The Daily Stoic - The Four Stoic Virtues | Real-Life Role Models to Inspire You

Episode Date: December 25, 2024

Courage, discipline, justice, and wisdom are not just abstract concepts from Stoic history, they are virtues that are still embodied by individuals today. In 2024, several guests on The Daily Stoic podcast demonstrated these principles, not as theoretical philosophers, but as real people who actively apply these Stoic values in their lives.Courage: Colonel (retired) Martha McSally, former U.S. Congresswoman and U.S. Senator, and author of Dare to Fly: Simple Lessons in Never Giving UpListen to Martha’s full episode: Why You Should Run Towards Your FearYou can follow her on Instagram @marthamcsally. Discipline: Texas A&M Men’s Basketball Head Coach, Buzz WilliamsListen to Buzz Williams’ full episode: Be An Everyday PersonWatch Buzz Williams’ full episode on YouTube Follow Buzz Williams on Instagram: @TeamCoachBuzz and on X: @TeamCoachBuzz.Justice: Sharon McMahon is a former high school government teacher who now runs the non-partisan, fact-based Instagram account @sharonsaysso and is the bestselling author of The Small and the Mighty. Listen to Sharon McMahon’s full episode on The Unsung Americans Who Altered the Course of HistoryCheck out Sharon’s podcast Here’s Where It Gets Interesting and follow her on Instagram @SharonSaysSo and on X @Sharon_Says_SoWisdom: Mark Matousek is a teacher, speaker and bestselling author of Lessons from an American Stoic: How Emerson Can Change Your Life. Listen to Mark Matousek’s full episode Self-Reliance and the Confidence in Trusting Your Inner Wisdom You can follow him on IG: @mark.matousek and @theseekersforum. 📚 Check out the Virtue Series 3-Book Bundle which includes Ryan Holiday’s books: Courage is Calling, Discipline is Destiny, and Right Thing, Right Now 🎙️ Follow The Daily Stoic Podcast on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dailystoicpodcast🎥 Watch top moments from The Daily Stoic Podcast on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@dailystoicpodcast✉️ Want Stoic wisdom delivered to your inbox daily? Sign up for the FREE Daily Stoic email at https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Get Stoic inspired books, medallions, and prints to remember these lessons at the Daily Stoic Store: https://store.dailystoic.com/📱 Follow us:  Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, and FacebookSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to the daily Stoic early and ad free right now. Just join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple podcasts. We've got a bit of a commute now with the kids and their new school. And so one of the things we've been doing as a family is listening to audiobooks in the car. Instead of having that be dead time, we want to use it to have a live time. We really want to help their imagination soar. And listening to Audible helps you do precisely that. Whether you listen to short stories,

self-development, fantasy, expert advice, really any genre that you love, maybe you're into stoicism. And there's some books there that I might recommend by this one guy named Ryan. Audible has the best selection of audio books without exception and exclusive Audible originals all in one easy app.

And as an Audible member, you choose one title a month to keep from their entire catalog. By the way, you can grab Right Thing right Right Now on audible. You can sign up right now for a free 30-day audible trial and try your first audiobook for free. You'll get Right Thing Right Now totally for free. Visit audible.ca to sign up. So for this tour I was just doing in Europe we had I think four days in London and I was with my kids, my wife, and my in-laws so we knew we didn't want to stay in a hotel. We'd spend a fortune, we'd be cramped. So we booked an Airbnb and I was with my kids, my wife and my in-laws. So we knew we didn't want to stay in a hotel. We'd spend a fortune, we'd be cramped.

So we booked an Airbnb and it was awesome. As it happens, the Airbnb we stayed in was like this super historic building. I think it was where like the first meeting of the Red Cross or the Salvation Army ever was. It was awesome. That's why I love staying in Airbnbs. To stay in a cool place,

you get a sense of what the place is actually like. You're coming home to your house, not to the lobby of a hotel every night. It just made it easier to coordinate everything and get a sense of what the city is like. When I spent last summer in LA, we used an Airbnb also. So you may have read something that I wrote while staying in an Airbnb.

Airbnb has the flexibility in size and location that work for your family. And you can always find awesome stuff. You click on guest favorites to narrow your search down. Travel is always stressful. It's always hard to be away from home. But if you're going to do it, do it right. And that's why you should check out Airbnb. Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, where each weekday we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stoics, a short passage of ancient wisdom designed to help you find strength and insight here in everyday life.

And on Wednesdays, we talk to some of our fellow students of ancient philosophy, well known and obscure, fascinating and powerful. With them, we discuss the strategies and habits that have helped them become who they are and also to find peace and wisdom in their lives. Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. Last time I talked to you, I was in Orlando. My wife and I are furiously packing for what will be the last trip of the year.

My last talk, I'm doing a thing in DC. I can't talk about it yet, but I'll talk about it after. But so we are off to DC, and it being DC, I had to see if I could still squeeze into the suit that I got married in. Shockingly, I do. I guess that's a nod to my temperance slash self-discipline. That was 10 years ago, and I was in good shape then.

So I guess I've maintained it well enough through a couple of kids and a lot of craziness. But DC is like the only place you gotta wear a suit these days. You know, Thoreau's line about, be wary of any enterprise that requires new clothes. This doesn't exactly require new clothes, but certainly required a trip to the dry cleaner

with some old clothes. I don't know what that says, but I'm excited. As I said, I'll tell you about it after. But I'm excited about today's episode because doing this podcast has been this sort of rare, unusual experience, right? We started just taking the daily emails and then I would read them and that ran.

And then people asked if I would do interviews and there were some people I wanted to talk to. And it kind of slowly grew to this thing where now the Daily Stoke podcast has done almost 200 million downloads, millions of downloads every month. People listen to it all over the world. People watch it all over the world. Like when we started the Daily Stoke podcast,

the idea of watching podcasts, like it really didn't even exist. And now we have a studio next to the painted porch in this old building that was a barbershop for over 100 years. That's now where we record these episodes. And I've been doing the podcast the entire time that I've been working on this Stoic Virtues series. So I've had the ability to ask and talk to people about these ideas. So instead of courage and discipline and justice

and wisdom being these things that exist only historically, I got to talk to people who were practitioners, experts, who had to take this idea and live it, not pen and ink philosophers, as the Stoics would say, but real philosophers, people who had to apply these ideas. Now, were they perfect embodiments of all the virtues in every way? No, they weren't even perfect examples of just this virtue.

