Stuff You Should Know - Do motivational speakers motivate people?

Episode Date: August 8, 2017

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. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called, David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're gonna use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s.

We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass

and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, ya everybody, about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say. Bye, bye, bye.

Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. 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 accomplish those goals. You can get that corvette. Shoot for the stars, engage your passion, ignite your fury. Ignite your fury? Sure.

That's my new one. I'm trying to get everybody mad. I wanna go to your motivational seminar. Ignite your fury. It's called Igniting Fury with Josh Clark. That's pretty good. I know what Aaron Cooper's doing this week. How you doing?

I'm doing pretty good, man. I'm feeling kind of pumped. Took some vitamin B12 today. I'm ready to go. Yeah, as you notice, I cut all that dumb hair off. Yeah, it looks good. I like it both ways. Yeah, Chuck 2.0 was,

Chuck 2.0 got too hot is the real explanation. Oh yeah, that'll do it. And literally just drove to the place and said, all right, take it off. As you know, as well, it's gotten kind of longish. And I've got like that sixth grade skater cut tip where like I'm like just kind of... Flipping it?

Yeah, just twisting my head 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. Personal focus, because it was... From you, you 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 many years since I've had to focus on my hair. You had to go buy a whole new bottle of Maine and Tail. I just felt dumb, I think. Yeah. I was like, you know, I'm going back to Chuck 1.0. Good for you, man. Yeah.

And welcome back to Fight Club. Thank you. And let me see your fingernails. All right, those look acceptable. What'd you think about this topic? I thought that I couldn't ever, I couldn't that the end would never come. What, like researching it?

Mm-hmm, 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 research, my, the tone of my research changed because of Nancy Besser. Oh. So here's the thing, this is my personal opinion.

I'll give it at the front and you can decide whether to listen to the rest of the episode or not. Okay. This, the motivational speaking is so flimsy and jelly-like, the whole field is so unscientifically based and just so prone to hucksterism in a lot of cases. Yeah. That I just, I didn't even want to research it.

I was just like, I hate this stuff so much. And then partway, I was, but I was doing my due diligence, I'm a professional as you know. Yes. But partway through, I was reading the in the house of works article about Nancy Besser. And so I went on to her 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. Yeah. 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. Yeah. So saying that, 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?

Yes. And 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? Let's go like this. We're going to front load the opinions and then talk about them more all throughout. My deal is this, if you have a really great story

to tell about your life because maybe you overcome some great adversities, maybe you're a quadriplegic or maybe you are a POW or had a life 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.

Yes. If you are just really good at holding a pep rally and 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 met these famous people and they think I'm cool.

I have two feelings about that. One is if people are genuinely being helped, I'm not gonna yuck their yon, then that's great. I think that's good for you to say. But I look at that other scene with a very weary eye because it reeks of everything from taking advantage of people to sometimes it even sounded like Scientology. Oh yeah, there's a lot of religious overtones

to the whole thing. In that it would be like, well, buy this book and then buy this one and then come to this seminar and then buy this thing. And 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. And I think that's kind of the deal with motivational speaking is it takes many, many forms

from an inspirational person who has a great life story to someone who was just like, hey, I can hold a pep rally as good as the next guy. I'll charge somebody three grand to listen to that to, hey, here's a financial seminar where you can get rich. Right, just give us a bunch of money first. Yeah, so it's really all over the map 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 nail down our feelings about it one way or the other or why we have multiple feelings is because inherently there's nothing in and of itself wrong with making an effort to motivate other people to be a better version of themselves, right?

Yeah. But that can be that neutral thing or maybe even positive thing can be exploited depending on the context that's used it, right? Yeah. There's a really good example of that. There's a book called Who Moved My Cheese? And it's like 90 pages, big print, lots of illustrations.

So it's a quick read. I love the title. But the whole thing is 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 in arms that they're cheese and they're anymore. What a tragedy, who could have possibly done this?

And then these two mice, I can't remember what the mice is. Yeah, the mice is. 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 mice are the heroes of the story where the humans are dumb and it's because the humans are allowing themselves to become victims. And there's like some certain themes in there that's true. Like, yes, it's not necessarily a good idea to focus on 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 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 to exonerate people who are making decisions that are negatively impacting people's lives. There it is in a nutshell. There's the good and the bad. Yeah, I will say this. I like fictional motivational speakers much more.

