How To Win Friends And Influence People

Live like Dale Carnegie, neg like Calvin Coolidge.

Where to find us: 

• Our Patreon
• Our merch!
• Peter's newsletter
• Peter's other podcast, 5-4
• Mike's other podcast, Maintenance Phase

Sources:

• Self-help Messiah: Dale Carnegie and Success in Modern America
• The Positive Thinkers
• Age of industrial violence 1910-1915 : the activities and findings of the United States commission on industrial relations
• Representation and Rebellion: The Rockefeller Plan at the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company, 1914–1942 
• Dale Carnegie and the Problem of Sincerity
  New York Times review from 1937

Thanks to Mindseye for our theme song!

Support us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/IfBooksPod

Transcript

Copy Transcript Copied

Peter: Yeah, I think I've got something. Hold on, let me think about it. 

Michael: He prepared, not you preparing for the podcast. I'm like, [Peter laughs] so with it, Peter. 

Peter: I’s so with it. 

Michael: Are you about to stand on business? [Peter laughs] Are you standing on business, Peter? Are you about to stand on business? 

Peter: Not me is like the worst fuck. That's so fucking annoying to me. That's one of the signs of me getting old is like, I hear that and I just get pissed off. 

Michael: Yeah.

Peter: It's not like, “Oh, I don't really get that slang.” It's like, “Shut the fuck up.” 

Michael: [laughs] That is you about to turn 40. That is it. 

Peter: Not me being taken to the camps. [Michael laughs] That's a fucking TikTok a year from now. 

Michael: Also, the slang in this book has fucking ruined my vocabulary because he keeps talking about fisticuffs.

Peter: Not me resorting to fisticuffs. [Michael laughs] Not me scuffling with this vagabond. 

Michael: Okay, Peter. 

Peter: Michael.

Michael: What do you know about How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie?

Peter: All I know is that we've covered a lot of frauds and phonies on this podcast, and it's nice to finally cover someone who did it the right way by having the same last name as a successful businessman.

[If Books Could Kill theme]

Michael: So, the full title of the book is How to Win Friends and Influence People. No colon. 

Peter: Wow. 

Michael: Co, co, co. Combo breaker. We've never had this. It is published in 1936. It's sold. It's not clear how many copies it sold, but somewhere in the tens of millions. It has been called the most popular nonfiction book since The Bible. So of course, neither one of us are coming into this fresh, I assume. 

Peter: I'm not really familiar with the contents of the book. I am aware that this is the OG business self-help book. 

Michael: Yes.

Peter: But that's really it. 

Michael: Over the years, I have heard various things about this book. I've heard from people that this is not that bad, and that most of the advice in it is pretty reasonable. I've also heard that he's like a demon sent from hell. So, I went into this relatively open. I was like, this could be good. This could be bad. I picked up the book, I opened it. The second paragraph starts with, “I have since 1912, been conducting educational courses for business and professional men and women in New York City.” 

Peter: Oh, my God. 

Michael: So, he's a seminar grifter. 

Peter: A hundred years ago, was the seminar grifter. 

Michael: The first seminar grifter I know. 

Peter: If Dale was born in 1991, he'd be hosting a podcast in aviators. 

Michael: Yeah. 

Peter: Hawking some product. [Michael laughs] This pill changed my relationship with my dick. 

Michael: So, after he does his little like I teach seminars introduction, I'm extremely skeptical. He then goes into a litany of testimonials. He's like, this man attended my course. And then he achieved success like he had never known. And it just goes on and on. 

Peter: If you are willing to sit there for 20 minutes reading about how important something is before you even know what it is. 

Michael: I know. 

Peter: You're a natural sucker. 

Michael: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. 

Peter: And you're going to buy whatever they're selling. 

Michael: He then of course does the thing where he's like, “This is such powerful wisdom. But they don't teach it to you in schools.” 

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

Michael: [laughs] I know. Another OG trick in this book is that he includes a lot of quotes from famous people. 

Peter: Hell yeah, dude. 

Michael: So, he has a quote from the former president of Princeton saying, “Education is the ability to meet life's situations.” 

Peter: Whoa. 

Michael: Which is not a good quote. 

Peter: Two podcast bros just in awe. 

Michael: Yeah. Theo von voice. 

Peter: Wow. Yeah. 

Michael: You got situations and then you got to meet him, man. So that's the first introduction. We then have another introduction called Nine Suggestions on How to Get the Most out of This Book. And it's all super self-aggrandizing. It's like, you mustn't only read this once. You must underline your favorite passages. You must tell your friends to purchase it as well. 

Peter: Sure. 

Michael: We then have another introduction, a biography of Dale Carnegie by a radio broadcaster named Lowell Thomas. It's called “A Shortcut to Distinction.” So, we then get all these biographical details, which I got to say, a lot of which struck me as very fake or at least slightly dubious. He is raised on a farm in Maryville, Missouri, which is where my grandmother is from. He says that his dog died by being struck by lightning.

Peter: I believe it. 

Michael: He has all these stories about I had to wake up at 3 AM to feed the hogs. 

Peter: I don't think that's when you feed hogs. 

Michael: He then says, the hogs got cholera. He's traveling to and from school on horseback and doing chores and then reading Latin by oil light at night. He then goes to Teachers College, but then he drops out to become essentially a door-to-door salesman and starts selling distance learning courses. Back when correspondence courses were in the mail. 

Peter: He's doing Zoom Grifter shit. But well, before Zoom. 

Michael: He then quits as a traveling salesman to go to acting school and then drops out to join a circus. Apparently, circuses had plays that went along with them as part of the evening's entertainment. So, he's an actor in the play that is along with the circus. He moves back to New York to sell used cars. 

Peter: Yes. 

Michael: He then quits to become a novelist and then starts teaching these courses at the YMCA. And there's a whole thing about, like, “We can't pay you, so we. We must give you a portion of the proceeds.” And then, of course, before you know it, he's making a thousand dollars a night because the proceeds are so high. It's like, the success story.

Peter: I see.

Michael: This guy Lowell Thomas speaks of Dale Carnegie in these weirdly reverent tones. Another thing that made me suspicious. He says, “A slave to no hard and fast rules. He developed a course that is as real as the measles and twice as much fun.” 

Peter: What? 

Michael: I mean, measles. Many things are twice as fun as measles. [Michael laughs] 

Peter: Why is he so bad at identifying good quotes for a book? 

Michael: That's so fucking weird. [laughs]

Peter: Maybe that was a saying. 

Michael: He also has a weird thing about. He's like, “As the old saying goes, give a dog a bad name and then you hang him.” [Peter laughs] Like what? Like, is that the whole saying? 

Peter: As the old saying goes, shoot a lady in the face, [Michael laughs] not me hanging my dog. 

Michael: So, I go into this book unbelievably negative. This guy's a seminar grifter. He has this too perfect backstory. He's already giving me a bunch of filler, a bunch of exaggerated stuff. I finally get into the core text of the book. The book is split into around 30, like, principles. Principles of how to win friends and influence people. The first principle is, “Don't criticize, condemn, or complain.” Most of it is kind of like, fine. He's like, “You win more friends by being nice than by being mean.” 

Peter: That's true. 

Michael: He quotes in full this thing called “father forgets,” which is like a little parable that apparently ran in Reader's Digest numerous times because it was so popular. Basically, about a dad who gets home and criticizes his son. They go to a baseball game, he criticizes his son, and eventually the father realizes that, “Hey, I should be nice to my son.” 

Peter: Okay? 

Michael: He then says this. I'm going to send it to you. 

Peter: We nourish the bodies of our children, but how seldom do we nourish their self-esteem. We provide them with roast beef and potatoes to build energy. But we neglect to give them kind words of appreciation that would sing in their memories for years like the music of the morning stars. Wow. 

Michael: Yeah. 

Peter: This was the first time anyone ever thought about being nice to children. [Peter laughs] It was 1936. And he was like, “I have an idea.” 

Michael: We then get to principle two, which is give honest and sincere appreciation. And he basically says that, like, “One of the core drivers of essentially all human behavior is that we want to feel important. And we want to have our needs and our feelings recognized by other people.” And so, he tells the story of Charles Schwab, who was the First President of the US Steel Company. He's apparently the first person ever to make a million dollars as his salary. This is actually interesting. The thing that is happening at the time is that we're basically getting the first green shoots of the knowledge economy. We're shifting from the industrial production. Your ability to succeed at work is based on how good of a producer you are on the production line.

We're now switching to, essentially the creation of American middle management, American corporate hierarchies. And so, a lot of the people who are attending Dale Carnegie's courses are these people who used to be assembly line workers who are now in middle management and are like, “How do I do this?” It's not my skill at engineering that is going to get me up the corporate ladder. It's actually my ability to get along with people and influence people. And so, this is actually one of the core drivers of his courses. 

