If Books Could Kill - How To Win Friends And Influence People

00:00:00.000 uh yeah i think i've got something hold on let me think about it he prepared not you preparing for

00:00:06.800 the podcast i'm like so with it peter you're so with it are you about to stand on business

00:00:10.980 are you standing on business peter you're about to stand on business not me is like the worst 0.87

00:00:15.000 but it's that's so fucking annoying to me that's like one of the signs of me getting old is like 0.90

00:00:19.660 i hear that and i just get pissed off yeah it's not like oh i don't really get that slang it's 0.99

00:00:24.960 like shut the fuck up that is you about to turn 40 that is it not me being taken to the camps 0.99

00:00:31.480 that's like that's a fucking tiktok a year from now also the slang in this book has fucking ruined 1.00

00:00:36.860 my vocabulary because he keeps talking about like fisticuffs not me resorting to fisticuffs 0.99

00:00:42.000 not me scuffling with this vagabond okay peter michael what do you know about how to win friends

00:00:49.060 and Influence People by Dale Carnegie.

00:00:51.580 All I know is that we've covered a lot of frauds and phonies on this podcast,

00:00:56.880 and it's nice to finally cover someone who did it the right way

00:01:01.520 by having the same last name as a successful businessman.

00:01:04.580 man. So the full title of the book is How to Win Friends and Influence People,

00:01:21.600 no colon. Wow. C-c-c-c-combo breaker. We've never had this. It is published in 1936. It's sold. It's

00:01:29.140 not clear how many copies it sold, but somewhere in the tens of millions. It has been called the

00:01:32.880 most popular nonfiction book since the bible so of course neither one of us are coming into this

00:01:37.440 fresh i assume i'm not really familiar with the contents of the book i am aware that this is sort

00:01:43.720 of like the og business self-help book yes that's really that's really it over the years i have

00:01:49.740 heard various things about this book i've heard from people that this is like not that bad and

00:01:53.820 that most of the advice in it is pretty reasonable i've also heard that he's like a demon sent from

00:01:58.460 hell yeah so i went into this relatively open i was like this could be good this could be bad

00:02:01.620 I picked up the book.

00:02:03.160 I opened it.

00:02:04.280 The second paragraph starts with, I have, since 1912, been conducting educational courses

00:02:10.440 for business and professional men and women in New York City.

00:02:13.500 Oh, my God.

00:02:14.180 So he's a seminar grifter.

00:02:15.440 A hundred years ago, it was the same grifter.

00:02:17.580 The first seminar grifter, I know.

00:02:19.680 If Dale was born in 1991, he'd be hosting a podcast in aviators, hawking some product. 1.00

00:02:27.160 This pill changed my relationship with my dick. 0.99

00:02:30.220 So after he does his little like, I teach seminars introduction, I'm extremely skeptical. 0.99

00:02:34.100 He then goes into a litany of testimonials.

00:02:37.580 He's like, this man attended my course and then he achieved success like he had never

00:02:40.800 known.

00:02:41.100 And it just goes on and on.

00:02:42.660 If you are willing to sit there for 20 minutes reading about how important something is before 0.95

00:02:48.440 you even know what it is, you're a natural sucker and you're going to buy whatever they're 0.98

00:02:53.400 selling. 0.96

00:02:53.860 He then, of course, does the thing where he's like, this is such powerful wisdom, but they

00:02:56.960 don't teach it to you in schools.

00:02:58.460 In schools, they'll have you thinking that you should be focused on the giant world war that's about to happen.

00:03:03.840 Yeah, I know.

00:03:05.400 Another like OG trick in this book is that he includes a lot of quotes from famous people.

00:03:10.000 Hell yeah, dude.

00:03:10.760 So he has a quote from the former president of Princeton saying, education is the ability to meet life's situations.

00:03:18.680 Whoa.

00:03:19.400 Which is not a good quote.

00:03:20.400 Two podcast bros just in awe.

00:03:23.680 Yeah, Theo Vaughn voice.

00:03:24.860 Wow.

00:03:25.580 Whoa.

00:03:26.660 Yeah.

00:03:26.860 You've got situations, and then you've got to meet them, man.

00:03:30.060 So that's the first introduction.

00:03:31.340 We then have another introduction called Nine Suggestions on How to Get the Most Out of

00:03:36.520 This Book.

00:03:37.760 And it's all super self-aggrandizing.

00:03:39.580 It's like, you mustn't only read this once.

00:03:41.780 You must underline your favorite passages.

00:03:44.200 You must tell your friends to purchase it as well.

00:03:47.040 We then have another introduction, a biography of Dale Carnegie by a radio broadcaster named

00:03:53.520 Lowell Thomas.

00:03:54.500 It's called A Shortcut to Distinction.

00:03:56.860 So we then get all these biographical details, which I got to say a lot of which struck me as like very fake or at least like slightly dubious.

00:04:05.520 He is raised on a farm in Maryville, Missouri, which is where my grandmother is from.

00:04:11.540 He says that his dog died by being struck by lightning.

00:04:16.440 I believe it.

00:04:17.480 He has all these stories about like I had to wake up at 3 a.m. to feed the hogs.

00:04:21.520 I don't think that's when you feed hogs.

00:04:22.860 He then says the hogs got cholera.

00:04:25.080 he's traveling to and from school on horseback and like doing chores and then reading latin by

00:04:32.500 oil light at night he then goes to teacher's college but then he drops out to become essentially

00:04:39.500 a door-to-door salesman and start selling like distance learning courses back when correspondence

00:04:44.600 courses were like in the mail he's doing zoom grifter shit but well before zoom he then 0.80

00:04:50.060 quits as a traveling salesman to go to acting school and then drops out to join a circus.

00:04:56.720 Apparently circuses had like plays that went along with them as part of like the evenings

00:05:01.180 entertainment. So he's an actor in the play that is along with the circus. He moves back to New

00:05:06.760 York to sell used cars. Yes. He then quits to become a novelist and then starts teaching these

00:05:13.700 courses at the YMCA. And there's a whole thing about like, we can't pay you. So we must give

00:05:18.280 you a portion of the proceeds and then of course before you know it he's making like a thousand

00:05:22.460 dollars a night because the proceeds are so high it's like the success story i see this guy little

00:05:26.480 thomas speaks of dale carnegie in these like weirdly reverent tones another thing that made

00:05:30.880 me kind of suspicious he says a slave to no hard and fast rules he developed a course that is as

00:05:36.440 real as the measles and twice as much fun what i mean measles many things are twice as fun as

00:05:42.400 measles why is he so bad at identifying good quotes weird twice as maybe that was a saying

00:05:49.020 he also has a weird thing about like he's like as the old saying goes give a dog a bad name and

00:05:54.340 then you hang him like what like is that the whole saying as the old saying goes shoot a lady in the 0.94

00:06:01.520 face not me hanging my dog so i go into this book unbelievably negative this guy's a seminar grifter 0.92

00:06:08.300 He has this like kind of too perfect backstory.

00:06:11.240 He's already given me a bunch of filler, a bunch of exaggerated stuff.

00:06:14.720 I finally get into the core text of the book.

00:06:17.960 The book is split into around 30 like principles, principles of how to win friends and influence

00:06:22.660 people.

00:06:23.220 The first principle is don't criticize, condemn, or complain.

00:06:27.060 Sure.

00:06:27.220 Most of it is kind of like fine.

00:06:28.860 He's like, you win more friends by being nice than by being mean.

00:06:32.440 That's true.

00:06:33.120 He quotes in full this thing called Father Forgets, which is like a little parable that apparently ran in Reader's Digest numerous times because it was so popular.

00:06:42.320 Basically about like a dad who gets home and criticizes his son.

00:06:45.640 They go to a baseball game.

00:06:46.500 He criticizes his son.

00:06:47.640 And eventually the father realizes that like, hey, I should be nice to my son.

00:06:51.260 Okay.

00:06:51.660 He then says this.

00:06:54.440 I'm going to send it to you.

00:06:55.360 We nourish the bodies of our children, but how seldom do we nourish their self-esteem?

00:06:59.240 We provide them with roast beef and potatoes to build energy, but we neglect to give them

00:07:03.700 kind words of appreciation that would sing in their memories for years like the music

00:07:07.500 of the morning stars.

00:07:08.860 Wow.

00:07:09.340 Yeah.

00:07:09.800 This was the first time anyone ever thought about being nice to children.

00:07:13.520 It was 1936 and he was like, I have an idea.

00:07:16.460 We then get to principle two, which is give honest and sincere appreciation.

00:07:21.760 And he basically says that like one of the core drivers of essentially all human behavior

00:07:25.280 is that we want to feel important and we want to have our needs and our feelings recognized by

00:07:29.840 other people. And so he tells the story of Charles Schwab, who was the first president of the U.S.

00:07:36.800 Steel Company. He's apparently the first person ever to make a million dollars as his salary.

00:07:42.740 This is actually kind of interesting. The thing that is happening at the time is that we're

00:07:46.600 basically getting the first green shoots of the knowledge economy. We're shifting from like the

00:07:50.140 industrial production. Like your ability to succeed at work is based on how good of a producer

00:07:55.160 you are, like on the production line, we're now switching to essentially the creation of like

00:07:58.900 American middle management, American corporate hierarchies. And so a lot of the people who are

00:08:03.380 attending Dale Carnegie's courses are these people who like used to be assembly line workers who are

00:08:08.140 now in middle management and are like, how do I do this? Like, it's not my skill at engineering

00:08:13.500 that is going to get me up the corporate ladder. It's actually my ability to like, yeah, get along

00:08:18.120 with people and influence people. And so this is actually one of the core drivers of his courses.

00:08:22.640 I need to get good at bullshit. I need to get good at fake nonsense. 0.99

00:08:28.440 So he quotes Charles Schwab here.

00:08:31.900 I consider my ability to arouse enthusiasm among my people, said Schwab, the greatest asset I possess.

00:08:37.740 And the way to develop the best that is in a person is by appreciation and encouragement.

00:08:41.960 I have yet to find the person, however great or exalted his station, who did not do better work and put forth greater effort under a spirit of approval than he would ever do under a spirit of criticism.

00:08:53.200 He draws the distinction between flattery and appreciation.

00:08:55.880 He says, like, you should think deeply about what you appreciate about other people and tell them that and give meaningful compliments.

00:09:02.720 So here's what he says about flattery.