But I got to have really interesting conversations with them. I'm three deep in this series now. The fourth, actually, I'm just waiting for some notes back. We're deciding cover options on the wisdom book. So that's in the works. But what I wanted to do here at the end of the year is do kind of a wrap up on what these virtues mean.

And I wanted to pick one guest from an episode during the year and dive deep into that virtue. And so that's what we're gonna do today. This should be a nice recap kind of an episode. You probably didn't follow every episode when they came out. I totally understand that. My goal is just to make lots of great stuff

and people dip in and dip out of the ones they like. And so maybe you missed these or maybe it's worth just listening to this section again, but let's dive into it. And if you wanna check out any of the virtue books, you can grab signed copies at store.dailystowett.com. You get the audio books anywhere books are sold, support your local Indies, support the painted porch,

or find some way to check it out at your library. I don't care. I'm really proud of Courage is calling Discipline is Destiny and Right Thing Right Now. Justice, I'm gonna be super proud of the wisdom book when it comes out. And I can't wait for you to hear today's episode. Courage, discipline, justice, wisdom.

So for courage, look, obviously there are multiple forms of courage. There's physical courage and moral courage. Some people have both, some have just one or the other. Today's guest has both. And I found her fascinating. Her name is Colonel Martha McSally. That's one of her titles. You may also know her as Congresswoman McSally or Senator McSally because in the more ancient tradition, she went from the armed forces into

politics. She was deployed six times in the Middle East and Afghanistan. She flew 325 combat hours in an A-10 attack plane sharing the Bronze Star and six air medals. She was also the first woman to command a fighter squadron in combat. She's also an endurance athlete, an assault survivor, and the author of Dare to Fly, Simple Lessons in Never Giving Up. Now we don't agree politically on much, I imagine. We jostled a little bit about that in the fuller episode, which you can listen to a link to that in today's show.

But in today's episode, I just wanted to talk to her about courage. And this is a clip from her episode, which we called, Why You Should Run Towards Your Fear. When I took off in the A10 for the very first time, my dream 10 years in the making, I thought I was gonna throw up. I was very afraid I love your distinction of scared versus afraid actually That's a really good thing. Yeah, do things scared. I was scared

But I chose to take off afraid you might using my term. I chose to do things afraid and It's only then that you realize that the fear didn't have power over you. You build your capabilities of confidence. You expand yourself. And then when you get right on the edge, you're gonna feel afraid again. So it's choosing to do the thing in the midst of the fear

that actually brings you courage. Dan Sullivan says courage is doing what you need to do with wet pants or something like that. Well, look, if you're not afraid, if there's no fear, then courage is not necessary. Not necessary and certainly whatever you did can't be described as courageous. The whole point is it had to be scary to you.

Yes. Right, like if you are the kind of person to whom that thing is not scary because you've done it a thousand times, then it just is. Or if you're somehow a sociopath or something that you're wired differently, you're not feeling it. That doesn't mean it's not impressive

or it wasn't necessary to do. It just means that for you, it wasn't an act of courage. Courage is the triumph over the doubt or the fear or the hesitation. It's not wanting to do it and doing it anyway. That's the whole point. Exactly. And going back to a point you had previously

about when you are a change agent, like I am, you tend to push against everything. When I was younger, I would be like, well, why are we doing that? Especially in a bureaucracy. So I had to learn how to pick my battles. Like, why am I, you know, pushing back and all sorts of stuff?

You could diminish your impact if you're just always, you know, always resisting, right? Or always looking to change. So you have to have that discernment of when it's time to stand the line, what issue, and when it's time to find a way to bring about change in other ways. So I had to learn that with maturity for sure. Yeah. There's that quote, discretion is the better part of valor. Like if you're, if you're fighting over everything, people just get tired of you.

They don't listen to you. And then also you don't have the capital or the credibility you need to really get things done where it matters. Yeah, exactly, exactly. But when it comes to those big moments, like the moment that I, in this burka battle, as we call it, filed Martha McSally

versus Donald Rumsfeld in court, like you don't just wake up in the morning and say, I'm gonna sue the secretary of defense today. That, you know, that was a multi-year journey that I never would have imagined at the beginning of it. If somebody told me at the beginning, this is where this is going, I would have been, uh-uh, no, there's no way. But do the next right thing.

Do the next right thing. So when I decided I'm suing the Secretary of Defense because I believe this is wrong and the bureaucracy has failed and we need oversight from another branch of government, I mean, at that point I knew like, all right, I'm done. This is part of my mission and calling to be a fighter pilot, but I'm finished here, even though I didn't do anything wrong, I think the system doesn't appreciate that kind of behavior,

even though I eventually had a unanimous law passed and 535 members of Congress and the president agreed with me, not the bureaucracy. There were quiet people supporting me, but they wouldn't stand with me. Of course, they didn't have the courage to do that. But you were familiar with that. Yeah, they were like, I'm staying,

to use a munitions term, we're staying out of the frag pattern, where they could actually get hit, but cheering me on quietly, which I was disgusted by, to be honest with you, it's just all they could offer at the time. In their minds, they're making a distinction. I'm not like the bad people,

but to you, it's almost worse, because they know the right thing and they're not doing it. Yes, exactly. Exactly. And like I said, it could have been a different end of the story. And there are many stories similar to this where you don't win. But the question is when you feel a conviction to do the right thing.

