Speaker 1: Every day A way up the breakfast Clubs.
Speaker 2: Y'all done morning.
Speaker 3: Everybody is DJ Envy just hilarious. Charlamagne the guy we
Speaker 3: are to breakfast Club Lawn. The Rolls is here as well.
Speaker 3: We got a special guest in.
Speaker 2: The building, one of my favorite authors ever. It's a
Speaker 2: new book.
Speaker 3: Wisdom Takes work, Learn, Apply, repeat, Ladies and gentlemen, Ryan Holiday.
Speaker 4: Welcome back, Thanks for having me.
Speaker 3: How are you feeling this morning?
Speaker 4: Doing awesome?
Speaker 1: The book is this number one, sixteen.
Speaker 4: Fifth or six time he's been up here. Very good
Speaker 4: to me.
Speaker 2: Yeah, now we like having you. Man.
Speaker 1: The Wisdom takes work, Learn, apply, repleate, repeat, And in
Speaker 1: the book you argue that wisdom is the virtue on
Speaker 1: which all other virtues depend.
Speaker 2: How did you arrive at that belief?
Speaker 5: So the four virtues of Stoke Foster try to write
Speaker 5: about our courage.
Speaker 4: Discipline, justice, and wisdom.
Speaker 5: They're all separate, but they're related in that, you know,
Speaker 5: wisdom tells us when and how to apply the others.
Speaker 5: I think if you doesn't matter you know how good
Speaker 5: your heart is, if you don't have the wisdom the
Speaker 5: intelligence to know how to bring it into the world,
Speaker 5: or you know courage is important, but you could be
Speaker 5: courageous for something real dumb. So wisdom is the sort
Speaker 5: of layer on top that we have to apply to
Speaker 5: all other skills and assets.
Speaker 1: Well, it's one thing to do to research with their
Speaker 1: specific moment in your life that made you realize it.
Speaker 4: That wisdom was important.
Speaker 5: Yeah, well, you know, I think we've all met some
Speaker 5: smart people that do dumb things. And I think we've
Speaker 5: all done dumb things. And you look at you look
Speaker 5: at wisdom as being the sort of the key to
Speaker 5: not just a successful life, but a good life. Right
Speaker 5: you can you can be really good at what you
Speaker 5: do and then you can blow it all up, or
Speaker 5: you can be profoundly unhappy, or you know how many
Speaker 5: smart people are lacking in self awareness. So I just
Speaker 5: think wisdom is this sort of that brings it all together.
Speaker 5: And I think I think one of the problems is
Speaker 5: that we assume wisdom is this thing that just happens,
Speaker 5: right we go. Sure, school is important, but you know,
Speaker 5: experience is important. You know wisdom comes with age, not
Speaker 5: It's no guarantee. I've met a lot of dumb old
Speaker 5: people too.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, I was always talking small people learn from the
Speaker 1: ol mistakes. Wise people learn from mistakes of others. I
Speaker 1: completely agree that wisdom is a lost art. I think
Speaker 1: you have a lot of smart people. I don't think
Speaker 1: you have a lot of wise people nowadays.
Speaker 5: Yeah yeah, and I mean you need this not just
Speaker 5: to be successful, as I was saying, but like, how
Speaker 5: do you not fall for demagogues? Or how do you
Speaker 5: not fall for scams? How do you rise above the noise?
Speaker 5: How do you separate fact from fiction?
Speaker 4: Wisdom?
Speaker 5: I think is you know that there's this word discernment, right,
Speaker 5: the art of discernment, like how many people can really
Speaker 5: see the difference between good and really good, you know,
Speaker 5: right and almost right truths and complete nonsense?
Speaker 4: That to me is the missing skin of our time.
Speaker 2: We do so pack it up. We're not doing Yes,
Speaker 2: we are, no.
Speaker 6: I think I think everybody eventually has something in their
Speaker 6: life that wakes them up to that, whether it's at
Speaker 6: a different like might be young, might be older. But
Speaker 6: you always taught you always thought that like wisdom comes
Speaker 6: with age. Yes that saying so you probably hate that
Speaker 6: saying huh yeah.
Speaker 5: Churchill was joking about this guy he didn't like, and
Speaker 5: he said, uh that although he occasionally stumbled over the truth,
Speaker 5: he quickly picked himself up and carried on as if
Speaker 5: nothing had happened. Right, So people are I think life
Speaker 5: is always teaching you, right, but you don't have to
Speaker 5: hear it, and so life will sometimes whisper life.
