The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – The Socrates Express: In Search of Life Lessons from Dead Philosophers by Eric Weiner

Episode Date: September 18, 2020

The Socrates Express: In Search of Life Lessons from Dead Philosophers by Eric Weiner ericweinerbooks.com The New York Times bestselling author of The Geography of Bliss embarks on a rollicking intellectual journey, following in the footsteps of history’s greatest thinkers and showing us how each—from Epicurus to Gandhi, Thoreau to Beauvoir—offers practical and spiritual lessons for today’s unsettled times. We turn to philosophy for the same reasons we travel: to see the world from a dif­ferent perspective, to unearth hidden beauty, and to find new ways of being. We want to learn how to embrace wonder. Face regrets. Sustain hope. Eric Weiner combines his twin passions for philosophy and global travel in a pil­grimage that uncovers surprising life lessons from great thinkers around the world, from Rousseau to Nietzsche, Confucius to Simone Weil. Traveling by train (the most thoughtful mode of transport), he journeys thousands of miles, making stops in Athens, Delhi, Wyoming, Coney Island, Frankfurt, and points in between to recon­nect with philosophy’s original purpose: teaching us how to lead wiser, more meaningful lives. From Socrates and ancient Athens to Simone de Beauvoir and twentieth-century Paris, Weiner’s chosen philosophers and places provide important signposts as we navigate today’s chaotic times. In The Socrates Express, Weiner invites us to voyage alongside him on his life-changing pursuit of wisdom and discovery as he attempts to find answers to our most vital questions. Eric Weiner is author of the New York Times bestsellers The Geography of Bliss and The Geography of Genius, as well as the critically acclaimed Man Seeks God and, his latest book, The Socrates Express: In Search of Life Lessons from Dead Philosophers. A former foreign correspondent for NPR, he has reported from more than three dozen countries. His work has appeared in the New Republic, The Atlantic, National Geographic, The Wall Street Journal, and the anthology "Best American Travel Writing." He lives in Silver Spring, MD with his wife and daughter.

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms and legs inside the vehicle at all times. Because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain now here's your host chris voss hi folks is voss here from the chris voss show.com the chris voss show.com hey we're coming here with another great podcast we certainly appreciate you guys tuning in we have all the best authors and if you didn't think we had the best authors on yet,

they just keep getting better, and we have better today. So you're going to be able to enjoy this wonderful conversation. We are going to have, and it's going to expand your mind. It's pretty cool. It's not about politics, which is kind of nice for a change. In the meantime, you can see the video version of this, youtube.com, fortunehouschrisfoss. Hit that bell notification button. And you can also go to shop, I'm sorry, amazon.com forward slash shop forward slash chrisvoss.

You can see all the wonderful authors that have been on the show, and you can click on buy their books separately or just, you know, run that credit card up. Buy them all at a time. Besides, what else are you going to do? You're stuck in the coronavirus quarantine. Today we're going to be talking to Eric Weiner. He's the author of The Socrates Express, In Search of Life Lessons from Dead Philosophers. He is the award-winning journalist, best-selling author, and speaker.

His books include The Geography of Bliss, The Geography of Genius, as well as Man Seeks God, and The Socrates Express, of course, which we have here today. This is a beautiful book. There you go, nice and thick. His books have been translated into more than 20 languages. Eric is a former foreign correspondent for NPR and reporter for the New York Times. He is a regular contributor to the Washington Post, BBC Travel, and afar, among other publications. Welcome to the show, Eric. How are you doing today? I'm doing well. Happy to be here, Chris. Awesome, Saucin. So we've got the, oh, this is the Advanced Reader's Edition.

This is kind of special. We've got a whole lot here. So the Socrates Express. There's the finished product. There you go. I've got a label on mine this this makes it special i think yours is yours is better yours is better yeah the label i'll sell it to you on ebay um doesn't have an autograph though i don't i'll have to look up the author well you send mail it to me and i'll sign it that sounds like a deal that sounds like a deal and then i can put on e. I'm just kidding. I'm kidding. We're having some fun here.

Eric, why did you write the book? What motivated you there, buddy? It was really this thing. It's not on now because I'm talking to you, but it's my iPhone thingy. You probably have an iPhone thingy, an iThingy yourself. I got a Samsung thingy for me. Samsung thingy for me. Sam-thung thingy, yeah. And so with these smartphones, we've got basically all of human knowledge from the ancient Egyptians to theoretical physics, you know, available at the swipe of a finger.

Probably, I think it's safe to say, never before in human history have we had access to so much knowledge. And so many people have had so much access. And yet, are we happier are we leading richer more meaningful lives and i would argue the answer is no and uh the reason i think is that we are awash in information but willfully lacking in wisdom. And that's really the genesis for my book, is this hunger, really, for wisdom. Not for more data bits, not for more information,

not even for more knowledge, but wisdom. And we often conflate the two, knowledge and wisdom, but they're different. You know, knowledge is something you possess. Wisdom is something you do. My favorite explanation for the difference comes from a British musician and journalist named Miles Kington. And he said, knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad.

