The Daily Stoic - Julia Baird on Phosphorescence and Making a Habit Out of Awe

Episode Date: November 20, 2021

Ryan talks to Julia Baird about her newest book Phosphorescence, The awe and wonder that unfolds in the midst of deep suffering, how the journey towards achieving stillness requires incremental progress, and more. Julia Baird is a journalist, broadcaster and author based in Sydney, Australia. She hosts The Drum on ABCTV and writes columns for the Sydney Morning Herald and the International New York Times. Her new book Phosphorescence reflects on her encounters with a luminescent phenomenon found in nature, and how she was able to cultivate her own ‘inner light’ in the face of a life-threatening illness.The new Pod Pro Cover by Eight Sleep is the most advanced solution on the market for thermoregulation. It pairs dynamic cooling and heating with biometric tracking. You can add the Cover to any mattress, and start sleeping as cool as 55°F or as hot as 110°F. Go to eightsleep.com/dailystoic to check out the Pod Pro Cover and save $150 at checkout.DECKED truck bed tool boxes and cargo van storage systems revolutionize organization with a heavy-duty in-vehicle storage system featuring slide out toolboxes. DECKED makes organizing, accessing, protecting, and securing everything you need so much easier. Get your DECKED Drawer System at Decked.com/STOIC and get free shipping.KiwiCo believes in the power of kids and that small lessons today can mean big, world-changing ideas tomorrow. KiwiCo is a subscription service that delivers everything your kids will need to make, create and play. Get 30% off your first month plus FREE shipping on ANY crate line with code STOIC at kiwico.com.Uprising Food have cracked the code on healthy bread. Only 2 net carbs per serving, 6 grams of protein and 9 grams of fiber. They cover paleo, to clean keto, to simple low carb, to high fiber, to dairy free to grain free lifestyle. Uprising Food is offering our listeners ten dollars off the starter bundle. that includes two superfood cubes and four pack of freedom chips to try! go to uprisingfood.com/stoic and the discount will be automatically applied at checkout. Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://DailyStoic.com/dailyemailCheck out the Daily Stoic Store for Stoic inspired products, signed books, and more.Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, FacebookFollow Julia Baird: Homepage, Twitter, InstagramSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hey, prime members, you can listen to the Daily Stoic podcast early and add free on Amazon music. Download the app today. Welcome to the weekend edition of the Daily Stoic. Each weekday we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stoics, something to help you live up to those four Stoic virtues of courage, justice, temperance, and wisdom. And then here on the weekend, we take a deeper dive into those same topics. We interview stoic philosophers, we explore at length how these stoic ideas can be applied to our actual lives and the challenging issues of our time. Here on the weekend when you have a little bit more space when things have slowed down, be sure to take some time to think, to go for a walk, to sit with your journal and most importantly to prepare for what the week

ahead may bring. Hi I'm David Brown, the host of Wendree's podcast business wars. And in our new season, Walmart must fight off target, the new discounter that's both savvy and fashion forward. Listen to business wars on Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, it's Ryan Holiday. Welcome to another weekend episode of the Daily Stoic podcast. I love when people surprise you. When you sort of put them in one category and then you find out they're capable of something you didn't expect.

Under estimating's the wrong word, but you just interacted with them in one component or one facet or you experienced their work in one facet and then you meet them or you talk to them or you see something else they didn't you're like wow. Julia Beard is, I have to say someone I would put in that category. I read and I have raved about her biography, Queen Victoria. It's one of the few biographies we carry at the painting porch. I used it as a source. And stillness, I used it again in the book that I'm writing just now. Love the book,

highly recommend it. Check it out if you haven't. And I shot her a note after I read the book like two years ago, two and a half years ago, and we connected. And you know, I was thinking about people that have on the podcast and I shot her a note. and she said, I'm happy to be, I'm happy to come on, but I'd like you to read my new book. And I said, sure, of course, she sent me this little book called Foss for Essence, which I'm carrying my hand. The subtitle is a memoir of finding joy when your world goes dark. So I thought Julia would be someone I was a fan of as a biographer, but I guess I just didn't expect to be reading a book

in the subtitle and the deck headline on the inside flap is a deeply personal exploration of what can sustain us through our darkest hours. And I just absolutely loved this book. It was a great read about resilience, right? It's deeply stoked. Phosphorescence is basically things that illuminate in the dark. And she's talking, why do some animals glow,

particularly sea creatures, literally glow? What makes a firefly do what it does? That's where the word phosphorescence comes from. But I think we all know people that are like that. Those are the people that inspire us. Even though life's thrown the absolute worst crap, you can imagine at them somehow they still emanate this energy, this positivity, you know. And that's what this book has, too, which is fitting. So I wanted to talk to her and I'm so excited to bring in this conversation. In addition to her book on Queen Victoria, Julia is a journalist, a broadcaster, and an

author based in Sydney, Australia. She hosts the Drum on ABC TV, writes columns for the Sydney Morning Herald in the International New York Times. She has a PhD from Sydney University and as I said just a wonderful writer and I think you're really going to like this interview. You can go to our website juliabeard.me. You can follow her on Twitter at Beard, Julia B.A.I.R.D. Julia, and then Instagram the exact reverse at juliabeard. and then Instagram the exact reverse at Julia Baird. Just a wonderful book. Do check out Foss for Essence, and which I'm plugging in the reading list newsletter this month, which you should subscribe to also.

And check out our book on Queen Victoria in the Painted Ports and enjoy this interview. You know, when I originally reached out, I wanted to talk to you about Queen Victoria, which I loved and was super helpful to me when I was writing stillness, and I thought a little bit about it when I was writing courage is calling, actually.