Speaker 4: Life will tell you.
Speaker 5: Nicely things that you need to know, and then when
Speaker 5: we ignore that, it becomes louder and louder and louder,
Speaker 5: until sometimes you know, you have to learn from some
Speaker 5: kind of catastrophic failure or catastrophe, and so you know
Speaker 5: your point that that we can learn from the experiences
Speaker 5: of others, that's a cheap, effective, efficient way to do it,
Speaker 5: and then a lot of us go, no, no, I'd
Speaker 5: rather figure it out on my own, and that that
Speaker 5: costs not just them, but the people around them, like
Speaker 5: the when we're late to learning lessons, that doesn't just
Speaker 5: affect us, but that affects the people that work for us,
Speaker 5: that affects our family, that affects the people who you
Speaker 5: know bear the consequences of that, you know, painful lesson
Speaker 5: that we chose to learn the hard way.
Speaker 3: I think wisdom has to come from age, though sure, regardless,
Speaker 3: I mean, regardless of what the part you could meet
Speaker 3: a stupid old person, but there is some wisdom that
Speaker 3: comes from what they're doing, whether if they work at
Speaker 3: a plant, whether they whatever they do at the house,
Speaker 3: there is some type of wisdom that they can continue
Speaker 3: on to give to somebody else.
Speaker 5: Well, you know, the root of the word idiot is
Speaker 5: somebody in ancient Greece who did not participate in public life.
Speaker 5: So you know, you can read everything you want, and
Speaker 5: you can read a lot, and that'll make you smarter
Speaker 5: than the average person. But if you're not engaged and involved,
Speaker 5: you're going to miss some things that you can only
Speaker 5: learn from experience. You know, Da Vinci would sign his
Speaker 5: letters a disciple of experience.
Speaker 4: You have to learn by doing. You have to put
Speaker 4: yourself out there.
Speaker 5: And that's why I say it's learn, apply, repeat, So
Speaker 5: you learn the things you hear, the lessons you study,
Speaker 5: you go to school, then you got to go out
Speaker 5: in the world and you find that a lot of
Speaker 5: what you learn now has to be applied, or a
Speaker 5: lot of what you learned you didn't actually understand it.
Speaker 5: And then you repeat that cycle over and over and
Speaker 5: over again each time that that's a positive feedback loop
Speaker 5: that's making you smarter and better.
Speaker 3: And they talk about educational a lot of people. I'm
Speaker 3: seeing this a lot more, more and more and more,
Speaker 3: that people are not necessarily wanting to go to college. Sure,
Speaker 3: they feel like the education that they get in college,
Speaker 3: they can be taught more through life experiences, and they
Speaker 3: feel like the wisdom that those professors have might be
Speaker 3: outdated what they're teaching. What's your thoughts on them?
Speaker 5: Well, look, I'm a proud college dropout, so I'm all
Speaker 5: about it. There is and always has been a difference
Speaker 5: between school and education. So I think the problem is
Speaker 5: if you don't know what you're trying to do, how
Speaker 5: do you know what the best form of schooling or
Speaker 5: education is for you?
Speaker 3: I said that all the time. By the way, I
Speaker 3: think it's stupid that we force kids to get out
Speaker 3: of high school and say, go to college and pick
Speaker 3: a major immediately when they don't necessarily know what they
Speaker 3: want to do. If you know what you want to do,
Speaker 3: that's great. But there's been times where kids would like,
Speaker 3: I don't know, Like, don't make me pick a major
Speaker 3: and make me take these courses if I don't necessarily
Speaker 3: know what I want to do in life.
Speaker 1: And that's the way I woulday when we live in
Speaker 1: a world where we're kind of preparing for a future
Speaker 1: that won't even exist for the AI going to be
Speaker 1: having all the jobs anyway.
Speaker 5: Well, look, spending a couple hundred thousand dollars over four
Speaker 5: years is an expensive way to figure out what you
Speaker 5: want to do, absolutely, especially if at the end of
Speaker 5: it you find out that what you want to do
Speaker 5: is something that didn't require college. For me, I met
Speaker 5: Robert Green, our mutual friend, and then I realized that's
Speaker 5: what I wanted to do. And then I said, well,
Speaker 5: am I going to keep going to college or am
Speaker 5: I going to go directly learn from the person who's
Speaker 5: done it. So I'm a big believer in apprenticeships and mentorships.