And that is wise. And that is true. So wisdom is applied knowledge, and you're probably thinking, well, what does this have to do with philosophy and philosophers? Well, the word philosophy comes from the ancient Greek, philosophos, which means love of wisdom, and a philosopher is someone who loves wisdom,

and that's the launching point for the journey on the Socrates Express. We've, like you said, we have a lot of information, but not a lot of knowledge. Clearly, you've been on Twitter. So give us an overview of the book and stuff. Well, this is a book about philosophy for people who would never pick up a book about philosophy. You know, the comedian Steve Martin majored in philosophy as an undergrad, and he famously said, well, if you major in any other subject, you forget it the second you graduate. But if you major in philosophy, you've retained just enough to screw you up for the rest of your life. And I think, unfortunately, that's the impression

of philosophy, that it's something that will mess with your head, or it's something that's the impression of philosophy that it's something that will mess with your head or it's something that's difficult something you're likely to flunk out of in college and it really didn't start out that way back in ancient greek a couple thousand years ago it started out as this love of wisdom it's where people went uh to get in shape physically and to get in shape mentally and to learn how to be, and to learn how to be wiser. So I approached the book through that practical lens, and each chapter is actually a how-to chapter with very basic things, like how to walk, how to get out of bed, how to wonder, how to listen, how to fight, how to be kind, and getting later on in the day and in life, how to grow old and even how to die.

Channeling one philosopher through me to sort of wrestle with that how-to question. It's about life. It's a user's manual to life. User's manual to life. I like that. Yeah. Here's to this. How to get out of bed like Marcus Aurelius.

Yes, he was a Roman emperor. He was a pretty powerful dude. He had a bigger empire than you, Chris. This is how big this guy is. Really? Wow. Yes, yeah. He had like 10 podcasts. He was a Roman emperor in the first century A.D.,

controlled a quarter of the world population, huge territory, but he couldn't get out of bed in the morning. And he writes in his book called Meditations, which is this very confessional sort of like journal. In fact, it was a journal. He writes about lots of things, but one of them is how he has trouble getting out of bed in the morning and how he uses his philosophy. He was a Stoic philosopher and emperor to help him get out of bed and uh what's more practical than that you know yeah most definitely he clearly

didn't have death wish coffee brought to you by death wish coffee.com and powered by the christmas see marcus marcus lived a thousand years he lived about a thousand years before coffee was invented you see that was his his bad totally his bad no yeah he should have worked that out differently he should have totally do not want to be living a thousand years before coffee note to self so it looks like there's some different uh titles here see like throw fight like gandhi what's this kind of interesting well uh we'll get into that uh be kind like confucius have no regrets like nietzsche uh grow old like before i'm not sure if i'm pronouncing that correctly but tell us more about what those are clearly yeah so it's

it is um it is again these very basic uh things that we do that we think we know how to do but we don't right and this is this is sort of what philosophy is all about. It's about questioning the obvious. And you said, here's a show that's not about politics, and you're mostly right, a little bit wrong, in that it's relevant to our time. Okay, no, it's not really about politics. We don't question our assumptions. We think we know how to see, for instance, if you could hold up your coffee mug there for a second. Okay. Thank you. So you think that you are looking at the coffee mug and that most people think of it as a thank you. Is that one of your sponsors or

something? It says hot stuff on it, but it's supposed to reflect my look. You think that you're looking at the hot stuff coffee mug as a sort of photograph, that your mind's eye is just taking a photograph and you're seeing it, but that's not how it works. In fact, you, Chris, are having a conversation with the hot stuff coffee mug. It is merely sending electromagnetic waves to your eye and then to your brain. And then your brain sort of decodes it and says, huh, what is this? Looks like a coffee mug. These letters look familiar. Yes, I think it's a coffee mug. And that sort of conversation happens very quickly. And usually it's efficient and effective. And so

you pick up and you drink out of the coffee mug and, you know, not out of the microphone, which would be bad. And I've had those nights with drinking though. Drinking out of the microphone, which would be bad. I've had those nights with drinking, though. Drinking out of the microphone and talking into the coffee mug. But the point is that we need to slow it down, said Henry David Thoreau. He saw more than we did. And he would say, well, wait, you think that's a coffee mug? Maybe it's not. And he thought as soon as you define something or somebody, you stop seeing them. You've defined them. This is a coffee mug. This is a guy with a baseball hat on and a microphone. And we need to slow down the seeing process and sort of have that conversation, but have it more slowly. Ah, I love the thinking behind that. So basically what you did is you took some of this

philosophy and you turn it into like everyday techniques. And so you made it easier for people to connect the dots between the two things. Cause some people look at philosophy and, you know, they go, Oh wow, that's too little, too airy for me. Um, it's, it's not, I mean, if, if being happy is too airy for you, then yeah, but that's really what it's about. And unfortunately, you know, in schools and colleges, it's not taught in this way. It's not taught as a love of wisdom. It's taught as a love of analysis and logic chopping, some people call it. And, you know, there's a place for that in philosophy, but its original purpose was about

how to get through a day, how to get out of bed, how to see more beauty in everyday events and everyday places and people, and how to cope. I mean, we can talk about that for a second, if you like. Sure, let's get into that. There's a chapter called How to Cope, like the Stoics, and it's kind of timely now because we need some coping. So Stoic is probably, it's a term most people know, but like most of these terms, it's a little bit off base. We think of a Stoic as someone with a stiff upper lip who just doesn't grumble, doesn't complain, doesn't feel anything, sort of like Mr. Spock in Star Trek. The Stoics, in fact, were much more than that. They really believed in a joyful life, but they thought too many of us spent too much time trying to control things we can't control

