Pod Insights Stuff You Missed in History Class Self-help Books Throughout History About this episode The origins of self-help writing are often traced back to ancient times. This episode talks through some early versions of it, the goal-setting advice of a founding father, and the beginnings of the modern self-help genre.
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1:03 Speaker 03 A rare disease diagnosis can change your life, but it doesn't have to define your future. In season seven of Untold Stories: Life with a Severe Autoimmune Condition, host Martine Hackett continues the conversation with people living with MG, CIDP, and the broader rare disease community, exploring what comes after diagnosis through stories of hope, progress, and connection. Produced by Ruby Studio in partnership with Argenx, listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production of iHeartRadio.
1:46 Speaker 03 Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly Frey. And I'm Tracy. V. Wilson. Oh, Tracy, we're at a time of year. We are. When a lot of folks are kind of looking to the future and thinking about the coming year and setting goals for themselves. We've talked about it many times on the show. I love doing that. I love the year turnover and I love a good resolution and a new planner. But this also leads to a lot of people purchasing self-help books of one kind or another as they work on those goals. And I am very fascinated by the self-help genre. So I thought it might be interesting to talk about the ways self-help books have evolved over time, even before they were called self-help books.
2:26 Speaker 03 But here's the real real. I almost produced a very different episode.
2:33 Speaker 03 I started out actually working on an episode about positive psychology and the ways that having a positive mindset has been touted as a life-changing attribute throughout history. That idea, though, is so often weaponized against people who are dealing with illnesses or disabilities, or just difficult times in their lives, as though if they just adopted a positive attitude, everything would turn around.
2:59 Speaker 03 Look, positive thinking has benefits, but I don't want any part of that other baloney. We will talk a little bit about some of it, but researching that as a single episode made me feel weird and I didn't like it. So while there's the potential for it to become a future episode, if I find an avenue into it that doesn't make me feel yucky, that's not what this is. This seemed like a more enjoyable way to end the year. As I just said, there are still some mentions in this episode of how people need to be self-reliant and upbeat. The advice of the 19th century definitely came with that attitude, that that was all you needed. But it is much less than the other topic would have given us.
3:40 Speaker 03 Some of them do insist that people just need to laugh more, which is also pretty useless.
3:48 Speaker 03 We're not dealing with that. We are also not getting into things like workout books and like how to change your body because your body's fine, just the way it is. This is actually just to set up expectations, a pretty breezy history through some of the ancient books that offered relatively practical advice all the way through to when a more how to approach was developed and we're noting a few prominent titles and standout developments along the way. And I kind of use the guardrails of focusing on writings that were mostly intended for kind of general self-help advice. Some of these writings are problematic, but that's sort of secondary to the other rather Labrador Retriever-esque takes on positivity.
4:32 Speaker 03 And I'm looking at you, Douglas Fairbanks, and we'll talk about that.
4:37 Speaker 03 We're going to talk about his book, but the most problematic one, which does kind of fall into that it's all in your mind and you can control your life with your mind bucket, is going to come last. So if even hearing about it, even though ours is a pretty critical lens, is not your thing, that will be where to jump and we will give you a heads up when we get there. It was a very long intro to say self-help books are interesting, some are yucky, and we will let you know before we get to the yuckiest one we're talking about.
