Speaker 1: Personology is a production of I Heart Radio. Hi. I'm
Speaker 1: Dr Gail Saltz, and this is Personology. Today. We're going
Speaker 1: to be speaking about Howard Robart Hughes, Jr. He was,
Speaker 1: in his lifetime one of the most financially successful men
Speaker 1: in the world. He was an American businessman, but he
Speaker 1: was also a film director and producer. He was also
Speaker 1: an engineer and a record setting pilot. He also gave
Speaker 1: away a good amount of his money as a philanthropist,
Speaker 1: but he also came to be known as reclusive and eccentric,
Speaker 1: which probably had to do with his psychiatric illness obsessive
Speaker 1: compulsive disorder. My guest joining me today is James B. Steele.
Speaker 1: He's a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and best selling author,
Speaker 1: and he is the co author of the book Howard Hughes,
Speaker 1: His Life and Madness. Howard Hughes was born in nine five,
Speaker 1: perhaps on Christmas Eve, although that seems that I documents
Speaker 1: say different things. But we'll say Christmas Eve in Humble, Texas,
Speaker 1: which is kind of ironic for a man who was
Speaker 1: anything but humble or Houston, Texas. It sounds like I
Speaker 1: think it was Houston, because you know, one of the
Speaker 1: mysteries of his life is that his birth certificate was
Speaker 1: never found, and it was only when he in World
Speaker 1: War Two came around that his aunts had to verify
Speaker 1: as to when he was born and where the birth
Speaker 1: took place. So it's just typical of a man who
Speaker 1: lived his whole life with mystery that we don't even
Speaker 1: have a real birth certificate for that is pretty fascinating
Speaker 1: in it of itself, a man who would ultimately come
Speaker 1: to be a mysterious figure in so many ways. An
Speaker 1: only child, two parents who really didn't have much to
Speaker 1: start with, but whose father And this is just interesting,
Speaker 1: you know, when you think about what's nature and what's nurture,
Speaker 1: that's a big question in the life of Howard Hughes,
Speaker 1: and that his father had nothing. But his father, who
Speaker 1: was originally from Missouri, discovered, or let you say, designed,
Speaker 1: built a drill bit to drill oil, that's correct, and
Speaker 1: it revolutionized the oil industry because prior to the invention
Speaker 1: of this drill bit, conventional drills were basically destroyed when
Speaker 1: they hit extremely hard rock formations. So this particular drill
Speaker 1: devised a way to go through those formations, and in fact,
Speaker 1: it developed a fascinating name. At the oil fields, people
Speaker 1: called it the rock Eater because that's exactly what it did,
Speaker 1: and revolutionized the oil industry and ultimately made Howard you Senior,
Speaker 1: Howard's father fabulously wealthy, and that was actually the basis
Speaker 1: of his son's fortune. What's also fascinating in terms of
Speaker 1: what do you take away from your parents and learn
Speaker 1: or what has to do with, you know, innate intelligence.
Speaker 1: But he not only built this thing and revolutionized the industry,
Speaker 1: but he chose to a patent and be rented, not
Speaker 1: sell it, which really was instrumental in not only making
Speaker 1: his fortune but keeping his fortune in the sense that
Speaker 1: ultimately people were always dependent on renting these pieces. No
Speaker 1: one else could make these pieces, and so this became
Speaker 1: really for life in many ways, a source of Howard
Speaker 1: Hughes Junior's money. Absolutely. And it's funny that the father
Speaker 1: intuitively understood that the way you really make money in
Speaker 1: business is to be a monopoly, and that's an effect
Speaker 1: what he was, and everybody in the oil industry was
Speaker 1: dependent on that, and he fought vigorously for years to
Speaker 1: protect that patent, to make sure nobody else ripped it off,
Speaker 1: and then Howard continued that same process, but you're absolutely right,
Speaker 1: the leasing the renting of it assured not just the
Speaker 1: father's fortune, but particularly his sons. So fascinatingly, Howard's father
Speaker 1: was engineering, was very intelligent and innovative and business wise, intelligent, innovative,
Speaker 1: and also somewhat ruthless in his pursuit. He was also
Speaker 1: described as a loner. He didn't have very many friends himself.
Speaker 1: The father, he was the businessman, and he was away
Speaker 1: a lot. And that's just interesting because those words could
Speaker 1: be used to describe young Howard as a boy exactly.
Speaker 1: Howard was an only child and from early on a
Speaker 1: loaner early on, very interested in mechanical things. As far
Speaker 1: as I could tell in all the research we did
Speaker 1: for our book, he really only had one friend from
Speaker 1: his childhood and who basically was kind of his only
Speaker 1: real friend. It was the son of the fellow who
Speaker 1: had developed the tool company drill Bit with Howard Sr.
Speaker 1: And in fact they weren't in close contact. They didn't
Speaker 1: correspond much. But many years later, when Howard was famous,
Speaker 1: flown around the world, created all kinds of achievements. He
Speaker 1: was very unhappy with where he was in the world.
Speaker 1: And he called Dudley, this boyhood friend, and he said, Dudley,
Speaker 1: I've just messed up my whole life. I've messed it
Speaker 1: up terribly. And Dudley couldn't figure out what he meant,
Speaker 1: because at that point he was this famous aviator, this
Speaker 1: famous designer of airplanes, fabulously rich, Hollywood starlet's hanging off
Speaker 1: his arm. Whatever he meant by that, Dudley had no idea.
Speaker 1: But the point of my story on this is that that,
Speaker 1: as far as I could tell, and all the research
Speaker 1: we did, was his only him. He had no siblings.
Speaker 1: His father was away a lot with this business, so
Speaker 1: often not home. His mother, on the other hand, was
Speaker 1: a very different relationship. He was very, very close to
Speaker 1: his mother, you could say really and what the term I,
Speaker 1: as a psychiatrist would use a psychoanalysts and meshed. It
Speaker 1: was hard to know where one began and the other
Speaker 1: one ended. They were that kind of close. And it's
Speaker 1: important and interesting to note that his mother is described
Speaker 1: as being so nurturing as to being babying, being you know,
Speaker 1: sort of couldn't stop nurturing him. Was fairly intrusive with
Speaker 1: her nurturing. You will do it this way, you need
Speaker 1: to wash this way, you need to be healthy this way,
Speaker 1: and that she had a particular fear of germs herself.
