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Speaker 1: That line between genius and madness is very fluid. You

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Speaker 1: can sort of introduce alternative facts, as they say, and

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Speaker 1: people believe them. Stoicism is not a formula for you

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Speaker 1: to be a better sociopath. This is Gavin Newsom and

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Speaker 1: this is Ryan Holiday.

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Speaker 2: Ryan, thanks for being here. Man. Of course, Sacramento, California.

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Speaker 2: You know this area? Well, don't you not?

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Speaker 1: This area? Because I like, I think people don't understand

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Speaker 1: that Sacramento is a bit like Los Angeles where to

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Speaker 1: people who don't live there, it's one place, yeah, but

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Speaker 1: if you live there, it's a bunch of other Like

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Speaker 1: I probably came downtown like ten times in my life,

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Speaker 1: interesting until later because I lived in the suburbs of

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Speaker 1: sacrament I mean.

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Speaker 2: So this was a big city Sacramento back when.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, but it's like this is the town we would

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Speaker 1: pass on the way to Arco Arena Kings, yeah, or

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Speaker 1: or we would go down here in Sutter's Ford or

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Speaker 1: the Railroad Museum as a kid. But you wouldn't actually

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Speaker 1: do Sacromeno one because it wasn't. I mean, it's done

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Speaker 1: so much amazing works for bringing it back to life.

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Speaker 1: But also like California is like these self contained suburbs

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Speaker 1: and you live in your in your suburb.

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Speaker 2: But you went you must have when you were a kid,

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Speaker 2: you must have gone to the capitol, right, you have to.

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Speaker 2: Part of the obligation of childhood. Here in California, everyone

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Speaker 2: does a fourth grade they do a little tour. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, how about the Governor's mansion where we are right now.

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Speaker 1: I've never been. I've never been here. Interesting, I don't

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Speaker 1: even think I've seen it. You've never seen it, I don't,

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Speaker 1: I don't know.

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Speaker 2: I don't even Ronald Reagan's.

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Speaker 1: Here's when I would have seen it.

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Speaker 2: Uh.

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Speaker 1: They made you do your driver's tests and your driver's

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Speaker 1: training in downtown because it was the only place that

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Speaker 1: would have like four way stops. Right like anyways, I

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Speaker 1: remember driving downtown to to get my drivers That's it.

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Speaker 2: But you're far Oaks kid, far Oaks, California, the suburb here.

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Speaker 1: I was born in Gold River. Yeah, and then and

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Speaker 1: then we moved to fair Oaks and uh, yeah, I

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Speaker 1: was there till high school.

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Speaker 2: Until high school and then you went what you went

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Speaker 2: down South? Went to? Sure?

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Speaker 1: No, we went to I went to Granpe High School.

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Speaker 2: So your Granded Bay High School? Yes, yes, you know

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Speaker 2: and you were you know, we're an excellent student. Were

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Speaker 2: you that kid that was always raising your hand or

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Speaker 2: were you in the back? What was give me your profile?

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Speaker 1: Well, my parents wanted me to go to Jesuit and

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Speaker 1: I didn't go to Jesuits. So I was not that student.

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Speaker 1: No I I uh, I think I was like I

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Speaker 1: was like hit or miss. Uh. Sometimes sometimes it was

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Speaker 1: a fit, and when it was a fit, it was good,

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Speaker 1: and then a lot of times it wasn't. It wasn't

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Speaker 1: until I went to college that uh, that anything really

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Speaker 1: started to happen for me.

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Speaker 2: But in high school, were you just was I mean

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Speaker 2: what you must have had some it wouldn't be a

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Speaker 2: vision board, but you must have had some vision of

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Speaker 2: your future. What was it? What were you thinking you'd become?

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Speaker 1: Oh, I wanted to be in a heavy metal band.

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Speaker 2: So that was it. That's just you were certain about that.

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Speaker 1: Yes, yes, I mean I think I want, I want.

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Speaker 1: I loved music. But I've said this before, but like

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Speaker 1: I I don't think Sacramento is a lovely place. But

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Speaker 1: it was not then much the territory of entrepreneurs or

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Speaker 1: artists or like I don't, I don't know if I

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Speaker 1: ever met anyone growing up who didn't have a job

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Speaker 1: like just a regular like like teachers, doctors, civil servants,

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Speaker 1: you know, real estate agents. It was it was just

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Speaker 1: very conventional, right, And I think that's why people love

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Speaker 1: Sacramento is that you could have a conventional life here.

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Speaker 1: That version of the American dream was very accessible. But

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Speaker 1: the idea that like I loved books, but I didn't

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Speaker 1: meet anyone that wrote books, and you know, it wasn't

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Speaker 1: like oh this neighbor there kid, you know, there wasn't

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Speaker 1: any of that. So it was I just don't I

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Speaker 1: just didn't have a sense of what was possible. I mean,

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Speaker 1: it wasn't until I it was probably in my twenties

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Speaker 1: that I even learned Joan Didion was from out for it. Like,

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Speaker 1: it wasn't a like, hey, this is a place where

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Speaker 1: people who do that come from.

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Speaker 2: What were your parents? What were your parents doing? What

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Speaker 2: kind of My.

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Speaker 1: Dad was a police detective and my mom was a

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Speaker 1: school principal. I love it so just you know, like

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Speaker 1: your classic sort of American job and.

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Speaker 2: A school principal. I mean, what kind of mindset do

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Speaker 2: you have with a mom who's a school principal.

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Speaker 1: Well, my mom was a school principal in the San

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Speaker 1: Juan School District. But she did like continuing adult education,

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Speaker 1: so she did. She didn't have like kids as her students.

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Speaker 1: It got it. It was like you know, plumbers going

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Speaker 1: back to get their ged and stuff. So it was

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Speaker 1: I mean, it was all. It was all really interesting,

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Speaker 1: but just not what I wanted to do.

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Speaker 2: And were you surrounded by books as a kid, with

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Speaker 2: your parents pushing books from you know, your tenth grade.

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Speaker 2: You know, here's honey, here's the three books you need

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Speaker 2: to read.

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Speaker 1: I mean I read a lot as a kid, but

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Speaker 1: I read you know, like like Westerns and action. I

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Speaker 1: didn't know about this thing called philosophy. I didn't know,

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Speaker 1: Like I didn't know there was all these amazing history books.

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Speaker 1: I was just I don't know. It was a It

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Speaker 1: was a bubble in a good way. Yeah. And uh

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Speaker 1: and then I mean that's why you go away to

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Speaker 1: college is to expand what you're exposed to.

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Speaker 2: So you were in college and what we were studying,

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Speaker 2: what'd you start to study?

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Speaker 1: I was a political science and creative writing.

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Speaker 2: And creative writing. Yeah. We always a writer.

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Speaker 1: I think I wanted to be a writer, and I

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Speaker 1: remember my first seminar. We had to go down in

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Speaker 1: the summer and we had the seminar was taught by

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Speaker 1: Susan Straight, who's one of the great sort of novel

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Speaker 1: California novelists, and she had assigned they had assigned us

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Speaker 1: her book, and it was like it was a real book,

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Speaker 1: like a you know, like a like a book you

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Speaker 1: would see in a bookstore. And I was like, Oh,

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Speaker 1: people do this, Like this is a this is a

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Speaker 1: job you could have, This is a thing people do.

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Speaker 1: And I think, you know, like you talked about like

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Speaker 1: NEPO babies and stuff, and I think one of the

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Speaker 1: things people don't understand about that is that a big

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Speaker 1: part of what it does is it demystifies the possibility

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Speaker 1: of going in certain directions. You know, oh, hey, like

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Speaker 1: my mom's friend does that, or hey, I've seen my

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Speaker 1: dad practice you know, his lines for an audition like you.

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Speaker 1: I got to imagine for Steph Curry being in an

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Speaker 1: NBA arena is like, this is where my dad works,

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Speaker 1: and so it becomes possible in a way that obviously

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Speaker 1: there's the genetics and the privilege and all that, but

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Speaker 1: I think a huge part of it is just like no, no, no,

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Speaker 1: this is a thing you can do because you saw

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Speaker 1: other people do it, for the same reason that it

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Speaker 1: was probably likely that I'd be a police officer or

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Speaker 1: a school teacher because you know, you saw your parents.

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Speaker 2: Do that, And I think about you know, all that is.

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Speaker 2: Once a mind is stretched, it never goes back to

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Speaker 2: its original form or even the more simple frame, which

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Speaker 2: is probably overstated, but you can't be what you can't see.

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Speaker 2: Once you see something, yes, it's now more tangible.

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Speaker 1: And that's like they talk about this like with representation,

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Speaker 1: Like if you don't see people like you on TV

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Speaker 1: or in art, or you know, in the movies or

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Speaker 1: you know, on the headlines, you just don't think someone

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Speaker 1: like you can do it. And representation matters, not obviously

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Speaker 1: just in terms of gender or class or nationality, but

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Speaker 1: also just like, hey, people like you from this small

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Speaker 1: town can That's why that's why towns celebrate like who

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Speaker 1: came from here? That like there is a way to

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Speaker 1: do that.

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Speaker 2: This is my favorite part of American Idol when they

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Speaker 2: come back home and the entire town's out there on

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Speaker 2: main Street. I'm just so proud their native sons. So

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Speaker 2: you you know, you were out there. But meanwhile, you're

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Speaker 2: just so, you're doing a little creative writing, but you've

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Speaker 2: got a rock band on the side. What are you doing?

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Speaker 2: I mean you're sitting there in the driving your parents

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Speaker 2: crazy in the garage.

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Speaker 1: Uh huh, That's exactly what I was. I'm sure it

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Speaker 1: was horrible, and they were pretty they were pretty patient,

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Speaker 1: and and yeah, I just didn't go anywhere. And as

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Speaker 1: is to be expected, But.

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Speaker 2: You lasted how many years in college? You too? Just

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Speaker 2: too too? So what happened?

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Speaker 1: I got a chance to be a writer. So I

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Speaker 1: was writing for the college newspaper, which, again you sort

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Speaker 1: of get a chance to do a thing. Oh, this

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Speaker 1: is a this is like a job. So I was

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Speaker 1: writing for the college newspaper in Riverside, and and I

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Speaker 1: I started working for this person that i'd written about,

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Speaker 1: this guy named Robert Green who wrote the Forty Laws

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Speaker 1: of Power.

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Speaker 2: And how did you get I mean, I mean Robert

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Speaker 2: a legend. Yeah, and begin to describe him, and I

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Speaker 2: mean you don't have to introduce forty Laws power.

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Speaker 1: I mean it's like one of the greatest nonfiction writers of.

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Speaker 2: So how do you even get a chance to even

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Speaker 2: I mean you're writing about him, did you? And that

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Speaker 2: all of a sudden, then he attached this.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, and then I started doing little things for him

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Speaker 1: here there, and and it kind of became this whole

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Speaker 1: He needed a research assistant, and I was like that's

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Speaker 1: I remember thinking like, hey, if this is what I

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Speaker 1: this is my first job out of college, college would

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Speaker 1: be a success.

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Speaker 2: You know.

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Speaker 1: Did my parents agree with horror?

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Speaker 2: No?

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Speaker 1: No, they of course didn't, right, Yeah, because I I

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Speaker 1: think my entire family was horrified. They're all teachers, and

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Speaker 1: you know, also for that that was the thing is

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Speaker 1: you your kids go to college so they don't end

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Speaker 1: up living under a bridge somewhere, and so they did not.

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Speaker 1: They did not handle it well. And it was I mean,

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Speaker 1: it's funny too because I thought I was at the time.

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Speaker 1: I thought it was this enormous risk, you know, like

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Speaker 1: crazy thing that I was doing because I've never done anything.

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Speaker 2: You're still a teenager at the time, yeah, nineteen or something.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, maybe, but I do I do think we we

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Speaker 1: put so much pressure on kids that like, if you

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Speaker 1: don't go to college between the ages of eighteen and

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Speaker 1: twenty two, it's over for you. Like you're you're just done.

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Speaker 1: And I've so that's that's not really true. I could

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Speaker 1: have always gone back. And I think that the Silicon

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Speaker 1: Valley model of dropping out to go do something, actually

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Speaker 1: it was very helpful to me because I could be like, oh,

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Speaker 1: all these other people had had done it in other

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Speaker 1: ways and it doesn't it doesn't ruin your life.

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Speaker 2: And what and Robert was not you know, so you're

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Speaker 2: doing research, but he's also just an outsized mentor.

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Speaker 1: Yes, in every way, it was like an appres I mean,

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Speaker 1: in retrospect, you would call it an apprenticeship. I think

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Speaker 1: sometimes people think these things are very official, like this person.

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Speaker 1: You know, you sign a contract and then you're there

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Speaker 1: your mentor for the next experience. It's it's a it's

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Speaker 1: an informal thing that develops over time and you learn

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Speaker 1: a lot. And then also I think people only claim

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Speaker 1: the relationship if you go on to do things good.

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Speaker 1: Point right, like that the mentorship is is sealed by

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Speaker 1: you by you, by you validating the investment that they

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Speaker 1: put in you. And so but but yeah, I learned

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Speaker 1: everything I could possibly learn about how to do the

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Speaker 1: thing that I wanted to do.

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Speaker 2: And you were and you had a very definitive intentional

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Speaker 2: thing you wanted to do. I mean, writing's construct but

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Speaker 2: there's so many different disciplines. I mean, where you did

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Speaker 2: did you did you start to follow his path or

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Speaker 2: were you trying to follow your own path and sort

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Speaker 2: of you know, and all of a sudden you deviated back.

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Speaker 1: What I knew I wanted to write about sort of

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Speaker 1: history and and stuff like that. And he is an

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Speaker 1: interesting model because you know, he's not a university professor

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Speaker 1: or anything like that. He just writes these books that

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Speaker 1: are enormously popular and influential and have been for a

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Speaker 1: really long time kind of outside the system. Like The

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Speaker 1: forty Laws of Powers is consistently one of the most

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Speaker 1: shoplifted books in the country. Well, it's also banned in

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Speaker 1: most prisons.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, I trust me, I know this.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like a issue.

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Speaker 2: We were just reviewing our banned books at our California

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Speaker 2: and Department of Corrections.

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Speaker 1: It's yeah, like the Innocence Project will tell people like, hey,

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Speaker 1: do not have this book in yourself. It will be

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Speaker 1: used against you in sentencing.

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Speaker 2: Oh deal.

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Speaker 1: So you've just written these really interesting books that that

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Speaker 1: you know, have this sort of outsized reputation, but but

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Speaker 1: they're also just like meticulously crafted and really kind of

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Speaker 1: transgressive in how they're laid out and organized it. I

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Speaker 1: just didn't know you. Again, I didn't know you could

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Speaker 1: do something like that, and and uh so that's I

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Speaker 1: wanted to do something like that, and I do. I

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Speaker 1: think if you're like a young person, you're trying to

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Speaker 1: figure out what you want to do, the best thing

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Speaker 1: you can do is find someone who's done something similar,

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Speaker 1: like something just in the ballpark, and find some means

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Speaker 1: of being in the orbit. You know, It's like, how

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Speaker 1: do you go sweep floors in their record studio? How

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Speaker 1: do you know? How do use stock shelves in the store?

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Speaker 1: How do you drive them? You know?

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Speaker 2: What? What?

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Speaker 1: How can you do anything where you're just in the orbit?

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Speaker 2: And that? So was that something you had a concept

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Speaker 2: of at the time, or over time you started to

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Speaker 2: wake up to that appreciation you started to realize, wait

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Speaker 2: a second, I need to really take this in more fully,

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Speaker 2: and I need to really appreciate what I'm learning and

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Speaker 2: what I'm sory Or is that your relationship to that

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Speaker 2: the idea you know, successfullys clues that you can pick

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Speaker 2: up on other peoples. Did that come in hindsight?

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Speaker 1: I think more in hindsight, Yeah, there's a Lyndon Johnson

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Speaker 1: thing where he's like, you go to the people who

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Speaker 1: are at the center of things nice, and you just

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Speaker 1: need to be in proximity to power, influence, expertise. So

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Speaker 1: I think I had some sense that you just want

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Speaker 1: to go where the action is. I think I was

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Speaker 1: very just. It would be like, you know, Robert would

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Speaker 1: assign me to transcribe a bunch of interviews and then

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Speaker 1: he'd be like, bring them by the house, you know,

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Speaker 1: And and to me, that was where I was getting paid,

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Speaker 1: is that I would get to go and then you know,

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Speaker 1: he'd okay, so what's in here and we'd review it,

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Speaker 1: and then I maybe get to sneak in like one

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Speaker 1: or two questions nice and and that, to me, that

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Speaker 1: was that was how I was getting paid. He was

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Speaker 1: actually very generous and he did pay me, but like

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Speaker 1: I was getting paid in something that I understood was

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Speaker 1: much more valuable than you know, would show up on

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Speaker 1: a on a on a paste or whatever, which is like,

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Speaker 1: how do you how do you get advice from the

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Speaker 1: people who have done done the thing?

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Speaker 2: Yep?

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Speaker 1: And that's I think where you want to go. It's

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Speaker 1: funny because later he writes this I think his best book.

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Speaker 1: That it's probably the book that I would give most

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Speaker 1: young people. You wrote this book called Mastery and and

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Speaker 1: it's all about how you become great at something, and

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Speaker 1: there's this whole, the whole. I think the second step

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Speaker 1: is about this sort of apprenticeship you have. The first

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Speaker 1: thing is you find the thing that you're meant to

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Speaker 1: do and when and when you're lucky enough to be like, oh,

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Speaker 1: this is the thing that lights me up, this is

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Speaker 1: what I want to do. The next step is you

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Speaker 1: find that person who is who has done it and

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Speaker 1: you just have to you know, you have to attach

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Speaker 1: yourself to them. And that that was the that phase

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Speaker 1: for a good chunk of my twenties.

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Speaker 2: Love it. How many so you were? You were there

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Speaker 2: for how many years? Then with Robert uh.

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Speaker 1: Twenty nineteen to twenty six twenty, it was I mean

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Speaker 1: and and like I these things are fluid and they overlap.

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Speaker 1: You know, you get your you get your first shot.

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Speaker 1: You know, I wrote a book and he was helping

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Speaker 1: me with it. It's not like this one day it

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Speaker 1: ends and you graduate. It's this, it's this thing. I mean.

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Speaker 1: I was just talking to him a couple of days ago.

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Speaker 1: Asking him for some advice, and so it's a it's

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Speaker 1: kind of a fluid thing. But he ended up getting

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Speaker 1: me a job at this company called American Apparel and

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Speaker 1: that was kind of the next sort of part of

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Speaker 1: that education.

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Speaker 2: And you were doing marketing work there. How'd that go

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Speaker 2: for you, Ryan, Well, it was it was interesting. Some

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Speaker 2: people may not know a little bit of this story.

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Speaker 2: Give you we don't have to dwell on this, but

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Speaker 2: it's a it's a hell of an interesting story.

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Speaker 1: What's a sad you know, it's a sad story too,

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Speaker 1: in that if you had told me at twenty three

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Speaker 1: that that now, I would say that name and people

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Speaker 1: would stare at you blankly. It's kind of it's a

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Speaker 1: cautionary I mean, I wrote I wrote a book called

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Speaker 1: Ego is the Enemy that I wrote as the company

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Speaker 1: was imploding, because I sort of had a ringside seat

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Speaker 1: to this one point, the largest garment manufacturer in the

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Speaker 1: Northern Hemisphere. It was this success story. It was this

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Speaker 1: incredible thing, one of the coolest brands in the world,

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Speaker 1: and it just it destroyed itself, destroyed itself, and the

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Speaker 1: genius that created it was also the demonic energy that

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Speaker 1: destroyed it and and that's a very common thing where

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Speaker 1: like that line between genius and madness is very fluid,

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Speaker 1: and and yeah, it was. It was a it was

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Speaker 1: a surreal experience. I learned a ton, obviously, and then

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Speaker 1: a lot a lot of things that took a while

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Speaker 1: to unlearned as well.

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Speaker 2: Did you I mean, there's you know, the old frame

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Speaker 2: you put a mask on, you know, I think, orwell

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Speaker 2: and shooting the elephant talked about he put a mask

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Speaker 2: on his face grew into it. Did you see that

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Speaker 2: happening to you in terms of trying to sort of

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Speaker 2: defend or sort of you know, the pr push you know,

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Speaker 2: sort of you know, mask the DEVNC.

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Speaker 1: There you you experience only in looking back, especially as

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Speaker 1: you get older, you go, I had no business being there,

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Speaker 1: Like like why did why was a twenty two year

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Speaker 1: old running marketing at a publicly traded company it You know,

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Speaker 1: if you'd ask me a twenty two I would have said,

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Speaker 1: because I'm that good and then and then now I go, oh,

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Speaker 1: I was probably good. But I also didn't know how

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Speaker 1: fucking insane it of this was. And so that I

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Speaker 1: think it helped me understand some of some of what's

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Speaker 1: happening in the world, some of them the two stuff

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Speaker 1: where you're like, oh, part of the reason that everyone

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Speaker 1: there was was in their twenties working for someone who

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Speaker 1: was not in their twenties was that there was a

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Speaker 1: certain amount of control and a certain amount of naivete

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Speaker 1: about what was happening that allowed allowed that sort of

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Speaker 1: system to go on as it did. So you know, like, yeah,

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Speaker 1: just I just realized, like, oh, I just shouldn't have

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Speaker 1: been in any of these situations. Is wildly inappropriate and insane.