5:08 Speaker 03 The origins of self-help writing are often traced back to the ancient world, and there have been texts full of advice written from the moment that humans could write, it seems. Ancient Egyptian writing offered advice on how to live a virtuous life known as wisdom literature or sebiat. This was often framed as a hybrid of narrative and didactic writing, contextualized as pieces of wisdom or instruction being shared by a father to his son. The most famous example is the teachings of Tahoe Tep, sometimes called the maxims of Tahoe Tep or the instruction of Tahoe Tep, which was believed to have been
5:49 Speaker 03 written during the reign of Jedkari Assesi in the 24th century BCE, is often referenced as being the oldest book in the world. And this book is laid out as the advice that vizier Tahoe tep gives his son with the permission of the pharaoh regarding how things operate so that he may be in the pharaoh's words, a quote, "good example for the children of the magistrates." These teachings offer a lot of practical instructions, like how to win an argument. That section states, quote, "If thou find an arguer talking, one that is well disposed and wiser than thou, let thine arms fall, bend thy back, be not angry with him if he
6:31 Speaker 03 agree not with thee. Refrain from speaking evilly. Oppose him not at any time when he speaketh. If he address thee as one ignorant of the matter, thine humbleness shall bear away his contentions. If thou find an arguer talking, thy fellow, one that is within thy reach, keep not silent when he saith aught that is evil, so shalt thou be wiser than he. Great will be the applause on the part of the listeners, and thy name shall be good in the knowledge of princes. If thou find an arguer talking, a poor man, that is to say, not thine equal, be not scornful toward him because he is lowly. Let him alone, then
7:11 Speaker 03 shall he confound himself. Question him not to please thine heart, neither pour out thy wrath upon him that is before thee. It is shameful to confuse a mean mind. If thou be about to do that which is in thine heart, overcome it as a thing rejected of princes." So if they're smarter than you, maybe supplicate. If they're your equal, call them out if they're saying bad stuff. And if there's somebody that is less smart than you, don't be mean, which is actually all pretty good advice. This book is also full of instructions on things like keeping your wife happy, which included keeping her well fed and clothed and gladdening her heart, how to treat servants, which is pretty good advice. It's about being
7:54 Speaker 03 kind and respectful of people, even if they are technically under your employ or beneath you in the hierarchy of society, obeying your elders, et cetera.
8:05 Speaker 03 And on learning, it stated, quote, "Be not proud because thou art learned, but discourse with the ignorant man is with the sage. For no limit can be set to skill, neither is there any craftsman that possesseth full advantages. Fair speech is more rare than the emerald that is found by slave maidens on the pebbles." Confucius, who lived in the 6th and 5th centuries BCE, did not write any books himself, but his collected wisdom was committed to writing in books like the Analects, and could loosely be considered self-help because of the advice he offered on living a long and fulfilled life. Confucius based his teachings on the idea that people are inherently
8:48 Speaker 03 good, and that by studying and practicing virtue, the less noble characteristics and instincts of human behavior could be controlled. Almost everyone has probably been exposed to a number of, quote, "attributed to Confucius," like, quote, "Everything has beauty, but not everyone sees it," or, quote, "In a country well governed, poverty is something to be ashamed of. In a country badly governed, wealth is something to be ashamed of." When most Westerners today think of Confucius, there's this tendency to envision sort of a peaceful sage just sort of issuing inspiring or thought-provoking phrases. But Confucius lived at a contentious time in China's history, and he was involved in political strife
9:33 Speaker 03 as he worked in service of the Duke of Liu. It was after his exile because of his political ideas that Confucius began teaching his ideals of mutual respect in rural China. There is a really interesting aspect of Confucian wisdom, which is that because it was written down by his students after he died, we can't conclusively know that all of his often quoted words were actually entirely his own, or his own at all. Still, the Analects can be considered an early self-help guide. Ancient Greece also offers some examples of writing that could loosely be labeled as self-help. In "On the Shortness of Life," Stoic philosopher Seneca offered wisdom such
10:15 Speaker 03 as, quote, "It's not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste much of it." Life is long enough and it's been given to us in generous measure for accomplishing the greatest things if the whole of it is well invested. But when life is squandered through soft and careless living and when it's spent on no worthwhile pursuit, death finally presses and we realize that the life which we didn't notice passing has passed away. He also mentions that wealth is often a burden, noting that men of prosperity, quote, "are choked by their own goods," giving readers the lesson that it's better not to want so much stuff.
10:59 Speaker 03 Honestly, a lot of the advice Seneca gives in this book is solid and it's pretty inspiring. He cautioned against postponing the things that you want to do, waiting for some achievement marker or for conditions to be exactly right before you can rest or play or just enjoy your life. He wrote, quote, "Putting things off is the biggest waste of life, robbing each day as it comes and denying the present with the promise of the future. The greatest obstacle to living is expectancy." But these early examples of guiding people to improved living were very different in their focus from the way we think about self-help guides today. There was no attempt to frame it as a cheat code for greater success.
11:42 Speaker 03 These weren't about achieving or getting anything. They were primarily about getting through life the best way you could and being a better person. And that was so that you could be a better member of society in most cases. Coming up, we will talk about how one of the US founding fathers brought the idea of self-help instruction into the modern age. But first, we will pause for a sponsor break.