And so when I reached out, I thought we would talk about that. I didn't know you had this new book, which you were nice enough to send me. But when I sat down to read the book, obviously only knowing you from Queen Victoria, I wasn't sure what to expect. But there's sort of a, as the subtitle hints, a memoir of finding joy when your world goes dark, there is this sort of looming darkness in the book that you are combating with the

phosphorescence. Yes. What happened between the Queen Victoria book and the place that took you to write this book? Yeah, although I was kind of finishing my footnotes, anyone who's ever written a biography knows is the most arduous part of writing a writing one of those large tomes. I was finishing that at the time. I got sick, I was diagnosed with this rare abdominal cancer and at first they thought it was ovarian and which would have meant, my tumors were so large

that it just would have meant that I just didn't have long to live. And so I had to get my head around that and then go through this really intense surgery where they, you know, anyway, which takes, I don't know, I don't know how long it takes 12 hours, the last one took 15 hours. And you have to slowly rebuild yourself in a way, walk again and encounter the world again. So you do go into a very dark place. I was really conscious that people had written before about happiness and meaning meaning and I really wanted to write about what is it when the world goes really dark, how do you get through like when you don't know if you can swing your legs out of bed or how do you put one foot in front of the other and I was really surprised during my own

experience and I've had three surgeries for this, for this cancer now. I was really surprised about what actually did sustain me and how some ways it seemed really simple, but it was actually quite extraordinary and it was especially around awe and wonder. So you're sort of, you've got the exhilaration of finishing this book, which must have been many years in the making, including Victoria Book. Exactly. You've got two young kids, and then you're just at the doctor one day and you get this terrible news.

Well, I was actually, and I had worked so hard on this biography for years, on top of like doing other jobs and moving countries, because I moved back from the States to Australia in that period and I was like now finally I can live and once I'd kind of finished that whole manuscript. But no, I got, I just started having tear terrible pains. So I just mentally emergency and I had, you know, I was the size of a basketball, this thing inside me. It was awful. Wow. Yeah, I know. And the prognosis was probably not like, you're sort of staring your own mortality in the face.

Yeah, I was trying to, I was trying to be, well, I suppose in some situations it's okay. I remember my doctor saying to me, one day, listen, this is a surgeon, you're very clinically spoken and he just said, listen, Julia, I have to be honest with you, all the signs are that this is very serious and I was like, right. And it's at that point that you go into, like, how am I going to conserve my energy, how am I going to stay strong?

And that point I went to a root point of really intense stillness, I think, is the best way to describe it. And how long is this journey? Is it a year, three years, like not totally clear on the timeline? I think so first, since I was diagnosed. So that was in 2015. Wow. Yeah. So yeah, it's it's it's it's very

intense and I've got little kids and you know, I mean, they've kind of grown into teenagers now, but they my little boy had just started school. So that that's that's the most confronting thing for me. I think you can kind of bear anything happening to you, but you worry about, you just worry about your little ones, right? No, that's sort of been the vibe of the pandemic, right? It's like, it's like, we can figure it out, but you're sort of the sort of powerlessness and frustration because it, it's taking something away from people who are not at all to blame your kids. Right, that's it, exactly right. And the innocence of that. And I just remember one day,

and my doctor called me and was like, my surgeon, this guy, the clinical guy, he was like, I have to tell you, it's spread to your liver and I went, oh, that's not good. And he said, well, it's not. And I was cutting sandwiches for their lunch, you know, and so I just took them by the hands and I was walking them down the hill to their school just with my heart and my stomach thinking, I have got to get through this. Yeah, so yeah, it really does.

I mean, life narrows to a slit when you go through times like that and everything else kind of falls away And it's it's really only what you care about and I find the whole concept of a buck at least really interesting because I think buck at least assumes you've got quite a bit of time if you really had a friend where you're like oh I this could be you know, I don't know month or I don't know it's it Your world almost shrinks in a way. You don't really want to go and jump off cliffs. You just want to sit next to your kids and be with them. And sit. Yeah. Ironically, it's like you want to do the things that you took the

most for granted and trying to rush through in the course of your ordinary life, the sort of banal regular moments. Yeah, you fall in love with ordinaryness all over again. I remember walking back into my little place after I'd had my first surgery and I was like, oh, I love this, there's my bed, this, my couch, there's my comfy, all those things. Having been able to have a cup of tea again was such a great thing.

That's a real gift. Being able to really relish and save up pleasures, which is something my son does very naturally. He just has a very low bar for what he enjoys in life. Like literally we have this big trip to the US and his favorite moment was he got a ball of pizza dough at a restaurant and he talks about it. I was just unbelievable this moment for him. It was just so good. He just yeah he just relishes things and I think that's one thing that's you know really cool to happiness. When you've thought about all of these things, I know.

No, no, you're right. Weirdly, the more you can shrink your view to what's in front of you, I guess there's less FOMO and there's less entitlements and you're just like, this is so nice, I want this for as long as I can have it. Yeah, that's right, and that gives you a real pace. So... Well, what I thought was, go ahead, sorry. No, you can. What I was going to say, what I thought was so unique

about the book is, and you sort of talk about this at the beginning, which is like, you know, sort of most self-help books and most sort of memoirs are usually coming from some place of positivity or reflection on how wonderful everything is, let me show you how you should be. What's fascinating about this book is that it comes it's still a lot of that, but coming from a very dark place. That it obviously not quite on the scale of like one of my favorite books is Man Search for Meaning. There is something powerful about, hey, let me tell you what the meaning of life is from

someone who has seen the worst of life as opposed to even even my books, I would have to admit, come from thinking about stuff, but not having to have gone through what you went through. Right. Now, I mean, one of the worst things when you're going through a really tough time is it can be positivity, to be honest, like, and a lot of the discussion around, I mean, at the same time, I was really drawn to really positive pragmatic people over that time, and I really kind of value that. But when I was very conscious, because I write a lot about awe and wonder and paying attention to the world and how astonishing that can be in uplifting you and drawing you out of

yourself and giving you as Rachel Carson discovered, like a really, a strength that's remarkable and that we take for granted. So I write a lot about the natural world, which we can talk about in a moment, but I really want to be conscious that when you're getting a terrible diagnosis or your partner has just died or something terrible has happened to a child of yours, it's not like you can't just say, go a my under a tree and everything will be fine. It won't, it's horrible, it's awful. Life you have moments of immense suffering

and struggle in life, that is life. But, a, but, twin with that suffering can be moments of great beauty and tenderness and, and sites that are purely marvelous and I think I was just so surprised by my daily ocean swim and what that gave me and I wanted to write about that that that that everyone is different I think although I think I think Orrin Wondo really can give that to anyone, but you just need to work out ways of deliberately living. So that when you go through difficult times, you can almost rope together your crossbeams

of resilience and just hang on to them for dear love. Well, you talk about the sort of love of the outdoors and wilderness of theater Roosevelt, which I've always been fascinated by. And I don't remember if you made the connection, but what I thought when I was reading that is, and I thought about it when I read the subtitle of your book, is, have you seen the famous diary entry that he did after his mother and wife died in the same house on the same day? Oh, wow. No, what's he saying? So he I forget what it is. It's 1880 something or whatever, but