Peter: I need to get good at bullshit. I need to get good at fake nonsense. [Peter laughs] 

Michael: So, he quotes Charles Schwab here. 

Peter: I consider my ability to arouse enthusiasm among my people, said Schwab, the greatest asset I possess and the way to develop the best that is in a person is by appreciation and encouragement. I have yet to find the person, however great or exalted his station, who did not do better work and put forth greater effort under a spirit of approval than he would ever do under a spirit of criticism. 

Michael: He draws the distinction between flattery and appreciation. He says, like, “You should think deeply about what you appreciate about other people and tell them that and give meaningful compliments.” So, here's what he says about flattery. 

Peter: The difference between appreciation and flattery. That is simple. One is sincere and the other insincere. One comes from the heart out, the other from the teeth out. One is unselfish, the other selfish. One is universally admired, the other universally condemned. Emerson said, “Every man I meet is my superior in some way.” If that was true of Emerson, isn't it likely to be a thousand times more true of you and me. Let's cease thinking of our accomplishments, our wants. Let's try to figure out the other person's good points. 

Michael: Yeah. 

Peter: So true. Yeah, this is before they figured out negging. 

Michael: Yeah, I think the updated version of this is much shorter because here it just says, tell her her shoes look really comfortable. 

Peter: It's Chapter 10 of How to Win Friends, runes.

Michael: [laughs] We then get principle three, arouse in the other person an eager want. 

Peter: Yeah, this is where it gets hot and heavy, folks. 

Michael: [laughs] Which-- honestly it sounds bad. I went into this chapter like, “Oh, where's he going with this?” But this is basically just like, find out what other people's interests are. And when you're negotiating, try to find an arrangement that genuinely offers something to both of you. 

Peter: Dale Carnegie, doing the Lord's work, just out here introducing [Peter laughs] basic morality and human kindness to Americans in the mid-1930s. 

Michael: We then get principal four, become genuinely interested in other people. 

Peter: Okay. 

Michael: He says, “You can make more friends in two months by becoming genuinely interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in you.” 

Peter: This is especially good advice for people who are really boring. 

Michael: Yeah. 

Peter: If you're not interesting, this has been phenomenal advice. If you're super cool like us, where your job is, podcaster, you don't need to do this. 

Michael: That's something I appreciate about you, Peter, is the EQ of your voice, how I've [Peter laughs] made you attractive through the settings on the editing software.

Peter: Using technology, Michael has made me attractive and appealing. [Michael laughs]

Michael: One of his little life hacky tips is that when you see somebody who you like and appreciate and want to become friends with, stop what you're doing and greet them enthusiastically. 

Peter: Okay.

Michael: I genuinely think that's good advice. Someone who drops what they're doing is like, “Oh, I'm so glad to see you. How was your day?” Feels really good. 

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

Michael: Or enough of this nice guy bullshit. 

Peter: Right. I'm not going to walk up to you and be excited, like an absolute schmuck, like a Carnegie reader. I'm going to stand in the corner looking disinterested. 

Michael: We then get to the first hint of problematicness. Principle five is smile. 

Peter: Ladies, listen up. 

Michael: You know, he starts with anecdote about a woman who refuses to smile. 

Peter: Let me tell you a story of a woman who would have been a lot prettier if she [Peter laughs] smiled. 

Michael: Going to send you this. 

Peter: At a dinner party in New York, one of the guests, a woman who had inherited money, was eager to make a pleasing impression on everyone. She had squandered a modest fortune on sables, diamonds and pearls. Get it, girl? 

Michael: Sables. 

Peter: [laughs] But she hadn't done anything whatever about her face. 

Michael: Her face. 

Peter: It irradiated sourness and selfishness. She didn't realize what everyone knows. Namely, that the expression one wears on one's face is far more than the clothes one wears on one's back. Wrong, wrong, wrong. He doesn't understand or isn't willing to accept the power of a rich bitch. [Peter laughs] If you're a rich lady who has inherited a fortune, you don't need to smile for people. That's the benefit. 

Michael: So, here's his little conclusion. He's hammering the point home. 

Peter: Actions speak louder than words, and a smile says, “I like you. You make me happy. I am glad to see you.” This is why dogs make such a hit. 

Michael: Some people like dogs. 

Peter: They're so glad to see us that they almost jump out of their skins. So naturally, we are glad to see them. 

Michael: I'm including the thing about the dog, also because some of this is pretty good and pretty sweet advice, but this is a very dumb book. 

Peter: Part of why people like dogs is because dogs are so fucking stupid. 

Michael: Yeah, exactly. And they're dogs, they're not humans. It's just a different standard of behavior. 

Peter: I don't think you can operate based off that principle. But there is something to the underlying concept of just be excited and happy to see people. And they will probably reciprocate, not me. I won't enjoy that, but a lot of people will. 

Michael: [laughs] So, then we get to our first life hack piece of advice. Principle six is remember that a person's name is, to that person, the sweetest and most important sound in any language. 

Peter: Oh, no. This is something that I actually do. 

Michael: What? Remember people's names. 

Peter: Maybe this is slightly different, but I drop people's names into conversation. 

Michael: Really? 

Peter: Simplest thing is when I would send a little thank you email to someone, I would say, thank you and their name always. 

Michael: Did it feel like it worked? 

Peter: No. [Peter laughs] I mean, that was a piece of professional advice I got when I was young. 

Michael: Again, pretty good advice. Like, remember people's names, obviously. But I've also done especially, I've done interviews with public figures like politicians, they're like, “That's an interesting question,” Mike. But what I think, Mike.

Peter: No, you don't want to force it. 

Michael: You can tell they're overdoing it. And they're doing it in like a way that feels like they read it in a fucking self-help book. 

Peter: And it turns out they did. 

Michael: We then get to principle 7. Be a good listener, encourage others to talk about themselves. 

Peter: Okay. 

Michael: He says, if you aspire to be a good conversationalist, be an attentive listener. To be interesting, be interested. This is nice. 

Peter: Yeah. 

Michael: But then we also see some of the darkness underneath this advice and where it's coming from with Dale Carnegie. So, here's his opening anecdote to this.

Peter: Some time ago, I attended a bridge party. I don't play bridge. And there was a woman there who didn't play bridge either. She discovered that I had travelled in Europe a great deal. So, she said, “Oh, Mr. Carnegie, I do want you to tell me about all the wonderful places you have visited and the sights you have seen.” As we sat down on the sofa, she remarked that she and her husband had recently returned from a trip to Africa. Africa, I exclaimed, how interesting. I've always wanted to see Africa. Tell me, did you visit the big game country? That kept her talking for 45 minutes. She never again asked me where I had been or what I had seen. She didn't want to hear me talk about my travels. All she wanted was an interested listener so she could expand her ego and tell about where she had been. Was she unusual? No. Many people are like that. 

Michael: So, it's sort of like “I asked this lady a question and she answered it.” 

Peter: Well, 45 minutes is a long time, Mike. You got to admit, you got to admit. 

Michael: But also, we don't know the actual dynamics of that conversation. Like, I assume he's asking follow up questions. 

Peter: I do think this is sort of right. Although, this also feels like there's a discordance between this and the earlier just be nice sort of friendly stuff. Because this is sort of like people are disgusting, ego-driven animals. 

Michael: There's a little bit of cynicism that pops through. So, earlier in one of the principles, he says every act you've ever performed since the day you were born was performed because you wanted something. And so, what you should be doing is identify other people's wants. But also, it's a weirdly cynical way to go through life of like, well, everyone, you're only talking to me because you want something that just isn't true of most interactions. 

Peter: How many people listening to this are literally wandering into a room right now where you don't remember why you entered that room, right?

Michael: [laughs] Right. Like Kyle Rittenhouse, you're doing many things at once. Yes. 

Peter: Imagine how many people are hearing that. No context. 

Michael: [laughs] That wasn't a bonus episode. That's now lore. 

Peter: It's canonical, folks. 

Michael: I also am someone who maybe because I'm a journalist, I asking people about things that they like talking about and they're experts on. And I don't leave those conversations being like, “Oh, they just talked about themselves.” I would say I learned a lot from somebody. I think you could also frame this a way of, like, people have treasures within them, and you can unearth them and form connections and learn things about the world through talking to people. 

Peter: Yeah, I think that's true. But I mean, look, so far this has been pretty good advice, right? 

Michael: Yeah. 

Peter: Listen to people. Engage with their interests. People want to be listened to. Smile, ladies, all the classics.

Michael: I will say most of the core of this book is good. Try to be nice to people. Listen to them when they talk. Think about what you appreciate about people. 

