Think And Grow Rich

Summary

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Podcast Summary: If Books Could Kill – "Think and Grow Rich"

Hosts: Michael Hobbes & Peter Shamshiri
Air date: May 21, 2026

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Episode Overview

In this episode, Michael and Peter dive into the bestselling self-help book Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill. Framed as the progenitor of modern self-help manifesting books and the hidden source of much "positive thinking" ideology, the book is dissected for its origins, its dubious claims, and Hill's own checkered personal history. The hosts take a detour through Hill's life of relentless grifting and exposes the book’s core messages as an unscientific, at times farcical, vehicle for Hill’s personal enrichment.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. The "Secret" of Manifestation ([00:06]–[05:00])

• The book is heavily based on the concept of metaphysical "vibrations," a precursor to The Secret and "law of attraction" ideas.
• Peter riffs on the framing: “The one thing to know is this is like fundamentally, it's the secret.” [00:06]
• Hill claims thoughts are vibrations that can literally attract success or poverty.
• Michael jokes on the era’s technological metaphors: “It's radio, by the way. It's radio waves. That's very funny to add that there, because this is the 1930s and like that's the most technology he can think of.” [03:25]

2. The Context and Hill’s Biography ([06:49]–[29:52])

• Hill’s self-mythology includes a fabled meeting with Andrew Carnegie, which is never substantiated:
  “The whole book is premised on the idea that he had a conversation with Andrew Carnegie that he learned from.” [00:20]
• The episode outlines Hill’s ever-shifting career: journalist, mine manager, salesman, serial entrepreneur, and most reliably, a schemer.
• Michael methodically dismantles Hill’s origin stories, showing how Hill’s claims around meeting giants like Carnegie, Edison, and Woodrow Wilson are likely fabricated.
• Michael: “I find out there’s an official biography...It says...Hill advised FDR...He claims to have met Edison...It’s just someone who got a little taste of lying and then just started doing it way too much.” [14:23–15:10]

Memorable Scams and Personal Downfalls ([17:27]–[29:52])

• Early frauds: Lumber credit scam ([19:52]), forging legal credentials ([24:04]), MLM-style automobile labor scheme ([21:12]).
• Charitable fronting: set up a prison reform “charity” that funneled funds to himself ([25:57]).
• Serial abandonment: Multiple marriages and neglect of his families, absentee fatherhood, and running out on debts.
• Peter on Hill’s ever-present duplicity: “Life hack: be a lifelong piece of shit. This is how you get rich.” [20:37]
• Hill’s real secret: relentless, inventive, and shameless grifting.

3. Hill’s “Principles of Success” Deconstructed ([29:52]–[54:25])

• Hill’s advice is a mix of mystical “vibration” talk and generic “practical” tips.
• Notoriously, his book promises to reveal but never directly states its “secret,” claiming it’s hidden in the text:
  “He literally says the secret was brought to my attention by Andrew Carnegie more than a quarter of a century ago.” [12:32]
• The “six steps” to manifesting money are listed—essentially: decide a number, set a date, plan, and repeat it out loud daily.
• Peter quips, “It's like, write down a plan and then implement the plan. This is the most basic advice for basically anything in your life.” [34:32]
• Pseudoscience pervades the book, e.g., claims of collaborating with Edison and Bell, “the human brain is both a broadcasting and receiving station for the vibration of thought.” [53:54]

The “Sex Transmutation” Section ([48:03]–[53:30])

• Plenty of the book is spent pondering how being “highly sexed” (horny) leads to achieving greatness—an idea neither well-defined nor supported.
• Hill suggests channeling sexual energy into creative or business pursuits, but his explanation is incoherent.
• Memorable moment: A list of historical figures with “highly developed sex natures,” including Washington, Napoleon, and Caruso. [53:05]
• Peter: “What if the actual secret is if the clitoris is at the 1 o’ clock?... He says the reality of a sixth sense has been fairly well established. This sixth sense is creative imagination.” [51:05]
• Community resonance: Michael points out how “no FAP” subcultures still reference Hill on “retaining” sexual energy.

4. Underlying Politics and "Blame the Victim" Mindset ([38:32]–[43:59])

• Hill ascribes economic disaster (the Great Depression) not to structural failings, but moral or attitudinal ones:
  “He attributes the rebound in the economy to these people all recognizing the value of good customer service.” [38:53]
• Advocates for capitalism, claims it’s a uniquely empowering system; economic hardship is personal failure.
• Michael frames the book as a conservative, anti-union, and structurally oblivious tract: “Coming out of the Depression, people don’t want to hear about structural impediments...They want someone to tell them that they can be rich if they just get their mind right.” [57:11]

5. Book’s Impact and Enduring Legacy ([56:39]–end)

• Think and Grow Rich popularized positive thinking and manifesting ideology, influencing decades of self-help and even, circuitously, figures like Donald Trump.
• Proceeds from the bestseller were quickly squandered; Hill and his wife lived lavishly but unsustainably.
• Michael: “Here we are a hundred years after this guy was in his prime and his foundation is run by a bunch of people who are basically, like, doing his fraud to this day.” [61:30]
• Peter sums up its personal and cultural upshot: “Did he live the values he espoused in his book? No. But did his work inspire millions of people to improve their lives also? No.” [61:44]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments (w/ Timestamps)

• “The one thing to know is this is like fundamentally, it’s the secret.” – Michael [00:06]
• On the creation myth: “He claims to have met Edison. He claims to have collaborated with Alexander Graham Bell. He claims he was present in the room when Woodrow Wilson received the message of the German surrender in World War I. And that he advised Wilson on his reply.” – Michael [14:56]
• “Life hack: be a lifelong piece of shit. This is how you get rich.” – Peter [20:37]
• “It’s just like, what is he manifesting here? He’s just yelling at people to do it. The actual question is, how did the engineers do it?” – Michael, on the Henry Ford anecdote [31:45]
• “If the lesson here is don't be so horny that you ruin your life, fair. But, yeah, there's this little thing about transmuting your sexual urges...” – Michael [47:38]
• “He suggests taking out ads in newspapers, advertising yourself...You just like took an ad out for yourself. You're like, I'm good at shit.” – Michael [45:10]
• “The actual secret is just lying and shamelessness. Like he kind of does have a secret to success.” – Peter [29:52]
• “Did he live the values he espoused in his book? No. But did his work inspire millions of people to improve their lives also? No.” – Peter [61:44]

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Important Timestamps

• [00:06] The “Secret” and the metaphysics of vibration
• [06:49] Hill’s official biography and debunking myths
• [17:27] Hill’s early scams and family life
• [29:52] Transition from grifter biography to book’s “advice”
• [32:14] The “six steps” to wealth
• [38:32] Hill’s “practical” advice + misguided economic takes
• [48:03] Chapter on “sex transmutation”
• [53:54] Pseudo-neuroscience and telepathy claims
• [56:39] Hill’s lasting influence, legacy, and downstream effects

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Tone and Takeaways

The episode is deeply skeptical, irreverent, and playful, with Michael and Peter puncturing the pretensions and pseudo-wisdom of Think and Grow Rich at every turn. They mix heavy doses of humor (“use your boner to vibrate your way into a job in radio” [62:44]) with a sense of real historical exasperation about the ease with which Hill’s nonsense has been absorbed into American culture. The analysis closes on the idea that the true secret Hill offers is shamelessness, not wealth, and that his vision is ultimately a moralizing, anti-social screed that has been retrofitted endlessly into the self-help canon.

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For listeners and non-listeners alike, this episode delivers both a crash course in Hill’s scams and a sharp, funny takedown of one of history’s most influential (and fraudulent) self-help texts.

Transcript

[A]

Yeah. What do you got? What do you know about this? Do you know anything?

[B]

Nothing. I didn't even know it was one of those old timey self help books until you told me.

[A]

The one thing to know is this is like fundamentally, it's the secret.

[B]

He'll be like, Andrew Carnegie knew the secret. I already know where this is going.

[A]

Wait, did you say that? Did I tell you that?

