The Daily Stoic - Ryan Speaks with Kevin Rose at the Commonwealth Club

Episode Date: October 18, 2020

Today's episode features Ryan's conversation with Digg Founder Kevin Rose at the Commonwealth Club as part of the launch tour for his newest book, Lives of the Stoics.Get Lives of the Stoics: https://geni.us/LUN7***If you enjoyed this week’s podcast, we’d love for you to leave a review on Apple Podcasts. It helps with our visibility, and the more people listen to the podcast, the more we can invest into it and make it even better.Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: http://DailyStoic.com/signupFollow @DailyStoic:Twitter: https://twitter.com/dailystoicInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/dailystoic/Facebook: http://facebook.com/dailystoicYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/dailystoicSee 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 Stoic, something that can help you live up to those four stoic virtues of courage, justice, wisdom, and temperance. And here on the weekend, we take a deeper dive into those same topics. We interview stoic philosophers, we reflect, we prepare. We think deeply about the challenging issues of our time. And we work through this philosophy in a way that's more

possible here when we're not rushing to worker to get the kids to school. When we have the time to think to go for a walk, to sit with our journals and to prepare for what the future will bring. Hi, I'm David Brown, the host of Wunderree'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 episode of the Daily Stoke podcast.

It's been a surreal couple of weeks, obviously, with the new book, you usually travel around and go to all these events and see you guys up close and and sign books and meet retailers and you do media and all these local cities. Obviously, that's out the window with the pandemic. And one of the things that got canceled, at least in person, was a talk I was going to do at the Commonwealth Club in California in San Francisco. I got to do an event there with Chase Jarvis for conspiracy a few years ago, but we were going to do an interview with Kevin Rose, who's a friend of mine and a fan of the Stokes, and just a great overall dude, fellow traveler on the St stoicism stuff on some Eastern philosophy, parenty young kids like me, and then also just one of the great technology investors, entrepreneurs of our time. So I was looking forward to get to seeing him in person and doing a sort of a fireside chat. That didn't happen, but he

was nice enough to agree to do an online version of it. Common with clubs been around since the 1900s. I'm reading this book about FDR right now, and it's like he was swinging through and did a talk at the Commonwealth Club when he was running for president. So it's this really old-timey, awesome private club, but they do really cool events. So Kevin was nice enough to do it remotely.

So he and I talked for about an hour. He asked me questions or some reader questions as well. It was such an awesome chat. I wanted to share it with you guys for today's episode. Since he does an intro on there, I won't belabor it. We'll just get right into it. And of course, you can check out Lies of the Stoics anywhere, books are sold, and hearing great things from everyone. I appreciate it. I hope you're staying safe. I'm not doing my events. I hope you are not going to weddings and doing other crazy stuff. We're all being smart and safe and, you know, we'll get through this.

Hello, everyone, and welcome to today's virtual program at the Commonwealth Club of California. My name is Kevin Rose, and I'll be moderating today's program. The Commonwealth Club would like to thank their members, donors, and supporters for making this and all their other programs possible. They are grateful for your support and hope others will follow the example to support the club during these uncertain times. Today I am joined by Ryan Holiday, author of the new book Lives of the Stoic. Ryan has been credited by the New York Times for increasing the popularity of stosism by applying it to the modern age. His writings and conversations highlight the necessity of a balanced life and limiting the noise to remain focused on achieving a personalized version

of success. We will be discussing the virtues of stoicism, its core values, and a lot more in the next hour. And I want you to get your questions answered as well. So if you're watching this along with us live, please put your questions into the text chat on YouTube or on the comments section on Facebook and we'll be getting them later into the program. But first, well, I guess I want to thank the most important person here that our guest today, Ryan, thanks for joining us. Yeah, thanks for having me. This is really cool. I was looking forward to doing it in person, but we'll make this work. Yeah, I know. It's a bummer we haven't been able to hang in a while. It's good to be reconnected.

I'm excited to talk about your new book because I've always really loved everything that you've done around stoicism. Like the New York Times said, putting it on the map, I think that obviously we had heard about it at some point in school, but I don't think anyone has ever done as much to popularize it as you have. I'm really curious, I guess a great place to start would be for someone that has no idea what we're talking about. What's your new book about and what is lives of the Stoics? So I think of the subset of people who've heard of Stoicism, the actual number of them that know really anything about the Stoics themselves is an even smaller group.

And what I was fascinated by what I wanted to do in the book was go, okay, so maybe some people sort of vaguely heard about these ideas of the philosophy, or maybe they've read my other books, right? They're heavily influenced by the ideas of, you know, Seneca and Marcus Reles and Epic Titus and Cato, but like who were they as people? How did they actually live the ideas? Because I think we could all agree, like, if the philosopher has really interesting ideas,

but is actually like a garbage person that says something about either the validity of the ideas or it says something about the sincerity of the person who is having it. And so there really is no historical work which really captures who the stoics were certainly in one place. And so that was the aim is like, who were these people? And how did they actually follow the teachings of Stoicism? Do you think that this book really get into practical kind of tactics that one could use?

Because I think when you talk about who were they and how they lived, you know, for me the exposure has always been via your blog or a newsletter or something where you see a quote from a stoke and you're like, oh wow, that's really profound, but there's no tactics there, really. So Plutarch, who's the maybe the greatest biographer in history, whose son, our grandson actually becomes Mark Cerelylis's philosophy teacher, and anyway, he makes this big distinction between biography and lives. He's saying, if you're doing biography, you're here all the facts about this person.

When you get a modern biography, it's always like this thick, it's filled with footnotes. Often you even get the sense that the biography doesn't particularly like the subject right it's almost like a good a good tactic for biographers is just to try to destroy the person that they're that they're biogurizing so Plutarch like two thousand years ago was saying you know it's not really the facts of these people that matter it matters like he's saying it may be in a joke or in one quote or one story that you not only understand the complete essence of that human being, but it gives you something to apply in your own life.