Peter: Where's the Korean Pilots chapter, Michael? 

Michael: [laughs] We've talked a lot on the show about how essentially all mass market advice is just a way of people packaging their own biographies. They're all accidental biographies, these self-help books. As I was reading How to Win Friends and Influence People, I was also reading a book called Self-Help Messiah, Dale Carnegie and Success in Modern America by Steven Watts, which is very interesting and very good, and essentially tells his entire life story as it's going through the legacy of the book, all of the threads of American society and economy that were going on that led to the book. And so, I have this book, and then I also have this biography of the guy who wrote it. And it matches up very closely, the kind of life and interactions that he's having and also the kind of advice that he's giving. So, the first thing to note is that those anecdotes at first that rubbed me the wrong way, they're all true. [Peter laughs] He had an insane life. 

Peter: Okay. 

Michael: It appears his dog really did get struck by lightning, or at least there's letters home to his mom and shit that indicate that. And it's like a consistent story that he told, so to the extent that we can confirm it appears to be true. 

Peter: Right. 

Michael: The other thing that you note is that all of the tips that he's giving you for human interaction are essentially coping mechanisms. So, there's two experiences that feed into the kind of advice that he gives for the rest of his life. The first is that Dale Carnegie is an unbelievably insecure guy. So, he grows up in like profound poverty. Like the kind of poverty that I saw when I used to do human rights trips to Zimbabwe. His dad would take out loans to buy hogs or buy seeds. And then there'd be a drought or all the hogs would die of disease. And then they'd be out of food and out of money. And so, the only way they buy is basically growing their own food. 

Peter: Pre new deal style poverty, Grapes of Wrath situation. The kind of poverty that you don't see anymore and won't see for another two years. 

Michael: [laughs] Because they're like the only way that he got clothes was they would barter meat from the hogs into cloth. And then his mom would sew his clothes. 

Peter: Give me that shirt. I'll give you this dog that was struck by lightning. 

Michael: And so of course he's like much poorer than the other kids at school. He's extremely insecure. Once he moves to New York, he's not quite one of these East Coast sophisticates. He doesn't really fit into that world. He also doesn't really fit into rural farm life the way that he used to either. He feels distant from all of these groups his whole life. He basically doesn't have a lot of confidence in his abilities. And when you think about the kinds of tactics that he's proposing here, like if you're afraid that you don't have anything interesting to say and that people are going to be bored or annoyed by you, a great way to get around that is just ask them about themselves. You're like, “Well, then I don't have to talk. I can just have people talk to me and then they'll like me.”

And if you don't know how to fit into social situations and you're nervous about what people think of you're going to be obsessed with avoiding conflict, trying to ingratiate yourself to other people any way that you can, smiling, taking this subservient role in every interaction because to you, you're just desperate to be liked to get some form of affirmation and make your anxiety about conversation go away. 

Peter: This comparison might be a bit of a stretch, but it feels to me like he was a tech bro equivalent where he has been catapulted into this liminal class space.

Michael: Yeah. 

Peter: Existing side by side with the rich, but not quite one of them. Yeah, with the Aura tech bros, it turned them into Nazis. I don't believe that happened to Dale. 

Michael: Well, there's a whole sequence in the book about how he's really insecure about his ability to get women, especially when he's younger. 

Peter: Well, duh. 

Michael: He's like, “Even if a girl wants to go out with me, I can't take her anywhere because I don't have any money and I wear the same clothes every single day and they don't fit me.” He's so insecure about everything about himself that would appeal to the opposite sex. 

Peter: This is also a time when you'd see a picture of five-year-old children and they're all wearing suits. 

Michael: But it's also interesting is there wasn't really right-wing propaganda for him to find at that time. I feel like he's the guy that if Reddit was around, he would have ended up in like a really bad place. But he basically found like the debate team and public speaking and that's how he like starts to gain self-esteem and he just feels good at one thing. 

Peter: If he had lived in Italy, he is on the streets in the 20s cracking socialist heads for sure. 

Michael: So, this is an excerpt from a really interesting article called Dale Carnegie and The Problem of Sincerity by Gail Thain Parker. 

Peter: He was profoundly wrong about human psychology. His own experience, first as a poor farm boy, later as a prosperous lecturer and author, led him to believe that survival and success were possible only if you were willing to disavow your strongest instincts, gloss over mysteries, and be satisfied with communicating as opposed to standing for anything. If you smiled, looked people in the eye and expressed an interest in what they were feeling, if you never snarled, nagged, attacked, or asserted your rights, you could survive. And as an American survivor, you might hope for a nice car, a nice wife, and a nice home in a garden suburb. The rewards for improving your social radar were not the satisfaction of deep personal needs, but the maintenance of comfort and appearances. 

Michael: He does seem to have been very good at like navigating these social interactions. But it also feels like he felt profoundly alone in these social interactions oftentimes and he really struggled to feel connected to people. When all you're doing in a conversation is like, how can I meet the other person's needs? You don't feel like you're completely present in that conversation. You have this feeling of being alone when you're with other people. Because you're in this low-grade panic of just like, “Well, how can I make sure the other person is comfortable?” 

Peter: It's interesting that this suffers from some of the same problems that pickup artistry does, which is that if you're just trying to adhere to the gamification of conversation, you will never actually have a real one. 

Michael: Exactly. You're not really participating. 

Peter: Yeah. All you're doing is mapping out how the conversation should go and what you should do in your mind. And you're never actually engaging with this other person in a way that would expose you to some vulnerability. Where you might be in danger of fucking the conversation up a little bit. Which is half of what makes a conversation fun, frankly. 

Michael: And you're doing way more work than the other person too. 

Peter: That lady's just yapping about Africa. And Dale is like, what is my next move in this conversation? 

Michael: So, the book is informed by his deep insecurity. It's also very fundamentally informed by his experience as a door-to-door salesman. Despite the fact that he spends most of his life-giving advice to middle managers and career people, he never has an office job his whole life. And this public speaking thing is the only thing he's ever succeeded at all. 

Peter: All one book, right? 

Michael: Yeah.

Peter: I mean, it's so interesting that this is how you can trace the self-help grift back. You give 20 lectures and seminars and you've made a bunch of money and everyone's like, “You should write a book.” And you're like, “Yeah, that's another scam I could run.”

Michael: He goes to teaching college, but he never graduates because he drops out to door-to-door sales. He's not very good at sales. He then gets another job not selling correspondence courses. He's selling lard and soap, like pork products. It doesn't appear he's very good at that. He goes to acting school, but then drops out. He joins the circus, but that's only like a three-month gig and he can't get any acting gigs after that. He then goes back to selling used cars, fails at that. He writes a novel that is so bad that his agent is like, I'm not even sending this to publishers. This is like an embarrassment. The only thing he's ever been good at is like debate, public speaking. And so, essentially in desperation he's like, I can teach other people to do public speaking. 

And again, and again his life, he tries to branch out from that and then fails and then comes back to public speaking. 

Peter: Yeah. Right. 

Michael: And also, if you think about these tips of smile and try to avoid arguments and greet somebody enthusiastically a lot of these are tips for making somebody like you immediately. 

Peter: Yeah. 

Michael: They're not tips for ongoing relationships. They're like, when you show up at somebody's door, how can you make a good impression in the first five minutes and establish trust very quickly? 

Peter: I'll also say it's a very classic self-help that he tries to write a novel and it's just atrocious. They're like, “Absolutely not.” And then he writes a self-help book and they're like, “Yeah, this is great.” 

Michael: It's also funny because when he tried to write the novel, he was already relatively well known. He was a radio producer. He was a midlevel celebrity at the time that he pitched the novel. The fact that his agent was like, “No, we're not even trying.” It must have been so bad. 

Peter: Maybe this was a time when they were like, “We actually expect books to be relatively good. [Peter laughs] Maybe try this in a hundred years Dale. 

Michael: The other salesmanship tactic is that throughout his life and throughout his book, he gets over his skis as far as telling the truth. 

Peter: Nice. 

Michael: There's a really interesting episode in the book where as he's becoming a novelist, he's also writing magazine articles on the side. He sort of has this little stint in journalism, which again, doesn't really go anywhere. But as he's writing these articles, they're mostly like profiles of business people. He does this thing of like, “What's the secret to your success?” He's really interested in this throughout the course of his life. But he also writes an essay in 1918 called My Triumph Over Fears that Cost Me $10,000 a Year in something called American Magazine. And it's a story of a guy who was so nervous and he wasn't succeeding at business. But then eventually his wife is like, you need skills as a public speaker. And then he starts attending public speaking courses at the YMCA in New York. And all of a sudden, his career takes off.

Peter: Wow. 