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Speaker 1: But I didn't know because I'm a kid from Sacramento,

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Speaker 1: and this all seems very exciting and interesting. I you know,

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Speaker 1: I'm it's not sting, it's not it's not striking me

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Speaker 1: as insane that this you know, single forty five year

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Speaker 1: old multi millionaire wants me to live in his house.

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Speaker 1: You know, like that that seemed exciting and interesting. Thankfully

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Speaker 1: I did not live in set house. But uh, but

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Speaker 1: you know, you just you just don't realize what's crazy

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Speaker 1: until you're out of the thing. And so I am

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Speaker 1: somewhat sympathetic to people who kind of get in over

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Speaker 1: their heads on stuff because that was that was certainly me.

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Speaker 1: I just didn't I was I was. I was just

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Speaker 1: really caught up in the energy and the excitement and

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Speaker 1: the sort of canvas that it was to to you know,

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Speaker 1: uh do what I was doing. But the the the

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Speaker 1: fact that it was all nuts, you know, was a

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Speaker 1: was a was a debriefing process. And then the funny

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Speaker 1: thing is, you know, I've my wife and I've been

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Speaker 1: together since we met in college, and so she was

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Speaker 1: there through all of it, and she was like, you know,

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Speaker 1: I was telling you every day that this insane like

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Speaker 1: like I told you so, like I'll just be in

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Speaker 1: you know, I'll be on the middle of a run

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Speaker 1: somewhere and something will hit me and I'll come back

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Speaker 1: and I'll tell her and she's like, I told you

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Speaker 1: that like eight hundred times, you know. And and so you

401
00:20:02,080 --> 00:20:06,560
Speaker 1: were just you know, your you're what's that that Upton

402
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Speaker 1: sinclear thing about it's very hard to understand something when

403
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Speaker 1: your salary depends on you're not understanding. Well said yes,

404
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Speaker 1: and was a lot of that.

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Speaker 2: There was a lot of that as well. So, I mean,

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Speaker 2: how long was that Probably it was over a two

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Speaker 2: year pero. Oh no, I was there.

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Speaker 1: Two thousand and seven, two thousand and fourteen or fifteen

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Speaker 1: something like that.

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Speaker 2: So it was a it was a big chunk of

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Speaker 2: my Yeah, it was a big trunk. And meanwhile, though

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Speaker 2: you start you said, egoes the enemy. You're starting to

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Speaker 2: I mean perfect book sort of the genesis of that

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Speaker 2: experience and understanding it. And so I mean it was

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Speaker 2: that the first I mean for you and you had

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Speaker 2: written a number of things. But was that, yeah, because

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Speaker 2: that sort of starts to move you in the direction

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Speaker 2: that you ultimately are today, Or.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, I did when I did a book, I did

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Speaker 1: a book on media first, and then I did my

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Speaker 1: first book on stoicism was called the Opps was Away,

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Speaker 1: and then and then yet ego was sort of at

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Speaker 1: the Ego was was me kind of leaving a good

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Speaker 1: chunk of that behind and watching that sort of explode.

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Speaker 1: So it was it was, you know, in retrospect you

426
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Speaker 1: look back, I'm sure you experienced this writing your book.

427
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Speaker 1: You think of these things as these kind of clean

428
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Speaker 1: periods or that you had this like you had this insight,

429
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Speaker 1: like this is when I knew I was going to

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Speaker 1: do this. And then like I am one of the

431
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Speaker 1: great California writers. Is this guy Bud's Bud Schulberg. If

432
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Speaker 1: you know who that is. He wrote What makes Sammy

433
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Speaker 1: Run on the Waterfront. Anyways, he wrote this book called

434
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Speaker 1: The Herder They Fall, which is about this sort of

435
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Speaker 1: corrupt PR agent who's working for the mob as they

436
00:21:49,040 --> 00:21:52,719
Speaker 1: fix boxing fights. And and I read this book. And

437
00:21:53,320 --> 00:21:55,439
Speaker 1: if you asked me when I knew I wanted to

438
00:21:55,520 --> 00:21:58,600
Speaker 1: leave American Apparel and get out of this life, I

439
00:21:58,600 --> 00:22:01,080
Speaker 1: would tell you it was the day I read that book,

440
00:22:01,320 --> 00:22:04,600
Speaker 1: and I would say like, like, and I know it

441
00:22:04,720 --> 00:22:07,439
Speaker 1: because the like the last not the last page is

442
00:22:07,480 --> 00:22:10,480
Speaker 1: this kind of big yes, this big insight because you know,

443
00:22:10,480 --> 00:22:14,960
Speaker 1: I've realizing now you cannot deal in filth without becoming

444
00:22:15,000 --> 00:22:17,199
Speaker 1: the thing you touch. Yeah, this is sort of my

445
00:22:17,240 --> 00:22:20,479
Speaker 1: truck moment. And so I was like, okay, so I

446
00:22:20,560 --> 00:22:23,159
Speaker 1: read that, and I can I still gone back and

447
00:22:23,160 --> 00:22:25,560
Speaker 1: looked at it. You know this, I can see the

448
00:22:25,600 --> 00:22:29,080
Speaker 1: markings that I'm my holy shit, what is it like?

449
00:22:29,280 --> 00:22:30,800
Speaker 1: It felt like, you know when you read something like

450
00:22:30,800 --> 00:22:33,840
Speaker 1: I feel so attacked. You know this is about me specifically.

451
00:22:33,840 --> 00:22:35,639
Speaker 1: Interesting away that would have been when I thought I

452
00:22:35,880 --> 00:22:39,919
Speaker 1: I my breakthrough happened, and then I was talking to

453
00:22:39,960 --> 00:22:41,600
Speaker 1: someone about it. I was actually talking to Tim Miller

454
00:22:41,640 --> 00:22:43,439
Speaker 1: about this because he and I had similar sort of

455
00:22:43,520 --> 00:22:47,040
Speaker 1: arcs on our journey. And and I was like, as

456
00:22:47,080 --> 00:22:48,720
Speaker 1: I was prepping for that conversation, I was like, oh,

457
00:22:48,720 --> 00:22:50,199
Speaker 1: you know what, I bought this book on Amazon. I

458
00:22:50,200 --> 00:22:52,160
Speaker 1: can see the day that I bought it. I can,

459
00:22:52,280 --> 00:22:55,720
Speaker 1: you know. And I went on Amazon, and so I left.

460
00:22:55,760 --> 00:22:59,880
Speaker 1: I left America Apparel in two thousand and fourteen or fifteen,

461
00:23:00,480 --> 00:23:03,879
Speaker 1: and and that my Amazon receipt for the Heart of

462
00:23:03,920 --> 00:23:07,199
Speaker 1: They Fall is like two thousand and nine. Well, it

463
00:23:07,280 --> 00:23:09,520
Speaker 1: was like way closer to the beginning than the end.

464
00:23:10,119 --> 00:23:14,280
Speaker 1: And so you can often have you you get the

465
00:23:14,320 --> 00:23:18,239
Speaker 1: insight or the idea that the thing, you understand it,

466
00:23:18,280 --> 00:23:20,680
Speaker 1: but it can be a very long time until you

467
00:23:21,600 --> 00:23:23,719
Speaker 1: understand it, and then more importantly, you have any of

468
00:23:23,760 --> 00:23:27,520
Speaker 1: the sort of courage or clarity to act on it.

469
00:23:28,040 --> 00:23:32,639
Speaker 1: And so it was that whole period is much more

470
00:23:33,400 --> 00:23:39,720
Speaker 1: sort of contradictory and overlappy than it feels like. And

471
00:23:39,880 --> 00:23:43,679
Speaker 1: it is important if you're a young person you're like

472
00:23:43,760 --> 00:23:47,280
Speaker 1: looking at someone's life story, that you realize that when

473
00:23:47,280 --> 00:23:49,639
Speaker 1: they lay it all out, it's all that gets smooth,

474
00:23:49,640 --> 00:23:52,480
Speaker 1: that all it gets laid out narratively, and it gets

475
00:23:52,560 --> 00:23:56,479
Speaker 1: smoothed out as well. And they it can feel like

476
00:23:56,560 --> 00:23:58,960
Speaker 1: it was this plan, or can feel like at one

477
00:23:59,000 --> 00:24:02,440
Speaker 1: thing was leading to the next, and that's all that's

478
00:24:02,480 --> 00:24:05,399
Speaker 1: all made up in retrospect. It's not like that in

479
00:24:05,440 --> 00:24:07,359
Speaker 1: the moment. And by the way, history is not like

480
00:24:07,400 --> 00:24:10,320
Speaker 1: that in the moment either. Nobody knows how the story

481
00:24:10,400 --> 00:24:13,840
Speaker 1: is going to end, and so you have to kind

482
00:24:13,840 --> 00:24:17,679
Speaker 1: of deal in that ambiguity more than you would like.

483
00:24:18,480 --> 00:24:21,680
Speaker 2: You wrote a lot about sort of ambiguity, wrote a

484
00:24:21,760 --> 00:24:25,200
Speaker 2: lot about your own experience, and wrote a book that

485
00:24:25,720 --> 00:24:30,040
Speaker 2: you know, we intentionally have not even with you being around,

486
00:24:30,080 --> 00:24:33,400
Speaker 2: have on the on the shelf there. Trust me, I'm.

487
00:24:33,240 --> 00:24:36,359
Speaker 1: Lying, I'm actually doing I'm supposed to do the fifteen

488
00:24:36,400 --> 00:24:38,200
Speaker 1: year anniversary edition of that book.

489
00:24:38,680 --> 00:24:42,080
Speaker 2: You have to. Yeah, it was you were decades ahead.

490
00:24:42,400 --> 00:24:44,119
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was funny when I was writing. Trust mean

491
00:24:44,119 --> 00:24:45,879
Speaker 1: on lying. I remember saying in the publisher they were like,

492
00:24:45,880 --> 00:24:49,320
Speaker 1: we're thinking, you know, like a summer twenty twelve release,

493
00:24:49,440 --> 00:24:52,080
Speaker 1: and I go, I can't wait that long. I was like,

494
00:24:52,240 --> 00:24:54,359
Speaker 1: it's like, I was like this all this stuff is

495
00:24:54,400 --> 00:24:56,680
Speaker 1: like no, it needs to come out right now. And

496
00:24:57,320 --> 00:25:00,840
Speaker 1: I remember being rushed and I was probably ten years early. Yeah,

497
00:25:01,400 --> 00:25:05,240
Speaker 1: but fifteen it's a yeah, it's a strange.

498
00:25:05,400 --> 00:25:07,640
Speaker 2: It's a strange just for folks that don't know much

499
00:25:07,640 --> 00:25:10,080
Speaker 2: about this book. I mean back to you know, the

500
00:25:10,240 --> 00:25:13,960
Speaker 2: timestamp in twenty twelve. Yeah, and you were talking about

501
00:25:13,960 --> 00:25:16,720
Speaker 2: citizen journalism. You were talking about legacy media, you were

502
00:25:16,760 --> 00:25:20,120
Speaker 2: talking about truth and trust, you were talking about manipulation.

503
00:25:20,280 --> 00:25:24,280
Speaker 2: You were talking about you know, the validation and how

504
00:25:24,560 --> 00:25:29,040
Speaker 2: you're able to spread stories and validate that story and sources,

505
00:25:29,160 --> 00:25:30,520
Speaker 2: and I mean.

506
00:25:30,560 --> 00:25:32,840
Speaker 1: Tell us, Yeah, I was trying to write sort of

507
00:25:32,880 --> 00:25:36,439
Speaker 1: an expose of how the media system really worked, not

508
00:25:37,000 --> 00:25:41,680
Speaker 1: how people thought it worked, which was objectivity and fact checkers,

509
00:25:41,920 --> 00:25:45,720
Speaker 1: and I was looking at how the economics sort of

510
00:25:45,760 --> 00:25:48,440
Speaker 1: shape shape it. And I was trying to show you,

511
00:25:48,880 --> 00:25:51,960
Speaker 1: like how the sausage gets made, Like how how stories

512
00:25:52,440 --> 00:25:55,679
Speaker 1: that you're reading in the news where they actually came from,

513
00:25:56,240 --> 00:26:03,320
Speaker 1: and how easy it is to sort of inject things

514
00:26:03,359 --> 00:26:07,960
Speaker 1: into that kind of slipstream. And obviously in twenty sixteen

515
00:26:07,960 --> 00:26:10,880
Speaker 1: we saw a sort of Russia at a whole element

516
00:26:10,960 --> 00:26:13,760
Speaker 1: of that. And you know, I was writing before TikTok,

517
00:26:13,800 --> 00:26:18,000
Speaker 1: I was writing before Instagram even really, so it's obviously

518
00:26:18,000 --> 00:26:22,800
Speaker 1: become like hyper hyperdrive of a lot of the stuff

519
00:26:22,800 --> 00:26:25,119
Speaker 1: I was talking about in that book. I mean, I

520
00:26:25,160 --> 00:26:27,480
Speaker 1: wish I could sit back here and go fifteen years later,

521
00:26:27,520 --> 00:26:30,399
Speaker 1: like I was totally dis totally proven wrong and everything

522
00:26:30,440 --> 00:26:33,440
Speaker 1: was awesome. But it's sort of like beyond my worst

523
00:26:33,520 --> 00:26:36,199
Speaker 1: nightmare of all the things I was talking about in

524
00:26:36,200 --> 00:26:38,920
Speaker 1: that book. Which is funny because when I wrote it,

525
00:26:39,840 --> 00:26:42,960
Speaker 1: although a lot of people read it, the media reaction

526
00:26:43,200 --> 00:26:47,600
Speaker 1: was mostly like shoot the messenger, like he's he's the

527
00:26:47,680 --> 00:26:51,800
Speaker 1: bad guy. And what I was trying to say is like, look,

528
00:26:51,800 --> 00:26:54,600
Speaker 1: this is what I do to sell t shirts or

529
00:26:54,680 --> 00:26:56,919
Speaker 1: books or you know, the this is how I can

530
00:26:57,359 --> 00:27:00,639
Speaker 1: I can, you know, introduce something funny, ridiculous into the

531
00:27:00,720 --> 00:27:07,280
Speaker 1: media cycle. But like if if media is where public

532
00:27:07,320 --> 00:27:12,680
Speaker 1: opinion is formed, it this this vulnerability is just too

533
00:27:13,440 --> 00:27:17,919
Speaker 1: too valuable to too many powerful, important or deranged people

534
00:27:18,080 --> 00:27:20,040
Speaker 1: for them not to sort of take advantage of it.

535
00:27:20,080 --> 00:27:25,640
Speaker 1: And I think we're seeing now a world where yeah,

536
00:27:25,680 --> 00:27:30,560
Speaker 1: you can, you can sort of introduce alternative facts, as

537
00:27:30,560 --> 00:27:34,760
Speaker 1: they say, into into this and people believe them. What

538
00:27:34,760 --> 00:27:37,440
Speaker 1: what kind of vulnerabilities that exposes to us?

539
00:27:37,480 --> 00:27:39,800
Speaker 2: And they believe them and you've you've talked about this,

540
00:27:40,240 --> 00:27:43,920
Speaker 2: they believe them even after they're debunked, sometimes even more

541
00:27:44,480 --> 00:27:45,880
Speaker 2: after the quote unquote correction.

542
00:27:46,640 --> 00:27:49,879
Speaker 1: Well, I think I mean in a Again, this is

543
00:27:49,880 --> 00:27:52,000
Speaker 1: always a complicate thing to talk about, but January sixth

544
00:27:52,040 --> 00:27:55,200
Speaker 1: is a fascinating example of like everyone with eyes saw

545
00:27:55,240 --> 00:28:00,000
Speaker 1: a thing happen, and then there was an investigation, right

546
00:28:00,240 --> 00:28:03,960
Speaker 1: that that sort of laid out exactly what happened. But

547
00:28:04,080 --> 00:28:07,040
Speaker 1: because one guy with a lot of followers, you saw

548
00:28:07,119 --> 00:28:09,240
Speaker 1: him sort of scramb You saw Trump in the early

549
00:28:09,320 --> 00:28:13,120
Speaker 1: days after January six where he was complicit and responsible

550
00:28:13,119 --> 00:28:21,879
Speaker 1: for an unthinkable and inexcusable thing, scramble around for how

551
00:28:21,960 --> 00:28:25,280
Speaker 1: is he going to explain this? And then and then

552
00:28:25,560 --> 00:28:29,280
Speaker 1: sort of settles on it was Antifa, and also these

553
00:28:29,320 --> 00:28:33,440
Speaker 1: people were patriots and and by the way, are just

554
00:28:33,480 --> 00:28:37,920
Speaker 1: two contradictory explanations, uh, just on the top of his head.

555
00:28:38,200 --> 00:28:41,680
Speaker 1: But then if he says it enough times, and if

556
00:28:41,680 --> 00:28:47,600
Speaker 1: there is a financial and ideological and just cognitive reason

557
00:28:47,760 --> 00:28:54,080
Speaker 1: to want that to be true, eventually a sizeable percentage

558
00:28:54,080 --> 00:28:58,320
Speaker 1: of the population will coalesce around that thing, because to

559
00:28:59,280 --> 00:29:02,400
Speaker 1: not do it would mean you have to face the

560
00:29:02,440 --> 00:29:07,680
Speaker 1: tragedy and the horror and the violence and the you know,

561
00:29:08,200 --> 00:29:12,600
Speaker 1: the implications of that thing, and so in a way,

562
00:29:13,320 --> 00:29:18,480
Speaker 1: it just kind of lays bare our media system. I mean, yeah,

563
00:29:18,520 --> 00:29:20,880
Speaker 1: it's like it's laid out in these different lawsuits, it's

564
00:29:20,960 --> 00:29:23,080
Speaker 1: laid out in these congress like we know what happened,

565
00:29:23,080 --> 00:29:26,200
Speaker 1: and we know the role that people played in it happening.

566
00:29:26,720 --> 00:29:30,040
Speaker 1: And yet afterwards he was able to kind of with

567
00:29:30,120 --> 00:29:34,120
Speaker 1: this media jiu jitsu, just make it not have happened.

568
00:29:35,840 --> 00:29:38,680
Speaker 2: All right, I want to unpack all of that, and

569
00:29:38,760 --> 00:29:40,400
Speaker 2: we I mean, you were right in this back I

570
00:29:40,400 --> 00:29:44,120
Speaker 2: mean when you wrote trust Me Online, you mentioned Dick Tuck.

571
00:29:44,560 --> 00:29:47,720
Speaker 2: You know it didn't exist. I mean, Facebook probably it

572
00:29:47,760 --> 00:29:50,200
Speaker 2: was in its orphan phase. The cloud was in the sky,

573
00:29:50,280 --> 00:29:53,280
Speaker 2: four G was probably a parking space back then, in

574
00:29:53,320 --> 00:29:55,680
Speaker 2: linked in a prison. But you know, you were the

575
00:29:56,000 --> 00:29:59,760
Speaker 2: algorithms weren't necessarily you were talking blogs mostly back then, right.

576
00:29:59,720 --> 00:30:03,840
Speaker 1: Yeah, logs and Twitter and and and how much traditional

577
00:30:03,880 --> 00:30:07,000
Speaker 1: media was sort of the final step in that system.

578
00:30:07,400 --> 00:30:08,640
Speaker 1: And now it doesn't need.

579
00:30:08,520 --> 00:30:11,600
Speaker 2: To be final step after you seed yeah, the extreme.

580
00:30:11,640 --> 00:30:13,680
Speaker 2: Then you have a source, you say one sort now

581
00:30:13,720 --> 00:30:15,840
Speaker 2: you have two sources, and all of a sudden, now

582
00:30:16,320 --> 00:30:19,120
Speaker 2: now it moves itself up the ladder. I see that

583
00:30:19,200 --> 00:30:22,360
Speaker 2: by the way I live this. Yes, Daily Mail says something,

584
00:30:22,440 --> 00:30:25,280
Speaker 2: The California Post says something. Now, The New York Post

585
00:30:25,280 --> 00:30:28,520
Speaker 2: says two sources have confirmed something. All of a sudden,

586
00:30:28,520 --> 00:30:31,400
Speaker 2: I'm watching Jesse Waters on Fox and then the next

587
00:30:31,480 --> 00:30:33,280
Speaker 2: night Hannity and all the rest of the lineup, and

588
00:30:33,280 --> 00:30:35,080
Speaker 2: then you had to respond to it. And I'm responding.

589
00:30:35,120 --> 00:30:37,600
Speaker 2: Then I'm chasing something and I'm playing defense. They're already

590
00:30:37,600 --> 00:30:38,520
Speaker 2: onto the next damn thing.

591
00:30:38,840 --> 00:30:41,240
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I mean again, Trump, it's sort of intuitively

592
00:30:41,320 --> 00:30:43,280
Speaker 1: understanding all this. He is really good at going and

593
00:30:43,320 --> 00:30:49,080
Speaker 1: a lot of people are saying and so it's this

594
00:30:49,160 --> 00:30:52,240
Speaker 1: way that things that are not true become true by

595
00:30:52,600 --> 00:30:54,280
Speaker 1: you bump into them enough time.