00:09:05.420 The difference between appreciation and flattery?

00:09:07.680 That is simple.

00:09:08.420 One is sincere and the other insincere.

00:09:10.540 One comes from the heart out, the other from the teeth out.

00:09:13.580 One is unselfish, the other selfish.

00:09:15.600 One is universally admired, the other universally condemned.

00:09:19.080 Emerson said, every man I meet is my superior in some way.

00:09:22.800 If that was true of Emerson, isn't it likely to be a thousand times more true of you and me?

00:09:26.980 Let's cease thinking of our accomplishments, our wants.

00:09:29.640 Let's try to figure out the other person's good points.

00:09:32.120 Yeah.

00:09:32.420 So true.

00:09:33.040 Yeah. 0.95

00:09:33.260 This is before they figured out negging.

00:09:35.520 The updated version of this is much shorter because here it just says,

00:09:38.980 tell her her shoes look really comfortable.

00:09:40.540 it's chapter 10 of how to win friends runes we then get principle three arouse in the other

00:09:47.860 person an eager want yeah this is where it gets hot and heavy folks which honestly sounds bad

00:09:54.660 i went into this chapter like oh where's he going with this but this is basically just like find out

00:09:58.240 what other people's interests are and when you're negotiating try to find an arrangement that

00:10:02.040 genuinely offers something to both of you dale carnegie doing the lord's work just out here

00:10:07.500 introducing basic morality and human kindness to americans in the mid-1930s we then get principle

00:10:14.880 four become genuinely interested in other people okay he says you can make more friends in two

00:10:19.600 months by becoming genuinely interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get

00:10:24.460 other people interested in you this is especially good advice for people who are really boring yeah

00:10:28.900 if you're not interesting this has been phenomenal advice if you're super cool like us where you have

00:10:34.100 where your job is podcaster, you don't need to do this.

00:10:37.180 That's something I appreciate about you, Peter, is the EQ of your voice.

00:10:40.500 How I've made you attractive through the settings on the editing software.

00:10:44.140 Using technology, Michael has made me attractive and appealing.

00:10:47.920 One of his like little life hacky tips is that when you see somebody who you like and

00:10:52.860 appreciate and want to become friends with, like stop what you're doing and greet them

00:10:55.940 enthusiastically.

00:10:56.840 Okay.

00:10:57.160 I genuinely think that's like good advice.

00:10:58.700 Like someone who like drops what they're doing is like, I'm so glad to see you.

00:11:01.660 How was your day?

00:11:02.620 Feels really good. 0.92

00:11:03.340 There's something very earnest about that that feels like you wouldn't get that in modern self-help because they're like, they would think that that's pathetic. 0.99

00:11:10.620 We're like, enough of this nice guy bullshit. 0.99

00:11:12.500 Right. 1.00

00:11:12.700 I'm not going to walk up to you and be excited like an absolute schmuck, like a Carnegie reader. 0.98

00:11:18.320 I'm going to stand in the corner looking disinterested. 0.97

00:11:21.580 We then get to the first hint of problematicness.

00:11:24.560 Principle five is smile. 1.00

00:11:27.540 Ladies, listen up. 1.00

00:11:28.860 You know he starts with an anecdote about a woman who like refuses to smile. 0.99

00:11:33.340 Let me tell you a story of a woman who would have been a lot prettier if she smiled.

00:11:38.740 I'm going to send you this.

00:11:40.280 At a dinner party in New York, one of the guests, a woman who had inherited money, 0.96

00:11:43.960 was eager to make a pleasing impression on everyone. 0.95

00:11:46.800 She had squandered a modest fortune on sables, diamonds, and pearls.

00:11:50.680 Get it, girl?

00:11:51.200 Sables.

00:11:52.000 But she hadn't done any...

00:11:53.260 But she hadn't done anything whatever about her face.

00:11:58.640 Her face. 0.99

00:11:59.440 It irradiated sourness and selfishness.

00:12:01.700 she didn't realize what everyone knows namely that the expression one wears on one's face is

00:12:05.960 far more than the clothes one wears on one's back wrong wrong wrong this is he doesn't he doesn't 1.00

00:12:13.900 understand or isn't willing to accept the power of a rich bitch if you're a rich lady who has 0.95

00:12:20.940 inherited a fortune you don't need to smile for people that's like the benefit so here's his 0.97

00:12:26.740 little conclusion he's hammering the point home actions speak louder than words and a smile says

00:12:31.740 i like you you make me happy i'm glad to see you this is why dogs make such a hit so people like

00:12:36.980 dogs they're so glad to see us that they almost jump out of their skins so naturally we are glad

00:12:42.460 to see them i'm including the thing about the dog also because like some of this is like pretty good 0.60

00:12:46.460 and pretty sweet advice but this is a very dumb book part of why people like dogs is because dogs 0.99

00:12:51.160 are so fucking stupid yeah exactly and they're dogs they're not humans it's just a different 1.00

00:12:55.460 standard of behavior. I don't think you can operate based off that principle, but there is 1.00

00:12:59.640 something to the underlying concept of just be excited and happy to see people and they will

00:13:07.040 probably reciprocate, right? Not me. I won't enjoy that, but a lot of people will. So then we get to

00:13:13.540 our first life hack piece of advice. Principle six is remember that a person's name is to that person

00:13:18.680 the sweetest and most important sound in any language. Oh no, this is something that I actually

00:13:23.780 do. What? Remember people's names? Maybe this is slightly different, but I drop people's names

00:13:28.560 into conversation. Really? Simplest thing is when I say, when I would send like a little thank you

00:13:34.700 email to someone, I would say thank you and their name always. Did it feel like it worked? I, no,

00:13:39.880 I mean, that was like a piece of professional advice I got when I was young. This is again,

00:13:45.260 pretty good advice. Like remember people's names, obviously, but I've also done, especially like

00:13:49.460 I've done interviews with like public figures, like politicians. They're like, that's an

00:13:53.080 interesting question mike yeah what i think mike no you don't want to force it you can tell they're 0.97

00:13:56.480 overdoing it and they're doing it in like a way that feels like they read it in a fucking self-help

00:13:59.780 book and it turns out they did we then get to principle seven be a good listener encourage 0.96

00:14:04.680 others to talk about themselves okay he says if you aspire to be a good conversationalist be an

00:14:09.620 attentive listener to be interesting be interested this is nice yeah but then we also see some of the

00:14:16.020 darkness underneath this advice and where it's coming from with dale carnegie so here's his like

00:14:22.380 opening anecdote to this. Some time ago, I attended a bridge party. I don't play bridge,

00:14:28.260 and there was a woman there who didn't play bridge either. She discovered that I had traveled in

00:14:32.160 Europe a great deal. So she said, oh, Mr. Carnegie, I do want you to tell me about all the wonderful

00:14:36.560 places you have visited and the sights you have seen. As we sat down on the sofa, she remarked

00:14:41.300 that she and her husband had recently returned from a trip to Africa. Africa, I exclaimed. How

00:14:45.660 interesting. I've always wanted to see Africa. Tell me, did you visit the big game country?

00:14:51.060 That kept her talking for 45 minutes.

00:14:53.360 She never again asked me where I had been or what I had seen.

00:14:56.240 She didn't want to hear me talk about my travels.

00:14:58.400 All she wanted was an interested listener so she could expand her ego and tell about

00:15:03.540 where she had been.

00:15:04.580 Was she unusual?

00:15:05.520 No.

00:15:06.100 Many people are like that.

00:15:07.240 So it's sort of like I asked this lady a question and she answered it.

00:15:10.580 Well, 45 minutes is a long time, Mike.

00:15:12.380 You got to admit.

00:15:12.900 You got to admit.

00:15:13.480 But also we don't know the actual dynamics of that conversation.

00:15:15.700 Like I assume he's asking follow-up questions.

00:15:17.740 I do think this is sort of right. 0.97

00:15:19.160 Although this also feels like there's a discordance between this and like the earlier just be nice sort of friendly stuff because this is sort of like people are disgusting, ego-driven animals.

00:15:29.260 There's a little bit of cynicism that kind of pops through.

00:15:32.260 So earlier in one of the principles, he says, every act you've ever performed since the day you were born was performed because you wanted something.

00:15:38.980 And so what you should be doing is identify other people's wants.

00:15:42.580 But also it's sort of like a weirdly cynical way to go through life.

00:15:45.600 Like, well, everyone, you're only talking to me because you want something.

00:15:48.400 That just isn't true of most interactions.

00:15:50.520 How many people listening to this are literally wandering into a room right now where you

00:15:54.620 don't remember why you entered that room, right?

00:15:58.120 Like Kyle Rittenhouse, you're doing many things at once.

00:16:03.580 Imagine how many people are hearing that no context.

00:16:08.680 That wasn't a bonus episode.

00:16:10.120 That's now lore.

00:16:11.040 It's canonical, folks.