Speaker 1: She imparted that concerns about violent germs was the term
Speaker 1: she used, which is an interesting personification of germs as
Speaker 1: something though to be really feared and that were aggressive
Speaker 1: in her mind, something that she seemed to pass on
Speaker 1: to Howard. Again, it's always interesting when we think about
Speaker 1: things like fears and phobias or obsessions. The impact of
Speaker 1: your environment certainly is there, and we know that about
Speaker 1: everything from simple phobias to O c D. But it's
Speaker 1: also true that things like simple phobias and obsessive compulsive
Speaker 1: disorder running families because there's a genetic basis for it,
Speaker 1: and we think there's something biologic as well. But she
Speaker 1: was afraid of violent germs, and fairness to her, there
Speaker 1: was a time of the real polio outbreak where understandably
Speaker 1: a lot of people were afraid about what you could catch,
Speaker 1: and terrible things did happen. But she would tell him
Speaker 1: to clean his body, try to kind of control what
Speaker 1: he ate. He needed to eat very curative foods, and
Speaker 1: talk to him a lot about being sick and be
Speaker 1: generally overinvolved, but he describes really having this close and
Speaker 1: nurturing relationship in a kind of positive way. Right. Absolutely.
Speaker 1: I think he was very close to her, and I
Speaker 1: think what you mentioned earlier, the fact his father was
Speaker 1: away in the oil fields selling the drill bit, building
Speaker 1: up the company that would become this great fortune. So
Speaker 1: they were together much more than he was with the
Speaker 1: entire family. It's true also that only children probably get
Speaker 1: more attention than children who are part of a multi
Speaker 1: child family. But he had been sick as a child,
Speaker 1: and the mother was frankly obsessed by this. And some
Speaker 1: of the most revealing letters we found were when she
Speaker 1: finally got up the nerve to let him go to
Speaker 1: camp when he was a young teenager. They sent him
Speaker 1: from Houston up to northeast Pennsylvania. Houston those days there
Speaker 1: was no air conditioning, unbelievably hot in the summertime. Human
Speaker 1: also fear of malaria, other kinds of problems, which on
Speaker 1: this day and age we don't think of a place
Speaker 1: like that having that back in those days, it was
Speaker 1: a real thing. So she sent him to this camp
Speaker 1: up in Pennsylvania, and she worried the whole time. She
Speaker 1: would send letters to the fellow who was running the
Speaker 1: camp watch out for Howard. If there's anybody who's sick
Speaker 1: near him, would you make sure that that boy gets
Speaker 1: isolated and I put Howard somewhere else. I understand there's
Speaker 1: a polio outbreak and that part of the world. Just
Speaker 1: please take care of him. And you know Howard's delicate
Speaker 1: makes you know this, that and the other thing. So
Speaker 1: we have actual physical evidence in these letters that she
Speaker 1: wrote repeatedly to the fellow who ran the camp, saying,
Speaker 1: I'm really concerned about him. Will you be concerned about him?
Speaker 1: Will you take special care to watch my boy because
Speaker 1: he needs special care? Basically that's what she was saying.
Speaker 1: In fact, she even had one time where she was
Speaker 1: so anxious about this. She and her husband were in
Speaker 1: New York. He was their own business. She said, I
Speaker 1: have to I have to come see him, and she
Speaker 1: apparently took the train to near the camp, and whether
Speaker 1: or not they ever got together or not was never
Speaker 1: revealed any of these records, but it was an indication
Speaker 1: of just how on the impulse wasn't her to protect
Speaker 1: him and to worry about his condition. So it's hard
Speaker 1: from Howard standpoint not to absorb some of that concern
Speaker 1: in some of that worry. I mean, you made such
Speaker 1: a good point at the beginning about what's part of
Speaker 1: nature and what do you pick up I'm paraphrasing you
Speaker 1: in your environment. I think there's an awful lot that
Speaker 1: probably both those channels flowed into Howard. It's worth noting
Speaker 1: that the way his mother speaks and is described that
Speaker 1: she herself may have had obsessive compulsive disorder, her intense
Speaker 1: concern about cleanliness and germs. Of course those things weren't
Speaker 1: diagnosed in those days, but that was a possibility, and
Speaker 1: that similarly his father's mother, his grandmother, is also described
Speaker 1: as having similar concerns and fears, which to have genetic
Speaker 1: loading from both sides of your family with O c
Speaker 1: D makes it not surprising at all that you would
Speaker 1: struggle with it. You're absolutely the grandmother on his father's side,
Speaker 1: I mean his father's mother. They lived in kiakak, Iowa,
Speaker 1: and it was on the Mississippi River. His father was
Speaker 1: kind of a famous regional lawyer for the railroads at
Speaker 1: the time, and the grandmother had this terrible fear of
Speaker 1: bugs and germans, like being in the closets and Howard
Speaker 1: spent quite a bit of time as a boy with
Speaker 1: those grandparents. Whether it was just for that visitor loan
Speaker 1: or when he was passing through town not entirely clear,
Speaker 1: but he saw first hand some evidence of that particular
Speaker 1: thing as well, and so it seems totally natural to
Speaker 1: him by the time he's like fourteen or fifteen years old,
Speaker 1: that people should be worried about these things exactly. And
Speaker 1: let's talk about him as a student. He was by
Speaker 1: all accounts, extremely mathematically minded and had a propensity for
Speaker 1: the kinds of sciences that lead to engineering. While he
Speaker 1: seemed to have incredible aptitude, he wasn't a very good student, right,
Speaker 1: which sometimes happens with people who were quite bright. As
Speaker 1: we all know, he wasn't a particularly good student. He
Speaker 1: didn't particularly like, as far as we could tell, the
Speaker 1: organized activity that was involved in being in a school.
Speaker 1: Even how Hard was the ultimate loner, and being in
Speaker 1: that kind of environment means you're part of the community.
Speaker 1: But he was very interested in engineering. He was very
Speaker 1: interested in mathematics even and I believe elementary school was
Speaker 1: they built some toy radio. This at a time where
Speaker 1: there were not a lot of radios around actually he
Speaker 1: built like the first transistor sort of CB type radio
Speaker 1: exactly and was in the newspaper, was like eleven years old,
Speaker 1: and it was a phenom in terms of electrical engineering
Speaker 1: sorts of feats. That was his instinct, and those were
Speaker 1: his instincts. He was very comfortable with numbers, He was
Speaker 1: very comfortable with the kinds of engineering drawings, conceptual things
Speaker 1: of that sort. So he was more at home with
Speaker 1: them than it really was with people. And he had
Speaker 1: already as a child, it sounds like an interest in flying.
Speaker 1: That was something that appealed to him in those early days.
