Speaker 1: That line between genius and madness is very fluid. You
Speaker 1: can sort of introduce alternative facts, as they say, and
Speaker 1: people believe them. Stoicism is not a formula for you
Speaker 1: to be a better sociopath. This is Gavin Newsom and
Speaker 1: this is Ryan Holiday.
Speaker 2: Ryan, thanks for being here. Man. Of course, Sacramento, California.
Speaker 2: You know this area? Well, don't you not?
Speaker 1: This area? Because I like, I think people don't understand
Speaker 1: that Sacramento is a bit like Los Angeles where to
Speaker 1: people who don't live there, it's one place, yeah, but
Speaker 1: if you live there, it's a bunch of other Like
Speaker 1: I probably came downtown like ten times in my life,
Speaker 1: interesting until later because I lived in the suburbs of
Speaker 1: sacrament I mean.
Speaker 2: So this was a big city Sacramento back when.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but it's like this is the town we would
Speaker 1: pass on the way to Arco Arena Kings, yeah, or
Speaker 1: or we would go down here in Sutter's Ford or
Speaker 1: the Railroad Museum as a kid. But you wouldn't actually
Speaker 1: do Sacromeno one because it wasn't. I mean, it's done
Speaker 1: so much amazing works for bringing it back to life.
Speaker 1: But also like California is like these self contained suburbs
Speaker 1: and you live in your in your suburb.
Speaker 2: But you went you must have when you were a kid,
Speaker 2: you must have gone to the capitol, right, you have to.
Speaker 2: Part of the obligation of childhood. Here in California, everyone
Speaker 2: does a fourth grade they do a little tour. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, how about the Governor's mansion where we are right now.
Speaker 1: I've never been. I've never been here. Interesting, I don't
Speaker 1: even think I've seen it. You've never seen it, I don't,
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 2: I don't even Ronald Reagan's.
Speaker 1: Here's when I would have seen it.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 1: They made you do your driver's tests and your driver's
Speaker 1: training in downtown because it was the only place that
Speaker 1: would have like four way stops. Right like anyways, I
Speaker 1: remember driving downtown to to get my drivers That's it.
Speaker 2: But you're far Oaks kid, far Oaks, California, the suburb here.
Speaker 1: I was born in Gold River. Yeah, and then and
Speaker 1: then we moved to fair Oaks and uh, yeah, I
Speaker 1: was there till high school.
Speaker 2: Until high school and then you went what you went
Speaker 2: down South? Went to? Sure?
Speaker 1: No, we went to I went to Granpe High School.
Speaker 2: So your Granded Bay High School? Yes, yes, you know
Speaker 2: and you were you know, we're an excellent student. Were
Speaker 2: you that kid that was always raising your hand or
Speaker 2: were you in the back? What was give me your profile?
Speaker 1: Well, my parents wanted me to go to Jesuit and
Speaker 1: I didn't go to Jesuits. So I was not that student.
Speaker 1: No I I uh, I think I was like I
Speaker 1: was like hit or miss. Uh. Sometimes sometimes it was
Speaker 1: a fit, and when it was a fit, it was good,
Speaker 1: and then a lot of times it wasn't. It wasn't
Speaker 1: until I went to college that uh, that anything really
Speaker 1: started to happen for me.
Speaker 2: But in high school, were you just was I mean
Speaker 2: what you must have had some it wouldn't be a
Speaker 2: vision board, but you must have had some vision of
Speaker 2: your future. What was it? What were you thinking you'd become?
Speaker 1: Oh, I wanted to be in a heavy metal band.
Speaker 2: So that was it. That's just you were certain about that.
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, I mean I think I want, I want.
Speaker 1: I loved music. But I've said this before, but like
Speaker 1: I I don't think Sacramento is a lovely place. But
Speaker 1: it was not then much the territory of entrepreneurs or
Speaker 1: artists or like I don't, I don't know if I
Speaker 1: ever met anyone growing up who didn't have a job
Speaker 1: like just a regular like like teachers, doctors, civil servants,
Speaker 1: you know, real estate agents. It was it was just
Speaker 1: very conventional, right, And I think that's why people love
Speaker 1: Sacramento is that you could have a conventional life here.
Speaker 1: That version of the American dream was very accessible. But
Speaker 1: the idea that like I loved books, but I didn't
Speaker 1: meet anyone that wrote books, and you know, it wasn't
Speaker 1: like oh this neighbor there kid, you know, there wasn't
Speaker 1: any of that. So it was I just don't I
Speaker 1: just didn't have a sense of what was possible. I mean,
Speaker 1: it wasn't until I it was probably in my twenties
Speaker 1: that I even learned Joan Didion was from out for it. Like,
Speaker 1: it wasn't a like, hey, this is a place where
Speaker 1: people who do that come from.
Speaker 2: What were your parents? What were your parents doing? What
Speaker 2: kind of My.
Speaker 1: Dad was a police detective and my mom was a
Speaker 1: school principal. I love it so just you know, like
Speaker 1: your classic sort of American job and.
Speaker 2: A school principal. I mean, what kind of mindset do
Speaker 2: you have with a mom who's a school principal.
Speaker 1: Well, my mom was a school principal in the San
Speaker 1: Juan School District. But she did like continuing adult education,
Speaker 1: so she did. She didn't have like kids as her students.
Speaker 1: It got it. It was like you know, plumbers going
Speaker 1: back to get their ged and stuff. So it was
Speaker 1: I mean, it was all. It was all really interesting,
Speaker 1: but just not what I wanted to do.
Speaker 2: And were you surrounded by books as a kid, with
Speaker 2: your parents pushing books from you know, your tenth grade.
Speaker 2: You know, here's honey, here's the three books you need
Speaker 2: to read.
Speaker 1: I mean I read a lot as a kid, but
Speaker 1: I read you know, like like Westerns and action. I
Speaker 1: didn't know about this thing called philosophy. I didn't know,
Speaker 1: Like I didn't know there was all these amazing history books.
Speaker 1: I was just I don't know. It was a It
Speaker 1: was a bubble in a good way. Yeah. And uh
Speaker 1: and then I mean that's why you go away to
Speaker 1: college is to expand what you're exposed to.
Speaker 2: So you were in college and what we were studying,
Speaker 2: what'd you start to study?
Speaker 1: I was a political science and creative writing.
Speaker 2: And creative writing. Yeah. We always a writer.
Speaker 1: I think I wanted to be a writer, and I
Speaker 1: remember my first seminar. We had to go down in
Speaker 1: the summer and we had the seminar was taught by
Speaker 1: Susan Straight, who's one of the great sort of novel
Speaker 1: California novelists, and she had assigned they had assigned us
Speaker 1: her book, and it was like it was a real book,
Speaker 1: like a you know, like a like a book you
Speaker 1: would see in a bookstore. And I was like, Oh,
Speaker 1: people do this, Like this is a this is a
Speaker 1: job you could have, This is a thing people do.
Speaker 1: And I think, you know, like you talked about like
Speaker 1: NEPO babies and stuff, and I think one of the
Speaker 1: things people don't understand about that is that a big
Speaker 1: part of what it does is it demystifies the possibility
Speaker 1: of going in certain directions. You know, oh, hey, like
Speaker 1: my mom's friend does that, or hey, I've seen my
Speaker 1: dad practice you know, his lines for an audition like you.
Speaker 1: I got to imagine for Steph Curry being in an
Speaker 1: NBA arena is like, this is where my dad works,
Speaker 1: and so it becomes possible in a way that obviously
Speaker 1: there's the genetics and the privilege and all that, but
Speaker 1: I think a huge part of it is just like no, no, no,
Speaker 1: this is a thing you can do because you saw
Speaker 1: other people do it, for the same reason that it
Speaker 1: was probably likely that I'd be a police officer or
Speaker 1: a school teacher because you know, you saw your parents.
Speaker 2: Do that, And I think about you know, all that is.
Speaker 2: Once a mind is stretched, it never goes back to
Speaker 2: its original form or even the more simple frame, which
Speaker 2: is probably overstated, but you can't be what you can't see.
Speaker 2: Once you see something, yes, it's now more tangible.
Speaker 1: And that's like they talk about this like with representation,
Speaker 1: Like if you don't see people like you on TV
Speaker 1: or in art, or you know, in the movies or
Speaker 1: you know, on the headlines, you just don't think someone
Speaker 1: like you can do it. And representation matters, not obviously
Speaker 1: just in terms of gender or class or nationality, but
Speaker 1: also just like, hey, people like you from this small
Speaker 1: town can That's why that's why towns celebrate like who
Speaker 1: came from here? That like there is a way to
Speaker 1: do that.
Speaker 2: This is my favorite part of American Idol when they
Speaker 2: come back home and the entire town's out there on
Speaker 2: main Street. I'm just so proud their native sons. So
Speaker 2: you you know, you were out there. But meanwhile, you're
Speaker 2: just so, you're doing a little creative writing, but you've
Speaker 2: got a rock band on the side. What are you doing?
Speaker 2: I mean you're sitting there in the driving your parents
Speaker 2: crazy in the garage.
Speaker 1: Uh huh, That's exactly what I was. I'm sure it
Speaker 1: was horrible, and they were pretty they were pretty patient,
Speaker 1: and and yeah, I just didn't go anywhere. And as
Speaker 1: is to be expected, But.
Speaker 2: You lasted how many years in college? You too? Just
Speaker 2: too too? So what happened?
Speaker 1: I got a chance to be a writer. So I
Speaker 1: was writing for the college newspaper, which, again you sort
Speaker 1: of get a chance to do a thing. Oh, this
Speaker 1: is a this is like a job. So I was
Speaker 1: writing for the college newspaper in Riverside, and and I
Speaker 1: I started working for this person that i'd written about,
Speaker 1: this guy named Robert Green who wrote the Forty Laws
Speaker 1: of Power.
Speaker 2: And how did you get I mean, I mean Robert
Speaker 2: a legend. Yeah, and begin to describe him, and I
Speaker 2: mean you don't have to introduce forty Laws power.
Speaker 1: I mean it's like one of the greatest nonfiction writers of.
Speaker 2: So how do you even get a chance to even
Speaker 2: I mean you're writing about him, did you? And that
Speaker 2: all of a sudden, then he attached this.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and then I started doing little things for him
Speaker 1: here there, and and it kind of became this whole
Speaker 1: He needed a research assistant, and I was like that's
Speaker 1: I remember thinking like, hey, if this is what I
Speaker 1: this is my first job out of college, college would
Speaker 1: be a success.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: Did my parents agree with horror?
Speaker 2: No?
Speaker 1: No, they of course didn't, right, Yeah, because I I
Speaker 1: think my entire family was horrified. They're all teachers, and
Speaker 1: you know, also for that that was the thing is
Speaker 1: you your kids go to college so they don't end
Speaker 1: up living under a bridge somewhere, and so they did not.
Speaker 1: They did not handle it well. And it was I mean,
Speaker 1: it's funny too because I thought I was at the time.
Speaker 1: I thought it was this enormous risk, you know, like
Speaker 1: crazy thing that I was doing because I've never done anything.
Speaker 2: You're still a teenager at the time, yeah, nineteen or something.
Speaker 1: Yeah, maybe, but I do I do think we we
Speaker 1: put so much pressure on kids that like, if you
Speaker 1: don't go to college between the ages of eighteen and
Speaker 1: twenty two, it's over for you. Like you're you're just done.
Speaker 1: And I've so that's that's not really true. I could
Speaker 1: have always gone back. And I think that the Silicon
Speaker 1: Valley model of dropping out to go do something, actually
Speaker 1: it was very helpful to me because I could be like, oh,
Speaker 1: all these other people had had done it in other
Speaker 1: ways and it doesn't it doesn't ruin your life.
Speaker 2: And what and Robert was not you know, so you're
Speaker 2: doing research, but he's also just an outsized mentor.
Speaker 1: Yes, in every way, it was like an appres I mean,
Speaker 1: in retrospect, you would call it an apprenticeship. I think
Speaker 1: sometimes people think these things are very official, like this person.
Speaker 1: You know, you sign a contract and then you're there
Speaker 1: your mentor for the next experience. It's it's a it's
Speaker 1: an informal thing that develops over time and you learn
Speaker 1: a lot. And then also I think people only claim
Speaker 1: the relationship if you go on to do things good.
Speaker 1: Point right, like that the mentorship is is sealed by
Speaker 1: you by you, by you validating the investment that they
Speaker 1: put in you. And so but but yeah, I learned
Speaker 1: everything I could possibly learn about how to do the
Speaker 1: thing that I wanted to do.