00:16:12.440 I also am someone who like, maybe because I'm a journalist, I like asking people about

00:16:16.440 like things that they like talking about and they're experts on. And like, I don't leave those

00:16:20.320 conversations being like, oh, they just talked about themselves. I would say like, I learned a

00:16:23.980 lot from somebody. Like, I think you could also frame this a way of like, people have like treasures

00:16:27.980 within them and you can unearth them and form connections and like learn things about the world

00:16:32.140 through talking to people. Yeah, I think that's true. But I mean, look, this so far, this has been

00:16:36.760 pretty good advice, right? Yeah. Listen to people, engage with their interests. People want to be

00:16:42.100 listened to, Smile Ladies, all the classics. I will say like most of the core of this book is

00:16:49.100 good. Try to be nice to people. Listen to them when they talk. Think about what you appreciate

00:16:53.600 about people. Where's the Korean pilots chapter, Michael? We've talked a lot on the show about how

00:17:00.060 essentially all mass market advice is just a way of people packaging their own biographies. They're

00:17:06.000 all accidental biographies, these self-help books. As I was reading How to Win Friends and Influence

00:17:10.920 people, I was also reading a book called Self-Help Messiah, Dale Carnegie and Success in Modern

00:17:15.720 America by Stephen Watts, which is very interesting and very good and essentially tells his entire

00:17:20.180 life story as it's going through like the legacy of the book, all of the threads of American

00:17:24.200 society and economy that were going on that kind of led to the book. And so I have this book and

00:17:29.160 then I also have this biography of the guy who wrote it and it matches up very closely the kind

00:17:33.780 of life and interactions that he's having and also the kind of advice that he's giving. So the first

00:17:39.480 thing to note is that those anecdotes at first that sort of rubbed me the wrong way they're all

00:17:44.120 true he had like an insane life okay it appears his dog really did get struck by lightning or at

00:17:50.140 least like there's letters home to his mom and shit that indicate that and it's like a consistent

00:17:53.780 story that he told so to the extent that we can confirm it it appears to be true right the other

00:17:58.760 thing that you note is that all of the the tips that he's giving you for human interaction are

00:18:04.100 essentially coping mechanisms. So there's kind of two experiences that feed into the kind of

00:18:12.340 advice that he gives for the rest of his life. The first is that Dale Carnegie is an unbelievably

00:18:16.280 insecure guy. So he grows up in like profound poverty, like the kind of poverty that I saw

00:18:21.520 when I used to do like human rights trips to Zimbabwe. Like his dad would take out loans to

00:18:24.960 like buy hogs or buy seeds and then there'd be a drought or all the hogs would die of disease and

00:18:30.080 then they'd be like out of food and out of money and so the only way they can buy is basically

00:18:34.240 growing their own food pre new deal style yeah poverty grapes of wrath situation the kind of

00:18:40.480 poverty that you don't see anymore and won't see for another two years because they're like the 0.53

00:18:46.660 only way that he got clothes was they would barter meat from the hogs into cloth and then his mom 0.99

00:18:51.980 would sew his clothes give me that shirt i'll give you this dog that was struck by lightning and so 0.73

00:18:56.140 of course he's like much poorer than the other kids at school he's extremely insecure yeah once

00:19:01.100 he moves to new york he's not quite one of these like east coast sophisticates like he doesn't

00:19:04.800 really fit into that world yeah he also doesn't really fit into like rural farm life the way that

00:19:10.060 he used to either he feels distant from kind of all of these groups yeah his whole life he basically

00:19:14.660 like doesn't have a lot of confidence in his abilities and when you think about the kinds

00:19:18.800 of tactics that he's proposing here like if you're afraid that you don't have anything interesting to

00:19:24.060 say, and that people are going to be bored or annoyed by you, a great way to get around that

00:19:27.920 is just ask them about themselves. They're like, well, then I don't have to talk. I can just have

00:19:32.060 people talk to me and then they'll like me. And if you don't know how to fit into social

00:19:37.020 situations and you're nervous about what people think of you, you're going to be obsessed with

00:19:40.600 avoiding conflict, trying to ingratiate yourself to other people any way that you can, smiling,

00:19:47.140 kind of taking the subservient role in every interaction because to you, you're just desperate

00:19:51.960 to like be like to get some form of affirmation and make your anxiety about conversation go away.

00:19:57.180 This comparison might be a bit of a stretch, but it feels to me like he was sort of a tech

00:20:02.960 bro equivalent where he has been catapulted into this like liminal class space. Yeah. Existing

00:20:10.600 side by side with the rich, but not quite one of them. Yeah. With our tech bros, it turned them

00:20:17.140 into Nazis. Right. I don't believe that happened to Dale. Well, there's actually a there's a whole

00:20:21.560 sequence in the book about how like he's really insecure about his ability to get women especially

00:20:25.620 when he's younger well duh he's like even if a girl wants to go out with me i can't take her

00:20:29.380 anywhere because i don't have any money and i wear the same clothes every single day and they don't

00:20:32.860 fit me like he's so insecure about everything about himself that would appeal to the opposite

00:20:36.360 sex this is also a time when like you'd see a picture of like five-year-old children and they're

00:20:41.220 all wearing suits but it's also interesting is like there wasn't really right-wing propaganda

00:20:45.020 for him to find at that time i feel like he's the kind of guy that if like reddit was around he would

00:20:49.400 have ended up in like a really bad place. But he basically found like the debate team and public

00:20:53.200 speaking. And that's kind of how he like starts to gain self-esteem. And he just feels good at

00:20:58.060 one thing. If he hadn't lived in Italy, he is on the streets in the 20s, cracking socialist heads

00:21:03.900 for sure. So this is a excerpt from a really interesting article called Dale Carnegie and

00:21:09.640 the Problem of Sincerity by Gail Fane Perker. He was profoundly wrong about human psychology.

00:21:15.400 His own experience, first as a poor farm boy, later as a prosperous lecturer and author, led him to believe that survival and success were possible only if you were willing to disavow your strongest instincts, gloss over mysteries, and be satisfied with communicating as opposed to standing for anything.

00:21:30.600 If you smiled, looked people in the eye, and expressed an interest in what they were feeling, if you never snarled, nagged, attacked, or asserted your rights, you could survive. And as an American survivor, you might hope for a nice car, a nice wife, and a nice home in a garden suburb.

00:21:44.780 The rewards for improving your social radar were not the satisfaction of deep personal

00:21:49.260 needs, but the maintenance of comfort and appearances.

00:21:51.300 He does seem to have been very good at like navigating these social interactions, but

00:21:56.040 it also feels like he felt profoundly alone in these social interactions oftentimes.

00:21:59.580 And he really struggled to feel connected to people when all you're doing in a conversation

00:22:03.320 is like, how can I meet the other person's needs?

00:22:05.920 You don't feel like you're completely present in that conversation.

00:22:08.640 You have this sort of this feeling of like being alone when you're with other people

00:22:12.760 because you're kind of in this like low grade panic of just like, well, how can I make sure

00:22:16.560 the other person is comfortable? It's interesting that this suffers from

00:22:19.300 some of the same problems that pickup artistry does, which is that if you're just trying to

00:22:25.220 adhere to like the gamification of conversation, you will never actually have a real one.

00:22:31.040 Exactly. You're not really participating. Yeah. You're all you're doing is like mapping out

00:22:35.040 how the conversation should go and what you should do in your mind. And you're never actually

00:22:39.520 engaging with this other person in a way that would like expose you to some vulnerability,

00:22:44.460 right?

00:22:44.700 Where like you might be in danger of fucking the conversation up a little bit, right?

00:22:48.200 Which is half of what makes a conversation fun, frankly.

00:22:50.360 And you're doing like way more work than the other person too.

00:22:52.960 The lady's just yapping about Africa and Dale is like, what is my next move in this conversation?

00:22:58.700 So the book is informed by his deep insecurity.

00:23:01.880 It's also very fundamentally informed by his experience as a door-to-door salesman.

00:23:06.880 despite the fact that he spends most of his life giving advice to like middle managers and career

00:23:12.300 people he never has an office job his whole life and this public speaking thing is the only thing

00:23:18.660 he's ever succeeded at all one book right i mean yeah it's so interesting that this is how you can

00:23:24.220 trace the self-help grift back you give 20 lectures and seminars and you've made a bunch of money and

00:23:31.520 everyone's like you should write a book and you're like yeah yeah yeah that's another scam i could

00:23:34.920 run. He goes to teaching college, but he never graduates because he drops out to do door-to-door

00:23:38.880 sales. He's not very good at sales. He then gets another job, not selling correspondence courses.

00:23:43.580 He's selling like lard and soap, like pork products. It doesn't appear he's very good at

00:23:47.700 that. He goes to acting school, but then drops out. He joins the circus, but that's only like

00:23:52.040 a three-month gig and he can't get any acting gigs after that. He then goes back to selling

00:23:57.260 used cars, fails at that. He writes a novel that is so bad that his agent is like, I'm not even

00:24:02.060 sending this to publishers. This is like an embarrassment. The only thing he's ever been

00:24:05.480 good at is like debate public speaking. And so essentially in desperation, he's like, I can teach

00:24:10.400 other people to do public speaking. And again and again, his life, he tries to branch out from that

00:24:14.340 and then fails and then comes back to public speaking. And also, if you think about these

00:24:18.860 tips of like smile and try to avoid arguments and greet somebody enthusiastically, a lot of

00:24:24.900 these are tips for making somebody like you immediately. They're not tips for like ongoing

00:24:29.180 relationships. They're like, when you show up at somebody's door, how can you make a good

00:24:32.340 impression in the first five minutes and establish trust very quickly?

00:24:36.000 I'll also say it's a very classic self-help that he tries to write a novel and it's just

00:24:44.720 atrocious. They're like, absolutely not. And then he writes a self-help book and they're like,

00:24:50.000 yeah, this is great.

00:24:50.600 It's also funny because when he tried to write the novel, he was already relatively well-known.

00:24:54.340 He was like a radio producer. He was like kind of a mid-level celebrity at the time that he

00:24:58.700 pitch the novel. The fact that his agent was like, no, we're not even trying. It must have been

00:25:02.520 so bad. Maybe this was a time, maybe this was a time when they were like, we actually expect

00:25:06.960 books to be relatively good. Maybe to try this in a hundred years, Dale. He also, the other kind

00:25:12.620 of salesmanship tactic is that throughout his life and throughout his book, he gets over his

00:25:17.120 skis as far as telling the truth. Nice. There's a really interesting episode in the book where

00:25:21.740 as he's becoming a novelist, he's also like writing magazine articles on the side. He sort

00:25:25.560 has this little like stint in journalism, which again, doesn't really go anywhere. But as he's

00:25:29.880 writing these articles, they're mostly like profiles of business people. He does this thing

00:25:33.480 of like, what's the secret to your success? He's really interested in this throughout the course

00:25:36.160 of his life. But he also writes an essay in 1918 called My Triumph Over Fears that cost me $10,000

00:25:42.700 a year in something called American Magazine. And it's a story of a guy who was like so nervous

00:25:48.380 and he wasn't succeeding at business. But then eventually his wife is like, you need skills as

00:25:52.680 a public speaker and then he starts attending public speaking courses at the YMCA in New York

00:25:57.700 and all of a sudden his career takes off. Wow. So I'm going to send you an excerpt from the book.