and not enough time controlling what we can control. So they would see people then, as in now, chasing money, fame, fortune, whatever it is, and not getting it and having setbacks. And the Stoics would say, you can't control, you cannot control that. All you can control is your reaction to events. And even something as horrible as this pandemic need not depress us and it need not devastate us. The Stoics thought that we sort of, you know, we give away our agency and our control over our lives. And we say, oh, bad things are happening. I must be miserable now. Not to take anything away from the bad things, but often we make them worse through these mental habits. And the Stoics thought that we need to exercise sort of more control, again, to pause. Like, you know, if you were to bang your head into the microphone really hard, I'm not suggesting you do that. You know, accidentally it would hurt and that would be a physical sensation. And the Stoics would say,

okay, Chris hurt his head. But then you might dwell on that for the rest of the interview and the rest of the day and complain to whoever, wife, kids, whoever saying my head hurts and it could ruin the rest of your life. I mean, it's a slight exaggeration. The Stoics would say you banged your head against your microphone. You can't control that. You can't control the bump on your head, but you can control the rest of it. Definitely. It's interesting to me how, you know, these, I don't know what the most earliest philosopher was, but isn't it interesting how all this stuff still applies like thousands and

thousands of years later? It is. But yet, you know, Greek knowledge, we started off talking about information and knowledge. Like we don't really want to use Greek pharmaceuticals from 2,000 years ago. That would probably be a mistake, you know. And Greek technology, you know, we've made great advances. But that's because knowledge is perishable and wisdom is not.

So that's why it's still applicable. I mean, we're still human beings. And we think we're so advanced because we've got these gadgets and other gadgets. But really, we suffer for the same reason that ancient philosophers do and we exalt for the same reasons and um and yet we you know we think it's all about knowledge and technology when really wisdom is what life is all about would you say that we're collectively just we're in search of that of of the knowledge that you have in the book subconsciously and and we feel that by collecting all this BS on Facebook and Twitter

that somehow we're going to fill that void, but we never do. That's a really good… We just go searching for more of it. That's a very good question, a very good point. I think you're right. I think we have this hunger for wisdom, but it ends up getting directed, as I think we have this hunger for wisdom, but it ends up getting directed, as you say, into this search for stuff and sort of knowledge and Facebook followers and

Twitter followers become things that we amass. They become stuff that we accumulate. And we think that if we just know more and have more information, we'll achieve this state of wisdom. And that's not the case. You can know too much. And as you're aware, you can have too much information coming at you. It can actually be detrimental. I mean, actually harmful. When you become less wise, the more information that bombards you. And maybe you've met people who are very

knowledgeable, usually about a certain subject, they usually specialize, but they're not particularly happy or not particularly wise, you know? So I think we're confused. And some people look for wisdom in religion. I know if you watch your show, you're not a religious person. So there's some people who have problems with religion as an answer to the wisdom question. And then what are we left with? We're left with science and psychology, and that's helpful up to a point, but I think that we're missing out on kind of the search for wisdom that's kind of just stripped bare, you know, in philosophy. It doesn't usually have fancy statistical statistics and terms attached to it the way psychology does. It doesn't have the whole religious infrastructure, I'll just say that,

attached to it. So it's just, you know, people trying to figure out what does it mean to be a human being? What does it mean to lead a good life? And how should I go about it? And we don't, I don't know, we're racing around, we're, you know, distressed now because of the pandemic. And yet I've talked to friends, and maybe you've experienced this too, people who are thinking now actually is is a time to stop pause and think about what what the hell am i doing with my life you know even when the pandemic's over what what am i doing yeah it's uh it's it's definitely a good time and always a good time i i i think this i i'm loving this discussion we're having right here because i i know that i always want to be smarter and i think most people do that whether they're searching for what you mentioned uh meaning in

life or they're just searching to like just for a self-satisfaction or maybe a little bit of a narcissistic sort of thing well i want to be smart so i can be smarter yeah that's not that's not the that's not the smart that I admire, to be honest. No, seriously, I've known people like that in my life who have lots of book knowledge but are not wise. And, you know, there are people who can use knowledge as a kind of weapon. And, gee, I hate to get into politics, but certain people on one end of the spectrum might denigrate certain people on the other end of the spectrum. Let's just leave it at that and say you're not smart. You don't know what you're talking about.

And that's a way to shut down a conversation. Knowledge should be something you share, not a weapon you wield. And wisdom would never be that. Wisdom is, I would's there's no such thing as narcissistic wisdom there is such a thing as narcissistic knowledge let's put it that way there you go there you go so um so would you say narcissistic knowledge then would be the attempt to acquire information because i'll give you an example like for conspiracy theories uh you know well i'll give you a example like for conspiracy theories uh you know

well i'll give you a broad example actually this solves a lot of my issues and you you've heard about some of them you know i i grew up in a cult i grew up with a trying to be programmed into a certain religious slant and i've spent my whole life because this has been a scar that i've tried to heal that doesn't help my family's involved in it still. But my search for being has always been, why do people choose to believe what they do? Not just their own religion, but like if you decide, you know, hey, politicians, lizard people, hey, there's little blue aliens living amongst us. Whatever you choose to believe you do, you know, my children are

tools of Satan, so we must put them in the bathtub you know that's sort of all that sort of stuff uh and you see you see people that recently we've seen a lot of people and i think part of its mental health for what's going on with this subscribe to these conspiracy theories and it's interesting to me how deep they'll go in like for anything i mean you know me, I have a pretty depth of atheism and what it is. And they go really deep. And so I wonder if some of that narcissistic knowledge or that chase for it or that seeking of knowledge that we're looking in the wrong place for,

we should be looking to maybe philosophers. Maybe that's the wrong place. Yeah, I think you're right. I think the impulse that makes people join cults and believe in conspiracy theories actually begins as a good impulse to be wiser, to be more knowledgeable, to figure things out, right? A conspiracy theor more knowledgeable, to figure things out.