Basically his mother dies and his wife dies in childbirth and he just writes in his diary that night. There's a big X and he says the light has gone out of my life and you get, you know, when you read that, you're like, oh, this is the end, right? This is the end of the guy's life. And you're actually, this is the beginning of all the great things. Like, he moves, he heads to the west in response to this devastation. And so I think there's something powerful about this idea of like when life strips everything away from you, what do you find? And I found that your book was sort of like,

what do you find is really important when all the light goes out of your life. That's right. And how can you find it? And that's why I became really obsessed with the idea of phosphorescence or bioluminescence. And that's living light. From vampire squids to fireflies to those little phytoplankton

that you would have seen images of when the waves turn a kind of neon blue and you jump in it and it sparkles. I really became very, very intent on finding it, for some, like I'm physically finding it. And actually, it occurred in my neighborhood just about a month ago, which was unbelievable. And my daughter saw it as well, because I had dragged her along to see it once

and she said it was just the most euphoric experience of her life. Like there's something, sometimes I wish we could do recordings of, you know, like the double rainbow man, that sound in his voice when he was just like so excited. That's what happens when you see something like these massive curling, sparkling, like electric blue waves in the middle of the night coming towards you. Or you say, you know, a whale breaching or whatever it is that you've kind of experienced in the natural world we can refer to a childish and

artless self and it can give you I don't know I kind of high I don't know what you think of when you think of awe, but I really have learnt that with awe you have to deliberately pursue it. We tend to think, oh, I will see a sunset at the end of the day, you might see the beginning of the day. You get there's some cool, I don't know, you know, cool things you can see in the parks at the end of your street, all those things great, but pursue it, like hunt them down because so Rachel Carson, when before she wrote the silent spring, all about pesticides, kick, kick, starting the modern environmental movement

in many ways, a few years before that she wrote the work she was most proud of was about wonder and there's about teaching children to wonder she used to take her nephew who was three or four years old out through the woods and they would go down and look at tidal pool in Maine at night with little torches and see the activity in there and she said that if she could have one wish if she was a fairy godmother of all the children out there, it would be to give them a sense of wonder that would be undermined throughout their lives, so that their attention wouldn't be distracted by trivial things.

Because she said, it gives us kind of an immeasurable kind of strength, and I was struck by that. It actually does. It makes us strong. Because when we're exposed to all, we feel small. It's less about ourselves. When we feel small, we're more likely to feel part of a community. We're more likely to want to protect the earth. And there's a kind of real ancient wisdom in that. And I was speaking to some First Nations people in Australia who said the same thing to me how crucial it is to be psychologically small, even though we're told so often, especially professionally, which I completely understand, that it's important to occupy space and have authority and command

attention, whatever. That's good in one realm, but actually, as human beings, that care for each other and care for the planet and the need to sometimes kind of cope with our own sorrows. This one is a great thing. Raising kids can be one of the greatest rewards of a parent's life. But come on, someday, parenting is unbearable. I love my kid, but is a new parenting podcast from Wondry that shares a refreshingly honest and insightful take on parenting.

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So if you like to laugh with us as we talk about the hardest job in the world, listen to, I love my kid, but wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen ad-free on the Amazon Music or Wondery app. Oh, completely. I mean, I was in Budapest, maybe this is towards the end of 2019, and I remember I went to this, I was walking by and it was happening as I walked in. It was in some enormous 500 year old church cathedral. And there were some sort of classical concerts,

some choir was singing. And I remember sitting in one of the pews, listening to this, I'm not a religious person, but I remember thinking like when it was beautiful and looking around, and I was trying to think like, what this must have felt like to a person 500 years ago? Because they would have been doing the same concerts in the same way, in the same room,

singing the same songs as I was hearing right then. And how, because so much less stuff had been explained because they'd never been in a skyscraper or an airplane or had an iPhone in their pocket. How much more marvelous and unimaginably unreal, all of that would have felt just the sort of, I felt jealous for a second, right? Like I felt jealous of what it would have been like to experience what I was experiencing in a less jaded, spoiled way.

And I think there's something pure and grateful and vulnerable about these either natural experiences and then also sort of man made experiences where you're just like, how did this happen? Like what made this? And then you're dwarfed by it. Yep. And it's, it's just, it's very powerful. Yeah. I think you can absolutely get that from music, from architecture. A lot of architecture

has got to be big, soaring arches, especially in cathedrals and those kinds of things. Yeah. Well, I designed to give us that sense of space and of wonder. We can have moments of awe at human achievement or witnessing moments of great magnanimity or generosity or those kinds of things. But the dual thing is a crucial part and I was struck by this as well when I was looking, I started looking through the diaries of astronauts and they talk about the overview effect. of astronauts and they talk about the overview effect. So it's when, you know, we sent, they're generally like scientists, engineers, mathematicians, teachers, interspersed and they come back also philosophers and poets and theologians. And they talk about like putting their finger up and a thumb up and obscuring the earth like a pee behind it. And how you have this sense of obviously perspective but determination to

care more fiercely for each other and protect what it is we have. Yeah, it's this, I think I forget which one said it but he was saying you you want to grab politicians by the back of their neck and see like get your shit together What are you doing? Yes, send them into space? Some of them can come back. Maybe someone will stay there But mostly come back because you want them to have that sense of perspective Especially when it comes to climate, you know, all the discussions we're having this week, when people in space, you know, national boundaries disappear. Maps are artificial creations, you know, in terms of, I mean, sorry, not the mapping, but the borders between countries are. And I think that's a really profound thing to recognize. There's a

whole bunch of science, which is being done around the question of awe now, which I find fascinating. And some are trying to measure awe in goose bumps and others by like they'll get people to walk through a grove of California and redwoods. And those who do, as opposed to a cropped control group who doesn't, are more likely to help someone who like falls over or drops a pen on the way into the part

than those who don't. People are more likely after they're standing next to something like a T-Rex to sign their names smaller to feel that they're more part of a group. And obviously there's more work to be done in it, but it's really, really interesting, I think. Well, when you think about those views from space, I remember thinking about this when I was writing Stillness,

my book Stillness is the key. That photo of Earth, the famous blue marble photo, how unreal it is to go, that photo's 50 years old. That's it. How recent are our ability to see the world from the distance that we are able to see it is so shockingly recent.

