Part Two: Napoleon Hill: The Grifter Who Invented 'The Secret' & Donald Trump

In Part Two, Robert is joined again by Sara June to continue discussing Napoleon Hill.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hmm, what scamming my uh? Generations of naive Americans? Do
you think the answer to success is as simple as
envisioning yourself with more money rather than based heavily in
a combination of luck and the clash you're born into.
I'm Robert Evans. This is Behind the Bastards. That was

(00:23):
one of our better intros. I'd say, Uh, Sara June
is our guest today. How do you How do you
feel about that intro? I feel like that, um was
some canseley, very very broad and very very specific. Um,
You've you've managed to cover everybody, uh and see into
our souls and our deepest fears. Yeah, yeah, that's I
love our deepest fears. I love our deepest fears. Big fan. Well,

(00:46):
I'm Robert Evans and this is Behind the Bastards, the
podcast where we tell you about the worst people in
all of history, and of course the terrible historical person
we're talking about today is Napoleon Hill. This is part
two of our episode on Old Nappy h. So when
we left off, Napoleon had finally come up with his
first really great idea that didn't involve creating a fake

(01:06):
school or fleeing from angry mobs after robbing them block.
I mean, those were very good ideas, but still not
close to Think and Grow Rich. Yeah yeah, and I
think to the success quest. Yeah yeah, this is this
is the laws of law of success. So we're not
at think and Grow Rich. Yet this is his first book.
Yeah yeah. So uh so he has this great idea

(01:26):
for a book, and he's got a publisher who's interested
in it, and he just needs to convince this guy
that he's wealthy so that the dude will believe that
he has actually spent twenty years interviewing the most successful
people in history. It sounds like a great sitcom premise.
It is a great sitcom premise. You could really make
a fun movie, like a really fun episode of a sitcom. Oh,
I got to convince him I'm rich. You know. I

(01:47):
feel like Steve Carrell would knock Napoleon Hill out of
the fucking parks. I mean, let's be honest, everything out
of the park. But yes, he would. He would be
really good at as a blustering con man. Totally. Yeah, yeah,
I I would watch that movie and for young Steve Carrell,
we get I don't know one of the Jonas brothers
probably get those get those kids in the seats. How

(02:10):
old do you think the Jones brothers are what they're like,
They're in their twenties now the Jones brothers are are adults. Now,
I'm gonna be honest. The last pop culture that I
remember really really clearly, where like those cups with space
Jam stuff printed on them at McDonald's. Yeah, everything after
that is just a blur. Well that, okay, let's not

(02:33):
let's not bother Robert with what year it is, let's
move on. I feel like I don't want to break
you out of this trance because you're like a sleepwalker
and you might be on me or something. People still
like space Jam, right, absolutely, but it's not in the
way you think. We've got this new thing called irony,
don't worry about don't worry about it. Don't worry about it.

(02:53):
So uh, yeah, Napoleon's got to convince this guy that
he's rich so that he can sell his book idea
and once again, in order to do this, Napoleon leaned
on the wealthy family of one of his wives. I
think he's up to his like third or fourth Now
I kind of have trouble keeping track of them. There's
a lot of wives at play. Um, you know what
he was really just another type of scam. Yeah, wife

(03:15):
is basically a debit card to Napoleon. Hell yeah, here's
the here's the secret to Napoleon's success. A wife. A
wife is a scam. Yeah, a wife is a scam too.
Everything's a scam if you look at it, right. So
Napoleon borrows money from his wife's brother to rent a gigantic,
fancy hotel room in Philadelphia so that he can pretend
to be a big shot businessman rather than a guy

(03:37):
who has spent most of the last decade literally robbing
churches in elementary schools and then running away from the police,
and then running away from the police. Yeah, all across
the country. So I'm gonna quote again from his biography,
A lifetime of riches. He made a grand entrance, striding
with starched purposefulness to the registration desk. He flashed a
thick roll of cash as he put down the deposit

(03:57):
on his room, then strutted to the elevator with the
self assurance of a Rockefeller. Ascending to his suite, he
regally dispatched the bellboy to fetch him the tobacconist's most
expensive cigars. He rejected the first offering of simply excellent cigars,
then tip the boy four times the going rate for
his trouble. So all this is happening before Pelton even
arrives to meet with Napoleon. He's getting in character and

(04:21):
he's establishing like his goal was to make an entrance
and established himself as a rich big shot before Pelton arrives,
so that when the publishers shows up to talk with him,
the hotel staff will treat him like he's a big shot.
Like that. That's the con, which is a pretty smart con,
and it apparently works. Like the hotel staff treats him
like royalty. Pelton's impressed and assumes that he's actually a

(04:42):
rich guy. So Pelton agrees to publish Law of Success,
which will he not just one book, but a multi
volume epic, and he even pays Napoleon a healthy advance. Now,
you might imagine that a man in Napoleon situation, whose
wife has been supporting the family for more than a year,
and whose family had just loaned him the money that
he needed to make his dreams possible, you might expect
that guy to at least like pay his brother in

(05:05):
law back maybe, but no, Napoleon does not do that.
He's not to pay people back. Sort of guy roy
for himself people. Now you might also have expected this
guy who has like had his wife and kids living
with like their family all this time, you might expect
him to like say, okay, well, now we can all

(05:26):
move into a place together, since I just got this
advance and we can all live together as a family,
will I write this book. That doesn't happen either of
success now it's not the law of success is apparently
continuing to live in Philadelphia, abandoning his family and writing books, um,
which is what Napoleon does during this period of time.
So now, during this month, these months, Napoleon keeps writing

(05:49):
his wife lurid letters detailing the lavish gifts he plans
to buy for her upon like once his book is
a success and the money comes in. He promised her
that if she just held on a little bit longer
and let him work alone in Philadelphia, the money would
come rolling in and their troubles would be over forever.
And part of this was actually true, um, because by
dumb luck, sheer dumb luck, Napoleon's book Law of Success

(06:13):
is a gigantic hit and he makes a huge amount
of money with it. Well, here's the thing. I wouldn't
call that dumb luck, you know, I think I think
it's the scam. Yeah. Yeah, he did put in the groundwork.
You're right, put in the groundwork. He wrote a whole book.
He wrote something that was first of all, he did
something that was almost free for him to do, right,
which is like right about right. He's got this advance.

(06:34):
It's a very low cost endeavor, you know, writing a book,
and so you know, he's just making profit and he's
selling something by by telling people what they want to hear,
which is you can get rich quick, and uh, it is,
it's it's within your control. Uh. And he's also telling
rich people you're rich because you're very good and smart.

