 1: was quite nice dentist slash moonshiner. What a cool dad. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a fucking great dad. You're pulling out teeth drunk
Speaker 1: as fuck, just like making white light. You know. He
Speaker 1: had a bunch of like bottles of like pure ethanol
Speaker 1: that he kept teeth in just a crazy lab in
Speaker 1: the shed, just preserving all kinds of gums. No wonder
Speaker 1: his I'm a big fan of like like efficient synergy.
Speaker 1: You know, totally researching this podcast, but listen to an
Speaker 1: audiobook on a run or whatever. Wow, And I love
Speaker 1: the efficient synergy of both ripping teeth out of people's
Speaker 1: heads and making the moonshine. You need to sterilize them
Speaker 1: and cut and work as a painkiller. Like yeah, dude,
Speaker 1: I mean he sounds like he would get you super
Speaker 1: fucked up and then oh you blacked out. He would
Speaker 1: pull your teeth, which you know, what a great guy. Yeah, No,
Speaker 1: they have to pour you home from fucking the doctor Hill,
Speaker 1: the safe doctor dentist. No, no, but they did. Okay,
Speaker 1: they were you know, I don't know if you'd even
Speaker 1: call him middle class, but they weren't impoverished. They grew
Speaker 1: up in rural Virginia at Wise County as a child,
Speaker 1: all over family count Wise. Ah, but it was a
Speaker 1: pretty white county, I think. Yeah, I mean, I'm just
Speaker 1: gonna guess, but I am talking out of my ass there.
Speaker 1: As a child, his family called him nap Years later,
Speaker 1: Napoleon would write that his family represented three generations of quote, ignorance, illiteracy,
Speaker 1: and poverty, but The New York Times notes that this
Speaker 1: was probably not the case. Quote. In fact, his grandfather
Speaker 1: was a printer. His father became a self taught dentist
Speaker 1: and treated his neighbors until the state licensing authorities got
Speaker 1: wind of his activity a self taught dentist, and he
Speaker 1: got down for doing it. But then he went to
Speaker 1: dental school at age forty and practiced legally. Wow, he
Speaker 1: was like, I'm going straight, Yeah, I'm going straight to
Speaker 1: the dentist. Did he still illegally make moonshine even after
Speaker 1: becoming Oh he must have. You know, you don't stop
Speaker 1: making moonshine. That's just the hot that's a calling. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Speaking of divine in the world, Yeah, I would consider
Speaker 1: the concept of moonshine to be proof of divine intervention. Yeah. Now,
Speaker 1: Napoleon's mom died when he was nine years old, and
Speaker 1: his father remarried the next year to a woman named Martha,
Speaker 1: who was the widow of a school principal and seemed
Speaker 1: determined to push her new son towards a life of
Speaker 1: the mind. See as a kid, I'll show you that
Speaker 1: I had a reputation for wildness. What's that? No, go ahead.
Speaker 1: Napoleon had a reputation for wildness. He loved hiking around
Speaker 1: the woods in the middle of nowhere and Virginia with
Speaker 1: a handgun, firing at whatever he saw. Now, he was
Speaker 1: twelve at the time when he was doing this, so like,
Speaker 1: that's twelve years Napoleon wandering around the woods with a handgun,
Speaker 1: shooting stuff all the time. It sounds like so yeah,
Speaker 1: that sounds like that sounds like Virginia. So Miss Martha
Speaker 1: comes into the picture as his step mom, and she
Speaker 1: sees this kid like living half faral in the trees
Speaker 1: with a gun and decides maybe he could use some parenting.
Speaker 1: So she buys him a typewriter, and she tells him,
Speaker 1: if you become as good with the typewriter as you
Speaker 1: are with that gun, you may become rich and famous
Speaker 1: and known throughout the world. You can get pretty rich
Speaker 1: by shooting people with a gun. You can actually get
Speaker 1: very rich by shooting people with a gun. Now, it's
Speaker 1: possible that conversation never happened. Napoleon Hill, Like, that's based
Speaker 1: on his recollections and an unpublished autobiography. And Napoleon Hill
Speaker 1: was a notorious and inveterate con man, and a lot
Speaker 1: of what we're going to talk about is based on
Speaker 1: his recollections of Jesus and since he was clearly full
Speaker 1: of bullshit his whole life, and all we know about
Speaker 1: him is his lies. Yeah, we know a few other things.
Speaker 1: So my primary sources for this article are a New
Speaker 1: York Times article published in nineteen ninety five, which is
Speaker 1: good but fairly short, and a Gizmoto article by Matt
Speaker 1: Novak called All American Huckster. An article would be kind
Speaker 1: of an unfair way to describe what mister Novak wrote.
Speaker 1: He essentially put together like a short nonfiction book that's
Speaker 1: just published on a website. It's like tens of thousands
Speaker 1: of words long, exhaustively researched and clearly took him. I
Speaker 1: think he spent at least like six straight months putting
Speaker 1: this thing together. So he like he like traveled around
Speaker 1: and like found went through archives to like find original
Speaker 1: like articles about Napoleon Hill written while he was alive,
Speaker 1: and like it's a very very good article. So I
Speaker 1: want to I want to kind of highlight mister Novak's
Speaker 1: work up front, because he did some great work, and
Speaker 1: I don't think I can't really found any other journalists
Speaker 1: who's dug into Napoleon Hill. To this kind of extent,
Speaker 1: so's he's pretty critical. So from what we can put
Speaker 1: together based on a variety of sources, young Oliver's first
Speaker 1: job was writing up news articles for a small newspaper.
Speaker 1: Some of his articles would be picked up by local
Speaker 1: newspapers in Virginia, and this became a source of spare
Speaker 1: cash for the enterprising young teenager. His biographer's right quote,
Speaker 1: Napoleon would soon become a prolific source of stories. His
Speaker 1: writing was unpublished, if not crude, but he compensated with
Speaker 1: unbounded verve and a vivid imagination. Indeed, he later recalled
Speaker 1: that when news was scarce and there weren't stories to tell,
Speaker 1: he simply made them up. So that's his first child.
Speaker 1: Great career will be a pattern. Yeah. Now. Hill claims
Speaker 1: to have first gotten married when he was fifteen years old,
Speaker 1: in a convoluted story for which there are no records
Speaker 1: and no evidence outside of Hill's autobiography, He claims a
Speaker 1: young woman fell in love with him, and she was
Speaker 1: pregnant from somebody else, but she lied and said that
Speaker 1: the child was his, And when Napoleon married her thinking
Speaker 1: the child was his, but then had the marriage annulled.
Speaker 1: When he learned the truth. Now, there's no records of
Speaker 1: this marriage anywhere. We don't know what actually happened. Based
Speaker 1: on the rest of his life. My guess is that
Speaker 1: he just abandoned this woman and her child, who was
Speaker 1: his child too. But he claims he go she got
Speaker 1: he got hoodwinked by her. Yeah, yeah, he knows. Yeah so.
Speaker 1: Oliver Napoleon Hill graduated high school at age seventeen and
Speaker 1: went to a business school until nineteen oh one. When
Speaker 1: he was eighteen, he started to work with a coal
Speaker 1: magnate named Rufus Ayers. In his article for Gizmoto, Matt
Speaker 1: Novak writes, quote, Ayers was said to be impressed with Hill, who,
Speaker 1: according to the official biography, compensated for his youth and
Speaker 1: five foot six stature by adopting the appearance of a
Speaker 1: serious young executive, ramrod straight posture and peckable double breasted suits,
Speaker 1: immaculately pressed white shirts, conservative bow ties, and white handkerchiefs
Speaker 1: neatly posed in the breast pocket. I hate this guy.
Speaker 1: That's how young Napoleon. Yeah, you know you're not a fan.
Speaker 1: What is it? Is it the handkerchief? It's not the handkerchief.
