Mar 30, 2024 · 55m · founders
Mark Twain's Biography
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Host David Senra explores Roy Morris Jr.'s biography Lighting Out for the Territory, detailing how Samuel Clemens escaped the Civil War, navigated failure and poverty in the American West, and reinvented himself into the legendary author Mark Twain.
Statements from this episode (12)
Exceptional "power law people" leave voids that no one else can fill
“Power law people is one of the most incredible ideas once you know it, cause then you see it everywhere. It's a quote from my friend, Sam Hinckley that he said on his episode of investing the best, he says, people are really a power law and the best ones chang…”
Both Union and Confederate forces tried to conscript Mark Twain
“The Confederates and the Union both try to conscript Clemens into their army to make him do this because Clemens had valuable knowledge of
Of the river.”
Pre-Civil War Mississippi steamboat pilots earned a princely $250 a month
“Riverboat pilots were lords of all they surveyed, and they had a princely salary of 250 dollars a month.”
The Comstock Lode produced approximately $400 million over 30 years
“When they say the richest silver strike in American history, back in the 1800, I think maybe starting in 1860, over the next 30 years, that mine is going to make four hundred million dollars.”
Wells Fargo used live rattlesnakes to deter 1860s stagecoach robbers
“The company began putting live rattlesnakes in its strong boxes. To deter highwaymen, such as Jack Harris, from robbing them. It also formed its own private police force, which operated under the motto, Wells Fargo never forgets.”
People are attracted to confidence and repelled by nuance
“The way I would think about this is people are attracted to confidence and they're repelled from nuance.”
Abraham Lincoln interrupted a White House cabinet meeting to read comedy
“Ward was a favorite author of Abraham Lincoln, who once interrupted a cabinet meeting at the white house to read aloud from one of ward's humorous stories.”
Mark Twain nearly died by suicide during extreme San Francisco poverty
“Several years after, he remembered one despairing night when I put the pistol to my head, but wasn't man enough to pull the trigger.”
"The Celebrated Jumping Frog" became Mark Twain's first nationwide hit
“The importance of this story cannot be understated. It is his first viral hit is going to sweep across all the newspapers and all the magazines all throughout the country, which is going to lead him to his next big break when he's in Hawaii”
In 1866, Hornet survivors set the small-boat open-sea survival record
“At the time, their endurance was the single boat record in the world for people to survive the longest in a small boat.”