The Glenn Beck Program - Ep 73 ｜ Finding Stillness in the Chaos ｜ Ryan Holiday

00:00:00.000 You know, when I first started this podcast and wanted to do this podcast, I mean, I have

00:00:05.040 radio, television, I can talk to anybody several different ways. This podcast was important to me

00:00:10.720 because I wanted to talk to guests with unique perspectives on what we're going through and

00:00:15.740 people that have been shunned in academia, for example, people who I wouldn't otherwise find

00:00:21.880 myself talking to or people who wouldn't have an outlet to share their amazing stories because of

00:00:26.860 their political views and to do it in a forum to where we could just sit and just have a

00:00:31.260 conversation because that doesn't happen anymore. Agreeing with me on political issues or anything

00:00:35.540 else has never been a prerequisite. In fact, I want to hear different points of view. I want to

00:00:40.940 be intellectually nimble and curious. I encourage you to do something dangerous once a week,

00:00:46.900 something that scares you once a week. Have a conversation that you're not sure about.

00:00:52.320 Listening is a lost art now and it is absent in our culture and it's sapping our unity. Listening

00:00:59.980 is one of those things that my guest today has been cultivating on his own journey. This is an

00:01:06.000 incredible story. College dropout became brash, prodigious talent in the world of media and

00:01:12.380 publicity. Huge success. He wrote a book in his early twenties and how to manipulate the media.

00:01:18.440 He was really a fake news pioneer and he hated it. In the aftermath of that book and his pulling

00:01:26.340 back the curtain on the dark underbelly of American media, he did what most brash prodigies fail to do

00:01:32.620 without tragedy, addiction, or failure forcing it on them. And that is self-reflection. He looked in

00:01:39.100 the mirror and didn't like what he saw. There has to be more to life than this. But how is he going to

00:01:44.560 turn that ship? It was already churning through deep, deep waters of lies. Answering that question

00:01:50.800 has spurred him to remake his career in a way that invited a lot of skeptical criticism because of the

00:01:56.280 way he first burst on the scene with his how-to book on media manipulation. Is he still playing the

00:02:02.000 media manipulation game? Is he playing me like a fiddle? Well, I don't think so. Since that first book,

00:02:08.480 Trust Me, I'm Lying, he has written six other New York Times bestsellers, including his latest book

00:02:14.120 titled Stillness is the Key. It sounds like, oh, and you're going to have to meditate. It is not like

00:02:21.400 that at all. It's been translated into 30 languages. 30. The Prince of Media Lies has morphed into a

00:02:28.660 philosopher and an internationally known speaker in 30 different languages. There's some things I'm sure

00:02:34.780 we don't agree on, but there's a lot we do. There's one thing that he and I and all of us really have

00:02:40.880 in common. Most of our lives are too chaotic. There are practical ways to cut through the chaos and live

00:02:46.180 richer, deeper, more meaningful lives. Ryan Holiday. Countercultural, really. All countercultural ideas about

00:02:54.260 stillness.

00:03:04.780 I hope you don't take this the wrong way.

00:03:12.140 Uh-oh.

00:03:12.740 Yeah, I know. I know. It's never good when it starts that way. But in some ways, you remind me of me.

00:03:19.280 That you went and you did something and you thought you were doing great and you're pioneering and you're

00:03:25.780 doing it for maybe all the right reasons. And then you stop and you look back and you're like,

00:03:30.560 that caused some problems that I didn't see. Yeah. Right? Yes. And then you stop and you're like,

00:03:37.040 I could be very successful if I just keep doing that, but it provides too many

00:03:47.460 real traps for my own personal happiness that I just can't get past.

00:03:57.520 Yeah. It's like sort of what you, you have to look in the mirror at some point and go,

00:04:00.760 what kind of person do I want to be in? And do it's not, am I being well paid for this? Am I

00:04:06.520 doing it at a high level? And you know, am I doing, am I sort of challenged by it? But like,

00:04:12.420 is this making the world a better place? Yes or no. And I think on the media side, for me,

00:04:17.320 it was like, I discovered something I could be very good at it. Sky was the limit, but it was,

00:04:24.160 it was realizing like, Hey, if everyone was doing what I was doing, this would not be the world that

00:04:30.360 I would want to live in. And that I was doing things I thought for the right reasons, but people

00:04:35.200 could very easily do them for the wrong reasons. And that is almost exactly the way I felt. Yeah.

00:04:42.420 That I, I'm, I think I'm doing it for the right reasons. It's not being taken. And if everybody does

00:04:47.780 this, it's, it's trouble. I remember I read an interview with Michael Lewis and he was saying,

00:04:52.600 he's like, he wrote that book, Liars Poker about everything that was wrong with wall street.