Speaker 2: And you were and you had a very definitive intentional
Speaker 2: thing you wanted to do. I mean, writing's construct but
Speaker 2: there's so many different disciplines. I mean, where you did
Speaker 2: did you did you start to follow his path or
Speaker 2: were you trying to follow your own path and sort
Speaker 2: of you know, and all of a sudden you deviated back.
Speaker 1: What I knew I wanted to write about sort of
Speaker 1: history and and stuff like that. And he is an
Speaker 1: interesting model because you know, he's not a university professor
Speaker 1: or anything like that. He just writes these books that
Speaker 1: are enormously popular and influential and have been for a
Speaker 1: really long time kind of outside the system. Like The
Speaker 1: forty Laws of Powers is consistently one of the most
Speaker 1: shoplifted books in the country. Well, it's also banned in
Speaker 1: most prisons.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I trust me, I know this.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like a issue.
Speaker 2: We were just reviewing our banned books at our California
Speaker 2: and Department of Corrections.
Speaker 1: It's yeah, like the Innocence Project will tell people like, hey,
Speaker 1: do not have this book in yourself. It will be
Speaker 1: used against you in sentencing.
Speaker 2: Oh deal.
Speaker 1: So you've just written these really interesting books that that
Speaker 1: you know, have this sort of outsized reputation, but but
Speaker 1: they're also just like meticulously crafted and really kind of
Speaker 1: transgressive in how they're laid out and organized it. I
Speaker 1: just didn't know you. Again, I didn't know you could
Speaker 1: do something like that, and and uh so that's I
Speaker 1: wanted to do something like that, and I do. I
Speaker 1: think if you're like a young person, you're trying to
Speaker 1: figure out what you want to do, the best thing
Speaker 1: you can do is find someone who's done something similar,
Speaker 1: like something just in the ballpark, and find some means
Speaker 1: of being in the orbit. You know, It's like, how
Speaker 1: do you go sweep floors in their record studio? How
Speaker 1: do you know? How do use stock shelves in the store?
Speaker 1: How do you drive them? You know?
Speaker 2: What? What?
Speaker 1: How can you do anything where you're just in the orbit?
Speaker 2: And that? So was that something you had a concept
Speaker 2: of at the time, or over time you started to
Speaker 2: wake up to that appreciation you started to realize, wait
Speaker 2: a second, I need to really take this in more fully,
Speaker 2: and I need to really appreciate what I'm learning and
Speaker 2: what I'm sory Or is that your relationship to that
Speaker 2: the idea you know, successfullys clues that you can pick
Speaker 2: up on other peoples. Did that come in hindsight?
Speaker 1: I think more in hindsight, Yeah, there's a Lyndon Johnson
Speaker 1: thing where he's like, you go to the people who
Speaker 1: are at the center of things nice, and you just
Speaker 1: need to be in proximity to power, influence, expertise. So
Speaker 1: I think I had some sense that you just want
Speaker 1: to go where the action is. I think I was
Speaker 1: very just. It would be like, you know, Robert would
Speaker 1: assign me to transcribe a bunch of interviews and then
Speaker 1: he'd be like, bring them by the house, you know,
Speaker 1: And and to me, that was where I was getting paid,
Speaker 1: is that I would get to go and then you know,
Speaker 1: he'd okay, so what's in here and we'd review it,
Speaker 1: and then I maybe get to sneak in like one
Speaker 1: or two questions nice and and that, to me, that
Speaker 1: was that was how I was getting paid. He was
Speaker 1: actually very generous and he did pay me, but like
Speaker 1: I was getting paid in something that I understood was
Speaker 1: much more valuable than you know, would show up on
Speaker 1: a on a on a paste or whatever, which is like,
Speaker 1: how do you how do you get advice from the
Speaker 1: people who have done done the thing?
Speaker 2: Yep?
Speaker 1: And that's I think where you want to go. It's
Speaker 1: funny because later he writes this I think his best book.
Speaker 1: That it's probably the book that I would give most
Speaker 1: young people. You wrote this book called Mastery and and
Speaker 1: it's all about how you become great at something, and
Speaker 1: there's this whole, the whole. I think the second step
Speaker 1: is about this sort of apprenticeship you have. The first
Speaker 1: thing is you find the thing that you're meant to
Speaker 1: do and when and when you're lucky enough to be like, oh,
Speaker 1: this is the thing that lights me up, this is
Speaker 1: what I want to do. The next step is you
Speaker 1: find that person who is who has done it and
Speaker 1: you just have to you know, you have to attach
Speaker 1: yourself to them. And that that was the that phase
Speaker 1: for a good chunk of my twenties.
Speaker 2: Love it. How many so you were? You were there
Speaker 2: for how many years? Then with Robert uh.
Speaker 1: Twenty nineteen to twenty six twenty, it was I mean
Speaker 1: and and like I these things are fluid and they overlap.
Speaker 1: You know, you get your you get your first shot.
Speaker 1: You know, I wrote a book and he was helping
Speaker 1: me with it. It's not like this one day it
Speaker 1: ends and you graduate. It's this, it's this thing. I mean.
Speaker 1: I was just talking to him a couple of days ago.
Speaker 1: Asking him for some advice, and so it's a it's
Speaker 1: kind of a fluid thing. But he ended up getting
Speaker 1: me a job at this company called American Apparel and
Speaker 1: that was kind of the next sort of part of
Speaker 1: that education.
Speaker 2: And you were doing marketing work there. How'd that go
Speaker 2: for you, Ryan, Well, it was it was interesting. Some
Speaker 2: people may not know a little bit of this story.
Speaker 2: Give you we don't have to dwell on this, but
Speaker 2: it's a it's a hell of an interesting story.
Speaker 1: What's a sad you know, it's a sad story too,
Speaker 1: in that if you had told me at twenty three
Speaker 1: that that now, I would say that name and people
Speaker 1: would stare at you blankly. It's kind of it's a
Speaker 1: cautionary I mean, I wrote I wrote a book called
Speaker 1: Ego is the Enemy that I wrote as the company
Speaker 1: was imploding, because I sort of had a ringside seat
Speaker 1: to this one point, the largest garment manufacturer in the
Speaker 1: Northern Hemisphere. It was this success story. It was this
Speaker 1: incredible thing, one of the coolest brands in the world,
Speaker 1: and it just it destroyed itself, destroyed itself, and the
Speaker 1: genius that created it was also the demonic energy that
Speaker 1: destroyed it and and that's a very common thing where
Speaker 1: like that line between genius and madness is very fluid,
Speaker 1: and and yeah, it was. It was a it was
Speaker 1: a surreal experience. I learned a ton, obviously, and then
Speaker 1: a lot a lot of things that took a while
Speaker 1: to unlearned as well.
Speaker 2: Did you I mean, there's you know, the old frame
Speaker 2: you put a mask on, you know, I think, orwell
Speaker 2: and shooting the elephant talked about he put a mask
Speaker 2: on his face grew into it. Did you see that
Speaker 2: happening to you in terms of trying to sort of
Speaker 2: defend or sort of you know, the pr push you know,
Speaker 2: sort of you know, mask the DEVNC.
Speaker 1: There you you experience only in looking back, especially as
Speaker 1: you get older, you go, I had no business being there,
Speaker 1: Like like why did why was a twenty two year
Speaker 1: old running marketing at a publicly traded company it You know,
Speaker 1: if you'd ask me a twenty two I would have said,
Speaker 1: because I'm that good and then and then now I go, oh,
Speaker 1: I was probably good. But I also didn't know how
Speaker 1: fucking insane it of this was. And so that I
Speaker 1: think it helped me understand some of some of what's
Speaker 1: happening in the world, some of them the two stuff
Speaker 1: where you're like, oh, part of the reason that everyone
Speaker 1: there was was in their twenties working for someone who
Speaker 1: was not in their twenties was that there was a
Speaker 1: certain amount of control and a certain amount of naivete
Speaker 1: about what was happening that allowed allowed that sort of
Speaker 1: system to go on as it did. So you know, like, yeah,
Speaker 1: just I just realized, like, oh, I just shouldn't have
Speaker 1: been in any of these situations. Is wildly inappropriate and insane.
Speaker 1: But I didn't know because I'm a kid from Sacramento,
Speaker 1: and this all seems very exciting and interesting. I you know,
Speaker 1: I'm it's not sting, it's not it's not striking me
Speaker 1: as insane that this you know, single forty five year
Speaker 1: old multi millionaire wants me to live in his house.
Speaker 1: You know, like that that seemed exciting and interesting. Thankfully
Speaker 1: I did not live in set house. But uh, but
Speaker 1: you know, you just you just don't realize what's crazy
Speaker 1: until you're out of the thing. And so I am
Speaker 1: somewhat sympathetic to people who kind of get in over
Speaker 1: their heads on stuff because that was that was certainly me.
Speaker 1: I just didn't I was I was. I was just
Speaker 1: really caught up in the energy and the excitement and
Speaker 1: the sort of canvas that it was to to you know,
Speaker 1: uh do what I was doing. But the the the
Speaker 1: fact that it was all nuts, you know, was a
Speaker 1: was a was a debriefing process. And then the funny
Speaker 1: thing is, you know, I've my wife and I've been
Speaker 1: together since we met in college, and so she was
Speaker 1: there through all of it, and she was like, you know,
Speaker 1: I was telling you every day that this insane like
Speaker 1: like I told you so, like I'll just be in
Speaker 1: you know, I'll be on the middle of a run
Speaker 1: somewhere and something will hit me and I'll come back
Speaker 1: and I'll tell her and she's like, I told you
Speaker 1: that like eight hundred times, you know. And and so you
Speaker 1: were just you know, your you're what's that that Upton
Speaker 1: sinclear thing about it's very hard to understand something when
Speaker 1: your salary depends on you're not understanding. Well said yes,
Speaker 1: and was a lot of that.
Speaker 2: There was a lot of that as well. So, I mean,
Speaker 2: how long was that Probably it was over a two
Speaker 2: year pero. Oh no, I was there.
Speaker 1: Two thousand and seven, two thousand and fourteen or fifteen
Speaker 1: something like that.
Speaker 2: So it was a it was a big chunk of
Speaker 2: my Yeah, it was a big trunk. And meanwhile, though
Speaker 2: you start you said, egoes the enemy. You're starting to
Speaker 2: I mean perfect book sort of the genesis of that
Speaker 2: experience and understanding it. And so I mean it was
Speaker 2: that the first I mean for you and you had
Speaker 2: written a number of things. But was that, yeah, because
Speaker 2: that sort of starts to move you in the direction
Speaker 2: that you ultimately are today, Or.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I did when I did a book, I did
Speaker 1: a book on media first, and then I did my
Speaker 1: first book on stoicism was called the Opps was Away,
Speaker 1: and then and then yet ego was sort of at
Speaker 1: the Ego was was me kind of leaving a good
Speaker 1: chunk of that behind and watching that sort of explode.
Speaker 1: So it was it was, you know, in retrospect you
Speaker 1: look back, I'm sure you experienced this writing your book.
Speaker 1: You think of these things as these kind of clean
Speaker 1: periods or that you had this like you had this insight,
Speaker 1: like this is when I knew I was going to
Speaker 1: do this. And then like I am one of the
Speaker 1: great California writers. Is this guy Bud's Bud Schulberg. If
Speaker 1: you know who that is. He wrote What makes Sammy
Speaker 1: Run on the Waterfront. Anyways, he wrote this book called
Speaker 1: The Herder They Fall, which is about this sort of
Speaker 1: corrupt PR agent who's working for the mob as they
Speaker 1: fix boxing fights. And and I read this book. And
Speaker 1: if you asked me when I knew I wanted to
Speaker 1: leave American Apparel and get out of this life, I
Speaker 1: would tell you it was the day I read that book,
Speaker 1: and I would say like, like, and I know it
Speaker 1: because the like the last not the last page is
Speaker 1: this kind of big yes, this big insight because you know,
Speaker 1: I've realizing now you cannot deal in filth without becoming
Speaker 1: the thing you touch. Yeah, this is sort of my
Speaker 1: truck moment. And so I was like, okay, so I
Speaker 1: read that, and I can I still gone back and
Speaker 1: looked at it. You know this, I can see the
Speaker 1: markings that I'm my holy shit, what is it like?
