The Daily Stoic - Would You DIE to Keep Your Word? | John Amaechi (PT. 2)

Episode Date: October 4, 2025

Moral challenges have existed throughout history, and we all handle them in our own way. In today’s Part 2 episode, Ryan continues his conversation with former NBA player turned psychologist John Amaechi. They discuss the ethical dilemmas that have endured for 2,000 years, the role of compromise, and the complexity of loyalty and sacrifice.John Amaechi is an English psychologist, consultant and former professional basketball player. He played college basketball for the Vanderbilt Commodores and Penn State Nittany Lions, and professional basketball in the NBA for the Orlando Magic, Utah Jazz, and Cleveland Cavaliers. Since retiring from basketball, John got his PhD in psychology and has worked as a psychologist and consultant, establishing his company Amaechi Performance Systems.Follow John on X @JohnAmaechi and on Instagram @JohnAmaechiOBE 📚 Grab a signed copy of It’s Not Magic by John Amaechi at The Painted Porch🎙️ Listen to Ryan's solo episode You Are What You Won't Do For Money on Apple Podcasts and Spotify👉 Support the podcast and go deeper into Stoicism by subscribing to The Daily Stoic Premium - unlock ad-free listening, early access, and bonus content: https://dailystoic.supercast.com/📖 Preorder the final book in Ryan Holiday's The Stoic Virtues Series: "Wisdom Takes Work": https://store.dailystoic.com/pages/wisdom-takes-work🎙️ 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.

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stoic philosophers we explore at length how these stoic ideas can be applied to our actual lives and the challenging issues of our time. Here on the weekend, when you have a little bit more space, when things have slowed down, be sure to take some time to think, to go for a walk, to sit with your journal, and most importantly, to prepare for what the week ahead may bring. Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another episode of The Daily Stoke Podcast. My wife came in the office and said, dude, everyone loves the guest today.

And I go, who, what? I had sort of lost track of time. I'm talking about John Amaci, who was the guest. We ran part one of the episode earlier this week, had gotten there a little early, and he just like had everyone in the store eating out of the palm of his hand. A big personality, a big dude is incredibly tall, which is why he was picked to play basketball. I imagine. I told this story a little bit in part one. He doesn't start playing basketball until late in high school. He's English. So basketball wasn't, you know, sort of the sport people

are pushed into there, you know, ends up coming to America, plays college basketball, goes into the pros. As I said, in part one, famously turns down $17 million from the Lakers in 2000 to play in Orlando where he was getting paid $600,000 a year. So a really principled, interesting kind of out-of-the-box guy after he played basketball. He went on to be a psychologist. He got his Ph.D. And now he works with teams and high performers and all sorts of interesting people. And that's really ended up being the theme of both of these episodes. This idea of integrity, living by your principles, being a good leader. And how, you know, how you do one thing is really how you do everything. And we really ended up discussing a bunch of sort of fascinating stoic case

studies. And I think you'll really like this episode. As I said, John is an English psychologist, a consultant, former professional basketball player. He played at Vanderbilt and at Penn State. He had a professional career in the NBA. And then after he retired from the NBA, got his Ph.D. in psychology. He wrote a memoir called Man in the Middle. And he now has a leadership book called It's Not Magic. He signed a few copies of It's Not Magic here at the Pannon Porch. Let's get into it. Let me ask you. There's a story that Stoics loved that I wrote about in Right Thing right now, and I think about a lot. So there's this Roman general named Regulus, and he's fighting Carthage. And he ultimately ends up getting taken prisoner. So he's rotting away as a prisoner of war in Carthage. And finally, you know, the war goes on. And finally, Carthage, seeing an opportunity, says, you know, we'll let you go back to Rome, and we want you to negotiate a cessation of hostilities. But the condition is, if you can't, you have to. come back. You have to give us your word that if you can't successfully broker this piece,

which he claimed he thought it could do, you have to come back. That seems a bit unrealistic to people, but there's all sorts of conventions that we agree to as society, particularly in war, that we agree to. In war, they used to have prisoner exchanges where you have a prisoner, we have a prisoner, we'll swap, but neither of them can go back in the army. And it's an honor system. So he takes it, so he travels back from Carthage all the way to Rome as he gets to Rome. He'd been in Carthage a long time. He could see that they were actually losing the war, that they were sending him to negotiate not from a place of strength but weakness. And so he goes, he delivers their offer. He says these are the terms. And he says, but to the Roman council,

