#59 Howard Hughes: The Definitive Biography of the First American Billionaire

**David Senra** (0:00)
I want to tell you about a one-time only limited event that I don't think you're going to want to miss. I am doing a live show with Patrick O'Shaughnessy from the Invest Like the Best podcast in New York City on October 19th. Patrick has interviewed over 300 of the world's best investors and founders for his podcast. I've read over 300 biographies of history's greatest entrepreneurs for my podcast. We'll be talking about what we learned from seven years of podcasting, sharing our favorite ideas and stories and doing a live Q&A. There will also be special event-only swag. If you live in New York City, I think it's a no-brainer. But if not, I think it's a great excuse to fly in. I've already heard from a bunch of people that bought tickets, they're flying in from other cities. Some people are flying in from other countries. That's setting the bar really high, so I will have at least four shots of espresso or four energy drinks before or during the show so we can make it a night that you'll never forget. If you're interested in attending this unique live event, I will leave a link down below. I highly recommend you get your tickets today and I hope I get to see you in New York on October 19th. He was a film director, a producer, a test pilot, inventor, investor and entrepreneur. And for most of his life, he was considered to be the richest man in America. At a time when being a millionaire was rare, Hughes had several billion dollars. That alone would have made him intriguing, but Hughes' allure was about far more than money.
To unravel his story required the help of hundreds of journalists, lawyers, doctors, investigators, archivists, librarians, acquaintances and lovers, each contributing pieces of the grand puzzle of Hughes. In addition to interviews, court transcripts, and depositions, Hughes' own original papers were examined. While he never kept a private diary as such, he wrote over 8,000 pages of memos, notes, letters, and instructions that chronicled his loves, hates, fears, and frustrations. Recently declassified FBI and CIA files were also analyzed. 2,500 pages of detailed surveillance reports. Likewise, over 100,000 pages of sealed legal briefs, corporate records, and inventories were uncovered and read in an effort to gain entrance into the mind and life of this ultimate outsider.
The result of years of research, this book tears away the facade that Hughes worked his entire life to create and reveals a man so complex that during his life he remained an illusion, even to the few who knew him best.
It is a story that only he could tell of a life so extraordinary that it can be found recounted nowhere else.
Okay, so that is from the introduction of the book that I want to talk to you about today, which is Hughes, The Private Diaries, Memos and Letters, The Definitive Biography of the First American Billionaire.
And before I jump into the book, I just want to recount, so I was doing some extra research, and I came across this article that was published in the Washington Post in 1977, a few years after Hughes died.
And let me just read an excerpt to you. So it says, As the amazing Howard Hughes, which can be seen in two episodes on Channel Nine Tonight and Thursday night from nine to 11, is both satisfying and unsatisfying. Based on the book, Howard, the Amazing Hughes, by his longtime associate Noah Dietrich, Noah Dietrich's a very important person in this story, so please remember his name, in collaboration with all these other people that aren't important, so I'm skipping over that, the television adaptation of the book satisfies in that the subject is Howard Hughes, but, and this is the part that really stuck out to me when I was reading this article, but the dissatisfaction arises since most of us have read or heard too much about Howard Hughes, yet with all that we have read or heard, we have the vague feeling that we don't really know all there is to know about this man. So the reason I wanted to start here, in particular, is that last paragraph talking about the dissatisfaction about hearing a lot and being exposed to a lot of stories about him, but then at the end of all these stories, feeling that you don't really know him, that's exactly how I feel going into this podcast. So sometime I think last year, maybe the year before, I attempted to do a Founders episode on this book I read, which is called Howard Hughes, His Life in Madness. And I found it so frustrating that I read the entire book and it's massive. It's I think like a 20 hour read, 700 pages, 655 pages, something like that, I actually have in front of me, that I just refused to do a podcast on it because I was so frustrated by this guy. So I decided to give it another shot because if you really think about what we're doing here, well first of all, if this is your first time listening to Founders, welcome. My name is David. The concept of this podcast is extremely straightforward. Every week I read a biography or an autobiography or a book about somebody that's built a company and I just try to understand the person behind it, pull out ideas that we can use in our own lives.