Speaker 1: Hmm, what scamming my uh? Generations of naive Americans? Do
Speaker 1: you think the answer to success is as simple as
Speaker 1: envisioning yourself with more money rather than based heavily in
Speaker 1: a combination of luck and the clash you're born into.
Speaker 1: I'm Robert Evans. This is Behind the Bastards. That was
Speaker 1: one of our better intros. I'd say, Uh, Sara June
Speaker 1: is our guest today. How do you How do you
Speaker 1: feel about that intro? I feel like that, um was
Speaker 1: some canseley, very very broad and very very specific. Um,
Speaker 1: You've you've managed to cover everybody, uh and see into
Speaker 1: our souls and our deepest fears. Yeah, yeah, that's I
Speaker 1: love our deepest fears. I love our deepest fears. Big fan. Well,
Speaker 1: I'm Robert Evans and this is Behind the Bastards, the
Speaker 1: podcast where we tell you about the worst people in
Speaker 1: all of history, and of course the terrible historical person
Speaker 1: we're talking about today is Napoleon Hill. This is part
Speaker 1: two of our episode on Old Nappy h. So when
Speaker 1: we left off, Napoleon had finally come up with his
Speaker 1: first really great idea that didn't involve creating a fake
Speaker 1: school or fleeing from angry mobs after robbing them block.
Speaker 1: I mean, those were very good ideas, but still not
Speaker 1: close to Think and Grow Rich. Yeah yeah, and I
Speaker 1: think to the success quest. Yeah yeah, this is this
Speaker 1: is the laws of law of success. So we're not
Speaker 1: at think and Grow Rich. Yet this is his first book.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah. So uh so he has this great idea
Speaker 1: for a book, and he's got a publisher who's interested
Speaker 1: in it, and he just needs to convince this guy
Speaker 1: that he's wealthy so that the dude will believe that
Speaker 1: he has actually spent twenty years interviewing the most successful
Speaker 1: people in history. It sounds like a great sitcom premise.
Speaker 1: It is a great sitcom premise. You could really make
Speaker 1: a fun movie, like a really fun episode of a sitcom. Oh,
Speaker 1: I got to convince him I'm rich. You know. I
Speaker 1: feel like Steve Carrell would knock Napoleon Hill out of
Speaker 1: the fucking parks. I mean, let's be honest, everything out
Speaker 1: of the park. But yes, he would. He would be
Speaker 1: really good at as a blustering con man. Totally. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I I would watch that movie and for young Steve Carrell,
Speaker 1: we get I don't know one of the Jonas brothers
Speaker 1: probably get those get those kids in the seats. How
Speaker 1: old do you think the Jones brothers are what they're like,
Speaker 1: They're in their twenties now the Jones brothers are are adults. Now,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna be honest. The last pop culture that I
Speaker 1: remember really really clearly, where like those cups with space
Speaker 1: Jam stuff printed on them at McDonald's. Yeah, everything after
Speaker 1: that is just a blur. Well that, okay, let's not
Speaker 1: let's not bother Robert with what year it is, let's
Speaker 1: move on. I feel like I don't want to break
Speaker 1: you out of this trance because you're like a sleepwalker
Speaker 1: and you might be on me or something. People still
Speaker 1: like space Jam, right, absolutely, but it's not in the
Speaker 1: way you think. We've got this new thing called irony,
Speaker 1: don't worry about don't worry about it. Don't worry about it.
Speaker 1: So uh, yeah, Napoleon's got to convince this guy that
Speaker 1: he's rich so that he can sell his book idea
Speaker 1: and once again, in order to do this, Napoleon leaned
Speaker 1: on the wealthy family of one of his wives. I
Speaker 1: think he's up to his like third or fourth Now
Speaker 1: I kind of have trouble keeping track of them. There's
Speaker 1: a lot of wives at play. Um, you know what
Speaker 1: he was really just another type of scam. Yeah, wife
Speaker 1: is basically a debit card to Napoleon. Hell yeah, here's
Speaker 1: the here's the secret to Napoleon's success. A wife. A
Speaker 1: wife is a scam. Yeah, a wife is a scam too.
Speaker 1: Everything's a scam if you look at it, right. So
Speaker 1: Napoleon borrows money from his wife's brother to rent a gigantic,
Speaker 1: fancy hotel room in Philadelphia so that he can pretend
Speaker 1: to be a big shot businessman rather than a guy
Speaker 1: who has spent most of the last decade literally robbing
Speaker 1: churches in elementary schools and then running away from the police,
Speaker 1: and then running away from the police. Yeah, all across
Speaker 1: the country. So I'm gonna quote again from his biography,
Speaker 1: A lifetime of riches. He made a grand entrance, striding
Speaker 1: with starched purposefulness to the registration desk. He flashed a
Speaker 1: thick roll of cash as he put down the deposit
Speaker 1: on his room, then strutted to the elevator with the
Speaker 1: self assurance of a Rockefeller. Ascending to his suite, he
Speaker 1: regally dispatched the bellboy to fetch him the tobacconist's most
Speaker 1: expensive cigars. He rejected the first offering of simply excellent cigars,
Speaker 1: then tip the boy four times the going rate for
Speaker 1: his trouble. So all this is happening before Pelton even
Speaker 1: arrives to meet with Napoleon. He's getting in character and
Speaker 1: he's establishing like his goal was to make an entrance
Speaker 1: and established himself as a rich big shot before Pelton arrives,
Speaker 1: so that when the publishers shows up to talk with him,
Speaker 1: the hotel staff will treat him like he's a big shot.
Speaker 1: Like that. That's the con, which is a pretty smart con,
Speaker 1: and it apparently works. Like the hotel staff treats him
Speaker 1: like royalty. Pelton's impressed and assumes that he's actually a
Speaker 1: rich guy. So Pelton agrees to publish Law of Success,
Speaker 1: which will he not just one book, but a multi
Speaker 1: volume epic, and he even pays Napoleon a healthy advance. Now,
Speaker 1: you might imagine that a man in Napoleon situation, whose
Speaker 1: wife has been supporting the family for more than a year,
Speaker 1: and whose family had just loaned him the money that
Speaker 1: he needed to make his dreams possible, you might expect
Speaker 1: that guy to at least like pay his brother in
Speaker 1: law back maybe, but no, Napoleon does not do that.
Speaker 1: He's not to pay people back. Sort of guy roy
Speaker 1: for himself people. Now you might also have expected this
Speaker 1: guy who has like had his wife and kids living
Speaker 1: with like their family all this time, you might expect
Speaker 1: him to like say, okay, well, now we can all
Speaker 1: move into a place together, since I just got this
Speaker 1: advance and we can all live together as a family,
Speaker 1: will I write this book. That doesn't happen either of
Speaker 1: success now it's not the law of success is apparently
Speaker 1: continuing to live in Philadelphia, abandoning his family and writing books, um,
Speaker 1: which is what Napoleon does during this period of time.
Speaker 1: So now, during this month, these months, Napoleon keeps writing
Speaker 1: his wife lurid letters detailing the lavish gifts he plans
Speaker 1: to buy for her upon like once his book is
Speaker 1: a success and the money comes in. He promised her
Speaker 1: that if she just held on a little bit longer
Speaker 1: and let him work alone in Philadelphia, the money would
Speaker 1: come rolling in and their troubles would be over forever.
Speaker 1: And part of this was actually true, um, because by
Speaker 1: dumb luck, sheer dumb luck, Napoleon's book Law of Success
Speaker 1: is a gigantic hit and he makes a huge amount
Speaker 1: of money with it. Well, here's the thing. I wouldn't
Speaker 1: call that dumb luck, you know, I think I think
Speaker 1: it's the scam. Yeah. Yeah, he did put in the groundwork.
Speaker 1: You're right, put in the groundwork. He wrote a whole book.
Speaker 1: He wrote something that was first of all, he did
Speaker 1: something that was almost free for him to do, right,
Speaker 1: which is like right about right. He's got this advance.
Speaker 1: It's a very low cost endeavor, you know, writing a book,
Speaker 1: and so you know, he's just making profit and he's
Speaker 1: selling something by by telling people what they want to hear,
Speaker 1: which is you can get rich quick, and uh, it is,
Speaker 1: it's it's within your control. Uh. And he's also telling
Speaker 1: rich people you're rich because you're very good and smart.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, so yeah, yeah yeah Napoleon, you're right. Napoleon
Speaker 1: put in the work and he gets successful. And by
Speaker 1: midnight his royalty checks were more than dollars a month,
Speaker 1: which is the modern equivalent of making thirty six grand
Speaker 1: a month. And this really probably the first honest money
Speaker 1: he's ever made. Yeah, this is the the first honest
Speaker 1: money that he's ever made in his life. Now it's
Speaker 1: interesting to wonder about, like why this book was such
Speaker 1: a hit. Hill's biographers posit this theory quote law of
Speaker 1: Success might well have been discarded as the ravings of
Speaker 1: a lunatic, but for the fact that much of Hill's
Speaker 1: most improbable conjecture was spun from the musings of men
Speaker 1: like Thomas Edison and Alexander Graham Bell. Thus anchored in respectability,
Speaker 1: these passages stimulated readers to wonder, to ponder life on
Speaker 1: a grander scale, more than any self help book ever
Speaker 1: has before or since. Again, this is written by the
Speaker 1: people who are with the Napoleon Hill foundations, and I
Speaker 1: think this is the best book ever written. And he
Speaker 1: also made up all of these quotes. Yeah, he made
Speaker 1: all of these quotes. These are all lies. Matt Novak
Speaker 1: of Gizmoto reached out to David Nassau, who was Andrew
Speaker 1: Carnekie's official biographer, and Nassau told him that he found
Speaker 1: no evidence of any kind that Carnegie and Hill ever met.
