Speaker 1: School of Humans.
Speaker 2: You know what they say, those who can't do teach,
Speaker 2: and those who can't even do.
Speaker 1: That write self help books. That's right.
Speaker 2: You don't have to worry about failing in your career.
Speaker 2: You can always become a life coach. I personally don't
Speaker 2: read self help books, but I do ask read it
Speaker 2: a lot of questions about my life. One of the
Speaker 2: most sold self help books of all time is Think
Speaker 2: and Grow Rich. It came out in nineteen thirty seven
Speaker 2: and has sold over a bazillion copies. The actual number
Speaker 2: we don't know, as it's likely to have been greatly exaggerated.
Speaker 2: And how many of those people who read that book
Speaker 2: became rich, probably very few. The gist of the advice
Speaker 2: in the book is basically positive thinking.
Speaker 1: If you can think it, you can have it.
Speaker 2: That involves having a lot of desire for something, having
Speaker 2: faith in the process, positive self talk, imagining, intuition. If
Speaker 2: you use all of those things, you can get rich.
Speaker 2: So let's just take a moment to think and see
Speaker 2: if we become rich. Are you guys thinking? Do you
Speaker 2: guys have more money now? I don't think I do.
Speaker 1: Oh well.
Speaker 2: And even though most of its ideas are garbled, bullshit
Speaker 2: and relatively ineffective. Think and Grow Rich is considered one
Speaker 2: of the most influential books in the self help genre.
Speaker 2: And the guy who wrote this book was named Napoleon Hill.
Speaker 2: And if you can believe it, Napoleon was top tier
Speaker 2: American filth. He was a scammer, a cheater, temporarily part
Speaker 2: of a cult, you know, definitely someone I would like
Speaker 2: to take advice from. So let's get out of this
Speaker 2: self help section and just look at Napoleon Hill's life
Speaker 2: and see what lessons he can teach us on how
Speaker 2: to live.
Speaker 1: Cue the theme music.
Speaker 2: This is American filth and I'm Gabby Watts. Every week
Speaker 2: I tell you a filthy story from American history. This
Speaker 2: week's episode self help con Man. So here's something you
Speaker 2: might be dealing with that might make you turn to
Speaker 2: self help. This is a question. Are you struggling with
Speaker 2: getting people to take you seriously? Well, looking at Napoleon
Speaker 2: Hill's life, you can follow this one simple step to
Speaker 2: change that lie. That's right, Make stuff up about yourself
Speaker 2: to make you seem more serious, more elite, more deserving
Speaker 2: of sympathy, more interesting, more important, more worth someone's time.
Speaker 2: Why just be yourself. That's embarrassing and won't get you anywhere.
Speaker 2: So Napoleon Hill was born in eighteen eighty three in Virginia,
Speaker 2: and really he was born Oliver Napoleon Hill. He started
Speaker 2: going by Napoleon later in life. Napoleon described his family
Speaker 2: as three generations of quote, ignorance, illiteracy, and poverty. And
Speaker 2: who can't empathize or sympathize with a woe as me tale.
Speaker 2: Someone who came from such a dire and tough background
Speaker 2: definitely deserves to be taken seriously.
Speaker 1: And you see here is where Napoleon Hill did something
Speaker 1: very important.
Speaker 2: He lied because the Hill family was not ignorant, illiterate,
Speaker 2: or that poor. The family was actually pretty well educated.
Speaker 2: Like his grandfather was a printer, and if I'm being honest,
Speaker 2: it'd be really hard to be.
Speaker 1: A printer if you were illiterate.
Speaker 2: Napoleon's dad was a dentist. Granted he was an illegal dentist.
Speaker 2: He didn't have a license, but he eventually got one
Speaker 2: at the age of forty after authorities were like, hey,
Speaker 2: we're gonna arrest.
Speaker 1: You unless you become legit.
Speaker 2: And who knows, maybe it's because of this dentistry deception
Speaker 2: that Napoleon Hill himself got into scamming later in his life.
Speaker 1: Dads teach all the good lessons.
Speaker 2: Napoleon's mom died when he was around nine years old,
Speaker 2: which that it's sad and can you know, cause some trauma.
Speaker 1: But it seems that his stepmom was a very positive force.