he says, look, but before you make your decision here, let me say, I don't think you should take this offer. I think you can win this war. And I think they're about to lose it. So I don't think you should do it. I go, thank you very much. Okay, we're not going to do it. And so everyone's excited. Regulus is home. They're going to win this war. And he goes back to his house and he starts packing his things. And his wife is stunned. His children are stunned. But the Roman council is stunned because he hadn't told them that he was planning or going back. I said, what are you talking about? And he says, I gave them my word that if I could not broker a piece, I would return. And he goes back where they promptly put him to death, right? They don't go. go, thanks for keeping your word. They go, you failed. You're worthless to us now. And he's trampled to death by an elephant. That's how they kill him. And right before he goes back, someone asks them, they go, this is insane. You gave your word to the enemy. You don't have to keep it. And he says, look, if I keep my word, and I think he knew what would happen. He says, if I keep my word, I alone will suffer. But if I break my word, all of Rome will suffer. And his point was,

no one will trust a Roman prisoner, dignitary, ambassador, general ever again because they'd just been betrayed by him. And I think he also thought the converse that if he kept his word, even though he would go back and face certain death, that people would learn, oh, you can trust a Roman even when it's not in their direct interest. But I'm curious your reaction to that story. It's not quite turning down 17 million dollars. No, no. But it is this idea that, hey, the most important thing here is I do what I say, where I keep my word. Oh, God. I'm going to use the word context again. So I can see why the story appeals. Yeah. It feels removed from reality, because we're talking about it, a historical thing. It's thousands of years ago. And the reality is, if you are being held hostage

by somebody who says, if you, I don't know, if you convert to Catholicism will let you go. Yeah, sure. Or will let you live? Yeah, it's under duress. Then you should convert to Catholicism. Sure. I'm an atheist. You should convert to Catholic.

I would do it right now. Oh, yeah, I'll convert to Catholicism. I will go through the motions of anything you tell me to do because this is not a chosen context for me. But just to play devil's advocate here, you're Brittany Griner. You have been captured playing basketball in a foreign country, and they come into your prison cell and say, if you make a statement against your country or you admit to a bunch of false crimes or whatever will let you go, do you do it? The false crimes I'd be more hesitant about. The statements about the country, absolutely. Do that right now, today, right now.

Do it. nobody at least nobody should be fooled by this idea that dying in order to say America is the greatest country in the world in order to dying in order to say Britain is the greatest country in the world many Brits believe that sure I don't think it's valuable as a thing so it's not something that we should die for it's not sensible to die for you shouldn't die in a dispute with your neighbor because they want to take your flag down these are not good ways to die These go in the Darwin Awards, right? They're not good.

They're not sensible. This man had a daughter, family, and wife and partner, and went to be trampled by an elephant in a meaningless display for people who never valued him in the first place. And certainly... But do you think it's meaningless if we're talking about it 2,000 years later as an example about the power of keeping your word? But I think there are better examples of the power of keeping your word that don't require your death. And I think they're just as powerful. I always think these stories, and again, this is not disparages. I think there's great things about this.

Even though I was listening to it, it was forcing me. It's that a brilliant thing again where you hear a story and it forces you to suddenly stress test some of the things you believe. And it's like, I do believe that a person's word is important. I think one of the few reasons where people say me instead of, I don't know, Simon cynic or something, one of the few reasons that people do that is that, is that there is a real sense of authenticity and principle and integrity. And I love that for me and for my team. I'm not going to be kidnapped by, I don't care which entity it is, whether it's ICE or

whether it's some force of the European Union or some terrorist organization. And I'm not, my word with them, our contract is moot. Well, I think that's what's so interesting about this story. And I think the ancients did a better job than we do of taking events. and literature and history and myth and using them to ask these questions. What's so interesting about a lot of the Greek plays is they were writing the same story over and over again and each playwright is,

one is arguing the same story means this, the other one is taking the same story and inverting it. You know, should she have murdered her children to spite her husband? And, you know, from one lens, it's the most horrific crime ever. And then another version,

she's somehow perversely the hero of the story. It's this idea you take the event and you can always take another sloth. lice on it. And so, yeah, right, is this story illustration of the power and the length to which one should go to keep their word? Or is this a proud, foolish man who is abandoning his family to keep a promise to an enemy because he's play acting, you know, the hero, right? And so you can see it all these different ways. So I think that's what's so fascinating about it. Just I think this is why people are fascinated by your story because it's like, okay, either it was.

