The Charlie Kirk Show - Stoicism and the Soul with Vitaliy Katsenelson

00:00:00.000 Hey everybody, a special episode.

00:00:01.000 We talk about stoicism, life, wisdom, investing with Vitaly Costa Nelson, author of Soul in the Game.

00:00:08.000 I read the book.

00:00:08.000 I'm glad I did.

00:00:10.000 And I think this book will bless you.

00:00:11.000 It's deep.

00:00:12.000 It'll challenge you.

00:00:13.000 We talk about cold water, investing, waking up early, classical music.

00:00:17.000 A fun, insightful episode with a remarkably talented writer.

00:00:23.000 I am not a good writer.

00:00:24.000 I'm good at other things.

00:00:25.000 He's a great writer, and I have mad respect for that.

00:00:29.000 Get involved at TurningPointUSA at tpusa.com.

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00:00:36.000 Email me your thoughts as always, freedom at charliekirk.com and subscribe to our podcast by opening up your podcast app and typing in Charlie Kirk Show.

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00:00:50.000 Listen to the end of this episode for a special giveaway opportunity.

00:00:53.000 Buckle up, everybody.

00:00:54.000 Here we go.

00:00:55.000 Charlie, what you've done is incredible here.

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00:01:37.000 I got an email back, I think, in January, February that said, Charlie, do you want to read a book that Nassim Taleb recommends?

00:01:43.000 Like, of course, I love everything he's authored, including The Black Swan.

00:01:48.000 And so the book gets sent to me.

00:01:49.000 I get hundreds of books sent to me, hundreds.

00:01:52.000 And for whatever reason, I was drawn to this book by the recommendation.

00:01:56.000 And said, all right, I'll give this one a whirl.

00:01:57.000 It was a Friday night.

00:01:58.000 The book is called Soul in the Game, The Art of a Meaningful Life.

00:02:00.000 And I was like, I really like the way this is written.

00:02:02.000 Like, this author really knows how to capture your attention.

00:02:06.000 His syntax, his diction was excellent.

00:02:08.000 You just keep reading and reading and reading.

00:02:10.000 And it was incredibly deep.

00:02:11.000 Finished the whole thing.

00:02:12.000 I said, I want to have this guy on the show.

00:02:14.000 And there's tons of lessons there, tons of things that I really want to talk about and explore, including stoicism, which we're going to get to later in the hour.

00:02:21.000 But joining us now is the author of the book.

00:02:23.000 I might mispronounce the name.

00:02:24.000 I apologize if I do.

00:02:25.000 Vitaly Katz the Nelson.

00:02:28.000 Welcome to the program.

00:02:29.000 Vitaliks and Nelson.

00:02:30.000 It's perfect.

00:02:30.000 You got it.

00:02:30.000 No, it's perfect.

00:02:31.000 Okay.

00:02:32.000 Well, welcome to the program.

00:02:33.000 Congratulations on a very readable and fulfilling and deep book.

00:02:38.000 From your perspective, tell us why you wrote this book.

00:02:40.000 And I have several items I want to explore with you.

00:02:43.000 So please.

00:02:44.000 Yeah.

00:02:44.000 Well, you know, actually, I tell you this, the dedication of this book is to my kids because he don't read my emails.

00:02:51.000 And I think this probably sums it up.

00:02:56.000 I write these articles about investing about many fun topics, but a lot of topics are about life.

00:03:03.000 And I wanted to make sure my kids read my content.

00:03:06.000 So I figured the best way to do it is to package it into a book.

00:03:11.000 Well, and it's just rich with wisdom and also your own personal narrative.

00:03:16.000 And so again, the book is called Soul in the Game, The Art of a Meaningful Life.

00:03:19.000 So let's just kind of go through some of the elements here.

00:03:21.000 And then I want to dive into some particulars and specifics.

00:03:25.000 Your father, so being born in Russia was obviously a big part of your life.

00:03:30.000 Talk about that, being born in Russia, and then, as you put it, made in America.

00:03:34.000 Yeah, so I was born in Russia and I grew up in a, not just in Russia, but in Soviet Russia.

00:03:40.000 And I grew up in a town called Murmansk.

00:03:42.000 And most Americans would know about Murmansk if you watched the hunt for the Red October, because that is the home for the Russian Navy base.