00:04:56.140 And he's like, people come up to me and say, you're why I work on wall street. And he's like,

00:05:00.540 that was not what, and so I get that a lot. I'm, I would identify as sort of like center right or

00:05:05.860 sort of radical middle politically. But when like very extreme, all right, people tell me that like,

00:05:11.820 trust me, I'm lying is like their Bible or like the guy that gave Donald Trump, the idea for the

00:05:17.440 wall said that trust me, I'm lying is, is like the Bible that he lives by. Like that's not,

00:05:23.080 that's not the difference I want to make in the world. And, and so, yeah, I ended up writing that

00:05:29.280 book. And the funny thing was people, when I wrote it, people accused me of writing the book just to

00:05:34.560 make money. And it was like, writing a book is literally the worst possible way.

00:05:39.120 I know, I know, I know. So for anybody who hasn't read the book, just in a couple of paragraphs,

00:05:46.120 it is like a sort of a whistleblowers account or ripping back the curtain of how the sausage is

00:05:52.460 made from, from our, our modern media system of which I was a sort of a bad actor in, uh, but also

00:06:00.700 sort of, I think someone who has sort of shown like in the way I sort of like, hang on, just say,

00:06:04.820 you weren't a bad actor in, I mean, um, you were working for an apparel company.

00:06:12.040 Sure. It's not like you were like, and then they'll all die.

00:06:15.760 Yes. I wasn't, I wasn't, I wasn't spearheading Russia's, uh, election interference, but at the

00:06:21.620 same time, like I sort of liken it to a computer hacker who was like hacking into things that they

00:06:27.260 know they're not supposed to be doing, but then telling, like leaving signs afterwards to say,

00:06:32.320 you should fix this. And that's where I came from, from the book. I totally get, not everyone's

00:06:36.780 going to interpret it that way, but like, for me, it was, it was the thrill and the challenge of like

00:06:41.620 having fun in a corrupt, broken system, but, but knowing ultimately like this was not leading down

00:06:48.860 a path that, that I was proud of. Okay. So you had somewhere in you something good that you,

00:06:57.700 you had, uh, some sort of an archetype in you that said, that's not what I imagine a good person to

00:07:05.960 be. Yes. Right. Yes. We're erasing almost all of those. There is no, we, we are destroying

00:07:13.400 everything to the point to where we used to be able to point and say, Abraham Lincoln,

00:07:19.500 Martin Luther King, Jesus, Moses, whoever it is. I really don't care. We don't have anybody.

00:07:28.040 Everybody's bad. When I was about 19 years old, do you know who Dr. Drew is? Yeah. So I was 19

00:07:33.000 years old. I went to this conference and Dr. Drew was there and I asked him what books I should be

00:07:37.040 reading. And he told me to read the Stoics. And I read Mark's releases meditations. And there's a line

00:07:43.280 in that book. He says like, uh, waste no more time. And I have this as a print on my wall. Now he said,

00:07:47.920 waste no more time talking about what a good man is. Be one. And I think that was a big part. It was

00:07:54.260 like, I'm reading about this. I'm writing about this. I know this is true, but what am I, is, is,

00:08:00.620 is what I do professionally in line with that? And it wasn't. And, and I think, and this is something

00:08:06.400 you hear the Stoics talk about is exactly what you're saying about heroes. You have to have someone

00:08:11.480 that you're comparing yourself to or against. Like Seneca says, he's like, without a ruler,

00:08:16.800 you can't make crooked straight. And I think that's what these heroes should do for us. I think

00:08:22.820 the problem is we now spend most of our time undermining heroes rather than lionizing the

00:08:30.620 virtues that those heroes had. Partly because we, um, we made our heroes into gods. Sure. And,

00:08:40.280 and, and we would not accept anything. I mean, let's just take America. I grew up in, um, in,

00:08:49.060 in a family that, yeah, we got, we have problems. America has problems, but it's generally a good

00:08:55.540 place. But boy, is that screwed up? Yeah. You know what I mean? Sure. That's the way we should look at

00:09:00.800 heroes. But even today, you'll have people who are like, America is the best place ever. And you don't

00:09:07.760 like it. And the opposite, it is the worst place on the planet. It's neither of those. It has had

00:09:15.140 moments of each. I think that's a big part of it. I also think academically, like teachers used to

00:09:21.540 think their job was to teach your students how to be good people. Now they believe their job is to

00:09:27.300 teach them facts. So like, I, I like, if you look at old, old school books, they had the story of

00:09:34.540 George Washington and the cherry tree in, in that book, as if it was true. Obviously it's not true.

