Discover the extraordinary life of Milton Hershey, his unique vision for a self-sustaining community, and philanthropic legacy. Learn how his determination and resilience set him apart from his father's failed ventures, and why he chose to leave a large fortune to orphans. Explore the impact of his wealth on creating a utopian town and investing in an orphan school.

Explore the unique and innovative approach of William Randolph Hearst in media, using a synergy between newspapers, magazines, radio, and film. Delve into his complex personality, turbulent childhood, and challenging financial independence. Witness his vast audience reach, intense rivalry with Teddy Roosevelt, and eventual downfall due to financial mismanagement. Learn about his triumphs and challenges in later years as a media magnate.

What I learned from reading Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage by Alfred Lansing.----Come see a live show with me and Patrick O'Shaughnessy from Invest Like The Best on October 19th in New York City. Get your tickets here! ----Subscribe to listen to Founders Premium — Subscribers can listen to Ask Me Anything (AMA) episodes and every bonus episode. ---[0:58] All the men were struck, almost to the point of horror, by the way the ship behaved like a giant beast in its death agonies. [1:27]  His name was Sir Ernest Shackleton, and the twenty-seven men he had watched so ingloriously leaving the stricken ship were the members of his Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition. [2:02] Few men have borne the responsibility Shackleton did at that moment. Though he certainly was aware that their situation was desperate, he could not possibly have imagined then the physical and emotional demands that ultimately would be placed upon them, the rigors they would have to endure, the sufferings to which they would be subjected. [2:52] Their plight was naked and terrifying in its simplicity: If they were to get out—they had to get themselves out. [9:21] Shackleton returned to England a hero of the Empire. He was lionized wherever he went, knighted by the king, and decorated by every major country in the world. [10:24] Making his primary argument for such an expedition, he wrote: It is the last great Polar journey that can be made. I feel it is up to the British nation to accomplish this, for we have been beaten at the conquest of the North Pole and beaten at the first conquest of the South Pole. There now remains the largest and most striking of all journeys—the crossing of the Continent. [12:16] He was an explorer in the classic mold—utterly self-reliant, romantic, and swashbuckling. [15:20] But the great leaders of historical record—the Napoleons, the Alexanders—have rarely fitted any conventional mold. Perhaps it’s an injustice to evaluate them in ordinary terms. [17:00] When you are in a hopeless situation, when there seems no way out, get down on your knees, and pray for Shackleton. [17:15] The motto of his family: BY ENDURANCE WE CONQUER. [23:10] Shackleton said there once was a mouse who lived in a tavern. One night the mouse found a leaky barrel of beer, and he drank all he could hold. When the mouse had finished, he looked around arrogantly. “Now then,”  he said, “where’s that damn cat.”[25:15] From studying the outcome of past expeditions, he believed that those that burdened themselves with equipment to meet every contingency had fared much worse than those that had sacrificed total preparedness for speed. [30:19] Of all their enemies—the cold, the ice, the sea—he feared none more than demoralization. [32:00] Shackleton was not an ordinary individual. He was a man who believed completely in his own invincibility, and to whom defeat was a reflection of personal inadequacy. [43:15] It was pull or perish, and ignoring their sickening thirst, they leaned on their oars with what seemed the last of their strength. [47:05] No matter what the odds, a man does not pin his last hope for survival on something and then expect that it will fail. [48:34] The only thing to do was to hang on and endure. [49:39] They were possessed by an angry determination to see the journey through—no matter what. [54:33] I do not know how they did it, except they had to. ——“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested, so my poor wallet suffers.”— GarethBe like Gareth. Buy a book. It's good for you. It's good for Founders. A list of all the books featured on Founders Podcast.

Discover the enigmatic life of Alfred Lee Loomis, a unique figure who excelled as a financier, philanthropist, and physicist. From groundbreaking scientific research during World War II to his innovative work in radar technology, Loomis's contributions shaped history. Explore his bold and unconventional nature, as well as his strategic vision in overcoming Germany's scientific advantage. Uncover the legacy of this multifaceted innovator in finance and physics, and the power of extreme circumstances in achieving extraordinary success.

