If Books Could Kill - The Secret

00:00:00.000 Michael. Peter. What do you know about the secret? Uh, all I know is that for two weeks now I've

00:00:05.200 been visualizing having a good opening zinger for this episode. All right, I am going to set the

00:00:24.580 vibes by sending you a youtube video oh and i want you to just watch the first 50 seconds of it

00:00:32.380 okay and this is a pure vibe setter a year ago my life had collapsed around me

00:00:40.260 i'd worked myself into exhaustion my father died suddenly and my relationships were in turmoil

00:00:48.820 little did i know at the time out of my greatest despair was to come the greatest gift

00:00:58.200 you know this secret gives you everything you want what kind of a house do you want to live in

00:01:08.100 do you want to be a millionaire what kind of a business do you want to have do you want more

00:01:11.620 success what do you really want this is like i guess presumably the australian woman who's

00:01:18.500 talking this is a woman who's like walking through the desert and she's like on a quest and then she

00:01:24.960 goes up into the attic of her house or something some sort of like haunted castle and then she

00:01:32.060 opens a box like a secret treasure box and there's a book like a tome inside with a note that says

00:01:39.500 mama this will help and then she opens what is fundamentally just like a fairly generic self

00:01:48.380 help book that's right but she's presenting it as this like yeah a secret of like how to live

00:01:55.180 i guess and when she opens it images of great philosophers and artists flash before her eyes

00:02:04.140 i i wanted i just wanted to set the vibe because the secret is a book by rhonda byrne it's released

00:02:12.480 in 2006 but it's based on this documentary of the same name that she wrote and produced

00:02:19.780 the basic claim of this book is that it contains the secret to life when it came out it was a

00:02:27.200 sensation it sold michael 30 million copies holy shit that's that's almost 10 freakonomics

00:02:36.420 and ronda byrne herself who was really just a nobody before this suddenly everywhere uh talk

00:02:44.480 shows morning news segments right whole nine yards she is an australian woman visually sort 1.00

00:02:52.440 of like a yassified paula dean targaryen platinum hair and yeah she has that snapchat filter look

00:03:00.340 where she just sort of looks almost blurry right now the story that she's that is being told in 0.89

00:03:06.880 that uh opening sequence is that rhonda byrne was going through a very tough time and then her

00:03:13.660 daughter gave her a book titled the science of getting rich uh this is a 1910 book by

00:03:22.380 wallace d waddles okay who was just a an old-timey self-help guy from what i could gather

00:03:29.280 and she claims that this sort of like put her on the path to understanding the secret.

00:03:34.820 I don't want to get too far ahead of myself.

00:03:37.480 We'll talk about the substance of the book briefly.

00:03:39.580 But first, I want to talk about the experience of reading the book

00:03:43.520 because it does not feel like reading a book.

00:03:47.420 It feels like reading a book-length, multi-level marketing Facebook post.

00:03:52.300 The format of the entire book is that there will be somewhere between

00:03:56.120 one and three paragraphs of prose by Rhonda Byrne, followed by quotations that illustrate

00:04:02.300 the point being made.

00:04:03.800 Here is a sampling of the folks being quoted, and this is just from the first chapter.

00:04:09.660 There are well over a dozen of these.

00:04:12.380 Bob Proctor, who is described as a philosopher, author, and personal coach.

00:04:17.860 Dr. Joe Vitale, described as a metaphysician and marketing specialist, although I did some

00:04:26.000 research and he is a former amway executive which is just just perfect john assaraf uh described as

00:04:37.660 a money-making expert dr john demartini a philosopher and chiropractor these are grifters

00:04:45.540 michael these are grifters they have grifter names and grifter professions and they sell grifter

00:04:51.620 things money making professional it's like being a money making professional is how he makes his

00:04:57.480 money that's right you're paying them to tell you how to make money but that's how they make money

00:05:02.180 it's this weird mobius strip it's altruism michael they could keep it to themselves

00:05:08.020 but they are bringing this knowledge to you it always cracks me up because like

00:05:13.320 you could imagine a real version of this a realer version of this where it's like here's

00:05:18.240 Warren Buffett. Right. Instead, it's like, here's, you know, Steve, the top salesman at the local

00:05:23.020 GNC. Right. And he's going to explain to you how he understands the secret to the universe.