Michael: So, I'm going to send you an excerpt from the book. This is from the biography of Carnegie. 

Peter: Obviously, this true story of success was a thinly disguised parable about the usefulness of Carnegie's own course on public speaking. Having taken to heart the lesson of self-promotion, he wasted little time in distributing hundreds of reprints of this article. He added to the original manuscript by pointing out that Dale Carnegie was the teacher of the public speaking course and appended a postscript, “The YMCA in your city conducts a nationally known Carnegie course in public speaking, the course studied by the man whose story you have just read. You are invited to attend without any obligation on your part. One of the sessions of this course at your YMCA.”

Michael: This is egregiously unethical. 

Peter: Never stop hustling. 

Michael: It's like so bad. 

Peter: Never stop hustling. 

Michael: You fabricate a story, which is totally not true about this guy that achieved success. You pitch it to a magazine, somehow get it published, which is already unethical enough. You then reprint hundreds of copies of the article and go, “Look, American Magazine wrote an article about how good my course is.” 

Peter: I'm not sure that the postscript is that much more unethical. I feel like you basically crossed the threshold of unethicalness once you publish the full-on fake story. 

Michael: Right. 

Peter: And so, at that point you might as well add the grifty postscript. I think he's doing great. 

Michael: Go to the sentence he added to the original manuscript. 

Peter: Yeah. 

Michael: Do you notice anything about his name? 

Peter: Yes. It's not spelled the way that I'm familiar. It's spelled C-A-R-N-A-G-E-Y.

Michael: And it's pronounced Carnagey.

Peter: Interesting. 

Michael: So, the other little bit of salesmanship is that he legally changes his name to Carnegie.

Peter: Oh. To match Andrew. 

Michael: He never really admits to this, but it's like, “Yes, [laughs] of course.” 

Peter: Well, I'll tell you this, it worked because-- [crosstalk] 

Michael: It really worked, yeah. 

Peter: And pretty sure if you had asked me five years ago, who's Dale Carnegie, I would have been like “Andrew Carnegie's brother, right?”

Michael: Oh, yeah.

Peter:  For sure. 

Michael: I think that he accurately read that most people will see the name and just it'll trigger all of these associations. I think that was a correct read. But also, it's like unbelievably cynical to do this. 

Peter: The sort of story about him being insecure about his origins it's now complete. Where he won't even keep the name. He seizes onto the spelling of someone from high society. 

Michael: We're going to jump around now because if we do every principle, it'll take us many hours. But you start to see the flaws of Dale Carnegie's personality showing up more clearly in the book as it goes on. The book starts to show his pathological need to avoid conflict and just get along in conversations and not make any waves. So, principle 10 is the only way to get the best of an argument is to avoid it. 

Peter: Okay? 

Michael: Principle 11 is show respect for the other person's opinions. Never say you're wrong. One of the reviews that I read of this noted that throughout the entire book, there's no actual conflicts between people. Everything is a misunderstanding, and everything can be solved by just phrasing things slightly differently. So, this whole thing of a compliment sandwich.

Peter: You squeeze the despicable insult in between two compliments. By the way, I heard of this when I was really young, in college or something. And then I clocked it every single time a boss ever did it to me. And it just pissed me off every time. I'm like, you think you can use fucking tricks of psychology on me, you piece of shit? I know what you're trying to do. 

Michael: It's so entrenched in workplace bullshit now that everyone knows as soon as you get a compliment, like, “Oh, they're starting with a compliment.” I'm going to get the actual message they want me to receive. And I can just ignore the bread in the sandwich. 

Peter: It's really hard for me to understand how normal people do this. But I have always felt I'm slacking off too much at every single job I've ever had, I am basically in every performance review being like, have I been caught? 

Michael: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. [laughs]

Peter: Have they realized that I do seven hours of work a week? That's the only thing I'm thinking about the whole time. 

Michael: Until you actually went to a meeting where they did in fact, hire you. [laughs] 

Peter: We found out that you're just a full-time podcaster. 

Michael: Did they do a compliment sandwich where they're like, “You're the best dresser in the office. However, you can never come here again.” 

Peter: Work wise, spectacular employment wise un.

[laughter]

Michael: So, here is his example for this one. 

Peter: A friend of mine was a guest at the White House for a weekend during the administration of Calvin Coolidge drifting into the President's private office, he heard Coolidge say to one of the secretaries, that's a pretty dress you're wearing this morning. And you are a very attractive young woman. 

Michael: Bread. That's the bread. Here comes the meat. 

Peter: [laughs] That was probably the most effusive praise “Silent Cal” had ever bestowed upon a secretary in his life. It was so unusual, so unexpected, that the secretary blushed in confusion. Then Coolidge said, “Now don't get stuck up.” [Peter chuckles] I just said that to make you feel good. From now on, I wish you'd be a little bit more careful with your punctuation.” 

Michael: [laughs] I fucking love this story. 

Peter: I need a sign from God that this is true. Please tell me this story is true. 

Michael: To say something nice and then immediately be like, I didn't mean that by the way. 

Peter: The whole point of the compliment sandwich is defeated when you're like, “Don't get stuck up, young lady. I just said it to make you feel good.”

Michael: [laughs] I was fucking lying to you. What I'm serious about is that you are shitty at your job. 

Peter: “Don't get stuck up. That was a lie. I told you to make this part feel better. You're dumb as hell, you're bad at your job, and you're ugly.” [Peter laughs] That's how Calvin Coolidge talked, by the way. I don't know if our listeners know that. 

Michael: Who knows if this is true? But also, it's so funny that Dale Carnegie is presenting this as good advice. 

Peter: You're a hot, young number, and it's nice to see you around the office. Now, you're terrible with words. There is something in the male mind where you will compliment an objectively attractive lady. And if they're like, “Oh, that's nice, that makes me feel good.” You're like, “You better hop off that pedestal, bitch.” 

Michael: You got to throw a bucket of water on it immediately. 

Peter:  Right? It's like, you were just groveling at her feet, dude. Yeah, “Calvin, you were just groveling at her feet. Don't talk about her punctuation now.” 

Michael: So, Peter, we can't do every single one.

Peter: No. But I would like to hear about everyone that involves Calvin Coolidge from here on in. I'm sorry to just keep reiterating that anecdote. 

Michael: It is so funny. 

Peter: It is so funny. I will be bringing this one to my wife as soon as she arrives home from work. 

Michael: There are so many anecdotes in this book of someone saying something mean or basically acting against somebody else's interest. And then Carnegie is like but he phrased it the right way. And so, they didn't notice. The real jewel in the crown of these anecdotes. This might even better than the Coolidge one Peter. Carnegie talks about how there's a park near his house where youths keep starting fires. He says the youngsters go out to the park to go native and cook a frankfurter or an egg under the trees. 

Peter: You kids cooking fucking eggs over there. 

Michael: I love the idea of like five teenagers all huddled around one egg boiling. 

Peter: I love-- This is like, before they invented frisbees. [Michael laughs] You now what I mean? Like they had nothing. They were like “Let's go fry some fucking eggs.” 

Michael: So, the fires, constant fires are bothering Carnegie. He eventually goes up to these youths and he says like, “Hey, this is illegal. You need to not do this here.” 

Peter: You all look beautiful in those episodes outfits, now you got to stop cooking those eggs. 

Michael: Don't get cocky, boys. 

Peter: I only said that because I want you to stop cooking those eggs. 

Michael: So, after this threats and cajoling, he says the result they obeyed sullenly and with resentment. After I rode on over the hill, they probably rebuilt the fire and long to burn up the whole park. 

Peter: Yeah. 

Michael: So, being mean doesn't work, right? 

Peter: Right. 

Michael: So, then he says the next time he goes to the park he's going to try like a nicer kinder approach that is going to be much more effective. So, he then gives a speech to the youths which I'm going to send to you. 

Peter: [laughs] I'm going to start doing everything in this bullshit transatlantic accent I'm doing. [laughs] 

Michael: Having a good time boys? 

Peter: Having a good time, boys. 

[laughter] 

Peter: I can't tell this the whole time. Having a good time, boys. What are you going to cook for supper? I loved to build fires myself when I was a boy and I still love to. But they are very dangerous here in the park. I know you boys don't mean to do any harm, but other boys aren't so careful. They come along and see that you've built a fire, so they build one and don't put it out when they go home. And it spreads among the dry leaves and kills the trees. We won't have any trees here at all if we aren't more careful. You could be put in jail for building this fire. But I don't want to be bossy and interfere with your pleasure. I like to see you enjoy yourselves. 

But won't you please rake all the leaves away from the fire right now? And you'll be careful to cover it with dirt, a lot of dirt before you leave, won't you? And next time you want to have some fun, won't you please bold your-- [crosstalk]. 