00:03:51.000 And that's where the Red October, which is a fictional submarine, is from.

00:03:55.000 So Murmansk was kind of actually an interesting place because This is so up north.

00:04:01.000 If you look at Norway, you have to go to the very north, you know, to the highest tip of Norway to find Murmansk, right?

00:04:09.000 You know, it's 100 miles away.

00:04:10.000 So there's very little sunlight in the wintertime.

00:04:14.000 So little that I would wake up in the morning, it's dark.

00:04:17.000 I would walk to school.

00:04:20.000 It's still, you know, it's dark.

00:04:21.000 The sun would come out for about 10 minutes and I would miss it because I would be in school.

00:04:26.000 And when I walk back home, it's dark again.

00:04:30.000 And today, so my family moved to the United States.

00:04:34.000 I live in Denver, which is kind of the opposite of Murmansk because we have 300 days of sunshine.

00:04:41.000 But so my family moved to the United States in 1991.

00:04:45.000 Since then, now I have a wife, three kids. 0.51

00:04:49.000 And I'm a kind of, I call myself a capitalistic pig because living in Russia made me appreciate, made me appreciate what we have here in the United States.

00:04:59.000 And it's very special. 0.60

00:05:00.000 Amen.

00:05:00.000 And I want to ask you about finance advice and all that, but let's get into some of the particulars of the book.

00:05:06.000 And you have the first part of the chapter is all around being a student of life.

00:05:10.000 And something I admired about reading the book is you're incredibly observing and curious.

00:05:15.000 And I think that's what makes people, that's one of the ingredients to live a happy life.

00:05:20.000 Just talk about that.

00:05:21.000 Have you always been a curious person and just observing the little things and trying to connect them?

00:05:27.000 I think I became a lot more curious about life and a lot more observant when I started writing.

00:05:32.000 Because what happens when you start writing, you always look for stories and you look at life a little bit different because you are looking for stories.

00:05:40.000 And I think writing made me a lot more observant.

00:05:43.000 That's number one.

00:05:44.000 Number two, when you have a student of life as an attitude, when you have this attitude, you approach life differently because you never sure that your knowledge never becomes stale.

00:06:02.000 You're less likely to become arrogant.

00:06:05.000 And my day job as an investor, you know, like as an investor, you want to be kind of what I call thoughtfully arrogant.

00:06:13.000 And let me explain what I mean by this.

00:06:16.000 Whenever you buy a company or a stock, it's an act of arrogance because somebody is selling it to you, right?

00:06:24.000 Or when you sell the stock, somebody's buying it from you.

00:06:26.000 And so when you're doing this, you're basically saying, I know better than the person on the other side.

00:06:32.000 So you need to have some arrogance as an investor.

00:06:36.000 However, what I would argue, there's two types of arrogances.

00:06:40.000 There's arrogance is I am, therefore, I'm no better.

00:06:45.000 And then there is a second type of arrogance, which I call thoughtful arrogance.

00:06:49.000 And that arrogance is basically, I've done this tremendous amount of research.

00:06:54.000 I reached this conclusion, and my conclusion leads me to be, you know, to this decision.

00:07:00.000 So that's what I call thoughtful arrogance.

00:07:03.000 And but to write me also the kind of you combine thoughtful arrogance and being a student of life, this kind of attitude of constant curiosity or learning.

00:07:14.000 And that's kind of, you know, that's who I am, hopefully.

00:07:18.000 I think that comes across.

00:07:20.000 And so let's, another interesting part of the book that I have now applied like directly was the idea of how you identify with things that you're trying to resist.

00:07:32.000 And so you have two portions: I don't eat desserts and I don't eat pork.

00:07:36.000 Talk about that because it, you know, some people struggle with their vices.

00:07:40.000 But if you change your relationship with the vice, such as not that I wish I wouldn't eat desserts, but use the, I think an example from a kosher rabbi, a rabbi who eats kosher.

00:07:54.000 Talk about that. 0.68

00:07:55.000 Yeah.

00:07:56.000 So You want, um, let's see, let's let me give you this example.

00:08:02.000 So, the story was like this: I have a friend who is a rabbi, and he was in my house, and he uh, and he's telling Vitali, I have a hard time losing weight, and he says, My biggest issue is that I eat too much bread.