00:05:28.740 Here's Jack Lemmon from Glengarry Glen Ross to tell you. So, you know, I was a few pages into

00:05:36.140 the book and I was like, why is this the format of the book? Why is it just quotes and statements

00:05:42.760 alternating over and over again and then i realized remember i said the book was based on

00:05:48.360 her documentary what's a common documentary format there's some narration and then it's

00:05:53.880 interspersed with like little quotes from interviews with relevant people right what's

00:05:58.840 happening is that rhonda byrne isn't writing a book based on her documentary she is basically

00:06:04.260 writing the novelization of the documentary where it's like a carbon copy so you have like her

00:06:11.340 narrating and then yeah an expert pops in and says something just like in the documentary right

00:06:15.840 it makes for this very unnatural reading experience especially when you combine the

00:06:21.520 format with the content and it's just like layer upon layer of new age gibberish being presented

00:06:28.240 to you in one of the most unusual book formats i've ever witnessed i'm okay so i'm i'm having

00:06:34.400 this playing in the background without sound as you're talking and it's like it is just like a

00:06:40.960 parade of talking heads of people with extremely dubious titles one of them was a feng shui

00:06:46.780 consultant there's all this language on the screen these title cards about how like the secret was

00:06:51.760 suppressed for so long and it doesn't sound like it was it sounds like it was like a book that was

00:06:57.160 that was published and it doesn't sound like there's very much here that is like kind of worth

00:07:02.780 suppressing one of the big themes of the book especially early on is that she makes this claim

00:07:09.900 that the secret is this thing that's sort of held by the elites right and not purposefully not

00:07:18.400 shared with the people but at no point literally not once is there evidence to like back that up

00:07:26.460 like evidence of the elites hoarding this knowledge i paused this because i can't keep 0.67

00:07:31.900 fucking watching this while we're talking because it's it's too rich of a text and when i paused it 0.82

00:07:37.000 the title card is a quote that says the secret is the answer to all that has been all that is 0.98

00:07:43.580 and all that ever will be ralph waldo emerson a that's probably fake and b what is he talking

00:07:50.380 about is he talking about the same secret like that's just a generic quote from ralph waldo

00:07:54.980 emerson i'm glad you mentioned the emerson quote the quote is in the book but it's jammed in the

00:08:00.880 back and there's like a an appendix sort of area okay that i did not read as closely as the rest

00:08:06.080 in the book because my brain was melting yeah she attributes a quote to ralph waldo emerson

00:08:15.400 where he's talking about the secret quote unquote right when i read that i thought that's weird

00:08:21.360 a because i'm not familiar with famed essayist ralph waldo emerson thinking that this sort of

00:08:29.540 new age gibberish is real right and b because why would he call it the secret which is yeah

00:08:36.240 promotional terminology that rhonda byrne and her cohort sort of like latched on to

00:08:42.120 so i looked into this and the only thing i could find about it is one woman julia rickert in 2007

00:08:50.260 wrote a piece about trying to track down the source of this including like talking to ralph

00:08:58.060 waldo emerson experts and never finding any evidence that he ever said so from what i can

00:09:05.900 tell ronda byrne made up a quote and just attributed to like a famous author from the 1800s

00:09:15.660 maybe it's a mix-up maybe she thought that it came from noted man of letters ralph waldo emerson

00:09:21.160 when actually it came from steve the feng shui chiropractor in a strip mall in las vegas

00:09:27.480 So, all right, let's let's talk about the content a little bit. Now, as you can gather, the book makes it immediately clear that like the secret is not just a nice thing to know, but a fundamental secret to life. Right. It's presented as this age old truth known by the great figures of history. That is the the gift that she is bestowing upon you. Right.

00:09:54.720 So what is the secret? The secret it is revealed is the law of attraction. She quotes Bob Proctor,

00:10:03.080 aforementioned philosopher and personal coach, quote, everything that's coming into your life,

00:10:09.460 you are attracting into your life. And it's attracted to you by virtue of the images you're

00:10:14.700 holding in your mind. It's what you're thinking. Whatever is going on in your mind, you are

00:10:19.680 attracting to you burn later says quote thoughts are magnetic and thoughts have a frequency as you

00:10:26.820 think those thoughts are sent out into the universe and they magnetically attract all like

00:10:32.280 things that are on the same frequency exactly how magnets work they just attract ideas and events 0.97

00:10:38.300 yes this is this is one of my favorite fucking things where it's like you can say the most banal 0.97

00:10:44.880 shit but if you tell people that it's forbidden knowledge and it's been hidden from you by the 0.99

00:10:50.840 powers that be your idea will suddenly take on this like special magical property in people's 1.00

00:10:57.080 brains it's just a secret between you and 30 million of your best friends all she's really

00:11:01.880 saying is like try to have a positive attitude which whatever maybe that's true maybe it's not

00:11:06.500 but it's like that is something that people have been saying for hundreds of years there's nothing

00:11:12.020 remotely unique or interesting about that idea. Absolutely. But I think there's a nuance here

00:11:17.540 because it's true that the functional takeaway here is have a positive attitude. But the core

00:11:25.780 of this book is not about self-help, right? But what the secret is meant to be is a scientific

00:11:34.380 claim about the power of positive thinking being a real thing that really works right peppered

00:11:43.440 throughout the explanations of the law of attraction are various extremely unsourced

00:11:50.320 scientific claims by both burn and her various co-experts love it one dude says quantum physicists

00:11:57.800 tell us that the entire universe emerged from thought no i almost pulled the michael hobbs

00:12:04.300 and reached out to a quantum physicist about this.