Speaker 1: So there's there is zero, you know, oddly enough, that's
Speaker 1: the only one of them he met. Yeah, yeah, well
Speaker 1: but it's we'll talk about it later. You're gonna like
Speaker 1: this but that is the one famous person. He writes
Speaker 1: that in the book that he did meet um, but
Speaker 1: it's not quite the way he portrays it. But first
Speaker 1: I want to I want to read a quote from
Speaker 1: that gizmoo article about how he portrays Carnegie in his book. Quote.
Speaker 1: Opening Hill's book to any random page and reading the
Speaker 1: drivel past off as Carnegie's own words is a fun game.
Speaker 1: As just one random example from page ninety seven in
Speaker 1: my copy is is like written as a conversation Hill,
Speaker 1: will you tell me and the simplest words possible, just
Speaker 1: how one may control this wheel of fortune. I would
Speaker 1: like a description of this important success factor which the
Speaker 1: young man or young woman just beginning a business career
Speaker 1: may understand. Carnegie. First of all, to control the wheel
Speaker 1: of fortune, one must understand master and apply the seventeen
Speaker 1: principles of achievement. I already named five of these principles,
Speaker 1: and I might here suggest that these five, if properly applied,
Speaker 1: will carry one a long way on the road towards
Speaker 1: success in any calling. It's this is just like the
Speaker 1: the great grandfather of an entire genre of uship success
Speaker 1: books about like you know the it's uh you know
Speaker 1: to to quote Peep Show, it's business Secrets of the Pharaohs. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: like the idea that like Carnegie is like no, there's
Speaker 1: seventeen principles of success, and those allow you to run
Speaker 1: the wheel of fortune, and that's how business works. Like Rick,
Speaker 1: guys aren't sitting around like mapping out their success into
Speaker 1: abstract principles. They're they're looking at spreadsheets and going kill
Speaker 1: all those people. Yeah. There's there's two kinds of great businessman.
Speaker 1: There's the look at spreadsheets and say kill all those
Speaker 1: people will make an extra four bucks. And then there's
Speaker 1: the guys who are literally just like what if we
Speaker 1: try doing this? Get Yeah, well, what do we make
Speaker 1: a computer that like does this thing? Like what if
Speaker 1: we what if we make this purple? Like, we'll see
Speaker 1: if it sells my Yeah. A lot of them are
Speaker 1: born with a lot of money or given a lot
Speaker 1: of money, you know, like Trump or whatever, where it's like,
Speaker 1: well maybe if someone gives me a million dollars, I
Speaker 1: can buy a building and make three million dollars. You know,
Speaker 1: there's no principles at work there. It's just as profit
Speaker 1: people need and charge them more than they can afford.
Speaker 1: For it until they die. Yeah. That's literally the only
Speaker 1: rule of great business secret. Yeah, find something people need
Speaker 1: and sell it to them until they die. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: you've you you should put out a book. I you
Speaker 1: know what, I'm tweeting it for free, buddy. I'm just kidding.
Speaker 1: I don't tweet, but yeah, you're welcome. You're all welcome
Speaker 1: for these business secrets. Can you imagine Napoleon Hills twitter? Absolutely?
Speaker 1: I think wow. He would be so fucking good. He
Speaker 1: would be tweeting. He would be like Marian Williamson like
Speaker 1: meets Trump level tweets. Oh god, he would deafly be
Speaker 1: part of the Democratic debates. He would totally be running.
Speaker 1: Oh my god. Him and Hicky Looper would be buddies.
Speaker 1: I don't think many people got along with Napoleon Hill.
Speaker 1: Hick and Looper would show up at the next debate
Speaker 1: with like pantsless because Napoleon had stolen them and quit town.
Speaker 1: Oh boy. Now uh so in reality, as a we
Speaker 1: I alluded to a little earlier, only one of the
Speaker 1: famous men that Napoleon Hill claimed to have interviewed actually
Speaker 1: had any face to face contact with him, and that
Speaker 1: man was Thomas Albert Edison. Now, if you remember from
Speaker 1: part one and that Golden Rule magazine that he ran
Speaker 1: for a while, that he would like come up with
Speaker 1: bogus awards to give prominent people in order to get
Speaker 1: close to them, because he believed that that's you know,
Speaker 1: that was his strategy for it a tactic. Well, his
Speaker 1: meeting of Thomas Edison is another example of that um.
Speaker 1: The whole scheme was discussed in a December nineteen article
Speaker 1: of Specialty Salesman magazine titled Destroyers Confidence quote. He'll figure
Speaker 1: out how he could have a picture made with Thomas A.
Speaker 1: Edison so he could give him a medal. He sent
Speaker 1: a press agent over to announce that Mr Hill, one
Speaker 1: of the leading magazine writers, wished to attend the Edison
Speaker 1: Convention of Dealers. Of course he was welcome. He asked
Speaker 1: Mr Edison to pose with him, a request he could
Speaker 1: hardly refuse. So then the two guys shook hands, and uh,
Speaker 1: he tried to hand Thomas Edison this medal that he
Speaker 1: liked supposedly was awarding him. But Edison like seems to
Speaker 1: have immediately realized what was going on and like wouldn't
Speaker 1: even take the medal. But Napoleon got a fucking picture
Speaker 1: with him so good at Instagram. Oh yeah, yeah yeah.
Speaker 1: And that's kind of what this is is he just
Speaker 1: he just comes up with us a lie long enough
Speaker 1: to get a picture with Thomas Edison, and then for
Speaker 1: the rest of his life he circulates that picture of
Speaker 1: him with Edison is proof of like, no, I did
Speaker 1: talk to all these famous people. Here's casually a picture
Speaker 1: of me with Edison. Um, look how comfortable he looks.
Speaker 1: Looks how comfortable he looks. Uh so the photo I'm
Speaker 1: gonna I want to read you the caption that Napoleon
Speaker 1: Hill wrote for the photo of him and Edison. Two
Speaker 1: of America's famous men. Thomas A. Edison left in Napoleon Hill.
Speaker 1: Mr Edison is the inventor of the talking machine, the
Speaker 1: electric light, the moving picture, and scores of other things
Speaker 1: that serve mankind. Mr Hill is the editor of Napoleon
Speaker 1: Hills Magazine and The New Philistine Magazine, and believes in
Speaker 1: making the Golden rule the rule of all human conduct.
Speaker 1: Edison was born of poor parents and began his career
Speaker 1: as a news butcher on a train. Hill began as
Speaker 1: a laborer in the coal mines. Both have risen to
Speaker 1: fame through their own efforts. I do love that he
Speaker 1: has changed covering for the murder of a black boy
Speaker 1: and getting made the manager of a coal mine into
Speaker 1: laboring in the coal mines. Yeah, you know, it's all in.
Speaker 1: It's all in how you finesse it. That's some pretty
Speaker 1: intense finessing. Yeah, that's that's great. I mean, it's not great,
Speaker 1: but it's it's it's actually terrible. It's what the word
Speaker 1: I'm looking for is, it's very terrible. It's a horrible thing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but you know, it's good to remember this during campaign season. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So if you paid attention here, you probably noticed a
Speaker 1: through line in hills writing. He's focused entirely on the
Speaker 1: idea that people rise to fame and wealth only through
Speaker 1: their own efforts, and that people consequently fail only through
Speaker 1: their own efforts. Hill was not the first person to
Speaker 1: want to popularize this sort of thinking, but he was
Speaker 1: the first person to phrase it in a way that
Speaker 1: made it seem mystical, spiritual, and most importantly marketable. For
Speaker 1: this reason, he's still known by many people today as
Speaker 1: the godfather of the modern day self help genre. And
Speaker 1: what's so brilliant about this to me? If you want
Speaker 1: to like, uh, talk about this from I don't know,
Speaker 1: like a class, like analyze this the way that someone
Speaker 1: like Frederic Ingalls would uh. For a long time, people
Speaker 1: at the top of society, the kings and the queens
Speaker 1: and the nobles and whatnot, had to like come up
Speaker 1: with it, like divine right of kings justifies why I
Speaker 1: have all this money and you don't because it's God's
Speaker 1: will that I should rule you. And like that stops
Speaker 1: working big because we've got impartment, because we get democracy,
Speaker 1: because we get newspapers, because people like you know, things
Speaker 1: change and that no longer works. And this is a
Speaker 1: brilliant way to justify that in the same way, but
Speaker 1: to make people feel empowered by embracing it. So instead
Speaker 1: of them just being like, well, the kings the king,
Speaker 1: and I got to accept that, or he'll kill me
Speaker 1: or God will kill me. Instead you're like, well, I'm
Speaker 1: just poor right now because my mind's not positive enough
Speaker 1: and it's my thinking, Like it's it's one of those
Speaker 1: things that would almost make you believe in a conspiracy
Speaker 1: because it's it's a genius way to stop people from
Speaker 1: eating the rich. It's making this popular because it's like, yes,
Speaker 1: you know, yes, you're bad, but you could be good
Speaker 1: if you thought hard enough. Yeah, if you thought hard enough,
Speaker 1: you know. And all these positive thoughts that poor people
Speaker 1: are having, um, actually do not affect the rich in
Speaker 1: any way. I'm thinking real hard about well three distribution. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so are a lot of us. It doesn't seem to
Speaker 1: be hell. But as I stated in some previous podcasts
Speaker 1: we recorded, what helps more than thinking about wealth distribution
Speaker 1: is everybody going out buying a pair of bolt cutters.