00:08:15.000 And I said, And I said, Well, you just need to become a person who does not eat bread.

00:08:19.000 It's not like it's not that you eat bread sometimes, you just never eat bread.

00:08:24.000 Yes, and because what happens to us when you make little exceptions, every time you present it with a chin, every time you present it with a choice, it becomes a choice, right?

00:08:33.000 Like, I'm gonna eat a little bit of bread, uh, or so I'm gonna eat dessert sometimes.

00:08:39.000 If you become a person who doesn't eat dessert or who doesn't eat bread and it becomes part of your identity, that's not really a choice for you.

00:08:47.000 So, when I was talking to my rabbi friend, he said, But Vitali, it's so difficult not to eat bread.

00:08:52.000 I said, You do something like this all the time.

00:08:55.000 I said, Do you do you eat pork?

00:08:57.000 He said, Of course not.

00:08:58.000 You know, I'm a rabbi.

00:09:01.000 I said, Well, just become a person who does not eat bread.

00:09:06.000 And just the same way, like it's not a choice for you when you know when somebody offers you a piece of bacon, it's not like you're thinking, Well, I'm gonna eat bacon sometimes.

00:09:16.000 You know, you just, you know, and so that had a huge impact on him because he called me a few months later and he lost 20, 30 pounds just from then, you know, just the that's becoming his identity.

00:09:31.000 You know, so that he's a person who does not eat bread.

00:09:35.000 So, the I call this a half-binary decisions, meaning it's a non-decision decision.

00:09:42.000 So, I, at some point, I said, I'm a person who does not eat sugar or who does not dessert.

00:09:47.000 And so, when people eat cake around me, it does not bother me.

00:09:52.000 I could be sitting in my desk surrounded by donuts and I'm going to have zero temptation because it's part of my identity.

00:09:58.000 I'm the person who does not eat dessert.

00:10:00.000 That's exactly right.

00:10:00.000 Yeah, you've changed your relationship with the vice as to I'm not trying to resist it, but who I am is completely inconsistent with what that thing is.

00:10:09.000 It's a totally different way to frame temptation and vices, which is a huge problem right now for a lot of people.

00:10:19.000 Hey, everybody, Charlie Kirk here.

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00:11:22.000 So, Vitali, I want to spend a majority of the remainder of our hour on stoicism, but first, I want to just talk about personal finance.

00:11:29.000 You are really becoming a legend in the space of investments and investment philosophy.

00:11:36.000 We have a younger audience that listens that feels intimidated by the markets.

00:11:40.000 Just you talk a little bit about this in the book, and you've done other books that are focused primarily on this.

00:11:45.000 Let's just have a conversation: personal finance, best tips and tricks.

00:11:48.000 How do you get into it?

00:11:50.000 Let's explore this topic.

00:11:53.000 Sure.

00:11:54.000 Well, if you want to learn, if you want to learn investing, number one, you want to approach it not as gambling, but investing.

00:12:02.000 And what I mean by this is that when I buy a stock, you're basically buying a fractional ownership of a business.

00:12:11.000 It's how it happens to be publicly traded.

00:12:13.000 So if you approach investing that way, that's very different than probably 95% of people who buy stocks approach it.

00:12:26.000 That's number one.

00:12:27.000 So if you're young and you want to learn investing, what I would do, I would take as much money as you can afford to lose and I would approach it as your tuition money.

00:12:38.000 And figure out what are your strengths, what businesses do you know better?

00:12:44.000 Like, for instance, if you are an aerospace engineer, you should probably focus on aerospace companies because you already know a lot about this business.

00:12:53.000 If you have a restaurant background, focus on restaurants.

00:12:56.000 And then I would analyze these companies and just buy like a very few of them.

00:13:03.000 Your goal is not to build a diversified portfolio.

00:13:06.000 Your goal is to learn.

00:13:08.000 Okay.

00:13:09.000 And again, just approach it with the same attitude as if you're going to lose that.

00:13:15.000 That's your tuition money that you're willing to lose.

00:13:18.000 And then slowly start following your investments.

00:13:22.000 And little by little, you become better at this.

00:13:26.000 I mean, that's how I would start if I had a, I don't know, a few thousand dollars or $10,000 or whatever, and I wanted to learn about investing.