Michael: It goes on so long. 

Peter: And next these boys are just like, “Get this fucking guy away from me.” 

Michael: [laughs] They're already like shooting him with pellet guns at this point. 

Peter: “They're putting full ass rocks into slingshots. [Michael laughs] And next time you want to have some fun, won't you please build your fire over the hill there in the sandpit. I can't do any harm there. Thanks so much boys. Have a good time.” 

Michael: [laughs] So, according to him, this works like a charm. 

Peter: Having a good time boys? What are you going to cook for supper? I got a fresh egg in my pocket for you, if you just build your fire over in the sandpit. This is pissing me off just listening to it now when I'm 40.

Michael: Just the length of it. 

Peter: Yeah, just some old guy who's obviously condescending to you.

Michael: I used to do this when I was a youth. 

Peter: I used to love to boil a frankfurter back in my day. But of course, I was always very cautious about fire safety. 

Michael: It's just like I imagine him turning a baseball cap around backwards, sitting in a backwards chair, like, “Hello, boys.” 

Peter: He's 58 and he's putting, like, a slingshot in his back pocket, like Dennis the Menace. 

Michael: I might seem like an old guy, but I'm actually one of you. 

Peter: I can't get over how boring being a child was. They were just like, ‘Let's go cook food”. [Peter laughs] Let's go throw rocks at ladies on the street. 

Michael: Okay. So again, you can see Dale Carnegie refusing to believe that people have different interests and thinking that wording will solve things. 

Peter: What if we told the children that their actions have consequences? 

Michael: This does tip into misinformation and really bad politics at various points. 

Peter: You know, who knows how to speak to people? Is that fella out of Germany? 

Michael: So, this is from Principle 13, begin in a friendly way. 

Peter: In 1915, John D. Rockefeller was the most fiercely despised man in Colorado. One of the bloodiest strikes in the history of American industry had been shocking the state for two terrible years. Irate, belligerent miners were demanding higher wages from the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company. Rockefeller controlled that company. Property had been destroyed, troops had been called out. Blood had been shed. At a time like that, with the air seething with hatred, Rockefeller wanted to win the strikers to his way of thinking. And he did it. [laughs] How? Here's the story. [chuckles] “Hey, boys. See you're enjoying your strike over there. I used to enjoy a striker, too.” 

Michael: Give me two free eggs if you go back to work. 

Peter: After weeks spent in making friends, Rockefeller addressed the representatives of the strikers. This speech in its entirety is a masterpiece. It produced astonishing results. It calmed the tempestuous waves of hate that threatened to engulf Rockefeller. It won him a host of admirers. It presented facts in such a friendly manner that the strikers went back to work without saying another word about the increase in wages for which they had fought so violently. 

Michael: He gave such a good speech, they forgot about how much they're making at work. 

Peter: Okay, well, yeah, so I'm excited to hear the speech, as I imagine it will de radicalize me. 

Michael: I condensed this slightly. He has a very long excerpt, but this is the sort of the heart of it, and still pretty long. This is Rockefeller speaking to striking miners in 1915.

Peter: “This is a red-letter day in my life. It is the first time I have ever had the good fortune to meet the representatives of the employees of this great company. I've had the opportunity of visiting all the camps and visited in your homes and met many of your wives and children. We meet here not as strangers, but as friends. And it is in the spirit of mutual friendship that I am glad to have this opportunity to discuss with you our common interests. It is only by your courtesy that I am here, for I am not so fortunate as to be either one or the other. And yet I feel that I am intimately associated with you men. For in a sense, I represent both the stockholders and the directors.” Mm, moving. 

Michael: So, I went back to the original text of the book to be like, “Did I miss something?” He's only quoting the boilerplate introduction of Rockefeller's speech. He's like, “I'm glad to be here today.” But he's not quoting any of the substantive parts of it. 

Peter: Right. 

Michael: Maybe this is just because we're all surrounded by so much corporate boilerplate at all times. This is the way that Southwest Airlines starts a letter telling your flight has been canceled. 

Peter: Yeah. Again, it's like this is the first time that anyone did corporate boilerplate. Right. And so, everyone's like, “Oh, fuck.” 

Michael: Wow. Incredible. 

Peter: This rocks. And now every 23-year-old out of college knows how to talk like this. 

Michael: So, I did look into the basic facts of this. 

Peter: The coalfield wars, right? Or whatever it was. 

Michael: Colorado Coalfield War. Yeah. 

Peter: Yeah. 

Michael: So, for this, I looked at a book called Representation and Rebellion: The Rockefeller Plan at the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company, 1914-1942. And the report that was produced on this called the Age of Industrial Violence, 1910-1915. So, yes, this is the Colorado Coalfield War. Basically, as you can imagine, in the early 1900s, the working conditions of miners were extremely bad. Eventually, they start trying to form a union with the United Mine Workers of America. They issue a bunch of demands. The company rejects their demands. And because they're all living in company provided housing, the company also evicts everybody. So, they all have to start living in tents on the mining site. There's sort of back and forth about various demands various pushback, different authorities are brought in. Eventually, the Feds call in the National Guard and it’s unclear who starts it. 

But this is basically just like they shoot into a fucking crowd and they kill eight people, including one 12-year-old boy. Eleven people who are hiding from the shooting. They're like “Hiding under mattresses or in a cellar are asphyxiated during this.” 

Peter: Jesus. 

Michael: So, it's like really awful. There's then retaliatory acts by the union. The entire incident goes for five years and results in 232 deaths. And so, Rockefeller owns 40% of this mining company. He's actually not as in control as the media depicts it at the time. But Rockefeller becomes the target of a huge amount of national unrest. People are showing up outside of his offices and picketing and shit. It's a huge deal. This is oftentimes seen as the beginning of crisis PR. So, he hires a PR firm to be like, “How do I salvage my reputation from this?” He does actually in 1915 visit the mines, although Carnegie leaves out the fact that he doesn't visit the mine where workers are striking. 

He visits an adjacent mine where there's been some labor unrest, but nothing like the Ludlow massacre. He does meet with people. He does this whole like PR campaign thing. He does give this speech, but the way that Carnegie presents it, he says “The speech presented facts in such a friendly manner that the strikers went back to work without saying another word about the increase in wages for which they had fought so violently.” That is not true. Basically, he proposes something called, that is eventually known as the Rockefeller Plan, which is a series of updates to working conditions. And he doesn't actually recognize the union. It takes many more decades of labor unrest to recognize the union. But it sets up essentially a company union which is not great, but it's way better than what they had. 

And he also agrees that the company will not reduce wages without notice. And also, if mines in the area so like mines in adjacent states raise wages, he has to raise wages too. So, it doesn't result in specific wage increases, but it does establish a procedure that results in the miners making significantly more money over the following years. 

Peter: Right, right. 

Michael: He focuses on wages here, but there's also very meaningful safety improvements as a part of this. And also, it sets up a government body within Colorado to also monitor safety conditions in the mines and give actual punishments for mines that do not follow the procedure. So, it's not like he gave a speech that was so good, people were like, “Did we get more wages? I don't even know. I forgot.” Because his speech was so good, he made meaningful reforms. 

Peter: It's so interesting how even before communism was a boogeyman to the extent it was in the post war era, it was just considered this unequivocal good that the workers went back to work with no raise. 

Michael: Yeah. 

Peter: Even by this kid-- this guy was raised poor. 

Michael: I think it's so interesting of the sort of the limitations of his thinking because it's he seems to think that every conflict can be papered over, which I think if you're a door-to-door salesman, kind of works. 

Peter: Yeah, yeah, right. That's it. Because that's his understanding of what conflict is like. Your objective is to like convince someone. You can just manipulate words and stuff because that's what convincing is. At least to some degree. The idea of real struggle, zero sum struggle with your employer doesn't really compute with him. 

Michael: He also has some of the most passive aggressive advice I've ever seen in one of these books. So, here is a guy talking about how he resolves conflict in his home. 

Peter: “Gladstone never criticized at home. When he came down to breakfast in the morning when the rest of his family was still sleeping, he had a gentle way of registering his reproach. He raised his voice and filled the house with a mysterious chant that reminded the other members that he was waiting downstairs for his breakfast all alone.”

Michael: Ooohh, for hours. 

Peter: “Diplomatic and considerate, he rigorously refrained from domestic criticism.”

Michael: Is that considerate? 

Peter: A lot of people criticize their wife for not feeding him. Meanwhile, I go downstairs, I put silverware in my hands, I sit at the table, took a napkin in a bib, and then I slam my fist on the table while shouting, breakfast, breakfast, breakfast, breakfast, breakfast. 

Michael: [laughs] And then when she comes downstairs, I'm like, “Oh, are you up?” Oh, hey. But I'm not criticizing. 