Speaker 5: You got to find your teachers. Sometimes those are college professors,
Speaker 5: sometimes their business executives, sometimes their you know, your neighbor
Speaker 5: down the street. But you got to find who can
Speaker 5: teach you how to do what you want to do.
Speaker 1: And when When you started off as an apprentice with
Speaker 1: Robert Green, one of the first things he puts you
Speaker 1: on with forty power.
Speaker 5: No, I've worked on the fiftieth law fiftie Like the
Speaker 5: first thing I did was transcribe before in a world
Speaker 5: before AI. I transcribed hours and hours of interviews between
Speaker 5: him and fifty and so that was part of my
Speaker 5: education is just listening, not just listening to it, but
Speaker 5: having to painstakingly type it all out. And so I
Speaker 5: got this masterclass and not just you know how he worked,
Speaker 5: but all the people around him. And but what I
Speaker 5: was actually learning was like how you put a book together.
Speaker 5: And Robert showed me how to research a book and
Speaker 5: how to write, and then how to operate in the industry.
Speaker 5: You want to find the people who are further ahead
Speaker 5: in what you want to do and do it. Although
Speaker 5: to be fair, like in college, I think one of
Speaker 5: the most professors are professionals in what they do.
Speaker 4: They're not just.
Speaker 5: Teachers, they're researchers, They're experts there. You know, they had
Speaker 5: a previous experience where they did the thing. And you
Speaker 5: know every week they have office hours where they have
Speaker 5: to sit there and meet with the students and nobody comes.
Speaker 4: So I thought.
Speaker 5: The crazy thing for me is like I didn't go
Speaker 5: into the library at my college until after I dropped
Speaker 5: out and I was writing my first book because I
Speaker 5: was like, oh wait, this is an incredible free resource
Speaker 5: that I was too busy, you know, doing the college
Speaker 5: kid thing to take advantage of. So all this stuff
Speaker 5: is there, it's just you got to be self directed
Speaker 5: and self motivated.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: In a Wisdom Takes Work you write that we live
Speaker 1: in an age where reaction and idle chatter are rewarded
Speaker 1: in restraint and thoughtfulness are unfashionable.
Speaker 2: And you talk to these digital decays about what you
Speaker 2: mean that?
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean, look, social media is by definition talking
Speaker 5: and not listening. Zeno, the founder of stoicism, he said,
Speaker 5: we have two ears and one mouth for a reason,
Speaker 5: and when you're talking, what you're mostly doing is not listening.
Speaker 5: So we have this enormous sort of media culture that's
Speaker 5: about chatter and noise and it's not about thoughts and reflection.
Speaker 5: And I mean, even how much of what we listen
Speaker 5: to and talk about is what's happening right now, not
Speaker 5: the historical context or the bigger picture. And I think
Speaker 5: it's not that there's anything wrong with news or podcasts
Speaker 5: or social media, but if you don't have like the
Speaker 5: historical basis, the larger context, you're not going to know
Speaker 5: what any of it means. You know, Truman's famous line was,
Speaker 5: there's nothing new in the world, but the history you
Speaker 5: don't know. And so most of what's happening now has
Speaker 5: happened before. But if it's the first time you're hearing
Speaker 5: about it, you're experiencing, you're going to have the wrong
Speaker 5: read on it, because you think it's like, somehow unprecedented,
Speaker 5: But in fact it's very precedented.
Speaker 1: Somebody is unprecedented. Though a lot of what we're seeing
Speaker 1: right now you think so, at least in America. I
Speaker 1: guess you mean, I guess if you can rely on
Speaker 1: historical context, that's.
Speaker 4: What I mean.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean this archetype you want to look at
Speaker 5: a Donald Trump. Donald Trump exists in half a dozen
Speaker 5: Shakespearean plays. He exists in Greek tragedies. There are historical
Speaker 5: precedent after historical precedent for guys like that.
Speaker 4: I mean.
Speaker 5: One of the interesting lines in Marx Sirelis's Meditations, he
Speaker 5: says that he thanks his philosophy teacher for teaching him
Speaker 5: not to fall for every smooth talker. So like the
Speaker 5: idea of the demagogue, the idea of the strong man,
Speaker 5: the idea of the con man is as old a
Speaker 5: thing as there has ever been. And part of the
Speaker 5: reason I think people have trouble spotting it or seeing
Speaker 5: it for what it is is that they don't know
Speaker 5: that this has happened again and again and again, and
Speaker 5: therefore they don't know how badly this ends.
