In our second episode we examine the faith of a man who once had 2% of America's GDP.
Was America’s richest man truly a Christian?
We explore his Baptist upbringing, how faith influenced his business empire, his massive philanthropy, and double check the conspiracy theories.
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00:00 --> 00:03 [SPEAKER_00]: Christian or not is a production of Revive Studios.
00:05 --> 00:06 [SPEAKER_01]: It's the late 19th century.
00:07 --> 00:11 [SPEAKER_01]: And you're traveling through upper North East America.
00:11 --> 00:14 [SPEAKER_01]: And you have to take a stop in Cleveland, Ohio.
00:14 --> 00:15 [SPEAKER_01]: Maybe that's more than Midwest.
00:15 --> 00:18 [SPEAKER_01]: But regardless, you're traveling through town.
00:18 --> 00:19 [SPEAKER_01]: And it's Sunday.
00:19 --> 00:24 [SPEAKER_01]: And it's expected that on Sundays, you're going to attend a local church.
00:24 --> 00:26 [SPEAKER_01]: Maybe on vacations in the 21st century.
00:26 --> 00:27 [SPEAKER_01]: That's something that's much less common.
00:28 --> 00:31 [SPEAKER_01]: In the 19th century, the entire town is closed up, you're going to go to church.
00:32 --> 00:35 [SPEAKER_01]: And so you go down to the Baptist Church down the street.
00:35 --> 00:41 [SPEAKER_01]: You click Baptist Church, you get there, you enjoy, you check it out.
00:41 --> 00:46 [SPEAKER_01]: And as you come in, you get there in time for the Sunday school service before the main service.
00:46 --> 00:51 [SPEAKER_01]: And you meet a few people, they're nice, everyone's been friendly so far.
00:51 --> 00:53 [SPEAKER_01]: And you meet the Sunday school teacher.
00:53 --> 00:58 [SPEAKER_01]: It's a little bit of an older man, perhaps, and he starts talking to you, what are you doing in town?
00:58 --> 01:01 [SPEAKER_01]: You know, all the normal things that you would talk to them about.
01:01 --> 01:05 [SPEAKER_01]: And he looks from all accounts, everything seems normal.
01:05 --> 01:07 [SPEAKER_01]: He's five foot, 10 inch guy.
01:07 --> 01:09 [SPEAKER_01]: He's a little slightly overweight, but not too bad.
01:09 --> 01:11 [SPEAKER_01]: He's actually even an A might be in maybe a little thin.
01:12 --> 01:12 [SPEAKER_01]: It's hard to tell.
01:12 --> 01:16 [SPEAKER_01]: Pleasant overall voice and he's in his mid 60s.
01:17 --> 01:18 [SPEAKER_01]: You're going to say he's mid 60s, right?
01:18 --> 01:30 [SPEAKER_01]: And as you're talking, maybe he brings up a couple of his kids how they're doing the classic conversations that you would have and he might tell you, you know, I've actually been a Sunday school teacher at this church since I was 20 years old.
01:30 --> 01:37 [SPEAKER_01]: He could tell you fun stories about all a different things he's done or how he helps kind of set up the ones that you're picnic and they even
01:37 --> 01:39 [SPEAKER_01]: promoted him to superintendents.
01:39 --> 01:41 [SPEAKER_01]: So he's really in charge of the Sunday schools.
01:42 --> 01:44 [SPEAKER_01]: I he might introduce you to his wife Laura.
01:44 --> 01:46 [SPEAKER_01]: She's a sweet woman.
01:46 --> 01:54 [SPEAKER_01]: She goes by caddy sometimes and he might tell you all about junior and everything they've been up to and he might even notice like hey I pick up a little bit of an accident.
01:54 --> 01:55 [SPEAKER_01]: You're not from Ohio either.
01:55 --> 01:58 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, you know originally from New York and
01:58 --> 02:04 [SPEAKER_01]: He might tell you about growing up how the district in New York that he was from was called the burnt over district.
02:04 --> 02:09 [SPEAKER_01]: But during the second grade awakening, these preachers came by and preached a fiery gospel.
02:09 --> 02:11 [SPEAKER_01]: And that's how his mom came to Christ.
02:11 --> 02:15 [SPEAKER_01]: And even though his dad wasn't around much, she raised him in the church.
02:15 --> 02:18 [SPEAKER_01]: And that's why he's been following God all these days.
02:18 --> 02:20 [SPEAKER_01]: And around this time at some point,
02:21 --> 02:33 [SPEAKER_01]: He might say, you know, one of my life models has always been make as much money as you could, but then give away as much as you can that he'd heard that from some of those early preachings in his life and just always stuck with him as a great idea.
02:34 --> 02:40 [SPEAKER_01]: And at that moment, at some point, you might have been wondering, who is this Sunday school teacher?
02:40 --> 02:44 [SPEAKER_01]: And it seems like a very nice guy's been running this place, been around for a long time.
02:45 --> 03:00 [SPEAKER_01]: And he may even joking back and forth and telling his story, he may tell you about the time that he was trying to live out that motto, giving tens of thousands of dollars away while also asking the bank for a loan of a million dollars he jokes is wife laughs and you're
03:03 --> 03:05 [SPEAKER_01]: And if you asked him what his name was, he would say, oh, yeah, I'm nice to meet you.
03:05 --> 03:05 [SPEAKER_01]: I'm John D. Rockefeller.
03:05 --> 03:08 [SPEAKER_01]: And he'd realize that Sunday's school teacher is the richest man, and not only the world at that time, but he's actually one of the richest men who have ever lived.
03:09 --> 03:28 [SPEAKER_01]: [♪ music playing in background music playing in background music playing in background music playing in background music playing in background music playing in background music playing in background music playing in background music playing in background music playing in background music playing in background music playing in background music playing in background music playing in background music playing in background music playing in background music playing in background music playing in background music playing in background music playing in background music playing in background music playing in background music playing in background music playing in background music playing in background music playing in background music playing in background music playing in background music playing in background music playing in background music playing in background music playing in background music playing in background music playing in background
03:29 --> 03:31 [SPEAKER_00]: My name's Mark, and I was mesmerized by that intro.
03:31 --> 03:32 [SPEAKER_00]: I was, I read the script.
03:32 --> 03:40 [SPEAKER_00]: I knew what was coming, but still you, I was seeing, and I was seeing myself walking through that Sunday's full wondering who this guy was.
03:40 --> 03:41 [SPEAKER_01]: And I hope that's where we could get you.
03:41 --> 03:47 [SPEAKER_01]: Obviously, if you clicked on the title of this, you would have probably guessed it was John, New Rockefeller, but that's the reason that's,
03:47 --> 04:02 [SPEAKER_01]: story right there was the reason I wanted to do an episode on them because at some point I we we talked about names of people that should be on this show and I had heard there was like this rumor in the back of my head that John D. Rockefeller was a Christian, the original Rockefeller was, but
04:03 --> 04:22 [SPEAKER_01]: It goes against everything I've heard of or know of or anything about the Rockefeller family name, and so I was like, okay, there's a guy I want to know I've always been fascinated by business people in the way they interact like look, it may be nerdy, but one of my favorite things to read about is like how did a fast food get going like how did the McDonald's people come McDonald's and how did?
04:22 --> 04:29 [SPEAKER_01]: Um, over the summer I got to go to Chick-fil-A's headquarters and here like the story of how the guy you found a Chick-fil-A, I was, you know, I was like, what did he do next?
04:29 --> 04:31 [SPEAKER_01]: He sold those buns for 20 cents crazy.
04:31 --> 04:36 [SPEAKER_01]: Like, I love these stories of businesses because in a lot of ways, it's competition.
04:36 --> 04:42 [SPEAKER_01]: It's like battling, but instead of wars, it's dollars and Rockefeller, like he's the king of that, right?
04:43 --> 04:57 [SPEAKER_01]: was he a Christian and there are people who are already are maybe in the comments going no way absolutely no how could you even ask he's tricking you because he's a lizard man or something like this so that's not the direction we plan to go today.
04:58 --> 04:58 [SPEAKER_00]: No, I don't think so.
04:58 --> 05:01 [SPEAKER_00]: That's so just episode two.
05:01 --> 05:03 [SPEAKER_00]: We did Isaac News in first.
05:03 --> 05:04 [SPEAKER_00]: Now John the Rockefeller.
05:04 --> 05:08 [SPEAKER_00]: We're just a real quick recap of what do we do here on Chris sure not.
05:09 --> 05:11 [SPEAKER_00]: We do not want to be the judge.
05:11 --> 05:12 [SPEAKER_00]: We know we are not God.
05:12 --> 05:14 [SPEAKER_00]: We cannot see in the hearts of people.
05:14 --> 05:40 [SPEAKER_00]: But we just, you know, we like history, we like to do our research, we read about people and we can't see the fruits of what people do and we just basically go over the information that's available and then give our honest opinion, we ask you for your opinion and I think oh no, our goal is just for us all to learn something here, we don't want to be, you know, the whole year then vow people looking at other people and like that's wrong, that's wrong, that's wrong, that's
05:40 --> 05:41 [SPEAKER_00]: That's now what we're doing here.
05:42 --> 06:04 [SPEAKER_01]: So yeah, so that's when we first kind of kicked this idea of a show around, and it came from Elise who is the host of Martyrs and missionaries in my wife, and she was like, hey, she was reading like philosophy for, for a degree, she was rapping up, and she was like, I'm kind of just curious, like, there's all these famous philosophers, which ones of them were Christian or not, and that just was like the germination idea that became Christian or not.
06:05 --> 06:07 [SPEAKER_01]: But for me, as soon as I started out, I was like, it would be really nice
06:09 --> 06:15 [SPEAKER_01]: where we could find out, like, you know, was Winston Churchill, was Abraham Lincoln, was John Rockefeller, was Isaac Newton, a Christian or not.
06:15 --> 06:17 [SPEAKER_01]: I don't know, anybody who's really trying to find that out.
06:18 --> 06:19 [SPEAKER_01]: And so I was like, we should know these things.
06:19 --> 06:24 [SPEAKER_01]: So if these aren't, like, I love the famous pastors and preachers and missionaries and people that we've covered.
06:25 --> 06:45 [SPEAKER_01]: through our years of doing these shows, I've learned so much from them, but I also think it's important to know like these people who have completely shaped history, who've led history, who've done so many things through history, some of them claiming to be Christians, who maybe weren't, and some of them who weren't Christians at all, or don't seem to be known for being Christians, but maybe actually were, I think it'd be really important to know.
06:45 --> 06:49 [SPEAKER_01]: And so originally to me, it just felt like it'd be like somebody needs to do this information, research.
06:50 --> 07:05 [SPEAKER_01]: But what's interesting as we kind of been doing this research, it's made me realize I'm also studying what I believe it is to be a Christian like what are the values and beliefs, the things in the sand that I'm not going to cross and say that person's a Christian if they don't believe these things and
07:06 --> 07:22 [SPEAKER_01]: what it challenges me will what should my behaviors and actions look like if I claim I'm a Christian and I'm in business or I'm in this whatever will what would that look like to be and that's kind of what Rockefeller is looking at his life kind of taught me it was like okay there's this side of him
07:23 --> 07:32 [SPEAKER_01]: that is clearly going to church in, you know, would look like a Christian, does it match the rest of his life and does it match who he is?
07:32 --> 07:34 [SPEAKER_01]: And would we find it acceptable?
07:34 --> 07:44 [SPEAKER_01]: Like, if this guy, I use this another place as well as he's here too, if he's in church with us, would our church put him on church discipline, would our church open up be excited to have him?
07:45 --> 07:51 [SPEAKER_01]: Because I don't think, which I also don't wanna apply a standard that's so ridiculously perfect, no one can live up to it.
07:51 --> 07:52 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, no, absolutely.
07:52 --> 07:57 [SPEAKER_00]: And I mean, I think any church would be happy to have a guy like Rockefeller in there, you know?
07:57 --> 08:00 [SPEAKER_00]: If we're certainly giving us 10% that would be a good.
08:01 --> 08:04 [SPEAKER_01]: His generosity would certainly, I mean, I mean, we did some deep research.
08:04 --> 08:13 [SPEAKER_01]: I read, I mean, entire ridiculously long article on Cleveland, Ohio, inspiration that is absolutely useless to me now for the most part.
08:13 --> 08:14 [SPEAKER_01]: So I got deep in there.
08:15 --> 08:19 [SPEAKER_01]: And at one point, I was reading just like his records of interacting with this church in Ohio.
08:19 --> 08:20 [SPEAKER_01]: And he had other churches later on,
08:21 --> 08:37 [SPEAKER_01]: specifically like it was like donation amounts this and this it was a really that was only he kept a very strict ledger on what he gave and didn't give so we can get some really detailed things there but yeah you're right everyone would love to have him and when the came to generosity that was something that he'll we'll get to but he's pretty no more
08:37 --> 08:42 [SPEAKER_01]: But let's go back a little bit with the beginning because you've probably heard the name Rockefeller.
08:42 --> 08:46 [SPEAKER_01]: Maybe you've even used the joke like I do it to my kids, you know, hey can we buy this?
08:46 --> 08:47 [SPEAKER_01]: What do I look like a Rockefeller?
08:47 --> 08:50 [SPEAKER_01]: I've got money for that candy at the convenience store and knock it off, right?
08:50 --> 08:59 [SPEAKER_01]: Like you, you know of their names, their rich famous people and maybe you're up there getting ready to say yeah, and they're in the Illuminati and they're also the Knights Templar and their Roth Chauze.
09:00 --> 09:02 [SPEAKER_01]: Okay, maybe that we're not going to go down that road.
09:02 --> 09:04 [SPEAKER_01]: We're going to use the research and information.
09:05 --> 09:09 [SPEAKER_01]: Um, I, we're just not going to go there because that's not what Krish Krish should are not.
09:09 --> 09:10 [SPEAKER_01]: It's really rear four.
09:10 --> 09:14 [SPEAKER_00]: I just don't think it's us that that's going to be our next show comes to be received or not.
09:14 --> 09:15 [SPEAKER_00]: So you're seeing it.
09:15 --> 09:15 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
09:15 --> 09:16 [SPEAKER_00]: That that's there.