Peter: He's downstairs, like, “Bring me eggs. Bring me eggs.”

Michael: [laughs] Okay, this is too many examples. I might cut these in the edit, but this one's also just so delicious. Okay, here's another one. 

Peter: Marge Jacob of Woonsocket, Rhode Island told one of our classes how she convinced some sloppy construction workers to clean up after themselves when they were building additions to her house. For the first few days of the work, when Mrs. Jacob returned from her job, she noticed that the yard was strewn with the cut ends of lumber. She didn't want to antagonize the builders because they did excellent work. So, after the workers had gone home, she and her children picked up and neatly piled all the lumber debris in a corner. The following morning, she called the foreman to one side and said, “I'm really pleased with the way the front lawn was left last night. [Michael laughs] It is nice and clean and does not offend the neighbors.” From that day forward, the workers picked up and piled the debris to one side. 

Michael: I love it. 

Peter: Yes, the classic move of doing something and then telling someone that they did it. 

Michael: Yeah. And then thanking them for something they didn't do. [laughs] 

Peter: Maybe this is the annoying suburban homeowner in me now, but it's just like you are paying them for work. Just be like, “Hey, can you pile that on the side there?” 

Michael: Yeah, exactly. You just directly ask, like, “Hey, sorry, can you clean up after you're done? It's not.” 

Peter: Oh, I don't want to antagonize them. Yeah, relax. I don't think they would feel antagonized. [Michael laughs] It's like, “Put the wood over there, please. That'd be great. Thank you.” 

Michael: This is, like, this weird need to avoid conflict. But also, by avoiding conflict, you're being ruder. 

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

Michael: This culminates in a story about firing people. 

Peter: Okay. 

Michael: He's talking about a guy who works at a taxation firm where, of course, they, like, have a big rush, and then they have to fire a bunch of their employees. So, here's the original way that this guy was firing people. 

Peter: Sit down, Mr. Smith. The season's over and we don't seem to see any more assignments for you. Of course, you understood you were only employed for the busy season anyhow. 

Michael: Little terse. Little terse. 

Peter: Yep. 

Michael: So, then after he takes the Carnegie course and he learns about Principle 26, let the other person save face. He then does it with these words. 

Peter: By the way, this doesn't matter. This guy is fired regardless. This is completely irrelevant-- [crosstalk]

Michael: We'll get there. We'll get there. We'll get there. [laughs] 

Peter: All right, “Mr. Smith, you've done a fine job. That time we sent you to Newark, you had a tough assignment. You were on the spot, but you came through with flying colors. And we want you to know the firm is proud of you. You've got the stuff. You're going a long way wherever you're working,” [laughs] wherever you're working which brings me to my next point. 

Michael: Speaking of which, since we're on it, anyway. 

Peter: This firm believes in you and is rooting for you and we don't want you to forget it. I love how he doesn't tell him that he's fired in this. 

Michael: Wherever you happen to go Monday morning at 9 AM. I'm sure you're going to do great. And then Carnegie of course has a little thing afterwards where he's like, “This guy didn't even mind being fired.” “No. I think people notice when they get fired, Dale.” [laughs] 

Peter: Dude, this is before the welfare state even existed. This guy is fucked. This guy's like, “Okay, my children are going to starve, my son's been frying eggs in the park.” [Peter laughs] I don't even understand what this is meant to accomplish other than making you feel better about the firing process. 

Michael: Yeah exactly. It is telling that a lot of the stories in this book are from the perspective of CEOs. 

Peter: That's the people taking his little course, I guess. 

Michael: I mean this is the Great Depression too. He's giving people this advice in 1936. So, things are not great in the country. And yeah, you get the sense that this is appeasing the ego of the guy doing the firing. It's like they don't even mind. Maybe they don't tell you because you might want to rehire them in six months because it's a tax firm. But this doesn't do anything. 99% of your emotional reaction to being fired is the fact you're being fired. The wording doesn't really matter that much. And there's no wording so good that's going to make you forget that you're being fired. This is not how humans work. People know their own interests. 

Peter: How was work today? Actually, pretty good. 

Michael: Good. 

Peter: I got fired, real nice. 

Michael: You can imagine this being baldly cynical, right? The kind of person who's just like, “Ha ha ha, manipulate them with these words but then like treat them ruthlessly.” Right? 

Peter: Yeah, yeah. 

Michael: But when you look at Dale Carnegie's biography, this actually isn't what you see. What you see is an extremely earnest guy who just can't think very deeply about anything. Dale Carnegie appears to be a really great husband and father. His first wife, it's kind of weird he ends up marrying this like Habsburg adjacent German aristocrat lady. 

Peter: Oh, that's the dream. 

Michael: One of the biggest fights in their marriage is that he is able to just identify very basic injustices he's like, “Isn't it weird how nobility have lots of money and then other people don't have money?” And she's like, “You can't say that, Dale.” 

Peter: He's dodging her jaw in the argument. 

Michael: [laughs] He's like, some people have no money and other people have six fingers on each hand. It's incredible. 

Peter: Her eye is falling out of her socket and she's, like this is my birthright, Dale. 

Michael: And then with his second wife. His second wife has a daughter from a first marriage, and Dale is just immediately the coolest stepdad. He's bragging about his daughter's achievements. They eventually have a kid on their own, and he's like, basically a stay-at-home dad and is super excited about having a daughter. He's also a very good husband it appears. He's super respectful of his wife. It's actually a fairly progressive relationship. It sounds from other people that his wife is able to stand up to him and be like, “No Dale.’ And he's like, “Oh, you're right. Yeah, I should rethink that.” He just seems like a genuinely nice guy. 

Peter: Okay. 

Michael: He also has a very weird political consciousness. So, during the Great Depression, he turns $25 into dimes and he goes down to the local homeless shelter and just starts giving away dimes to people. He's like, “These people are in need and I have a decent amount of money. I should give money away.” He's not someone who's incapable of seeing basic morality. But also, at the same time, he has no political understanding of what would have caused the Great Depression. It doesn't radicalize him in any way. 

Peter: Yeah. 

Michael: Around the same time, he also spends a month traveling around China. And when he comes back, he's sort of like, “Well, these people wouldn't be so bummed out if they knew how poor Chinese people were. You got it. Way better off than the Chinese.” 

Peter: Okay. So, he would be a Democrat. 

Michael: There's interviews with him during the run up to World War II where they ask him about all of the really horrific shit that Japan is doing in China. And they're like, “What do you think about this?” And he's like, “Why? I traveled around Japan. I saw no signs of violence at all. They just don't seem like a violent people to me. I think it's a big old misunderstanding.” They also ask him about Hitler and he is a good enough person to understand, like, Hitler is the bad guy. He doesn't do any bothsidesing, but he's like, “Well, the problem with Hitler is just he's so selfish and if he wasn't such a bad guy, we wouldn't have these problems.” 

Peter: Yes. 

Michael: I think we've been doing the wrong voice for him. I don't think it's the Al Capone voice. I think it's the Jimmy Stewart voice where it's like, “Now you see here, mister, if you were just a little nicer, we wouldn't have to resort to fisticuffs.” 

Peter: Okay, well, easy for you to say when you can do the voice. I can't. So, I'm just going to stick with the one I can sort of do. 

Michael: There's also a thing of, the seminar GRIFT that he's doing. We've seen a lot of these guys who run these seminar GRIFTs and they fucking know they're scamming you, right? They're like, “Oh, yeah, call your credit card company at lunch break and have them raise your limit and then pay us for like elite gold package. And they just provide you with nothing.” They know that what they're doing is snake oil. Dale Carnegie, the only stories in the book of him being mean to people is when people show cynicism about the course. So, at one point the course is a franchise. At this point, he travels around to different satellite, the Boston Carnegie course or whatever. 

He goes and he overhears one of the instructors talking about, like, “Oh, I got to teach these rubes once again, these idiots tonight.” And Carnegie just fires him on the spot. And he's like, “No, we are providing a service to people. These are people who need something and they're paying us and we should take that obligation really seriously.” 

Peter: Yeah, but I bet he fired him. Nice. I bet he fired him real nice. [Peter laughs] You've been doing a great job teaching this seminar to be clear, you are fired.

Michael: From later academic analyses. It seems like the course was pretty good. Not because he was saying anything particularly profound. Like, most of the public speaking stuff was fairly standard advice. Like, the biggest thing in the course is that he'll kind of make people stand up and give a 90-second speech about themselves. And then he'll critique it like, “Oh, you could do this better. You could do this better.” And like, that's actually really useful for people. And it became a support group. Warren Buffett and Lee Iacocca were both people who took the course and both spoke about it very positively. So, he seems like a Very good-hearted guy, but also no depth. 