Whether it was Matt Foley, which is mentioned in this article, of course. Great Chris Farley character. He gets three paragraphs. Yeah, that was overdoing it a bit, but definitely one of the more classic SNL characters. My other favorite is from Magnolia, Frank T.J. Mackie, the Tom Cruise character.

That was one of Tom Cruise's best characters. Yeah, and I think so ironic that he played that character in two ways. I almost get the impression that it was like, who directed that? Was it Paul Thomas Anderson? That in a way, casting Cruise was toying with him a little bit

or Paul Thomas Anderson wanted him to face himself. Maybe, or maybe he gave him the script and 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, right? No, no, no, Tom, it's terrific. You're the best, Tom.

All right, you're not making fun of me, right? Anyway, that character was specifically about picking up women in bars and having sex with them. Yeah, basically. It was sort of a different type of thing. But it was motivational. It was. So we mentioned different kinds of people who do this.

There are people like Matt Long, who is a motivational speaker because he had a 20 ton bus hit him while he was on a bicycle. Was in the hospital for five months, had about 40 operations, and then finally overcame that to run the New York City Marathon.

So people like that, you will often see that have an amazing hardship, like I said, that they have overcome and maybe did a small speaking engagement and said, people really connected to this. And I think I really helped folks. So can I sign up with a company that's gonna book gigs for me?

And I can make some real dough. And you really can. I mean, there are people out there who support themselves just from motivational speaking. I think there's probably far more who aspire to that. But it is entirely possible to become a motivational speaker with representation. And that's how you make your living.

Yeah, and you know what? I don't think we've ever talked about this on the show, but stuff you should know, 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 or booking it that we are not motivational speakers.

You're never to book us as such. And that we are not experts, but we're glad to come and talk to your company, by the way. Yeah. How about that? I mean, you just let the cat out of the bag. He 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 the speaker. And so we've kind of got a little bit of an inside view on kind of what this professional public speaking is all about. And one of the things that, I mean, we kind of do our thing and 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 get up on stage and just rally people. We're kind of like, 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. Nancy Besser. Was that Besser? Yes. Yeah, 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 sincere, then it might be something that you should look into. Right. That's another reason why I like Nancy Besser too. She's the only one in this article who admits that, yeah, anybody can do it. It's just, 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, this is not for you. Well, yeah, Matt Long, the elite athlete says like, no, no, not everybody could do it. Oh, he did? 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. Sure. But I say this totally honestly, 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. No, right. Like 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's the key. Now, the next level, of course,

is whether you can arouse positive emotions in the people out there listening to you. And 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 research, really, is if you look up how to be a motivational speaker,

that is going to leave you heartache. But if you look up sensible things, like how do you motivate people? 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 telling people that they can have a better life themselves, that it's in there, in them. That's really the big difference between motivational speaking and any other type of public speaking. Yeah, I wonder if that guy who said, wonder if in his thing, he goes, you can come over any adversity

except public speaking, motivational speaking. Don't try that. Right. Anything else you could probably do, though. The competition is thick enough. All right, well, let's take a break here. That's a good start. Oh, okay, good.

And we will motivate you to come back and listen more right after this. ["The Star-Spangled Banner"] On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces.

We're gonna use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends, and non-stop references to the best decade ever.

Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting Frosted Tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL Instant Messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's beeper,

because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts,

or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough or you're at the end of the road. Ah, okay, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself,

what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place, because I'm here to help. This, I promise you. Oh, God. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS,

because I'll be there for you. Oh, man. And so will my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yep, we know that, Michael. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life step by step. Oh, not another one.

Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts,

or wherever you listen to podcasts. All right. Psychology-wise, people have been, psychologists have been studying motivation for many, many years and what motivates people. And there's a dude named Abraham Harold Maslow. And in the 1940s, he came up with something, a little pyramid called Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs,

which is fairly interesting if you look at it. It is, it's a pyramid, we're down at the bottom. I think it's been revised over the years. No, that's the food pyramid you're thinking of. No, 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 like food and water.

Shelter. Shelter, warmth. Right above that, you have safety needs, security and safety in life. Above that, you have belongingness and love, which our friends and intimates. Esteem goes above that, prestige, feeling of accomplishment.