596
00:30:54,400 --> 00:30:56,560
Speaker 2: But you're I mean, you're. The point you're making is

597
00:30:56,600 --> 00:30:59,840
Speaker 2: this is not this is bad. It's not only bad,

598
00:31:00,160 --> 00:31:04,360
Speaker 2: but it's it's it's been I mean, it's uh, wake up, everybody.

599
00:31:04,440 --> 00:31:07,200
Speaker 2: It's the way it's been done. It's hardly novel.

600
00:31:07,280 --> 00:31:09,600
Speaker 1: No, No, I mean, it's it. This is this has

601
00:31:09,680 --> 00:31:12,000
Speaker 1: been the way that the sausage has been made for

602
00:31:12,200 --> 00:31:13,800
Speaker 1: a decade and a half, basically, right.

603
00:31:13,680 --> 00:31:15,920
Speaker 2: So your new book is going to figure out to

604
00:31:15,920 --> 00:31:17,000
Speaker 2: tell us what to do about it.

605
00:31:17,280 --> 00:31:20,080
Speaker 1: No, I mean, first, it's it's mortifying, of course to

606
00:31:20,160 --> 00:31:21,800
Speaker 1: have to go back and read something that you wrote

607
00:31:21,800 --> 00:31:24,120
Speaker 1: when you were twenty three and you thought you understood

608
00:31:24,120 --> 00:31:26,280
Speaker 1: how the world worked, even though I was right about

609
00:31:26,280 --> 00:31:28,000
Speaker 1: a lot of ways that you know, I think you

610
00:31:28,160 --> 00:31:33,240
Speaker 1: mostly the cringe is mostly in the certainty and the

611
00:31:33,240 --> 00:31:34,440
Speaker 1: the arrogance.

612
00:31:34,280 --> 00:31:34,520
Speaker 2: You know.

613
00:31:34,920 --> 00:31:37,520
Speaker 1: So, so that that's why I've been procrastinating it.

614
00:31:37,520 --> 00:31:40,800
Speaker 2: But that's that's plus you've meant it out about fifty

615
00:31:40,800 --> 00:31:42,840
Speaker 2: other damn books in the in the interim, so it's

616
00:31:42,840 --> 00:31:45,600
Speaker 2: not like you're not busy. So I want to sort

617
00:31:45,600 --> 00:31:48,400
Speaker 2: of circle by so the you know, hell of a

618
00:31:48,440 --> 00:31:51,320
Speaker 2: hell of a time American Peril and uh and then

619
00:31:51,400 --> 00:31:55,720
Speaker 2: you you know, you're you're hardly an old man. Your

620
00:31:55,720 --> 00:31:57,240
Speaker 2: wife saying I told you so, I told you so,

621
00:31:57,280 --> 00:31:59,320
Speaker 2: I told you so. Mom and Dad are like Jesus,

622
00:31:59,560 --> 00:32:02,840
Speaker 2: you know, how did we raise you young man? Yeah? Or not?

623
00:32:03,200 --> 00:32:06,880
Speaker 2: They probably are more generous. Yeah, you know. So where

624
00:32:06,880 --> 00:32:08,600
Speaker 2: are you now in terms of just you go on

625
00:32:08,680 --> 00:32:11,680
Speaker 2: a walk about? Is that when you picked up meditations

626
00:32:11,800 --> 00:32:12,480
Speaker 2: or no, I know.

627
00:32:12,760 --> 00:32:17,360
Speaker 1: I found the irony is I found stuicism before and

628
00:32:17,320 --> 00:32:20,400
Speaker 1: in college I was in it was would have been

629
00:32:21,320 --> 00:32:23,040
Speaker 1: I found the Amazon receipt for that the other day,

630
00:32:23,040 --> 00:32:25,320
Speaker 1: October two thousand and six, So it's going on twenty years.

631
00:32:25,480 --> 00:32:28,000
Speaker 2: And what it was a motive, you remember, the motivation

632
00:32:28,160 --> 00:32:29,440
Speaker 2: for even making the purchase.

633
00:32:29,880 --> 00:32:34,400
Speaker 1: Yeah, you want to know who told me about the Stokes. Yeah,

634
00:32:34,480 --> 00:32:36,000
Speaker 1: there's no way you could guess.

635
00:32:36,760 --> 00:32:39,720
Speaker 2: There's no way you could guess Robert Green would be

636
00:32:39,760 --> 00:32:40,520
Speaker 2: the safe bet.

637
00:32:40,600 --> 00:32:46,840
Speaker 1: No, it was doctor Drew. Okay, why not?

638
00:32:47,680 --> 00:32:47,959
Speaker 2: I was.

639
00:32:48,040 --> 00:32:49,840
Speaker 1: I was writing for the college newspaper and I went

640
00:32:49,880 --> 00:32:53,360
Speaker 1: to this h I got invited to this conference in

641
00:32:53,760 --> 00:32:58,440
Speaker 1: West Hollywood which was sponsored by Trojan Condoms, and he

642
00:32:58,480 --> 00:33:00,920
Speaker 1: was he was giving a talk, and after the talk,

643
00:33:01,600 --> 00:33:03,000
Speaker 1: I was just I was like, you know, a young

644
00:33:03,080 --> 00:33:05,640
Speaker 1: kid was just hungry for advice and direction and all

645
00:33:05,680 --> 00:33:08,720
Speaker 1: these things. And I just said, hey, I'm what what

646
00:33:09,320 --> 00:33:12,920
Speaker 1: you got any book recommendations? And he turned me onto

647
00:33:12,960 --> 00:33:14,240
Speaker 1: the Stokes and changed the course of.

648
00:33:14,200 --> 00:33:16,280
Speaker 2: My life in which which was which stoic and.

649
00:33:16,280 --> 00:33:19,480
Speaker 1: Which he told me first about Epictetus, about Epictetus and

650
00:33:19,520 --> 00:33:23,280
Speaker 1: Mark Surelius and uh, you know, obviously it took a

651
00:33:23,280 --> 00:33:25,719
Speaker 1: while for them to sleep in. But but you know,

652
00:33:25,800 --> 00:33:30,160
Speaker 1: sitting in Riverside, California, reading Mark Trelis's meditations.

653
00:33:29,680 --> 00:33:31,400
Speaker 2: And what was that the first book? Was that the

654
00:33:31,400 --> 00:33:32,040
Speaker 2: book that was.

655
00:33:31,960 --> 00:33:36,000
Speaker 1: The first one? Yeah? And I just I was what

656
00:33:36,280 --> 00:33:36,600
Speaker 1: is this?

657
00:33:37,000 --> 00:33:38,760
Speaker 2: You know? And it really was that immediate.

658
00:33:39,040 --> 00:33:43,200
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, Perc. I didn't know there was writing like this.

659
00:33:43,280 --> 00:33:45,800
Speaker 1: I didn't know there was advice like this. I didn't

660
00:33:45,840 --> 00:33:47,520
Speaker 1: know it was what I was looking for. But it

661
00:33:47,560 --> 00:33:48,400
Speaker 1: was exactly what I was.

662
00:33:48,440 --> 00:33:52,280
Speaker 2: And did you know there was about stoicism that he

663
00:33:52,400 --> 00:33:55,640
Speaker 2: was about stoicism? Or was it just the most powerful

664
00:33:55,640 --> 00:33:57,479
Speaker 2: man in the world and that intrigued you, I mean

665
00:33:57,640 --> 00:33:58,720
Speaker 2: in its life lessons.

666
00:33:58,800 --> 00:34:00,680
Speaker 1: You know, we're only a few years out from the

667
00:34:00,680 --> 00:34:02,920
Speaker 1: movie Gladiator at this time, so I think I was

668
00:34:02,960 --> 00:34:05,840
Speaker 1: a little bit primed. But but there there was something

669
00:34:05,880 --> 00:34:09,200
Speaker 1: about I think, what at the core young men are

670
00:34:09,200 --> 00:34:13,239
Speaker 1: looking for direction, right, and they're looking for direction, particularly

671
00:34:13,320 --> 00:34:15,760
Speaker 1: now in a world where a lot of the old

672
00:34:16,400 --> 00:34:21,480
Speaker 1: sort of traditions and explicit and implicit instructions in that

673
00:34:21,600 --> 00:34:24,560
Speaker 1: regard are gone, and so there's this just kind of

674
00:34:24,600 --> 00:34:28,440
Speaker 1: existential void. There's this leadership void. You just don't you

675
00:34:28,480 --> 00:34:31,279
Speaker 1: don't know how to be a person, and and there's

676
00:34:31,320 --> 00:34:35,720
Speaker 1: not it's not like they're these rituals or these groups,

677
00:34:35,800 --> 00:34:39,640
Speaker 1: or this kind of process by which you become a

678
00:34:39,680 --> 00:34:43,040
Speaker 1: man that just doesn't exist. And so to sort of

679
00:34:43,080 --> 00:34:46,720
Speaker 1: pick up the private thoughts of the Emperor of Rome,

680
00:34:47,520 --> 00:34:51,040
Speaker 1: and he's he's talking to himself about how to how

681
00:34:51,040 --> 00:34:54,840
Speaker 1: to not just be you know, a productive person and

682
00:34:54,920 --> 00:34:58,640
Speaker 1: a strong person, but also a wise person and a

683
00:34:58,640 --> 00:35:01,359
Speaker 1: good person, and how how to deal with you know,

684
00:35:01,760 --> 00:35:05,319
Speaker 1: everything from his temper to his anxiety to his you know,

685
00:35:05,400 --> 00:35:08,600
Speaker 1: sort of fear of death or his frustrations with other people.

686
00:35:08,880 --> 00:35:12,360
Speaker 1: I just I didn't If you had asked me to

687
00:35:12,400 --> 00:35:17,520
Speaker 1: define philosophy in my late teens, I would have said,

688
00:35:17,840 --> 00:35:20,440
Speaker 1: I don't know. It's like, you know, it's it's those

689
00:35:20,480 --> 00:35:23,239
Speaker 1: people in togas, or it's those people on college campuses,

690
00:35:23,880 --> 00:35:28,440
Speaker 1: you know, asking impossible questions about things for which there

691
00:35:28,440 --> 00:35:31,640
Speaker 1: are no answers, you know, like that it's first things,

692
00:35:31,719 --> 00:35:34,880
Speaker 1: it's for people smarter than me, right, And then to

693
00:35:35,000 --> 00:35:37,920
Speaker 1: read the Stoics, you go, oh no, no, this is

694
00:35:37,960 --> 00:35:42,400
Speaker 1: for people trying to be human beings like and trying

695
00:35:42,400 --> 00:35:49,640
Speaker 1: to just deal with the difficulties of life. And that

696
00:35:51,360 --> 00:35:53,840
Speaker 1: is what I think struck me so much about meditation,

697
00:35:53,960 --> 00:35:56,719
Speaker 1: because even compared to the other Stoics, you know, whether

698
00:35:56,719 --> 00:35:59,240
Speaker 1: they're reading senec or epicteties, they're there at least talking

699
00:35:59,280 --> 00:36:04,360
Speaker 1: to an audience. And and there's something so personal and

700
00:36:04,840 --> 00:36:09,080
Speaker 1: disarming about meditations because here it's it's it's not meant

701
00:36:09,080 --> 00:36:13,239
Speaker 1: for publication. It's it's it's just a guy. It's like

702
00:36:13,280 --> 00:36:16,799
Speaker 1: a guy's inner monologue. It's like that the angel on

703
00:36:16,840 --> 00:36:20,040
Speaker 1: his shoulder, you know, trying to be like, you're better

704
00:36:20,080 --> 00:36:21,799
Speaker 1: than this, you should do this, try to do that.

705
00:36:21,840 --> 00:36:24,080
Speaker 1: What about this? And and so I think I was

706
00:36:24,160 --> 00:36:28,600
Speaker 1: just I was blown away. And then particularly that he

707
00:36:28,719 --> 00:36:31,920
Speaker 1: is such a good writer, that even his notes to

708
00:36:32,040 --> 00:36:35,560
Speaker 1: himself are some of the best philosophy ever written. I

709
00:36:35,600 --> 00:36:37,840
Speaker 1: think that that all is what's struck me.

710
00:36:38,040 --> 00:36:40,880
Speaker 2: So was that. So it's sort of you know, all

711
00:36:40,920 --> 00:36:43,359
Speaker 2: of a sudden, this book speaks to you and your

712
00:36:43,400 --> 00:36:48,719
Speaker 2: time of life, your state of mind titis. Similarly, you

713
00:36:48,760 --> 00:36:51,239
Speaker 2: mentioned the Big three of Stokes, but these aren't the

714
00:36:51,280 --> 00:36:56,120
Speaker 2: ogesus stoves. I mean, what the broader stoic construct for you?

715
00:36:56,400 --> 00:37:00,920
Speaker 2: When did that click versus more of a contemporary no stoicism.

716
00:37:00,960 --> 00:37:04,080
Speaker 1: Well, they represent the ogs of stoicism. You go back to,

717
00:37:04,160 --> 00:37:08,279
Speaker 1: you get Zeno and Anthes and Chris Zippi's Cato being

718
00:37:08,600 --> 00:37:10,120
Speaker 1: maybe another one that maybe some.

719
00:37:10,000 --> 00:37:10,920
Speaker 2: People have heard of.

720
00:37:12,360 --> 00:37:14,440
Speaker 1: You know that that was the process of kind of

721
00:37:14,560 --> 00:37:17,480
Speaker 1: tracing it back the words you kind of. I think

722
00:37:17,520 --> 00:37:20,120
Speaker 1: most people should start with the big three of the

723
00:37:20,239 --> 00:37:23,920
Speaker 1: of the Stoics and then and work their way back.

724
00:37:23,960 --> 00:37:25,759
Speaker 1: There's a reason that they're the ones that are most

725
00:37:25,760 --> 00:37:28,600
Speaker 1: well known, and that is a really cool thing. It

726
00:37:28,640 --> 00:37:31,640
Speaker 1: just blows your mind about history, where you're like, Okay,

727
00:37:32,360 --> 00:37:38,600
Speaker 1: to Marcus Aurelius, Stoicism was ancient philosophy, ancient philosophy like five,

728
00:37:39,000 --> 00:37:44,520
Speaker 1: like Zeno is to Marcus Aurelius what Shakespeare is to us.

729
00:37:44,920 --> 00:37:47,680
Speaker 2: I was quoting Plutarch the other day. The imbalance between

730
00:37:47,680 --> 00:37:49,879
Speaker 2: the rich and the poor is the oldest and most

731
00:37:49,920 --> 00:37:53,120
Speaker 2: fatal ailment of all republics, says it. You know, I

732
00:37:53,120 --> 00:37:57,080
Speaker 2: don't know fifty seventy eighty. Yes, the oldest and most

733
00:37:57,080 --> 00:37:58,040
Speaker 2: fatal ailments.

734
00:37:58,080 --> 00:38:01,520
Speaker 1: But that's so and you hey, Plutarch right again, Yeah,

735
00:38:01,560 --> 00:38:05,040
Speaker 1: probably the great, one of the great biographers. Truman would

736
00:38:05,080 --> 00:38:06,960
Speaker 1: talk about how whenever he had a problem as president,

737
00:38:07,000 --> 00:38:08,640
Speaker 1: he could take he could pull out. He said, I

738
00:38:08,680 --> 00:38:11,840
Speaker 1: pulled up my old friend Plutarch, my old friend, my

739
00:38:11,920 --> 00:38:14,360
Speaker 1: old friend Plutarch, and he would have the solution to

740
00:38:14,400 --> 00:38:18,560
Speaker 1: my problems. But Plutarch is writing about you know, Caesar

741
00:38:18,640 --> 00:38:24,480
Speaker 1: and Cicero and Demosthenes and and all these Greek and

742
00:38:24,560 --> 00:38:29,279
Speaker 1: Roman figures who were to him what he is to us,

743
00:38:29,360 --> 00:38:31,960
Speaker 1: you know, not quite that far. But but but we

744
00:38:32,000 --> 00:38:34,840
Speaker 1: think about ancient Greece and Rome as this kind of

745
00:38:34,880 --> 00:38:38,400
Speaker 1: like brief moment as opposed to a civilization that lasted

746
00:38:38,480 --> 00:38:41,360
Speaker 1: hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years. Even the decline

747
00:38:41,600 --> 00:38:44,960
Speaker 1: and fall of Rome is like nine hundred years, you know,

748
00:38:46,040 --> 00:38:47,680
Speaker 1: maybe a little bit less than that, depending on where

749
00:38:47,680 --> 00:38:49,000
Speaker 1: you want to date it to. But the point is

750
00:38:49,560 --> 00:38:50,200
Speaker 1: that should give.

751
00:38:50,120 --> 00:38:51,080
Speaker 2: Us comfort in the US.

752
00:38:51,239 --> 00:38:54,799
Speaker 1: It's a little bit, but it gives you. You just

753
00:38:54,880 --> 00:38:58,839
Speaker 1: realized that that they were like when they were going

754
00:38:58,880 --> 00:39:02,799
Speaker 1: through stuff. When when when Marx realist is living through

755
00:39:02,920 --> 00:39:05,719
Speaker 1: a civil war, or Cato is living through a civil war,

756
00:39:06,360 --> 00:39:10,040
Speaker 1: or Seneca is in exile or during the reign of Nero,

757
00:39:10,600 --> 00:39:13,920
Speaker 1: what are they turning to? They're turning to the ancients,

758
00:39:14,280 --> 00:39:16,799
Speaker 1: who we are also turning to. And then what we

759
00:39:16,880 --> 00:39:19,640
Speaker 1: have is generations. This is why they call philosophy the

760
00:39:19,640 --> 00:39:26,040
Speaker 1: Great Conversation, because it's these core ideas that were sort

761
00:39:26,040 --> 00:39:30,480
Speaker 1: of brought into existence at some point. But the genius

762
00:39:30,480 --> 00:39:33,560
Speaker 1: of them is the layering on top of each subsequent

763
00:39:33,640 --> 00:39:36,880
Speaker 1: generation trying and riffing. And just as just as the

764
00:39:36,920 --> 00:39:41,080
Speaker 1: Founders I give you Jeffrey Rosen's The Pursuit of Happiness,

765
00:39:41,400 --> 00:39:46,799
Speaker 1: the Founders were turning to the stokes that my nine

766
00:39:46,840 --> 00:39:50,680
Speaker 1: years obsessed with Hamilton. Oh, the play Hamilton, the most

767
00:39:50,680 --> 00:39:54,920
Speaker 1: famous play in the Western world in the eighteenth century,

768
00:39:55,239 --> 00:39:58,200
Speaker 1: was a play about Cato, and it was as famous

769
00:39:58,239 --> 00:40:00,960
Speaker 1: as Hamilton is now, and in the way that you know,

770
00:40:01,840 --> 00:40:03,879
Speaker 1: like if you go immigrants, they get the job done.

771
00:40:03,880 --> 00:40:09,759
Speaker 1: People know what you're talking about. When George Washington would

772
00:40:09,760 --> 00:40:13,480
Speaker 1: talk about, you know, looking at events through the calm

773
00:40:13,560 --> 00:40:16,800
Speaker 1: light of mild philosophy, or when they say I regret

774
00:40:16,880 --> 00:40:19,240
Speaker 1: I have but one life to give for my country,

775
00:40:19,520 --> 00:40:22,440
Speaker 1: these are lines from that play. And so it's this

776
00:40:22,560 --> 00:40:26,520
Speaker 1: great tradition of these ideas being just so perfectly expressed

777
00:40:26,520 --> 00:40:28,600
Speaker 1: and the example being so powerful that people have been

778
00:40:28,640 --> 00:40:32,799
Speaker 1: turning to it over and over again. And that's the

779
00:40:32,880 --> 00:40:36,960
Speaker 1: really powerful thing. Stoicism wasn't Marcus realized. It was six

780
00:40:37,040 --> 00:40:42,279
Speaker 1: hundred years of it in Greece and Rome and then

781
00:40:42,719 --> 00:40:44,920
Speaker 1: you know, I mean it continues on up. It's not

782
00:40:44,960 --> 00:40:48,040
Speaker 1: like people haven't been talking about and riffing about it

783
00:40:48,040 --> 00:40:50,360
Speaker 1: in the eighteen hundred years since. They absolutely have. And

784
00:40:50,440 --> 00:40:54,000
Speaker 1: so it's just this energy I think you tap into

785
00:40:54,040 --> 00:40:56,800
Speaker 1: and you go, oh, these are ideas that have really

786
00:40:56,840 --> 00:41:00,600
Speaker 1: been tested in the crucible of human EXPSI.

787
00:41:00,400 --> 00:41:03,440
Speaker 2: Was the stoic? I mean, was I mean when Zeno

788
00:41:04,040 --> 00:41:07,080
Speaker 2: it was three hundred BC or something. Yeah, he said,

789
00:41:07,160 --> 00:41:10,640
Speaker 2: I am I declare myself a Stoic? Uh it was?

790
00:41:10,960 --> 00:41:12,760
Speaker 2: Or was he declared a stoic?