Speaker 1: Just make sure you have those with you. You know,
Speaker 1: they'll they'll be handy one of these, buddy. Yeah. So anyway,
Speaker 1: now Hill's book is a huge success. He's making funkloads
Speaker 1: of money. Uh. And now that he's actually finally wealthy
Speaker 1: for the first time, he starts spending money like it
Speaker 1: caused cancer. Uh. He bought two Rolls royces in a
Speaker 1: mansion on six acres, which he named shag Bark for
Speaker 1: reasons that are lost to history. Uh. This giant mansion was,
Speaker 1: of course, way out of his price range, so he
Speaker 1: conned some investors into buying into it with him with
Speaker 1: the idea that shag Bark into the world's first what
Speaker 1: he called the world's first university size success school. So
Speaker 1: that's his first idea, and then over time the success
Speaker 1: school morphs into a success colony. So he plans to
Speaker 1: like make a utopian community where he's going to make
Speaker 1: human beings better. Okay, this guy can't even have a
Speaker 1: best selling book without turning it into a scam. Like
Speaker 1: this is scam on scam on scam at this point,
Speaker 1: Like it's always has got to be a scam with him.
Speaker 1: He's got some money work, but he's gotta you know,
Speaker 1: he's got this pathological need to fucking scam people. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's what they all do. It's like, it's why Donald
Speaker 1: Trump is like buying from his own properties in a
Speaker 1: basically illegal manner, like in order to make more money
Speaker 1: while he's president, Like the con of becoming the president
Speaker 1: that's not enough. Like I've gotta also use the presidency
Speaker 1: to enrich my businesses. It's like, uh, l Ron Hubbard, Like,
Speaker 1: well you know what, No, it's not like l Ron
Speaker 1: Hubbard because everything Robert, Yeah, you're right, you're right. He's
Speaker 1: he's unique and beautiful, and I just like thinking about him. Um,
Speaker 1: he's very he's an iconic cult leader. Yeah, Okay, so um,
Speaker 1: yeah so, and and for a little while, just by
Speaker 1: the sheer success of his first book, it looked like
Speaker 1: he might actually start a success college or a success
Speaker 1: colony um and more importantly, for a very brief chunk
Speaker 1: of time, Napoleon Hill actually made good on the things
Speaker 1: he promised his wives, um or one of his wives.
Speaker 1: For a few precious months, he and his wife, Florence,
Speaker 1: and their three children all occupied the same home. He
Speaker 1: actually got her the mansion that he promised her, So
Speaker 1: that's nice, but only lasted a few months because yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: He almost immediately got sick of this and started leaving
Speaker 1: home to go on speaking tours, which some of which
Speaker 1: were legitimate, but most of which were probably just him
Speaker 1: having sex with prostitutes. So the cash started to roll
Speaker 1: in in late nineteen in throughout nineteen nine, but then
Speaker 1: the Great Depression hits and it puts an end too
Speaker 1: Napoleon's money's pigot. There were royalty checks peter out, his
Speaker 1: stupid mansion is foreclosed on, and his family has to
Speaker 1: move back in with his wife's parents. Now his family
Speaker 1: moves back with his wife's parents, Napoleon remains in New
Speaker 1: York City so he can write his second book, which
Speaker 1: he calls The Magic Ladder to Success, but this wound
Speaker 1: up being so badly written that his publisher was unwilling
Speaker 1: to bother printing it. Wait, after after all the ship
Speaker 1: he wrote in the Law of Success, the publisher is like,
Speaker 1: I can't put like the publisher as standards. Now it
Speaker 1: may just have been this was just a worse book,
Speaker 1: all right. Yeah, I mean, I don't know. I never
Speaker 1: read The Magic Ladder to Success. Maybe he just lost
Speaker 1: his mojo. Yeah, um, maybe he became like a like
Speaker 1: when a comedian gets rich and then all their material
Speaker 1: is about rich people problems. Yeah, yeah, that's that's kind
Speaker 1: of He's not rich anymore. He's not rich for very
Speaker 1: long because he immediately goes wildly in debt um. So,
Speaker 1: like with most of America, the Great Depression was a
Speaker 1: dark time for Napoleon. He spends most of it broke,
Speaker 1: engaged in one scammer and there and I I can't
Speaker 1: detail all of that. Uh, you should have a feel
Speaker 1: for the man's style by now. He keeps scamming throughout
Speaker 1: the Depression. Petty shit. Uh. In nineteen thirty five, Florence
Speaker 1: finally filed for divorce Napoleon didn't bother to contest it. Now,
Speaker 1: there are two different versions of Napoleon's life, reality and
Speaker 1: the version self help aficionados who still love his work
Speaker 1: believed today. In that version of events, Napoleon Hill was
Speaker 1: still poor during the Great Depression, but he was also
Speaker 1: somehow hired by FDR to save the country from the depression.
Speaker 1: Um And of course Napoleon claims he refused to be
Speaker 1: paid for this work, and so everybody thought he was
Speaker 1: crazy for refusing to take money from the president for
Speaker 1: helping solve the depression. But he totally solved the depression,
Speaker 1: Matt Novac writes quote. Years later, he would claim that
Speaker 1: he was approached by the Roosevelt administration to help instill
Speaker 1: confidence in the American economy. As Holst biographer's note, his
Speaker 1: personal record of his relationship with Franklin Delano Roosevelt and
Speaker 1: f DR's administration was surprisingly scant, and their political views
Speaker 1: were polar opposites, with Hill being an arch conservative. But
Speaker 1: somehow they made it work, and Hill's ideas were injected
Speaker 1: into FDR's New Deal program, supposedly imploring labor unions to
Speaker 1: be more cooperative with management at various companies. Again, this
Speaker 1: was all according to Napoleon Hill, and anti union arch conservative,
Speaker 1: who claimed, we have written some of FDR speeches and
Speaker 1: even to coin the phrase we have nothing to fear
Speaker 1: but fear itself. What yuh? I will not stop? No,
Speaker 1: he can't, he can't and I I I should note.
Speaker 1: He also claimed later in life that during World War
Speaker 1: One he'd been a personal advisor to Woodrow Wilson uh
Speaker 1: and claimed that on the day that Germany surrendered he
Speaker 1: was sitting next to Woodrow Wilson when he got the telegram,
Speaker 1: and that he advised Wilson personally that he had to
Speaker 1: make the Kaiser's abdication and necessary requirement for accepting the surrender.
Speaker 1: So Napoleon Hill takes credit for getting rid of the Kaiser. Wow,
Speaker 1: he's just like he's every He's like, um, what's his name?
Speaker 1: Like a forest, that's the the picture he wants. He's
Speaker 1: for his gump. He's like, you know, he's Zelig. He's
Speaker 1: fucking everywhere. He's everywhere once throughout history. He's the one.
Speaker 1: He's the one that killed Hitler. Yes, that's how he
Speaker 1: wants people to see him. But he was also poor
Speaker 1: while being a personal adviser to the president. Also still
Speaker 1: poor and humble. Yes, still poor and humble. He is
Speaker 1: honest about the fact that he was fucking broke during
Speaker 1: this period of time. Um yeah, and I will say
Speaker 1: admitting that he spent much of his life poor as
Speaker 1: ship is the one thing Napoleon Hill is honest about
Speaker 1: kind of consistently. Um. Now, After Florence left him, he
Speaker 1: was completely cut off from her family money, so he
Speaker 1: made ends meet by sundry scams and by continuing to
Speaker 1: cash in on the success of his first book by
Speaker 1: giving lectures. During one of these lectures in Tennessee, which
Speaker 1: is essentially a self help seminar in like nineteen thirty six,
Speaker 1: he mentions that he's looking for his dream girl. He
Speaker 1: says this like during a lecture he's giving a bunch
Speaker 1: of strangers, which seems weird to me. Yeah, but woman
Speaker 1: in the what's crazier is a young woman in the audience,
Speaker 1: Rosalie Bieland makes a bee line for Napoleon after the
Speaker 1: lecture and is like, I'm totally fucking down. Let's do
Speaker 1: this ship thinking get laid, thinking, get laid. It's time
Speaker 1: to go to add It is time to go to ads.
Speaker 1: You know what goes better with is better than getting laid. No,
Speaker 1: that's not you know, it's better than sex products and services,
Speaker 1: products and services, and the best of all our products
Speaker 1: and services that enable sex, like the wonderful dick pills
Speaker 1: that we advertise on this show. We're back great products,
Speaker 1: good services. So you're telling me that Napoleon hill manifested
Speaker 1: not only incredible wealth but also his dream girl just
Speaker 1: by lying his entire life. Yeah, although dream girl would
Speaker 1: be putting it a bit strong. Um, I think you
Speaker 1: might like what happens with Rosalie. Um, it doesn't go
Speaker 1: the way I expected it to. Uh So the two
Speaker 1: were married within days. Napoleon was fifty three and Rosa
Speaker 1: was twenty nine. Um, which seems like it could potentially
Speaker 1: have been a dangerous and exploitative situation, but it was
Speaker 1: literally the opposite. See, Rosa was just as much of
Speaker 1: a con man as Napoleon hill She wanted to make
Speaker 1: a funckload of money selling nonsense self help advice, and
Speaker 1: she knew Napoleon was her vehicle to doing that. So
Speaker 1: immediately after their wedding, they sit down to write a
Speaker 1: new book, Think and Grow Rich. The couple moves in
Speaker 1: with Napoleon's son Blair and his wife and a tight
Speaker 1: in their tiny New York apartment so they can stay
Speaker 1: off the street while they work on this book because
Speaker 1: neither has any money. Now, Napoleon's son Blair was literally
Speaker 1: the last person he had to lean on. None of
Speaker 1: his other children would even talk to him, as he
Speaker 1: had habitually burned every single bridge that he came across
Speaker 1: in life. So once Blair and Blair is again the
Speaker 1: deaf son he refused to teach sign language to my
Speaker 1: god son takes pity on his terrible dad and he's like, yes,
Speaker 1: wife can live with me while you write another book
Speaker 1: of awful bullshit, it gets even worse. So once Blair
Speaker 1: and his wife Vera start hosting Napoleon and and his
Speaker 1: new wife, Um, things quickly get bad, both because Napoleon
Speaker 1: is an asshole and also because mainly just because Napoleon's
Speaker 1: an asshole. Um. And he particularly hated his husband's wife
Speaker 1: according to Hill his own, Yeah, he hated his or
Speaker 1: he hated his his son's wife. Oh oh, so Napoleon
Speaker 1: Hill really didn't like his son's Vera. Yeah, he hates Vera.