Speaker 1: It felt like, you know when you read something like
Speaker 1: I feel so attacked. You know this is about me specifically.
Speaker 1: Interesting away that would have been when I thought I
Speaker 1: I my breakthrough happened, and then I was talking to
Speaker 1: someone about it. I was actually talking to Tim Miller
Speaker 1: about this because he and I had similar sort of
Speaker 1: arcs on our journey. And and I was like, as
Speaker 1: I was prepping for that conversation, I was like, oh,
Speaker 1: you know what, I bought this book on Amazon. I
Speaker 1: can see the day that I bought it. I can,
Speaker 1: you know. And I went on Amazon, and so I left.
Speaker 1: I left America Apparel in two thousand and fourteen or fifteen,
Speaker 1: and and that my Amazon receipt for the Heart of
Speaker 1: They Fall is like two thousand and nine. Well, it
Speaker 1: was like way closer to the beginning than the end.
Speaker 1: And so you can often have you you get the
Speaker 1: insight or the idea that the thing, you understand it,
Speaker 1: but it can be a very long time until you
Speaker 1: understand it, and then more importantly, you have any of
Speaker 1: the sort of courage or clarity to act on it.
Speaker 1: And so it was that whole period is much more
Speaker 1: sort of contradictory and overlappy than it feels like. And
Speaker 1: it is important if you're a young person you're like
Speaker 1: looking at someone's life story, that you realize that when
Speaker 1: they lay it all out, it's all that gets smooth,
Speaker 1: that all it gets laid out narratively, and it gets
Speaker 1: smoothed out as well. And they it can feel like
Speaker 1: it was this plan, or can feel like at one
Speaker 1: thing was leading to the next, and that's all that's
Speaker 1: all made up in retrospect. It's not like that in
Speaker 1: the moment. And by the way, history is not like
Speaker 1: that in the moment either. Nobody knows how the story
Speaker 1: is going to end, and so you have to kind
Speaker 1: of deal in that ambiguity more than you would like.
Speaker 2: You wrote a lot about sort of ambiguity, wrote a
Speaker 2: lot about your own experience, and wrote a book that
Speaker 2: you know, we intentionally have not even with you being around,
Speaker 2: have on the on the shelf there. Trust me, I'm.
Speaker 1: Lying, I'm actually doing I'm supposed to do the fifteen
Speaker 1: year anniversary edition of that book.
Speaker 2: You have to. Yeah, it was you were decades ahead.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was funny when I was writing. Trust mean
Speaker 1: on lying. I remember saying in the publisher they were like,
Speaker 1: we're thinking, you know, like a summer twenty twelve release,
Speaker 1: and I go, I can't wait that long. I was like,
Speaker 1: it's like, I was like this all this stuff is
Speaker 1: like no, it needs to come out right now. And
Speaker 1: I remember being rushed and I was probably ten years early. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but fifteen it's a yeah, it's a strange.
Speaker 2: It's a strange just for folks that don't know much
Speaker 2: about this book. I mean back to you know, the
Speaker 2: timestamp in twenty twelve. Yeah, and you were talking about
Speaker 2: citizen journalism. You were talking about legacy media, you were
Speaker 2: talking about truth and trust, you were talking about manipulation.
Speaker 2: You were talking about you know, the validation and how
Speaker 2: you're able to spread stories and validate that story and sources,
Speaker 2: and I mean.
Speaker 1: Tell us, Yeah, I was trying to write sort of
Speaker 1: an expose of how the media system really worked, not
Speaker 1: how people thought it worked, which was objectivity and fact checkers,
Speaker 1: and I was looking at how the economics sort of
Speaker 1: shape shape it. And I was trying to show you,
Speaker 1: like how the sausage gets made, Like how how stories
Speaker 1: that you're reading in the news where they actually came from,
Speaker 1: and how easy it is to sort of inject things
Speaker 1: into that kind of slipstream. And obviously in twenty sixteen
Speaker 1: we saw a sort of Russia at a whole element
Speaker 1: of that. And you know, I was writing before TikTok,
Speaker 1: I was writing before Instagram even really, so it's obviously
Speaker 1: become like hyper hyperdrive of a lot of the stuff
Speaker 1: I was talking about in that book. I mean, I
Speaker 1: wish I could sit back here and go fifteen years later,
Speaker 1: like I was totally dis totally proven wrong and everything
Speaker 1: was awesome. But it's sort of like beyond my worst
Speaker 1: nightmare of all the things I was talking about in
Speaker 1: that book. Which is funny because when I wrote it,
Speaker 1: although a lot of people read it, the media reaction
Speaker 1: was mostly like shoot the messenger, like he's he's the
Speaker 1: bad guy. And what I was trying to say is like, look,
Speaker 1: this is what I do to sell t shirts or
Speaker 1: books or you know, the this is how I can
Speaker 1: I can, you know, introduce something funny, ridiculous into the
Speaker 1: media cycle. But like if if media is where public
Speaker 1: opinion is formed, it this this vulnerability is just too
Speaker 1: too valuable to too many powerful, important or deranged people
Speaker 1: for them not to sort of take advantage of it.
Speaker 1: And I think we're seeing now a world where yeah,
Speaker 1: you can, you can sort of introduce alternative facts, as
Speaker 1: they say, into into this and people believe them. What
Speaker 1: what kind of vulnerabilities that exposes to us?
Speaker 2: And they believe them and you've you've talked about this,
Speaker 2: they believe them even after they're debunked, sometimes even more
Speaker 2: after the quote unquote correction.
Speaker 1: Well, I think I mean in a Again, this is
Speaker 1: always a complicate thing to talk about, but January sixth
Speaker 1: is a fascinating example of like everyone with eyes saw
Speaker 1: a thing happen, and then there was an investigation, right
Speaker 1: that that sort of laid out exactly what happened. But
Speaker 1: because one guy with a lot of followers, you saw
Speaker 1: him sort of scramb You saw Trump in the early
Speaker 1: days after January six where he was complicit and responsible
Speaker 1: for an unthinkable and inexcusable thing, scramble around for how
Speaker 1: is he going to explain this? And then and then
Speaker 1: sort of settles on it was Antifa, and also these
Speaker 1: people were patriots and and by the way, are just
Speaker 1: two contradictory explanations, uh, just on the top of his head.
Speaker 1: But then if he says it enough times, and if
Speaker 1: there is a financial and ideological and just cognitive reason
Speaker 1: to want that to be true, eventually a sizeable percentage
Speaker 1: of the population will coalesce around that thing, because to
Speaker 1: not do it would mean you have to face the
Speaker 1: tragedy and the horror and the violence and the you know,
Speaker 1: the implications of that thing, and so in a way,
Speaker 1: it just kind of lays bare our media system. I mean, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like it's laid out in these different lawsuits, it's
Speaker 1: laid out in these congress like we know what happened,
Speaker 1: and we know the role that people played in it happening.
Speaker 1: And yet afterwards he was able to kind of with
Speaker 1: this media jiu jitsu, just make it not have happened.
Speaker 2: All right, I want to unpack all of that, and
Speaker 2: we I mean, you were right in this back I
Speaker 2: mean when you wrote trust Me Online, you mentioned Dick Tuck.
Speaker 2: You know it didn't exist. I mean, Facebook probably it
Speaker 2: was in its orphan phase. The cloud was in the sky,
Speaker 2: four G was probably a parking space back then, in
Speaker 2: linked in a prison. But you know, you were the
Speaker 2: algorithms weren't necessarily you were talking blogs mostly back then, right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, logs and Twitter and and and how much traditional
Speaker 1: media was sort of the final step in that system.
Speaker 1: And now it doesn't need.
Speaker 2: To be final step after you seed yeah, the extreme.
Speaker 2: Then you have a source, you say one sort now
Speaker 2: you have two sources, and all of a sudden, now
Speaker 2: now it moves itself up the ladder. I see that
Speaker 2: by the way I live this. Yes, Daily Mail says something,
Speaker 2: The California Post says something. Now, The New York Post
Speaker 2: says two sources have confirmed something. All of a sudden,
Speaker 2: I'm watching Jesse Waters on Fox and then the next
Speaker 2: night Hannity and all the rest of the lineup, and
Speaker 2: then you had to respond to it. And I'm responding.
Speaker 2: Then I'm chasing something and I'm playing defense. They're already
Speaker 2: onto the next damn thing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I mean again, Trump, it's sort of intuitively
Speaker 1: understanding all this. He is really good at going and
Speaker 1: a lot of people are saying and so it's this
Speaker 1: way that things that are not true become true by
Speaker 1: you bump into them enough time.
Speaker 2: But you're I mean, you're. The point you're making is
Speaker 2: this is not this is bad. It's not only bad,
Speaker 2: but it's it's it's been I mean, it's uh, wake up, everybody.
Speaker 2: It's the way it's been done. It's hardly novel.
Speaker 1: No, No, I mean, it's it. This is this has
Speaker 1: been the way that the sausage has been made for
Speaker 1: a decade and a half, basically, right.
Speaker 2: So your new book is going to figure out to
Speaker 2: tell us what to do about it.
Speaker 1: No, I mean, first, it's it's mortifying, of course to
Speaker 1: have to go back and read something that you wrote
Speaker 1: when you were twenty three and you thought you understood
Speaker 1: how the world worked, even though I was right about
Speaker 1: a lot of ways that you know, I think you
Speaker 1: mostly the cringe is mostly in the certainty and the
Speaker 1: the arrogance.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: So, so that that's why I've been procrastinating it.
Speaker 2: But that's that's plus you've meant it out about fifty
Speaker 2: other damn books in the in the interim, so it's
Speaker 2: not like you're not busy. So I want to sort
Speaker 2: of circle by so the you know, hell of a
Speaker 2: hell of a time American Peril and uh and then
Speaker 2: you you know, you're you're hardly an old man. Your
Speaker 2: wife saying I told you so, I told you so,
Speaker 2: I told you so. Mom and Dad are like Jesus,
Speaker 2: you know, how did we raise you young man? Yeah? Or not?
Speaker 2: They probably are more generous. Yeah, you know. So where
Speaker 2: are you now in terms of just you go on
Speaker 2: a walk about? Is that when you picked up meditations
Speaker 2: or no, I know.
Speaker 1: I found the irony is I found stuicism before and
Speaker 1: in college I was in it was would have been
Speaker 1: I found the Amazon receipt for that the other day,
Speaker 1: October two thousand and six, So it's going on twenty years.
Speaker 2: And what it was a motive, you remember, the motivation
Speaker 2: for even making the purchase.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you want to know who told me about the Stokes. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's no way you could guess.
Speaker 2: There's no way you could guess Robert Green would be
Speaker 2: the safe bet.
Speaker 1: No, it was doctor Drew. Okay, why not?
Speaker 2: I was.
Speaker 1: I was writing for the college newspaper and I went
Speaker 1: to this h I got invited to this conference in
Speaker 1: West Hollywood which was sponsored by Trojan Condoms, and he
Speaker 1: was he was giving a talk, and after the talk,
Speaker 1: I was just I was like, you know, a young
Speaker 1: kid was just hungry for advice and direction and all
Speaker 1: these things. And I just said, hey, I'm what what
Speaker 1: you got any book recommendations? And he turned me onto
Speaker 1: the Stokes and changed the course of.
Speaker 2: My life in which which was which stoic and.
Speaker 1: Which he told me first about Epictetus, about Epictetus and
Speaker 1: Mark Surelius and uh, you know, obviously it took a
Speaker 1: while for them to sleep in. But but you know,
Speaker 1: sitting in Riverside, California, reading Mark Trelis's meditations.
Speaker 2: And what was that the first book? Was that the
Speaker 2: book that was.
Speaker 1: The first one? Yeah? And I just I was what
Speaker 1: is this?
Speaker 2: You know? And it really was that immediate.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, Perc. I didn't know there was writing like this.
Speaker 1: I didn't know there was advice like this. I didn't
Speaker 1: know it was what I was looking for. But it
Speaker 1: was exactly what I was.
Speaker 2: And did you know there was about stoicism that he
Speaker 2: was about stoicism? Or was it just the most powerful
Speaker 2: man in the world and that intrigued you, I mean
Speaker 2: in its life lessons.