791
00:41:13,280 --> 00:41:16,279
Speaker 1: Well, that's that. I think it's to Zeno's credit that

792
00:41:16,719 --> 00:41:19,279
Speaker 1: the philosophy is not called Xenoism. Right, there's a little

793
00:41:19,320 --> 00:41:22,440
Speaker 1: bit right at the beginning. There's some humility, so Stoa.

794
00:41:22,920 --> 00:41:27,919
Speaker 1: So so the founding story of Stoicism is Zeno's a merchant. Uh,

795
00:41:27,960 --> 00:41:31,799
Speaker 1: and he deals in this rare purple dye and uh

796
00:41:32,239 --> 00:41:35,640
Speaker 1: that that die being a commodity in those days, a

797
00:41:36,080 --> 00:41:39,160
Speaker 1: dyeing purple. Yeah, we we we we think of like

798
00:41:39,880 --> 00:41:42,200
Speaker 1: it's funny where the straight of four moves is shut

799
00:41:42,239 --> 00:41:45,680
Speaker 1: down global trade, but it's the modern thing. It's like, no,

800
00:41:45,840 --> 00:41:49,760
Speaker 1: the purple dye was this commodity that that was made

801
00:41:49,920 --> 00:41:53,080
Speaker 1: across multiple islands in the Mediterranean, and it would get

802
00:41:53,080 --> 00:41:58,200
Speaker 1: traded and moved around like the same the same navigational

803
00:41:58,239 --> 00:42:01,960
Speaker 1: issues we're having right now people talking about then. But

804
00:42:02,200 --> 00:42:04,880
Speaker 1: but but he suffers this shipwreck, he washes up in

805
00:42:04,920 --> 00:42:10,200
Speaker 1: Athens and ends up there discovering philosophy, and that's where

806
00:42:10,239 --> 00:42:13,920
Speaker 1: stoicism starts. But he just begins lecturing about these ideas

807
00:42:14,480 --> 00:42:17,800
Speaker 1: on the Stoa Pochila, which is the painted porch in Athens,

808
00:42:18,280 --> 00:42:22,240
Speaker 1: and that's where that's what stoic means. It just Stoa

809
00:42:22,360 --> 00:42:25,040
Speaker 1: means porch. It doesn't mean anything. These are just the

810
00:42:25,040 --> 00:42:29,799
Speaker 1: guys from the porch, bullshitting and talking and sharing. It

811
00:42:29,880 --> 00:42:31,959
Speaker 1: is funny then that he would talk about that, that's

812
00:42:32,360 --> 00:42:37,799
Speaker 1: this merchant of purple dye. His philosophy would become the

813
00:42:37,800 --> 00:42:41,359
Speaker 1: philosophy associate with Marcus Relis because I could tell you

814
00:42:41,480 --> 00:42:44,840
Speaker 1: mouthing the words there. One of the powerful lines and meditations,

815
00:42:44,840 --> 00:42:48,440
Speaker 1: as Mark Sali says, this is a reference to being emperors,

816
00:42:48,520 --> 00:42:52,239
Speaker 1: is be careful that you are not dyed purple. And

817
00:42:52,480 --> 00:42:55,840
Speaker 1: he's saying that that make sure that power doesn't corrupt

818
00:42:55,920 --> 00:42:58,719
Speaker 1: youss because the Roman emperor was one of the few

819
00:42:58,760 --> 00:42:59,759
Speaker 1: that could wear the color.

820
00:43:01,880 --> 00:43:06,960
Speaker 2: So you're reading all of this, your portal to this

821
00:43:07,400 --> 00:43:11,640
Speaker 2: beginning with Meditations, which has had an outsize influence and

822
00:43:11,920 --> 00:43:14,520
Speaker 2: on everybody that's ever picked up did you read? You

823
00:43:14,600 --> 00:43:16,800
Speaker 2: pick it up? I picked up all the wrong versions,

824
00:43:17,520 --> 00:43:20,480
Speaker 2: couldn't understand a damn thing interesting. I look back, it's interesting.

825
00:43:20,680 --> 00:43:23,719
Speaker 2: I must have fifteen or twenty different copies. Wow, And

826
00:43:23,840 --> 00:43:26,600
Speaker 2: it took me listening to you on damn YouTube to

827
00:43:26,719 --> 00:43:29,000
Speaker 2: go here's the one I recommend. I'm like, start reading.

828
00:43:29,040 --> 00:43:32,560
Speaker 2: I'm like, wait, this makes some sense because the translations are,

829
00:43:32,640 --> 00:43:35,400
Speaker 2: you know, time back to decades and decades ago. So

830
00:43:35,440 --> 00:43:37,560
Speaker 2: I think my father, someone you know, was around, and

831
00:43:37,640 --> 00:43:40,160
Speaker 2: then here my uncle says, here's a book you should read,

832
00:43:40,320 --> 00:43:42,360
Speaker 2: like Jesus, you know. Lasting. So they just sort of

833
00:43:42,400 --> 00:43:45,440
Speaker 2: collected dust. But there were a few efforts, and they

834
00:43:45,560 --> 00:43:48,239
Speaker 2: just didn't go anywhere because it didn't speak to me

835
00:43:48,360 --> 00:43:51,320
Speaker 2: with the kind of language that I understand today. I do.

836
00:43:51,600 --> 00:43:53,760
Speaker 1: I don't believe in miracles, but I went on Amazon

837
00:43:53,800 --> 00:43:55,919
Speaker 1: and I just bought a random copy that I got

838
00:43:56,160 --> 00:43:58,640
Speaker 1: was just the first one I like. I got the

839
00:43:58,920 --> 00:44:01,840
Speaker 1: copy that change my life, and I've now recommended it

840
00:44:01,960 --> 00:44:05,320
Speaker 1: so many people that just that's the first the algorithm

841
00:44:05,400 --> 00:44:08,120
Speaker 1: blessed me, someone who's so critical of algorithms, and that

842
00:44:08,239 --> 00:44:10,000
Speaker 1: one case the algorithm blessed me.

843
00:44:10,160 --> 00:44:11,440
Speaker 2: By the way, one of the things I love that

844
00:44:11,520 --> 00:44:14,000
Speaker 2: you do is you'll go back to the same you'll

845
00:44:14,040 --> 00:44:16,600
Speaker 2: go to different translations. Yeah, and you're able to sort

846
00:44:16,600 --> 00:44:19,080
Speaker 2: of lay them out. And I mean it shows, I mean,

847
00:44:19,560 --> 00:44:22,680
Speaker 2: you know how language is radically changed. Well that and

848
00:44:22,760 --> 00:44:24,759
Speaker 2: how important the translation is.

849
00:44:25,040 --> 00:44:27,080
Speaker 1: Yes, I mean, so I don't speak Greek or Latin,

850
00:44:27,160 --> 00:44:31,800
Speaker 1: so I don't I don't know exactly, but it is

851
00:44:31,880 --> 00:44:34,880
Speaker 1: interesting when you read all these different translations, you go, oh, like,

852
00:44:35,640 --> 00:44:38,440
Speaker 1: this is the same idea, fifteen different cuts on it,

853
00:44:38,560 --> 00:44:41,320
Speaker 1: and what a big role the translator plays, and also

854
00:44:42,560 --> 00:44:46,719
Speaker 1: what a big role the moment in time that you're in.

855
00:44:47,640 --> 00:44:49,840
Speaker 2: So how we like how you interpret it in the

856
00:44:49,920 --> 00:44:52,040
Speaker 2: context of something contemporary.

857
00:44:52,560 --> 00:44:56,960
Speaker 1: So I've been reading Meditation for fifteen years and then

858
00:44:57,880 --> 00:45:02,080
Speaker 1: twenty twenty pandemic hits. I'm reading Meditations and all of

859
00:45:02,160 --> 00:45:05,640
Speaker 1: a sudden there's all these references to the plague and

860
00:45:05,719 --> 00:45:09,160
Speaker 1: to pestilence, and and you realize, oh, it's this is

861
00:45:09,160 --> 00:45:11,560
Speaker 1: a plague book. This guy wrote in the middle of

862
00:45:11,640 --> 00:45:16,000
Speaker 1: the Antonine plague, this fifteen year pandemic that killed millions

863
00:45:16,000 --> 00:45:16,279
Speaker 1: of things.

864
00:45:16,280 --> 00:45:18,320
Speaker 2: And you never picked up on that, I mean necessarily,

865
00:45:18,440 --> 00:45:22,600
Speaker 2: I guess, I just you don't. You think he's being metaphorical. Yeah,

866
00:45:22,840 --> 00:45:24,840
Speaker 2: and then and then you realize he's being literal.

867
00:45:24,920 --> 00:45:27,000
Speaker 1: Like one of the passages I thought the most about

868
00:45:27,040 --> 00:45:30,040
Speaker 1: during the pandemic is this one where he goes, there's

869
00:45:30,280 --> 00:45:33,200
Speaker 1: there's two types of plagues. There's the one that can

870
00:45:33,320 --> 00:45:37,200
Speaker 1: destroy your health and the one that can destroy your character.

871
00:45:37,680 --> 00:45:40,000
Speaker 1: And I and then then you watch over the next

872
00:45:40,160 --> 00:45:45,560
Speaker 1: two years, people get radicalized, People turn off their hearts

873
00:45:45,840 --> 00:45:50,759
Speaker 1: and their their neighborliness to other people, and and you

874
00:45:51,200 --> 00:45:55,040
Speaker 1: and in other cases lose their mind come, you know,

875
00:45:56,640 --> 00:45:59,480
Speaker 1: do and say things they would have been shocked by,

876
00:45:59,600 --> 00:46:03,000
Speaker 1: just if you years earlier. And you, oh that he

877
00:46:03,160 --> 00:46:05,839
Speaker 1: must have seen that, you know, he must he must

878
00:46:05,880 --> 00:46:09,839
Speaker 1: have seen that. And and I think there's a there's

879
00:46:09,880 --> 00:46:14,000
Speaker 1: a famous story about Markusrelius. He's presiding over some court

880
00:46:14,080 --> 00:46:17,920
Speaker 1: and one of the lawyers, uh makes this reference to

881
00:46:18,200 --> 00:46:21,960
Speaker 1: the victims of the plague, and he just bursts into tears.

882
00:46:22,640 --> 00:46:25,400
Speaker 1: And so you think Number one, I thought this is

883
00:46:25,440 --> 00:46:28,319
Speaker 1: the stoics don't have emotions, they don't care about people. Yes,

884
00:46:28,440 --> 00:46:30,040
Speaker 1: and then and and here he is just sort of

885
00:46:30,080 --> 00:46:33,719
Speaker 1: weeping over these untold thousands of people who have died.

886
00:46:33,920 --> 00:46:35,960
Speaker 1: You know, in some cases people we would have uh

887
00:46:36,920 --> 00:46:41,439
Speaker 1: cared deeply about and been very close to. And you go, oh,

888
00:46:42,600 --> 00:46:47,600
Speaker 1: that's not what stoicism Isn't this uh uh fuck you?

889
00:46:47,880 --> 00:46:50,440
Speaker 1: I got mine, or like I got a strong immune

890
00:46:50,480 --> 00:46:51,440
Speaker 1: stitu I think there.

891
00:46:51,600 --> 00:46:54,440
Speaker 2: Was when you first heard about it, because so many

892
00:46:54,480 --> 00:46:56,560
Speaker 2: people see it as just yeah, I'm just I will

893
00:46:56,600 --> 00:46:59,320
Speaker 2: have no emotion. I'm just being stoic, you know, the

894
00:46:59,440 --> 00:47:00,960
Speaker 2: sort of ridge, robotic.

895
00:47:02,080 --> 00:47:04,160
Speaker 1: I think what I was at I was attracted to

896
00:47:04,200 --> 00:47:06,520
Speaker 1: stoicism for the reason that young men have been attracted

897
00:47:06,560 --> 00:47:09,960
Speaker 1: to stoicism for centuries, which is it's about getting your

898
00:47:10,000 --> 00:47:16,160
Speaker 1: shit together, getting it on lock, you know, just just

899
00:47:16,560 --> 00:47:20,000
Speaker 1: that sort of ownership and control of the self, which

900
00:47:20,120 --> 00:47:23,080
Speaker 1: I think if anyone needs help in, it's young men.

901
00:47:23,560 --> 00:47:26,200
Speaker 1: So so I think that was my initial attraction to it.

902
00:47:26,719 --> 00:47:30,000
Speaker 1: And then and I think I was attracted to trappings

903
00:47:30,040 --> 00:47:32,520
Speaker 1: of power and you know, all the all the things

904
00:47:32,560 --> 00:47:35,520
Speaker 1: that make it, you know, interesting and unique compared to

905
00:47:35,880 --> 00:47:39,680
Speaker 1: I don't know, existentialism or some other school of philosophy,

906
00:47:40,640 --> 00:47:44,680
Speaker 1: but over the years you realize, oh, this is actually

907
00:47:44,760 --> 00:47:49,759
Speaker 1: a profoundly ethical philosophy. This is about our connections to

908
00:47:49,840 --> 00:47:52,480
Speaker 1: other people. This is about our responsibilities to other people.

909
00:47:53,160 --> 00:47:58,520
Speaker 1: This is about being like when when they're talking about excellence,

910
00:47:58,560 --> 00:48:03,120
Speaker 1: they don't simply mean perfection excellence, and that actually professional

911
00:48:03,239 --> 00:48:09,160
Speaker 1: excellence is pretty common, but professional and personal excellence, like

912
00:48:09,600 --> 00:48:12,560
Speaker 1: sort of rounding that package out is actually the sort

913
00:48:12,600 --> 00:48:15,680
Speaker 1: of thing to be more ambitious about. So I think

914
00:48:16,160 --> 00:48:18,080
Speaker 1: my initial attraction to it was one thing, and then

915
00:48:18,120 --> 00:48:21,480
Speaker 1: what it works on you, And I think it's interesting

916
00:48:21,520 --> 00:48:23,960
Speaker 1: to hear you talk about sort of starting and stopping

917
00:48:24,000 --> 00:48:28,280
Speaker 1: it over the years. It's it's important that people understand

918
00:48:28,320 --> 00:48:32,960
Speaker 1: stoicism is a philosophy you should be reading, not a

919
00:48:33,040 --> 00:48:34,120
Speaker 1: philosophy you have read.

920
00:48:35,120 --> 00:48:36,719
Speaker 2: You say that. I love that you say that. And

921
00:48:36,920 --> 00:48:39,880
Speaker 2: also you make the point and I don't remember exactly

922
00:48:39,920 --> 00:48:41,520
Speaker 2: who said it, but you never swim in the same

923
00:48:41,600 --> 00:48:44,480
Speaker 2: river twice. Yeah, this notion that the river's changed or

924
00:48:44,560 --> 00:48:46,680
Speaker 2: step in the same way. Yeah, I'll swim in it

925
00:48:47,480 --> 00:48:49,759
Speaker 2: American just up the black where you were growing up.

926
00:48:50,600 --> 00:48:52,800
Speaker 2: But we change as well, Yes, and back to this.

927
00:48:53,239 --> 00:48:55,880
Speaker 2: You know, you're reading it again, and now we're in

928
00:48:55,960 --> 00:48:58,200
Speaker 2: a plague, and all of a sudden you're reading it

929
00:48:58,840 --> 00:49:01,879
Speaker 2: as I mean almost as a new visitor to the same,

930
00:49:02,320 --> 00:49:03,200
Speaker 2: same old Well.

931
00:49:03,239 --> 00:49:05,319
Speaker 1: I think it's so fascinating that, Yeah, you picked up

932
00:49:05,320 --> 00:49:08,320
Speaker 1: a book when you were one age, you picked it

933
00:49:08,400 --> 00:49:11,239
Speaker 1: up again another, it continually wasn't working, and then at

934
00:49:11,320 --> 00:49:15,000
Speaker 1: some point, and I bet if you actually laid those

935
00:49:15,080 --> 00:49:17,840
Speaker 1: translations outside by side, they're not that different.

936
00:49:17,880 --> 00:49:18,359
Speaker 2: They're not there.

937
00:49:18,400 --> 00:49:19,239
Speaker 1: I think you were.

938
00:49:19,880 --> 00:49:23,360
Speaker 2: You were profound Well, I was trying to find language period.

939
00:49:23,440 --> 00:49:25,640
Speaker 2: I you know, wrote a book about my own learning disability.

940
00:49:25,680 --> 00:49:28,440
Speaker 2: So just I mean literally the words just above my

941
00:49:28,520 --> 00:49:30,320
Speaker 2: pay grade that needs to be explained to me. I

942
00:49:30,520 --> 00:49:33,279
Speaker 2: remember Shakespeare class in college. I mean, your toast is

943
00:49:33,320 --> 00:49:37,280
Speaker 2: a dyslexic. You're like me, doth thought that, I mean Jesus,

944
00:49:37,600 --> 00:49:39,960
Speaker 2: So you like immediately try to find a cliff note

945
00:49:40,080 --> 00:49:42,600
Speaker 2: version or something on TV that you could claim that

946
00:49:42,719 --> 00:49:45,800
Speaker 2: I read or understood. Yeah. So no, it's so you

947
00:49:45,920 --> 00:49:48,360
Speaker 2: did all that. You know, so you're reading this, but

948
00:49:48,800 --> 00:49:51,000
Speaker 2: you weren't necessarily going Wait a second, this is my

949
00:49:51,160 --> 00:49:54,320
Speaker 2: new path, my career that I'm going to become. You

950
00:49:54,400 --> 00:49:57,440
Speaker 2: know I'm going to translate this to a whole different

951
00:49:57,480 --> 00:50:00,120
Speaker 2: audience that I'm going to be able to express this

952
00:50:00,239 --> 00:50:02,279
Speaker 2: with new media. I'm going to be able to get

953
00:50:02,280 --> 00:50:05,319
Speaker 2: a whole new generation to understand and bring to life

954
00:50:06,000 --> 00:50:07,440
Speaker 2: these extraordinary figures.

955
00:50:07,640 --> 00:50:10,160
Speaker 1: No, I mean I was introduced to the Stokes in

956
00:50:10,160 --> 00:50:12,080
Speaker 1: two thousand and six, and my first book on PTol

957
00:50:12,080 --> 00:50:15,560
Speaker 1: philosophy came out in summer of twenty fourteen.

958
00:50:16,600 --> 00:50:19,440
Speaker 2: So what was the in spir What what said? You know,

959
00:50:19,640 --> 00:50:22,279
Speaker 2: I have to do my version of this, But I've

960
00:50:22,280 --> 00:50:25,080
Speaker 2: written about store. Yeah, I don't know. I was.

961
00:50:25,280 --> 00:50:27,160
Speaker 1: I wrote my first book because I wanted to be

962
00:50:27,200 --> 00:50:30,759
Speaker 1: a writer, and I knew that that book had to

963
00:50:30,800 --> 00:50:32,640
Speaker 1: come first. You couldn't write the stoic books and then

964
00:50:32,680 --> 00:50:34,120
Speaker 1: the media book. So I knew I had to get

965
00:50:34,160 --> 00:50:35,839
Speaker 1: the media book out of the way. So I did

966
00:50:35,880 --> 00:50:37,480
Speaker 1: the media book first, and then what I really wanted

967
00:50:37,520 --> 00:50:40,960
Speaker 1: to write about was was the Stoics. But no, I

968
00:50:41,120 --> 00:50:44,080
Speaker 1: I thought I had this idea for one Stoic book

969
00:50:44,200 --> 00:50:46,239
Speaker 1: about this one passage from Archstreet. That was it.

970
00:50:47,200 --> 00:50:50,320
Speaker 2: And I think again, obstacles away, what stands in the

971
00:50:50,360 --> 00:50:52,360
Speaker 2: way becomes the way. Yes, I love it.

972
00:50:52,440 --> 00:50:54,800
Speaker 1: Come on, I know, I could somewhere. I mean, I just,

973
00:50:54,920 --> 00:50:57,960
Speaker 1: I just it's too good. It's the best, it's the best.

974
00:50:58,520 --> 00:51:03,440
Speaker 1: Someone some to action becomes the action. Yes, the way

975
00:51:03,440 --> 00:51:06,080
Speaker 1: becomes away. But you want to know something funny about

976
00:51:06,120 --> 00:51:08,800
Speaker 1: that quote there Again, you you evolve your understanding of

977
00:51:08,880 --> 00:51:11,719
Speaker 1: these things as you get So I wrote the book

978
00:51:11,920 --> 00:51:14,120
Speaker 1: and The Obstacles Away mostly about how we deal with

979
00:51:14,400 --> 00:51:18,800
Speaker 1: like professional obstacles, right, Like how you're trying to like

980
00:51:19,360 --> 00:51:21,200
Speaker 1: do something and something gets in the way, which is

981
00:51:21,239 --> 00:51:24,359
Speaker 1: obviously what he's partly talking about there. But the fuller quote,

982
00:51:24,360 --> 00:51:26,759
Speaker 1: which obviously I knew is I edited to put some

983
00:51:26,840 --> 00:51:29,920
Speaker 1: ellipses in there, But mostly what he's talking about is

984
00:51:30,320 --> 00:51:34,640
Speaker 1: is is annoying people and obnoxious people's He's saying, people

985
00:51:35,080 --> 00:51:37,719
Speaker 1: can cause problems for us, they can get in our way,

986
00:51:38,920 --> 00:51:42,480
Speaker 1: but you know, we all, he says, we always have

987
00:51:42,560 --> 00:51:44,600
Speaker 1: the ability to accommodate and adapt. He says, we can

988
00:51:44,680 --> 00:51:49,160
Speaker 1: convert this to our own, you know, our own potential acting.