00:26:05.940 This is from the biography of Carnegie. Obviously, this true story of success was a thinly disguised

00:26:10.540 parable about the usefulness of Carnegie's own course on public speaking. Having taken to heart

00:26:14.760 the lesson of self-promotion, he wasted little time in distributing hundreds of reprints of this

00:26:18.580 article. He added to the original manuscript by pointing out that Dale Carnegie was the teacher

00:26:22.500 of the public speaking course and appended a postscript quote the ymca in your city conducts

00:26:28.040 a nationally known carnegie course in public speaking the course studied by the man whose

00:26:31.940 story you have just read you are invited to attend without any obligation on your part

00:26:36.000 one of the sessions of this course at your ymca it's like this is egregiously unethical

00:26:41.480 never stop hustling it's like so never stop you fabricate a story which is totally not true about

00:26:47.660 this guy that achieved success you pitch it to a magazine somehow get it published which is already

00:26:51.160 unethical enough. You then reprint hundreds of copies of the article and go, look, American

00:26:56.560 Magazine wrote an article about how good my course is. I'm not sure that the postscript is that much

00:27:02.240 more unethical. I feel like you basically crossed the sort of threshold of unethicalness once you

00:27:08.320 publish the full on fake story. And so at that point, you might as well add the grifty postscript.

00:27:15.900 I think he's doing great. Go to the sentence he added to the original manuscript. Yeah. Do you

00:27:19.720 notice anything about his name? Yes. It's not spelled the way that I'm familiar. It's spelled

00:27:25.760 C-A-R-N-A-G-E-Y. Yeah. And it's pronounced Carnegie. Interesting. So the other little 0.54

00:27:33.680 bit of salesmanship is that he legally changes his name to Carnegie. Oh, to match Andrew?

00:27:40.140 I mean, he never really admits to this, but it's like, yes, of course. I mean, well,

00:27:45.720 I'll tell you this. It worked because- I mean, it really worked. Yeah. I'm pretty sure if you

00:27:48.900 had asked me five years ago, who's Dale Carnegie? I would have been like, Andrew Carnegie's brother,

00:27:53.640 right? Oh, yeah. For sure. I think that he like accurately read that like most people will see

00:27:57.920 the name and just like it'll trigger all of these associations. Like I think that was a correct

00:28:01.380 read. But also it's like unbelievably cynical to do this. The sort of story about him being

00:28:07.860 insecure about his origins is now like it's now complete, right? Where he just he won't even keep

00:28:12.960 the name. Right. He sort of seizes on to the spelling of someone from high society. We're

00:28:17.740 going to sort of jump around now because like if we do every principle it'll take us many hours

00:28:21.200 but you start to see the flaws of dale carnegie's personality showing up more clearly in the book

00:28:27.580 as it goes on the book starts to show his like pathological need to avoid conflict and just kind

00:28:33.600 of get along in conversations and not make any waves so principle 10 is the only way to get the

00:28:39.580 best of an argument is to avoid it okay principle 11 is show respect for the other person's opinions

00:28:45.220 never say you're wrong. One of the reviews that I read of this noted that throughout the entire

00:28:49.860 book, there's no actual conflicts between people. Everything is a misunderstanding and everything

00:28:55.140 can be solved by just phrasing things slightly differently. So, you know, this whole thing of

00:29:00.140 like a compliment sandwich, right? You squeeze the, you squeeze the, uh, the despicable insult

00:29:06.340 in between two compliments. By the way, I, I heard of this when I was really young, like in college

00:29:11.460 or something and then i clocked it every single time a boss ever did it to me and it just pissed 0.98

00:29:16.360 me off every time i'm like you think you can use fucking tricks of psychology on me you piece of 0.99

00:29:20.300 shit i know what you're trying to do it's so entrenched in like workplace bullshit now that 1.00

00:29:24.940 everyone knows as soon as you get a compliment like oh if they're starting with a compliment 1.00

00:29:27.840 i'm gonna get the actual message they want me to receive and i can just i can just ignore the bread

00:29:32.140 in the sandwich it's really hard for me to understand how normal people do this but because

00:29:35.900 Because I have always felt like I'm slacking off too much at every single job I've ever

00:29:40.360 had, I am basically in every performance review being like, have I been caught?

00:29:45.960 Have they realized that I do seven hours of work a week?

00:29:48.760 That's the only thing I'm thinking about the whole time.

00:29:51.040 Until you actually went to a meeting where they did, in fact, fire you.

00:29:54.540 We found out that you're just a full-time podcaster.

00:29:57.460 Did they do a compliment sandwich?

00:29:58.720 Were they like, you're the best dresser in the office.

00:30:00.840 However, you can never come here again.

00:30:02.460 Work-wise, spectacular.

00:30:04.480 Employment-wise, un.

00:30:05.900 so here is his example for this one a friend of mine was a guest at the white house for a weekend

00:30:14.280 during the administration of calvin coolidge drifting into the president's private office

00:30:19.340 he heard coolidge say to one of the secretaries that's a pretty dress you're wearing this morning

00:30:23.020 and you are a very attractive young woman bread that's the bread here comes the meat that was

00:30:28.360 probably the most effusive praise silent cal had ever bestowed upon a secretary in his life

00:30:32.860 it was so unusual so unexpected that the secretary blushed in confusion then coolidge said now don't

00:30:39.780 get stuck up i just said that to make you feel good from now on i wish you'd be a little bit

00:30:45.240 more careful with your punctuation i fucking love this story i need a sign from god that this is 0.91

00:30:51.440 true please tell me this story is true to say something nice and then immediately be like i 0.86

00:30:55.980 didn't mean that by the way the whole point of the compliment sandwich is defeated when you're

00:30:59.660 Like, don't get stuck up, young lady.

00:31:01.240 I just said that to make you feel good. 1.00

00:31:02.800 I was fucking lying to you. 1.00

00:31:04.220 What I'm serious about is that you are shitty at your job. 1.00

00:31:07.320 Don't get stuck up. 1.00

00:31:08.300 That was a lie.

00:31:08.940 I told you to make this part feel better. 1.00

00:31:10.920 You're dumb as hell. 1.00

00:31:12.580 You're bad at your job and you're ugly. 1.00

00:31:15.340 That's how Calvin Coolidge talked, by the way. 0.99

00:31:17.180 I don't know if our listeners know that.

00:31:18.600 Who knows that this is true, but also it's so funny that Dale Carnegie is presenting

00:31:22.380 this as like, good advice.

00:31:23.380 You're a hot young number and it's nice to see around the office.

00:31:26.420 Now you're terrible with words.

00:31:28.020 there is something in the male mind where you will compliment like an objectively attractive lady

00:31:38.240 and if they're like oh that's nice that makes me feel good you're like you better hop off that 1.00

00:31:44.640 pedestal bitch you gotta throw a bucket of water on it immediately right it's like what are you 1.00

00:31:48.160 talking you were just groveling at her feet dude yeah calvin you were just groveling at her at her 1.00

00:31:53.540 feet don't talk about our punctuation now so peter i can't we can't do every single one i know but i

00:31:59.220 would like to hear about everyone that involves calvin coolidge from here on in i'm sorry to just

00:32:03.400 keep reiterating that anecdote it's so funny it's so funny i will be i will be bringing this one to

00:32:07.760 my wife as soon as she arrives home from work there are so many anecdotes in this book of like

00:32:14.100 someone saying something mean or like basically acting against somebody else's interest and then

00:32:19.840 And Carnegie is like, but he phrased it the right way.

00:32:22.240 And so they didn't notice the real like jewel in the crown of these anecdotes.

00:32:27.420 This might even be better than the Coolidge one, Peter.

00:32:29.600 Carnegie talks about how there's a park near his house where like youths keep starting fires.

00:32:35.320 He says the youngsters go out to the park to go native and cook a Frankfurter or an egg under the trees. 1.00

00:32:41.580 You kids cooking fucking eggs over there. 0.99

00:32:43.060 I love the idea of like five teenagers all huddled around like one egg boiling. 1.00

00:32:47.100 I love, this is like before they invented Frisbees.

00:32:50.340 You know what I mean?

00:32:51.100 Like they had nothing. 1.00

00:32:52.460 They were like, let's go fry some fucking eggs. 0.99

00:32:54.000 So the fires, concert fires are bothering Carnegie. 0.99

00:32:58.000 He eventually like goes up to these youths and he says like, hey, this is illegal.

00:33:01.720 You need to not do this here.

00:33:02.980 You all look beautiful in those outfits.

00:33:05.020 Now you got to stop cooking those eggs.

00:33:06.740 Don't get cocky, boys.

00:33:07.900 I only said that because I want you to stop cooking those eggs.

00:33:09.940 So after this sort of like threats and cajoling, he says, the result, they obeyed sullenly.

00:33:16.000 And with resentment, after I rode on over the hill, they probably rebuilt the fire and longed to burn up the whole park.

00:33:22.160 Yeah.

00:33:22.340 So being mean doesn't work, right?

00:33:23.620 Right.

00:33:23.840 So then he says the next time he goes to the park, he's going to try like a nicer, kinder approach that is going to be much more effective.

00:33:30.260 So he then gives a speech to the youths, which I'm going to send to you. 0.95

00:33:35.200 I'm going to start doing everything in this bullshit transatlantic accent I'm doing. 0.95

00:33:39.980 Having a good time, boys? 0.99

00:33:41.180 Having a good time, boys?

00:33:44.340 I can't do this the whole time.

00:33:46.000 Having a good time, boys? What are you going to cook for supper?

00:33:48.600 I loved to build fires myself when I was a boy, and I still love to.

00:33:51.920 But you know they are very dangerous here in the park.

00:33:54.380 I know you boys don't mean to do any harm, but other boys aren't so careful.

00:33:57.620 They come along and see that you've built a fire, so they build one,

00:34:00.440 and don't put it out when they go home and it spreads among the dry leaves and kills the trees.

00:34:04.640 We won't have any trees here at all if we aren't more careful.

00:34:07.160 You could be put in jail for building this fire.

00:34:09.180 But I don't want to be bossy and interfere with your pleasure.