Speaker 1: According to his own biography quote, she bore the full
Speaker 1: brunt of Napoleon's ability to unashamedly heckel and hound people
Speaker 1: he didn't like. Vera endured several months of naps, nastiest
Speaker 1: bullying and snipe, and then finally left Blair and moved
Speaker 1: back to West Virginia. Blair soon returned to West Virginia
Speaker 1: two after loaning his father enough money to subsist for
Speaker 1: several more months. Blair and Vera tried to rebuild their marriage,
Speaker 1: but several years later were divorced. Although Blair went on
Speaker 1: to become an imminently successful businessman and a lovely and
Speaker 1: a beloved community leader, he never remarried. So Napoleon gets
Speaker 1: taken in by his son, kicks them out of their
Speaker 1: own apartment, and ruins their marriage and gets hundreds of
Speaker 1: dollars from him. Um, this paby like just doesn't give
Speaker 1: a shit about anything or anybody. No, he is a
Speaker 1: total piece of shit. Now, Napoleon and his wife, while
Speaker 1: living at the apartment they stole from his son, finished
Speaker 1: their new book, and Rosa was an integral part of
Speaker 1: the entire process, because Napoleon was a terrible writer and
Speaker 1: she was apparently a pretty good editor, so she has
Speaker 1: manages to like edit his ramblings into something other human
Speaker 1: beings would enjoy reading. The book had to be rewritten
Speaker 1: three times, but eventually the couple got it right, and
Speaker 1: they succeeded in convincing Hill's old publisher Pelton, to give
Speaker 1: him a second try. Think and Grow Rich is one
Speaker 1: of those books that is hard to h oversell the
Speaker 1: success of and like and and over emphasize its impact
Speaker 1: on society. By some counts, it sold as many as
Speaker 1: twenty million copies. Now that number is probably a big exaggeration,
Speaker 1: but ten million might not be. Like it was a
Speaker 1: hugely successful book. Um, I've seen it on the bookshelves
Speaker 1: of more people than I can count. Like, it's just
Speaker 1: it's everywhere. Any any used bookstore you go to will
Speaker 1: have one or a few copies of Thinking Grow Rich. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's fucking everywhere. And it's still very very common and
Speaker 1: very popular. Um. And a lot of that's to do
Speaker 1: with the fact, like I've never I've never read it,
Speaker 1: but I think it's people say it's a well written
Speaker 1: self help book, which I think is probably mostly due
Speaker 1: to Rosalie. Um. Yeah, Now, Think and Grow Rich was
Speaker 1: essentially just a refining and rehashing of the best parts
Speaker 1: of Napoleon's first book, Uh Law of Success. I found
Speaker 1: a two thousand fifteen right up of the book on
Speaker 1: Business Insider. It was titled seventy eight years ago a
Speaker 1: journalist studied five Richmond and boiled down their success into
Speaker 1: thirteen steps. Now, calling Mr Hill a journalist stretches the
Speaker 1: definition of that word, maybe more than it's ever been stretched.
Speaker 1: I can't think of anyone who is less of a journalist.
Speaker 1: And Napoleon Hill he was even when he was writing
Speaker 1: for a newspaper, he was mostly full of ship and
Speaker 1: then and then he didn't write for newspapers anymore, so
Speaker 1: he didn't even call himself a journalist. No, he's closer
Speaker 1: to being a lumber salesman. Yeah, he called himself a businessman. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So the Business Insider write up confusing. We summarize as
Speaker 1: Hill's work this way, quote Think and Grow, rich shares
Speaker 1: what he calls the money making secrets in thirteen Principles.
Speaker 1: There's no mention of money, well finances, or stocks within
Speaker 1: Hill's text. He takes a different approach, focusing on breaking
Speaker 1: down the psychological barriers that prevent many of us from
Speaker 1: attaining our own fortunes. These money making secrets include such
Speaker 1: bold and mind blowing strategies as desire riches instead of
Speaker 1: wishing for them. Uh Napoleon wrote, quote, wishing will not
Speaker 1: bring riches, but desiring riches with a state of mind
Speaker 1: that becomes an obsession than planning definite ways and means
Speaker 1: to acquire riches and backing those plans. Different, That was
Speaker 1: different steps. First you had desiring and then you had
Speaker 1: making a plan and taking action. Yeah, those are different things. Well,
Speaker 1: he says, He says, yeah, like the the idea that
Speaker 1: he's saying desire riches instead of wishing for them is
Speaker 1: nonsense because his description of desiring riches is like the same,
Speaker 1: Like there's no difference between desiring something and wishing for it.
Speaker 1: Um Like it's it's just nonsense. Like and it's like
Speaker 1: you could say that it's good advice to say, like, yeah,
Speaker 1: but if you want to be successful, be obsessed with
Speaker 1: the thing you want to do, plan ways to like
Speaker 1: make it happen, back those plans with persistence, don't accept failure.
Speaker 1: But like, again that's not a guide. That's obvious. It's
Speaker 1: like me selling myself was a marathon coach by saying,
Speaker 1: so you just run for twenty six point two miles
Speaker 1: and don't stop. And if you don't stop for any reason,
Speaker 1: don't stop. Just keep going and you'll finish the marathon.
Speaker 1: And you know what if you if you fall and
Speaker 1: you can't run anymore, that's not my fault. It would
Speaker 1: be more like saying, if you fall and can't run anymore,
Speaker 1: I suggest getting up and continuing to run. Here's the
Speaker 1: thing you have to desire finishing the race, and then
Speaker 1: you have to do it. It's like, yeah, that's how
Speaker 1: you achieve success. It's very easy. You just you think
Speaker 1: about it and then you do it. I mean, I
Speaker 1: don't know how I can make this any easier. Frea Guys. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the secret to success is being sending a way to
Speaker 1: succeed and then doing it. Yeah. He's not just saying
Speaker 1: be successful. He's saying, make a plan to be successful.
Speaker 1: But that's still not useful information. Um. Yeah. So another
Speaker 1: thing that's included in his book, or another one of
Speaker 1: the steps included in his book is faith. Uh. He
Speaker 1: notes riches begin in the form of thought. The amount
Speaker 1: is limited only by the person in whose mind the
Speaker 1: thought is put into action. Faith removes limitations. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: think and grow rich. As you may have guessed by
Speaker 1: now is the book that popularized affirmations, which is the
Speaker 1: idea of like writing down a bunch of times per day,
Speaker 1: I'm going to get this grade on a test, or
Speaker 1: I'm going to make this much money, I'm going to
Speaker 1: get this job. Yeah. A big part of afflications is
Speaker 1: basically the idea that they that they trick your brain into,
Speaker 1: you know, creating new thought patterns by forcing yourself to
Speaker 1: repeat thoughts that are you know, positive or desired over
Speaker 1: and over allowed or by writing them down and then
Speaker 1: by doing so it's just like you know, it'll just
Speaker 1: you trick your brain and then you think a different way.
Speaker 1: And Hill didn't call them affirmations. He called it the
Speaker 1: principle of auto suggestion. But it's the same thing, like
Speaker 1: the idea is the same and usually like affirmations now
Speaker 1: are generally um it's generally considered important that they be
Speaker 1: in the form of a statement rare than a predictive
Speaker 1: future statement like I am rich versus like I will
Speaker 1: be rich. You know. Ah, yeah, yeah, this whole scam
Speaker 1: has evolved so much over the years. It's always heartening
Speaker 1: to hear about how Yeah. So uh, Thinking Grow Rich,
Speaker 1: like I said, sold like hotcakes. Uh. And as someone
Speaker 1: who has never been drawn to self help books, I
Speaker 1: can't really explain why. But people loved it and they
Speaker 1: still love it. Uh. And I've met a lot of like,
Speaker 1: reasonable intelligent people who I respect, who have this book
Speaker 1: on their shelves somewhere and presumably found value in it.
Speaker 1: So if you're one of those people, I have no
Speaker 1: desire to to shoot on you or the fact that
Speaker 1: you found value uh in it. Um. But I do
Speaker 1: think it's funny that Napoleon Hill wrote about sex transmutation.
Speaker 1: So we're going to talk about that some Oh hell
Speaker 1: yeah um from Thinking Grow Rich quote. The desire for
Speaker 1: sexual expression is by far the strongest and most impelling
Speaker 1: of all the human emotions. For this very reason, this desire,
Speaker 1: when harnessed and transmuted into action, other than that a
Speaker 1: physical expression may raise one to the status of a genius.