09:16 --> 09:23 [SPEAKER_01]: You know what, there are plenty of great conspiracy podcasters, great depending on how you want to use it.
09:23 --> 09:24 [SPEAKER_00]: We'll let them do that.
09:24 --> 09:27 [SPEAKER_00]: We're going to stick to what what it is we can do here.
09:27 --> 09:28 [SPEAKER_00]: And that is definitely history.
09:29 --> 09:41 [SPEAKER_01]: And now, but there is a, there is an element, not of truth to the conspiracy, but an element where there's a little an issue here, and that is, although I don't believe that Rockefeller was a lizard person.
09:42 --> 09:44 [SPEAKER_01]: There is an element where I can't.
09:44 --> 09:54 [SPEAKER_01]: can't be a hundred percent certain about what I'm reading with Rockefeller, because he will sound a network that is extremely generous, extremely giving.
09:55 --> 10:10 [SPEAKER_01]: His son will take over that network, and the Rockefellers will give absolutely massive amounts of money later on in their life, but there will be a little bit of spin to it, like you're not going to say bad things about the guy giving you this amount of money, and so how many
10:10 --> 10:25 [SPEAKER_01]: how many of his stories, what is he saying, how much of it is a hundred percent true and how much of it is a little bit of the spin or propaganda of time that has kind of massaged into something that seems, wow, what a great story will this cause it's a story, right?
10:26 --> 10:29 [SPEAKER_00]: And this seems like a great time to say that this show is sponsored by another.
10:29 --> 10:37 [SPEAKER_01]: It's a seller network, you know, I, yeah, no, I think I like our studio, but I do think it'd be a lot of fancier if it was, if it was, if it was beautiful.
10:37 --> 10:39 [SPEAKER_00]: That is, that is absolutely true.
10:39 --> 10:41 [SPEAKER_00]: We would probably be able to hire a producer.
10:41 --> 10:44 [SPEAKER_00]: I wouldn't be like pushing a button here with my left handle time.
10:44 --> 10:49 [SPEAKER_00]: Like, I would be a, yeah, we would probably be a little better off, even though I love this studio, Troy.
10:50 --> 10:50 [SPEAKER_00]: No, I think it's great.
10:50 --> 10:52 [SPEAKER_00]: No, I got worried about this video.
10:52 --> 11:04 [SPEAKER_01]: This is, I mean, for a studio in Indonesia, I think we have one of the top, I'm gonna put it out there, I think we have one of the top history for some of the ass studios currently being recorded in Indonesia.
11:05 --> 11:08 [SPEAKER_00]: I think that is a very safe, safe bet to make.
11:08 --> 11:11 [SPEAKER_01]: Sorry, everyone else, we'll see, but I think we got you right now for some.
11:11 --> 11:13 [SPEAKER_01]: So someone's got to be first, someone's about it.
11:13 --> 11:15 [SPEAKER_01]: We're gonna go pay even the wait for the next people.
11:15 --> 11:16 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I'm sure, really.
11:16 --> 11:19 [SPEAKER_01]: So there's just a lot of noise out there in the life of Rockefeller.
11:19 --> 11:23 [SPEAKER_01]: It can be just difficult to tell what part of his life is real and what part is not.
11:23 --> 11:30 [SPEAKER_01]: We're going to try our best to stick with the facts of things that I'm pretty sure about without over speculating because that's not what we're going to do.
11:31 --> 11:32 [SPEAKER_01]: I read a lot of different stuff.
11:32 --> 11:35 [SPEAKER_01]: I read like a time magazine interview of him from 1928.
11:35 --> 11:39 [SPEAKER_01]: Like I read it extremely long article on his life in Cleveland.
11:39 --> 11:46 [SPEAKER_01]: But again, more I read, and the more I looked at his life, the more I kind of realized I don't know anything about this guy.
11:46 --> 11:47 [SPEAKER_01]: So let me give you the rundown.
11:47 --> 11:51 [SPEAKER_01]: Let's start with who he is and how he became who he is.
11:51 --> 11:54 [SPEAKER_01]: John D. Rockefeller was born in 1839.
11:54 --> 11:58 [SPEAKER_01]: His father William Rockefeller was
11:59 --> 12:00 [SPEAKER_01]: comment.
12:00 --> 12:01 [SPEAKER_01]: He was a jerk.
12:01 --> 12:02 [SPEAKER_01]: He was a bad guy.
12:03 --> 12:05 [SPEAKER_01]: His nickname was the devil bill.
12:06 --> 12:08 [SPEAKER_01]: And that tells you not like the devil bill in a fun way.
12:09 --> 12:12 [SPEAKER_01]: Like he was actually like a really kind of a nasty piece of work.
12:12 --> 12:15 [SPEAKER_00]: Is there a devil bill in the fun way?
12:15 --> 12:17 [SPEAKER_00]: Like like we don't look like you devil.
12:17 --> 12:19 [SPEAKER_01]: But like in this case it was like you devil.
12:19 --> 12:20 [SPEAKER_01]: Like you're a bad guy.
12:21 --> 12:22 [SPEAKER_01]: Everyone loved him.
12:22 --> 12:23 [SPEAKER_01]: Like he was the life of the party.
12:27 --> 12:36 [SPEAKER_01]: John never actually says, like anything negative about his dad, like in all of his records, he is extremely respectful of his father and keeps it very positive.
12:37 --> 12:43 [SPEAKER_01]: In fact, he would even go on to say, like, I owe my dad a great debt for how much I learned from him and how much he taught me.
12:43 --> 12:45 [SPEAKER_01]: and how much he's done for me.
12:45 --> 12:49 [SPEAKER_01]: But Biola counts his dad as a complete jerk.
12:49 --> 12:56 [SPEAKER_01]: They originally came from New York and it seems like at least one theory is that running from the law they moved to Ohio.
12:57 --> 13:01 [SPEAKER_01]: So, right out of the bat is childhood he has to move to this part of Cleveland Ohio.
13:01 --> 13:05 [SPEAKER_01]: Very likely because his dad is broken too many rules and is in trouble.
13:06 --> 13:15 [SPEAKER_01]: He's on jerk like maybe in the traditional sense like you might think okay, he's a jerk because Like he's he yells at his wife and he beats his kids.
13:15 --> 13:20 [SPEAKER_01]: No, he's like a con man like he goes around his dad goes around the West
13:21 --> 13:24 [SPEAKER_01]: selling fake medicines to people.
13:25 --> 13:34 [SPEAKER_01]: He'll roll in the town in a wagon with a bunch of herbs and stuff and say these potions, when you wouldn't call them potions, but it will cure you of 80, you have.
13:35 --> 13:37 [SPEAKER_01]: If you have cancer, you won't have cancer after taking this.
13:37 --> 13:42 [SPEAKER_01]: If you had cancer and are gonna die, it'll make the process smooth and painless.
13:42 --> 13:47 [SPEAKER_01]: It's all garbage, none of it is real, but he's gonna act like it is.
13:47 --> 14:00 [SPEAKER_01]: He he he conned people all over the West back in the day of like cowboys and settlers and these people don't have access to real medicine So a guy shows up with a wagon full of miracle cures from the east and they don't know what to do.
14:01 --> 14:05 [SPEAKER_00]: I'm just now putting this together actually because I mean I'm not from the States.
14:05 --> 14:14 [SPEAKER_00]: I don't know my history that well, but like 18 Like so he was born 1839 They moved from New York, so we're talking maybe like 1850s.
14:14 --> 14:15 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, give or take
14:16 --> 14:19 [SPEAKER_00]: This was like still full on while West Calo stuff.
14:19 --> 14:35 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, not only wild west, but like John Rockefeller will be graduating as the Civil War is like kind of starting and it's really after the Civil War is considered kind of the wild frontier cowboy days like the gold rush is kind of happened in 1849 so like there are people out there.
14:35 --> 14:44 [SPEAKER_01]: But like the you know we need any of Jesse James and all the cowboy life that's happening as many of the kind of Confederates and people moved out west to get their own land.
14:44 --> 14:45 [SPEAKER_01]: They're kind of break.
14:45 --> 14:47 [SPEAKER_01]: That's some of that's happening because it happened after the Civil War.
14:48 --> 14:57 [SPEAKER_01]: That is the era that like rock offenders coming of age into and that is where that's the area that his dad is out there selling these medicine.
14:57 --> 15:05 [SPEAKER_00]: So pretty harsh environment, probably like this is not like you're friendly, just little quaint town at this point.
15:05 --> 15:10 [SPEAKER_00]: This is just all like people, yeah, maybe some more people are out there for the same reasons.
15:10 --> 15:15 [SPEAKER_00]: Like, you know, had to leave the other town because yeah, a little hot, get a little warm under their feet.
15:15 --> 15:28 [SPEAKER_01]: it's the kind of time to where if you run from one state to another like mess and they can't really do much to catch you because it's just too difficult and those days too and so oftentimes you sell a miracle cure to a town.
15:28 --> 15:29 [SPEAKER_01]: It doesn't do anything.
15:30 --> 15:40 [SPEAKER_01]: Well, long gone by the time they realized they've been had you're out of there and again now some people are sitting here It might be what's in this episode and going I see where John gets it.
15:40 --> 15:48 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, so I see where he got his business sense of Conning people from but to be fair like actually that's what John said to like he would describe his dad
15:50 --> 16:00 [SPEAKER_01]: He said, like, I learned what I learned about business and selling things from what my dad taught me, my dad spent a lot of time teaching us to sell and to buy things.
16:00 --> 16:03 [SPEAKER_01]: His dad did write in his diary or something too.
16:03 --> 16:12 [SPEAKER_01]: Like, I would purposely con my kids as much and as regularly as often, because I wanted them to know every con in the book.
16:12 --> 16:16 [SPEAKER_01]: Like, I wanted them to expect a con when they went into the world.
16:16 --> 16:17 [SPEAKER_01]: That was like his way of prepping them.
16:18 --> 16:24 [SPEAKER_01]: like I'm going to call you and beat you down kids so that when it happens to you in the future you're going to know hey that's like what dad used to do.
16:25 --> 16:34 [SPEAKER_00]: It's kind of like the uh uh like one of those birds that sort of just kicks their yeah a little shake it up and mess like very the world is a harsh place and I'm going to be it's harder.
16:34 --> 16:43 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, really it's a very Spartan way to like raise up the kids they're kind of like yeah like you're going to get con so mine as well be me who teaches you what con life is like again his
16:47 --> 16:54 [SPEAKER_01]: And another thing about the devil bill is that he kept a thousand dollars on them at all times a thousand dollars back in the mid 1800s
16:56 --> 16:56 [SPEAKER_01]: is a lot of money.
16:57 --> 17:05 [SPEAKER_01]: Even Rockefeller in the 1920s would say about his dad, like, I keep dines on me and give them away and people love them.
17:05 --> 17:12 [SPEAKER_01]: I'm amazed that my dad had a thousand dollars at him, pretty much at all times, like that's just dangerous and wild.
17:12 --> 17:18 [SPEAKER_01]: Now to give me more of an idea, not only is he a con man, he was also off partying as he went from town to town, having a good time.
17:19 --> 17:23 [SPEAKER_01]: Um, but he would just kind of show up in John's life for, you know, you know, you haven't seen that near.
17:23 --> 17:26 [SPEAKER_01]: Oh, dad's here for a few months with a bunch of money in his pocket.
17:26 --> 17:26 [SPEAKER_01]: Yay.
17:27 --> 17:29 [SPEAKER_01]: Oh, dad's head knocked us to work again.
17:29 --> 17:30 [SPEAKER_01]: Where's dad?
17:30 --> 17:33 [SPEAKER_01]: And that's kind of how his entire life went with his relationship with his father.
17:34 --> 17:37 [SPEAKER_01]: And his relationship with his grandpa was even kind of more mysterious.
17:37 --> 17:43 [SPEAKER_01]: Like literally, as he was describing it with his own kids, he'd be in the mansion one day.
17:43 --> 17:47 [SPEAKER_01]: And he'd get a ring up and he'd be like, answer the phone or you know, the telegram or whatever.
17:47 --> 17:50 [SPEAKER_01]: Hey, grandpa's at the station waiting for you to pick him up.
17:50 --> 17:51 [SPEAKER_01]: I had no idea.
17:51 --> 17:52 [SPEAKER_01]: Grandpa was coming to town.
17:52 --> 17:53 [SPEAKER_01]: Grandpa's got a violin.
17:53 --> 17:54 [SPEAKER_01]: All the kids were having a party.
17:54 --> 17:55 [SPEAKER_01]: Grandpa's here.
17:55 --> 17:57 [SPEAKER_01]: Grandpa, what do you do for a living?
17:57 --> 18:00 [SPEAKER_01]: Oh, no, you don't tell us or anybody what you do.
18:00 --> 18:01 [SPEAKER_01]: You just mysteriously travel through our lives.
18:02 --> 18:06 [SPEAKER_01]: So like the devil bill was a force of nature that you couldn't understand.
18:06 --> 18:10 [SPEAKER_01]: And it sounds like Rockefeller's grandfather was even more of a mysterious force.
18:10 --> 18:13 [SPEAKER_01]: Like the way Rockefeller described it like everybody loved grandpa.
18:13 --> 18:26 [SPEAKER_01]: Nothing brought more joy to in grandpa can't even know we would never know when or when he was coming how long he'd be here when he would leave it was just all a mystery and no one knew what he did or anything about his past and I'm like what a missteer his family.
18:27 --> 18:36 [SPEAKER_00]: It's I'm I'm just trying to think of like what doesn't make me think of it it's just so random I like you think this it doesn't make me think this is going to be the guy.
18:36 --> 18:40 [SPEAKER_01]: This is going to be the family that raises three business tycoons that rewrite the world.
18:41 --> 18:51 [SPEAKER_01]: Like, that's not normally the kind of, like this is much more like the story of like, and this is when he became a hippie artist or like a director of movies, like the kind of thing that you would think artistic maybe, he might change the world.
18:51 --> 18:56 [SPEAKER_01]: I do not hear in this severe business man in this backstory at all.
18:56 --> 18:59 [SPEAKER_00]: No, not so far, but who knows what's gonna come?