And then finally, at the very top of the pyramid, people should stop using pyramids, because that's just got a bad name now. Achieving one's full potential or self-actualization. Correct. 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 lower called lower level deficit needs, and then you can progress onto these higher needs until you reach that final level of self-actualization. Right. And I mean, you can take issue and people have with Maslow's hierarchy like the literal reading of it would say that homeless people are incapable of having friendships or caring about one another,

because they're lacking in a lower need, which is shelter and housing. But overall, it does seem to be pretty widely regarded, well-regarded. Yeah, but most. It doesn't take into account social factors. Let's put it this way. It sounds like something developed in the 1940s.

Right. And it's pretty elementary. It's not very complex. But it has formed the basis of a lot of psychology. For sure. It is pretty much the standard for motivational theory from what I understand. And it definitely forms a lot of the basis

for motivational speaking and the motivational speaking industry and the crux of what motivational speakers base their motivation on. Right. So like you said, you have this Maslow's theory. But regarded well or not, 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 in Bessar's case, she actually went to school. She went to graduate school and studied conflict resolution and emotional intelligence, which I think gives her a leg up as far as being schooled, at least, in things. She talks about how empathy is very important. And she's at least studied on it, you know?

Right. Which is more than you can say for a lot of them. Did you interview Tony Robbins at one point for us, for our blog? I did. You remember that? Yeah. So three, 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. But I mean, let's be honest, we were made to do this. Yes, very much so. It was in the evening. It was there was something else going on. I think a birthday party. I had to step away from.

But it was right before his TV show Breakthrough with Tony Robbins came out. And do you remember that show? I do. Very short-lived. Like it was, yeah, it was extremely short-lived. But they were selling like Super Bowl sized or Super Bowl priced commercials for that thing.

Like that's how much the ad 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 4 million people he reaches from 100 countries has a net worth of about $480 million through his books and speeches and services.

Yeah, and he's been at it for a very long time. A lot of people think that he started the motivational speaking industry. He definitely did not. I read a pretty interesting article that suggested that Ralph Waldo Emerson was America's first motivational speaker. Really?

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. Yeah, I've heard of her. She got together with a guy named Phineas Parkhurst Quimby. If that's not a mid-19th century name, I don't know

what it is, right? Yeah, or a new hipster Brooklyn kid's name. Yes, it is now. Yeah. And 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 such a widespread thought.

And 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 your own future, right? But that makes zero sense whatsoever, logically. And it finds its roots back in these two people coming together.

So that actually probably was the basis of the motivational speaking industry. And it continued on here. There were some luminaries that pop up between the New Thought Movement and Tony Robbins. You've got Dale Carnegie, who wrote How to Make Friends and 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. He was an interesting dude. And then you've got guys like Napoleon Hill, who wrote Think and Grow Rich, I believe. That sounds like something on The Simpsons, like a fake self-help book. It really was. And there's actually Chuck, a really good article on

Gizmodo called The Untold Story of Napoleon Hill, the greatest self-help scammer of all time. And you know how you like those long-form articles? This one's long as it gets, right? It's basically like a mini book. So the mid-20th century, you got people popping up. And then 1988, a young man named Anthony Robbins created an infomercial for his personal power program.

Do you remember that infomercial? I do, and I looked into it a little bit, because I realized I was like, I don't even know his deal. I know he wasn't a POW. I wondered what his story was. You were like, OK, check that box out. 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. Is that the deal? Yes, from what I understand. And he was absolutely right. He did it. He's a cottage industry unto himself, Tony Robbins. Oh, for sure.

That personal power infomercial, by the way, in the first three years that it was out, 100 million people saw it in America alone. So he became like a juggernaut, became a pop culture thing. Remember he was in Shallow How? Oh, yeah. He's actually the McGuffin for the whole movie.

Meeting Tony Robbins in an elevator is what sets the whole plot of the movie off. Isn't that what a McGuffin is? 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, a McGuffin is the thing that helps the plot along, right? Yeah, a McGuffin is something in the movie, a device or

something that triggers the plot. So I think in that case, you're correct. OK, I'm using it correctly, by goodness. Yes. So Tony Robbins, so by the time he came out with his show Breakthrough in 2010, 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 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 am like, oh my gosh, I can't believe they did this. He went and met up with a guy who was quadriplegic, I believe.