Exploring the clash between Theodore Roosevelt and J.P. Morgan, showcasing their contrasting approaches towards big business and public accountability. Highlighting Morgan's commanding nature and distrust of public sentiment, alongside Roosevelt's belief in regulation and accountability. Narrating the power struggle between the two men, with Morgan's impatience and paternal influence shaping his decisions. Delving into the intricate power dynamics and rivalry among railroad executives, leading to bold moves and cooperation in times of crisis.

What I learned from reading Total Recall: My Unbelievably True Life Story by Arnold Schwarzenegger.----Come see a live show with me and Patrick O'Shaughnessy from Invest Like The Best on October 19th in New York City. Get your tickets here! ----Subscribe to listen to Founders Premium — Subscribers can listen to Ask Me Anything (AMA) episodes and every bonus episode. ---I decided that the best course for independence was to mind my own business and make my own money.I never felt that I was good enough, strong enough, smart enough. He let me know that there was always room for improvement. A lot of sons would have been crippled by his demands, but instead, the discipline rubbed off on me. I turned it into drive.I became absolutely convinced that I was special and meant for bigger things. I knew I would be the best at something - although I didn’t know what - and that it would make me famous. I never went to a competition to compete. I went to win. Even though I didn’t win every time, that was my mindset. I became a total animal. If you tuned into my thoughts before a competition, you would hear something like: “I deserve that pedestal, I own it, and the sea ought to part for me. Just get out of the fucking way, I’m on a mission. So just step aside and gimme the trophy.” I pictured myself high up on the pedestal, trophy in hand. Everyone else would be standing below. And I would look down.When you grow up in that kind of harsh environment, you never forget how to withstand physical punishment, even long after the hard times end. I find joy in the gym because every rep and every set is getting me one step closer to my goal. It gave Reg Park’s whole life story, from growing up poor in Leeds, England, to becoming Mr. Universe, getting invited to America as a champion bodybuilder, getting sent to Rome to star as Hercules, and marrying a beauty from South Africa. This story crystallized a new vision for me. I could become another Reg Park. All my dreams suddenly came together and made sense. I refined this vision until it was very specific. I was going to go for the Mr. Universe title; I was going to break records in powerlifting; I was going to Hollywood; I was going to be like Reg Park. The vision became so clear in my mind that I felt like it had to happen. There was no alternative; it was this or nothing.Lucille Ball gave me advice about Hollywood. “Just remember, when they say, ‘No,’ you hear ‘Yes,’ and act accordingly. Someone says to you, ‘We can’t do this movie,’ you hug him and say, ‘Thank you for believing in me.’ There was nothing normal about me. My drive was not normal. My vision of where I wanted to go in life was not normal. The whole idea of a conventional existence was like Kryptonite to me.It was the fact that I had failed—not my body, but my vision and my drive. I hadn’t done everything in my power to prepare. Thinking this made me furious. “You are still a fucking amateur,” I told myself. I decided I wouldn’t be an amateur ever again. That night, despair came crashing in. I was in a foreign country, away from my family, away from my friends, surrounded by strange people in a place where I didn’t speak the language. I ended up crying quietly in the dark for hours. I always wrote down my goals. I had to make it very specific so that all those fine intentions were not just floating around. It might seem like I was handcuffing myself by setting such specific goals, but it was the opposite: I found it liberating. Knowing exactly where I wanted to end up freed me totally to improvise how to get there. I came away fascinated that a man could be both smart and powerful. Going to school, training five hours a day at the gym, working in the construction and mail-order businesses, making appearances, and going to exhibitions—all of it was happening at the same time. Some days stretched from six in the morning until midnight.Nothing was going to distract me from my goal. No offer, no relationship, nothing. People were always talking about how few performers there are at the top of the ladder, but I was convinced there was room for one more. I felt that, because there was so little room, people got intimidated and felt more comfortable staying on the bottom of the ladder. But, in fact, the more people that think that, the more crowded the bottom of the ladder becomes! Don’t go where it’s crowded. Go where it’s empty. Even though it’s harder to get there, that’s where you belong and where there’s less competition.Very few actors like to sell. I’d seen the same thing with authors in the book business. The typical attitude seemed to be, “I don’t want to be a whore. I create; I don’t want to shill.” It was a real change when I showed up saying, “Let’s go everywhere because this is good not only for me financially but also good for the