(06:54):
Yeah yeah, so yeah, yeah yeah Napoleon, you're right. Napoleon
put in the work and he gets successful. And by
midnight his royalty checks were more than dollars a month,
which is the modern equivalent of making thirty six grand
a month. And this really probably the first honest money
he's ever made. Yeah, this is the the first honest

(07:15):
money that he's ever made in his life. Now it's
interesting to wonder about, like why this book was such
a hit. Hill's biographers posit this theory quote law of
Success might well have been discarded as the ravings of
a lunatic, but for the fact that much of Hill's
most improbable conjecture was spun from the musings of men
like Thomas Edison and Alexander Graham Bell. Thus anchored in respectability,
these passages stimulated readers to wonder, to ponder life on

(07:37):
a grander scale, more than any self help book ever
has before or since. Again, this is written by the
people who are with the Napoleon Hill foundations, and I
think this is the best book ever written. And he
also made up all of these quotes. Yeah, he made
all of these quotes. These are all lies. Matt Novak
of Gizmoto reached out to David Nassau, who was Andrew
Carnekie's official biographer, and Nassau told him that he found

(07:59):
no evidence of any kind that Carnegie and Hill ever met.
So there's there is zero, you know, oddly enough, that's
the only one of them he met. Yeah, yeah, well
but it's we'll talk about it later. You're gonna like
this but that is the one famous person. He writes
that in the book that he did meet um, but

(08:20):
it's not quite the way he portrays it. But first
I want to I want to read a quote from
that gizmoo article about how he portrays Carnegie in his book. Quote.
Opening Hill's book to any random page and reading the
drivel past off as Carnegie's own words is a fun game.
As just one random example from page ninety seven in
my copy is is like written as a conversation Hill,

(08:41):
will you tell me and the simplest words possible, just
how one may control this wheel of fortune. I would
like a description of this important success factor which the
young man or young woman just beginning a business career
may understand. Carnegie. First of all, to control the wheel
of fortune, one must understand master and apply the seventeen
principles of achievement. I already named five of these principles,

(09:01):
and I might here suggest that these five, if properly applied,
will carry one a long way on the road towards
success in any calling. It's this is just like the
the great grandfather of an entire genre of uship success
books about like you know the it's uh you know
to to quote Peep Show, it's business Secrets of the Pharaohs. Yeah, yeah, yeah,

(09:25):
like the idea that like Carnegie is like no, there's
seventeen principles of success, and those allow you to run
the wheel of fortune, and that's how business works. Like Rick,
guys aren't sitting around like mapping out their success into
abstract principles. They're they're looking at spreadsheets and going kill
all those people. Yeah. There's there's two kinds of great businessman.
There's the look at spreadsheets and say kill all those

(09:47):
people will make an extra four bucks. And then there's
the guys who are literally just like what if we
try doing this? Get Yeah, well, what do we make
a computer that like does this thing? Like what if
we what if we make this purple? Like, we'll see
if it sells my Yeah. A lot of them are
born with a lot of money or given a lot
of money, you know, like Trump or whatever, where it's like,
well maybe if someone gives me a million dollars, I

(10:09):
can buy a building and make three million dollars. You know,
there's no principles at work there. It's just as profit
people need and charge them more than they can afford.
For it until they die. Yeah. That's literally the only
rule of great business secret. Yeah, find something people need

(10:30):
and sell it to them until they die. Yeah, that's
you've you you should put out a book. I you
know what, I'm tweeting it for free, buddy. I'm just kidding.
I don't tweet, but yeah, you're welcome. You're all welcome
for these business secrets. Can you imagine Napoleon Hills twitter? Absolutely?
I think wow. He would be so fucking good. He

(10:52):
would be tweeting. He would be like Marian Williamson like
meets Trump level tweets. Oh god, he would deafly be
part of the Democratic debates. He would totally be running.
Oh my god. Him and Hicky Looper would be buddies.
I don't think many people got along with Napoleon Hill.

(11:14):
Hick and Looper would show up at the next debate
with like pantsless because Napoleon had stolen them and quit town.
Oh boy. Now uh so in reality, as a we
I alluded to a little earlier, only one of the
famous men that Napoleon Hill claimed to have interviewed actually
had any face to face contact with him, and that
man was Thomas Albert Edison. Now, if you remember from

(11:37):
part one and that Golden Rule magazine that he ran
for a while, that he would like come up with
bogus awards to give prominent people in order to get
close to them, because he believed that that's you know,
that was his strategy for it a tactic. Well, his
meeting of Thomas Edison is another example of that um.
The whole scheme was discussed in a December nineteen article

(11:57):
of Specialty Salesman magazine titled Destroyers Confidence quote. He'll figure
out how he could have a picture made with Thomas A.
Edison so he could give him a medal. He sent
a press agent over to announce that Mr Hill, one
of the leading magazine writers, wished to attend the Edison
Convention of Dealers. Of course he was welcome. He asked
Mr Edison to pose with him, a request he could
hardly refuse. So then the two guys shook hands, and uh,

(12:20):
he tried to hand Thomas Edison this medal that he
liked supposedly was awarding him. But Edison like seems to
have immediately realized what was going on and like wouldn't
even take the medal. But Napoleon got a fucking picture
with him so good at Instagram. Oh yeah, yeah yeah.
And that's kind of what this is is he just

(12:40):
he just comes up with us a lie long enough
to get a picture with Thomas Edison, and then for
the rest of his life he circulates that picture of
him with Edison is proof of like, no, I did
talk to all these famous people. Here's casually a picture
of me with Edison. Um, look how comfortable he looks.
Looks how comfortable he looks. Uh so the photo I'm
gonna I want to read you the caption that Napoleon

(13:02):
Hill wrote for the photo of him and Edison. Two
of America's famous men. Thomas A. Edison left in Napoleon Hill.
Mr Edison is the inventor of the talking machine, the
electric light, the moving picture, and scores of other things
that serve mankind. Mr Hill is the editor of Napoleon
Hills Magazine and The New Philistine Magazine, and believes in
making the Golden rule the rule of all human conduct.

(13:23):
Edison was born of poor parents and began his career
as a news butcher on a train. Hill began as
a laborer in the coal mines. Both have risen to
fame through their own efforts. I do love that he
has changed covering for the murder of a black boy
and getting made the manager of a coal mine into
laboring in the coal mines. Yeah, you know, it's all in.
It's all in how you finesse it. That's some pretty

(13:45):
intense finessing. Yeah, that's that's great. I mean, it's not great,
but it's it's it's actually terrible. It's what the word
I'm looking for is, it's very terrible. It's a horrible thing. Yeah,
but you know, it's good to remember this during campaign season. Yeah. Yeah,
So if you paid attention here, you probably noticed a

(14:07):
through line in hills writing. He's focused entirely on the
idea that people rise to fame and wealth only through
their own efforts, and that people consequently fail only through
their own efforts. Hill was not the first person to
want to popularize this sort of thinking, but he was
the first person to phrase it in a way that
made it seem mystical, spiritual, and most importantly marketable. For
this reason, he's still known by many people today as

(14:28):
the godfather of the modern day self help genre. And
what's so brilliant about this to me? If you want
to like, uh, talk about this from I don't know,
like a class, like analyze this the way that someone
like Frederic Ingalls would uh. For a long time, people
at the top of society, the kings and the queens
and the nobles and whatnot, had to like come up

(14:51):
with it, like divine right of kings justifies why I
have all this money and you don't because it's God's
will that I should rule you. And like that stops
working big because we've got impartment, because we get democracy,
because we get newspapers, because people like you know, things
change and that no longer works. And this is a
brilliant way to justify that in the same way, but
to make people feel empowered by embracing it. So instead

(15:14):
of them just being like, well, the kings the king,
and I got to accept that, or he'll kill me
or God will kill me. Instead you're like, well, I'm
just poor right now because my mind's not positive enough
and it's my thinking, Like it's it's one of those
things that would almost make you believe in a conspiracy
because it's it's a genius way to stop people from

(15:35):
eating the rich. It's making this popular because it's like, yes,
you know, yes, you're bad, but you could be good
if you thought hard enough. Yeah, if you thought hard enough,
you know. And all these positive thoughts that poor people
are having, um, actually do not affect the rich in
any way. I'm thinking real hard about well three distribution. Yeah,

(15:58):
so are a lot of us. It doesn't seem to
be hell. But as I stated in some previous podcasts
we recorded, what helps more than thinking about wealth distribution
is everybody going out buying a pair of bolt cutters.
Just make sure you have those with you. You know,
they'll they'll be handy one of these, buddy. Yeah. So anyway,