Speaker 1: Oh okay, he's a no FAP guy. Yeah, he's a
Speaker 1: no fab You you pulled it? You got it? I didn't, Okay,
Speaker 1: So I actually I actually so. No fap is like
Speaker 1: a community on Reddit of people who don't masturbate, and
Speaker 1: there are other places to like the Proud Boys have
Speaker 1: a no masturbation rule. It's like a thing. Some groups
Speaker 1: of people have this idea that like, if you don't masturbate,
Speaker 1: you can transmute your sexual energy that you would lose
Speaker 1: if you came into a whatever. Yeah, whether I mean,
Speaker 1: like you know, it's it's also like why I think monks,
Speaker 1: you know, monks aren't allowed to jerk off because you know,
Speaker 1: you're you have to all of the energy and your
Speaker 1: body has to be channeled towards the greater purpose, whether
Speaker 1: that is being a Nazi or loving God or whatever. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I I have to note that, with literally about
Speaker 1: a fucking second worth of googling, I found a Reddit
Speaker 1: thread in the no FAPs ubread it titled what Napoleon
Speaker 1: Hill thought of no fab in nineteen thirty eight. Now
Speaker 1: I'm just going to read you one of the exchanges
Speaker 1: from that threat. Okay, okay, fine, So it starts. It
Speaker 1: starts with a guy named with the user name Rocky
Speaker 1: Mountain oysters which your testicles, quoting Napoleon Hill. So here's
Speaker 1: the Napoleon Hill quote. Controlled sex supplies the magnetic force
Speaker 1: that attracts people to one another. It is the most
Speaker 1: important factor of a pleasing personality. It gives quality to
Speaker 1: the tone of the voice and enables one to convey
Speaker 1: through the voice any feeling desired. And then the person
Speaker 1: quoting this, Rocky Mountain Oysters, writes underneath that somebody who
Speaker 1: hadn't seen me in about a year was just telling
Speaker 1: me tonight that my voice lessons must be working because
Speaker 1: the tone of my voice while I was singing sounds
Speaker 1: so good. In reality, I quit the voice lessons more
Speaker 1: than a year ago. I just sound good at the
Speaker 1: moment because I've been a good no fapper for a
Speaker 1: week and a half. Oh my god. And then the
Speaker 1: response to this is someone else who says I'm a
Speaker 1: singer too. And I found that at times when I'm
Speaker 1: sexually sober, it feels like my voice electrifies the air
Speaker 1: around it. Also, I understand that Frank Sinatra used to
Speaker 1: sleep with a different woman every night, except when he
Speaker 1: was getting ready to record an album. Maybe that's why
Speaker 1: he was such a shitty singer. I love it. I
Speaker 1: love it, boy. I mean, you know, the great thing
Speaker 1: about no FAP is that there's such a huge historical
Speaker 1: precedent for it, and these guys like all they really
Speaker 1: want is is proof that other men throughout history have
Speaker 1: done the same thing as them and have been great.
Speaker 1: Uh So, like all of these, these these forums are
Speaker 1: just guys being like see Aristotle said it, you know,
Speaker 1: so it's gonna be true kind of thing. I I
Speaker 1: diated a guy once who told me that he thought
Speaker 1: um women were less attracted to him when he wore deodorant,
Speaker 1: like because of pheromones or whatever. And I was like,
Speaker 1: I don't know, I think that's true. I think you're
Speaker 1: just being addictive people and that's why they don't like you. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's uh. I I love the little theories people come
Speaker 1: up with things that they just want to do. I
Speaker 1: mean it's so crazy too, because like I mean, just
Speaker 1: like the think and grow rich thing there are I
Speaker 1: can see how part of this like works, you know
Speaker 1: what I mean. I can see like a kernel of
Speaker 1: truth in this or how for some people it does work.
Speaker 1: Like if you're in the state of mind where you
Speaker 1: know you have you have money making opportunities, but or
Speaker 1: you have talent, but you just are paralyzed you know,
Speaker 1: by self loathing or or old ways of thinking and
Speaker 1: I can see why reading a self help book that
Speaker 1: states the obvious, you know, which is think about what
Speaker 1: you want and then make a plan for it. It's
Speaker 1: like very very helpful, you know. And and and it's
Speaker 1: it's the same thing with like with this no fab stuff.
Speaker 1: Like I can see if you're a creative person, if
Speaker 1: you're a musician or if you're a writer, uh, and
Speaker 1: you're in the process of you're you're kinda put on
Speaker 1: a show or you're like writing something, and you want
Speaker 1: to have you you like want to be able to
Speaker 1: bring that like powerful like sexual sort of like impulse
Speaker 1: to it. I can say, yeah, if you stop masturbating,
Speaker 1: you don't have sex for a few days, like yeah,
Speaker 1: maybe you'll be in a mind state and better able
Speaker 1: to like convey that. If you're like singing a song
Speaker 1: about how badly you want to fux somebody in your
Speaker 1: Frank Sinatra, maybe yeah, don't you want to be horny
Speaker 1: as ship when you're I got people. It's just like
Speaker 1: it's like a focus thing. It's like I'm not going
Speaker 1: to masturbate because I'm not doing anything. I'm just focusing
Speaker 1: on saving up all of my energy, you know, for this.
Speaker 1: But like to do it as as a lifestyle is
Speaker 1: so interesting because it's so dumb. What do these guys
Speaker 1: think they're getting out of not masturbating? Generally it's women? Yeah,
Speaker 1: which is I know that there is I will say,
Speaker 1: like I've read enough into that community to know that
Speaker 1: there's a chunk of them for whom it's like, No,
Speaker 1: I had a real problem masturbating and I was getting
Speaker 1: nothing done because I had just an Internet porn addiction,
Speaker 1: And like, if that's your situation, like totally reasonable, like
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna I'm not gonna feeling, especially if you've
Speaker 1: been um in it in such a way where you
Speaker 1: don't feel in control of your ability to masturbate, and
Speaker 1: then you get you gain control. You know, it's a
Speaker 1: very empowering feeling, So like I get you know why
Speaker 1: that would be. It's like when you start to work
Speaker 1: out and you feel like you have, you know, more
Speaker 1: control over your body and you know, oh and my
Speaker 1: body can do more stuff than I realized. You know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: It's just where it gets ridiculous is when you have
Speaker 1: to like turn it into a superpower and make it
Speaker 1: into this iron rule of nature. Yeah, and you have
Speaker 1: to like quote Napoleon Hill about it and why it's
Speaker 1: actually good. Like, that's my least favorite genre of thing
Speaker 1: in human culture, is like people who find a thing
Speaker 1: that works for them and then need to find a
Speaker 1: justification for why it's the best way for everyone to be. Um,
Speaker 1: it's like if because I'm a drug addict, I were like, No,
Speaker 1: I've I've discovered through research that human beings only have
Speaker 1: a set quantity of sobriety in their life, and so
Speaker 1: if you're not wasted most of the time, you can't
Speaker 1: be sober when it matters. It's that like, it's that ridiculous.
Speaker 1: Like that is my my my self help book, Get
Speaker 1: Wasted and Grow Sober, which will be which will be
Speaker 1: coming out from not Hill in December nineteen, so you know,
Speaker 1: preorder it on Amazon. You know, there's a lot of
Speaker 1: wisdom in there, a lot of a lot of those
Speaker 1: success juels hidden in that book. Yeah. So, uh, this
Speaker 1: is a fun little digression. I always loved talking about
Speaker 1: the no FAP community. If you're if you're a no fapper,
Speaker 1: we're not trying to attack you, but if you call
Speaker 1: yourself a no fapper, it's fair game for us to
Speaker 1: giggle at. Yeah, come on, come, come on, come on.
Speaker 1: I don't need to know about whether you master it,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. There's plenty. Here's the thing,
Speaker 1: there's plenty of people who don't masturbate and just never
Speaker 1: talk about it. Yeah, there's lots of non masturbators who
Speaker 1: don't talk about it. They're called women. I'm just kidding,
Speaker 1: women masturbator. Yeah. My bus driver doesn't masturbate. I asked
Speaker 1: him every day and he never said. That's probably so successful.
Speaker 1: I don't even write a bus but I just this
Speaker 1: guy is near my wait at the bus stop. I
Speaker 1: wait for the doors to open. I say, do you masturbate?
Speaker 1: He says, no, go away? Did to come today? And
Speaker 1: I'm satisfied. Yeah, oh boy, okay, so I think and
Speaker 1: grow rich was a huge hit. And Napoleon and his
Speaker 1: new wife Rosalie both grew rich, and in the true
Speaker 1: Napoleon Hill fashion, they immediately spent all of their money
Speaker 1: as quickly as it came in, substantially faster than it
Speaker 1: came in. In fact, they were so busy buying cars
Speaker 1: and a mansion and other nonsense that they forgot to
Speaker 1: pay back Napoleon's son Blair for the three hundred dollars
Speaker 1: he'd loaned them that had made it possible for them
Speaker 1: to survival writing their self help book. Um classic Napoleon Hill.
Speaker 1: I love that he writes a book about how people
Speaker 1: who are successful do it completely on their own, due
Speaker 1: to their own minds, and totally deserve everything they make
Speaker 1: and then fails to repay his son the three hundred
Speaker 1: dollars that allowed him to not live on the street
Speaker 1: while he was writing the book that made him rich.
Speaker 1: And the crazy thing is he really believes all this,
Speaker 1: Like he you know, I'm sure he was like an
Speaker 1: arch conservative, and he was like, you can only do
Speaker 1: you know, you can only achieve success through individual effort
Speaker 1: when the entire circumstances of his life are he's dependent
Speaker 1: on other people to fall for his lies so he
Speaker 1: can scam them out of money, and then he just
Speaker 1: leans on various family members and non family members, you know,
Speaker 1: his wife's family members until they get sick of him. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I cannot think of anybody more supported by a community
Speaker 1: of people. This is literally no individual achievement at all
Speaker 1: in his life. He's never made anything that anyone wanted
Speaker 1: except for this book. And he's like, here's the thing
Speaker 1: I did at bootstraps. M Yeah, I bootstrapped my way
Speaker 1: into into Yeah, it's it's it's. There's a lesson in
Speaker 1: the story of Napoleon Hill. If you can figure out
Speaker 1: what the lessons, yeah, tweeted us, tweeted us, or by
Speaker 1: bolt cutters. A lot of a lot of rich people
Speaker 1: gates out there anyway. Um Yeah. Rosa wrote Blair a
Speaker 1: letter bragging that she and Napoleon were so rich that
Speaker 1: they were now considering retire ring. Blair sent back a
Speaker 1: letter asking if she might pay him back now uh,
Speaker 1: and Rosa did not respond to this. Blair wrote his mother, Florence,
Speaker 1: a letter, calling his dad quote an unscrupulous holier than
Speaker 1: now two timing, double crossing, good for nothing, which is
Speaker 1: pretty fair. Yeah, and also you know a very uh,
Speaker 1: a very fair and um clean assessment. Yeah. By nineteen
Speaker 1: thirty nine, however, the money had started to dry up.