00:34:11.700 I'd like to see you enjoy yourselves, but won't you please rake all the leaves away from the fire right now,

00:34:15.580 and you'll be careful to cover it with dirt a lot of dirt before you leave won't you

00:34:19.120 and next time and next time you want to have some fun won't you please build your 0.99

00:34:23.060 it goes on so long and next these boys are just like get this fucking guy away from me 0.99

00:34:29.020 they're already like shooting him with pellet guns at this point they're putting full-ass rocks 0.99

00:34:32.860 into slingshots and next time you want to have some fun won't you please build your fire over

00:34:37.580 the hill there in the sand pit i can't do any harm there thanks so much boys have a good time

00:34:42.140 so according to him this works like a charm having a good time boys what are you what are

00:34:47.220 gonna cook for supper i got a fresh egg in my pocket for you if you just build your fire over

00:34:52.120 in the sandpit this is pissing me off just like listening to it now when i'm 40 just the length

00:34:57.960 of it yeah just some some old guy who's obviously condescending to you i used to do this when i was

00:35:03.960 a youth i used to love to uh to boil a frankfurter back in my day but of course i was always very

00:35:11.940 cautious about fire safety it's just like i i imagine him like turning a baseball cap around

00:35:17.160 backwards like sitting in a backwards chair like hello boys he's 58 and he's putting like a slingshot

00:35:22.180 in his back pocket like dennis the menace i might seem like an old guy but i'm actually one of you

00:35:26.720 i i can't get over how boring being a child was they were just like let's go cook food

00:35:30.740 now let's go throw rocks at ladies on the street okay so again you can see dale carnegie kind of

00:35:37.760 refusing to believe that people have different interests and thinking that wording will solve

00:35:43.600 things. What if we told the children that their actions have consequences? This does tip into

00:35:48.540 misinformation and really bad politics at various points. You know who knows how to speak to people

00:35:53.940 is that fella out of Germany. So this is from principle 13, begin in a friendly way. In 1915,

00:36:00.880 John D. Rockefeller was the most fiercely despised man in Colorado. One of the bloodiest strikes in

00:36:05.460 history of american industry had been shocking the state for two terrible years irate belligerent

00:36:10.560 miners were demanding higher wages from the colorado fuel and iron company rockefeller

00:36:15.420 controlled that company property had been destroyed troops had been called out blood had

00:36:20.480 been shed at a time like that with the air seething with hatred rockefeller wanted to win the strikers

00:36:26.080 to his way of thinking and he did it how here's the story

00:36:30.580 hey boys i see you're enjoying your strike over there i i used to enjoy a striker too

00:36:37.840 give you two free eggs if you go back to work after weeks spent in making friends

00:36:42.920 rockefeller addressed the representatives of the strikers this speech in its entirety

00:36:47.220 is a masterpiece it produced astonishing results it calmed the tempestuous waves of hate that

00:36:53.380 threatened to engulf rockefeller it won him a host of admirers it presented facts in such a friendly

00:36:58.880 matter that the strikers went back to work without saying another word about the increase in wages

00:37:03.080 for which they had fought so violently. He gave such a good speech, they forgot about how much

00:37:07.240 they're making it work. Okay. Well, yeah. So I'm excited to hear the speech as I imagine it will

00:37:13.740 de-radicalize me. I condensed this slightly. He has like a very long excerpt, but this is the sort

00:37:19.360 of the heart of it. And it's still pretty long. This is Rockefeller speaking to striking miners

00:37:23.600 in 1915.

00:37:53.600 associated with you men for, in a sense, I represent both the stockholders and the directors.

00:37:59.080 Hmm. Moving.

00:38:00.320 So I went back to the original text of the book to be like, did I miss something? He's only quoting

00:38:05.840 the sort of boilerplate introduction of Rockefeller's speech. He's like, I'm glad to be here

00:38:11.000 today, but he's not quoting any of the substantive parts of it. Maybe this is just because we're all

00:38:16.320 surrounded by so much corporate boilerplate at all times. This is the way that Southwest Airlines

00:38:21.720 starts a letter telling you your flight has been canceled.

00:38:24.380 Yeah.

00:38:24.640 Again, it's like this is the first time that anyone did corporate boilerplate.

00:38:28.720 Yeah.

00:38:28.960 Right.

00:38:29.320 And so everyone's like, oh, wow, this guy, this rocks.

00:38:33.220 And now like every 23 year old out of college knows how to talk like this.

00:38:36.640 So I did look into the basic facts of this.

00:38:39.120 It's the Coalfield Wars, right?

00:38:40.380 Or whatever it was.

00:38:41.460 Colorado Coalfield War.

00:38:42.580 Yeah.

00:38:42.800 Yeah.

00:38:43.020 So for this, I looked at a book called Representation and Rebellion,

00:38:45.480 the Rockefeller Plan at the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company, 1914 to 1942.

00:38:49.480 And the report that was produced on this called The Age of Industrial Violence, 1910 to 1915.

00:38:56.040 So yes, this is the Colorado Coalfield War.

00:38:58.880 Basically, as you can imagine, in the early 1900s, the working conditions of miners were

00:39:02.740 extremely bad.

00:39:03.880 Eventually, they start trying to form a union with the United Mine Workers of America.

00:39:07.400 They issue a bunch of demands.

00:39:09.000 The company rejects their demands.

00:39:10.680 And because they're all living in company-provided housing, the company also evicts everybody.

00:39:15.080 So they all have to start living in tents on the mining site.

00:39:18.120 There's sort of back and forth about, like, various demands, various pushback.

00:39:23.200 Different authorities are brought in.

00:39:25.020 Eventually, the feds call in the National Guard.

00:39:28.240 And it's sort of unclear who starts it. 1.00

00:39:30.980 But this is basically just, like, they shoot into a fucking crowd. 0.99

00:39:34.180 Right. 1.00

00:39:34.420 And they kill eight people, including one 12-year-old boy.

00:39:37.740 Eleven people who are hiding from the shooting, they're, like, hiding under mattresses or, like, in a sort of cellar, are asphyxiated during this.

00:39:45.100 Jesus.

00:39:45.440 So it's, like, really awful.

00:39:46.800 There's then sort of retaliatory acts by the union.

00:39:50.800 This goes on.

00:39:51.840 The kind of entire incident goes on for five years and results in 232 deaths.

00:39:58.240 And so Rockefeller owns 40% of this mining company.

00:40:01.460 He's actually not like as in control as the sort of media depicts it at the time.

00:40:04.980 But Rockefeller becomes the target of a huge amount of national unrest. 0.98

00:40:08.660 People are like showing up outside of his offices and like picketing and shit. 0.99

00:40:11.140 It's a huge deal. 0.97

00:40:12.840 This is oftentimes seen as like the beginning of crisis PR.

00:40:16.020 So he hires a PR firm to be like, how do I salvage my reputation from this?

00:40:21.660 He does actually in 1915 visit the mines, although Carnegie leaves out the fact that

00:40:26.220 he doesn't visit the mine where workers are striking.

00:40:28.660 He visits like an adjacent mine where there's been some labor unrest, but nothing like the

00:40:32.440 Ludlow Massacre.

00:40:33.180 He does meet with people.

00:40:34.420 He does kind of this whole like PR campaign thing.

00:40:36.560 He does give this speech.

00:40:38.260 But the way that Carnegie presents it, he says the speech presented facts in such a

00:40:43.320 friendly manner that the strikers went back to work without saying another word about the increase

00:40:47.380 in wages for which they had fought so violently. That is not true. Basically, he proposes something

00:40:52.220 called, that is eventually known as the Rockefeller Plan, which is a series of like updates to working

00:40:57.060 conditions. And he doesn't actually recognize the union. It takes many more decades of like

00:41:00.640 labor unrest to recognize the union. But it sets up essentially a company union, which is not great,

00:41:06.120 but it's way better than what they had. And he also agrees that the company will not reduce wages

00:41:11.440 without notice. And also if mines in the area, so like mines in adjacent states raise wages,

00:41:17.580 he has to raise wages too. So it doesn't result in like sort of specific wage increases, but it

00:41:23.720 does establish a procedure that results in the miners making significantly more money over the

00:41:29.300 following years. There's also, I mean, he focuses on wages here, but there's also very meaningful

00:41:33.480 safety improvements as a part of this. And also it sets up a government body within Colorado to

00:41:38.600 also monitor safety conditions in the mines and give actual punishments for mines that do not

00:41:43.320 follow the procedure. So it's not like he gave a speech that was so good. People were like,

00:41:47.260 did we get more wages? I don't even know. Oh, I forgot because like his speech was so good.

00:41:50.740 He made meaningful reforms. It's so interesting how even before communism was like a boogeyman

00:41:59.100 to the extent it was in the post-war era, it was just considered this unequivocal good that the

00:42:05.740 workers went back to work with no raise yeah even by this kid he like this guy was raised poor i

00:42:10.920 think it's so interesting of like the sort of the limitations of his thinking because it's like he

00:42:15.360 seems to think that every conflict can be papered over which i think if you're a door-to-door salesman

00:42:19.880 kind of works yeah yeah right that's it because that's his understanding of what conflict is is

00:42:24.840 like right your objective is to like convince someone right you can just sort of like manipulate

00:42:29.640 words and stuff because that's what convincing is right um to at least to some degree the idea of

00:42:35.340 like real struggle sort of you know zero sum struggle with your employer doesn't really

00:42:41.240 compute with him he also has some of the most passive aggressive advice i've ever seen in one

00:42:46.760 of these books so here is a guy talking about how he resolves conflict in his home gladstone never

00:42:53.440 criticized at home when he came down to breakfast in the morning when the rest of his family was

00:42:57.540 still sleeping he had a gentle way of registering his reproach he raised his voice and filled the

00:43:01.980 house with a mysterious chant that reminded the other members that he was waiting downstairs for

00:43:06.220 his breakfast all alone for hours diplomatic and considerate he rigorously refrained from

00:43:13.580 domestic criticism is that considerate a lot of people criticize their wife for not feeding him

00:43:18.320 meanwhile i go downstairs i put silverware in my hands i sit at the table yeah took a napkin in

00:43:24.000 like a bib and then i uh slam my fists on the table while he's shouting breakfast breakfast

00:43:29.260 breakfast breakfast and then when she comes downstairs i'm like oh are you up oh hey but

00:43:35.760 i'm not criticizing he's down he's downstairs like bring me eggs bring me eggs okay this is

00:43:42.700 too many examples i might cut these in the edit but this one's also just so delicious okay here's

00:43:46.400 another one marge jacob of woundsocket rhode island told one of our classes how she convinced

00:43:51.280 some sloppy construction workers to clean up after themselves when they were building additions to

00:43:55.280 her house. For the first few days of the work, when Mrs. Jacob returned from her job, she noticed 0.97

00:44:00.100 that the yard was strewn with the cut ends of lumber. She didn't want to antagonize the builders

00:44:04.700 because they did excellent work. So after the workers had gone home, she and her children

00:44:09.020 picked up and neatly piled all the lumber debris in a corner. The following morning, she called

00:44:14.500 the foreman to one side and said, I'm really pleased with the way the front lawn was left

00:44:18.020 last night. It is nice and clean and does not offend the neighbors. From that day forward,

00:44:23.740 the workers picked up and piled the debris to one side i love it ah yes the the classic move

00:44:29.180 of doing something and then telling someone that that they did it yeah and then thanking them for

00:44:33.820 something they didn't do maybe this is uh the annoying suburban homeowner in me now but it's

00:44:39.460 like just you are paying them for work just be like hey can you pile that on the side there you

00:44:43.560 just like directly ask like hey sorry could you clean up after you're done it's not i don't want

00:44:47.060 to and oh i don't want to antagonize them yeah relax i don't think they would feel antagonized

00:44:51.840 It's like, put the wood over there, please.