00:13:35.000 So some people say that that's still too intimidating for me.

00:13:38.000 I won't be able to track it or follow it.

00:13:40.000 But I think what you're trying to do is democratize people's power to be able to engage in markets, right?

00:13:46.000 And you can start small and you could scale from there.

00:13:50.000 What do you think is the most misleading, not misleading, that's the wrong way, damaging philosophical approach people have towards investing?

00:13:59.000 Is it they want to make money too quickly?

00:14:01.000 They have too high expectations of their own genius.

00:14:05.000 I think a couple of things.

00:14:07.000 I think people, number one, people usually very impatient.

00:14:11.000 That's number one.

00:14:12.000 Number two, I think they get attracted by this daily liquidity of the stock market because you can buy and sell stocks 10 times a day if you want to, at no cost now.

00:14:24.000 And they start and they become gamblers, not investors.

00:14:28.000 I'll give you an example.

00:14:29.000 Two people buying a stock, same stock.

00:14:32.000 You can have two people buying Microsoft stock, for instance.

00:14:36.000 One of them could be an investor, one of them could be a gambler.

00:14:39.000 And the difference is it's how much work that person did who bought the stock.

00:14:45.000 Because here's the tricky part about the stock market.

00:14:49.000 When you go to Las Vegas Casino, nobody's going to mistake you for an investor, right?

00:14:54.000 Because you are going to casino, you're going to gamble.

00:14:57.000 The stock market, it's actually because of this daily liquidity, it sucks people in because they think I can buy the stock, it's going to go up tomorrow, I'm going to flip it.

00:15:09.000 But that's not investing.

00:15:11.000 That is trading.

00:15:12.000 And so I would approach it.

00:15:15.000 Yeah.

00:15:15.000 So the key here is this.

00:15:18.000 You want to have an attitude, this kind of attitude.

00:15:21.000 If the stock market was closed for next 10 years, would I still want to be making this decision?

00:15:29.000 And I think that's probably the most important kind of advice you can give in three minutes or less.

00:15:34.000 No, that's great.

00:15:36.000 Can you just mention you've written a couple of books on this?

00:15:39.000 What are they called?

00:15:41.000 Yeah, I think the book that's probably the most appropriate for your listeners, The Little Book of Sideways Markets, which, you know, and I wrote the previous book is active value investing.

00:15:53.000 The little book is a shorter version of my first book.

00:15:59.000 So I would, the little book of Sideways Markets, that would be a good book for your listeners to start with.

00:16:05.000 In 30 seconds, what is the lesson that you learned post last four or five years that you wish you would have known five years ago?

00:16:12.000 I think when I started investing, I spent most of my time looking at very hard numbers, like at a lot of hard numbers, like price turnings, return equity, a whole bunch of terms like this.

00:16:27.000 Over the last 10 years, what I learned is that how important people are that run the businesses.

00:16:34.000 So today, when we analyze companies, we spend as much time looking at the people who run these businesses as the businesses themselves.

00:16:44.000 That's interesting.

00:16:45.000 That goes to show that a computer trading computer can't do everything.

00:16:49.000 You actually have to know the human beings behind it.

00:16:51.000 Fascinating.

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00:17:57.000 I want to get into stoicism.

00:17:59.000 The best part of the book, in my opinion, I find stoicism very helpful and interesting.

00:18:04.000 So talk about how you came across the Stoics.

00:18:07.000 And I have tons of questions, and I'd love to contribute my own thoughts, but how has Stoicism impacted your life?

00:18:13.000 It was life-changing.

00:18:17.000 So when I grew up in Soviet Russia, I'm Jewish.

00:18:24.000 But until I was 18 years old, I did not know there was such a thing as a Jewish religion.

00:18:31.000 Because Soviets looked at religion as it was competing with another religion they had, which was communism or socialism.

00:18:39.000 So what socialism did for me, what religion did, what other people, religions were for that, is a kind of a framework through which to look at life.

00:18:52.000 It's basically what it did for me.

00:18:54.000 It's provided an operating system for life.

00:18:57.000 How to go through life and still have a meaningful life, but at the same time, reduce the necessary volatility you get from life that comes from negative emotions.

00:19:11.000 And the Stoic philosophy is 2,000 years old.

00:19:14.000 It came from ancient Greece and Rome.