00:12:06.360 And then I said, no, I'm not going to debase myself.

00:12:09.460 It started with thought.

00:12:11.120 Yeah.

00:12:11.440 By the way, not the only time quantum physics is brought up.

00:12:14.680 At one point, the book is addressing the question of how long it takes to manifest what you want

00:12:20.440 once you put it out into the universe, right?

00:12:22.460 Because that's sort of one of the obvious questions that flows from like,

00:12:26.640 well, if I can just attract things into my life with my thoughts, how long does it take, right?

00:12:32.220 Does it come next year or whatever?

00:12:33.300 Right. And Byrne says that Einstein told us that time is an illusion and that everything is

00:12:38.140 happening simultaneously. And therefore, it takes no time for the universe to manifest what you want.

00:12:43.720 The only obstacle is you truly believing it. Not what Einstein said, but OK.

00:12:48.960 Yeah. Not really what Einstein said. Also, does not make any practical sense. But there's only

00:12:54.700 so much time I can spend on like every little time that she says something that made my head 0.81

00:12:59.880 just fucking spin around like the exorcist if you blast this book at a wall it goes through two 0.58

00:13:05.440 different slits and then it creates a mark on the next wall so probabilistically you can't say where 0.96

00:13:11.080 the book is at any given time so before we get too far maybe worth pausing to note that the book

00:13:16.760 never explains anything about how the law of attraction works scientifically oh i'm livid

00:13:23.540 I would have loved like a long, like really try hard scientific explanation.

00:13:29.320 Like some physics diagram.

00:13:34.780 At certain points, it expressly says that you don't need to know how it works.

00:13:39.100 You just need to know that it works.

00:13:41.040 And there are hints that asking how it works is counterproductive because, quote, how it

00:13:48.640 will happen, how the universe will bring it to you is not your concern or your job.

00:13:53.540 when you are trying to work out how it will happen you are emitting a frequency that contains a lack

00:14:00.320 of faith don't question it don't if if you think at all about like the rank pseudoscience that this

00:14:08.980 is you're actually denying it and it won't work for you i mean you're seeing the real like the

00:14:14.600 direct parallels with religious thinking right just totally yeah if this is not working for you

00:14:19.420 if you're confused about it, that's actually you not having enough faith. And the only way for it

00:14:25.880 to work is for you to not question it. It sounds like every religion and every diet. It's like,

00:14:32.360 I'm going to sell you something that probably isn't true. And if you can't make it work for

00:14:37.340 you, it's not the fault of the plan. It's the fault of you for not being able to implement

00:14:42.260 this like Baroque deranged system of like scheduled things and fasting and like macronutrients.

00:14:49.040 I have texted you a couple of images, pages from the book.

00:14:52.880 Okay.

00:14:53.280 I imagine you will be unsettled from the first sentence onward.

00:14:56.840 So this is, I guess, a quote from Bill Harris, who's described as teacher and founder of Centerpoint Research Institute.

00:15:04.200 It says, Robert was gay.

00:15:07.160 He outlined all of the grim realities of his life in his emails to me. 0.78

00:15:12.620 In his job, his coworkers ganged up on him.

00:15:14.980 When he walked down the street, he was accosted by homophobic people who wanted to abuse him in 0.78

00:15:19.260 some way. He wanted to become a stand-up comedian, and when he did a stand-up comedy job, everybody

00:15:23.980 heckled him about being gay. His whole life was one of unhappiness and misery, and it all focused

00:15:29.640 around being attacked because he was gay. I began to teach him that he was focusing on what he did 1.00

00:15:34.840 not want. I directed him back to his email that he sent me and said, read it again. Look at all

00:15:40.060 the things you do not want that you're telling me about. I can tell you're very passionate about

00:15:44.340 this, and when you focus on something with a lot of passion, it makes it happen even faster.

00:15:48.980 He started taking this thing about focusing on what you want to heart, and he began really trying

00:15:53.520 it. What happened within the next six to eight weeks was an absolute miracle. All the people in

00:15:58.700 his office who had been harassing him either transferred to another department, quit working

00:16:02.960 at the company, or started completely leaving him alone. He began to love his job. When he walked

00:16:08.180 down the street, nobody harassed him anymore. They just weren't there. When he did his stand-up

00:16:12.620 comedy routines he started getting standing ovations and nobody was heckling him his whole

00:16:17.480 life changed because he changed from focusing on what he did not want what he was afraid of what

00:16:22.380 he wanted to avoid to focusing on what he did want yeah um thoughts this is true sounds totally

00:16:33.200 nothing to pick at here this is my favorite anecdote in the whole book it's so good this

00:16:38.880 dude cured homophobia through the power of the secret he had his entire department restructured

00:16:46.280 through the power of his mind he willed a open mic stand-up comedy career into success the secret

00:16:54.020 is so powerful that he somehow got a standing ovation at a comedy club something that does

00:16:59.480 not happen something that has never happened in the history of comedy clubs