the bravest thing to do or the dumbest thing to do. And you can see it either way. Oh, no, you should see it both ways. Yeah. This is the thing about, I mean, people reject broadly everything related to identity at this stage, it seems to me, but intersectionality is such an interesting thing to look at, right? It means that I can be both brave and courageous and have integrity and incredibly stupid and without foresight and without kind of emotional foresight because I kind of intellectually knew what's happened. I had no idea about the impact it would have me because I just didn't explore it well enough. And maybe if I had, I would have done something different. But so I can be all of those things at the same time. I was all of those

things at same time. But that is for you, for other people's gaze, right? They look at me with that multiplicity of things. Whereas I, even as I'm talking about this, the image in my brain that I'm seeing is the pages of all these books, like flying around me in chaos. And so if you're looking from the outside. It's like, what the hell is going on there? But I'm sat at this table and the air is still and I know who I am. And that's the bit that I've got. And I know it looks confusing from the outside, but it is confusing. No, no. And these, if you think they're simple in black and white, you're not doing any real thinking. It's probably coming from some sort of ego or emotional place. There's a really great F. Scott Fitzgerald story about this guy who's asked

to sort of do something at work. You know, he's like, he has to screw over the these farmers for his Wall Street boss. And at the end, you know, in the meeting, he ends up telling the farmers what's happening and screws his boss. And Fitzgerald has this great paragraph where he sort of rifts on how it's this brave, magnificent, selfless thing until you think about he has a wife and kids and now he just lost his job. And so, you know, there's the principle, then there's the consequences of the principle. And if you're a lone, figure, it's clearer than if you're part of a community, part of a group. Okay, you go to this Regulist story and he breaks his word, right? And it's interesting, I didn't think about it to those

other moments. What if there's other prisoners? What if he goes back and they kill him, but they spare the other prisoners? What if by not returning Carthage just immediately executes the other prisoners that remained behind? All of our moral questions exist in a context or with overlapping other moral considerations. And so it's, there's always this complexity to it. I do think that changes it, right? It remarkably changes it, but it doesn't, but it changes it in a way that is simpler because the contract of, of integrity has to exist between, like, that's why I focus on his contract now isn't with his captors, it's with the other prisoners. Exactly right. Yes. And so, and they don't even have to know that this is a thing, but I know that it's a thing. I know if I return

60 people go free. Yeah. It's easy for me. No brain. But the interesting part is when you start asking how many people. Sure. It's the same thing, though, as 17 million dollars, is there a number? If it was 50 million dollars, if it was 100 million.

You said 100 million for Roaring. I was like, oh, am I that? Do I have that much integrity? Sure. I'm not sure I do. I'm sure I do. Sure? Yeah, I'm certain of it because I love money.

I'm not one of these people who's like, oh, no, cabin in the wood. I like nice stuff. Sure. And I'm huge. everything I want is really expensive, right? I'm carrying my luggage is with me for the next 10 days. It's carry on. Because

if I put it underneath and it gets lost, I'm not just replacing it right way, right? And so I have become accustomed to a life that has got luxuries in it. There aren't just little luxuries. They're really nice. And so I like money a lot. I like

being aligned with my principles better. And I also like the fact that I'm not sure anybody can say they have principles until they've been dinged. Yeah, until something has run into it. And it could be money, it could be status, it could be something else. But it's got to be dinged. Somebody's got to tap that thing for you to know it's there.

And I'm not sure that I would feel as comfortable if I hadn't had it dinged a little bit and significantly. I used to bank with Goldman, not Goldman Sachs, who's the bank that crashed? Now, it's Lehman Brothers. And I should know that because I lost everything. Wow. I lost everything. So what I did have was gone. I picked Lehman because they were the oldest bank and I thought they would be the most conservative and the least likely to be trouble.