And he had become quadriplegic after jumping head first into a swimming pool, I think, at his wedding reception and became paralyzed. And I obviously quite depressed as a result and had lost his job. And his life had really just taken a huge turn downward. And Tony Robbins 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. Oh, that's right. Do you remember he pushed a man, a quadriplegic man, out of an airplane with a parachute on and said, like, skydive or something like that. It was one of the craziest things anyone's ever done on TV.

And I'm including up to present day. So Breakthrough with Tony Robbins flopped, 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. And I don't want to sound like I'm bashing the guy, because he helps a lot of people that buy into it.

And apparently he's very philanthropic in many ways. So that's good, right? Sure, of course. But he also is a fire walker. This is something I did not know. In his Unleash the Power Within program that he does live, he gets thousands of people to walk across hot coals.

He's got an Oprah Winfrey to walk across hot coals. And you know, fire walkings, it's a real thing. If you look at it scientifically, what's going on is coals are not a very good conductor of heat. So it takes about a second to actually feel that heat. And if you 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, is like staring at those coals and doing it. I don't think he's saying like, look, it's magic because of me, you're not getting burned. I don't know, I think the premise of his fire walking thing at these conferences is to show people that they can

overcome even physical problems like hot coals on their feet by using their mind. Oh, I thought it was a little more like the fear. OK. No, 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 pose by the hot coals on your feet. OK, fair enough. It all kind of went wrong in Dallas, though. In 2016, there was an event there where 30 to 40 people were evaluated. I think five people were taken to the hospital with burn injuries. And his spokesperson, Jennifer Connolly, said, you

know what, only five people out of 7,000 requested examination beyond what we had on site to examine people. And everyone had a great time, basically. I have to say, statistically speaking, she makes an excellent point. Well, sure. And there's actually somebody in this article, what's her name?

Weissman? Irene Weissman, yeah, who really kind of put it well. She seems to be somebody who goes to these things, she definitely goes to Robbins conferences. But she also seems to understand what's going on at them, rather than maybe buying into a lock, stock, and barrel. And from what I've seen, someone like her, someone who

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 on to you so that you're basically magically changed. Those people have the greatest chance of succeeding at whatever they're being motivated to do.

Yeah. But basically, she puts the fire walk like this. She was saying the real magic is that there were 10,500 people waiting their turn to walk over these coals. Sure. And everyone was exuberant and calm and happy. Nobody was irritated or hurry up or anything like that. It was a neat communal feeling waiting in line to go do the

fire walk. And she did the fire walk. She said it was cool or whatever. But it was more about the camaraderie in the community that developed in line waiting for the fire walk for her. It's a pep rally. It definitely is. And I think if you ask Tony Robbins, maybe he'll come on to

the show and talk to us about it sometime. OK. If you asked Tony Robbins, I would guess that he would concede that, yes, you could interpret his conferences as a pep rally. Oh, I bet he concedes nothing. I don't know. I don't know.

You know, I want to say something, Chuck. OK. I hold the skeptic community to account for not giving more ink to the motivational speaking industry. Yeah, I didn't see a lot. And I specifically looked from skeptic sites. Yeah, me too. And it's almost not there.

So that says two things. One, skeptics either think that it is right. That's one. 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, the Tony Robbins conference. Did you see that one? No, I didn't. 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's like, I have read some of his books.

I'm a fan. Like, I'm into it. And he walked out, and he just had a very leveled critical eye on the presentation. 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 he kind of had some bad segues and non sequiturs. And he just looked at it from a critical eye of a public speaker, and was kind of like, he's kind of phoning it in these days. So 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 poo poo the guy. Like I said, he was a fan. So he just was kind of like, he ditched the Capris, and start doing a better presentation was his take. Gotcha. The Capris? Tony Robbins wears Capri pants? He sure does.

Does he really like the ones with the draw strings at the bottom and the cargo pockets? Yeah. 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 for this. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends

to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends, and nonstop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting Frosted Tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair.

Do you remember AOL Instant Messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's beeper, because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app,

Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough, or you're at the end of the road. OK, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass

and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place, because I'm here to help. This, I promise you. Oh, god. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS, because I'll be there for you.

Oh, man. And so will my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yep, we know that, Michael. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life, step by step. Oh, not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general, can get messy.

