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SOLVED with Mark Manson

The Biggest Self-Help Scam in History, Solved

3/25/202627 min

This book has sold over a hundred million copies, billionaires swear by it. But what if it's a lie? Does the effectiveness of the book change if we find out that the author is a huge scammer and quite possibly made up the whole story that spearheaded the book?

Vote for Solved for Best Indie Podcast in the 2026 Webby Awards: https://vote.webbyawards.com/PublicVoting#/2026/podcasts/features/best-indie-podcast For practical, science-based advice each week that might change your life, sign up for my newsletter here: http://bit.ly/3JRg3NX Written & Directed by Mark...

Transcript preview

First 90 seconds

  1. Speaker 00:00

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  7. Mark Manson· Host0:29

    [instrumental music] It's 1908. A scrappy, ambitious journalist named Napoleon sits down across from Andrew Carnegie in his sixty-four room Manhattan mansion. Hill is a no-name, born dirt poor in a one-room cabin in rural Virginia. Carnegie is the richest man in the world, a titan of industry. He came from nothing, made his fortune in steel, crushed his competitors, and built the backbone of American industry. And now, at seventy-two, he's giving it all away. Libraries, universities, foundations. He's looking to leave a legacy. Carnegie had a proposition for Napoleon: interview five hundred of the most successful men in America and distill their secrets into a philosophy anyone can follow. No salary, no advance, just introductions to the most powerful people in the world, and a chance to unlock the formula of wealth itself. The only condition, Napoleon had to share it with the world. Napoleon accepted. The project would take him twenty years. He would interview Henry

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