00:17:02.980 so there's a lot going on here one thing i want to um use this to illustrate is that

00:17:10.700 it's not just about the power of positive thinking per se it's that whatever you think about you

00:17:18.620 attract to you and that means when you focus on the negative you're actually attracting those

00:17:24.460 negative things into your life so if you become obsessed with the people that street harass you

00:17:29.820 you're attracting street harassment but if you visualize walking to work with no street harassment

00:17:36.140 you're attracting that so that's the that's the lesson when you're getting homophobia done to you

00:17:42.740 you don't want to dwell on it you just want to think positively and you will eventually

00:17:48.020 get all of your co-workers laid off

00:17:50.260 i like how in the history of american victim blaming we've gone from

00:17:58.260 what was she wearing to what was he thinking huge progress i'm also i mean obviously homophobia

00:18:05.460 still existed in america in the early 2000s but like where was robert getting constant street

00:18:12.040 homophobic harassment yeah you don't want to downplay societal homophobia but the idea that

00:18:19.640 this guy was going to, like, stand-up comedy clubs and people were just like, get off the 0.86

00:18:24.560 stage, you queer. 0.99

00:18:25.700 Like, where was this? 1.00

00:18:27.600 I think better advice would have been, like, move to San Francisco, Robert.

00:18:32.420 So the book spends a lot of time going over ways to harness the law of attraction, right?

00:18:40.120 Meditating to clear your mind of bad thoughts, maintaining a mental catalog of happy thoughts.

00:18:45.860 Okay.

00:18:46.100 It is mostly throughout the book the same concept restated.

00:18:49.640 over and over. The interesting parts come when they are trying to discuss the real world things

00:18:55.660 that you can accomplish using the secret. Almost immediately, Byrne turns the discussion to making

00:19:01.140 money. She claims that wealthy people use the secret, whether they know it or not, and that

00:19:05.960 the key to being rich is just thinking about being rich and not thinking about being poor.

00:19:11.960 One expert, quote unquote, says that wealth inequality is explained by the secret. Here's

00:19:18.200 the quote. Why do you think that 1% of the population earns around 96% of all the money

00:19:23.280 that's being earned? Do you think that's an accident? It's designed that way. They understand

00:19:28.720 something. They understand the secret. All those heirs to fortunes just have positive thinking and

00:19:34.020 that's the reason they get their like Mars dynasty money when their grandparents die. Yes. I would

00:19:39.900 give up everything I own to be able to go back in time and read that to Karl Marx.

00:19:44.340 you get these like pearls of wisdom like uh the only reason any person does not have enough money

00:19:51.280 is because they are blocking money from coming to them with their thoughts turns out you just

00:19:55.980 don't want money that's the one thing why hasn't anyone asked poor people to want money their

00:20:00.740 vibes are too negative michael we've talked on the show a lot about how most of the books

00:20:05.020 that we cover like could have been magazine articles i feel like this is one that could

00:20:10.060 have been just a bumper sticker like i don't understand how you can pad this concept out to

00:20:16.620 like 200 pages i mean it could yeah it could be a tweet that just says get your vibes right yeah

00:20:21.700 that's it again we are literally explaining poverty here not as any sort of systemic condition

00:20:28.040 or the consequence of policy of any type but as a purely personal failing right at times it's

00:20:35.900 almost expressly religious, with Byrne at one point assuring the reader that Jesus, Abraham,

00:20:42.780 Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, and Moses were all millionaires.

00:20:50.180 She quotes some other grifter's book about this that was called like Millionaires of

00:20:53.920 the Bible or something like that.

00:20:55.640 Jesus famously loved inherited wealth.

00:20:58.080 Millionaire Jesus.

00:20:59.140 I'm coming around to the view that she's actually correct because if this is a secret that like 0.67

00:21:04.160 all of the world's elites know and then the secret is that like poor people are poor because they're

00:21:09.820 lazy and they don't want to be rich that is actually what most rich people believe about 0.98

00:21:14.600 poor people right this is just power flattering bullshit that she's like repackaging for people 1.00

00:21:20.220 who don't have that much power the funny part about her claiming that like jesus is a millionaire 0.97

00:21:24.560 is because like you can't ever claim that jesus's vibes were wrong yeah right when you're putting 0.84

00:21:29.460 out a self-help book. And if his vibes were right, he had to be rich because that's how

00:21:34.960 the secret works. Right. You're not editing the ideology. You're editing his biography

00:21:38.700 to make it fit the ideology. Yes. Right. Now, the first sort of case study that Byrne does

00:21:45.200 is called The Secret End Your Body. Oh, no. As you might imagine, it's about using the

00:21:50.900 secret to lose weight. Now, as soon as I saw this, I got admittedly very excited thinking

00:21:56.500 about how mad you are going to get. I am sending you another portion of this book. I want you to

00:22:07.120 read it. Oh no. Even though you've done, you've covered almost every type of pseudoscience related

00:22:13.680 to weight, this might still be new to you. So I'm excited. The first thing to know is that if you

00:22:18.660 focus on losing weight, you will attract back having to lose more weight. So get having to

00:22:23.700 lose weight out of your mind it's the very reason why diets don't work because you're focused on

00:22:29.380 losing weight you must attract back continually having to lose weight what okay the second thing

00:22:35.600 to know is that the condition of being overweight was created through your thought to it to put it

00:22:41.320 into the most basic terms if someone is overweight it came from thinking fat thoughts whether that

00:22:47.120 person was aware of it or not. Jesus Christ. A person cannot think thin thoughts and be fat.