Speaker 1: You know, we're only a few years out from the
Speaker 1: movie Gladiator at this time, so I think I was
Speaker 1: a little bit primed. But but there there was something
Speaker 1: about I think, what at the core young men are
Speaker 1: looking for direction, right, and they're looking for direction, particularly
Speaker 1: now in a world where a lot of the old
Speaker 1: sort of traditions and explicit and implicit instructions in that
Speaker 1: regard are gone, and so there's this just kind of
Speaker 1: existential void. There's this leadership void. You just don't you
Speaker 1: don't know how to be a person, and and there's
Speaker 1: not it's not like they're these rituals or these groups,
Speaker 1: or this kind of process by which you become a
Speaker 1: man that just doesn't exist. And so to sort of
Speaker 1: pick up the private thoughts of the Emperor of Rome,
Speaker 1: and he's he's talking to himself about how to how
Speaker 1: to not just be you know, a productive person and
Speaker 1: a strong person, but also a wise person and a
Speaker 1: good person, and how how to deal with you know,
Speaker 1: everything from his temper to his anxiety to his you know,
Speaker 1: sort of fear of death or his frustrations with other people.
Speaker 1: I just I didn't If you had asked me to
Speaker 1: define philosophy in my late teens, I would have said,
Speaker 1: I don't know. It's like, you know, it's it's those
Speaker 1: people in togas, or it's those people on college campuses,
Speaker 1: you know, asking impossible questions about things for which there
Speaker 1: are no answers, you know, like that it's first things,
Speaker 1: it's for people smarter than me, right, And then to
Speaker 1: read the Stoics, you go, oh no, no, this is
Speaker 1: for people trying to be human beings like and trying
Speaker 1: to just deal with the difficulties of life. And that
Speaker 1: is what I think struck me so much about meditation,
Speaker 1: because even compared to the other Stoics, you know, whether
Speaker 1: they're reading senec or epicteties, they're there at least talking
Speaker 1: to an audience. And and there's something so personal and
Speaker 1: disarming about meditations because here it's it's it's not meant
Speaker 1: for publication. It's it's it's just a guy. It's like
Speaker 1: a guy's inner monologue. It's like that the angel on
Speaker 1: his shoulder, you know, trying to be like, you're better
Speaker 1: than this, you should do this, try to do that.
Speaker 1: What about this? And and so I think I was
Speaker 1: just I was blown away. And then particularly that he
Speaker 1: is such a good writer, that even his notes to
Speaker 1: himself are some of the best philosophy ever written. I
Speaker 1: think that that all is what's struck me.
Speaker 2: So was that. So it's sort of you know, all
Speaker 2: of a sudden, this book speaks to you and your
Speaker 2: time of life, your state of mind titis. Similarly, you
Speaker 2: mentioned the Big three of Stokes, but these aren't the
Speaker 2: ogesus stoves. I mean, what the broader stoic construct for you?
Speaker 2: When did that click versus more of a contemporary no stoicism.
Speaker 1: Well, they represent the ogs of stoicism. You go back to,
Speaker 1: you get Zeno and Anthes and Chris Zippi's Cato being
Speaker 1: maybe another one that maybe some.
Speaker 2: People have heard of.
Speaker 1: You know that that was the process of kind of
Speaker 1: tracing it back the words you kind of. I think
Speaker 1: most people should start with the big three of the
Speaker 1: of the Stoics and then and work their way back.
Speaker 1: There's a reason that they're the ones that are most
Speaker 1: well known, and that is a really cool thing. It
Speaker 1: just blows your mind about history, where you're like, Okay,
Speaker 1: to Marcus Aurelius, Stoicism was ancient philosophy, ancient philosophy like five,
Speaker 1: like Zeno is to Marcus Aurelius what Shakespeare is to us.
Speaker 2: I was quoting Plutarch the other day. The imbalance between
Speaker 2: the rich and the poor is the oldest and most
Speaker 2: fatal ailment of all republics, says it. You know, I
Speaker 2: don't know fifty seventy eighty. Yes, the oldest and most
Speaker 2: fatal ailments.
Speaker 1: But that's so and you hey, Plutarch right again, Yeah,
Speaker 1: probably the great, one of the great biographers. Truman would
Speaker 1: talk about how whenever he had a problem as president,
Speaker 1: he could take he could pull out. He said, I
Speaker 1: pulled up my old friend Plutarch, my old friend, my
Speaker 1: old friend Plutarch, and he would have the solution to
Speaker 1: my problems. But Plutarch is writing about you know, Caesar
Speaker 1: and Cicero and Demosthenes and and all these Greek and
Speaker 1: Roman figures who were to him what he is to us,
Speaker 1: you know, not quite that far. But but but we
Speaker 1: think about ancient Greece and Rome as this kind of
Speaker 1: like brief moment as opposed to a civilization that lasted
Speaker 1: hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years. Even the decline
Speaker 1: and fall of Rome is like nine hundred years, you know,
Speaker 1: maybe a little bit less than that, depending on where
Speaker 1: you want to date it to. But the point is
Speaker 1: that should give.
Speaker 2: Us comfort in the US.
Speaker 1: It's a little bit, but it gives you. You just
Speaker 1: realized that that they were like when they were going
Speaker 1: through stuff. When when when Marx realist is living through
Speaker 1: a civil war, or Cato is living through a civil war,
Speaker 1: or Seneca is in exile or during the reign of Nero,
Speaker 1: what are they turning to? They're turning to the ancients,
Speaker 1: who we are also turning to. And then what we
Speaker 1: have is generations. This is why they call philosophy the
Speaker 1: Great Conversation, because it's these core ideas that were sort
Speaker 1: of brought into existence at some point. But the genius
Speaker 1: of them is the layering on top of each subsequent
Speaker 1: generation trying and riffing. And just as just as the
Speaker 1: Founders I give you Jeffrey Rosen's The Pursuit of Happiness,
Speaker 1: the Founders were turning to the stokes that my nine
Speaker 1: years obsessed with Hamilton. Oh, the play Hamilton, the most
Speaker 1: famous play in the Western world in the eighteenth century,
Speaker 1: was a play about Cato, and it was as famous
Speaker 1: as Hamilton is now, and in the way that you know,
Speaker 1: like if you go immigrants, they get the job done.
Speaker 1: People know what you're talking about. When George Washington would
Speaker 1: talk about, you know, looking at events through the calm
Speaker 1: light of mild philosophy, or when they say I regret
Speaker 1: I have but one life to give for my country,
Speaker 1: these are lines from that play. And so it's this
Speaker 1: great tradition of these ideas being just so perfectly expressed
Speaker 1: and the example being so powerful that people have been
Speaker 1: turning to it over and over again. And that's the
Speaker 1: really powerful thing. Stoicism wasn't Marcus realized. It was six
Speaker 1: hundred years of it in Greece and Rome and then
Speaker 1: you know, I mean it continues on up. It's not
Speaker 1: like people haven't been talking about and riffing about it
Speaker 1: in the eighteen hundred years since. They absolutely have. And
Speaker 1: so it's just this energy I think you tap into
Speaker 1: and you go, oh, these are ideas that have really
Speaker 1: been tested in the crucible of human EXPSI.
Speaker 2: Was the stoic? I mean, was I mean when Zeno
Speaker 2: it was three hundred BC or something. Yeah, he said,
Speaker 2: I am I declare myself a Stoic? Uh it was?
Speaker 2: Or was he declared a stoic?
Speaker 1: Well, that's that. I think it's to Zeno's credit that
Speaker 1: the philosophy is not called Xenoism. Right, there's a little
Speaker 1: bit right at the beginning. There's some humility, so Stoa.
Speaker 1: So so the founding story of Stoicism is Zeno's a merchant. Uh,
Speaker 1: and he deals in this rare purple dye and uh
Speaker 1: that that die being a commodity in those days, a
Speaker 1: dyeing purple. Yeah, we we we we think of like
Speaker 1: it's funny where the straight of four moves is shut
Speaker 1: down global trade, but it's the modern thing. It's like, no,
Speaker 1: the purple dye was this commodity that that was made
Speaker 1: across multiple islands in the Mediterranean, and it would get
Speaker 1: traded and moved around like the same the same navigational
Speaker 1: issues we're having right now people talking about then. But
Speaker 1: but but he suffers this shipwreck, he washes up in
Speaker 1: Athens and ends up there discovering philosophy, and that's where
Speaker 1: stoicism starts. But he just begins lecturing about these ideas
Speaker 1: on the Stoa Pochila, which is the painted porch in Athens,
Speaker 1: and that's where that's what stoic means. It just Stoa
Speaker 1: means porch. It doesn't mean anything. These are just the
Speaker 1: guys from the porch, bullshitting and talking and sharing. It
Speaker 1: is funny then that he would talk about that, that's
Speaker 1: this merchant of purple dye. His philosophy would become the
Speaker 1: philosophy associate with Marcus Relis because I could tell you
Speaker 1: mouthing the words there. One of the powerful lines and meditations,
Speaker 1: as Mark Sali says, this is a reference to being emperors,
Speaker 1: is be careful that you are not dyed purple. And
Speaker 1: he's saying that that make sure that power doesn't corrupt
Speaker 1: youss because the Roman emperor was one of the few
Speaker 1: that could wear the color.
Speaker 2: So you're reading all of this, your portal to this
Speaker 2: beginning with Meditations, which has had an outsize influence and
Speaker 2: on everybody that's ever picked up did you read? You
Speaker 2: pick it up? I picked up all the wrong versions,
Speaker 2: couldn't understand a damn thing interesting. I look back, it's interesting.
Speaker 2: I must have fifteen or twenty different copies. Wow, And
Speaker 2: it took me listening to you on damn YouTube to
Speaker 2: go here's the one I recommend. I'm like, start reading.
Speaker 2: I'm like, wait, this makes some sense because the translations are,
Speaker 2: you know, time back to decades and decades ago. So
Speaker 2: I think my father, someone you know, was around, and
Speaker 2: then here my uncle says, here's a book you should read,
Speaker 2: like Jesus, you know. Lasting. So they just sort of
Speaker 2: collected dust. But there were a few efforts, and they
Speaker 2: just didn't go anywhere because it didn't speak to me
Speaker 2: with the kind of language that I understand today. I do.
Speaker 1: I don't believe in miracles, but I went on Amazon
Speaker 1: and I just bought a random copy that I got
Speaker 1: was just the first one I like. I got the
Speaker 1: copy that change my life, and I've now recommended it
Speaker 1: so many people that just that's the first the algorithm
Speaker 1: blessed me, someone who's so critical of algorithms, and that
Speaker 1: one case the algorithm blessed me.
Speaker 2: By the way, one of the things I love that
Speaker 2: you do is you'll go back to the same you'll
Speaker 2: go to different translations. Yeah, and you're able to sort
Speaker 2: of lay them out. And I mean it shows, I mean,
Speaker 2: you know how language is radically changed. Well that and
Speaker 2: how important the translation is.
Speaker 1: Yes, I mean, so I don't speak Greek or Latin,
Speaker 1: so I don't I don't know exactly, but it is
Speaker 1: interesting when you read all these different translations, you go, oh, like,
Speaker 1: this is the same idea, fifteen different cuts on it,
Speaker 1: and what a big role the translator plays, and also
Speaker 1: what a big role the moment in time that you're in.
Speaker 2: So how we like how you interpret it in the
Speaker 2: context of something contemporary.
Speaker 1: So I've been reading Meditation for fifteen years and then
Speaker 1: twenty twenty pandemic hits. I'm reading Meditations and all of
Speaker 1: a sudden there's all these references to the plague and
Speaker 1: to pestilence, and and you realize, oh, it's this is
Speaker 1: a plague book. This guy wrote in the middle of
Speaker 1: the Antonine plague, this fifteen year pandemic that killed millions
Speaker 1: of things.
Speaker 2: And you never picked up on that, I mean necessarily,
Speaker 2: I guess, I just you don't. You think he's being metaphorical. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and then and then you realize he's being literal.
Speaker 1: Like one of the passages I thought the most about
Speaker 1: during the pandemic is this one where he goes, there's
Speaker 1: there's two types of plagues. There's the one that can
Speaker 1: destroy your health and the one that can destroy your character.
Speaker 1: And I and then then you watch over the next
Speaker 1: two years, people get radicalized, People turn off their hearts
Speaker 1: and their their neighborliness to other people, and and you
Speaker 1: and in other cases lose their mind come, you know,
Speaker 1: do and say things they would have been shocked by,
Speaker 1: just if you years earlier. And you, oh that he
Speaker 1: must have seen that, you know, he must he must
Speaker 1: have seen that. And and I think there's a there's
Speaker 1: a famous story about Markusrelius. He's presiding over some court
Speaker 1: and one of the lawyers, uh makes this reference to
Speaker 1: the victims of the plague, and he just bursts into tears.
