The Daily Stoic - Gavin Newsom on Ego, Power, and Stoicism

Episode Date: May 16, 2026

The real test of philosophy is not what it teaches us in quiet moments, but what it demands from us when power, pressure, and ego enter the room. In today’s episode, Ryan talks with Gavin Newsom, the Governor of California, about Stoicism, leadership, responsibility, and the dangers of power without introspection. They discuss ego, the crisis facing young men, the loss of shared rituals and institutions, and why philosophy still matters in public life.🎥 Watch the full episode on Gavin Newsom's podcast, This Is Gavin Newsom: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s4VNpUtXdiM🎙️ Listen to the full episode on Spotify and Apple Podcasts📚 Check out Gavin Newsom's memoir: Young Man In A Hurry 🎙️ AD-FREE | Support the podcast and go deeper into Stoicism by subscribing to The Daily Stoic Premium - unlock ad-free listening, early access, and bonus content: https://dailystoic.supercast.com/🎥 VIDEO EPISODES| Watch the video episodes on The Daily Stoic YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@DailyStoic/videos✉️ FREE STOIC WISDOM | Want Stoic wisdom delivered to your inbox daily? Sign up for the FREE Daily Stoic email at https://dailystoic.com/dailyemailSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, designed to help bring those four key stoic virtues, courage, discipline, justice, and wisdom into the real world. Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. Okay, so a couple of months back, I'm listening to a podcast. I'm listening to Ezra Klein's podcast. And the governor of California is on there. I'm from California. I'm from California. I no longer lived there. And, yeah, and the governor of California starts suddenly talking about stoicism. Listen to this. I hate to bring this book up because it's such a universal, obvious book. I had never read it.

I've had 10 copies. I finally picked it up off the shelf. I'm like, what the heck? Meditations from Marcus Aurelius. And I'm like, where the hell have I been? Or where is that book been on my life? You get into podcasting and immediately the Stoics. I'm telling you.

Can't be a male podcaster and not get into the Stoics. How could you not? I don't think there's, perhaps there's never been more important and impactful words ever written. So I ended up reaching out and we got connected. It turned out that Gavin Newsom had read the obstacles the way and was reading meditations and some other stuff on Stoicism. And we ended up connecting. And I ended up going out there last month. I took my oldest son.

We went on a little father-son trip. And I swung by the governor's mansion and we talked stoic philosophy. I thought it was cool. Look, you can totally disagree with his politics. I think it's hard to miss his sort of sincere interest in the philosophy here. And look, I'll take it from whoever it comes from. Like, look, would I sit down and do a podcast with Ron DeSantis of Florida? I mean, I'm not a huge fan of him.

But if he was sincerely interested in the philosophy, I would talk to him. about it. I happen to think Gavin Newsom is a vastly superior politician than Ron DeSantis and, you know, certainly the very large disparity between their death rates in the COVID pandemic, I think are, you know, a pretty stark and vivid illustration of their differences in competencies. Do I agree with everything that Gavin Newsom has ever done? Absolutely not. In fact, one of the things we talk about, in the episode, which surprised me is I'd actually said something negative about him in one of my books, and he sort of pushed back on that. I was actually surprised at how seriously he took that. So anyways, look, I know this is going to be a somewhat controversial episode, but it's not going to be

a political episode in the way that perhaps you might think. This is going to be me and the governor of one of the largest states in the union, one of the largest economies in the world, my home state talking about the philosophy that I have made my life's work. So I think that's interesting unto itself. I read his memoir, a young man in a hurry, which I related to in a lot of ways, not just, again, as a Californian, but as a person who experienced some of that same ambition and drive insecurities, mistakes, all of that. Let's just get into the episode, I'll just keep this intro shorter so I don't piss anyone off and allow this to speak for itself. Now, this is a chunk of his podcast.

