The 38 Letters from J.D. Rockefeller to His Son

I’ll admit, I approached this expecting the usual ‘work hard, pray harder’ platitudes from America’s original oil baron. Instead, I got a masterclass in cognitive dissonance—and I mean that as a compliment. Rockefeller’s letters are *alive* with tension: he’s the man who built Standard Oil by crushing competitors, yet he lectures his son on the virtues of ‘quiet influence.’ Rick Font’s performance sells this duality brilliantly. His voice has that old-money gravitas, but he lets Rockefeller’s occasional pettiness (like his obsession with his son’s handwriting) seep through, making the man feel human, not mythic. The production is clean, but not sterile—Font’s pacing gives weight to Rockefeller’s more philosophical passages (his thoughts on legacy are eerily prescient) while keeping the shorter, scolding letters sharp. My only gripe? The lack of historical context between letters. First-time listeners might miss the subtext of Rockefeller’s references to business rivals or family dramas. And while Font’s delivery is mostly flawless, his cadence occasionally flattens during the more preachy sections, making them feel like a 19th-century TED Talk. Still, these are minor quibbles. The real revelation here is Rockefeller himself: a man who weaponized thrift, justified ruthlessness as ‘stewardship,’ and whose letters read like a playbook for power—one that’s as relevant to Silicon Valley as it was to the Gilded Age.