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12:38 Speaker 03 A rare disease diagnosis can change your life, but it doesn't have to define your future. Tune in for season seven of Untold Stories: Life with a Severe Autoimmune Condition, a Ruby Studio production in partnership with Argenx. Hosted by public health and policy expert Dr. Martine Hackett, Untold Stories: Life with a Severe Autoimmune Condition pushes the conversation within the rare disease community forward. Featuring guests living with MG, CIDP, myositis, SMA, and other rare autoimmune conditions, each episode explores hope, progress, and connection. How does research create new opportunities? How do shared experiences help light the way forward? How do we best show up for each other?
13:23 Speaker 03 Tune in to find out. Listen on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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14:17 Speaker 03 Benjamin Franklin didn't publish a self-help book exactly, but in his autobiography, he included a lot of advice about the way he lived his life and his own quest to continually improve, which he had systematized. And this makes up chapter nine of that writing titled, "Plan for Attaining Moral Perfection." And he shared that system he developed, complete with his daily calendar and a set of 13 virtues he believed were important and the way he implemented his pursuit of those values in his life, also with a calendar layout. He talks about how tricky the pursuit of moral perfection can be, writing, quote, "I wished to live without committing any faults at any time. I would conquer all
15:02 Speaker 03 that either natural inclination, custom, or company might lead me into. I knew or thought I knew what was right and wrong. I did not see why I might not always do the one and avoid the other, but I soon found I had undertaken a task of more difficulty than I had imagined. While my care was employed in guarding against one fault, I was often surprised by another. Habit took the advantage of inattention. Inclination was sometimes too strong for reason. I concluded at length that the mere speculative conviction that it was our interest to be completely virtuous was not sufficient to prevent our slipping,
15:44 Speaker 03 and that the contrary habits must be broken and good ones acquired and established before we can have any dependence on a steady, uniform rectitude of conduct. For this purpose, I therefore contrived the following method." So the first step in his method was figuring out a list of virtues that he thought would encompass the entirety of improved morality if he pursued them. And he came up with 13, and each of them had a short explanatory phrase to elaborate on what that meant in day-to-day life. We're going to talk in a minute about why he chose 13, but the list of 13 virtues were: 1. Temperance. Eat not to dullness, drink not to elevation.
16:27 Speaker 03 2. Silence. Speak not, but what may benefit others or yourself. Avoid trifling conversations. 3. Order. Let all your things have their places. Let each part of your business have its time. Four, resolution. Resolve to perform what you ought, perform without fail what you resolve. Five, frugality. Make no expense but to do good to others or yourself, i.e. waste nothing. Six, industry. Lose no time. Be always employed in something useful. Cut off all unnecessary actions. Seven, sincerity. Use no hurtful deceit. Think innocently
17:09 Speaker 03 and justly, and if you speak, speak accordingly. Eight, justice. Wrong none by doing injuries or omitting the benefits that are your duty. Nine, moderation. Avoid extremes. Forbear resenting injuries so much as you think they deserve. Ten, cleanliness. Tolerate no uncleanliness in body, clothes, or habitation. Eleven, tranquility. Be not disturbed at trifles or at accidents common or unavoidable. Twelve, chastity. Rarely use venery but for health or offspring. Never to dulness, weakness, or the injury of your own or another's peace
17:49 Speaker 03 or reputation. Thirteen, humility. Imitate Jesus and Socrates. Listen, we know Ben Franklin was a womanizer, so chastity was very funny to me. Working on 13 different virtues is a lot, and Franklin knew this was something that would take ongoing work, so he planned to work on it in a rotating system. Quote, "My intention being to acquire the habitude of all these virtues, I judged it would be well not to distract my attention by attempting the whole at once, but to fix it on one of them at a time, and when I should be master of that, then to proceed to another, and so on, till I should have gone through the thirteen. And as the previous acquisition
18:34 Speaker 03 of some might facilitate the acquisition of certain others, I arranged them with that view as they stand above."
18:42 Speaker 03 So Ben Franklin describes in this autobiography, setting up a little notebook that is going to sound rather familiar to anyone who has used a bullet journal or a similar tracking journal. And he's very thorough in his description and actually includes example charts so that readers can create their own. He used one page to set up a chart with seven columns for the days of the week across the top and then lines for each of the 13 virtues going down the page. So using this chart, anytime he failed to uphold a virtue, he would make a black mark in the box that corresponded with the virtue and the day of the week. And the goal was eventually to have a completely clean chart. But for each week, he picked one virtue as his primary focus.