00:22:53.860 It completely defies the loss of attraction. Whether people have been told they have a slow

00:22:59.020 thyroid, a slow metabolism, or their body size is hereditary, these are all disguises for thinking

00:23:05.380 fat thoughts. If you accept any of these conditions as applicable to you and you believe it, 0.99

00:23:10.820 it must become your experience and you will continue to attract being overweight.

00:23:16.600 There's actually science that confirms this, that people in South Pacific Islands just have higher rates of fat thoughts.

00:23:23.280 That's why we see higher rates there.

00:23:26.420 When she got to fat thoughts, I had to like do a lap around my apartment.

00:23:32.120 You resisted texting me about it beforehand, which is nice to do.

00:23:35.140 I really, I was like, oh my God, this is so on point for Michael.

00:23:39.740 I love the circular logic of this.

00:23:41.860 She says, a person cannot think thin thoughts and be fat.

00:23:45.160 it defies the laws of attraction it's like well if it doesn't all come back to thin thoughts

00:23:50.800 then the law of attraction isn't even true and we know it's true therefore we know it's true

00:23:55.800 i also love that she throws slow thyroid in there like they're like physiological reasons

00:24:03.900 why some people are fatter than others and she's like no no no that's the thoughts that's like 0.75

00:24:09.580 what this made me realize um so she's expressly saying here that food has no relationship

00:24:15.060 to your weight but beyond that that your weight is dictated in full right by your thoughts about

00:24:21.000 your weight which is the first time it hit me that like not only is the law of attraction fake

00:24:27.200 science but it's also supplanting real science right not only are you fat because you're thinking 0.96

00:24:32.960 fat thoughts but your thyroid condition is not real right your bodybuilding routine is useless

00:24:38.120 you should just visualize being jacked i wonder if she's proposing any limits to this so like

00:24:42.780 i'm five foot six i'm 40 years old if i start thinking tall thoughts will i be like six one

00:24:49.140 by the end of the year this this basic question in its various forms haunted me throughout the

00:24:54.340 book if you read what what their claims are literally there is nothing stopping you from

00:25:02.400 visualizing being taller and therefore getting taller fuck yeah they will expressly say there

00:25:06.260 is there is no limit to the law of attraction right the the universe's power is infinite i

00:25:12.380 believe that if you ask them this question my best guess is what they would say is that like

00:25:15.660 our collective belief that this is impossible makes it impossible right so i can't humans can't fly

00:25:22.380 because we all think that humans can't fly remember in miracle on 34th street when everyone

00:25:26.320 starts believing in santa yeah if we could if we could pull off that kind of collective energy

00:25:30.720 we all grow two inches it also it also implies because i i know too much actual science of 0.97

00:25:38.380 fatness to like swallow fucking any of this. It also implies that Americans started becoming 0.88

00:25:44.260 fatter in the 1980s because we all started having more fat thoughts. But then what would the cause

00:25:50.740 of that be? Like she's just pushing the causality up one level. Well, beyond that, every social

00:25:56.640 trend, Michael, of any type. Right. Is just the result of vibe shifts. All of it. Wait, has she

00:26:04.380 She told Stephen Leavitt about his abortion and crime hypothesis, because I think that we have some more explaining to do about the 1990s.

00:26:12.200 Actually, Bill Clinton just manifested low crime rates.

00:26:14.940 Thank you. 0.70

00:26:16.620 So she puts all of this weight loss stuff in the context of like, aren't we all trying to lose a little bit of weight, ladies?

00:26:24.860 But the implication is also that like a starving person could manifest a healthier weight through positive thinking.

00:26:31.920 Right.

00:26:32.440 Right.

00:26:32.580 And you see this dark current running throughout this book, occasionally made explicit that

00:26:38.060 human suffering is something that people bring on themselves because their vibes are off.

00:26:43.520 If you're poor or sick, that is something you could fix by just properly visualizing

00:26:49.220 being rich and healthy.

00:26:50.720 And if you view the world like this, things like charity and human kindness are literally

00:26:57.180 useless, right?

00:26:58.460 You cannot help other people. 0.94

00:27:00.440 They can only improve their circumstances.