Speaker 1: It's the immaculately pressed white shirts. It's also the you know,
Speaker 1: I bet he uh wow, Yeah, this is the kind
Speaker 1: of this is like a young Republican kind of guy.
Speaker 1: You know, yeah, he looks like he looks like the
Speaker 1: kind of guy like I'm sure he's the kind of
Speaker 1: guy who'd wear a full suit in DC in the
Speaker 1: middle of the summer. Yeah. Yeah. But also like as
Speaker 1: a seventeen year old, this is you know, the guy
Speaker 1: who who wears a suit like when he doesn't have to,
Speaker 1: and he kind of thinks everybody else is worse for
Speaker 1: not wearing a suit. Like he kind of acts like
Speaker 1: it's a joke. He's like, Haha, it's my thing. I
Speaker 1: wear suits, but he actually thinks everybody who doesn't wear
Speaker 1: suits all the time is a loser. Yeah, you get
Speaker 1: that feeling from Napoleon. Or it may just have been
Speaker 1: it may just have been like a calculation because he's
Speaker 1: a con man, where he was like, well, everyone trusts
Speaker 1: a guy in a suit, and I need extra trust
Speaker 1: because I'm conning people, so I should always wear a suit.
Speaker 1: I'm still thinking about that last quote where he's like,
Speaker 1: you know, when there's not any news, I make it up.
Speaker 1: Aren't I a good journalist? Like he doesn't know what
Speaker 1: being a journalist is. Well, in a little bit of
Speaker 1: fairness to him, at that point in time, there was
Speaker 1: there was a lot of weird bullshit in paper. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I know that's true. There was a lot of crazy
Speaker 1: shit in papers. But like you weren't supposed to tell
Speaker 1: people we make it up, you know, supposed to tell
Speaker 1: people we know a lot of stuff. Yeah, yeah, you're yeah,
Speaker 1: it's he's he's from the beginning, not somebody to whom
Speaker 1: the truth is important A major concept. Yeah, yeah, just
Speaker 1: not a not a fully fleshed out concept. Truth. It's
Speaker 1: like sketchy, sketchy outline. There's something there. If you say something,
Speaker 1: maybe it's the truth, maybe it's not. It's a nice idea. Yeah.
Speaker 1: To Napoleon Hill, it's like, oh, that's so, that makes
Speaker 1: me think of something else, some bullshit. Yeah. So, six
Speaker 1: months into his employment, Oliver Napoleon Hill was promoted to
Speaker 1: work as a clerk for a mine in Richland's Virginia. Now,
Speaker 1: the first major tests of his professional acumen, other than
Speaker 1: his ability to wear a suit, came when the manager
Speaker 1: of a bank which was also owned by his employer
Speaker 1: the same guy who owned the mine. This bank manager
Speaker 1: got wasted and accidentally shot a black bell hop to death.
Speaker 1: Now we have a couple of different versions of the story.
Speaker 1: It's possible he dropped his gun and it fired by accident.
Speaker 1: It's possible it was an active, outright murder. We just
Speaker 1: really don't know. But the New York Times reports what
Speaker 1: happens next. Quote with the boss away, Hill took charge,
Speaker 1: arranging to have the death covered up. As a result,
Speaker 1: his employer made him manager of the mine at the
Speaker 1: age of only nineteen. Yeah, this all tracks with the
Speaker 1: suit thing. Yeah, this all tracks with the suit thing. Now.
Speaker 1: According to Napoleon Hill's autobiography, when he arrived at the
Speaker 1: bank after the shooting, the drunken manager had left the
Speaker 1: vault open and thousands of dollars were scattered around. Hill
Speaker 1: goes out of his way to note that he scrupulously
Speaker 1: recorded and reorganized all of the money without taking anything.
Speaker 1: He wrote, quote, I could have appropriated fifteen to twenty
Speaker 1: thousand dollars or perhaps more, without the slightest indication that
Speaker 1: I had taken the money. You absolutely took the money
Speaker 1: if you make the point of noting like I could
Speaker 1: have stolen all this money, but I didn't nobody, the
Speaker 1: kind of nobody would bring that money from there. They
Speaker 1: had done it. Don't bring that up. Yeah exactly. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna guess he stole some money. But Hill claims that
Speaker 1: in gratitude for his honesty, rufus Ayers promoted him to
Speaker 1: manage the coal mind. Yeah, that's the thing bankers do,
Speaker 1: reward honesty. Yeah, yeah, one way or the other. Napoleon
Speaker 1: Hill covers up a murder and winds up in charge
Speaker 1: of a coal mine and makes out with you know,
Speaker 1: maybe fifteen thousand dollars, yeah atimate, Yeah, by his own estimate, Yeah,
Speaker 1: maybe fifteen grand. So yeah, that's that's the story so far.
Speaker 1: This guy is like is like Pete Butterage so far
Speaker 1: or like everything, he just keeps like moving upward, you know,
Speaker 1: and he's like, aren't I great at this? And everyone's like,
Speaker 1: I don't know, but sure, and then he just he
Speaker 1: just keeps going up. Ah. Maybe maybe I don't know
Speaker 1: much about Pete Butterage. Always kind of like he was
Speaker 1: like a top of his class, you know, like went
Speaker 1: to an IVY league, like did it really good grades?
Speaker 1: You know, the high achiever. Yeah, I wouldn't say Napoleon
Speaker 1: was a high achiever. I think he was more of
Speaker 1: a I think he was more of a guy who
Speaker 1: kept sliding into their place at the right time with
Speaker 1: the right lie, and and that that's that's where he
Speaker 1: is so far. Is he like gets into this good
Speaker 1: situation and kind of wangles a job by covering up
Speaker 1: a murder like who I don't know whom, but yeah,
Speaker 1: that's where he is right now. So we're gonna break
Speaker 1: for ads because it's time for a product and maybe
Speaker 1: a service or two. But when we come back, we're
Speaker 1: going to talk about a whole bunch of fucking cons
Speaker 1: just a whole lot of conning people out of money.
Speaker 1: So after the break products, we're back, and we we
Speaker 1: found who Napoleon Hill does remind us a little of,
Speaker 1: and it's Roger Stone, Like, I, yeah, I think that's
Speaker 1: a that's a good comparison, Sophie. I think this is
Speaker 1: what Roger Stone would have been if he'd never gotten
Speaker 1: into politics, because he is he is. Yeah, Well, well
Speaker 1: we'll tell the rest of his story so that you
Speaker 1: can understand why I think that. So on June seventeenth,
Speaker 1: nineteen oh three, Napoleon Hill married a woman named Edith Whitman.
Speaker 1: Their daughter, Edith Whitman Hill, was born two years later
Speaker 1: in nineteen oh five. The family moved to Marbury, Alabama
Speaker 1: when their daughter was six months old, but Napoleon sent
Speaker 1: them back to Virginia five months after that. Then in
Speaker 1: nineteen oh seven, he moved to Mobile, Alabama to start
Speaker 1: a timber company, with his family still waiting behind in Virginia.
Speaker 1: So he spends maybe a couple of months in total,
Speaker 1: like actually living with his family, and then he's off
Speaker 1: to start this new company. Now, one probable reason that
Speaker 1: he spent so much time moving about outside of his
Speaker 1: business is that Napoleon Hill had a tremendous addiction to prostitutes.