18:59 --> 19:06 [SPEAKER_01]: Now, the one more thing about double bill that needs to be mentioned is, and this will come up in his life later on, is that his, uh, he had a second family from all accounts.
19:06 --> 19:16 [SPEAKER_01]: So he would live with Rockefellers under his actual name, but at some point he set up a second identity and had in a completely second family in New York.
19:16 --> 19:17 [SPEAKER_01]: And this would come back.
19:19 --> 19:21 [SPEAKER_01]: be a real issue for Rockefeller later on.
19:21 --> 19:25 [SPEAKER_01]: So again, you're getting an idea of what this family was like and what John was.
19:25 --> 19:30 [SPEAKER_01]: So the person at the most influence on John's life was definitely John's mother.
19:30 --> 19:33 [SPEAKER_01]: And John's mother was the opposite of the devil bill, as you could be.
19:34 --> 19:35 [SPEAKER_01]: He picked, um, and I don't know.
19:35 --> 19:36 [SPEAKER_01]: Like I don't know.
19:36 --> 19:36 [SPEAKER_01]: Like I don't.
19:37 --> 19:39 [SPEAKER_01]: He didn't pick somebody like him.
19:39 --> 19:44 [SPEAKER_01]: He picked a strict upright, very almost puritanical woman.
19:44 --> 19:46 [SPEAKER_01]: Not me, just disciplined.
19:46 --> 19:50 [SPEAKER_01]: Like she was a firm hand on that family.
19:51 --> 19:54 [SPEAKER_01]: She encouraged the children's faith growing up severely.
19:54 --> 19:56 [SPEAKER_01]: She was completely always at church.
19:57 --> 20:03 [SPEAKER_01]: And she was all about working hard to save every penny and make the most of life that way.
20:04 --> 20:09 [SPEAKER_01]: John's childhood is the story of a poor kid with a many ways an absentee father.
20:09 --> 20:18 [SPEAKER_01]: However, one moment where his dad kind of came in the clutch was there was one high school that I wouldn't even say was in a lead school.
20:18 --> 20:30 [SPEAKER_01]: It was just kind of the only high school in the area and it was in Cleveland, Ohio and his dad was able to kind of pull some connection strings, money, whatever to get him in there.
20:30 --> 20:32 [SPEAKER_01]: Now, John was only there for two years.
20:33 --> 20:34 [SPEAKER_01]: which by the way, wasn't a big deal.
20:35 --> 20:38 [SPEAKER_01]: Not graduating a high school like today if you're a high school dropout.
20:38 --> 20:39 [SPEAKER_01]: That's not great.
20:40 --> 20:42 [SPEAKER_01]: That then it was actually extremely normal.
20:43 --> 20:50 [SPEAKER_01]: He quit high school so we could go to a business kind of school for a few, I think that not long, but it was pretty normal.
20:50 --> 20:52 [SPEAKER_01]: This is how you kind of got your break in.
20:52 --> 20:53 [SPEAKER_01]: That was expected.
20:54 --> 20:56 [SPEAKER_01]: The high school is very important for two reasons though.
20:56 --> 21:00 [SPEAKER_01]: A, a tongue of a lot of his kind of formal education, I guess three reasons.
21:00 --> 21:05 [SPEAKER_01]: B, it was where he met his future wife, Lauren, Laura Spellman, who we mentioned at the beginning of the show.
21:06 --> 21:11 [SPEAKER_01]: It would be the only wife that he would have, and he loved her by accounts his entire life.
21:11 --> 21:15 [SPEAKER_01]: And then get married right out of high school, but it would be pretty soon thereafter.
21:15 --> 21:19 [SPEAKER_01]: He also is the see here, is he met a man named Mark Hanna?
21:20 --> 21:21 [SPEAKER_01]: I've never heard of him.
21:21 --> 21:24 [SPEAKER_01]: And I'm going to guess that you probably haven't either.
21:24 --> 21:31 [SPEAKER_00]: I had, I just only figured out, you know, the whole frontier was part of American history.
21:31 --> 21:33 [SPEAKER_00]: So no, I do had no idea.
21:33 --> 21:40 [SPEAKER_01]: Mark and us not a super famous name today, but in his era, he was a political king maker.
21:40 --> 21:44 [SPEAKER_01]: he was one of the most important people in politics at the time.
21:44 --> 21:49 [SPEAKER_01]: He is seen as the guy who would ensure that the William McKinley becomes president.
21:50 --> 21:58 [SPEAKER_01]: And if you're the kind of political king-maker that can be the party guy that you go to to make a president, you're a pretty important person.
21:58 --> 22:02 [SPEAKER_01]: And it just is a coincidence that two of the most important people in their era,
22:02 --> 22:10 [SPEAKER_01]: happened to go to the same very small high school in the middle of nowhere at that time, not the offensive Cleveland at the time.
22:10 --> 22:11 [SPEAKER_01]: It was very small.
22:11 --> 22:18 [SPEAKER_01]: By the reason you may be of heard of the name Cleveland Ohio today, is because of what these two guys are about to do to the world.
22:18 --> 22:35 [SPEAKER_01]: But it's just a what a coincidence in history that these men and they became friends like they were lifelong friends from this point on like all they were high school buddies like they they could they would see each other and it was it was a permanent friendship for the rest of their lives despite the fact that they would be going in very different directions.
22:35 --> 23:03 [SPEAKER_01]: I try to think of like a modern equivalent to this and I just like what would it be like the equivalent of a of a of a tycoon a business like Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos going to a very small high school in the middle of nowhere before he was famous with like a Joe Rogan or a Donald Trump junior or something like somebody who's big in politics everyone knows their name but even that doesn't feel quite right is no real comparable I think person we don't
23:03 --> 23:25 [SPEAKER_00]: have a one person political king maker anymore is I really don't know what you can hear and especially the time when you know you weren't getting around as easily like there were maybe some railroads out there yeah that was about it that was the fast as way of getting out to Cleveland Ohio and I don't know my maps very well but from what I'm gathering already it's pretty far from you know New York and
23:26 --> 23:32 [SPEAKER_00]: And, you know, the main cities of the older colonies, so you will.
23:32 --> 23:35 [SPEAKER_00]: So older states, sorry, send it wrong.
23:35 --> 23:39 [SPEAKER_00]: The older states, yeah, sorry, European mistake.
23:39 --> 23:39 [SPEAKER_00]: No.
23:40 --> 23:41 [SPEAKER_01]: We call them states.
23:41 --> 23:42 [SPEAKER_01]: We prefer to call them that.
23:43 --> 24:02 [SPEAKER_01]: I guess it would be like the equivalent, my thought is just like Elon Musk grows up in like fair banks Alaska or not like even further out like some hill in the middle of Alaska somewhere where they have like a small school and happens to be going to school with I don't know like Hillary Clinton or something.
24:03 --> 24:06 [SPEAKER_01]: I know that doesn't work but that's like the closest equivalent.
24:06 --> 24:10 [SPEAKER_01]: I can think of like that it just made your cool random that one of the richest people on earth
24:11 --> 24:14 [SPEAKER_01]: happens to be with a very politically influential person and their own way.
24:15 --> 24:16 [SPEAKER_01]: I don't know what else you can compare to.
24:17 --> 24:19 [SPEAKER_01]: The actor quitting high school to go take a business school.
24:19 --> 24:22 [SPEAKER_01]: He went around Cleveland, begging for someone to get a job.
24:22 --> 24:26 [SPEAKER_01]: But he was a graduate of a business class.
24:27 --> 24:28 [SPEAKER_01]: And he had never worked a day in his life.
24:28 --> 24:29 [SPEAKER_01]: He was a young man.
24:29 --> 24:31 [SPEAKER_01]: And he had a very interesting philosophy.
24:31 --> 24:40 [SPEAKER_01]: He basically took time to look at what were the firms with the best reputation, the best integrity that were going places in his mind and Cleveland.
24:40 --> 24:42 [SPEAKER_01]: He listed out, like, I don't know, 20, 30 firms.
24:42 --> 24:44 [SPEAKER_01]: And he was like, these are the ones I see,
24:45 --> 24:50 [SPEAKER_01]: And then he just went into each of them and said, hey, I want a job, I want a job, what do I got to do to get a job here?
24:51 --> 25:15 [SPEAKER_01]: And they all like said, no, and so he went through all 34 firms and then he just started it back over and every day for six weeks, he would just work through his list top to bottom and once he hit the bottom, he just went back to the top and he did that for six weeks in the middle of summer, no car, no anything walking from place to place asking, well, is there anywhere, I can get a job, you can let me work, I just want to work.
25:16 --> 25:18 [SPEAKER_00]: And that is some dedication right there.
25:18 --> 25:22 [SPEAKER_01]: It's some dedication and it really also tells you Rockefeller wasn't nobody.
25:22 --> 25:27 [SPEAKER_01]: You cannot say this guy had a hand up like he couldn't even get a job at like doing anything.
25:28 --> 25:29 [SPEAKER_01]: Nobody wanted him at all.
25:29 --> 25:35 [SPEAKER_00]: But I mean, major credits to him that he didn't go to commonly, like he persisted.
25:35 --> 25:40 [SPEAKER_00]: He kept going like he could have followed in his dad's shoes and just started selling fake medicine and whatnot.
25:41 --> 25:46 [SPEAKER_01]: you know, and who hasn't been tempted to go down their fathers to start selling baked medicine, right?
25:46 --> 25:48 [SPEAKER_00]: It all comes up in those career talks.
25:48 --> 25:51 [SPEAKER_01]: It's an important part of every son growing up.
25:51 --> 25:56 [SPEAKER_01]: Am I going to be like the old con man dad or am I going to be like grandpa and one or aimlessly through?
25:56 --> 25:56 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
25:57 --> 25:59 [SPEAKER_01]: Um, it's a good, yeah, a really dish show.
25:59 --> 26:03 [SPEAKER_01]: So he eventually does get somebody who says, okay, meet me at the Docs tomorrow.
26:03 --> 26:04 [SPEAKER_01]: What look your best?
26:04 --> 26:05 [SPEAKER_01]: I'll give you a, kind of, we'll see.
26:06 --> 26:13 [SPEAKER_01]: He gets a job as an assistant to the assistant bookkeeper, which is pretty low on the totem pole, but this is everything to him.
26:13 --> 26:17 [SPEAKER_00]: So he is the assistant to, yeah, the assistant.
26:17 --> 26:19 [SPEAKER_01]: It's a low job, but to him, this is it.
26:20 --> 26:24 [SPEAKER_01]: He marks it on his calendar, it's in September, job day.
26:24 --> 26:29 [SPEAKER_01]: And he, for the rest of his life, would celebrate job day, way bigger than those birthday.
26:29 --> 26:32 [SPEAKER_01]: As birthday, I didn't do anything wrong in birthday, but he would say like job day.
26:33 --> 26:37 [SPEAKER_01]: That was the day the world gave me a chance and I grabbed that chance.
26:37 --> 26:38 [SPEAKER_01]: Like he would gather kids around.
26:38 --> 26:40 [SPEAKER_01]: There were some great kids coming.
26:40 --> 26:41 [SPEAKER_01]: Let me tell you about job day.
26:41 --> 26:53 [SPEAKER_01]: It was, you know, it's my 50th job day celebration where I was allowed to be an assistant assistant bookkeeper here and put some words and numbers on paper and that's how I started making money.
26:54 --> 26:54 [SPEAKER_01]: And
26:54 --> 27:02 [SPEAKER_01]: Again, it just tells you how his outlook on life was, like he just was so excited to be able to start working.
27:02 --> 27:08 [SPEAKER_01]: He was so convinced that once I get a job and work hard enough, eventually I will start to make my way.
27:08 --> 27:08 [SPEAKER_01]: And the thing is,
27:09 --> 27:34 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, he gave a speech at a church his son asked him to come speak at a church and he found his very first ledger his very first notebook and he like put held it up and it was so dirty with notes literally He was like, I was so poor and I was so trying to save money that I would use the cover and the inside of the cover to leave notes So I wouldn't have to buy a new notebook to make stint it's life and he was like, I was kind of going through it and just found it recently at the other day
27:35 --> 27:39 [SPEAKER_01]: He said, I remember how careful I was with money.
27:39 --> 27:43 [SPEAKER_01]: And those first couple years, I was only making $25 or so.
27:43 --> 27:46 [SPEAKER_01]: I believe it was either a week or a month that was not a lot of money.
27:47 --> 27:56 [SPEAKER_01]: And yeah, I would save some of it as I went and do odd and end jobs until within a couple years, I was able to save $1 on my own.
27:56 --> 27:57 [SPEAKER_01]: And this was something that,
27:58 --> 28:03 [SPEAKER_01]: I did put myself in the mindset of an 1800s business name because I realized we think very differently about money today.
28:04 --> 28:19 [SPEAKER_01]: If you do the business idea today and you want to prove it, you're going to go use charts, maybe you're going to use chatchip, but you're going to go out of your way to go if you invest as money here, here's our plan to make it grow money and we're going to spend money to make money as a common phrase.
28:19 --> 28:23 [SPEAKER_01]: That is not how money is viewed in the 1800s.
28:25 --> 28:29 [SPEAKER_01]: In the 1800s, you proved you were go with money by how good you were at saving it.
28:29 --> 28:36 [SPEAKER_01]: And when you saved 5 cents somewhere, you put that down because that was your proof to the world that you are a good businessman.
28:36 --> 28:38 [SPEAKER_01]: You didn't spend money to make money.
28:38 --> 28:43 [SPEAKER_01]: That idea, in some ways, actually John Rockefeller isn't, we're going to see a pioneer of that idea.
28:43 --> 28:47 [SPEAKER_01]: So he's kind of the reason we get there a little bit, but it wasn't there yet.
28:47 --> 28:57 [SPEAKER_01]: The way you prove to the world you knew how to do business was how much you could cut and save and still have a good product and that played out everywhere in your life.
28:57 --> 29:04 [SPEAKER_01]: So every little penny he put away to stock into that thousand dollars was in some ways his way to prove to the world.
29:04 --> 29:14 [SPEAKER_01]: I and somebody you should do business with because with this low paying job look what I was able to do now if you hire me for something greater look what I might be able to do as well.