(16:20):
now Hill's book is a huge success. He's making funkloads
of money. Uh. And now that he's actually finally wealthy
for the first time, he starts spending money like it
caused cancer. Uh. He bought two Rolls royces in a
mansion on six acres, which he named shag Bark for
reasons that are lost to history. Uh. This giant mansion was,
of course, way out of his price range, so he

(16:42):
conned some investors into buying into it with him with
the idea that shag Bark into the world's first what
he called the world's first university size success school. So
that's his first idea, and then over time the success
school morphs into a success colony. So he plans to
like make a utopian community where he's going to make

(17:03):
human beings better. Okay, this guy can't even have a
best selling book without turning it into a scam. Like
this is scam on scam on scam at this point,
Like it's always has got to be a scam with him.
He's got some money work, but he's gotta you know,
he's got this pathological need to fucking scam people. Yeah,
it's what they all do. It's like, it's why Donald
Trump is like buying from his own properties in a

(17:27):
basically illegal manner, like in order to make more money
while he's president, Like the con of becoming the president
that's not enough. Like I've gotta also use the presidency
to enrich my businesses. It's like, uh, l Ron Hubbard, Like,
well you know what, No, it's not like l Ron
Hubbard because everything Robert, Yeah, you're right, you're right. He's
he's unique and beautiful, and I just like thinking about him. Um,

(17:52):
he's very he's an iconic cult leader. Yeah, Okay, so um,
yeah so, and and for a little while, just by
the sheer success of his first book, it looked like
he might actually start a success college or a success
colony um and more importantly, for a very brief chunk
of time, Napoleon Hill actually made good on the things

(18:13):
he promised his wives, um or one of his wives.
For a few precious months, he and his wife, Florence,
and their three children all occupied the same home. He
actually got her the mansion that he promised her, So
that's nice, but only lasted a few months because yeah, yeah.

(18:33):
He almost immediately got sick of this and started leaving
home to go on speaking tours, which some of which
were legitimate, but most of which were probably just him
having sex with prostitutes. So the cash started to roll
in in late nineteen in throughout nineteen nine, but then
the Great Depression hits and it puts an end too
Napoleon's money's pigot. There were royalty checks peter out, his

(18:57):
stupid mansion is foreclosed on, and his family has to
move back in with his wife's parents. Now his family
moves back with his wife's parents, Napoleon remains in New
York City so he can write his second book, which
he calls The Magic Ladder to Success, but this wound
up being so badly written that his publisher was unwilling
to bother printing it. Wait, after after all the ship

(19:19):
he wrote in the Law of Success, the publisher is like,
I can't put like the publisher as standards. Now it
may just have been this was just a worse book,
all right. Yeah, I mean, I don't know. I never
read The Magic Ladder to Success. Maybe he just lost
his mojo. Yeah, um, maybe he became like a like

(19:39):
when a comedian gets rich and then all their material
is about rich people problems. Yeah, yeah, that's that's kind
of He's not rich anymore. He's not rich for very
long because he immediately goes wildly in debt um. So,
like with most of America, the Great Depression was a
dark time for Napoleon. He spends most of it broke,
engaged in one scammer and there and I I can't

(20:01):
detail all of that. Uh, you should have a feel
for the man's style by now. He keeps scamming throughout
the Depression. Petty shit. Uh. In nineteen thirty five, Florence
finally filed for divorce Napoleon didn't bother to contest it. Now,
there are two different versions of Napoleon's life, reality and
the version self help aficionados who still love his work
believed today. In that version of events, Napoleon Hill was

(20:25):
still poor during the Great Depression, but he was also
somehow hired by FDR to save the country from the depression.
Um And of course Napoleon claims he refused to be
paid for this work, and so everybody thought he was
crazy for refusing to take money from the president for
helping solve the depression. But he totally solved the depression,
Matt Novac writes quote. Years later, he would claim that

(20:47):
he was approached by the Roosevelt administration to help instill
confidence in the American economy. As Holst biographer's note, his
personal record of his relationship with Franklin Delano Roosevelt and
f DR's administration was surprisingly scant, and their political views
were polar opposites, with Hill being an arch conservative. But
somehow they made it work, and Hill's ideas were injected
into FDR's New Deal program, supposedly imploring labor unions to

(21:09):
be more cooperative with management at various companies. Again, this
was all according to Napoleon Hill, and anti union arch conservative,
who claimed, we have written some of FDR speeches and
even to coin the phrase we have nothing to fear
but fear itself. What yuh? I will not stop? No,
he can't, he can't and I I I should note.
He also claimed later in life that during World War

(21:32):
One he'd been a personal advisor to Woodrow Wilson uh
and claimed that on the day that Germany surrendered he
was sitting next to Woodrow Wilson when he got the telegram,
and that he advised Wilson personally that he had to
make the Kaiser's abdication and necessary requirement for accepting the surrender.
So Napoleon Hill takes credit for getting rid of the Kaiser. Wow,

(21:53):
he's just like he's every He's like, um, what's his name?
Like a forest, that's the the picture he wants. He's
for his gump. He's like, you know, he's Zelig. He's
fucking everywhere. He's everywhere once throughout history. He's the one.
He's the one that killed Hitler. Yes, that's how he
wants people to see him. But he was also poor

(22:15):
while being a personal adviser to the president. Also still
poor and humble. Yes, still poor and humble. He is
honest about the fact that he was fucking broke during
this period of time. Um yeah, and I will say
admitting that he spent much of his life poor as
ship is the one thing Napoleon Hill is honest about
kind of consistently. Um. Now, After Florence left him, he

(22:38):
was completely cut off from her family money, so he
made ends meet by sundry scams and by continuing to
cash in on the success of his first book by
giving lectures. During one of these lectures in Tennessee, which
is essentially a self help seminar in like nineteen thirty six,
he mentions that he's looking for his dream girl. He
says this like during a lecture he's giving a bunch
of strangers, which seems weird to me. Yeah, but woman

(23:00):
in the what's crazier is a young woman in the audience,
Rosalie Bieland makes a bee line for Napoleon after the
lecture and is like, I'm totally fucking down. Let's do
this ship thinking get laid, thinking, get laid. It's time
to go to add It is time to go to ads.
You know what goes better with is better than getting laid. No,

(23:25):
that's not you know, it's better than sex products and services,
products and services, and the best of all our products
and services that enable sex, like the wonderful dick pills
that we advertise on this show. We're back great products,
good services. So you're telling me that Napoleon hill manifested

(23:50):
not only incredible wealth but also his dream girl just
by lying his entire life. Yeah, although dream girl would
be putting it a bit strong. Um, I think you
might like what happens with Rosalie. Um, it doesn't go
the way I expected it to. Uh So the two

(24:12):
were married within days. Napoleon was fifty three and Rosa
was twenty nine. Um, which seems like it could potentially
have been a dangerous and exploitative situation, but it was
literally the opposite. See, Rosa was just as much of
a con man as Napoleon hill She wanted to make
a funckload of money selling nonsense self help advice, and
she knew Napoleon was her vehicle to doing that. So

(24:34):
immediately after their wedding, they sit down to write a
new book, Think and Grow Rich. The couple moves in
with Napoleon's son Blair and his wife and a tight
in their tiny New York apartment so they can stay
off the street while they work on this book because
neither has any money. Now, Napoleon's son Blair was literally
the last person he had to lean on. None of
his other children would even talk to him, as he

(24:55):
had habitually burned every single bridge that he came across
in life. So once Blair and Blair is again the
deaf son he refused to teach sign language to my
god son takes pity on his terrible dad and he's like, yes,
wife can live with me while you write another book