Speaker 1: And aviation was the hot issue, I mean, the most
Speaker 1: dramatic thing that was happening in the world when he
Speaker 1: was a kid. I mean, the Wright brothers were only
Speaker 1: I guess a couple of years before he was born
Speaker 1: and was kiddie hawk. And so from then on there
Speaker 1: was one aviation advance after another that formed part of
Speaker 1: that whole story. So he sort of dove tailed perfectly
Speaker 1: with his mathematics and the possibility of flying. So it
Speaker 1: was a natural thing that he would later evolve into
Speaker 1: that particular field. At that point, his father had made
Speaker 1: enough money for him to do things that maybe most
Speaker 1: boys in those days wouldn't have been able to afford
Speaker 1: to do. He took flying lessons basically as a teen,
Speaker 1: which is pretty exciting, expensive venture, certainly in those days,
Speaker 1: but he already was sort of in pursuit of that
Speaker 1: interest of his yes, And after his mother died, his
Speaker 1: father spent quite a bit of time on the West
Speaker 1: Coast in l A, where a lot of the early
Speaker 1: aviation industry was starting to shape up because of year
Speaker 1: round moderate temperatures where you could build certain kinds of things.
Speaker 1: So before we get to his independence, let's let's talk
Speaker 1: about for a minute about the death of his parents,
Speaker 1: which happened at an early age and created a very
Speaker 1: odd scenario for him as an only child. His mother
Speaker 1: died he was seventeen. He was away at boarding school,
Speaker 1: and she developed well what turned out to be an
Speaker 1: ectopic pregnancy, which was in those days often deadly because
Speaker 1: they didn't have a treatment for that, really, and they
Speaker 1: often didn't discover it in time. And she said to him,
Speaker 1: I'll be fine, I'll be fine. I'm going in for something,
Speaker 1: but it's going to be fine, And of course she
Speaker 1: did not emerge. She died, and that was really devastating
Speaker 1: for both Howard and his father. Yes, and Howard at
Speaker 1: the time was in school in Santa Barbara, and his
Speaker 1: uncle Rupert Hughes, came up from Los Angeles and broke
Speaker 1: the news to him, and then the two of them
Speaker 1: took the train back to Houston. But it was a
Speaker 1: devastating blow, not just a Howard but even to the father.
Speaker 1: After that, I think he returned to school briefly, and
Speaker 1: then of course he got the other dreadful news a
Speaker 1: little over here after that, where his father, who had
Speaker 1: appeared to be in perfect health, very robust kind of
Speaker 1: figure as home in the oil fields of Texas and Louisiana,
Speaker 1: as he was in chatting up people in the movie
Speaker 1: community in l A, which he spent some time in,
Speaker 1: suddenly just keels over at his desk in Houston one day,
Speaker 1: that of a heart attack. So here's Howard at eighteen.
Speaker 1: Up to this time, his evidence no particular sign of
Speaker 1: independence or wanted to be his own person. He's been
Speaker 1: a very loyal son to both the mother and the
Speaker 1: father other But then something very dramatic happens. His relatives.
Speaker 1: His father had a brother by name and Rupert, who
Speaker 1: was a very famous author and screenwriter in California, and
Speaker 1: then his grandparents. I think by this time we're also
Speaker 1: living in California. The assumption was they would all oversee
Speaker 1: the tool company, Howard's the fortune, the basis and family fortune.
Speaker 1: But Howard, right away, right away, with no indication, with
Speaker 1: no advanced warning, says I want to buy you out.
Speaker 1: I mean, here's this eighteen year old kid. There's evidence,
Speaker 1: no sign of any particular independence. Who the family is thinking, gosh,
Speaker 1: she just lost both parents. He's eighteen years old, and
Speaker 1: he wants to buy us out. And it, needless to say,
Speaker 1: it created a tremendous rift in the family. They initially
Speaker 1: resisted this, but eventually he was so determined and so
Speaker 1: hardheaded and so stubborn about it, which was the hallmark
Speaker 1: of his character throughout his life as a boy, and
Speaker 1: I mean as young man and then as a mature
Speaker 1: man that he had. They eventually said, okay, buy us out.
Speaker 1: They were part owners somehow, or in the will they
Speaker 1: became parted in the wild, they were part owners. They
Speaker 1: were all in that together, but he was the majority
Speaker 1: owner right exactly. And he remembered something his father had
Speaker 1: told him once which in this case. He then starts
Speaker 1: to use on the family. His father had had some
Speaker 1: difficulty with one early partner, and his father said, whatever
Speaker 1: you do, don't ever have a partner in this world.
Speaker 1: So Howard took this to heart with his own family.
Speaker 1: Let's take a quick break here, we'll be back in
Speaker 1: a moment. His father basically told him business partners are dangerous,
Speaker 1: you know, as sort of like his mother told him
Speaker 1: germs or dangerous. And so his absorption of dangers and
Speaker 1: fears was very total. That really caught his attention. And
Speaker 1: I'm just thinking of of how he was is and
Speaker 1: these influences over the course of his life, and his
Speaker 1: being primed for danger signals and to do everything you
Speaker 1: can to batten down the hatches and avoid danger. By
Speaker 1: the way, after your two parents die, so you know,
Speaker 1: of course you think the world is a pretty dangerous place.
Speaker 1: That he would decide, you know, the most important thing
Speaker 1: was to avoid this danger. And I think the point
Speaker 1: you just made as an excellent one. He did see
Speaker 1: these various dangerous and out of this group, I think
Speaker 1: even stronger desire to be a loner. I mean, it
Speaker 1: came naturally to being a loner. But basically I think
Speaker 1: Howard felt, you can't trust anything in this world. You
Speaker 1: can't trust the fact your parents are going to survive
Speaker 1: a small operation and they're otherwise healthy. Father is going
Speaker 1: to live to be an old man. Don't even trust
Speaker 1: your relatives, don't trust your uncle or your grandparents, don't
Speaker 1: trust anybody. You just have to rely on yourself in
Speaker 1: this world. I think that's something that came out of that,
Speaker 1: and it's sort of dovetailed perfectly with his sense of
Speaker 1: being kind of a loaner anyway, and in so much
Speaker 1: of his life it wasn't a problem. But eventually, and
Speaker 1: I'm sure we'll get to that, it was a problem.