00:44:53.660 That'd be great.

00:44:54.140 Thank you.

00:44:54.560 This is like this weird need to like avoid conflict, but also by avoiding conflict, you're

00:44:58.320 being ruder.

00:44:59.300 I found a way to be passive aggressive and also do labor that I didn't need to do.

00:45:03.980 This culminates in a story about firing people.

00:45:08.440 OK.

00:45:08.900 He's talking about a guy who works at a taxation firm where, of course, they like have a big

00:45:13.300 rush and then they have to like fire a bunch of their employees.

00:45:15.740 So here's the original way that this guy was firing people.

00:45:19.840 Sit down, Mr. Smith.

00:45:21.360 The season's over and we don't seem to see any more assignments for you.

00:45:24.380 Of course, you understood you were only employed for the busy season anyhow.

00:45:27.760 A little terse, a little terse.

00:45:29.240 Yep.

00:45:29.420 So then after he takes the Carnegie course and he learns about principle 26, let the

00:45:34.800 other person save face, he then does it with these words.

00:45:38.800 By the way, this doesn't matter.

00:45:40.040 This guy is fired regardless.

00:45:41.800 This is completely irrelevant.

00:45:43.380 We'll get there.

00:45:44.560 Mr. Smith, you've done a fine job.

00:45:46.600 That time we sent you to Newark, you had a tough assignment.

00:45:49.640 You were on the spot, but you came through with flying colors, and we want you to know

00:45:53.240 the firm is proud of you.

00:45:54.660 You've got the stuff.

00:45:56.120 You're going a long way wherever you're working.

00:45:59.800 Wherever you're working, which brings me to my next point.

00:46:02.660 Speaking of which, since we're on it anyway.

00:46:04.460 This firm believes in you and is rooting for you, and we don't want you to forget it.

00:46:09.120 I love how he doesn't tell him that he's fired in this.

00:46:12.040 Wherever you happen to go Monday morning at 9 a.m., I'm sure you're going to do great.

00:46:16.020 And then Carnegie, of course, has like a little thing afterwards where he's like, this guy didn't even mind being fired.

00:46:20.800 No, I think people notice when they get fired, Dale.

00:46:23.920 Dude, this is before the welfare state even existed. 1.00

00:46:26.540 This guy is fucked. 1.00

00:46:27.560 This guy's like, OK, my children are going to starve. 1.00

00:46:31.340 My son's been frying eggs in the park.

00:46:34.620 I don't even understand what this is like meant to accomplish other than making you feel better about the firing process.

00:46:39.960 A lot of it is telling that a lot of the stories in this book are from the perspective of like CEOs.

00:46:46.600 That's the people taking his little his little course, I guess.

00:46:49.240 Because I mean, this is the Great Depression, too.

00:46:50.860 Like he's giving people this advice in like 1936.

00:46:52.700 So like things are not great in the country.

00:46:54.540 Right.

00:46:54.940 And yeah, you get the sense that this is this is appeasing the ego of the guy doing the firing.

00:46:59.260 It's like they don't even mind.

00:47:00.740 Maybe they don't tell you because you might want to rehire them in six months because it's a tax firm.

00:47:04.340 But like this doesn't do anything.

00:47:06.620 99% of your emotional reaction to being fired is the fact you're being fired.

00:47:10.460 The wording doesn't really matter that much.

00:47:12.140 And there's no wording so good that's going to make you forget that you're being fired.

00:47:15.780 Like no one is – this is not how humans work.

00:47:17.380 People know their own interests.

00:47:18.580 How has it worked today?

00:47:19.940 Actually pretty good.

00:47:21.900 Good.

00:47:22.300 I got fired real nice.

00:47:24.140 You can imagine this being baldly cynical, right?

00:47:27.740 The kind of person who's just like, ha, ha, ha, manipulate them with these words, but then like treat them ruthlessly, right?

00:47:33.140 Yeah, yeah.

00:47:33.780 When you look at Dale Carnegie's biography, this actually isn't what you see.

00:47:37.380 What you see is an extremely earnest guy who just can't think very deeply about anything.

00:47:44.820 Dale Carnegie appears to be like a really great husband and father.

00:47:49.060 His first wife, it's kind of weird.

00:47:50.420 He ends up marrying this like Habsburg adjacent German aristocrat lady. 0.96

00:47:55.680 That's the dream.

00:47:56.600 One of the biggest fights in their marriage is that like he is able to just identify like

00:48:00.760 very basic injustices.

00:48:02.140 He's like, isn't that weird how, like, nobility have, like, lots of money and then other people don't have money?

00:48:07.780 And she's like, you can't say that, Dale.

00:48:09.400 He's dodging her jaw in the argument.

00:48:13.880 He's like, some people have no money and other people have six fingers on each hand.

00:48:17.240 It's incredible.

00:48:18.380 Her eye is, like, falling out of her socket.

00:48:20.460 She's like, this is my birthright, Dale.

00:48:22.220 And then with his second wife, his second wife has a daughter from a first marriage.

00:48:26.460 And, like, Dale is just immediately, like, the coolest stepdad.

00:48:29.680 He's, like, bragging about his daughter's achievements.

00:48:32.360 They eventually have a kid on their own, and he's, like, basically a stay-at-home dad and is, like, super excited about having a daughter.

00:48:38.720 He's also, like, a very good husband, it appears.

00:48:40.920 He's super respectful of his wife.

00:48:42.160 It seems like it's actually a fairly progressive relationship.

00:48:44.840 It sounds from other people that his wife is able to stand up to him and be like, no, Dale.

00:48:48.120 And he's like, oh, you're right.

00:48:48.900 Yeah, I should rethink that.

00:48:50.160 Like, he just seems like a genuinely, like, nice guy.

00:48:52.260 Okay.

00:48:52.640 He also has, like, a very weird political consciousness.

00:48:54.680 So during the Great Depression, he turns $25 into dimes and he goes down to the local homeless

00:49:02.260 shelter and just like starts giving away dimes to people. He's like, these people are in need

00:49:06.260 and I have a decent amount of money. I should give money away. He's not someone who's like

00:49:09.960 incapable of seeing basic morality, but also at the same time, he has no like political

00:49:15.940 understanding of like what would have caused the Great Depression. It doesn't like radicalize him

00:49:18.940 in any way around the same time. He also spends a month traveling around China. And when he comes

00:49:24.400 back, he's sort of like, well, these people wouldn't be so bummed out if they knew how poor

00:49:27.400 Chinese people were. You got it way better off than the Chinese. Okay. So he would be a Democrat. 1.00

00:49:32.220 There's interviews with him during the run up to World War Two, where they ask him about all of 0.98

00:49:36.900 the really horrific shit that Japan is doing in China. And they're like, what do you think about 0.93

00:49:40.680 this? And he's like, why? I traveled around Japan. I saw no signs of violence at all. They just don't

00:49:44.660 seem like a violent people to me. I think it's a big old misunderstanding. They also ask him about

00:49:48.760 Hitler. And like, he is a good enough person to understand like Hitler is the bad guy. Like he 0.95

00:49:53.780 doesn't do any both sides thing but he's like well the problem with hitler is just he he's so selfish

00:49:58.020 and if he wasn't such a bad guy we wouldn't have these problems yes it's like i i think we've been

00:50:03.000 doing the wrong voice for him i don't think it's the al capone voice i think it's the jimmy stewart

00:50:07.260 voice we're like now you see here mister if you were just a little nicer we wouldn't have to

00:50:12.240 resort to fisticuffs okay well easy for you to say when you can do the voice i can't so i'm just

00:50:16.560 gonna stick with the one i can sort of do there's also a thing of you know the the seminar grift

00:50:21.200 that he's doing. You know, we've seen a lot of these guys who run these seminar grifts and like

00:50:25.000 they fucking know they're scamming you, right? They're like, oh yeah, call your credit card 0.94

00:50:28.200 company at lunch break and have them raise your limit and then pay us for like elite gold package

00:50:32.880 and they just provide you with nothing. Like they know that what they're doing is snake oil.

00:50:37.400 Dale Carnegie, the only stories in the book of him being mean to people is when people show

00:50:43.440 cynicism about the course. So at one point, the course is kind of a franchise at this point. He

00:50:48.440 travels around to like different satellite, you know, the Boston Carnegie course or whatever.

00:50:52.200 He goes and he overhears one of the instructors talking about like, oh, I've got to teach these 1.00

00:50:56.620 rubes once again, like these idiots tonight. And Carnegie just fires him on the spot. 1.00

00:51:00.920 And he's like, no, we are providing a service to people. These are people who need something

00:51:04.120 and they're paying us and we should take that obligation really seriously.

00:51:07.020 Yeah, but I bet he fired him nice. I bet he fired him real nice. You've been doing a great job

00:51:12.500 teaching this seminar. To be clear, you are fired.

00:51:15.480 From later academic analyses, it seems like the course was pretty good, not because he was saying anything particularly profound.

00:51:22.020 Like most of the public speaking stuff was fairly standard advice.

00:51:25.060 Like the biggest thing in the course is that he'll kind of make people stand up and give like a 90-second speech about themselves, and then he'll critique it.

00:51:31.140 Like, oh, you could do this better.

00:51:32.240 You could do this better.

00:51:33.320 And like that's actually really useful for people, and it kind of became a kind of support group.

00:51:37.720 Warren Buffett and Lee Iacocca were both people who took the course and both spoke about it very positively.

00:51:42.000 So he seems like a very good hearted guy, but also no depth.

00:51:47.320 Yeah.

00:51:47.620 Before he wrote the book, he had a radio show called Little Known Facts about well-known

00:51:52.240 people, which was exactly what it sounds like.

00:51:54.100 Dude, that sounds like a podcast right now.