This is Gavin Newsom, which you can listen to the full episode of anywhere you listen to your podcasts. But anyways, thanks to the governor for having me on the show. Thanks for the time he took to talk to my son. My son thought that was a very cool experience. And thanks for letting me see the governor's mansion, which I had not ever even seen, despite growing up not that far from it. Anyways, let's get into it. Here we go. A hell of a time, American peril.

And then you, you know, you're hardly an old man. Your wife's saying, I told you, I told you so, I told you so. I told you. Mom and dad are like, Jesus, you know, how did we raise you, young man? Yeah. Or not. They're probably are more generous. Yeah.

You know, so where are you now in terms of just you go on a walkabout? Is that when you picked up meditations? No, I found, the irony is I found stoicism before. In college, I was in, I found the Amazon receipt for that the other day, October 2006. So it's going on 20 years. And what was the motive? You remember the motivation for even making the purchase? Yeah.

You want to know who told me about the Stoics? Yeah. There's no way you could guess. There's no way you could guess. Robert Green would be the safe bet. No, it was Dr. Drew. Okay. Why not Dr. Drew?

I was writing for the college newspaper and I went to this. I got invited to this conference in West Hollywood, which was sponsored by Trojan Condoms. Okay. And he was giving a talk. And after the talk, I was just, I was like, you know, a young kid, I was just hungry for advice and direction and all these things. And I just said, hey, you got any book recommendations? And it turned me on to the Stoics and changed the course of my life. And which, which, which, which, which, he told me first about Epicetus.

I bought Epicetus and Mark Srealius. And, you know, obviously took a while for them to sleep in. But, but, you know, sitting in Riverside, California, reading Mark Strelis' Meditations. And what was that the first book? I think that was the first one. Yeah. And I just, I was saying, what is this? You know?

And it really was that immediate? Yeah. Yeah. 100%. I didn't know there was writing like this. I didn't know there was advice like this. I didn't know it was what I was looking for, but it was exactly what I was. And did you know, I mean, there was about stoicism?

that he was about stoicism, or was it just the most powerful man in the world and that intrigued you? I mean, and it's life lessons. We're only a few years out from the movie Gladiator at this time, so I think I was a little bit primed. But there was something about, I think, at the core young men are looking for direction, right? And they're looking for direction, particularly now in a world where a lot of the old sort of traditions and explicit and implicit instructions in that regard are gone. And so there's this just kind of existential void. There's this leadership void.

You just don't, you don't know how to be a person. And there's not, it's not like there are these rituals or these groups or this kind of process by which you become a man. That just doesn't exist. And so to sort of pick up the private thoughts of the emperor of Rome. And he's, he's talking to himself about how to not just be, you know, productive person and a strong person, but also a wise person and a good person and how to deal with, you know, everything from his temper to his anxiety to his, you know, sort of fear of death or his frustrations with other people. I just, I didn't, if you had asked me to define philosophy

in my late teens, I would have said, I don't know, it's like, you know, it's, it's those people in Togas or it says people on college campuses, you know, asking impossible questions about things for which there are no answers. There you go. You know, like, that it's for people smarter than me, right? Yeah. And then to read the Stoics, you go, oh, no, no, this is for people trying to be human beings, like, and trying to just deal with the difficulties of life.

and that is what I think struck me so much about meditations because even compared to the other Stoics, you know, whether you're reading Seneca or Epictetus, they're there at least talking to an audience. And there's something so personal and disarming about meditations because here it's not meant for publication. It's just a guy. It's like a guy's inner monologue. It's like the, the, the, the, the, the, the, angel on his shoulder, you know, trying to be like, you're better than this. You should do this. Try to do that. What about this? And so I think I was just, I was blown away. And then particularly

that he is such a good writer, that even his notes to himself are some of the best philosophy ever written. I think that that all is what struck me. So was that, so you sort of, you know, all of a sudden, in this book speaks to you and your time of life, your state of mind, epictetus, similarly you mentioned the big three of stoics, but these aren't the OGs of stoism. I mean, the broader stoic construct for you, when did that click versus more of a contemporary version of stoicism?