29:15 --> 29:25 [SPEAKER_01]: Now he combines this money with $1 his dad gave him his dad said when he turned 21, I promised to give you $1 he said, hey, I'm 19, but I have a business opportunity kind of get my $1 early.
29:25 --> 29:27 [SPEAKER_01]: He said, okay, if you pay me interest.
29:27 --> 29:28 [SPEAKER_01]: That's that.
29:28 --> 29:31 [SPEAKER_01]: Any amount, but John, he loved it.
29:31 --> 29:32 [SPEAKER_01]: He was like, again, forever grateful.
29:32 --> 29:37 [SPEAKER_01]: That's $1 is how I got my first shipping company going with his 2000, another guy.
29:37 --> 29:38 [SPEAKER_01]: They opened a shipping company.
29:38 --> 29:40 [SPEAKER_01]: They buy, I guess, a ship.
29:40 --> 29:42 [SPEAKER_01]: And they start shipping some agricultural stuff.
29:43 --> 29:48 [SPEAKER_01]: And I don't know about you, but like 1920, I wasn't starting my first shipping company.
29:49 --> 29:51 [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, but I've had it where you when you started your first one.
29:52 --> 29:53 [SPEAKER_01]: Oh, they still counting.
29:53 --> 29:55 [SPEAKER_00]: You know, yes, not there yet, Drew's still out.
29:57 --> 30:06 [SPEAKER_00]: I still feel that way about so many things where I hear about these these business tycoons and the age that they started, they're like, yeah, I was playing video games.
30:07 --> 30:11 [SPEAKER_00]: Like, I was not doing, like, I was in fun, you know, I was hanging out with my friends.
30:11 --> 30:13 [SPEAKER_00]: I was being a social guy.
30:14 --> 30:17 [SPEAKER_00]: I was not thinking of starting any kind of company.
30:17 --> 30:19 [SPEAKER_00]: And, you know, I'm not an entrepreneur.
30:19 --> 30:21 [SPEAKER_00]: And that's just not me as a person.
30:22 --> 30:25 [SPEAKER_00]: And, but I do find it amazing when I see these people do it,
30:27 --> 30:29 [SPEAKER_00]: like what you just shared as well.
30:29 --> 30:32 [SPEAKER_00]: Like just grinding for it, just working hard.
30:32 --> 30:36 [SPEAKER_00]: And but I think he really had such a clear vision of where he was going to go as well.
30:36 --> 30:39 [SPEAKER_00]: So that's yeah, I mean, what did you start your first company?
30:39 --> 30:43 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, well, I mean, you know, I started my first podcast, right?
30:43 --> 30:48 [SPEAKER_01]: But like there was also he had, he said he is a young series of like when I was young, I had a dream.
30:49 --> 30:51 [SPEAKER_01]: It sounds stupid because it was every young guy's dream.
30:51 --> 30:53 [SPEAKER_01]: I want to be a, I want to have a million dollars.
30:53 --> 30:54 [SPEAKER_00]: And I want to live to be 100.
30:55 --> 31:01 [SPEAKER_01]: And like you could look at me like that's so cheesy, but like come on, who doesn't want to have a million dollars and live to be 100, right?
31:01 --> 31:03 [SPEAKER_00]: But then who actually follows through?
31:03 --> 31:05 [SPEAKER_01]: The thing is, though, he didn't set that's my dream.
31:05 --> 31:06 [SPEAKER_01]: Let me go for it.
31:06 --> 31:07 [SPEAKER_01]: He actually aimed for it.
31:08 --> 31:15 [SPEAKER_01]: And so he starts to chip in company, off to a good start up Civil War of America hits and Rockefellers of Asia serve.
31:15 --> 31:19 [SPEAKER_01]: However, you could pay to send this substitute for you back in those days.
31:19 --> 31:22 [SPEAKER_01]: Now, usually it's the rich people sending them.
31:23 --> 31:31 [SPEAKER_01]: Rockefeller isn't rich, but he's able to save up enough money to send someone to go and serve in the union for him, and he had to have a legitimate excuse why.
31:31 --> 31:35 [SPEAKER_01]: And his legitimate excuse was, I in the sole care provider for my family.
31:35 --> 31:39 [SPEAKER_01]: My dad is the devil bill wandering around aimlessly who knows where he's at.
31:40 --> 31:46 [SPEAKER_01]: And I just started a shipping company and took, you know, my family's means a provision to start this shipping company.
31:46 --> 31:48 [SPEAKER_01]: If I leave it now, the shipping company will fall
31:51 --> 31:52 [SPEAKER_01]: So you could look at him.
31:52 --> 31:58 [SPEAKER_01]: I was like, wow, he's a draft Dodger or you could say that seems like a pretty legitimate reason to not be currently in the Civil War.
31:58 --> 32:09 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, well, I mean, and I have like a little math question here because if he was of age to serve, yeah, but in you pain someone else goes that person was also like, yeah, ready to go anywhere.
32:09 --> 32:09 [SPEAKER_00]: Like, what's that word?
32:09 --> 32:16 [SPEAKER_01]: I'm not, I don't know the math on how you find someone who substitutes for you and how that works out, but I will say though, it was.
32:17 --> 32:19 [SPEAKER_01]: He was a big fan of it, like not in the summer work.
32:19 --> 32:21 [SPEAKER_01]: A lot of those, he was a big fan of the union.
32:21 --> 32:23 [SPEAKER_01]: Like he was a hardcore abolitionist.
32:23 --> 32:25 [SPEAKER_01]: He really hated slavery.
32:26 --> 32:28 [SPEAKER_01]: He really hated everything that was going on there.
32:28 --> 32:31 [SPEAKER_01]: And it was very clear like he was like, I want the union to win.
32:31 --> 32:34 [SPEAKER_01]: I want that side to go down.
32:34 --> 32:37 [SPEAKER_01]: It just, I just can't go fight in that war.
32:37 --> 32:44 [SPEAKER_00]: I'm really showing my, you know, not being from the States or Bear, Cleveland, Ohio, which side were they on North?
32:44 --> 32:44 [SPEAKER_01]: Even Ohio's North.
32:46 --> 32:53 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, so they're going to be up there in the north and he's getting called to go fight for the union But he's going to say like again, just started shipping company.
32:53 --> 33:02 [SPEAKER_01]: I'm not the type so he does this thing his brother Frank will go fight in the war So, you know, there are members of his family out there fighting just not him.
33:03 --> 33:04 [SPEAKER_01]: However, he like
33:05 --> 33:11 [SPEAKER_01]: because sometimes with the civil war, you know, the north is all good in the south is all bad, but actually Rockefeller doesn't seem to have that opinion either.
33:12 --> 33:22 [SPEAKER_01]: He has a real soft spot for the poor people in the south and he will, it'll come up a lot later on in his life how much he wants to help those people kind of come out of their poverty circumstances.
33:23 --> 33:25 [SPEAKER_01]: So it's not like he hated the people down there.
33:25 --> 33:27 [SPEAKER_01]: He just really didn't seem to like slavery.
33:27 --> 33:32 [SPEAKER_01]: Now, and you know what, but either do I. I'm not, let it be snowed on Christian or not.
33:32 --> 33:33 [SPEAKER_01]: We don't like slavery there.
33:33 --> 33:33 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
33:33 --> 33:41 [SPEAKER_01]: Now, I will pretend to be a business expert on how he does this next part, just like in the Isaac Newton episode, I don't think we could fully explain all of his theories.
33:42 --> 33:44 [SPEAKER_01]: How he makes his money from here out.
33:44 --> 33:47 [SPEAKER_01]: He starts right now, they're doing the end of the Civil War.
33:48 --> 33:50 [SPEAKER_01]: There is an oil boom in the world.
33:50 --> 33:52 [SPEAKER_01]: Oil is becoming the next thing.
33:53 --> 33:54 [SPEAKER_01]: Oil is becoming the next oil rush.
33:54 --> 33:56 [SPEAKER_01]: I don't know how to say it.
33:56 --> 34:06 [SPEAKER_01]: And most people are running over to different parts of North America, especially Pennsylvania, digging by England, hoping there's oil on it because if there's oil on it, you can be rich in an instant.
34:07 --> 34:14 [SPEAKER_01]: And it was so bad that people were just sloppily sloshing oil around, didn't matter what you lost because every barrel was worth so much money.
34:14 --> 34:15 [SPEAKER_01]: You were gonna be fine.
34:16 --> 34:20 [SPEAKER_01]: Rockefeller and his business partner were deciding let's get into the oil thing.
34:20 --> 34:23 [SPEAKER_01]: But Rockefeller was saying, but let's not go down that route.
34:23 --> 34:24 [SPEAKER_01]: Let's not go buy all the drills.
34:25 --> 34:31 [SPEAKER_01]: That's very, you know, fortune, you could buy land that has oil or you could buy land that doesn't.
34:31 --> 34:32 [SPEAKER_01]: you've lost all your money.
34:32 --> 34:35 [SPEAKER_01]: It's a very dangerous risk.
34:35 --> 34:37 [SPEAKER_01]: Let's instead buy the refineries.
34:37 --> 34:41 [SPEAKER_01]: Let's get in through the oil has to come to us to become usable.
34:41 --> 34:43 [SPEAKER_01]: We'll make our money that way.
34:43 --> 34:50 [SPEAKER_01]: It's not going to make as much money at first, but if we do it right over time, it's a steady year income way to go.
34:50 --> 34:52 [SPEAKER_01]: So again, Rockefeller is like 21 or 22.
34:53 --> 34:54 [SPEAKER_01]: He may be 23 or 24 at this age.
34:55 --> 35:05 [SPEAKER_01]: He has the opportunity to get in on the oil game, Dearing the oil rush, but unlike many of his peers and colleagues, he's choosing the safer, reliable, more business savvy route.
35:06 --> 35:07 [SPEAKER_01]: This will make money.
35:07 --> 35:07 [SPEAKER_01]: There are fine areas.
35:07 --> 35:08 [SPEAKER_01]: Will be a good idea.
35:09 --> 35:11 [SPEAKER_01]: It just won't be as quick money as, you know.
35:11 --> 35:17 [SPEAKER_01]: He's the guy who's carefully building a company while his friends are chasing a crypto, right?
35:17 --> 35:18 [SPEAKER_01]: That's kind of what he is.
35:18 --> 35:19 [SPEAKER_01]: The crypto might make all the money,
35:20 --> 35:21 [SPEAKER_01]: but toss and burn.
35:21 --> 35:22 [SPEAKER_00]: You don't know what's going to happen.
35:22 --> 35:24 [SPEAKER_00]: He's going to save a route.
35:24 --> 35:27 [SPEAKER_00]: We're also not giving crypto advice here on Christian or not.
35:27 --> 35:37 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, but it's very interesting because indeed like he again, he just looks like for it sort of maybe seemingly the harder route.
35:37 --> 35:38 [SPEAKER_00]: Like could have been a comment.
35:38 --> 35:44 [SPEAKER_00]: No, decides to know just go around finding that job and he just works at it and he saves his first dollars.
35:44 --> 35:58 [SPEAKER_00]: And now again like you can just you know start drilling you strike oil and you're rich with no He's like, okay, we could do that or we could just be the guy that they have to go to and and That I don't have to keep finding oil wells.
35:58 --> 36:11 [SPEAKER_01]: It really does seem like Rockefeller can see not into the future as like a mystical Way or that but he's just seeing down the road like, okay, yeah You're gonna build all these oil wells, but those oil wells are gonna have to go somewhere And if I can get to the end of that road of where the oil wells go that's
36:12 --> 36:13 [SPEAKER_01]: That's where I'm going to make a lot more money.
36:13 --> 36:14 [SPEAKER_01]: So that's what he's doing.
36:15 --> 36:18 [SPEAKER_01]: And the Civil War really put oil on the paths of growth.
36:19 --> 36:24 [SPEAKER_01]: We're not yet at automobiles and planes, which are all going to need oil, too.
36:25 --> 36:28 [SPEAKER_01]: But, up until this point, I mean, the world is lit by candle.
36:28 --> 36:30 [SPEAKER_01]: Up until this point, the world is using whale oil.
36:30 --> 36:35 [SPEAKER_01]: And there are people out there catching whales and expensively getting the oil out of it and blubber.
36:35 --> 36:35 [SPEAKER_01]: It's a whole thing.
36:35 --> 36:36 [SPEAKER_01]: It's killing tons of whales.
36:37 --> 36:38 [SPEAKER_01]: And this is the moment in history.
36:38 --> 36:40 [SPEAKER_01]: We're all of that begins to stop.
36:41 --> 36:58 [SPEAKER_01]: the world is beginning to embrace electricity where you're able to heat your home with something that came out of the ground through a drill not through a thousand logs and not you're able to start building cities now you're saying they had them but a very different type of city than the ones we had before.
36:59 --> 37:05 [SPEAKER_01]: This I oil is becoming usable at the exact moment when we need oil for what's going to come next.
37:05 --> 37:09 [SPEAKER_01]: And he's in the middle of this perfect moment.
37:09 --> 37:12 [SPEAKER_01]: And he buys this refinery at a very young age.
37:12 --> 37:14 [SPEAKER_01]: And I read on one kind of paper.
37:15 --> 37:20 [SPEAKER_01]: This is where the moment where like luck comes into it, where something that you couldn't predict is shows up.
37:20 --> 37:27 [SPEAKER_01]: And that is a chemist kind of came to Cleveland, Ohio, with a theory on how to refine oil differently than anyone's ever refined it.
37:28 --> 37:29 [SPEAKER_01]: he's like, I've done the chemistry here.
37:30 --> 37:33 [SPEAKER_01]: If we put these things together, your oil will be cleaner, better, and full.
37:33 --> 37:38 [SPEAKER_01]: We're fine, faster, and you can have more of it than the other guys.
37:38 --> 37:40 [SPEAKER_01]: And you just have to take a risk on me.
37:40 --> 37:42 [SPEAKER_01]: I have this formula in a way of doing it.
37:42 --> 37:45 [SPEAKER_01]: I need a refinery that's willing to go with me and try it.
37:45 --> 37:50 [SPEAKER_01]: And Rockefeller is that refinery where he says, okay, we'll implement your process.
37:50 --> 37:51 [SPEAKER_01]: and it works.