(25:15):
of awful bullshit, it gets even worse. So once Blair
and his wife Vera start hosting Napoleon and and his
new wife, Um, things quickly get bad, both because Napoleon
is an asshole and also because mainly just because Napoleon's
an asshole. Um. And he particularly hated his husband's wife

(25:39):
according to Hill his own, Yeah, he hated his or
he hated his his son's wife. Oh oh, so Napoleon
Hill really didn't like his son's Vera. Yeah, he hates Vera.
According to his own biography quote, she bore the full
brunt of Napoleon's ability to unashamedly heckel and hound people
he didn't like. Vera endured several months of naps, nastiest
bullying and snipe, and then finally left Blair and moved

(26:01):
back to West Virginia. Blair soon returned to West Virginia
two after loaning his father enough money to subsist for
several more months. Blair and Vera tried to rebuild their marriage,
but several years later were divorced. Although Blair went on
to become an imminently successful businessman and a lovely and
a beloved community leader, he never remarried. So Napoleon gets
taken in by his son, kicks them out of their

(26:21):
own apartment, and ruins their marriage and gets hundreds of
dollars from him. Um, this paby like just doesn't give
a shit about anything or anybody. No, he is a
total piece of shit. Now, Napoleon and his wife, while
living at the apartment they stole from his son, finished
their new book, and Rosa was an integral part of

(26:42):
the entire process, because Napoleon was a terrible writer and
she was apparently a pretty good editor, so she has
manages to like edit his ramblings into something other human
beings would enjoy reading. The book had to be rewritten
three times, but eventually the couple got it right, and
they succeeded in convincing Hill's old publisher Pelton, to give
him a second try. Think and Grow Rich is one

(27:02):
of those books that is hard to h oversell the
success of and like and and over emphasize its impact
on society. By some counts, it sold as many as
twenty million copies. Now that number is probably a big exaggeration,
but ten million might not be. Like it was a
hugely successful book. Um, I've seen it on the bookshelves

(27:23):
of more people than I can count. Like, it's just
it's everywhere. Any any used bookstore you go to will
have one or a few copies of Thinking Grow Rich. Yeah,
it's fucking everywhere. And it's still very very common and
very popular. Um. And a lot of that's to do
with the fact, like I've never I've never read it,
but I think it's people say it's a well written
self help book, which I think is probably mostly due

(27:45):
to Rosalie. Um. Yeah, Now, Think and Grow Rich was
essentially just a refining and rehashing of the best parts
of Napoleon's first book, Uh Law of Success. I found
a two thousand fifteen right up of the book on
Business Insider. It was titled seventy eight years ago a
journalist studied five Richmond and boiled down their success into
thirteen steps. Now, calling Mr Hill a journalist stretches the

(28:10):
definition of that word, maybe more than it's ever been stretched.
I can't think of anyone who is less of a journalist.
And Napoleon Hill he was even when he was writing
for a newspaper, he was mostly full of ship and
then and then he didn't write for newspapers anymore, so
he didn't even call himself a journalist. No, he's closer

(28:31):
to being a lumber salesman. Yeah, he called himself a businessman. Yeah.
So the Business Insider write up confusing. We summarize as
Hill's work this way, quote Think and Grow, rich shares
what he calls the money making secrets in thirteen Principles.
There's no mention of money, well finances, or stocks within
Hill's text. He takes a different approach, focusing on breaking

(28:52):
down the psychological barriers that prevent many of us from
attaining our own fortunes. These money making secrets include such
bold and mind blowing strategies as desire riches instead of
wishing for them. Uh Napoleon wrote, quote, wishing will not
bring riches, but desiring riches with a state of mind
that becomes an obsession than planning definite ways and means
to acquire riches and backing those plans. Different, That was

(29:16):
different steps. First you had desiring and then you had
making a plan and taking action. Yeah, those are different things. Well,
he says, He says, yeah, like the the idea that
he's saying desire riches instead of wishing for them is
nonsense because his description of desiring riches is like the same,
Like there's no difference between desiring something and wishing for it.

(29:39):
Um Like it's it's just nonsense. Like and it's like
you could say that it's good advice to say, like, yeah,
but if you want to be successful, be obsessed with
the thing you want to do, plan ways to like
make it happen, back those plans with persistence, don't accept failure.
But like, again that's not a guide. That's obvious. It's
like me selling myself was a marathon coach by saying,

(30:01):
so you just run for twenty six point two miles
and don't stop. And if you don't stop for any reason,
don't stop. Just keep going and you'll finish the marathon.
And you know what if you if you fall and
you can't run anymore, that's not my fault. It would
be more like saying, if you fall and can't run anymore,
I suggest getting up and continuing to run. Here's the

(30:22):
thing you have to desire finishing the race, and then
you have to do it. It's like, yeah, that's how
you achieve success. It's very easy. You just you think
about it and then you do it. I mean, I
don't know how I can make this any easier. Frea Guys. Yeah,
the secret to success is being sending a way to
succeed and then doing it. Yeah. He's not just saying
be successful. He's saying, make a plan to be successful.

(30:44):
But that's still not useful information. Um. Yeah. So another
thing that's included in his book, or another one of
the steps included in his book is faith. Uh. He
notes riches begin in the form of thought. The amount
is limited only by the person in whose mind the
thought is put into action. Faith removes limitations. Yeah, so

(31:06):
think and grow rich. As you may have guessed by
now is the book that popularized affirmations, which is the
idea of like writing down a bunch of times per day,
I'm going to get this grade on a test, or
I'm going to make this much money, I'm going to
get this job. Yeah. A big part of afflications is
basically the idea that they that they trick your brain into,

(31:26):
you know, creating new thought patterns by forcing yourself to
repeat thoughts that are you know, positive or desired over
and over allowed or by writing them down and then
by doing so it's just like you know, it'll just
you trick your brain and then you think a different way.
And Hill didn't call them affirmations. He called it the

(31:48):
principle of auto suggestion. But it's the same thing, like
the idea is the same and usually like affirmations now
are generally um it's generally considered important that they be
in the form of a statement rare than a predictive
future statement like I am rich versus like I will
be rich. You know. Ah, yeah, yeah, this whole scam

(32:09):
has evolved so much over the years. It's always heartening
to hear about how Yeah. So uh, Thinking Grow Rich,
like I said, sold like hotcakes. Uh. And as someone
who has never been drawn to self help books, I
can't really explain why. But people loved it and they
still love it. Uh. And I've met a lot of like,
reasonable intelligent people who I respect, who have this book

(32:31):
on their shelves somewhere and presumably found value in it.
So if you're one of those people, I have no
desire to to shoot on you or the fact that
you found value uh in it. Um. But I do
think it's funny that Napoleon Hill wrote about sex transmutation.
So we're going to talk about that some Oh hell

(32:52):
yeah um from Thinking Grow Rich quote. The desire for
sexual expression is by far the strongest and most impelling
of all the human emotions. For this very reason, this desire,
when harnessed and transmuted into action, other than that a
physical expression may raise one to the status of a genius.
Oh okay, he's a no FAP guy. Yeah, he's a
no fab You you pulled it? You got it? I didn't, Okay,

(33:15):
So I actually I actually so. No fap is like
a community on Reddit of people who don't masturbate, and
there are other places to like the Proud Boys have
a no masturbation rule. It's like a thing. Some groups
of people have this idea that like, if you don't masturbate,
you can transmute your sexual energy that you would lose
if you came into a whatever. Yeah, whether I mean,