Like even, we talk about getting the 10,000 foot view. Like when was the first time a human being was even able to get a 10,000 foot view? I think that would, the answer to that would surprise people. Yeah, and if you went back to ancient times and you suggested this to someone, you would think that such a perspective would provoke a revolution. It should be so fundamentally transformed the way we see each other and the world and yet and yet, you know,

we've continued on in many destructive ways, I think. Another really interesting part of all too is there was a study recently, I think it was came out in the psychology journal Emotion. It took people on a bunch of all walks that a control group who just went on walks and then they had another group that had an all walk, and that meant you pay attention, you look around you, is that tree in, you know, the flowers blooming, what's happening with the, whatever, bandicoots, for example, you don't have them,

they're an endangered species, they live in my place, they squeak or die, and they bring in, they're little funny mass supergills, but anyway, they dig up entire areas. Anyway, I wouldn't, on my morning walks I see what damage the bandicoot has done that day. Now those who went on the all walks at the end of this several week period were kind of a lot more pro-social sentiments were more content. But one really fascinating metric was that they were asked to take photographs of themselves

throughout the walk. And at the beginning, over time, the actual physical head shrunk in terms of the proportion they took up of these selfies, right? So at the beginning, it's like, hey, here I am on my walk date, week one, next it would be, oh wow, look, can you see this you know autumn leaf behind me in this tree, it's actually phenomenal and their head gets, if I could literally, their head's got smaller, it's like this, it could not more perfectly illustrate what an antidote to narcissism it is actually paying more attention to the world. They were sort of shrinking into the, or becoming more a part of the landscape and the larger

picture instead of standing in center and taking up most of the frame. Exactly. That's so lovely. I love that. What is, why do you think swimming does this? Why is swimming so uniquely or well-suited to bringing about some of the feelings we're talking about? And I think you brought up sort of phosphorescence. It does seem like a lot of the species that have that are underwater species. Yeah, no, that is true.

It's absolutely, although, to my delight, in during lockdown, there were a bunch of discoveries that like all these Australian marsupials do actually go under UV light. Wow. Yeah. And those scorpions too. No, like platypus too. Not worth it, there were a whole bunch of bombats too and they just discovered it by using a different torch. It was actually

like a light shone on them in a UV torch in a museum. It was first in the States. I can't quite remember which university and then they scrambled to have a look at it here but you're right. It's especially in the deep deep sea, which I'm kind of obsessed with because of this so funky looking down there, like spectacular light shows from all these different octopuses and you know, squids and so on, but then also these really crazy looking blob fish and angle fish. But that's another that's another discussion. So I was writing columns for the New York Times and my editor said to me, why don't you write something? Because he knew that I was ocean swimming every morning at seven.

He said, why don't you write something about it? And I sat and I was really puzzling over what it was that it did to me. So I start to swim at the southern end of a beach and then we go round with a group of people, usually at seven at seven in the morning. we go round with a group of people, usually at 7 o'clock, 7 o'clock. You go round the headland to the next beach and you swim over a protected, it's like like I'm not sure what it is in Mars but it's a couple of kilometers and you go over this protected marine bay. So there's little stripy sharks, port jacks and sharks, there's cuddle fish that I became very obsessed with and still am. And you know occasionally we get dolphins, we get

turtles, a bit different kinds of fish like and I was like okay so obviously and a lot of people like a really once they start this it's become a huge group now people, a lot of people got off antidepressants once they start to do this, they call it vitamin C. And there is something, and I was puzzling over it. I'm like, okay, it gets me up in the morning, and it makes me exercise. And then you also see people and banter,

like just stupid banter with people with which you only have in common the fact that you love the tides, and should you wear a wetsuit on art or What is the ocean doing today is actually a really healthy thing to do first thing in the morning because you're just mucking around right and then But but there was something else and obviously there's physical beauty to it. I think exercising outside, there's evidence around how superior that is. But I then realized that it was about awe and it was something about swimming on the edge of a vast ocean whose rips and tides and curls

you have to try to understand and to navigate carefully and respectfully. And the wonder. So when you're going along and I see a cuddlefish and they're so cool, like they've got these funny heads with these like trunks coming out and they display, like if you get a real show off, they will, I mean, I had one just recently

a few weeks ago. So he was like, I'm gonna go over the weeds now and I will go from this cool like blonde golden color, which is over the sand, to this like prickly brown red color over the weed. And now I'm going to go over the rocks and I'm going to change to exactly that color. And now when you raise your two from fingers at it, it actually will raise them back at you. He was like, I'm gonna go forwards, I'm gonna go backwards. And I was so, I was just like crazy with it

because that couldn't believe it. And so I've raised down to try to see if I could see this giant cut off again. And it was giving me something wonderful. And during those times when it was really difficult, I realized that these sightings and that experience was sustaining me in a way that I wanted to try to articulate. I wonder if part of it with the ocean, it was just less familiar with them, so there's a sort of ocean. We're just less familiar with them. So there's a sort of

that's right. Strangeness to them. And then I think you talk about this in the book. And I think it's that there's no screens down there. No noise. It's just it's like being in the womb or something. That's right. And it's like it's also a rhythmical breathing thing too. It's like three, one, two, three, three, one. And you just, you know, there's something soothing. The blokey wrote Blue Minds who I forgot, I forgot his name now, but he said that water

meditates you. And I think- I love that. That's right, right? So yeah, it does overtake you in that sense. And I also, a good true, really attracted to, even those, there's commotion under the ocean. And there's a dawn chorus there amongst fish, too, which I did not know and was delighted

to find out. But underneath there is a silence and a stillness. And I really was drawn to that in the period after I was sick and when I was recovering. And that's why I've actually started to learn how to free-dile. Because just being under and holding my breath. And I actually saw it as a state like what the Tibetan, you know, what what is called the Bado. So a state we all suspended between birth and rebirth.