Speaker 1: One of Napoleon's friends later testified during divorce proceedings that
Speaker 1: his wife instituted about his behavior on a nineteen oh
Speaker 1: six business trip. Quote soon after we reached Bluefield, West Virginia,
Speaker 1: we went to a house of ill fame between eight
Speaker 1: and nine o'clock of that night, and mister Oliver in Hill,
Speaker 1: within a few minutes after arriving there, took one of
Speaker 1: the girls to a room in the same house and
Speaker 1: stayed with her until about twelve o'clock that night. Both
Speaker 1: of the women who stayed at this house were of
Speaker 1: easy virtue, and mister Hill went there for the purpose
Speaker 1: of having sexual intercourse with these women. He admitted to
Speaker 1: me that night, when we were going to the hotel,
Speaker 1: that he had sexual intercourse with the girl that he
Speaker 1: took to the room. That's pretty clear, yep, the one
Speaker 1: he told his wife about. Well, no, no, this is
Speaker 1: the one that This is the one that one of
Speaker 1: his friends told the judge about when his wife sued
Speaker 1: for divorce. Oh oh, I see, Okay, great way to
Speaker 1: find that out. Yeah, now, I think she probably guessed,
Speaker 1: although he was again never around. Napoleon and Edith were
Speaker 1: together for five years, but only actually again together for
Speaker 1: a fraction of that. In court proceedings, Edith claimed that
Speaker 1: he was frequently violent when they were together. At one point,
Speaker 1: during a visit to Virginia, he left with their young
Speaker 1: daughter and delivered her to his stepmother, and then threatened
Speaker 1: his wife that he would never give their daughter back
Speaker 1: to her. In January of nineteen oh eight, he wrote
Speaker 1: his wife this letter quote, I'm leaving the country where
Speaker 1: you'll never bother me. You can only communicate with me
Speaker 1: through my father and not unless he thinks best. Wow,
Speaker 1: very excited to see this guy become extremely rich. Well,
Speaker 1: I have some good news there, but but we'll get
Speaker 1: to that. I don't wanna. I don't wanna. I don't
Speaker 1: want to bury the lead he does. Briefly, it does
Speaker 1: seem interesting to me that this is basically the same
Speaker 1: thing l Ron Hubbard did to his second wife, kidnapping
Speaker 1: their baby and moving away, except for in Hubbard's case,
Speaker 1: he took the baby to Cuba and drank heavily while
Speaker 1: writing a book, whereas Napoleon at least left his infant
Speaker 1: daughter with family. So we can say conclusively that Napoleon
Speaker 1: Hill was a better father than l Ron Hubbard. There
Speaker 1: are worse things you can do with a baby then
Speaker 1: give them to their step mother. Yeah. Worst things you
Speaker 1: can do with a baby that you steal. M M yep,
Speaker 1: that that that you steal. Look, if he's not abandoning babies,
Speaker 1: he's stealing them. Yeah, that's that's this guy. He's he
Speaker 1: mostly abandons baby. Mostly fairness to Napoleon, he only stole
Speaker 1: the one baby, and it was his baby, and it
Speaker 1: was his baby. I mean, most babies are stolen by
Speaker 1: their parents. But yeah, so three months after writing that letter,
Speaker 1: Edith managed to get back her baby and successfully file
Speaker 1: for divorce. She alleged that Napoleon sometimes threw their small
Speaker 1: child on the bed and choked her. So, actually he's
Speaker 1: not a better father than el Ron Hubbard. Yeah, no,
Speaker 1: that guy Hubbard. Hubbard didn't beat his kids. Well he
Speaker 1: Actually this is really a pointless thing. They're both terrible parents. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: maybe we shouldn't kids too. I don't know why I
Speaker 1: try to evaluate them. Yeah, you know, we want somebody
Speaker 1: to be the guy here, but it turns out they're
Speaker 1: all bad. I shouldn't look for the good guy and
Speaker 1: l Ron Hubbard. Right, but this podcast isn't called behind
Speaker 1: the Good Guys. No, no, so. Edith also alleged that
Speaker 1: at one point her husband threatened to blow her brains
Speaker 1: out on a crowded city street. Numerous people who worked
Speaker 1: with Napoleon testified to his constant alliances with prostitutes and
Speaker 1: habitual infidelity. Now so, yeah, the marriage splits up, and
Speaker 1: think the point in time, Napoleon's timber business isn't exactly
Speaker 1: doing well either, because it turns out that rather than
Speaker 1: being a business, it was just kind of a scam.
Speaker 1: So Napoleon bought ten to twenty thousand dollars worth of
Speaker 1: lumber using credit from companies around the country. So he
Speaker 1: would like buy the lumber and like sign a contract
Speaker 1: saying he would pay them back later with interest, and
Speaker 1: then he would just take the lumber and sell it
Speaker 1: like individually to people for cash. But he had no
Speaker 1: point credit. Yeah, essentially, Yeah, he was just driving around
Speaker 1: like you guys wants some fucking wood. Yeah, he would
Speaker 1: sell the wood for cash and just keep moving so
Speaker 1: that nobody could ever Yeah, like that that was the
Speaker 1: whole plan. Truck selling it on the street. Yeah, out
Speaker 1: of a truck, really advanced. Yeah, he's not a great
Speaker 1: con man, but he's a constant one. Yeah. It's like
Speaker 1: makings telling everybody and fucking stealing wood. Yeah. So the
Speaker 1: most traceable crime thief, wood thief and fake journalists at
Speaker 1: this point is his his resume and stole a baby once. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So by late nineteen oh eight, many of his creditors
Speaker 1: had realized they were being fleeced. Matt Novak sits an
Speaker 1: article in the October issue of the Pensacola Journal covering
Speaker 1: Hill's lumber fraud the whereabouts of Owen Hill, said to
Speaker 1: be the president and general manager of the Acree Hill
Speaker 1: Lumber Company, is causing considerable anxiety among creditors of the
Speaker 1: concern in the state and several other lumber sections. Hill
Speaker 1: has not been at his office since September eighth. Warrants
Speaker 1: were issued for Hill's arrest at the same time, the
Speaker 1: Post Office started looking into claims of mail fraud, which
Speaker 1: Napoleon Hill had also been busy committing. Wow he was
Speaker 1: charged with Czech fraud as well. Hill spent the fall
Speaker 1: and winter in nineteen oh eight on the run, dodging
Speaker 1: law enforcement and creditors as he's gradually made his way
Speaker 1: to Washington, d C. That's what I'm saying. You can't
Speaker 1: be weighed down by a baby when you're dodging creditors,
Speaker 1: you know, running up and down the country. The wife
Speaker 1: is she's just like really holding him back from being
Speaker 1: the slimiest bag he can be. And once he's free
Speaker 1: of his wife and free of his creditors and all
Speaker 1: of the people that he fleeced in his lumber business
Speaker 1: and his check fraud, and he moves to Washington, d C.
Speaker 1: He drops the first name Oliver and starts going by
Speaker 1: Napoleon Hill because he's a new man there. He's changed,
Speaker 1: just like disease. That'll make it harder to be found. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So nineteen oh nine, when he winds up in DC
Speaker 1: is a time in which cars were still new and
Speaker 1: very exciting to just about everybody. There's a lot of
Speaker 1: money to be made in the Nason automobile industry, and
Speaker 1: more importantly for mister Hill, there was a lot of
Speaker 1: money to be made in lying to people about the
Speaker 1: Nason automobile industry. In order to understand this, you have
Speaker 1: to think of cars not as the ubiquitous tools they
Speaker 1: are today, but more like the Internet and social media
Speaker 1: were a decade ago. Scams are always going to be
Speaker 1: rampant with any new technology doing that sweet spot after
Speaker 1: it becomes clear how valuable it is, but before anyone
Speaker 1: really understands it. So like cars are in that place
Speaker 1: in nineteen oh nine when Napoleon Hill winds up in
Speaker 1: d C. So he joins immediately an automotive enthusiast group
Speaker 1: called the Automobile Club of Washington, and it inspires him
Speaker 1: to create his own organization, the Automobile College of Washington.
Speaker 1: In early nineteen oh nine already already fake already, not
Speaker 1: a college, just a coluge, not a college. It's a club.