00:09:39.900 And obviously I don't think they thought it was true. I think they were teaching it as a moral

00:09:44.100 lesson. I remember in school, not learning that story, but learning specifically that it was not

00:09:50.360 true. Like they went out of their way to go, Hey, by the way, George Washington did not chop,

00:09:54.920 like did not do this thing with the cherry tree. That's a lie. But what they, which is fine,

00:09:58.860 as long as you go, but here is a real life story of someone who didn't tell a lie when it counted,

00:10:05.700 right? Like here is his book on virtues that he wrote when he was like 10. Yes. I mean,

00:10:11.180 that's an incredible thing. It kills me, especially on George Washington, that however long ago we came

00:10:18.860 up with a lie to teach how honest he was. It's insane. It is. And then, you know, people go, Oh,

00:10:25.900 but George Washington owned slaves. And that's one way to look at it. The other way is to look

00:10:29.360 at it. If all the founders who almost all universally believe that slavery was bad,

00:10:34.080 he's the only one that freed his slaves. And like, and he was the only one that could though,

00:10:40.260 at least in Virginia, Jefferson couldn't. Well, we, we don't even, we can't even,

00:10:45.100 yeah, no, we can't even get into the debate about like, Hey, look, actually Virginia passed laws that

00:10:49.720 meant that made it. So you had to provide for your slaves after you monumented them. So it was actually

00:10:54.360 extraordinarily difficult to do it. Like, have you read the Chernow biography of Grant?

00:10:59.120 No. The new one? It's really good. And what I loved about it was that he spends a whole bunch

00:11:03.680 of time on reconstruction. And I had always believed, and what I, and this is someone who'd

00:11:09.160 studied the Civil War, that it was like, we won the Civil War, the North wins the Civil War,

00:11:14.140 the motivations are somewhat, you know, conflicted. And then we just dropped the ball on

00:11:19.280 Reconstruction, right? We just didn't actually care about black people. And we, you know,

00:11:23.560 we threw into the wolves. What you read in that book is just how hard Grant and Sherman and all

00:11:30.400 these union veterans fought to solidify the gains of that victory and how hard the Freedmen's Bureau

00:11:38.400 and all the things that the prosecutions of the Klan and all like, so we tell the story,

00:11:43.860 the story we tell kids is that like, we failed on civil rights. It's a black mark, a shame on this

00:11:50.400 nation. And we're horrible hypocrites when we should be saying, look, it was a narrow run

00:11:56.060 thing. We almost got this right in the 1860s. And, and, and because we didn't get all the

00:12:02.120 way there, it took us a hundred years to get it right again. And that's why we have to keep

00:12:07.260 fighting and we have to believe that we're capable. Do you know what I mean? Like those

00:12:10.520 are fundamentally different narratives. I, um, I'll have to show you my first copy. I, we, I,

00:12:16.260 we have a, uh, a copy of the original draft of the Declaration of Independence handwritten by Thomas

00:12:24.940 Jefferson. Have you ever seen one? No. I mean, yes. In DC I've seen one, but yes. So, um, we have

00:12:31.380 the 1820 engraving of it. When Jefferson is writing about slavery, that's been taken out of the

00:12:39.560 Declaration of Independence. When his handwriting changes, you can see how passionate he is. He's

00:12:44.700 capitalizing words. It's crazy. Yeah. And we don't, we don't learn any of this stuff. Um, we just

00:12:51.600 tear it all down, say that it's all worthless. And I, I've gotten to the point where I look at,

00:12:58.920 we hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal and endowed by a creator with

00:13:03.960 certain inalienable rights, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. And government is

00:13:09.540 established by men to protect those rights. Beautiful.

00:13:18.680 Can you think of a better dot on the horizon that you say, that's where we want to go?

00:13:27.400 I can't. And we're just, we're throwing the baby with the bathwater. There's lots of stuff that we

00:13:35.880 can't change, but that wasn't, Hey, we've done it. That's saying this is our direction for the first

00:13:43.460 time in human history. We believe we should do this. And let's say that wasn't what they were doing.

00:13:49.280 Lincoln reframes it that way in the 1860s because he re and Martin Luther King, a hundred years later,

00:13:57.240 reframes it that way. And so did Frederick Douglass. Frederick Douglass was against it at first until

00:14:02.860 Lincoln said, have you read it? And, and so the idea of like deciding what are you going to like

00:14:08.740 Victor Frankl had this line where he said, you know, if you take things as they are,

00:14:12.960 you make man worse. If you think about it as what we can be, you make men better. And I think we've

00:14:19.580 decided to tell a very depressing, a very dark, a very resigned narrative about America, about the

00:14:26.020 human race, instead of one, like instead of one where we are calling to our capacities to be better

00:14:33.580 when we're, when we're pushing the mark of where we can go. Instead, we've decided that we're all

00:14:37.960 terrible, totally irredeemable. Everyone's a, uh, a hypocrite. And what I think this has left us in

00:14:44.040 is this sort of nihilism that is the modern world where nothing matters, nothing can be accomplished.

