August 8, 2017 • 50 mins
There are all kinds of motivational speakers, from people who have overcome incredible hardships to those who hold pep-rally style events in stadiums. But do these speakers actually help anyone? Science can't prove it out, but people who take part swear by it. Learn all about the strange world of motivational speakers in today's episode.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from how Stuff Works
dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,
There's Charles Chuck Bryant, there's Jerry So this is stuff
you should know and we're here to say that you
can do it. You can do it. You can accomplish
(00:24):
those goals. You can get that tor vet, shoot for
the stars, engage your passion to ignite your fury. Ignite
your fury. That's my new one. I'm trying to get everybody.
I want to go to your motivational seminar Ignite your
fears called Igniting Fury with Josh Clark. That's pretty good.
I know what Aaron Cooper is doing this week. How
(00:47):
you doing. I'm doing pretty good, man. I'm feeling kind
of pumped. Took some Vitamin B twelve today. I'm I'm
ready to go. Yeah, as you notice, I cut all
that dumb hair off. Yeah looks good. I I like
it both ways. Yeah chuck two point? Oh was I
chuck two point? I got too hot? Is the real
(01:08):
expect Yeah, that'll do it. And literally just drove to
the place and said, all right, take it off. I
um I mine mine. As you know, as well as
has gotten kind of longish, and I've got like that
sixth grade skater cut tick where like I'm like just
kind of flipping it. Yeah, just just twisting my head
(01:28):
suddenly to the side to get the hair out of
my face. Yeah. I think that was another reason I
cut mine too, was it was just there was too
much focus on it, uh, personal focus because it was
from you. I mean yeah, just like management and having
to do things to it and like get it right.
And I was just like, I just it's been so
(01:49):
many years since I've had to focus on my hair.
You had to go buy a whole new bottle of
mane and tail just felt dumb, I think. Yeah. I
was like, you know, I'm going I'm going back to
Chuck one point. Good for you, man, and welcome back
to fight club. Thank you. Let me see your fingernails
all right? Does look acceptable? What do you think about
this topic? I thought that I couldn't ever, I couldn't
(02:12):
that the end would never come what like researching it? Yeah,
I guess we know how we both feel about this.
Then it's not even dude. I have to say I
got switched mid mid research my the tone of my
research changed because of a Nancy Besser. Oh. Um. So
(02:35):
here's the thing. This is my personal opinion. I'll give
it at the front and you can decide whether listen
to the rest of the episode or not. It's the
motivational speaking is so uh flimsy and jelly, like the
whole field. It's so unscientifically based and just so prone
(03:01):
to hucksterism in a lot of cases that I just
I didn't even want to research it. I was just like,
I meat this stuff so much. Um. And then part
way I was but I was doing my due diligence.
I'm a professional, as you know. But um, part way through,
I was reading the in the House Stuff Works article
about Nancy Besser, and so I went on to her
(03:22):
site and did some more research on her, and I
read her I think, like about me or her mission
or something like that, and I was like, actually, that's
I don't disagree with anything. This lady just said like
that's great. Good for her, good for where she came from,
good for what she's trying to do if she wants
to make some money doing it, awesome. So saying that
(03:44):
it definitely changed course and pulled me back from the brink,
which I think was really needed because I was really
kind of like I was crop circle in it, you
know what I mean. And Um, she brought me back
and I appreciate that to her, and I'd like to
find out how I can mail her some money. All right,
you want to know my opinion? What's like this? We're
gonna front load the opinions and then talk about the
(04:07):
more all throughout. UM. My deal is this. If you have, um,
a really great story to tell about your life, because
maybe you overcome some great adversities. Uh, maybe you're a quadriplegic,
or maybe you are a POW or had a life
(04:27):
threatening illness, or if you had any general like major
life hardships that you overcame and are like killing it
in life. And you have a great story to tell
that is sincere and you can go up there and
make some dough inspiring people, then awesome. If you are
just really good at holding up pep rally um, and
(04:51):
you don't have any big story in your life other
than the fact that you were like, Hey, I'm kind
of good at this and I think I can make
some dough. And I've met these celebrities and I've met
these famous people and they think I'm cool. Um. I
have two feelings about that. One is, if people are
genuinely being helped, I'm not gonna yuck their young, then
(05:13):
that's great. I think that's good for you to say.
But I look at that that other scene with a
very weary eye, um, because it reeks of everything from
taking advantage of people too. Sometimes it even sounded like scientology.
Oh yeah, there's a lot of religious overtones to the
(05:33):
whole thing, and that it would be like, well, by
this book, uh, and then by this one, and then
come to this seminar, and then by this thing, and
it had it had all the markings of like a
pyramid scheme almost. So I was like you, I'm kind
of all over the place with it, um. And I
think that's kind of the deal with motivational speaking is
(05:56):
it takes many many forms, from an inspirational person who
has a great life story to someone who was just like, hey,
I'm I can hold a pepperrelly as good as the
next guy. I'll charge somebody three grand to listen to that. Two, Hey,
here's a financial seminar where you can get rich, right,
just give us a bunch of money first. Yeah, so
(06:18):
it's really all over the map, um, because it's I mean,
not that it should be regulated, but it's just such
a it's kind of like the wild West as far
as what you can be as a motivational speaker. Yeah.
And I think also one of the reasons why it's
tough for us to to nail down our feelings about
it one way or the other, or why we have
multiple feelings, because inherently there's nothing in and of itself
(06:42):
wrong with making an effort to motivate other people to
be a better version of themselves. Right, But that can
be that that neutral thing or maybe even positive thing
can be exploited depending on the context that's used it. Right.
(07:03):
There's a really good example of that. There's a book
called Who Moved My Cheese? And it's like ninety pages,
big print, lots of illustrations, so it's a quick read
the title, but the whole thing is there's, um, there's
a maze, and there used to be cheese in this
one place, and these two humans Ham and Haw are
just all up at arms that that that they're cheese?
(07:24):
Is there anymore? What? What a tragedy? Who could have
possibly done this? And then these two mice. I can't
remember what the mices the Yeah, the mices. I can't
remember what the mice. Yeah, the mice, that's right, the
mice's names are. But they see that their cheese is gone,
they run off to find cheese elsewhere. Right, So the
(07:44):
mice are the heroes of the story where the humans
are dumb, and it's because the humans are allowing themselves
to become victims. Now, there's like some certain themes in
there that's true, Like, yes, it's not necessarily a good
idea to focus on, you know why this issue came about.
Just solve the problem and move on. But who moved
my cheese? Is very commonly a book that's purchased by
(08:08):
employers when they're going through a downsizing and they're saying
to their employers or their employees like, hey, you need
to give us a smile. Don't start asking why your
job was downsized. Just read this book and try to
be happy. So, this thing that could be good is
being exploited in a very negative manner um to to
(08:29):
exonerate people who are making decisions that are negatively impacting
people's lives. There's there's that's there. It is in a nutshell,
there's the the good and the bad. Yeah, I will
say this, I like UH fictional motivational speakers much more.
Whether it was uh Matt Foley, which is mentioned in
this article of course, great Chris Farley character. He gets
(08:49):
three paragraphs. Yeah, that was overdoing it a bit, but
definitely one of the more classic SML characters. Um. My
other favorite is UH from Magnolia Frank T. J. Mackie.
That was one of Tom Cruise's best characters. Yeah. Uh,
And I think so ironic that he played that character.
In ways, I almost get the impression that it was like,
(09:12):
um who who directed that was Paul Thomas Anderson, that
in a way casting Cruise was toying with him a
little bit, or Paul Thomas Anderson wanted him to face
him himself maybe, or maybe he gave him the script
and like literally every day on set after he finished,
Cruise would look around and say, are you making fun
of me here? You're not making fun of me? No,
(09:34):
no, no no, it's on. It's terrific. You're the best time.
All right, you're not making fun of me? Right? Anyway?
That that character was specifically about UH picking up women
in bars and having sex with him. So yeah, that
was sort of a different type of thing, but it
was motivational. It was uh. So we mentioned different kinds
(09:56):
of people who do this. Um, there are people like
Long who uh is a motivational speaker because he had
a twenty ton bus hit him while he was on
a bicycle. Uh. It was in the hospital for five
months at about forty operations and then finally overcame that
to run the New York City Marathon. So people like
(10:18):
that you will often see that have an amazing hardship.
Like I said that they have overcome and maybe did
like a small speaking engagement and said, you know, people
really connected to this, and I think I really helped folks. Um,
So can I sign up with a company that's gonna
book gigs for me and I can make some real though?
(10:40):
And you you really can? I mean, like there's there's
there are people out there who support themselves just from
motivational speaking. I think there's probably far more who aspired
to that. Um. But but it is entirely possible to
become a motivational speaker with representation and and that's how
you make your living. Yeah, and you know what, I
(11:02):
don't think we've ever talked about this on the show,
but stuff you should know we actually we actually don't
do motivational gigs, but we've done some corporate speaking on occasion.
We have specifically told the people who are agents are
booking it that we are not motivational speakers to book
us as such, and that we are not experts, but
we're glad to come talk to your company. By the way, Yeah,
(11:23):
how about that. I mean, you just you just let
the cat out of the bag. You changed our lives
for the better, Chuck. But long story short, we have
because of this, we have talked and spoken with a
number of agencies and representatives who act as the liaison
between a company or a corporation or a group and
(11:46):
the speaker, and so we've kind of got a little
bit of an inside view on kind of what this
public professional public speaking is all about. And one of
the things that uh, I mean, we kind of do
our thing and we're not the best. Um, we're not
the best for people to sell because we're not like
we can do this and we're vivacious and we have
(12:07):
get up on stage and just rally people. We're kind
of well, we kind of do one thing so if
you want us to do that, we can do it. Yeah.