So like take friends in Zeno who's the founder of stoicism, like obviously what happened in his life is interesting and that he's a historically important individual. Obviously, what happened in his life is interesting and that he's a historically important individual. But the fact that stoicism is founded by a guy after he suffers a shipwreck and loses everything, I think this works on multiple layers, because it's a fact, but it's also telling us how the stoicism actually worked, and then it's inspiring us because we may be going

through a bankruptcy or a divorce or some sort of physical disability and we're having to rebuild the broken pieces of our lives. So ultimately, the reason the book is called Lives of the Stoics is because it's a reference to that ancient idea of analyzing a life in a way that makes you morally and professionally better. Hmm. I'm curious. What drew you in? Like, what was it about your life where you were like, wow, these, these, these different principles and that I'm so fast and I got to go deeper here, I want to apply some of this to my own life. Was it a certain time? Was it something you were going

through? Well, I was 18 or 19 years old and I was at a conference and I asked the speaker sort of like a common wealth club style event and I asked the speaker what he was reading and he recommended. Epic Titus, I ended up somewhat ignoring him and I read Marcus Aurelius instead. Marcus Aurelius, this is not original copy, but it's one of them. But I was just so amazed because I was taking a philosophy class in college, but like Aristotle is somewhat interesting, but you're not like, I'm listening to Aristotle because he was great. We're listening to Aristotle because he was smart.

You know what I mean? And so the idea that philosophy isn't just brilliant theories, but it's actually the hard one wisdom of successful or influential or great men and women was a distinction that I'd never really thought of. So, Marcus really is, you're like, wow, this guy's philosophical, but he's testing these theories in the laboratory of, you know, running an empire. So I think I think what it struck me was one, the writing style was just so accessible and interesting, but it was that this wasn't just for like academic purposes or idle, you know, exploration. it was for life. And it was that was that the case with all the Stoics like did they all actually apply these to their their everyday life? So the big distinction between the Epicurians and the Stoics is and that we get this from Santa Coobley says, you know, the Epicurian believes like they're going to attend to their

own personal self development unless some emergency calls them to be involved in public life. And he says, the stoic will only not be involved if there's an emergency. So like the epicureans were much more Buddhist in their retreat from the world into the exploration of the inner domain. You could sort of like in the Epicurian Garden to like the monastery. But the Stelix were generals and senators and artists,

like what's, I was just reading this, it's so insane. So in the ancient world there was Seneca and for most of modern history we believe that Seneca the playwright and Seneca the politician slash philosopher were two separate people. If we couldn't even wrap our head around the fact that Seneca was the most famous playwright of his time, the most famous politician of his time and the most famous philosopher of his time. So just the idea that pretty much all of the stuff, certainly all the ones in the book were Stoics, were doers in addition to being philosophers like Kato famously doesn't write any philosophical works, but he's considered a great philosopher because of his political conduct. Ah, the Bahamas. What if you could live in a penthouse above the crystal clear ocean working during the

day and partying at night with your best friends and have it be 100% paid for? FTX Founder Sam Bankman Freed lived that dream life, but it was all funded with other people's money, but he allegedly stole. Many thought Sam Bankman Freed was changing the game as he graced the pages of Forbes and Vanity Fair. Some involved in crypto saw him as a breath of fresh air from the usual Wall Street buffs with his casual dress and ability to play League of Legends during boardroom meetings. But in less than a year, his exchange would collapse, and SPF would find himself in a jail

cell, with tens of thousands of investors blaming him for their crypto losses. From Bloomberg and Wondering, comes Spellcaster, a new six-part docu-series about the meteoric rise and spectacular fall of FTX, and its founder, Sam Beckman Fried. Follow Spellcaster, wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, prime members, you can listen to episodes Add Free on Amazon Music. Download the Amazon Music app today. And then out of all these,

as you've been going through this and doing the research and finding out, you know, these different ways to apply these philosophies to your own life, what changes have you seen personally? You said that you had started adopting this when you were at 19, so it's been a bit. Yeah, no. I guess in the next year or so, I'll have known about stoicism for almost as long as I

did not know about stoicism. It'll be half my life, which is kind of crazy to think about. my life, which is kind of crazy to think about. I mean, to me, it's a complete world view, like our friend Tim Ferris calls it an operating system. So it's not so much as like, oh, because of stoicism, I now do X. It's more like, I try to do everything through the lens of stoic. But I mean, it is filled with sort of practical exercises, whether we're talking about sort of the idea of momentumore here, or we're talking about journaling, or we're talking about, you know, the sort of the art of discourse or whatever you want to choose. But I think the idea that it's something that integrates into your life and then shapes whatever you're doing, whether you're a slave,

like Epictetus or a senator, like Kato, the ideas, you're supposed to do that thing according to the principles of stoicism, in the way that a Christian, like their life doesn't begin an end in church, they're a Christian who's also a baseball player. Right. What do you think of those integrations that you've had success with? I mean, journaling's like probably the big practice that I took for in socialism, and it's funny, I took it late. I knew obviously that sort of stoicism and journaling were always really difficult to separate from each other, but I think I thought because I was a

writer, I didn't actually also have to do that. That sort of my ongoing writing about stoicism publicly was the same as journaling. So about five or six years ago, I started that practice and spent like a really great rooting, form of rooting in my life, particularly the last several months, just because it's a way to start the day. So, I mean, it's interesting too. I wish Stoicism had something as sort of singular as meditating.

It's like, this is the form or praying or the rosary. It's much more of a worldview. So it's harder to pin down as like, this is the exercise I do because I'm a stoic. You know what I mean? Yeah, I wonder how do you actually embrace something like that than an internet from a great quote that you've read? And you can say I agree with that.

So I can actually fully, truly believing it at your core to where it does have that mental shift and change for you. I think it's the, so if you think about what Marcus is doing in meditations, it's like, if obviously I know you know about journaling, so you think journaling is like, I woke up today, and I sort of said what was on my mind. What's really interesting about meditation, so first off, meditation begins with sort of a recitation of all of the lessons he's ever learned in his life. So why is he doing it? From what we know, the work was never intended to be viewed.

So why is he writing down all the lessons that he learned if it's not to pass it on? He's writing it for himself, and that's actually what meditation translates to it's to himself. But like, when the more you read meditation, the more you see that he's repeating himself that he's sort of tackling the problems from different angles. So it really is kind of a meditative experience where you're supposed to take the ideas and sort of consume them and re-consume them and and and almost dance with them over and over again. And that was actually one of the really interesting things writing the book. I would go back and and Steve Hanselman who did a lot of the research he was my co-writer on it. You would find an idea like a metaphor, an image appear in one of the stoics for the first time. And then you

would notice it getting repeated over and over again by the later stoics. And that was the practice of Marcus is writing as his sort of, it's like playing scales on a guitar. Like you know it, but it's the fact of doing it over and over again that sort of integrating it all. Just like reinforcing it. Yeah, exactly. Yes.