19:27 Speaker 03 The idea was that focusing on a single virtue for a week would strengthen that virtue without having to worry about any of the others. Then the second week, when he focused on the next virtue, the first one would already have been improved. And this was meant to be a repeating system. He chose 13 virtues because that meant he could complete this cycle four times every year, filling all 52 weeks of the calendar. Franklin also offered an example of how he allocated his time each day with blocks for preparing his day, work in the morning and afternoon, a midday break for eating and reading, and a wrap-up block from 6 to 10, in which he tidied up, had his dinner, enjoyed entertainment, and had what he called his, quote,
20:11 Speaker 03 "examination of the day." Regarding the results of his whole method, he wrote, quote, "I entered upon the execution of this plan for self-examination and continued it with occasional intermissions for some time. I was surprised to find myself so much fuller of faults than I had imagined, but I had the satisfaction of seeing them diminish." And he's also clear that this is not a system in which it's really all that realistic to achieve perfection, writing, quote, "But on the whole, though I never arrived at the perfection I had been so ambitious of obtaining, but fell far short of it, yet I was by the endeavor a better and a happier man than I otherwise should have been if I had not attempted it."
20:54 Speaker 03 He also mentioned that the virtue that gave him the most trouble was order. Again, a little surprising, perhaps made me giggle. Franklin also shared various quotes that he would sometimes include in his notebooks to inspire him throughout his efforts to improve himself. Though Benjamin Franklin included the kind of material you'd associate with self-help books and his autobiography, it still wasn't called self-help. That term, which sometimes has a hyphen in it and sometimes not, was coined by Scottish author Samuel Smiles. His work in the field is sometimes described as ushering in the modern genre of self-help. Smiles was born on December 23rd, 1812, in Berwickshire, Scotland, which is in
21:39 Speaker 03 the southeast of the country. His father was also named Samuel and his mother was named Janet, and he had 10 siblings. He attended school in Haddington and became an apprentice to a physician's office at the age of 14. When he was 17, he moved to Leith, Scotland, with one of the doctors that he apprenticed under. And then he enrolled in Edinburgh University in 1829 to get his medical degree. When Samuel was 20, two big life events happened. He got his MD and his father died. While he was still grieving, he started his own medical practice, but he didn't stay with it for very long. Smiles had started writing for the Edinburgh Weekly Chronicle as sort of a hobby, writing articles about politics.
22:23 Speaker 03 And he found that he really enjoyed writing so much that he published a book in 1838 about raising children. Yeah, it's got a misleading title, which we'll talk about misleading titles with him in a moment, called Physical Education. But it's literally about like the physical body of your child, not about doing sports like activities and exercise. The same year that book came out, he also made a career pivot to journalism because he wanted to write full time and not be a doctor anymore. And he moved to Leeds, England, to try to build a career in that field. He worked as editor of the Leeds Times from 1838 to 1842. And while working at the paper in Leeds, which was considered a progressive publication,
23:08 Speaker 03 he became a huge supporter of free trade. Smiles didn't stay in the journalism game, though. In 1840, he met civil engineer George Stevenson, who is known today by the nickname "The Father of Railways." Stevenson will probably be a future episode, but the short version is this: "He was highly instrumental in the development of the steam locomotive and railways in England." When the two men met at a railway opening, they hit it off, and soon, Smiles was working for the railroad as the secretary of the Leeds and Thirsk Railway. That was in 1845. He stayed with the company for more than 20 years, working in various positions. During that time, he kept writing. He continued to write political articles,
23:50 Speaker 03 which were published in Eliza Cook's journal. He published a biography of George Stevenson in 1857. He would continue writing about accomplished engineers and the engineering accomplishments that were ushering in the industrial age for the rest of his life. But the book that was a runaway hit was the one titled "Self-Help: With Illustrations of Character and Conduct", which came out in 1859. Smiles had finished writing the book before his Stevenson biography, but it had some difficulty in finding an interested publisher. On the title page of "Self-Help", Smiles included the Shakespeare quote from the play "Hamlet":
24:32 Speaker 03 "This above all, to thine own self be true; and it must follow, as the night the day, then canst not then be false to any man." He explained in his introduction how he ended up writing such a book. Quote, "The origin of this book may be briefly told. Some fifteen years since, the author was requested to deliver an address before the members of some evening classes, which had been formed in a northern town for mutual improvement, under the following circumstances." He spends some time at this point talking through the organic formation of this group, how it started with a few young men who met in one of their homes every week to share knowledge in the hopes of improving themselves, and how that group grew so large