37:51 --> 37:54 [SPEAKER_01]: And it is better oil than all the other guys.
37:54 --> 37:58 [SPEAKER_01]: So now his refinery has a step ahead of the rest of them.
37:59 --> 38:08 [SPEAKER_01]: And once he gets that step taking that risk with this guy at 25, he is suddenly now in charge of the largest oil refinery in the nation.
38:08 --> 38:10 [SPEAKER_01]: If not the largest one, one of the largest one.
38:11 --> 38:15 [SPEAKER_01]: But then listen to this by the age of 31, he owns the largest
38:20 --> 38:28 [SPEAKER_01]: He will be refining 90% of the United States' oil, and that is a meteoric rise to power.
38:29 --> 38:36 [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, I can't think of anything that is as useful to the world as oil was that anyone ever owned over 90% of it.
38:37 --> 38:42 [SPEAKER_00]: it's like I'm trying to like a modern world equivalent like you're owning 90% of the internet.
38:42 --> 38:50 [SPEAKER_01]: Like everything has to go through you would be as is somehow one person owned 90 plus percent of all the social media's everything.
38:51 --> 38:55 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I know Google kind of attempted that with Google and YouTube is up that way.
38:55 --> 38:59 [SPEAKER_01]: But 90% of it, I'm talking almost everything going through that one engine.
38:59 --> 39:00 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, that's crazy.
39:00 --> 39:06 [SPEAKER_00]: That's that I mean, I'm starting to see now where this guy is going to make the big bucks.
39:06 --> 39:07 [SPEAKER_01]: And that was the thing.
39:07 --> 39:08 [SPEAKER_01]: It was buying the extra refineries.
39:08 --> 39:12 [SPEAKER_01]: He realized like one refinery makes a lot of money.
39:12 --> 39:12 [SPEAKER_01]: It's good.
39:13 --> 39:19 [SPEAKER_01]: But since everyone needs to refine the oil, my biggest way to make money is to buy more refineries.
39:19 --> 39:23 [SPEAKER_01]: So he'd go up to already made refineries in different towns across the United States.
39:23 --> 39:25 [SPEAKER_01]: And he would say let me buy it from you.
39:25 --> 39:28 [SPEAKER_01]: And as he bought each refinery, he would take the money.
39:28 --> 39:33 [SPEAKER_01]: that that refinery started making and use it to invest into the next refinery.
39:33 --> 39:34 [SPEAKER_01]: Again, spin money to make money.
39:35 --> 39:43 [SPEAKER_01]: He's kind of pioneering this idea of if I buy enough of these, eventually I will make all that money back less way more.
39:43 --> 39:46 [SPEAKER_01]: I think he's ever played monopoly, right?
39:47 --> 39:49 [SPEAKER_01]: Like, you know, the board game kind of based on him.
39:50 --> 39:54 [SPEAKER_01]: You've got these little, you know, the first thing you had to do is start buying all those hotels and playing them out.
39:55 --> 40:17 [SPEAKER_01]: Eventually I don't know how the game ends because I've never played a game I'm an athlete to the finish line, but I Has anyone I'm not sure that it's even possible to do but I know that eventually Multiple we will have hotels or spending money But again at that time period the idea was saved money once you have enough then you kind of move forward the idea of Building a larger finery and making a ton of money and then using that money
40:18 --> 40:26 [SPEAKER_01]: to buy several smaller finearies so that you could use that money to buy even, like that's just thinking in a way that nobody in the 1800s really was.
40:26 --> 40:31 [SPEAKER_01]: It's a even today when you see somebody doing that, you'd see them and go, oh, that's a master business.
40:31 --> 40:35 [SPEAKER_01]: He's doing three steps ahead, but at least he's seen other people do it.
40:36 --> 40:39 [SPEAKER_01]: This is before anyone has ever even thought of this kind of way of doing it.
40:40 --> 40:44 [SPEAKER_00]: So talking about the game monopoly, it sounds like he was building his own oil refinery.
40:44 --> 40:50 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, monopoly and usually one of the bigger drawbacks of that is like you can set the price.
40:50 --> 40:55 [SPEAKER_00]: Like there's no competition, there's no one, you know, there's no market at work anymore then.
40:55 --> 41:03 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and if you ever played the game monopoly by the end of the game, everyone else has broke and you have won because you raised your private prices, got too high.
41:03 --> 41:04 [SPEAKER_01]: They ran out of money.
41:04 --> 41:07 [SPEAKER_01]: That's not what Rockefeller does.
41:07 --> 41:14 [SPEAKER_01]: Statistics like price wise, the price of oil he will have truly a monopoly on oil.
41:14 --> 41:18 [SPEAKER_01]: It will be so bad that the United States government will eventually break his monopoly.
41:18 --> 41:19 [SPEAKER_01]: We're quite there yet, but it's coming.
41:20 --> 41:22 [SPEAKER_01]: But while he's running oil,
41:23 --> 41:23 [SPEAKER_01]: solely through him.
41:24 --> 41:26 [SPEAKER_01]: He could make it whatever price he wants to.
41:26 --> 41:31 [SPEAKER_01]: The price of oil will drop 80% during his time.
41:31 --> 41:36 [SPEAKER_01]: So if originally I would like the price of oil to drop 80% when I have to look think, right?
41:36 --> 41:39 [SPEAKER_01]: That is a significant drop of money.
41:39 --> 41:48 [SPEAKER_01]: Make it much more affordable at the exact moment when cars and things like that planes are needing oil to be affordable.
41:48 --> 41:49 [SPEAKER_01]: He's cutting the prices and
41:51 --> 42:04 [SPEAKER_01]: When all the refineries are run by one company and they're all running through one system, you can actually make the price a lot cheaper because it's a lot, usually no competition makes the prices worse and the business worse.
42:05 --> 42:12 [SPEAKER_01]: In Rockefeller's case, it seems like no competition allowed Rockefeller to bring the prices down as much as a humanly could.
42:12 --> 42:14 [SPEAKER_01]: And that's not what you normally see.
42:14 --> 42:17 [SPEAKER_00]: Oh, that is, that's an interesting turn of events.
42:17 --> 42:19 [SPEAKER_00]: So, uh, speak to this character.
42:19 --> 42:20 [SPEAKER_01]: It's definitely speaks.
42:20 --> 42:31 [SPEAKER_01]: He could have raised, and he could have made oil a luxury elite good, that only the richest and greatest of people could show off with their very rare cars on their very sweet private roads.
42:32 --> 42:36 [SPEAKER_01]: In the world of oil, if he had raised prices and everyone became this giant competition of who has the most money.
42:37 --> 42:41 [SPEAKER_01]: it really could have become this elite novelty thing that the rest of the world didn't get to enjoy.
42:42 --> 42:43 [SPEAKER_01]: He went in the exact opposite direction.
42:43 --> 42:50 [SPEAKER_01]: He thought the best thing from oil would be everyone's easy, and everyone can live a better life with access to it.
42:50 --> 42:50 [SPEAKER_01]: Now,
42:52 --> 42:54 [SPEAKER_01]: not to say I fully understand his argument.
42:55 --> 43:05 [SPEAKER_01]: And certainly people have made the case that he undercut those refineries and then everyone walked out like had the the refinery went broken and then he bought the damage refinery.
43:05 --> 43:07 [SPEAKER_01]: But I read out of people who said no, that's not what happened.
43:07 --> 43:12 [SPEAKER_01]: Like the people who sold their refineries usually walked away with pretty good money, happy with their buyout.
43:13 --> 43:18 [SPEAKER_01]: I'm not sure which one of those stories is true and maybe both are maybe sometimes the undercut them and other times.
43:18 --> 43:21 [SPEAKER_01]: But we see that happening in business today.
43:21 --> 43:26 [SPEAKER_01]: Walmart is famous for undercutting the local guys, tell their out of business and then raising the prices.
43:26 --> 43:28 [SPEAKER_01]: This is like common business tactic.
43:29 --> 43:30 [SPEAKER_01]: I'm not saying I like it.
43:30 --> 43:34 [SPEAKER_01]: I'm saying that it's not something we haven't and we don't still see around today.
43:34 --> 43:35 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
43:35 --> 43:38 [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, that's just good old capitalism and work, right?
43:38 --> 43:40 [SPEAKER_00]: That's just the way it works.
43:40 --> 43:47 [SPEAKER_01]: Now, the part where you might criticize him for the capitalism is some people will say, well, during this time, he made a deal with the government.
43:47 --> 43:49 [SPEAKER_01]: You still had it once you refined that oil.
43:49 --> 43:50 [SPEAKER_01]: You still had to get that oil out to the world.
43:51 --> 43:54 [SPEAKER_01]: And he made a deal with the railroads to the government.
43:54 --> 43:59 [SPEAKER_01]: kind of a secret hand shake deal that my oil will move cheaper than everyone else's.
43:59 --> 44:01 [SPEAKER_01]: I'll make more money than everyone else because of that.
44:02 --> 44:08 [SPEAKER_01]: And because I'm making more money than everyone else, you know, we'll work things out me and the government.
44:09 --> 44:09 [SPEAKER_01]: I'm not sure.
44:09 --> 44:10 [SPEAKER_01]: sure how much that is true.
44:10 --> 44:15 [SPEAKER_01]: Yes, he did actually have a cheaper oil moving on the railroad than his competitors.
44:15 --> 44:18 [SPEAKER_01]: And that made it difficult for his competitors to ship oil.
44:18 --> 44:21 [SPEAKER_01]: He also was shipping a lot more oil.
44:22 --> 44:30 [SPEAKER_01]: And usually if you go to a store where you buy 1 eggs, you usually can get a cheaper than when you buy 3 eggs.
44:30 --> 44:31 [SPEAKER_01]: That's just normal business.
44:32 --> 44:34 [SPEAKER_01]: How much of it was just, yeah, you're shipping this.
44:35 --> 44:38 [SPEAKER_01]: 200 times more than the competitors are will give you a better price.
44:39 --> 44:43 [SPEAKER_01]: I don't know that's people people have their very strong opinions on that either way.
44:44 --> 44:57 [SPEAKER_01]: as a businessman, he was known to be really nice to his employees, like especially in those early days of the refinery, when things were stressful and hardest to see was this, all, everything was on the line, was it going to work out?
44:57 --> 45:07 [SPEAKER_01]: All his employees were like, yeah, we'd have stressful tough days, work long hours, he'd always smile nod, be friendly with us, he never raised his voice, he never cost at us, he was never acted wrong, like they all
45:08 --> 45:13 [SPEAKER_01]: all of the interview later in life when he became the super mega wealthy guy all were like we loved working for him.
45:13 --> 45:14 [SPEAKER_01]: It was a great guy.
45:14 --> 45:15 [SPEAKER_01]: He would seem nice.
45:15 --> 45:18 [SPEAKER_01]: He never he was never the dictator manager yelling at the company.
45:19 --> 45:20 [SPEAKER_01]: Do it my way and I know what's going on.
45:21 --> 45:24 [SPEAKER_01]: He was always just the nicest friendliest guy you could have working for.
45:24 --> 45:25 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I'm so far.
45:25 --> 45:28 [SPEAKER_00]: I'm not reading any like Scrooge McDuck vibes here.
45:28 --> 45:29 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, he seems like a
45:30 --> 45:48 [SPEAKER_01]: Like just a good boss if all the work stories are true and you know, like how much of these stories have been impacted by, you know, the Rockefeller name over time, but then again reverse that he was the richest man alive and you still said he was a nice guy you could have been famous and made your mark by saying I want jerk.
45:48 --> 45:48 [SPEAKER_01]: I hated that guy.
45:49 --> 45:50 [SPEAKER_01]: You didn't do that.
45:50 --> 45:52 [SPEAKER_01]: I think that's where it's something as well.
45:52 --> 45:53 [SPEAKER_01]: He probably was then a nice guy.
45:54 --> 45:56 [SPEAKER_01]: He was also just a strange guy.
45:57 --> 45:58 [SPEAKER_01]: Here's the story from him.
45:58 --> 46:02 [SPEAKER_01]: Like he would famous for taking naps, like in the after famous napper.
46:03 --> 46:07 [SPEAKER_01]: Hey, I don't map because whenever I try to wake up from an app, I just never fully come back.
46:07 --> 46:08 [SPEAKER_01]: I'm gone.
46:08 --> 46:14 [SPEAKER_00]: I actually had that this afternoon like I had a late zoom meeting yesterday and I was so tired.
46:14 --> 46:15 [SPEAKER_00]: I just needed a map.
46:15 --> 46:16 [SPEAKER_00]: I set a timer.
46:16 --> 46:17 [SPEAKER_00]: It it woke me up.
46:18 --> 46:20 [SPEAKER_00]: And I was just confused.
46:20 --> 46:20 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
46:20 --> 46:24 [SPEAKER_00]: And like your whole body feels just slow.
46:24 --> 46:27 [SPEAKER_00]: And it took me a good hour to get back into life.
46:27 --> 46:29 [SPEAKER_01]: I've read that that's a sign you're not getting hit of sleep.
46:29 --> 46:36 [SPEAKER_01]: And I'm like, if that's the case, my entire life, I'm not going to sleep because I've never come out of a nap and not felt like time has traveled around me.
46:36 --> 46:37 [SPEAKER_01]: And you know, I don't know what
46:38 --> 46:42 [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, in old fairness, it's now 10 o'clock local time here.
46:42 --> 46:43 [SPEAKER_00]: We're still doing a podcast.
46:43 --> 46:45 [SPEAKER_00]: So there may be some truth today.
46:45 --> 46:45 [SPEAKER_01]: I don't hear it.
46:46 --> 46:51 [SPEAKER_01]: But the thing is, the thing is, though, his dude loved his naps and he would be in them.
46:51 --> 46:53 [SPEAKER_01]: He had a nap in his boardroom.
46:53 --> 47:01 [SPEAKER_01]: Like when the the directors and people are arguing about what to do with big business deals, you know, or they're, I can imagine them shouting and being in the table.
47:01 --> 47:05 [SPEAKER_01]: If you want oil and California, you know, you're going to have done it and he would just kind of wander over, taking a nap.