Interesting. How did this doys live outside of like, how did they, one thing I've never heard this answer, I don't know if you have the answer to this, but you probably will. How did they eat like drink, exercise, like, you know, in Zen, there's like, you know, prescriptions for that as well, like, you know,

in Okinawa they call it, what is it? Harihachi boo will like eat until you're 80% full Okay, or eight parts out of 10 they call yeah, and like the eight at the eight of the 10 is for you and the extra two or for the doctor So if you go to 10 you're actually given those it's a beautiful thing But I'm curious like how are there are there thoughts there as well like how they lived yeah? Yeah, can you go into that so there's less, you know, it's not like some code or something where it's, you know, here's the stoic prescription for dieting or something,

but, you know, the key, the second virtue of the four virtues for the stoics is moderation or self-discipline or temperance. So they would love the rule of eight out of 10. There's even a, like, there's even a story in Xeno, he's got this dinner party and it's sort of a famous sort of glutton and slash hog and they serve the fish and Xeno grabs it and eats the whole thing. And the guy's like, what are you doing? And he says, what do you think it's like for your guests at your dinner parties?

This is like, you know, that you're creating this like competition for the food. And so there are all these anecdotes from the Stokes about their moderation and how they would eat, you know, Kato is famous, he would always give the choices cut of a meal to his guests. We know the Stoics like to drink and eat, but they were trying to do it sort of within the

confines of moderation. And the purpose of the meal was to have the philosophical discussion, right? Cato doesn't write anything down, but we know a lot of what he's thought because of sort of quotes that survive from the dinner parties. My favorite example though, there's a passage in meditations where Marcus really is who must have sort of been served the greatest food you could imagine. He, over the course of this page, he breaks down like what the meal is. So he's like, this is a dead bird, this is a dead pig, this wine is fermented grapes. He's like walking through, he's trying to deconstruct the glamour of the feast,

so it sort of loses its power over him. And then my other favorite one, which I'm just remembering is, so at the end of Seneca's life, he runs a foul of Nero. And this reminds me of Yolobo. He runs a foul of Nero, and Nero sets out to kill him, and the way you would kill Romans is you would try to poison them. But apparently, Seneca's diet had gotten so meager, excuse me, Seneca's diet had gotten so meager, he was supposedly like living off water from the stream and berries and nuts that Nero is unable to poison him because both he doesn't have a way in and Seneca's diet is supposedly so hardy that he becomes unpoisonable.

So who knows how true that is, but the idea is, I think, that this was, they saw over eating as a vice, like any of the other vices. How about in terms of exercise, anything there? Yeah. So, so, Seneca jokes that the better you eat, the less time you'll have to waste exercising and thus have more time for philosophy. I mean, there's something you said about that. No, I totally agree.

I mean, I heard a great term a few years ago that certainly applies to myself. The term is exercise bulimia, which is basically, obviously not a clinical diagnosis and not to make light of people have actual bulimia. But I don't know about you, but I kind of get to a place where it's like, because I know I take care of myself physically, I allow myself to indulge in ways that maybe I know are probably not good for me.

And you're kind of just keeping yourself in a perfect equilibrium. When really, if you had a little bit more self discipline, you wouldn't need to go running right. You need to work out the degree of it. Yeah, I mean, in some sense, I mean, I should probably flip those things, right? Like, if I think about it, I mean, I'm in Portland, Oregon. Fantastic breweries out here. Yeah. Like, I'll go have a couple beers or, you know, and then the next day, I'm like, okay, I need to run that, you know, five miles or whatever. Maybe I should flip those around,

you know, the least exercise. But yeah. Yeah, you're working off the thing that if you're just not consumed, you wouldn't have to work off. So, but what is interesting is the stoic writings are filled with analogies about boxing and wrestling. Crescipus is a famous runner. We don't know how good he is, but it sounds to be an elite athlete. So, you know, and a lot of them were soldiers and generals. So you get the sense that they were pretty active.

Although the interesting thing about Seneca is for many years, and if you have any of the older translations of Seneca, you see Seneca is sort of this lean, haggard figure, which is kind of how Seneca wanted to be seen. But they actually only surviving bust that we have of Sennaka, which has been verified as being made in his own life, shows him to be a bit more epicurean than he represented.

So there's always this difference between, I guess, practice and teaching. Did they have any regimens like fasting or anything like that incorporated into what they did? Yeah, so not as overt about fasting as I know, but two things. So, San aco, we know experiments with vegetarianism when he's a teenager. And it's not like an idle experiment. Like at that time, to be a vegetarian was a deeply transgressive decision. It was almost associated with certain cults in Rome.

So for him to experiment with his diet for ethical reasons, we shows him what the scholars think is a sort of a pretty bold move. But Seneca said that one day a month we should practice either sort of fasting or eating like really small amounts of food. He talks about sort of practicing poverty and the point being, could you sort of get outside your comfort zone on a regular enough basis that you're not scared of losing those

things? And so one of the things I like about intermittent fasting, and obviously you can get a little dangerous, but you feel that sort of pang of hunger, and the ability to kind of conquer that is an important skill. And so I think the Stoics would have didn't talk about it too explicitly, but I think they, from what I gather, they were interested

in pushing past those boundaries, if only for the sake of conquering one's own limitations. Yeah, just going into that a little bit, when you think about, I often think about it, experience stretching being a real thing, whereas you go off and you experience too much of a good thing at a high level, and know, and then all of a sudden dropping down is really difficult for people, you know? Like you go out, you watch a sunset, beautiful sunset. You watch the sunset again with a fantastic glass of whiskey,

even better experience, and you can just keep leveling up to where it's harder to drop back down. How do you recalibrate something like that? So for someone like Seneca, and I think some of the other Romans, I mean, they had the, they had the benefit of being in a somewhat unstable, unpredictable world, right? So like, imagine your Seneca, you've made your way through law school, you're, you're, you've sort of burst on the scene as this generational legal talent.