Speaker 2: In his life. She was like, hey, Napoleon, you need
Speaker 2: to get your act together. You need to go to school,
Speaker 2: you need to go to church. And she also bought
Speaker 2: him a typewriter. She was like, Napoleon, if you can write,
Speaker 2: the world is your oyster. So clearly Napoleon's family wasn't ignorant, illiterate,
Speaker 2: or really in poverty. They were actually kind of well off, supportive,
Speaker 2: and one of the best for him. But that's not
Speaker 2: an interesting story. That doesn't capture the American dream where
Speaker 2: you start from the bottom and end up at the top. Napoleon,
Speaker 2: he was in the middle. That's not compelling. I'm not
Speaker 2: going to take that seriously. The only self help writer
Speaker 2: we're going to take seriously is one who has struggled
Speaker 2: and persevered. So anyway, if you want people to take
Speaker 2: you more seriously, just lie about who you are and
Speaker 2: where you come from. Another thing you can do to
Speaker 2: be taken seriously is to be in the right place
Speaker 2: at the right time and cover up a murder. Here's
Speaker 2: what happened. Right after college. Napoleon got a job working
Speaker 2: as the assistant to a lawyer, and this lawyer owned
Speaker 2: some coal mines. One night, the manager of the coal
Speaker 2: mine got drunk and shot a black bell hop allegedly accidentally.
Speaker 2: Napoleon's boss was out of town, so Napoleon went to
Speaker 2: the scene of the crime and it is like, I'm
Speaker 2: going to take responsibility for this situation, and I'm going
Speaker 2: to cover up the murder so that nobody, including my boss,
Speaker 2: will look bad. And then when his boss came back,
Speaker 2: Napoleon was like, hey, I covered up this murder for you.
Speaker 2: Nobody knows about it. It's totally chilling cool. And his
Speaker 2: boss was like, oh my god, that's such great work.
Speaker 2: I'm going to promote you. So Napoleon took that drunk
Speaker 2: guy's job and became the manager of a coal mine.
Speaker 2: At this point, he was only nineteen years old. But
Speaker 2: unfortunately for Napoleon, he had a huge head, huge ego,
Speaker 2: and being the manager of a coal mine was still
Speaker 2: not good enough for him. And that leads us to
Speaker 2: another self help question, how can I make a lot
Speaker 2: of money without actually having a job.
Speaker 1: Well, as Napoleon Hill's life will show us.
Speaker 2: You should probably just get a job. Because he started
Speaker 2: a lot of schemes, a lot of scams that failed.
Speaker 2: But Napoleon Hill, he thought he was destined for great
Speaker 2: things in his life, so he wasn't just going to
Speaker 2: be a low life employee. He wanted to own a business,
Speaker 2: be rich, be renowned. So what he did was moved
Speaker 2: to Mobile, Alabama in nineteen oh seven, because we all
Speaker 2: know that Alabama is the best place to make money.
Speaker 2: Everyone's always like, if you want to be famous, if
Speaker 2: you want to be rich, if you want to be notable,
Speaker 2: you got to move down to Mobile, Alabama. What he
Speaker 2: was doing down there is he developed a scheme. He
Speaker 2: was buying lumber on credit and then he would sell
Speaker 2: it to other people at a reduced rate and then
Speaker 2: just not pay back his credit. The people buying the
Speaker 2: lumber from him were like, Wow, this is a great deal. Meanwhile,
Speaker 2: the people he had bought the lumber from were like, hey,
Speaker 2: you need to pay us back. But unfortunately for Napoleon Hill,
Speaker 2: his scheme did not work out. Eventually a bunch of
Speaker 2: people were after him. He was bankrupt. He was also
Speaker 2: facing mail fraud charges. He had to pay back his creditors,
Speaker 2: but instead of doing that, he fled.
Speaker 1: But you guys know what they say.
Speaker 2: If you can do mail fraud and mobile Alabama, you
Speaker 2: can do it anywhere. It's unclear how he evaded authorities
Speaker 2: and his creditors, but by nineteen oh eight he was
Speaker 2: living in Washington, d c. And this is officially when
Speaker 2: he changed his name to Napoleon Hill instead of Oliver. Sure,
Speaker 2: he might say it was an esthetic change, you know,
Speaker 2: he was trying to be a new person, but it
Speaker 2: was probably a way to deceive the law so they
Speaker 2: wouldn't find him and throw him in prison.
Speaker 1: When he got to DC, he picked.
Speaker 2: Up his typewriter and started writing articles about successful people.
Speaker 1: But unfortunately he wasn't making enough money.
Speaker 2: So he was like, I guess I got to do
Speaker 2: another scheme because having a normal job is out of
Speaker 2: the question.