[B]

No, I'm just trying to think of old timey celebrities that he's gonna use.

[A]

This whole book is premised on the idea that he had a conversation with Andrew Carnegie that he learned from.

[B]

I literally did not know that.

[A]

Wow, we're so good at this. We're so good at this that you actually pulled out the entire conceit of this book for From Thin Air.

[B]

Should I just do the episode? Peter, having not read the book? I'll just improv the whole thing.

[A]

I'll tell you at the end what you got right and what you got wrong.

[B]

Who starts?

[A]

Michael? Peter, what do you know about Think and Grow Rich?

[B]

All I know is that I'm nostalgic for a time in America where you had to think to grow rich.

[A]

Think and Grow. Grow Rich by a man named Napoleon Hill.

[B]

Wait, really?

[A]

Yeah. Oliver Napoleon Hill. This is a book from 1937.

[B]

Powerful name.

[A]

Could almost say that it contains an

[B]

ancient wisdom, a secret, if you will.

[A]

This book has sold some unbelievable amount of copies. I've seen estimates that look like 100 million copies. That sounds wrong.

[B]

Yeah, that's probably not true.

[A]

But I've just heard crazy numbers. Yeah. It is the spiritual progenitor of many self help books. Not just in substance, but in style and in the nature of Napoleon himself, which we'll get into. This comes out one year after how to Win Friends and Influence People, which we talked about. So this book is in the tradition of New Thought, which is a spiritual movement that was relatively popular at the time and which you and our listeners may know from the Secret. Do you remember the gist of the Secret? Can you tell me the gist of the Secret?

[B]

It was just all this manifestation stuff. It's like if you imagine yourself having a million dollars, the universe will give it to you. But it was almost like she thought it was like a metaphysical rule, almost like a godlike power that you could cure cancer with it.

[A]

It's a material reality. Right. It's not just the power of positive thinking is that you're confident and then confidence gets you stuff. It's like if you truly want something, the vibrations in your brain match the vibrations of the universe.

[B]

She's basically saying there's the strong nuclear force, the weak nuclear force, gravity, electromagnetism, and the secret. Those are the forces in the universe.

[A]

So I'm going to send you a bit from Think and grow Rich.

[B]

The Aether is a great cosmic mass of eternal forces of vibration. It is made up of both destructive vibrations and constructive vibrations. It carries at all times vibrations of fear, poverty, disease, failure, misery, and vibrations of prosperity, health, success and happiness, just as surely as it carries the sound of hundreds of orchestrations of music and hundreds of human voices, all of which maintain their own individuality and means of identification through the medium of radio descendants. Actually started out pretty good, like simple concept.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And then he just added this like hundreds of human voices thing on there for no reason.

[A]

It's radio, by the way. It's radio waves. That's very funny to add that there, because this is the 1930s and like that's the most technology he can think of.

[B]

He continues from the great storehouse of the ether. The human mind is constantly attracting vibrations which harmonize with that which dominates the human mind. Any thought, idea, plan or purpose which one holds in one's mind attracts from the vibrations of the ether, a host of its relatives.

[A]

You can see that this is not the best written book in the world. Also, this was written with the help of his then wife, one of several. And it's sort of understood that he is a very clunky writer and she helped him. And even then it's rough.

[B]

That's like the chatgpt of the era. You see an EM dash and you're like, oh, it's wife, wife did it, huh?

[A]

So the metaphysical sort of argument here, the pitch is that all of these frequencies are running through the universe. And if you align your mind with the frequencies, the universe will deliver whatever that frequency entails.

[B]

Whatever thought, idea, plan or purpose. Yeah, those are all scoops, Peter. Plan, scoop.

[A]

So here is an explanation of the Great Depression, which of course has just passed. And this is not the last time that we will hear Napoleon try to diagnose the Great Depression.

[B]

Hell yeah.

[A]

Using his knowledge of the human mind.

[B]

I love how all these guys need, like, here's my little self help rule that also explains like all historical events.

[A]

I mean. Well, it has to, right? Because he's sort of explaining this great universal truth, right? And he sort of seems to believe that everything that happens to a person happens because of which frequencies they are aligned with. And so it has to explain everything.

[B]

Abraham Lincoln was imagining himself Getting shot. And then the universe gave it to him.

[A]

For a while he was cooking with slave freeing vibes and then he got self killing vibes.

[B]

He says here take notice of a very significant truth. To wit, the business Depression started in 1929 and continued on to an all time record of destruction until sometime after President Roosevelt entered office. Then the depression began to fade into nothingness. Just as an electrician in a theater raises the light, so gradually that darkness is transmuted into light before you realize it. So did the spell of fear in the minds of the people gradually fade away and become faith. It's funny to be like a new president took over and then the conditions changed. But it wasn't that. It was the vibrations.

[A]

Right? It was the vibration.

[B]

Oh my God, Peter, he's talking about a vibe shift.

[A]

Oh, that's right.

[B]

He's just using the longer version of Vibe.

[A]

The fact that this is written a couple years after the depression is very important to why this book exists and I think why it was popular.

[B]

He should have been talking about grit. The lack of grit caused the Great Depression.

[A]

This also would have been a sick time to drop the game. Yeah, imagine how much you would have cleaned up with some basic card tricks.

[B]

Although back then everyone was wearing a top hat, so that wouldn't give you much competitive advantage. You need to do more magic tricks.

[A]

But also, almost no one had runes.

[B]

Yeah, that's true.

[A]

So I read what's called the original edition of this book. But the version I read has an introduction written in 2009 by an author, Tom Butler Bowden. He seems to be known for writing books about books.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

He has like a book about the 50 greatest self help books, stuff like that. Right, whatever. But he gives sort of an overview of Napoleon's life. And I'm going to send you it in a couple of chunks here.

[B]

America in 1908 was an exciting place. Henry Ford had ushered in the automobile age with the production of the first Model Ts. The Wright brothers were doing the same for Flight when they kept a craft in the air for two hours. And the motion picture industry was just getting started. In the autumn of that year, young reporter Napoleon Hill was asked by a magazine to write a series on major business figures with his first subject, the great steel magnate Andrew Carnegie, now the richest person in America. After the sale of his massive interests, the wily Scott had grown excited as he expounded on the idea that there should be a concrete philosophy of success for the average person, drawn from the experience of great achievers. When Carnegie suddenly challenged him to spend the next 20 years formulating his philosophy. Hill was taken aback. It's reassuring to know that Andrew Carnegie was the right kind of white person. He's one of the Scots.

[A]

This guy. Gives a summary of Hill's career. He was a young journalist. Then followed business, college, the management of a mine employing 350 men, a brief period in law school, and after proving to be an effective salesman, an appointment as a partner in a lumber company. An impressive resume indeed for someone raised in the cultural and material poverty of rural Virginia.

[B]

Wait, he owned a mine?

[A]

Well, this is. The actual reason that the Depression happened, is you could just pop into any industry and be like, I'll take a swing at this. Put me in charge of these men. I want you to remember some of the details. Business, college, mine, employing 350 men, brief period in law school, partner in a lumber company. That's his impressive resume. Just put those into your mind.

[B]

This is not foreshadowing the fact that you're emphasizing this. This will not come back. You just want to make sure that I'm understanding what we're talking about right now.

[A]

So Hill goes back into journalism, and in 1928, he publishes a book called Law of Success, which was ostensibly the result of his research into success, which Carnegie told him to do. Right. His whole story is, Andrew Carnegie told me in 1908 to study why successful men are successful. The intro says the proceeds, in addition to his lecturing fees, enabled Hill to acquire a large estate in the Catskill Mountains. Hill had in mind to create the first success university on the site, but also have it as a family home. His earnest pursuit of riches and recognition had meant time away from his wife Florence and their three sons, who had remained in Virginia, waiting on infrequent visits and erratic checks. As the family enjoyed their new surrounds, it seemed to vindicate all the years of uncertainty.

[B]

Peter, we need to make, like, a bingo board for these episodes because we already have, like, a seminar grifter. We have some, like, dubious biographical details. I feel like all of this stuff is, like, classic Ibica material.