00:14:49.500 Nothing is improved. And we all suck. It's Nietzsche. When he said it wasn't a celebrate,

00:14:55.400 a celebratory phrase. When he said, God is dead, he was challenging. So man's going to need a God.

00:15:02.400 What are you going to replace it with? And if you don't replace it, you're doomed.

00:15:05.900 Yeah. He doesn't say, he says, God is dead and we have killed him. Like that's a problem. And what

00:15:10.200 do you replace it with? And, and I think, you know, as someone who writes about the Stoics,

00:15:15.200 like every, every couple of months, the New York times or the Washington post, one of these

00:15:18.640 newspapers will do a trend piece about how the popularity of Stoicism is, you know, about,

00:15:24.560 you know, it's like, why are, why are people in Silicon Valley obsessed with suffering? Why are we

00:15:28.160 using this philosophy of the ancient world where they used to, you know, tolerate it? Who were the

00:15:34.060 founding fathers thinking about when they were, they were thinking of Cato, right? Like

00:15:38.040 George Washington was inspired by these ancient figures who themselves fell short of what they

00:15:43.760 believed in. And so you have to be looking at history, not with an eye of judgment, but

00:15:48.580 by finding something to call you to a higher principle. And, and we've, we've lost that and

00:15:55.360 we've replaced it with what? I had a friend tell me one time, um, he was a great man, great

00:16:12.040 man and, uh, taught me so much. And he came into my office one time and he said,

00:16:17.580 you have any pictures of any of your heroes. And I said, no. And he said, you have to, you

00:16:26.860 have to, he said, you have to put a picture of some men you want to be like, and you put

00:16:32.160 them right there on the edge of the desk. So when you're making a decision and you're

00:16:35.980 just talking, you glance down there and think to yourself, is that what that guy, am I getting

00:16:40.700 closer or farther away? When you would walk into Monticello, Jefferson had statues of his

00:16:47.720 heroes, George, contemporary heroes like Washington, but also ancient heroes. And I have a bust on

00:16:53.920 my desk of Marcus Aurelius from the 1840s. And, and I think I use it for a couple of things.

00:16:59.000 One, I think the guy that had this statue made is dead and someone will own this statue after

00:17:05.380 me. Like, this is just a, uh, like what they say about like a caretaker. Yeah. That you just

00:17:10.700 own a Rolex till you pass it on to the next generation or whatever. Not a Rolex. What is

00:17:14.580 it? It's a Patek Philippe. Yes. But, but that idea that we're all just stewards, but, but like

00:17:21.220 we have this expression that absolute power corrupts absolutely. And then there's this guy

00:17:26.440 who is adopted to be emperor. So he suddenly thrust upon him that he's going to be the emperor of Rome.

00:17:32.480 And what does he do with absolute power? We know what everyone else has ever done with absolute

00:17:36.760 power. You kill your rivals, right? You, you Marcus Aurelius, the first thing he does as emperor

00:17:42.160 is name a co-emperor. The first thing he does with absolute power is give half of it away to his

00:17:47.700 stepbrother. And you're just like, that is, that will, that has never happened before in history.

00:17:52.580 And that will probably never happen again in history. What can you learn from these people and

00:17:57.280 how can you keep their memory fresh? So, and that helps us if we, you know, history, I mean,

00:18:05.340 um, Wilson was the first who tried to run for a third term. It wasn't against the constitution.

00:18:13.560 Yeah. It's just that George Washington gave it up when he didn't have to, you know, King George said,

00:18:20.460 if he gives that up, he'll be the greatest man to ever live. Yeah. He did. And so the conversation

00:18:26.200 was, you really think you're better than George Washington? Yeah. We don't have that anymore. So

00:18:31.820 these people, because that self regulator is gone, these people run until they did. Barack Obama,

00:18:41.260 Donald Trump, they'd run until the day they died.

00:18:44.040 Well, and what's so incredible is why did Washington do that? Because his hero was

00:18:48.340 Cincinnatus who is made dictator. He saves Rome. And then he says, I want to return to my farm.

00:18:55.200 And, and like, uh, I think it's George Wills. Uh, uh, he he's, he's writing that, uh, that Washington

00:19:03.500 wanted power for the sole purpose of giving it away. Like that his dream was for him. It wasn't,

00:19:11.000 how can I become powerful? It's how can I become powerful? And then use that to teach the lesson

00:19:16.620 that the institutions matter more than the individual. And, and he resigns his commission.

00:19:22.300 That's the first time he gives power away. Then, then, uh, then, then he, he walks away after he

00:19:27.640 becomes, it's incredible, but he does that not because he's superhuman, but because he had the

00:19:34.440 myths and heroes that inspired him to be better than what he naturally was. He had humility.

00:19:41.000 There's nothing. There is no, look at Abraham Lincoln. Is there a more humble guy than that?