And I remember looking around like, isn't somebody else going to do this? Isn't there someone else who's with me? But in the end, it was my mission. It was my conviction. I couldn't put it away. And so I had to do it alone. I mean, I eventually had support from people in the legal process. But at the time that I made that decision,

it was not easy for sure. And I'm sure also you would have liked for it to have been handled much simpler and easier and in-house. You shouldn't have just been able to get someone on the phone and say, hey, what about this? This is obviously wrong, but that's not normally how it goes. And that has happened, I mean, thousands of times when I was in the military, where you see something's not normally how it goes. And that has happened, I mean, thousands of times when I was in the military,

where you see something's not quite right, you do your homework, you build a, you know, argue, not an argument, but you, you know, you bring about the change, you know, often the indirect way is a better way than the, you know, direct, um, approach or like the direct kind of assault, if that makes sense. You attack on the flanks. Make it the general's idea, right? Instead of, so I've done that a million times. In this case, it actually,

the legal authority was a two-star general, the one I ended up working for, and he thought it was above his pay grade until I pointed out it was his policy, which had been handed down to him from the general before. It's a classic case of bureaucratic policy creep, but once challenged, everybody defends it to the death, right? Right.

Don't you challenge us. We're not going to change. So he could have done the right thing, but he was more interested in getting his next star in his own career. He didn't want to rock the boat or change on his watch. And so he chose to, I mean, order me to not bring it up again. And to berate me, I mean, this is probably the most difficult experience I had in my time in the military,

was this general berating me with his JAG and his chief of staff both there. What's the matter with you? Why do you care so much about this? Why can't you just shut up and comply like everybody else? You know, do we need to send you for a mental health evaluation? Why are you so much about this? Why can't you just shut up and comply like everybody else? Do we need to send you for a mental health evaluation? Why are you so obsessed by this? No one cares about this but you.

And I mean, I remember going back, I had complied one time to get it changed to get this guy's ear. And I had suggested a very reasonable initial policy change after I shared my research. And he's just shutting me down and berating me. This is my boss. I mean, I literally went back to my room and crawled into bed. I was like, what do I do now? I don't even know what to do next. Right. It was horrible. It was horrible. But years later, I'm sitting in the gallery It was horrible, but years later, I'm sitting in the gallery of the House of Representatives when unanimously they voted on the bill that I had drafted to overturn these stupid policies.

And I remember sitting there thinking, you know, I'm not the only one who cares about this, you only one who cares about this, you fucking asshole. Excuse my language. Now, me and 435 representatives of the American people care about this. Hi, I'm Lindsey Graham, the host of Wondry Show American Scandal. We bring to light some of the biggest controversies in U.S. history. Presidential lies, environmental disasters, corporate fraud. In our latest series, NASA embarks on an ambitious program to reinvent space exploration with the launch of its first reusable vehicle, the Space Shuttle. And in 1985, they announce they're sending teacher Krista McAuliffe into space aboard the Space Shuttle Challenger along with six other astronauts. But less than two minutes after liftoff, the Challenger explodes.

And in the tragedy's aftermath, investigators uncover a series of preventable failures by NASA and its contractors that led to the disaster. Follow American Scandal on the Wondry app or wherever you get your podcasts. Experience all episodes ad-free and be the first to binge the newest season only on Wondry+. You can join Wondry+, in the Wondry app, Apple podcasts or Spotify. Start your free trial today.

Now for the discipline episode, I wanted to bring you a person I've known for a long time. It's been a big supporter of my work and who I admire. You may have seen one of his super viral clips where he talks about being an everyday guy. But the hardest thing about what we do best is we do it every day. It's not punishment.

And then here's the next day and it ain't gonna change. And it's not because I'm trying to be like, I've got it all figured out. I've watched like a Thousands of these in my career. I know what the times are. I know what the deal is I've seen hundreds of people do it The best thing we do is every day But the hardest thing we do is every day and all that September proves is who's an everyday guy

And if you're not an everyday guy, it doesn't mean we love you less It just means you got to sit over there on the side right you have to be every day and it's not gonna change and it's not gonna go away and I'm not gonna lose my patience and go oh never mind we'll just do it again tomorrow no we're gonna do it today that's what makes our program our program but that's the hardest thing. And that's not for Julius. That's for the student manager. That's for the coach. That's for the good player.

That's for the old player. You got to do it every day. And if you can't do it every day, then you're going to struggle because it's every day. Person behind that, if you didn't know, is Texas A&M's head basketball coach, Buzz Williams, who I've known since his days at Virginia Tech. I went and talked to that team. I talked to this team that he has now. And he's just a guy we go back and forth.

He sends me stuff, I send him stuff. He stopped by the painted porch. And we talked about that, what it means to be an everyday guy, what it means to apply discipline, not just in these one or two big moments, but the day-to-dayness of it, that's the most important thing.

So what is it, because you have this awesome video about what's an everyday guy? Are you tough enough to be an everyday guy? I think, I don't think it has anything to do with Paul. I think a lot of it has to do with how I was raised and what I witnessed as I was growing up is whatever it is that you're trying to do,

however you deem success, are you tough enough to do that every single day? And I think that time, if you're basing it on talent, well, talent at some point in time probably will prevail, but not always. And so if you remove talent, then it becomes consistency, then it becomes discipline, then it becomes how are you spending your time and are you tough enough to do those things every day? And like I tell our guys all the time, I would like to win, but I want to win playing my hand and I'm okay losing if I'm not playing my hand and my hand is

what I believe is right. And I can't sacrifice what I believe those things to be are right. And I'm not saying that I am right. I'm just saying an everyday person is who I respect the most. An everyday person, their talent is going to improve because they're tough enough to do it every day. Hey, I can't shoot. Well, it's like compound interest.

Just shoot then if you can't shoot. Hey, I wanna get stronger. Well, go in there and lift weights. Hey, I wanna lose some weight. And I just think maybe it's counterintuitive to constantly talk about the end. Hey, you wanna lose some weight? I can tell you how to lose weight.

Don't eat breakfast for 200 days and walk on the end. Hey, you wanna lose some weight? I can tell you how to lose weight. Don't eat breakfast for 200 days and walk on the treadmill. Do that for 200 days and then get on the scale. Not going the other way around. And I think that's, to me, that's what an everyday guy is. Yeah, it's like, it's the difference between, my friend Austin Kleon talks about, he says, a lot of people wanna to be the noun. They don't want to do the verb, you know?