47:06 --> 47:08 [SPEAKER_01]: And it's like, it's not time, I'm good now.
47:08 --> 47:09 [SPEAKER_01]: I'll see you later, guys.
47:09 --> 47:13 [SPEAKER_01]: And that just both kind of shows how calm his demeanor is.
47:14 --> 47:15 [SPEAKER_01]: And he had a life, he had a whole life philosophy.
47:15 --> 47:20 [SPEAKER_01]: You do a whole episode on just his philosophy of like, you need to always be self-controlled.
47:20 --> 47:24 [SPEAKER_01]: Like, he really believed self-control of emotions was how you would win it life.
47:24 --> 47:27 [SPEAKER_01]: And that like, one of the ways you do life is by being
47:28 --> 47:37 [SPEAKER_01]: you know, he would be still like when stoicism wasn't like a thing or popular at the time like just to study out being master over your emotions as your first step to mastering kind of life.
47:38 --> 47:41 [SPEAKER_01]: And so taking an app in the middle of board meeting is not really a big deal.
47:41 --> 47:49 [SPEAKER_01]: But what was interesting is like while these guys were shouting and fighting in the board meeting, he would occasionally like pipe up and just throw a question someone's way that they would be like that's actually a really good question.
47:49 --> 47:50 [SPEAKER_01]: We need to ask that.
47:50 --> 47:53 [SPEAKER_01]: And he were like, I thought that guy was asleep getting what a strange guy.
47:54 --> 47:56 [SPEAKER_00]: I, I kind of like it.
47:56 --> 48:05 [SPEAKER_00]: I just, I'm just imagining this situation, you know, like you said, like people shouting and then just the big bosses on the couch, everybody's also kind of mindful, like, yeah, don't worry.
48:05 --> 48:07 [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, like, how does this work?
48:07 --> 48:08 [SPEAKER_00]: And then he just says something,
48:10 --> 48:13 [SPEAKER_00]: Wait, yes, why am we thought of this?
48:13 --> 48:14 [SPEAKER_01]: Like, well, and that's the thing, too.
48:14 --> 48:17 [SPEAKER_01]: Like, even the way he would sit in the border, he didn't send up the end of the border.
48:17 --> 48:26 [SPEAKER_01]: And like, where the president normally sits, apparently he liked to put the guy he'd been disagreeing with in fighting with the most at that spot to like give him the most chances to have his say.
48:27 --> 48:29 [SPEAKER_01]: Well, he would sit down the side of the table because he didn't want to be seen guys.
48:29 --> 48:31 [SPEAKER_01]: the big boss in the way you're making decisions.
48:32 --> 48:34 [SPEAKER_01]: But he's also taking NAS, like a total power.
48:34 --> 48:36 [SPEAKER_01]: I don't know, in a lot of ways, like that's the goal.
48:36 --> 48:42 [SPEAKER_01]: Like if I'm the powerful boss of a gigantic mega company, I want to be able to show you how little I care if I take this happen in the middle of it.
48:43 --> 48:43 [SPEAKER_01]: So I don't know about it.
48:43 --> 48:44 [SPEAKER_00]: It's crazy.
48:44 --> 48:45 [SPEAKER_01]: But he's...
48:45 --> 48:46 [SPEAKER_01]: He's making so much money.
48:46 --> 48:51 [SPEAKER_01]: He's growing his business like crazy, and he's doing all these things.
48:51 --> 48:53 [SPEAKER_01]: Some of it people are saying are evil.
48:53 --> 48:58 [SPEAKER_01]: Now, there's one person who's probably more responsible for his bad reputation than anyone else.
48:59 --> 49:00 [SPEAKER_01]: Her name is Ida Tarbel.
49:01 --> 49:04 [SPEAKER_01]: She writes one of the first biographies on him.
49:04 --> 49:09 [SPEAKER_01]: And she, like, just really goes after you made a secret sneaky deal with the government.
49:09 --> 49:10 [SPEAKER_01]: That's how you made your big money.
49:11 --> 49:12 [SPEAKER_01]: you're a bad person.
49:12 --> 49:21 [SPEAKER_01]: However, her father was one of the competitors for oil during that time, trying to do its own oil refinery business and went down.
49:21 --> 49:30 [SPEAKER_01]: And if he did have a secret sneaky deal with the government that allowed him to become this ultra wealthy guy, evil guy, then you know what, she's right, she's exposing a victim.
49:31 --> 49:38 [SPEAKER_01]: or if his dad or if Rockefeller was just business savvy and did a good job, then you're just, you're a bitter, you got a person.
49:39 --> 49:47 [SPEAKER_01]: But either way, that's the person who writes the first biography of like the life of, and the business of she's hardcore anti-business.
49:48 --> 49:53 [SPEAKER_01]: And the main part of her story that she focuses on is the Devil Bill.
49:53 --> 49:55 [SPEAKER_01]: She finds out about his dad.
49:55 --> 49:58 [SPEAKER_01]: She tells the story of his second family and exposes it to the world.
50:00 --> 50:01 [SPEAKER_01]: crushes him.
50:01 --> 50:02 [SPEAKER_01]: He's a private guy.
50:03 --> 50:19 [SPEAKER_01]: He's always keeping everything to himself and having his dad embarrassed his dad that he's always respected and never said a negative word just embarrassed to the entire country and he feels like it's his fault because you know I'm the one running the company she's after.
50:19 --> 50:20 [SPEAKER_01]: It really hurts him.
50:20 --> 50:23 [SPEAKER_01]: No, I would also say it's your dad's fault for having
50:28 --> 50:52 [SPEAKER_00]: Like there's a lot of firsts here, like you have in sort of building this first sort of mega company first kind of monopoly first one to have this strategy of buying out other companies and and building like a bigger conglomerate even and but now he's also one of the first that sort of gets like you know in the target of the public eye like he like he really gets picked apart and you know he doesn't want to.
50:52 --> 51:02 [SPEAKER_01]: And this is a really communism era, progressivism era where there's this new wave of people saying, hey, we need to undo capitalism.
51:02 --> 51:03 [SPEAKER_01]: It's evil.
51:03 --> 51:10 [SPEAKER_01]: And you can't have a bigger face of evil than the guy running the gigantic oil company that just took over like the world.
51:11 --> 51:23 [SPEAKER_01]: like he is, even in a perfect world, the guy who's the richest man in the world from business is always going to be the face of evil in any communist, run group of people.
51:23 --> 51:24 [SPEAKER_01]: That's just naturally going to be their target.
51:25 --> 51:27 [SPEAKER_01]: Let alone when he did it by being this really savvy business man.
51:27 --> 51:29 [SPEAKER_01]: I took over a bunch of places really fast.
51:29 --> 51:32 [SPEAKER_01]: That's just going to look like a villain.
51:32 --> 51:33 [SPEAKER_01]: Even if he wasn't a villain,
51:33 --> 51:35 [SPEAKER_01]: again, I'm not really weighing on that.
51:35 --> 51:36 [SPEAKER_01]: I don't fully understand it myself.
51:37 --> 51:40 [SPEAKER_01]: But what I do know is that this had a really negative impact on him.
51:40 --> 51:44 [SPEAKER_01]: He became extremely stressed out, and the public turned against him.
51:44 --> 51:46 [SPEAKER_01]: Why does he own all the oil?
51:46 --> 51:52 [SPEAKER_01]: The company owned standard oil was huge, and Teddy rose about the president at times that we need to take back company to court.
51:52 --> 51:53 [SPEAKER_01]: It has gone too far.
51:54 --> 51:56 [SPEAKER_01]: And this gets brought to the Supreme Court.
51:56 --> 51:57 [SPEAKER_01]: It gets decided.
51:57 --> 51:58 [SPEAKER_01]: It's a monopoly.
51:58 --> 52:04 [SPEAKER_01]: And it gets crushed and divided into a bunch of different companies.
52:04 --> 52:06 [SPEAKER_01]: And in a lot of ways, this might look like the end.
52:06 --> 52:07 [SPEAKER_01]: The public outrage did it.
52:07 --> 52:09 [SPEAKER_01]: The journalist, I mean, a lot of ways kind of amazing.
52:10 --> 52:16 [SPEAKER_01]: One journalist was able to kind of swing public opinion against him so much that all that money did not protect him.
52:16 --> 52:19 [SPEAKER_01]: And he lost that battle.
52:19 --> 52:21 [SPEAKER_01]: And this is kind of a tough moment for him.
52:22 --> 52:43 [SPEAKER_01]: And he was so stressed out by it getting his private guy getting constantly harassed that he went bald like he lost his hair both his hair on his head and even the hair on his eyebrows there's a picture of it it's kind of weird picture I don't know that I've ever been so stressed that I've lost all my hair or if I'm honest any of my hair.
52:44 --> 52:45 [SPEAKER_01]: Um, pretty intense.
52:45 --> 52:48 [SPEAKER_01]: He was very shy and constantly getting hammered everywhere ago.
52:48 --> 52:54 [SPEAKER_01]: This next part of the story, I heard, I read like seven different like several different accounts.
52:54 --> 52:59 [SPEAKER_01]: I don't know which one is true, but something seems to kind of awaken in him.
53:00 --> 53:02 [SPEAKER_01]: whether it's turning back to God.
53:02 --> 53:07 [SPEAKER_01]: Some people where he realized I have more faith in money than God.
53:07 --> 53:12 [SPEAKER_01]: There was one version of the story that he had like took out some insurance on a boat that was sailing.
53:12 --> 53:14 [SPEAKER_01]: He wouldn't take out insurance on a boat.
53:14 --> 53:17 [SPEAKER_01]: He was a rich man, but he was spent $100 on the pat on like a delivery.
53:17 --> 53:20 [SPEAKER_01]: He was sitting then a storm hit really bad on the Great Lakes.
53:21 --> 53:42 [SPEAKER_01]: he sent a guy to go buy the insurance and when the guy came back he had the insurance great but the package actually made it and he remembered being angry that he spent $100 on insurance he had wasted money and like one version of story was that like that moment where he's like I'm angry that I wasted $100 when my package got where it was going and I'm this rich maybe that was it.
53:42 --> 53:43 [SPEAKER_01]: Another version was
53:44 --> 53:45 [SPEAKER_01]: And he was a chiefscape.
53:45 --> 54:11 [SPEAKER_01]: My gosh, there's a story where he has a cook and he's walking by a store and he sees that there are salmon being sold for eight cents less than what his cook It put on the grocery bill and so he sent his cook on like a two week that vacation A two week paid off time has his second cook come in and he's watching the grocery bill And if he sees it gets cheaper on their cook to then it wasn't her cook one cook ones out of there because he's been cheating him
54:13 --> 54:14 [SPEAKER_01]: That's cheap.
54:14 --> 54:22 [SPEAKER_01]: He's the richest man, and he would be worth tens of billions of dollars today, but he's watching eight pennies.
54:23 --> 54:24 [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, like, I can't even fast.
54:24 --> 54:25 [SPEAKER_01]: I can't even fathom.
54:25 --> 54:28 [SPEAKER_01]: I don't want to be a pennies now, and I probably should.
54:29 --> 54:37 [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I'm just gonna go out on a limp here and say, if I had so many billions of dollars, I think I would be a little less on the penny.
54:37 --> 54:38 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, exactly.
54:38 --> 54:43 [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I would have to try it to make sure, but I think I would be that guy.
54:43 --> 54:44 [SPEAKER_01]: I think so.
54:45 --> 54:46 [SPEAKER_01]: But maybe that's why we don't have billions of dollars, right?
54:46 --> 54:47 [SPEAKER_01]: We're not.
54:47 --> 54:49 [SPEAKER_00]: Maybe that's one of the difference we've done with him.
54:49 --> 54:51 [SPEAKER_01]: But like, cut it so, watchy money.
54:51 --> 54:54 [SPEAKER_01]: He's definitely money isn't idle on some level to him.
54:54 --> 54:55 [SPEAKER_01]: It's pretty clear.
54:56 --> 54:56 [SPEAKER_01]: And the end at the same time.
54:57 --> 54:58 [SPEAKER_01]: something changes.
54:58 --> 55:01 [SPEAKER_01]: Another person was he met like a mystical guy and said you need to get more money.
55:01 --> 55:03 [SPEAKER_01]: There was so many different versions of the story.
55:03 --> 55:06 [SPEAKER_01]: I don't know if it's something changes and he starts to go, I'm going to give away money.
55:07 --> 55:11 [SPEAKER_01]: Now the thing is that makes it sound like he hasn't been giving money away this whole time.
55:11 --> 55:14 [SPEAKER_01]: He's always been giving away lots of money.
55:14 --> 55:22 [SPEAKER_01]: When he again, when he was asking for a loan from the bank for a million dollars to buy refineries, he was giving away tens of thousands of dollars at the exact same time.
55:22 --> 55:23 [SPEAKER_01]: He's always given a lot.
55:24 --> 55:28 [SPEAKER_01]: But it was like, it motivated him to go even more on the giving side.
55:28 --> 55:31 [SPEAKER_01]: But I'm, you know what, I don't care about making money anymore.
55:31 --> 55:32 [SPEAKER_01]: I'm just gonna give it away.
55:32 --> 55:40 [SPEAKER_01]: Now ironically, if I had a tar bell saw, she defeated him by splitting his companies into 47 companies.
55:41 --> 55:42 [SPEAKER_01]: Um, nope.
55:43 --> 56:06 [SPEAKER_01]: That that was a real Phoenix dies comes back to life situation because he used the money he had to kind of get early stakes and all those companies and everyone saw hey standard oil needs so much money there's no way these 47 companies don't make money they invested in them quickly and so those 47 companies companies are still around today like exon and BP.
56:07 --> 56:07 [SPEAKER_01]: Become worth.
56:08 --> 56:10 [SPEAKER_01]: so much more money.
56:10 --> 56:18 [SPEAKER_01]: And he ends up being far wealthier having the major shares of 47 companies than just one.
56:18 --> 56:20 [SPEAKER_01]: And so if it was like a ha, we stopped you.
56:21 --> 56:32 [SPEAKER_01]: You know, the sequel of the movie villain, is going to be, oh, look, it's Rockefeller again, even richer than last time you saw him because defeating his evil Death Ray created 47 Death Ray.