Speaker 1: What is he gonna? I don't know what what is
Speaker 1: Automobile College? Is it a college? Does he train? Does
Speaker 1: he learn? It's a college kind of in the same
Speaker 1: way Trump University is a college. Okay, so they're it's
Speaker 1: a little more legit. It's a little more legit than
Speaker 1: Trump University. So the idea is that the Auto College
Speaker 1: is a training program that would that would teach you
Speaker 1: how to build cars with six weeks of true. Oh oh,
Speaker 1: like a camp but for cars. Yeah, exactly, exactly. Like
Speaker 1: he's promising graduates that they'll be able to earn between
Speaker 1: seventy five dollars and two hundred dollars per week, which
Speaker 1: is like really good money, and all they have to
Speaker 1: do is like pay to learn how to build cars. Now,
Speaker 1: the reality of the situation, these people were building cars,
Speaker 1: so there is actual learning how to build cars going
Speaker 1: on here. But what Napoleon has done is basically set
Speaker 1: up a car factory wherein people pay to work there,
Speaker 1: like that's that's that's the business. That's the scam. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is his best one yet. Yeah, this is a
Speaker 1: good This is mm hmm yeah, like there's an actual product.
Speaker 1: People are presumably learning something, right, but you're making a
Speaker 1: bunch of money and no, like presumably folks aren't realizing.
Speaker 1: Are we just paying to work in a factory. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I kind of want to do like a coal mining college.
Speaker 1: Like I'll teach you how to mind coal. You just
Speaker 1: got to mine coal. Look your mine. Uh no, you're
Speaker 1: not doing it right, do it for another few years.
Speaker 1: You need another few years of coal school. Yeah. It's
Speaker 1: like if the Washington Post rebranded as a journalism school
Speaker 1: and started charging people to write op eds. Wow. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well yeah, now so yeah. Hill worked out a deal
Speaker 1: with the Carter Motor Corporation in nineteen ten and nineteen eleven,
Speaker 1: and basically they that's who he was making cars for.
Speaker 1: So his students were producing vehicles that were then sold
Speaker 1: by the Carter Motor Company. And you know, it's a
Speaker 1: great deal for Carter because they get free labor and
Speaker 1: Napoleon gets free money and the students. You know, you
Speaker 1: might even think that it's semi legitimate because at least
Speaker 1: the students are going to learn how to assemble cars
Speaker 1: and they could presumably get a job elsewhere that they
Speaker 1: didn't pay for. Yeah, that they didn't pay for. That
Speaker 1: is an actual job, So presumably like this, this is
Speaker 1: I would say, this is the high point of Napoleon
Speaker 1: Hill's life as a person who did things that were
Speaker 1: almost legitimate. Yeah, he's doing a classic capitalist scam here.
Speaker 1: You know, it involves slavery, it involves new technology, and
Speaker 1: it involves a lot of lying. So this is you know,
Speaker 1: he's really he's got the three hmah together beautiful. But
Speaker 1: like all great scams that involve slavery, it involves like
Speaker 1: it's slavery where the people who are kind of slaves
Speaker 1: don't think of themselves that way because they're paying for
Speaker 1: the privilege. Like it is slavery voluntary servitude. So I
Speaker 1: don't know, slavery. Might slavery is a bit far. He's
Speaker 1: just tricking people into into being employees and telling them
Speaker 1: but yeah, it's it's I don't know what you call
Speaker 1: people in this situation. It's like running a film school
Speaker 1: and like secretly having them make the new Like Disney
Speaker 1: started a film school and secretly had people make new
Speaker 1: Marvel movies and didn't pay them. Yeah, like like yeah,
Speaker 1: so while he's running this kind of half scam car college.
Speaker 1: Napoleon meets another woman named Elizabeth Horner. Now, his main
Speaker 1: attraction to Elizabeth seemed to be that her family was rich.
Speaker 1: They got hitched, and shortly thereafter, Napoleon's bogus car college collapses.
Speaker 1: Now did everyone just kind of hard to say, Well,
Speaker 1: it seems like what happened is that the Carter car
Speaker 1: company who he was making vehicles for, fell apart, probably
Speaker 1: because their vehicles were being assembled by people who didn't
Speaker 1: know how to make cars. The one fatal flaw in
Speaker 1: the perfect scam. Yeah, because Napoleon didn't know how to
Speaker 1: make cars. So this is the issue. Were like, I
Speaker 1: don't think, I don't think very functional cars were not
Speaker 1: being produced by the sodom the school. So it was
Speaker 1: also alleged that Napoleon had stolen a car from some
Speaker 1: of his business partners, and he was arrested and his
Speaker 1: college was put into receivership. Now none of this stopped
Speaker 1: Napoleon from continuing to operate his automotive college. Instead, he
Speaker 1: just changed the focus of the school from teaching people
Speaker 1: how to build cars to teaching people how to sell cars. So, yep,
Speaker 1: you got to be able to pivot if a scammers
Speaker 1: how to pivot now. As time went on, the focus
Speaker 1: of a schools drifted further and further away from teaching
Speaker 1: any kind of marketable skill and words, the sort of
Speaker 1: multi level marketing schemes we're very familiar with in the
Speaker 1: twenty first century. That the motor article I've been citing
Speaker 1: highlights an early exposee of hills scam, an article in
Speaker 1: Motor World magazine titled pointing the easy route to get
Speaker 1: rich Quickland. I went ahead and I found an archived
Speaker 1: copy of that report, and I'd like to read it
Speaker 1: now in my best old timy voice, because I really
Speaker 1: enjoy it. Please. Astonishing and enticing means employed by the
Speaker 1: greatest automobile college in the world to catch the wood
Speaker 1: be Chaufur's coin Masters of gas Engines evolved in twelve
Speaker 1: weeks and before graduation and after there's money, money everywhere,
Speaker 1: if not a cent to spend fun, that's pretty good fun,
Speaker 1: Sun times. Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, uh so. The author
Speaker 1: of this article wrote about Napoleon's revamped fake college that quote.
Speaker 1: The whole business is so cunningly planned as to appeal
Speaker 1: not only to the cupidity of the indolent naird Weell, who,
Speaker 1: in his ignorance thinks he sees the gates of prosperities
Speaker 1: standing ajar. But also to the ill informed but really
Speaker 1: ambitious youth who has an honest desire to make something
Speaker 1: of himself, and who is willing to devote his scanty
Speaker 1: savings and infrequent spare hours to the task. Those those
Speaker 1: near Duell's always screwing it up for the ambitious, the
Speaker 1: ambitious do well. Yeah, now that that statement could apply
Speaker 1: equally well to like Amway or Young Living Essential Oils
Speaker 1: or any modern day MLM. Like this is before people
Speaker 1: use the term multi level marketing. They weren't even calling
Speaker 1: these pyramid schemes at this point. So Napoleon Hills really
Speaker 1: fucking groundbreaking at this stuff. And like the actual business
Speaker 1: practice that he evolved for his Auto college is like,
Speaker 1: it's really groundbreaking. Basically, I'm just gonna read from the
Speaker 1: article breaking it down. The very day you enroll, the
Speaker 1: flow of language ripples on. You may note the Grace's
Speaker 1: permission begin to send in the names of the young
Speaker 1: men whom you think might be interested in our course.
Speaker 1: It is estimated that half of such men will enroll
Speaker 1: and as the school pays three dollars ahead for every
Speaker 1: student brought in. According to this plan, it is suggested
Speaker 1: that you should pay for your course several times over.
Speaker 1: In this manner, he stops, he stops even selling, like
Speaker 1: he says, like, Okay, now, this is a school where
Speaker 1: you teach people how to sell cars. But the real
Speaker 1: business is getting your friends to sign up for the college,
Speaker 1: and then you get a cut of what they like.
Speaker 1: It's it's well, you know, it's a thing, Robert. Everybody's
Speaker 1: making money, So why are you mad? Well, I mean,
Speaker 1: the only downside is that after like at a certain
Speaker 1: like six weeks or so into this process, there's no
Speaker 1: people less than six weeks. You know what. I don't
Speaker 1: like to I don't like to think that far ahead.