So it's sort of a narrower field, but it's niche.
It is very niche. But if you do want to,
if you think you have a neck. And this one
woman in here who was the one that said that
she was always sort of the cheerleader in her group, Yeah,
(12:29):
she was like I kind of always was just this
person in life and my friends. I would motivate my
friends and my family and stuff. So if you have
that kind of vivacious personality and you can get up
on stage in front of people and you have a
good story to tell that's um sincere, then it might
be something that you should look into. Right. That's another
(12:51):
reason why I like Nancy bestor too. She's the only
one in this article who admits that, Yeah, anybody can
do it. It's just it's a it's a certain type
of skill set, but not something you would have to
be born with, Like anybody can figure it out well.
And I think a lot of professional motivational speakers would
probably be like, no, no, no, no, this is not
for you. Well yeah, Matt Long, the elite athlete UM
(13:12):
says like, no, no, not everybody could do it. Yeah,
he said, well, if it were easy, everyone would be
doing it. So no, that was his answer to can
anybody do it? I think we like I would say
my sense of humor, especially as stuff you should know goes,
is pretty self deprecating. But I say this totally honestly
(13:35):
that if we can do it, we're proof that anybody
can do this. Oh yeah, we didn't have any experience
getting on stage in front of people. Now we learned it. Again.
We're not up there doing motivational speaking, but we're up
there doing public speaking in front of groups who don't
know us, and that that's the key. Now. The next level,
of course, is whether you can arouse uh, positive emotion
(14:00):
and in the people out there you know, listening to
you um, And that that I think takes a decent
amount of practice. But there are techniques and there are
methods that you can figure out, and all you have
to do is a little bit of research. All you
would have to to research really is if you look
up like how to be a motivational speaker, that is
(14:21):
going to leave you a heartache. But if you look
up sensible things like how do you motivate people? Um,
how do you give a dynamite presentation. All of these things,
it's all the same stuff. It's just the thing that
makes motivational speaking different is the through line is inspiration.
You have an inspirational story. You're you're telling people that
(14:43):
they can they can have a better life themselves, that
it's in there in them. That's that's really the big
difference between motivational speaking and any other type of public speaking. Yeah.
I wonder if that guy who said that, UM wonderful
in his thing he goes, you know, you can come
over any adverse the except public speaking motivation speaking, like,
don't don't try that. Anything else you could probably do though.
(15:07):
The competition is thinking of all right, well let's take
a break here. It's a good start, and we will
motivate you to come back and listen more right after this.
(15:41):
All right. Uh. Psychology wise, people have been um. Psychologists
have been studying motivation for for many many years, um,
and what motivates people? And there's a dude, uh named
Abraham Harold Maslow, and in the nineteen forties came up
with something a little, a little pyramid called Maslow's hierarchy
(16:05):
of needs, which is fairly interesting if you look at it.
It is UM. It's a pyramid. Were down at the bottom.
I think it's been revised over the years. No, that's
the food pyramid you're thinking of. Now, this has been
revised a little bit. At the bottom there are one, two, three, four,
five levels and at the bottom you have physiological needs
(16:28):
like food and water, shelter, shelter, warmth. Right above that
you have safety needs UM, security and safety in life.
Above that you have belongingness and love, which are friends
and intimates. Esteem goes above that prestige feeling of accomplishment.
And then finally at the very top of the pyramid, UM.
(16:50):
People should stop using pyramids because that's just got a
bad name. Now, UM achieving one's full potential or self actualization.
And so the idea is that you've divided these needs
up into groups where once you have fulfilled these basic needs,
you will become stronger and you will basically satisfy those
(17:11):
lower called lower level deficit needs, and then you can
progress onto these higher needs until you reach that final
level U self actualization. And you I mean you can
take issue and people have with Maslow's hierarchy, like the
a literal reading of it would say that homeless people
couldn't are incapable of having friendships or caring about one
(17:32):
another because they're lacking in a lower need, which is
shelter and housing. UM. But the overall it does seem
to be pretty widely, widely regarded, well regarded most like
it doesn't take into account social factors. UM, it sounds
(17:53):
Let's put it this way, it sounds like something developed
in the nineteen forties, right, Yeah, And it's pretty it's
pretty elementary, and it does it's not very complex, but
it has formed the basis of UM a lot of psychology,
Like it is pretty much the standard for motivational theory
(18:13):
from what I understand, and UM, it definitely forms a
lot of the basis for motivational speaking and the motivational
speaking industry and and the the um crux of what
motivational speakers based their motivation on. Right. So, like you said,
you have this Maslow's theory, but UM regarded well or not,
(18:37):
It's been around for a long time and is the
basis for how to motivate people. And people speakers use
this in their own way. They have their own take
on how they want to use it or whether they
use it, and investor's case. Um, she actually went to school.
She she went to graduate school and studied, uh, conflict
(18:58):
resolution and emotional intelligence, which I think UM gives her
a leg up as far as being schooled at least
and things she talks about how empathy is very important
and she's at least studied on it, you know, which
is more than you can say for a lot of them.
(19:18):
Did you you interviewed Tony Robbins at one point for
us for our blog? Imber did. Yeah, he's seven years ago.
I was part of I don't know, there were like
four or five other people on the phone. It was
a conference interview that we were but I mean, let's
be honest, we were made to do this, yes, very much.
So it was in the evening, Um it was there
(19:39):
was something else going on, I think a birthday party.
I had just step away from UM. But it was
right before his TV show Breakthrough with Tony Robbins came out,
and I do you remember that show? I do? Uh?
Very short lived like it was, Yeah, it was extremely
short lived, but it was the were selling like super
(20:01):
Bowl um sized, we're super Bowl price commercials for that thing,
like that's how much those the ads spots were going
for on this. It was a huge event and it
flopped very quickly, which I think surprised everybody because Tony
Robbins is He's huge man, He's enormous. Yeah. One of
the stats, the four million people he reaches from a
(20:23):
hundred countries has a net worth of about four and
eighty million dollars through his books and speeches and services.
And he's been at it for a very long time.
A lot of people think that he started the UM,
the motivational speaking industry. He definitely did not. Read a
pretty interesting article that suggested that Ralph Waldo Emerson was
(20:44):
America's first motivational speaker could make sense. I've seen it
go back even further than that. There's a lady named
Mary Baker Eddie who ended up founding the Christian Science
I guess church. She got together with a guy named
Phineas park hurse Quimby. If that's not a mid nineteenth
century name, I don't know what is right, or a
(21:05):
new hipster Brooklyn kid's name. Yes, it is now um
and there's They came together and created what's known as
the New Thought movement, which is basically said that if
you think positively good things will happen, which, now this
is just such a widespread thought and it's it forms
(21:27):
such that forms as much the basis of motivational speaking
as Maslow's hierarchy, the idea that if you think positively,
you're going to have an actual effect on fate, on destiny,
on the universe, on on your your own future. Right,
But that makes zero sense whatsoever logically, and it it
(21:49):
finds it's its roots back in this, these two, these
two people coming together, so that actually probably was the
basis of the motivational speaking industry, and it continued on here.
There there were some luminaries that pop up between uh
the New Thought movement and Tony Robbins. You've got like
Dale Carnegie, who wrote How To Um Make Friends and
(22:11):
Influence People, one of the greatest selling self help books
of all time, and really introduced the concept of self
help to the masses. Dale Carnegie did use an interesting dude.
And then you've got guys like Napoleon Hill who wrote
Think and Grow Rich. I believe it sounds like something
(22:31):
on the Simpsons, like a fake self help book, it
really was. And there's actually Chuck a really good article
on Gizmoto called The Untold Story of Napoleon Hill the
greatest self help scammera of all time. Well, and you
know how you like those long form articles, this one,
as long as it gets right, it's basically like a
mini book. So the mid twenties century, you've got people
(22:52):
popping up. And then and then a young man named
Anthony Robbins created an infomercial for his Personal Power program.
Remember that infomercial I do. And I looked into a
little bit because I realized I was like, I don't
even know his deal, Like what was uh? I know,
he wasn't a pow um Like I wondered what his
(23:13):
story was. You're like, okay, check that box off um.
And from what I could find, and I didn't do
a deep dive, but from what I could find, he
worked for a motivational speaker. And I think was just like, hey,
I can do this. Yeah, is that the deal? Yes? Okay,
from what I understand, And he was absolutely right. He
(23:36):
did it. He he's a cottage industry onto himself. That
Personal Power infomercial. By the way, in the first three
years that it was out, a hundred million people saw
it in America, So he became like a juggernai, I
became a pop culture thing. Remember he was in Shallow
How he's actually the mcguffin for the whole movie. Meeting
(23:57):
Tony Robbins in an elevator is what sets like the
whole plot of the movie off. And then what a
mcguffin is, I don't I don't remember seeing that movie,
to be honest, I know the movie, but I don't
think I saw it. But no, as far as film
industry parlance goes, and mcguffin is the thing that helps
the plot along, right, Yeah, a mcguffin is uh something
(24:18):
in the movie, a device or something that triggers the plot.
So I think in that case you're correct. Okay, I'm
using it correctly, by goodness. So um Tony Tony Robins.
So by the time he came out with his show
breakthrough in two thousand ten, um, everybody just assumed it
would be huge and it was not for some reason.
I still don't understand why. But if you watch that
(24:40):
first episode, it's basically him going around and motivating people
who have like enormous challenges up against them. And the
first episode still to this day, I just kind of
I'm like, oh my gosh, I can't believe he did this.