Speaker 1: Napoleon and Rosalie cooked up a plot to try and
Speaker 1: draw interest back to their book and reinvigorate sales. They
Speaker 1: started claiming that they were going to adopt fifteen children
Speaker 1: and raise them to be ideal Americans. They hinted that
Speaker 1: they discovered all of the bad parenting habits that most
Speaker 1: Americans were ruining their kids with. One of the big
Speaker 1: ones is abandoning your children. That's a big one. That
Speaker 1: that one's fine in Napoleon Hill's case, that's actually the
Speaker 1: most responsible parenting habits is to abandon your children. Like
Speaker 1: adopting fifteen children is is maybe one of the worst
Speaker 1: ideas he's ever had. Yeah, that's it's a terrible idea.
Speaker 1: And it never happened. Thinks it seems it was. It
Speaker 1: was either just a scam to get attention or it
Speaker 1: was supposed to be they were like maybe working on
Speaker 1: another book, Like it seems like they might have been
Speaker 1: trying to put together a childcare book. But either way,
Speaker 1: the scheme didn't happen because their marriage started to crumble
Speaker 1: shortly thereafter. And we'll talk about the sex cult that
Speaker 1: tried to raise an immortal baby that got sort of
Speaker 1: related to Napoleon Hill. But first products we're back, I
Speaker 1: gotta know more. Yeah, this is the story that people
Speaker 1: reached out to me with wanting to know about when
Speaker 1: they suggested Napoleon Hill as a bastard. Is this immortal
Speaker 1: baby cult that he got involved with, And it's not
Speaker 1: really that interesting a story. Um, everything else about Napoleon's
Speaker 1: life is way more interesting. But there's a neat story,
Speaker 1: but it's just not it's not a very long one.
Speaker 1: The cliffs notes is this. There was a your cult
Speaker 1: called the Royal Fraternity of Master Metaphysicians led by a
Speaker 1: guy named James Bernard Shaeferhysicians, Yeah, metaphysicians. Yeah, it'll you'll
Speaker 1: understand why in a second. They were led by a
Speaker 1: guy named James Bernard Schaefer and were a part of
Speaker 1: the New Thought movement. Most of their teachings revolved around
Speaker 1: thinking things into reality. Um. So they were kind of
Speaker 1: in that original strain of the New Thought movement where
Speaker 1: you could think yourself into better health. Um. And they
Speaker 1: had around ten thousand members at their height. Uh. And
Speaker 1: in nineteen thirty nine they were a little by a
Speaker 1: gigantic mansion in Long Island. Now the cult fell in
Speaker 1: love with Think and Grow Rich and quickly adopted it
Speaker 1: as one of their primary religious texts. And then in
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty nine, the colt decided to adopt a baby
Speaker 1: and make it immortal. Uh. They sort of adopted and
Speaker 1: sort of bribed the mother of a baby named Jane gaunt.
Speaker 1: According to a write up from hoaxes dot org quote,
Speaker 1: Baby Jean was given a private nursery where, in addition
Speaker 1: to a nurse who attended her twenty four hours a day,
Speaker 1: she was constantly watched over by Schaefer's followers. The plan
Speaker 1: was to make her immortal by never allowing her to
Speaker 1: hear mention of death or disease, nor would she be
Speaker 1: exposed to any bad or destructive thoughts. No unkind words
Speaker 1: would ever be spoken in her presence. She would eat
Speaker 1: in all vegetarian eternity diet. As she grew older, she
Speaker 1: would learn about tobacco, coffee, tea, mustard, vinegar, and spices,
Speaker 1: but she would never consume any of them. Mustard, Yeah,
Speaker 1: mustard second, right, mustard and tea in the same level
Speaker 1: with tobacco and alcohol. Mormons eat mustard, right, Yes, I
Speaker 1: think Mormons are fine with mustard anti mustard sandwich prepared
Speaker 1: to me by Mormons, the Royal Society of fucking mustard haters. Yeah,
Speaker 1: fucking mustard haters. It's also so cruel that you're gonna,
Speaker 1: like raise this baby and you're gonna tell her about
Speaker 1: alcohol and tobacco and coffee. But like, but you can
Speaker 1: never have these. Yeah, you're presumably as you smoke chamber,
Speaker 1: you might as well just never tell her about them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you're never going to tell her about death, but you
Speaker 1: will tell her about alcohol, but say she can't take
Speaker 1: it because why I feel like the growing up and
Speaker 1: no one ever talking about death. Yeah, thankfully she did
Speaker 1: not because none of this worked out. But immediately thought
Speaker 1: plan didn't go anywhere. Well, the baby's mother sued the
Speaker 1: cult for essentially abducting abducting their kid, and Napoleon doesn't
Speaker 1: really interact with this story much as far as I
Speaker 1: can tell. His main crosses with this is both that
Speaker 1: the the cult used his book as like a religious text. Uh,
Speaker 1: and they made him Baby Jean's godfather. But I'm not
Speaker 1: aware of him ever actually meeting Baby Jean or even
Speaker 1: having much to do with them. But like, yeah, he
Speaker 1: was not really I don't think he was a big
Speaker 1: part of this. They did pose the baby with a
Speaker 1: picture of his book. It seems like one of those
Speaker 1: things where he would have just would have totally him
Speaker 1: posing with Edison baby. It seems like he probably would
Speaker 1: have gotten on board with what the cult was doing
Speaker 1: if it had like worked out at all, and they'd
Speaker 1: attracted a lot of media attention. But it's just going
Speaker 1: with this plan. But it didn't really go anywhere, and
Speaker 1: it certainly wasn't his his main burner. Scam Um. His
Speaker 1: only direct interaction with the cult as far as I
Speaker 1: can tell, is that he may have gotten its leader
Speaker 1: embroiled in a scam that eventually landed in a suicide.
Speaker 1: I meant, who has he not embroiled at a scam? Yeah?
Speaker 1: The whole world. Yeah. In the early nineteen forties, Schaeffer,
Speaker 1: the cult leader, convinced one of his wealthy cult members
Speaker 1: to give him a lot of money to buy a magazine.
Speaker 1: The magazine flopped, and she sued him for grand larceny,
Speaker 1: for which he did five years in sing Sing prison.
Speaker 1: In his appeal in court to try to fight via
Speaker 1: the sentence, he claimed, quote, Napoleon Hill came to me, honor,
Speaker 1: about the first of December nineteen thirty nine, and told
Speaker 1: me that he had an opportunity to purchase a magazine
Speaker 1: called Psychology for about five thousand dollars, and that we
Speaker 1: could each put up dollars and become partners. He told
Speaker 1: me that although the magazine was then in very bad condition.
Speaker 1: It had once made twenty five tho dollars a year,
Speaker 1: and he thought that could be built up again. I
Speaker 1: was interested, but told him I hadn't the money. I decided, however,
Speaker 1: to try and borrow dollars to go into the venture,
Speaker 1: and with that in view, approached Mina Schmidt, the lady
Speaker 1: who sued him for the loan. I quickly stated her
Speaker 1: the purpose for which I wanted the money, with which
Speaker 1: I had been told by Mr Hill, concerning the history
Speaker 1: of the magazine and what he thought of the future prospects,
Speaker 1: notwithstanding its poor financial condition at the time. So that
Speaker 1: was Schaefer's appeal. He claims that Napoleon came up with
Speaker 1: a scam that got him put in prison, but his
Speaker 1: appeal was rejected. He may have just been lying. He
Speaker 1: did five years in prison, and then he and his
Speaker 1: wife shot themselves in their car several years after being released.
Speaker 1: So it's hard for me to tell how direct Napoleon's
Speaker 1: role in any of this was. But just based on
Speaker 1: his personal history, I don't have any trouble believing that
Speaker 1: he used these people's trust in him to swindle them
Speaker 1: out of Yeah, that sounds like something he definitely has
Speaker 1: done before literally hundreds of times. Now, the good news
Speaker 1: is that Napoleon himself did finally meet a grifter who
Speaker 1: was more than his match. His fourth right wife, Rosalie,
Speaker 1: in money running out, she finally got tired of him
Speaker 1: while he was away giving lectures. She sold off all
Speaker 1: of their property, including his beloved Rolls Royce, and then
Speaker 1: ran off and served him with divorce papers. Her justification
Speaker 1: was that he cheated on her, which was probably true,
Speaker 1: but considering Rosalie also immediately married her divorce lawyer, it's
Speaker 1: equally likely that Napoleon just met a grifter who was
Speaker 1: faster on the draw than he was. She got right
Speaker 1: the funk out of there, sold off all their ship
Speaker 1: and gone, And then she wrote self help books because
Speaker 1: now that she had been attached to Napoleon Hill, she
Speaker 1: didn't need him anymore. She could get self help totally.
Speaker 1: She gave him the old Napoleon Hill treatment. She got
Speaker 1: in there, got a selfie, and left. She Napoleon Hill,
Speaker 1: Napoleon Hill, I love it. Yeah, that's a happy ending
Speaker 1: for a scammer. Story is like, he marries this woman
Speaker 1: twenty something years younger than him, and you think he's
Speaker 1: going to take advantage of her, but then she just
Speaker 1: robs him. Well, here's the thing. First, she makes him rich,
Speaker 1: like she she writes his best selling but she translates
Speaker 1: his ramblings into like one of the best selling books
Speaker 1: of all time. And then that damn yeah absolutely, um yeah,
Speaker 1: So Oliver Napoleon Hill never again repeated the staggering success
Speaker 1: of Think and Grow Rich. He continued to write in
Speaker 1: lecture for the rest of his life, but most of
Speaker 1: that life was spent near the edge of financial collapse.