A conspiracy theorist is trying to figure things out and solve a mystery. They get off track, of course. Well, people who join a cult are also hungry for something, right? And I don't think that makes them weak, necessarily. But what happens is, and this brings it right back to Socrates, the main dude, is we acquire these beliefs and we don't question them anymore, and we're then just going down that train track to some destination, and we don't know why we're going there, but we're trying to go as fast as we can. And what Socrates did back in ancient Athens is he would go around and he would annoy people,

basically, and ask them difficult questions. Like, he'd find a general who says, you know, you must know a lot about courage. Oh, yes, I know. And he would start to ask him, well, what is courage? And the general would give some half-baked lame answer. And most people would be satisfied with that and say, well, thank you, general. You're a very courageous, wise man. But no, Socrates would push and push and say, well, where did you get this belief? And how do you, what about that? Do you know this to be true? And it's pissed people off, you know, as it then, as it does now. But it's funny, we always think that other people have these entrenched beliefs, but never us. It's sort of like when you're in traffic, you're like, damn, all this damn traffic, not realizing that you were part of the traffic, right? So it's easy to look at people in cults and conspiracy theorists and say, well, I'm not like them.

I don't have any false beliefs like them, but we all do, right? And we don't see them. I mean, trying to know your false beliefs is trying to like see your eyeball, you know, you can't do it. So that's why not being isolated helps, getting out of the echo chamber. Socrates thought philosophy should be practiced in the buddy system, sort of like we're doing here, have a conversation. He was not, you know, we think of philosophers as going off into the mountain and thinking deep thoughts alone. And a few of them did that, but not many. Most of them were pretty social, intermittently social. So we sort of need to have conversations and with people who are not just like us. You know, Socrates talked to everyone in Athens

and not just people just like him. And so we get our beliefs reinforced. If you're in a cult, you don't get any outside messages. If you're a conspiracy theorist, you just go to those websites. And if you're a liberal, you'll go to certain websites and not others as well. So that is not a recipe for wisdom. It's a recipe for a kind of knowledge that becomes a cage that traps you.

There are some times where I focus on different topics. I mean, I've led some adventures in my life. Like I went for some years where I tried to be a photographer and be a good or great photographer, but all the cameras and, you know, that sort of stuff. And I go through these vent adventures and I would try and, I think a lot of us are searching for meaning, whether it's religion or cults or conspiracies or just everyday life.

Sometimes we're just like, why am I here? One of my favorite things is, what was that one movie where Jack Parlance, I think it was, he goes, you gotta find the one thing. And I think a lot of people are looking for that. Sometimes it's like what you have in the book here, day-to-day motivation. Like, I don't know if I can get out of bed today. That's pretty much every day for me.

Fortunately, I have two Huskies that will annoy the crap out of me to get out of bed. I don't know, Marcus Aurelius. Yeah, see, no, Marcus, it was actually that sense of outside himself, some sense of duty, not as an emperor or as a Roman or as a philosopher, but as a human being to help other people. And that was what ultimately got him out of bed. And that's, you know, your huskies are important, actually, because they, not just because they're probably licking your face and jumping all over you to get out of bed, but because they're reminding you, oh, yeah, there's another sentient being who's dependent on me. And, you know, that sense of duty got Marcus out of bed. There you go. If I don't, they'll be on the floor, too, so there's that.

Your huskies are pretty fellow. I could teach Marcus Aurelius a couple things, evidently. Your huskies could teach him something, too. They sound like two philosophical dogs uh sometimes i don't know when they're not peeing on the rug uh you know i know this is a special book because i was trying to find the chapter you're referring to earlier it's got zero page numbers so i was trying to find the chapter earlier. But what's interesting, at the beginning of every chapter, it appears that you have like a little time stamp and some sort of thing. Tell us what that is about.

So there's a train. There are several trains in this book. I like trains. I don't know how you feel about trains and train travel. I said trains when I was a kid. I don't like trains the way foamers. A foamer is someone who's a train nut who gets so excited as some locomotive he starts to

froth at the mouth and foam. I'm not like that. I just like the experience of taking a long train ride. And so I did. So in the course of researching this book, I mean, I traveled to where all these philosophers did their thinking and where they lived and died. And I took

just train rides for the heck of it. I took Amtrak from my home in Washington, D.C. to Portland, Oregon, took four days, three nights, took a train across India, across Europe. And each chapter opens with me on a train. Short little ditty. It's sort of an intermission between philosophical acts. And I'm thinking on a train. And I can can think on trains I cannot think on an airplane I don't know if you've ever tried to think on an airplane it is physically impossible I believe to think on an airplane the air is thin the leg room is too

short you know so but on something about a train in a train ride, where you feel like it's just you have all the time in the world, that's when I can think. And so, yeah, it's sort of one long train of thought, you might say. There you go. Whoa, he hit the thing there. Yeah, maybe I should try a long train ride. You should. Take the show.

My wife has been telling me to get on a train and never come back, so no. She's kidding. She's kidding. So this explains the cover. We'll plug this again here for the plug of you on a train. That's not necessary. I got one here. Okay.