00:27:02.580 by manifesting it like just this truly dark view of the world the framing of it as a secret also

00:27:10.120 invites you to become an evangelist for this right and like walk up to fat people who you

00:27:16.140 see on the street and be like did you know and just be terrible to them right because it's like 0.99

00:27:21.340 i know something that you don't any marginalized minority you would give them a fucking lecture 0.88

00:27:26.680 about their attitude so worth taking a step back here i think and realizing that the premise of 0.87

00:27:31.380 this book is that it is telling you the secret to the universe and then they follow that up by

00:27:36.040 explaining how to get skinny and rich with it imagine having like the power of all the infinity

00:27:41.520 stones and then you look around the entire world and you're like i want a six-pack that's your

00:27:47.100 finger snap is like you know what body fat that's it thanos just snaps his fingers and gets like a

00:27:52.920 little more vascular i mean and there are sections of the book that are a little bit emotionally

00:27:59.680 healthier if i could put it okay okay there's a part about using the secret in relationships

00:28:04.320 which actually focuses a lot on loving yourself in order to attract love from others making it by

00:28:10.780 a wide margin the least problematic portion of the book i know that's actually i was like yeah

00:28:15.900 on a relative scale that's not that bad there's a chapter on the secret and health which goes

00:28:21.020 beyond losing weight and unfortunately talks expressly about using the secret to cure diseases

00:28:27.860 yeah that's not good now we have uh as you can tell taken a turn away from the emotionally

00:28:34.340 healthy portions of the book pretty quickly yeah recall what i mentioned about the science

00:28:39.700 of the secret supplanting real science yeah burn says that you cannot catch any virus unless you

00:28:46.440 think you can oh no so i guess the claim is that the field of virology is an illusion of some sort 0.99

00:28:53.340 Fake shit. The COVID pandemic was just because the entire world at once decided to make themselves vulnerable to this, I guess, virus that doesn't exist. 0.96

00:29:04.160 That's right. It's a plandemic. There's a story shared about a woman who claims to have used the secret to cure her breast cancer, which is actually a piece of shit move because you could theoretically manifest anything, right? 0.78

00:29:17.260 So she could have manifested the actual cure for breast cancer, but instead she just cured herself. 0.86

00:29:23.340 um very selfish i know why doesn't she manifest that like a big research breakthrough all of

00:29:28.780 these people claim to like have this sort of mastered and none of them have ever done anything

00:29:34.080 good for the world can i manifest like a bunch of billionaires deciding to pay their taxes

00:29:38.940 can i manifest that at some point we need to talk about the uh conflicting manifestations

00:29:44.960 oh yeah one person is manifesting one thing and one person is manifesting another right um never

00:29:50.200 explained okay let's all right Byrne says quote you can think your way to the perfect state of

00:29:58.920 health the perfect body the perfect weight and eternal youth and it's hard to read this section

00:30:04.920 without wondering what the death toll of this book might be I know I remember when we were

00:30:08.760 talking about the title of our podcast we were like is this going too far but then we have books

00:30:13.200 like this yeah it's like we're not going far enough Jesus Christ moving on to like the sort

00:30:18.520 of extraneous chapters toward the end of the book. There's a chapter called The Secret to the World

00:30:23.060 about using the secret to make the world a better place. But one thing the book never really makes

00:30:29.000 clear is the extent to which your use of the secret impacts others. Remember, that one guy

00:30:35.640 fixed homophobia among what seemed to be a few dozen people at least, right? And in doing so

00:30:41.720 violated their religious liberty. So how do we balance that? If you can will away localized

00:30:47.560 homophobia can someone just manifest world peace what are the limits here what about just peace in

00:30:53.900 like one decent sized place right i live in queens could i manifest no crime in queens could i

00:31:01.700 manifest decent mexican food in berlin the the final chapters are titled the secret to you and

00:31:09.320 the secret to life respectively same drivel over and over again you have the power to manifest

00:31:15.940 anything and everything go forth and prosper um and that's sort of it that's how the book wraps

00:31:22.660 oh yeah there is a sort of semi-appendix of that just gives like sort of mini biographies of all 0.66

00:31:28.480 of the contributors oh filler the filler in these fucking books right right once you hit the actual 0.59

00:31:34.100 end of the book you're at like 160 pages and so you could tell that some publisher was like i'm 0.97

00:31:37.860 gonna need 40 more yeah we just need we gotta hit the marks man so yeah i mean that's the substance

00:31:44.560 of the book i think it makes sense to step back and think about this book's place in like the

00:31:51.500 canon of self-help which i imagine will be returning to many times on this podcast yeah

00:31:57.440 unfortunately i think part of what's happening here is that the secret is taking the genre

00:32:02.140 to like its natural end point these books propose magic bullet solutions to complex problems right

00:32:11.400 And so it sort of makes sense that eventually someone would take that idea and just make it explicit.

00:32:17.260 Right.

00:32:17.420 Not like I'm giving you useful advice, but like I'm giving you the magic bullet.

00:32:22.360 Right.

00:32:22.480 I'm giving you an ironclad scientific way to fix all of your problems in like the snap of a finger.

00:32:29.120 It was like the only place that this sort of positive thinking self-help grift could go.