Peter: Yeah, 

Michael: Before he wrote the book, he had a radio show called Little Known Facts About Well Known People, which was exactly what it sounds like. 

Peter: Dude, that sounds like a podcast right now. 

Michael: Yeah, no, I was actually thinking like, “Can we steal this, please?” It's actually a really good idea. But the author of the biography notes that he'll do an episode about Gandhi. And he's like, “He wore false teeth. He had to put them in before he ate and then he took them out.” 

Peter: And that's today's show, folks. We'll see you time next week. 

Michael: Yeah. And like his episode on Lenin where the only thing he actually says about like his life is like, “He embarked on an economic experiment and then the whole show is just like fun facts about how he used to write letters to people with invisible ink and they had to like dip it in water to read the letter. But was there a reason why Lenin was an important figure.”

Peter: Or a reason why he was using invisible ink? I feel like this reminds me. There's like a certain type of person who's like, “Whoa, fun facts. Hitler was a vegetarian. What?”

Michael: Yeah, yeah, yeah. 

Peter: And like that's where their interest ends. They're just like, “Isn't that crazy?” 

Michael: Throughout How to Win Friends and Influence People, Carnegie will sort offhand mention. He's like, “I've been poring over biographies of Abraham Lincoln and trying to understand the minds of the great people in history.” And according to the biography, that is roughly true. But also, he could only read Reader's Digest summaries of books. He wasn't a guy who read primary sources. He was very interested in the world around him and he liked talking to people. And it seems like he really was a very active listener in his interpersonal relationships. But he couldn't read a full book or engage with actual literature. He's like, “I just want the condensed version of it.” So, there's interest, but there's not, like, ability. 

Peter: [laughs] Compliment sandwich. Love your courses. You are illiterate. [Peter laughs] Again, incredible courses. 

Michael: So, here is an excerpt from the biography. 

Peter: “Carnegie blithely ignored interests of all kinds, economic, regional, racial, religious, ethnic, ideological, to insist that political success was largely a matter of personality. Carnegie claimed that Theodore Roosevelt's intense interest in other people was the secret of his astonishing popularity. He argued that James Farley, FDR's key political manager, helped sweep his boss into the White House because he had memorized the names of 50,000 people. And upon meeting one of them, he was able to slap him on the back and inquire after the wife and kids. Even at the highest levels of political operation, Carnegie contended personal interactions trumped everything. When Woodrow Wilson was unable to win American cooperation with the League of Nations at the end of World War I, it was because he failed to use human relations skills. Carnegie argued that Congress rejected his proposals because Wilson mishandled prominent Republicans. “He refused to let them feel that the league was their idea as well as his.” 

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

Peter: Can we pause? This guy definitely didn't have 50,000 names memorized, right? 

Michael: That's another thing that Carnegie doesn't seem to be able to show a little skepticism to some of these anecdotes. These are fun facts that go around, but it's like, that's probably not true. 

Peter: Right. 

Michael: But there's a book from the 1980s called The Positive Thinkers by Donald Meyer, and it has a chapter on Carnegie. And he points out that it's a little weird how many of these stories in the book are about CEOs and presidents. And every single time, Carnegie just says, “Well, the reason they're successful is because they're nice as a person.” 

Peter: Right. 

Michael: He genuinely believed this and he needed to believe this. 

Peter: This is his theory of everything, right? That are like, that being nice and friendly and open will lead to success. And also, if you are successful, you must be nice and friendly and open. 

Michael: Yeah. 

Peter: He was like, “What if someone rose in the morning and then immediately grinded?”

Michael: [laughs] Yeah. 

Peter: And he was the first guy to think about that. And you have to give him credit for that. It's not derivative. 

Michael: It's like, “Well, gee, mister, you just got to get up and rise and get on your grind set.” I'm going to do that voice all the time. That's the one that I can do. [Peter laughs] But then okay, I would be remiss if we didn't talk about the final section of the book. I think all of these threads of Dale Carnegie's life culminate in part six, “Seven rules for making your home life happier.” 

Peter: Oh. Oh, my God. Is this our Korean pilots? Does theory go back to 1936? 

Michael: So, rule one is don't nag with three exclamation points. Do you want to guess who this advice is directed at, Peter? 

Peter: I do want to guess. 

Michael: Is there a specific person in the household who should be told not to nag. 

Peter: I'm going to say that this is directed towards the woman, the adult woman. 

Michael: Incredible. 

Peter: Because of their proclivity, their innate God given proclivity for nagging. 

Michael: Your mind, Peter, your mind. [Michael laughs] He immediately says, “Many a wife has made her own marital grave with a series of little digs.”

Peter: When you say that in 1936, it makes me think you're being literal where it's like, “Yeah, some men have had to kill their wives.” 

Michael: Yeah. Unfortunately,

Peter: Because they're nagging so much. 

Michael: He does blame Napoleon's wife for him cheating on her systematically. 

Peter: You haven't even conquered the whole continent yet. [Peter laughs] What are you doing, Napoleon? You're a loser. 

Michael: Also, a powerful French man cheating on his wife. I don't know. It must be the wife's problem. [Michael laughs] He quotes some author at the time saying, “If young wives would only be as courteous to their husbands as to strangers, any man will run from a shrewish tongue.” And then he gives us this. 

Peter: The wife of Count Leo Tolstoy discovered that after it was too late, before she passed away, she confessed to her daughters, I was the cause of your father's death. Her daughters didn't reply. They were both crying. They knew their mother was telling the truth. They knew she had killed him with her constant complaining, her eternal criticisms, and her eternal nagging. Get him, Dale. 

Michael: It does say that in Leo Tolstoy's Wikipedia entry, cause of death, eternal nagging. 

Peter: [laughs] There were like, “We know, mom, we know you killed him.” 

Michael: Yeah, I know. I love the detail that the daughters are like, “Oh, you definitely killed him.” 

[laughter] 

Peter: What is this based on.

Michael: Dude? 

Peter: How's he getting so much gossip about the wives of these powerful men? 

Michael: So, in his defense, this was a fairly widespread urban legend at the time. It's the yoko broke up The Beatles of its era. They were having an argument or it was a tumultuous time in their home life. This is October of 1910. He basically goes out of that. He's like, “Oh, fuck this.” Goes out of the house, dies of pneumonia. That's kind of like the way the story is typically told. Like, okay, so he's running away from his wife and he gets pneumonia and dies. 

Peter: Wasn't he like 90? 

Michael: No, he was. First of all, he's 82. So, an 82-year-old man dying is like not something that needs that much of an explanation. Secondly, he died of pneumonia 11 days after he left home. So, it was true that, like, they were having a lot of conflicts. He basically had this born-again transformation late in his life and he wanted to give away all of his copyrights. And they're having all these fights where she's like, “I would like our children and myself to be like, financially taken care of.” And he's like, “Why are you concerned with worldly possessions?”

Peter: You're 80 years old and your husband's like, “I'm going to give away everything.” And you're like, “Well, what about the stuff we need to survive?” And he's like, “Why are you so obsessed with this shit, right? 

Michael: And also, she like 20 to 30 years younger than him too, so she's like much more interested than he is. 

Peter: She's like, “I've got a ton to live for.” 

Michael: But then it does seem like they were fighting a lot in the house. But then when he left, he had a whole entourage around him and he was traveling around Russia and there were basically the 1910 equivalent of paparazzi following him around. He was really ambivalent about fame, ambivalent about the way that he would get mobbed by people wherever he went. He was depressed. It's like any monocausal explanation of this is just going to be really ridiculous. So, he does die of pneumonia, but that is caused by all the other things that he was doing for the 11 days after leaving his home before he died. So, it just is not true that he rushed out of the house in a T shirt and shorts and then like immediately died. [Peter laughs] I don't even know why I'm bothering to debunk it. Like, of course Zeet was not nagged to death. 

Peter: I know. I love that you're explaining. [Peter laughs] You dug way too deep on the research for that one. 

Michael: I know. I really, I was mostly just curious. I was like, “Did Leo Tolstoy's wife kill him?”

Peter: Because this is why you don't like women. You've always told me, it's your fear of being nagged to death. 

Michael: The thing is, we know men die of nagged to death all the time. I'm just wondering if it's true in this case. 

Peter: We see this all the time in the self-help books about relationships where the advice is actually directed at the guy's wife. We saw this in Men Are From Mars, right? 

Michael: There's also another thing. When I was reading that anthropology book for our manhood episode, one of the things he mentioned in there was that this thing of women has nagging, this is actually a fairly common trope of gender relations in almost every society. 

Peter: Interesting ladies, anything to say for yourselves? 