(33:36):
like you know, it's it's also like why I think monks,
you know, monks aren't allowed to jerk off because you know,
you're you have to all of the energy and your
body has to be channeled towards the greater purpose, whether
that is being a Nazi or loving God or whatever. Yeah. Yeah,
And I I have to note that, with literally about
a fucking second worth of googling, I found a Reddit

(33:58):
thread in the no FAPs ubread it titled what Napoleon
Hill thought of no fab in nineteen thirty eight. Now
I'm just going to read you one of the exchanges
from that threat. Okay, okay, fine, So it starts. It
starts with a guy named with the user name Rocky

(34:20):
Mountain oysters which your testicles, quoting Napoleon Hill. So here's
the Napoleon Hill quote. Controlled sex supplies the magnetic force
that attracts people to one another. It is the most
important factor of a pleasing personality. It gives quality to
the tone of the voice and enables one to convey
through the voice any feeling desired. And then the person
quoting this, Rocky Mountain Oysters, writes underneath that somebody who

(34:42):
hadn't seen me in about a year was just telling
me tonight that my voice lessons must be working because
the tone of my voice while I was singing sounds
so good. In reality, I quit the voice lessons more
than a year ago. I just sound good at the
moment because I've been a good no fapper for a
week and a half. Oh my god. And then the
response to this is someone else who says I'm a
singer too. And I found that at times when I'm

(35:03):
sexually sober, it feels like my voice electrifies the air
around it. Also, I understand that Frank Sinatra used to
sleep with a different woman every night, except when he
was getting ready to record an album. Maybe that's why
he was such a shitty singer. I love it. I
love it, boy. I mean, you know, the great thing
about no FAP is that there's such a huge historical

(35:25):
precedent for it, and these guys like all they really
want is is proof that other men throughout history have
done the same thing as them and have been great.
Uh So, like all of these, these these forums are
just guys being like see Aristotle said it, you know,
so it's gonna be true kind of thing. I I
diated a guy once who told me that he thought
um women were less attracted to him when he wore deodorant,

(35:50):
like because of pheromones or whatever. And I was like,
I don't know, I think that's true. I think you're
just being addictive people and that's why they don't like you. Yeah,
it's uh. I I love the little theories people come
up with things that they just want to do. I
mean it's so crazy too, because like I mean, just
like the think and grow rich thing there are I

(36:12):
can see how part of this like works, you know
what I mean. I can see like a kernel of
truth in this or how for some people it does work.
Like if you're in the state of mind where you
know you have you have money making opportunities, but or
you have talent, but you just are paralyzed you know,
by self loathing or or old ways of thinking and
I can see why reading a self help book that

(36:34):
states the obvious, you know, which is think about what
you want and then make a plan for it. It's
like very very helpful, you know. And and and it's
it's the same thing with like with this no fab stuff.
Like I can see if you're a creative person, if
you're a musician or if you're a writer, uh, and
you're in the process of you're you're kinda put on
a show or you're like writing something, and you want
to have you you like want to be able to

(36:56):
bring that like powerful like sexual sort of like impulse
to it. I can say, yeah, if you stop masturbating,
you don't have sex for a few days, like yeah,
maybe you'll be in a mind state and better able
to like convey that. If you're like singing a song
about how badly you want to fux somebody in your
Frank Sinatra, maybe yeah, don't you want to be horny
as ship when you're I got people. It's just like

(37:16):
it's like a focus thing. It's like I'm not going
to masturbate because I'm not doing anything. I'm just focusing
on saving up all of my energy, you know, for this.
But like to do it as as a lifestyle is
so interesting because it's so dumb. What do these guys
think they're getting out of not masturbating? Generally it's women? Yeah,
which is I know that there is I will say,

(37:37):
like I've read enough into that community to know that
there's a chunk of them for whom it's like, No,
I had a real problem masturbating and I was getting
nothing done because I had just an Internet porn addiction,
And like, if that's your situation, like totally reasonable, like
I'm not gonna I'm not gonna feeling, especially if you've
been um in it in such a way where you
don't feel in control of your ability to masturbate, and

(37:58):
then you get you gain control. You know, it's a
very empowering feeling, So like I get you know why
that would be. It's like when you start to work
out and you feel like you have, you know, more
control over your body and you know, oh and my
body can do more stuff than I realized. You know. Yeah,
It's just where it gets ridiculous is when you have
to like turn it into a superpower and make it

(38:19):
into this iron rule of nature. Yeah, and you have
to like quote Napoleon Hill about it and why it's
actually good. Like, that's my least favorite genre of thing
in human culture, is like people who find a thing
that works for them and then need to find a
justification for why it's the best way for everyone to be. Um,
it's like if because I'm a drug addict, I were like, No,

(38:41):
I've I've discovered through research that human beings only have
a set quantity of sobriety in their life, and so
if you're not wasted most of the time, you can't
be sober when it matters. It's that like, it's that ridiculous.
Like that is my my my self help book, Get
Wasted and Grow Sober, which will be which will be

(39:03):
coming out from not Hill in December nineteen, so you know,
preorder it on Amazon. You know, there's a lot of
wisdom in there, a lot of a lot of those
success juels hidden in that book. Yeah. So, uh, this
is a fun little digression. I always loved talking about
the no FAP community. If you're if you're a no fapper,
we're not trying to attack you, but if you call

(39:23):
yourself a no fapper, it's fair game for us to
giggle at. Yeah, come on, come, come on, come on.
I don't need to know about whether you master it,
you know what I mean. There's plenty. Here's the thing,
there's plenty of people who don't masturbate and just never
talk about it. Yeah, there's lots of non masturbators who
don't talk about it. They're called women. I'm just kidding,
women masturbator. Yeah. My bus driver doesn't masturbate. I asked

(39:45):
him every day and he never said. That's probably so successful.
I don't even write a bus but I just this
guy is near my wait at the bus stop. I
wait for the doors to open. I say, do you masturbate?
He says, no, go away? Did to come today? And
I'm satisfied. Yeah, oh boy, okay, so I think and

(40:07):
grow rich was a huge hit. And Napoleon and his
new wife Rosalie both grew rich, and in the true
Napoleon Hill fashion, they immediately spent all of their money
as quickly as it came in, substantially faster than it
came in. In fact, they were so busy buying cars
and a mansion and other nonsense that they forgot to
pay back Napoleon's son Blair for the three hundred dollars

(40:27):
he'd loaned them that had made it possible for them
to survival writing their self help book. Um classic Napoleon Hill.
I love that he writes a book about how people
who are successful do it completely on their own, due
to their own minds, and totally deserve everything they make
and then fails to repay his son the three hundred
dollars that allowed him to not live on the street

(40:48):
while he was writing the book that made him rich.
And the crazy thing is he really believes all this,
Like he you know, I'm sure he was like an
arch conservative, and he was like, you can only do
you know, you can only achieve success through individual effort
when the entire circumstances of his life are he's dependent
on other people to fall for his lies so he
can scam them out of money, and then he just

(41:08):
leans on various family members and non family members, you know,
his wife's family members until they get sick of him. Yeah.
I cannot think of anybody more supported by a community
of people. This is literally no individual achievement at all
in his life. He's never made anything that anyone wanted
except for this book. And he's like, here's the thing

(41:31):
I did at bootstraps. M Yeah, I bootstrapped my way
into into Yeah, it's it's it's. There's a lesson in
the story of Napoleon Hill. If you can figure out
what the lessons, yeah, tweeted us, tweeted us, or by
bolt cutters. A lot of a lot of rich people

(41:51):
gates out there anyway. Um Yeah. Rosa wrote Blair a
letter bragging that she and Napoleon were so rich that
they were now considering retire ring. Blair sent back a
letter asking if she might pay him back now uh,
and Rosa did not respond to this. Blair wrote his mother, Florence,
a letter, calling his dad quote an unscrupulous holier than