Well, the OGs of stoicism, you go back to, you get Zeno and E. Clanthes and Chrysippeys, Cato being maybe another one that maybe some people have heard of. You know, that was the process of kind of tracing it back for me. You kind of, I think most people should start with the big three of the Stoics and then work their way back. There's a reason that they're the ones that are most well known.

And that is a really cool thing. It just blows your mind about history where you're like, okay, to Marcus Aurelius, Stoicism was ancient philosophy. Ancient philosophy. Like five, like Zeno is to Marcus Aurelius what Shakespeare is to us. I was quoting Plutarch the other day, the imbalance between the rich and the poor is the oldest and most fatal ailment of all republics says it you know i don't know 50 70 ad yes the oldest and most fatal ailment it's but and and you take plutarch right again yeah probably the great one of the great

biographers truman would talk about how whenever he had a problem as president he could take he could pull out he said i pull it my my old friend plutarch my old friend my old friend my old friend plutarch and he would have the solution to my problems but plutarch is writing about you know caesar and and Cicero and Demosthenes and all these Greek and Roman figures who were to him what he is to us, you know, not quite that far, but but we think about ancient Greece and Rome as this kind of like brief moment. Yeah, yeah. As opposed to a civilization that lasted hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years. Even the decline and fall of Rome is like 900 years, you know, maybe a little bit less than that,

depending on where you want to date it to. But the point is, they would- That should give us comfort in the U.S. It does a little bit. But it gives you, you just realize that they were, like, when they were going through stuff, when Marx-Rerlis is living through a civil war or Cato is living through a civil war

or Seneca is in exile or enduring the reign of Nero, what are they turning to? They're turning to the ancients who we are also turning to. And then what we have is generations, This is why they call philosophy the great conversation because it's these core ideas that were sort of brought into existence at some point, but the genius of them is the layering on top of each subsequent generation,

trying and riffing and just as the founders. I gave you Jeffrey Rosen's The Pursuit of Happiness. The founders were turning to the Stokes. My nine-year-old is obsessed with Hamilton. Oh, good. the play Hamilton. The most famous play in the Western world in the 18th century was a play about Cato. And it was as famous as Hamilton as now.

And in the way that, you know, like if you go immigrants, they get the job done. People know what you're talking about. When George Washington would talk about, you know, looking at events through the calm light of mild philosophy. Or when they say, I regret I have but one life to give for my country. These are lines from that play. And so it's this great tradition of these ideas being just so perfectly expressed and the example being so powerful that people have been turning to it over and over again. And that's the really powerful thing. Stoicism wasn't Marcus realized it was 600 years of it in Greece and Rome.

And then, you know, I mean, it continues on up. It's not like people haven't been talking about and riffing about it in the 1800 years since. they absolutely have. And so it's, it's just this, this energy, I think, if you tap into and you go, oh, these are ideas that have really been tested in the crucible of human experience. Was the word, stoic? I mean, was, I mean, when Zeno, but it was 300 BC or something, yeah, he said, I am, I declare myself a stoic. It was, or was he declared a stoic? Well, that's, that, I think it's to Zeno's credit that the, the philosophy is not called Xenoism, right? There's a little bit, right at the beginning, there's some humility.

So Stoah, so the founding story of Stoicism is, Zeno's a merchant, and he deals in this rare purple dye. And that die being a commodity in those days. Dying purple. Yeah, we think of like, it's funny, where the Strait of Hormuz is shut down, global trade, that's the modern thing. It's like, no, the purple dye was this commodity that was. made across multiple islands in the Mediterranean and it would get traded and moved around like the same the same navigational issues we're having right now people were talking about then but he suffers this shipwreck he washes up in Athens and ends up their discovering

philosophy and that's where Stoicism starts but he just begins lecturing about these ideas on the Stoa pokela which is the painted porch in Athens and that's where that's what stoic means. It just stoa means porch. It doesn't mean anything. These are just the guys from the porch, bullshitting and talking and sharing. It is funny then that he would talk about that this merchant of purple dye, his philosophy would become the philosophy who associate with Marcus Rillus because I could tell you, mouthing the words there, one of the powerful lines in meditations is Marks Rheal says, this is a reference to being emper. He says, be careful that you are not dyed purple.