Speaker 1: And so you think Number one, I thought this is
Speaker 1: the stoics don't have emotions, they don't care about people. Yes,
Speaker 1: and then and and here he is just sort of
Speaker 1: weeping over these untold thousands of people who have died.
Speaker 1: You know, in some cases people we would have uh
Speaker 1: cared deeply about and been very close to. And you go, oh,
Speaker 1: that's not what stoicism Isn't this uh uh fuck you?
Speaker 1: I got mine, or like I got a strong immune
Speaker 1: stitu I think there.
Speaker 2: Was when you first heard about it, because so many
Speaker 2: people see it as just yeah, I'm just I will
Speaker 2: have no emotion. I'm just being stoic, you know, the
Speaker 2: sort of ridge, robotic.
Speaker 1: I think what I was at I was attracted to
Speaker 1: stoicism for the reason that young men have been attracted
Speaker 1: to stoicism for centuries, which is it's about getting your
Speaker 1: shit together, getting it on lock, you know, just just
Speaker 1: that sort of ownership and control of the self, which
Speaker 1: I think if anyone needs help in, it's young men.
Speaker 1: So so I think that was my initial attraction to it.
Speaker 1: And then and I think I was attracted to trappings
Speaker 1: of power and you know, all the all the things
Speaker 1: that make it, you know, interesting and unique compared to
Speaker 1: I don't know, existentialism or some other school of philosophy,
Speaker 1: but over the years you realize, oh, this is actually
Speaker 1: a profoundly ethical philosophy. This is about our connections to
Speaker 1: other people. This is about our responsibilities to other people.
Speaker 1: This is about being like when when they're talking about excellence,
Speaker 1: they don't simply mean perfection excellence, and that actually professional
Speaker 1: excellence is pretty common, but professional and personal excellence, like
Speaker 1: sort of rounding that package out is actually the sort
Speaker 1: of thing to be more ambitious about. So I think
Speaker 1: my initial attraction to it was one thing, and then
Speaker 1: what it works on you, And I think it's interesting
Speaker 1: to hear you talk about sort of starting and stopping
Speaker 1: it over the years. It's it's important that people understand
Speaker 1: stoicism is a philosophy you should be reading, not a
Speaker 1: philosophy you have read.
Speaker 2: You say that. I love that you say that. And
Speaker 2: also you make the point and I don't remember exactly
Speaker 2: who said it, but you never swim in the same
Speaker 2: river twice. Yeah, this notion that the river's changed or
Speaker 2: step in the same way. Yeah, I'll swim in it
Speaker 2: American just up the black where you were growing up.
Speaker 2: But we change as well, Yes, and back to this.
Speaker 2: You know, you're reading it again, and now we're in
Speaker 2: a plague, and all of a sudden you're reading it
Speaker 2: as I mean almost as a new visitor to the same,
Speaker 2: same old Well.
Speaker 1: I think it's so fascinating that, Yeah, you picked up
Speaker 1: a book when you were one age, you picked it
Speaker 1: up again another, it continually wasn't working, and then at
Speaker 1: some point, and I bet if you actually laid those
Speaker 1: translations outside by side, they're not that different.
Speaker 2: They're not there.
Speaker 1: I think you were.
Speaker 2: You were profound Well, I was trying to find language period.
Speaker 2: I you know, wrote a book about my own learning disability.
Speaker 2: So just I mean literally the words just above my
Speaker 2: pay grade that needs to be explained to me. I
Speaker 2: remember Shakespeare class in college. I mean, your toast is
Speaker 2: a dyslexic. You're like me, doth thought that, I mean Jesus,
Speaker 2: So you like immediately try to find a cliff note
Speaker 2: version or something on TV that you could claim that
Speaker 2: I read or understood. Yeah. So no, it's so you
Speaker 2: did all that. You know, so you're reading this, but
Speaker 2: you weren't necessarily going Wait a second, this is my
Speaker 2: new path, my career that I'm going to become. You
Speaker 2: know I'm going to translate this to a whole different
Speaker 2: audience that I'm going to be able to express this
Speaker 2: with new media. I'm going to be able to get
Speaker 2: a whole new generation to understand and bring to life
Speaker 2: these extraordinary figures.
Speaker 1: No, I mean I was introduced to the Stokes in
Speaker 1: two thousand and six, and my first book on PTol
Speaker 1: philosophy came out in summer of twenty fourteen.
Speaker 2: So what was the in spir What what said? You know,
Speaker 2: I have to do my version of this, But I've
Speaker 2: written about store. Yeah, I don't know. I was.
Speaker 1: I wrote my first book because I wanted to be
Speaker 1: a writer, and I knew that that book had to
Speaker 1: come first. You couldn't write the stoic books and then
Speaker 1: the media book. So I knew I had to get
Speaker 1: the media book out of the way. So I did
Speaker 1: the media book first, and then what I really wanted
Speaker 1: to write about was was the Stoics. But no, I
Speaker 1: I thought I had this idea for one Stoic book
Speaker 1: about this one passage from Archstreet. That was it.
Speaker 2: And I think again, obstacles away, what stands in the
Speaker 2: way becomes the way. Yes, I love it.
Speaker 1: Come on, I know, I could somewhere. I mean, I just,
Speaker 1: I just it's too good. It's the best, it's the best.
Speaker 1: Someone some to action becomes the action. Yes, the way
Speaker 1: becomes away. But you want to know something funny about
Speaker 1: that quote there Again, you you evolve your understanding of
Speaker 1: these things as you get So I wrote the book
Speaker 1: and The Obstacles Away mostly about how we deal with
Speaker 1: like professional obstacles, right, Like how you're trying to like
Speaker 1: do something and something gets in the way, which is
Speaker 1: obviously what he's partly talking about there. But the fuller quote,
Speaker 1: which obviously I knew is I edited to put some
Speaker 1: ellipses in there, But mostly what he's talking about is
Speaker 1: is is annoying people and obnoxious people's He's saying, people
Speaker 1: can cause problems for us, they can get in our way,
Speaker 1: but you know, we all, he says, we always have
Speaker 1: the ability to accommodate and adapt. He says, we can
Speaker 1: convert this to our own, you know, our own potential acting.
Speaker 1: And then he says, you know, the impediment action in
Speaker 1: advances action, what stands in the way becomes a way,
Speaker 1: and then you go, okay. So when he's saying, some
Speaker 1: person comes up and says something horrible to you, or
Speaker 1: some some some person screw something up for you, or
Speaker 1: some some person, uh you know, it's just constantly uh
Speaker 1: stressing you out or abusing you or whatever it is.
Speaker 1: What he's saying is that that's an opportunity for you
Speaker 1: to be the better person, the bigger person, to grow
Speaker 1: as a person in wrestling with and handling what this
Speaker 1: person is doing to you. And and so you go, Okay,
Speaker 1: Like when the Stokes are saying the obstacles the way,
Speaker 1: they don't necessarily mean, oh, this is a chance to
Speaker 1: you know, hey, this, this huge recession that we just
Speaker 1: got plunged into, is actually a chance for you to
Speaker 1: retrench in the business and tighten things up and come
Speaker 1: back smarter and and and leaner, and you know, more organized.
Speaker 2: It may be.
Speaker 1: But he's saying, actually, you know this, this, this person
Speaker 1: who just broke your heart, or this person who just
Speaker 1: lied to you or stole from you, or this per
Speaker 1: who just said something horrible to you, they're a chance
Speaker 1: for you to grow as a human being in how
Speaker 1: you respond to them. That is obviously not my reading
Speaker 1: of the passage when I'm nineteen, but it's how I
Speaker 1: understand it. Twenty years later and.
Speaker 2: You understand it. It's sort of the core part of
Speaker 2: what you said is sort of for you if you
Speaker 2: were going to distill the essence of stoicism, this notion
Speaker 2: that we have agency, Yeah, that you know, it's not
Speaker 2: what happens to us, how we respond to what happens
Speaker 2: to us.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, would I'd be curious, Like in politics, isn't
Speaker 1: that I'd be curious to find some line of work
Speaker 1: in which that's not the case the case, right, Like
Speaker 1: you wake up and somebody gives you the news and
Speaker 1: then you figure out your job is to say, here's
Speaker 1: what we're going to do.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but so much of our life is this sort
Speaker 2: of victim mentality that you know that it's fate and
Speaker 2: we can't control our own fate. Yeah, you know, the
Speaker 2: systems rigged against me. There's nothing I can do, nothing
Speaker 2: one person can do. Yes, who this is, whose fault
Speaker 2: it is? This is how why it should have gone
Speaker 2: the other way. Just a lot of a lot of
Speaker 2: dwelling on why it happened, as.
Speaker 1: Opposed to what you're gonna do about it.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So it's interesting to me just you know, I
Speaker 2: write a little bit and uh, some of my my
Speaker 2: friends like why you're writing about Tony Robbins. But it's
Speaker 2: interesting I write about it because I was, you know,
Speaker 2: around your age, and all of a sudden, my contemporary
Speaker 2: version dare I say, how dare you? Was this guy
Speaker 2: with you know, who was self described with big teeth
Speaker 2: on you know, on infomercials selling me cassette tapes. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and I listened to those today and I'm like, so
Speaker 2: much is you know?
Speaker 1: Well, I do think that that there's a little bit
Speaker 1: there that's just a complete indictment of philosophy as a
Speaker 1: whole these days, right, like like that that that is,
Speaker 1: that's what Socrates is doing, That's what that That's what
Speaker 1: uh Aristotle was doing. They were they were trying. I mean,
Speaker 1: Socrates gets killed for corrupting the youth, which is to say,
Speaker 1: teaching the young boys what they need to know about
Speaker 1: life that their parents didn't want them to know, right,
Speaker 1: or challenging convention or or you know, teaching them a
Speaker 1: new way of thinking. And I guess it just says
Speaker 1: something that that philosophy does not speak to people in
Speaker 1: a way that it's supposed to. It is supposed to
Speaker 1: be the guide to the good life, which you know,
Speaker 1: to me, the American dream is both a financial dream
Speaker 1: but also a sort of a moral and a spiritual
Speaker 1: dream of a of a better life. And and philosophy
Speaker 1: is supposed to be part of that and and it's
Speaker 1: just it's just not and and I think we're in
Speaker 1: extra trouble when you know, organized religion has not just
Speaker 1: fallen away, but also you know, alienated huge swats of
Speaker 1: the population, whether you're talking about the abuse scandals in
Speaker 1: the in the Catholic Church, which is what I grew
Speaker 1: up in, or you're looking at the sort of political
Speaker 1: radicalization of sort of evangelical faith. And so if if
Speaker 1: you're not going to have traditions and sort of rituals,
Speaker 1: you're also not going to have religion, what are you
Speaker 1: Where are people supposed to learn this stuff? And and
Speaker 1: and it's I think created a huge vacuum that that
Speaker 1: certain you know, bad actors have stepped into phil and.
Speaker 2: You haven't become a bad actor. Thanks you talk about
Speaker 2: you know, because you you talked to you, we can
Speaker 2: go back to sort of March twenty twenty and sort
Speaker 2: of the beginning, and we could talk about that pandemic people,
Speaker 2: you know, I mean, I explained more things in more ways,
Speaker 2: on more days of everything. Sure, our relationships back to
Speaker 2: truth trust. This certainly are politics. I didn't fully absorb
Speaker 2: it appreciate it at the time. And what we've become
Speaker 2: on the other side, and what people became people I
Speaker 2: don't they were unrecognizable to this day that went through
Speaker 2: that process. We can get Elon Musk in a minute,
Speaker 2: but I knew him well before.
Speaker 1: That's my favorite part of your book. You talked about
Speaker 1: how you came of age as all. You came of
Speaker 1: age at the same time as all those Silicon Valley people.
Speaker 2: I was with Larry and Serge at Google and when
Speaker 2: Steve Jobs taps us on the shoulder and says, hey,
Speaker 2: he wasn't interested in me, he was interested in Larry
Speaker 2: and Serge to show us pulled out of his back
Speaker 2: pocket the first iPhone and we're like, you know, it
Speaker 2: was like a joy ride. We're going with our fingers
Speaker 2: like oh we and they're all by you know, they
Speaker 2: were just in. There was sense of optimism back to
Speaker 2: you when you were writing this book.