Then you get tuberculosis and you have to go spend 10 years in Egypt recovering and you come back You become a senator and just at the height of your senatorial career You're exiled by an emperor who's jealous of you So this like these events were like more the rule than the exception, right? Like life was very capricious So I think one of the, one of the things we take for granted in the modern world is how stable something is. It's like you buy a house, you're not worried like, oh, someone's going to come take this house from me by force or something,

right? And so we get really used to our things and then we go, this is the new normal. And I was, I was just talking about this to a group I spoke to earlier today. They were a finance and an insurance company that had started in 1907. I went through between now in 1907 how many economic crises, pandemics, and market recessions we've been through since 1907. It was like, there was one the year before the company started, there was one the year after the company started in almost every year since then there's been some major event. The point being what we often say is like normal or

reasonable what we get used to, especially lately has been a totally abnormal sense of things. So I think that what you get from the Stoics is a kind of an appreciation and a gratitude for the good things because they were often experiencing just like horrendous losses. I mean, Marcus Aurelius lost seven children before adulthood and just like wrapping your head around the magnitude of that kind of tragedy, I think it either breaks you or it allows you not to take the sunset for granted. So how would one apply that? Well, let's just like look at this last year of chaos. You know, these things are impacting you. I'm sure in your family, you know, COVID,

like all the things that we've been hit with, what do you do when something like that comes up? When there's like a lockdown on your state and you're dealing with COVID and you see your friends and family losing their jobs, like how do you, how are you able to apply some of these principles to refram, reframe your own mind so it doesn't hit you as hard? Well, this is actually one of my favorite ones from Senegar. He has this idea of pre-meditashi on Malorum, and he says, all the terms of our human lot should be before our eyes. Exile, torture, war, and shipwreck. I mean, it doesn't say pandemic, but you know,

that I think one of the interesting things about the pandemic is how surprised we all were by it, even though there have been so many warnings, and even though many of us were very much under the impression that Donald Trump would be a erratic, unpredictable figure. But what happens is, you know, you're kind of like, you seem to let talks about the Thanksgiving Turkey that goes like, well, the last 300 days have been good. So it's probably going to continue being good. And so I think the first thing that stoicism is there to do, it should be to prepare us to sort of give us a full scope of like, what is possible and to sort of not be caught off guard by it.

So I feel like I was caught off guard by it more than I would like to be, but I certainly was much more prepared than most people that I know. And then I think the other interesting thing we talk about sort of the reading and the rereading, I mean it was so fascinating to me, I mean I've read Marcus Rueh as hundreds of times to go back to it in March and for it to really fully hit me for the first time that he was writing during the Antonin plague, right? Like he was writing during a pandemic that was much worse than this one. And you sort of go, oh, like people have been through this before.

And what did they learn? Where do those insights come from? And so I think Stoicism is about kind of getting that perspective, but then it's also like, it's going to the study, going to the tax, what do you find, what do they have to show you? I've just been, I don't know, it's been an interesting experience for me

because I think it's both sort of, it's humbled me in one sense, but then it's also, I don't know about you, but it's made me much more confident in my judgment, right? Like, I feel like most of the decisions that I've made in the last seven months, people haven't always agreed with them, including people in my own family,

but they've turned out to be the right decisions. Like, give me an example of that. Well, just, I mean, you and I were talking in March, like we sort of went into lockdown really early. Texas, you know, Texas didn't get hit right at the beginning. And so in kind of like late April, early May, people started to go, oh, this is nothing. And so Texas started to reopen. And I was just like, guys, like fundamentally nothing has changed.

And so, so sort of, you know, definitely didn't get into that. And then there were, you know, like people in situations where, you know, people would be like, hey, we're gonna have a get together. And you'd be like, oh, it'd be so fun to go see those people. And then it's like, turns out so. And so had COVID, that would have been really bad. Or, you know, like, just little decisions and big decisions

where you're just like, oh, I have a pretty good intuitive sense of what I think is right and that you have to trust that sense and you can't really let other people pressure you or sort of push you off that block. Yeah, that makes sense. I'm curious when you're going through all the different stoics in this book, do you gravitate towards one? Do you have a favorite? Do you have something new and interesting that you learn from the research this time around? So Marcus remains like the most fascinating to me, but from all these different angles.

But there were a bunch of other figures that I kind of fell in love with. So like famously, Seneca is kind of the, he's the tricky stoke because he wrote the most eloquently, but then it's really hard to square a lot of what he wrote with the fact that he was obscenely wealthy, for instance. Like, sure, he has his meager diet, but he's like the richest man in Rome, and how does he get his money?

He gets his money as a Neuros advisor, right? So the hard thing to wrap your head around is with Seneca. And so I understood that maybe sort of stoicism was tested by the corruption and the evil of Neuros regime, but I wasn't quite aware that they're referred to now as the stoic opposition, but there was a group of other stoics who were lesser known, but were sort of on the front lines of standing up to Nero. There was one named Agrippinus, who was really interesting. There was one named Thrasia, who's a sort of lone senatorial,

hold out against Nero. There was one called Helvides. There's no need for that. The most badass names in the world, pretty much. They're so cool. They're so cool. Although, like, one of the things we really had to work on was like, how the hell do you pronounce them?

So I put like a pronunciation guide in the book. Although the audio book was like the hardest thing that I've had to do because they're so difficult to pronounce. But they were just like complete bad at like, uh, Thrasia's last words were, uh, Nero can kill me, but he can't harm me. And you're just like, whoa, like these weren't people. So when we talk about stoicism being like a philosophy you apply, I mean, these people were applying it in the sort of highest stakes scenarios

that you can imagine. Like these are people who are ultimately forced to commit suicide or people who are executed, people who had all their property confiscated and then sent into exile. It was, yeah, it was a harsh time, but I was really inspired. I think that it sort of ties in to the rise of authoritarianism we're seeing across the world. I was just really inspired by the idea of the philosopher is not

someone who sits on the sideline. The philosopher is someone who's on the front lines. Yeah. What do you think that when someone picks up this book, reads through it, and what are they going to take away? How are they going to feel when they finish, and what is your hope there? I mean, I hope they understand that these were like flesh and blood people, you know, that these were human beings who sort of struggled and had temptations. Like, Kato is famously considered like the sort of the greatest of all the Stoics. Like he's a sort of superhero.