That's good. And I think- That's really good. I think it's like, we want these end states. We want to be seen as X, but we don't understand that it's really a result of doing Y, right? Like people want to publish books. They don't want to write books. But publishing is a by-product of writing.

Of the writing. And yeah, improving is a by-product of doing the work. Having a great jump shot is the result of having done many, many jump shots. So much of what you're being praised for publicly is whatever it is that you're doing privately. Yes. Yes. Whether it's somebody making a jumper or somebody writing another bestseller.

Ron, how are you doing that? There's layers to that. But somewhere in that layer of what you've done over the last 15 years, somewhere in that layer, you've continued to refine the process and somewhere in that process is included, I'm going to do it every day. Now, I may write more on Wednesday than I do on Saturday when I'm taking the kids to get donuts, but somewhere in there, the consistency of I'm going to do it every single day for me, where I'm from, how I grew up. That's what I respect, is the toughness to do it every day.

The success is a lagging indicator of the things you were doing. It's a quote shirt, I sent it to you. Yeah, yeah. All success is a lagging indicator. And so that's the point on the biggest loser or the best jump shooter or the best author. Yeah, if you're asking me about this,

no question is a bad question, but that's the wrong question. And to what you said, I don't want you to talk about my Twitter feed. I don't want you to talk about my Instagram reel. I understand how I got a million followers. I understand how I have an email list of 1 million people. What you don't understand is where it started and how it got to that.

And if we're only talking about right now, well, then you're never gonna get it. I saw this thing with Chris Rock. He was talking more about inspiration, but I think it's true here. He was saying, a comedian makes the money during the day, but they collect it at night.

So it's going around thinking about the things, working on the things, riffing about it with other comedians. That's where it's made. But then it's when you go up on stage for eight minutes or an hour, whether you're in a club or you're selling at a theater, that's the lagging indicator coming true.

But the work, the important part was earlier that day or you're selling out of theater, that's the lagging indicator coming true. But the work, the important part was earlier that day or probably earlier that decade. So good. Yeah. So good. Publishing is collecting, you know? But writing is where the money's made

or the gym is where the money's made. It's doing the thing that's the important part. The public facing part is this accidental byproduct of doing the thing. And I think too often times, it would be like me understanding what you do. I don't. I enjoy and I learn from and I grow from what you do. But the interaction,

the association, the tour, all of the things that come with writing that book, that's a very small percentage of the actual work. Yeah, for sure. And that's one thing that as my career has unfolded, the percentage of time that goes to what comes from this versus what it took to make this diametrically opposed. And it's very easy, whether it's money, whether it's ego, whether it's power, whether it's followings. You have to be really careful that on that 180, you don't go all the way over there and tip the scales upside down. And I think that's why an everyday guy over time, it's not the first one.

It's not the second one. Can you do it again? Can you do it again? And if you can it is based somewhat on talent, but it means you have kept in proportion What's required to do the actual work? Yes. Yeah, an everyday guy is in the gym early Whether it was a blowout loss the night before, or whether you want a championship the day before. They're in the gym, whether it's been a good season, a bad season, whether they're feeling great, whether they're not feeling great. They're just, they're doing, they're doing the thing.

When you write your third bestseller, human nature takes you to, Well, Ryan, you can go speak across the country to Fortune 500 companies and arguably give less time, less mental energy, and make more money than when you write the next book. You just totally described the business that I'm in. Most nonfiction authors make more money from speaking than writing. And it's much easier. I mean, look, it's hard to get up on stage. It's hard to command an audience,

but like it kicks your ass less in creatively to just talk about a thing you've already done than to do the next thing. And so the temptation is, hey, yeah, I just want to go collect, right? I want to collect the rewards from the thing. Like 90% of the talks I give are still about the obstacles away. A book I wrote 10 years ago. So I could just wake up every day and just collect dividends from a thing I already did. But to me, waking up and doing the next thing is one more intellectually

challenging and fulfilling. But it's also harder. And so it keeps me it keeps me honest, I think. But yeah, that you can I empathize and understand why you don't want to do it. There's a there's an expression that a writer is someone to whom writing does not come easily. But speaking is easy comparatively. And so yeah, you can just keep doing, you can go towards the easier thing or you can go towards the harder thing. And I think it's human nature to go towards the easier thing.

We're like water. Whether that's the success that came from the obstacle is the way book versus it's time to write the next one. And I think that how you handle that equilibrium of easy and hard is what constitutes your sustainability. But at some deeper level, it's why are you doing it? Are you doing it so you can make a million dollars speaking in 2025 on the obstacle is the way? Well, to your point, you could have done that in 2018

when it had been on the New York Times bestseller for 92 weeks. Like just run around. But then you wouldn't have the relationship you have with your wife or walk and run and swim and with your boys like it wouldn't have turned into this. And like that's why I respect you and anyone like you that you're you have constantly fought human nature. Now, I'm going to go over here and I'm going to work. What are you going to do tomorrow? I'm going to work. you that you're you have constantly fought human nature. Now I'm going to go over here and I'm going to work.

What are you going to do tomorrow? I'm going to work. Oh, I thought you were going to speak. No, I told him to stop Mark Patterson, who I think is a brilliant author who has started a church. He's about your age and what he has done in his world is phenomenal. Author, I think he's written 14 New York Times bestsellers. Kind of got to know him the same way. And I have watched his career unfold from afar.