989
00:51:49,200 --> 00:51:50,800
Speaker 1: And then he says, you know, the impediment action in

990
00:51:50,800 --> 00:51:52,839
Speaker 1: advances action, what stands in the way becomes a way,

991
00:51:53,560 --> 00:51:56,279
Speaker 1: and then you go, okay. So when he's saying, some

992
00:51:56,760 --> 00:51:59,759
Speaker 1: person comes up and says something horrible to you, or

993
00:52:00,320 --> 00:52:02,960
Speaker 1: some some some person screw something up for you, or

994
00:52:03,040 --> 00:52:08,160
Speaker 1: some some person, uh you know, it's just constantly uh

995
00:52:08,800 --> 00:52:11,400
Speaker 1: stressing you out or abusing you or whatever it is.

996
00:52:11,600 --> 00:52:15,200
Speaker 1: What he's saying is that that's an opportunity for you

997
00:52:15,440 --> 00:52:17,919
Speaker 1: to be the better person, the bigger person, to grow

998
00:52:18,120 --> 00:52:24,000
Speaker 1: as a person in wrestling with and handling what this

999
00:52:24,200 --> 00:52:28,640
Speaker 1: person is doing to you. And and so you go, Okay,

1000
00:52:28,800 --> 00:52:31,560
Speaker 1: Like when the Stokes are saying the obstacles the way,

1001
00:52:31,560 --> 00:52:33,800
Speaker 1: they don't necessarily mean, oh, this is a chance to

1002
00:52:34,400 --> 00:52:37,960
Speaker 1: you know, hey, this, this huge recession that we just

1003
00:52:38,080 --> 00:52:40,840
Speaker 1: got plunged into, is actually a chance for you to

1004
00:52:40,960 --> 00:52:44,560
Speaker 1: retrench in the business and tighten things up and come

1005
00:52:44,640 --> 00:52:49,600
Speaker 1: back smarter and and and leaner, and you know, more organized.

1006
00:52:49,719 --> 00:52:50,120
Speaker 2: It may be.

1007
00:52:50,680 --> 00:52:54,360
Speaker 1: But he's saying, actually, you know this, this, this person

1008
00:52:54,440 --> 00:52:57,000
Speaker 1: who just broke your heart, or this person who just

1009
00:52:57,120 --> 00:52:59,920
Speaker 1: lied to you or stole from you, or this per

1010
00:53:00,239 --> 00:53:03,359
Speaker 1: who just said something horrible to you, they're a chance

1011
00:53:03,480 --> 00:53:06,319
Speaker 1: for you to grow as a human being in how

1012
00:53:06,440 --> 00:53:10,440
Speaker 1: you respond to them. That is obviously not my reading

1013
00:53:10,520 --> 00:53:13,320
Speaker 1: of the passage when I'm nineteen, but it's how I

1014
00:53:13,440 --> 00:53:14,759
Speaker 1: understand it. Twenty years later and.

1015
00:53:14,840 --> 00:53:17,040
Speaker 2: You understand it. It's sort of the core part of

1016
00:53:17,080 --> 00:53:19,040
Speaker 2: what you said is sort of for you if you

1017
00:53:19,080 --> 00:53:22,359
Speaker 2: were going to distill the essence of stoicism, this notion

1018
00:53:22,719 --> 00:53:25,600
Speaker 2: that we have agency, Yeah, that you know, it's not

1019
00:53:25,840 --> 00:53:28,000
Speaker 2: what happens to us, how we respond to what happens

1020
00:53:28,000 --> 00:53:28,279
Speaker 2: to us.

1021
00:53:28,400 --> 00:53:32,799
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, would I'd be curious, Like in politics, isn't

1022
00:53:32,840 --> 00:53:36,200
Speaker 1: that I'd be curious to find some line of work

1023
00:53:36,239 --> 00:53:39,560
Speaker 1: in which that's not the case the case, right, Like

1024
00:53:40,000 --> 00:53:42,520
Speaker 1: you wake up and somebody gives you the news and

1025
00:53:42,640 --> 00:53:45,839
Speaker 1: then you figure out your job is to say, here's

1026
00:53:45,840 --> 00:53:46,400
Speaker 1: what we're going to do.

1027
00:53:46,680 --> 00:53:49,279
Speaker 2: Yeah, but so much of our life is this sort

1028
00:53:49,320 --> 00:53:52,920
Speaker 2: of victim mentality that you know that it's fate and

1029
00:53:53,080 --> 00:53:55,759
Speaker 2: we can't control our own fate. Yeah, you know, the

1030
00:53:56,160 --> 00:53:59,439
Speaker 2: systems rigged against me. There's nothing I can do, nothing

1031
00:53:59,520 --> 00:54:03,520
Speaker 2: one person can do. Yes, who this is, whose fault

1032
00:54:03,600 --> 00:54:05,520
Speaker 2: it is? This is how why it should have gone

1033
00:54:05,560 --> 00:54:09,080
Speaker 2: the other way. Just a lot of a lot of

1034
00:54:09,360 --> 00:54:11,919
Speaker 2: dwelling on why it happened, as.

1035
00:54:11,800 --> 00:54:13,680
Speaker 1: Opposed to what you're gonna do about it.

1036
00:54:13,840 --> 00:54:16,800
Speaker 2: Yeah. So it's interesting to me just you know, I

1037
00:54:17,080 --> 00:54:19,960
Speaker 2: write a little bit and uh, some of my my

1038
00:54:20,080 --> 00:54:23,120
Speaker 2: friends like why you're writing about Tony Robbins. But it's

1039
00:54:23,160 --> 00:54:25,880
Speaker 2: interesting I write about it because I was, you know,

1040
00:54:25,960 --> 00:54:28,280
Speaker 2: around your age, and all of a sudden, my contemporary

1041
00:54:28,360 --> 00:54:32,799
Speaker 2: version dare I say, how dare you? Was this guy

1042
00:54:33,480 --> 00:54:36,160
Speaker 2: with you know, who was self described with big teeth

1043
00:54:36,239 --> 00:54:39,799
Speaker 2: on you know, on infomercials selling me cassette tapes. Yeah,

1044
00:54:40,360 --> 00:54:43,759
Speaker 2: and I listened to those today and I'm like, so

1045
00:54:43,920 --> 00:54:46,040
Speaker 2: much is you know?

1046
00:54:46,600 --> 00:54:48,759
Speaker 1: Well, I do think that that there's a little bit

1047
00:54:48,800 --> 00:54:52,480
Speaker 1: there that's just a complete indictment of philosophy as a

1048
00:54:52,480 --> 00:54:55,800
Speaker 1: whole these days, right, like like that that that is,

1049
00:54:57,600 --> 00:55:00,239
Speaker 1: that's what Socrates is doing, That's what that That's what

1050
00:55:00,960 --> 00:55:05,560
Speaker 1: uh Aristotle was doing. They were they were trying. I mean,

1051
00:55:05,920 --> 00:55:08,759
Speaker 1: Socrates gets killed for corrupting the youth, which is to say,

1052
00:55:09,040 --> 00:55:12,760
Speaker 1: teaching the young boys what they need to know about

1053
00:55:12,840 --> 00:55:16,359
Speaker 1: life that their parents didn't want them to know, right,

1054
00:55:17,480 --> 00:55:21,840
Speaker 1: or challenging convention or or you know, teaching them a

1055
00:55:21,920 --> 00:55:24,439
Speaker 1: new way of thinking. And I guess it just says

1056
00:55:24,520 --> 00:55:30,000
Speaker 1: something that that philosophy does not speak to people in

1057
00:55:30,120 --> 00:55:32,520
Speaker 1: a way that it's supposed to. It is supposed to

1058
00:55:32,520 --> 00:55:34,560
Speaker 1: be the guide to the good life, which you know,

1059
00:55:35,160 --> 00:55:38,719
Speaker 1: to me, the American dream is both a financial dream

1060
00:55:38,760 --> 00:55:42,920
Speaker 1: but also a sort of a moral and a spiritual

1061
00:55:43,040 --> 00:55:46,440
Speaker 1: dream of a of a better life. And and philosophy

1062
00:55:46,560 --> 00:55:48,640
Speaker 1: is supposed to be part of that and and it's

1063
00:55:48,880 --> 00:55:51,880
Speaker 1: just it's just not and and I think we're in

1064
00:55:52,160 --> 00:55:57,600
Speaker 1: extra trouble when you know, organized religion has not just

1065
00:55:57,760 --> 00:56:03,560
Speaker 1: fallen away, but also you know, alienated huge swats of

1066
00:56:03,600 --> 00:56:05,960
Speaker 1: the population, whether you're talking about the abuse scandals in

1067
00:56:06,040 --> 00:56:08,600
Speaker 1: the in the Catholic Church, which is what I grew

1068
00:56:08,680 --> 00:56:11,520
Speaker 1: up in, or you're looking at the sort of political

1069
00:56:11,640 --> 00:56:18,719
Speaker 1: radicalization of sort of evangelical faith. And so if if

1070
00:56:19,880 --> 00:56:24,640
Speaker 1: you're not going to have traditions and sort of rituals,

1071
00:56:24,920 --> 00:56:28,480
Speaker 1: you're also not going to have religion, what are you

1072
00:56:28,880 --> 00:56:34,040
Speaker 1: Where are people supposed to learn this stuff? And and

1073
00:56:34,480 --> 00:56:37,440
Speaker 1: and it's I think created a huge vacuum that that

1074
00:56:37,600 --> 00:56:41,279
Speaker 1: certain you know, bad actors have stepped into phil and.

1075
00:56:41,360 --> 00:56:45,560
Speaker 2: You haven't become a bad actor. Thanks you talk about

1076
00:56:45,760 --> 00:56:47,520
Speaker 2: you know, because you you talked to you, we can

1077
00:56:47,600 --> 00:56:49,759
Speaker 2: go back to sort of March twenty twenty and sort

1078
00:56:49,760 --> 00:56:52,000
Speaker 2: of the beginning, and we could talk about that pandemic people,

1079
00:56:52,600 --> 00:56:55,799
Speaker 2: you know, I mean, I explained more things in more ways,

1080
00:56:55,800 --> 00:56:59,600
Speaker 2: on more days of everything. Sure, our relationships back to

1081
00:56:59,680 --> 00:57:04,360
Speaker 2: truth trust. This certainly are politics. I didn't fully absorb

1082
00:57:04,440 --> 00:57:07,160
Speaker 2: it appreciate it at the time. And what we've become

1083
00:57:07,239 --> 00:57:09,800
Speaker 2: on the other side, and what people became people I

1084
00:57:09,840 --> 00:57:13,279
Speaker 2: don't they were unrecognizable to this day that went through

1085
00:57:13,360 --> 00:57:15,359
Speaker 2: that process. We can get Elon Musk in a minute,

1086
00:57:15,400 --> 00:57:17,200
Speaker 2: but I knew him well before.

1087
00:57:17,480 --> 00:57:20,400
Speaker 1: That's my favorite part of your book. You talked about

1088
00:57:21,040 --> 00:57:26,040
Speaker 1: how you came of age as all. You came of

1089
00:57:26,080 --> 00:57:29,479
Speaker 1: age at the same time as all those Silicon Valley people.

1090
00:57:29,680 --> 00:57:31,960
Speaker 2: I was with Larry and Serge at Google and when

1091
00:57:32,320 --> 00:57:34,440
Speaker 2: Steve Jobs taps us on the shoulder and says, hey,

1092
00:57:34,840 --> 00:57:36,600
Speaker 2: he wasn't interested in me, he was interested in Larry

1093
00:57:36,600 --> 00:57:38,200
Speaker 2: and Serge to show us pulled out of his back

1094
00:57:38,240 --> 00:57:41,080
Speaker 2: pocket the first iPhone and we're like, you know, it

1095
00:57:41,200 --> 00:57:43,320
Speaker 2: was like a joy ride. We're going with our fingers

1096
00:57:43,600 --> 00:57:45,960
Speaker 2: like oh we and they're all by you know, they

1097
00:57:46,000 --> 00:57:47,880
Speaker 2: were just in. There was sense of optimism back to

1098
00:57:47,960 --> 00:57:49,240
Speaker 2: you when you were writing this book.

1099
00:57:49,760 --> 00:57:52,840
Speaker 1: So what happened? Like I think that that quote where

1100
00:57:53,000 --> 00:57:54,760
Speaker 1: Elon Musk is on Rogan and he says, you know,

1101
00:57:55,160 --> 00:57:57,160
Speaker 1: empathy is going to be the death of Western civilization.

1102
00:57:57,560 --> 00:57:59,280
Speaker 1: That to me was one. And then when I watched

1103
00:57:59,360 --> 00:58:01,960
Speaker 1: Mark and Drees and talk about how he has zero

1104
00:58:02,120 --> 00:58:05,840
Speaker 1: introspection and and he's like, I never looked backward. He goes,

1105
00:58:05,880 --> 00:58:08,040
Speaker 1: I never looked backwards. It's like, by the way, that's

1106
00:58:08,080 --> 00:58:10,200
Speaker 1: not what introspection is. Just to be like, you clearly

1107
00:58:10,240 --> 00:58:13,680
Speaker 1: don't even know what it is. Like introspection is looking inwards.

1108
00:58:13,760 --> 00:58:16,880
Speaker 1: Just to be clear, that's not looking backwards. But but

1109
00:58:17,440 --> 00:58:19,280
Speaker 1: but he goes, you know, the great men of history,

1110
00:58:19,360 --> 00:58:22,280
Speaker 1: they they they they didn't look around. They didn't It's

1111
00:58:22,360 --> 00:58:25,200
Speaker 1: like the bad ones, you know, the ones who were

1112
00:58:25,280 --> 00:58:30,800
Speaker 1: responsible for genocides and pointless wars and uh ecological disasters

1113
00:58:30,920 --> 00:58:36,080
Speaker 1: and economic calamities. Yes, they had no sense of introspection

1114
00:58:36,440 --> 00:58:40,440
Speaker 1: or history or perspective. But the great ones, whether you're

1115
00:58:40,480 --> 00:58:45,240
Speaker 1: talking about FDR or Truman or Theodore Roosevelt, Washington or Lincoln,

1116
00:58:46,280 --> 00:58:49,160
Speaker 1: the best of the best, all the great, all the greats.

1117
00:58:49,240 --> 00:58:51,320
Speaker 1: And I just named a bunch of of white dudes.

1118
00:58:51,320 --> 00:58:53,880
Speaker 1: So I'm sorry, but like you know, you could we could.

1119
00:58:53,720 --> 00:58:56,200
Speaker 2: Talk about that too, and where women are in the story,

1120
00:58:56,320 --> 00:58:57,040
Speaker 2: you could expand.

1121
00:58:57,560 --> 00:59:01,600
Speaker 1: But the point is that the great historical figures are

1122
00:59:02,000 --> 00:59:09,800
Speaker 1: by definition profoundly considerate and conscientious people, and and when

1123
00:59:10,040 --> 00:59:14,000
Speaker 1: when they're not, it is responsible for their biggest failings.

1124
00:59:14,320 --> 00:59:16,560
Speaker 1: And so what so what's.

1125
00:59:16,440 --> 00:59:18,520
Speaker 2: Happened was what happened?

1126
00:59:18,800 --> 00:59:19,200
Speaker 1: What happened?

1127
00:59:19,200 --> 00:59:21,000
Speaker 2: And what happened to you? That you didn't fall prey

1128
00:59:21,040 --> 00:59:23,720
Speaker 2: to all that? I mean you you, I mean, your

1129
00:59:23,880 --> 00:59:27,080
Speaker 2: rise just gone. I mean it's you can you were

1130
00:59:27,440 --> 00:59:31,520
Speaker 2: wildly successful before the pandemic. But you know, I mean,

1131
00:59:31,600 --> 00:59:36,720
Speaker 2: now the ubiquity and your success it's just exploded. But

1132
00:59:36,880 --> 00:59:39,520
Speaker 2: but it's but it suggests that people are they're not

1133
00:59:40,160 --> 00:59:42,840
Speaker 2: they haven't necessarily been sold that bill of goods either,

1134
00:59:43,240 --> 00:59:44,520
Speaker 2: that they're looking for something different.

1135
00:59:44,680 --> 00:59:47,560
Speaker 1: I mean, look, I've definitely experienced some success. It's small

1136
00:59:47,600 --> 00:59:49,680
Speaker 1: potatoes compared to being, you know, one of the richest

1137
00:59:49,760 --> 00:59:51,480
Speaker 1: or most powerful people in the world. So I I

1138
00:59:52,240 --> 00:59:55,600
Speaker 1: don't want to judge people whose thing you know, who's

1139
00:59:55,720 --> 00:59:59,040
Speaker 1: who's uh, whose you know sort of experiences is something

1140
00:59:59,080 --> 00:59:59,920
Speaker 1: I can't even comprehend.

1141
01:00:00,000 --> 01:00:00,360
Speaker 2: But it does.

1142
01:00:00,480 --> 01:00:03,680
Speaker 1: It does seem weird that these people, many of whom

1143
01:00:03,720 --> 01:00:05,800
Speaker 1: I I also knew or met over the years and

1144
01:00:05,880 --> 01:00:08,920
Speaker 1: thought were one thing. It sort of revealed themselves to

1145
01:00:08,960 --> 01:00:10,960
Speaker 1: be another. What do you what's your explanation.

1146
01:00:12,240 --> 01:00:14,200
Speaker 2: I'm struggling with it, and I've been strung. I mean,

1147
01:00:14,200 --> 01:00:15,800
Speaker 2: I struggled with it a little bit of the book.

1148
01:00:15,840 --> 01:00:18,640
Speaker 2: It looks even you know who I was becoming. I

1149
01:00:18,720 --> 01:00:21,200
Speaker 2: mean I was, you know, and and you know, God bless,

1150
01:00:21,240 --> 01:00:23,000
Speaker 2: I was reading one of your books for years ago

1151
01:00:23,040 --> 01:00:25,440
Speaker 2: and took a little indirect shot at me, and I

1152
01:00:25,480 --> 01:00:27,960
Speaker 2: thought it was completely you to see, you know back.

1153
01:00:28,000 --> 01:00:31,320
Speaker 2: I don't want anyone get back. The one of the

1154
01:00:31,440 --> 01:00:34,680
Speaker 2: most important stories. You always say, what during the plague?

1155
01:00:34,840 --> 01:00:37,760
Speaker 2: What Marcus really did? He sold all the things in here?

1156
01:00:37,800 --> 01:00:40,920
Speaker 2: I was going to a damn restaurant and you made it.

1157
01:00:41,000 --> 01:00:43,000
Speaker 2: And I'm like, you know what fair? And it was

1158
01:00:43,120 --> 01:00:46,640
Speaker 2: Legit hurt. It hurt because it was right. And of

1159
01:00:46,760 --> 01:00:48,360
Speaker 2: course I knew I had no greater critic of me

1160
01:00:48,480 --> 01:00:51,440
Speaker 2: than me, and so I appreciate it. But so you know,

1161
01:00:51,920 --> 01:00:53,520
Speaker 2: but in a lot of what I write about in

1162
01:00:53,560 --> 01:00:57,800
Speaker 2: this book, I mean talk about ego, there's I mean

1163
01:00:58,320 --> 01:01:00,320
Speaker 2: the whole thing. I mean, I just I laid it

1164
01:01:00,320 --> 01:01:02,920
Speaker 2: all out, and I laid myself out in this sort

1165
01:01:02,960 --> 01:01:06,640
Speaker 2: of journey of discovery, this memoir of discovery, and discovering

1166
01:01:06,960 --> 01:01:10,240
Speaker 2: myself and my own you know, and my own you

1167
01:01:10,280 --> 01:01:14,240
Speaker 2: know this, there's so many but you know, expectations and

1168
01:01:14,320 --> 01:01:17,680
Speaker 2: how I was living in other people's expectations and I

1169
01:01:17,760 --> 01:01:20,280
Speaker 2: was kind of losing myself and how now And I

1170
01:01:20,360 --> 01:01:23,400
Speaker 2: think it's why sort of reading dove deep into your work.

1171
01:01:23,840 --> 01:01:26,640
Speaker 2: It's just so sort of all coincided. I'm like, oh,

1172
01:01:27,600 --> 01:01:31,320
Speaker 2: you know, just literally just breathe again and have perspective

1173
01:01:31,480 --> 01:01:33,160
Speaker 2: and grace and humility.

1174
01:01:33,480 --> 01:01:37,400
Speaker 1: You're saying, introspection, interest like the thing they are running

1175
01:01:37,400 --> 01:01:37,919
Speaker 1: away from.

1176
01:01:37,880 --> 01:01:42,680
Speaker 2: Running away from the coarseness. That's why I've got forgive me.

1177
01:01:42,800 --> 01:01:45,480
Speaker 2: I didn't mean to put you behind these knee pads.