So, and he's saying that, that make sure that power doesn't corrupt you. God bless. Because the Roman emperor was one of the few that could wear the color purple. So you're reading all of this. You're portal to this beginning with meditations,

which has had an outsized influence on everybody that's ever picked up. When did you pick it up? I picked up all the wrong versions. Yeah. Couldn't understand a damn thing. Interesting. I look back.

It's interesting. I must have 15 or 20 different copies. Wow. And it took me listening to you on damn YouTube to go, here's the one I recommend. I'm like, start reading. I'm like, wait, this makes some sense. Because the translations are, you know, time of back to decades and decades ago.

So I think my father, someone, you know, was around. And then my uncle says, here's a book you should read. I'm like, Jesus, you know. So they just sort of collected dust. But there were a few efforts. Yes. And they just didn't go anywhere because it didn't speak to me with the kind of language that I understand today.

I do, I don't believe in miracles, but I went on Amazon and I just bought a random copy. That I got the first one, I got the copy that changed my life and I've now recommended it so many people. That just, that's the first, the algorithm blessed me. For someone who's so critical of algorithms

and that one case, the algorithm blessed me. By the way, one of the things I love that you do is you'll go back to the same, you'll go to different translations. Yeah. And you're able to sort of lay them out. And, I mean, it shows. I mean, you know, how language is radically changed.

Well, that. And how important the translation is. Yes. I mean, so I don't speak Greek or Latin. So I don't know exactly. But it is interesting when you read all these different translations. You go, oh, like, this is the same idea, 15 different cuts on it.

And what a big role the translator plays. And also what a big role the moment in time that you're in. So how we, like, how you interpret it in the context of, of something contemporary. So I've been reading meditation here for 15 years. And then 2020, pandemic hits. And I'm reading meditations.

And all of a sudden, there's all these references to the plague and to pestilence. And you realize, oh, this is a plague book. This guy wrote in the middle of the Antonine plague. This 15-year pandemic that killed millions of people. And you never picked up on that. I mean, necessarily, I guess I just, I don't, you think he's being metaphor. Oracle. Yeah.

And then you realize he's being literal. Like one of the passages I thought the most about during the pandemic is this one where he goes, there's two types of plagues. There's the one that can destroy your health and the one that can destroy your character. And then you watch over the next two years, people get radicalized. People turn off their hearts and their neighborliness to other people. And in other cases, lose their mind. come, you know, do and say things they would have been shocked by just a few years earlier.

And you go, oh, that, he must have seen that. You know, he must have seen that. And I think there's a famous story about Marksurelius, he's presiding over some court and one of the lawyers makes this reference to the victims of the plague. And he just bursts into tears. And so you think, number one, I thought, the Stoics don't have emotions. I thought they don't care about people.

And here he is just sort of weeping over these untold thousands of people who have died, you know, in some cases people we would have cared deeply about and been very close to. And you go, oh, that's not what Stoicism isn't this, fuck you, I got mine. Or like, I got a strong immune system. Did you think it was when you first heard about it? Because so many people see it as just, yeah, I'm just, I will have no emotion. I'm just being stoic, you know, it's sort of rigid, robotic.

I think what I was attracted to stoicism for the reason that young men have been attracted to stoicism for centuries, which is it's about getting your shit together, getting it on lock, you know, that sort of ownership and control of the self, which I think if anyone needs help in, it's young men. So I think that was my initial attraction to it.