public; they get to see a good movie!”Whenever I finished filming a movie, I felt my job was only half done. Every film had to be nurtured in the marketplace. You can have the greatest movie in the world, but if you don’t get it out there, if people don’t know about it, you have nothing. It’s the same with poetry, with painting, with writing, with inventions. It always blew my mind that some of the greatest artists, from Michelangelo to van Gogh, never sold much because they didn’t know-how. They had to rely on some schmuck - some agent or manager or gallery owner - to do it for them.That wasn’t going to happen to my movies. Same with bodybuilding, same with politics - no matter what I did in life, I was aware that you had to sell it. They couldn’t handle working every day. Lazy bastards. I wanted to be rich very quickly. No matter what you do in life, it’s either reps or mileage. If you want to be good at skiing, you have to get out on the slopes all the time. If you play chess, you have to play tens of thousands of games. On the movie set, the only way to act together is to do the reps. If you’ve done the reps, you don’t have to worry.—“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — GarethBe like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast 

What I learned from reading Hard Drive: Bill Gates and the Making of the Microsoft Empire by James Wallace and Jim Erickson. ----Come see a live show with me and Patrick O'Shaughnessy from Invest Like The Best on October 19th in New York City. Get your tickets here! ----Subscribe to listen to Founders Premium — Subscribers can listen to Ask Me Anything (AMA) episodes and every bonus episode. ---Microsoft had become the first software company to sell more than a billion dollars worth of software in a single year. Gates was the undisputed mastermind of that success, a brilliant technocrat, ruthless salesman, and manipulative businessman. Gates had slammed his fist into his palm and vowed to put several of his major software competitors out of business. By 1991, many of those competitors were in full retreat. I can do anything I put my mind to. Aggressive and stimulated by conflict; prone to change mood quickly; a dominating personality with outstanding powers of leadership. Mary Gates, in describing her son, has said that he has pretty much done what he wanted since the age of eight. Even as a child Gates had an obsessive personality and a compulsive need to be the best. Everything Bill did, he did to the max. Everything he did, he did competitively and not simply to relax. He was a very driven individual. Gates was immediately hooked. He found he had to compete for time on the computer with a handful of others who were similarly drawn to the room as if by a powerful gravitational force. Among them was Paul Allen. Gates devoured everything he could get his hands on concerning computers and how to communicate with them, often teaching himself as he went. Gates and a couple of other boys broke into the PDP-10 security system and obtained access to the company’s accounting files. They found their personal accounts and substantially reduced the amount of time the computer showed they had used. “It was when we got that free time that we really got into computers,” Gates said. “Then I became hardcore. It was day and night.” Gates was 13 years old. Although he was only in the ninth grade, he already seemed obsessed with the computer, ignoring everything else, staying out all night. He consumed biographies to understand how the great figures in history thought. If you had asked anybody at Lakeside, ‘Who is the real genius among geniuses?’ everyone would have said ‘Bill Gates.’He was obnoxious, he was sure of himself, he was aggressively, intimidatingly smart. He had a hard-nosed, confrontational style. His intensity at times boiled over into raw, unthrottled emotion. To those who knew him best Gates was hardly the social outcast he may have appeared to be from a distance. He had a sense of humor and adventure. He was a risk taker, a guy who liked to have fun and who was fun to be with. He had an immense range of knowledge and interests and could talk at length on any number of subjects. Although Gates may not have known what he was going to do with his life, he seemed confident that whatever he did would make him a lot of money. He made such a prediction about his future on several occasions. He and Paul Allen began to talk about forming their own software company. They shared the same vision that one day the computer would be as commonplace in the home as a television set and that these computers would need software—their software. Bill Gates would later tell a friend he went to Harvard to learn from people smarter than he was and left disappointed. That Gates would fall asleep in class was not surprising. He was living on the edge. It was not unusual for him to go as long as three days without sleep. His habit was to do 36 hours or more at a stretch, collapse for ten hours, then go out, get a pizza, and go back at it. And if that meant he was starting again at three o’clock in the morning, so be it. Gates and Allen were convinced the computer industry was about to reach critical mass, and when it exploded it would usher in a technological revolution of astounding magnitude. They were on the threshold of one of those