Speaker 1: This time, he started a scam in.
Speaker 2: The field of education, which he would do time and
Speaker 2: time again throughout his life. What he did is he
Speaker 2: started this education program where people were learning how to
Speaker 2: repair cars. But really what was happening is he was
Speaker 2: just using these people to assemble and repair cars and
Speaker 2: not pay them because look, they're learning, it's education. It
Speaker 2: was like an unpaid internship, and Napoleon got all of
Speaker 2: the profits from their labor. But unfortunately this scheme did
Speaker 2: not last long, so he pivoted. He was like, instead
Speaker 2: of doing that where I get people to assemble cars,
Speaker 2: what I'm going to do is I'm going to promise
Speaker 2: students that I'm going to teach them how.
Speaker 1: To sell cars.
Speaker 2: But really what happened is that he set it up
Speaker 2: kind of like a multi level marketing scheme where he
Speaker 2: got people to sign up and then got those people
Speaker 2: to get other people to sign up, but they didn't
Speaker 2: ever actually learn anything, and Napoleon again got all of
Speaker 2: their money.
Speaker 1: Through these schemes.
Speaker 2: Again, people were accusing him of fraud, and so he
Speaker 2: was like, no, what I'm going to do now, I'm
Speaker 2: going to move to Chicago. When he got to Chicago,
Speaker 2: he did try to do a legal business. He and
Speaker 2: a couple partners opened a candy store, but very quickly
Speaker 2: after starting that business, his partners were like, Hey, get
Speaker 2: the fuck out of this business. You're so annoying and
Speaker 2: you don't know how to do anything. I imagine Napoleon
Speaker 2: was also trying to scam them in some way. Yeah,
Speaker 2: that's conjecture, but I feel like it's kind of evidence
Speaker 2: based based on his past behavior. Isn't this someone you
Speaker 2: really want to take advice from? Good thing he got
Speaker 2: into self help because if he didn't get into self help,
Speaker 2: he kind of has the qualifications of being the president
Speaker 2: of the United States, get it, because Trump's also a
Speaker 2: con artist. Just kidding, guys, this is a bipartisan podcast.
Speaker 1: We have no opinions on it.
Speaker 2: So after the candy shot failed, he went back to
Speaker 2: his education model. Throughout these years of scheming and planning,
Speaker 2: something he is good at is marketing himself. He's good
Speaker 2: at convincing people he's legit when he's not. And so
Speaker 2: he was like, who else does that?
Speaker 1: Oh?
Speaker 2: People in advertising. So he started an institute of advertising
Speaker 2: where he was like, I'm going to teach people how
Speaker 2: to be confident and sell stuff, Like, yeah, I could see.
Speaker 1: How you could make money off of that.
Speaker 2: People love a nice little lecture about how to believe
Speaker 2: in themselves. But of course Napoleon had a scheme behind this.
Speaker 1: As well.
Speaker 2: What he did at the institute is that he valued
Speaker 2: it at one hundred thousand dollars and then got the
Speaker 2: students to buy stocks. But the thing is the school
Speaker 2: was actually only valued at twelve hundred dollars, and then
Speaker 2: he just kept all of that money. It's honestly insane
Speaker 2: how many schemes he had. It's just like bruh, Like
Speaker 2: can't you just write or pull down a job or something.
Speaker 2: It's really insane because over the next few years he
Speaker 2: did even more fraudulent advertising and committed mail fraud and
Speaker 2: just did all sorts of terrible things.
Speaker 1: Like he started a charity where he said, oh.
Speaker 2: If you donate to it, we'll give that money to veterans,
Speaker 2: but really he just took all that money and put
Speaker 2: it in oil stocks. Then he had another charity where
Speaker 2: he said, oh, if you give me money, I'm going
Speaker 2: to send educational supplies to people in prison. But can
Speaker 2: you believe it, he was just pocketing that money for himself.
Speaker 2: And even as he did all these scams and all
Speaker 2: these schemes, he never had that much money. And I know,
Speaker 2: I keep saying the thing of like, oh, he's a
Speaker 2: just good job, which sounds very boomer of me, but
Speaker 2: still like these scams weren't working out for him. He'd
Speaker 2: get the money, then he'd lose it, or he'd have
Speaker 2: to pay legal fees, and he had to travel a lot.
Speaker 2: But I guess he thought one day, through one of
Speaker 2: these schemes, he'd make.