You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody, about my new podcast, and make sure to listen, so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. All right, so Tony Robbins isn't the only person out there

that's made a ton of money doing this. Don't want to pick on him. No, we should say a ton of money. His six day conference, I think it's called Date with Destiny this year and last year. OK. So the Irene Wiseman said there were 10,500 people there. The tickets were about $4,000 a piece.

That's $42 million they grossed for a six day conference. He should call that conference, Credit Cards on Fire. Yeah, I read an article, I think in Forbes, about the Chinese motivational speaking industry. And there's this one person who's like, who's going to sign up for my other classes? And some people came to the front in 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, I love that movie. So Tony Robbins isn't the only person out there who's done this over the years.

Many, many people, I think. I mean, didn't it say there was something like close to 500 registered motivational speakers in the US alone? I think like six something. Oh, was it? Yeah. But very famously, a man named Jack Canfield wrote a book called Chicken Soup for the Soul.

And this is an amazing record. He holds the Guinness record for having seven books on 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 Soul? They wrote one for people in prison. I did not know that.

And also, did you know Ashton Kutcher is trying to bring Chicken Soup for the Soul to Netflix? The Cooch as what, a documentary, or is? I have no idea. That's all I saw. Or is he starring as Chicken Soup? He's starring as Noodle. I've booked a lot of fun at the Cooch,

but he seems like a pretty sincere guy. Sure. No? I don't know. I don't know. I've learned to just try to shy away from the Cooch. 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. And even if I did know more about him, that's not the whole picture. So I have no idea what he's like as a person. Just based on knowing people, it's probably likeliest that he is a good person.

Wayne Dyer, another famous author no longer with us, wrote a book called Your Aronias Zones. And a lot of these people 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 do if you're a motivational speaker is mentioned, by the way, I've got even more insights that are going to help you out. And my books 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 yeah, all of them do that. Like you're a fool if you're a motivational speaker who doesn't have a book for sale at your conference. Like you're doing it wrong. 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 doing is selling their book or their class or their something. Their motivational speech is actually just a sales pitch. Right. That's the hucksters. And there's plenty of them in the industry. Yes, we talk about get motivated. Yes, we should.

This is a seminar series that was started in 2002 by a guy named Peter Lowe. And in the article I read, he is described as the son of a missionary who, along with his ex-wife Tamara, who is a self-help book author who writes Christian rap, started something that a series called Get Motivated that is filling up stadiums that at one point and no longer, but at one point was in business with TD Ameritrade.

Yeah, I think they started with a legitimate motivational speaker conference. And then over time said, hey, you know what? We could get somebody in here to underwrite a lot of this. And they can just give, they can basically put ads in amongst the motivational speakers. Yeah, so they partnered up with TD Ameritrade with this product they had called Invest Tools.

And they're no longer in business together, but Get Motivated is still out there. I'm not sure if they're partnering with anyone or not. No, they have a new owner called Wealth Rock that has their own investing classes that they now sell exclusively, or I think are the only things that are sold at the Get Motivated conferences.

Okay, so here's the 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 a Tony Robbins live event, but you pay like five bucks or something and say, hey, I can go here, Colin Powell speak or Terry Bradshaw or who else did they have, Laura Bush or Giuliani. And who wouldn't go here speeches by them for five bucks?

Yeah. Besides me. And then you go and you, or anyone we know. I'd go see Colin Powell. You would? Sure. For five bucks? I'd go see Colin Powell for five bucks if he spoke in my living room.

How's that? 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, he 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 70s dad thing to say.

Oh, totally. So anyway, you would go and you would listen to these motivational speeches and then what's going on is they're selling a financial product, basically. Right. And again, it's like you've got actual, like Colin Powell's not like, and by the way, have I mentioned how great TD Ameritrade's

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 flash a picture of the Corvette

and everybody raises their hand. He's like, you can have a Corvette too with invest tools or whatever, right? So the criticism of this is that these people are super pumped and ready to just do anything because they're feeling really good thanks to Colin Powell'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 maybe without really fully understanding what's going on. On the other side, the TD Ameritrade people say, how are you gonna do a hard sell with, to 20,000 people in a stadium? You can't.

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 out the whole thing was just a TD Ameritrade ad 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 on. Well, yeah, and in 2009, investors agreed to pay $3 million to settle allegations from the SEC that it let instructors mislead students into thinking they could make extraordinary profits 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. Yeah. You can't, you cannot do that. And apparently you're also not supposed to say what percentage return you can offer. And they apparently said 17%, 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 money because you don't understand what you're doing.