moments when history held its breath and jumped, as it had done with the development of the car and the airplane. They could either lead the revolution or be swept along by it. Gates spent many hours sitting in his room “being a philosophical depressed guy, trying to figure out what I was doing with my life.”Bill had a monomanical quality. He would really focus on something and stick with it. He had a determination to master whatever it was he was doing. Bill was deciding where he was going to put his energy and to hell with what anyone else thought. Gates eventually gave up any thought of becomming a mathematician. If he couldn’t be the best in his field, why risk failure? Gates knew Allen was right. It was time. The personal computer miracle was going to happen.The personal computer revolution had begun. Its prophets were two young men not yet old enough to drink, whose software would soon bring executives in suits from around the country to a highway desert town to make million-dollar deals with kids in blue jeans and t-shirts. You’ve got to remember that in those days, the idea that you could own a computer, your own computer, was about as wild as the idea today of owning your own nuclear submarine. It was beyond comprehension. His parents and grandparents had taught him to be financially conservative, and that was the way he intended to run his company. There would be no unnecessary overhead or extravagant spending habits with Microsoft. Bill always had the vision that Microsoft’s mission was to provide all the software for microcomputers. They became known as the Microkids—high-IQ insomniacs who wanted to join the personal computer crusade, kids with a passion for computers who would drive themselves to the limits of their ability and endurance. Gates’ tireless salesmanship, browbeating, and haggling had resulted in agreements to license BASIC to a number of computer companies. He took one look at the long-haired, scraggly, 21-year-old and decided the legal battle against Microsoft was going to be easy. Roberts had warned Pertec that it would have its hands full with Gates, but no one listened to him. “Pertec kept telling me I was being unreasonable and they could deal with this guy,” Roberts said. “It was a little like Roosevelt telling Churchill that he could deal with Stalin.” What sustained the company was not Gates’ ability to write programs. Gates sustained Microsoft through tireless salesmanship. For several years, he alone made the cold calls and haggled, cajoled, browbeat, and harangued the hardware makers, convincing them to buy Microsoft’s services and products. When we got up to 30 employees, it was still just me, a secretary, and 28 programmers. I wrote all the checks, answered the mail, and took the phone calls. I’ll tell you or anybody else, that by the time you were with Bill for fifteen minutes, you no longer thought about how old he was or what he looked like. He had the most brilliant mind that I had ever dealt with. Microsoft did not need venture capital; Gates was essentially hiring the firm’s expertise. Gates wanted to eliminate his opponents from the playing field. Bill learned early on that killing the competition is the name of the game. There just aren’t as many people later to take you on. In game theory, you improve the probability you are going to win if you have fewer competitors. If you talk to Bill about any software company there’s a very high probability that he will be able to tell you who the CEO is, what their revenues were last year, what they are currently working on, what the problems are with their products. He’s very knowledgeable and prides himself on knowing what’s going on in the industry. Hanson suggested a different product naming strategy. It was important for a product to be identified by its brand name. Microsoft had to get its name associated with its products.The brand is the hero. People start to associate certain images with the brand, and that becomes more important than any single product. What the consumer goods companies realized years ago was that products come and go. But if you can create a halo around a brand name, when you introduce new products under that brand halo it becomes much easier to create momentum. With few exceptions, they’ve never shipped a good product in its first version. But they never give up and eventually get it right. It was all part of Gates’ master plan. As General George S. Patton liked to say, a good plan, violently executed now, is better than a perfect plan next week. He was a very clear thinker. But he would get emotional. He would browbeat people. Just imposing your intellectual prowess on somebody doesn’t win the battle, and he didn’t know that. He was very rich and very immature. He had never matured emotionally. For the year that ended June 30, 1985, Microsoft had revenues of $140 million. Its profits had totaled $31.2 million. All I’m thinking and dreaming about is selling software, not stock. The combination of ambition and wanting to win every single day is what Gates referred to as “being hardcore.”—“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — GarethBe like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