We're not best friends. I'm not suggesting that, but I've watched how he has stayed true to his mission. Bob Goff, another author you know, Bob Goff lawyer has created academies and helped thousands of orphans outside of the states. And his rule is, I speak, but I have to be home before dinner. Yeah. And it's kind of like Kid Rock. You know, when Kid Rock got maybe addicted to the wrong things, one of his rules was I'll go sing at the concert, but I have to be at home by midnight.

sing at the concert, but I have to be at home by midnight. And so based on where the concert was, was based on the type of jet he had, and based on where the FBO was relative to the concert venue, and based on the car service on who they picked up. And like when he would finish the, whatever it's called, the mic drop, when he would finish the whatever it's called the mic drop when he was done. They said that as soon as he walked off the stage, that the door was already open and the driver already had started the car

and he just got in. And they said that when he got to the tarmac, that when he pulled up to the FBO, the gate was already open. The driver never stopped, took him right to the FBO, the gate was already open. The driver never stopped, took him right to the gate. And they said that as soon as he got up the last step of the plane, they were already shutting it and the plane had already started and he was in the air. And they said that when he landed, it was the exact same and that he quit asking. You know, there was a period of time, I guess, when he was really popular.

I don't really, I've just studied this scenario. They said that he would do the exact same thing when he landed in Detroit. Just to get home. Just to get home. Wow. And that he turned down that, you know how like on some of those shirts that you wear on the back, it may have had the concert tour dates. They said that you could, when you would buy those shirts,

if you really looked at the cities, it would be a certain portion of the United States, but it was all based on he had to be home by midnight, but nobody ever knew that. Wow. Yeah. I was like, oh, I like that guy. I like that guy. I like that too.

Now for justice, the person we're going to hear from today about justice is the first and only guest that my in-laws wanted to meet and they came out. I'm talking about Sharon McMahon, who runs the nonpartisan fact-based Instagram account at Sharon Says So. She has this wonderful new book that came out. We have signed copies in the painted porch called The Small and the Mighty. She has stories of 12 Americans who didn't make it in the textbooks, but had a lasting impact by doing

what she calls the next right thing, the smallest right thing. It's a wonderful episode, a wonderful book, and it's exactly the kind of stuff I'm talking about in Right Thing right now, this sort of stoic idea of participating in public life, trying to make the world better, doing your part. That's the kind of justice we're talking about.

And she and I dig into that in today's episode. Do check out her wonderful book, The Small and the Mighty. There's a famous World War I poem and he has this line, I used it in the Justice book, he says, "'To you from failing hands we throw the torch.'" If you see the figures as a person who moved the ball forward or carried the torch a little bit, but that it was part of this continuous battle

or this perennial march, then it's beautiful and each one of them was significant. If you try to attribute it to any one of them where you go, this was the person, each individual accomplishment is not that great and ultimately can be cut short, whether it's by assassination or they have some personal scandal.

So yeah, I think it's about making your brief contribution with the resources you have in the moment of time that you're in and then seeing it as part of this larger procession. That's the only way to do things and to do it not motivated by it either. Yeah, I totally agree with you. And I think the people in this book,

they're great examples of that. Yes. Yeah, where their contributions are by and large lost to history, either by virtue of the fact that they died young, they didn't have descendants to keep their memory alive. They were intentionally excluded from history because they were the wrong color or they were the wrong gender. And yet it does not negate what they did. And I have really been enjoying sort

of excavating their contributions. And what they did is actually, in many cases, more significant than a lot of people you've heard of. Exactly. Exactly. And I think it's actually tremendously encouraging to people who feel, I'm sure you've heard this many times, people feel like nothing I do matters.

Nothing I do makes a difference. I did the things. I made the calls. heard this many times. People feel like nothing I do matters. Nothing I do makes a difference. I did the things, I made the calls, I wrote the letters, I did the voting, I did whatever it is. Nothing is changing. Right. And it can feel very discouraging and it can make you feel hopeless as though it makes you retreat into cynicism, as though nothing you do will ever move the needle. I think that's one of the problems.

It's not totally incorrect. Some of the structural theories, critical race theory, these sort of explanations for the interlocking systems of oppression and discrimination, how they have shaped and informed history, how we're still living in them. There is a, it's not a nihilism that comes from it, but like the great man of history theory at least gives people something to believe in and aim for. So if you believe that everything is interlocking

and structural and it doesn't matter what individuals do, that's also a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you believe you can make it, if you don't believe you can make a difference, you will definitely not make a difference-fulfilling prophecy. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. If you believe you can make a... If you don't believe you can make a difference, you will definitely not make a difference. That's absolutely right. Just because you believe you can make a difference doesn't mean you will.

But certainly believing that change is not possible makes sure that it is not possible. That's absolutely right. Yes. If you believe you can't, then you're right. Yes. Mm-hmm. And I just... Yeah. It's been tremendously helpful, at least for me and from other people that I've heard of, to sort of reframe this idea of what it means to make a contribution.

It does not necessarily mean that your name is on the side of a weirdly shaped rocket ship, right? Or that you have an airplane emblazoned with your local. Yeah, or that it was even appreciated or understood in the moment that it was happening. That's right. Sometimes, if you're ahead of the curve, you're probably not going to be appreciated in your moment, or you're not going to be fully appreciated for the magnitude of what you're doing.

You might be appreciated by your small group of people or your supporters or believers, but most people, it's almost a sign that you're not that groundbreaking if everyone likes what you're doing. Yeah, I think that's totally true. that you're not that groundbreaking if everyone likes what you're doing. Yeah, I think that's totally true. If you look back at some of the biggest change makers in history, they were widely opposed, right?

Like the Martin Luther Kings of the world had a lot of hate in his lifetime. And not just from white people, by the way. No. Like a huge percentage of black America thought either Martin Luther King was too radical or not radical enough. And so, you know, in his own community, he was considered, you know, two in the middle. And so, yeah, there's something about being able to stand alone and do the thing

because you think it's the right thing. It's such a big ask for some people, right? Like it's such a, I would love to hear what advice you have for somebody who feels like they just, like they just don't know if they can do that. Well, we often think about, we think of change as this enormous thing, as opposed to, I was fascinated, I didn't end up doing a chapter about it

in the Justice book, but I was fascinated with footnotes, like how many future Supreme Court decisions the stage was set for them in a way I was fascinated with footnotes, like how many future Supreme Court decisions the stage was set for them in like, by a footnote in a descent from a much earlier Supreme Court decision. And so, yeah, like that it feels paltry and not nearly enough to be dissenting

in say Plessy v. Ferguson. But the argument that he lays out in that decision is drawn upon a generation later. And so, yeah, sure, would it have been better if he could have convinced all of his colleagues to not do this morally important thing, but he couldn't. And so he did the piece of it that he could do and it stood there for a very, very long time.