Yes. It's not about who has the bigger book, Eric. No, no, it's not. who has a bigger book eric no no it's not but if it were mine's bigger uh so he's thinking there and he's looking out the window and uh i don't know i you know is he naked though that's really what i want to know what's going on there i'm not sure you can do that on a train yeah chapter chapter two would explain all that the greeks had some funny ideas about sex and things this is the thinker for another so yeah he's a thinker this is uh my friend gave me a uh a uh my business partner actually giving me the statue of the thinker years ago not the statue but you know

like a replica and uh because in my business i used to challenge a lot of my thinking a lot of stuff we built for our companies um I used what I call the crazy Ivan effect. And so what I would do is I would run off on weekends with the, on little Johnson vacations, we call them. And I'd take a yellow pad and paper and I'd sit and think about my business and why we did things. And sometimes I just take apart whole things that I had forgotten that I had built actually. And so I'd be like, why do we do things this way? And they're like, I don't know, you built the systems that way, Chris. I'm like, I did?

Well, why did I do it that way? And so I would do this crazy Ivan reverse inlet, and nothing was off limits. I mean, that's kind of the way my brain works on philosophy and religion. I think crazy Ivan is philosophy, basically. Yeah. and religion and i think it is philosophy basically i think you've and so i i basically do that internal wilderness of mirrors where i try and look inside and try and get over whatever unconscious or conscious biases i have i challenge them you know why do you believe in this stupid crap i don't know you know that sort of thing yeah and sometimes you don't get an answer at least not right away um but it's important to ask the question you know and we sort of thing. Yeah, and sometimes you don't get an answer, at least not right away.

But it's important to ask the question, you know, and we don't ask the question. And we don't, you know, one of the characters I meet in the book, a living character, is a guy named Jacob Needleman, who's a cool dude, philosopher from out in San Francisco. And I took the train across the country to meet with him. And he said, no, the problem is in this country is we're always rushing to solve our problems or to find pleasure. But we don't sit and experience questions. And I thought that was a very profound thing to say, that we're big into problem solving. And we want to get past the question as quickly as possible and get to the solution. And we think that's just automatically good, but are we willing to sit with the question?

You know, it's uncomfortable. You know, I think, well, I should, I should change my career. What should I do? I need to find the answer. And you just, you just frantically look for, you Google career changes and you, you can't rest until you find it. And we need to sort of be willing to sit with uncomfortable questions for a little while. I mean, you're still working them through, but you're not rushing. I mean, that's one of the themes in my book is just to slow down. I mean, there was a philosopher named Wittgenstein

who called philosophy the slow cure, and he said that all philosophers should greet each other with, instead of, you know, have a nice day, should we have a slow day or something like that, you know, and something actually useful. Yeah, sort of just pausing, like what you did with your business partner, you know, probably was not the most productive, immediately productive, I would say, you know, a few minutes out of your day and probably he was like, Chris, what are you talking about? We got, we got stuff to do. We got stuff to do.

That's why I do it on the weekends because we'd be driving in the car, kind of like you in the train. And I'd be trapped in the car. He or a girlfriend would be driving and I'd be sitting there in the passenger seat, nothing to do. You're on these long drives where it's, where you know you're just between Utah and California and uh so I'd be stuck there with my l-pad so I'd start writing and tinkering and I would do this way I don't know but I love the concept of what you said experience questioning um and kind of uh revel in it or wallow in it if you will um

and you're right. I think a lot of people, you know, there are some times in my day where I either have insecurities or I need some hope and I go looking for hope. Sometimes I go to the news. Sometimes I go to a pop-up. Don't do that. Yeah.

Sometimes I go different places. Sometimes I go to Twitter. That's a mistake. Let's talk about Dunning-Kruger, the Dunning-Kruger effect. You know, a lot of people fall into that, too, in that search for knowledge. Should we explain what that is, or does everyone know what that is? Sure. I'll let you take that. My understanding of it is it is essentially summing up very simply that we don't know what we don't know, that we are ignorant of our own ignorance.

And people in Dunning and Kruger, two psychologists, they did these studies and essentially found out people are convinced they know something when they don't. And it takes a lot to change their mind. So we don't know what we don't know. And I would argue a lot of us don't care to know what we don't know. We don't, we don't, we're just, we're like, well, we know that. We don't, you know. But in fact, that's how, you know, that leads to groupthink. It leads to a lot of stupidity actually and it's the stupidity not of the uh ignorant but

people who are ignorant of their ignorance and i know this sounds highfalutin but but it's it's and socrates talked about this 2,500 years before dunning kruger was um so brief little history is this oracle at delphi says socrates is the wisest man in all of Athens. He thought, me, wise? No, I'm just a dude. I walk around barefoot. I'm a stonecutter's son. So he went around asking people questions in Athens,

and he realized they thought they knew all these things about courage and beauty. They didn't know Jack. So then Socrates famously said, well, at least I know what I don't know. So maybe I am the wisest man. And yeah, we don't know what we don't know, which is tricky. It's not questioning the knowledge you do have. It's sort of questioning the unknown unknowns, you know, things out there that we don't know and living with that. Look, right now, talk about uncertainty.