And then, and I think I was attracted to it, trappings of power and, you know, all the, all the things that make it, you know, interesting and unique compared to, I don't know, existentialism or some other school of philosophy. But over the years, you realize, oh, this is actually a profoundly ethical philosophy. This is about our connections to other people. This is about our responsibilities to other people. When they're talking about excellence, they don't simply mean professional excellence. And that actually, professional excellence is is pretty common but professional and personal excellence like sort of rounding that package out is actually the sort of thing to be more ambitious about so i i think

my initial attraction to it was one thing and then what it it works on you and i think it's interesting to hear you talk about sort of starting and stopping it over the years like it's important that people understand stosis is a philosophy you should be reading not a philosophy you have read. Being an effective leader is difficult, right? You've got to keep your ego in check. You got to know how your business works, how the team operates for peak effectiveness. But most leaders are making decisions about their teams based on assumptions and not reality. And that's exactly the problem that today's sponsor, Scribe, was built to fix. Scribe Optimize passively captures how your team works across approved business apps.

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I'll swim in it too. I like that too. American, just up the block where you were growing up. But we change as well. Yes. And back to this, you know, you're reading it again and that we're in a plague and all of a sudden you're reading it as, I mean, almost as a new visitor to the same old. Well, I think it's so fascinating. Yeah, you picked up a book when you were one age, you picked it up again, another. It continually wasn't working. And then at some point, and I bet if you actually laid those translations outside by side, they're not that different. I think you were, you were profoundly different. Well, I was trying to find language, period. I wrote a book about my own learning disability. So just, I mean, literally the words, just above my pay grade that needs to be explained to me. I remember it's Shakespeare class in college. I mean, your toast is a disliked.

You're like, wow, me do thoth. I mean, Jesus. So you're like immediately trying to find a Cliff Note version or something on TV that you could claim that I read or understood. Yeah. So no, it's, so you did all that, you know, so you're reading this. But you weren't necessarily going, wait a second. This is my new path, my career, that I'm going to become, you know, I'm going to translate

this to a whole different audience, that I'm going to be able to express this with new media. I'm going to be able to get a whole new generation to. to understand and bring to life these extraordinary figures. No, I mean, I was introduced to the Stoics in 2006, and my first book on Stoic philosophy came out in summer of 2014. 14. And what was the inspiration? What said, you know, I have to do my version of this.

It's been plenty written about Sto's. Yeah, I don't know. I wrote my first book because I wanted to be a writer, and I knew that that book had to come first. You couldn't write the Stoic books and then the media book. So I knew how to get the media book out of the way. So I did the media book first, and then what I really wanted to write about was the Stoics. But, no, I thought I had this idea for one Stoic book about this one passage from Archstreet.

That was it. And, again, obstacles away. What stands in the way becomes the way. Yes. I love it. Come on. I know. I heard you say this somewhere.

I mean, I just, it's too good. It's the best. It's the best. Someone, some. The impediment to action becomes the action. Yes. Stans the way becomes the way. But you want to know something funny about that quote?

Again, you evolve your understanding of these things as you can. So I wrote the book, The Obstacles Away, mostly about how we deal with, like, professional obstacles, right? Like how you're trying to, like, do something and something gets in the way, which is obviously what he's partly talking about there. But the fuller quote, which obviously I knew is I edited it to put some ellipsies in there, but mostly what he's talking about is annoying people and obnoxious people. He's saying people can cause problems for us.

They can get in our way. But, you know, he says, we always have the ability to accommodate and adapt. He says, we can convert this to our own, you know, our own potential acting. And then he says, you know, the impediment action advances action, what stands in the way becomes away. And then you go, oh, okay. So when he's saying some person comes up and says something horrible to you or some person screw something up for you or some person, you know, is just constantly stressing you out or abusing you or whatever it is. What he's saying is that that's an opportunity for you to be