They he went and met up with a guy who
was Audre, who was qua quadriplegic, I believe, and he
(25:05):
had become quadriplegic after jumping headfirst into a swimming pool
I think at his wedding reception. Um And and became
paralyzed and I you know, obviously quite depressed as a result,
and was had lost his job and his life had
really just taken a huge turn downward. And Tony Robbins
(25:27):
showed up to help the guy, and he wanted to
help him by inspiring him. And the way that he
inspired him was to take him up in an airplane
and push him out. Do you remember he pushed a man,
a quadriplegic man out of an airplane with a parachute
on and said like Scottive or something like that. It
was one of the craziest things anyone's ever done on TV.
(25:47):
And I'm including up to present day. So so breakthrough
Tony Robbins plot. But that was probably just like a
blip on that dude's radar. It did nothing to his
personal brand as far as dragging it down. No, um
And I don't want to like sound like I'm bashing
the guy, because you know, he helps a lot of
people that buy into it and apparently is very philanthropic,
(26:12):
uh in many ways. So that's good, right, sure of course. Um,
But he also, um, is a firewalker. This is something
I did not know U. In his Unleashed the Power
Within program that he does live, he gets thousands of
people to walk across hot coals. He's gotten Oprah Winfrey
(26:34):
to walk across hot coals, and um, you know, firewalkings,
It's it's a real thing. Um, if you look at
it scientifically, what's going on is is coals are not
a very good conductor of heat, so it takes about
a second to actually feel that heat, and if you
(26:56):
walk at a good clip, it's about a half a second.
So what you're doing is not really And I don't
think he's saying there's some danger you're overcoming. I think
in his case, it's you're overcoming a fear and taking
part in a group activity and that's where the benefit is.
It's like staring at those coals and doing it. I
don't think he's saying, like, look, it's magic because of me.
(27:19):
You're not getting burned. I don't know. I think that
what he's the premise of his fire walking thing and
at these conferences is to show people that they can
overcome even physical problems like hot coals on their feet
by using their mind. I thought it was like the fear. No,
(27:40):
I think in reality that's what's going on. But I
believe from what I understand, that it's being presented that
you can say something like yes or cool moss, and
you're using your mind to overcome the dilemma of the
hot posed by the hot coals on your feet. Okay,
(28:02):
fair enough, right? Uh? It all kind of went wrong
in Dallas though in there was an event there where um,
thirty to forty people were evaluated. I think five people
were taken to the hospital with burn injuries, and um,
his spokesperson, Jennifer Connelly said, you know what, only five
(28:22):
people out of seven thousand requested examination beyond what we
had on site to examine people, and you know, everyone
had a great time. Basically, I have to say, statistically speaking,
she makes an excellent point. And there's actually somebody in
this article, um, oh, what's her name, Irene Wiseman. Yeah,
(28:45):
who really kind of put it well, she seems to
be somebody who goes to these things to go to
she goes. She definitely goes to Robbin's conferences, um, but
she also seems to understand what's going on at them,
rather than like maybe buying into a lock stock and barrel.
And from what I've seen, someone like her, someone who
(29:07):
approaches a motivational speaking conference with her own set of
judgments and values about it and is able to take
that message and adjust it so that it works for her,
rather than trying to take everything from the person wholesale
and putting it onto you so that you're basically magically changed.
(29:29):
Those people have the greatest greatest chance of succeeding, um
at whatever they're being motivated to do. But she she
basically she puts the firewalk like that. She was saying,
like the real magic is that there were ten thousand
five people waiting their turn to walk over these colds,
and everyone was exuberant and calm and happy. Nobody was
(29:52):
irritated or you know, um like hurry up or anything
like that. It was a neat communal feeling waiting in
line to go do the fire the firewalk, and she
she did the firewalks. She said it was cool or whatever. Um,
but it was more about the camaraderie in the community
that developed in line waiting for the firewalk. For her,
(30:12):
it definitely is. And I think if you asked Tony Robbins,
maybe he'll come onto the show and talk to us
about it sometime. Okay, if you asked Tony Robbins, I
would guess that he would concede. Uh that, Yes, you
could interpret his conferences as a Pepper rallying. I don't know,
(30:34):
I don't know, you know, I want to say something, Chuck,
I hold the skeptic community to account for not giving
more ink to motivational the motivational speaking industry. Yeah, I
didn't see a lot. And I specifically looked from skeptic sites. Yep,
me too, and it's almost not there. So that that
(30:55):
has two things. One that skeptics either think that it
is right, that's fine, or they think it's so ridiculous
that it's not even worth writing about, which I don't
think that's the case, because skeptics write about some pretty
ridiculous stuff. Well, I looked at this one article. I
don't know if you saw it from the guy who
walked out of a conference, a Tony Robbins conference. Did
(31:16):
you see that one? Um, this guy was by all
accounts from what he said, someone who should be into it.
He's like, I wasn't there to bust him. I'm not
a skeptic. He was like, I h have read some
of his books. I'm a fan, Like I'm into it. Uh.
And he walked out and he just had a very
like just a very leveled critical eye on the presentation,
(31:40):
not like this guy is this and this. He was
just like, you know what, he repeated himself too much,
and he name dropped too much, and um, he kind
of had some bad segues that and non sequiturs, and
he just looked at it sort of from a critical
i of a public speaker, and it was kind of
like this he's he's kind of phoning it in these days.
(32:02):
So it was, Oh, it was Tony Robbins himself that
he walked out on. Yeah, and he was just like,
you know, I left, He said, I just found that
I wasn't really getting anything out of it. And he
didn't go there to to poopoo the guy. Um, like
I said, he was a fan, so he just it's
kind of like he you know, he ditched the capris
and and and start doing a better presentation, was his take?
(32:25):
Gotcha the capris Tony Robbins his capri pants, he sure does.
Does he really like the ones with the drawstrings at
the bottom in the cargo pockets? No? Does he really?
I've not seen that. All right, Well let's take a
break and let Josh ponder that, and we'll come back
and finish up this stuff right after this. All right,
(33:11):
So Tony Robbins isn't the only person out there that's
made a ton of money doing this. They want to
pick on him. No, we should say a ton of money.
His six day conference, Um, I think it's called Date
with Destiny this year and last year. So the the
Irene Wiseman said there were ten thousand, five hundred people there.
The tickets were about four thousand dollars apiece. That's forty
(33:32):
two million dollars they grossed for a sixth day conference.
He should call that conference credit cards on fire. Yeah.
I read an article, I think in Forbes about the
Chinese UM motivational speaking industry, and um, there's this one
person who's like, who's going to sign up for the
for my other classes and um, like, some people came
(33:54):
to the front and a ring of people with like
wireless credit card machines formed around them. Oh my god, yeah, wow, yeah,
one of us, one of us man's creepy. Uh So
Tony Robbins isn't the only person out there who's done
this over the Here's many, many people, I think, I mean,
(34:15):
I didn't it say there was something like close to
five registered motivational speakers in the U s alone, think
like six something. That was it. But very famously, a
man named Jack Canfield wrote a book called Chicken Soup
for the Soul. Um and this is an amazing record.
He holds the Guinness Record for having seven books on
(34:35):
the New York Times bestseller list at the same time.
That's unbelievable. Did you know they wrote one for chicken
Soup for the prisoner's soul, They wrote one for people
in prison? M I did not know that. And also
did you know Ashton Kutcher is trying to bring Chicken
Soup for the Soul to Netflix the Coach as what
(34:57):
a documentary? Or's I have no idea, that's that's all
I saw. Or he's starring his Chicken Soup he's starring
his noodle I book a lot of fun at the coach.
But he seems like a pretty sincere guy. Uh sure, No,
I I don't know. I don't know. I I've I've
learned to just try to shy away from no from
(35:19):
from like saying stuff about people on air. People I
don't know. I don't know him. He's a celebrity. That's
all I know about him, you know, like, and even
if I did know more about him, and that's not
the whole picture. So I have no idea what he's like.
Is a person just based on knowing people he that's
probably likeliest that he is a good person. Wayne Dyer,
(35:40):
another famous author, no longer with us. I wrote a
book called Your Erroneous Zones, and a lot of these people,
it seems like, started out as book writers. That's the
best way. That used to be the best way to
get started. Now I think the best way to get
started is to just start speaking and then write your
books based on your successes there. You want to do
that almost simultaneously too, because one of the things you
(36:02):
do if you're an motivational speaker is mentioned by the way,
I've got even more insights that are going to help
you out, and my books that are available for sale
right outside. Yeah, that's when it reeks of scientology to me.
It's like you can unlock more discoveries by buying more things.
But all, yeah, all of them do that. Like you're
a fool if you're a motivational speaker who doesn't have
(36:26):
a book for sale at your conference, Like you're doing
it wrong. Right, as far as the industry would be concerned,
I think that in and of itself doesn't necessarily mean
that you are a huckster. But there are plenty of
them in the industry that are hucksters because all they're
(36:46):
they're doing is selling their book or their class or
there's something they're They're motivational speech is actually just a
sales pitch. That's the hucksters, and there's plenty of them
in the industry. Yes, should we talk about get motivated? Yeah?