Speaker 2: Is he a smooth talker. I wouldn't consider him a
Speaker 2: smooth time.
Speaker 5: I mean he's not smooth in the sense that you know,
Speaker 5: he's particularly good at it, like he's this soaring order.
Speaker 5: But he's really good at telling aggrieved people what they
Speaker 5: want to hear. And that's what demagogues have always done
Speaker 5: and always do. They They point to the other and
Speaker 5: they say, your problems are not.
Speaker 4: Your fault, they're these people's fault.
Speaker 5: And I'm going to be your weapon of vengeance against them.
Speaker 5: That's as old as you know political strong men have
Speaker 5: ever been.
Speaker 3: What's the second brain?
Speaker 5: Second brain? So and I learned this from Robert Green
Speaker 5: The the the writer is like you have to be
Speaker 5: recording and synthesizing the knowledge that you get. So it's
Speaker 5: not enough to have a mentor it's not enough to
Speaker 5: read books, it's not enough to watch listen to podcasts
Speaker 5: or watch documentaries. How are you collecting and organizing this information. So, like,
Speaker 5: I'm reading book right now and I'm I'm taking notes.
Speaker 5: I'm taking notes. It's a big one. This is uh
Speaker 5: Joe la Poor History of the United States all.
Speaker 4: It's a great book. And I'm gonna record this stuff.
Speaker 5: I'm gonna read it, I'm gonna take my time with it,
Speaker 5: and then I'm gonna break this down into note cards,
Speaker 5: which I organize, and then that's what I use in
Speaker 5: my writing, in my videos and my talks. So I think,
Speaker 5: if you're not keeping a journal, if you're not recording
Speaker 5: the information that you're consuming or learning, where's it going.
Speaker 5: It's just going in a black hole somewhere. So that's
Speaker 5: what they call the second brain.
Speaker 1: What's an information diet?
Speaker 5: Oh well, what do you just like they say, garbage in,
Speaker 5: garbage out right, But what are you eating?
Speaker 4: What are you consuming?
Speaker 5: We understand that what we eat affects our health, affects
Speaker 5: our mood, affects, you know, our happiness, and yet people
Speaker 5: just consume straight garbage in directly in their ears, directly
Speaker 5: in their eyes all day And I think, you know,
Speaker 5: you definitely see this on the right. This just sort
Speaker 5: of depraved garbage information diet of like the worst slop
Speaker 5: and nonsense, whether it's coming from podcasts or Twitter where
Speaker 5: like like, if you're not protecting what's going in your brain,
Speaker 5: you're going to destroy your brain. And I think we
Speaker 5: see this happening, like no one should watch as much
Speaker 5: cable news or spend as much time on social media
Speaker 5: as Donald Trump does, and so you're watching it degrede.
Speaker 5: I think the most telling example of this is like,
Speaker 5: at one point in his life, Elon Musk was reading
Speaker 5: Soviet rocket manuals to figure out physics and space and
Speaker 5: the aeronautics industry. And now he just spends all his
Speaker 5: time on Twitter, you know, mainlining memes, and he's insane. Right,
Speaker 5: he broke his brain. And that's that's why your information die.
Speaker 4: It matters. It's not just the quality, but it's also.
Speaker 5: Like if you consume too much, your brain will break.
Speaker 5: You got to have some some discipline and boundaries too.
Speaker 6: But if it's like that's if it's habitual, right, like,
Speaker 6: how do you why do you manage the diet after
Speaker 6: you already broke here brain.
Speaker 5: I remember growing up as a kid and my friend's
Speaker 5: parents watched so much Fox News it was literally burned
Speaker 5: in the corner of the TV, and that's.
Speaker 4: Not healthy, Like this is not healthy.
Speaker 5: So you gotta say, hey, this is when I get
Speaker 5: my news, this when I get my information, This is
Speaker 5: who I trust to give me my information. And I
Speaker 5: think people consume way too much real time information and
Speaker 5: don't go back far enough. I think books are better.
Speaker 5: I think conversations with real human beings are better. You're
Speaker 5: just you're there's this recency bias, and so much of
Speaker 5: what's happening right now is ephemeral and trivial and or developing,
Speaker 5: you know what I mean, Like you shouldn't be watching
Speaker 5: the news as it's happening unless you are a hedge
Speaker 5: fund trader or.
Speaker 4: You hold elected office, like wait for.