Speaker 1: It big, so it'd all be worth it.
Speaker 2: As napoy and Hill was running amuck doing all of
Speaker 2: these scams and schemes, he was still manufacturing an identity
Speaker 2: to make himself look more notable throughout these couple decades
Speaker 2: after he went to college to before he became a
Speaker 2: successful self help writer.
Speaker 1: Said that he met all.
Speaker 2: Sorts of rich and talented people, who in turn thought
Speaker 2: he was also a rich and talented person. Unfortunately for him,
Speaker 2: there is absolutely no proof that he met any of
Speaker 2: these people, according to Napoleon Hill, though he says, oh, well,
Speaker 2: all the records of me meeting these people unfortunately got
Speaker 2: burned up in this fire.
Speaker 1: Ugh, that's so annoying. Sorry, I can't prove it, but
Speaker 1: I did meet these people.
Speaker 2: The only evidence that he met a famous person was
Speaker 2: there's a photograph of him and Thomas Edison. Edison looks
Speaker 2: annoyed Napoleon Hill is standing next to him, awkwardly close,
Speaker 2: just staring at him. And apparently this photo was taken
Speaker 2: after Napoleon had given Thomas Edison an award, an award
Speaker 2: that Napoleon had created through his magazine, and that was
Speaker 2: used as an excuse for him to meet people, being like, oh, hello,
Speaker 2: famous person, here's an award I'm giving you. According to
Speaker 2: some newspaper reports, Thomas Edison declined the award. Another person
Speaker 2: that Napoleon Hill claimed to meet was none other than
Speaker 2: President Woodrow Wilson, and they met during World War One.
Speaker 2: Napoleon claimed that Woodrow Wilson had reached out to him
Speaker 2: to get his perspective and his advice on the war,
Speaker 2: and also to go sign the armistice with Germany. Yes,
Speaker 2: apparently Napoleon Hill is so notable that Woodrow Wilson was like,
Speaker 2: I need you to finish this war.
Speaker 1: Isn't that believable? Later on, Napoleon.
Speaker 2: Hill also claimed that he had met FDR and he
Speaker 2: said it was actually himself who had come up with
Speaker 2: the iconic phrase the only thing we have to fear
Speaker 2: a spear itself. Unfortunately for Napoleon, though the White House
Speaker 2: has explicitly said that there are no records at all
Speaker 2: of Napoleon Hill ever meeting FDR, Woodrow Wilson or any president.
Speaker 2: At this point, I think we can learn a lesson
Speaker 2: from Napoleon Hill, which is, if you're trying to make
Speaker 2: up fun tidbits about your life, maybe don't go so
Speaker 2: far as to say that you're the advisor to the president.
Speaker 2: You know, if you want to stay believable, maybe just
Speaker 2: have some like lower tier people that you know, because
Speaker 2: at this point he does kind of sound like a lunatic.
Speaker 2: But it wasn't his fictitious meeting with Woodrow Wilson or
Speaker 2: FDR that was central to Napoleon Hill's life. No, it
Speaker 2: was in nineteen oh eight, right after he had fled Alabama.
Speaker 2: That's when he claimed he met Andrew Carnegie, who at
Speaker 2: the time was the richest man in the world. And
Speaker 2: it was this alleged conversation with Andrew Carnegie that would
Speaker 2: lead to his self help rise to fame because, according
Speaker 2: to Napoleon Hill, Andrew Carnegie gave him a lot of
Speaker 2: advice on how to think and how to get rich,
Speaker 2: and then also introduce Napoleon to all these other successful
Speaker 2: people who he interviewed so he could write his book,
Speaker 2: Think and Grow Rich. But again, there is no evidence
Speaker 2: that this conversation with Andrew Carnegie ever happened. You know,
Speaker 2: Napoleon would say it's because all of the documents got
Speaker 2: burnt up in that fire, and Carnegie would say it's
Speaker 2: because he has no idea who the hell that guy is.
Speaker 2: But before we get to his breakthrough, here's another question
Speaker 2: you might consult to self help book for how can
Speaker 2: I have a successful marriage? Well, let's look at Napoleon
Speaker 2: Hill's life once again to answer this question. And if
Speaker 2: we do that, it looks like the answer is you can't.
Speaker 2: It is literally impossible to have a successful marriage. Most
Speaker 2: official Napoleon Hill biographers basically the Napole Hill simps. They
Speaker 2: say that he was married three times, but actually it
Speaker 2: was probably more like five.