00:19:16.000 And what's absolutely incredible about this is that if you read the ancient text from the 2000 years ago, I'll give you one example.

00:19:26.000 Seneca, who is one of the four figures in Stoicism, writes about how people are wasting their life on this on the, and you think he's talking about Netflix or TikTok or whatever.

00:19:44.000 And he's talking about how they're spending, how wasting their life on this Stupid activities, you know, and how the time is fragmented.

00:19:53.000 And he wrote it 2,000 years ago, before iPhone, before TikTok, before Facebook.

00:19:58.000 So, what was interesting about Stoicism is that even though it's so old, people have not really changed in 2000 years.

00:20:06.000 We are still, you know, we are still broken in many ways like we were 2,000 years ago.

00:20:13.000 So, let's take a step back, actually.

00:20:15.000 And this is my fault.

00:20:16.000 Let's define what Stoicism is.

00:20:17.000 There's four Stoics: Seneca, Epietus, Marcus Aurelius.

00:20:21.000 The fourth escapes me.

00:20:23.000 Zeno?

00:20:24.000 That's right.

00:20:25.000 He's the founder of Stoicism.

00:20:26.000 Yeah, so those are the big four.

00:20:28.000 So, Epietus, I believe, was a former slave.

00:20:31.000 Zeno, I don't know his biography.

00:20:34.000 Aurelius obviously was the equivalent of king of the world.

00:20:37.000 So, if you had an operating framework, but walk us through the history of Stoicism.

00:20:42.000 Sure, yeah.

00:20:43.000 So, let's start with Zeno because he's actually the founder of Stoicism.

00:20:47.000 He was a wealthy merchant who lost all his wealth in the shipwreck.

00:20:53.000 And, you know, like what if you go through life, you realize pain could be an incredible impetus to self-improvement.

00:21:00.000 Yes.

00:21:01.000 And that's how Stoic Last Figure started actually by Zeno.

00:21:05.000 So, Marcus Aurelius was an emperor of Rome.

00:21:08.000 And he was an emperor of Rome when Rome was basically the world.

00:21:14.000 And what's really incredible about him, how this is a person who had absolute power, completely absolute power, and he would not let that power corrupt him, which is absolutely incredible.

00:21:27.000 Seneca was a Roman emperor.

00:21:29.000 I'm sorry, Seneca was kind of the Renaissance man, like 15 centuries before the Renaissance.

00:21:35.000 He was a playwright, he was a banker, he was an advisor to emperors.

00:21:41.000 And so, and so that's another one.

00:21:44.000 And the final one is Epictetus, who was a slave.

00:21:50.000 And his writing is absolutely incredible.

00:21:53.000 And this is a person who had a very harsh life, but still was able to go through this life and find a lot of meaning and enjoying it.

00:22:03.000 And so they wrote, you know, separate, let's just say, writings and books.

00:22:11.000 Let's focus on Aurelius, who's my favorite.

00:22:13.000 I actually have a bust of Aurelius.

00:22:15.000 I had that before I even read your book and only deepened my understanding and appreciation.

00:22:20.000 His book is The Meditations, which is noteworthy because it was actually probably one of the most popular books ever that was not ever intended to be read by anybody except himself.

00:22:30.000 He'd probably be horrified that we would all be reading his private diaries and journals.

00:22:35.000 You say it perfectly.

00:22:36.000 He was king of the world, and yet here he is writing about how you shouldn't get too comfortable in your bed, how you should embrace difficult environments, about how you should be out in nature, understand the stillness of the natural world.

00:22:50.000 You connect this practically through your new relationship with cold water, which I love.

00:22:56.000 I try to get myself in contact with cold water daily.

00:23:00.000 How on earth is there really a philosophical reason why people should get into cold water every day?

00:23:06.000 Well, Wim Hoff would tell you you should get cold water.

00:23:09.000 Cold water has a lot of he's a crazy person, but yes, that is right.

00:23:09.000 Yes, of course.

00:23:16.000 But I think there's a lot of physical reasons to do this, yeah, because it's good for you.

00:23:21.000 I'm doing it for a different reason.

00:23:22.000 So I take cold showers almost every day.

00:23:26.000 And the reason I take cold showers is because I turn on cold water.

00:23:31.000 And this, if you think about it, it's a harmless activity, right?