00:19:47.120 He's beaten almost to death. You look at the picture of five year difference. Obama changed

00:19:53.860 in office. It's incredible. It's incredible. So he's just beaten into humility and there is nothing,

00:20:01.780 nothing in our society that is saying, Hey, good for you. You're humble. Yeah. Right. Nothing.

00:20:09.500 Well, no, no. Look, I, I wrote a book called ego is the enemy. Like I think about this a lot. Like

00:20:14.080 the greatest people are, are the most humble, but it's the, they're also advertised for themselves

00:20:21.300 the worst. So we hear about them. Do you know what I mean? We hear like George Marshall, I think is the

00:20:26.260 greatest man of the 20th century. Why do we know less about George Marshall? It's because in 1950,

00:20:31.540 George Marshall was offered a million dollars to write his memoirs and he turned it down.

00:20:37.220 Wow. And, uh, and, and he said, and, and why is George Marshall not become president and Eisenhower

00:20:44.180 does FDR says to Marshall, I know you want a battlefield command. I know your reputation

00:20:49.640 as a general depends on it. Do you want to command the troops at Normandy? And he says,

00:20:55.260 I want you to pick who you think will help you do your job best. And it goes to his subordinate

00:21:03.160 Eisenhower. Marshall has to write out this one. I think the greatest, one of the greatest,

00:21:07.460 most remarkable moments in American history. So I, FDR offers the job to Marshall. He turns it down.

00:21:12.560 He write, he says, okay, I'm giving it to Eisenhower. Please write out, please. Here's the orders.

00:21:17.700 He has to write out the orders to his protege, giving him the job that gives Eisenhower the,

00:21:23.280 the presidency, the most important invasion in history. And after he finishes the orders,

00:21:30.220 he writes, and you can see this, he writes, dear Ike, I thought you might want this memento for your,

00:21:36.860 for your, for your records. Congratulations. And so all he, and, and so all he's thinking about is

00:21:43.980 the country and the mission and not about other people. And, and then, so you go, oh, but doesn't

00:21:49.020 this help him. That doesn't hurt his career. When, when Marshall goes, when you have a reputation

00:21:54.320 like that, when Marshall goes in front of Congress and says, Hey, I need hundreds of millions of

00:21:58.200 dollars for this thing called the Manhattan project. And I can't tell you what it's for.

00:22:01.740 You'll have no visibility into it. They say, sure. Right. Like when you have that reputation,

00:22:06.760 you can actually accomplish incredible things. But it's interesting to me because I didn't know

00:22:11.880 that story about Marshall. It's interesting to me that Ike was similar in many ways. I mean,

00:22:18.600 the, the, the, the, one of the more powerful letters in history I've ever read is this is my

00:22:24.400 fault. I did it wrong. Blame no one else that he wrote before the battle of Normandy is saying,

00:22:30.660 in case it goes horribly, just release this where he takes 100% of the blame.

00:22:35.820 And, and he would keep the, he kept this poem in his wallet that said like, take your hand,

00:22:42.000 put it in a bucket of water. Now, remove your hand from the bucket of water. That's how important

00:22:46.880 you are. So something like, like he would meditate actively on how insignificant he was. Meanwhile,

00:22:54.540 he's heading the largest army ever in history. And, and you need that, you need that balance. Otherwise

00:23:01.820 you become like MacArthur and eventually you spin off the planet. Right. And, and you make

00:23:05.920 catastrophic mistakes. And, and again, this is what the study of history reminds you of.

00:23:11.680 Hopefully none of us are ever leading an army that large, but we are leading companies or you're a

00:23:17.640 parent, like, like these are timeless forces that have led humans astray forever. And, and this is

00:23:24.880 what the smart philosophers and leaders have always been struggling with. And, you know, I think Mattis,

00:23:31.340 is a deep admirer of, of, uh, of Marshall. And I think he struggled with, do I write my memoirs or

00:23:39.680 not? He decides to write them. I think the remarkable thing about Mattis's memoirs is not

00:23:44.820 only does he not mention Trump one time, but there's a scene in the memoirs where he talks about,

00:23:50.280 I think it's in the second Gulf War, he has to fire a commander who was, who was good, but not

00:23:56.040 aggressive enough. And this had been like an international incident. Cause he fired, like,

00:23:59.600 as we're winning the war, he, I forget who it was, but he, he, he basically cashiers this

00:24:03.680 like a commander. All these years later, he's writing about it in his memoir. He refuses

00:24:10.080 to name the guy because he doesn't want to add to the guy's embarrassment. Like he already

00:24:14.740 did it, but he's, he has the dignity and self-control and the principle to say like, here's the kind

00:24:21.240 of person that I'm going to be. And I just love that kind of a code.