And then I woke up one morning and they were gone. So in the end, if you'd taken the money, you'd end up in the same place. Yeah, I was penniless and I ended up living in my sister's front room for a while. This is after being an athlete. Actually, I think this is the first time I've mentioned it ever. But as most people imagine this transition that was amazing, I remember. I was one of the three athletes chosen, former athletes, chosen to be an ambassador for the London 2012 Games.

And I remember in the run-up to the games, I was living in my sister's front room, getting down to London on the train, arriving and being kind of tubing and walking, but I had no money for anything else. And so here I was. I go to an event where the Olympic, you know, those people, officials were showing up.

And I would be grabbing food putting into my thing, grabbing bottles of water, because I had nothing for anything else. And I was just playing at having money because people just imagined I did. You assumed you're an NBA player. Yeah. Do you want to go to dinner tonight? No, sorry, I really can't. There was a whole period like that. And that's rough on your identity if you don't have some sense of who you are outside of the stuff or the status.

Yeah. And, you know, it didn't mean I had. nothing, but it meant I had very little, and it meant that I was, you know, starting my business at that point and trying to kind of build it up, having gone through that, I thought I'd have a bit more of a cushion at that stage. Sure. We were just at a dinner with some friends, and they were talking about their sort of pregame partying routine now that they're a little older.

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to what's happening inside your body. And a thousand of our followers will get a $100 credit towards their membership. Just visit functionhealth.com slash daily stoic or use gift code Daily Stoic 100 at sign up to own your health. One of the reasons people think that integrity is too hard or too expensive or whatever is they don't just imagine the thing you'll get for it. They've extrapolated out. You get the 17, you're invested, and you enjoy it your whole life, whatever, right? And I think one of the things that it's not that sometimes people think the Momentumori stuff for stoicism or the focus on all the things that could happen is a little dark, but it's also freeing because it's like you don't

actually own the money either. It can get taken away like that, right? Your life can get taken away like that. And so in that moment, as you're bleeding out on the side of a street, you're not like, I'm so glad I took the 17. Because you don't get that then either. And so, but you do get to keep the integrity for the few seconds. So you got to ask yourself, you know, hey, what actually matters? What do I actually possess? What's truly mine? So you watch these people sell their souls. I mean, we're seeing this now in American politics, sell their souls to get a job or to keep a job that you can lose for other reasons.

By the way, everyone else who's made that same bargain, did it pay? Are you sure you're being as self-interested as you think you're being? Or are you actually just deluding yourself? You know, people will sell their soul for, you know, an IOU that you're not actually going to get to cash. That's very true.

Yeah. I think some decisions are worth compromises. I'm not sure. this example you gave about the politicians of selling out. But I've just gone through the process. What do they call it when you when you get rid of your citizenship? I used to have American citizenship. Oh, renounce your citizenship. So I renounce my citizenship a couple of years ago. What for? Some people are doing it for tax people. Sometimes you have to do it for another. It's not for tax reasons. So I work with some entities in the government in the United Kingdom,

where dual citizenship is inconvenient for working at security clearance levels. So that's one of the reasons. It's not the only reason. The other reason is that I, if I'm going to be associated with a country that I am disappointed in. I need to be associated with only one country I'm disappointed in, right? And so that was a big part of it. It's like I'm really disappointed. Sure. I used to live in this country.

I lived in Scottsdale, Arizona, and I thought this country would be my home. I remember when I played in the league, I would come home to the UK. I'd do a couple of basketball camps and I'd see my family, then I'd leave. And when I was leaving to come back to Phoenix, I knew I was coming home. And then I've realized that that is not possible for me. And that realization that it's not home here because it feels, so for example, I'm going to South Korea, I'm going to Shanghai, I'm going to Dubai in the next three, four weeks. And all of those places feel safer to come to.

From a governmental point of view, this is not about people. This is just the stability thing. When I come through the airport, I know that nothing will happen to me. There's a steady hand on the wheel. Whereas one of my colleagues, and this is, I don't know if this is just administration-based, but one of my colleagues, who is a French national, was detained for 36 hours. She's a sociologist, and that's terrifying. And I've never been detained all the times I've run in and out of China, despite the fact

that I'm a member of Amnesty International and vociferous about my comments and have been in the past about China, right? So that's why, but it means I had to get through the 01A visa process, which is terrifying. I had to give them the links and passwords to all of my social media. And my team and I have made a decision about what kind of social media we would do during the process. Yeah. And so even there, that feels like a compromise to my principles, but like there's a larger principle I'm trying to protect. Sure. And not just my self-interest in earning money in America. But so, yeah, there's always a compromise to this.