And it's an incredibly peaceful prospect to me. Yeah. There's a river in Texas. It starts from a natural spring. It's in San Marcos. And there's this sort of rare species of, well I think it might be the only place. It's like an underwater rice. I forget what it's called, but it's this sort of wavy, like tall grass. The river is, it's like millions of gallons or just coming up, you can see where the river starts. It just starts out of nowhere. And this, you know, millions of gallons are just pouring out. And you get underwater, you can kind of swim against the current at like almost like a treadmill or one of those infinity pools.

And you're just watching these like waves of grass go sway into the current like it's, you know, you're in the middle of the prairie somewhere but you're underwater. And it's one of the most sort of incredible rhythmic things that I've ever experienced in my life. And yeah, I think you go and you experience one of those things and then you leave,

to me, what the idea of the book, your book is, is like that energy that you bring back into the world, we need more of that. Yes, I think that's right. And it's almost hard to put your finger on. And that's what I was trying to grasp. Like, what is that? When you're sitting on a hill, you know, in some area where there's no light pollution,

you're looking at the stars, like, what is that? We all know that that soothes us. We all know that it makes us feel better, but but but why? And that's why I think, you know think scientists are trying to get to it. Why have we designed life to be literally the opposite of that and to have as little of that as humanly possible? That is the strange thing about the modern world. The infinite distraction. I think that's the same. Yeah.

But even just environmentally, right? Like for instance, on the Gulf Coast in America, it's somewhat recently, that's pretty even just environmentally right like like for instance on the Gulf Coast in America They it's somewhat recently. There's this like law that Because turtles are attracted to light you can't have lights on any building that faces the ocean So it's pretty incredible Yeah, but you're sort of walking along the ocean. It's completely dark And it's you can actually see the stars and it's wonderful. But to think that this was a thing they had to,

this is an incredible gift. Anyone that experiences it loves it, just as if you get out of the city and you're away from the light pollution, you can actually see the stars. So this is incredible. And then you're like, this only exists by accident, or this only exists because they rammed

this unpopular law down people's throats. If people had the freedom to choose, they would choose not this, even though they love it when they have it. It's insane. Yeah, that's so true. It's like, it's almost like we're becoming toddlers again that need to re-burn attention.

I don't know about you, but when I write, I download, I think the Freedom app so it locks all of my other internet access on my computer. And I don't get it. Because otherwise I'm back. And then sometimes I have to go and put my phone like the other end of the house or something. So I'm not looking at that. I have to really fight for my attention. And that's why I'm at the ECO Resort where they promise you you can't get Wi-Fi. Because we get distracted. But the

more the world has become urbanized and we only tipped over a few years ago into more people living in urban than regional centers. The more we're going to have to be reminded of these mountain, growing mountain of evidence about how good green is for us, the more we're going to have to be reminded of these mountain, growing mountain of evidence about how good green is for us, the side of green, even in our plants, even in our house, like in our neighborhoods in our communities, how crucial that is. I was just reading an article this morning about the shrinking backyard in Australia and what that's going to mean in terms of climate and creating kind of little heat pools. So yeah, I was reminded of this too, when I'm not sure if you're aware of this growing

forest therapy movement. And I went and met Professor King Lee in a Tokyo to talk to him about, and he is a very busy and in demand moment. So I'm Tsunrin Yoko, who is what it's called. So, and people are being taught around the world to be far as the paraphrase, and also to go on these, you know, walks into natural areas and use all their five sensors and take it in slowly. And what I find that wonderful in the sense that that's what people do.

And obviously it's not too expensive and all tied up with eager results that the not everyone can access. That's a great thing to be doing, but there's also strikes me at the same time that it's almost sad that we have to be taught how to do that again. Yes. Yeah, like that you mentioned indigenous peoples. It's like we're paying, we're rediscovering a thing that has been well known for thousands of years by people that we not only didn't listen to,

but tried to take away, not only do we take the stuff away from them, we took them away from it and tried to indoctrinate them with our understanding of reality to their detriment and our detriment. That's right. And I mean, when you think about one of essential tenants as non-indigenous person, I won't explain it as well

as it should be explained, but the central tenant that Aboriginal people in Australia always talk about is listening to country, you listen to country, and in a way that's a psychologically soothing thing for a person to take time out and be still and get off your devices and listen to country, but there's a second part of that, which is country sick now. Like what are we doing to country? Right. Are we caring for it? And are we disconnected from it?

Are we taming it and conquering it and plundering it and mining it? Or are we nurturing it? And Aboriginal people have always been custodians of the land. That's what we, you know, the phrase that we always use. And that's caretakers and that's a fundamentally different understanding of what it means to be human. Yeah, and, I mean, there's also this sort of myth making or revisionism that we can tell about, you know, first peoples where they also had problems with over hunting and not sort of burning large swaths of land to do what they want. I mean, human beings, I think just generally have this tendency of, of like sort of, there's the part of us that appreciates land and wants to be a custodian of it. And then there's the other part of us that want something for it.

And so we exploit it and we ravage it and we steal from it. And we don't realize that what we're really doing is stealing from ourselves and stealing from the people that we claim to care about, which is our family and subsequent generations. Right, exactly, for everyone. Yeah, I mean, I haven't seen evidence of that, you know, in Australian history, and we have the oldest continuous living culture.

On the planet, 65,000 years and one of the big things that actually has been an issue is that Aboriginal people always did burning as a way of controlling the climate and controlling the bushfires. So we have it. We have like having a lot of discussions around the times of these, like horrific bushfires about whether we're the, we've not like, well, no, we were rejecting their ancient wisdom on how, you know, if you sort of take over certain functions from nature, then you also have to take over some of the destructive, uh, functions of nature or you make yourself super, super vulnerable.

Yeah, exactly. It's like in California, like a million acres a year would burn on its own. And then now nobody burns anything. And then the whole state catches on fire and people go, how could this happen? It's like, this has been happening for a million years. Exactly. We just have so much to learn on that front, I think. We better do it quickly. Exactly. We just had so much to learn on that front, I think. We better do it quickly.