[A]

He then writes what will eventually become think and grow rich, which, from what I can gather. I didn't read Laws of Success, but I browsed it. It's mostly a repackaging of the first book.

[B]

Right.

[A]

His publisher apparently wanted to call this book use your noodle to win more boodle.

[B]

Dude, that's so much better.

[A]

Think and grow Rich is a quick bestseller that makes Hill actually rich. This is what the intro says about

[B]

that of Course, there's quite an IR to the fact that Hill had not been rich when he wrote Think and Grow rich. Far from it. Which may, on the surface, undermine his apparent authority to write such advice. Yet Hill might have answered that this was exactly the point. Here was a success philosophy that worked as long as it was faithfully practiced and which inevitably would pay off handsomely. Oh, and so it's like he was a grifter, but the fact that he sort of like grifted his way into success confirms that the theory is true. This is like giving him way too much credit. He basically wrote a scam book when he wasn't rich.

[A]

It's very funny to spot this glaring contradiction in the grift, which we've talked about so many times, right, that like a lot of these people selling you their get rich schemes were never rich until they sold it to you. Right?

[B]

Yeah. You are the get rich quick scheme.

[A]

And this dude just glides past it. He's like, well, maybe. Well, you know, that's just the way the crazy. This crazy world works. It's like this is literally a broke guy writing an instruction manual on getting

[B]

rich because it made him rich eventually. Does that mean it's any less of a shame?

[A]

So now let's talk about the book itself and Hill's intro to the book. He pitches it as him telling you a money making secret that he learned. And here is him giving you the story of Andrew Carnegie's wisdom.

[B]

Oh, my God. He literally says the secret.

[A]

He literally says the secret, dude.

[B]

He says the secret was brought to my attention by Andrew Carnegie more than a quarter of a century ago. The canny, lovable old Scotsman carelessly tossed it into my mind when I was but a boy. Then he sat back in his chair with a merry twinkle in his eyes and watched carefully to see if I had brains enough to understand the full significance of what he had said to me. When he saw that I had grasped the idea, he asked if I would be willing to spend 20 years or more preparing myself to take it to the world. To men and women who, without the secret, might go through life as failures. I said I would. And with Mr. Carnegie's cooperation, I have kept my promise. The secret to which I refer has been mentioned no fewer than a hundred times throughout this book. It has not been directly named, for it seems to work more successfully when it is merely uncovered and left in sight where those who are ready and searching for it may pick it up. That is why Mr. Carnegie tossed it to me so quietly without Giving me its specific name. God, he's wordy.

[A]

Especially in the beginning of the book. He presents the secret to making money as if it's something hidden in.

[B]

Yeah, he's like, I'm not gonna name it. Yeah, right.

[A]

He's like, I'm not gonna tell you, but if you read closely, you will see it. Right? He says this a lot in the opening chapters, but then he basically does tell you the secret.

[B]

And surely the secret is just believe in yourself. Right?

[A]

The secret is the vibration thing. That's all it is. It's not more complicated than that. Although he elaborates on it to a degree that is jolting and upsetting. I'm gonna send you this little bit.

[B]

The secret was extensively used by President Woodrow Wilson during the World War. It was passed on to every soldier who fought in the war, carefully wrapped in the training received before going to the front. President Wilson told me it was a strong factor in raising the funds needed for the war.

[A]

I like the idea that this is like a much hidden secret, but also every World War I soldier knew it.

[B]

Oh, that's what happened at Dunkirk. They didn't know the secret.

[A]

Well, the other side knows the secret too, sometimes. And then it's just secret fights. So this caught my attention because he's claiming he spoke with Woodrow Wilson. Right? Right. And he claims he met Carnegie, who then introduced him to Wilson as well as others like Henry Ford. I'm like, okay, okay, hold up. Right. I need to look into this guy. I find out there's an official biography published in 1995, some 25 years after Napoleon Hill died. It is official in the sense that it is published by the Napoleon Hill Foundation. Ooh, okay, I start skimming that. Not only does it say that Hill advised Woodrow Wilson, it says he advised FDR. It says in 1933, the Roosevelt administration reached out to Napoleon Hill, and Hill advised him on everything from labor policy to his fireside chats.

[B]

So Napoleon Hill ended the Great Depression is what we're getting at. He's too humble to tell us.

[A]

But I thought that was interesting because this book was published in 1937, and Hill doesn't mention that at all. Right. So in 1933, when the Roosevelt administration ostensibly reached out. Hill is a medium successful, self help guy. Why are they looking for his advice exactly?

[B]

FDR is not attending a lot of seminars at this phase of his life.

[A]

In his official biography, it says that sometimes among friends, Hill took credit for coining the phrase, there's nothing to fear but fear itself.

[B]

That's like How I keep telling people that I coined the phrase eyebrows on fleek. Something we all. Something we all still say.

[A]

He claims to have met Edison. He claims to have collaborated with Alexander Graham Bell. He claims he was present in the room when Woodrow Wilson received the message of the German surrender in World War I. And that he advised Wilson on his reply.

[B]

You can tell he got, like, a little taste of lying and then just started doing it, like, way too much.

[A]

Well, here's the thing. In this point in history before, like, 1980, lying was just goaded. Like, you could be like, yeah, I advised fdr. And people are like, well, it doesn't sound right, but I don't. There's literally no way to disprove it.

[B]

Being a high society grifter was, like, easier because there's fewer. I feel like people would not have had their, like, antenna up for that in the same way that we do now.

[A]

So at this point, I'm like, okay, I'm Googling Napoleon Hill fraud and shit like that, right? And up pops this Gizmodo piece from 2016 by Matt Novak titled, the Untold Story of Napoleon Hill, the Greatest Self help Scammer of All Time.

[B]

Hell, yes.

[A]

Now we're fucking cooking. I'm like, all right.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

What Novak found was that there is no record of Napoleon Hill even meeting Woodrow Wilson or fdr.

[B]

Right.

[A]

In fact, there is no record of him meeting Andrew Carnegie.

[B]

Hell, yes.

[A]

The entire foundation of the book. Yes, the claim is that he met Carnegie in 1908, but he only started making that claim in the 1920s after Carnegie died. Novak reached out to a Carnegie biographer who said he found no evidence that they ever met. Yeah. Novak also found a magazine piece published in 1921 about the World War I armistice where Hill did not mention being in the room with Woodrow Wilson, only started making that claim many years later. And that claim is not even in this book. Right. That claim is something that pops up after Novak did a bunch of research to piece together an outline of Hill's actual life. And it is one scam after another.

[B]

Hell, yes.

[A]

So we're going to take a pretty significant detour, and the first half of this episode is just going to be about this guy's life. Cool. Because I can't. I can't read his success tips to you in good faith without first telling you about how he operated in the real world.

[B]

Maybe that was his success tip. He should have written the book about how to scam your way into high school, dude.

[A]

That's the thing, is if he. If you look at this. If he was just like, here's how you run a scam, it would have been great.

[B]

Whereas making you the victim of the scam is what he actually did.

[A]

Yeah, it's a shame because there was an opportunity here. So most of what I'm going to tell you is from the Gizmodo piece. Although, God help me, I did in fact read much of his official biographies.

[B]

Okay, cool, cool, cool.

[A]

Brutal. So this guy is born Oliver Napoleon Hill in Virginia to a relatively poor family. And he picks up writing when he's a teenager and starts working for a small newsletter that would occasionally get picked up by local papers. His biographers, who are very sympathetic to him, said that he recalled making up stories when there wasn't anything good to report. Right. So bullshitting from an early age here. I'm going to send to you a bit from Novak.