Speaker 1: The first time he.
Speaker 2: Got married was when he was fifteen. He married another
Speaker 2: teenager who had accused him of fathering her child. But
Speaker 2: after they got married, she was like, oh, actually, I'm
Speaker 2: just kidding. That didn't happen. This is someone else's kid,
Speaker 2: So the marriage was a nult. The next marriage was
Speaker 2: to this woman named Edith Whitman. They got married in
Speaker 2: nineteen oh three. In this relationship, Napoleon was super abusive
Speaker 2: and a huge pile of garbage.
Speaker 1: They had a daughter together, and oh boy, was he
Speaker 1: a bad dad.
Speaker 2: On several occasions, he threw his toddler daughter to the
Speaker 2: floor and hit Edith, even choking her. There was also
Speaker 2: a time when he took their daughter away from Edith
Speaker 2: and said she couldn't have her back. Edith eventually was
Speaker 2: able to get her daughter back and filed for divorce.
Speaker 2: This happened when Napoleon was in Alabama doing his lumber schemes,
Speaker 2: and while he was down there, he started visiting houses
Speaker 2: of ill repute aka cornicating with prostitutes. In nineteen oh a,
Speaker 2: when Edith filed her divorce, Napoleon never showed up in court,
Speaker 2: effectively abandoning his wife and his daughter, probably for the best,
Speaker 2: and starting his new life in DC as Napoleon the
Speaker 2: writer who was single, but don't worry. With his lies
Speaker 2: and deceit, he was quickly able to find another wife.
Speaker 2: He married this lady named Florence Elizabeth Horner in nineteen ten,
Speaker 2: and by lady, I mean they met when she was
Speaker 2: still in high school and they got married in a
Speaker 2: rush literally three months after they met. Over the course
Speaker 2: of their marriage, they had three sons. One of the
Speaker 2: kids was born deaf. Napoleon believed he could fix this,
Speaker 2: and so he never allowed his son to learn sign
Speaker 2: language and was like, Hey, even though he's deaf, we're
Speaker 2: going to be able to teach him how to hear
Speaker 2: and how to speak. Yes, you can just will someone
Speaker 2: to start hearing, because that's the power of positive thinking. Unfortunately,
Speaker 2: his son remained deaf. His wife, Florence, came from a
Speaker 2: well off family, and early in their marriage her family
Speaker 2: actually invested in several of his schemes, but over time
Speaker 2: they realized how much of a con man he was
Speaker 2: and how he was just losing and wasting all of
Speaker 2: their money. For most of their marriage, Florence and Napoleon
Speaker 2: lived separately. Napoleon was always off doing his scams, and
Speaker 2: she would say with her family in West Virginia. He
Speaker 2: would only visit her and his kids when he wanted money,
Speaker 2: which her family was more and more hesitant to give
Speaker 2: him because they were sick of his shit. But in
Speaker 2: nineteen twenty eight, it seemed that everything was going to
Speaker 2: turn around because Napoleon Hill finally found the publisher. We'll
Speaker 2: be right back after these soothing advertisements. So Napoleon Hill,
Speaker 2: while he'd been doing his schemes and his scams and
Speaker 2: all that jazz he was writing, he had magazines. He
Speaker 2: wrote those profiles about inspirational successful people. During this time
Speaker 2: he had also written an eight volume work called The.
Speaker 1: Law of Success.
Speaker 2: In it, he described fifteen principles of success. A definite
Speaker 2: chief aim, self confidence, habit of saving, initiative, and leadership. Imagination.
Speaker 2: Of those things, he most definitely had imagination. But it
Speaker 2: was a long road to publishing, first of all, because
Speaker 2: these books that he wrote are actually quite bad. They're
Speaker 2: pretty messy, they don't make that much sense. But Napoleon
Speaker 2: said he did have an interested publisher. His name was
Speaker 2: Donald Mellett, and he was a newspaper publisher in Ohio.
Speaker 2: Mellett was known for going after game and also police corruption,
Speaker 2: and according to Napoleon, he was very interested in publishing
Speaker 2: self help books. However, right before the contract was supposed
Speaker 2: to be signed, right before Napoleon was supposed to get
Speaker 2: his cash to publish the books, Mellet was murdered, perhaps
Speaker 2: by some gang members or even by some police officers,
Speaker 2: Napoleon was convinced that he was next. Obviously he was
Speaker 2: friends with Mellet, so the gangs are going to come
Speaker 2: after him because he's so important. The gangs don't want
Speaker 2: those self help volumes coming out, so Napoleon went into
Speaker 2: hiding because he was for sure a target. Well, Napoleon
Speaker 2: very quickly came out of hiding, and he was bereft
Speaker 2: because he didn't have a publisher.