Speaker 1: His next book, Mental Dynamite, published in nineteen forty one,
Speaker 1: was a flop. You know, fill in your own Napoleon
Speaker 1: Dynamite joke here, yeah, yeah, he'll yeah, damn it, you're right. Uh,
Speaker 1: I don't I don't know what the joke is, but
Speaker 1: there's got to be one in there. They'll make one.
Speaker 1: They don't make now. He'll married again in nineteen forty three,
Speaker 1: and he made minor news in nineteen fifty three when
Speaker 1: he started urging the government to in the Korean War
Speaker 1: by nuking every single city in Russia. Um, which is
Speaker 1: an interesting solution to the Korean War. What if we
Speaker 1: kill all the Russians? Anybody tried that that sentence had
Speaker 1: a real twist ending. Yeah, he was an arch conservative,
Speaker 1: like you get the feeling he and General MacArthur would
Speaker 1: have in along. Now, Napoleon Hill himself would know no
Speaker 1: more great success in his life, But in nineteen fifty
Speaker 1: two a book he inspired and helped the craft did
Speaker 1: become a big success, The Power of Positive Thinking by
Speaker 1: Norman Vincent Peel. Now, The Power of Positive Thinking is
Speaker 1: still today one of the most influential books in this
Speaker 1: self helped genre, and Peele credited Napoleon Hill with helping
Speaker 1: him write the book. Now you may not have heard
Speaker 1: of Norman Vincent Peel, but someone who does know who
Speaker 1: that guy is is President Donald Trump, because Norman Vincent
Speaker 1: Peel was Donald Trump's pastor when Trump was a child.
Speaker 1: Decades later, Donald Trump recalled quote, you always when the
Speaker 1: service was over, you'd have said, I'd have sat there
Speaker 1: another hour. There aren't too many people like that. It
Speaker 1: wasn't the speaking ability, it was the thought process for you. See.
Speaker 1: Norman Vincent Peel was part of a tradition in American
Speaker 1: Christianity called Christian libertarianism. The movement was spawned by conservative
Speaker 1: Protestant preachers who hated the New Deal and believed quote
Speaker 1: freedom from government is a necessary part of freedom under God.
Speaker 1: And while Napoleon Hill wouldn't have identified himself as one
Speaker 1: of these sorts exactly, his writing laid the groundwork for them.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna quote again from that article on New Thought
Speaker 1: from the Conversation quote. Peel's message was unequivocally nationalistic, as
Speaker 1: his storian Christopher Lane writes, the idea that American needed
Speaker 1: a pro Christian nationalism to head off an attack of
Speaker 1: atheistic communism was central to Peal's message, and He's stuck
Speaker 1: to it zealously. Peel's identity as God's salesman for positive
Speaker 1: thinking was inseparable from his belief that only in a
Speaker 1: free market society could Christianity thrive. The article goes on
Speaker 1: a note that quote American exceptionalism is at the heart
Speaker 1: of Trump's Christianity. As theologian Stanley Hower Was puts it,
Speaker 1: Christianity and Peel's hands was closer to a set of
Speaker 1: beliefs a follower could make up to suit their desires.
Speaker 1: Trump has adopted the strategy and applies it to the country.
Speaker 1: The link between Christianity and nationalism was evident a. Trump's inauguration,
Speaker 1: when Prosperity Gospel minister Paula White said in her invocation,
Speaker 1: we recognize that every good and every perfect the gift
Speaker 1: comes from you, and the United States of America is
Speaker 1: your gift for which we proclaim gratitude. So that's neat. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Napoleon Hill ties into the today. Wow. Well uh oh boy,
Speaker 1: I mean this is all just Isn't this really just
Speaker 1: manifest destiny repackaged? Yeah? Well yeah, yeah, it is that
Speaker 1: same idea, which is like man, the manifest destiny is
Speaker 1: the idea you need to tell any people anywhere who
Speaker 1: are on top, because it's the for one thing promises
Speaker 1: to them that you'll stay on top forever. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: not only that you're you're on top and you'll stay
Speaker 1: on top, but that everything you get through destroying other
Speaker 1: people's lives is actually an expression of Divine will through you.
Speaker 1: Any financial power that you amass and and money is
Speaker 1: not a system of value created by and able to
Speaker 1: be destroyed by human beings, but is in fact just
Speaker 1: an expression of God's will that is infallible. Yeah. If
Speaker 1: you if you're somebody living in a giant mansion built
Speaker 1: on grifted cash, and you're hearing someone like me talking
Speaker 1: about how people should buy bolt cutters so they can
Speaker 1: make their way through your gates and take all of
Speaker 1: your things. You need to believe that God himself has
Speaker 1: ordained your position and is protecting you. Otherwise you're gonna
Speaker 1: have a lot of trouble sleeping at night. Yeah. And also,
Speaker 1: you know, even when people aren't scared, but when rich
Speaker 1: people just feel guilty. You know when when rich people
Speaker 1: see the amount of suffering in the world of people
Speaker 1: who do not have the same wealth that they do,
Speaker 1: and they feel guilty and they think, well, maybe I
Speaker 1: should be doing something about this, And then Norman Vince
Speaker 1: appeal is like no, no, no, no no no no
Speaker 1: no no no no no no no no no no
Speaker 1: no no no no no no. Yeah. So other politicians
Speaker 1: who are more directly influenced by Napoleon Hill include Newt
Speaker 1: gang Ridge, who read Think and Grow Rich as a
Speaker 1: young man, and Mitt Romney, who was born rich and
Speaker 1: probably didn't need to do much thinking to stay that way.
Speaker 1: The Secret, which would sell fifteen million copies, It was
Speaker 1: basically a twenty one century rewriting of Napoleon's masterpiece of
Speaker 1: positive thinking. Tony Robbins, Jack Canfield, Stephen V and a
Speaker 1: platoon of other modern self help gurus all site Napoleon
Speaker 1: Hill as foundational parts of their own grifts, although they
Speaker 1: don't call what they do grift ing obviously, even though
Speaker 1: they are now Napoleon Hill died in Greenville General Hospital
Speaker 1: in South Carolina at six thirty pm on Sunday, November eighth,
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy. He was almost penniless. I could end this
Speaker 1: by pointing out that his work has outlived him, that
Speaker 1: a Napoleon Hill Foundation continues to sell every book he
Speaker 1: ever published, and that he has enjoyed something of a
Speaker 1: renaissance in our modern Gilded Age. But instead, I'd like
Speaker 1: to end by reading part of a weird ass essay
Speaker 1: I found written about how Napoleon Hill hid secret magic
Speaker 1: rituals in his books. Okay, I found this on a
Speaker 1: website called Butterfly Language dot com, which is apparently the
Speaker 1: blog of a woman named Valerie Diorazzio who's she's a
Speaker 1: comic book and video game writer who's worked for DC,
Speaker 1: Marvel and other big names, and she's also really into
Speaker 1: the occult. And she alleges that Norman Vincent Peel and
Speaker 1: Napoleon Hill were basically sneaking magic into uh like mainstream
Speaker 1: Christian thought. Yeah yeah quote. Both Hill and Peel discuss
Speaker 1: such heavy stuff as thought energy, create a visualization, and
Speaker 1: flat out mental telepathy, but they do it within a
Speaker 1: judaeo Christian context that wouldn't freak out the mass audience
Speaker 1: at the time. Basically, they got that stuff in under
Speaker 1: the radar, and they do it in the most stripped
Speaker 1: down simple form possible. Some critics appeal, and they are admittedly.
Speaker 1: Legion accused him of essentially practicing some sort of hypnosis
Speaker 1: voodoo on his readers by repeating the same stuff over
Speaker 1: and over. But it also works. It works. The Power
Speaker 1: of Positive Thinking is one of the most occult books
Speaker 1: I've ever read, specifically because it is presented as the
Speaker 1: exact opposite of such and thus seeps directly into your
Speaker 1: subconscious She goes on to note it should be no
Speaker 1: surprise that towards the end of his life, Napoleon Hill
Speaker 1: admitted that he was literally in touch with an extra
Speaker 1: dimensional entity called the Master, through whom he pretty much
Speaker 1: channeled parts of his books. This is the author of
Speaker 1: Think and Grow Rich Folks, one of the most recommended
Speaker 1: business groups of all time. Uh, so that's fun. So
Speaker 1: there's so he's really he is a lot more like
Speaker 1: l around Hoeverard than we thought. There's like an alien
Speaker 1: that's telling him what to write in his books. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And she also notes that Norman Vincent Peel had a
Speaker 1: lot of weird magic stuff in his own book, Like
Speaker 1: he talked about something called the other self and the
Speaker 1: presence that like almost this like quasi magical thing. Is
Speaker 1: it just like astral projection? Yeah? I really don't know. Um,
Speaker 1: you know I thought about this, especially when there was
Speaker 1: that whole Trump Jim Baker coin thing. Um, you remember
Speaker 1: that when they were advertising on Fox News. It was
Speaker 1: a couple of months ago. Uh. There they made a
Speaker 1: gold coin with Donald Trump not quite in profile because
Speaker 1: it turned out in profile he looked very bad. Um,
Speaker 1: but sort of a downward downward diagonal profile and then
Speaker 1: King Cyrus of Persia profile and they were selling this
Speaker 1: for four or five dollars. And what was crazy to
Speaker 1: me when I watched this clip was, you know, I've
Speaker 1: seen coin commercials, but I've never seen one where the
Speaker 1: pastor and the salesman is referring to it as a
Speaker 1: um as a prayer coin. And what he says is
Speaker 1: if you buy this prayer coin and you hold it
Speaker 1: while you pray for Donald Trump, and you pray to
Speaker 1: bless America, all of our collective prayers will be transmit.