Speaker 1: Fascinating and he, as you said, you know, self sufficiency
Speaker 1: became the most important thing, the most important thing to him,
Speaker 1: and he could financially be self sufficient vis a vis
Speaker 1: this company, which then allowed him to use that money
Speaker 1: to explore and develop and innovate other companies, which is
Speaker 1: in the veins of his interests, which was interesting. He
Speaker 1: did this by at the age of nineteen. Petitioning to
Speaker 1: become legally emancipated was sort of a furthering of his
Speaker 1: I'm not going to count on anybody in this world
Speaker 1: it's me and I have to be the one, and
Speaker 1: he basically starts Hughes Tool Company. He makes that the
Speaker 1: center of things. But then he goes on to develop
Speaker 1: these other institutions, not surprisingly a medical institution, given that
Speaker 1: his parents both died of illness and he was so
Speaker 1: afraid of illness and germs. I think that seems really
Speaker 1: overdetermined that you would choose to make a medical institution.
Speaker 1: Two things happened with the medical institution. People are always
Speaker 1: asking him as he grew through life, what are you
Speaker 1: going to do with your money? And that became also
Speaker 1: a way to tell people that's where it's going to go,
Speaker 1: and that appeared to be something that was a good
Speaker 1: thing to do. Howard Is didn't need people for much
Speaker 1: of his life, but he had this absolutely sixth cents
Speaker 1: about what motivated the population and public opinion. He knew
Speaker 1: exactly what would ring true. And to say that you're
Speaker 1: going to leave your money to a medical institutional, that
Speaker 1: that was a good thing. That must mean Howard's a
Speaker 1: good person, and that must mean he's on the right
Speaker 1: track and he's he has bigger issues and motivations at him.
Speaker 1: Were there other indications besides this that Howard cared what
Speaker 1: people thought of him, what his public legacy would be.
Speaker 1: I'm glad you asked that, because Howard was obsessed by
Speaker 1: his image, even though he himself was very shy in
Speaker 1: many ways, and he all throughout his life he had
Speaker 1: various public relations people churning out certain things about in
Speaker 1: blatant life. He didn't he didn't have to worry about
Speaker 1: that so much because by that time the image was built.
Speaker 1: He wanted to create the image at all times that
Speaker 1: he was possibly the richest man in the world or
Speaker 1: one of the richest. He wanted to make sure the
Speaker 1: image that he was a great corporate leader and designer
Speaker 1: of machines and so forth. He wanted to conquer Hollywood,
Speaker 1: which he could do because of his money, not to
Speaker 1: make money. Most of his movies lost money. But he
Speaker 1: was very conscious of the image. And when he did
Speaker 1: the premier for his famous movie Hells Angels, which actually
Speaker 1: has some of the most remarkable aerial sequences for the
Speaker 1: planes of that time, the nine twenties that you'll ever see,
Speaker 1: I mean, they truly are amazing. I mean, three people
Speaker 1: have died in the filming of that movie because of
Speaker 1: these things were so dare devilished. But anyway, you look
Speaker 1: at those and you see wow. But what was typical Howard?
Speaker 1: When that movie premiered, he shut down Hollywood, searchlights, planes
Speaker 1: flying overhead, everything in the world focusing on that kind
Speaker 1: of thing. So Hugh was, while shy personally, in many ways,
Speaker 1: understood so well what it took to catch the public's attention,
Speaker 1: and that continued throughout life in the other movies as well.
Speaker 1: Did he talk to others about the importance of perhaps
Speaker 1: surpassing his father in success. He did not talk about
Speaker 1: that per se, but it was a conclusion we reached
Speaker 1: in our book that that was one of the great
Speaker 1: driving forces of his life. His father was a larger
Speaker 1: than life figured to him, who had really died before
Speaker 1: Howard himself reached his maturity. So maybe by at that stage,
Speaker 1: Howard's not even noticing perhaps a few flaws in his father,
Speaker 1: if he had any. I mean, the man is really
Speaker 1: on a pedestal at that point. He's created this great company,
Speaker 1: he's engineered this amazing is unfortune. It goes west with
Speaker 1: him to Hollywood to see his uncle, and people are
Speaker 1: dazzled by Howard Senior and a handsome man, very rich Man,
Speaker 1: so on and and so forth. So I think his whole
Speaker 1: life he wanted to do something that would equal that,
Speaker 1: but we came to the conclusion in his own mind
Speaker 1: he never did, even though he himself vastly exceeded the
Speaker 1: fame of his father in multiple areas of interest, from
Speaker 1: aviation to movies to other industries as well. That is
Speaker 1: interesting because it's not unusual, as you point out, at
Speaker 1: least through your teens to idolize a parent and see
Speaker 1: them as a hero. And then usually as you move
Speaker 1: along in your teens and early twenties, you start to
Speaker 1: devalue them, and maybe then ultimately after your twenties or
Speaker 1: late twenties, you start to come into a more just
Speaker 1: a realistic view that includes everything. But yes, left with
Speaker 1: this purely idealized view of a hero, it would be
Speaker 1: difficult to, when you know what you know about yourself,
Speaker 1: to feel that you could measure up. But I also
Speaker 1: think another thing comes to bear, and that is because
Speaker 1: of the many signs and symptoms of some form of
Speaker 1: obsessive compulsive disorder. The flip side of that is that Howard,
Speaker 1: there are many things about him and his work that
Speaker 1: indicate he was extremely perfectionistic, that he was incredibly detailed oriented,
Speaker 1: and that everything he did with the development of planes,
Speaker 1: with the movies, that he would do something over and
Speaker 1: over and over again because it had to be just right.
Speaker 1: And you could say, well, you know, this is actually
Speaker 1: a symptom of O c D, this level of perfectionism
Speaker 1: that actually can make people suffer terribly in their lives
Speaker 1: because nothing is ever exactly right. And sometimes people with
Speaker 1: O c D of this form can't get anything done
Speaker 1: because they have to keep redoing things, so nothing ever
Speaker 1: gets completed, and they're striving for it to be just right.
Speaker 1: But in the case of Howard Hughes, his perfectionism in
Speaker 1: many ways was an incredible asset. Your description a second
Speaker 1: ago is really a one paragraph description of what kind
Speaker 1: of drove him. It was both the source of his
Speaker 1: triumphs and later on it became the source of his
Speaker 1: really his own destruction in a way. But you're absolutely
Speaker 1: right the the O c D, the perfectionism you saw
Speaker 1: it in particular with the airplanes and actually in the
Speaker 1: making of the movies, and the reason he was able
Speaker 1: to make these movies like Hell's Angels, which cost a
Speaker 1: fortune and never made any money was because he had
Speaker 1: all this money and he could do things the average
Speaker 1: producer of a movie couldn't do, who had investors and
Speaker 1: other people to answer to. He had no partners, He
Speaker 1: had to man to spend. You can do whatever you
Speaker 1: want if you own your own movie studio. There is
Speaker 1: no one to tell you know, you can't do that. Exactly.