Michael: Well, the thing is, you don't find it in more equal societies. Partly because nagging is a function of power relations. When you don't have power in a relationship, when you can't open a bank account. As a woman in a relationship, you have to nag. “Did you pay the electricity bill? Did you pay the electricity bill?” That's the only way you can get the electricity bill. 

Peter: So, you're saying that women do nag, but you blame inequality. The concept of the nag is always very interesting because it implies that you're not doing something that you're asked to do. But also, that perhaps you haven't provided a reason. [laughs] 

Michael: So, there are seven rules in this section. I was ready after the nagging thing for this to be absolutely atrocious. It's actually mostly okay. Rule two is don't try to make your partner over-- This is paternalistic, but he has a thing where he's like, “Women have this strange thing where they want you to remember their birthday and anniversaries” and guys, you should remember the fucking birthdays and anniversaries. Like, even if you think it's dumb that's important to them, it is important to them. And so, you should do it. Which for the time I'm like, “Okay, great.” It's not about, how to litigate that or how to talk your wife out of that. It's like, “Yeah, this is a fairly small ass.” Just remember her fucking birthday and anniversary. 

Peter: This reminds me of those like Jimmy Kimmel Street interviews where they go up to couples and they're just like, “What's her birthday? What's her mom's name? What's her middle name?” And like, “Guys are just swinging and missing at preposterous rage. [crosstalk]  

Michael: That is egregious. 

Peter: I don't get it. 

Michael: The best one, my favorite one, is rule seven. This is the final rule of this section and this book. Rule seven read a good book on the sexual side of marriage. 

Peter: What would a book from 1936-- [crosstalk] 

Michael: I know. 

Peter: Say? 

Michael: It's very funny to me to be like, this is how you break a coal miner’s strike. This is how you run the country. This is a lesson from Gandhi when it comes to sex. He's like, “Oh, just go read a book.” I'm not going to give you anything. Just here's some books. 

Peter: Yeah, I would have liked to hear his advice, but I want to scope those books. Because there's probably no sex ed. You're just experiencing human genitalia for the first time, that's pretty crazy. 

Michael: The perfect encapsulation of the good parts of Dale Carnegie's personality and the bad parts come at the end of this section of the book where he has a questionnaire about how good of a marriage partner you are. So, the first set of questions are for husbands, Peter. And I want you to think deeply about whether you are doing any or all of these. 

Peter: “Do you still court your wife with an occasional gift of flowers with remembrances of her birthday and wedding anniversary, or with some unexpected attention, some unlooked for tenderness? Are you careful never to criticize her before others? Do you give her money to spend entirely as she chooses above the household expenses? Do you make an effort to understand her varying feminine moods and help her through periods of fatigue, nerves and irritability? Do you share at least half of your recreation hours with your wife? Do you tactfully refrain from comparing your wife's cooking or housekeeping with that of your mother or of Bill Jones' wife, except to her advantage? Do you take a definite interest in her intellectual life, her clubs and societies, the books she reads, her views on civic problems?

Can you let her dance with and receive friendly attentions from other men without making jealous remarks? Do you keep alert for opportunities to praise her and express your admiration for her? Do you thank her for the little job she does for you, such as sewing on a button, darning your socks and sending your clothes to the cleaners?” I would never let my wife darn my socks without saying thank you. 

Michael: The thing is, this advice to men is more progressive than half the advice we cover on this show. 

Peter: Pretty good. 

Michael: It's like, “Look for opportunities to compliment her, take her intellectual ideas seriously. Thank her for stuff that she does around the house. Notice the little things that she does for you.” Some of the language, obviously is outdated. Some of the ideas are outdated, but it's mostly pretty good. 

Peter: Yeah, this is all pretty reasonable stuff. 

Michael: But then, Peter, we also have to cover the advice to wives. 

Peter: Hell, yeah. 

Michael: So, read this with your dulcet tones. I want all female listeners to listen closely and think about their own behavior. 

Peter: Yeah, listen up, ladies. Time to lecture our audience of lesbians and cat owners. [Michael laughs] Do you give your husband complete freedom in his business affairs? And do you refrain from criticizing his associates, his choice of a secretary or the hours he [laughs] keeps? Do you try your best to make your home interesting and attractive? 

Michael: Keep it clean. 

Peter: Do you vary the household menu so that he never quite knows what to expect when he sits down to the table? Do you have an intelligent grasp of your husband's business so you can discuss it with him helpfully? Can you meet financial reverses bravely, cheerfully, without criticizing your husband for his mistakes or comparing him unfavorably with more successful men? 

Michael: So, if he gambles away all of your income at the horse track, are you complaining, ladies or are you chill? 

Peter: Do you make a special effort to get along amiably with his mother or other relatives? Do you dress with an eye for your husband's likes and dislikes in color and style? Do you compromise little differences of opinion in the interest of harmony? Do you make an effort to learn games your husband likes so that you can share his leisure hours? And do you keep track of the day's news, the new books and new ideas so you can hold your husband's intellectual interest? So, yeah, there is an imbalance here. 

Michael: Yeah. 

Peter: She has to psychologically mold herself to the shape of her husband. 

Michael: Yeah. To me it's the perfect encapsulation of both the good things of his personality and also the limitations of it that he's basically asking the person with more power in the relationship to show kindness and grace to the person with less power. But he also can't imagine a world where he doesn't have more power. 

Peter: He should have been the guy to come up with first wave feminism. 

Michael: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You can't judge people on the standards of right now. And I genuinely think, like, this is fairly progressive for the time. It's also, of course, very limited. 

Peter: Yeah, yeah. 

Michael: Honestly, I ended this book and I ended the biography mostly liking Dale Carnegie. He seems like a good guy. He seems like he started a lot of the threads of self-help that have toxified over time. But most of this book is not toxic. Most of this book is like, be nice to people and try to think about other people's needs and don't be shitty. And it sounds like he lived according to these principles.

Peter: Maybe to a fault, right. Just a guy who believed in the power of being nice. The worst you can say maybe a bit of a sucker, didn't quite grasp the world around him, but this was one of the first times that anyone ever thought of being nice. 

Michael: It is interesting that the critical reception to this book when it came out because of course it was a runaway bestseller and so it got reviewed everywhere. The critical reception was super negative and people basically had this snobbish response to the book at the time. So, Collier’s calls him “A man with a magnificent grasp of the obvious.” 

Peter: Got him. 

Michael: I do think that, like, this is pretty obvious advice, but also, it's worth reminding people of the obvious advice. And so much of the advice now is such fucking sewage that if what you're reminding people of is try to be nice to other people around you, I'm willing to forgive a lot if that's the core message of your book, right? 

Peter: It's not useless just because it's obvious. Sometimes, it's a good refresher, right? There's a reason that this stuff is helpful for people, even though it's sort of like, “Yeah, I kind of knew that I just needed to be reminded. I need to keep it front of mind, right?” I think that's totally fine in theory or in a vacuum. It gets worse and more cynical over time because there's a thousand books like this now. Publishing a new one that says the same thing is actually griftier and worse each time, right? Each time becomes more derivative, more cynical, more grifty, just by its nature. 

Michael: Carnegie was one of the first people to come up with this idea that, like, well, you can make a lot of money by teaching seminars to people. But then I think later on people were like, “Oh, well, you can make even more money by overpromising. You can make even more money by fleecing people.” 

Peter: There are people who teach seminars because they have an idea they want to teach. And there are people who first thought, I need to teach a seminar, and then they jammed an idea into it, right? And those are very different types of people. And one of them is grifty and one of them is, at least theoretically not. 

Michael: So, I want to end with a quote from the book. I think this is like a really good summation of the book's overall theme and message, and I just think it's worth dwelling on. So, here's this. This is from Carnegie. 

Peter: “Philosophers have been speculating on the rules of human relationships for thousands of years. And out of all of that speculation, there has evolved only one important percept, do unto others as you would have others do unto you. You want the approval of those with whom you come into contact. You want recognition of your true worth. You want a feeling that you are important in your little world. You don't want to listen to cheap, insincere flattery, but you do crave sincere appreciation. You want your friends and associates to be, as Charles Schwab put it, hearty in their approbation and lavish in their praise. All of us want that. So, let's obey the golden rule and give unto others what we would have others give unto us. How? When? Where? The answer is all the time. Everywhere.” Oh, what a sweetie. 

Michael: I like when this genuinely moving. It's nice. 

Peter: All the time. Everywhere. I like it.

Michael: All the time. Everywhere. Yeah. 

Peter: And how would I like to be treated? I would like someone to tell me that I look cute and then tell me don't get stuck up. Don't get stuck up. [Peter laughs] You can't spell.

[music]

[Transcript provided by SpeechDocs Podcast Transcription]