Speaker 1: I like to live in the now. That's actually why
Speaker 1: I'm so wealthy and successful, because I'm not gonna you know,
Speaker 1: these are negative thoughts, and I'm thinking prosperity, thinking for prosperity.
Speaker 1: You're thinking and growing rich, I am, I am. You
Speaker 1: should try thinking and growing right. On November eleventh, nineteen twelve,
Speaker 1: Napoleon and Florence had their second baby boy, and the
Speaker 1: second of their three children. This son was born deaf. Now,
Speaker 1: according to Napoleon's biography, A Lifetime of Riches quote, the
Speaker 1: baby boy was not only born deaf, he was completely
Speaker 1: without ears. In the years to come, despite the intense
Speaker 1: fighting with both family and school teachers, Napoleon would never
Speaker 1: allow the boy to learn sign language. Oh my god,
Speaker 1: it gets why he was determined to single handedly teach
Speaker 1: his death son to speak and even to hear. As
Speaker 1: the boy was growing up, Hill would talk to him
Speaker 1: for hours with his lips pressed against Blair's cranial bone
Speaker 1: at the base of the neck, just behind where his
Speaker 1: ears would normally have been. Wow, that's so creepy, just
Speaker 1: shouting into his kid's skull. Oh my god, Well, not
Speaker 1: even shouting, just talk like that. Yeah, wow yeah. Now,
Speaker 1: Napoleon's biography claims that this eventually worked out because Napoleon's
Speaker 1: son had a weird bone deformity. Uh And like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna read from the biography. I want to note
Speaker 1: clearly lies, like obvious lies. But this is how his
Speaker 1: biographers with the Napoleon Hill Foundation explain why it was
Speaker 1: good that he refused to teach his death son's sign language.
Speaker 1: Years later, the boy did begin to hear, for it
Speaker 1: was discovered that the bone itself was conducting sound to
Speaker 1: his brain, and eventually he wore a specially designed hearing
Speaker 1: aid that dramatically improved his hearing and speaking abilities. But
Speaker 1: it was Napoleon who inspired Blair's desire to overcome his handicap.
Speaker 1: His father never allowed his son to give up. He
Speaker 1: didn't even allow Blair to consider himself handicapped. He taught
Speaker 1: his son that deafness was simply an adversity that could
Speaker 1: be triumphed over. Think and become not deaf if yeah,
Speaker 1: think and grow ears. What the fuck? Wow? Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: you know what's crazy? Is another way to quote overcome
Speaker 1: the handicap of being deaf is to have sign language
Speaker 1: and speak sign language. That's actually how you overcome that disability.
Speaker 1: You know. It's so can you imagine, Oh my god,
Speaker 1: I feel that kid, just having to sit with your
Speaker 1: dad talking to your skull for hours. Yeah, and he's
Speaker 1: probably talking all sorts of bullshit about how like being
Speaker 1: deaf is your fault because you didn't think hard enough
Speaker 1: about ears while you were growing or something. Your attitude
Speaker 1: is not positive enough. Yeah, you're not deaf. You're not incredible,
Speaker 1: and then to completely and to completely censor and mute
Speaker 1: him his entire life, to give him no way to
Speaker 1: express himself, while constantly telling him you're not deaf. I'll
Speaker 1: say this, It's not as bad as it sounds, Sarah,
Speaker 1: because Napoleon abandoned his children for the vast majority of
Speaker 1: their lives, so he's not around all that much. You know,
Speaker 1: I mean right now, that doesn't that seems like the
Speaker 1: nicer thing to do. Yeah, I would say it's better
Speaker 1: to be abandoned by Napoleon Hill than parent advice. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: Now you know what it's not good to be abandoned
Speaker 1: by Sarah. No, well anything, products and services that support
Speaker 1: the show. They would never not abandon you, never, never, never,
Speaker 1: they'd never abandon you products. We're back, so uh, as
Speaker 1: I noted, Napoleon's college collapsed eventually, like all scams do,
Speaker 1: and he moved his family in with his wife's family
Speaker 1: to leach more money off of them. His wife's family
Speaker 1: helped him get a job at a university by having
Speaker 1: a family friend who was a judge write him a
Speaker 1: letter of recommendation. The job was in sales and advertising,
Speaker 1: but since Napoleon now had a piece of paper in
Speaker 1: which a judge had written like that he was a
Speaker 1: good guy. Napoleon started using this to claim to be
Speaker 1: an attorney at law. Even his own biographers admit this. Yeah,
Speaker 1: even his own biographers admit this highly exaggerated claim looked
Speaker 1: impressive on paper, but there is no record of his
Speaker 1: having performed legal services for anyone. Hey, man, I'm a
Speaker 1: self taught attorney. Okay, oh you want a license? Well
Speaker 1: how about this. I got a note from a judge,
Speaker 1: says I'm cool. Yeah, it doesn't even say I'm a lawyer,
Speaker 1: but would anyone who's not a judge, No, a lawyer,
Speaker 1: who's not a lawyer, No a judge. I'm just swee,
Speaker 1: just imagining. It's like a beautiful like a gilded looks
Speaker 1: like a diploma, But then in Gothic fond instead of
Speaker 1: saying his name, it just says this guy's chill. And
Speaker 1: then there's a judge signature, this guy's chill, guess, judge,
Speaker 1: judge at judge. If anyone listening to this is a judge,
Speaker 1: hit me up on Twitter at I write, okay, and
Speaker 1: I'll give you my mailing address and you can send
Speaker 1: me a piece of paper that says, I'm chill because
Speaker 1: I would love to practice law, just as Napoleon Hill didn't. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that sounds like a whot. Tape it to my shirt. Hey, guys,
Speaker 1: I'm representing myself in court. Yeah. So Napoleon Hill worked
Speaker 1: at that university for a couple of months before quitting
Speaker 1: in nineteen fifteen and getting involved with a candy company,
Speaker 1: which he and his partners renamed the Betsy Ross Candy Shop.
Speaker 1: Hill was quickly pushed out of the judge by his partners,
Speaker 1: likely because they realized he was a gigantic con man
Speaker 1: who was stealing from them, stealing, stealing money. I think
Speaker 1: they bought this company together and he was probably just
Speaker 1: stealing from the company because he's Napoleon Hill. We don't
Speaker 1: know exactly what went down. Thinking about growing rich. Look,
Speaker 1: he's not stealing, He's manifesting wealth from the cash register
Speaker 1: to his pockets. Yeah, we don't know exactly what happens
Speaker 1: happened there, but Hill claims that his business partners had
Speaker 1: him quote arrested on false charges. He never specified what
Speaker 1: those charges were, but he claims he was forced to
Speaker 1: hand over his stakes in the company so Napoleon Hill
Speaker 1: would spend most of the nineteen teens, leaping from one
Speaker 1: failure to another. In September nineteen fifteen, he created another
Speaker 1: fake school, the George Washington Institute, which he claimed was
Speaker 1: dedicated to teaching the principles of success. Part of this
Speaker 1: class was apparently having his students write hundreds of letters
Speaker 1: to newspapers supporting Napoleon Hill's race for a seat in
Speaker 1: the US Congress. Now, he never ran for Congress, but
Speaker 1: it seems so like, wait, we don't know why he
Speaker 1: did this. This seems like he was just trying another scam,
Speaker 1: but it didn't get off the ground. Yeah, he just
Speaker 1: had so many scams going yeah, yeah, what what a
Speaker 1: what a weird move. It's like, you know, maybe maybe
Speaker 1: it's so when he if he was like, if I
Speaker 1: run later, I can be like, look at all this
Speaker 1: grassroots support I have. Yeah. I think a guy like Napoleon, like,
Speaker 1: you know, abs always be scamming. Yeah, So, like, you know,
Speaker 1: while you got your main scam you're working on, you're
Speaker 1: trying to see little other scam because not all scams,
Speaker 1: not all scams will last. So you got to plant
Speaker 1: a lot of not all scams will last. You got
Speaker 1: to diversify, right, because I was like, Wow, he's already
Speaker 1: running He's already running a school scam, right, He's already
Speaker 1: getting money out of that. Now he's gonna like let
Speaker 1: that feed into a larger, more legitimate scam of being
Speaker 1: a politician. Wow, this is like really good. But I
Speaker 1: guess he couldn't. He couldn't hack it, Like the George
Speaker 1: Washington Institute is his day job, and having people write
Speaker 1: letters to newspapers telling him to run for Congress is
Speaker 1: his equivalent of a four oh one can. Like, that's
Speaker 1: like his that's like his security. Like he's putting some
Speaker 1: scam away for later. Yeah, exactly exactly. This was my kids. Yeah,
Speaker 1: uh no, he wouldn't leave anything of his fucking kids.