Speaker 1: The one big institution he had to we owned most
Speaker 1: of them, but not all of it turned out to
Speaker 1: be a real problem for him, which was t w a.
Speaker 1: The airplane. But that perfectionism you really saw not just
Speaker 1: in health angels, but you also saw in the making
Speaker 1: of the airplanes. You know, he designed and flew some
Speaker 1: very innovative aircraft. The original ones were a cross country
Speaker 1: Johnson and then he had his famous around the World
Speaker 1: flight in and prior to that, a lot of people
Speaker 1: thought of airplanes, it's just guys with leather caps and
Speaker 1: they get in the cockpit and they buckety buck across
Speaker 1: the Atlantic, and let's just an active, great personal heroism,
Speaker 1: which of course it was. But in his case, the
Speaker 1: round the World flight he took with several crew members
Speaker 1: was not only in heroic jount but the plan they
Speaker 1: designed and that he helped design and perfect was an
Speaker 1: engineering and mechanical marvel for its time, the Lucky thirty eight.
Speaker 1: So that was a case where the perfectionism was extremely important.
Speaker 1: It got them out of a couple of close calls.
Speaker 1: There was one close call in Shoe where they almost
Speaker 1: crashed into a mountain. But I think if the instruments
Speaker 1: hadn't been functioning properly, they might have been in some
Speaker 1: real trouble. They would have been in some real trouble.
Speaker 1: But anyway, later on in life, the perfectionism got out
Speaker 1: of control. And there's one it's almost a funny incident
Speaker 1: when he was having a battle that he was aircraft
Speaker 1: company which didn't actually make an airplanes and made electronics.
Speaker 1: He was having all kinds of trouble with the Pentagon
Speaker 1: because he was a defense contractor people trying to get
Speaker 1: decisions out of it. And as you pointed out, sometimes
Speaker 1: the c D people have trouble making a decision because
Speaker 1: they're afraid they're going to make the wrong decision the way,
Speaker 1: that's that and the other thing, And pretty soon you're
Speaker 1: just you're sitting there on this fence and it's so
Speaker 1: what do you do when that happens? Well, in Howard's case,
Speaker 1: it's almost comical. He's got this huge enterprise under government
Speaker 1: contract and generals and their force people are breathing down
Speaker 1: his neck. So what does he do. He orders the
Speaker 1: study of the all the candies that are being sold
Speaker 1: in the company's vending machines. He was kind of a
Speaker 1: funny health note as well, but again it's just something
Speaker 1: where he's able to make a decision on something that's
Speaker 1: totally unimportant that kind of saves him from making this
Speaker 1: big decision and diverse his attention. It's sort of something
Speaker 1: he can focus on and move forward and then perhaps
Speaker 1: have the issue that was kind of crippling him, the
Speaker 1: obsessing issue, take a back burner, which actually might have
Speaker 1: allowed him to then make that decision, which would be
Speaker 1: interesting because what it would be is a personal work
Speaker 1: around or like a self treatment you know of sorts
Speaker 1: and something we might incognitive behavioral therapy use to you know,
Speaker 1: teach a patient how to sort of unstick themselves, you know,
Speaker 1: at any time. So that's kind of fascinating. He needed
Speaker 1: something like that, I'll tell you it really did. Of course,
Speaker 1: there were not those treatments at that time, and people
Speaker 1: didn't talk about those things. The stigma was tremendous. But
Speaker 1: as you point out, hues Aircraft was really a maker
Speaker 1: of like satellites and technology, not airplanes. But he did
Speaker 1: have this love of aviation and airplanes and he did,
Speaker 1: as you just discussed, you know, build airplanes, set world records,
Speaker 1: and he married his interests. Which is also really interesting
Speaker 1: that he brought aviation to film in a way that
Speaker 1: both improved the brand of aviation filming himself and putting
Speaker 1: it in the films in a way that made aviation
Speaker 1: sexier if you will, and have the public be more
Speaker 1: interested in it and want to fly t w A.
Speaker 1: And at the same time he used that to make
Speaker 1: movies that he hoped obviously would be successful on groundbreaking
Speaker 1: by using the appeal of aviation absolutely and in fact
Speaker 1: you see in the case of t Way, he was
Speaker 1: one of those who had a hand in designing t
Speaker 1: Wway is famous plane which anybody young today is not
Speaker 1: aware of. But it was this absolutely gorgeous plan called
Speaker 1: the Constellation. Even gave it this wonderful name. It had
Speaker 1: basically three tales, three fins at the rear, and it
Speaker 1: became the great luxury airliner prop plane of its time,
Speaker 1: and he was used it very much in his movie business,
Speaker 1: very starlets back and forth the movie sets and things
Speaker 1: of that sort. And there's just unbelievable numbers of films
Speaker 1: where some famous Hollywood actress are standing on the gangway
Speaker 1: of a constellation to come out, waving to the press,
Speaker 1: waving to others, things of that sort. So it became
Speaker 1: it was a marriage of these two luxurious issues, aviation
Speaker 1: and movies. That's what was so much of Hughes's early
Speaker 1: driving instincts. It's fascinating that while in certain areas of
Speaker 1: his life he was obviously terrified of taking risks, you know,
Speaker 1: when it came to issues that is O. C. D
Speaker 1: touched on health and and well being and perhaps social issues,
Speaker 1: taking risks. In terms of relationships, as you pointed out,
Speaker 1: he really he had two definite but you know a
Speaker 1: couple of year marriages. It seems that he was often
Speaker 1: fairly certainly emotionally absent and often physically absent from those marriages,
Speaker 1: did not have children. Was pursued by various starlets, but
Speaker 1: it seemed more about superficial you look good with me,
Speaker 1: I'm very wealthy, I look good with you. Sorts of liaisons,
Speaker 1: but in planes, he really took risks and sadly ultimately
Speaker 1: had a terrible plane crash. But he really did take risks.
Speaker 1: That's at the heart of a lot of his image
Speaker 1: and why people are in part of him. I mean,
Speaker 1: in addition, he said a couple of ground speed records
Speaker 1: in California with a racer he designed, one of which
Speaker 1: christ but didn't hurt him. Then he set two transcontinental
Speaker 1: flights from l A to the New York area six
Speaker 1: and the other seven I believe, where you set the
Speaker 1: record for flying across the country. This is one person
Speaker 1: doing this in a little plane that took around eight
Speaker 1: to nine ten hours. But here's one guy in a
Speaker 1: cockpit flying through the night, and his compass went out
Speaker 1: on one of the early into the flight. And here
Speaker 1: he is flying at night, looking down at the lights
Speaker 1: of various cities, or hopes of the cities. He thinks
Speaker 1: they are on his way to Newark, New Jersey. So
Speaker 1: there's a lot of gutsiness. You're absolutely right. I mean,
Speaker 1: he took risks, and there was a lot of gutsiness
Speaker 1: in what he did. That created the image of a
Speaker 1: rich guy who wasn't just clipping his coupons. He's out
Speaker 1: there building airplanes. He's investing in this new industry called movies.