He's the one that, like, Thrasia, who's a badass, was like looking up at Kato. Like, I can't even touch this. But you know, there's a scene in the book where Kato's like weeping over the death of his brother. And his brother was not at all a philosopher, like his brother was sort of not a playboy, but lived by a different code. And I thought it was just, I loved their relationship, talking about their relationship because it sort of illustrates this stoic concept. There's a quote from Marcus Real as he talks about being tolerant with others, but strict with yourself. And so stoicism, even in Kato, this like extra strict guy, he still had all these people in his life who were nothing like him, who he didn't ever try to hold to his own standards. You know what

I mean? So I hope what you take from it is like, oh, these were people just like me. And they weren't like, they weren't dusty old figures from history, but they also weren't gods. Like they, in some cases kind of reached a transcendent level. You know, like, like Kato suicide to me echoes the monk

who kills himself in Vietnam by lighting himself on fire. It's this sort of tragic suicide to set to make a point. And so there is a moment of like sort of otherworldlyness to it, but it's it's done by human beings. Yeah. I'm curious on the the monks a great example of someone that, that you know was able to sit there through what Would many can would consider to be one of the worst possible endings of life in that you're you're dousing yourself with gasoline lining yourself in fire did not move did not cry out You know obviously it had been training and meditating for for quite a while had been training and meditating for quite a while. Do the stoics ever have any realization? Like when you're a monk, you're goal,

at least in certain practices, depending on which lineage we're talking about, but oftentimes is waking up or enlightenment or you know, some type of transformation that happens in the mind that can allow you to pour gasoline over yourself without screaming. Does anything like that transformation happen at the stoic level? Is there such thing? I think so. So the stoics, obviously, they talk about wisdom, but the highest level of

wisdom would be a sage. And I think they kind of accepted probably like the monks do that you don't actually ever get there, but you can approach it, right? Or that maybe you can touch it for some fleeting moment of greatness. Like, Kato's suicide is, so basically, Julius Caesar overthrows the Roman Republic, he's installing himself as a dictator, and Kato basically realizes like, I'm going to be used as a puppet to endorse or legitimize this regime and I'm not going to do that. And so his last night is it's an incredible... Mo, I don't think it's about glorifying suicide in any more than the monk lighting himself on fire is. But he has one final dinner party where they talk about philosophy as if life is going to go on as normal.

He puts his friends in boats and sends them off to escape Caesar. And then he goes to his room and he reads a book about Socrates from cover to cover twice. And then he sort of realizes that it's his moment and he gets his sword and he stabs himself in the chest. And he stumbles, he falls back and in falling, sort of people rush in and they realize what he's doing and they try to stop him. They don't want him to do this. And so he passes out from unconsciousness and they stitch him, the doctor stitches him back up and Kato comes to and he realizes what's happened and he pulls his own wound open and disembowels himself with his own hands. So it is sort of superhuman in the way that the, you know, the monk lighting himself on

fire is and it's, it sort of stands as this epic gesture of defiance. And so some people at Napoleon being one would criticize this, they said, you know, he should have ran away and continued to fight, that, you know, to give up was a betrayal of Stoicism. But it's really Kato's example that hundreds of years later inspires the founding fathers of America to defy to the death, you know, they're sort of British overlords. So he kind of ends up being this great example through history because of the sacrifice that he makes. And I would argue that was one of those moments. There's a moment in Marcus Aurelius' reign at the absolute worst of the pandemic, where he goes through the palace and he selects the

most valuable treasures, and he sells them on the lawn of the palace to keep Rome going. And so that's not as glamorous or as badass as suicide, but to me it's touching on a level of like, here you have the most powerful man in the world having a garage sale to raise money for other people. You know, to me it touches a similar level of greatness. And is there any structure to stoicism? Like, is there any, like, is there a path at all? Like, I think of these other religions, or even just meditation, like Buddhism,

like the Eightfold Path, like these ways that are these more prescriptive ways to kind of apply these things to your life. Or is it more of like a choose your own adventure with stochism? I think it's a little bit choose your own adventure, but like, these are the four virtues of stoicism It's courage justice, temperance and wisdom. So that would be kind of like the eightfold path

Those are the those are the the same cardinal virtues of Christianity are the cardinal virtues of stoicism There's just for the stoics there just wasn't also You know ten commandments for instance and then there wasn't also 10 commandments, for instance. And then there wasn't the artifice built on top, and I don't mean to insult the church, but there wasn't a structure built on top over hundreds or thousands of years of organized rituals, because Stoicism comes almost from pagan Rome, and then Christianity takes off shortly thereafter. So, it doesn't fully develop into priests and what, like Marcus really is kind of just like the last Stuart philosopher and all that remains are their works and we're kind of

picking up the pieces thousands of years later. Yeah. What are your thoughts on, you know, we live in a very much divided America? Are there any principles that we can take or anything we can learn from the Stoics that could help us come together in some way? I think there is. So two early Stoic concepts, there's this word I'm probably butchering it, but it's okay, OSIS, which basically is saying like we have a natural affinity for other people. And then sympathya is saying basically that we're all part of a one large organism in Zen

they would say like all is one. That's a very stoic concept as well. So I think, you know, Marcus really says two things I love. He says to do harm to another is to do harm to yourself. And then he also says, and you can do an injustice by doing nothing as well. So that I think the still virtue of justice to me is that like the idea that although we might have

these sort of political policy disagreements, politically like the whole point of politics is that we're on the same team. And I think they would be repulsed by this sort of winner-take-all, this sort of authoritarian, even though they were emperors, in some cases, the authoritarian impulse to shove things down the weaker side's throat. Marcus really talks about learning from Helvides, the importance of freedom of speech, equality under the law, leaders, rulers who respect their citizens.