Speaker 1: This is Napoleon Hill we're talking about. They can think
Speaker 1: and grow rich themselves. Uh. Next, I'm gonna quote again
Speaker 1: from Gizmoto's Matt Novak quote. Some students of the George
Speaker 1: Washington Institute would accuse Hill's unaccredited school of fraud, and
Speaker 1: it too had a very short life. According to his biographers.
Speaker 1: He'll return the favor of one student's criticism by alerting
Speaker 1: the FBI if the German American kids suspicious activities. The
Speaker 1: student was supposedly arrested for the duration of World War One.
Speaker 1: Oh my fucking god, such a piece of shit. Wow, damn.
Speaker 1: He does not play at all. No, he does not.
Speaker 1: Just if you're like, hey, this school is a scam,
Speaker 1: He's like, I'm sending you to jail a spy. Wow.
Speaker 1: Cool guys. He uses his children, immigrants, all people trying
Speaker 1: to learn a trade. Definitely. I have not run across
Speaker 1: any racism in this story. So, like, as far as
Speaker 1: I know, Napoleon Hill would have scammed a black man
Speaker 1: as well as a white man. You know, Napoleon didn't
Speaker 1: see color. Just green baby, just green baby, that's the
Speaker 1: only color. Yeah, although it's also possible he just only
Speaker 1: fleeced white people because he completely ignored that anyone else existed.
Speaker 1: That's pretty I really don't know anything about his attitude
Speaker 1: on race relations. I mean to assume not we can.
Speaker 1: I think we can safely safely surmise now. The George
Speaker 1: Washington Institute quickly collapsed, and by nineteen seventeen, Napoleon Hill
Speaker 1: was trying to sue the Illinois General Railroad because he
Speaker 1: said the lighting on their cars was bad. For his
Speaker 1: eyesight and had caused him to need glasses, so he
Speaker 1: gets a little bit desperate. Yeah, he's a really diversity,
Speaker 1: but not in a great way. Yeah, he's this has
Speaker 1: been like a sad arc you get from like this
Speaker 1: legitimately kind of cunning automotive college, like suing the railroad
Speaker 1: for fucking up your eye. Yeah, I mean ambulance chasers next,
Speaker 1: you know. Yeah. By nineteen eighteen, the Better Business Bureau
Speaker 1: attacked him after revealing that his success school was really
Speaker 1: just a barely camouflaged stock selling scheme. The magazine Postage
Speaker 1: reported that quote. While it appeared on the face of
Speaker 1: the operation that he sought students for the educational course
Speaker 1: he offered, there was evidence that his chief object was
Speaker 1: to sell stock in the enterprise. Napoleon apparently convinced people
Speaker 1: to buy stocks in his college by claiming it had
Speaker 1: a capital value of over one hundred thousand dollars. In reality,
Speaker 1: the entirety of the enterprise was worth around twelve hundred
Speaker 1: dollars at best. Napoleon was once again yeah yeah, he
Speaker 1: was arrested again, and this arrest seems to have convinced
Speaker 1: his long suffering wife to finally cut ties with him.
Speaker 1: All these failures in a row certainly had a deleterious
Speaker 1: effect on Hill's morale, as you might imagine. The New
Speaker 1: York Times noted quote hilbergard such setbacks as a test
Speaker 1: of his faith, but he was not immune to despair.
Speaker 1: After another one of his business failures, he confessed, I
Speaker 1: had spent the better portion of my life chasing a rainbow.
Speaker 1: I had begun to place myself in the category of
Speaker 1: charlatans who offers a remedy for failure which they themselves
Speaker 1: cannot successfully apply. Wow. A lot of self awareness for
Speaker 1: such a piece of shit. That is a shocking amount
Speaker 1: of It is also insane that at this point in
Speaker 1: his life he's like, people think I'm a charlatan. You guys,
Speaker 1: well better start another success. Be honest with me. Does
Speaker 1: everyone think I'm a charlatan? Yes? Yes, he says that,
Speaker 1: like as he's setting up like a shell game or
Speaker 1: something like that in the middle of the like downtown. Yeah,
Speaker 1: do you want to buy some lumber? By the way?
Speaker 1: Trust me now. By nineteen nineteen, Napoleon Hill had gotten
Speaker 1: tired of jumping from scam to scam, sometimes a step
Speaker 1: of the ahead of the law and often several steps
Speaker 1: behind it. He decided that from now on, his life
Speaker 1: was going to be different, and his first step to
Speaker 1: winning that different step was to weaponize the Golden Rule. Yes,
Speaker 1: the Golden rule do unto others as you would have
Speaker 1: them do unto you. On its surface, it seems like
Speaker 1: one of the least problematic things a human being could
Speaker 1: believe or advocate. But our friend Napoleon found a way
Speaker 1: to make it problematic. He founded Golden Rule Magazine, which
Speaker 1: he used to outline his new philosophy on life. This
Speaker 1: is Napoleon Hill's philosophy on the Golden Rule. Quote. It
Speaker 1: seems ridiculous to refer to the Golden Rule as a weapon,
Speaker 1: but that's just what it is. A weapon that no
Speaker 1: resistance on earth can withstand. The Golden Rule is a
Speaker 1: powerful weapon in business because there is so little competition
Speaker 1: in its application. What a psychopath? Yeah yeah, so, Matt
Speaker 1: Novak explains. Quote. Hill's understanding of the Golden Rule meant
Speaker 1: that people would become indebted to you for providing something
Speaker 1: to them. It was a weapon rather than do unto
Speaker 1: others as you would have them do unto you. He
Speaker 1: believed that by providing something to someone or simply showing
Speaker 1: them kindness, they owed you something in return. So that's
Speaker 1: how the Golden Rule works for the Oh my god. Wow. Okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: all right, yeah cool. Now. Golden Rule magazine was founded
Speaker 1: using money from a couple with the last name of
Speaker 1: Cox and they were a wealthy couple who owned the
Speaker 1: General Oil Company, and they were looking to drum up
Speaker 1: more investors for their business. And that was kind of
Speaker 1: the purpose that they had magazine that Hill was running.
Speaker 1: So their plan was for Hill to basically use his magazine.
Speaker 1: I hate this so much, Oh god. Their plan was
Speaker 1: for Hill to use his magazine to convince people that
Speaker 1: General Oil was a great thing to invest. It's an
Speaker 1: oil company starting a magazine. That's like remember what Jesus said,
Speaker 1: Here's how you can use it to make yourself rich. Yeah.
Speaker 1: In April of nineteen nineteen, Hill wrote an article in
Speaker 1: his magazine titled an Interesting man and his wife the Coxes,
Speaker 1: who have made a million dollars for other people. Wow.