Yeah, right. Where do you, like the person who is unable to contact. compromise. Again, if you're the lone wolf, you know, maybe you get to do that. If you're the monk, you get to do that. One of my favorite stories about the Stoics and this idea is there's this guy Cato, who's a famous Stoic. He's famously principled, never compromises. And Pompey, the great, comes to him and proposes an alliance that, you know, back then it would be like, your daughter marries me or our kids married, proposes a marriage alliance. And Cato says, like, get the fuck out of here. You know, I'm, he says, I will not be bought by way of women's apartments, you know. And so Pompey the Great, you know, because alliances are a part of

politics, allies with Caesar instead. And Plutarch, the ancient historian, goes, here in this moment, because of his principles, Cato brings about the destruction of the republic that he was so principled in defending. And goes to his death defending. I mean, he could, commit suicide rather than live in Caesar's tyranny or Caesar's Rome. But if he just let his daughter marry Pompey, which, by the way, she wanted to do, like it wasn't a, wasn't an alliance. Yeah. Yeah. Like the women were told, and again, these are all stories more than there are exact historical events, I'm sure. But like the women were, were pro the alliance and he wasn't. And so to the ancient, this was an example of sort of purity, which is wonderful,

philosophically, but problematic politically, actually intersecting and bringing about, you know, the exact same, the exact thing that you are principally defending. And so, yeah, we often think of compromises this bad thing, but it's what makes the world work. But yeah, because compromises are, that's one word for it, but there's, in science, if we are unmoved by evidence, and also even emerging evidence, which forces you to think slightly differently, sure, then that's, you know, there'd be trouble, there'd be dragons, right? So I like the idea that people change my mind. Sure. I like the idea that people force me to kind of ting like a tuning fork, my principles, and say, maybe I'm taking this the wrong way. Maybe, maybe, and then even in the book, I write about this idea of,

I'm amazed by people who want to be right right now. And that's what, when they really talk about principles, what really is I want to be right right now. Yeah. versus winning in the long run. Yes. And winning not just as a number, but as this bigger picture thing

that they've really visioned and looked at. Yeah. And to me, that's another one. That's, you know, I look at that story, and it's like, I love the purity of the principles. Yet at the same time, it almost sounds like people like that, they never touch their principles anymore. Yeah.

They're protected. They're covered in, what's that poppy stuff that you put them on? Bubble wrap, right? They're covered in bubble wrap, and they haven't touched them in so long. that they now just have to kind of assume where it is. Yes. And I think there's something about, actually, in the larger picture of this, if I just look down two months or three months or five months or a year,

does this principle really make sense in the scheme of things? Well, that's what leadership is, right? And I think it's not this magical thing. It's this ability to see where everything fits in its place. And to be able to go in the small picture, this seems like it matters. But in the big picture, it doesn't. Or conversely, you know, this small thing actually matters a great deal. And that's what leaders do.

And they take those stands even, you know, you can imagine him making that, not wanting to make that alliance because it would dent his perception of being the principled person who's above such things. Yeah. There's a hubris to that. It's made me think of this principal thing. It's made me think of this. There was this unhoused guy. I lived off Regent's Park. not the posh bit.

I always say Regents Park's adjacent, which for people who live in London, know that's very posh there. But Houston station is right around the corner. It's not posh. That's where I lived. And I had this ground fall flat, and there was this,

I always used to play music. I was playing some Sam Cuck and something else. And this unhouse guy was, he just stood there. And he had a piece of paper and he started, I've got it in my house, this picture of Sam Cuck that he did with a Sharpie. Wow.

And I thought it's remarkable. And he gave it to me. I said, you know, let me give you some money. for that. He said, no, no, I just said, I could, you know, really use the bathroom. And I was like, it makes you think, right? One of the things about not having a house. Sure. That's one of those, how to impugn someone's dignity more than find, you can't find a place to go to the bathroom. So came in, used the bathroom. I just had a barbecue, so I had some food

left over. And so I packaged it up. When he was about to leave, I said, here's some stuff. And I said, what's in it? He said, what's in it? That's fair question, right? What's in it? And I said, well, there's some broccoli and some chicken. whatever, I said, I can't take it. I'm vegan. And it was such an interesting thing for me, because my initial thing was like, am I being punked? Are there cameras around right now? Because it's like, this man was not a lot of bones, not all the skin on the bones. And it's like, wow. And it's like, okay, so I separately wrapped some of the veggies up and gave them that, but it's just one interesting thing. I'm not sure you talk about, is there a number?