We should. This is a seminar series that was started
in two thousand two by guy named Peter Lowe and
(37:08):
in the article I read, he has described as the
son of a missionary who along with his ex wife Tamarra,
who was a self help book author who writes Christian
rap started, uh something that a series called Get Motivated
that UM is filling up stadiums that at one point
(37:28):
and no longer, but at one point was in business
with TD Ameritrade. Yeah. I think they started with a
legitimate motivational speaker conference, Okay, and then over time said hey,
you know what, we could get somebody in here to
to underwrite a lot of this and UM they can
(37:49):
just give they can basically put ads in amongst the
motivational speakers. Yeah. So they partnered up with t d
AMR Trade with this UM product they hauled had called
invest Tools UM and they're no longer in business together,
but Get Motivated still out there. I'm not sure if
they're partnering with anyone or not. No, they have a
(38:11):
new owner called wealth Rock that has their own investing
classes that they now sell exclusively. I think are the
only things that are sold at the Get Motivated conferences. Okay,
So here's a long and short of it. What they
do is they charge very little money. It's not like
you have to pay thousands of dollars like Tony Robbins
UM live event, but you pay like five bucks or
(38:33):
something and say hey, I can go here. Colin Powell
speak or Terry Bradshaw or who else they they have U,
Laura Bush or Juliani. And who wouldn't go here speeches
by them for five bucks besides me? Uh? And then
you go and you h you would, um for five bucks.
(38:59):
I'd go see Colin all for five bucks if he
spoke in my living room. How's that? Uh, let's make
it happen, America. That's a riff on an old joke
my dad used to say, which was when he wanted
to denigrate a performer, you would say, I wouldn't go
see them if they were playing in my backyard. I've
heard that before too. That's such a seventies dad thing
(39:19):
to totally. Um. So anyway, you would go and you
would listen to these motivational speeches. Um. And then what's
going on is is their financial they're selling a financial
product basically right, And again it's it's like you've got
actual like Colin Powell's not like. And by the way,
if I mentioned how great t D and Merri Trades
(39:40):
investment tools are, They've helped me out a lot. He
just paid a boatload of money to go speak exactly,
and he's giving like a real motivational speech. Right. And
then after Colin Powell, you have some guy come up
and say, hey, who wants a Corvette and they flashed
a picture of a Corvette and everybody raises their hand.
He's like, you can have them with corvette too, with
invest tools or whatever. Right. So the criticism of this
(40:05):
is that these people are super pumped and ready to
just do anything because they're feeling really good thanks to
Colin Pal's speech. And then now they're getting this the
sales pitch that's being wedged in between these motivational speakers,
So of course they're signing up for this and and
maybe without really fully understanding what's going on. Um. The
(40:26):
on the other side, the t D A Mere trade
people say, how are you gonna do a hard sell with,
you know, to twenty people in a stadium. You can't like, like,
that's just that's that's ridiculous to say that these people
had a hard sales pitch leveled against them. The point
is that people who went went thinking they were going
to a motivational speaking event a conference, and it turns
(40:50):
out the whole thing was just a t D A
mere trade add to get them to give them their
money for these investment tools that may or may not
help them actually make money from that point, well, yeah,
and uh. In two thousand nine, investivals UM agreed to
pay three million dollars UH to settle UM allegations from
the SEC that it let instructors mislead students and the
(41:11):
things that can make extraordinary profits. Uh and to claim
they were expert option traders when their income was really
coming from selling the courses. Yeah. Apparently one of the
instructors said, like, the returns were guaranteed, you can't you
cannot do that. And apparently you're also not supposed to
say what percentage return you can offer, and they they
(41:34):
apparently said seventeen percent, which is just ridiculous. And these
are options that we're talking about. These are not like
stock trades, where you know, you can do a little
research and figure out stock trades and you're not necessarily
swimming with sharks. These were options. Options are extremely complex
and difficult, and they cost more to trade than a
stock trade does, and you're much more apt to lose
(41:56):
money because you don't understand what you're doing. There's a
lot more factors involved in whether you make money off
of investing in options. Or not. So this is like
they're going to people who are paying to see you know,
Colin Powell and Laura Bush speak because they admire them,
and then they're they're getting sold these supposedly classes on
(42:19):
investing in very sophisticated financial tools. It's just you shouldn't
do that. You know. Their lineup is now who I
went to get motivated website and like, did you say
that they had they had their own product? Now yeah,
Wealth Rock is the owner I believe spelled r A
(42:39):
W k uh. Their current lineup right now for this
next tour is Kevin O'Leary, Mr. Wonderful from Shark Tank,
one of the Duck Dynasty dudes. All right, do you
know his name? Larry King? Really? Yeah? Okay? Um. A
woman named Mangeet Minhas who I believe I looked into
(43:02):
her briefly. She's started breweries and wineries in Canada, made
a lot of money and then finally rounding it out
Edwards Snowden. That's a good one, man, that's quite I'm
sure Edward Snowden. I want to be in the green
room with Edward Snowden and the Duck Dynasty guy. Well,
you're you're joking about Edward Snowden. Oh that's four real. No, yes,
(43:26):
no it's not. Yes, it is what and under his
thing it says, uh what did it say? I mean,
you know, says entrepreneur below one and said duck Dynasty
star and blow him, it says whistle blower. No, Edward
Snowden is doing this conference. Yes, well I'm going I
(43:46):
gotta hear this. Yeah. Wow, strange times. It is strange times.
I gotta say, I like what Wealth Rock is doing
these days? Uh. In two thousand five, that was an
investigative journalist named Steve Salerna who um wrote a book
called SHAM, which stands for self help in Actualization movement,
(44:08):
called SHAM colin how the self help movement made America
helpless And he kind of peeled back. He he didn't
hold any punches and kind of peeled back the the
thin layer on this industry and um basically said, there's
no science behind this, uh, these techniques, there's no evidence
(44:30):
that this stuff is effective at all. Um, it could
be just coincidence or people may not be uh maybe
are not helped by this industry at all. Right, And
he was saying, like just the law of Averages says
that if enough people try it, some of them are
going to be helped, and they may even be helped
just by other things or by things other than whatever
(44:52):
the motivational speaker was telling him to do, but it
will be attributed to the motivational speaker. And if you
get some people who are willing to give testam O'Neills,
then that just helps feed the beast, basically right. And
if you're not helped, then the common line as well,
you just you're not buying in like you can. Yeah,
this is where it gets insidious to me. It's where
(45:13):
the it's is built in self defense. I guess deflection
mechanism for for motivation the motivational speaking industry, which is, yeah,
you're not enough of a believer, you don't have enough passion,
you're um not trying hard enough, Like you're the problem,
you're failing, you're the loser, you're committed to losing. That's
(45:35):
another one too, and that's despicable to me. If you're
if you are deflecting blame from yourself and your own
shoddy product, that's not actually helping people onto somebody who
is really looking for help because they don't think that
they have the real strength and of in themselves too
to overcome the adversity they face. Okay, um, holding it back, man,
(46:02):
Well you said that great article, Three reasons why most
motivational speakers are dead wrong, And that was one of
the things that um that this author, Well did you
have his name? Uh? He is Hoffman. His name is
Bobby Hoffman. Yeah, that was one of the things he
brought up, that is that it's undebunkable basically because they
(46:24):
can always just put it back on the person do that. Yeah,
it's not good at all. No, So I mean, I
guess in a nutshell the and apparently in a nutshell
was Dale Carnegie thing. But in a nutshell the motivational
speaking industry, it can be good and can be bad depending. Yeah,
and I know we spent a lot of time in
(46:45):
retrospect now slamming it all. But um, like I said,
good for you. If you do have a legitimate sincere
hardship overcoming a hardship life story to tell and that
helps people out and you can make a buck doing it,
then I think that's awesome. Yeah. And again, if you're
somebody who's looking to be motivated by a motivational speaker.
(47:06):
If what somebody is saying makes a lot of sense
to you, it feels right, you feel good listening to them,
reading their books, hearing what they have to say. UM,
more power to you. I I don't knock that at all. No,
just tread lightly and go into it with a with
a intelligent I. There you go. I don't want to
(47:27):
see anyone get duped, you know. Okay, those our our
public service for the week. Goodness. Uh. If you want
to learn more about motivational speaking, type those words in
the search bar how stuff works dot com. And since
I said that, it's time for a listener mail, I'm
gonna call this ghost fishing follow up UM from Anthony
(47:50):
and Charlotte, North Carolina. Hey, guys, just finished ghost fishing
and glad you covered this really important topic of an
environmental scientist who studies fishing water in North Carolina. Have
worked in this field all over the country. While the
commercial fishing industry is extremely detrimental to marine life, recreational
fishing causes a lot of fish to die and freshwater
because of littering from it. And this is something I
(48:11):
really thought about as UM. Seldom fishermen many fishermen and
women throw little excess bits of line while tying knots
on the ground or in the water while the fishing.
This monofilament goes in the waterways, and if you look
into the gut of many fish, turtles, birds, and other
life associated with water, you almost always find this fishing
(48:31):
line and hooks stuck in the various biota or the
biota being stuck in the gear. I would highly recommend
fishermen and women, let's just say fisher people, uh, fisher
kings of fisher kings, to make sure they put this
extra line in their pocket to dispose of later, or
use an environmentally friendly nylon line that if they can
(48:53):
find it. This monofilament line just does not break down
over time like the nylon does. Just wanted to share
this with you all. Many people are unaware of the
harm they can do without meaning to these little bits
of line, and I hope it can help people be
more aware while they're fishing. Good Yeah, thanks Anthony from Charlotte.