the better person, the bigger person, to grow as a person in wrestling with and handling what this person is doing to you. And so you go, oh, okay, like when the Stoics are saying the obstacles away, they don't necessarily mean, oh, this is a person. a chance to, you know, hey, this, this huge recession that we just got plunged into is actually a chance for you to retrench in the business and tighten things up and come back smarter and leaner and, you know, more organized. It may be. But he's saying, actually, you know, this, this person who just broke your heart or this person who just lied to you or stole from you or this person who just said something horrible to you,

they're a chance for you to grow as a human being in how you respond to them. That is obviously not my reading of the passage when I'm 19, but it's how I understand it 20 years later. And you understand it sort of the core part of what you said is sort of for you, if you were going to distill the essence of stoicism, this notion that we have agency.

Yeah, that, you know, it's not what happens to us, how we respond to what happens to us. Yeah. Yeah, I'd be curious, like, to find some line of work in which that's not the case. The case, right? Like, you wake up and somebody gives you the news and then you figure out your job is to say, here's what we're going to do. Yeah. But so much of our life is this sort of victim mentality that, you know, that it's fate and we can't control our own fate.

Yeah. You know, the system's rigged against me. There's nothing I can do. Nothing one person can do. Yes. This is whose fault it is. This is why it should have gone the other way. Just a lot of dwelling on why it happened

as opposed to what you're going to do about it. Yeah. So it's interesting to me, just, you know, I write a little bit and some of my friends like, why are you writing about Tony Robbins? But it's interesting. I write about it because I was, you know, around your age and all of a sudden my contemporary version, dare I say.

How dare you? was this guy with, you know, who self-describe with big teeth on, you know, on infomercials selling me cassette tapes. Yeah. And I listened to those today and I'm like, what so much is, you know. Well, I do think that there's a little bit there

that's just a complete indictment of philosophy as a whole these days. Yeah. Like that that is, that's what Socrates is doing. That's what, that's what, Aristotle was doing, they were trying, I mean, Socrates gets killed for corrupting the youth, which is to say, teaching the young boys what they need to know about life that their parents didn't want them to know, right? Or challenging convention or, you know, teaching them a new way of thinking. And I guess it just says something that philosophy does not speak to people in a way that

it's supposed to. It is supposed to be the guide to the good life, which, you know, to me, the American dream is both a financial dream, but also a sort of a moral and a spiritual dream of a, of a better life. And philosophy is supposed to be part of that. And it's just, it's just not. And I think we're in extra trouble when, you know, organized religion has not just fallen away, but also, you know, alienated, huge swaths of the population, whether you're talking about the abuse scandals in the Catholic Church, which is what I grew up in, or you're looking at the sort of political radicalization

of sort of evangelical faith. And so if you're not going to have traditions and sort of rituals, you're also not going to have religion, what are you, where are people supposed to learn this stuff? and it's, I think, created a huge vacuum that certain, you know, bad actors have stepped into Phil. And you haven't become a bad actor. Thanks. You talk about, you know, because you, you talk to, we can go back to sort of March 2020 and sort of the beginning and we could talk about that pandemic.

People, you know, I mean, explains more things and more ways and more days of everything. Sure. Our relationships, back to truth and trust is certainly our politics. I didn't fully absorb it, appreciate it at the time, and what we'd become on the other side, and what people became people. They were unrecognizable to this day that went through that process.

We can get D.L.L. Musk in a minute, but I knew him well before. That's my favorite part of your book. You talked about how you came of age as all, you came of age at the same time as all those Silicon Valley people. I was with Larry and Sergey at Google, and when Steve John,

taps us on the shoulder and says, hey, he wasn't interested in me. He was interested in Larry and Sergey to show us, pulled out of his back pocket the first iPhone. And we're like, you know, it was like a joyride. We're going with our fingers. Like, oh, we. And they were all by, you know, they were just in there was sense of optimism back to you when you were writing this book. So what happened? Like I, I think that that quote where Elon Musk is on Rogan and he says, you know, empathy is going to be the death of Western civilization. That to me was, was one. And then when I watched Mark and Driesen talk about how he has zero introspection. And he's like, I never look backwards. He goes, I never look backwards. It's like, by the way, that's not what introspection is just to be like, clearly don't even know what it is. Like, introspection is looking inward, just to be clear. It's not looking backwards. But he goes, you know, the great men of history, they, they, they didn't look around.