Speaker 5: Them to figure it out, then check in and get
Speaker 5: that information and check it against your larger historical sense
Speaker 5: of what things being and how the world works.
Speaker 6: It just always feels like things are moving so fast sometimes,
Speaker 6: And for a person like me, when you talk about
Speaker 6: like how you download information, if I'm watching the news
Speaker 6: when things are happening, I retain it way better than
Speaker 6: if I have to go back and like sit with
Speaker 6: it sometimes because I feel like it's a lived experience.
Speaker 6: You think, so that I mean that is just kind
Speaker 6: of what I've been experiencing and working in news. Like
Speaker 6: I literally remember January sixth when they went into the
Speaker 6: Capitol because CNN was on and I watched it. So
Speaker 6: when I was able to talk about it, I watched it,
Speaker 6: like I mean, I talked about it from me watching
Speaker 6: in real time, yeah, versus when I go back and
Speaker 6: read things. It's I don't know, it's just different.
Speaker 4: No, I get that.
Speaker 5: I think sports is a great example. It's like you
Speaker 5: could watch Stephen A. Smith all week, that's not going
Speaker 5: to change what's going to happen on Sunday. Like what's
Speaker 5: going to happen on Sunday is what's going to happen
Speaker 5: on Sunday, And so we sometimes conflate like speculating about
Speaker 5: what's going to happen, debating about what happened. You know,
Speaker 5: you know, rumors are this is what's happening, and that's
Speaker 5: not the actual like nut of it. And I think
Speaker 5: we consume all this sort of stuff and commentary around
Speaker 5: it and not like the main thing.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I could see that.
Speaker 1: Can wisdom protect you from being influenced because I do
Speaker 1: agree with you with the information diet, but they're like
Speaker 1: I can look at a whole bunch of stuff throughout
Speaker 1: the week and not be influenced by it. Sure, I
Speaker 1: think it's the influence of it that I think is
Speaker 1: worse than just consuming it.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and look, I think part of this comes down
Speaker 5: to media literacy, technological literacy. I mean, like, look, something
Speaker 5: like twenty percent of Americans think that chocolate milk comes
Speaker 5: from brown cows. Like, no, if that's where your starting
Speaker 5: point is, you're gonna have trouble, Like when you are
Speaker 5: reading a complicated news story telling you why something happened
Speaker 5: or what it means. So, yeah, you have to have
Speaker 5: a certain amount of intelligence and savvy to be able
Speaker 5: to separate, you know what. And I do think that's
Speaker 5: why it's such a battle for attention, is that you know,
Speaker 5: some people are up for grabs and some people aren't.
Speaker 5: And I think you want to be one of the
Speaker 5: people that's not up for grabs because you you sort
Speaker 5: of know what's what. To me, that's like a good
Speaker 5: working definition of wisdom, Like I know what's what. I
Speaker 5: know what humans are, I know how humanity works, I
Speaker 5: know history, I know I know enough about the world
Speaker 5: that that I can it. Look, we can all be
Speaker 5: made fools and suckers, but the bigger basis, you know,
Speaker 5: protects you against you know, the day to day barrage
Speaker 5: for sure.
Speaker 1: I really know people that think chocolate milk come from
Speaker 1: a black.
Speaker 5: House brown that is that is a that is a
Speaker 5: statistical fact.
Speaker 4: It is nuts.
Speaker 2: That is like, remember right, that's crazy.
Speaker 4: It is crazy. But but you you realize.
Speaker 5: That not everyone's working with the same toolkit. Yeah, and
Speaker 5: and that that that makes it hard to go through life.
Speaker 3: How do you attack what book you're going to write about? Like,
Speaker 3: you know this was about wisdom takes work? How do
Speaker 3: you know? You know I'm going to go this way
Speaker 3: on this book and next next time it's about this one.
Speaker 3: So how did you pick this book? And what stood
Speaker 3: out about this that made you want to write about
Speaker 3: wisdom taking work?
Speaker 7: It should be zero percent who's drinking milk either, But
Speaker 7: look it's a I've been doing the series I did.
Speaker 5: Courage, discipline, justice, and wisdom. Those are the four virtues.
Speaker 5: So I knew that was the the arc. That's that's
Speaker 5: what stoicism is based on. Correct, But I wanted to
Speaker 5: save wisdom for last because it strikes me as the
Speaker 5: hardest and it strikes me as the thing in exactly
Speaker 5: what we're talking about this world not just of lots
Speaker 5: of noise and information, but also AI, like the most essential.