(42:11):
now two timing, double crossing, good for nothing, which is
pretty fair. Yeah, and also you know a very uh,
a very fair and um clean assessment. Yeah. By nineteen
thirty nine, however, the money had started to dry up.
Napoleon and Rosalie cooked up a plot to try and
draw interest back to their book and reinvigorate sales. They

(42:33):
started claiming that they were going to adopt fifteen children
and raise them to be ideal Americans. They hinted that
they discovered all of the bad parenting habits that most
Americans were ruining their kids with. One of the big
ones is abandoning your children. That's a big one. That
that one's fine in Napoleon Hill's case, that's actually the
most responsible parenting habits is to abandon your children. Like

(42:57):
adopting fifteen children is is maybe one of the worst
ideas he's ever had. Yeah, that's it's a terrible idea.
And it never happened. Thinks it seems it was. It
was either just a scam to get attention or it
was supposed to be they were like maybe working on
another book, Like it seems like they might have been
trying to put together a childcare book. But either way,
the scheme didn't happen because their marriage started to crumble

(43:19):
shortly thereafter. And we'll talk about the sex cult that
tried to raise an immortal baby that got sort of
related to Napoleon Hill. But first products we're back, I
gotta know more. Yeah, this is the story that people

(43:39):
reached out to me with wanting to know about when
they suggested Napoleon Hill as a bastard. Is this immortal
baby cult that he got involved with, And it's not
really that interesting a story. Um, everything else about Napoleon's
life is way more interesting. But there's a neat story,
but it's just not it's not a very long one.
The cliffs notes is this. There was a your cult

(44:00):
called the Royal Fraternity of Master Metaphysicians led by a
guy named James Bernard Shaeferhysicians, Yeah, metaphysicians. Yeah, it'll you'll
understand why in a second. They were led by a
guy named James Bernard Schaefer and were a part of
the New Thought movement. Most of their teachings revolved around
thinking things into reality. Um. So they were kind of
in that original strain of the New Thought movement where

(44:22):
you could think yourself into better health. Um. And they
had around ten thousand members at their height. Uh. And
in nineteen thirty nine they were a little by a
gigantic mansion in Long Island. Now the cult fell in
love with Think and Grow Rich and quickly adopted it
as one of their primary religious texts. And then in
nineteen thirty nine, the colt decided to adopt a baby
and make it immortal. Uh. They sort of adopted and

(44:45):
sort of bribed the mother of a baby named Jane gaunt.
According to a write up from hoaxes dot org quote,
Baby Jean was given a private nursery where, in addition
to a nurse who attended her twenty four hours a day,
she was constantly watched over by Schaefer's followers. The plan
was to make her immortal by never allowing her to
hear mention of death or disease, nor would she be
exposed to any bad or destructive thoughts. No unkind words

(45:08):
would ever be spoken in her presence. She would eat
in all vegetarian eternity diet. As she grew older, she
would learn about tobacco, coffee, tea, mustard, vinegar, and spices,
but she would never consume any of them. Mustard, Yeah,
mustard second, right, mustard and tea in the same level
with tobacco and alcohol. Mormons eat mustard, right, Yes, I

(45:30):
think Mormons are fine with mustard anti mustard sandwich prepared
to me by Mormons, the Royal Society of fucking mustard haters. Yeah,
fucking mustard haters. It's also so cruel that you're gonna,
like raise this baby and you're gonna tell her about
alcohol and tobacco and coffee. But like, but you can
never have these. Yeah, you're presumably as you smoke chamber,

(45:53):
you might as well just never tell her about them. Yeah,
you're never going to tell her about death, but you
will tell her about alcohol, but say she can't take
it because why I feel like the growing up and
no one ever talking about death. Yeah, thankfully she did
not because none of this worked out. But immediately thought

(46:15):
plan didn't go anywhere. Well, the baby's mother sued the
cult for essentially abducting abducting their kid, and Napoleon doesn't
really interact with this story much as far as I
can tell. His main crosses with this is both that
the the cult used his book as like a religious text. Uh,
and they made him Baby Jean's godfather. But I'm not

(46:38):
aware of him ever actually meeting Baby Jean or even
having much to do with them. But like, yeah, he
was not really I don't think he was a big
part of this. They did pose the baby with a
picture of his book. It seems like one of those
things where he would have just would have totally him
posing with Edison baby. It seems like he probably would

(46:59):
have gotten on board with what the cult was doing
if it had like worked out at all, and they'd
attracted a lot of media attention. But it's just going
with this plan. But it didn't really go anywhere, and
it certainly wasn't his his main burner. Scam Um. His
only direct interaction with the cult as far as I
can tell, is that he may have gotten its leader
embroiled in a scam that eventually landed in a suicide.

(47:19):
I meant, who has he not embroiled at a scam? Yeah?
The whole world. Yeah. In the early nineteen forties, Schaeffer,
the cult leader, convinced one of his wealthy cult members
to give him a lot of money to buy a magazine.
The magazine flopped, and she sued him for grand larceny,
for which he did five years in sing Sing prison.
In his appeal in court to try to fight via

(47:41):
the sentence, he claimed, quote, Napoleon Hill came to me, honor,
about the first of December nineteen thirty nine, and told
me that he had an opportunity to purchase a magazine
called Psychology for about five thousand dollars, and that we
could each put up dollars and become partners. He told
me that although the magazine was then in very bad condition.
It had once made twenty five tho dollars a year,
and he thought that could be built up again. I
was interested, but told him I hadn't the money. I decided, however,

(48:04):
to try and borrow dollars to go into the venture,
and with that in view, approached Mina Schmidt, the lady
who sued him for the loan. I quickly stated her
the purpose for which I wanted the money, with which
I had been told by Mr Hill, concerning the history
of the magazine and what he thought of the future prospects,
notwithstanding its poor financial condition at the time. So that
was Schaefer's appeal. He claims that Napoleon came up with
a scam that got him put in prison, but his

(48:25):
appeal was rejected. He may have just been lying. He
did five years in prison, and then he and his
wife shot themselves in their car several years after being released.
So it's hard for me to tell how direct Napoleon's
role in any of this was. But just based on
his personal history, I don't have any trouble believing that
he used these people's trust in him to swindle them
out of Yeah, that sounds like something he definitely has

(48:47):
done before literally hundreds of times. Now, the good news
is that Napoleon himself did finally meet a grifter who
was more than his match. His fourth right wife, Rosalie,
in money running out, she finally got tired of him
while he was away giving lectures. She sold off all
of their property, including his beloved Rolls Royce, and then

(49:08):
ran off and served him with divorce papers. Her justification
was that he cheated on her, which was probably true,
but considering Rosalie also immediately married her divorce lawyer, it's
equally likely that Napoleon just met a grifter who was
faster on the draw than he was. She got right
the funk out of there, sold off all their ship
and gone, And then she wrote self help books because

(49:31):
now that she had been attached to Napoleon Hill, she
didn't need him anymore. She could get self help totally.
She gave him the old Napoleon Hill treatment. She got
in there, got a selfie, and left. She Napoleon Hill,
Napoleon Hill, I love it. Yeah, that's a happy ending
for a scammer. Story is like, he marries this woman
twenty something years younger than him, and you think he's
going to take advantage of her, but then she just
robs him. Well, here's the thing. First, she makes him rich,

(49:55):
like she she writes his best selling but she translates
his ramblings into like one of the best selling books
of all time. And then that damn yeah absolutely, um yeah,
So Oliver Napoleon Hill never again repeated the staggering success
of Think and Grow Rich. He continued to write in
lecture for the rest of his life, but most of