I think ultimately, if there's almost a utopian element to stoicism that's like, none of this stuff matters. What matters is other people. What are you still learning? And in terms of, you've done so much research, spent so much time, for me, I spend more time in the kind of the Zen world of things. And every time I reread, like an important book,

I'm always like, how did I miss that? Right, did you find that this time around? Was there anything we were like, this is so new and exciting for me when writing this book? Yeah, I wanna read, I wanna read this passage. Let me find it. I read it recently and it hit me so, okay, this is what Marcus is saying

he learned from sex this, who is actually Plutarch's grandson. He said, he learned to investigate and analyze with understanding and logic the principles we ought to live by, not to display anger or other emotions to be free of passion yet full of love. And so that, I read that for the, like obviously many times, but that really hit me a few months ago, because I think I've focused for a long time

and it does take a lot of practice. The idea of being free of emotions or not being at the mercy of your emotions, that's what stoic means, right? People, it's about controlling your temper, controlling your anxiety, controlling your temptations. That's been 15 years of work for me, but I think I'm coming now to better understand that second part of that equation, which is, okay, so you manage to tamp those down.

What do you replace them with? And he's saying you replace it with love. down what do you replace them with and he's saying you replace it with love and I think that's a beautiful idea that I don't know why I skipped over it but it's it's beginning to shape and change how I think about things and I feel like every time I find one of those things in stoicism then as I go read more I find more of it like a couple years ago I you know I came across the idea of stillness in Marcus Aurelius, and so finding that shaped, you know, my understanding of that concept in stoicism, and I found that it was actually a pretty big theme. So I think that's the next big one for me.

Hmm. It's really fascinating in that if you think about, I mentioned kind of these things that we're trying to rid ourselves of, will there be anxiety or anger? To just pound something down and try and push it down and swallow it. And just like, you know, that's, you're not, you're not doing any good. You're just like, right, you're kicking the can down the road for a future date with destiny, right? So, it makes sense to me that you would have to figure out how to do this kind of surgical swap in a sense and that you want to get rid of it, but replace. How does one practically do that? How do you replace anger with love?

Yeah, I mean, that's a good example. So like, if you, all right, so like, but something that makes you angry, maybe it's a, you know, sort of people who are behaving a certain way. So you could, you could be like, this makes me angry. And then through force and sheer will, you could contain that anger. That's what the debates have left a few days. Right. So you could, you could contain that anger. And that's certainly a skill that most people don't have. I think what Marcus is saying is, okay, that's good, but what if you can make that anger go away by really understanding those people and finding what makes them human

and sensing the pain that they're in or feel obligated to do something for them that might take them out of the behavior or the reasons for the behavior. Some more compassion. More compassion for a person. I think he's talking about empathy. Yeah. And the idea of the common good is a theme that comes up in in meditations over and over again. But I think understanding that the other person is not your enemy,

but in fact, is another person in pain. I don't know. Like, one of the things I talked about this in stillness, but it's like, one of the things I'll do is I'll think, okay, what is the thing that I care the most about in the whole world? I mean, it's my kids. And I'll think about the feeling that that gives me. Like, when I see them, when they're doing something, you know, like playing in the pool or whatever. And then I try to think of someone that either I don't like or that's hurt me or that's doing something I disagree with

or just some mass murderer in jail. And then I try to think about them having that feeling about something. Right? And then when you do that, you immediately realize that, you know, with few exceptions, there is some something good there. There's something. This is a common ground in you humanizing them a little bit. Would you say that's true? So, yeah. Yeah, that's it, but you mentioned just a second ago about kind of the first step being containment. Yeah, would you,

would you, I would think that my gut tells me containment is just, is dangerous because it's not releasing that thing. It's just trying to hold it back and shove it down. Is that not how it's supposed to be? I don't think it's about, I don't think it's about shoving it down, but I do think, you know, like,

the stokes aren't saying like, like for instance, there's a lot of essays from the stokes about grief. The stokes are saying it's perfectly natural to feel grief, but then they try to go like, Sennaka writes his great consolation to a friend, he's saying, okay, the person that you're grieving, would they want you to feel horrible?

Like would that be their dying wish that you would feel horrible? Would they want you to kill yourself out of grief because they're gone? Of course not, you know what I mean? And so I think containment's the wrong word. What Astoeco is trying to do is logically work through what's often illogical impulses, so you don't have it. And like lust would be a great example, Epicurus of all people talks about,

he's like, when you find yourself lusting for something, try to think about how you're gonna feel after you get it. Not how you're gonna feel getting it, but the shame that comes after, or the disappointment that comes after, and he talks about how that'll help you not want it so bad. So I don't think it's like white knuckling it, but it is, you know, if you're afraid of something,

I don't think any philosopher would be like, oh, lean into that fear, that fear is good. They would urge you to logically break down that fear. That makes sense. Well, yeah, going in and taking the time to really explore it and feel it, right? Yeah. And that's part of breaking it down, I guess, is to say. But they wouldn't say like, your fear is good. Don't question your emotions. Give into your fear. You know, like they would they would grant that it's probably not a constructive, you know, mood and that you want to analyze it and understand

it. Yeah, gotcha. Very cool. Well, I want to get to some of these questions. Yes. We've had people writing in and they're very important. They're awesome questions. So the first one says, how do you feel we should make the most of this, quote unquote, time

in isolation and quote unquote exile. It is a little bit like exile. I don't know about you, but I'm having to think about obviously, I want things to go back to normal and I want people not to be suffering and I don't want people's businesses to close. But a big part of me is less thinking about like, how do I get my old life back? And more about like, how do I keep my life more like this? To me, this has been like the greatest lifestyle experiment in human history. And I've discovered a lot of things about how I want my life to be going forward. Yeah, and it's given us, for me, it's given me time to explore and adopt new things that I would never have done. I would just be too busy. I'd be too busy traveling or going to meetings or doing these things.

And now I do have time to embrace a few other things that are more self-care, which I think it's a great time to, if we have the time to kill, it's well, it's been it on yourself, you know? Totally, totally. Okay, next question here, see here. Hi, Ryan, if you had to point to one thing in your personal life that the stokes have impacted, what would it be? I mean, I have to be hard to come up with one thing.

We covered journaling, what's it? What's another thing that I mean the the memento mori one is a big one. Marcus really is an epictetus who both had children talk about as you talk your kids in at night he says like actively think about them not making it to the morning which is like a horrendously awful thing to have go through your mind. And like if they hadn't said to do that, anytime you found yourself doing it, you would try to crush that impulse.

Do you know what I mean? You're like, don't do that. And he actually says this, he goes, now I know you're gonna think like that you're tempting fate by thinking about this, but he's like actually know you have to do it. And I have to say it's totally over the last four years my son's for it's totally transformed bedtime. I never feel any pressure to get them to bed.