[B]

It says, officially, Napoleon Hill supporters are probably aware of two or three of his marriages. In fact, he was married at least five times. This would perhaps not be worth mentioning except for the circumstances surrounding his first two marriages, the two that are largely missing from the official stories of Hill. Hill's first marriage occurred when he was just 15 and had gotten a girl pregnant. According to the official Hill biography, which is the only known record of his marriage, the young girl's father angrily demanded that the two be married. But not long after the wedding, Napoleon's bride confessed that he had not fathered the child. The marriage was annulled, though it's unclear why this young girl would claim that the 15 year old Napoleon was the father if this wasn't the case. But it wouldn't be the last time that the official record of Hill's life would erase one of his alleged children.

[A]

So Hill graduates high school, he attends a business school, and then he goes to work for a fairly prominent coal man named rufus Ayers. In 1903, he gets married again, this time to a woman named Edith Whitman. They have a baby, they move to Alabama for a bit until he sends his wife and child back to Virginia to live with her father. It turns out that while married to her, Napoleon liked to dabble with ladies of the night. And we know this because Edith would eventually file for divorce and be granted one.

[B]

Oh, wow.

[A]

Back then in 1908, you needed like an oil painting of your husband cheating on you to get a divorce. Granted, she said that he was a man of violent and ungovernable temperament. There were like serious allegations of abuse and there were serious allegations of cheating.

[B]

The whole concept of sending Your wife and child away is also fascinating.

[A]

That's sort of divorce number one.

[B]

And wait, I thought it was divorce number two.

[A]

Sorry, sorry for the 15 year old. You know what, you're right. That's divorce number two. Then we get what can only be described as some lumber fraud.

[B]

Nice.

[A]

This is again from the Novak piece.

[B]

Throughout 1908, Hill had taken between $10,000 and $20,000 worth of lumber on credit from various suppliers as far away as Georgia, Florida, Pennsylvania and Indiana. He had been selling off the lumber as quickly as he could in Alabama, accepting only cash and virtually any amount that he was offered. This of course, raised plenty of suspicions from the buyers, not to mention the lumber sellers in Alabama who were being undercut at obscenely low prices. By the second half of 1908, word quickly spread that Hill was committing fraud and every businessman in the lumber community was looking for him. In September of 1908, Hill went on the run from his office in Mobile, Alabama. So wait, so was he stealing his lumber and selling it?

[A]

He was buying the lumber on credit, selling the lumber for cash, and then stiffing the folks who gave him the lumber.

[B]

Dude, I love how this is like life hack be a lifelong piece of shit. This is how you get rich.

[A]

So warrants are issued for his arrest, lawsuits are filed. Yeah, he's investigated for mail fraud, but somehow, in some way, he's either never caught or never gets into any significant trouble for this.

[B]

This is also back when you could just like basically leave the state.

[A]

He shows up in Washington D.C. and is now going by his middle name, Napoleon.

[B]

Nice.

[A]

Pretty quickly takes out ads offering training in automobile assembly.

[B]

Oh, nice.

[A]

He starts the Automobile company of Washington. Here is Novak again.

[B]

Hill's college was actually a way to get free labor for building cars. Students were paying for the pleasure of producing Washington brand cars for the Carter Motor Corporation. In 1910 and 1911, the Carter Company had struck a deal with Hill's school and got free labor from, quote, students who were toiling away constructing vehicles in a Washington warehouse. Oh God, it's internships.

[A]

Basically you're working for exposure. His business partners here all break the partnerships with him in pretty short order, making various allegations of misconduct, including that he stole a car. The company goes into bankruptcy, he pivots the business model to teaching people sales rather than automobile assembly. Once again, the students were doing actual labor for him. By selling cars. Right, and they received $3 for each person they signed up to be students.

[B]

Oh, there was an mlm.

[A]

Very early multi level marketing, which by the way, doesn't even really exist for another, like, 20 years in its modern form. Yeah. During all of this, he has remarried to a woman named Florence and had a couple of kids, including one who was born deaf and I believe, without physical ears, who he refuses to allow to learn sign language because he wants him to be able to communicate like everyone else. He wants him to learn.

[B]

He's a tiger, dad.

[A]

He writes about this at length in Think and Grow Rich.

[B]

No way.

[A]

There's a chapter about it, and he frames it as, like, part of his secret to success. Right. By denying the kid other tools of communication, he forced him to become more capable at speaking and even hearing. Right. Here's more from the little deaf boy

[B]

went through the grades, high school and college without being able to hear his teachers, excepting when they shouted loudly at close range. He did not go to a school for the deaf. We would not permit him to learn the sign language. We were determined that he should live a normal life and associate with normal children. And we stood by that decision, although it cost us many heated debates with school officials. God, that poor kid. Jesus Christ.

[A]

Here's more.

[B]

During his last week in college, something happened which marked the most important turning point of his life. Through what seemed to be mere chance, he came into possession of another electrical hearing device which was sent to him on trial. He was slow about testing it due to his disappointment with a similar device. Finally, he picked the instrument up and more or less carelessly placed it on his head, hooked up the battery, and lo, as if by a stroke of magic, his lifelong desire for normal hearing became a reality. We had refused to accept nature's error. And by persistent desire, we had induced nature to correct that error through the only practical means available. But nature didn't fix the error. It was like, a technology thing.

[A]

Dude, he's just giving himself credit for the literal advancement of science.

[B]

Yeah. For, like, the invention of hearing aids.

[A]

I imagine that doctors are somewhat familiar with this, Right? You, like, cure a patient and then people are like, our prayers. Our prayers were answered. And you're like, come on.

[B]

Like, I had syphilis and I manifested penicillin into existence. It's like, no, there's a technology that solved this issue.

[A]

Eventually, Napoleon heads to Chicago, at one point pretending to be an attorney. We don't know exactly what happened, but we do know that he got letterhead describing himself as Napoleon Hill, attorney at law.

[B]

Hell, yeah.

[A]

God knows what he was up to. If you recall, the intro by that other dude said that Hill briefly went to law school, which, for the Record does not actually appear to be true.

[B]

Right.

[A]

What was true was that he was posing as an attorney.

[B]

The guy in 2009. It's so weird to just write all this stuff down and not be like, did he really meet all these people? It's so weird.

[A]

I mean, this is a man who just writes books about books.

[B]

That's, like, one tier below people who make podcasts about books to be below us.

[A]

Gross. Then Hill founds the George Washington Institute, which was an unaccredited school that taught the principles of success. Ooh. This little institute gets into all kinds of minor trouble. The big thing is that he runs a stock scam where he sold stock in the school to his students based on a fraudulent valuation that seems to have resulted in an investigation and warrants being put out for his arrest.

[B]

Damn.

[A]

He also sets up a dummy corporation called the First National Trust association. And then he mailed students offers to lend the money for their tuition.

[B]

Ooh, Good scam. Okay.

[A]

Kind of unclear how this played out legally, but he again, seems to have gotten away with it to some degree, because the very next year, he joins up with a couple who is looking for investors in their oil concern, and then he runs fraudulent ads for them and gets charged by the ftc.

[B]

How bad you have to fuck up for the FTC to go after you? At this time, the FTC was, like, two people.

[A]

It's unreal.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

All right. We are now in the early 1920s, right? I'm gonna send you a little bit.

[B]

Hill partnered with Chaplain Tote to start the Intra Wall correspondence school in 1922. The charity would provide educational materials for prisoners in Ohio so they could lead productive lives once they left prison. Unsurprisingly, the charity's main focus was the sale of subscriptions for Hill's magazine and newly developed prison correspondence courses.

[A]

In 1923, there's a newspaper article published about all of his unpaid debts and other dealings.

[B]

Nice.

[A]

It includes the fact that Hill has allegedly pocketed much, or perhaps all of the charity money. So here's a little more from Novak.

[B]

Hill schemes of the early twenties were as brazen as they were despicable. He'd hop from town to town, often targeting churches, promising that every penny he collected was going to help men in prison start a new life. But every penny was making its way to Hill and his associates pockets. By one way or another, people found

[A]

out that he's scamming them again because the various places that he claimed he was sending the money never actually received it.

[B]

Napoleon Hill walked so Sean King could run.