Speaker 5: I think that's the interesting thing about AI is people
Speaker 5: are acting like it's going to be this magical thing
Speaker 5: that solves every problem or.
Speaker 4: Can teach you anything.
Speaker 5: But in fact, what you need not just to be
Speaker 5: able to take advantage of AI because it requires you
Speaker 5: to prompt it, which means you have to be able
Speaker 5: to ask it smart questions, but like if you're not,
Speaker 5: if you don't have some sense of wisdom, some sense
Speaker 5: of knowledge, you're going to be vulnerable to a thing
Speaker 5: that that, by the way, hallucinates the significant percentage of
Speaker 5: the time, that's wrong all the time. So you're gonna
Speaker 5: like this idea of needing wisdom, needing a good bullshit
Speaker 5: filter is like more important than ever because it's going
Speaker 5: to eat you alive if you don't have uh, if
Speaker 5: you don't have a sense of reality.
Speaker 2: People don't I agree.
Speaker 1: Oh, another claim you make in the book, you say,
Speaker 1: cultivating wisdom requires mental struggle, and there's no shortcut for that.
Speaker 1: So what does mental struggle look like from a from
Speaker 1: a practical sense.
Speaker 5: Well, look like books are basically free, you know, you
Speaker 5: can get from the library. The amount of wisdom in
Speaker 5: a book is incredibly cheap.
Speaker 4: But it still takes work. You got to wrestle with
Speaker 4: the book.
Speaker 5: You gotta read it, you got to put the time in,
Speaker 5: you know. I think it's not just the struggle to
Speaker 5: you know, make the time to do the work, to read,
Speaker 5: to go to class, whatever. But then it's also wrestling
Speaker 5: with big questions like if you think life is black
Speaker 5: and white, if you think it's easy, if you think
Speaker 5: everyone is trying to tell you the truth all the time,
Speaker 5: I think, again, you're going to find yourself pretty vulnerable.
Speaker 5: So it it It is struggle. It's a it's a battle.
Speaker 5: It's a battle against ignorance, it's a battle against misinformation.
Speaker 5: It's a it's a battle against your your own biases.
Speaker 5: I think one of the things the Stoics remind us
Speaker 5: is that, like, your mind is not always your friend.
Speaker 5: We all have prejudices, we all have biases, we all
Speaker 5: have mental shortcuts that we do that that prevent ego
Speaker 5: being another one that gets in the way of us
Speaker 5: learning and.
Speaker 4: Seeing what we need to see.
Speaker 5: So you've got to struggle against yourself too.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, And I like the subtitle to learn, apply, repeat, Yeah,
Speaker 1: like you're saying that it has to be a cycle,
Speaker 1: not a one time of it.
Speaker 5: Yeah, Like you become a student when you're young, but
Speaker 5: that's all sort of forced upon us. But to me,
Speaker 5: the essential question is how long do you stay a student.
Speaker 5: There's a story about Marksreli. Philosopher King is the wisest
Speaker 5: man in Rome, the most powerful man in Rome, and
Speaker 5: he's seen leaving the palace and a friend stops him
Speaker 5: and he says, you know, sir, where are you going?
Speaker 5: And he says, I'm off to see sex. This the
Speaker 5: philosopher to learn that which I do not yet know
Speaker 5: the man.
Speaker 4: This is amazing.
Speaker 5: Here we have the philosopher King still taking up his
Speaker 5: tablets and going to school. But that's why he was
Speaker 5: a philosopher King. And I like that he was going
Speaker 5: to the teacher instead of sending the teacher to So
Speaker 5: there is something about staying hungry but also staying humble, Like,
Speaker 5: you know, if you're a know it all, you're right,
Speaker 5: because if you're a know at all, you know all
Speaker 5: that it is possible for you to know. But if
Speaker 5: you focus on what you don't know. If you focus
Speaker 5: on how much there is left to know, then you're
Speaker 5: always going to get better and that, you know, think
Speaker 5: about what the Socratic method is to asking questions. States
Speaker 5: doesn't go around Athens, you know, lecturing people. He goes
Speaker 5: around asking them questions, trying to find things out. And
Speaker 5: so this this decision to become a student is part one,
Speaker 5: but part two is staying a student and remaining a
Speaker 5: student all.
Speaker 4: Of your life.