Speaker 1: So what happened? Like I think that that quote where
Speaker 1: Elon Musk is on Rogan and he says, you know,
Speaker 1: empathy is going to be the death of Western civilization.
Speaker 1: That to me was one. And then when I watched
Speaker 1: Mark and Drees and talk about how he has zero
Speaker 1: introspection and and he's like, I never looked backward. He goes,
Speaker 1: I never looked backwards. It's like, by the way, that's
Speaker 1: not what introspection is. Just to be like, you clearly
Speaker 1: don't even know what it is. Like introspection is looking inwards.
Speaker 1: Just to be clear, that's not looking backwards. But but
Speaker 1: but he goes, you know, the great men of history,
Speaker 1: they they they they didn't look around. They didn't It's
Speaker 1: like the bad ones, you know, the ones who were
Speaker 1: responsible for genocides and pointless wars and uh ecological disasters
Speaker 1: and economic calamities. Yes, they had no sense of introspection
Speaker 1: or history or perspective. But the great ones, whether you're
Speaker 1: talking about FDR or Truman or Theodore Roosevelt, Washington or Lincoln,
Speaker 1: the best of the best, all the great, all the greats.
Speaker 1: And I just named a bunch of of white dudes.
Speaker 1: So I'm sorry, but like you know, you could we could.
Speaker 2: Talk about that too, and where women are in the story,
Speaker 2: you could expand.
Speaker 1: But the point is that the great historical figures are
Speaker 1: by definition profoundly considerate and conscientious people, and and when
Speaker 1: when they're not, it is responsible for their biggest failings.
Speaker 1: And so what so what's.
Speaker 2: Happened was what happened?
Speaker 1: What happened?
Speaker 2: And what happened to you? That you didn't fall prey
Speaker 2: to all that? I mean you you, I mean, your
Speaker 2: rise just gone. I mean it's you can you were
Speaker 2: wildly successful before the pandemic. But you know, I mean,
Speaker 2: now the ubiquity and your success it's just exploded. But
Speaker 2: but it's but it suggests that people are they're not
Speaker 2: they haven't necessarily been sold that bill of goods either,
Speaker 2: that they're looking for something different.
Speaker 1: I mean, look, I've definitely experienced some success. It's small
Speaker 1: potatoes compared to being, you know, one of the richest
Speaker 1: or most powerful people in the world. So I I
Speaker 1: don't want to judge people whose thing you know, who's
Speaker 1: who's uh, whose you know sort of experiences is something
Speaker 1: I can't even comprehend.
Speaker 2: But it does.
Speaker 1: It does seem weird that these people, many of whom
Speaker 1: I I also knew or met over the years and
Speaker 1: thought were one thing. It sort of revealed themselves to
Speaker 1: be another. What do you what's your explanation.
Speaker 2: I'm struggling with it, and I've been strung. I mean,
Speaker 2: I struggled with it a little bit of the book.
Speaker 2: It looks even you know who I was becoming. I
Speaker 2: mean I was, you know, and and you know, God bless,
Speaker 2: I was reading one of your books for years ago
Speaker 2: and took a little indirect shot at me, and I
Speaker 2: thought it was completely you to see, you know back.
Speaker 2: I don't want anyone get back. The one of the
Speaker 2: most important stories. You always say, what during the plague?
Speaker 2: What Marcus really did? He sold all the things in here?
Speaker 2: I was going to a damn restaurant and you made it.
Speaker 2: And I'm like, you know what fair? And it was
Speaker 2: Legit hurt. It hurt because it was right. And of
Speaker 2: course I knew I had no greater critic of me
Speaker 2: than me, and so I appreciate it. But so you know,
Speaker 2: but in a lot of what I write about in
Speaker 2: this book, I mean talk about ego, there's I mean
Speaker 2: the whole thing. I mean, I just I laid it
Speaker 2: all out, and I laid myself out in this sort
Speaker 2: of journey of discovery, this memoir of discovery, and discovering
Speaker 2: myself and my own you know, and my own you
Speaker 2: know this, there's so many but you know, expectations and
Speaker 2: how I was living in other people's expectations and I
Speaker 2: was kind of losing myself and how now And I
Speaker 2: think it's why sort of reading dove deep into your work.
Speaker 2: It's just so sort of all coincided. I'm like, oh,
Speaker 2: you know, just literally just breathe again and have perspective
Speaker 2: and grace and humility.
Speaker 1: You're saying, introspection, interest like the thing they are running
Speaker 1: away from.
Speaker 2: Running away from the coarseness. That's why I've got forgive me.
Speaker 2: I didn't mean to put you behind these knee pads.
Speaker 2: And I think about with Trump, I mean the obstacles away.
Speaker 2: To me, it's so profound in the context of how
Speaker 2: I'm dealing with the challenges and the obstacle it stands
Speaker 2: in the way of decent. From my perspective, decency, lack
Speaker 2: of character, all those those cardinal VERSI choose that you
Speaker 2: write so beautifully about this notion of justice and this
Speaker 2: notion of what courage really is in temperance, all these
Speaker 2: found what discipline looks. It's a math amount of what
Speaker 2: we have today. But I think about, all, right, obstacle
Speaker 2: is the way it stands, the way becomes away. So
Speaker 2: how we can sort of with agency, you know, manifest
Speaker 2: and take responsibility and have the discipline and the character
Speaker 2: to you know, not just identify the problems, but begin
Speaker 2: to march strategies and iteration to address these problems and
Speaker 2: to move in a more enlightened direction. And again, you've
Speaker 2: been a huge part of that for millions of us,
Speaker 2: but certainly for the guy sitting here as the current
Speaker 2: occupant of the governor's mansion.
Speaker 1: That's unbelievable to me. I think, you know, there's this
Speaker 1: passage of Meditations where Mark Schmiz talks about fighting to
Speaker 1: be the person that philosophy tried to make you love it.
Speaker 1: And now I think about that, that's what he's doing
Speaker 1: in Meditations, is he's trying. He's trying to be better
Speaker 1: than whatever he could get away with or whatever you know,
Speaker 1: he would he might just be on his own. He's
Speaker 1: sure sort of aspiring to be some greater self. And
Speaker 1: it does feel like in the sort of Silicon Valley
Speaker 1: kind of like leadership class, there is this and Trump
Speaker 1: I think obviously hastened it. But it's this kind of
Speaker 1: like why why should you try to be back?
Speaker 2: Why just do what you want? Yeah, you know yours
Speaker 2: when you're.
Speaker 1: Famous, they let you do it, you know. And it's
Speaker 1: like the embracing of that and the idea of like why.
Speaker 1: One of my favorite headlines of all time, there's this
Speaker 1: Huffington Post headline from fifteen years ago and it says, uh,
Speaker 1: I don't know how to explain to you that you're
Speaker 1: supposed to care about other people and that, and it
Speaker 1: really does feel like like there was this concerted effort
Speaker 1: in a small group of people to just let themselves
Speaker 1: off the hook for being responsible for or to anyone,
Speaker 1: despite the incredible power and privilege that they enjoy.
Speaker 2: There you go, there you go, and we're I mean,
Speaker 2: it's and we're living with the consequences of that. I
Speaker 2: mean we you know, we've hit on you know, young men,
Speaker 2: but you you know, subtly made the point. I'll make
Speaker 2: it more expressive. Young men are in crisis. Yeah, And
Speaker 2: it's interesting how you connect tradition and rituals. And now,
Speaker 2: I mean we're seeing a little bit now with religion.
Speaker 2: People are finding religion a little bit again. But we've
Speaker 2: lost those institutions, that connection to each other. I am,
Speaker 2: because you are this notion of untu, this commonwealth, you know,
Speaker 2: and this uh and and of course with algorithms and
Speaker 2: now this manus for broadly defined and you know Hustlers
Speaker 2: University and Bugatti Bugotti you get mine and you know,
Speaker 2: and and all the just patriarchy that comes in there.
Speaker 2: I mean, and these guys sometimes trying attach these name
Speaker 2: I know, and.
Speaker 1: Now it's it's uh, I try to say, it's not.
Speaker 1: Stoicism is not a formula for you to be a
Speaker 1: better sociopath. It's supposed to do the opposite. It's supposed
Speaker 1: to it's supposed to help you because look, we're all
Speaker 1: inherently selfish. We are all self interested. And the Stokes
Speaker 1: talk about this like you come out of the womb
Speaker 1: being like inherently not just dependent on others, but you
Speaker 1: will you will suck your parents dry literally and figuratively
Speaker 1: so you can survive. That's what your genes are designed
Speaker 1: for you to do. Right, And and that maturation or growth,
Speaker 1: the Stokes would say, is the like the the the
Speaker 1: overcoming of that realizing that you have these obligations and
Speaker 1: duties to to not just these people immediately around you,
Speaker 1: but everyone else like, there's this there's this stoke named
Speaker 1: Hirocles and he talked about the circles of concern and
Speaker 1: that he said, the purpose of the philosophy is pulling
Speaker 1: these outer rings inwards. And to me that like when
Speaker 1: I heard that, I was like, Oh, that's that's what
Speaker 1: they were talking about in church as a kid. That's
Speaker 1: also what Jesus was talking about. And so there is
Speaker 1: there is actually a if Catholicism, especially because it has
Speaker 1: those cardinal virtues that I think you sort of you
Speaker 1: immediately recognize it in the Stoics that oh, oh, this
Speaker 1: was the tradition before that tradition, and that there's a
Speaker 1: lot of overlap there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, I love. I mean, just even when we
Speaker 2: were celebrating the two and fifteth anniversary of the declaration
Speaker 2: Best of Roman Republic, Best of Greek Democracy. I mean
Speaker 2: back to your point in terms even the books. You
Speaker 2: just thank you for the books, but just reminding me
Speaker 2: the founding fathers, the direct inspiration from these greats.
Speaker 1: You know, Washington's the only one of the founders who
Speaker 1: doesn't read the Stoics in Greek or Latin like them
Speaker 1: in English, because every they were. They were so familiar,
Speaker 1: like Jefferson as Jefferson as Seneca in French on his nightstand,
Speaker 1: when he dies, and so like these were These were
Speaker 1: incredibly literate philosophical figures. And you know, the primary influence
Speaker 1: on the Founders was not you know, those English legal thinkers,
Speaker 1: It was the It was the when they're writing the
Speaker 1: Federalist papers and they're masquerading as these Roman characters, they're
Speaker 1: thinking about Cato, they're thinking about Seneca, they're thinking about
Speaker 1: Marcus Aurelius. That those are the people who are influencing
Speaker 1: them the most. And you know that that that does
Speaker 1: go back to I think the founding of America, which
Speaker 1: we've fundamentally misunderstood, this idea that, yes, on the one hand,
Speaker 1: this is a country about freedom where you're the state
Speaker 1: can't tell you how to be or how to live,
Speaker 1: your your individual behavior is not legally prescribed the way
Speaker 1: that it would be in another society. But they were
Speaker 1: very much of the mind that all that freedom was
Speaker 1: to be counterbalanced by a sense of virtue in the people.
Speaker 1: And John Adams said, like, hey, without it, we're fucked,
Speaker 1: Like the constitution cannot is not strong enough. He says
Speaker 1: it will go like a whale through a net like ah, actually,
Speaker 1: this is my this is my I wrote a piece
Speaker 1: about this for the Economists a couple of years ago,
Speaker 1: and maybe maybe now that you're leaving office, it's going
Speaker 1: to be a next project. Okay. So so Victor Frankel
Speaker 1: talked about how there's a statue of liberty in New
Speaker 1: York Harbor and he believed that it should be counterbalanced
Speaker 1: by a statue of responsibility in San Francisco Harbor.
Speaker 2: It's funny, and I think there's people.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the idea that we're we're going to spend federal
Speaker 1: money to make Alcatraz a pro God when when what
Speaker 1: what we desperately need as a society is not to
Speaker 1: lock more people up. We need a monument, I think,
Speaker 1: to responsibility and our obligations to each other.
Speaker 2: Right, I was just tritt a Senator Padia about this.
Speaker 2: We are literally this is a real conversation. No way. Yeah,
Speaker 2: So I'm not waiting till I'm out of it. Okay,
Speaker 2: all right, No, I love this idea. It's well, this
Speaker 2: notion of responsibility, it's that's uh. I don't want to
Speaker 2: get the too political, but kind of missing in my
Speaker 2: party at the kind of level that I think it
Speaker 2: needs to be. We talk about opportunity, we talk in
Speaker 2: terms of community sometimes but not responsibility. It's you know,
Speaker 2: about service and civics and I mean all these, I
Speaker 2: mean it's really critical and back to you know, I
Speaker 2: don't know, there's uh, it's part of that three legged stool,
Speaker 2: and I think often we're talking two legs, not that
Speaker 2: third leg when and.