Speaker 1: He had burned most.
Speaker 2: Of the bridges in his life and so he was
Speaker 2: reduced to cold calling. But he did find this one
Speaker 2: publisher who was really into self help, who was going
Speaker 2: to self help Napoleon, and by that I mean publish
Speaker 2: his freakin' books. The publisher was Andrew Pelton. He loved
Speaker 2: a self help which was really having a moment in
Speaker 2: the nineteen twenties, and so Napoleon cold called him, was like, hey,
Speaker 2: I have this series of books that I wrote about
Speaker 2: self confidence and how to be successful.
Speaker 1: I think you might like them.
Speaker 2: Andrew Pelton had no idea who he was, but agreed
Speaker 2: to me with him in Philadelphia. Now, Napoleon, who at
Speaker 2: the time was extremely broke estranged from his family, he
Speaker 2: was like, I need to look like I'm rich and
Speaker 2: successful so that I can get this guy to publish
Speaker 2: these books about being successful. So what he did is
Speaker 2: he approached one of Florence's brothers and was like, can
Speaker 2: you give me some money? And he was like, okay, fine,
Speaker 2: go away now. And so Napoleon got a swanky hotel
Speaker 2: room in Philadelphia and kept acting like he was the
Speaker 2: richest guy ever. He was overtipping everybody. He would just
Speaker 2: pull out a roll of cash, being like, look, I mean,
Speaker 2: I'm the richest, most successful guy in the world. That's
Speaker 2: why I wrote these books about success. But he tricked Pelton.
Speaker 2: Pelton's all of that and was like, damn, this guy
Speaker 2: knows what he's talking about. I better publish his eight
Speaker 2: volume work, The Law of Success. And weirdly enough, the
Speaker 2: book was a whopping success. Napoleon had finally done it.
Speaker 2: He was making something that made money and wasn't completely
Speaker 2: a scam. I mean, the advice was a scam because
Speaker 2: he didn't know what he was talking about, obviously, but
Speaker 2: the royalty started coming in. He was making twenty five
Speaker 2: hundred dollars a month. At this point, he and Florence
Speaker 2: and his three sons rekindled their family Napoleon bought a
Speaker 2: big house and property in the Catskills.
Speaker 1: He bought a rolls Royce. He was living large so.
Speaker 2: Charge that it was more than he was making off
Speaker 2: of the books. But unfortunately, not only was Napoleon Hill
Speaker 2: spending too much money, it was nineteen twenty nine and
Speaker 2: the stock market crashed and Napoleon Hill was completely broke
Speaker 2: again and so again he had to plead with his
Speaker 2: wife to give him some money from her family. They
Speaker 2: lost the house she and her family had to pay
Speaker 2: for all of their expenses. In the early thirties, he
Speaker 2: published another book that was a commercial failure, so he
Speaker 2: had to go back to scheming and scamming, but nothing
Speaker 2: paid off, so in nineteen thirty five he and Florence
Speaker 2: got divorced because he was a freaking loser who had
Speaker 2: scammed her family and had abandoned his wife and his kids,
Speaker 2: only appearing when he needed money. But two years later
Speaker 2: Napoleon Hill wrote his Open Think and Grow Rich. The
Speaker 2: reason this book was more successful than The Laws of
Speaker 2: Success is because he.
Speaker 1: Didn't really write it.
Speaker 2: He had a lot of the ideas behind it, but
Speaker 2: it was actually his new wife, a twenty nine year
Speaker 2: old named Rosalie Beelnd, who can be credited for a
Speaker 2: lot of the book's success. They met soon after his
Speaker 2: divorce from Florence. She was twenty nine years old, he
Speaker 2: was fifty three. She went to one of his lectures
Speaker 2: and afterwards talked to him for five hours, and then
Speaker 2: within forty eight hours of them knowing each other, they
Speaker 2: got engaged. But Napoleon and Rosalie they didn't have any money,
Speaker 2: So what ended up happening is they moved in with
Speaker 2: one of Napoleon's sons who was living in a small
Speaker 2: apartment in New York City. The apartment was cramped and
Speaker 2: his son's wife hated him and Rosalie. The son's wife
Speaker 2: moved out and eventually divorced the Sun. The Sun also
Speaker 2: fled the apartment and left his dad three hundred dollars
Speaker 2: because he had no other money. But Rosalie and Napoleon
Speaker 2: were undeterred by being pieces of shit, so they started
Speaker 2: on a book. Rosa typed up and significantly edited the
Speaker 2: book to make sense, because that was one of the
Speaker 2: main issues with Napoleon's writing.