00:23:35.000 Like there is nothing bad that can happen to me once I get into the cold water, but it's the discomfort that you feel, right?

00:23:43.000 And Then I over then, every single time I look at the cold water and force myself to do this, and I overcome this discomfort.

00:23:53.000 And I think it helps you in life and in general, because a lot of times you have to do things that are difficult.

00:23:59.000 And if you train yourself little by little to do those difficult things, then when you face, you know, when you face them, it becomes easier and easier little by little.

00:24:09.000 So I have, I try, I try to do a cold water immersion daily, 42 degrees.

00:24:17.000 It's usually more like three or four times a week now.

00:24:19.000 I used to do it every single morning and I, now I just do cold showers.

00:24:23.000 So what I love about cold water and how it connects to the philosophical part of it is it's one of the few things where it takes incredibly low, little period of time, right?

00:24:33.000 So it's not like a huge time commitment.

00:24:35.000 I think you write about this in the book.

00:24:36.000 It's also one of the few things where I can find where the feeling and the reaction is completely disconnected with what actually is happening to you.

00:24:45.000 So the reality and the feeling are so opposite, right?

00:24:49.000 And this is kind of what you're getting at because you feel like you're dying.

00:24:53.000 And that's not an exaggeration, right?

00:24:55.000 Cortisol, noreperephrine, adrenaline is spiking, right?

00:24:59.000 Your mind goes into fight or flight when in reality, it's just cold water.

00:25:03.000 Now, if you stayed there for 10 or 15 minutes, you could have hypothermia and you could, but you're not.

00:25:07.000 You're staying in the cold water for 30 to seconds to a minute.

00:25:12.000 So just kind of add some depth to that or respond to that.

00:25:15.000 No, absolutely.

00:25:16.000 No, I think you're absolutely right because the whole point is it's not just one or two minutes of this.

00:25:23.000 And so when you get under cold water, you start your heart starts racing.

00:25:28.000 And then through breathing, you try to calm yourself down.

00:25:32.000 By the way, that's a great exercise when you get stressed in general.

00:25:37.000 When you get stressed, when you get stressed, when you, you know, your breathing starts, you know, starts to accelerate.

00:25:45.000 And by breathing, you slow yourself down.

00:25:48.000 And that's a very good thing.

00:25:50.000 That's a very good trick to learn in general for life.

00:25:55.000 And so, and once you conquer it, it gives you kind of a sense of accomplishment as well, right?

00:26:02.000 Because you just did something, you overcame fear or discomfort.

00:26:06.000 And then in life, when you in life, you're going to face a lot of, you know, a lot of times, you know, this kind of discomfort.

00:26:12.000 And it's a muscle.

00:26:15.000 If you train yourself little by little, then it's going to be easier just to go through life, period.

00:26:21.000 No, this is, and I want to keep building this out.

00:26:23.000 So it's one of the few things that in two minutes of commitment, you can feel as if you just did something that might take an hour of working out.

00:26:33.000 So every single study shows your dopamine level baseline goes up for the next four to five hours, your sense of accomplishment.

00:26:40.000 And again, you should check with your doctor if you have heart issues.

00:26:43.000 And, you know, no joke.

00:26:44.000 But for 99% of the audience listening, this is 100% safe and is perfectly fine.

00:26:51.000 I also love it.

00:26:52.000 And I'm sure, Vitaly, you understand this.

00:26:54.000 So there is a sense of psychological dread and wrestling that happens before you get into the cold, right?

00:27:02.000 That's right.

00:27:03.000 Where do I really need to do this?

00:27:05.000 The anxiety, the questioning, the tension, which is unbelievably applicable to other scenarios that you might have to go into.

00:27:14.000 And so you're right.

00:27:14.000 It is a safe way to train yourself to get that muscle of grit and endurance.

00:27:21.000 And so, but the Stoics talked about this in other ways, right?

00:27:25.000 They talk about finding difficult, modern day, sucky things that can, that are good for you, not because they necessarily make you feel good, but because life is about becoming tougher, not becoming more comfortable.

00:27:40.000 It's developing your character, right?

00:27:42.000 I think I think some of them, I forget who, they would sleep in an uncomfortable bed.

00:27:51.000 That's right.

00:27:52.000 They were said that.