They didn't, it's like the bad ones, you know, the ones who were responsible for genocides and pointless wars and ecological disasters and economic calamities. Yes, they had no. sense of introspection or history or perspective, but the great ones, whether you're talking about FDR or Truman or Theodore Roosevelt, Washington, or Lincoln. The best of the best in your mind. All the greats. And I just named a bunch of white dudes. So I'm sorry. But like, you know, you could We could talk about that too and where women are in the stoic history. You could expand. But the point is that the great historical figures are by definition profoundly concerned.

considerate and conscientious people. And when, when they're not, it is responsible for their biggest failings. And so what's happened? Well, I was what the hell happened? Yeah, what happened? And what happened to you that you didn't fall prey to all that? I mean, you, you, I mean, your rise, it's just gone. I mean, it's, you can, you were wildly successful before the pandemic. But, you know, I mean, now the ubiquity and your success, it's just exploded. Yeah. But it suggests that people are, they're not, they haven't necessarily been sold that bill of goods either, that they're looking for something different. I mean, look, I've definitely experienced some success. It's small potatoes compared to being, you know, one of the richest or most powerful people in the world. So I don't want to judge people who's thing, you know, who's, who's, you know, sort of experience is something I can't even comprehend.

But it does, it does seem weird that these people, many of whom I also knew or met over the years and thought were. one thing and sort of revealed themselves to be another. What's your explanation? I'm struggling with it and I've been struggling with it. I mean, I struggle with it a little bit of the book. Even, you know, who I was becoming. I said, I mean, I was, you know, and, you know, God bless.

I was reading one of your books for years ago and took a little indirect shot at me and I thought it was completely legit. What did I say? You just say, you know, back, I don't want to even get back. I don't know. One of the most important stories you always say, what during the plague, what Marcus really did. He sold all the things in here.

I was going to a damn restaurant. Oh, did I make a friend? And I'm like, you know what? Fair. And it was legit. It hurt. It hurt because it was right. And of course, I knew I was no greater critic of me than me.

And so I appreciate it. But so, you know, but a lot of what I write about in this book, I mean, talk about ego. Yeah. No, there's some words in there. I mean, right? I mean, the whole thing. I mean, I just, I laid it all out. And I laid myself out in this sort of journey of discovery, this memoir of discovery and

discovering myself and my own, you know, but, you know, expectations and how I was living in other people's expectations. Yeah. I was kind of losing myself and how now, and I think it's why sort of really dove deep into your work. It's just sort of all coincided. I'm like, oh, you know, just literally, just breathe again and have perspective and grace and humility. So you're saying introspection. Introspection. Like the thing they are running away from. running away from. The coarseness. That's why I've got, forgive me, I didn't mean to put you behind these knee pads.

And I think about with Trump, I mean, the obstacle is a way to me, it's so profound in the context of how I'm dealing with the challenges and the obstacle it stands in the way. Yeah. From my perspective, decency, lack of character, all those cardinal virtues that you write so beautifully about. There's notion of justice. And there's no sort of what courage really is in temperance. All these found in what discipline looks at.

It's anathema of what we have today. But I think about, all right, obstacle is the way. It stands the way, becomes a way. So how we can sort of with agency, you know, manifest and take responsibility and have the discipline and the character to, you know, not just identify the problems, but begin to march strategies and iteration to address these problems and to move in a more enlightened direction. And again, you've been a huge part of that for millions of us. but certainly for the guy sitting here as the current occupant of the governor's mansion.