00:51:56.040 Yeah.

00:51:56.220 No, I was actually thinking like, can we steal this, please?

00:51:58.600 It's actually a really good idea.

00:51:59.960 But the author of the biography notes that he'll do an episode about like Gandhi.

00:52:04.380 And he's like, he wore false teeth.

00:52:06.140 He had to put them in before he ate and then he took them out.

00:52:08.680 And that's today's show, folks.

00:52:10.320 We'll see you next week.

00:52:11.520 and like his episode on lenin where the only thing he actually says about like his life is like he

00:52:16.660 embarked on an economic experiment and then the whole show is just like fun facts about how he

00:52:21.920 used to write letters to people with like invisible ink and they had to like dip it in water to read

00:52:26.240 the letter but it's like they all was there a reason why lenin was an important figure or a

00:52:30.840 reason why he was using invisible ink there there's something i feel like this reminds me

00:52:35.640 there's like a certain type of person who's like whoa fun facts uh hitler was a vegetarian

00:52:43.400 what yeah yeah and like that's that's where their interest ends they're just like isn't that crazy

00:52:49.020 it's throughout how to win friends and influence people carnegie will sort of offhand mention he's

00:52:52.880 like i've been pouring over biographies of abraham lincoln and like trying to understand the minds of

00:52:57.560 the great people in history and according to the biography that is roughly true but also he could

00:53:03.180 only read Reader's Digest summaries of books. He wasn't a guy who read like primary sources. He was

00:53:08.920 very interested in the world around him. And he liked talking to people. And it seems like he

00:53:12.440 really was like a very active listener in his interpersonal relationships. But he couldn't like

00:53:16.680 read a full book or like engage with actual literature. He's like, I just want the condensed

00:53:21.480 version of it. So there's interest, but there's not like ability. Compliment sandwich. Love your

00:53:26.840 courses you are illiterate again incredible courses so here's an excerpt from the biography

00:53:33.800 carnegie blithely ignored interests of all kinds economic regional racial religious ethnic

00:53:39.740 ideological to insist that political success was largely a matter of personality carnegie claimed

00:53:45.120 that theodore roosevelt's intense interest in other people was the secret of his astonishing

00:53:49.280 popularity he argued that james farley fdr's key political manager helped sweep his boss into the

00:53:55.440 White House because he had memorized the names of 50,000 people, and upon meeting one of them,

00:54:00.520 he was able to slap him on the back and inquire after the wife and kids. Even at the highest

00:54:05.940 levels of political operation, Carnegie contended, personal interactions trumped everything. When

00:54:11.160 Woodrow Wilson was unable to win American cooperation with the League of Nations at the

00:54:15.040 end of World War I, it was because he failed to use human relations skills. Carnegie argued that

00:54:20.380 Congress rejected his proposals because Wilson mishandled prominent Republicans. Quote,

00:54:24.620 He refused to let them feel that the League was their idea as well as his.

00:54:29.400 He should have sat at the breakfast table chanting until they signed the League of Nations.

00:54:33.500 Can we pause?

00:54:34.020 This guy definitely didn't have 50,000 names memorized, right?

00:54:38.560 That's another thing that Carnegie doesn't seem to be able to like show a little skepticism

00:54:41.680 to some of these anecdotes.

00:54:42.920 These are fun facts that go around, but it's like, that's probably not true.

00:54:46.260 But there's also, there's a book from the 1980s called The Positive Thinkers by Donald

00:54:50.420 Meyer, and it has a chapter on Carnegie.

00:54:52.760 And he points out that it's a little weird how many of these stories in the book are about, you know, CEOs and presidents.

00:55:00.400 And every single time, Carnegie just says, like, well, the reason they're successful is because they're nice as a person.

00:55:05.220 He genuinely believed this, and he sort of needed to believe this.

00:55:08.740 This is his theory of everything, right?

00:55:10.380 That, like, that being nice and friendly and open will lead to success.

00:55:16.040 And also, if you are successful, you must be nice and friendly and open.

00:55:21.180 yeah he was like what if someone rose in the morning and then immediately grinded yeah and

00:55:27.020 he was he was the first guy to think about that and uh you have to give him credit for that you

00:55:30.860 can't it's not derivative it's like well gee mister you just gotta get up and rise and get

00:55:34.780 on your groin set i'm gonna do that voice all the time that's the one that i can do

00:55:38.240 but then okay i would be remiss if we didn't talk about the final section of the book i think all

00:55:42.760 of these threads of dale carnegie's life culminate in part six seven rules for making your home life

00:55:49.700 happier oh oh my god is this is this our korean pilots this does the theory go back to 1936 so 0.52

00:55:58.020 rule one is don't nag with three exclamation points do you want to guess who this uh advice 0.51

00:56:05.120 is directed at peter i do want to guess their person is there a specific person in the household

00:56:09.300 who should be told not to nag i'm going to say that this is directed towards the woman the adult 0.51

00:56:15.460 woman incredible because of their proclivity their innate god-given proclivity for nagging 0.95

00:56:22.120 your mind peter your mind he immediately says many a wife has made her own marital grave with

00:56:28.540 a series of little digs when you say that in 1936 it makes me think you're being literal where it's

00:56:33.000 like yeah some men have had to kill their wife unfortunately because they're nagging so much he

00:56:37.760 does blame uh napoleon's wife for him cheating on her like systematically oh you you haven't even

00:56:44.080 have conquered the whole continent yet. What are you doing, Napoleon? You're a loser.

00:56:49.680 Also, a powerful French man cheating on his wife? I don't know. It must be the wife's problem. 1.00

00:56:54.620 So this is, he quotes some author at the time saying, if young wives would only be as courteous

00:57:00.880 to their husbands as to strangers, any man will run from a shrewish tongue. And then he gives us

00:57:06.860 this example. The wife of Count Leo Tolstoy discovered that after it was too late. Before

00:57:12.740 she passed away, she confessed to her daughters, I was the cause of your father's death. Her

00:57:17.780 daughters didn't reply. They were both crying. They knew their mother was telling the truth.

00:57:22.600 They knew she had killed him with her constant complaining, her eternal criticism, and her

00:57:27.820 eternal nagging. Get him, Dale. It does say that in Leo Tolstoy's Wikipedia entry, cause of death,

00:57:33.360 eternal nagging. They were like, we know, mom, we know you killed him. Yeah, I know. I love the

00:57:38.780 the detail that the daughters are like oh you definitely killed him what is this what is based

00:57:44.400 on dude how's he getting so much uh gossip about the wives of these powerful men so in his defense

00:57:50.140 this was a fairly widespread urban legend at the time it's it's kind of the uh yoko broke up the

00:57:54.700 beetles of its era they were having an argument or like it was a tumultuous time in their home life 0.90

00:57:59.880 this is october of 1910 he basically like goes out of that he's like oh fuck this goes out of the 0.94

00:58:05.180 house dies of pneumonia that's kind of like the way the story is typically told like okay so he's 0.83

00:58:09.600 running away from his wife and he gets pneumonia and dies wasn't he like 90 no he was first of all

00:58:14.200 he's 82 so an 82 year old man dying is like not something that like needs that much of an

00:58:19.440 explanation secondly he died of pneumonia 11 days after he left home so it was true that like they

00:58:25.520 were having a lot of conflicts like he basically had this like born again transformation late in

00:58:29.440 his life and he wanted to give away all of his copyrights right they're having all these fights

00:58:33.420 where she's like i would like our children and myself to be like financially taken care of and

00:58:37.900 he's like why are you why are you concerned with worldly possessions you're like 80 years old and

00:58:42.540 your husband's like i'm gonna give away everything and you're like well what about our like what about 0.96

00:58:47.040 the stuff we need to survive and he's like why are you so obsessed with this shit right and also 0.93

00:58:50.940 she's like 20 to 30 years younger than him too so she's like much more interested in she's like i 0.95

00:58:55.860 i've got a ton to live for but then it does seem like they were fighting a lot in the house but

00:59:00.400 then when he left, he had like a whole entourage around him and he was traveling around Russia and

00:59:04.840 there were basically the 1910 equivalent of paparazzi following him around. He was really

00:59:09.280 ambivalent about fame, ambivalent about the way that he would get mobbed by people wherever he

00:59:13.920 went. He was depressed. It's like any monocausal explanation of this is just like going to be

00:59:19.680 really ridiculous. So he does die of pneumonia, but that is caused by like all the other things

00:59:23.780 that he was doing for like the 11 days after leaving his home before he died. So it just is

00:59:29.120 not true that like he he rushed out of the house in like a t-shirt and shorts and then like

00:59:33.220 immediately died i don't even know why i'm bothering to debunk it like of course of course

00:59:38.840 seat was not nagged to death i i know i love that you're explaining you dug way too deep on the

00:59:43.860 research for that one i know i really i was mostly just curious i was like did leo told

00:59:47.800 his wife kill him because this is why you don't like women you've always told me uh your it's

00:59:53.300 your fear of being nagged to death the thing is we know men die of nagged to death all the time

00:59:58.420 I'm just wondering if it's true in this case.

01:00:01.000 We see this all the time in the self-help books about relationships where the advice is actually directed at the guy's wife.

01:00:10.700 We saw this in Men Are From Mars, right?

01:00:12.420 There's also another thing.

01:00:13.180 You know, when I was reading that anthropology book for our manhood episode, one of the things he mentioned in there was that this thing of like women as nagging, this is actually a fairly common trope of gender relations in like almost every society. 0.97

01:00:26.660 Interesting, ladies.

01:00:28.180 Anything to say for yourselves? 0.98

01:00:29.860 Well, the thing is you don't find it in more equal societies, partly because nagging is

01:00:34.160 a function of power relations, right? 0.77

01:00:35.620 When you don't have power in a relationship, when you can't open a bank account as a woman 1.00

01:00:39.320 in a relationship, you have to nag. 1.00

01:00:41.900 Right. 1.00

01:00:42.120 Did you pay the electricity bill?

01:00:43.120 Did you pay the electricity bill?