25:16 Speaker 03 that they eventually needed to rent space in a large apartment that had once been a cholera hospital. When the group had 100 members, they started asking lecturers to come and give talks to the assembled young men, and that's when they approached Smiles. Speaking in the third person, Smiles continues the story as it regarded his involvement. Quote, "He could not fail to be touched by the admirable, self-helping spirit which they had displayed. And though entertaining but slight faith in popular lecturing, he felt that a few words of encouragement, honestly and sincerely uttered, might not be without some good effect. And in this spirit, he addressed them on more than one
25:59 Speaker 03 occasion, citing examples of what other men had done, as illustrations of what each might, in a greater or less degree, do for himself, and pointing out that their happiness and well-being as individuals and afterlife must necessarily depend mainly upon themselves, upon their own diligent self-culture, self-discipline, and self-control, and above all, on that honest and upright performance of individual duty, which is the glory of manly character." So Smiles admits in this writing that this wasn't new information he was sharing in these lectures. He was just sharing some relatively old-fashioned advice about various
26:40 Speaker 03 things. But this topic of improving yourself this way became a source of great interest to him after the first lecture, and he began to study it. And that's when he started giving additional lectures to the group based on those studies. And he stood firm on the idea that those old-fashioned pieces of advice were still valid, writing, quote, "The object of the book briefly is to re-inculcate these old-fashioned but wholesome lessons, which perhaps cannot be too often urged, that youth must work in order to enjoy, that nothing creditable can be accomplished without application and diligence, that the student must not be daunted by difficulties, but conquer them by patience and perseverance, and that above
27:23 Speaker 03 all, he must seek elevation of character, without which capacity is worthless and worldly success is not." Most of these lectures, and subsequently the chapters of the book, are about the lives of men who had achieved a measure of perceived success or greatness in their lives, and what qualities Smiles thought led them to that success.
27:46 Speaker 03 A lot of the messaging in the book is really about self-reliance. It opens by saying you can only count on yourself and that relying on others will make you weak. Quote, "Help from without is often enfeebling in its effects, but help from within invariably invigorates. Whatever is done for men or classes, to a certain extent, takes away the stimulus and necessity of doing for themselves. And where men are subjected to over-guidance and over-government, the inevitable tendency is to render them comparatively helpless." He also kind of goes on an anti-government rant here, stating, quote, "Moreover, it is every day becoming more clearly understood that the function of government is negative
28:30 Speaker 03 and restrictive rather than positive and active." There was actually a little bit of misunderstanding of the title of this book initially, and in an 1897 reprint of it, the new preface written by Smiles included the mention of this problem. Quote, "In one respect, the title of the book, which it is now too late to alter, has proved unfortunate, as it has led some who have judged it merely by the title to suppose that it consists of a eulogy of selfishness, the very opposite of what it really is, or at least what the author intended it to be." In the 20th century, the self-help genre in publishing just exploded in popularity.
29:11 Speaker 03 And we'll talk about a celebrity self-help book right after we hear from some of the sponsors that keep Stuff You Missed in History Class going.
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29:53 Speaker 03 A rare disease diagnosis can change your life, but it doesn't have to define your future. Tune in for season seven of Untold Stories: Life with a Severe Autoimmune Condition, a Ruby Studio production in partnership with Argenx. Hosted by public health and policy expert Dr. Martine Hackett, Untold Stories: Life with a Severe Autoimmune Condition pushes the conversation within the rare disease community forward. Featuring guests living with MG, CIDP, myositis, SMA, and other rare autoimmune conditions, each episode explores hope, progress, and connection. How does research create new opportunities? How do shared experiences help light the way forward? How do we best show up for each
30:37 Speaker 03 other? Tune in to find out. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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31:31 Speaker 03 In 1917, we see the rise of celebrity self-help writing when Douglas Fairbanks published his book, Laugh and Live. Fairbanks is one of those people who believed being happy is a choice for everyone, and he opens the book with that message. Quote, "There is one thing in this good old world that is positively sure. Happiness is for all who strive to be happy, and those who laugh are happy. Everybody is eligible, you, me, the other fellow." Happiness is fundamentally a state of mind, not a state of body, and mind controls. Indeed, it is possible to stand with one foot on the inevitable banana peel of life with
32:14 Speaker 03 both eyes peering into the great beyond and still be happy, comfortable, and serene, if we will even so much as smile.