More than 50 years, yeah. Yeah, with the Stokes, like Cato resists Julius Caesar's attempts to overthrow the Roman Republic. He is defeated. And he, instead of, Caesar almost certainly would have pardoned Cato, and Cato found that subservience to be morally unconscionable. And so he kills himself in this incredibly dramatic,

resistant way. It's the ancient world's version of the monk who lets himself on fire. Sure, yeah. And it has exactly zero effect. Caesar takes over. He's later assassinated, but has nothing to do with Cato, really.

So philosophers would debate, like should he have stuck around? But like 2000 years later, it's Cato that George Washington is modeling himself on, and the founders are modeling themselves on. And so, yes, sometimes you do this thing that you're trying to inspire others or send this message and you're thinking, like, I hope everyone around me sees this. But it may stay dormant for 100 years, it could stay dormant for 1000 years. So I think the idea of like, hey, I'm going to do what I think is right here. And I'm going send this message. To me, the stoic part of it is I don't control whether the message is heard.

I only control whether I say it. And let's see where it goes. Yeah, I love that. That's really interesting. I was, my wife read your book and loved it, and then my in-laws both read it and loved it. And I was like, I was waiting to read it till closer to when you came. And I was like, trying, I was like, I was waiting to read it till closer to when you came.

And I was trying to like, guess who was gonna be the figures. Were there a bunch that you didn't include that you wanted to? Yeah, yeah. And there's also stories of the figures that I wanted to include and couldn't. You know, like I think that's always true of any sort of non-fiction writer is that you have to,

you end up with stuff that you wish you could have included and you just couldn't make it work or whatever There was one aspect of a story in this book that I I'm still convinced is true. Okay, I just Couldn't find the documents to prove it after years of looking Okay, which is that one of the characters in this book my hypothesis is that her family was involved in the Underground Railroad Oh, and which one is this Anna Je was involved in the Underground Railroad. Oh. And- Which one is this? Anna Jeans. Okay.

So Anna Jeans lives in Philadelphia, and she's in the right place, she's in the right time, she's a Quaker, she has the right belief system, I can put her brothers, you know, she's the youngest of six surviving adult siblings, I can put her brothers in the same room with very prominent workers on the Underground Railroad, like William Still.

They're in the same room together. They belong to the same sort of abolitionist societies. And the Jeans family was very wealthy. And there's almost no chance that the people who were raising money for the Underground Railroad were not hitting up the Jeans family. There's almost no chance. But the other sort of piece of the puzzle that I became really intrigued by is the fact people who were raising money for the Underground Railroad were not hitting up the Jeans family, right? There's almost no chance. But the other sort of piece of the puzzle that I became really intrigued by is the fact

that the Jeans family has a country home that is where they just kind of go in the summer that they abandon. And at one point, their country home is robbed and somebody steals a painting off the wall that Anna had painted and Anna had an attachment to that painting and she wanted it back. And so there's this big, you know, sort of investigation into who broke into the household, et cetera. And there were reports in the newspaper that talk about how there was food left on the table as though people had left in a hurry. And that's not something that the jeans would have done.

So to me, it makes sense that they had said, OK, you can go ahead and use our house. Go ahead and if you need to use it, it's yours for the using. That somebody had been there who needed to leave in a hurry for whatever reason, because why would the Jeans have needed to leave in a hurry? Why would they have left food on the table? And there were not reports that the house is trashed or that vandals were living there or anything of that nature. So that's a whole storyline that I ended up

writing up everything that I knew about the Jeans family and about how I, you know, the evidence that I was able to compile about their involvement in the Underground Railroad. But ultimately, because the Underground Railroad was intentionally secretive and because the Jeans family was intentionally secretive, they believed in this sort of biblical edict that you should not let the right hand, your right hand know what the left is doing and that you should give in secret and your reward will come in heaven later. And so they purposely did not attach their names to things. They purposely were not like courtesy of the Jeans family, you know, like that was not their vibe. They didn't even allow their picture to be taken. You know,

like they were very hardcore about it. Yes. So there's that aspect. And then there's also the aspect that the Underground Railroad was also intentionally secretive. They're not going to be like, and we stayed at this house. So there's just no documentation that I can come up with that is the smoking gun that says, and we stayed at Stapley Manor, you know, outside of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, as much as I looked. And the other thing that's quite possibly true is that the people who were on the Underground Railroad would not have known what that house was called. And they would have been very reticent to give up a description of the house. They would not have known who owned it.

They would have just been word of mouth told, there's that house over there, you can stay it if you need to. So there are definitely stories like that, that I wished that I could have included. And there are aspects of other people's stories too that ultimately did not make it into the book. Well, as I was thinking about this, I was like, I don't want to talk about the people in the book that much because the book's so good. I wanted people to, like, I think it's like, it's a spoiler thing. Like, I feel like you want to, so I wanted people to, like, I think it's a spoiler thing. Like, I feel like you want to, so I was gonna tell you some of my favorite small but mighty figures.

And let's take a look at them. Yes, tell me. But the concept of like, who are these kind of hidden figures of history who punched above their weight? I love characters like that. Yes, same. So when you're talking about the Underground Railroad, do you know who Thomas Wentworth Higginson is?

Okay, so he's a translator of Epictetus. He's the first one who translates Epictetus in American English. But so he's a professor at Harvard, he's a contemporary of Emerson and all the transcendentalists, but he's much more radical than they are. So he's like one of the six who funds John Brown. He's a couple of those riots

where the fugitive slave catchers would bring, would steal people out of Boston. He was like there when they would riot. So he's this kind of radical abolitionist. And he ends up leading the first black regiment of troops in the US Civil War. So there's Colonel Shaw who people know, that's what the movie Glory is about So there's Colonel Shaw who people know,

that's what the movie Glory is about. He's a little bit before him. They were less distinguished in balance. But so you have this philosopher who is, you know, not passive like you would think of the stories, but like engaged in the great struggle of his time. But then he's also this lover of poetry and art. And he meets this, this woman sends him her poetry

and he likes it and he ends up publishing it, which brings her great fame. He's the person who discovers Emily Dickinson. And so I just love, so it's like, you know, if you did any one of those things, that's an incredible life. But just the guy that is funding John Brown is leading black troops for the Union in the Civil War.