[A]

Sean King wishes he had moves like this, dude. He's on the run again. And he ends up moving around the Midwest. He's lecturing in the region, including at least once to a meeting of the Klan. Ooh. At one point, he goes into hiding for a couple of years, though it's not entirely clear why. He pops up again in 1928 or so in Philadelphia, trying to pitch his new book, which would become the Law of Success. Here is Novak again.

[B]

Hill was completely broke in Philadelphia and had to appear to his potential publisher as a man of success and grace. So he borrowed money from his brother in law, rented an enormous suite in a swanky Philadelphia hotel, and played the role of the successful businessman for Pelton. Hill's biographers tell of Napoleon flashing a large wad of money around the hotel lobby, lavishly tipping every bellboy and clerk he saw in anticipation of Pelton's arrival.

[A]

So this obviously works. He publishes his book, and it's a bit of a hit by his standards. He's making legitimate money for the first time in a while. He's buying fancy cars and houses. He buys a big estate in the Catskills, as the intro told us. And as the intro told us, he's going to turn it into a success academy. But then, of course, the stock market crashes, the Depression hits, and it wipes him out also.

[B]

There's something so perfect and telling about this trajectory. This guy who just has no morals whatsoever, right? Just complete inveterate scammer. At first he's doing actual stuff, right? He's selling lumber, he's trying to build cars. But then eventually he finds out that just lecturing, lying to people without the actual stuff is much more profitable. So he goes into self help, right. I feel like that says something about the self help, like, genre is that, like, this is a guy that just wants to scam you. And eventually he figures out this is the easiest way.

[A]

The more abstract you get, the easier the fraud becomes. Cause when, yeah, when you are like stiffing your creditors, that's gonna come back to bite you. There's like this clear disconnect. But when you're just like, I'm gonna teach you how to succeed, that won't

[B]

come back to bite you in the same way. Cause there's always some plausible deniability, like it's your fault, right?

[A]

Right. Novak says at this point in the piece, if it hasn't become clear already, Napoleon has more or less abandoned his wife Florence and their three sons by the late 1920s.

[B]

I was gonna ask about this. Yeah, he probably left them wherever he was.

[A]

They were all living with Florence's mother. Only seeing Napoleon when he'd peek his head in for short bursts, usually to get money.

[B]

Nice.

[A]

By 1935, she files for divorce. He remarries, this time a 29 year old. He is 53. He moves in with the only son who will still talk to him. Blair Nice loans a few hundred bucks from him and starts writing Think and Grow Rich. And here we are. We have arrived at the book. You have just heard his life story to this point. And now it is time to learn about his principles of success.

[B]

It's also funny because the actual secret is just like lying and shamelessness. Like he kind of does have a secret to success. Dude.

[A]

But what if that's what he means when he says it's like hidden in the book? Oh, shit. What if the real secret is hidden and it's like you lie.

[B]

Yeah, just lie. Just bullshit. Yeah, it's a meta text.

[A]

Oh, man.

[B]

It's like Lolita between the lines. It was actually a really good story.

[A]

Is that why you're always reading it?

[B]

The joke doesn't even make sense, Peter. Because I'm gay. It doesn't make sense.

[A]

I know, I know. Lolito, as you call it. So he starts off the book with a bunch of anecdotes about people who found success through sheer force of will. Here is one about Henry Ford.

[B]

We're in the Op. Oprah knew the secret section of the book.

[A]

Dude, there's a lot of it, he says.

[B]

A few years back, Henry Ford decided to produce his now famous V8 motor. He chose to build an engine with an entire eight cylinders cast in one block, and instructed his engineers to produce a design for the engine. The design was placed on paper, but the engineers agreed to a man that it was simply impossible to cast an eight cylinder gas engine block in one piece. Ford said, produce it anyway. But they replied, it's impossible. Go ahead, Ford commanded. And stay on the job until you succeed, no matter how much time is required. Six months went by. Nothing happened. Another six months passed and still nothing happened. At the end of the year, Ford checked his engineers and again they informed him they found no way to carry out his orders. Go right ahead, said Ford. I'll want it and I'll have it. They went ahead. And then, as if by a stroke of magic, the secret was discovered. The Ford determination had won once more. Peter, I recognize this anecdote. Yeah, Was it. What was that one? What was the money one Jen Sincero.

[A]

So this is straight from youm are a badass, which means that you are a badass. Actually, I assume just plucked this also, as usual.

[B]

It's not actually an example of the secret at all. It's just an example of, like, being mean to your staff. Which is exactly what we said on the youe Are a Badass episode.

[A]

Exactly what we said. It's just like, what is he manifesting here? He's just yelling at people to do it. The actual question is, how did the engineers do it?

[B]

Yeah, I manifested a glass of ice water by, like, shouting it at the waiter across the restaurant.

[A]

So he says that if you have a definite desire or a burning desire, you can manifest the wealth. He says the method by which desire for riches can be transmuted into its financial equivalent consists of six definite practical steps.

[B]

Here we go, baby.

[A]

If you've been zoning out, listener, focus up.

[B]

Lock in.

[A]

We're about to drop some fucking knowledge on you.

[B]

First, fix in your mind the exact amount of money you desire. It is not sufficient merely to say, I want plenty of money. Be definite as to the amount. Second, determine exactly what you intend to give in return for the money you desire. There is no such reality as something for nothing. Third, establish a definite date when you intend to possess the money you desire. Fourth, create a definite plan for carrying out your desire. And begin at once, whether you are ready or not, to put this plan into action. Fifth, write out a clear, concise statement of the amount of money you intend to acquire. Name the time limit for its acquisition, state what you intend to give in return for the money, and describe clearly the plan through which you intend to accumulate it. That's just like the same as the previous four. Sixth, read your written statement aloud twice daily. Once just before retiring at night, and once after arising in the morning, as you read, see and feel and believe yourself already in possession of the money. I can't do this in the mornings because I'm eating too much almond butter because my wife wants to have sex with me in two days.

[A]

In two days, yeah. He goes on to say, it may be of further help to that. The six steps here recommended were carefully scrutinized by the late Thomas A. Addison, who placed his stamp of approval upon them as being not only the steps essential for the accumulation of money, but necessary for the attainment of any definite goal.

[B]

You do not need this, Napoleon. You could just list your steps. I don't need Thomas Edison to approve.

[A]

I'm gonna send you a picture. Click on that. Wait.

[B]

What's this? This is a picture of two middle aged men.

[A]

On the left, Thomas Edison. On the right, Napoleon Hill.

[B]

Wait, is that true?

[A]

This is a picture of Napoleon Hill with Thomas Edison. The story of this photograph is that Hill went to a convention Edison was at and asked for a picture. He then started circulating the photo with the caption describing the picture as being of quote, two of America's famous men

[B]

never stop hustling Napoleon.

[A]

He basically just photobombed Thomas Edison and then used it to help boost his career. But this is the only. Of all the people that he says he's met and shit, this is the only one where it appears like, well, they did at least meet once. He went and photobombed Thomas Edison once.

[B]

This plan is not. You don't really need Thomas Edison's approval for this. It's like, write down a plan and then implement the plan. This is the most basic advice for basically anything in your life.

[A]

But what's interesting about this is, and what we'll see more of in the rest of the book is that he tells you have a plan. And it's sort of unclear whether he thinks the purpose of the plan is like to be a set of practical steps that get you money or whether having a plan impacts your vibration. Like if you have a plan, you're vibrating closer to where you need to be vibrating. But then like once you start saying that, it's just sort of like you're no longer talking about vibrations, you're just talking about doing stuff to try to get money.

[B]

Then it's just like kind of practical advice.

[A]

Yeah. If to align your vibrations with the universe, you need to do the practical steps, then what is the difference between this and just a practical guide you're

[B]

manifesting becoming a doctor. And then the actual advice is like, well, go to medical school.

[A]

Right.

[B]

You vibrated yourself into medical school, but not really. I just did the steps necessary to achieve my plan.

[A]

So the first few chapters of the book are really just about the importance of having this burning desire for success and how it must transcend mere hope and become something you actually believe will happen. When he uses a term, faith, that is what he's talking about.