I'm pretty sure if I get hungry enough. I don't eat fish or seafood, not for any intellectual reasons I just don't like the texture. But yeah, yeah, I'll eat that. I'll eat that. Awful. I'll eat that. Yeah. There's almost nothing I wouldn't do in order to not even survive, but feel like my belly was full. Right. And I just, I still haven't examined that story in my head. It just sparked me there. It's like, what a fascinating situation to maintain that principle. Yeah. Well, and look, you said no one should ever die for their country or, and it's, it's interesting because there's all these contexts that change it. Like I brought up Britney Griner, and I think that's sure.

She's a basketball player who gets taken prisoner. What are her loyalties, you know, but what if you're a P-O-W? Like, you're actually a prisoner of war and you're fighting in said war. Well, now, you know, maybe you swore an oath. Maybe you would be used as propaganda against. So it's like depending on our roles, depending on our obligations, these things take on different contexts, right? They do. They do. I still maintain. But, you know, are we really in an age? Oh, I suppose, you know what? That's ridiculous. I've just answered my question before I asked it. I was going to say, are we really in an age where a normal person of good conscience couldn't imagine that if somebody was taken hostage, whether it be by terrorist organization or foreign power, and you suddenly saw them on the news saying, you know, in a nice suit or whatever else and food around them,

saying, yeah, America is the best place, the worst place in the world, and I'm so glad that I'm here and these people are taking care of me. I wanted to believe, as I was saying it, that, you know, normal people with good conscious would see through that and see that it's a survival strategy. I could understand and would empathize with anyone, would I hope to hold myself to a higher standard? Oh, come on, no. You've got people who love you. I don't know. I'm writing, I'm writing a book right now about this guy James Stockdale. Do you know who Stockdale is? He's one of the prisoners of war. in Vietnam. So he shot down over Vietnam. John McCain is. I'll give you. Yeah, yeah. Do you know the John McCain story? He's a prisoner. But you know he could have left. Yes. So do you think he should have left? I'm not sure that he did. I'm not sure. I don't know the story in full, right? But I don't know what he did. So his father is the theater commander in the area. So as soon as they find out, they have basically the, the Admiral's son, they're like, you can go home right now. Because they wanted to send the message that it was a fundamentally morally unjust war that was being waged hypocritically by, you know, the capitalist powers. Here, the Admiral's son is getting special

treatment. So it's a, it's a trap, right? They're saying you can go because they want to use him leaving as a weapon of war. And then, and this is putting aside whether we should have been in Vietnam or not, which we definitely shouldn't have been. But the regulation, the rule, as the code of conduct that all the military guys had been under was that one, you cannot accept special treatment in exchange for, you know, testimony or special favors or whatever, but also that if prisoners would be released, they would be released in order of how long they'd been there. So there wouldn't be, oh, you're of a higher rank, you get to go home earlier, or your dad is important so you get to go home earlier. So they're trying to get him to make an exception to

not just embarrass the country, but to also break the spirit of the other prisoners. Yeah, I... But he has a family. Yeah, I think when you're part of an institution, if you adopt the, the kind of rules, especially military or pseudo-military institutions, I get that. That's what I mean. I suppose you have conflicting. Well, yeah, part of my challenge, though, is that the very people who would kind of look at that story and value it so highly are the same people who in their actual lives should really be wearing like an F1 driver's jersey. They should be wearing that jumpsuit with all the badges of all the compromises and gifts and promises that they've taken. And that makes it less powerful for me. The very people who speak of fidelity, for example,

are the very people cheating, the very people who speak of the sin of homosexuality. The very people who speak of the sin of homosexuality are the very ones with a boyfriend in the back. It's like I find it hard that some of these stories that are supposed to teach a way of life, a way of living more than a way of life, that they're used as a weapon. But it's not even they're not consistent. It's that they use these things knowing that they don't believe these things. What an interesting weapon to have. You speak this way, whether it be from a pulpit or from a senatorial office or whatever else, you speak this way while you live a different way. Sure.