I'd never really thought about that my own self, and
(49:14):
that's wrong. Yeah, good going, Anthony, much appreciated. If you
want to get in touch with us like Anthony did,
and give us a heads up on something We love
those You can tweet to us at s y s
K podcast or Josh, I'm Clark. You can join us
on Facebook at Facebook dot com, slash stuff you Should
Know or slash Charles W. Chuck Bryant. You can send
(49:36):
us an email with Stuff podcast at how stuff Works
dot com and it's always joined us at a home
on the web, Stuff you Should Know dot com. For
more on this and thousands of other topics, is it
how stuff Works dot com. Two
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from how Stuff Works
dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,
There's Charles Chuck Bryant, there's Jerry So this is stuff
you should know and we're here to say that you
can do it. You can do it. You can accomplish
(00:24):
those goals. You can get that tor vet, shoot for
the stars, engage your passion to ignite your fury. Ignite
your fury. That's my new one. I'm trying to get everybody.
I want to go to your motivational seminar Ignite your
fears called Igniting Fury with Josh Clark. That's pretty good.
I know what Aaron Cooper is doing this week. How
(00:47):
you doing. I'm doing pretty good, man. I'm feeling kind
of pumped. Took some Vitamin B twelve today. I'm I'm
ready to go. Yeah, as you notice, I cut all
that dumb hair off. Yeah looks good. I I like
it both ways. Yeah chuck two point? Oh was I
chuck two point? I got too hot? Is the real
(01:08):
expect Yeah, that'll do it. And literally just drove to
the place and said, all right, take it off. I
um I mine mine. As you know, as well as
has gotten kind of longish, and I've got like that
sixth grade skater cut tick where like I'm like just
kind of flipping it. Yeah, just just twisting my head
(01:28):
suddenly to the side to get the hair out of
my face. Yeah. I think that was another reason I
cut mine too, was it was just there was too
much focus on it, uh, personal focus because it was
from you. I mean yeah, just like management and having
to do things to it and like get it right.
And I was just like, I just it's been so
(01:49):
many years since I've had to focus on my hair.
You had to go buy a whole new bottle of
mane and tail just felt dumb, I think. Yeah. I
was like, you know, I'm going I'm going back to
Chuck one point. Good for you, man, and welcome back
to fight club. Thank you. Let me see your fingernails
all right? Does look acceptable? What do you think about
this topic? I thought that I couldn't ever, I couldn't
(02:12):
that the end would never come what like researching it? Yeah,
I guess we know how we both feel about this.
Then it's not even dude. I have to say I
got switched mid mid research my the tone of my
research changed because of a Nancy Besser. Oh. Um. So
(02:35):
here's the thing. This is my personal opinion. I'll give
it at the front and you can decide whether listen
to the rest of the episode or not. It's the
motivational speaking is so uh flimsy and jelly, like the
whole field. It's so unscientifically based and just so prone
(03:01):
to hucksterism in a lot of cases that I just
I didn't even want to research it. I was just like,
I meat this stuff so much. Um. And then part
way I was but I was doing my due diligence.
I'm a professional, as you know. But um, part way through,
I was reading the in the House Stuff Works article
about Nancy Besser, and so I went on to her
(03:22):
site and did some more research on her, and I
read her I think, like about me or her mission
or something like that, and I was like, actually, that's
I don't disagree with anything. This lady just said like
that's great. Good for her, good for where she came from,
good for what she's trying to do if she wants
to make some money doing it, awesome. So saying that
(03:44):
it definitely changed course and pulled me back from the brink,
which I think was really needed because I was really
kind of like I was crop circle in it, you
know what I mean. And Um, she brought me back
and I appreciate that to her, and I'd like to
find out how I can mail her some money. All right,
you want to know my opinion? What's like this? We're
gonna front load the opinions and then talk about the
(04:07):
more all throughout. UM. My deal is this. If you have, um,
a really great story to tell about your life, because
maybe you overcome some great adversities. Uh, maybe you're a quadriplegic,
or maybe you are a POW or had a life
(04:27):
threatening illness, or if you had any general like major
life hardships that you overcame and are like killing it
in life. And you have a great story to tell
that is sincere and you can go up there and
make some dough inspiring people, then awesome. If you are
just really good at holding up pep rally um, and
(04:51):
you don't have any big story in your life other
than the fact that you were like, Hey, I'm kind
of good at this and I think I can make
some dough. And I've met these celebrities and I've met
these famous people and they think I'm cool. Um. I
have two feelings about that. One is, if people are
genuinely being helped, I'm not gonna yuck their young, then
(05:13):
that's great. I think that's good for you to say.
But I look at that that other scene with a
very weary eye, um, because it reeks of everything from
taking advantage of people too. Sometimes it even sounded like scientology.
Oh yeah, there's a lot of religious overtones to the
(05:33):
whole thing, and that it would be like, well, by
this book, uh, and then by this one, and then
come to this seminar, and then by this thing, and
it had it had all the markings of like a
pyramid scheme almost. So I was like you, I'm kind
of all over the place with it, um. And I
think that's kind of the deal with motivational speaking is
(05:56):
it takes many many forms, from an inspirational person who
has a great life story to someone who was just like, hey,
I'm I can hold a pepperrelly as good as the
next guy. I'll charge somebody three grand to listen to that. Two, Hey,
here's a financial seminar where you can get rich, right,
just give us a bunch of money first. Yeah, so
(06:18):
it's really all over the map, um, because it's I mean,
not that it should be regulated, but it's just such
a it's kind of like the wild West as far
as what you can be as a motivational speaker. Yeah.
And I think also one of the reasons why it's
tough for us to to nail down our feelings about
it one way or the other, or why we have
multiple feelings, because inherently there's nothing in and of itself
(06:42):
wrong with making an effort to motivate other people to
be a better version of themselves. Right, But that can
be that that neutral thing or maybe even positive thing
can be exploited depending on the context that's used it. Right.
(07:03):
There's a really good example of that. There's a book
called Who Moved My Cheese? And it's like ninety pages,
big print, lots of illustrations, so it's a quick read
the title, but the whole thing is there's, um, there's
a maze, and there used to be cheese in this
one place, and these two humans Ham and Haw are
just all up at arms that that that they're cheese?
(07:24):
Is there anymore? What? What a tragedy? Who could have
possibly done this? And then these two mice. I can't
remember what the mices the Yeah, the mices. I can't
remember what the mice. Yeah, the mice, that's right, the
mice's names are. But they see that their cheese is gone,
they run off to find cheese elsewhere. Right, So the
(07:44):
mice are the heroes of the story where the humans
are dumb, and it's because the humans are allowing themselves
to become victims. Now, there's like some certain themes in
there that's true, Like, yes, it's not necessarily a good
idea to focus on, you know why this issue came about.
Just solve the problem and move on. But who moved
my cheese? Is very commonly a book that's purchased by
(08:08):
employers when they're going through a downsizing and they're saying
to their employers or their employees like, hey, you need
to give us a smile. Don't start asking why your
job was downsized. Just read this book and try to
be happy. So, this thing that could be good is
being exploited in a very negative manner um to to
(08:29):
exonerate people who are making decisions that are negatively impacting
people's lives. There's there's that's there. It is in a nutshell,
there's the the good and the bad. Yeah, I will
say this, I like UH fictional motivational speakers much more.
Whether it was uh Matt Foley, which is mentioned in
this article of course, great Chris Farley character. He gets
(08:49):
three paragraphs. Yeah, that was overdoing it a bit, but
definitely one of the more classic SML characters. Um. My
other favorite is UH from Magnolia Frank T. J. Mackie.
That was one of Tom Cruise's best characters. Yeah. Uh,
And I think so ironic that he played that character.
In ways, I almost get the impression that it was like,
(09:12):
um who who directed that was Paul Thomas Anderson, that
in a way casting Cruise was toying with him a
little bit, or Paul Thomas Anderson wanted him to face
him himself maybe, or maybe he gave him the script
and like literally every day on set after he finished,
Cruise would look around and say, are you making fun
of me here? You're not making fun of me? No,
(09:34):
no, no no, it's on. It's terrific. You're the best time.
All right, you're not making fun of me? Right? Anyway?
That that character was specifically about UH picking up women
in bars and having sex with him. So yeah, that
was sort of a different type of thing, but it
was motivational. It was uh. So we mentioned different kinds
(09:56):
of people who do this. Um, there are people like
Long who uh is a motivational speaker because he had
a twenty ton bus hit him while he was on
a bicycle. Uh. It was in the hospital for five
months at about forty operations and then finally overcame that
to run the New York City Marathon. So people like
(10:18):
that you will often see that have an amazing hardship.
Like I said that they have overcome and maybe did
like a small speaking engagement and said, you know, people
really connected to this, and I think I really helped folks. Um,
So can I sign up with a company that's gonna
book gigs for me and I can make some real though?
(10:40):
And you you really can? I mean, like there's there's
there are people out there who support themselves just from
motivational speaking. I think there's probably far more who aspired
to that. Um. But but it is entirely possible to
become a motivational speaker with representation and and that's how
you make your living. Yeah, and you know what, I
(11:02):
don't think we've ever talked about this on the show,
but stuff you should know we actually we actually don't
do motivational gigs, but we've done some corporate speaking on occasion.
We have specifically told the people who are agents are
booking it that we are not motivational speakers to book
us as such, and that we are not experts, but
we're glad to come talk to your company. By the way, Yeah,
(11:23):
how about that. I mean, you just you just let
the cat out of the bag. You changed our lives
for the better, Chuck. But long story short, we have
because of this, we have talked and spoken with a
number of agencies and representatives who act as the liaison
between a company or a corporation or a group and
(11:46):
the speaker, and so we've kind of got a little
bit of an inside view on kind of what this
public professional public speaking is all about. And one of
the things that uh, I mean, we kind of do
our thing and we're not the best. Um, we're not
the best for people to sell because we're not like
we can do this and we're vivacious and we have
(12:07):
get up on stage and just rally people. We're kind
of well, we kind of do one thing so if
you want us to do that, we can do it. Yeah.