00:27:53.000 Yeah.

00:27:54.000 Yeah, no, they live in uncomfortable bed or expose themselves to cold.

00:28:00.000 Like, I guess they would embrace intermittent fasting a lot.

00:28:06.000 In fact, one thing I started doing after the book came out, once a week, I basically fast for 24 hours and I only do it just to appreciate food so much more.

00:28:18.000 Because we live in this, let me tell this story because I think this, you know, it's a, I didn't talk about it in the book, but I think it's a very important concept.

00:28:27.000 So when I grew up in Russia, I only had Pepsi or Coke once when I was like 16 years old.

00:28:36.000 And I remember that was a magical experience because it was hot outside and it was almost like a Coke commercial.

00:28:42.000 Like when it's hot outside and you get a, and I absolutely remember that moment and it was magical.

00:28:49.000 And then when I came to the United States, I discovered that you can buy Coke by gallons and you know at the grocery store.

00:28:55.000 And over the next three years, I probably consumed enough Coke to overcompensate of the previous 18 years of underconsumption.

00:29:04.000 And you know what happened?

00:29:06.000 I was at the restaurant one day and I was getting my third refill of Coke and I realized I couldn't taste it because I drank so much of it.

00:29:15.000 Now it's started to taste like water.

00:29:18.000 And so it's, you know, we have this incredible abundance here.

00:29:25.000 But the problem is abundance is that we start appreciating what we have.

00:29:31.000 And so in Russia, and so with Russia, we had a lot of scarcity.

00:29:34.000 And obviously we look at scarcity from a negative perspective.

00:29:37.000 But there are positive sides of it too, because when something is scarce, you appreciate it.

00:29:43.000 We look at abundance as only positive.

00:29:45.000 And I would argue that it also has negative side because we stop appreciating what we have.

00:29:51.000 So what I started doing, so after that moment at the restaurant when I was 21, I basically told myself, I'm going to drink Coke now only a few times a year, like when I go to movie theater.

00:30:03.000 And now every single time I have a Coke, I love it because it's a very special experience for me.

00:30:11.000 So, and I would argue you can do the same thing with other things like that have a lot of sugar. 0.99

00:30:18.000 By the way, we had a similar experience with ice cream in the United States, when I came to the United States as well.

00:30:24.000 So kind of creating this artificially, this scarcity in your life can actually improve your appreciation for what you have.

00:30:34.000 So me fasting once a week, it creates a kind of a new appreciation for food.

00:30:42.000 So that's one example, I guess.

00:30:44.000 So Soul in the Game is the book.

00:30:46.000 Excellent commentary and deep wisdom.

00:30:50.000 So Tali, we only have a couple minutes remaining here.

00:30:52.000 I like to do this with authors because you put so much time into your work.

00:30:56.000 What topics in the book do you want our audience to be aware of or things that you wished we would have covered more deeply?

00:31:07.000 That's a great, I mean, this is such a great question.

00:31:10.000 Thank you.

00:31:11.000 There is a chapter in this book, which to me is kind of the most dearest chapter because I think it's the most original where I talk about art and craft.

00:31:21.000 And I think that that's a very interesting framework because I think if you want to have a meaningful life in your activity, you want to have a certain amount of art and you don't want to have too much craft.

00:31:33.000 So you have to have this right balance.

00:31:36.000 And If you do something for a long period of time and you feel like you perfected it, it becomes complete, and there is no uncertainty, there is no risk.

00:31:47.000 That's all you have is craft and no art.

00:31:50.000 So whenever you, like when I write, you know, when I write, whenever I sit down to write, I always have this feeling of uneasiness. 0.97

00:32:00.000 I feel like I don't know how it's going to look when I'm dumb as that.

00:32:04.000 That's what's make, but that's what creates art in my life. 0.92

00:32:10.000 If it's very easy, when I write about investing now, it's mostly craft now because I've done it for such a long period of time.

00:32:16.000 It's very easy to do.

00:32:18.000 When I write about new topics, I introduce more art in my life.

00:32:21.000 So in your life, you want to kind of find this right balance where you still have plenty of craft, but an art at the same time.

00:32:28.000 Talk about how classical music has impacted and blessed your life.

00:32:33.000 I found that to be incredibly compelling.