32:24 Speaker 03 This book is obviously overly simplistic with a very upbeat attitude to sell it.
32:31 Speaker 03 Fairbanks advises readers to take stock of themselves, to really acknowledge their strengths and their weaknesses, which can be a good exercise for most people, but the rest is sort of fluffy talk about finding your drive and your energy and keeping in good shape and good humor. There's even a chapter titled Building Up a Personality that mostly just suggests you focus on what he calls sturdy qualities without really saying what those qualities are. Overall, the whole thing reads like a very perky book written by a man who has lived a charmed life. Yeah, I couldn't help but envision Douglas Fairbanks with his pen being like, this is really brilliant.
33:14 Speaker 03 And it's like, because it's written from your life experience, which has been, you know, very privileged, very happy, very lucky.
33:24 Speaker 03 A man named Dale Carnegie wrote one of the most long-lived self-help books in 1936, which was How to Win Friends and Influence People. Carnegie was a Missouri farm kid who tried out a number of jobs when he reached adulthood, including sales and acting, before he started teaching public speaking classes, which was something that he just naturally excelled at. Incidentally, his name was originally spelled C-A-R-N-A-G-E-Y, but he changed it to Carnegie, the spelling that we would associate with Andrew Carnegie. He allegedly told people that that was so that others would misspell his name less because they never got his original spelling right.
34:06 Speaker 03 But there are also some theories that he just wanted to capitalize on the clout of Andrew Carnegie's name. I would say even almost 100 years later. Probably most people who have heard of Dale Carnegie think he was related to Andrew Carnegie somehow. Yes. There's also a whole episode of the podcast If Books Could Kill about this book. Yeah. Want to have more about it. What we'll talk about is, starting in the 1920s, Dale Carnegie started writing books about public speaking, and they were aimed at businessmen. But he continued to give in-person courses, and that's how he was discovered by an employee from Simon & Schuster, who thought Dale's instruction could appeal to a general audience outside the business world.
34:51 Speaker 03 The result of that chance meeting was How to Win Friends and Influence People. The book promised eight things in its opening pages, stating that it would help the reader, quote, "get out of a mental rut, think new thoughts, acquire new visions, discover new ambitions, make friends quickly and easily, increase your popularity, win people to your way of thinking, increase your influence, your prestige, your ability to get things done, handle complaints, avoid arguments, keep your human contact smooth and pleasant, become a better speaker, a more entertaining conversationalist, arouse enthusiasm among your associates."
35:33 Speaker 03 This particular book is largely a guide map to positive interpersonal communication. Carnegie explains that getting along with people in a way that also gets you what you want largely comes down to a form of cooperation. Quote, "There's one way under high heaven to get anybody to do anything. Did you ever stop to think of that? Yes, just one way, and that is by making the other person want to do it. Remember, there is no other way. Of course, you can make someone want to give you his watch by sticking a revolver in his ribs. You can make your employees give you cooperation until your back is turned by threatening to fire them. You can make a child do what you want it to do by a whip or a threat,
36:18 Speaker 03 but these crude methods have sharply undesirable repercussions." So his advice is to get people on your side by getting... Giving them a feeling of importance. But he states vehemently, quote, "I am not suggesting flattery, far from it. I'm talking about a new way of life. Let me repeat, I am talking about a new way of life." And some of Carnegie's advice around this is pretty sound. It really comes down to appreciating people and acknowledging them. Obviously, there's more, but that really is the root of the whole ideology. Really be interested in other people, be a good listener, show respect even when you disagree. And this struck a chord with readers, and it still does. How to Win Friends remains popular.
37:03 Speaker 03 While researching this episode, Holly did a search for it on Amazon and found that it was number 18 on the top 20 most read books of the week, and it's been on that list for years. So this all sounds pretty upbeat. And there are actually a lot of famous and successful people who have credited Carnegie's work with inspiring them and making them better leaders and achievers. But it does, of course, come with the dark aspect of people using this for outright manipulation. And there is one very extreme instance of this, and that's Charles Manson, who took a course based on Carnegie's book while he was in prison in the 1950s for stealing a car. And then he used those teachings from the book to assemble his followers, known as
37:48 Speaker 03 the family, and got them to commit crimes, including murder, often by making them believe it was all their own idea rather than his. Carnegie wrote several other self-help books along the same lines as How to Win Friends, including How to Develop Self-Confidence and Influence People by Public Speaking, How to Enjoy Your Life and Your Job, How to Stop Worrying and Start Living, and The Quick and Easy Way to Effective Speaking. Yeah, all with kind of, you know, mixed reviews. Plenty of criticism to go around for these. But the last book that we're going to talk about has also been popular for decades, but it has been controversial from its earliest printing, and so has its author.