It makes this thing that you're doing not a philosophy or a valuable insight to be shared. It's just a bludgeon for other people's children to die by. So something you might not know about me. I live on a Halloween street here in Bastrop. Like they close the whole street down and there's. Decorations everywhere. People go absolutely insane. Thousands of people from all over this enormous county, mostly farm kids that can't trick or treat where they live, come out, and it's crazy. So we're already putting up our Halloween decorations. We're already going all out. And that's where today's sponsor comes in. Wayfair. Not only did we look at our Halloween decorations, but we already started looking at Christmas decorations too. Wayfair makes it easy to tackle your home goals this holiday season with endless inspiration for every space. and budget. They offer free and easy delivery, even on the big stuff. No more huge delivery fees for furniture. You can get big stuff like sofas, dining tables, beds, desks, and more shipped for free. And as I said,

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hey, I'm not going to be a part of that. Principles and these stories of heroism and selflessness and whatever, they can either inspire, they can also be used to kind of keep people in line or get them to do something that is very much not in their self-interest, but seems like greatness, but is actually, you know, complicit in some larger flawed system or, and that's, you have to be able to zoom out and see history from all the different angles. And at least I would say this. So, so I don't necessarily agree with a lot of Senator McCain's policies. Of course, me neither. However, I do, and I don't know everything about him, but it does appear. I've met a couple of people who've met him in the past

before he passed. And I do remember that there's this story that I have been poop-pooing. a little bit, right? And then there's him in the middle of his campaign with a woman who is most definitely a vociferous bigot, calling President Obama a Muslim, and he, in the calmest, kindest way, but also the firmest, most principal way, stops her in a way that is completely not in his best. Forget 17 million. There he lost. Or, you know, he's very much opposed to the Affordable Health Care Act, very much. opposed to Obamacare and would have liked to see it repealed. And he cast the deciding vote famously to prevent the effort to repeal it because he felt it was violating what he had talked about

many times, which was the way the Senate procedures are supposed to be observed. And so there's a handful of moments. And I think the tragedy of someone like McCain is not, though, examples, it's that he wasn't always those examples. But the other way to think about it is nobody is that all the time. Like, Tanahasi Coates had this great line where he's like, not everyone's Jackie Robinson and Jackie Robinson wasn't always Jackie Robinson. Very true. Sometimes people who are cynical or nihilistic can can try to take moments of greatness like that and go, well, what about X, Y, and Z with that same person as a way of going, well, that wasn't great. And really it's more like, no, no, it definitely was great because of X, Y, and Z because they, they were able to do it in that, they were able to bat, you know, 400 in one season. The fact that they didn't do it all the time doesn't mean that they weren't great. It means that it's really fucking hard to bat 400.

Yeah. So I suppose even as you said that, part of my brain wanted to challenge it, right? So I think there's a difference between Jackie Robinson and Senator McCain or any Senator. Right. And I don't just mean historically in context. I mean, we reach into history for Jackie Robinson. Senator McCain reached out to the world. He chose to be a senator. He chose to raise unbelievable Machiavellian amounts of money, right, to do the thing that he did as all senators must. We place him there. And he didn't necessarily choose it. It was a product of his time and who he was and some good decisions and some bad decisions. But we don't imagine that his whole life. somehow had to be, but if you choose to say that I am a representative of all of the people in my state, such a remarkable statement to make, right? Right, yeah. All of a sudden now, yeah, if I voted you because you talk about this story, then that story should be resonant in the decisions that you make. I should be able to see that story manifest.

So I should expect nothing else than the thumbs down when the time comes. Yeah, that's true. We're all flawed people doing the best we can. Are we all doing the best we can? Are we all? That's true. Because I think we are all flawed people. That's true.

Not everyone is trying their best and some people are not trying at all. There's a lot of phoning it in it, it seems to me. But I would say that I think I tend to, Alex Haley said, the job of the writer is to find the good and praise it. My impulse is to find moments of greatness and go like, that's amazing. Not your story about choosing $17 million, my instinct is not to go. But where all the other times that he chose money over his word, right? Because I think the idea is you want more people to aspire to be like that and not try to find ways for people to rationalize not having to ever do that.