1178
01:01:45,680 --> 01:01:48,120
Speaker 2: And I think about with Trump, I mean the obstacles away.

1179
01:01:48,160 --> 01:01:50,720
Speaker 2: To me, it's so profound in the context of how

1180
01:01:50,800 --> 01:01:53,880
Speaker 2: I'm dealing with the challenges and the obstacle it stands

1181
01:01:53,960 --> 01:01:57,400
Speaker 2: in the way of decent. From my perspective, decency, lack

1182
01:01:57,440 --> 01:02:00,480
Speaker 2: of character, all those those cardinal VERSI choose that you

1183
01:02:00,600 --> 01:02:03,360
Speaker 2: write so beautifully about this notion of justice and this

1184
01:02:03,520 --> 01:02:05,760
Speaker 2: notion of what courage really is in temperance, all these

1185
01:02:05,960 --> 01:02:09,000
Speaker 2: found what discipline looks. It's a math amount of what

1186
01:02:09,080 --> 01:02:12,240
Speaker 2: we have today. But I think about, all, right, obstacle

1187
01:02:12,400 --> 01:02:14,760
Speaker 2: is the way it stands, the way becomes away. So

1188
01:02:15,120 --> 01:02:19,240
Speaker 2: how we can sort of with agency, you know, manifest

1189
01:02:19,880 --> 01:02:23,880
Speaker 2: and take responsibility and have the discipline and the character

1190
01:02:24,400 --> 01:02:27,800
Speaker 2: to you know, not just identify the problems, but begin

1191
01:02:27,880 --> 01:02:31,520
Speaker 2: to march strategies and iteration to address these problems and

1192
01:02:31,880 --> 01:02:34,760
Speaker 2: to move in a more enlightened direction. And again, you've

1193
01:02:34,800 --> 01:02:37,440
Speaker 2: been a huge part of that for millions of us,

1194
01:02:38,880 --> 01:02:41,560
Speaker 2: but certainly for the guy sitting here as the current

1195
01:02:41,600 --> 01:02:43,800
Speaker 2: occupant of the governor's mansion.

1196
01:02:44,200 --> 01:02:48,160
Speaker 1: That's unbelievable to me. I think, you know, there's this

1197
01:02:48,280 --> 01:02:50,800
Speaker 1: passage of Meditations where Mark Schmiz talks about fighting to

1198
01:02:50,880 --> 01:02:53,280
Speaker 1: be the person that philosophy tried to make you love it.

1199
01:02:53,520 --> 01:02:55,480
Speaker 1: And now I think about that, that's what he's doing

1200
01:02:55,640 --> 01:02:58,680
Speaker 1: in Meditations, is he's trying. He's trying to be better

1201
01:02:58,760 --> 01:03:01,800
Speaker 1: than whatever he could get away with or whatever you know,

1202
01:03:02,240 --> 01:03:05,640
Speaker 1: he would he might just be on his own. He's

1203
01:03:05,720 --> 01:03:09,040
Speaker 1: sure sort of aspiring to be some greater self. And

1204
01:03:09,360 --> 01:03:13,320
Speaker 1: it does feel like in the sort of Silicon Valley

1205
01:03:14,200 --> 01:03:20,520
Speaker 1: kind of like leadership class, there is this and Trump

1206
01:03:20,680 --> 01:03:23,440
Speaker 1: I think obviously hastened it. But it's this kind of

1207
01:03:23,600 --> 01:03:25,480
Speaker 1: like why why should you try to be back?

1208
01:03:25,560 --> 01:03:27,960
Speaker 2: Why just do what you want? Yeah, you know yours

1209
01:03:28,840 --> 01:03:29,720
Speaker 2: when you're.

1210
01:03:29,640 --> 01:03:32,600
Speaker 1: Famous, they let you do it, you know. And it's

1211
01:03:32,680 --> 01:03:37,080
Speaker 1: like the embracing of that and the idea of like why.

1212
01:03:38,440 --> 01:03:40,040
Speaker 1: One of my favorite headlines of all time, there's this

1213
01:03:40,120 --> 01:03:43,680
Speaker 1: Huffington Post headline from fifteen years ago and it says, uh,

1214
01:03:44,360 --> 01:03:46,920
Speaker 1: I don't know how to explain to you that you're

1215
01:03:46,960 --> 01:03:50,440
Speaker 1: supposed to care about other people and that, and it

1216
01:03:50,560 --> 01:03:55,800
Speaker 1: really does feel like like there was this concerted effort

1217
01:03:55,920 --> 01:03:59,640
Speaker 1: in a small group of people to just let themselves

1218
01:03:59,720 --> 01:04:03,760
Speaker 1: off the hook for being responsible for or to anyone,

1219
01:04:03,880 --> 01:04:08,120
Speaker 1: despite the incredible power and privilege that they enjoy.

1220
01:04:08,640 --> 01:04:12,000
Speaker 2: There you go, there you go, and we're I mean,

1221
01:04:12,080 --> 01:04:14,200
Speaker 2: it's and we're living with the consequences of that. I

1222
01:04:14,280 --> 01:04:17,200
Speaker 2: mean we you know, we've hit on you know, young men,

1223
01:04:17,360 --> 01:04:20,360
Speaker 2: but you you know, subtly made the point. I'll make

1224
01:04:20,400 --> 01:04:23,840
Speaker 2: it more expressive. Young men are in crisis. Yeah, And

1225
01:04:24,160 --> 01:04:27,880
Speaker 2: it's interesting how you connect tradition and rituals. And now,

1226
01:04:27,920 --> 01:04:29,800
Speaker 2: I mean we're seeing a little bit now with religion.

1227
01:04:29,840 --> 01:04:32,400
Speaker 2: People are finding religion a little bit again. But we've

1228
01:04:32,440 --> 01:04:35,840
Speaker 2: lost those institutions, that connection to each other. I am,

1229
01:04:35,920 --> 01:04:39,360
Speaker 2: because you are this notion of untu, this commonwealth, you know,

1230
01:04:39,440 --> 01:04:43,680
Speaker 2: and this uh and and of course with algorithms and

1231
01:04:43,960 --> 01:04:48,280
Speaker 2: now this manus for broadly defined and you know Hustlers

1232
01:04:48,400 --> 01:04:52,360
Speaker 2: University and Bugatti Bugotti you get mine and you know,

1233
01:04:52,480 --> 01:04:55,640
Speaker 2: and and all the just patriarchy that comes in there.

1234
01:04:55,640 --> 01:04:59,200
Speaker 2: I mean, and these guys sometimes trying attach these name

1235
01:04:59,520 --> 01:05:00,360
Speaker 2: I know, and.

1236
01:05:00,440 --> 01:05:03,920
Speaker 1: Now it's it's uh, I try to say, it's not.

1237
01:05:04,320 --> 01:05:07,080
Speaker 1: Stoicism is not a formula for you to be a

1238
01:05:07,160 --> 01:05:10,480
Speaker 1: better sociopath. It's supposed to do the opposite. It's supposed

1239
01:05:10,480 --> 01:05:14,040
Speaker 1: to it's supposed to help you because look, we're all

1240
01:05:14,480 --> 01:05:20,840
Speaker 1: inherently selfish. We are all self interested. And the Stokes

1241
01:05:20,880 --> 01:05:22,479
Speaker 1: talk about this like you come out of the womb

1242
01:05:22,960 --> 01:05:28,840
Speaker 1: being like inherently not just dependent on others, but you

1243
01:05:29,000 --> 01:05:33,160
Speaker 1: will you will suck your parents dry literally and figuratively

1244
01:05:33,400 --> 01:05:36,360
Speaker 1: so you can survive. That's what your genes are designed

1245
01:05:36,400 --> 01:05:40,000
Speaker 1: for you to do. Right, And and that maturation or growth,

1246
01:05:40,040 --> 01:05:43,640
Speaker 1: the Stokes would say, is the like the the the

1247
01:05:43,800 --> 01:05:48,120
Speaker 1: overcoming of that realizing that you have these obligations and

1248
01:05:48,240 --> 01:05:52,520
Speaker 1: duties to to not just these people immediately around you,

1249
01:05:52,840 --> 01:05:57,640
Speaker 1: but everyone else like, there's this there's this stoke named

1250
01:05:57,680 --> 01:06:01,400
Speaker 1: Hirocles and he talked about the circles of concern and

1251
01:06:01,920 --> 01:06:04,840
Speaker 1: that he said, the purpose of the philosophy is pulling

1252
01:06:04,960 --> 01:06:09,120
Speaker 1: these outer rings inwards. And to me that like when

1253
01:06:09,120 --> 01:06:11,480
Speaker 1: I heard that, I was like, Oh, that's that's what

1254
01:06:11,600 --> 01:06:14,560
Speaker 1: they were talking about in church as a kid. That's

1255
01:06:14,720 --> 01:06:17,680
Speaker 1: also what Jesus was talking about. And so there is

1256
01:06:17,840 --> 01:06:22,560
Speaker 1: there is actually a if Catholicism, especially because it has

1257
01:06:22,640 --> 01:06:27,960
Speaker 1: those cardinal virtues that I think you sort of you

1258
01:06:28,080 --> 01:06:31,440
Speaker 1: immediately recognize it in the Stoics that oh, oh, this

1259
01:06:31,680 --> 01:06:34,400
Speaker 1: was the tradition before that tradition, and that there's a

1260
01:06:34,440 --> 01:06:35,400
Speaker 1: lot of overlap there.

1261
01:06:35,760 --> 01:06:37,440
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, I love. I mean, just even when we

1262
01:06:37,480 --> 01:06:40,120
Speaker 2: were celebrating the two and fifteth anniversary of the declaration

1263
01:06:40,560 --> 01:06:43,200
Speaker 2: Best of Roman Republic, Best of Greek Democracy. I mean

1264
01:06:43,400 --> 01:06:45,280
Speaker 2: back to your point in terms even the books. You

1265
01:06:45,400 --> 01:06:47,800
Speaker 2: just thank you for the books, but just reminding me

1266
01:06:47,960 --> 01:06:52,760
Speaker 2: the founding fathers, the direct inspiration from these greats.

1267
01:06:53,320 --> 01:06:55,800
Speaker 1: You know, Washington's the only one of the founders who

1268
01:06:56,560 --> 01:07:02,640
Speaker 1: doesn't read the Stoics in Greek or Latin like them

1269
01:07:02,680 --> 01:07:07,320
Speaker 1: in English, because every they were. They were so familiar,

1270
01:07:07,360 --> 01:07:11,680
Speaker 1: like Jefferson as Jefferson as Seneca in French on his nightstand,

1271
01:07:11,720 --> 01:07:14,960
Speaker 1: when he dies, and so like these were These were

1272
01:07:15,080 --> 01:07:21,120
Speaker 1: incredibly literate philosophical figures. And you know, the primary influence

1273
01:07:21,160 --> 01:07:28,480
Speaker 1: on the Founders was not you know, those English legal thinkers,

1274
01:07:28,840 --> 01:07:31,960
Speaker 1: It was the It was the when they're writing the

1275
01:07:32,880 --> 01:07:36,680
Speaker 1: Federalist papers and they're masquerading as these Roman characters, they're

1276
01:07:36,720 --> 01:07:39,880
Speaker 1: thinking about Cato, they're thinking about Seneca, they're thinking about

1277
01:07:40,240 --> 01:07:43,520
Speaker 1: Marcus Aurelius. That those are the people who are influencing

1278
01:07:43,600 --> 01:07:47,080
Speaker 1: them the most. And you know that that that does

1279
01:07:47,200 --> 01:07:49,160
Speaker 1: go back to I think the founding of America, which

1280
01:07:49,200 --> 01:07:55,400
Speaker 1: we've fundamentally misunderstood, this idea that, yes, on the one hand,

1281
01:07:55,440 --> 01:07:58,280
Speaker 1: this is a country about freedom where you're the state

1282
01:07:58,440 --> 01:08:01,680
Speaker 1: can't tell you how to be or how to live,

1283
01:08:04,400 --> 01:08:09,440
Speaker 1: your your individual behavior is not legally prescribed the way

1284
01:08:09,520 --> 01:08:15,600
Speaker 1: that it would be in another society. But they were

1285
01:08:15,800 --> 01:08:18,360
Speaker 1: very much of the mind that all that freedom was

1286
01:08:18,439 --> 01:08:25,200
Speaker 1: to be counterbalanced by a sense of virtue in the people.

1287
01:08:25,479 --> 01:08:28,120
Speaker 1: And John Adams said, like, hey, without it, we're fucked,

1288
01:08:28,200 --> 01:08:33,599
Speaker 1: Like the constitution cannot is not strong enough. He says

1289
01:08:34,280 --> 01:08:40,479
Speaker 1: it will go like a whale through a net like ah, actually,

1290
01:08:40,560 --> 01:08:42,599
Speaker 1: this is my this is my I wrote a piece

1291
01:08:42,640 --> 01:08:44,280
Speaker 1: about this for the Economists a couple of years ago,

1292
01:08:44,360 --> 01:08:46,479
Speaker 1: and maybe maybe now that you're leaving office, it's going

1293
01:08:46,520 --> 01:08:49,759
Speaker 1: to be a next project. Okay. So so Victor Frankel

1294
01:08:49,800 --> 01:08:53,320
Speaker 1: talked about how there's a statue of liberty in New

1295
01:08:53,400 --> 01:08:56,360
Speaker 1: York Harbor and he believed that it should be counterbalanced

1296
01:08:56,439 --> 01:08:59,320
Speaker 1: by a statue of responsibility in San Francisco Harbor.

1297
01:08:59,439 --> 01:09:02,200
Speaker 2: It's funny, and I think there's people.

1298
01:09:02,439 --> 01:09:05,559
Speaker 1: Yeah, the idea that we're we're going to spend federal

1299
01:09:05,640 --> 01:09:09,800
Speaker 1: money to make Alcatraz a pro God when when what

1300
01:09:10,240 --> 01:09:12,760
Speaker 1: what we desperately need as a society is not to

1301
01:09:13,080 --> 01:09:16,559
Speaker 1: lock more people up. We need a monument, I think,

1302
01:09:16,720 --> 01:09:20,080
Speaker 1: to responsibility and our obligations to each other.

1303
01:09:21,439 --> 01:09:23,320
Speaker 2: Right, I was just tritt a Senator Padia about this.

1304
01:09:23,520 --> 01:09:26,599
Speaker 2: We are literally this is a real conversation. No way. Yeah,

1305
01:09:26,680 --> 01:09:28,519
Speaker 2: So I'm not waiting till I'm out of it. Okay,

1306
01:09:28,560 --> 01:09:31,920
Speaker 2: all right, No, I love this idea. It's well, this

1307
01:09:32,040 --> 01:09:35,400
Speaker 2: notion of responsibility, it's that's uh. I don't want to

1308
01:09:35,400 --> 01:09:37,920
Speaker 2: get the too political, but kind of missing in my

1309
01:09:38,000 --> 01:09:39,640
Speaker 2: party at the kind of level that I think it

1310
01:09:39,720 --> 01:09:43,280
Speaker 2: needs to be. We talk about opportunity, we talk in

1311
01:09:43,560 --> 01:09:47,080
Speaker 2: terms of community sometimes but not responsibility. It's you know,

1312
01:09:47,120 --> 01:09:49,760
Speaker 2: about service and civics and I mean all these, I

1313
01:09:49,800 --> 01:09:52,880
Speaker 2: mean it's really critical and back to you know, I

1314
01:09:52,920 --> 01:09:55,920
Speaker 2: don't know, there's uh, it's part of that three legged stool,

1315
01:09:55,960 --> 01:09:58,439
Speaker 2: and I think often we're talking two legs, not that

1316
01:09:58,560 --> 01:09:59,680
Speaker 2: third leg when and.

1317
01:09:59,800 --> 01:10:03,120
Speaker 1: All, so the responsibility and agency are related to each other, right,

1318
01:10:03,240 --> 01:10:06,479
Speaker 1: because there is this thing in our society where I

1319
01:10:06,520 --> 01:10:09,439
Speaker 1: think most most people are like, hey, this shouldn't be happening.

1320
01:10:09,520 --> 01:10:12,639
Speaker 1: This isn't good. I don't like this, this is wrong,

1321
01:10:13,240 --> 01:10:16,559
Speaker 1: and then everyone is waiting for somebodybody to do something

1322
01:10:16,600 --> 01:10:16,840
Speaker 1: about it.

1323
01:10:16,960 --> 01:10:19,879
Speaker 2: I mean, brand I said, in democracy, the most important

1324
01:10:19,880 --> 01:10:24,560
Speaker 2: office is office of citizen active, not inert citizenship.

1325
01:10:24,800 --> 01:10:26,920
Speaker 1: But you mentioned the Democratic Party. I think, even like

1326
01:10:27,080 --> 01:10:29,680
Speaker 1: your thing on redistricting, right, like everyone is like, hey,

1327
01:10:29,760 --> 01:10:31,720
Speaker 1: what they're doing in Texas, which is where I live,

1328
01:10:32,080 --> 01:10:35,880
Speaker 1: is wrong, it's it's regulousism whatever. And then like the

1329
01:10:36,520 --> 01:10:41,000
Speaker 1: typical Democratic Party response would be why do they stop

1330
01:10:41,160 --> 01:10:41,560
Speaker 1: doing that?

1331
01:10:43,520 --> 01:10:46,720
Speaker 2: Yeah, so shame on them, shame on them. Meanwhile, they're

1332
01:10:46,720 --> 01:10:50,400
Speaker 2: consolidating power. Yeah. Yeah, I mean it's hard though, right,

1333
01:10:50,439 --> 01:10:52,000
Speaker 2: because you don't you know what you know, when they

1334
01:10:52,160 --> 01:10:54,600
Speaker 2: I mean the Michelle rama, when they go low, we

1335
01:10:54,680 --> 01:10:56,400
Speaker 2: want to go high and we you know, we have

1336
01:10:56,479 --> 01:11:00,160
Speaker 2: a higher sense of self in that respect. But you

1337
01:11:00,240 --> 01:11:03,720
Speaker 2: know we'll lose this republic. Yeah, that's the way I feel, right,

1338
01:11:03,800 --> 01:11:06,559
Speaker 2: I mean, this is this is this is code read Yes,

1339
01:11:06,680 --> 01:11:09,559
Speaker 2: this is serious. And so this notion of having agency

1340
01:11:09,920 --> 01:11:12,160
Speaker 2: stands in the way becomes sorry, I'm going to keep

1341
01:11:12,200 --> 01:11:15,160
Speaker 2: coming back. You wrote the damn book. You know, you

1342
01:11:15,320 --> 01:11:19,120
Speaker 2: rewired my brain and uh and uh, this notion, I mean,

1343
01:11:19,200 --> 01:11:22,719
Speaker 2: it's it literally that became the foundation of the inspiration

1344
01:11:22,880 --> 01:11:26,760
Speaker 2: and the responsibility to be held to a higher level

1345
01:11:26,800 --> 01:11:30,080
Speaker 2: of accountability, particularly when you have this gift for me,

1346
01:11:30,200 --> 01:11:32,519
Speaker 2: it's a gift of public service. And to be in

1347
01:11:32,600 --> 01:11:35,400
Speaker 2: this position I don't want to dream of ready well.

1348
01:11:35,320 --> 01:11:38,160
Speaker 1: And because it also it could have not worked. It

1349
01:11:38,240 --> 01:11:40,479
Speaker 1: could have been it could have failed, it could have

1350
01:11:40,520 --> 01:11:43,080
Speaker 1: been embarrassing, it could have been the end of your

1351
01:11:44,439 --> 01:11:46,439
Speaker 1: and all the book. But there is this, there is

1352
01:11:46,560 --> 01:11:49,519
Speaker 1: this sort of sense of like, well, I got to

1353
01:11:49,560 --> 01:11:53,920
Speaker 1: keep my powder dry for the moment that there I

1354
01:11:54,680 --> 01:11:57,640
Speaker 1: there is this thing where people tell themselves, hey, like

1355
01:11:57,920 --> 01:12:01,360
Speaker 1: later i'll be more secure, yeah, or later that's when

1356
01:12:01,400 --> 01:12:05,639
Speaker 1: I'll do it. And the result is is nobody's doing anything.

1357
01:12:05,960 --> 01:12:06,240
Speaker 2: Thank you?

1358
01:12:06,360 --> 01:12:06,960
Speaker 1: What it feels like.

1359
01:12:07,280 --> 01:12:09,559
Speaker 2: I mean, come on, I mean what you you look,

1360
01:12:09,640 --> 01:12:11,280
Speaker 2: you write a lot about this, you talk a lot

1361
01:12:11,320 --> 01:12:15,040
Speaker 2: about this. It just it's the do yeah yeah, stop talking,

1362
01:12:15,080 --> 01:12:17,640
Speaker 2: stop thinking about, just start doing it. You got it?