When will there be a vaccine? When will life return to something resembling normal? We don't know. And that makes us uneasy. And that's a dangerous time because people will turn to snake oil salesmen and others who will give them quick and easy answers. Because we don't, as human beings, I don't know what you think about this, we don't do very well with uncertainty. It tends to drive us nuts. But the philosophers in my book, and I would agree with them, a lot of them think that does not need to be the case,

that life is uncertain, but we can build up our tolerance for that. Some people, if you've noticed this, have a higher tolerance for uncertainty. They tend to live in the moment and that sort of thing. So it's not like uncertainty is equally bad and it's like being shot in the head and it's bad for all of us. I don't know where that came from, but you know what I mean. It's like some people have this tolerance for it and some people even are okay with it um they're like i don't know where i'm gonna be a year from now and i'm okay with that and we other people would be like whoa i need to know where i'll be five seconds from now the uh and and you're right that comes back to, like you say, when people go look for conspiracy things,

I think they're trying to accumulate wisdom and they don't realize they're just accumulating some knowledge. And they're looking for certainty. They're clinging to the certainty part. And wisdom is, it's not that kind of certainty. It's something more fluid that you're always willing to change. The epigraph, that's a little quote at the top of my book, is from this French philosopher, and he says, sooner or later, life makes philosophers of us all. And I think that's true. It's very true.

There's some people who say, I never contemplate anything. I think right now, everyone's thinking, what the F? What do I do? I'm learning more at 50. I've learned more about 50 about myself and about life and what I don't know, partially because I have this great history to look back on of wreckage and go, yeah, there's a pattern there, man. Like when I was 20, there wasn't any wreckage.

So there was no pattern to look back on. You couldn't look back and go, yeah, there's kind of a theme going on there. But now I can look back. The philosopher Nietzsche famously said, what doesn't kill you makes you stronger. And, you know, it's been debated. Some people say what doesn't kill you leaves you maimed and bitter for the rest of your life. But in your case, it sounds like your childhood, whatever you went through, I don't know all the details, but it was tough and rough and didn't kill you. Did it make you stronger?

Did it make you stronger? I'm still bitter, though. No, but, you know, one thing you were talking about, I wish somebody had sat down and explained this to me, but I sat down with my niece and nephew early this year because they were both starting to graduate from school. And I realized they were at a pivotal point that I wish someone had told me some stuff. And I sat down with them and I tried to compile in writing to them everything that I wish someone had told me when I was 20 and shit that I didn't figure out sometimes so I was 50. And one of those things was, I said, let me explain something to you. In life, there are three things. There are what you know, there are what you don't know, and there are what you don't know

you don't know. And there are lots of times where I go searching in my life. Sometimes I go searching for information. This is one of the reasons I really enjoy this podcast, because I have brilliant people like you on who come, open my mind, expand it, and hopefully my audience has the same experience and gets me thinking about stuff that, wow, I never thought of that before, or I didn't even know it existed before.

The truth is, Chris, that really this podcast is a philosophy podcast in this in disguise i would not change the name to the philosophy podcast keep the chris voss show that's good but i'm very serious actually what you're doing um from the episodes i've watched and certainly our conversation is philosophy. Um, so, uh, does this mean I got to wear one of them fucking robes with the sandals and shit? Yeah,

it does. And yeah, and you, um, no, you, this is the problem is, uh,

it's, it's sort of, um, what's the word I'm looking for? It's stealth philosophy is what, is what I do in my book. It's the ideas are getting in there, but I try to write in an accessible way.

I'm a fan of what Einstein famously said. Once he said, if you can't explain something simply, you don't understand it well enough. If you can't explain something simply, you don't understand it well enough. And so't explain something simply you don't understand it well enough. So I think my job as a writer is to read all these dense academic books, understand them, and explain them

simply. Explain the ideas simply. And that's what I've tried to do in all my books, and certainly in this one. And what I like about your book is it's just not philosophy coming at you. Like, to be or not to be. Do or do not. You you know there is no i was going to quote you you're just you're free associating but go ahead

that was shakespeare actually but that's okay rank one great uh i don't know the yoda is yoda philosopher anyway um yeah definitely it's definitely oh yeah okay very wise um peach there's not peach with pineapple i think you said that uh but what's interesting about your book throughout it is you're not just like i said throwing uh throwing philosophy sayings that you you're doing really you're kind of sharing the introspective and telling a story uh that you're going through and and your experience and stuff like that, which is really nice. You're talking about the train ride and you're, you're like incorporating it all into this thing. And so, you know,

it's just not, you know, like if you ever read a philosophy book, you know, or somebody, you know, like a quote book or something or you see some on the internet where it's just like the way is not the way if the way is the way. And're like no way no way all right there you go i i thank you and that's what i try to do is i try to i try on these philosophies and um and apply them to everyday situations um you know like uh walking my dog and using uh's tactics of nonviolence. Let's get into that, if you don't mind. Oh, yeah, okay.

So my dog had a fight like Gandhi. So all these philosophers are misunderstood, but probably none more than Gandhi, because most people think of him as this kind of saint-like figure, very passive and meek. And he was a badass, really, Gandhi was. He was tough. And he wrote a lot about the need for courage and manliness,

and he thought that you needed to fight. The worst thing than violence was cowardice. But he did think you should fight nonviolently and get into the sort of good trouble that John Lewis talked about. John Lewis studied Gandhi. And his ideas are extremely practical. He wasn't perfect, but he was tough and in a nonviolent way. So he would oppose a law. If he thought it was unjust, he would say, I'm going to break this law at 2 p.m. tomorrow because I don't think it's a good law, and you're

welcome to arrest me. And he would go and do it, and he would get arrested, and he would serve his time. And he felt that you had to point out that you, how do I put this? You point out that by being human yourself, you're extremely human. Let's put it that way. You point out the inhumanity of the oppressor, of the police, right? So if there's violence on the part of protesters, that muddies the waters. Gandhi thought you must be incredibly strict and disciplined in your ranks, not the least amount of violence to be used as an excuse by others. And also because it's the right thing to do. Um, so if I used a word to describe it, it would be bad-ass. If I can say

that on the Chris Foss show, uh, disciplined, disciplined and, and loving. And it's a strange combination. We don't find that in people these days. I think in John Lewis we saw it and a few other people. But that combination of toughness and love is not something you see every day. So maybe, according to your book, we should get back to some of the basics. I can't remember. I think John was the basketball coach. He used to always say, let's go back to the basics.