Yeah, or there won't be anything left to learn. One of the things I was going to ask you, I have some Victoria questions, which we'll loop back to, but I was curious, you know, like going through what you went through, I was struck when I, and obviously before I knew what you had gone through, one of the things I was struck by when I was reading about her life was just how much pain she must have been in as a human being or just throughout her life, not just the pain of the loss of her husband and the pain of childbirth, but it sounded like when they, when they sort of looked at her body after death, they were like, how did this woman stand this? I know.

And that was one of those things I was awkward about because I realized that too. That's why she wanted to be carried around by strong servants a lot of the time. I mean, childbirth had literally kind of ravaged her body in a way that she would never examine by doctors and never received any help for what must have been an ongoing, very difficult physical condition.

So that gave me a lot more insight and compassion into the fact that she was not physically mobile, if you're not physically mobile, you can have other attendant health issues and so on. So, yeah, and that was that the doctor found that she had a prolapse on her dead bed when he examined her. And it's a thing of like, do we tell that story when we tell a queen? Is that like too much, you know, like, you know, going into her privacy, is it something we should know, we shouldn't know, and you don't want to be prudent about it, but we also need to understand that in, you know, centuries past and still today what childbirth can do to women and

what they endure silently. And I think it is important to talk about it. You think about someone like Queen Elizabeth, if we sort of marvel at her decades and decades of service. But then you're like, what if you found that she was also in chronic pain every single moment of that service? You realize like, oh, this wasn't like an impressive person. This was like a superhero. Like this is, this is incomprehensible that a person could have done this. Yeah, but they talk about the veins of iron that went through Victoria's character. That's right. And they didn't have the pain relief in the way that they did now.

And a lot of her uncles had been addicted to OPM and Gout and had done, you know, like we're making a tattoo and indulged every kind of gambling and like dozens of mistresses and all the rest of it and she was so upright. And but also think about another thing that she was constantly attacked for which was her reclusiveness. She worked. She worked very hard, but she didn't want to go out into public and she didn't want to leave the comfort of her carriage a lot of the time Towards the end of her life and she had a big Jubilee. She didn't get out. It drew up in front of the

Avio the cathedral and she stayed in there for the rest of the ceremony But now we would understand that if we know again that they're right that she was in chronic pain Yeah, you know Churchill had that joke about I forget who he's they arrive, but she was in chronic pain. Yeah, Churchill had that joke about, I forget who he's talking about, but he's like, they're a modest man who has much to be modest about. It's sort of funny, we admire sort of modesty or humility or restraint,

but then you look at someone like Queen Elizabeth or you look at Queen Victoria and you're like, oh, but this person is that way, but they could get, or you look at Queen Victoria and you're like, oh, but this person is that way, but they could get, if you look at their predecessors, particularly their male predecessors or, you know, kings and royalty of any nationality in any country, you're like, think of what you could get away with that you have chosen not to let yourself get away with that you have chosen not to let yourself get away with. That I'm always very impressed, the sort of voluntary regulation, you know, like she could have done whatever she wanted.

Instead she chose to work very hard. Yeah, I know. I mean, she did stretch the limits of constitutionality. She did, you know, have a visceral dislike of William Gladstone, tried to prevent him from coming Prime Minister. She corresponded with generals in the field directly about how to conduct the wars. I mean, when there was overreach, that was the kind of thing she did, but you're right.

I mean, she conducted herself in a way. She didn't. She burst into tears on upon discovering how close she was to the throne. And I think we know it's a heavy burden, and the inherited power is a very peculiar thing. I think we kind of fundamentally recognize that. But she grasped it and she performed her duty.

And so England has had the Victorian and the current, you know, Elizabethan, years of these women who should never be underestimated as decorative or functional because of how hard they work. And the fact that both of them have been the most famous working women of their time. One of the things, there's a couple of things that in that book that you just threw off off handedly that really hit me and one of them connects to the new book also and I ended up doing a bunch of research on it when I read it. But you sort of threw out this weird thing about William Gladstone, how we like

to just go cut down trees as a hobby and that strikes me as a, I mean, it's a form of, I guess, forest bathing, but also just sort of hobby and getting lost in the flow state of doing the thing. Kind of an unusual hobby, but I just, I love the peculiarity of it. Yeah, that's right. Oh, that's so smart. I've not had anyone weave together these two books before. So that's quite a delightful insight for me. That's right. I mean, and he would do it for months at a time. He would have thousands of trees he'd chuck down in his lifetime. Three months, and then go off and really I don't know, think about what to do about Ireland. Weed a few heavy tomes, and he would conduct a few sermons. He always gave a few sermons for his

servants, which I'm sure they were thrilled about every week. I mean Victoria said she spoke to him. He speaks to me as if it was a public meeting. And that was part of his problem with the awkwardness of his relationship with her, that he was kind of strict and booming and very, very smart, but possibly charmless whereas, you know, Benjamin just Rayleigh was so elegant in prose and manna and constantly complimenting her and she was utterly charmed by it. I think he was, you know, really great company. So that was part of that. But no, I think that's it. He did get into that's how he got into flow. And this is a man who gave four

to five hour speeches, you know, on the stump, which itself is hard to fathom as well. Right. You must have been practicing them in his head, as he was doing. Right. Yeah, but Doc points for his work. But imagine the luxury of being able to do that now. Like, we don't know if we did a day off, a little bit of weekend. Right, no, it's like, sorry, you can't reach the president. He's chopping down trees on his property right now.

No, except that. In the floor. Yeah. Yeah. The other offended thing I loved less connected, but more of a fascinating historical, what if that I wanted to ask you about. You mentioned that there was some talk of Queen Victoria marrying, was it Van Buren or Pierce, I forget who it was, but there was some idea that she would marry either a former

or sitting U.S. president. Was that right? Oh, yeah. That's right. Am I making this up? I remember it being in the book. It was a, it was, it was gossip, but not actually founded as so many things were. When she was very eligible.

And that was, that was one of the names that was suggested, I believe, in the American papers, but it never took, never took hold. And Albert was her great lover, but she also had a second love, which was John Brown her servant. I was just thinking of how different the special relationship would have been, had America and Britain after the Revolution, after the War of 1812, which wasn't that distant to her age, had been somehow joined by marriage. Once again, it would have been insane.