Speaker 6: I was my ex with your books. It seems like
Speaker 6: your target or your goal is to allow people to
Speaker 6: think freely but like have an educated like base that
Speaker 6: they're pulling from. Yeah, how hard does it be coming
Speaker 6: for you to go around teaching all of this in
Speaker 6: this like time with this administration. I saw the thing
Speaker 6: that happened with you at the Naval base and canceling
Speaker 6: your lecture that you do.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 5: I've been doing a series of lectures at the Naval
Speaker 5: Academy on the Cardinal virtues for the last four years,
Speaker 5: and the last one was cancel. I was supposed to
Speaker 5: lecture about wisdom and I was going to talk about
Speaker 5: Admiral James Stockdale was a famous graduate with there who
Speaker 5: famously took a course on Marxism at Stanford before he
Speaker 5: was shot down in Vietnam and sent to a Marxist prison.
Speaker 5: And the idea is, like, you want to learn from
Speaker 5: the enemy, you want to understand what they think, or
Speaker 5: else you're vulnerable to brainwashing and propaganda. Actually, Seneca, the
Speaker 5: stoke fluster, said this. He said, we want to study
Speaker 5: like a spy in the enemy's camp. So I was
Speaker 5: supposed to give this lecture, and like a couple weeks
Speaker 5: before I went, they started removing books from the library
Speaker 5: at orders of the Secretary of Defense and the president
Speaker 5: because they were too woke or pro DEI and I
Speaker 5: own a bookstore. I can't get up there and give
Speaker 5: a lecture about wisdom as they're literally removing books.
Speaker 4: From a library.
Speaker 5: So I was going to mention it, and they found
Speaker 5: out and they said, look, if you got to remove
Speaker 5: those slides and you can't come talk here. Hey, And
Speaker 5: this is one of the universities in this country. These
Speaker 5: are people who someday are going to be piloting fighter
Speaker 5: jets or aircraft carriers or nuclear submarines like these are
Speaker 5: these cannot be sensitive little snowflakes, or we're in big trouble.
Speaker 5: These are people who are gonna not just have to
Speaker 5: make highly complex technical decisions, but profoundly ethical and moral questions.
Speaker 5: And yet here we are protecting them, not just from
Speaker 5: from from you know, protect potentially political books. But Maya
Speaker 5: Angelou's Memoirs was one of the books that they that
Speaker 5: they removed, probably because no one in excess office has
Speaker 5: read it, knows anything about it.
Speaker 4: He probably chat GPT told.
Speaker 5: Him it was a woke book, so we wanted to
Speaker 5: remove it. So I felt I couldn't do that. And that's,
Speaker 5: by the way, where all the virtues are interrelated, because
Speaker 5: it's not just knowing that that book banning is stupid
Speaker 5: and reckless and dangerous. But then I have to decide,
Speaker 5: you know, do I want to preserve my access or
Speaker 5: do I want to say what I think is true?
Speaker 5: And also do you want to you know, actuary defense
Speaker 5: to be mad at you. That's where courage comes in.
Speaker 5: But then also justice, like, hey, it's the right thing,
Speaker 5: so you do the right thing. But yeah, we are
Speaker 5: we are in a dangerous moment. Do you know the
Speaker 5: word cacistocracy? So like oligarchy, democracy, right, different types of
Speaker 5: governmental systems. Cacistocracy is government by the stupidest and that's
Speaker 5: what we are facing in this moment, people who are
Speaker 5: who are not just not smart, but actively afraid of
Speaker 5: and angry at and resentful of people who have competence
Speaker 5: and knowledge because they're fundamentally threatened by it.
Speaker 2: So we have to replace the term idiocracy.
Speaker 4: Then, Yeah, I mean idiocracy.
Speaker 5: It's a similar way to say the same thing. Okay,
Speaker 5: but I mean I don't think the American people are
Speaker 5: that stupid. I think we are in a moment where
Speaker 5: we have elected a number of officials who are actively stupid
Speaker 5: and deliberately ignorant. And uh, what you said is interesting.
Speaker 1: You said they're resentful of people who are smart, And
Speaker 1: to me, I'm like, I don't think they don't.
Speaker 2: I don't think they believe anybody's actually smarter than them.
Speaker 5: There's a hilarious list of all the people that Trump
Speaker 5: has said he is smarter than and it's like basically
Speaker 5: everyone that's ever existed.
Speaker 2: What I'm saying, Yeah, but it's this idea that.
Speaker 5: Like, my feelings are more true or stronger than your expertise.