Speaker 1: All, so the responsibility and agency are related to each other, right,
Speaker 1: because there is this thing in our society where I
Speaker 1: think most most people are like, hey, this shouldn't be happening.
Speaker 1: This isn't good. I don't like this, this is wrong,
Speaker 1: and then everyone is waiting for somebodybody to do something
Speaker 1: about it.
Speaker 2: I mean, brand I said, in democracy, the most important
Speaker 2: office is office of citizen active, not inert citizenship.
Speaker 1: But you mentioned the Democratic Party. I think, even like
Speaker 1: your thing on redistricting, right, like everyone is like, hey,
Speaker 1: what they're doing in Texas, which is where I live,
Speaker 1: is wrong, it's it's regulousism whatever. And then like the
Speaker 1: typical Democratic Party response would be why do they stop
Speaker 1: doing that?
Speaker 2: Yeah, so shame on them, shame on them. Meanwhile, they're
Speaker 2: consolidating power. Yeah. Yeah, I mean it's hard though, right,
Speaker 2: because you don't you know what you know, when they
Speaker 2: I mean the Michelle rama, when they go low, we
Speaker 2: want to go high and we you know, we have
Speaker 2: a higher sense of self in that respect. But you
Speaker 2: know we'll lose this republic. Yeah, that's the way I feel, right,
Speaker 2: I mean, this is this is this is code read Yes,
Speaker 2: this is serious. And so this notion of having agency
Speaker 2: stands in the way becomes sorry, I'm going to keep
Speaker 2: coming back. You wrote the damn book. You know, you
Speaker 2: rewired my brain and uh and uh, this notion, I mean,
Speaker 2: it's it literally that became the foundation of the inspiration
Speaker 2: and the responsibility to be held to a higher level
Speaker 2: of accountability, particularly when you have this gift for me,
Speaker 2: it's a gift of public service. And to be in
Speaker 2: this position I don't want to dream of ready well.
Speaker 1: And because it also it could have not worked. It
Speaker 1: could have been it could have failed, it could have
Speaker 1: been embarrassing, it could have been the end of your
Speaker 1: and all the book. But there is this, there is
Speaker 1: this sort of sense of like, well, I got to
Speaker 1: keep my powder dry for the moment that there I
Speaker 1: there is this thing where people tell themselves, hey, like
Speaker 1: later i'll be more secure, yeah, or later that's when
Speaker 1: I'll do it. And the result is is nobody's doing anything.
Speaker 2: Thank you?
Speaker 1: What it feels like.
Speaker 2: I mean, come on, I mean what you you look,
Speaker 2: you write a lot about this, you talk a lot
Speaker 2: about this. It just it's the do yeah yeah, stop talking,
Speaker 2: stop thinking about, just start doing it. You got it?
Speaker 2: Its action, you know, And it's I mean this notion
Speaker 2: when I'm thirty then, or when i'm a millionaire then,
Speaker 2: or when I have that then I'll be you know,
Speaker 2: yeah or you know this notion even have to be
Speaker 2: something to do something that I have to be a
Speaker 2: city council or governor or mayor before I can meet
Speaker 2: move there. I don't think Gandhi waited around for elected office.
Speaker 2: I don't recall, seriously, was it President, King, doctor king?
Speaker 2: It wasn't all right, I mean, you know, even even
Speaker 2: the guys that served in office, like Hovel or even Mendela,
Speaker 2: I don't remember. You know, four years of Mendela's presidency
Speaker 2: were interesting. The new con I don't want to disregard it.
Speaker 2: But that's not why I think of Mendela. His peak
Speaker 2: of his power wasn't he is in jail. Yeah, and
Speaker 2: there's moral authority.
Speaker 1: And one of the things that you you missed too
Speaker 1: is like all the we're naming the name to guys
Speaker 1: we're named, and most of those were men, but you're
Speaker 1: you're naming mostly the people that we've heard of, as
Speaker 1: if they also weren't part of enormous organizations of a
Speaker 1: bunch of ordinary p bhoblos who were also participating. And
Speaker 1: so like it may it may fall on you to
Speaker 1: be one of those people, but uh, it may also
Speaker 1: just fall on like like Rosa Parks was a secretary
Speaker 1: at you know, the NAACP and and and eventually, yes,
Speaker 1: she also has her moment in the thing. But if
Speaker 1: if that had been the only thing she'd done, if
Speaker 1: she'd only been answering phones, there you've got that would
Speaker 1: have enabled whoever ultimately was the person who doesn't go
Speaker 1: to the back of the bus.
Speaker 2: Right And and of course you know she was an
Speaker 2: echo of Vita b. Wells and so many others that
Speaker 2: that that inspired.
Speaker 1: Along the way, there's this other book I should have
Speaker 1: brought you, do you know what the Highlander School was? No? Okay,
Speaker 1: So so again we think of Rosa Parks as like
Speaker 1: this lady that just gets tired one day and you know,
Speaker 1: sets in motion. There is this thing in Tennessee and
Speaker 1: the mountains of Tennessee called the Highlanders School, which is
Speaker 1: run by this this sort of folksy family of activists.
Speaker 1: And it was a school where they trained activists in
Speaker 1: nonviolence and political activism. And almost all the major figures
Speaker 1: of the civil rights movement, including John Lewis, including Rosa Parks,
Speaker 1: they all go to this school.
Speaker 2: And it's not only I didn't know about it.
Speaker 1: Not only do they they learn the things like they
Speaker 1: would practice, you know, having racial slurs shouted at them,
Speaker 1: and how how do you how do you roll on
Speaker 1: the ground and cover yourself as you're getting beaten? How
Speaker 1: do you you know, how do you talk to people?
Speaker 1: But it's also where like the relationships that they then
Speaker 1: took back all over the country. But it's like nobody
Speaker 1: knows the name of this school, or not enough people do.
Speaker 1: But those people they're coaching trees. I'm free, I'm right
Speaker 1: now forgetting the names of the founders of the Highlanders,
Speaker 1: except mclark was one of the graduates that their coaching
Speaker 1: tree leads to the civil rights movement, just as by
Speaker 1: the way Gandhi's coaching tree leads to the people that
Speaker 1: came back to found the Highlander School, and so again
Speaker 1: you're gonna you. One of the things that Stokes talk
Speaker 1: about is that like we're all assigned these like parts,
Speaker 1: these roles, and we don't know what it is. It
Speaker 1: could be a big one, it could be a little one.
Speaker 1: But your job is to just play the hell out
Speaker 1: of that role and you but chances are your role
Speaker 1: is not sit on the sidelines and complain about God.
Speaker 2: I can't take it. I mean, I just can't take it.
Speaker 2: I can't take the's and I don't mean to disregard
Speaker 2: people that really do feel like they're victims and have
Speaker 2: plenty of receipts to back that up. I can't take it.
Speaker 2: Do something. Seriously, it's exhausting. You know, I love what
Speaker 2: you're saying about. Just you know, we all have this role.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's it's the women, right, oh mell life.
Speaker 2: You know, the powerful play goes on and we almost
Speaker 2: contribute our verse. And this notion that we have to
Speaker 2: contribute our verse again back to agent was.
Speaker 1: Doing in the civil worries, volunteering in hospitals, taking care
Speaker 1: of soldiers, like there's always something you can do, yes,
Speaker 1: And and the problem is, I think that our political
Speaker 1: leaders are not are not willing to risk their political careers.
Speaker 2: Well, they had no problem in risking their political reputation
Speaker 2: by trying to get rid of Rosa Park's race in
Speaker 2: the social studies books, because it was woke, as if
Speaker 2: race said anything to do with her story. Uh. They
Speaker 2: finally were called out on that, by the way, as
Speaker 2: you were called out of the Naval Academy.
Speaker 1: Fun the hell was that it was? It was surreal. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I was gonna.
Speaker 2: I was with some of your great speeches and lectures.
Speaker 2: Thank you are there.
Speaker 1: And there was honor. It was the honor of my
Speaker 1: life to be able to.
Speaker 2: And the reception you get there is off the charts.
Speaker 2: But one of the few.
Speaker 1: Things that gives me hope about our society is if
Speaker 1: you spend any time with people who are in the
Speaker 1: armed services right now, it's it's less point.
Speaker 2: Guy. I was with a dozen of these kids.
Speaker 1: It blew me away, especially because like that was the
Speaker 1: opposite of who I was at seventeen, eighteen eighty twenty.
Speaker 1: You're just like, yeah, you just like you have it,
Speaker 1: you have it together at this level. It's incredible.
Speaker 2: And there.
Speaker 1: I mean they could they could be at Harvard, they
Speaker 1: could be working at some Wall Street firm, they could
Speaker 1: be anywhere other than what they're doing, and they're choosing
Speaker 1: to be there. And then you watch, even even as
Speaker 1: as they are being mismanaged, as they objectively are right now,
Speaker 1: just the what they are able to do, the problems
Speaker 1: they are able to solve, it's incredible. Anyways, Yeah, so
Speaker 1: I was supposed to give a talk at the the
Speaker 1: Naval Academy and I was canceled the last minute, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: about about an hour before I was supposed to go
Speaker 1: on because because I because I was going to make
Speaker 1: the political statement that I think removing books from the library,
Speaker 1: which they did idea.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, I think there was two years ago,
Speaker 2: four three and forty books, if I recall the exact
Speaker 2: number that were been in libraries or schools across this country.
Speaker 2: This banning bende rewriting history, censoring historical facts, as if
Speaker 2: that makes us stronger and wiser.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like, hey, this person is going to be uh,
Speaker 1: you know, in charge of nuclear weapons or flying a
Speaker 1: fighter jet. But maya Angelou's memoir is to.
Speaker 2: Handle. Yeah. Yeah, they can't handle it. Yeah, they're way
Speaker 2: too sensitive for that. Yeah, exactly. But you gave the
Speaker 2: lecture nonetheless.
Speaker 1: Yeah, get well, I gave it one to put this
Speaker 1: stuff into practice. You know, it's like, oh, actually, you
Speaker 1: know it's it's an It was an interesting insight into
Speaker 1: it too, because I remember talking to the person giving
Speaker 1: you know, the messenger who had to pass along that
Speaker 1: I was, you know, being, and who I really felt
Speaker 1: for because it's like, hey, this this dude has a pension. Anyways,
Speaker 1: I he goes, Look, we just don't want to we
Speaker 1: just don't want to draw any tention to ourselves, you know.
Speaker 1: And I said, I think I don't think that's how
Speaker 1: this works. I think I think canceling the lecture an
Speaker 1: hour before I'm supposed to go on is going to
Speaker 1: add a lot more here.
Speaker 2: There were a few dozen headlines.
Speaker 1: And yeah, and and so yeah, I gave I gave
Speaker 1: the talk online, and it was obviously seen by a
Speaker 1: lot more people than would have there.
Speaker 2: But and you had the audacity to talk about I
Speaker 2: don't know these uh, you know, these extreme progressive liberal
Speaker 2: woke you know, admirals like Stockdale. Yes, yes, yes, a
Speaker 2: move many others.
Speaker 1: By the way, A great California story there. He the
Speaker 1: Navy sends him to Stanford in nineteen sixty one and
Speaker 1: he gets an advanced degree and in and as part
Speaker 1: of his studies there, he's he he takes classes in
Speaker 1: comparative Marxism, I forgot it and then and then is
Speaker 1: introduced to to Epictetus and and it's those two things
Speaker 1: that allow him to survive the Pow experience.
Speaker 2: And it was like seven years or something.
Speaker 1: I was fascinated to my grandfriendrandfather just like what.
Speaker 2: Get what he didn't read Aupictitis.
Speaker 1: Well, you came back just when you are exposed to
Speaker 1: an experience that's designed to break you as a human being,
Speaker 1: and they strip you down and then just fling you
Speaker 1: back into the world like very few people could can
Speaker 1: can manage that. And the reason that Stockdale doesn't break
Speaker 1: is that he is introduced to these things at a
Speaker 1: woe liberal institution run by you know, California hippies.