Speaker 1: He's not just sitting still. He's advancing science, technology or
Speaker 1: understanding of the world and how we're going to get
Speaker 1: around that world in airplanes, and clearly trying to demonstrate,
Speaker 1: perhaps mostly for himself, that he has talent and ability
Speaker 1: that isn't just about inheriting money. Exactly right. That's exactly right,
Speaker 1: and I think is maybe as much as anything, what
Speaker 1: droving was not just the interest in those areas, but
Speaker 1: I honestly think trying to equal his father in part.
Speaker 1: His father had created this great fortune, and that fortune
Speaker 1: was what made all of these other ventures possible. I
Speaker 1: mean people used to think about how are to use
Speaker 1: and how Richie was the whole heart of the fortune
Speaker 1: to the end of his days was that company invented
Speaker 1: by his father, and that financed everything else. And I
Speaker 1: think as a result of this, he was always trying
Speaker 1: to show what he himself could do. But it wasn't
Speaker 1: just in the minds of the public of foolhardiness. I
Speaker 1: mean he headed to a science, aviation technology that the
Speaker 1: idea that mankind, humankind is moving on in advancing. It's
Speaker 1: interesting just from a psychiatric point of view that he
Speaker 1: increasingly as he aged, suffered more with his O c
Speaker 1: D symptoms and at the same time, something that's often
Speaker 1: used by people who suffer from anxiety, you know, pathologic
Speaker 1: anxiety and O c D use a defense mechanism that's
Speaker 1: called counterphobic behavior. So instead of being afraid of something,
Speaker 1: you don't contemplate it, you just jump into it and
Speaker 1: do something extra scary, like you know, dive off the
Speaker 1: diving board. And you could see evidence as his O
Speaker 1: c D worsened in some ways, you know, he was
Speaker 1: sort of noted to increasingly like separate his food and
Speaker 1: count his peas and you know, sort of numerical and
Speaker 1: like food shouldn't touch each other, and symptoms that we
Speaker 1: know do classically happen with certain forms of O c
Speaker 1: D that at the same time he's taking these incredibly
Speaker 1: risky brave you know, I had a plane crash, but
Speaker 1: I'm going to get it back into plane and do
Speaker 1: still do something risky a real I think it's psychoanalytically,
Speaker 1: you might look at this as coping defense mechanism for
Speaker 1: his increasing anxiety. In other ways, that's a fascinating point,
Speaker 1: and I think he fits that description perfectly. I mean
Speaker 1: he had multiple plane crashes. I mean, if somebody had
Speaker 1: one plane crash or one nearer miss, you might and
Speaker 1: he was afraid of all the things. You might think
Speaker 1: he would pull back, and in fact he moves forward.
Speaker 1: In World War two, very serious plane crash outside of
Speaker 1: Las Vegas that killed a couple of crew members. He
Speaker 1: himself was hurt but survived. And then there was the
Speaker 1: famous one after the war ended. I should go back
Speaker 1: a little bit on this one. During the war, he
Speaker 1: had two major contracts. Because there was a shortage of
Speaker 1: metal h he wanted to build one huge transport plane
Speaker 1: out of wood that became the famous Spruce Scoose, largest
Speaker 1: plane ever built. Another contract was of a fighter plane.
Speaker 1: Both of these contracts he was unable to deliver that
Speaker 1: product before the war ended. Not totally his fault. I
Speaker 1: mean you could say it was way too ambitious what
Speaker 1: he planned to do, and this and that. But the
Speaker 1: fighter plane, after the war was over, he was determined
Speaker 1: to take it up and see how it performed. And
Speaker 1: he was actually warned at the time that perhaps this
Speaker 1: isn't the best time to do this. You shouldn't and
Speaker 1: there's kinds of things you should avoid there intentionally took
Speaker 1: a risk and the plane crashed in Beverly Hills and
Speaker 1: almost killed it. And it's is actually a miracle based
Speaker 1: on what happened to his body that he actually did survive.
Speaker 1: Nobody on the ground was killed. But that christ was
Speaker 1: a direct result of errors that he made in judgment
Speaker 1: that he had been warned about. Similarly, with the Spruce Goose,
Speaker 1: the huge flying boat, he did fly it briefly for
Speaker 1: about a mile in Long Beach Harbor, but he was
Speaker 1: also warned that this thing might have come apart in
Speaker 1: the air because it was actually made out of wood
Speaker 1: and so forth. But absolutely what you're saying, he took
Speaker 1: these risks. There were some part of a piece of
Speaker 1: his personality that said, I need to test this, I
Speaker 1: need to show the world this, I need to show
Speaker 1: this to myself. We can speculate on who was trying
Speaker 1: to show it to, but these were unnecessary risks that
Speaker 1: he can tenually took, even while he's worried about a
Speaker 1: little german getting in his food. It is notable that
Speaker 1: after the very bad crash that you mentioned, he suffered
Speaker 1: many injuries, including head trauma. And that's very important because
Speaker 1: it does seem that his symptoms of O c D
Speaker 1: really became significantly worse after this crash. The pressure of
Speaker 1: the two contracts to build those planes, which he failed
Speaker 1: to do deliver on, along with the crash, those things
Speaker 1: all seemed to contribute greatly to what happened to him
Speaker 1: after that. By in the late forties, he's increasingly not
Speaker 1: seen in public as much as he once was, and
Speaker 1: then all through the fifties the same thing as true,
Speaker 1: fewer and fewer people seen. He's living in the Beverly
Speaker 1: Hills Hotel in one of the bungalows. Some men who
Speaker 1: worked for him take over the other bungalows. When he
Speaker 1: Mary Jean Peters, they were both living in separate bungalows
Speaker 1: at the Beverly Hills Hotel, and in fact, one of
Speaker 1: the most amazings that tis six they weren't married, I
Speaker 1: guess twelve years. We computed that they actually lived together
Speaker 1: only nine months of those twelve years. But this process
Speaker 1: of separation and of sealing himself off from the rest
Speaker 1: of the world, from the world a tiny world he
Speaker 1: should control, accelerates from that mid nineteen on through the
Speaker 1: rest of his life. That's a key word, you say,
Speaker 1: their control that you know, if you love someone, if
Speaker 1: you're married to someone, you know and they do things
Speaker 1: in your environment that you find difficult. Because you have
Speaker 1: O c D, you can't entirely control another person, so
Speaker 1: that would be very very difficult. And head trauma depending
Speaker 1: on where the trauma was to the brain, but even
Speaker 1: just generally getting such a hard hit that you have
Speaker 1: essentially some mild form of organic brain damage could very
Speaker 1: much accentuate psychiatric problem that was already there. But there
Speaker 1: was another issue too, and that is that he had
Speaker 1: so many injuries and needed pain medications to control his pain,
Speaker 1: which probably isn't very well controlled just in terms of
Speaker 1: the pain medications that were available then, which were often
Speaker 1: short acting and may not have controlled his pain very well.