[B]

You have to really want to be rich. Have you tried wanting to be rich?

[A]

But after the first few chapters, we actually move away a little bit from the more mystical angles and he starts to provide more practical advice. Yeah, he talks about the importance of specialized knowledge, meaning expertise. He talks about the importance of making concrete plans. He talks about the importance of coordinating with reliable and Talented people, something he has never done. It's always run through with mystical language, but it's trying to be pragmatic. Some of the most interesting parts of this book are him trying to talk about the real world in more like, realistic terms, because then you can see, like, his actual mind at work. And so here's him talking business a bit.

[B]

He says the next flock of millionaires will grow out of the radio business, which is new and not overburdened with men of keen imagination. Crooners and light chatter artists who now pollute the air with wisecracks and silly giggles will go the way of all light timbers.

[A]

Wrong bitch. Wrong bitch.

[B]

I was gonna give you shit after this paragraph, but okay. And their places will be taken by real artists who interpret carefully planned programs which have been designed to service the minds of men as well as provide entertainment.

[A]

Whatever. Go listen to this American life, you fucking dork.

[B]

They also said this when, like, TV was invented.

[A]

It was like, this will.

[B]

This will produce mass literacy. We'll never need schools again. It's like anytime there's a new technology, it's like, we're all gonna become good and smart.

[A]

Cut to me watching below deck on my couch, just brain melting.

[B]

Never let it discourage you if you have no experience in radio. Andrew Carnegie knew very little about making steel. I have Carnegie's own word for this. But he made practical use of two of the principles described in this book and made the steel business yield him a fortune. Well, then why don't I just do fucking steel then?

[A]

He loves the idea of radio. He's like the. He thinks the whole universe is built around radio waves.

[B]

It is funny to be like, oh, it's all about, like, metaphysical vibrations. And then just be like, well, find a new technology that's growing and, like, get into that industry.

[A]

Let's talk about scale. You know, I actually think these portions of the book are really interesting because Hill himself has never had a business idea besides, like, you know, start a business to sell my success. Principles get an investor defraud, right? That's, like, how he operates. So it's interesting to hear him give advice about, like, what industries to go into, how to succeed in all these other ways that we know he's never succeeded in. In one chapter, he names several fields that he believes will require new leadership. But he basically names, like, every field you can imagine. He says politics, business, industry, religion, law, education, medicine and journalism will all require new leaders who are more empathetic to the public.

[B]

Plastics.

[A]

This is a window into his mind because coming out of the Depression, people are obviously looking for answers. Right, Right. And his reasoning is all very based on this idea of that people in all fields sort of failed on a moral level. And in line with that, he seems to chalk up a lot of the Depression to rude customer service.

[B]

Wait, really?

[A]

He says nearly every railroad in America is in financial difficulty. Who does not remember the day when if a citizen inquired at the ticket office the time of departure of a train, he was abruptly referred to the bulletin board instead of being politely given the information. He says the same about streetcars and bankers. And he attributes the rebound in the economy to these people all recognizing the value of good customer service.

[B]

Why don't you just manifest a nicer bank teller then, bitch?

[A]

He says behind the Depression was a cause. Nothing ever happens without a cause. In the main, the cause of the Depression is traceable directly to the worldwide habit. Habit of trying to reap without sowing. And he means here, trying to reap money without sowing, like the seeds of kindness. This is insane. But also could get published in the Atlantic today.

[B]

Completely 100%. Yeah. This is also on the. If Books could kill. Bingo. Board of. You have this grand, sweeping idea that explains all of history, and then you keep zooming in on it until it's just like a grievance that you have.

[A]

Yeah, yeah.

[B]

Remember how the population bomb guy was annoyed that he couldn't find parking in Berkeley, California?

[A]

Right. And he's like, we're all gonna fucking die if I don't get it. There's more about his diagnosis for the Depression that I want to share. Here you go.

[B]

The Depression served as a mighty protest from an injured public whose rights had been trampled upon in every direction by those who were clamoring for individual advantages and profits. When the debris of the Depression shall have been cleared away and business shall have once again been restored to balance, both employers and employees will recognize that they are no longer privileged to drive bargains at the expense of those whom they serve. The employer and the employee of the future will be considered as fellow employees whose business it will be to serve the public efficiently. In times past, employers and employees have bartered among themselves, driving the best bargains they could with one another, not considering that, in the final analysis, they were in reality bargaining at the expense of the third party, the public they serve. The future relationship between employers and their employees will be more in the nature of a partnership consisting of, A, the employer, B, the employee, C, the public they. Sir Peter, why did you make me read this? This is Gibberish.

[A]

What he's trying to say is that part of the reason that the depression happened is bargaining for wages. Oh. He says, during the Depression, I spent several months in the anthracite coal region of Pennsylvania studying conditions which all but destroyed the coal industry. Among several very significant discoveries was the fact that greed on the part of operators and their employees was the chief cause of the loss of business for the operators and loss of jobs for the miners. So again, this Guy's career is 95% fraud, but he sees people bargaining for wages and he's like, that's greed. This should give you some sense of his actual politics, but just to be sure, his official biographers describe him as an anti union, an arch conservative.

[B]

This is like the woman who went on the Beast Games and said greed is idolatry. She was on the Beast Games twice.

[A]

Are you watching Beast Games?

[B]

No, I'm watching video essays about Beast Games, which is significantly better.

[A]

Classic Hobbes. Classic Hobbs.

[B]

There's no fucking way I would watch that.

[A]

You'll never watch tv, but you will watch essays.

[B]

I don't care about any of these shows, but I want an unwell zoomer to explain them to me.

[A]

He does at times make it very express where he stands on the issue of. Of capitalism. I'm sending you this.

[B]

We often hear politicians proclaiming the freedom of America when they solicit votes. But seldom do they take the time or devote sufficient effort to the analysis of the source or nature of this freedom. Having no axe to grind, no grudge to express, no ulterior motives to be carried out, I have the privilege of going into a frank analysis of that mysterious, abstract, greatly misunderstood something which gives to every citizen of America more blessings, more opportunities to accumulate wealth, more freedom of every nature than may be found in any other country. Dude. Send this to Thomas Chatterton Williams. We beat your sentence record. The name of this mysterious benefactor of mankind is capital. Capital consists not alone of money, but more particularly of highly organized, intelligent groups of men who plan ways and means of using money efficiently for the good of the public and profitably to themselves. We finally got to the capitalism is good section of the self help. This is not necessary for the idea, not at all.

[A]

But I think it's important to the book because coming out of the Depression, a lot of Americans had lost some faith in the capitalist project for obvious reasons. Right. There's contemporary polling from Pew and Gallup showing large amounts of support for government interventions into the markets. Free health care, Social Security, et cetera. The number of people who supported free health care. It was 75%. This book exists within the context of a debate about what our society will look like and should look like moving forward. And he's saying very expressly, we don't have systemic issues. In fact, the system is great. It's the best system. What we have is a collection of personal moral failures.

[B]

Right.

[A]

So you can view this not just as like a self help book, but a policy prescription. We don't need socialism. We just need everyone to get their shit together.

[B]

Also, what's actually so interesting about this is that that you could cast him kind of as the little guy. Like, he grew up poor. Like, he could have seen himself as somebody who was like, taking from the rich. I mean, that would have been false. He was doing all these scams at a time of like, rapidly increasing inequality. He could have lived exactly the life that he had with an ideology of like, we need to help out the little guy, right? And like, rich people have too much money, but somehow he manages to like, glaze capitalists like Andrew Carnegie and stuff. Like, it's weird to have his life and come up with this ideology because it's not like he made money through capital accumulation. He made money through scamming.

[A]

There's something weird about. You'll never encounter a guy who survives through fraud but is self aware enough to be like, the little guy needs some help around here.

[B]

Right.

[A]

I feel like every fraudster is just like, yeah, capitalism rocks. And it's like the best system.

[B]

It's amazing.