That would have been amazing. And Britain would have gone completely crazy. Can you imagine her marrying an American? I mean, they destroyed the German that she married. They just couldn't, they were constantly at home. Right. For being German and like they said he was penniless and used under under a fog of suspicion for that, even though Albert was one of the best things that actually happened

to the monarchy for quite a long time, but no, he was a fascinating prospect actually. You know, when we're talking about someone like Queen Victoria or some of the people you mentioned, it strikes me that this sort of phosphorescence is, well, I call it stillness. But it's like when somebody has it, you can just feel it. Like when you're, Marcus Realis in Meditations, he says, you know, you want to be like the smelly goat in the room. Like everyone knows it's there, which I think is a funny image. But like when you're around someone who has that, although they're not literally lighting up,

we do talk about people who light up a room. You're just around them and you can, you know, this energy, what people talk about energy, which obviously doesn't really exist, but of course it also exists. Yeah, and it's energy like like I think, with the phosphorescence thing, sometimes lighting up a room can mean charisma and attractiveness and charm and extraversion. But you also want to know how you feel when that person leaves a room.

Go back to Gladstone and Israeli again. A woman, I'm trying to work out if these American ambassadors wife, I can't remember, but Go back to Gladstone and Israeli again. I'm trying to work out if these American ambassadors wife, I can't remember, but you said that sitting next to William Gladstone at a dinner party, you felt like you were sitting next to the smartest man in the world. You were so impressive and so brilliant. Sitting next to Israeli, you felt like you were the smartest

woman in the world. And that was the essence of his charm, I think, but in my family, and I write about this in my book, we talk about basement people and penthouse people. You have some encounters with people. You walk away and you know, someone can be a little bit toxic, said a few things, oh, how many finished your book yet? Oh, or whatever. Okay.

And then that just takes you down. And someone else can take you up and that's kind of, and that's to the pen house. And what is it about those people? My mother was one of those people. She was a very calming, and she was an introvert. But there was something about her that was so strong and content and non-judgmental, and she had this grace that you've always left feeling better. And I think that's a real aspiration to be that person. I think with a phosphorescent person, it feels like they know what makes them strong and they're not kind of needing input. They've worked out how to pay

attention to the world and to others and how to shrink their own heads in photos on all walks, you know. There's something very appealing about people who who have that work down. Yeah it's it's like, they make you, I don't know, you know who sees her Milan is, the dog trade. I have a dog. You're like, really with this, yes. Yeah, it's like somebody where you're like, how does this person just like have an energy that like an animal can sense, right? Like again, it feels, it feels preposterously woo-woo that someone could

you're like, oh, I felt their energy or they have very calming energy or whatever. But then, then you experience it and you're like, oh, this is real. Like, this is real. That's exactly right. I think, I mean, I have had my dog trained. I think that what he's often picking up with is the massive bag of treats that they always have. That's true. Be very effective. But I know exactly what you're talking about, and I'm wondering if what you've noticed in all your research is that it's people who adhere to, say, you know, a stoic philosophy

and really deliberately pursue it and impact stillness and meditation into their day and that kind of takes them somewhere else. I mean, what I've noticed with my work on awe and wonder and even talking to people who regularly, free dive or serve, serve for whatever, that does give them something or people who are conscious of, oh yeah, off being still or of looking outwards. They're kind of the people I really want to spend time with. Is that what you sound like? Yeah, it's like, you know, for instance, someone who is like very skilled at martial arts, they could be wearing totally a regular street clothes. And they sort of walk in the room

and they touch you and you're like, oh, this person, this person has a carriage or a sense of themselves that's been changed by something they've experienced or learned that I don't have as just a regular person. Maybe this is, could also get this someone who's been a war, or also, like, I don't know, I never met the Dalai Lama, but someone who has just done an intense sort of spiritual discipline you're just like oh you're operating at a frequency that is so distinct that

it's I'm getting vibes. Yeah that's that's right and then how do you get to that place because I think sometimes we think it's by, I don't know, wrote learning verses or by ticking off whether it's religious or secular rituals. And it's actually not. It's kind of creating a space where, wherever it is about you, I mean, like, because we don't have many spaces where we talk about character and how you form character. right? It's not cutting and pasting inspirational quotes. It's developing and practice, whatever that may be.

What is it for you? Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I think it's, I have this weird experience. I can feel myself getting into a weird place. I tend to, I run usually lately, I've been running in the morning, but then I sort of work out in the evening and after my kids have gone to sleep, I'll work out in the gym,

and then I usually, I live out in the country, so I'll go for like a short walk on my property in the dark, no light, just sort of by the mood. And I can just feel myself accessing like a different frequency that I'm not normally on where I'm kind of present and locked in and calm and quiet in a way that's just yet like sort of not not where I normally am. Yeah, season that interesting because that's what I was trying to discover like what is that? Is it the moon? is it the space, is it the silence? And swimming is exactly like that for me. I mean, my kids will push me out the door. Yesterday my kid was like mom, Sam was like, like, you need it. Yeah, you got to have your swim. He said, I don't know why you miss it, like every now and then, because the days you miss it, you always say, you don't feel the same and you know aren't the same. You just got to, and I'm like, yeah, I know. I'm aware of all of that.

But, you know, a lot of people could say the same for exercise as well, but I think it is repetitive behavior. It's almost like a, yeah, I mean, that's like, it's a spiritual practice, I think. Australia is the perfect place to swim just because it's also insanely naturally beautiful. Like those rock pools are, I mean, I don't know.