Speaker 1: So he may have been also struggling with chronic pain
Speaker 1: and with addiction that was you know, created by physicians
Speaker 1: who gave him the pain medications that he needed. This
Speaker 1: is still continues to be a dilemma for people today
Speaker 1: that you know. The thing about opioids in general is
Speaker 1: they can treat pain and they often are needed. You
Speaker 1: shouldn't leave someone in pain. But at the same time,
Speaker 1: you often end up needing more of the same medication
Speaker 1: to control the same amount of pain because we developed
Speaker 1: tolerance to those medications, and if you try to cut back,
Speaker 1: you go through withdrawal, and it's a very painful situation
Speaker 1: to be in. Most people who get addicted to opioids
Speaker 1: today do so because they were originally given to them
Speaker 1: for a medical need, you know, post surgery or post
Speaker 1: an injury. But if you're Howard Hughes and you can
Speaker 1: get anything you want, no matter the cost and no
Speaker 1: matter the legality of it, and you are surrounding yourself
Speaker 1: with people who will basically not question anything you do,
Speaker 1: even for your own good, then unfortunately you may be
Speaker 1: left to stuff with the consequences of severe chronic pain
Speaker 1: and an addiction. An addiction we know affects your judgment tremendously,
Speaker 1: so one's ability to say, oh, this is not looking
Speaker 1: good and you to do something about this would really
Speaker 1: be impaired. We have evidence said right after his death
Speaker 1: he was found to have needles broken off in his
Speaker 1: arms from giving himself injections. And you can only imagine
Speaker 1: if you would tolerate that, what kind of pain you
Speaker 1: must be in it otherwise, absolutely right. And the drug
Speaker 1: addiction is unfortunately such a major part of the last
Speaker 1: chapter of his life. And you're right because of his wealth,
Speaker 1: because there were doctors around him who were giving these things.
Speaker 1: His main addiction was to coding, which is just about
Speaker 1: the worst kind of thing to be continually addicted to.
Speaker 1: I mean, coding's purpose is for a short term relief
Speaker 1: from pain, maybe a terrible tooth extraction or some other
Speaker 1: kind of surgery. But the idea of using coding continually,
Speaker 1: the side effects are horrendous from your internal system and
Speaker 1: so forth, and that producing other problems. So I don't
Speaker 1: think there's any doubt about it. The drugs accelerated that problem,
Speaker 1: and the ways as manifested itself was really disturbing, if
Speaker 1: you'd come back with me from it. When we did
Speaker 1: the book, there was a lot of speculation about how
Speaker 1: could somebody this smart, who designed all of these things,
Speaker 1: who had these beautiful women on his arm, How could
Speaker 1: somebody like that have long, fair nails and behave in
Speaker 1: this very bizarre way. So we were actually skeptical of
Speaker 1: a lot of the initial stories that he was this
Speaker 1: kind of crazy and so forth. Well, a lot of
Speaker 1: evidence began piling up that all those stories were in
Speaker 1: fact true. And then one day, as part of our research,
Speaker 1: we were able to obtain something as the most chilling
Speaker 1: document that I have ever seen about anybody. And it
Speaker 1: was called the Procedures manu. And this was a manual
Speaker 1: devised by these handful of yes men who worked around him,
Speaker 1: who never argue with him about anything, about how to
Speaker 1: do everything, how to open a can of fruit if
Speaker 1: somebody has died in the company, here's a four page memo,
Speaker 1: and how to send flowers that make sure that the
Speaker 1: bill doesn't come back to the home office because there
Speaker 1: might be germs on it. How to walk through the
Speaker 1: door and give me something. Make sure you walk at
Speaker 1: an angle, don't come straight in, like, don't breathe on me.
Speaker 1: This thing was an inch and a half thick, and
Speaker 1: it had been written by the aids because they were
Speaker 1: continually berated by him when they had failed to do
Speaker 1: things properly into his perfectionist view of the world. So
Speaker 1: they wrote everything down says, well, this is how you
Speaker 1: told us to do these things. Let's take a quick
Speaker 1: break here. We'll be back in a moment. I think
Speaker 1: people looked at that kind of ending for Hughes or
Speaker 1: those last years of his life and thought, what a
Speaker 1: you know, creepy, weird and villainous kind of behavior. But
Speaker 1: if people could understand that that procedural manual that the
Speaker 1: aids were simply writing down what they observed he required,
Speaker 1: and have an idea of what it would be like
Speaker 1: to live with that manual in your brain all the time.
Speaker 1: That basically, you know, when you have obsessive compulsive disorder,
Speaker 1: there is a thought telling you constantly you know what
Speaker 1: needs to happen, and if it can't happen, the unbearable
Speaker 1: anxiety and terror you will face until you can and
Speaker 1: in often cases do some other behavior or correct it
Speaker 1: in some way. That's the compulsion part, Right, You have
Speaker 1: this thought obsession, and then you have the compulsion which
Speaker 1: makes you feel momentarily better. So the guy's going to
Speaker 1: walk in the or I'm terrified he's going to contaminate
Speaker 1: me and and and make me sick. Oh okay, I
Speaker 1: made him walk at an angle. I'm relieved, I'm saved.
Speaker 1: And that relief is positive reinforcement for the brain, which
Speaker 1: keeps the obsession in place. It keeps it alive, and
Speaker 1: there are more and more and more, and so it's
Speaker 1: torture for somebody with O C that they live with
Speaker 1: that procedural manual in their head all the time. So
Speaker 1: it's terribly sad. Of course, this is a treatable illness,
Speaker 1: a very treatable illness, and sadly, had that been the
Speaker 1: case at that time, and he'd been willing to do that,
Speaker 1: he might not have suffered so much and might have
Speaker 1: been able to participate more in the strengths that actually
Speaker 1: conferred to him to some degree. Also because he had
Speaker 1: O C D perfectionism and the innovation. What is so
Speaker 1: sad about it is that he would think with the
Speaker 1: less wealthy person, a person were plugged than to a community,
Speaker 1: a person with a spouse, a person with some children,
Speaker 1: a person with some other relatives, a person was some
Speaker 1: close friends, that somebody might have come up and said, Howard,
Speaker 1: you kind of got a problem here, but let's work
Speaker 1: with this. Let's see what we can do here. We
Speaker 1: don't really have to worry about how we opened this
Speaker 1: can of fruit. But let's let's talk about this over here.