So it's sort of a narrower field, but it's niche.
It is very niche. But if you do want to,
if you think you have a neck. And this one
woman in here who was the one that said that
she was always sort of the cheerleader in her group, Yeah,
(12:29):
she was like I kind of always was just this
person in life and my friends. I would motivate my
friends and my family and stuff. So if you have
that kind of vivacious personality and you can get up
on stage in front of people and you have a
good story to tell that's um sincere, then it might
be something that you should look into. Right. That's another
(12:51):
reason why I like Nancy bestor too. She's the only
one in this article who admits that, Yeah, anybody can
do it. It's just it's a it's a certain type
of skill set, but not something you would have to
be born with, Like anybody can figure it out well.
And I think a lot of professional motivational speakers would
probably be like, no, no, no, no, this is not
for you. Well yeah, Matt Long, the elite athlete UM
(13:12):
says like, no, no, not everybody could do it. Yeah,
he said, well, if it were easy, everyone would be
doing it. So no, that was his answer to can
anybody do it? I think we like I would say
my sense of humor, especially as stuff you should know goes,
is pretty self deprecating. But I say this totally honestly
(13:35):
that if we can do it, we're proof that anybody
can do this. Oh yeah, we didn't have any experience
getting on stage in front of people. Now we learned it. Again.
We're not up there doing motivational speaking, but we're up
there doing public speaking in front of groups who don't
know us, and that that's the key. Now. The next level,
of course, is whether you can arouse uh, positive emotion
(14:00):
and in the people out there you know, listening to
you um, And that that I think takes a decent
amount of practice. But there are techniques and there are
methods that you can figure out, and all you have
to do is a little bit of research. All you
would have to to research really is if you look
up like how to be a motivational speaker, that is
(14:21):
going to leave you a heartache. But if you look
up sensible things like how do you motivate people? Um,
how do you give a dynamite presentation. All of these things,
it's all the same stuff. It's just the thing that
makes motivational speaking different is the through line is inspiration.
You have an inspirational story. You're you're telling people that
(14:43):
they can they can have a better life themselves, that
it's in there in them. That's that's really the big
difference between motivational speaking and any other type of public speaking. Yeah.
I wonder if that guy who said that, UM wonderful
in his thing he goes, you know, you can come
over any adverse the except public speaking motivation speaking, like,
don't don't try that. Anything else you could probably do though.
(15:07):
The competition is thinking of all right, well let's take
a break here. It's a good start, and we will
motivate you to come back and listen more right after this.
(15:41):
All right. Uh. Psychology wise, people have been um. Psychologists
have been studying motivation for for many many years, um,
and what motivates people? And there's a dude, uh named
Abraham Harold Maslow, and in the nineteen forties came up
with something a little, a little pyramid called Maslow's hierarchy
(16:05):
of needs, which is fairly interesting if you look at it.
It is UM. It's a pyramid. Were down at the bottom.
I think it's been revised over the years. No, that's
the food pyramid you're thinking of. Now, this has been
revised a little bit. At the bottom there are one, two, three, four,
five levels and at the bottom you have physiological needs
(16:28):
like food and water, shelter, shelter, warmth. Right above that
you have safety needs UM, security and safety in life.
Above that you have belongingness and love, which are friends
and intimates. Esteem goes above that prestige feeling of accomplishment.
And then finally at the very top of the pyramid, UM.
(16:50):
People should stop using pyramids because that's just got a
bad name. Now, UM achieving one's full potential or self actualization.
And so the idea is that you've divided these needs
up into groups where once you have fulfilled these basic needs,
you will become stronger and you will basically satisfy those
(17:11):
lower called lower level deficit needs, and then you can
progress onto these higher needs until you reach that final
level U self actualization. And you I mean you can
take issue and people have with Maslow's hierarchy, like the
a literal reading of it would say that homeless people
couldn't are incapable of having friendships or caring about one
(17:32):
another because they're lacking in a lower need, which is
shelter and housing. UM. But the overall it does seem
to be pretty widely, widely regarded, well regarded most like
it doesn't take into account social factors. UM, it sounds
(17:53):
Let's put it this way, it sounds like something developed
in the nineteen forties, right, Yeah, And it's pretty it's
pretty elementary, and it does it's not very complex, but
it has formed the basis of UM a lot of psychology,
Like it is pretty much the standard for motivational theory
(18:13):
from what I understand, and UM, it definitely forms a
lot of the basis for motivational speaking and the motivational
speaking industry and and the the um crux of what
motivational speakers based their motivation on. Right. So, like you said,
you have this Maslow's theory, but UM regarded well or not,
(18:37):
It's been around for a long time and is the
basis for how to motivate people. And people speakers use
this in their own way. They have their own take
on how they want to use it or whether they
use it, and investor's case. Um, she actually went to school.
She she went to graduate school and studied, uh, conflict
(18:58):
resolution and emotional intelligence, which I think UM gives her
a leg up as far as being schooled at least
and things she talks about how empathy is very important
and she's at least studied on it, you know, which
is more than you can say for a lot of them.
(19:18):
Did you you interviewed Tony Robbins at one point for
us for our blog? Imber did. Yeah, he's seven years ago.
I was part of I don't know, there were like
four or five other people on the phone. It was
a conference interview that we were but I mean, let's
be honest, we were made to do this, yes, very much.
So it was in the evening, Um it was there
(19:39):
was something else going on, I think a birthday party.
I had just step away from UM. But it was
right before his TV show Breakthrough with Tony Robbins came out,
and I do you remember that show? I do? Uh?
Very short lived like it was, Yeah, it was extremely
short lived, but it was the were selling like super
(20:01):
Bowl um sized, we're super Bowl price commercials for that thing,
like that's how much those the ads spots were going
for on this. It was a huge event and it
flopped very quickly, which I think surprised everybody because Tony
Robbins is He's huge man, He's enormous. Yeah. One of
the stats, the four million people he reaches from a
(20:23):
hundred countries has a net worth of about four and
eighty million dollars through his books and speeches and services.
And he's been at it for a very long time.
A lot of people think that he started the UM,
the motivational speaking industry. He definitely did not. Read a
pretty interesting article that suggested that Ralph Waldo Emerson was
(20:44):
America's first motivational speaker could make sense. I've seen it
go back even further than that. There's a lady named
Mary Baker Eddie who ended up founding the Christian Science
I guess church. She got together with a guy named
Phineas park hurse Quimby. If that's not a mid nineteenth
century name, I don't know what is right, or a
(21:05):
new hipster Brooklyn kid's name. Yes, it is now um
and there's They came together and created what's known as
the New Thought movement, which is basically said that if
you think positively good things will happen, which, now this
is just such a widespread thought and it's it forms
(21:27):
such that forms as much the basis of motivational speaking
as Maslow's hierarchy, the idea that if you think positively,
you're going to have an actual effect on fate, on destiny,
on the universe, on on your your own future. Right,
But that makes zero sense whatsoever logically, and it it
(21:49):
finds it's its roots back in this, these two, these
two people coming together, so that actually probably was the
basis of the motivational speaking industry, and it continued on here.
There there were some luminaries that pop up between uh
the New Thought movement and Tony Robbins. You've got like
Dale Carnegie, who wrote How To Um Make Friends and
(22:11):
Influence People, one of the greatest selling self help books
of all time, and really introduced the concept of self
help to the masses. Dale Carnegie did use an interesting dude.
And then you've got guys like Napoleon Hill who wrote
Think and Grow Rich. I believe it sounds like something
(22:31):
on the Simpsons, like a fake self help book, it
really was. And there's actually Chuck a really good article
on Gizmoto called The Untold Story of Napoleon Hill the
greatest self help scammera of all time. Well, and you
know how you like those long form articles, this one,
as long as it gets right, it's basically like a
mini book. So the mid twenties century, you've got people
(22:52):
popping up. And then and then a young man named
Anthony Robbins created an infomercial for his Personal Power program.
Remember that infomercial I do. And I looked into a
little bit because I realized I was like, I don't
even know his deal, Like what was uh? I know,
he wasn't a pow um Like I wondered what his
(23:13):
story was. You're like, okay, check that box off um.
And from what I could find, and I didn't do
a deep dive, but from what I could find, he
worked for a motivational speaker. And I think was just like, hey,
I can do this. Yeah, is that the deal? Yes? Okay,
from what I understand, And he was absolutely right. He
(23:36):
did it. He he's a cottage industry onto himself. That
Personal Power infomercial. By the way, in the first three
years that it was out, a hundred million people saw
it in America, So he became like a juggernai, I
became a pop culture thing. Remember he was in Shallow
How he's actually the mcguffin for the whole movie. Meeting
(23:57):
Tony Robbins in an elevator is what sets like the
whole plot of the movie off. And then what a
mcguffin is, I don't I don't remember seeing that movie,
to be honest, I know the movie, but I don't
think I saw it. But no, as far as film
industry parlance goes, and mcguffin is the thing that helps
the plot along, right, Yeah, a mcguffin is uh something
(24:18):
in the movie, a device or something that triggers the plot.
So I think in that case you're correct. Okay, I'm
using it correctly, by goodness. So um Tony Tony Robins.
So by the time he came out with his show
breakthrough in two thousand ten, um, everybody just assumed it
would be huge and it was not for some reason.
I still don't understand why. But if you watch that
(24:40):
first episode, it's basically him going around and motivating people
who have like enormous challenges up against them. And the
first episode still to this day, I just kind of
I'm like, oh my gosh, I can't believe he did this.