I agree with you. I suppose I don't countenance it as looking for the positive. I, part of the reason for this book is the idea of I'm tired of people thinking that there's something magical about some of the figures we talked about. I want people to know that there are ordinary things you can do on a day-to-day basis that will be dull, onerous, challenging in the smallest possible ways, and they will help make you the kind of person that is successful in a way that's meaningful to you, congruent with who you are, even better at understanding who. you are. And it won't make you into somebody famous necessarily, but it appears to me that the way you could become famous nowadays is more about being unexamined rather than being examined. And my thought is that if you're examined and dutiful and willing to do some small things daily and not manifesting them, because I don't believe in that, but rather that, I don't think

there's good evidence for it. But those things are the things that can make you look remarkable in the eyes of others who've not yet started that journey. And that's a different thing to me. And a more accessible thing. I think the powerful stories have resonance and people are able to be entertained by them. And they're important. But yeah, there is this element. Like when we look at, we tend to think of courage as like, did it win you a Victoria

Cross or a medal of honor? Like, was it transcendent? And this neglects day-to-day moral courage to just be like yourself. or to take minor risks. And so there is this tendency, I think, to put these things up on a pedestal and act like they're for other people or they're unattainable

or they're things you do once in some great moment of crisis or consequence as opposed to a day-to-day person that you are. Yeah. I do think that that, I think it's partly done by people to gate keep excellence or being seen as excellent.

But it's also, and I heard, maybe I didn't hear it, maybe I read it, something about imposter phenomena which I talk about quite a lot what this person countenance is a more generous view of a possible phenomenon

and they were suggesting that actually it's a really convenient thing for people to have imposter phenomena it's really convenient if the little voice in your head that tells you you can't do stuff that's great

well that means I don't have to do it I have to do it or at least I don't have to do it's hard because I'll never make it anyway that's what the voice tells me and so rather than challenging and examining that voice there is some part of you

that finds it, even as it is injurious, you find it convenient. Yeah. And I think, so that's why I said when you were talking about, you know, people are broadly good. It's like, this is the stuff that's happening inside people. And it's fascinating to me. It's not neutral. It's not bad. It's not good.

It's just really complicated. Yeah. It's like, and in a way, what would I do if I was prime minister during the blitz? Oh, boy. You're not going to be prime minister during the blitz, but you're having to decide whether, you're going to lay people off or not, or whether you're going to, you know, do this or that. You have all these data, like the trolley problem. You're never going to pull the fucking lever and run people over with the train.

And it's interesting as a thought exercise, but you are making day-to-day ethical decisions that have very real consequences for yourself and others. and there is this just sort of fantasy land or theoretical land that we would prefer to live in as opposed to the day-to-day choices. It is far more fun as an intellectual exercise to think about those other things. Rather than just say, what about me? What did I do yesterday?

What are the choices that I made? I've been going to the same coffee shop for three years and I still don't know the name of the person who serves me with a smile and knows my name. Sure. It's like, there's a choice for you. Yeah.

I don't think it's a big consequential, biggest one in the world, but it is an interesting one. By the way, it's one you have now and that you have complete and total control. Yeah.

And also there's a rich, I think people think of it only as difficult and challenging rather than there's a richness missing. Yes. Right? So there's a coffee shop called The Watch House.

I moved from, I used to live in Colin Garden right in the center of London and I moved because it was too loud. I got old and it just got too loud. I need to be in bed at 10, And it was too loud. And I've moved it to the city, which is dead and a good view, and I like it that way.

But the coffee shop that was by my house, I go there all the time. And these wonderful people, there's a part of me moving that was properly difficult because it's like, I won't have this. Right on my doorstep. These relative strangers, I learned about them coming to this country. I learned about them taking various different academic studies and courses. I learned about their dreams and aspirations. I learned about the challenges they were thinking between should I stay at this job?

I'm the manager now. This is great. It gives me some flexibility in hours, but there's more money I can make at this other place over there. I had that conversation while getting a coffee. It's an amazing richness, I think, that you miss if you don't choose to make some better decisions. I agree.

You want to go check out my store? Oh, yeah, I do. 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 it would really help the show. We appreciate it, and I'll see you next episode.