56:32 --> 56:33 [SPEAKER_01]: Like, you know what I mean?
56:33 --> 56:35 [SPEAKER_01]: This did not work in all their favor.
56:38 --> 56:40 [SPEAKER_00]: No, I was just thinking like, and it makes sense.
56:40 --> 56:49 [SPEAKER_00]: Like, if you're smart with one big company, like, like, if you're gonna know how to make money with one big company, you're gonna know how to make money off 47 companies.
56:49 --> 56:52 [SPEAKER_00]: And now we have 47 companies that you're, you know, are doing their thing.
56:53 --> 56:58 [SPEAKER_00]: Like, even I think from an economical point of view, you're just actually spreading your chances way better.
56:58 --> 56:59 [SPEAKER_00]: So, yeah.
56:59 --> 57:14 [SPEAKER_00]: if anything they did in favor helped them out they helped them out it didn't feel like it though I feel kind of sad like losing or your hair seems like a like a rough thing to happen to you but yeah glad it worked out for him, but I'm I want to hear more about this next part
57:15 --> 57:17 [SPEAKER_01]: So I think we're at now, though, is we've kind of given you the rundown.
57:17 --> 57:24 [SPEAKER_01]: If you're like, if you're really dying for more 1800s oil company stories, we got them, you can maybe that'll be a patriotic exclusive someday.
57:25 --> 57:26 [SPEAKER_01]: But I think you're probably ready for more.
57:26 --> 57:27 [SPEAKER_01]: Let's look at his faith.
57:27 --> 57:33 [SPEAKER_01]: Let's get to where is the, you've seen aspects of his Christianity, giving money and stuff like that.
57:33 --> 57:35 [SPEAKER_01]: But what did he actually believe?
57:35 --> 57:37 [SPEAKER_01]: Let's look at that and move to that portion.
57:43 --> 57:46 [SPEAKER_01]: So the thing is, we don't have a lot written down.
57:47 --> 57:49 [SPEAKER_01]: Again, he's a very shy guy who didn't talk a lot in public.
57:49 --> 57:55 [SPEAKER_01]: He did, again, visit a church where he shared how God helped him lead him to make money so he could give it away.
57:56 --> 58:00 [SPEAKER_01]: And I think it's just giving away where you start to see a lot about his faith.
58:01 --> 58:03 [SPEAKER_01]: He always done it, but he gave in a lot of money.
58:03 --> 58:04 [SPEAKER_01]: And not,
58:05 --> 58:19 [SPEAKER_01]: to the places you might expect, like helping poor people, everyone likes to do that where they can, but he's giving millions of dollars to seminaries, southern and Baptist seminaries because in his mind, the South got rect by the Civil War and means good theology.
58:20 --> 58:21 [SPEAKER_01]: He's a Baptist.
58:21 --> 58:27 [SPEAKER_01]: He wants to see the southern Baptist do well because they need good pastors and teachers there.
58:27 --> 58:31 [SPEAKER_01]: He sends a lot of money to foreign missions, the idea that people are around the world,
58:32 --> 58:56 [SPEAKER_01]: dying without the gospel was we never hear him say I guess but based on the money he gave to it it was clearly an important part of his thinking churches including his own personal church but other movements as well where he could he's giving lots of money not just to random public causes but his entire life is marked by giving money to Christian causes to see that the Lord's people are moving and
58:56 --> 58:58 [SPEAKER_01]: and he's seen it as seminars.
58:58 --> 59:00 [SPEAKER_01]: He's personal friends with a lot of these guys as well.
59:01 --> 59:16 [SPEAKER_01]: John Brottis, he probably would have not heard of him, is very famous Southern Baptist a theological seminar professor and president who was personal friends spent a lot of one on one time with Rockefeller would go to Rockefeller's house all his life visiting when he felt you know the need.
59:17 --> 59:20 [SPEAKER_01]: And Rockefeller will eventually start the University of Chicago.
59:20 --> 59:21 [SPEAKER_01]: He wanted to put a divinity school in it.
59:21 --> 59:22 [SPEAKER_01]: He wanted it and it does.
59:23 --> 59:27 [SPEAKER_01]: He wants it to be a place where theology is trained for the better of Chicago.
59:27 --> 59:28 [SPEAKER_01]: And he begs John Broadass.
59:28 --> 59:30 [SPEAKER_01]: I want you to come work there.
59:30 --> 59:31 [SPEAKER_01]: I want you to be a professor or a president.
59:32 --> 59:33 [SPEAKER_01]: You would do a great job there.
59:33 --> 59:35 [SPEAKER_01]: And John Broadass says, look, no, I can't.
59:35 --> 59:37 [SPEAKER_01]: I got to stick with the Southern Baptist seminary.
59:37 --> 59:38 [SPEAKER_01]: They need me.
59:38 --> 59:57 [SPEAKER_01]: But it just in that, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in
59:57 --> 01:00:14 [SPEAKER_00]: And also, then here what happens here with this good friend that actually says no, sorry, I'm not going to go to your new university, I want to stay where I am at this seminary then right now, like he doesn't use the money as a power play like he doesn't like well now then I'm not going to give you money anymore like he's
01:00:15 --> 01:00:33 [SPEAKER_01]: Hey, like there seems to be a genuine heart behind all of these things and he does give less money to the Southern Baptist Seminaries at that point, but not like at a threatening way, just like I'm running another school now, like I'm going to divert more of that education money towards that school, but not like a personal animus where there's definitely no falling out day state friends or rest of the days.
01:00:34 --> 01:00:39 [SPEAKER_01]: And he does invite others southern back to theological seminary professors and presidents later on like, hey, you I'm all in.
01:00:39 --> 01:00:44 [SPEAKER_01]: Can you come over like he's inviting them over for the rest of his life like he really respects them?
01:00:44 --> 01:00:45 [SPEAKER_01]: And he thinks they would do a good job.
01:00:45 --> 01:00:47 [SPEAKER_01]: He wants his university be good.
01:00:47 --> 01:00:52 [SPEAKER_01]: Was interesting, too, is most people don't even know the University of Chicago was started by Rockefeller.
01:00:52 --> 01:00:58 [SPEAKER_01]: As Rockefeller is starting all these things, he doesn't put his name on hardly any of it.
01:00:58 --> 01:01:00 [SPEAKER_01]: And he might be going, wait a second, but I've heard a Rockefeller center,
01:01:04 --> 01:01:05 [SPEAKER_01]: It was started by a son.
01:01:06 --> 01:01:10 [SPEAKER_01]: His son put his name on things, but the original Rockefeller really didn't.
01:01:10 --> 01:01:16 [SPEAKER_01]: Now he will also fund several colleges in the south for black people to get educated.
01:01:16 --> 01:01:20 [SPEAKER_01]: Spellman College was a free admission black women could get educated there.
01:01:20 --> 01:01:22 [SPEAKER_01]: He named it after his wife, Laura Spellman, loved her.
01:01:23 --> 01:01:28 [SPEAKER_01]: And he also will be one of the major funders of the Tuskegee Institute, so that black students could get an education.
01:01:29 --> 01:01:40 [SPEAKER_01]: And most people don't know that Rockefeller had did this because he started a company like a way to give money called the general education board, which sounds boring and no one realizes.
01:01:41 --> 01:01:42 [SPEAKER_01]: Most people have no idea.
01:01:42 --> 01:01:47 [SPEAKER_01]: was actually an arm of Rockefeller so that he could give without having to put his name on it.
01:01:47 --> 01:01:57 [SPEAKER_01]: So the number of institutions and things that he funded like that where his money showed up and paid for it, but you didn't know where it came from, is actually really high.
01:01:57 --> 01:02:03 [SPEAKER_01]: And to me, it sounds to me like the biblical principle of giving, don't let your right hand know where the left hand is doing.
01:02:03 --> 01:02:07 [SPEAKER_01]: Like he seems to be trying to help the world without putting his name all over the world.
01:02:12 --> 01:02:15 [SPEAKER_00]: Like he could have done it so differently.
01:02:15 --> 01:02:27 [SPEAKER_00]: He could have gone such a different way where he used his money, like I just said, like a power way, like really to get himself influenced, to get himself power to really get his will done basically.
01:02:28 --> 01:02:29 [SPEAKER_00]: That's not what I see happening here.
01:02:29 --> 01:02:31 [SPEAKER_01]: He could have been far more powerful.
01:02:31 --> 01:02:33 [SPEAKER_01]: He was best friends with that politician guy growing up.
01:02:34 --> 01:02:40 [SPEAKER_01]: They'd be very well could have been talking about the story of President Rockefeller easily if this guy had wanted to, or at least it would have been on the table.
01:02:41 --> 01:02:43 [SPEAKER_01]: And there's another very famous cartoon at the time.
01:02:45 --> 01:02:49 [SPEAKER_01]: Andrew Carnegie, he does put his name on everything, everything he gives comes with the name.
01:02:50 --> 01:02:52 [SPEAKER_01]: Carnegie is going to be on this from now on.
01:02:53 --> 01:02:54 [SPEAKER_01]: And Rockefeller's not doing that.
01:02:54 --> 01:02:56 [SPEAKER_01]: It's not that he's doesn't know you can.
01:02:56 --> 01:02:59 [SPEAKER_01]: It's that he doesn't seem to be interested in it.
01:02:59 --> 01:03:04 [SPEAKER_01]: Rockefeller gave away at least half a billion dollars of his wealth that we know of.
01:03:05 --> 01:03:07 [SPEAKER_01]: And today that would be considered 20 billion US dollars.
01:03:07 --> 01:03:10 [SPEAKER_01]: And that is an enormous amount of his money.
01:03:12 --> 01:03:34 [SPEAKER_01]: he will set up the first was called a research hospital where they do research again through a through an unnamed kind of way and that hospital will eliminate yellow fever and hookworm in the south which were both present still but that research hospital will go in and fix it again his heart is on poor people in the south part of the country that most northerners have kind of not cared about it all actually.
01:03:34 --> 01:03:40 [SPEAKER_01]: at just some more of the feelings toward a south or not strong, and the fact that the south was poor and hurting, it was kind of like, well, that's what you get, right?
01:03:40 --> 01:03:44 [SPEAKER_01]: That's allow a lot of people in the north felt, not rock valleys, like these people are poor.
01:03:44 --> 01:03:45 [SPEAKER_01]: They're broken.
01:03:45 --> 01:03:48 [SPEAKER_01]: We've got to lift them out of this, because it's a miserable place to be.
01:03:49 --> 01:03:52 [SPEAKER_01]: Oh, and they still have yellow fever and hookworm, so let's fix that up as well.
01:03:53 --> 01:04:01 [SPEAKER_01]: Um, when he, a 1912, he had $900 million study was worth, but when he died, he was worth only 26 million.
01:04:01 --> 01:04:07 [SPEAKER_01]: That is to say, he gave away, he found ways to get rid of the rest of that money.
01:04:07 --> 01:04:10 [SPEAKER_01]: And again, inflationary wise, bazillions and billions of dollars.
01:04:10 --> 01:04:18 [SPEAKER_01]: Now, he also, just on a personal note, he loved his family, he loved his kids, he's dedicated to his wife, his entire life, he's on a secret family like that.
01:04:19 --> 01:04:19 [SPEAKER_01]: Um,
01:04:20 --> 01:04:23 [SPEAKER_01]: He's, he tried to have a good relationship with his brothers.
01:04:23 --> 01:04:26 [SPEAKER_01]: One of his brothers will work in his companies and work for him in his whole life.
01:04:26 --> 01:04:28 [SPEAKER_01]: His other brother will work for him for a while.
01:04:28 --> 01:04:32 [SPEAKER_01]: It's thought that maybe his weird stuff with his dad, they get in a fight over it.
01:04:32 --> 01:04:35 [SPEAKER_00]: His other brother will go off and be like a rancher in Texas.
01:04:35 --> 01:04:36 [SPEAKER_00]: Oh, no, a bunch of big ranches.
01:04:36 --> 01:04:42 [SPEAKER_01]: and he'll introduce himself as I'm Frank or Rockefeller, but I'm not that Rockefeller.
01:04:42 --> 01:05:01 [SPEAKER_01]: So like he is definitely a little bit of issue there and in fact he will be in Ohio at the same time as John when he's dying and he will his very last thing he'll write out publicly to the world as I'm dying and do not let John visit me, which is I mean gosh and John's words recorded when he died was that was my brother.
01:05:02 --> 01:05:03 [SPEAKER_01]: I held him as a baby.
01:05:03 --> 01:05:06 [SPEAKER_01]: Like sad it's I don't know what happened there.
01:05:06 --> 01:05:26 [SPEAKER_00]: It seems like John seems pretty broken up about how that went, too But I John and Frank did not get get it back to other themes and I mean I unfortunately you hear these stories from from all around like you know families sometimes things have worked out So yeah, I don't know no what to read into it like we don't know we haven't been there for the conversations but yeah
01:05:27 --> 01:05:47 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I mean, I think it's a little bit more like things about his faith like you said there is my he hasn't like written his own theology books he hasn't shared his own like sermons by by John D. Rockefeller but just seeing all these things like I'm I'm seeing a man that seems to be wanting to do the right thing
01:05:47 --> 01:05:49 [SPEAKER_01]: This is what I would want to see.
01:05:49 --> 01:05:56 [SPEAKER_01]: Like, if I'm thinking a big business man living for Jesus in the world, I would want to see a guy who's not making it all about himself.
01:05:56 --> 01:06:04 [SPEAKER_01]: I would want to see a guy who's giving his money away, using it for good, not cheating his customers, bringing the price of oil down.
01:06:04 --> 01:06:07 [SPEAKER_01]: Like, I'm not going to say everything he did was probably perfect.
01:06:07 --> 01:06:10 [SPEAKER_01]: I imagine he had to do some tough stuff to be a business man.
01:06:11 --> 01:06:15 [SPEAKER_01]: but especially in his later life, I just don't know what else you would expect to see.
01:06:15 --> 01:06:19 [SPEAKER_01]: Now, what you might be wanting to see is some speeches promoting the name of Christ.
01:06:19 --> 01:06:20 [SPEAKER_01]: And I'm with you.