01:00:44.020 That's the only way you can get the electricity bill paid. 1.00

01:00:45.780 So you're saying that women do nag, but you blame inequality. 1.00

01:00:50.840 The concept of the nag is always very interesting because it implies that you're not doing

01:00:56.160 something that you're asked that you're asked to do right but also that perhaps you haven't 0.86

01:01:00.660 provided a reason so there are seven rules in this section i was ready after the nagging thing

01:01:05.160 for this to be like absolutely atrocious it's actually mostly okay you know rule two is don't

01:01:10.440 try to make your partner over i mean this is paternalistic but he has a thing where he's like

01:01:15.140 you know women have this strange thing where they want you to remember their birthday and anniversaries 0.99

01:01:20.400 and guys you should remember the fucking birthdays and anniversaries like even if you think it's dumb 0.99

01:01:25.580 that that's important to them. 0.99

01:01:27.020 It is important to them.

01:01:28.240 And so you should do it.

01:01:29.360 Which for the time, I'm like, okay, great.

01:01:31.500 It's not about like how to litigate that

01:01:32.900 or how to talk your wife out of that.

01:01:34.420 It's like, yeah, this is a fairly small ask. 1.00

01:01:36.160 Just remember her fucking birthday and anniversary. 0.99

01:01:38.060 There is something like this reminds me 0.99

01:01:39.660 of those like Jimmy Kimmel street interviews

01:01:42.480 where they go up to couples

01:01:43.460 and they're just like, what's her birthday?

01:01:45.300 What's her mom's name?

01:01:46.320 What's her middle name?

01:01:47.160 And like guys are just swinging and missing

01:01:50.040 at preposterous rates.

01:01:52.760 I don't get it.

01:01:53.600 The best one, my favorite one, is Rule 7.

01:01:56.500 This is the final rule of this section in this book.

01:01:59.140 Rule 7, read a good book on the sexual side of marriage.

01:02:02.740 What would a book from 1936 say?

01:02:04.640 I know.

01:02:05.560 It's very funny to me to be like, this is how you break a coal miner's strike. 0.92

01:02:09.600 This is how you run the country.

01:02:11.080 This is a lesson from Gandhi.

01:02:12.400 When it comes to sex, he's like, oh, just go read a book.

01:02:14.480 I'm not going to give you anything.

01:02:15.560 Just hear some books.

01:02:16.080 Yeah, I would have liked to hear his advice.

01:02:19.160 But I want to scope those books because there's probably no sex ad. 0.89

01:02:23.600 right so you're just sort of experiencing human genitalia for the first time which

01:02:29.800 that's pretty crazy the perfect encapsulation of the good parts of dale carnegie's personality and

01:02:35.800 the bad parts come at the end of this section of the book where he has a questionnaire about how

01:02:41.660 good of a marriage partner you are so the first set of questions are for husbands peter and i want

01:02:48.300 you to think deeply about whether you are doing any or all of these. Do you still court your wife

01:02:54.160 with an occasional gift of flowers with remembrances of her birthday and wedding anniversary or with

01:02:58.400 some unexpected attention, some unlooked for tenderness? Are you careful never to criticize

01:03:02.880 her before others? Do you give her money to spend entirely as she chooses above the household

01:03:08.680 expenses? Do you make an effort to understand her varying feminine moods and help her through

01:03:13.280 periods of fatigue nerves and irritability do you share at least half of your recreation hours with

01:03:19.300 your wife do you tactfully refrain from comparing your wife's cooking or housekeeping with that of

01:03:25.120 your mother or a bill jones's wife except to her advantage do you take a definite interest in her

01:03:31.020 intellectual life her clubs and societies the books she reads her views on civic problems

01:03:37.760 can you let her dance with and receive friendly attentions from other men without making jealous

01:03:43.000 remarks do you keep alert for opportunities to praise her and express your admiration for her

01:03:48.920 do you thank her for the little job she does for you such as sewing on a button

01:03:53.400 darning your socks and sending your clothes to the cleaners i would never let my wife darn my socks

01:04:00.600 without saying thank you the thing is i this advice to men is like more progressive than like

01:04:05.740 half the advice we we cover on this show pretty good it's like look for opportunities to compliment

01:04:10.740 her. Take her intellectual ideas seriously. Thank her for stuff that she does around the house.

01:04:14.720 Notice the little things that she does for you. Some of the language obviously is outdated and

01:04:18.620 the ideas are outdated, but it's mostly pretty good. Yeah, this is all pretty reasonable stuff.

01:04:22.720 But then, Peter, we also have to cover the advice to wives. Hell yeah. So read this with your dulcet 0.76

01:04:28.000 tones. I want all female listeners to listen closely and think about their own behavior. 1.00

01:04:31.340 Yeah. Listen up, ladies. You know? Time to lecture our audience of lesbians and cat owners. 1.00

01:04:37.360 do you give your husband complete freedom in his business affairs and do you refrain from 1.00

01:04:43.480 criticizing his associates his choice of a secretary or the hours he keeps do you do you

01:04:49.920 try your best to make your home interesting and attractive keep it clean do you vary the household

01:04:54.480 menu so that he never quite knows what to expect when he sits down to the table do you have an

01:04:59.600 intelligent grasp of your husband's business so you can discuss it with him helpfully can you meet

01:05:04.080 financial reverses bravely cheerfully without criticizing your husband for his mistakes or

01:05:08.640 comparing him unfavorably with more successful men so if he gambles away all of your income at

01:05:12.880 the horse track are you are you complaining ladies or are you chill do you make a special

01:05:17.460 effort to get along amiably with his mother or other relatives do you dress with an eye for your

01:05:22.880 husband's likes and dislikes in color and style do you compromise little differences of opinion

01:05:28.140 in the interest of harmony do you make an effort to learn games your husband likes so that you can

01:05:33.420 share his leisure hours and do you keep track of the day's news the new books and new ideas

01:05:38.980 so you so you can hold your husband's intellectual interest so yeah there is an imbalance here yeah

01:05:44.780 she has to sort of like uh psychologically mold herself to the shape of her husband yeah i mean

01:05:51.140 to me it's the perfect encapsulation of both the good things of his personality and also the

01:05:55.800 limitations of it that he's basically asking the person with more power in the relationship to like

01:06:00.140 show kindness and grace to the person with less power yeah but he also can't imagine a world where

01:06:05.300 he doesn't have more power he should have been the guy to come up with first wave feminism yeah

01:06:09.500 i mean you can't judge people on like the standards of right now and i i genuinely think

01:06:15.200 like this is fairly progressive for the time right it's also of course very limited yeah yeah

01:06:19.640 honestly i sort of ended this book and i ended the biography mostly liking dale carnegie

01:06:23.380 he seems like a good guy he seems like he started a lot of the threads of self-help that have

01:06:28.540 toxified yeah over time but most of this book is not toxic most of this book is like be nice to

01:06:36.220 people and try to think about other people's needs and don't be shitty and it sounds like

01:06:40.080 he lived according to these principles maybe to a fault right just uh just a guy who believed in 0.90

01:06:45.560 the power of being nice yeah the worst you can say maybe a bit of a sucker yeah didn't quite

01:06:50.920 grasp the world around him but this was again this was like one of the first times that anyone

01:06:56.060 ever thought of being nice it is interesting that the critical reception to this book when it came

01:07:00.000 out because of course it was a runaway bestseller and so it got reviewed everywhere the critical

01:07:03.820 reception was super negative and people basically had this like snobbish response to the book at

01:07:09.160 the time so colliers calls him a man with a magnificent grasp of the obvious got him i do

01:07:15.000 think that like this is pretty obvious advice but also it's worth reminding people of the obvious 0.82

01:07:20.000 advice and so much of the advice now is such fucking sewage that if what you're reminding 0.64

01:07:25.560 people of is like try to be nice to other people around you i'm willing to forgive like a lot if 0.95

01:07:30.620 that's the core message of your book right it's not useless just because it's obvious sometimes

01:07:35.520 it's like a good refresher right there's a reason that this stuff is helpful for people

01:07:39.100 even though it's sort of like yeah i kind of knew that i just needed to be reminded i need to keep

01:07:44.520 bit front of mind, right? I think that's totally fine in theory or in a vacuum. It gets worse and

01:07:51.580 more cynical over time because there's a thousand books like this now. Publishing a new one that

01:07:57.740 says the same thing is actually griftier and worse each time, right? Each time becomes more

01:08:04.800 derivative, more cynical, more grifty just by its nature. Carnegie was one of the first people to

01:08:09.640 come up with this idea that like, well, you can make a lot of money by teaching seminars to people.

01:08:13.240 But then I think later on, people were like, oh, well, you can make even more money by overpromising.

01:08:18.220 You can make even more money by fleecing people.

01:08:20.560 There are people who teach seminars because they have an idea they want to teach.

01:08:24.320 And there are people who first thought, I need to teach a seminar.

01:08:28.500 And then they jammed an idea into it, right?

01:08:31.380 And those are very different types of people.

01:08:33.360 And one of them is grifty and one of them is at least theoretically not.

01:08:37.560 So I want to end with a quote from the book.

01:08:39.680 I think this is like a really good summation of the book's kind of overall theme and message.

01:08:44.360 And I just think it's worth dwelling on.

01:08:45.680 So here's this.

01:08:46.540 This is from Carnegie.

01:08:47.860 Philosophers have been speculating on the rules of human relationships for thousands of years.

01:08:51.720 And out of all of that speculation, there has evolved only one important precept.

01:08:56.160 Do unto others as you would have others do unto you.

01:08:59.540 You want the approval of those with whom you come into contact.

01:09:02.560 You want recognition of your true worth.

01:09:04.800 You want a feeling that you are important in your little world.

01:09:07.980 You don't want to listen to cheap, insincere flattery, but you do crave sincere appreciation.

01:09:13.660 You want your friends and associates to be, as Charles Schwab put it,

01:09:17.420 hearty in their approbation and lavish in their praise.

01:09:20.860 All of us want that.

01:09:22.120 So let's obey the golden rule and give unto others what we would have others give unto us.

01:09:27.020 How, when, where?

01:09:28.640 The answer is all the time, everywhere.

01:09:31.260 Oh, what a sweetie.

01:09:32.200 I like when this is genuinely moving.

01:09:34.360 It's nice.

01:09:35.580 All the time, everywhere.

01:09:36.580 I like it.

01:09:37.060 I'm everywhere, yeah.

01:09:38.460 And how would I like to be treated?

01:09:40.160 I would like someone to tell me that I look cute

01:09:42.380 and then tell me, don't get stuck up.

01:09:44.560 Don't get stuck up, you can't spell.

If Books Could Kill - October 02, 2025

How To Win Friends And Influence People

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