Speaker 1: The other But he had been a loner his whole life,
Speaker 1: and in his youth and in his middle manhood, it
Speaker 1: wasn't such a big issue. He calls all the shots.
Speaker 1: He's got so much money. Everybody says yes, Mr Hughes,
Speaker 1: yes Howard, whatever you want, Howard. But later in life
Speaker 1: he needed somebody to step up and say, okay, let's
Speaker 1: work with you on this. But by then it was
Speaker 1: too late because he surrounded himself with people who were
Speaker 1: just yes people. But what we found absolutely astonishing. We
Speaker 1: calculated that basically the last fifteen or sixteen years of
Speaker 1: his life, he didn't really see many people at all
Speaker 1: other than those six or seven or eight people who
Speaker 1: were waiting on him twenty four hours a day. There
Speaker 1: are a couple of exceptions, but even the guy who
Speaker 1: ran all his Las Vegas operations in the sixties never
Speaker 1: had a face to face meeting with it. In fact,
Speaker 1: one of the funny things that we did the book.
Speaker 1: People always say to so, what did you ever meet
Speaker 1: Howard Used? And I said, nobody met Howard Used from
Speaker 1: that nine on, because he had pulled into this zone
Speaker 1: where he could control everything. But the funny thing was
Speaker 1: he wasn't controlling anything. Unfortunately, of course, we now understand
Speaker 1: about O. C. D. That controlling everything is a symptom
Speaker 1: of the illness in an attempt to manage what is
Speaker 1: your suffering. But we also understand that all that controlling
Speaker 1: makes the disease worse. And it worked for him. He
Speaker 1: was still able to, you know, help functions so highly
Speaker 1: earlier on. But ultimately I think you know the disease,
Speaker 1: but also the chronic pain. I mean, some of the
Speaker 1: things that were described that you say seemed to be true,
Speaker 1: that growing along fingernails, not wearing any clothing, just draping
Speaker 1: something over your genitals and that's all, or picking anything
Speaker 1: up with a tissue also speak to the possibility that
Speaker 1: his chronic pains had developed into a syndrome Aladinia. That
Speaker 1: when you have terrible pain, everything can become sensitized and
Speaker 1: your ability to tolerate any touch at all, which is
Speaker 1: terribly sad if you're you know, in terms of being
Speaker 1: alone already, but any touch at all is really so
Speaker 1: heightened that it's painful, and trimming your fingernails or wearing
Speaker 1: clothing can be painful for people with Aladinia. That would
Speaker 1: explain a lot because he spent a lot of those
Speaker 1: last years basically in bed, and when you're in bed.
Speaker 1: You're not really moving around very much. You've propped up
Speaker 1: in your hospital bid watching movie after movie, sometimes the
Speaker 1: same movie three times in one day. If you're not moving,
Speaker 1: you're not in much pain. Well, a tragic ending for
Speaker 1: Howard Hughes In in terms of his sufferings, certainly towards
Speaker 1: the last part of his life, but fascinating that the
Speaker 1: innovation and the perfectionism and the creativity and the risk
Speaker 1: taking in business as well paid off in terms of
Speaker 1: his strengths, which had a lot to do with his
Speaker 1: mental illness as well, but his strengths which have continued
Speaker 1: to this day. Right we still have medical institutions of
Speaker 1: the hues name. Is there still technology and aviation in
Speaker 1: the Hughes name. Huge Aircraft has been bought by other institutions,
Speaker 1: but a lot of that work still does go on,
Speaker 1: a lot of the satellite work that he wasn't directly
Speaker 1: involved in the company by that point, but he had
Speaker 1: created an environment in their original Huge Aircraft company that
Speaker 1: brought some of the true best and brightest in their
Speaker 1: fields together, and by then he wasn't meddling the way
Speaker 1: he sometimes did when he was younger, but he had
Speaker 1: created that field that brought together some astonishing companies, so
Speaker 1: a lot of early satellites, a lot of other things
Speaker 1: that created helicopters on down the line, very innovative and
Speaker 1: still part of the system out there. The Tool company
Speaker 1: bought by other companies at this point. But funny thing
Speaker 1: is one of the greatest assets that he left was
Speaker 1: he bought huge amounts of land when he did have
Speaker 1: some money that he didn't develop. But we're just part
Speaker 1: of his estate once once he died, which later provided
Speaker 1: a lot of money to the folks that didn't inherit
Speaker 1: that money. But you're absolutely right, he did achieve a lot.
Speaker 1: He probably could have achieved more. The sad thing is
Speaker 1: it's really a human failure of nobody to step up
Speaker 1: and really help him when he needed that help. Not
Speaker 1: that he would have necessarily welcomed it or allowed it,
Speaker 1: but it's a great statement about how really we all
Speaker 1: need somebody at some time in our life to kind
Speaker 1: of step up and maybe even tell us something we
Speaker 1: don't want to hear. He didn't have that, and it
Speaker 1: it paved the way for a lot of his own
Speaker 1: destruction down the road. And that mental illness is not
Speaker 1: so simple that it can confer terrible suffering and it
Speaker 1: can con for potential strengths. And that's said that there
Speaker 1: weren't treatments around or that he could partake of at
Speaker 1: that time that could have made a big difference in
Speaker 1: his life. Well, that wraps things up for this episode.
Speaker 1: Thanks for joining me today. If you'd like to know
Speaker 1: more about Howard Hughes, check out James Steele's book Howard Hughes,
Speaker 1: His Life and Madness. And if you'd like to know
Speaker 1: more about the link between psychiatric illness and genius, as
Speaker 1: you could see was the case with Howard Hughes, you
Speaker 1: could check out my book The Power of Different The
Speaker 1: Link between Disorder and Genius. And if you have a question,
Speaker 1: you can tweet me at Doctor Gayl's Salts. Personology is
Speaker 1: a production of I Heart Radio. The executive producers are
Speaker 1: doctor Gayl Salts and Tyler Klang. The associate producer is
Speaker 1: Lowell Brulante. For more podcasts from My Heart Radio, visit
Speaker 1: the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
Speaker 1: get your podcasts. M