38:33 Speaker 03 And that is Norman Vincent Peale's 1952 book, The Power of Positive Thinking. So this book is the most problematic one that we're talking about today that we've mentioned at the very top of the show. So Norman Vincent Peale was born May 31, 1898 in Ballaratville, Ohio. His father was a Methodist preacher, and the family moved around to whatever place the church assigned him to. Peale initially pursued a journalism career after getting his degree from Ohio Wesleyan University, but he switched to ministry like his father not long after. Peale was, by all accounts, a compelling and really popular preacher with a talent for quickly growing the size of any congregation he was assigned to. In the 1930s, he started a radio show
39:18 Speaker 03 called The Art of Living. And in 1951, he founded the American Foundation of Religion and Psychiatry. In a 2021 writing, cultural anthropologist Dr. Holly Walters mentioned this foundation and why it has often been criticized, writing, quote, "Much of the current American ethos of toxic positivity can be traced back to the 1930s when two men, Norman Vincent Peale, a Methodist minister, and Smiley Blanton, a psychoanalyst, established a religio-psychiatric clinic next door to their church. Their methods then for faith-based psychological healing tended towards the idea that mental and emotional problems had their ultimate roots in a crisis of belief."
40:02 Speaker 03 And that is also true of The Power of Positive Thinking and other books written by Peale. He gives example after example of people who've turned their lives completely around simply by changing their thinking, but that thinking is always tied to Christian faith. The 10th rule in his list of rules for living a life of positivity was, quote, "Believe that you can receive power from God." This is an interesting contrast to the self-help instruction of Benjamin Franklin, who wrote in his writing about his method to improve morality, quote, "Though my scheme was not wholly without religion, there was in it no mark of any of the distinguishing
40:43 Speaker 03 tenets of any particular sect. I had purposely avoided them for being fully persuaded of the utility and excellency of my method, and that it might be serviceable to people in all religions, and intending some time or other to publish it, I would not have anything in it that should prejudice anyone of any sect against it." So in addition to Peel's work, including the specific need for the Christian religion, which caused a lot of criticism, the bigger issue that a lot of people had and still have with Peel is that there's not much verifiable information in his writing. His many examples of success stories all tend to be anonymous. It's all very, "I know a guy who had this
41:27 Speaker 03 problem, but he did what I told him, and now he doesn't have that problem anymore." There's no names, and there's no case studies, and there's no documentation of anything. While this book is also still in print, Peel's method has been condemned by mental health professionals since it came out because it lacks evidence and can frankly be damaging to people. Peel also caused problems for himself politically. He was very active in conservative politics. He was against the New Deal, for example. When Adlai Stevenson was on the ballot as vice president, Peel openly campaigned against him, claiming that because he was divorced, he was ungodly and problematic. Stevenson famously quipped in reply to finding
42:11 Speaker 03 out about it, quote, "I find Paul appealing and Peel appalling," invoking the Apostle Paul to show that he was indeed a religious man. But in 1960, so eight years after his very popular book came out, he aligned with a number of other Protestant ministers against JFK in the presidential campaign, convinced that if Kennedy won, he would be more loyal to the Pope than to the United States. And this caused, understandably, a huge outrage, and a lot of people called for Peel to resign as a minister. He did not, though, and in 1984, Ronald Reagan gave him the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Yeah, even at the time, people in his congregation were like...
42:53 Speaker 03 What? No, that's a weird conspiracy theory, dude. Yeah. He really thought that the Papal States were somehow going to suddenly control the United States. Yeah. Because Kennedy was Catholic. It's a conspiracy theory that's still around. Yeah. And this is an incredibly powerful person preaching this.