(50:16):
that life was spent near the edge of financial collapse.
His next book, Mental Dynamite, published in nineteen forty one,
was a flop. You know, fill in your own Napoleon
Dynamite joke here, yeah, yeah, he'll yeah, damn it, you're right. Uh,
I don't I don't know what the joke is, but
there's got to be one in there. They'll make one.
They don't make now. He'll married again in nineteen forty three,

(50:38):
and he made minor news in nineteen fifty three when
he started urging the government to in the Korean War
by nuking every single city in Russia. Um, which is
an interesting solution to the Korean War. What if we
kill all the Russians? Anybody tried that that sentence had
a real twist ending. Yeah, he was an arch conservative,
like you get the feeling he and General MacArthur would

(50:59):
have in along. Now, Napoleon Hill himself would know no
more great success in his life, But in nineteen fifty
two a book he inspired and helped the craft did
become a big success, The Power of Positive Thinking by
Norman Vincent Peel. Now, The Power of Positive Thinking is
still today one of the most influential books in this
self helped genre, and Peele credited Napoleon Hill with helping

(51:22):
him write the book. Now you may not have heard
of Norman Vincent Peel, but someone who does know who
that guy is is President Donald Trump, because Norman Vincent
Peel was Donald Trump's pastor when Trump was a child.
Decades later, Donald Trump recalled quote, you always when the
service was over, you'd have said, I'd have sat there
another hour. There aren't too many people like that. It

(51:44):
wasn't the speaking ability, it was the thought process for you. See.
Norman Vincent Peel was part of a tradition in American
Christianity called Christian libertarianism. The movement was spawned by conservative
Protestant preachers who hated the New Deal and believed quote
freedom from government is a necessary part of freedom under God.
And while Napoleon Hill wouldn't have identified himself as one

(52:05):
of these sorts exactly, his writing laid the groundwork for them.
I'm gonna quote again from that article on New Thought
from the Conversation quote. Peel's message was unequivocally nationalistic, as
his storian Christopher Lane writes, the idea that American needed
a pro Christian nationalism to head off an attack of
atheistic communism was central to Peal's message, and He's stuck
to it zealously. Peel's identity as God's salesman for positive

(52:29):
thinking was inseparable from his belief that only in a
free market society could Christianity thrive. The article goes on
a note that quote American exceptionalism is at the heart
of Trump's Christianity. As theologian Stanley Hower Was puts it,
Christianity and Peel's hands was closer to a set of
beliefs a follower could make up to suit their desires.
Trump has adopted the strategy and applies it to the country.

(52:50):
The link between Christianity and nationalism was evident a. Trump's inauguration,
when Prosperity Gospel minister Paula White said in her invocation,
we recognize that every good and every perfect the gift
comes from you, and the United States of America is
your gift for which we proclaim gratitude. So that's neat. Yeah,
Napoleon Hill ties into the today. Wow. Well uh oh boy,

(53:13):
I mean this is all just Isn't this really just
manifest destiny repackaged? Yeah? Well yeah, yeah, it is that
same idea, which is like man, the manifest destiny is
the idea you need to tell any people anywhere who
are on top, because it's the for one thing promises
to them that you'll stay on top forever. Yeah. And
not only that you're you're on top and you'll stay
on top, but that everything you get through destroying other

(53:37):
people's lives is actually an expression of Divine will through you.
Any financial power that you amass and and money is
not a system of value created by and able to
be destroyed by human beings, but is in fact just
an expression of God's will that is infallible. Yeah. If

(53:59):
you if you're somebody living in a giant mansion built
on grifted cash, and you're hearing someone like me talking
about how people should buy bolt cutters so they can
make their way through your gates and take all of
your things. You need to believe that God himself has
ordained your position and is protecting you. Otherwise you're gonna
have a lot of trouble sleeping at night. Yeah. And also,
you know, even when people aren't scared, but when rich

(54:20):
people just feel guilty. You know when when rich people
see the amount of suffering in the world of people
who do not have the same wealth that they do,
and they feel guilty and they think, well, maybe I
should be doing something about this, And then Norman Vince
appeal is like no, no, no, no no no no
no no no no no no no no no no
no no no no no no. Yeah. So other politicians

(54:40):
who are more directly influenced by Napoleon Hill include Newt
gang Ridge, who read Think and Grow Rich as a
young man, and Mitt Romney, who was born rich and
probably didn't need to do much thinking to stay that way.
The Secret, which would sell fifteen million copies, It was
basically a twenty one century rewriting of Napoleon's masterpiece of
positive thinking. Tony Robbins, Jack Canfield, Stephen V and a
platoon of other modern self help gurus all site Napoleon

(55:03):
Hill as foundational parts of their own grifts, although they
don't call what they do grift ing obviously, even though
they are now Napoleon Hill died in Greenville General Hospital
in South Carolina at six thirty pm on Sunday, November eighth,
nineteen seventy. He was almost penniless. I could end this
by pointing out that his work has outlived him, that
a Napoleon Hill Foundation continues to sell every book he

(55:25):
ever published, and that he has enjoyed something of a
renaissance in our modern Gilded Age. But instead, I'd like
to end by reading part of a weird ass essay
I found written about how Napoleon Hill hid secret magic
rituals in his books. Okay, I found this on a
website called Butterfly Language dot com, which is apparently the
blog of a woman named Valerie Diorazzio who's she's a

(55:48):
comic book and video game writer who's worked for DC,
Marvel and other big names, and she's also really into
the occult. And she alleges that Norman Vincent Peel and
Napoleon Hill were basically sneaking magic into uh like mainstream
Christian thought. Yeah yeah quote. Both Hill and Peel discuss

(56:09):
such heavy stuff as thought energy, create a visualization, and
flat out mental telepathy, but they do it within a
judaeo Christian context that wouldn't freak out the mass audience
at the time. Basically, they got that stuff in under
the radar, and they do it in the most stripped
down simple form possible. Some critics appeal, and they are admittedly.
Legion accused him of essentially practicing some sort of hypnosis
voodoo on his readers by repeating the same stuff over

(56:30):
and over. But it also works. It works. The Power
of Positive Thinking is one of the most occult books
I've ever read, specifically because it is presented as the
exact opposite of such and thus seeps directly into your
subconscious She goes on to note it should be no
surprise that towards the end of his life, Napoleon Hill
admitted that he was literally in touch with an extra
dimensional entity called the Master, through whom he pretty much

(56:51):
channeled parts of his books. This is the author of
Think and Grow Rich Folks, one of the most recommended
business groups of all time. Uh, so that's fun. So
there's so he's really he is a lot more like
l around Hoeverard than we thought. There's like an alien
that's telling him what to write in his books. Yeah.
And she also notes that Norman Vincent Peel had a
lot of weird magic stuff in his own book, Like

(57:13):
he talked about something called the other self and the
presence that like almost this like quasi magical thing. Is
it just like astral projection? Yeah? I really don't know. Um,
you know I thought about this, especially when there was
that whole Trump Jim Baker coin thing. Um, you remember
that when they were advertising on Fox News. It was
a couple of months ago. Uh. There they made a

(57:35):
gold coin with Donald Trump not quite in profile because
it turned out in profile he looked very bad. Um,
but sort of a downward downward diagonal profile and then
King Cyrus of Persia profile and they were selling this
for four or five dollars. And what was crazy to
me when I watched this clip was, you know, I've
seen coin commercials, but I've never seen one where the