[A]

One chapter gives practical tips on landing a job, which revolve mostly around marketing your personal services. He suggests taking out ads in newspapers, advertising yourself.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

And I don't. I just thought that was interesting because, like, you know how boomers will be like, well, why don't you just walk down to the store and shake the manager's hand? Two generations before that, you didn't even need to do that. You just like took an ad out for yourself. You're like, I'm good at shit. Yeah. If you need someone to like chop down a tree or something, I can do that. And then you just get a job that way.

[B]

Yeah, yeah.

[A]

He also lists out the 30 major causes of failure. Ooh. Most of them are pretty normal. Lack of self discipline and so forth. Right. But there are some standouts, some odd ones. The first is unfavorable hereditary background.

[B]

Oh, wrong kind of whites.

[A]

I actually thought this was gonna be racist. I was like, oh, this is gonna be expressly racist. But he actually just means people who are Naturally stupid.

[B]

Oh.

[A]

He says there is but little, if anything, which can be done for people who are born with a deficiency in brain power.

[B]

Okay, they can't place that. Don't be placing ads if you're a dummy.

[A]

But also, like, what happened to transmuting? Like, you made your son here according to your.

[B]

Right, Exactly. So can I transmute myself, like, 30 extra IQ points or something?

[A]

Yeah, just a little bit.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

This is the first one of 30 major causes of failure. He's like, number one. You're a dumbass.

[B]

Look, if you're dumb enough to buy this book, that's why you're not succeeding.

[A]

There's also ill health.

[B]

Oh, okay.

[A]

I'm gonna send you this. This is like number six. The order of these is inexplicable.

[B]

He says no person may enjoy outstanding success without good health. Many of the causes of ill health are subject to mastery and control. These in the main. A, overeating of foods not conducive to health. B, wrong habits of thought, giving expression to negatives. C, wrong use of and overindulgence in sex. D, lack of proper physical exercise. E, an inadequate supply of fresh air due to improper breathing. So he's just like an RFK Jr kind of guy.

[A]

I was enthralled by this little throwaway about getting inadequate fresh air due to bad breathing. This is never mentioned again in the book. It was not explained at all. All he needed was, like, a parenthetical.

[B]

A long digression about mewing.

[A]

Here's another major cause of failure.

[B]

Lack of controlled sexual urge. Sex energy is the most powerful of all the stimuli which move people into action. Because it is the most powerful of the emotions, it must be controlled through transmutation and converted into other channels. I disagree.

[A]

You disagree with what?

[B]

I think you can be on Grandeur and have a podcast. I think it's fine. You know what?

[A]

So look, if the lesson here is don't be so horny that you ruin your life, fair. But, yeah, there's this little thing about transmuting your sexual urges that caught my attention. And. And I don't think we can talk about anything else until we talk about that. So let's skip forward a bit to chapter 11, which is titled the Mystery of Sex Transmutation.

[B]

So he does elaborate on this.

[A]

There's an entire chapter on sex transmutation. I know that you've already complained about how all of his rating is saying the same thing over and over again. That is not about to improve. Here you go.

[B]

He says sex transmutation is simple and easily explained. It means the switching of the mind from thoughts of physical expression to thoughts of some other nature. Sex desire is the most powerful of human desires. When driven by this desire, men develop keenness of imagination, courage, willpower, persistence and creative ability unknown to them at other times. So strong and impelling is the desire for sexual contact that men freely run the risk of life and reputation to indulge when harnessed and redirected along other lines. This motivating force maintains all of its attributes of keenness, of imagination, courage, etc. Which may be used as powerful creative forces in literature, art, or in any other profession or calling. Including, of course, the accumulation of riches. This is the Chatterton illness, where he includes all these lists of things you don't need. Eight examples of what this can do because it is a really simple concept. So basically, you take your boner energy and you put your boner energy into, like, painting watercolors.

[A]

Yeah. Although I actually still don't understand how.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

It's unclear to me if what he means is like, don't jerk off, instead write something, or if what he means is something else. It's not entirely clear. He never says, like, don't have sex. Right.

[B]

Right.

[A]

In fact, kind of the opposite. So let me send you this.

[B]

You need a boner of the mind,

[A]

you get a mind boner. It's very similar to an idea scoop.

[B]

He says scientific research has disclosed these significant facts. One, the men of greatest achievement are men with highly developed sex natures, Men who have learned the art of sex transmutation. This is like the grit thing. He's just like, making this thing up.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Two, the men who have accumulated great fortunes and achieved outstanding recognition in literature, art, industry, architecture and the profession were motivated by the influence of a woman. The research from which these astounding discoveries were made went back through the pages of biography and history for more than 2000 years. Wherever there was evidence available in connection with the lives of men and women of great achievement, it indicated most convincingly that they possessed highly developed sex natures. What is he talking about?

[A]

I genuinely don't know. I will say this. When I was trying to figure out what the fuck he was talking about, I was just googling around and a lot of, like, the no FAP communities are like, by the way, Napoleon Hill says that.

[B]

Oh, really?

[A]

So they. Some people think that it's like, don't masturbate and you will sort of like, accrue power.

[B]

I mean, whatever.

[A]

I don't think that's what he means.

[B]

Actually, because he says the successful men had a highly developed sex nature, implying they were having a lot of sex.

[A]

It seems like they. He's talking about people who are just fucking a lot. Yeah, but then he also says, like, I'm not talking about just libertines. I'm not talking about being a libertine. So it's sort of. He's like, you have to control it. But he never actually articulates what that means.

[B]

What if the actual secret is if the clitoris is at the 1 o'? Clock? Genghis Khan knew the secret. Mahatma Gandhi knew the secret.

[A]

He says the reality of a sixth sense has been fairly well established. This sixth sense is creative imagination. The faculty of creative imagination is one which the majority of people never use during an entire lifetime. And if used at all, it usually happens by mere accident.

[B]

That's not what a sense is.

[A]

I'm still explaining this, Michael.

[B]

I'm like, ready? I'm like, poised to fucking respond to this.

[A]

He says that the only people who can use their creative imagination are geniuses, and that only geniuses have made the discovery of sex transmutation. The creative imagination is triggered when the mind is vibrating at an exceedingly high rate. So what I think he's saying is that, like, being horny gets your brain vibrating high, and then you utilize that high vibration to think of good ideas.

[B]

Bring on ChatGPT. The AI robots are so much better than this shit. What is he talking about? What is he doing?

[A]

He says that this is more powerful than standard reasoning because reasoning is based on your own knowledge and experience, which is flawed. Whereas this is connecting you to the vibrations of the universe, which are infinite.

[B]

The blood, blood that was going to go to my boner should go to my brain, he says, and that's the energy that I should use.

[A]

He's just got a boner so severe that his brain is draining of blood. And he's like, this is it, this is it. I just sent you a little bit more. And obviously it's very necessary. This is an important part of the episode.

[B]

In connection with the facts available from the biographies of certain men, we here present the names of a few men of outstanding achievement, each of whom was known to have been of a highly sexed nature. Oh, and then he lists off dudes. George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Napoleon Bonaparte, Elbert Hubbard, William Shakespeare, Oscar Wilde, Woodrow Wilson, Abraham Lincoln, John H. Patterson, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Andrew Jackson, Robert Burns, Enrico Caruso.

[A]

I just wrote lmao under this whole situation. Who are highly sexed.

[B]

The thing is, if I was writing a self help book. I would absolutely include a list of historical figures who could get it.

[A]

But that's different.

[B]

That's not a highly sexed nature.

[A]

Like, I read the chapter twice. Because I was like, does he say anything? Is he explaining this?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

No, because at first I was like, oh, it just means you don't have sex. Y examples of people who just, he seems to believe, had a lot of sex.

[B]

Had a lot of sex. Yeah.

[A]

But then I still come back to the conclusion that, like, what I think he means is, like, you get horny and then work.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

We're gonna move on to some other interesting later chapters. He has a chapter that is about the human brain.

[B]

It's so funny to me that in all of these books, it's like you have a self help idea and then you can just write about literally anything.

[A]

Sex, transmutation, dude.