That's unbelievable to me. I think, you know, there's this passage of meditations where Marksueless talks about fighting to be the person that philosophy tried to make you. I love it. And I think about that that's what he's doing in meditations is he's trying, he's trying to be better than whatever he could get away with or whatever, you know, he might just be on his own. he's sort of aspiring to be some greater self. And it does feel like in that sort of Silicon Valley kind of like leadership class, there is this

and Trump, I think, obviously, hastened it. But it's this kind of like, why? Why should you try to be better? Just do what you want. Yeah. You know. Get yours. When you're famous, they let you do it.

You know? And it's like the embracing of that. And the idea of like why one of my favorite headlines of all time, there's this Huffington Post headline from 15 years ago. And it says, I don't know how to explain to you that you're supposed to care about other people. And that, and it really does feel like there was this concerted effort in a small group of people

to just let themselves off the hook for being responsible for or to anyone, despite the incredible power. and privilege that they enjoy. There you go. There you go. And we're, I mean, it's,

and we're living with the consequences of that. I mean, we, you know, we've hit on, you know, young men, but you,

you know, subtly made the point. I'll make it more express. The young men are in crisis. Yeah. And it's interesting how you connect tradition and rituals and,

you know, now, I mean, we're seeing a little bit now with religion. People are, for refining religion, a little bit again. But we've lost those institutions,

that connection to each other. I am, because, you are, this notion of WMUnto, this commonwealth, you know, and this, and, of course, with algorithms, and now this manosphere broadly defined and, you know, Hustlers University and Bugatti, Bugatti, get mine, and, you know, and all the, just patriarchy that comes in there. I mean, and these guys sometimes trying to attach these names. I know, I know.

I try to say it's not stoicism is not a formula for you to be a better sociopath. God bless. It's supposed to do the opposite. It's supposed to help you because look, we're all inherently selfish. We are all self-interested. The Stoics talk about this. Like you come out of the womb being like inherently, not just dependent on others, but you will, you will suck your parents dry literally and figuratively.

so you can survive. That's what your genes are designed for you to do. That's right. And that maturation or growth the Stokes would say is the, like the overcoming of that, realizing that you have these obligations and duties to not just these people immediately around you, but everyone else. Like there's this Stoic named Hierocles. And he talked about the circles of concern.

Yeah. And that he said the purpose of the philosophy is pulling these outer rings inwards. And to me, like when I heard that, I was like, oh, that's what they were talking about in church as a kid. That's also what Jesus was talking about. And so there is actually a, if Catholicism especially, because it has those cardinal virtues, I think you sort of, you immediately recognize it in the Stoics that, oh, well, this was the tradition before that tradition, and that there's a lot of overlap there.

Yeah. Well, I love me. Just even when we were celebrating the 250th anniversary of the Declaration, best of Roman Republic, best of Greek democracy. I mean, back to your point in terms of even the books, you just thank you for the books, but just reminding me the founding fathers, the direct inspiration from these greats.

Yeah, Washington's the only one of the founders who doesn't read the Stoics in Greek or Latin. Like he only reads him in English. Because they were so familiar. Like Jefferson has, Jefferson has Seneca in French on its nightstand when he dies. And so like these were these were incredibly literate philosophical figures. And, you know, the primary influence on the founders was not, you know, those English legal thinkers. It was the, it was the, it was the, when they're writing the. federalist papers and they're masquerading as these Roman characters. They're thinking about

Cato. They're thinking about Seneca. They're thinking about Marcus Aurelius. Those are the people who are influencing them the most. And, you know, that does go back to, I think, the founding of America, which we fundamentally misunderstood. This idea that, yes, on the one hand, this is a country about freedom where the state can't tell you how to be or how to live. It, you, you, you're, you, your individual behavior is not legally prescribed the way that it would be in another society. But they were very much of the mind that all that freedom was to be counterbalanced by a sense of virtue in the people. And John Adams said, like, hey, without it, we're fucked. Like the Constitution cannot, is not strong enough.

He says, like a wail through a net. Like a whale through it. I love that.