00:24:25.360 So it is the code that built us, you know, it is, I own a ranch way up in the mountains

00:24:37.160 in the West and it's a farming community and, and contracts for anything. Yeah. Hey, can I run

00:24:44.760 my cattle on your land and I'll pay you this at the end of the year? Yeah. Sure. Done. Right.

00:24:52.620 That code is who we used to be. You didn't break your word. You were a man of integrity,

00:24:59.960 not all of it, but at least that was, that was the thing that again, we pointed to and said,

00:25:05.720 I want you want to be that man. Yeah. Okay. Um, is this going to come back into fashion? I mean,

00:25:14.820 because to me, our suicide rate is going up because we don't have that. There's nothing to strive to be

00:25:22.180 that will actually mean something. There's nothing better than somebody saying, you're a good man.

00:25:31.940 Thank you for that. Or you just doing something and nobody knows, but you feel good. Yeah. That's

00:25:39.500 what feeds us and keeps us up. No. And that's the glue that keeps the society together. I think

00:25:47.320 the constitution and the bill of rights were designed to give us all these freedoms.

00:25:54.700 The idea was not that you were free to do whatever you want. It's that the government wasn't

00:25:59.540 going to tell you to do these things, but there had to be some sort of personal or religious or

00:26:03.660 spiritual code that governed your behavior. We've gotten rid of all that. We've gotten rid of our

00:26:07.920 heroes. Yes. We've gotten rid of our churches. We've gotten rid of what else, uh, held us into

00:26:15.020 place. Just our, our common bands as a community. It's all gone. Well, I think like, I'm not a, a

00:26:23.020 religious person. I think I used to be an atheist. I identify now as agnostic and that I don't know,

00:26:27.360 but like if, if you start talking to someone about the cardinal virtues, uh, you know, sort of, uh,

00:26:33.780 courage, justice, wisdom, and temperance, they hear cardinal and they think, oh, that's like a

00:26:39.940 religious card. They think that's a, and cardinal, uh, CS, CS Lewis talks about this. Cardos is hinge.

00:26:45.000 These are the pivotal virtues of, of, of society of Western, the Western world, but they're not

00:26:50.580 Christian. These are philosophical. These are, these go back to Socrates and Aristotle and Marcus Aurelius.

00:26:56.340 And so one of the things that gets me excited, obviously I'm a little bit biased in that I write

00:27:00.600 about it, but like that people are turning back to these ideas because they've, they realized we

00:27:06.580 knocked everything down and that you have to, there has to be something or else why not just kill

00:27:12.440 yourself? As you said, because like, if this is meaningless, what do we, what do we, life is too

00:27:17.040 hard to keep doing it? I've, um, I've always believed that if, if, if the 10 commandments

00:27:31.020 or the new Testament were just, uh, uh, travels with Jesus and, uh, uh, uh, top 10 tips from Moe,

00:27:43.480 yeah, they would be the, they would be the gold standard of, of everything. But because we've

00:27:50.540 attached, we've, we've taken all of those principles. Doesn't, I believe they are true. Doesn't matter if it

00:27:58.280 actually happened. What matters is this is 5,000 years of people going, you know, this really

00:28:09.520 repeats itself. You know what I mean? You're, you're just learning how it repeats itself.

00:28:15.200 Well, I think what's remarkable. I talk about this every Christmas to people,

00:28:19.220 Jesus and Seneca were born in the same year and they walked the same Roman empire at the same time

00:28:24.840 saying a lot of the same things. Jesus is obviously saying, I am son of man. Uh, I am the son of God

00:28:30.740 and, and, and that, that there's a religious justification for what he's talking about,

00:28:35.440 but it's not as if he was the only person saying this, like St. Paul is debating and talking with

00:28:41.340 the Stoics and the cynics and, and that like philosophy was the civic, this was where we

00:28:47.860 were discussing like in, in some, in some senses, it's almost like religion. Christianity was too

00:28:52.540 successful. It ate everything. And so that, and, and rightfully so they sort of absorbed a lot of

00:28:58.360 the tenants of these ancient schools. And, and so now, because people are like, I'm not religious.

00:29:04.960 They think that, that humanity, that's the only moral framework that humanity has existed in. And

00:29:12.220 that's nonsense. And, and what I find so, so inspiring is that when you turn to Eastern philosophy,

00:29:19.720 um, and all the religions at the core, they're, they are saying very similar things about what kind

00:29:25.500 of person to be. Almost all of them are saying exactly the same thing. Yeah. It's, it's,

00:29:31.000 it's, it's why I started questioning, um, God and hell and everything else. Cause I'm like,

00:29:36.740 if I'm over in China and I'm, you know, Gandhi always bothered me. Gandhi, good guy. You know,

00:29:43.840 Jesus didn't wear pants. He didn't wear pants. I mean, they have a lot of common, you know, and

00:29:47.380 good, but, but Gandhi knew Jesus. He knew, he said, I like this Jesus guy. I just don't like his