(57:57):
pastor and the salesman is referring to it as a
um as a prayer coin. And what he says is
if you buy this prayer coin and you hold it
while you pray for Donald Trump, and you pray to
bless America, all of our collective prayers will be transmit.
The coin itself is a is a fucking amulets. I mean,

(58:19):
that's that's what he's describing. He's describing an object that
you put your magical energy into that then transmits that
magical energy through the power of representation and focused thought,
which is magic. That's all magical practice. This is a
cult as fuck. And how is this on a conservative

(58:39):
Christian channel? Isn't the whole point of Christianity that you're
not supposed to pray to objects that you're not supposed
to have idols, that that the connection to God is
either direct or through a religious leader. And I think
that might be a little bit of the point that
both that article on the New Thought movement and that uh,
this Valerie Arazzio woman was making is that like Napoleon

(59:03):
Hill is like kind of integral and sort of sneaking
occult thinking into modern American Christianity. And like why that's
why some of this stuff has gotten so weird is
because of his influence and guys like Norman Vincent Peel,
which I think might mean that Donald Trump is technically
an evil wizard. Um. So you know, there's that information

(59:27):
for you. That's the episode. That's all I got. It's
really funny to prosperity Gospel. Christianity is some of like simultaneously, um,
the coolest most fusion Christianity because it's basically magic, but
also um, some of the dirtiest, most exploitative, uh of

(59:48):
modern religion that we've ever seen, which is just getting
old people to give you their money. It's indulgences. Essentially,
it's like, give us the money and you get to
go to heaven. Um, Yeah, and we'll put in a
word with God for you. But also you're putting in
a word with God for yourself by giving money to
this pastor who is already incredibly wealthy. It's frustrated to

(01:00:10):
me because actual occult rituals and stuff are so much
more fun. Like I'm not a believer in any of that,
but I've participated in some stuff with friends of mine,
like weird goetic ceremonies and stuff where like you're drawn
over the floor and there's candles everywhere, and people are
like chanting and like you've got like people like baking
like like blood into like wafer crackers and stuff in

(01:00:31):
order to have like a sacrament and stuff like it's
it's it's cool and weird and wacky. That's what makes
it interesting is that you have fucking incense and candles
and you get dressed up in special clothes and yeah,
that's fun. That's all. It's fun. And it's also on purpose.
It's to put you in a spiritual mindset or whatever,
you know. So it's like the power of positive thinking
and thinking you grow rich. Are just um that kind

(01:00:53):
of like focused thinking type behavior of like casting a
spell or whatever, but without all the fun stuff. No robes,
no candles, just an old nobody's taken acid. Yeah, yeah,
it's it's bullshit. If he had just included a paragraph
that said, and if you take acid and funk while
doing all this, it works even better. No, no, no, no,
fucking yeah, we'd be in a very different place as

(01:01:16):
a country. But we're not. Well, this is this is
all very good evidence for why no one should ever
go to business school. Yeah, don't go to business school.
Just visualize a path for success and then you'll be
rich and don't check off. Ever, don't jack off think
about being successful. Don't learn how like the stock market works,

(01:01:38):
or like how to how to maintain payroll, or like
don't learn a don't learn a trade, don't don't don't
learn a trade, are useless a lot of stuff, don't deliver,
get the money and tell them they can be whatever
they want to be. Yeah, just just uh griff and
abandon everyone in your life until you die penniless. Um.

(01:02:01):
That that's the Napoleon Hill method. I do like that.
He's one of the only guys like this we talk
about who actually ends up without any fucking money. Um,
because he was he was never good at any of this.
He's a bad scammer. He's a bad stammer who got lucky.
He's a bad scammer who wrote one successful book and
then found a scammer who was better than him, who

(01:02:23):
helped him write a second, more successful book. And everything
else he ever did was a rank failure. And he
was so dumb that he burned through all of his
money as soon as he made it. And like that's
basically all of the most powerful people in UH business
and politics all think of this. Guy as a hero. Yeah,

(01:02:43):
it's it's amazing to think of, Like, it's amazing to
think that somebody steering the country thinks that the advice
and think and grow rich is good. It's very scary
to me because at the heart, like like we talked about,
at the heart of of prosperity Gospel Christianity is the
idea that um having money is both uh proof of

(01:03:08):
God's blessing and proof that other people should give you
more money. You know, like those pastors prosperity gospel pastors
will say, you know, you need to give me money
to prove that God is reel or that you love God,
or whatever the fund to prove God. And then they
will also point to their riches as a sign that
God loves them the most. God has blessed me, really

(01:03:31):
blessy with it, Like a lot of people gave all
their a lot of very poor people gave you a
bunch of money, you know, and they're like, well, God
has blessed me. And then the porpula are like, you know,
he does seem to be doing pretty good. Yeah, well
he clearly God wants him to have money. Let's give
him some money and make God happy. I mean it's
a it's a way of um engendering a slave mentality
in in you know, the working class, uh, that will

(01:03:52):
then govern their whole lives, you know, and make people
think that that they're not worth anything on their own,
that if labor is not valuable, that money is not
tied to labor. I mean to say something like what
Marian Williamson says, which is the labor theory of value
is obsolete in the twenty century and we need to
go to a vibrational theory of value or some crazy shit.

(01:04:13):
It's like, yeah, okay, who who decides who decides how
much vibration there is? You know, where's the fdi vibrations.
That's part of what makes this also fucking dangerous in
my mind is that, um it sounds harmless enough on
its head, especially when we're in this world we've got
groups that are like literal Nazis marching in the streets
and people saying really hateful things and talking about locking

(01:04:34):
up kids. Someone being like, no, it's you know, the
labor theory of value doesn't mean like it's all vibrations,
and if we vibrate more positively than that's going to
like we need to raise the consciousness of the poor
in order to so they won't be poor anymore. It's like, no,
people are poorer because they fit into a capitalist system
that requires the majority of people to be poor so
that a very small percentage can be ultra rich. Yeah,

(01:04:57):
and that and it's an excuse. You know. I'm not
to say Maryan Wilson feels this way, because I don't
know her opinion on the social safety Net, but that
logic can is very easily can lead you to be like, well, no,
you shouldn't. We shouldn't be giving services. We shouldn't be
trying to provide homes for the homeless or food at
the very least for them. We shouldn't be trying to
like we should be helping them sciousness instead. Yeah, we

(01:05:19):
should just you know, we should just give them copies
of Napoleon Hills book, which, if you're a rich asshole
who wants to stay that way and doesn't want anybody
else to catch up, you could do a lot worse
than just handing out free copies of Think and Grow
Rich to the people around you, because it's like it's
a book that's designed, not even designed, because I think
it was an accident because nothing Napoleon Hill was smart

(01:05:41):
enough to plan anything like this. But it's sure as
how works that way, which is amazing. Anyway, an American,
I think that's the episode. I think that's it. Yes,
Sarah June, you want to plug your plug doubles before
we roll out? I got I got all my plugables
at Hey, Sara June, h u y s A r

(01:06:02):
A j u n E. That's my website, that's my venmoo.
That's my Instagram. You can follow me. I am making
some shows for Means TV at Means Underscore TV. Uh
Anti Capital's Entertainment cooperative. We're coming out with some shows
uh in so follow them on Twitter and see see
some stuff we made already. And I'm Robert Evans. Myself

(01:06:25):
help book, Drink and Grows Sober, will be out this December,
so so please check it out. It's critical information for
all of you. Uh. You can find me on Twitter
at I right, okay. You can find this podcast on
the internet behind the Bastards dot com. You can find
us on Instagram and Twitter at at Bastards pod, buy
t shirt, public dot com. That's it. That's the fucking episode.

(01:06:45):
I love about