Speaker 1: It wasn't good or coherent.
Speaker 2: They approached Pelton with the book and he was like, ah,
Speaker 2: it's the Great Depression.
Speaker 1: People aren't really like buying books right now.
Speaker 2: Also, the self help movement kind of feels at its end.
Speaker 2: But Napoleon pressed him and he did it, and oh boy,
Speaker 2: think and grow rich started flying off the shelves. One
Speaker 2: reason is, you know, yes, this was during the depression.
Speaker 2: People didn't have that much money to spend, but they
Speaker 2: were obviously also eager to figure out how to make money,
Speaker 2: and voila a solution. They could just think and grow rich. Now,
Speaker 2: at this point, Napoleon and Rosalie became super rich.
Speaker 1: They made a lot of money.
Speaker 2: And again, while they made money, Napoleon was good at
Speaker 2: spending more than he ever made. They bought a mansion
Speaker 2: in Florida, bought all the newest luxuries, but they never
Speaker 2: did for pay Napoleon's son back the three hundred dollars.
Speaker 1: What a great guy.
Speaker 2: Because they were spending so much money though it was
Speaker 2: running out, and a couple of years they were like,
Speaker 2: oh no, we need even more money now to maintain
Speaker 2: our lavish lifestyle in this mansion in Florida. So they
Speaker 2: decided to do this weird media stunt to get more attention.
Speaker 2: They were interviewed by a newspaper, and they told the
Speaker 2: paper that they were going to adopt fifteen children and
Speaker 2: raise them away from the corruption of the world and
Speaker 2: make them perfect beings by showing them the right way
Speaker 2: to think, so they could get rich and be great,
Speaker 2: to basically be angels on earth. They're like, yeah, if
Speaker 2: we raise them in isolation, they're going to be awesome.
Speaker 2: I'm going to show them how to think and be powerful.
Speaker 2: And yes, this sounds absolutely bonkers. And they never did
Speaker 2: end up adopting any children, but some friends of the Hills,
Speaker 2: who were the leaders of a religious cult, actually did
Speaker 2: do something like this. They wanted to raise a baby
Speaker 2: who had such extraordinary power of thinking that the baby
Speaker 2: would become immortal.
Speaker 1: Yep, an immortal.
Speaker 2: Baby just through positive thinking. Well I'm going to talk
Speaker 2: about that next week.
Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 2: Back to Napoleon and Rosalie. So while their finances were dwindling,
Speaker 2: Rosalie decided to write a book of her own. She
Speaker 2: called it How to Attract Men and Money. Napoleon wasn't
Speaker 2: ashamed of this. He was like, Yeah, that's awesome that
Speaker 2: she's writing that, and he actually contributed a bit to
Speaker 2: the book.
Speaker 1: He was like, I scheme she schemes.
Speaker 2: We all scheme, and that's fine. But for Napoleon, he's
Speaker 2: about to be out schemed. Perhaps he met his match
Speaker 2: in Rosa Lee, because before they had gotten married, they
Speaker 2: signed a prenup that said all the royalties from the
Speaker 2: book would go to Rosa Lee. At the time, Napoleon
Speaker 2: was like, yeah, that makes sense, because my ex wife
Speaker 2: and kids they want my money. And also all these
Speaker 2: people who have tried to sue me for my scams
Speaker 2: they want my money. So if Rosa Lee has the money,
Speaker 2: it's not my money, so they can't take it. And
Speaker 2: that will be fine because we're married, we're happy. But
Speaker 2: after Rosalie published her book, she got a divorce from Napoleon.
Speaker 1: She suspected that.