Austin has some amazing sort of natural swimming pools, but I don't think there's anything that comes close to those swim clubs in Australia. Yeah, I think though what I learned, and as you would know, one of the best things about riding a book is the correspondence that you get from people. Especially about the stuff that we all share like during COVID and maybe the last presidential election in your country and some of the stuff that's been happening here is like there's just so much division and toxicity and it's really wonderful to think about the things that we all love and we all share. And I'm acutely conscious that you don't need to be sitting on top of a, you know, the

grand canyon or swimming with whale sharks to get a sense of that or, and a lot of people can find it in their own backyards. I mean, a sunrise and a sunset can give you that thing. It's just, I think, for me working out what it is that takes you outside of yourself and just building into your day. It's kind of it's it's as simple as that. Yeah, there's a Senica line, I wish I could speak a Latin, but it's something like the whole world is a temple of the gods. And I think if you can go through life that way, not only does it

one, sort of give you a good sense of what our obligations are to the planet that we've been given, but it also allows you to sort of constantly be in that state of awe or reverence because you're seeing it as a temple as opposed to just a Random, you know, you're you're really seeing the landscape Yeah, that's right. It's almost like I don't know it's like almost living in a state of grace in a strange way and actually seeing how Yeah, everything is like childbirth I hope we do our kids are milling around all the time, but Unbelievable like the day when you you know, you must have been like this when you partner, go, it's just like unbelievable. And that happens every day all over the place. Like, what the hell is that speaking of a or, you know, well, my, my son turned five

yesterday. And you're just like, this, this thing is five years old and it's like tall and walking around and has opinions about things and tells you stories about it's like If you look at life from the right eye, it's it's almost like you're you're high on drugs because it's so incomprehensibly weird and beautiful and wonderful and blows your mind all the time if you let it. Yeah, that's right. And again, it's like to anyone who might be listening, who's going through a really horrible, like, feral time and doesn't know how they're going to get out of it, it might sound like, oh yeah, you know, here they are bending on about, childbirth or treat, or, you know, nice waves or whatever.

And I think, when I was going through, like, black times, it's like, you times, it's like, you're not going to go from being flat out in your bed to a state of ecstasy on a cliff in a moment. It's understanding what it is that can give you this strength and try to bring it into your life by increments and before you know it. I mean, there's a fantastic book that's been written. I think it's called It's the Sound of a Snail Eating and it was a one. He was a really unwell and she like to the extent she really could not get out of bed for a considerable period of time. And someone gave her a plant and did not know there was a snail on it. And every day she observed this snail. And she wrote this beautiful book about it because she, you know, the snail then reproduced and she, you know, I've like learned about all the, but the sound that it makes when it eats and the thousands of rows of teeth and wove that into her own story.

And you can see that this snail, in a way, gave her life and it's extraordinary because she was pulled out of herself at a time when she didn't really want to inhabit herself. And who would know? I mean, if you know, like, honestly you something really terrible happens, you wouldn't say here's a snail, but people who found that out by going through that experience. And I was exactly the same with cuddlefish. And that's what took me to understand that making a habit out of awe can, you know, can be like a leg rope to survival. Well, I think that's, that's what I said because it's not, they didn't gift her a trip to the Grand Canyon or to,

you know, Stonehenge or something. She had it, she had it within her, the gave her the plant, but it could have been anything. It was that she was open to seeing and experiencing and not closing herself off to the wonderful thing. That's right. And then lo and behold, what happens when you do? Yeah. Speaking of last insane mind blowing things, I only just learned this recently because I was reading a book about it to my kids. But did you know that wombats have square poop and they're the only animal in the world that does that?

Yes. Yeah. Fucking where does that. Yes. Yeah. Where is that? There's a place called Kangaroo Valley, which of course is inhabited almost entirely by one bats that I go and stay out with my kids. We go on night missions to try to find them with torches and stuff, but they're everywhere. And there's these cubes.

And I was really amused recently to say that someone had done like a study and worked out that, oh, it's their intestines. Like that's how they actually produce it. I'm like, well, we didn't know, when they'd nobody knew how to like this year. They're like, of course, that's what happened. You know what I mean?

It's not like they took one afterwards. They've, you know, been just shape it into a little mess. It's like, but you know, one that's are amazing. A friend of mine wrote a book about them actually. One of my friends who's got a great capacity for one day He's written a book about great rights and also one that's incredibly fast And and children are so good at this and if I can talk about this But if I just to mention this book it's by James James Woodford called the secret life of one bat and he found so the world

Expert to date the best work. It's been done on the life of Wombats was by a 12-year-old boy. He used to sneak out of his boarding school in Victoria, at night, with a torch and wriggle down into Wombat holes. He learned how they moved, how they related to each other, how they grunted to each other, the sounds they make, and he went back and wrote it all up, and to date it's this definitive thing. And this is the right and there's something about the capacity of kids for wonder.

And I was really struck by Martha Nusbaum saying, what sounds like a really simple thing, but like how wonderful, drinkable little stars. Like, how are your kids to wonder what that is? Like, what is that? I'm still wondering about the stars, you know? And that cultivating that curiosity and that openness to, or is a great thing to give a child,

and then sometimes we find actually they're giving it back to us. Well, and that your job as an adult is, it's not even your job to cultivate it, it's your job to not crush it. Because it's already there, your job is not to steal it from them, which is what so many parents do.

Yeah, but also to just take them out whenever you can. Like, my little one for some reason is very resistant. I don't know if that's his way of revealing against me, is to not want to swim, it's like that's a massive rebellion. But like, I will drag, if there's big surf and big seas near my place, there's massive waves, and I like to go and sit on the cliffs

and watch the surfers. And I've dragged him out to do that recently like I dragged them to see the bioluminescence when it was happening in the waves. And then they get it. And I feel like the fact that my daughter was yelling at me that we had to run as fast as we could because we'd heard the two beaches along.

There was blue, by luminescence in the waves and she was yelling at me at like 11 o'clock at night. And of course I was in my swimmers and out the doors before you could say anything. I felt that when I heard her running along the beach and she was like, oh my God, oh my God, I felt like that she was gonna be okay. I found that very reassuring that she had that capacity to run kind of screaming into the light, no matter whatever it is. She was going through at the time.

That's beautiful. Well, we'll call it there. I truly loved the new book and I loved the other book and I'm a huge fan and I'm so glad we got to talk and I'm glad that you found, found light amidst the darkness and now you're doing in a very fast, forensic way, sharing it with other people. It's been an absolute delight to talk to you Ryan. Thank you so much. I love how you work the books to get up. No one wants to. That's my job. Yes, wonderful. Thank you. My new book, Courage is Calling is now officially

a New York Times bestseller. Thank you so much to everyone who supported the book. It was literally and figuratively overwhelming. We signed almost 10,000 copies of the book, which just, you know, it hit me right here. And I appreciate it so much. If you haven't picked up a copy or you want to pick up a signed copy as a gift, please do. You can get your copy.dailystoic.com. Hey, Prime Members, you can listen to the Daily Stoic early and ad-free on Amazon Music, download the Amazon Music app today, or you can listen early and ad-free with

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