00:29:55.320 followers. Okay. Is he in hell? That didn't make any sense to me. Yeah. You know, it's,

00:30:03.040 it, God is speaking a language, you know, if there be a God, I happen to believe there is,

00:30:08.980 but this is, there is something that is a, a pulsar that is saying truth, truth, truth,

00:30:17.980 truth. And it's global. It's universal. It is. There are certain things that, that make us better

00:30:28.500 people, make us a safer people, a safer civilization, a happier people. Yeah. I think about it. It's

00:30:36.980 ironic. You would think about it in terms of evolution, but like, like apes and chimps both

00:30:41.500 have, uh, sorry, a pandas and chimps both have thumbs, bats and birds. They both fly. They,

00:30:46.660 they evolutionarily, they have a common ancestor, but it's not like they're both descended from the

00:30:50.580 same thing, right? These are independently, these animals evolved very similar strategies for

00:30:57.920 surviving. I think in a way it goes to the central truth of what Christianity and Islam and Confucianism

00:31:04.420 and Buddhism is talking about that these schools independently said, Oh, like you got to control

00:31:09.840 your temper. Oh, suffering is an inevitable part of life. You know, Oh, courage is important,

00:31:15.780 right? Uh, the golden rule that they would independently come on the golden rule is to me

00:31:21.200 like the proof that it doesn't have to, either it's proof that it's supernatural or that it's proof

00:31:26.880 that it doesn't matter if it's supernatural. It's that it clearly works because we've discovered it

00:31:32.380 multiple times.

00:31:33.540 I mean, to, I mean, to me personally, it matters to me personally for you, for me looking at you,

00:31:45.220 I don't care. I mean, I don't care. Are you, are you getting to be a better person than you were

00:31:51.100 yesterday? Are you discovering the, the tenants of just universal truth? Cause it's just, it's like,

00:32:01.880 you know, the family is just being torn apart, just torn apart family, traditional family. Look,

00:32:11.640 it's a building block. That doesn't mean I hate, I mean, my mom was a single mom. Okay. I don't hate

00:32:17.980 families that broke apart or whatever. That doesn't make any sense. I don't hate gay people. I don't,

00:32:22.360 but can't we all just say if you can get a family where mom and dad aren't drunk alcoholics,

00:32:30.380 you know, is probably better. You know, there's some things that, you know, um, but where you have

00:32:36.780 a family unit, that is the structure of all life. And it's best to do that. That doesn't mean

00:32:45.160 these are all evil. Right. It just means this is something we can say, this is what we should

00:32:52.160 strive for knowing humans fail all the time. And it's going to, it's not always going to look like

00:32:57.960 that, but this is something good. Isn't it? I would be curious for your thoughts. Like,

00:33:02.680 I think it's like this word, like decency is coming up a lot or norms come up a lot.

00:33:07.160 And we seem to think those are things that you enforce on other people rather than follow yourself.

00:33:12.140 So like, like I, I think Donald Trump has run roughshod over a whole bunch of important norms

00:33:17.600 in American history and in our political system. I think it's ironic that the media, which is

00:33:22.320 violating all the hundreds of years of norms of its own profession is the one that's upset about

00:33:27.200 that. Right. It's like, you can, you can only deal with the stuff that's going on in your house.

00:33:32.640 Like, so it's like decent. It's like, I think the bedrock of a family is important. So instead of

00:33:38.240 being really upset about that, other people are doing things over here, I'm going to try to be a good dad.

00:33:42.140 Yes. Yes. And don't condemn everybody else for living a different lifestyle than yours. Just,

00:33:50.080 we just have to be able to say, uh, you know what Donald Trump does is nuts. Yeah. A lot of the

00:33:57.760 times. Right. And as a conservative, I don't like it a lot of the times. Sometimes he does stuff that

00:34:03.400 turns out good. Sure. Um, and I'll take that and I'll leave that and not embrace it and not become

00:34:11.220 everything I despise. Yeah. But, and, and, and I think the, the politics becoming kind of a team

00:34:18.720 sport has, there's no nuance in, and that has eliminated the idea of like, Oh, these are the

00:34:24.260 things I believe like, like, uh, I, I, that's what I think about Trump where it's like, I don't care

00:34:29.900 whether I agree with his policies or not. Like, would you let your daughter work for him? Would you

00:34:34.160 want him to be in charge of your retirement money? Like the, like, so I don't, I don't care whether

00:34:40.480 I agree with the policies or not. I, I agree with the, the previous conservative position that

00:34:46.340 character and temperament and, you know, like personal behavior matters more than politics.

