The Daily Stoic - BONUS: Martin Luther King Jr.’s Inspiring Lesson on Courage

Episode Date: January 20, 2025

In honor of Martin Luther King Jr. Day, here is a lesson on courage we could all hear today. 📕 Check out the Virtue Series 3-Book Bundle which includes Ryan Holiday’s books: Courage is Calling, Discipline is Destiny, and Right Thing, Right Now 📚 Books mentioned: Taylor Branch Trilogy: https://www.thepaintedporch.com/Waging a Good War by Thomas Ricks: https://www.thepaintedporch.com/🎙️ Follow The Daily Stoic Podcast on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dailystoicpodcast🎥 Watch top moments from The Daily Stoic Podcast on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@dailystoicpodcast✉️ Want Stoic wisdom delivered to your inbox daily? Sign up for the FREE Daily Stoic email at https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Get Stoic inspired books, medallions, and prints to remember these lessons at the Daily Stoic Store: https://store.dailystoic.com/📱 Follow us:  Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, and FacebookSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to the daily Stoic early and ad free right now. Just join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. When I travel with my family, I almost always stay in an Airbnb. I want my kids to have their own room. I want my wife and I to have a little privacy. You know, maybe we'll cook or at the very least we'll use a refrigerator. Sometimes I'm bringing my in-laws around with me or I need an extra room just to write in. Airbnbs give you the flavor of actually being in the place you are. I feel like I've lived in all these places that I've stayed for a week or two or even a night or two. There's flexibility in size and location. When you're searching you can

look at guest favorites or even find like historical or really coolest things. It's my choice when we're traveling as a family. Some of my favorite memories are in Airbnb's we've stayed at. I've recorded episodes of a podcast in Airbnb. I've written books. One of the very first Airbnbs I ever stayed in was in Santa Barbara, California, while I was finishing up what was my first book,

Trust Me I'm Lying. If you haven't checked it out, I highly recommend you check out Airbnb for your next trip. Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, recommend you check out Airbnb, dailystewick.com. Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stewick Podcast. Actually, this is a bonus episode of the Daily Stewick Podcast because here in America, it is Martin Luther King Jr. today. And in honor of that, because he is such a pivotal figure in this series on the cardinal virtues I have been doing, his big character in Courageous Calling, Disciplined Destiny, and of course, the Justice Book right thing right now.

And actually, there was a chapter on taking criticism, which was going to be in the Justice book on Martin Luther King that I just moved to the Wisdom book. So I believe he appears in all four books. But in this one, this is one of my favorite chapters. It's called A Few Seconds of Courage. Like we tend to think of courage as this sort of big long thing. I don't know if that makes sense. But like we think about it as like a thing you have or you don't have as opposed to a thing you do. And you do in just a few seconds, right? Just a few seconds of it is what matters.

It's starting the process. It's not like many things in life, right? You have to start the run. You have to start the process of standing up to speak up. You have to walk towards the trash to throw away the pack of cigarettes or whatever. You have to start it. And then once you get the momentum,

it can kind of take care of itself. But in this chapter, I talk about not just Martin Luther King's courage, put himself out there to risk his body. He's arrested, about to be sent to a very notorious Southern prison. Whereas as King's being pulled away by this car, he's pretty sure he's going to end up in a ditch somewhere. As people often were then, they would just sort of disappear. You

know, being arrested by the Southern police wasn't, oh, you're risking jail time necessarily. You're risking being murdered extra judicially. And this is a story about Nixon and Kennedy and their campaigns in that 1960 election and the very different tax they take towards the news that this civil rights leader being arrested throws in their direction. And so we'll get into all that. I will say on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, if you haven't read Taylor Branch's epic trilogy, I think it's trilogy on the civil rights movement, you are missing out, is an incredible series of books. I'll link to that in today's show notes.

And of course, I'll also listen to Courage is Calling, but those three books, I think they're 500, 600 pages each, are just insane, insanely good. I'd also recommend Tom Ricks' Waging a Good War, which looks at the civil rights movement as a kind of military campaign, which it was. And then David Halberstam's The Children, also a beautiful book. Those are just some of my favorites.

But anyways, here is a discussion of courage that I think we could all benefit from on Martin Luther King Day. And if you want a signed copy of Courage Is Calling, I'll link to that in today's show notes as well. ["Courage Is Calling"] Just a few seconds of courage. Just a few seconds of courage. On October 19th, 1960, Martin Luther King Jr. was arrested for trying to eat at a restaurant inside Rich's department store in Atlanta.