I never feel like I always stop myself when I go like this is taking too long. I got to get in the other room. I got to watch Netflix., I gotta answer email. Like, it really makes me soak in those moments. And like, I mean, I haven't missed a bedtime in seven months, you know, it's been incredible. But even before that, it really helps me go, it's not the idea that like, oh, this is gonna happen.

It's that it could happen and you would never wanna be in a position where you needlessly cut connection short to do something that didn't matter. Mm. Yeah, that's an important, I need to adopt that as well. I do cut the bedtime short from time to time.

Well, you're just like, you feel like because you started it, you should finish it promptly. Do you know what I mean? And I mean, obviously, if they're, if because of your ritual, they're not sleeping, that's obviously not a good idea. But it's like, you're reading, and then can we read one more book?

And you're like, no. And why is the answer no? There's no, you have nowhere to be, you have nothing to do. You're just, it's just a control thing, you know, and a lot of aspects. And so it's like, yeah, of course, we can read as many books as you want.

Like, this is what I am literally here for. Why am I going to answer emails that I didn't want to receive in the first place instead of reading a book with you? That's funny. I mean, so many parents these days, my wife and I included, you get to the end of the day and you've been kind of depending on the day,

you've been through a little bit of all of it, especially at the ages I'm at with two and three year olds. You just hired. Right, sure. So it's hard not to be like, okay, off to bed. Let's go grab a glass of wine, you know? Right, no, no, that that's I would say a good portion of the time But we end up falling asleep together and I'm just taking a late nap, you know, but I like on my death bed

Whenever that is I'll remember those moments so much more than you know, whatever I was gonna go Yeah, that's a great point. That's that's a beautiful thing. All right. Well, you've inspired me there for sure next question I was gonna go do. That's a great point. That's a beautiful thing. All right, well, you've inspired me there for sure. Next question, how can we make the virtues and stoic teachings accepted as core learning for children in school seems more practical than teaching character education? To me, the way you teach these things and it's how I try to write is you teach them with stories,

right? The story of George Washington chopping down the cherry tree. I don't think anyone thought that was true. You know what I mean? It's an absurd story. I think that, but we used to understand that you taught people lessons by stories. And there's a reason that the Bible is written in parables

and people used to know what those parables were. I think, you know, we try to teach people facts when really what we remember are stories. And so that's something I'm working on now. But I think the main thing, you, the main way you teach kids and young people other than by your own example, which is a form of a story, is through stories. Lots of, lots of questions here around kids. The next one says, new dad and daily dad subscriber here. What practices or lessons did the Stokes impart on their own children that stand out for you as a father? So unfortunately, the Stokes don't have a lot

of explicit discussions about children. There's a few here or there, but there's not that many great stories. But we can kind of look at the way they taught and led in other aspects. So I try to obviously do that on daily dad. I'm trying to think of like a good, stoke, children's story. I can't think of a good one.

But to me, I think the stoke, you know, this idea of like don't talk about what a good man is like B1. If the counterpoint to the Teach by Stories is like, you can't teach your kids values, you can only show your kids values. Or if you're teaching them and then not showing them, you're actually teaching them that you don't care about these values and they're not very important. Next question, what is your daily routine now? Not that different than it was before, just all the time now. Like, I don't know about you, but I feel like all the days have blurred together

and there's no difference between like I think today's Thursday, right? But, you know, Friday, like I'm not like, oh, tomorrow's Friday. Like, there's just no difference in any of the days anymore. But I get up early, kids obviously help with that. I, we go for a walk every morning. So, trying to think how many days has it been since March? What is that? Like 200 days, 300, 200 days, something like that.

We've probably walked 600 miles, maybe 700 miles. So we do a three mile walk in the morning, and then we do a one mile walk in the evening, although sometimes my son rides his bike now, but we, so we, we just spent so much time together. So we do the walk, then I, I work or write, I've been credibly productive from a writing standpoint, and then I do intermittent fasting, which I sort of picked up from you. I stop eating it. Like tonight it was at five, and so I won't eat until probably 11 or 12 tomorrow. And then I don't do any kind of administrative business, promotional stuff, really before

noon. So I try to have the morning be the big creative block, and then the afternoon is like whatever else has to be done. How do you manage your time? Are you a calendar person? I'm like the opposite of a calendar person. So like I have a calendar, but my assistant knows that there should be as little as possible in the calendar. So like, my rule is I never have more than three things in the calendar in one day. So it might be a call in that afternoon or a podcast

or whatever, but like, if I open my calendar and there's a lot of stuff in it, that's like a sign that I've not been successful. And one of the benefits of the last seven months is like, it's been really empty. The whole time, like it not been successful. And one of the benefits of the last seven months is like, it's been really empty. The whole time, like it's been great. No coffee, no flights to catch, it's been. I think I was telling myself I was much more productive

and good at multitasking and working on the road than I actually was. I don't know about you. Yeah, I find that my entire routine has changed. It's been crazy because I was definitely doing a lot more face-to-face meetings and going out and fights and things like that. So, yeah, it's definitely been a complete rethinking of my day. How's your nighttime routine? Like, what is it like for you when you're getting ready for bed or you have a no-screen policy?

Like, what's your sleep schedule like? Like, how do you? So we're doing, we're doing, every year we do like a new year, a new you challenge for daily stoic. And we're, I was just thinking about this because I was like, what can I improve? Like, I think I get the mornings really dialed in.

I'm not saying it's my resolution because I'm going to try to do it before. But the thing I'm going to work on is I'm going to work on a bedtime. I'm going to give myself like, I'm really good. Like, I wake up by a certain time, but I'm going to work on a bedtime. I think that's my goal because like, it's one of the few things that's just like, well, whatever you're doing, just keep going. You know, and so I end up, end up, we'll watch TV too late, or I'll read too late, or we'll talk too late.

And I'm gonna be like, no, I go to bed by this time. What do you do for relaxation? Like, I know you don't drink. And you don't even do the flip side of that, which is you don't do coffee in the morning, right? Right. Right. You have anything?

I like to watch crappy TV. I mean, I like to hang out. Like I, are you a bachelor guy or something? You watch the horrible reality TV? I'm like, I like, you guys know what I'm like. We've rewatched most of the office. We've rewatched most of Seinfeld. You know, like I like to watch Lawn Order.