01:06:20 --> 01:06:24 [SPEAKER_01]: If that would make it a little bit easier and a little bit more clear, he seems to be a shy guy.
01:06:24 --> 01:06:30 [SPEAKER_01]: The only real time I see him talking to a church is when his son invites him to share at a young men's Bible study.
01:06:30 --> 01:06:34 [SPEAKER_01]: And when he did read the speech in the beginning, he was like, hey, so,
01:06:35 --> 01:07:01 [SPEAKER_01]: I came expecting the meat a bunch of young men and I see a bunch of old people came to hear me speak to and it's a lot more crowded than here that I expected so I'm just going to give me the speech that I was going to give to young men now like so like you can tell like he was uncomfortable the fact that this like kind of private moment of sharing his faith kind of got hijacked by a bunch of people he's very much not trying to be a Christian leader in that way like he doesn't see himself that I mean and he doesn't have to be.
01:07:02 --> 01:07:03 [SPEAKER_00]: like he wasn't a pastor.
01:07:03 --> 01:07:04 [SPEAKER_00]: He didn't go to seminary himself.
01:07:04 --> 01:07:06 [SPEAKER_00]: He didn't study the all of your anything.
01:07:06 --> 01:07:08 [SPEAKER_00]: Like that wasn't his thing.
01:07:08 --> 01:07:12 [SPEAKER_00]: Like would you expect any of your normal people sitting in church?
01:07:12 --> 01:07:13 [SPEAKER_00]: Like he does do those things.
01:07:13 --> 01:07:14 [SPEAKER_01]: No, that's a Christian later.
01:07:14 --> 01:07:15 [SPEAKER_01]: He's like, I'm a businessman.
01:07:15 --> 01:07:16 [SPEAKER_01]: Like if you if you
01:07:17 --> 01:07:30 [SPEAKER_01]: I feel like if he was in your church, you would be so thrilled to have such a humble like business man in your running Sunday and that's I think he may not have a speech, but he has 40 year track record around this Sunday school at his back this church.
01:07:31 --> 01:07:37 [SPEAKER_01]: I would imagine that if he was a hairdresser or something, somebody would have hopefully picked up on that in that time and we don't see any record of that at all.
01:07:37 --> 01:07:48 [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, imagine all the kids going through that Sunday school having been taught by him like like there should probably be some fallout and let's just say there's clearly our celebrity scandals looking for something.
01:07:49 --> 01:07:51 [SPEAKER_01]: So I think we go ahead and give to our opinion time.
01:07:52 --> 01:07:52 [SPEAKER_01]: What do we think?
01:07:53 --> 01:08:00 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, well, I mean, I think, you know, our listeners, the viewers already feel coming a little bit, but I think
01:08:02 --> 01:08:23 [SPEAKER_00]: by all accounts by everything that we see here like like at the very least I have no reason to doubt that he was a Christian if he if he went to church like like we don't know his deepest theology theological views like last episode we did Isaac Newton he writes a whole paper on how Jesus is not God okay so a little easier to form an opinion like like we don't have that info here.
01:08:24 --> 01:08:29 [SPEAKER_00]: But just seeing the way he lives out his life is faithful to his family.
01:08:29 --> 01:08:50 [SPEAKER_00]: He gives away his money also for causes like think of things like like even if you're you're going to a church and you want to give money but if you give it to like the really the education side things like the the seminaries to the missionaries like you're really all for just furthering that the agenda if you will or the kingdom of God into this world like you really
01:08:51 --> 01:09:15 [SPEAKER_00]: One got to be known in the world like you wouldn't do that if you don't really believe it Like that would not make sense and there would be so many other things you could give your money to so Yeah, I didn't know lack of name on it like you're not doing it for the record initially like yeah, you know We can think of other famous business been like a trump or something is gonna put trump tower on it like you know We don't see that happening here at all that there's no there
01:09:15 --> 01:09:19 [SPEAKER_01]: Like, and you have all these celebrity, like clearly people were looking to dig into his life.
01:09:19 --> 01:09:24 [SPEAKER_01]: The best, like it's dirt, like it's fine on him was his dad, which means that they didn't find dirt on him.
01:09:24 --> 01:09:31 [SPEAKER_01]: He's, I mean, I would love that the riches, you know, businessmen today could have such clean records, but that's not what we find.
01:09:31 --> 01:09:32 [SPEAKER_01]: He's a celebrity.
01:09:32 --> 01:09:37 [SPEAKER_01]: We generally hold celebrities to different standards, but he seems to be living it out.
01:09:37 --> 01:09:40 [SPEAKER_01]: Like, he really, I don't know what more you could expect from him.
01:09:41 --> 01:10:07 [SPEAKER_01]: It's I'm also with I from everything I'm seeing on paper and there could be something we're missing and I I hope there's not but it looks like he's a Christian it looks like his life is trying to reflect price so that I think we have to ask a second question that we wouldn't normally ask on Christian or not and that is what happened like why why does he have such a bad kind of reputation if he seems like he was probably a Christian guy and if I can get some history I think what went wrong is his son.
01:10:08 --> 01:10:15 [SPEAKER_01]: John David Rockefeller, Jr. was also a Christian is running this Christian Bible study that invites his dad to in New York.
01:10:16 --> 01:10:23 [SPEAKER_01]: But this church he goes to and grows up going to is a very progressive, not grows up, but this church he goes to is very progressive.
01:10:24 --> 01:10:26 [SPEAKER_01]: Church, the Bible is not fully true.
01:10:27 --> 01:10:29 [SPEAKER_01]: Christians are supposed to make the world a better place to the government.
01:10:30 --> 01:10:32 [SPEAKER_01]: A bunch of ideas that are very popular at the time,
01:10:33 --> 01:10:39 [SPEAKER_01]: everything from eugenics, the idea that some humans are kind of made better than others, everything from kind of communist strain of Christianity.
01:10:40 --> 01:10:44 [SPEAKER_01]: This was all present at this church that the junior will end up going to.
01:10:45 --> 01:10:48 [SPEAKER_01]: And I think that ends up being what happens.
01:10:48 --> 01:10:58 [SPEAKER_01]: Junior will take the money that his dad made and he will end up taking the reins of the Rockefeller Foundation and start to put the money into places that I don't think his dad,
01:11:02 --> 01:11:04 [SPEAKER_01]: And that's not a conspiracy theory.
01:11:04 --> 01:11:18 [SPEAKER_01]: Like we have clear records of the money going to Marxist groups that will have ties back to the Soviet Union that were using nice sounding names to try to promote communism in the United States.
01:11:18 --> 01:11:21 [SPEAKER_01]: Like that's not an anyway conspiracy.
01:11:21 --> 01:11:26 [SPEAKER_01]: And one of them, the federal church council of America, something like that was like SCCCA.
01:11:27 --> 01:11:34 [SPEAKER_01]: was literally run by communist agents at the top, like the Russia had put them in America, had paid the money.
01:11:35 --> 01:11:42 [SPEAKER_01]: They weren't Russian, but they were like people that they had trained with the idea of getting the church to change its opinion on the Soviet Union.
01:11:43 --> 01:11:50 [SPEAKER_01]: They would put out positive spin stories towards Russia and negative spin stories towards America and give their money to Marxist causes.
01:11:50 --> 01:11:55 [SPEAKER_01]: And Rockefeller, Jr., would give them a lot of money, thinking they were good people.
01:11:58 --> 01:12:00 [SPEAKER_01]: and a slow like not, he's clearly smart.
01:12:01 --> 01:12:07 [SPEAKER_01]: He was a smart business man, but he just didn't understand when he was giving his money to, or if he didn't didn't care.
01:12:08 --> 01:12:11 [SPEAKER_01]: But he's not, he's not being discerning.
01:12:11 --> 01:12:18 [SPEAKER_01]: And so a lot of the money that goes into the Rockefeller Foundation that will come afterwards will be used in really negative ways.
01:12:19 --> 01:12:20 [SPEAKER_01]: And I think that's why I
01:12:21 --> 01:12:37 [SPEAKER_01]: And ironically, one of history's greatest capitalists will have his money squandered on some of the most Marxist people and organizations of all time because of his son, but you don't blame, you know, Solomon for what Ray a bone does, right?
01:12:38 --> 01:12:47 [SPEAKER_01]: You don't blame this son, Jonathan, for what Solomon, or for Solomon, the father and the son are different people, and from all my accounts of everything I can really see here.
01:12:48 --> 01:12:54 [SPEAKER_01]: It looked like John David Rockefeller, it's senior, did everything he could to do his best to follow God.
01:12:54 --> 01:13:01 [SPEAKER_01]: And it looks like it's his son and his foundation and everything they did afterwards that kind of ruin that legacy for him.
01:13:01 --> 01:13:10 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so I think if there's there's like a lesson for us to learn here, it's definitely like don't just touch a book by its cover, you know, don't just go by the name like, oh Rockefeller, I know the name,
01:13:11 --> 01:13:25 [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, just I'm I'm glad what I learned here about like John the Rockefeller senior like yeah the things that he did I'm like yeah he did a great job if my little greedy I will say definitely ahead times where money was an idle
01:13:25 --> 01:13:32 [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, but I think we all fall risked to that and it doesn't like greed is mentioned in the Bible as being an issue.
01:13:33 --> 01:13:35 [SPEAKER_00]: So I think we're all very susceptible to that.
01:13:35 --> 01:13:42 [SPEAKER_00]: So yeah, I do think, yeah, it's just so sad to see what happens afterwards like this.
01:13:43 --> 01:13:59 [SPEAKER_00]: I think you often see this, or there's often this race like where one person does good things, or it lives out his life in a good way, but you know, then it sort of starts spreading and diluting and then but then sort of reflects back on that first person.
01:13:59 --> 01:14:00 [SPEAKER_00]: So that's that's yeah.
01:14:02 --> 01:14:03 [SPEAKER_00]: Maybe maybe good.
01:14:03 --> 01:14:05 [SPEAKER_00]: I learned something at least about John D. Rockefeller.
01:14:06 --> 01:14:09 [SPEAKER_00]: I didn't know him that well, but yeah, I'm interested.
01:14:09 --> 01:14:11 [SPEAKER_00]: I'm interested to read a little bit more about him.
01:14:11 --> 01:14:16 [SPEAKER_00]: Maybe I look for a good biography, not the one by the angry lady.
01:14:16 --> 01:14:17 [SPEAKER_01]: The angry lady.
01:14:17 --> 01:14:18 [SPEAKER_01]: It's 20 because one of the next biggest.
01:14:19 --> 01:14:30 [SPEAKER_01]: Rockefeller biographies I was written was written by David Horowitz who would actually become like a very conservative guy, but he wrote the biography in the 70s when he was when he was a self-procette for the best communist.
01:14:31 --> 01:14:34 [SPEAKER_01]: So like two of the biggest biographies that said his name into history.
01:14:35 --> 01:14:40 [SPEAKER_01]: Once a scorned daughter progressive and then the next one is a very outright cognitive.
01:14:40 --> 01:14:43 [SPEAKER_01]: That's not going to necessarily give you the most unbiased take on who.
01:14:44 --> 01:14:44 [SPEAKER_01]: he is.
01:14:45 --> 01:14:46 [SPEAKER_01]: Now, we did the best we could.
01:14:46 --> 01:14:48 [SPEAKER_01]: I hope we were able to do a good job.
01:14:48 --> 01:15:02 [SPEAKER_01]: But you know what Mark, I'm a feeling we'll get a plenty of opportunity to read more about Mark about Rockefeller because I can hear the keyboards already because there's no way that they're not going to be comments telling us how did you miss this and where why didn't you manage in that?
01:15:02 --> 01:15:05 [SPEAKER_01]: I am sure Rockefeller is a very controversial name.
01:15:05 --> 01:15:07 [SPEAKER_01]: So in this show, we give you our opinion.
01:15:07 --> 01:15:10 [SPEAKER_01]: We're not God, but we're just doing the best we can from our
01:15:10 --> 01:15:11 [SPEAKER_01]: best I can tell.
01:15:11 --> 01:15:17 [SPEAKER_01]: I think we're both saying and we've both agreed on this one that he seems like he was a Christian, but we want you to be included as well.
01:15:17 --> 01:15:22 [SPEAKER_01]: Leave your comment below and tell us, do you think we got it right or what were we missing?
01:15:22 --> 01:15:28 [SPEAKER_01]: What part of his life did we did we skip over or not see in our research that would have given it more clear?
01:15:28 --> 01:15:28 [SPEAKER_01]: Do you agree with us?
01:15:28 --> 01:15:33 [SPEAKER_01]: Do you think he was a Christian that his sadly is like a C scene suburban ruined by what came after him?
01:15:33 --> 01:15:37 [SPEAKER_01]: Or was it pretty obvious he was not a Christian and we somehow missed it?
01:15:37 --> 01:15:46 [SPEAKER_01]: we will read your opinion, the general audience opinion at a later episode so that you can have your say too because we don't think we have all the answers.
01:15:46 --> 01:15:54 [SPEAKER_01]: God is the only one who knows their hearts, but to the best of our ability as a group here, we're gonna try to get to the answer of whether or not these guys are Christian or not.
01:15:55 --> 01:16:14 [SPEAKER_00]: Absolutely and if anything something we can learn from from John Rockefeller here is that you know give away some of your money Yeah, or give away as much as you can like you said make as much money as you can give away as much as you can I think those are good words to live by and I think that will actually Help combat the feeling of greed so
01:16:15 --> 01:16:15 [SPEAKER_01]: and work hard too.
01:16:16 --> 01:16:19 [SPEAKER_01]: Like, you know, he clearly, like, you cannot say he got it handed to him.
01:16:19 --> 01:16:21 [SPEAKER_01]: He worked hard.
01:16:21 --> 01:16:26 [SPEAKER_01]: And I think that we need more stories of people working hard in the knocking on those doors for six weeks straight.
01:16:26 --> 01:16:32 [SPEAKER_01]: I think it's healthy for us to hear that because it reminds us that like life is not always easy and that's kind of okay actually.
01:16:32 --> 01:16:36 [SPEAKER_00]: So I really enjoyed reading up on a story and I hope you enjoyed listening to it.
01:16:36 --> 01:16:38 [SPEAKER_01]: We will see you next time on Christian or not.