43:14 Speaker 03 But in the years since these early self-help books, there have been literally thousands of books to offer how-to advice for people eager to improve their lives. And they have become much more specialized. While Ben Franklin wrote about his struggle to keep the virtue of order and maintain tidy surroundings, just as a single paragraph in his book, there are, for example, so many books today intended to teach people how to keep house, and many of them are even specialized within that niche area. So you can find self-help books about cleaning that are geared toward neurodivergent readers, cleaning books that focus on transitioning to minimalism, cleaning books that are just for small spaces, et cetera. You can get books on how to get better sleep, how to improve your memory,
43:58 Speaker 03 how to train for a marathon, how to do almost anything you can think of. And listen, some of them actually have fairly good advice. There are a lot of self-help books that are written by credentialed experts that are reviewed by their peers that actually are not going to cause damage. Most of the advice in those ones involves the reader doing a lot of actual work and being tenacious to achieve that desired result or to improve things. But because people are always eager to find that magic answer that's going to change everything they dislike about their lives really quickly, there are also a lot of useless ones that are just capitalizing on that need. Additionally, different people function differently when it comes to things like positive versus negative thinking.
44:44 Speaker 03 A 2011 article in Scientific American written by Scott O. Lillenfield and Hal Arkowitz notes that, quote, "Positive thinking surely comes with advantages. It may encourage us to take needed risks and expand our horizons, but it has downsides as well and may not be for everyone, especially those for whom worrying and fetching come naturally as coping mechanisms." Moreover, positive thinking may be counterproductive if it leads us to blithely ignore life's dangers.
45:15 Speaker 03 Oh, I have so much to talk about on Friday. I do, too. But right now, I'm gonna talk about Dole Whip. Do it. Kathy writes, Dear Holly and Tracy, I've been listening to the podcast for about seven years and have thoroughly enjoyed doing so. The two of you obviously put a lot of work into making the show fun as well as educational. Thank you for your efforts. I was listening to the behind the scenes on Cranberries and heard Holly bemoaning having to make large batches of Dole Whip in order to enjoy having cranberry sauce with it. It just so happens that as I was searching for popsicles for my son while compiling my grocery delivery order, I came across snack sized portions of Dole Whip. I don't know which store down south would carry it. It's giant here in Northern Virginia, but it's gotta be somewhere.
45:58 Speaker 03 I hope you can find it so you can enjoy your treat anytime you want. Best, Kathy. And that, of course, led me to look it up, and she's not wrong at all. You can go to dolsonshine.com and you can put in, there's a where to buy button and you can put in your, your zip code and it will tell you. Like, I was surprised at how many places near me actually carry these little cups. Kroger, which is a popular grocery store here, Publix, even some Walgreens have them. Like, they're options. So I was incorrect in saying that you could only get them in a few places because apparently now you can get Dole Whip anywhere, which is great. And then you can make your own cranberry sauce if you want, or you can buy the canned stuff and put it on top and enjoy the experience
46:42 Speaker 03 and delight. Listen, I'm running out to do it after we finish recording today. Uh, thank you so much for giving me that heads up because I sure did need it. If you would like to write to us, you can do so at [email protected] . You can also subscribe to the podcast on the iHeartRadio app or anywhere you listen to your favorite shows.
47:08 Speaker 03 Stuff You Missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
47:22 Speaker 03 A rare disease diagnosis can change your life, but it doesn't have to define your future. In season seven of Untold Stories: Life with a Severe Autoimmune Condition, host Martine Hackett continues the conversation with people living with MG, CIDP, and the broader rare disease community, exploring what comes after diagnosis through stories of hope, progress, and connection. Produced by Ruby Studio in partnership with Argenx. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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49:10 Speaker 03 It's proven to significantly reduce allergic reactions if a food allergy accident happens. Zolair 150mg is a prescription medication used to treat food allergy in people one year of age and older to reduce allergic reactions due to accidental exposure to one of more foods. While taking Zolair, you should continue to avoid all foods to which you are allergic. Don't use if you are allergic to Zolair. Zolair may cause a severe, life-threatening allergic reaction called anaphylaxis. Tell your doctor if you ever had anaphylaxis. Get help right away if you have trouble breathing or if you have swelling of your throat or tongue. Zolair should not be used for the emergency treatment of allergic reactions, including anaphylaxis. Zolair is for maintenance use to reduce allergic reactions, including anaphylaxis, while avoiding food allergens. Serious side effects such as cancer, fever, muscle aches and rash, parasitic infection, or heart and circulation problems have been reported.
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50:01 Speaker 00 This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.
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