I like, like, crappy, like, procedural, like, television. Like, when people are like, oh, you got to check out, like, bloodlines or something. I can make it through, like, one season, and it's, like, too stressful. And I'm like, I want the opposite of this. Like, I'd rather read a book than watch, like, difficult entertainment. Yeah. I'm divided there like Game of Thrones I didn't have a problem with except for some scenes. Ozarks was too strong to me. I watch on like these people are just fighting the entire time this is not good for my psyche. No, it's like Pete Holmes has this joke about he's like people tell you like oh go do all these things.

Before you have kids and he's like what they should oh, go do all these things before you have kids. And he's like, what they should say is like, watch all these movies before you have kids because like, now I can't watch anything, we're like a kid gets hurt, I can't watch anything. That's like, I think the Netflix formula, if you think about the streaming formula, the incentives are like a lot of highs and lows emotionally and

then it's to end on a level where you're like, I got a binge on the next episode and I think as I've gotten more healthy in my life, that feels really unpleasant to me. Like the transparent emotional manipulation of a multi-season streaming show? Like, I go like, this is not good. Do you know what I mean? Yeah, absolutely. I don't really, we don't really do any TV at all except for sports, you know? But that's kind of like just fun entertainment that's healthy and, you know. Right. No, totally. That was the, I'm glad sports are back. That was definitely one of the things I missed the most. Yeah. Okay, moving on to the next question.

Have either of you looked at the overlap of Zinn and Stoicism, any good books, certainly seems to be a lot of common ground? Well, I would, it's weird to recommend my own book, but I think I tried to do this in stillness as the key a little bit. I wanted to explore the overlap between the two. To me, what I like about them is that the overlap is coincidental, right? Like that they're not like the overlap between Christianity and stoicism is not random.

It's that the two borrowed from each other, right? Mostly that Christianity borrowed from stoicism, but they they borrowed from each other and they came from the same place. What I love about Buddhism is that it's almost like an independently evolved species. And so to me it proves a lot of the ideas that they both independently came to a lot of the same conclusions. Yeah, absolutely. It's really kind of eerie when you start seeing that they just pop up and you're like, wait, that's very similar here, you know? Well, it's like I've heard that like different countries develop different sign languages.

Like, like, the sign language was invented differently. And then, but it's still very similar. It's like, oh, right, okay, that makes sense. They went to whatever the first principle was. Whatever the core thing was, they solved it. Yeah, that's so cool. Yeah, I would say that for me, book-wise, Zen the authentic gate, I think, is very good. It is from a lineage that is sandbows in, which is I would consider to be out of the major zen sex,

whether it's like Soto-Arensai, I think sandbows like the leanest and cleanest and lightweight and not, it doesn't contain any deities or heavy dogmon. I think if you're looking for a clean version of zen, I think that's a great book. All right, let's see here. Next question.

Okay, what are your thoughts on the actions of Socrates with how he raised Nero as a tutor and his advisor as an emperor? Could you name it Seneca or do they say? It's a Socrates. It's definitely Seneca or do they say it's a Socrates the most definitely said that we said it's a Ceneca it's tricky there's there's a beautiful haunting book by James Rom called dying every day that's about Ceneca's time in Neuros Court it's a tricky thing I mean on the one hand you could look at and you'd be like it's

just inexcusable how can a great philosopher have been a member of such a heinous regime? On the other hand, from Seneca's perspective, he was probably telling himself, he would have been worse without me. And in fact, the first years of Nero's regime, they called the Quinquinium neuronium or something, basically like the first five years of Neurosurzyme were really good and that was largely because Cenica was in control and Cenica and a guy named Boris were in control So the I think I think that that's the tricky part about it. It's really hard to say like it's easy to say like everyone who disagrees with Trump should resign

because the administration would be unable to function. But you could also argue that all those people would be replaced with people that those people would find to be less qualified. So, I think it's a sad internal question of what's one's obligation to themselves and their own ethical code? What's their obligation to the country? What's their obligation to be in a position to prevent bad things from happening? It's a it's I think the more I study it the harder I time I have coming up with One clear easy answer. Yeah. All right.

It is that time in our program where we have time for one last question. All right. So here it is. If there was one thing you hope people will take away from the chaos of 2020, what would that be? That's a good question. I mean, I think you could go a couple of ways on this. You could be like,

hey, this is why you have to focus on, you know, preparedness, on resiliency, on, on, on all of that. I think that's really important. And I feel like I've talked about that a lot. The stoke idea, there's a stoke idea that character is fate, that, you know, sort of what you believe, how you can put yourself will determine the course of your life, the actions you take. To me, what the last several months of politicians of all parties, you know, friends, people I know, it's really, character seems to be that core issue, right? Like people of good character have done good things and people who have, you know, they've collected that element aspect of themselves have done things I find sort of, you know,

unconscionable, whether it's, you know, how they're operating their business, how they're treating, you know, vulnerable people in society, whether they wear a mask or not, or just like what and who they vote for. I think what we're really seeing is that the truth of that idea that character is fate. I would argue that competence is a part of character. The desire to truly be excellent at what you do and to hold yourself to a high standard to me as an element of Competence. So when I see these politicians of you know, in both both parts of the Ideological spectrum just so fall down on the job. It strikes me as a reminder of like hey

We have to stop thinking about like Who has all the same political positions as me, you know, who's on the same team as me, and we have to think more like you probably think when you're investing in a company, it's like, it's less like, do I like the idea? And more like, can this team do what they are claiming they want to do? You know what I mean? I think, I think we are just, I really like Mark and Dresan's essay about building and stuff. You know, like, I think we just, we desperately need competence and excellence in morally and in every other sense. And we're experiencing the very real consequences when you don't optimize

for those things. Yeah. Absolutely. Well, that's a great way to end it. Thank you, Ryan, so much for doing this with me. No, thank I really appreciate it. And yeah, it's always good to chat. Awesome. If you like the podcast that we do here and you want to get it via email every morning, you can sign up at Daily Stoic early and ad free on Amazon Music, download the Amazon Music app today, or you can listen early and ad free with Wondery Plus in Apple podcasts. Apple podcasts.