Speaker 2: He had been fraternizing with women of ill repute, which
Speaker 2: she was probably correct, and so what she did is
Speaker 2: she fled their Florida home and sold off all of
Speaker 2: his stuff and the divorce. With that prenup, she took
Speaker 2: all of his money, and then what she did is
Speaker 2: she married her divorce lawyer. Honestly, it's pretty hard to
Speaker 2: feel bad for Napoleon, but it really does seem that
Speaker 2: Napoleon and Rosalie were the perfect match, both deceitful pieces
Speaker 2: as shit. So by nineteen forty Napoleon was broke and
Speaker 2: alone again, and after thinking grow rich his big smash,
Speaker 2: he never wrote another hit. He wrote one book that
Speaker 2: he claimed Mahatma Gandhi really liked, and he was like, obviously,
Speaker 2: now I'm going to go to India and do a tour.
Speaker 2: I'm so important over there. Gandhi loves me. He never
Speaker 2: did that, nor did Gandhi ever say that. But he
Speaker 2: got married again in nineteen forty three to a woman
Speaker 2: named Annie Lou Norman.
Speaker 1: His fifth wife.
Speaker 2: She was actually his landlady, and I suppose he seduced
Speaker 2: her by being like, wow, I tore around, I give lectures,
Speaker 2: I write in a magazine.
Speaker 1: I'm so notable. Look at these books that I've written.
Speaker 2: And after they got married, for reasons unknown really, they
Speaker 2: moved to California, and there Napoleon started scamming again.
Speaker 1: In California, though his.
Speaker 2: Schemes weren't working, so he went out to this small
Speaker 2: town in Missouri being like, I'm gonna teach you guys
Speaker 2: how to be successful again, another education scam, and they
Speaker 2: were all like, you're full of shit, Go away. They
Speaker 2: saw him as a fraud pretty quickly, and that seemed
Speaker 2: to be happening.
Speaker 1: At this point.
Speaker 2: Napoleon was losing his touch. He wasn't able to trick
Speaker 2: people as easily. His last big scheme was he teamed
Speaker 2: up with this guy who worked in insurance to create
Speaker 2: a magazine called Success Unlimited.
Speaker 1: Not only was it a magazine, it.
Speaker 2: Also sold courses and tools for success. And they said
Speaker 2: it was a charity because Napoleon would be lecturing the poor,
Speaker 2: but really it was just a business and if you
Speaker 2: can believe it, this one also didn't work. The insurance
Speaker 2: guy went on to make millions of dollars doing other stuff,
Speaker 2: but Napoleon was left in the dust with hardly any money,
Speaker 2: and his health was failing rapidly. He died in nineteen seventy.
Speaker 2: He himself was pretty poor, but while he'd been alive,
Speaker 2: he'd started the Napoleon Hill Foundation, which held the rights
Speaker 2: to his books and what little royalties he had left.
Speaker 2: And when he died, his wife, Annie Lou sued for
Speaker 2: control of the rights to his books, and she was
Speaker 2: able to scrape away as much money as she could
Speaker 2: from the Napoleon Hill Foundation. It's funny because When you
Speaker 2: look at most of the stuff about Napoleon Hill online,
Speaker 2: a lot of it's from the Napoleon Hill Foundation, who
Speaker 2: have published biographies about him, talking about how amazing he was,
Speaker 2: how shrewd he was, how he was a great businessman.
Speaker 2: But if you look just slightly below the surface, as
Speaker 2: we have in this episode, you'll see that he really
Speaker 2: didn't seem to have any skills. He did a lot
Speaker 2: of schemes and really none of them were successful for
Speaker 2: very long, and he seemed like an all around not
Speaker 2: nice person. But a lot of people today do cite
Speaker 2: Napoleon Hill as an influence, including this guy named Norman
Speaker 2: Vincent Peel who was a pastor he loved Napoleon Hill,
Speaker 2: and guests who grew up in his church, Donald Trump.
Speaker 2: In every episode of American Filth, we learn a lesson.
Speaker 2: I think the lesson we learn here is we can
Speaker 2: all be successful self help book writers, even if we
Speaker 2: have nothing to share. Just make it up, Just think
Speaker 2: and write a self help book. Cue the credits. American
Speaker 2: Field is a production of School of Humans and iHeart Podcast.
Speaker 2: This episode was written and produced and hosted by me
Speaker 2: Gabby Wats. Our theme song is by Jesse Niswanger. Our
Speaker 2: executive producers are Virginia Prescott, Elsie Crowley, and Brandon Barr.
Speaker 2: You can follow along with a show on Instagram at
Speaker 2: American Filth Pod, and also be sure to leave us
Speaker 2: a review some stars, some online criticisms or comments. Share
Speaker 2: the pod far and Why.
Speaker 1: I'll talk to you guys next time.
Speaker 2: Bye, School of Humans.