1363
01:12:17,680 --> 01:12:20,120
Speaker 2: Its action, you know, And it's I mean this notion

1364
01:12:20,400 --> 01:12:22,880
Speaker 2: when I'm thirty then, or when i'm a millionaire then,

1365
01:12:23,320 --> 01:12:24,800
Speaker 2: or when I have that then I'll be you know,

1366
01:12:24,880 --> 01:12:27,479
Speaker 2: yeah or you know this notion even have to be

1367
01:12:27,680 --> 01:12:29,519
Speaker 2: something to do something that I have to be a

1368
01:12:29,600 --> 01:12:32,439
Speaker 2: city council or governor or mayor before I can meet

1369
01:12:32,720 --> 01:12:35,719
Speaker 2: move there. I don't think Gandhi waited around for elected office.

1370
01:12:35,760 --> 01:12:39,559
Speaker 2: I don't recall, seriously, was it President, King, doctor king?

1371
01:12:40,200 --> 01:12:42,639
Speaker 2: It wasn't all right, I mean, you know, even even

1372
01:12:42,680 --> 01:12:45,799
Speaker 2: the guys that served in office, like Hovel or even Mendela,

1373
01:12:46,520 --> 01:12:49,080
Speaker 2: I don't remember. You know, four years of Mendela's presidency

1374
01:12:49,160 --> 01:12:52,040
Speaker 2: were interesting. The new con I don't want to disregard it.

1375
01:12:52,400 --> 01:12:54,280
Speaker 2: But that's not why I think of Mendela. His peak

1376
01:12:54,320 --> 01:12:56,840
Speaker 2: of his power wasn't he is in jail. Yeah, and

1377
01:12:57,240 --> 01:12:58,280
Speaker 2: there's moral authority.

1378
01:12:58,360 --> 01:13:02,760
Speaker 1: And one of the things that you you missed too

1379
01:13:03,000 --> 01:13:05,679
Speaker 1: is like all the we're naming the name to guys

1380
01:13:05,760 --> 01:13:07,960
Speaker 1: we're named, and most of those were men, but you're

1381
01:13:08,160 --> 01:13:11,519
Speaker 1: you're naming mostly the people that we've heard of, as

1382
01:13:11,600 --> 01:13:14,920
Speaker 1: if they also weren't part of enormous organizations of a

1383
01:13:14,960 --> 01:13:17,920
Speaker 1: bunch of ordinary p bhoblos who were also participating. And

1384
01:13:18,040 --> 01:13:21,360
Speaker 1: so like it may it may fall on you to

1385
01:13:21,479 --> 01:13:25,240
Speaker 1: be one of those people, but uh, it may also

1386
01:13:25,400 --> 01:13:28,080
Speaker 1: just fall on like like Rosa Parks was a secretary

1387
01:13:28,400 --> 01:13:32,960
Speaker 1: at you know, the NAACP and and and eventually, yes,

1388
01:13:33,080 --> 01:13:35,439
Speaker 1: she also has her moment in the thing. But if

1389
01:13:35,760 --> 01:13:37,559
Speaker 1: if that had been the only thing she'd done, if

1390
01:13:37,560 --> 01:13:41,000
Speaker 1: she'd only been answering phones, there you've got that would

1391
01:13:41,000 --> 01:13:44,360
Speaker 1: have enabled whoever ultimately was the person who doesn't go

1392
01:13:44,400 --> 01:13:45,360
Speaker 1: to the back of the bus.

1393
01:13:45,320 --> 01:13:47,320
Speaker 2: Right And and of course you know she was an

1394
01:13:47,320 --> 01:13:49,880
Speaker 2: echo of Vita b. Wells and so many others that

1395
01:13:50,080 --> 01:13:51,200
Speaker 2: that that inspired.

1396
01:13:51,240 --> 01:13:53,080
Speaker 1: Along the way, there's this other book I should have

1397
01:13:53,080 --> 01:13:56,080
Speaker 1: brought you, do you know what the Highlander School was? No? Okay,

1398
01:13:56,200 --> 01:13:59,600
Speaker 1: So so again we think of Rosa Parks as like

1399
01:13:59,720 --> 01:14:02,280
Speaker 1: this lady that just gets tired one day and you know,

1400
01:14:02,479 --> 01:14:05,439
Speaker 1: sets in motion. There is this thing in Tennessee and

1401
01:14:05,479 --> 01:14:07,640
Speaker 1: the mountains of Tennessee called the Highlanders School, which is

1402
01:14:07,720 --> 01:14:11,520
Speaker 1: run by this this sort of folksy family of activists.

1403
01:14:11,880 --> 01:14:15,080
Speaker 1: And it was a school where they trained activists in

1404
01:14:15,360 --> 01:14:22,240
Speaker 1: nonviolence and political activism. And almost all the major figures

1405
01:14:22,280 --> 01:14:27,280
Speaker 1: of the civil rights movement, including John Lewis, including Rosa Parks,

1406
01:14:27,800 --> 01:14:28,920
Speaker 1: they all go to this school.

1407
01:14:29,160 --> 01:14:31,600
Speaker 2: And it's not only I didn't know about it.

1408
01:14:32,960 --> 01:14:35,880
Speaker 1: Not only do they they learn the things like they

1409
01:14:35,920 --> 01:14:38,639
Speaker 1: would practice, you know, having racial slurs shouted at them,

1410
01:14:38,680 --> 01:14:40,600
Speaker 1: and how how do you how do you roll on

1411
01:14:40,640 --> 01:14:43,559
Speaker 1: the ground and cover yourself as you're getting beaten? How

1412
01:14:43,600 --> 01:14:45,439
Speaker 1: do you you know, how do you talk to people?

1413
01:14:45,960 --> 01:14:48,439
Speaker 1: But it's also where like the relationships that they then

1414
01:14:48,520 --> 01:14:51,320
Speaker 1: took back all over the country. But it's like nobody

1415
01:14:51,439 --> 01:14:53,560
Speaker 1: knows the name of this school, or not enough people do.

1416
01:14:53,920 --> 01:14:57,920
Speaker 1: But those people they're coaching trees. I'm free, I'm right

1417
01:14:57,960 --> 01:14:59,879
Speaker 1: now forgetting the names of the founders of the Highlanders,

1418
01:15:00,200 --> 01:15:03,439
Speaker 1: except mclark was one of the graduates that their coaching

1419
01:15:03,560 --> 01:15:06,320
Speaker 1: tree leads to the civil rights movement, just as by

1420
01:15:06,360 --> 01:15:09,160
Speaker 1: the way Gandhi's coaching tree leads to the people that

1421
01:15:09,320 --> 01:15:12,240
Speaker 1: came back to found the Highlander School, and so again

1422
01:15:12,320 --> 01:15:16,160
Speaker 1: you're gonna you. One of the things that Stokes talk

1423
01:15:16,240 --> 01:15:19,960
Speaker 1: about is that like we're all assigned these like parts,

1424
01:15:20,120 --> 01:15:22,760
Speaker 1: these roles, and we don't know what it is. It

1425
01:15:22,800 --> 01:15:24,120
Speaker 1: could be a big one, it could be a little one.

1426
01:15:24,439 --> 01:15:26,360
Speaker 1: But your job is to just play the hell out

1427
01:15:26,400 --> 01:15:33,000
Speaker 1: of that role and you but chances are your role

1428
01:15:33,160 --> 01:15:36,040
Speaker 1: is not sit on the sidelines and complain about God.

1429
01:15:36,240 --> 01:15:40,560
Speaker 2: I can't take it. I mean, I just can't take it.

1430
01:15:40,600 --> 01:15:43,599
Speaker 2: I can't take the's and I don't mean to disregard

1431
01:15:43,680 --> 01:15:46,519
Speaker 2: people that really do feel like they're victims and have

1432
01:15:47,680 --> 01:15:51,160
Speaker 2: plenty of receipts to back that up. I can't take it.

1433
01:15:51,880 --> 01:15:55,840
Speaker 2: Do something. Seriously, it's exhausting. You know, I love what

1434
01:15:55,920 --> 01:15:57,880
Speaker 2: you're saying about. Just you know, we all have this role.

1435
01:15:57,880 --> 01:16:00,280
Speaker 2: I mean, it's it's the women, right, oh mell life.

1436
01:16:00,360 --> 01:16:02,920
Speaker 2: You know, the powerful play goes on and we almost

1437
01:16:02,960 --> 01:16:06,040
Speaker 2: contribute our verse. And this notion that we have to

1438
01:16:06,160 --> 01:16:08,040
Speaker 2: contribute our verse again back to agent was.

1439
01:16:08,080 --> 01:16:10,800
Speaker 1: Doing in the civil worries, volunteering in hospitals, taking care

1440
01:16:10,800 --> 01:16:14,280
Speaker 1: of soldiers, like there's always something you can do, yes,

1441
01:16:14,520 --> 01:16:19,160
Speaker 1: And and the problem is, I think that our political

1442
01:16:19,240 --> 01:16:23,400
Speaker 1: leaders are not are not willing to risk their political careers.

1443
01:16:23,720 --> 01:16:26,400
Speaker 2: Well, they had no problem in risking their political reputation

1444
01:16:26,520 --> 01:16:29,840
Speaker 2: by trying to get rid of Rosa Park's race in

1445
01:16:29,960 --> 01:16:33,639
Speaker 2: the social studies books, because it was woke, as if

1446
01:16:33,800 --> 01:16:37,920
Speaker 2: race said anything to do with her story. Uh. They

1447
01:16:38,040 --> 01:16:40,240
Speaker 2: finally were called out on that, by the way, as

1448
01:16:40,439 --> 01:16:42,960
Speaker 2: you were called out of the Naval Academy.

1449
01:16:42,960 --> 01:16:46,960
Speaker 1: Fun the hell was that it was? It was surreal. Yeah,

1450
01:16:47,000 --> 01:16:47,439
Speaker 1: I was gonna.

1451
01:16:47,520 --> 01:16:49,960
Speaker 2: I was with some of your great speeches and lectures.

1452
01:16:50,160 --> 01:16:50,960
Speaker 2: Thank you are there.

1453
01:16:51,080 --> 01:16:52,800
Speaker 1: And there was honor. It was the honor of my

1454
01:16:52,880 --> 01:16:53,760
Speaker 1: life to be able to.

1455
01:16:53,760 --> 01:16:56,240
Speaker 2: And the reception you get there is off the charts.

1456
01:16:56,560 --> 01:16:57,639
Speaker 2: But one of the few.

1457
01:16:57,600 --> 01:16:59,640
Speaker 1: Things that gives me hope about our society is if

1458
01:16:59,680 --> 01:17:01,640
Speaker 1: you spend any time with people who are in the

1459
01:17:02,120 --> 01:17:04,400
Speaker 1: armed services right now, it's it's less point.

1460
01:17:04,560 --> 01:17:07,040
Speaker 2: Guy. I was with a dozen of these kids.

1461
01:17:07,400 --> 01:17:10,760
Speaker 1: It blew me away, especially because like that was the

1462
01:17:10,800 --> 01:17:13,760
Speaker 1: opposite of who I was at seventeen, eighteen eighty twenty.

1463
01:17:13,800 --> 01:17:16,880
Speaker 1: You're just like, yeah, you just like you have it,

1464
01:17:17,120 --> 01:17:19,200
Speaker 1: you have it together at this level. It's incredible.

1465
01:17:19,240 --> 01:17:19,559
Speaker 2: And there.

1466
01:17:19,880 --> 01:17:22,320
Speaker 1: I mean they could they could be at Harvard, they

1467
01:17:22,400 --> 01:17:24,559
Speaker 1: could be working at some Wall Street firm, they could

1468
01:17:24,600 --> 01:17:27,719
Speaker 1: be anywhere other than what they're doing, and they're choosing

1469
01:17:27,840 --> 01:17:30,640
Speaker 1: to be there. And then you watch, even even as

1470
01:17:30,920 --> 01:17:34,360
Speaker 1: as they are being mismanaged, as they objectively are right now,

1471
01:17:35,120 --> 01:17:37,639
Speaker 1: just the what they are able to do, the problems

1472
01:17:37,680 --> 01:17:44,800
Speaker 1: they are able to solve, it's incredible. Anyways, Yeah, so

1473
01:17:44,840 --> 01:17:46,120
Speaker 1: I was supposed to give a talk at the the

1474
01:17:46,200 --> 01:17:49,360
Speaker 1: Naval Academy and I was canceled the last minute, right, yeah,

1475
01:17:49,360 --> 01:17:50,960
Speaker 1: about about an hour before I was supposed to go

1476
01:17:51,040 --> 01:17:55,080
Speaker 1: on because because I because I was going to make

1477
01:17:55,160 --> 01:17:58,799
Speaker 1: the political statement that I think removing books from the library,

1478
01:17:58,920 --> 01:17:59,880
Speaker 1: which they did idea.

1479
01:18:00,320 --> 01:18:02,880
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, I think there was two years ago,

1480
01:18:02,960 --> 01:18:06,000
Speaker 2: four three and forty books, if I recall the exact

1481
01:18:06,120 --> 01:18:08,920
Speaker 2: number that were been in libraries or schools across this country.

1482
01:18:08,960 --> 01:18:12,880
Speaker 2: This banning bende rewriting history, censoring historical facts, as if

1483
01:18:12,920 --> 01:18:14,839
Speaker 2: that makes us stronger and wiser.

1484
01:18:15,360 --> 01:18:17,519
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like, hey, this person is going to be uh,

1485
01:18:18,600 --> 01:18:21,519
Speaker 1: you know, in charge of nuclear weapons or flying a

1486
01:18:21,600 --> 01:18:26,600
Speaker 1: fighter jet. But maya Angelou's memoir is to.

1487
01:18:28,160 --> 01:18:32,000
Speaker 2: Handle. Yeah. Yeah, they can't handle it. Yeah, they're way

1488
01:18:32,000 --> 01:18:35,280
Speaker 2: too sensitive for that. Yeah, exactly. But you gave the

1489
01:18:35,400 --> 01:18:36,360
Speaker 2: lecture nonetheless.

1490
01:18:36,600 --> 01:18:38,640
Speaker 1: Yeah, get well, I gave it one to put this

1491
01:18:38,640 --> 01:18:42,560
Speaker 1: stuff into practice. You know, it's like, oh, actually, you

1492
01:18:42,640 --> 01:18:44,920
Speaker 1: know it's it's an It was an interesting insight into

1493
01:18:44,960 --> 01:18:47,200
Speaker 1: it too, because I remember talking to the person giving

1494
01:18:47,320 --> 01:18:49,400
Speaker 1: you know, the messenger who had to pass along that

1495
01:18:49,520 --> 01:18:51,639
Speaker 1: I was, you know, being, and who I really felt

1496
01:18:51,640 --> 01:18:56,120
Speaker 1: for because it's like, hey, this this dude has a pension. Anyways,

1497
01:18:56,160 --> 01:18:58,920
Speaker 1: I he goes, Look, we just don't want to we

1498
01:18:59,040 --> 01:19:01,640
Speaker 1: just don't want to draw any tention to ourselves, you know.

1499
01:19:01,720 --> 01:19:04,840
Speaker 1: And I said, I think I don't think that's how

1500
01:19:04,920 --> 01:19:07,439
Speaker 1: this works. I think I think canceling the lecture an

1501
01:19:07,479 --> 01:19:08,960
Speaker 1: hour before I'm supposed to go on is going to

1502
01:19:09,120 --> 01:19:10,040
Speaker 1: add a lot more here.

1503
01:19:10,080 --> 01:19:12,280
Speaker 2: There were a few dozen headlines.

1504
01:19:11,840 --> 01:19:14,559
Speaker 1: And yeah, and and so yeah, I gave I gave

1505
01:19:14,600 --> 01:19:16,200
Speaker 1: the talk online, and it was obviously seen by a

1506
01:19:16,200 --> 01:19:18,400
Speaker 1: lot more people than would have there.

1507
01:19:18,640 --> 01:19:20,640
Speaker 2: But and you had the audacity to talk about I

1508
01:19:20,680 --> 01:19:25,200
Speaker 2: don't know these uh, you know, these extreme progressive liberal

1509
01:19:25,400 --> 01:19:29,160
Speaker 2: woke you know, admirals like Stockdale. Yes, yes, yes, a

1510
01:19:29,240 --> 01:19:30,120
Speaker 2: move many others.

1511
01:19:30,000 --> 01:19:35,120
Speaker 1: By the way, A great California story there. He the

1512
01:19:35,240 --> 01:19:39,280
Speaker 1: Navy sends him to Stanford in nineteen sixty one and

1513
01:19:39,360 --> 01:19:43,160
Speaker 1: he gets an advanced degree and in and as part

1514
01:19:43,200 --> 01:19:45,960
Speaker 1: of his studies there, he's he he takes classes in

1515
01:19:46,160 --> 01:19:51,439
Speaker 1: comparative Marxism, I forgot it and then and then is

1516
01:19:51,520 --> 01:19:55,519
Speaker 1: introduced to to Epictetus and and it's those two things

1517
01:19:56,120 --> 01:19:59,799
Speaker 1: that allow him to survive the Pow experience.

1518
01:19:59,800 --> 01:20:01,519
Speaker 2: And it was like seven years or something.

1519
01:20:01,600 --> 01:20:04,720
Speaker 1: I was fascinated to my grandfriendrandfather just like what.

1520
01:20:04,880 --> 01:20:07,200
Speaker 2: Get what he didn't read Aupictitis.

1521
01:20:07,600 --> 01:20:10,880
Speaker 1: Well, you came back just when you are exposed to

1522
01:20:11,000 --> 01:20:13,800
Speaker 1: an experience that's designed to break you as a human being,

1523
01:20:14,840 --> 01:20:17,880
Speaker 1: and they strip you down and then just fling you

1524
01:20:18,040 --> 01:20:20,880
Speaker 1: back into the world like very few people could can

1525
01:20:21,560 --> 01:20:24,120
Speaker 1: can manage that. And the reason that Stockdale doesn't break

1526
01:20:24,240 --> 01:20:28,080
Speaker 1: is that he is introduced to these things at a

1527
01:20:28,479 --> 01:20:33,400
Speaker 1: woe liberal institution run by you know, California hippies.

1528
01:20:34,640 --> 01:20:37,280
Speaker 2: And uh and it's interesting and I want to go

1529
01:20:37,400 --> 01:20:39,880
Speaker 2: too far down the rabbit all with Stockdale. But this

1530
01:20:40,040 --> 01:20:43,880
Speaker 2: notion of optimism, it was not that, wasn't that wasn't

1531
01:20:44,320 --> 01:20:48,800
Speaker 2: his go to default, so it just remain optimistic. He

1532
01:20:48,960 --> 01:20:53,840
Speaker 2: just remained clear and confident with the end goal. The

1533
01:20:53,960 --> 01:20:57,000
Speaker 2: optimist didn't tend to do as well as well.

1534
01:20:57,520 --> 01:21:00,160
Speaker 1: The stoic version of optimism is not, oh, this is

1535
01:21:00,280 --> 01:21:03,120
Speaker 1: going to go amazingly, I'm going to get lucky breaks.

1536
01:21:03,320 --> 01:21:06,720
Speaker 1: The stoic version of optimism is I'm going to be

1537
01:21:06,840 --> 01:21:11,040
Speaker 1: better for this, however horrible it is. And ultimately his

1538
01:21:11,240 --> 01:21:17,320
Speaker 1: view was he was going to comport himself in such

1539
01:21:17,320 --> 01:21:20,160
Speaker 1: a way that if he survived, he would not just

1540
01:21:20,280 --> 01:21:22,920
Speaker 1: be proud of how he acted. That's the idea of

1541
01:21:23,000 --> 01:21:25,960
Speaker 1: returning with honor, which they now teach all POWs, but

1542
01:21:26,680 --> 01:21:28,680
Speaker 1: that he was going to turn it into something. He

1543
01:21:28,760 --> 01:21:31,040
Speaker 1: said that in retrospect he would not trade away. And

1544
01:21:31,120 --> 01:21:33,639
Speaker 1: I think that's how we have to see this moment. Like, look,

1545
01:21:33,680 --> 01:21:35,680
Speaker 1: I would love to have a normal president. I'd love

1546
01:21:35,720 --> 01:21:38,479
Speaker 1: to have normal politics. I'd love to have not lived

1547
01:21:38,520 --> 01:21:42,080
Speaker 1: through a pandemic. I would love all the If you

1548
01:21:42,200 --> 01:21:44,080
Speaker 1: had had given me my choice of how I would

1549
01:21:44,120 --> 01:21:46,600
Speaker 1: like the last ten years to go, I would have

1550
01:21:46,600 --> 01:21:49,640
Speaker 1: picked very differently. But the number one you don't get

1551
01:21:49,680 --> 01:21:53,280
Speaker 1: a choice. Number two, you think you know how you

1552
01:21:53,360 --> 01:21:56,679
Speaker 1: want it to go, but you actually don't. And three,

1553
01:21:56,840 --> 01:21:59,840
Speaker 1: the only thing you have to say over is how

1554
01:22:00,240 --> 01:22:03,439
Speaker 1: do you look back and go that was my moment,

1555
01:22:03,640 --> 01:22:06,200
Speaker 1: that was a thing that I rose up to meet,

1556
01:22:06,400 --> 01:22:08,280
Speaker 1: and that's going to be different for all of us.