Speaker 5: So it's this antipathy towards expertise, credentialism, and look like
Speaker 5: the experts are wrong all the time. I'm not saying
Speaker 5: they're flawless, but but like, you don't want to be
Speaker 5: driving the smartest, most qualified, most experienced people out of
Speaker 5: the armed forces, out of the government, out of business.
Speaker 5: And that's the sort of bent that we're on. It's
Speaker 5: going to end very very badly.
Speaker 1: Oh listen, I want to ask you about that distant
Speaker 1: if do you think the political climate made him feel
Speaker 1: that way? Because for the last ten years, all the
Speaker 1: political pundits in the scrap they've just been wrong.
Speaker 5: They have been wrong like and that that. So it's like,
Speaker 5: do you know this idea of negative capability? Negative capability
Speaker 5: is the idea? Can you can you hold two opposing
Speaker 5: ideas in your head? So, on the one hand, the
Speaker 5: experts are wrong a lot. On the other hand, expertise
Speaker 5: is still really important. So you can't throw the baby
Speaker 5: out with the bath art. So you got to go, hey,
Speaker 5: why were the experts wrong about this that or the other?
Speaker 5: What what biases or tendencies do they have that you
Speaker 5: got to protect against? And at the same time, you
Speaker 5: got to elect qualified people. You don't go, hey, that
Speaker 5: guy talks about the military on Fox News on the weekends.
Speaker 4: Let's put him in.
Speaker 5: Charge of the most powerful military in the world. I mean,
Speaker 5: he's not even qualified to be the spokesperson for the Pentagon,
Speaker 5: let alone running the Pentagon. And so, uh, you gotta
Speaker 5: you gotta, you gotta go. Hey, here's what I believe,
Speaker 5: Here's what I think is important, and then still respect,
Speaker 5: you know, wisdom, intelligence, credentials, experience.
Speaker 1: I want to ask you, what role is listening more
Speaker 1: than talking play when you're in like a culturally diverse setting,
Speaker 1: or when you're sitting with somebody with a different ideology
Speaker 1: and you're listening to them. Yeah, but at some point
Speaker 1: you might be like, what else wrong with some bullshit?
Speaker 2: You just keep listening to you in a jagular.
Speaker 5: But that that idea of negative capability is like realizing,
Speaker 5: for instance, I have to think about this with my kids.
Speaker 5: My kids are never wrong about their feelings because they're
Speaker 5: their feelings. Now I might feel differently, it might not change. Hey,
Speaker 5: you got to go to school, you got to do.
Speaker 4: X, Y or Z.
Speaker 5: But like your opinion is your opinion. And so I
Speaker 5: think what strong people are able to do, resilient people
Speaker 5: are able to do, wise people are able to do
Speaker 5: is understand that people feel differently about different things, have
Speaker 5: different opinions about different things, and to be interested and
Speaker 5: curious about that without necessarily changing your mind all the time.
Speaker 5: So that I think diversity is strength in the sense
Speaker 5: that you want to bring as many different opinions and
Speaker 5: viewpoints and worldviews into the equation. But at the end
Speaker 5: of the day, you do have to decide what you think,
Speaker 5: what you feel, what you're going to do, especially in
Speaker 5: a position of leadership, like the leader ultimately has to
Speaker 5: listen to everyone and then make and own the decision.
Speaker 3: What it's based on, what their opinions are based off of.
Speaker 3: Meaning your opinion or how you're feeling could be a
Speaker 3: certain way, yep, but if it's based off of some
Speaker 3: bullshit that's not true, then you're feeling is kind of wrong.
Speaker 5: And I think that's our problem with expertise is people
Speaker 5: are like, well, but I don't want that to be true,
Speaker 5: and it's like, Okay, that's great, and I respect that
Speaker 5: you don't like it, but it is what it is.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 3: Well, Ryan Holliday, Ladies and gentlemen, No book wisdom takes work, learn, apply, reply, repeat,
Speaker 3: It's available right now and thank you for.
Speaker 2: Joining all the pleasure you pull up right, you're the best.
Speaker 4: Thank you.
Speaker 2: Time brings some chocolate milk from a brown cow.
Speaker 4: I do have a brown cow. It does not make
Speaker 4: chocolate milk.
Speaker 2: It's the breakfast club. Good morning, hold up every day
Speaker 2: I wake click your ass up.
Speaker 4: The breakfast Club.
Speaker 2: You don't finish for y'all done,