What I learned from reading The House of Morgan: An American Banking Dynasty and the Rise of Modern Finance by Ron Chernow. [0:01] This book is about the rise, fall, and resurrection of an American banking empire—the House of Morgan. [1:56] What gave the House of Morgan its tantalizing mystery was its government links. Much like the Rothschilds it seemed insinuated into the power structure of many countries, especially the United States. [2:46] They practiced a brand of banking that has little resemblance to standard retail banking. [3:43] They have weathered wars and depressions, scandals and hearings, bomb blasts and attempted assassinations. [4:44] Contrary to the usual law of perspective, the Morgans seem to grow larger as they recede in time. [5:41] I was struck that the old Wall Street—elite, clubby, and dominated by small, mysterious partnerships—bore scant resemblance to the universe of faceless conglomerates springing up across the globe. [6:49] Only one firm, one family, one name rather gloriously spanned the entire century and a half that I wanted to cover: J.P. Morgan. [8:13] I am a firm believer that most people who do great things are doing them for the first time. —Marc Andreessen [12:22] He carried the scars of early poverty. Like many who have overcome early hardship by brute force, he was always at war with the world and counting his injuries. [14:22] My capital is ample but I have passed too many money panics unscathed, not to have seen how often large fortunes are swept away, and that even with my own I must use caution.[14:48] His annual savings were staggering. He spent only $3,000 of a total annual income of $300,000.[18:05] J.P’s dad’s advice: You are commencing upon your business career at an eventful time. Let what you now witness make an impression not to be eradicated. Slow and sure should be the motto of every young man. [18:40] Junius Morgan reminds me of Tywin Lannister. [21:19] Perhaps the contrast between his own steady nature and Pierpont’s unruly temper made Junius fret unduly about his boy. With granite will, he began to mold Pierpont. [23:03] The Rothschilds are mentioned 30 times in this book. They had an influence on how Junius wanted to set up the Morgan family. [25:08] Junius lectured Pierpont: Never, under any circumstances, do an action which could be called in question if known to the world. [25:55]  The railroads were the Internet of their day: More than just isolated businesses, railroads were the scaffolding on which new worlds would be built. [27:41]  Not for the last time, Pierpont contemplated retirement. He would assume tremendous responsibility, then feel oppressed. He never seemed to take great pleasure in his accomplishments. He craved a restful but elusive peace. [29:50] He made over $1 million, boasting to Junius: I don’t believe there is another concern in the country that can begin to show such a result. [31:19] He believed that he knew how the economy should be ordered and how people should behave. [32:24] He had trouble delegating authority and low regard for the intelligence of other people. “The longer I live the more apparent becomes the absence of brains.”[33:48] Under his stern facade, Junius adored Pierpont; the obsessive grooming was a tacit acknowledgement of his son’s gifts.[35:36] Pierpont was, by nature, a laconic man. He had no gift for sustained analysis; his genius was in the brief, sudden brainstorm. [38:40] Pierpont found Jack soft and rather passive, lacking the sort of gumption he had as a young man. [40:40] Pierpont was extremely attentive to details and took pride in the knowledge that he could perform any job in the bank. “I can sit down at any clerk’s desk, take up his work here he left it and go on with it. I don’t like being at any man’s mercy.” He never renounced the founder’s itch to know the most minute details of the business.[41:31] The years change, but the point always remains the same: Morgan benefits from financial crises. [42:14] Virtually every bankrupt railroad east of the Mississippi eventually passed through such reorganization, or morganization, as it was called. The companies’ combined revenues approached an amount equal to half of the U.S. government’s annual receipts. [45:22] He has the driving power of a locomotive. He suggested something brutish and uncontrollable, but also something of superhuman strength.[47:04] Carnegie celebrated too quickly. He later admitted to Morgan that he had sold out too cheap, by $100 million. Morgan replied, “Very likely, Andrew.”  [52:15]  McKinley’s assassination would be a turning point in Pierpont’s life, for it installed in the presidency Theodore Roosevelt. Book: The Hour of Fate: Theodore Roosevelt, J.P. Morgan, and the Battle to Transform American Capitalism[53:05] The 1907 panic was Pierpont’s last hurray. He suddenly functioned as America’s central bank. He saved several trust companies and a leading brokerage house, bailed out New York City, and rescued the Stock Exchange. [54:33] Contemporaries saw Morgan as the incarnation of pure will.  [1:02:39] This was Pierpont in a nutshell: He represented bondholders and expressed their wrath against irresponsible management. [1:07:37]  Andrew Carnegie after J. P. Morgan died: And to think he was not a rich man. —“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested, so my poor wallet suffers.”— GarethBe like Gareth. Buy a book. It's good for you. It's good for Founders. A list of all the books featured on Founders Podcast.