00:32:34.660 It had gone everywhere else.

00:32:35.980 The point had already been made a hundred times by a thousand different people.

00:32:40.520 and here we are right at the natural end point which is just taking it to the most absurd

00:32:45.660 possible place do you i mean i always really struggle with books like this because i feel like

00:32:50.900 on some level it probably is good advice to tell people to like you know i don't know not wallow

00:32:57.920 in misery yeah yeah there's a version of this advice that is like kind of prudent right like

00:33:04.540 100% you, you are dealing with a job loss. I am going through a breakup. I have a tendency to like

00:33:11.360 wallow in sadness and anxiety. And I have had people tell me like, maybe try to think about

00:33:17.440 something you enjoy or like maybe try to do something you love right now. Yeah. The responsible

00:33:22.500 version of that advice is like, this will help a little bit, right? It's like taking a Tylenol

00:33:27.860 or something like, is it, is it going to make your back pain go away? No, but it's going to like

00:33:33.080 lessen it a little bit it'll help yeah so the problem here isn't necessarily that these books

00:33:37.600 are telling people to think positively it's that they're telling them to think positively in every

00:33:41.700 situation yeah and the inability to think positively is something that explains societal

00:33:47.360 phenomena around you which it really doesn't right if you want to explain cancer rates you

00:33:53.040 should look at like i don't know environmental toxins yes but what's upstream of environmental

00:33:58.760 toxins. It's people manifesting environmental toxins. You have to go deeper, Michael. It's

00:34:04.500 always manifestation. On a serious note, it's hard not to imagine the ways in which this would

00:34:11.080 get in the way of actual self-improvement, right? We've talked about how this can blame indigent and

00:34:19.040 sick people for their own lot. But what about when someone is the victim of ongoing abuse,

00:34:28.020 right like there may be things that they should do and do quickly if they want to escape the abuse

00:34:34.080 if they want to survive but what the secret is telling you is that it's all all of that is just

00:34:38.880 an illusion right all of that is just an output of your own thoughts and therefore what you really

00:34:44.100 need to do is visualize yourself in a better situation which is not just victim blaming

00:34:49.840 although it is but it impedes actual solutions actual actions the victim might take to make

00:34:55.840 themselves safer right i don't think it's um difficult to conceptualize of circumstances

00:35:01.040 where this advice is just like flat out dangerous what's so bleak to me about it is not the content

00:35:08.360 of the book but the fact that it was so popular and like yeah oprah famously gave it a ton of

00:35:14.040 credibility i feel like so much of it comes back to this is such my like old man thought

00:35:19.940 but like historical literacy i mean this is one of the oldest ideas of humanity right is that

00:35:25.820 It's all attitude.

00:35:27.620 You need to think positively to get ahead.

00:35:30.260 There's no societal structures that affect you in any way.

00:35:32.920 Blah, blah, blah.

00:35:33.560 Yep.

00:35:33.760 One thing I've learned from doing the show with Aubrey is that, like, there's medicine 0.98

00:35:36.680 shows that were peddling the same bullshit in, like, the late 1800s. 0.95

00:35:39.820 Yeah. 0.96

00:35:40.460 It's really weird to me that at no point was there, like, a producer at the Oprah show

00:35:45.580 who was like, wait a minute, this has been proposed as, like, the key to humanity roughly

00:35:50.780 10,000 times before.

00:35:52.200 Yep.

00:35:52.340 And none of them have worked out. 0.90

00:35:53.620 And, you know, I mean, look, when you have pseudoscientific bullshit rising to enormous levels of prominence, you know that Oprah's involved. 0.89

00:36:01.980 She has to be. 0.98

00:36:02.900 Right.

00:36:03.700 So the Oprah saga gets pretty dark pretty quickly.

00:36:07.720 Yeah.

00:36:07.900 Oprah has Byrne on her show in like 2007 and gives her like a full-throated endorsement. 0.90

00:36:13.860 Right.

00:36:14.080 Saying that she should be – that viewers should be teaching the concept to their kids.

00:36:18.700 Oh.

00:36:19.060 A few months after Burn is featured on the show, a woman named Kim Tinkum wrote to Oprah saying that after hearing about the secret on the show, she decided to forego chemotherapy for her breast cancer and instead rely on the power of positive thinking.

00:36:36.580 And Oprah flies her out to be on the show and to tell her, hey, don't ignore modern science, which is sort of bizarre because the woman was not misreading the book.

00:36:49.620 The book expressly says that the secret can and has cured breast cancer and very heavily implies that medical treatment itself is functionally a placebo.