And 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 getting sold these supposedly classes on investing in very sophisticated financial tools.

Yeah. It's just, you shouldn't do that. You know who their lineup is now? Who? I went to Get Motivated's website and like, did you say that they had their own product now? Yeah. Wealth Rock is the owner, I believe.

Is it spelled R-A-W-K? Their current lineup right now for this next tour is Kevin O'Leary, Mr. Wonderful from Shark Tank. Okay. One of the Duck Dynasty dudes. All right. Who knows his name? Larry King.

Really? Yeah. Okay. I'm a woman named Manjeet Minhas, who I believe I looked into her briefly. She's started breweries and wineries in Canada. Okay. Made a lot of money.

Great. And then finally, rounding it out, Edward Snowden. That was a good one, man. That's quite a, I'm sure. Edward Snowden, I want to be in the green room with Edward Snowden and the Duck Dynasty guy. Wait, you're joking about Edward Snowden. Oh, no, dude.

That's for real. No. Yes. No, it's not. Yes, it is. What? And under his thing, it says, what does it say?

I mean, it says entrepreneur below one and said Duck Dynasty star. And below him, it says whistleblower. No. Edward Snowden is doing this conference. Yes. Well, I'm going. I got to hear this.

Yeah. Wow. Strange times. It is strange times. I got to say, I like what Wealth Rock is doing these days. In 2005, there was an investigative journalist named Steve Salerno who wrote a book called sham, which stands for self-help

in actualization movement called sham colon, how the self-help movement made America helpless. And he kind of peeled back, he didn't hold any punches. Right. And he kind of peeled back the thin layer on this industry. And basically said, there's no science behind this, these techniques. There's no evidence that this stuff is effective at all.

It could be just coincidence or people may not be, 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 the motivational speaker was telling him to do, but it'll be attributed

to the motivational speaker. And if you get some people who are willing to give testimonials then that just helps feed the beast, basically. Right. And if you're not helped, then the common line is all, you just, you're not buying in like you'd need to. Yeah. This is where it gets insidious to me.

Yeah. It's where the, it's this 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 not trying hard enough. Like you're the problem.

You're failing. You're the loser. You're committed to losing. That's 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. Yeah. Because they don't think that they have the real strength in themselves to, to overcome the adversity they face. I'm holding it back, man. Yep. I'm holding it back. Well, you said that great article,

three reasons why most motivational speakers are dead wrong. And that was one of the things that, that this author, oh, did you have his name? He is Hoffman. His name is Bobby Hoffman, PhD. Yeah. That was one of the things he brought up that is that it's undebunkable basically

because they can always just put it back on the person. Right. You just shouldn't 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 a 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 retrospect now, slamming it all. But 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, if what somebody's 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, more power to you. I don't knock that at all. No, just tread lightly and go into it with a intelligent eye. There you go. I don't want to see anyone get duped, you know? No.

Okay. That was our public service for the week. Goodness. If you want to learn more about motivational speaking, type those words in the search bar at HowStuffWorks.com. And since I said that, it's time for Listener Mail. I'm going to call this ghost fishing follow-up from Anthony in Charlotte, North Carolina.

Hey guys, just finished ghost fishing and glad you covered this really important topic. I'm an environmental scientist who studies fish and water in North Carolina and 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 fresh water because of littering from it. And this is something that I really thought about as a seldom fisherman. Many fishermen and women throw little excess bits of line while tying knots on the ground or in the water while they're 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 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. Yep, Fisher Kings. Fisher Kings to make sure they put this extra line

in their pocket to dispose of later or use an environmentally friendly nylon line if they can find it. This monofilament line 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 and these little bits of line

and I hope it can help people be more aware while they're fishing. Good advice. Yeah, thanks Anthony from Charlotte. I'd never really thought about that. My own self and 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 SYSK podcast or Josh on Clark. You can join us on Facebook at facebook.com slash stuff you should know or slash Charles W. Chuck Bright. You can send us an email with stuff podcast at howstuffworks.com and as always join us at our home on the web, stuffyoushouldknow.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics,

visit howstuffworks.com. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called, David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back

into the decade of the 90s. We lived it and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast

or wherever you listen to podcasts.