Speaker 1: The coin itself is a is a fucking amulets. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's that's what he's describing. He's describing an object that
Speaker 1: you put your magical energy into that then transmits that
Speaker 1: magical energy through the power of representation and focused thought,
Speaker 1: which is magic. That's all magical practice. This is a
Speaker 1: cult as fuck. And how is this on a conservative
Speaker 1: Christian channel? Isn't the whole point of Christianity that you're
Speaker 1: not supposed to pray to objects that you're not supposed
Speaker 1: to have idols, that that the connection to God is
Speaker 1: either direct or through a religious leader. And I think
Speaker 1: that might be a little bit of the point that
Speaker 1: both that article on the New Thought movement and that uh,
Speaker 1: this Valerie Arazzio woman was making is that like Napoleon
Speaker 1: Hill is like kind of integral and sort of sneaking
Speaker 1: occult thinking into modern American Christianity. And like why that's
Speaker 1: why some of this stuff has gotten so weird is
Speaker 1: because of his influence and guys like Norman Vincent Peel,
Speaker 1: which I think might mean that Donald Trump is technically
Speaker 1: an evil wizard. Um. So you know, there's that information
Speaker 1: for you. That's the episode. That's all I got. It's
Speaker 1: really funny to prosperity Gospel. Christianity is some of like simultaneously, um,
Speaker 1: the coolest most fusion Christianity because it's basically magic, but
Speaker 1: also um, some of the dirtiest, most exploitative, uh of
Speaker 1: modern religion that we've ever seen, which is just getting
Speaker 1: old people to give you their money. It's indulgences. Essentially,
Speaker 1: it's like, give us the money and you get to
Speaker 1: go to heaven. Um, Yeah, and we'll put in a
Speaker 1: word with God for you. But also you're putting in
Speaker 1: a word with God for yourself by giving money to
Speaker 1: this pastor who is already incredibly wealthy. It's frustrated to
Speaker 1: me because actual occult rituals and stuff are so much
Speaker 1: more fun. Like I'm not a believer in any of that,
Speaker 1: but I've participated in some stuff with friends of mine,
Speaker 1: like weird goetic ceremonies and stuff where like you're drawn
Speaker 1: over the floor and there's candles everywhere, and people are
Speaker 1: like chanting and like you've got like people like baking
Speaker 1: like like blood into like wafer crackers and stuff in
Speaker 1: order to have like a sacrament and stuff like it's
Speaker 1: it's it's cool and weird and wacky. That's what makes
Speaker 1: it interesting is that you have fucking incense and candles
Speaker 1: and you get dressed up in special clothes and yeah,
Speaker 1: that's fun. That's all. It's fun. And it's also on purpose.
Speaker 1: It's to put you in a spiritual mindset or whatever,
Speaker 1: you know. So it's like the power of positive thinking
Speaker 1: and thinking you grow rich. Are just um that kind
Speaker 1: of like focused thinking type behavior of like casting a
Speaker 1: spell or whatever, but without all the fun stuff. No robes,
Speaker 1: no candles, just an old nobody's taken acid. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's bullshit. If he had just included a paragraph
Speaker 1: that said, and if you take acid and funk while
Speaker 1: doing all this, it works even better. No, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: fucking yeah, we'd be in a very different place as
Speaker 1: a country. But we're not. Well, this is this is
Speaker 1: all very good evidence for why no one should ever
Speaker 1: go to business school. Yeah, don't go to business school.
Speaker 1: Just visualize a path for success and then you'll be
Speaker 1: rich and don't check off. Ever, don't jack off think
Speaker 1: about being successful. Don't learn how like the stock market works,
Speaker 1: or like how to how to maintain payroll, or like
Speaker 1: don't learn a don't learn a trade, don't don't don't
Speaker 1: learn a trade, are useless a lot of stuff, don't deliver,
Speaker 1: get the money and tell them they can be whatever
Speaker 1: they want to be. Yeah, just just uh griff and
Speaker 1: abandon everyone in your life until you die penniless. Um.
Speaker 1: That that's the Napoleon Hill method. I do like that.
Speaker 1: He's one of the only guys like this we talk
Speaker 1: about who actually ends up without any fucking money. Um,
Speaker 1: because he was he was never good at any of this.
Speaker 1: He's a bad scammer. He's a bad stammer who got lucky.
Speaker 1: He's a bad scammer who wrote one successful book and
Speaker 1: then found a scammer who was better than him, who
Speaker 1: helped him write a second, more successful book. And everything
Speaker 1: else he ever did was a rank failure. And he
Speaker 1: was so dumb that he burned through all of his
Speaker 1: money as soon as he made it. And like that's
Speaker 1: basically all of the most powerful people in UH business
Speaker 1: and politics all think of this. Guy as a hero. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's amazing to think of, Like, it's amazing to
Speaker 1: think that somebody steering the country thinks that the advice
Speaker 1: and think and grow rich is good. It's very scary
Speaker 1: to me because at the heart, like like we talked about,
Speaker 1: at the heart of of prosperity Gospel Christianity is the
Speaker 1: idea that um having money is both uh proof of
Speaker 1: God's blessing and proof that other people should give you
Speaker 1: more money. You know, like those pastors prosperity gospel pastors
Speaker 1: will say, you know, you need to give me money
Speaker 1: to prove that God is reel or that you love God,
Speaker 1: or whatever the fund to prove God. And then they
Speaker 1: will also point to their riches as a sign that
Speaker 1: God loves them the most. God has blessed me, really
Speaker 1: blessy with it, Like a lot of people gave all
Speaker 1: their a lot of very poor people gave you a
Speaker 1: bunch of money, you know, and they're like, well, God
Speaker 1: has blessed me. And then the porpula are like, you know,
Speaker 1: he does seem to be doing pretty good. Yeah, well
Speaker 1: he clearly God wants him to have money. Let's give
Speaker 1: him some money and make God happy. I mean it's
Speaker 1: a it's a way of um engendering a slave mentality
Speaker 1: in in you know, the working class, uh, that will
Speaker 1: then govern their whole lives, you know, and make people
Speaker 1: think that that they're not worth anything on their own,
Speaker 1: that if labor is not valuable, that money is not
Speaker 1: tied to labor. I mean to say something like what
Speaker 1: Marian Williamson says, which is the labor theory of value
Speaker 1: is obsolete in the twenty century and we need to
Speaker 1: go to a vibrational theory of value or some crazy shit.
Speaker 1: It's like, yeah, okay, who who decides who decides how
Speaker 1: much vibration there is? You know, where's the fdi vibrations.
Speaker 1: That's part of what makes this also fucking dangerous in
Speaker 1: my mind is that, um it sounds harmless enough on
Speaker 1: its head, especially when we're in this world we've got
Speaker 1: groups that are like literal Nazis marching in the streets
Speaker 1: and people saying really hateful things and talking about locking
Speaker 1: up kids. Someone being like, no, it's you know, the
Speaker 1: labor theory of value doesn't mean like it's all vibrations,
Speaker 1: and if we vibrate more positively than that's going to
Speaker 1: like we need to raise the consciousness of the poor
Speaker 1: in order to so they won't be poor anymore. It's like, no,
Speaker 1: people are poorer because they fit into a capitalist system
Speaker 1: that requires the majority of people to be poor so
Speaker 1: that a very small percentage can be ultra rich. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that and it's an excuse. You know. I'm not
Speaker 1: to say Maryan Wilson feels this way, because I don't
Speaker 1: know her opinion on the social safety Net, but that
Speaker 1: logic can is very easily can lead you to be like, well, no,
Speaker 1: you shouldn't. We shouldn't be giving services. We shouldn't be
Speaker 1: trying to provide homes for the homeless or food at
Speaker 1: the very least for them. We shouldn't be trying to
Speaker 1: like we should be helping them sciousness instead. Yeah, we
Speaker 1: should just you know, we should just give them copies
Speaker 1: of Napoleon Hills book, which, if you're a rich asshole
Speaker 1: who wants to stay that way and doesn't want anybody
Speaker 1: else to catch up, you could do a lot worse
Speaker 1: than just handing out free copies of Think and Grow
Speaker 1: Rich to the people around you, because it's like it's
Speaker 1: a book that's designed, not even designed, because I think
Speaker 1: it was an accident because nothing Napoleon Hill was smart
Speaker 1: enough to plan anything like this. But it's sure as
Speaker 1: how works that way, which is amazing. Anyway, an American,
Speaker 1: I think that's the episode. I think that's it. Yes,
Speaker 1: Sarah June, you want to plug your plug doubles before
Speaker 1: we roll out? I got I got all my plugables
Speaker 1: at Hey, Sara June, h u y s A r
Speaker 1: A j u n E. That's my website, that's my venmoo.
Speaker 1: That's my Instagram. You can follow me. I am making
Speaker 1: some shows for Means TV at Means Underscore TV. Uh
Speaker 1: Anti Capital's Entertainment cooperative. We're coming out with some shows
Speaker 1: uh in so follow them on Twitter and see see
Speaker 1: some stuff we made already. And I'm Robert Evans. Myself
Speaker 1: help book, Drink and Grows Sober, will be out this December,
Speaker 1: so so please check it out. It's critical information for
Speaker 1: all of you. Uh. You can find me on Twitter
Speaker 1: at I right, okay. You can find this podcast on
Speaker 1: the internet behind the Bastards dot com. You can find
Speaker 1: us on Instagram and Twitter at at Bastards pod, buy
Speaker 1: t shirt, public dot com. That's it. That's the fucking episode.
Speaker 1: I love about