With the enemy in custody, Southern authorities seized the opportunity to try and crush King while they had the chance. Holding him on other charges, they denied bail and sent him to the state prison in Reedsville, where he was to be sentenced to four months on a chain gang. There was real worry that King might be beaten or lynched, and so overwhelmed with worry, Coretta Scott King, very pregnant with her third child, called both the Nixon and Kennedy campaigns, who in one of the tightest elections in American history, both desperately needed the black vote.

Nixon, as it happens, was not only friends with King, but had personally overseen the Eisenhower administration's civil rights efforts. His advisors urged him to act, but Nixon hesitated, weighing the same considerations that had flashed in the mind of Theodore Roosevelt a half century before. He didn't want to lose the South. He didn't want to wade in the middle of a controversy. He was worried it would seem like grandstanding. And so he betrayed King in that moment and left the door open for Kennedy to call both the governor of Georgia as well as Coretta, whom he rang directly from an airport to console and reassure. Meanwhile, his brother Robert Kennedy called the judge in Alabama and pressured him into releasing King.

King immediately made it known who had been there for him when he needed it, even though he had planned to vote for Nixon. I had known Nixon longer, he recalled, and he would call me frequently about things, getting, seeking my advice. And yet when this moment came, it was like he had never heard of me. So this is why I really considered him a moral coward and one who was really unwilling to take a courageous step and take a risk. Kennedy went on to win the election two weeks later by less than half a percentage point, just 35,000 key votes across two key states. Two phone calls had won him the presidency. A few seconds of cowardice, the time it would have taken to speak to the wife of a good man wrongly imprisoned, had cost Nixon the office.

It doesn't matter who you are or what your track record is. What matters is the moment, sometimes even less than a moment. Do you do it? Or are you too scared? It takes just a few seconds to hit send on that email to get those first words out of your mouth to put your arm in motion to volunteer. To take that first step in the run towards a machine gun nest. To switch your vote from yes to no or no to yes. To pick up the phone as Kennedy did, not even to save King's life, but to comfort the man's wife.

Once the event is underway, everything else comes naturally, fulfilling your responsibilities, putting one foot in front of the other. You drop out of college, then you throw yourself into your new career. You file the divorce paperwork and begin rebuilding your life. You walk into the office of the SEC to make your complaint. You'll be too busy to be afraid. Momentum starts working for you, not against you. There is a great line in the screenplay written by

Cameron Crowe and Matt Damon for the movie, We Bought a Zoo, based on the true story of a British writer who did exactly that. You know, Matt Damon's character says to his young son, sometimes all you need is 20 seconds of insane courage. Just literally 20 seconds of just embarrassing bravery. And I promise you, something great will come of it.

Can we really make such a promise? No. Life is not the movies. Results are never certain. You may not succeed, but you do have to try, because the failure to act, that is a certainty. Those few seconds stick to us like a scarlet letter. I was afraid is not an excuse that ages well. When we marvel at people's courage or are intimidated by it, we often miss that it wasn't some enormous

planned out thing. It began with a simple decision. It began with a leap. He didn't know it was politically sound, King reflected on Kennedy's decision. But the same was true for King. He didn't know when he embarked on that first bus boycott in Montgomery that it would shape the rest of his life as well as the world. Courage is defined in the moment, in less than a moment, when we decide to step up or step out,

to leap or to step back. A person isn't brave generally. We are brave specifically. For a few seconds, for a few seconds of embarrassing bravery, we can be great. And that is enough. If you like the daily stoic and thanks for listening, you can listen early and ad free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple podcasts. Prime members can listen ad free on Amazon Music. And before you go, would you tell us about yourself by filling out a short survey on Wondery.com slash survey. New year, new resolutions. And this year on the best idea yet podcast,

we're revealing the untold origin stories of the products you're obsessed with. And we promise you have never heard these before. Ever wonder how the iconic Reese's Peanut Butter Cup was invented? Because it was by accident. H.B. Reese, a former frog salesman, stumbled upon the idea after accidentally burning a batch of peanuts.

Classic. Proving that sometimes our best ideas arise from what seem like our biggest mistakes. And Jack, did you know there's a scientific explanation why humans crave that surprising combo of peanut butter and chocolate? I didn't, but it sounds delicious. It is delicious. So if you're looking to get inspired and creative this year, tune in to the best idea yet. You can find us on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts.

And if you're looking for more podcasts to help you start this year off right, check out New Year, New Mindset on the Wondery app. Who knows? Your next great idea could be an accident that you burned. This is Nick. And this is Jack. And we'll see you on the best idea yet.