[B]

Write about the brain, write about sex. Who gives a shit?

[A]

I'm sending you the opening paragraph.

[B]

He Sundays, more than 20 years ago, the author, working in conjunction with the late Dr. Alexander Graham Bell and Dr. Elmer R. Gates, observed that every human brain is both a broadcasting and receiving station for the vibration of thought.

[A]

Sure. At this point, I feel like I don't need to tell you that this man did not meet Alexander. Never met him, let alone helped him conduct some kind of brain experiment.

[B]

Because what does he mean here? Broadcasting and receiving station? Does he mean that we can hear each other, other's thoughts?

[A]

So most of the chapter is pretty boring. It's about the same things, right? You got to get your brain vibrating. Right. But there is one bit where he talks about telepathy, which of course he believes is real.

[B]

Sure.

[A]

He cites the work of Joseph Rhine at Duke University as evidence that telepathy exists. And so I start poking around. This guy's fairly well known. He is the founder of the field of parapsychology. He's the one who came up with the term esp, Extrasensory perception. And of course, now his work is widely considered to be a mess. The methodologies are poor. It's never been replicated. Some of his colleagues were suspected of fraud in different circumstances. The very famous skeptic James Randi said he believed that Ryan was like a naive but good faith actor. But I will say this. In the 1930s, it was not crazy to see that research and think like, oh, maybe telepathy is real. They were doing experiments with cards. Where could people predict what card was what? Right.

[B]

Yeah. And the clever Han stuff, a lot of the stuff there's scenarios in which it looks like somebody's reading your mind.

[A]

Right. And there were real deal academics at the time studying this and finding what looked like evidence. Right. The only reason I included this in the episode is because there were so many times that Hill references, like, something you look up and then it's either not confirmed or it's confirmed as bullshit. Like, there was research about the sexual nature of the great men in history, and you're like, what the fuck are you talking about? Right. Yeah. And then he says this, and it's the one time he identifies actual science that you can actually locate.

[B]

And you're like, fair enough, man.

[A]

And it's about fucking telepathy.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

I was like, oh, my God. Like, even the real stuff is fake.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[A]

There's something so crazy about this because it's like he was vibrating on the fraud wavelength so hard that, like, he could, like, he was, like, subconsciously spotting the telepathy fraud without even knowing it. Like, the only things he can convey to you are fraudulent. And so even when he thought he was telling you about real science, he was actually telling you about fake science.

[B]

Yeah. Well, maybe that means telepathy is real. He's, like, catching the grifter vibrations from other grifters.

[A]

So he's correct about telepathy. And that is where we're gonna end our discussion of the book. The book just sort of winds down along these lines, Right. And it is a huge hit. And I think a lot of the reasons why it's complete bullshit are also why it succeeded. At the time, coming out of the Depression, people don't want to hear about structural impediments. They don't want to hear about why capitalism is gonna prevent you from getting rich. They want someone to tell them that they can be rich if they just get their mind. Right.

[B]

Because I did a little bit of research on the New Things stuff for the how to Win Friends and Influence People episode, and this was kind of a new idea. I mean, all of us now in America are just like. We're awash in this dumb fucking power of positive thinking garbage. But, like, this was kind of new at the time, the idea that you could, like, manifest things by envisioning them. Yeah.

[A]

And it feels scientific.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[A]

And I think kind of culturally. Right. He expressly says, being rich is the result of your mindset. Being poor is the result of your mindset. He says poverty is attracted to the. The minds of those favorable to it. I think to most sane people now, this just reads as blaming Poverty on the poor, which is a crazy thing to do following the Depression. But to a person in that situation, you could see how it might be hopeful. It presents you with a feasible solution. And that solution is not like, move to California in a wagon or write

[B]

your senator or something. It's like, okay, I just have to believe in this and try to really hard. Make a plan, et cetera.

[A]

A little bit of epilogue here. When the book becomes a hit, he signs the royalty rights over to his latest wife, the one who helped him write it, with the idea being that his various creditors would not be able to get at the money. That way, he does not pay back the $300 loan his son Blair gave him to launch the book. According to Novak, the journalist who wrote the Gizmodo piece his wife wrote wrote his son like a taunting letter about the high life they were living.

[B]

I drank champagne on your dime, bitch.

[A]

They are, like. They're, like, buying mansions and cars and shit.

[B]

Enjoy living in a shack, you fucking loser. So fucked up.

[A]

And they blow through the money in, like, two years.

[B]

That's nuts.

[A]

They had the opportunity here to lead, like, a normal, cushy life. Yeah, but. But because he spends all the money he gets immediately, he just never stops getting in trouble. He starts associating with a weird cult called the Master Metaphysicians, who drew headlines for purchasing an old Vanderbilt Mansion and then announcing publicly that they intended to adopt and raise an immortal baby using metaphysics and also a vegetarian diet. Hill is the godfather of this child.

[B]

Wait, so it's a real child, it's just not immortal.

[A]

This is a real human child.

[B]

And that baby's name was Brian Johnson.

[A]

Napoleon gets divorced again. He spends, like, the next 15 or so years doing the same shit he always did. He's giving speeches. He's trying to get people to invest in success schools. He's launching magazines. He's writing unsuccessful books.

[B]

It's wild. He couldn't live on this for the rest of his life.

[A]

They were, like, buying mansions like estates and, like, Rolls Royces and shit like that. Yeah, he's getting run out of various towns. You know, he's just. He's back to. He's back to classic Napoleon.

[B]

The man just loves scamming the pastor.

[A]

Norman Vincent Peale claimed that Hill helped him write the Power of Positive Thinking, really, in the early 1950s, which is notable, first of all, because it just boosts one book theory. Right.

[B]

We'll do that on the show eventually. But it is going to be precisely the same as this fucking Book.

[A]

And then also Peale was Donald Trump's pastor, of course, someone who Trump for many years cited as an influence. There was recently a Vanity Fair piece about Peel's influence on Trump. And it means that just maybe there's a chance that if Napoleon Hill never writes this piece of shit book, a butterfly flaps its wings and Trump is not the President of the United States.

[B]

And Hillary Clinton would have won in 2016 and somebody even worse would be in charge.

[A]

Now.

[B]

The phrase President Gillian Michaels would be appearing on this show constantly.

[A]

Or perhaps even better, Joe Biden, now 95 years old, is on his second

[B]

term, does not know he's president, but is still the president.

[A]

One of the interesting themes of the Gizmodo piece is that Matt Novak is trying to get Napoleon Hill's original writings from the Napoleon Hill foundation, which is this non profit that's obviously meant to boost his sort of profile and they won't give him access. And they're very cagey and weird about it and are like, we can give you a tour of his childhood home, but. But you'll have to donate $5,000 to the foundation.

[B]

No way.

[A]

And there's something so interesting about, like, here we are a hundred years after this guy was in his prime and his foundation is run by a bunch of people who are basically, like, doing his fraud to this day.

[B]

It's like, did he live the values he espoused in his book?

[A]

No.

[B]

But did his work inspire millions of people to improve their lives also? No. It's a sad contrast to Dale Carnegie, who did write one of these dumb books, but also seemed like a kind of a good guy.

[A]

Yeah. Remember his little chapter where he just walks up to the boys cooking hot dogs and he's like, you know, boys, I love the.

[B]

Gotta get out of the park. See?

[A]

Love that you're cooking hot dogs. Everybody loves a frankfurter. But perhaps do it a little more safely. All right.

[B]

But just like a nice guy. And then we have, only a year later, we have the complete corruption of this genre of book.

[A]

Yeah. He's like, dale Carnegie is a fucking pussy.

[B]

Yeah. Like this fucking loser who's like, trying to actually help you make friends, get

[A]

your mind vibrating and defraud everyone you know.

[B]

And fap. But not too much fap. The appropriate amount.

[A]

Dale Carnegie's like, try to be nice to everyone you meet. And Napoleon Hill's like, get horny and think of ideas. Get alone.

[B]

Yeah. Use your boner to vibrate your way into a job in radio. This book could have been one sentence.