Maybe we should be going back to the basics more. You know, the original core of philosophy, some of these original philosophers, and stick with the stuff that works. Yeah. There's a philosopher named William James, an American guy who said truth is what works. And by that he did not mean I can say two plus two equals five or some conspiracy

theory or whatever. He meant that if you try something out in your life and it works and makes you a better person, then it's good. I mean, I could say, Chris, you know, running three miles a day is good for you. And you could study it and look for studies, find studies that say, no, it's not actually good for you. Or you could just like start running three miles a day. And you're like, I don't understand this, but it's working. So there's a, there's a certain, yeah. Wisdom is actually in philosophy. I'll leave you with this thought.

Maybe it's just the most practical thing in the world. I mean, it is, people think it's this impractical subject that, oh God, hope my kid doesn't major in philosophy. Teaching you how to think and how to think about life, what the hell is more practical than that? It's a great toolbox to have because if you have it, you know, then everything else revolves around that. You can solve it. And it's portable. You can take it with you, this toolbox.

And also, the toolbox from 2,000 years ago works just as well now. It hasn't rusted out. In fact, you can pick up their tools and throw it in your toolbox. Yeah. I mean, the great thing is, I mean, there is a reason this stuff has stood the test of time. And we're talking about it today. And we probably won't be talking about QAnon like 3,000, 4,000 years from now. Well, either we won't be talking about it or it would 3,000, 4,000 years from now. Well, either we won't be talking about it,

or it would be the only thing we're allowed to talk about, one or the other. But I would say – We could be there, too. You're right. The test of time, that's a cliché, but it's a cliché because it's true. A cliché is something that is saying that has stood the test of time. That's what a cliché is. So I would say that is saying that has stood the test of time. That's what a cliche is. So I would say that you're right about this wisdom, that it's stuck around for a reason.

There's a reason. And Socrates didn't give us really any knowledge. He gave us a method. Right. And these methods are actually what's more important because all the stuff we think we know today i guarantee you in a thousand years if not 500 years or sooner a lot of it is going to be looked at as just absurd you know and raw and wrong um but the method of how we get at knowing stuff and being wiser that ages very well he just better than than you and I, for instance. Yeah. There are times where I come to the end of the day

and I've read so much BS or argued about so much BS. And sometimes you look back on it and you go, on a lot of timeline and hill beans and all the sands of the ocean lapping against the shore. This isn't going to matter. So Marcus called it the view from above, that you picture yourself way up there in the stratosphere, and you look down.

I mean, he didn't know about space travel, of course, but now we can picture, you know, you picture like being way up there in orbit, and you look down at Earth. That's got to give you some perspective. Look at that view from above and you're like, I'm worrying over this, or these two people are fighting over that little dot down there within the other dot, you know? And when you look at the view from above, you tend to, it makes the heaviness of your burden less heavy, right? You're like, it doesn't really matter.

And you sort of see the interconnectivity. I think the astronauts who went to the moon commented that, you know, you just realize it's just this pale blue dot, as Carl Sagan said, and we're all floating through space on it. And why can't we all get along? Because it's ridiculous otherwise. Yeah. It's a giant, what am i liking it too sometimes

when i've written um it's it's a giant kind of lifeboat and we're all rocking it and doing all sorts of stuff to sink it and some people are punching holes in it and trying to throw other people off the lifeboat and some people are just complaining that we need a bigger lifeboat this isn't going to work and yeah and so it's an interesting was there anything cathartic that you found uh when you let me ask you this we'll combine that question if you don't mind me stacking that but when you when you went to write each chapter were you were you and you were on the say on a certain train were you planning on like i'm going to focus on this thing or was there something cathartic in the experience that drew you to like, you're on the train and you're like,

this is an interesting way to go with this? I mean, I tried to have an idea about a chapter and a philosopher before I dove in, but be totally open to throwing that idea away, which means throwing work away. So I arrived, for instance, in Concord, Massachusetts, and I'm going to write about Henry David Thoreau, who famously wrote Walden Pond. He was the guy who went off and spent two years living in a cabin. And I thought for sure that chapter was going to be called How to Be Alone Like Thoreau, or How to Live Simply Like Thoreau. First of all, it turns out he was 20 minutes away from this bustling town of Concord, and he'd go in to get his laundry done three times a week, and get his mom's cooking two times a week,

and he had lots of visitors. So first of all, it was not the way it appeared. And second of all, I realized that, you know, when I started talking to people, just having open-ended conversations with people who know Thoreau, and I would say, well, what do you think he was about? I've got some ideas, but I want to hear, what do you think, if you were writing a how-to chapter about Thoreau, what would it be about? This woman named Leslie Wilson, who was a curator at the local library, said, oh, how to see. It was about how to see. And I had never thought of Thoreau as being about vision and seeing. And then I started to read his journals and read about it.