Speaker 1: The article that the Coxes were using a million dollars
Speaker 1: of their profits to fund scholarships for American veganarilanthropy is good. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: this was untrue. Obviously, there was no million dollars set
Speaker 1: aside for veterans, and Hill and the Coxes would be
Speaker 1: sued by the FTC in October that that year for
Speaker 1: fraudy and advertising. But being sued for fraud did not
Speaker 1: stop Napoleon Hill from producers this magazine about the Golden Rule. Yeah,
Speaker 1: in May of nineteen twenty two, he awarded a chiropractor
Speaker 1: by the name of B. J. Palmer what he called
Speaker 1: Hill's Golden Medal. Hill claimed that the award was based
Speaker 1: one hundred and fifty thousand votes cast by subscribers of
Speaker 1: his magazine, who, among them from places far away as Japan, Italy,
Speaker 1: Australia and England. Woodrow Wilson came in second place. What now,
Speaker 1: there were no subscribers course Golden Hill Magazine, just a couple,
Speaker 1: I mean, maybe a couple of dozen. This was all
Speaker 1: a lie. But this is like what he was getting
Speaker 1: at when he with his Golden Rule philosophy. It was
Speaker 1: basically the way that he actually acted on. That is,
Speaker 1: he would present awards to prominent citizens, politicians and celebrities
Speaker 1: and then use that opportunity to like get pictures with
Speaker 1: them and talk with them and try to get them
Speaker 1: to either invest in his scams or to let him
Speaker 1: use their name and credibility so he could trick other
Speaker 1: people into scams. Wow, so that's what that's how. That's
Speaker 1: the golden rule as used by Napoleon Hill. Yeah. Well
Speaker 1: you know, now we call it swag baby. You give
Speaker 1: him some free stuff. They got agream about it. Now
Speaker 1: it's just being an influencer. Yeah. Yeah. Napoleon Hill was
Speaker 1: like the original influencer. Yeah. In nineteen twenty two, Napoleon
Speaker 1: Hill used this tactic to start up a partnership with
Speaker 1: t O Ted, a prominent chaplain and humanitarian. Hill and
Speaker 1: Teed started a charity that, on its face provided educations
Speaker 1: to prisoners in Ohio to help rehabilitate. Well, don't tell
Speaker 1: me what it real. I don't want to. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: please Yeah. Yeah. So Napoleon would go from town to
Speaker 1: town raising money for this program, telling newspapers like, what
Speaker 1: we're trying to do here is mentally meet these men
Speaker 1: who are shut off from the outside world. We're going
Speaker 1: to prove to them that they have something to look
Speaker 1: forward to, then put in their hands the tools which
Speaker 1: they can carve out their future. Yes, absolutely, yes, I
Speaker 1: the oppressor, am going to give you the oppressed to
Speaker 1: the tools you need to escape my oppression. That's what
Speaker 1: I'm going to do. Because I'm really good and nice.
Speaker 1: I wouldn't call Napoleon an oppressor just because he's been
Speaker 1: arrested a shitload of times and spent a lot of
Speaker 1: time in jail himself, like because he's a criminal convey Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: But of course there was no actual charity. He was
Speaker 1: essentially running like the mono rail scheme from The Simpsons,
Speaker 1: but with a charity aimed at raising money to provide
Speaker 1: education to prisoners. In Shelby, Ohio. In nineteen twenty three,
Speaker 1: Napoleon collected more than one thousand dollars from kind hearted
Speaker 1: locals who were happy to raise fund Steve convicts a
Speaker 1: chance at a better life. A lot of the money
Speaker 1: came from a group of local school children who raised
Speaker 1: the cash because they were just so compassionate about the
Speaker 1: convicts that he'll had, you know, pain picture of how
Speaker 1: who's going to help them. Hill spent much of the
Speaker 1: nineteen twenties following the same basic pattern. He'd go from
Speaker 1: town to town sweet talk decent folk into donating money
Speaker 1: to help these people, and then he'd skip town, never
Speaker 1: to be seen again. By the late nineteen twenties, however,
Speaker 1: this scam had run its course. Napoleon's wife he had
Speaker 1: a new wife. Now Florence was starting to get pissed
Speaker 1: off with him. He wound up in Philadelphia, broke, and
Speaker 1: befriended a publisher named Pelton. And this is sort of
Speaker 1: when Napoleon's life starts to change. So the late twenties,
Speaker 1: like he's been run out of most of like the
Speaker 1: Midwest and the South and is hiding out in Philadelphia.
Speaker 1: He's got a new wife and she too has some
Speaker 1: family money, but she's pissed at him and kim befriends
Speaker 1: of public. Yeah, I can't imagine why. So he befriends
Speaker 1: a publisher, a guy named Pelton, and convinces this guy
Speaker 1: that he has a great idea for a new self
Speaker 1: help book called the Law of Success. So Napoleon started
Speaker 1: to weave a fantastic story for Pelton, claiming that back
Speaker 1: in nineteen oh eight, he'd sat down with Andrew Carnegie,
Speaker 1: one of the wealthiest and most successful men in America,
Speaker 1: had been handed a sacred task to collect all of
Speaker 1: the success secrets of the greatest men in history and
Speaker 1: to still them into a sort of science of success. Yes,
Speaker 1: it's like the divincion code, but for success. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: The success code should be obvious under the loof yeah
Speaker 1: he's well, he's still alive at this point. Well, so, yeah,
Speaker 1: as should be obvious to everybody. This meeting never took place,
Speaker 1: Like he there's zero evidence whatsoever that Napoleon Hill ever
Speaker 1: met Andrew carry But do you mean there's no evidence
Speaker 1: Napoleon Hill said it happened. He did say it happened.
Speaker 1: And here's how his biography describes this, uh like historic
Speaker 1: meeting between Andrew Carnegie and Napoleon Hill, the two greatest
Speaker 1: minds in the history of success. Quote. The richest heritage
Speaker 1: a young man can have is to be born into poverty.
Speaker 1: Carnegie told him he saw his own humble origins not
Speaker 1: as a deterrent to success, but rather as the inspiration
Speaker 1: to overcome all obstacles and attain seemingly impossible goals. If
Speaker 1: one had a strong sense of self worth, Carnegie claimed,
Speaker 1: no degree of impoverishment could hold one back. Individuals who
Speaker 1: achieve outstanding success are not born with some peculiar quality
Speaker 1: of genius, not possessed by others. Confidence is a state
Speaker 1: of mind. It is under the control of the individual,
Speaker 1: not an inborn trait, and the starting point for developing
Speaker 1: that self confidence is the definiteness of purpose. This was
Speaker 1: Carnegie's cardinal rule in his philosophy of personal achievement. The
Speaker 1: man who knows exactly what he wants, has a definite
Speaker 1: plan for getting it, and is actually engaged in carrying
Speaker 1: out that plan has no difficulty in believing his own
Speaker 1: ability to succeed. Only the man who procrastinates soon loses
Speaker 1: confidence and winds up doing nothing. But what happens Hill asked,
Speaker 1: When a man knows what he wants, has a plan,
Speaker 1: put it, and puts it into action, and meets with failure,
Speaker 1: doesn't that destroy his confidence? Carnegie smiled, I hope you
Speaker 1: would ask that, because it is important to understand what
Speaker 1: I'm about to tell you. I believe that every failure
Speaker 1: carries with it and the circumstances of the failure itself
Speaker 1: the seed of an equivalent advantage. If you examine the
Speaker 1: lives of truly great leaders, you will discover that their
Speaker 1: success is an exact proportion to their mastery of failures.