And just on the side discovers one of the great American female poets. I just love. I love those kind of, yes, I call them brain tangle moments where you're just like, I love knowing that. That is just like, does a little something in my brain where I'm like, that just feels real scratchy,

a little itch I didn't even know I had. Yes. I keep coming back to this idea that history favors the doers and not the critics, right? This is true of the entire sweep of history. Who are the critics that we look kindly upon, right? Who are the critics that have the biographies written about them unless they have done something

truly terrible with their lives and they're worth remembering as a villain, you know? And the people that history smiles most kindly upon in many ways are the people who just kept doing the next needed thing. I love that phrase in your book. Yes, that just the next needed thing. These are people without some grand five-year plan. These are people without access to the levers of power by and large, people without fame and fortune by and large, people who are often very marginalized by society, who just continue to do the next needed thing. And the effects of their actions are still being felt in the United States today in some

cases. And in some cases, the effects of their next needed thing, it's almost incalculable, the effect that they managed to have outside of the traditional levers of power. And that to me is a really interesting, an interesting proposal to think of. We think about how do we make change in society? We always think about using the levers of government. As a long-time government teacher, I can tell you that's an important component of it, right? But yet so many of the big and important and lasting changes, especially in American society, have been enacted by people who just decided, I'm just gonna try. And then finally, wisdom, the most ineffable of the virtues, the one I am still trying

to wrap my head around as I put the finishing touches on this book. And talking about wisdom with Mark Matusik. He's an author, a teacher, a speaker. He had this profound spiritual awakening through his own health crisis, sort of staring at death's door, turns to Emerson, who he calls an American Stoic. He has a great new book called

Lessons from an American Stoic, How Emerson Can Change Your Life. And Emerson himself is a student of the Stoics. Emerson has certainly changed my life. And look, my son's middle name is Emerson. So I wanted to talk to him about the virtue that I think Emerson talks the most about, which is this idea of wisdom,

taking your education in your own hands, drinking deeply from the greats and the great minds of history, and finding wisdom and then applying wisdom in your life. It's a great episode. We called it Self-Reliance and Confidence in Trusting Your Inner Wisdom. You can listen to that whole episode, of course, but I wanted to bring you a chunk of it. And then I'm so excited to bring you this new wisdom book, which I'll start talking about in the new year

once we get a title and cover and release date and all that. So what was your introduction to Emerson? Where did you start? I started at UCLA. I was in a PhD program. I was saying I was miserable. I hated academia. I knew I wanted to get out.

And my last year there, I happened to fall into a job as a research assistant for a very renowned Emerson scholar named Barbara Packer. And I didn't know much about him at all. I had read a couple of essays in high school, which I couldn't penetrate really. And so I spent a year in the library stacks, digging up references and reading his journals and I got a really good introduction to Emerson because I needed to make money.

I was broke and I needed a job. Sure. It forced you to go down a rabbit hole. It forced me into a rabbit hole, exactly. And I turned around at the end of that year and realized that I had fallen in love with this guy, not only philosophically, but as I said, personally, I had a deep identification with him.

There were things I could really relate to in his life. I was a fatherless kid. I was an insecure kid. I was an antisocial kid. There were many things that resonated for me. And so it endeared him to me. And what blew my mind was that out of this insecure work in progress came this extraordinary wisdom. And that's what blew me away was that even for a wreck, even for somebody a mess like me, that there could be a possibility of articulating those kinds of truths or at least knowing those kinds of things. And so as a human being, he spoke to me very deeply.

And as I said, the transcendental philosophy and the non-dual philosophy blew my mind. It's a tradition, right? Because you're reading Emerson, but really when you're, and I think he says this somewhere, but that we're all sort of compilations or composites of all the influence. So you're reading Emerson, and when you're reading Emerson,

you're reading all the things that Emerson read. And he's reading all the people that they've ever read. So it's this chain going back thousands of years of all of these books funneling down into this singular book or this singular essay or this singular quote, right? And so really the world of Emerson is this world of all these other people, right? One of my, I mentioned Matt Montanio,

I said he has this book, Representative Men, where he just picks like seven or eight people and it's their biography, but it's really what their influences were, what made them different, what tradition they were a part of. And that's, I think, the really cool part of Emerson. Yeah, there's a wonderful book about him,

Robert Richardson's book, Mind on Fire, and it's all about his intellectual formation. It doesn't matter where he was born, it doesn't matter what his parents were like, it was like, what are the influences of Emerson? Right, what was he reading? Yes. The paradox here is that he always warns

against worshiping the past and heroes of the past, and thinking that because it was said 2,000 years ago, it's therefore superior in some way. So, and that's another thing I think the Stoics said is, you know, not being deceived by the antiquity of things, into thinking that they're necessarily superior. So while he owed a lot to his predecessors and the people he learned from, he warns against worshiping them simply because they came before us and

devaluing ourselves. Yes. Well, it's very empowering, right? I think he says, he's like, you got to remember Socrates and Plato and all these, he was like, they were young men when they had these ideas. You know, that they weren't the sort of oracles or larger than life figures,

and that they weren't walking around in their togas or their robes. They were just ordinary people figuring things out. And that even like what they wrote down was in some cases like the least interesting part of them. It was how they lived and what they experienced. Towards the end, he's basically going like, well, what do you say? That's the tradition. And yeah, he's, towards the end, he's basically going like,

well, what do you say? You know, what, like, that's the tradition, right? It's not just the tradition of the, celebrating all these brilliant things from the past, but ultimately Emerson is saying, you gotta do what I'm doing, which is like, also write your own stuff, have your own ideas, put your own spin on it.