They he went and met up with a guy who
was Audre, who was qua quadriplegic, I believe, and he
(25:05):
had become quadriplegic after jumping headfirst into a swimming pool
I think at his wedding reception. Um And and became
paralyzed and I you know, obviously quite depressed as a result,
and was had lost his job and his life had
really just taken a huge turn downward. And Tony Robbins
(25:27):
showed up to help the guy, and he wanted to
help him by inspiring him. And the way that he
inspired him was to take him up in an airplane
and push him out. Do you remember he pushed a man,
a quadriplegic man out of an airplane with a parachute
on and said like Scottive or something like that. It
was one of the craziest things anyone's ever done on TV.
(25:47):
And I'm including up to present day. So so breakthrough
Tony Robbins plot. But that was probably just like a
blip on that dude's radar. It did nothing to his
personal brand as far as dragging it down. No, um
And I don't want to like sound like I'm bashing
the guy, because you know, he helps a lot of
people that buy into it and apparently is very philanthropic,
(26:12):
uh in many ways. So that's good, right, sure of course. Um,
But he also, um, is a firewalker. This is something
I did not know U. In his Unleashed the Power
Within program that he does live, he gets thousands of
people to walk across hot coals. He's gotten Oprah Winfrey
(26:34):
to walk across hot coals, and um, you know, firewalkings,
It's it's a real thing. Um, if you look at
it scientifically, what's going on is is coals are not
a very good conductor of heat, so it takes about
a second to actually feel that heat, and if you
(26:56):
walk at a good clip, it's about a half a second.
So what you're doing is not really And I don't
think he's saying there's some danger you're overcoming. I think
in his case, it's you're overcoming a fear and taking
part in a group activity and that's where the benefit is.
It's like staring at those coals and doing it. I
don't think he's saying, like, look, it's magic because of me.
(27:19):
You're not getting burned. I don't know. I think that
what he's the premise of his fire walking thing and
at these conferences is to show people that they can
overcome even physical problems like hot coals on their feet
by using their mind. I thought it was like the fear. No,
(27:40):
I think in reality that's what's going on. But I
believe from what I understand, that it's being presented that
you can say something like yes or cool moss, and
you're using your mind to overcome the dilemma of the
hot posed by the hot coals on your feet. Okay,
(28:02):
fair enough, right? Uh? It all kind of went wrong
in Dallas though in there was an event there where um,
thirty to forty people were evaluated. I think five people
were taken to the hospital with burn injuries, and um,
his spokesperson, Jennifer Connelly said, you know what, only five
(28:22):
people out of seven thousand requested examination beyond what we
had on site to examine people, and you know, everyone
had a great time. Basically, I have to say, statistically speaking,
she makes an excellent point. And there's actually somebody in
this article, um, oh, what's her name, Irene Wiseman. Yeah,
(28:45):
who really kind of put it well, she seems to
be somebody who goes to these things to go to
she goes. She definitely goes to Robbin's conferences, um, but
she also seems to understand what's going on at them,
rather than like maybe buying into a lock stock and barrel.
And from what I've seen, someone like her, someone who
(29:07):
approaches a motivational speaking conference with her own set of
judgments and values about it and is able to take
that message and adjust it so that it works for her,
rather than trying to take everything from the person wholesale
and putting it onto you so that you're basically magically changed.
(29:29):
Those people have the greatest greatest chance of succeeding, um
at whatever they're being motivated to do. But she she
basically she puts the firewalk like that. She was saying,
like the real magic is that there were ten thousand
five people waiting their turn to walk over these colds,
and everyone was exuberant and calm and happy. Nobody was
(29:52):
irritated or you know, um like hurry up or anything
like that. It was a neat communal feeling waiting in
line to go do the fire the firewalk, and she
she did the firewalks. She said it was cool or whatever. Um,
but it was more about the camaraderie in the community
that developed in line waiting for the firewalk. For her,
(30:12):
it definitely is. And I think if you asked Tony Robbins,
maybe he'll come onto the show and talk to us
about it sometime. Okay, if you asked Tony Robbins, I
would guess that he would concede. Uh that, Yes, you
could interpret his conferences as a Pepper rallying. I don't know,
(30:34):
I don't know, you know, I want to say something, Chuck,
I hold the skeptic community to account for not giving
more ink to motivational the motivational speaking industry. Yeah, I
didn't see a lot. And I specifically looked from skeptic sites. Yep,
me too, and it's almost not there. So that that
(30:55):
has two things. One that skeptics either think that it
is right, that's fine, or they think it's so ridiculous
that it's not even worth writing about, which I don't
think that's the case, because skeptics write about some pretty
ridiculous stuff. Well, I looked at this one article. I
don't know if you saw it from the guy who
walked out of a conference, a Tony Robbins conference. Did
(31:16):
you see that one? Um, this guy was by all
accounts from what he said, someone who should be into it.
He's like, I wasn't there to bust him. I'm not
a skeptic. He was like, I h have read some
of his books. I'm a fan, Like I'm into it. Uh.
And he walked out and he just had a very
like just a very leveled critical eye on the presentation,
(31:40):
not like this guy is this and this. He was
just like, you know what, he repeated himself too much,
and he name dropped too much, and um, he kind
of had some bad segues that and non sequiturs, and
he just looked at it sort of from a critical
i of a public speaker, and it was kind of
like this he's he's kind of phoning it in these days.
(32:02):
So it was, Oh, it was Tony Robbins himself that
he walked out on. Yeah, and he was just like,
you know, I left, He said, I just found that
I wasn't really getting anything out of it. And he
didn't go there to to poopoo the guy. Um, like
I said, he was a fan, so he just it's
kind of like he you know, he ditched the capris
and and and start doing a better presentation, was his take?
(32:25):
Gotcha the capris Tony Robbins his capri pants, he sure does.
Does he really like the ones with the drawstrings at
the bottom in the cargo pockets? No? Does he really?
I've not seen that. All right, Well let's take a
break and let Josh ponder that, and we'll come back
and finish up this stuff right after this. All right,
(33:11):
So Tony Robbins isn't the only person out there that's
made a ton of money doing this. They want to
pick on him. No, we should say a ton of money.
His six day conference, Um, I think it's called Date
with Destiny this year and last year. So the the
Irene Wiseman said there were ten thousand, five hundred people there.
The tickets were about four thousand dollars apiece. That's forty
(33:32):
two million dollars they grossed for a sixth day conference.
He should call that conference credit cards on fire. Yeah.
I read an article, I think in Forbes about the
Chinese UM motivational speaking industry, and um, there's this one
person who's like, who's going to sign up for the
for my other classes and um, like, some people came
(33:54):
to the front and a ring of people with like
wireless credit card machines formed around them. Oh my god, yeah, wow, yeah,
one of us, one of us man's creepy. Uh So
Tony Robbins isn't the only person out there who's done
this over the Here's many, many people, I think, I mean,
(34:15):
I didn't it say there was something like close to
five registered motivational speakers in the U s alone, think
like six something. That was it. But very famously, a
man named Jack Canfield wrote a book called Chicken Soup
for the Soul. Um and this is an amazing record.
He holds the Guinness Record for having seven books on
(34:35):
the New York Times bestseller list at the same time.
That's unbelievable. Did you know they wrote one for chicken
Soup for the prisoner's soul, They wrote one for people
in prison? M I did not know that. And also
did you know Ashton Kutcher is trying to bring Chicken
Soup for the Soul to Netflix the Coach as what
(34:57):
a documentary? Or's I have no idea, that's that's all
I saw. Or he's starring his Chicken Soup he's starring
his noodle I book a lot of fun at the coach.
But he seems like a pretty sincere guy. Uh sure, No,
I I don't know. I don't know. I I've I've
learned to just try to shy away from no from
(35:19):
from like saying stuff about people on air. People I
don't know. I don't know him. He's a celebrity. That's
all I know about him, you know, like, and even
if I did know more about him, and that's not
the whole picture. So I have no idea what he's like.
Is a person just based on knowing people he that's
probably likeliest that he is a good person. Wayne Dyer,
(35:40):
another famous author, no longer with us. I wrote a
book called Your Erroneous Zones, and a lot of these people,
it seems like, started out as book writers. That's the
best way. That used to be the best way to
get started. Now I think the best way to get
started is to just start speaking and then write your
books based on your successes there. You want to do
that almost simultaneously too, because one of the things you
(36:02):
do if you're an motivational speaker is mentioned by the way,
I've got even more insights that are going to help
you out, and my books that are available for sale
right outside. Yeah, that's when it reeks of scientology to me.
It's like you can unlock more discoveries by buying more things.
But all, yeah, all of them do that. Like you're
a fool if you're a motivational speaker who doesn't have
(36:26):
a book for sale at your conference, Like you're doing
it wrong. Right, as far as the industry would be concerned,
I think that in and of itself doesn't necessarily mean
that you are a huckster. But there are plenty of
them in the industry that are hucksters because all they're
(36:46):
they're doing is selling their book or their class or
there's something they're They're motivational speech is actually just a
sales pitch. That's the hucksters, and there's plenty of them
in the industry. Yes, should we talk about get motivated? Yeah?