1557
01:22:08,400 --> 01:22:10,800
Speaker 1: But that's to me, what the stoic is trying to

1558
01:22:10,840 --> 01:22:12,680
Speaker 1: say is that, Hey, I want to be able to

1559
01:22:12,720 --> 01:22:16,680
Speaker 1: look back on this period and say I was what

1560
01:22:16,840 --> 01:22:20,800
Speaker 1: I was capable of being, and that I grew and

1561
01:22:21,000 --> 01:22:24,760
Speaker 1: was changed by that experience for the better. That that

1562
01:22:25,120 --> 01:22:29,200
Speaker 1: is to me actually profoundly optimistic and hopeful thing to say.

1563
01:22:29,840 --> 01:22:32,800
Speaker 1: It's also realistic what.

1564
01:22:33,240 --> 01:22:36,559
Speaker 2: I mean, you look back at stoicism and anything they

1565
01:22:36,840 --> 01:22:38,640
Speaker 2: from your perspective got wrong.

1566
01:22:39,520 --> 01:22:42,519
Speaker 1: Well like basically everyone for the last two thousand years.

1567
01:22:42,520 --> 01:22:43,880
Speaker 1: They get the whole slavery thing wrong.

1568
01:22:44,200 --> 01:22:46,639
Speaker 2: There was a little that I mean, Marcus, realist slavery.

1569
01:22:47,040 --> 01:22:49,400
Speaker 2: You know, you had Seneca working for a guy named

1570
01:22:49,640 --> 01:22:51,040
Speaker 2: you know, good loss named Narrow.

1571
01:22:51,240 --> 01:22:54,200
Speaker 1: Yes, so wealthy guy. There's the kind of just basic,

1572
01:22:54,560 --> 01:22:57,479
Speaker 1: you know, personal decisions, and you can't study history and

1573
01:22:57,600 --> 01:23:03,479
Speaker 1: not go, hey, this person was flawed and made mistakes.

1574
01:23:03,520 --> 01:23:06,559
Speaker 1: We're all products of our time, so that there's certainly

1575
01:23:06,560 --> 01:23:10,519
Speaker 1: a lot of things like that. How about in their teachings, Well, look,

1576
01:23:10,520 --> 01:23:14,360
Speaker 1: they believed, I think, much more in predetermination and predestination

1577
01:23:14,520 --> 01:23:25,080
Speaker 1: than we do. They they they had obviously to go

1578
01:23:25,200 --> 01:23:28,640
Speaker 1: to the idea of agency, right like they were all

1579
01:23:28,720 --> 01:23:31,120
Speaker 1: these things that they thought couldn't be changed, that they

1580
01:23:31,360 --> 01:23:33,600
Speaker 1: that they thought was just a fact of life. And

1581
01:23:33,760 --> 01:23:36,120
Speaker 1: in a way this explains the political stuff, right like

1582
01:23:36,600 --> 01:23:40,759
Speaker 1: even epictetis the Slave doesn't question the institution of slavery.

1583
01:23:41,479 --> 01:23:45,439
Speaker 1: And so, you know, when you look back at history,

1584
01:23:46,280 --> 01:23:50,360
Speaker 1: you can't help but be grateful to the sort of revolutionary, radical,

1585
01:23:50,520 --> 01:23:53,800
Speaker 1: progressive people who imagined that the world could be something

1586
01:23:53,880 --> 01:23:58,200
Speaker 1: different than it currently is. And if there's anything that

1587
01:23:58,520 --> 01:24:02,479
Speaker 1: the Stokes get wrong, it's just that they were resigned

1588
01:24:02,720 --> 01:24:06,000
Speaker 1: to the world being the way that it had always been.

1589
01:24:06,680 --> 01:24:13,320
Speaker 1: And we are lucky that Gandhi was like, hey, what

1590
01:24:13,400 --> 01:24:15,679
Speaker 1: if there's a way to solve problems that doesn't involve

1591
01:24:16,240 --> 01:24:22,320
Speaker 1: terrorism or insurrection or overthrowing a government, you know, and

1592
01:24:22,680 --> 01:24:26,600
Speaker 1: Martin Luther King picks that up from him, and the

1593
01:24:28,560 --> 01:24:31,920
Speaker 1: gay rights activists pick that up from them, and you know,

1594
01:24:32,360 --> 01:24:37,400
Speaker 1: we're obviously lucky that all these different innovations happened where

1595
01:24:37,400 --> 01:24:39,720
Speaker 1: people were like, you know, we're in the debt of

1596
01:24:40,080 --> 01:24:45,280
Speaker 1: Thomas Clarkson, who in the seventeen hundreds writes an essay

1597
01:24:45,320 --> 01:24:50,439
Speaker 1: at Oxford about whether people should own slaves or not

1598
01:24:51,160 --> 01:24:54,479
Speaker 1: and then says, well, what if I'm right and they shouldn't,

1599
01:24:55,200 --> 01:24:58,160
Speaker 1: and then maybe someone should do something about it, And

1600
01:24:58,240 --> 01:25:00,640
Speaker 1: then he says, maybe that person could be me. And

1601
01:25:00,760 --> 01:25:03,080
Speaker 1: that's where the abolitionist movement comes from. And you know,

1602
01:25:03,160 --> 01:25:06,040
Speaker 1: you go back, back and back and back. We are

1603
01:25:06,840 --> 01:25:10,720
Speaker 1: the beneficiaries of the people who imagined the world being

1604
01:25:10,800 --> 01:25:16,000
Speaker 1: better than it is, and stoicism cannot simply be a

1605
01:25:16,240 --> 01:25:18,080
Speaker 1: tool for accepting the status quo.

1606
01:25:19,479 --> 01:25:23,400
Speaker 2: You just finished the book on wisdom. You talk about

1607
01:25:23,439 --> 01:25:28,880
Speaker 2: these cardinal virtues, you end on wisdom. You don't begin

1608
01:25:29,240 --> 01:25:31,280
Speaker 2: with wisdom, even though you said none of the other

1609
01:25:31,360 --> 01:25:34,320
Speaker 2: virtues are possible without yeah, wisdom, So why the hell

1610
01:25:34,400 --> 01:25:35,880
Speaker 2: do you end the.

1611
01:25:35,960 --> 01:25:38,880
Speaker 1: Series the hardest I say the hardest one for last.

1612
01:25:38,920 --> 01:25:41,519
Speaker 1: I felt weird starting with wisdom, just aving a practical

1613
01:25:42,040 --> 01:25:48,439
Speaker 1: writing standpoint, But I don't know, I felt like the

1614
01:25:48,520 --> 01:25:53,320
Speaker 1: last alphabetically it's last. Now there's no good reason they're

1615
01:25:53,360 --> 01:26:00,799
Speaker 1: all that. Zeno said that the cardinal virtues, courage, discipline, tempera, courage, discipline, justice, wisdom.

1616
01:26:01,120 --> 01:26:04,360
Speaker 1: They were independent yet inseparable from each other. Yeah, and

1617
01:26:04,840 --> 01:26:07,720
Speaker 1: and it really doesn't matter what order you think about them,

1618
01:26:07,800 --> 01:26:10,679
Speaker 1: whatever you read about them, whatever you write them about them.

1619
01:26:10,840 --> 01:26:11,400
Speaker 2: They all.

1620
01:26:13,040 --> 01:26:15,040
Speaker 1: You can't have one without the other. I mean, courage

1621
01:26:15,080 --> 01:26:21,320
Speaker 1: in pursuit of injustice is no impressive thing. And then

1622
01:26:21,640 --> 01:26:23,920
Speaker 1: you know, how do you know what the right thing

1623
01:26:24,080 --> 01:26:28,720
Speaker 1: is without wisdom? You know, how do you how do

1624
01:26:28,800 --> 01:26:32,160
Speaker 1: you bring good into the world without savvy incompetence. I

1625
01:26:32,200 --> 01:26:33,960
Speaker 1: think that's one of our big problems right now, is

1626
01:26:34,080 --> 01:26:39,920
Speaker 1: like we just think that being right is sufficient. Yeah,

1627
01:26:41,160 --> 01:26:42,720
Speaker 1: you know, you have to have you have to be

1628
01:26:42,880 --> 01:26:45,519
Speaker 1: a savvy political operator. You have to be a savy

1629
01:26:45,560 --> 01:26:49,280
Speaker 1: business like just because you you're in the broad strokes, correct,

1630
01:26:50,080 --> 01:26:51,080
Speaker 1: I don't get you.

1631
01:26:51,520 --> 01:26:55,040
Speaker 2: What, So what are you working on next?

1632
01:26:55,360 --> 01:26:56,799
Speaker 1: I'm doing a biography of Stockdale?

1633
01:26:57,160 --> 01:27:00,280
Speaker 2: Oh good, okay, yeah, there you go. Yeah. I mean

1634
01:27:00,800 --> 01:27:03,679
Speaker 2: you talk about him enough. He's one of my time

1635
01:27:03,760 --> 01:27:06,360
Speaker 2: you and he's you know, and and forgive me because

1636
01:27:06,400 --> 01:27:10,120
Speaker 2: it's just it's impossible to talk about Stockdale except he's

1637
01:27:10,560 --> 01:27:13,240
Speaker 2: better known. And this is why you need to write

1638
01:27:13,280 --> 01:27:15,439
Speaker 2: the book, Yeah, because he deserves not to be better

1639
01:27:16,400 --> 01:27:20,840
Speaker 2: for one simple line and a vice presidential debate, What sir,

1640
01:27:21,040 --> 01:27:21,599
Speaker 2: was that line?

1641
01:27:21,920 --> 01:27:23,040
Speaker 1: Who am I? Why am I here?

1642
01:27:24,040 --> 01:27:26,440
Speaker 2: Which as a stoic.

1643
01:27:27,040 --> 01:27:28,920
Speaker 1: Philosophically, it's actually line.

1644
01:27:30,479 --> 01:27:32,879
Speaker 2: For debate prep. You may want to use different language.

1645
01:27:33,040 --> 01:27:36,080
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, the family. I'll save it for writing. But

1646
01:27:36,120 --> 01:27:38,120
Speaker 1: apparently it's a big story as to how he found

1647
01:27:38,200 --> 01:27:39,680
Speaker 1: himself on that stage.

1648
01:27:40,920 --> 01:27:46,519
Speaker 2: And ros Pro's but but uh.

1649
01:27:47,479 --> 01:27:51,240
Speaker 1: Dennis Miller has a great bit about Stockdale where he says,

1650
01:27:51,280 --> 01:27:53,720
Speaker 1: you know, this was the first guy in last guy

1651
01:27:53,800 --> 01:27:58,760
Speaker 1: out of Vietnam hero like seven years right, prisoner serves honorably.

1652
01:27:59,280 --> 01:28:00,880
Speaker 1: When's the medal of or does all this? And he

1653
01:28:00,920 --> 01:28:04,559
Speaker 1: says he he committed the one unpardonable sin in our society.

1654
01:28:05,080 --> 01:28:06,720
Speaker 1: Do you know what it is? What I mean, it's

1655
01:28:07,160 --> 01:28:08,280
Speaker 1: he was bad on television?

1656
01:28:08,320 --> 01:28:11,000
Speaker 2: He was on TV. There you go. It's pathetic. What's

1657
01:28:11,000 --> 01:28:14,519
Speaker 2: happened to us? Huh? Yeah, sincerely, this is rather pathetic.

1658
01:28:14,960 --> 01:28:21,000
Speaker 1: Yeah, you imagine that incredibly as as a as a charismatic,

1659
01:28:21,080 --> 01:28:24,880
Speaker 1: good looking man, he's there there, there, there are I

1660
01:28:25,000 --> 01:28:28,400
Speaker 1: imagine there are many many more qualified people. But I

1661
01:28:28,479 --> 01:28:31,880
Speaker 1: could not just can't cut it politically because they different,

1662
01:28:31,920 --> 01:28:35,400
Speaker 1: they look bad or in a speech that that, you know,

1663
01:28:37,479 --> 01:28:40,479
Speaker 1: eighty years ago you only would have been heard about

1664
01:28:40,520 --> 01:28:44,240
Speaker 1: from a newspaper column, and they could have I could

1665
01:28:44,280 --> 01:28:46,759
Speaker 1: taft to be president now, good question.

1666
01:28:46,760 --> 01:28:50,040
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, not on the basis of what he's been described.

1667
01:28:50,479 --> 01:28:52,560
Speaker 1: And I mean even FDR has to hide that he

1668
01:28:52,680 --> 01:28:54,160
Speaker 1: has a reponsibility.

1669
01:28:54,240 --> 01:28:56,960
Speaker 2: I mean, even Kennedy is there's a reason the rocking chair.

1670
01:28:57,040 --> 01:28:58,640
Speaker 2: I mean, you know, and he was you know, and

1671
01:28:58,800 --> 01:29:02,120
Speaker 2: he was plenty of you know, external things that were

1672
01:29:02,160 --> 01:29:05,320
Speaker 2: injected to get them through the day. I mean yeah, yeah,

1673
01:29:05,479 --> 01:29:07,639
Speaker 2: in Instagram twenty four to seven.

1674
01:29:07,960 --> 01:29:10,760
Speaker 1: Yeah, probably would not have not have made it.

1675
01:29:10,840 --> 01:29:11,240
Speaker 2: I don't know.

1676
01:29:11,720 --> 01:29:11,920
Speaker 1: Yeah.

1677
01:29:12,000 --> 01:29:14,400
Speaker 2: Well, and of course the infamous there, I mean the

1678
01:29:14,640 --> 01:29:15,880
Speaker 2: first TV president.

1679
01:29:15,800 --> 01:29:19,000
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, then Nixon, the Nixon candibs.

1680
01:29:18,680 --> 01:29:25,000
Speaker 2: Yeah, Radio Nixon crushes them TV Kennedy. Yeah, no, Look,

1681
01:29:25,080 --> 01:29:27,160
Speaker 2: I appreciate it. I'm glad you. So it's good for

1682
01:29:27,200 --> 01:29:29,280
Speaker 2: you on this Starckdale thing. So what is I mean

1683
01:29:29,640 --> 01:29:32,080
Speaker 2: you got every morning? If you haven't got, by the way,

1684
01:29:32,120 --> 01:29:37,400
Speaker 2: everyone listening watching needs to subscribe to the damn Morning Email,

1685
01:29:38,720 --> 01:29:41,120
Speaker 2: which is next level. And what I love about it too,

1686
01:29:41,200 --> 01:29:43,760
Speaker 2: it's you know, repetitions and other skill too. What I

1687
01:29:43,960 --> 01:29:46,240
Speaker 2: like is it's not one and done. You'll come back

1688
01:29:46,360 --> 01:29:49,519
Speaker 2: to old themes. Yeah, and I'll see that as a critique. No,

1689
01:29:49,640 --> 01:29:51,639
Speaker 2: but it's but it's important, right, So it's just it's

1690
01:29:51,800 --> 01:29:54,800
Speaker 2: reps and you know you're sort of and so it's

1691
01:29:54,920 --> 01:29:58,439
Speaker 2: it's remarkably and it's a quick read every morning, way

1692
01:29:58,520 --> 01:30:01,439
Speaker 2: to wake up, uh, sort of recalibrate your brain. And

1693
01:30:01,520 --> 01:30:04,080
Speaker 2: it's contemporary. You put things. I love it. If you're

1694
01:30:04,120 --> 01:30:06,439
Speaker 2: feeling all these things, you're like, yes and yes. So

1695
01:30:06,640 --> 01:30:09,320
Speaker 2: clearly someone whoever's writing those things you were, what do

1696
01:30:09,360 --> 01:30:14,120
Speaker 2: you mean whatever? It's uh, it's uh, uh, it's it's

1697
01:30:14,640 --> 01:30:17,559
Speaker 2: it's I mean, it's free. What more can I say?

1698
01:30:17,640 --> 01:30:22,439
Speaker 2: But it's uh, it's it's profoundly impactful and and something

1699
01:30:22,479 --> 01:30:25,680
Speaker 2: everyone should sign up for. You've got you did what

1700
01:30:25,800 --> 01:30:28,519
Speaker 2: I did again? Your damn January? Oh you did?

1701
01:30:28,920 --> 01:30:29,120
Speaker 1: Yeah?

1702
01:30:29,360 --> 01:30:32,400
Speaker 2: I sat there in Lake Tahoe and you know, one

1703
01:30:32,520 --> 01:30:37,200
Speaker 2: degrees jumping in the damn river with icicles. By the way,

1704
01:30:37,600 --> 01:30:39,840
Speaker 2: it should have gone on my Instagram. But I didn't

1705
01:30:39,840 --> 01:30:41,840
Speaker 2: look pretty. I need to get a little better shape.

1706
01:30:42,000 --> 01:30:43,720
Speaker 2: I didn't look good without the shirt on. Plus I

1707
01:30:43,720 --> 01:30:46,400
Speaker 2: had underwear. So it's another conversation. So I was out

1708
01:30:46,439 --> 01:30:49,120
Speaker 2: there and you know, it was day one the polar plunge.

1709
01:30:49,160 --> 01:30:50,760
Speaker 2: Well then I get I had to burn away mind, tent,

1710
01:30:50,880 --> 01:30:53,800
Speaker 2: whatever the other things. Yes, but you're doing that. You

1711
01:30:53,920 --> 01:30:55,760
Speaker 2: got twenty six for twenty six, you had the thing,

1712
01:30:55,800 --> 01:30:57,560
Speaker 2: You've got all the stuff on YouTube, got all the

1713
01:30:57,920 --> 01:31:01,360
Speaker 2: I mean, come on, man, this is crazy. What's you know?

1714
01:31:01,920 --> 01:31:01,960
Speaker 1: What?

1715
01:31:02,200 --> 01:31:04,920
Speaker 2: When's enough enough? Are you? Are you a stoic?

1716
01:31:05,120 --> 01:31:07,840
Speaker 1: Is this this is what I like to do? I'd

1717
01:31:07,880 --> 01:31:09,200
Speaker 1: be doing it, and this is what I do.

1718
01:31:10,040 --> 01:31:13,920
Speaker 2: This is what I do. Uh, well, it's uh. I

1719
01:31:14,040 --> 01:31:18,439
Speaker 2: appreciate you coming back home, of course, coming back to California. Yeah,

1720
01:31:19,160 --> 01:31:22,960
Speaker 2: off your ranch in Texas which ain't so bad. Uh,

1721
01:31:23,200 --> 01:31:25,400
Speaker 2: and your credible kids. And I'm going to close on

1722
01:31:25,520 --> 01:31:30,439
Speaker 2: this the best thing you do as a father of four,

1723
01:31:31,240 --> 01:31:37,160
Speaker 2: the daily dead and dispensing advice as a father. Yeah,

1724
01:31:37,680 --> 01:31:39,240
Speaker 2: thank you. What was the inspiration of that?

1725
01:31:39,400 --> 01:31:43,000
Speaker 1: Besides I on my life was made better by writing

1726
01:31:43,040 --> 01:31:45,760
Speaker 1: about stoicism every day, the forced practice of having to

1727
01:31:45,880 --> 01:31:49,200
Speaker 1: do the meditation. And so when I when I when

1728
01:31:49,240 --> 01:31:50,560
Speaker 1: we had our first I was like, you know what

1729
01:31:50,600 --> 01:31:52,719
Speaker 1: I'll do a parent, I'll take the best parenting advice,

1730
01:31:52,840 --> 01:31:56,400
Speaker 1: not not my advice. I don't know shit, but like,

1731
01:31:56,479 --> 01:31:59,800
Speaker 1: what are the best smartest people, the wisest people say

1732
01:32:00,040 --> 01:32:02,080
Speaker 1: out this and all riff on it each morning, and

1733
01:32:02,120 --> 01:32:06,000
Speaker 1: so the daily Dad has almost eight years old, now

1734
01:32:06,960 --> 01:32:10,400
Speaker 1: nine years old, and it's it's made me a better

1735
01:32:10,439 --> 01:32:13,280
Speaker 1: parent because I'm I'm writing about this. I'm like, you know,

1736
01:32:13,400 --> 01:32:16,800
Speaker 1: when your kids are having trouble, you know, getting out

1737
01:32:16,840 --> 01:32:18,080
Speaker 1: of bed in the morning and you want to get

1738
01:32:18,080 --> 01:32:20,760
Speaker 1: you know, I'm not saying that I didn't just yell

1739
01:32:20,840 --> 01:32:23,200
Speaker 1: at my kids for not getting in the car in time.

1740
01:32:23,240 --> 01:32:26,920
Speaker 1: I'm saying I'm writing having just done that, trying to

1741
01:32:27,280 --> 01:32:31,080
Speaker 1: not do it tomorrow. You know, it's it's a you're

1742
01:32:31,200 --> 01:32:34,160
Speaker 1: constantly you know how you're you know what you know

1743
01:32:34,240 --> 01:32:35,800
Speaker 1: the parent you want to be and you're never being

1744
01:32:35,880 --> 01:32:38,840
Speaker 1: that parent. But so it helps to remind yourself over

1745
01:32:38,880 --> 01:32:40,840
Speaker 1: and over and over again, not of we're falling, sure,

1746
01:32:40,840 --> 01:32:43,120
Speaker 1: but what the ideal that you're aspiring towards.

1747
01:32:43,400 --> 01:32:45,519
Speaker 2: Love it and that's what that is the most important

1748
01:32:45,600 --> 01:32:48,320
Speaker 2: job right great to be with you, Thank you very much.