And that's what's so cool about what he does. Yeah, and he's also always about practical philosophy. That's why he loved journaling so much as obviously the Stoics did as well. And realizing that your own life is a laboratory. Yeah. And that you have the, you know, your life is an experiment and that you have to, the more experiments you make, the more, the more you learn, the more wisdom you receive. The more you learn, the more wisdom you receive. And the more you are not influenced, unduly influenced by powers outside of you.

Yeah. He warns so much, he says, society is not your friend. And to be yourself in the crowd is the greatest accomplishment. Yeah. So it's really about self-reliance and that deep sense of trusting your own knowing. Do you, so I think most of us interact with Emerson

probably in the handful of essays that are popular. Maybe we read a book like, Mind on Fire, but what do you find in the journals in the, he's famously keeps the commonplace book of the quotes that he likes and the notes that he's doing. He's not just reading and then reciting, there's this kind of intermediary step of digesting and riffing and questioning.

What do you see in all that from him? You see the angst and you see the fear and you see the loneliness. He was profoundly lonely. Why? Because he had this difficulty connecting with other people. He said, I have a porcupine impossibility of contact.

So even, he said, even sitting in my own house, there's a gap between me and everyone around me. So you really, you feel this deep alienation. It's a seeker's alienation. It's a philosopher's alienation. It's a seeker's alienation. It's a philosopher's alienation Because it's the outsider's perspective on this human predicament this human condition and how we can live it And in the journals you see how he was doing that on a daily basis the mistakes that he made the regrets that he had The rages the you know, irrational

Impulsive kinds of fallings out he had with people. That's where you what you see in the journal. It takes you apart, right? Like, have you seen the Barbie movie? Yeah. You know, she's they're all dancing there at the party at the house. And then she goes, Hey, do you guys ever think about death? You know, it's a record scratch. It's like, no, we don't think about that at all. And I think there is something in the philosopher's path in the decision to seek knowledge and

to explore oneself, where you start asking questions and thinking about things that you realize are not only not occurring to other people, but they resent you or look askance at you for bringing up, right? And so I think they're, yeah, it's not that philosophers have to be lonely, but there is something that separates you, at least at first, that takes you away because suddenly you're not like everyone else

and you're not on the same wavelength as everyone else. Absolutely, that's the left-handed path. It's the path of self-discovery. And that's why often it's crisis or catastrophe or disaster that leads people onto a seekers path. You know, until you have your comfortable version of things shaken up, until you have that story deconstructed by life, who wants to take that left-handed path? Who wants to walk around thinking about mortality all the time? But once you

realize the situation we're in, you see that there's really nothing else to think about if you want to prepare yourself for the realities of your life. Yeah, I mean, he goes to Divinity School, he's on this path to be a minister, he has a church, and then he starts thinking about things and reading things and experiences things.

And he realizes like, I can't get up here every Sunday and talk about these things that I don't believe. He basically goes, I can't get up here every Sunday and talk about these things that I don't believe that like I can't He basically goes I can't tell you guys what you want to hear that wouldn't be true to who I am So if the the asking of the questions are you know starting to pull on the thread? You could argue it really it unravels his whole life. You know, it it deprives him of the security, the status, the safety that he had went to school for, that his family had picked out for him,

that all his friends and colleagues were in, and it does it, ultimately it's for the best. It sets him on this whole path. This is also the founding of Stoicism, right? Zeno suffers his shipwreck and he loses everything. And he says, I made a great fortune when I suffered a shipwreck, but he everything. And he says, you know, I made a great fortune when I suffered a shipwreck.

But he only thinks that years later, right? The interim period would have been lonely and scary and destabilizing because all your old creature comforts are gone. Yeah, I mean, the reason that happened to Emerson is that he lost his wife. Yeah. You know, his 19 year old wife died of TB

a year after they were married. It completely broke his heart. He lost his wife. Yeah. You know, his 19 year old wife died of TB a year after they were married it completely broke his heart. He lost his traditional faith and he realized he couldn't give, you know, deliver the sacraments. He couldn't be a minister in good faith. So it wasn't a conscious choice. Life did it. Life stripped him down. And he had also been prepared for that. His dad died when he was nine years old. He grew up in poverty. He was the kid that Emerson kid that nobody expected much of. He graduated number 39 in the class of 60 from Harvard. He wasn't that outstanding. So he came from a lot of insecurity to begin with. And then when his wife Ellen died, that was the catalyzing event that got him to go to Europe, to really start and commit himself to writing, to leave the church, and to take on this transcendental

philosophy that doesn't depend on an institution to connect you to spiritual experience. I do think that is something that we can take from Emerson, right? When we have these encounters with truth, we have these rude awakenings, everything is laid bare. It's not a foregone conclusion that we see that or we make that change, right? What a lot of people do is they wait for it to subside. They find a way to pretend. They find a way to unsee. You know, They find a way to pretend. They find a way to unsee. There's another path where Emerson squashes the doubts, chooses not to understand the thing that his salary depends on him not understanding. And he just goes back to work and he's an ordinary, maybe even extraordinary minister.

But he's not Emerson, the American stoic, the transcendentalist, the philosopher, the sort of guy that influences so many artistic lives as well as we're still reading and talking about him today. It's because he doesn't turn away from that painful, destabilizing truth that he faces. Exactly, and that's the fact, that's the case for all of us. How do we respond to crisis? How do you respond when truth slams you in the face?

Do you turn away? Do you try to rationalize? Do you hide? Do you hide out in addiction or whatever? Or do you face what it is and let it take you deeper? And that's what he did. He didn't have any choice in the matter though. Temperamentally, he wasn't able to turn away

and just go, you know, just go into a conventional kind of life. It wasn't his who he was. Yeah, he had a profound belief in nonconformity and the importance of not moving with the crowd and listening to listening to the whisper only you can hear. That's that was something that he needed for his own survival. Thanks so much for listening. If you could rate this podcast and leave a review on iTunes, that would mean so much to us and would really help the show.

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