We should. This is a seminar series that was started
in two thousand two by guy named Peter Lowe and
(37:08):
in the article I read, he has described as the
son of a missionary who along with his ex wife Tamarra,
who was a self help book author who writes Christian
rap started, uh something that a series called Get Motivated
that UM is filling up stadiums that at one point
(37:28):
and no longer, but at one point was in business
with TD Ameritrade. Yeah. I think they started with a
legitimate motivational speaker conference, Okay, and then over time said hey,
you know what, we could get somebody in here to
to underwrite a lot of this and UM they can
(37:49):
just give they can basically put ads in amongst the
motivational speakers. Yeah. So they partnered up with t d
AMR Trade with this UM product they hauled had called
invest Tools UM and they're no longer in business together,
but Get Motivated still out there. I'm not sure if
they're partnering with anyone or not. No, they have a
(38:11):
new owner called wealth Rock that has their own investing
classes that they now sell exclusively. I think are the
only things that are sold at the Get Motivated conferences. Okay,
So here's a long and short of it. What they
do is they charge very little money. It's not like
you have to pay thousands of dollars like Tony Robbins
UM live event, but you pay like five bucks or
(38:33):
something and say hey, I can go here. Colin Powell
speak or Terry Bradshaw or who else they they have U,
Laura Bush or Juliani. And who wouldn't go here speeches
by them for five bucks besides me? Uh? And then
you go and you h you would, um for five bucks.
(38:59):
I'd go see Colin all for five bucks if he
spoke in my living room. How's that? Uh, let's make
it happen, America. That's a riff on an old joke
my dad used to say, which was when he wanted
to denigrate a performer, you would say, I wouldn't go
see them if they were playing in my backyard. I've
heard that before too. That's such a seventies dad thing
(39:19):
to totally. Um. So anyway, you would go and you
would listen to these motivational speeches. Um. And then what's
going on is is their financial they're selling a financial
product basically right, And again it's it's like you've got
actual like Colin Powell's not like. And by the way,
if I mentioned how great t D and Merri Trades
(39:40):
investment tools are, They've helped me out a lot. He
just paid a boatload of money to go speak exactly,
and he's giving like a real motivational speech. Right. And
then after Colin Powell, you have some guy come up
and say, hey, who wants a Corvette and they flashed
a picture of a Corvette and everybody raises their hand.
He's like, you can have them with corvette too, with
invest tools or whatever. Right. So the criticism of this
(40:05):
is that these people are super pumped and ready to
just do anything because they're feeling really good thanks to
Colin Pal's speech. And then now they're getting this the
sales pitch that's being wedged in between these motivational speakers,
So of course they're signing up for this and and
maybe without really fully understanding what's going on. Um. The
(40:26):
on the other side, the t D A Mere trade
people say, how are you gonna do a hard sell with,
you know, to twenty people in a stadium. You can't like, like,
that's just that's that's ridiculous to say that these people
had a hard sales pitch leveled against them. The point
is that people who went went thinking they were going
to a motivational speaking event a conference, and it turns
(40:50):
out the whole thing was just a t D A
mere trade add to get them to give them their
money for these investment tools that may or may not
help them actually make money from that point, well, yeah,
and uh. In two thousand nine, investivals UM agreed to
pay three million dollars UH to settle UM allegations from
the SEC that it let instructors mislead students and the
(41:11):
things that can make extraordinary profits. Uh and to claim
they were expert option traders when their income was really
coming from selling the courses. Yeah. Apparently one of the
instructors said, like, the returns were guaranteed, you can't you
cannot do that. And apparently you're also not supposed to
say what percentage return you can offer, and they they
(41:34):
apparently said seventeen percent, which is just ridiculous. And these
are options that we're talking about. These are not like
stock trades, where you know, you can do a little
research and figure out stock trades and you're not necessarily
swimming with sharks. These were options. Options are extremely complex
and difficult, and they cost more to trade than a
stock trade does, and you're much more apt to lose
(41:56):
money because you don't understand what you're doing. There's a
lot more factors involved in whether you make money off
of investing in options. Or not. So this is like
they're going to people who are paying to see you know,
Colin Powell and Laura Bush speak because they admire them,
and then they're they're getting sold these supposedly classes on
(42:19):
investing in very sophisticated financial tools. It's just you shouldn't
do that. You know. Their lineup is now who I
went to get motivated website and like, did you say
that they had they had their own product? Now yeah,
Wealth Rock is the owner I believe spelled r A
(42:39):
W k uh. Their current lineup right now for this
next tour is Kevin O'Leary, Mr. Wonderful from Shark Tank,
one of the Duck Dynasty dudes. All right, do you
know his name? Larry King? Really? Yeah? Okay? Um. A
woman named Mangeet Minhas who I believe I looked into
(43:02):
her briefly. She's started breweries and wineries in Canada, made
a lot of money and then finally rounding it out
Edwards Snowden. That's a good one, man, that's quite I'm
sure Edward Snowden. I want to be in the green
room with Edward Snowden and the Duck Dynasty guy. Well,
you're you're joking about Edward Snowden. Oh that's four real. No, yes,
(43:26):
no it's not. Yes, it is what and under his
thing it says, uh what did it say? I mean,
you know, says entrepreneur below one and said duck Dynasty
star and blow him, it says whistle blower. No, Edward
Snowden is doing this conference. Yes, well I'm going I
(43:46):
gotta hear this. Yeah. Wow, strange times. It is strange times.
I gotta say, I like what Wealth Rock is doing
these days? Uh. In two thousand five, that was an
investigative journalist named Steve Salerna who um wrote a book
called SHAM, which stands for self help in Actualization movement,
(44:08):
called SHAM colin how the self help movement made America
helpless And he kind of peeled back. He he didn't
hold any punches and kind of peeled back the the
thin layer on this industry and um basically said, there's
no science behind this, uh, these techniques, there's no evidence
(44:30):
that this stuff is effective at all. Um, it could
be just coincidence or people may not be uh maybe
are not helped by this industry at all. Right, And
he was saying, like just the law of Averages says
that if enough people try it, some of them are
going to be helped, and they may even be helped
just by other things or by things other than whatever
(44:52):
the motivational speaker was telling him to do, but it
will be attributed to the motivational speaker. And if you
get some people who are willing to give testam O'Neills,
then that just helps feed the beast, basically right. And
if you're not helped, then the common line as well,
you just you're not buying in like you can. Yeah,
this is where it gets insidious to me. It's where
(45:13):
the it's is built in self defense. I guess deflection
mechanism for for motivation the motivational speaking industry, which is, yeah,
you're not enough of a believer, you don't have enough passion,
you're um not trying hard enough, Like you're the problem,
you're failing, you're the loser, you're committed to losing. That's
(45:35):
another one too, and that's despicable to me. If you're
if you are deflecting blame from yourself and your own
shoddy product, that's not actually helping people onto somebody who
is really looking for help because they don't think that
they have the real strength and of in themselves too
to overcome the adversity they face. Okay, um, holding it back, man,
(46:02):
Well you said that great article, Three reasons why most
motivational speakers are dead wrong, And that was one of
the things that um that this author, Well did you
have his name? Uh? He is Hoffman. His name is
Bobby Hoffman. Yeah, that was one of the things he
brought up, that is that it's undebunkable basically because they
(46:24):
can always just put it back on the person do that. Yeah,
it's not good at all. No, So I mean, I
guess in a nutshell the and apparently in a nutshell
was Dale Carnegie thing. But in a nutshell the motivational
speaking industry, it can be good and can be bad depending. Yeah,
and I know we spent a lot of time in
(46:45):
retrospect now slamming it all. But um, like I said,
good for you. If you do have a legitimate sincere
hardship overcoming a hardship life story to tell and that
helps people out and you can make a buck doing it,
then I think that's awesome. Yeah. And again, if you're
somebody who's looking to be motivated by a motivational speaker.
(47:06):
If what somebody is saying makes a lot of sense
to you, it feels right, you feel good listening to them,
reading their books, hearing what they have to say. UM,
more power to you. I I don't knock that at all. No,
just tread lightly and go into it with a with
a intelligent I. There you go. I don't want to
(47:27):
see anyone get duped, you know. Okay, those our our
public service for the week. Goodness. Uh. If you want
to learn more about motivational speaking, type those words in
the search bar how stuff works dot com. And since
I said that, it's time for a listener mail, I'm
gonna call this ghost fishing follow up UM from Anthony
(47:50):
and Charlotte, North Carolina. Hey, guys, just finished ghost fishing
and glad you covered this really important topic of an
environmental scientist who studies fishing water in North Carolina. Have
worked in this field all over the country. While the
commercial fishing industry is extremely detrimental to marine life, recreational
fishing causes a lot of fish to die and freshwater
because of littering from it. And this is something I
(48:11):
really thought about as UM. Seldom fishermen many fishermen and
women throw little excess bits of line while tying knots
on the ground or in the water while the fishing.
This monofilament goes in the waterways, and if you look
into the gut of many fish, turtles, birds, and other
life associated with water, you almost always find this fishing
(48:31):
line and hooks stuck in the various biota or the
biota being stuck in the gear. I would highly recommend
fishermen and women, let's just say fisher people, uh, fisher
kings of fisher kings, to make sure they put this
extra line in their pocket to dispose of later, or
use an environmentally friendly nylon line that if they can
(48:53):
find it. This monofilament line just does not break down
over time like the nylon does. Just wanted to share
this with you all. Many people are unaware of the
harm they can do without meaning to these little bits
of line, and I hope it can help people be
more aware while they're fishing. Good Yeah, thanks Anthony from Charlotte.
I'd never really thought about that my own self, and
(49:14):
that's wrong. Yeah, good going, Anthony, much appreciated. If you
want to get in touch with us like Anthony did,
and give us a heads up on something We love
those You can tweet to us at s y s
K podcast or Josh, I'm Clark. You can join us
on Facebook at Facebook dot com, slash stuff you Should
Know or slash Charles W. Chuck Bryant. You can send
(49:36):
us an email with Stuff podcast at how stuff Works
dot com and it's always joined us at a home
on the web, Stuff you Should Know dot com. For
more on this and thousands of other topics, is it
how stuff Works dot com. Two
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