00:32:36.000 Well, I think classical music is one of my biggest loves outside of my family, obviously.

00:32:47.000 It's basically adds flavor to my life.

00:32:51.000 But what I also found fascinating, when you study the lives of composers, you get to appreciate how, like when you listen to Tchaikovsky, for instance, you listen to this incredible music, but what you don't realize, how much pain Tchaikovsky had to suffer to write this music.

00:33:12.000 And as a creative person, you realize that when you go through creative pain, it's absolutely fine.

00:33:20.000 That is part of life.

00:33:22.000 That's part of the creating process.

00:33:24.000 Because Tchaikovsky had to suffer to create this incredible music.

00:33:29.000 And so do we.

00:33:32.000 So classical music is similar to investing in this way.

00:33:35.000 People find it to be very difficult to understand and intimidating.

00:33:38.000 How should somebody start?

00:33:39.000 And I believe you have a website about classical music.

00:33:42.000 Is that correct?

00:33:43.000 Yeah.

00:33:43.000 I have a website, myfavoriteclassical.com.

00:33:47.000 And on this website, at the very top, there is a playlist.

00:33:51.000 And I created this playlist.

00:33:53.000 I call it the gateway drug to classical music.

00:33:57.000 And this clay, it took me a long time to create this playlist.

00:34:01.000 But if you know nothing about classical music and you start listening to it, you're going to fall in love with it right away.

00:34:08.000 I promise you.

00:34:08.000 I totally agree.

00:34:09.000 Yes.

00:34:10.000 Continue.

00:34:11.000 Yeah.

00:34:12.000 So the reason classical music is usually inaccessible because when you listen to a symphony, usually it takes me 10, 15 times to listen to it to understand it.

00:34:23.000 Well, pop music usually clicks with you right away.

00:34:26.000 So I created this playlist.

00:34:28.000 So when you start listening to it, this music will click with you right away.

00:34:32.000 And it's get more and more difficult as you go down the list.

00:34:36.000 So yeah, that's my contribution to, yeah, I hope you, you know, your listeners check it out.

00:34:43.000 Myfavoriteclassical.com.

00:34:45.000 Finally, you wake up very early.

00:34:46.000 What has that meant for your life?

00:34:50.000 That's been life-changing because yes, I get up every day at five in the morning.

00:34:54.000 I get a cup of coffee, do push-ups, and then I write for two hours.

00:34:59.000 And I would argue that writing is probably the most important thing that has happened to me as an individual because that forces me to think two hours a day.

00:35:10.000 It's a focused thinking.

00:35:12.000 It's a meditative like experience, actually.

00:35:14.000 And it improved my IQ tremendously.

00:35:19.000 And it made me a much more interesting person.

00:35:21.000 And, you know, and the reason you are talking because you read my book.

00:35:26.000 And I wouldn't be able to do this, obviously, if I didn't write it.

00:35:30.000 But after I wrote the book, I still write two hours a day every day.

00:35:34.000 And writing is like a muscle.

00:35:36.000 If you keep doing this, it gets easier and easier.

00:35:40.000 And so I write about, yeah, some 100 hours a year, roughly.

00:35:44.000 Yeah.

00:35:44.000 Amazing.

00:35:45.000 Vitali, you're welcome back.

00:35:46.000 Thank you for your book.

00:35:47.000 It certainly blessed and impacted my life.

00:35:49.000 And I encourage other people to read it.

00:35:51.000 It's deep and it's well written and it's fulfilling.

00:35:54.000 Vitali, thank you so much.

00:35:56.000 Charlie.

00:35:56.000 Charlie, thank you very much.

00:35:58.000 Thank you.

00:36:01.000 Thanks so much for listening, everybody.

00:36:02.000 Email us your thoughts, freedom at charliekirk.com.

00:36:04.000 In fact, email me freedom at charliekirk.com.

00:36:06.000 Do you think Donald Trump should debate yes or no?

00:36:09.000 A couple of you that answer will be put in the running to an assigned book.

00:36:12.000 So email me freedom at charliekirk.com.

00:36:14.000 Thanks so much and God bless.

00:36:17.000 For more on many of these stories and news you can trust, go to CharlieKirk.com.

The Charlie Kirk Show - July 19, 2023

Stoicism and the Soul with Vitaliy Katsenelson

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