And it turns out it was about seeing. All that solitude or supposed solitude, it was all about seeing more beauty and seeing more clearly. So that's just an example of you go in with an idea and you're willing to throw it out and go down a different road, even if it's not efficient. Efficiency is one of, I don't know, I think a lot of our problems today are caused by this focus on speed and efficiency at the expense of other virtues. And let's be clear, being fast and efficient is not just a good thing.

It is what we've decided is good. There's nothing that says efficiency and speed are inherently good. And would you say that's because people aren't busy trying to experience their questions? They're going for that quick fix, you know? Instead of going home and making a nice, healthy meal, you go for McDonald's, you know, that sort of thing, that quick consumerism. Yeah, it has to do with, I think, the question of how much is enough, right? I think we're getting – we could talk for another hour about this,

but there's a philosopher named Epicurus I write about who talks a lot about this. But we don't really answer the question, how much is enough? We don't know. We just think it's more, you know, people who are worth hundreds of millions, billions of dollars. They feel they don't have enough. How can that be? And they might continue to work because they enjoy it. But if it comes from the sense of lack, that we don't have enough, and how fast is fast enough? That's a philosophical question. That's not a technological question. Is 600 miles per hour on an airplane fast enough?

We would say, no, faster is better. We can go to New York, to California, an hour and a half, that would be better. Would it? Is faster always better is more, always better. And that's, I don't know how we get onto this subject, but that that's how we get into trouble. And Epicurus, the philosopher of pleasure, defined pleasure differently. He thought that it was an absence of suffering. And once you had an absence of disturbance in your life, that was enough.

That was it. And anything beyond that was just you're playing games with yourself. You're varying the pleasure. And he thought pleasure varied does not equal pleasure increased. So I don't know. You've got one part you love. My wife and my mistress tell me this all the time. So, um, yeah. Um, and he would say that you're, well, I won't go there, but he would say

basically, um, it's this, it, our whole consumer economy is based on the fact that a variety of pleasures is better than just one simple pleasure. And yeah, and he makes a compelling case for choosing the simple pleasures. So you don't become a prisoner of the fancy pleasures you got for a fancy, fancy meal, cost 500 bucks for wine and everything and you enjoy it. But now you're kind of addicted to that experience. You've got to replicate it. You've got to do nine podcasts, you know, just to make enough money to have that meal again, you know? Oh, you're just like psychoanalyzing me.

Still trying to figure out what the 10th one's going to be. No, I'm just kidding. There you go. It'll be the Chris and Eric show. There you go. The Chris and Eric philosophy show. And then doing there you go the chris and eric philosophy show and then i'll carry those little thorny crowns that like they used to wear in athens and shit the philosophy did and i'll get like the robe i already wear sandals i wear flip

flops so i already have halfway see i'm already a philosopher really when it comes down to it i just don't know it it's true it's actually true it's one of those things that i don't know it. It's true. It's actually true. It's one of those things that I don't know that I don't know that I don't know. Anyway, this has been a great discussion. Anything more you want to leave with us on why people should pick up the book? Yeah, I would say don't be afraid. Don't be afraid. Look at the friendly man. Look at the friendly naked man on the train.

Philosophy is not a four letter word um you have nothing to fear and everything to gain in terms of wisdom and i say come along for the ride with me um you will learn something you'll be a bit wiser and you'll have some fun you'll definitely have some fun i like how i i love the the way you play it out with where you're on the train, and you're going through the experience with you, and so it becomes a narrative. Because I can tell you, if I read philosophy or like a quote section of a website,

it can get really dry fast. You're like, the why is the where is the when and the when. You're like, what the fuck do I do with this? Right. And, you know, you help explain it, and you go through the journey. We're going through the journey with you almost like a bit of a catharsis I'm figuring it out

you're figuring it out as I figure it out the only difference is I spent four years reading a whole bunch of books back there so you didn't have to and yeah it's personal I mean if a philosophy isn't personal what good is it you know

we can have an impersonal philosophy of life what the heck is that about no it's personal you might agree with my take on things and you might disagree but I guarantee you'll think if you ponder it ponder the thing and the beautiful part is you spent four years

developing the data and they can get it in the Socrates Express very fastly in a read that won't take four years, unless you're a really slow reader, or unless you really want to what was that term that we had that we've been using here? Experience the question. Experience the question. You could read a sentence

a month and think about experience that sentence for a month and then move on. That works, sure. There you go. There you go. Guys, it's been wonderful to have Eric on. Eric, give us your plugs one more time so people can check out your books.

So my latest book is The Socrates Express, In Search of Life Lessons from Dead Philosophers. I also wrote a book people may have heard of called The Geography of Bliss. You can find out more about all my various writings and doings at ericweinerbooks.com weiner spelled w-e-i-n-e-r i'm on twitter at eric underscore weiner although i try not to spend too much time there it's a pretty toxic place um thanks for tuning in be sure to go to the cvpn.com for your friends neighbors relatives the show's been exploding with referrals. And also go to youtube.com forward slash Chris Voss if you want to see the video version of this.

You can also go to amazon.com forward slash shop forward slash Chris Voss. You can see all the books of all these great authors. Just run up your credit card, purchase them all and all that good stuff and you'll just learn so much. Like, it'll make you better looking.

People will be attracted to you. You might lose some weight because you'll be busy, I don't know, reading or something. And, yeah, do it. Do it now. Anyway, guys, thanks for tuning in. We certainly appreciate you guys. Love you.

We'll see you next time. Bye-bye.