00:37:00.200 so oprah i assume has some sort of realization behind the scenes yeah has to dedicate a whole

00:37:07.180 show to low-key being like look this doesn't actually work guys i mean i mean don't like do

00:37:12.180 what this says yeah one thing i think a lot about is in season two of the dream podcast which was

00:37:19.280 all about the wellness industry there's the story of this woman who went to a wellness retreat and

00:37:23.040 it was all about like they're they're building like a little shrine in the middle of a pond

00:37:27.120 and they have these like sort of counselors who are guiding them through it and they're like

00:37:31.320 whatever you do don't knock over the shrine whatever you do it can't get wet right and as

00:37:36.340 their group is building the shrine in the middle of this pond someone someone's elbow or something

00:37:40.080 like knocks it over even though they've been given this exhortation a million times that it's like

00:37:44.720 this sacred object and they'll they'll ruin the effect if it gets wet they just all quietly set

00:37:51.220 it back up and keep going and don't tell the counselors that's kind of what they want right

00:37:56.560 is like they don't want you to actually believe this stuff yeah which is i mean classic oprah

00:38:02.220 right to just totally quietly step back after the damage is irrevocably done right like she has

00:38:07.660 these quacks on her show non-stop and then cuts them loose when someone starts to ask like any 1.00

00:38:13.520 of the obvious questions that the presence of those quacks implies uh but like oops too late 0.88

00:38:18.760 dr oz is a senator yeah some of the other sort of weird things swirling around this book there are

00:38:26.240 tales of the secrets extended universe all of the uh all of the associated grifters one james ray

00:38:33.560 quoted throughout the book hosted a new age retreat in 2009 which involved what he described

00:38:40.580 as a sweat lodge ceremony and others described as a heat endurance exercise okay the ceremony

00:38:48.320 involved 50 people and resulted in 21 of them being hospitalized and three of them dying 0.98

00:38:55.740 oh fuck it was basically meant to be pseudo meditative thing where you're in the very hot 0.97

00:39:03.000 sweat lodge all reports say that he discouraged people from leaving except at like certain set 0.99

00:39:08.700 intervals and that many people wanted to leave and felt discouraged or expressly blocked by some 0.95

00:39:15.740 stories he was charged with negligent homicide and served two years for it holy shit during the 0.69

00:39:24.080 investigation before he was charged, I believe, he had a conference call with many of his followers 0.93

00:39:30.820 and people that were there. And he brought a medium onto that conference call who claimed

00:39:37.340 to be communicating with the dead people and reported to everyone there that the dead people

00:39:43.420 had left their bodies of their own volition during the ceremony and enjoyed themselves so much

00:39:50.040 that they decided to stay uh dead no way so they they are okay with dying and they don't want to

00:39:58.900 come back so like don't hold me accountable for the deaths basically they wanted to die they

00:40:02.840 chose to and they loved it and so they stayed dead that was the explanation given oh my imagine

00:40:11.020 if you could do this at like every murder trial like i you know i know i stabbed susan to death

00:40:15.180 but i've talked to susan she's okay with it why am i in trouble for susan thinking dead thoughts 0.96

00:40:21.620 right if she had manifested uh physically tougher skin maybe the knife wouldn't have 0.68

00:40:26.520 penetrated it i don't know what to tell you judge weak skin thoughts disgusting

00:40:30.400 uh um anyway yeah that guy is back in the self-help game uh of course should go without

00:40:37.040 saying obviously and he's doing fine yeah good burn herself would go on to publish a bunch of

00:40:43.080 near-identical books uh the power was the immediate sequel the magic hero how the secret changed my

00:40:51.440 life which is just a bunch of testimonials uh her latest she published in 2020 and it's titled

00:40:56.700 the greatest secret which you might think based on the title was going to be a new secret but

00:41:02.080 based on some pretty light research i'm confident is just the same secret again uh so yeah i mean

00:41:09.440 i'll give her points for consistency at least she's not like moving on to some like completely

00:41:12.820 new grift yeah i guess instead of manifesting world peace she decided to manifest writing the

00:41:18.780 same book over and over again for 15 years to each her own you know just like beethoven just

00:41:25.380 like ronald emerson they all knew it um oh man i mean it's hard to articulate how uncomfortable

00:41:30.220 it felt to read this like knowing how successful it was yeah i know god i cannot imagine reading

00:41:38.080 this book and feeling inspired i can't imagine reading this book and feeling anything other than

00:41:44.620 like a little bit upset yeah it's like these are like the book is proposing the tenets of the fall

00:41:51.160 of human civilization just like the complete disconnection of every person from every other

00:41:56.440 person the discarding of all knowledge heretofore acquired all of it to be replaced by the unfiltered

00:42:03.620 pursuit of our shallowest desires right like this is the worst book in history Michael it's the worst

00:42:10.540 I'm picturing a debate between Rhonda Byrne and like a panel of experts like a quantum physicist

00:42:17.860 a doctor you know etc and they all make the case for why the secret is pseudoscience and

00:42:27.620 they do that for hours and then Rhonda Byrne steps up and is just like well aren't these

00:42:32.760 a bunch of negative nancies yeah and the entire audience like erupts into applause

00:42:37.480 that's not a prediction that's just you watching oprah

If Books Could Kill - January 12, 2023

The Secret

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