What I learned from reading Reluctant Genius: The Passionate Life and Inventive Mind of Alexander Graham Bell by Charlotte Gray.----Come see a live show with me and Patrick O'Shaughnessy from Invest Like The Best on October 19th in New York City. Get your tickets here! ----Subscribe to listen to Founders Premium — Subscribers can listen to Ask Me Anything (AMA) episodes and every bonus episode. ---[0:01]  I have my periods of restlessness when my brain is crowded with ideas tingling to my fingertips when I am excited and cannot stop for anybody. Let me alone, let me work as I like even if I have to sit up all night all night or even for two nights. When you see me flagging, getting tired, discouraged put your hands over my eyes so that I go to sleep and let me sleep as long as I like until I wake. Then I may hand around, read novels and be stupid without an idea in my head until I get rested and ready for another period of work. But oh, do not do as you often do, stop me in the midst of my work, my excitement with “Alex, Alex, aren’t you coming to bed? It’s one o’clock, do come.” Then I have to come feeling cross and ugly. Then you put your hands on my eyes and after a while I go to sleep, but the ideas are gone, the work is never done. [1:20]  Books are the original links: So many times Edwin Land referenced what he learned from studying the life of Alexander Graham Bell—from being motivated as Bell persevered through struggles to how to market a brand new product. [3:06] Alexander Graham Bell had a lifelong passion for helping and teaching the deaf.  [4:13]  Alex asserted his independence early. Exasperated by being the third Alexander Bell in a row, he decided to add Graham to his own name. [4:32] He often retreated into solitude, particularly when he was preoccupied with a project.  [5:27] Alex’s school record was unimpressive. Chronically untidy and late for class, Alex often skipped school altogether. Outside the classroom he demonstrated the ingenuity and single-mindedness that would shape his later career.  [8:03] He complained of headaches, depression, and sleeplessness. Perhaps this wasn’t surprising considering the undisciplined intensity of his work habits. In a pattern that would last a lifetime, he would sit up all night reading or working obsessively on sound experiments. [9:54] A note he left himself: A man’s own judgement should be the final appeal in all that relates to himself. Many men do this or that because someone else thought it right. [11:42] The problem Alexander was trying to solve that led to the invention of the telephone: Could they solve a puzzle with which amateur engineers all over the United States were grappling? Nearly thirty years after its first commercial application, the telegraph system was still limited to sending one message at a time. The race was on to increase its capacity. Alex was determined to join this race. [12:39] Samuel Morse is mentioned over and over again in this book just like Alexander Graham Bell is mentioned over and over again in books on Edwin Land and just like Edwin Land is mentioned over and over again in books on Steve Jobs. This speaks to this instinctual nature that we have to want to learn from the life stories of other people— to collect that knowledge and push it down the generations.[17:42] Other inventors were on the same track as he was. A professional electrician and inventor named Elisha Gray had successfully transmitted music over telegraph wires. Thomas Edison was already bragging that he was close to introducing the quadruplex telegraph.  [23:43]  Inventor and Yankee entrepreneur had found one another. Alex was unaware that Gardiner Hubbard was on the hunt for a multiple telegraph device; Gardiner Hubbard had no idea that his daughter’s teacher [Alex] spent his nights crouched over a table covered with electromagnets and length of wire. Alex had the ideas Hubbard needed; Hubbard had the access to capital to finance them. [25:06] It is a neck and neck race between Mr. Gray and myself who shall complete our apparatus first. He has the advantage over me in being a practical electrician—but I have reason to believe that I am better acquainted with the phenomena of sound than he is—so that I have an advantage here. The very opposition seems to nerve me to work and I feel with the facilities I have now I may succeed. I shall be seriously ill should I fail in this now I am so thoroughly wrought up. [27:02] Thomas Watson on what it was like working with Alexander Graham