Speaker 1: Life has a way of developing strength and wisdom and
Speaker 1: individuals through temporary defeat. So you can see why people
Speaker 1: would find this compelling. Yeah, it kind of leaves out
Speaker 1: all of the exploitation of other people that went along
Speaker 1: with Andrew Carnegie's financial success. Yes, completely, Yes, And it
Speaker 1: also again it puts the onus of failure on the
Speaker 1: people who are not materially success. Right, if you're not rich,
Speaker 1: then it's because you're not good. It's just you're not
Speaker 1: brave enough or good. Yeah, you're just not and it's
Speaker 1: a thing. It's not your fault. But you're also just
Speaker 1: not good or brave or smart. So if you were,
Speaker 1: then you would be richer. Because that's what that's what
Speaker 1: I did, And it was all because of me. You
Speaker 1: could have chosen, and because I to be real hard
Speaker 1: about success every night, I thought of itout it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: why didn't you think thinking about if you did, your
Speaker 1: kids would have bread? And again, I just want to
Speaker 1: make it clear, I don't think Andrew Carnegie ever exprastinating
Speaker 1: like this. This is all Napoleon Hill putting words into
Speaker 1: Carnegie's mouth. I don't know anything about the man, but
Speaker 1: I'm sure he didn't say this shit. So next, according
Speaker 1: to Hill, Carnegie explained to him that in his conversations
Speaker 1: with other rich men like Henry Ford and Thomas Edison,
Speaker 1: he'd learned that all wealthy men had similar stories. They
Speaker 1: had all risen to greatness via trial and error and
Speaker 1: totally earned the wealth the universe had bestowed upon those
Speaker 1: Carnegie told Hill that he'd become convinced that the average
Speaker 1: person could gain wealth by studying the lives of great
Speaker 1: businessmen and replicating their tactics. All that was necessary was
Speaker 1: for some enterprising soul to go out talk to the
Speaker 1: great leaders and successful men of the world translate their
Speaker 1: wisdom into an easy to read guide for the average reader. Wow.
Speaker 1: So this is the ask that Andrew Carnegie. You know what,
Speaker 1: he didn't ask for. It was merely bestowed upon him
Speaker 1: as a mission. It was thrust upon thrust go out,
Speaker 1: you know, like an explorer, collect the gem secrets of
Speaker 1: business success and uh, and then bring them to the
Speaker 1: common man so that we can all become as successful
Speaker 1: in money as him. A con man. Yeah, He's like,
Speaker 1: I want you to be the Indiana Jones of rich people,
Speaker 1: and like like of rich people to call the Golden
Speaker 1: idols of how to run businesses from their temples of Okay,
Speaker 1: that's yeah anyway, uh so yeah, yeah that this is
Speaker 1: like so Hill claims that like Andrew Carnegie sets him
Speaker 1: this task, and that Carnegie tells him it's going to
Speaker 1: take twenty years to complete the mission, and Carnegie is
Speaker 1: like old like elder who lives on a mountain and
Speaker 1: is like, my sign, you must collect the secrets I
Speaker 1: give you. That's exactly the story that that Hill tells.
Speaker 1: And conveniently enough, he pitches this book in nineteen twenty eight,
Speaker 1: which is twenty years after he claims he had his
Speaker 1: fake meeting with Andrew Court. He spent the last twenty
Speaker 1: years not tricking people into building cars for him, but
Speaker 1: collecting success secrets. Yeah, in between fleecing small towns out
Speaker 1: of their spare money and running multiple fake colleges, he
Speaker 1: was interviewing the great thinkers of the world about success.
Speaker 1: So next, according to Hill's biography quote, Hill confessed that
Speaker 1: he not only shared Carnegie's utopian vision, but believed it
Speaker 1: could be accomplished. That was exactly what Carnegie wanted to hear.
Speaker 1: With his usual bluntness, he turned to Hill and without
Speaker 1: for any further preamble inquired if he felt equal to
Speaker 1: the challenge of undertaking this great work himself. Hill was
Speaker 1: honored and amazed that Carnegie saw in him someone worthy
Speaker 1: of the task, but Napoleon Hill believed he was. It
Speaker 1: took him less than half a minute to accept the offer.
Speaker 1: In fact, it took exactly twenty nine seconds, according to Carnegie,
Speaker 1: who had taken out his style watch and was timing
Speaker 1: Hill's response. Afterwards, he told Hill that he had given
Speaker 1: him a maximum of sixty seconds to come to a decision.
Speaker 1: If it had taken even one second longer than that,
Speaker 1: Carnegie said, the offer would have been withdrawn because a
Speaker 1: man who cannot reach a decision promptly once he has
Speaker 1: all the necessary facts cannot be depended upon to carry
Speaker 1: through any decision he may make. It's bad to think
Speaker 1: through your decisions, that's true. Yes, it's definitely. It's bad
Speaker 1: to spend more than a minute, yes, deciding whether to
Speaker 1: take on an unpaid twenty years. I mean, this is
Speaker 1: why I'm not rich, is because I think about decisions
Speaker 1: a lot. You know, I don't know, if you know,
Speaker 1: could I have accepted such a daunting task, The daunting
Speaker 1: task of going around to old rich men and asking
Speaker 1: them how they got so rich. I don't know, man,
Speaker 1: I don't know if I have the strength of character
Speaker 1: for that. No. No, that's why you know you're not
Speaker 1: Napoleon Hill. You lack the strength of character to kidnap
Speaker 1: your own child, run a fake automotive school, and steal
Speaker 1: lumber man. That's all wrong. I got to read the book. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's why I'm telling this story so other people can
Speaker 1: follow in Napoleon's I've done sort of what he did,
Speaker 1: and I'm taking all of the wisdom of his life
Speaker 1: and condensing it for you. Yeah. So, yeah, everything I've
Speaker 1: just read you that's the story that Napoleon Hill told Pelton,
Speaker 1: the guy who you know, the publisher that he befriended,
Speaker 1: and it was it's a good story. Like, that's a great,
Speaker 1: great idea for a bo So the thing about I
Speaker 1: only had thirty seconds to decide and he would have
Speaker 1: with you know, that's just like a real heightening of
Speaker 1: the stakes. That he was a good a good storyteller. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Now there was only one problem because he had Pelton
Speaker 1: as soon as Pelton Pelton being a smart guy, like
Speaker 1: here's the story and He's like, oh, yeah, I could
Speaker 1: sell a book with that with that premise. But there's
Speaker 1: an issue, which is that Napoleon Hill is destitute and
Speaker 1: if he'd spent the last twenty years learning all of
Speaker 1: the secrets of success, he would probably not be destitute.
Speaker 1: So Napoleon had to find a way to pretend to
Speaker 1: have some money in a meeting with this guy, or
Speaker 1: he's been training his whole life for this, Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: So we're gonna talk about how he did that and
Speaker 1: Napoleon's first major financial success in part two. But right now,
Speaker 1: Sorrow June, would you plug some pluggables because it is
Speaker 1: the end of this Absolutely, I will plug my website
Speaker 1: Heysarrow June dot com h E y s A r
Speaker 1: A j U n E. You can see where I
Speaker 1: am doing comedy shows. You can come to my comedy
Speaker 1: show High Priestess if you're in La High Priestesscomedy dot com.
Speaker 1: I'm on Venmo and Instagram at heysar at June. I'm
Speaker 1: on the Daily Zeitgeist sometimes and this is a great podcast.
Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to it. I'm Robert Evans. You
Speaker 1: can find me on Twitter at I write. Okay, you
Speaker 1: can find this podcast and all the sources for it
Speaker 1: at behind the Bastards dot com. You can find us
Speaker 1: on the Gram and the twits at at bastards pod
Speaker 1: and those are the only places in the world that
Speaker 1: you can find us, So don't don't go look in
Speaker 1: anywhere else. Mountain, use them into the success you seecret.
Speaker 1: If you can track me down on the top of
Speaker 1: the mountain where I live, I will quest, I will,
Speaker 1: I will. I will put you with a quest of
Speaker 1: talking to all of the worst dictators in the world
Speaker 1: and distilling their secrets of success. Uh. And once you
Speaker 1: put all the success in the crown, then you will
Speaker 1: manifest richness, but not for you, for some other guy,
Speaker 1: for for another guy who's a bud. Yeah, all right,
Speaker 1: that's the episode. Uh. We'll be back on Thursday with
Speaker 1: part two. H