Speaker 2: And uh and it's interesting and I want to go
Speaker 2: too far down the rabbit all with Stockdale. But this
Speaker 2: notion of optimism, it was not that, wasn't that wasn't
Speaker 2: his go to default, so it just remain optimistic. He
Speaker 2: just remained clear and confident with the end goal. The
Speaker 2: optimist didn't tend to do as well as well.
Speaker 1: The stoic version of optimism is not, oh, this is
Speaker 1: going to go amazingly, I'm going to get lucky breaks.
Speaker 1: The stoic version of optimism is I'm going to be
Speaker 1: better for this, however horrible it is. And ultimately his
Speaker 1: view was he was going to comport himself in such
Speaker 1: a way that if he survived, he would not just
Speaker 1: be proud of how he acted. That's the idea of
Speaker 1: returning with honor, which they now teach all POWs, but
Speaker 1: that he was going to turn it into something. He
Speaker 1: said that in retrospect he would not trade away. And
Speaker 1: I think that's how we have to see this moment. Like, look,
Speaker 1: I would love to have a normal president. I'd love
Speaker 1: to have normal politics. I'd love to have not lived
Speaker 1: through a pandemic. I would love all the If you
Speaker 1: had had given me my choice of how I would
Speaker 1: like the last ten years to go, I would have
Speaker 1: picked very differently. But the number one you don't get
Speaker 1: a choice. Number two, you think you know how you
Speaker 1: want it to go, but you actually don't. And three,
Speaker 1: the only thing you have to say over is how
Speaker 1: do you look back and go that was my moment,
Speaker 1: that was a thing that I rose up to meet,
Speaker 1: and that's going to be different for all of us.
Speaker 1: But that's to me, what the stoic is trying to
Speaker 1: say is that, Hey, I want to be able to
Speaker 1: look back on this period and say I was what
Speaker 1: I was capable of being, and that I grew and
Speaker 1: was changed by that experience for the better. That that
Speaker 1: is to me actually profoundly optimistic and hopeful thing to say.
Speaker 1: It's also realistic what.
Speaker 2: I mean, you look back at stoicism and anything they
Speaker 2: from your perspective got wrong.
Speaker 1: Well like basically everyone for the last two thousand years.
Speaker 1: They get the whole slavery thing wrong.
Speaker 2: There was a little that I mean, Marcus, realist slavery.
Speaker 2: You know, you had Seneca working for a guy named
Speaker 2: you know, good loss named Narrow.
Speaker 1: Yes, so wealthy guy. There's the kind of just basic,
Speaker 1: you know, personal decisions, and you can't study history and
Speaker 1: not go, hey, this person was flawed and made mistakes.
Speaker 1: We're all products of our time, so that there's certainly
Speaker 1: a lot of things like that. How about in their teachings, Well, look,
Speaker 1: they believed, I think, much more in predetermination and predestination
Speaker 1: than we do. They they they had obviously to go
Speaker 1: to the idea of agency, right like they were all
Speaker 1: these things that they thought couldn't be changed, that they
Speaker 1: that they thought was just a fact of life. And
Speaker 1: in a way this explains the political stuff, right like
Speaker 1: even epictetis the Slave doesn't question the institution of slavery.
Speaker 1: And so, you know, when you look back at history,
Speaker 1: you can't help but be grateful to the sort of revolutionary, radical,
Speaker 1: progressive people who imagined that the world could be something
Speaker 1: different than it currently is. And if there's anything that
Speaker 1: the Stokes get wrong, it's just that they were resigned
Speaker 1: to the world being the way that it had always been.
Speaker 1: And we are lucky that Gandhi was like, hey, what
Speaker 1: if there's a way to solve problems that doesn't involve
Speaker 1: terrorism or insurrection or overthrowing a government, you know, and
Speaker 1: Martin Luther King picks that up from him, and the
Speaker 1: gay rights activists pick that up from them, and you know,
Speaker 1: we're obviously lucky that all these different innovations happened where
Speaker 1: people were like, you know, we're in the debt of
Speaker 1: Thomas Clarkson, who in the seventeen hundreds writes an essay
Speaker 1: at Oxford about whether people should own slaves or not
Speaker 1: and then says, well, what if I'm right and they shouldn't,
Speaker 1: and then maybe someone should do something about it, And
Speaker 1: then he says, maybe that person could be me. And
Speaker 1: that's where the abolitionist movement comes from. And you know,
Speaker 1: you go back, back and back and back. We are
Speaker 1: the beneficiaries of the people who imagined the world being
Speaker 1: better than it is, and stoicism cannot simply be a
Speaker 1: tool for accepting the status quo.
Speaker 2: You just finished the book on wisdom. You talk about
Speaker 2: these cardinal virtues, you end on wisdom. You don't begin
Speaker 2: with wisdom, even though you said none of the other
Speaker 2: virtues are possible without yeah, wisdom, So why the hell
Speaker 2: do you end the.
Speaker 1: Series the hardest I say the hardest one for last.
Speaker 1: I felt weird starting with wisdom, just aving a practical
Speaker 1: writing standpoint, But I don't know, I felt like the
Speaker 1: last alphabetically it's last. Now there's no good reason they're
Speaker 1: all that. Zeno said that the cardinal virtues, courage, discipline, tempera, courage, discipline, justice, wisdom.
Speaker 1: They were independent yet inseparable from each other. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: and it really doesn't matter what order you think about them,
Speaker 1: whatever you read about them, whatever you write them about them.
Speaker 2: They all.
Speaker 1: You can't have one without the other. I mean, courage
Speaker 1: in pursuit of injustice is no impressive thing. And then
Speaker 1: you know, how do you know what the right thing
Speaker 1: is without wisdom? You know, how do you how do
Speaker 1: you bring good into the world without savvy incompetence. I
Speaker 1: think that's one of our big problems right now, is
Speaker 1: like we just think that being right is sufficient. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, you have to have you have to be
Speaker 1: a savvy political operator. You have to be a savy
Speaker 1: business like just because you you're in the broad strokes, correct,
Speaker 1: I don't get you.
Speaker 2: What, So what are you working on next?
Speaker 1: I'm doing a biography of Stockdale?
Speaker 2: Oh good, okay, yeah, there you go. Yeah. I mean
Speaker 2: you talk about him enough. He's one of my time
Speaker 2: you and he's you know, and and forgive me because
Speaker 2: it's just it's impossible to talk about Stockdale except he's
Speaker 2: better known. And this is why you need to write
Speaker 2: the book, Yeah, because he deserves not to be better
Speaker 2: for one simple line and a vice presidential debate, What sir,
Speaker 2: was that line?
Speaker 1: Who am I? Why am I here?
Speaker 2: Which as a stoic.
Speaker 1: Philosophically, it's actually line.
Speaker 2: For debate prep. You may want to use different language.
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, the family. I'll save it for writing. But
Speaker 1: apparently it's a big story as to how he found
Speaker 1: himself on that stage.
Speaker 2: And ros Pro's but but uh.
Speaker 1: Dennis Miller has a great bit about Stockdale where he says,
Speaker 1: you know, this was the first guy in last guy
Speaker 1: out of Vietnam hero like seven years right, prisoner serves honorably.
Speaker 1: When's the medal of or does all this? And he
Speaker 1: says he he committed the one unpardonable sin in our society.
Speaker 1: Do you know what it is? What I mean, it's
Speaker 1: he was bad on television?
Speaker 2: He was on TV. There you go. It's pathetic. What's
Speaker 2: happened to us? Huh? Yeah, sincerely, this is rather pathetic.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you imagine that incredibly as as a as a charismatic,
Speaker 1: good looking man, he's there there, there, there are I
Speaker 1: imagine there are many many more qualified people. But I
Speaker 1: could not just can't cut it politically because they different,
Speaker 1: they look bad or in a speech that that, you know,
Speaker 1: eighty years ago you only would have been heard about
Speaker 1: from a newspaper column, and they could have I could
Speaker 1: taft to be president now, good question.
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, not on the basis of what he's been described.
Speaker 1: And I mean even FDR has to hide that he
Speaker 1: has a reponsibility.
Speaker 2: I mean, even Kennedy is there's a reason the rocking chair.
Speaker 2: I mean, you know, and he was you know, and
Speaker 2: he was plenty of you know, external things that were
Speaker 2: injected to get them through the day. I mean yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: in Instagram twenty four to seven.
Speaker 1: Yeah, probably would not have not have made it.
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Well, and of course the infamous there, I mean the
Speaker 2: first TV president.
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, then Nixon, the Nixon candibs.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Radio Nixon crushes them TV Kennedy. Yeah, no, Look,
Speaker 2: I appreciate it. I'm glad you. So it's good for
Speaker 2: you on this Starckdale thing. So what is I mean
Speaker 2: you got every morning? If you haven't got, by the way,
Speaker 2: everyone listening watching needs to subscribe to the damn Morning Email,
Speaker 2: which is next level. And what I love about it too,
Speaker 2: it's you know, repetitions and other skill too. What I
Speaker 2: like is it's not one and done. You'll come back
Speaker 2: to old themes. Yeah, and I'll see that as a critique. No,
Speaker 2: but it's but it's important, right, So it's just it's
Speaker 2: reps and you know you're sort of and so it's
Speaker 2: it's remarkably and it's a quick read every morning, way
Speaker 2: to wake up, uh, sort of recalibrate your brain. And
Speaker 2: it's contemporary. You put things. I love it. If you're
Speaker 2: feeling all these things, you're like, yes and yes. So
Speaker 2: clearly someone whoever's writing those things you were, what do
Speaker 2: you mean whatever? It's uh, it's uh, uh, it's it's
Speaker 2: it's I mean, it's free. What more can I say?
Speaker 2: But it's uh, it's it's profoundly impactful and and something
Speaker 2: everyone should sign up for. You've got you did what
Speaker 2: I did again? Your damn January? Oh you did?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 2: I sat there in Lake Tahoe and you know, one
Speaker 2: degrees jumping in the damn river with icicles. By the way,
Speaker 2: it should have gone on my Instagram. But I didn't
Speaker 2: look pretty. I need to get a little better shape.
Speaker 2: I didn't look good without the shirt on. Plus I
Speaker 2: had underwear. So it's another conversation. So I was out
Speaker 2: there and you know, it was day one the polar plunge.
Speaker 2: Well then I get I had to burn away mind, tent,
Speaker 2: whatever the other things. Yes, but you're doing that. You
Speaker 2: got twenty six for twenty six, you had the thing,
Speaker 2: You've got all the stuff on YouTube, got all the
Speaker 2: I mean, come on, man, this is crazy. What's you know?
Speaker 1: What?
Speaker 2: When's enough enough? Are you? Are you a stoic?
Speaker 1: Is this this is what I like to do? I'd
Speaker 1: be doing it, and this is what I do.
Speaker 2: This is what I do. Uh, well, it's uh. I
Speaker 2: appreciate you coming back home, of course, coming back to California. Yeah,
Speaker 2: off your ranch in Texas which ain't so bad. Uh,
Speaker 2: and your credible kids. And I'm going to close on
Speaker 2: this the best thing you do as a father of four,
Speaker 2: the daily dead and dispensing advice as a father. Yeah,
Speaker 2: thank you. What was the inspiration of that?
Speaker 1: Besides I on my life was made better by writing
Speaker 1: about stoicism every day, the forced practice of having to
Speaker 1: do the meditation. And so when I when I when
Speaker 1: we had our first I was like, you know what
Speaker 1: I'll do a parent, I'll take the best parenting advice,
Speaker 1: not not my advice. I don't know shit, but like,
Speaker 1: what are the best smartest people, the wisest people say
Speaker 1: out this and all riff on it each morning, and
Speaker 1: so the daily Dad has almost eight years old, now
Speaker 1: nine years old, and it's it's made me a better
Speaker 1: parent because I'm I'm writing about this. I'm like, you know,
Speaker 1: when your kids are having trouble, you know, getting out
Speaker 1: of bed in the morning and you want to get
Speaker 1: you know, I'm not saying that I didn't just yell
Speaker 1: at my kids for not getting in the car in time.
Speaker 1: I'm saying I'm writing having just done that, trying to
Speaker 1: not do it tomorrow. You know, it's it's a you're
Speaker 1: constantly you know how you're you know what you know
Speaker 1: the parent you want to be and you're never being
Speaker 1: that parent. But so it helps to remind yourself over
Speaker 1: and over and over again, not of we're falling, sure,
Speaker 1: but what the ideal that you're aspiring towards.
Speaker 2: Love it and that's what that is the most important
Speaker 2: job right great to be with you, Thank you very much.