Bell: His head seemed to be a teeming beehive out of which he would often let loose one of his favorite bees for my inspection. A dozen young and energetic workmen would have been needed to mechanize all his buzzing ideas. [27:41] Alex meets with an older, wider inventor named Dr. Joseph Henry: He told the eager young inventor that his idea was the germ of a great invention. Since he lacked the necessary electrical knowledge he asked Dr. Henry should he allow others to work out the commercial application. Dr. Henry didn’t pause for a minute. If this young Scotsman was going to get the commercial payoff from his invention, he simply had to acquire an understanding of electricity. “GET IT!” he barked at the twenty-eight-year-old.  [31:42] Drawing inspiration from the life of Samuel Morse: He was frustrated by his lack of technical knowledge that “Morse conquered his electrical difficulties although he was only a painter, and I don’t intend to give in either till all is completed.” [35:09] Alexander Graham Bell’s personality: He put tremendous demands on himself. His tendency to work around the clock, and to alternate between states of fierce focus on one goal and an inability to concentrate on anything, suggest a lack of balance in his temperament. He was erratic in his habits and intellectually obsessive, but it was his unconventional mind that made him a genius. He refused to be hemmed in by rules. He allowed his intuition to flourish. He relied on leaps of imagination, backed by a fascination with physical sciences, to solve the challenges he set himself. Comparing and contrasting Thomas Edison and Alexander Graham Bell: Unlike Thomas Edison, the ruthless self-promoter who saw science as a Darwinian competition and who always announced his inventions before he had even got them working, Alex hated revealing anything until he was confident of its success. Edison was an ambitious self-made American; Alex was a cautious Scot more interested in scientific progress than commercial success. [I forgot to put this part in the podcast] [40:22] Struggle: When will this thing be finished? I am sick and tired of the nature of my work and the little profit that arises from it. Other men work their five or six hours a day, and have their thousands a year, while I slave from morning to night and night to morning and accomplish nothing but to wear myself out. I expect that the money will come in just in time for me to leave it to you in my will! I am sad at heart, and keep my feelings bottled up like wine in a wine cellar. [45:20] More struggle. Alex almost giving up again: Of one thing I am determined and that is to waste no more time and money on the telephone. Let others endure the worry, the anxiety and expense. I will have none of it. A feverish anxious life like that I have been leading will soon change my whole nature. I feel myself growing irritable, feverish, and disgusted with life. [49:37] What’s most important to Alex: “Yes, I hold it is one of the highest of all things, the increase of knowledge making us more like God.” He had bought a set of the new Encyclopedia Britannica and had announced he was going read it from start to finish. Nothing would dampen his irrepressible urge to explore, discover, and improve. [50:36]  Alexander Graham Bell on parenting: He believed that play is Nature’s method of educating a child and that a parent’s duty is to aid Nature in the development of her plan. [54:30] He never liked for anyone to knock on his door before entering the room. If he was following a train of thought and there was a tap on his door, his attention being diverted to the noise, he very often lost the thread and for days would not be able to pick it up again. Alex once said, “Thoughts are like the precious moments that fly past; once gone they can never be caught again.”  [55:20] Any disturbance was such anathema to Bell that he never had a telephone installed in his own study. ———“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested, so my poor wallet suffers.”— GarethBe like Gareth. Buy a book. It's good for you. It's good for Founders. A list of all the books featured on Founders Podcast 

Explore the diverse career of P.T. Barnum, from showman to author, banker, mayor, and more. Learn about his entrepreneurial spirit, relentless advertising, and wealth. Discover his struggles, triumphs, and lasting legacy. Delve into his financial downfall, resilience, and reinvention. Witness his partnership in creating the Barnum and Bailey Circus.