00:34:53.380 Yes. So now how do you get there when there is no one of character? I mean, we had, I think he,

00:35:04.940 I don't agree with his policies. I don't like him all that much. He doesn't like me either. And I'm

00:35:10.420 fine with that. Mitt Romney, I think he was a fundamentally good, decent man. Yes. He was made

00:35:17.760 into the devil. Right. And Americans on both sides were like, yeah, and he's a Mormon. So I'm not

00:35:23.240 sure. You know what I mean? Yeah. He was a good, decent man that you might disagree with,

00:35:29.700 but he was a good man. He's somebody I would let my daughter go to their house, you know,

00:35:34.220 he would watch my money. Yeah. All of it. I mean, I think McCain, I think liberals are going to have

00:35:40.360 to look themselves in the mirror about this. It's like, look at the quality of person, people that we

00:35:45.380 have turned into monsters over the last 10, 20 years. And then I liken it to the sort of the

00:35:52.120 over prescription of antibiotics. It creates super bugs. You know, when you prescribed the

00:35:57.600 shame treatment to John McCain, a guy who refused to go home from a POW camp because he wouldn't get

00:36:04.960 preferential treatment, you want to make him into some sort of corrupt, selfish monster. Right.

00:36:10.720 Like, of course you end up with Donald Trump. Correct. Uh, because what sane person would,

00:36:15.640 and then let's look at it the other way. Obama has been one, was one of the most dignified,

00:36:20.680 self-controlled sort of modeling good behavior presidents that we've ever had. I mean, like,

00:36:26.420 as far as like not bad, like almost every one of the presidents we've ever had has been

00:36:32.280 at the core, probably a bad person. Unfortunately, like a lot of them were bad people. George Bush

00:36:37.240 was a good man. Yeah. I'm just saying like on, on, on, on the odds, a lot of them were not good

00:36:42.380 people. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, you know, he wasn't cheating on his wife. He wasn't lying, you know,

00:36:47.860 even, even the way he's like, you know, like you, obviously you compare Obama post-presidency

00:36:52.980 to Truman post-presidency, you know, one, one, one is much more dignified and, and, but at the same

00:36:59.180 time, like, you know, he didn't make his money doing illicit things, you know, like he, he, he has for the

00:37:04.980 most part practiced what we say, what, what everyone is preaching. And somehow he got turned

00:37:11.340 into a monster, you know, and then we wonder why we get actual monsters. Like we're the boy who cried

00:37:17.440 wolf. And then a wolf came and, uh, suddenly you, people don't trust you when you say this is not

00:37:24.460 normal. And what comes after? I don't know how it can get like, it's either going to get a lot worse.

00:37:32.740 I used to say that. I used to say that. I can't imagine how it got worse. Yeah. It's going to get

00:37:37.280 worse. It does. I started saying that in 2004, it can either get like history book bad, or this is a

00:37:45.200 rock bottom moment where it can get better. I mean, I think it's, it's one of the, I think America is

00:37:49.680 even sensing a rock bottom coming. I mean, if, if the things that are happening on a daily basis are

00:37:56.200 not rock bottom, I don't want to know what rock bottom looks like. I mean, my mother committed

00:38:00.440 suicide. She was an alcoholic. She committed suicide when I was a teenager. I know rock bottom.

00:38:06.600 And for me, it's not there. And, uh, thinking as an alcoholic myself and somebody who has been

00:38:13.660 around suicide, I'm scared to death of America's rock bottom because I, I don't at some point you're

00:38:22.520 like, okay, there's an exit. We just went by, there is an exit. We went by, Hey, here's one.

00:38:26.800 And we keep passing them and the bridge is out. Yeah. I mean, one of the things I take from

00:38:33.260 history is like, like I earlier this year, I reread like Ford's post press post-presidential

00:38:39.200 memoirs. And you're just like, Oh, history is just the same thing happening over and over again.

00:38:44.020 Do you know what I mean? And that, that, that it's always seemed like it was coming apart at the

00:38:49.660 seems except there was the underlying belief that tomorrow would be better. The underlying belief

00:38:57.920 that there are good people and heroes and a uniting force of E pluribus unum. We're here for the idea

00:39:06.680 that all men are created equal, even though we don't ever get there. We still have this fundamental

00:39:13.040 belief. You know, um, Martin Luther King challenged us to live up to that Brigham Young. When he,

00:39:19.480 when he first crossed the mountains being with torches across the mountains and kill everybody,

00:39:24.460 he gets there and says, it's the people. It's not the documents. The ideas are right. We had that.

00:39:32.780 I don't know if we have that anymore. I mean, yeah, the, the, the silver lining might be that

00:39:38.220 is this also kind of a transition or is an, is a younger generation going, going to, there's an

00:39:45.880 F. Scott Fitzgerald story I love where he's this sort of spoiled young woman. And she, she has this

00:39:50.520 doctor. He comes and he gives her this, he says like, uh, it's your turn to tend the fire. Like you

00:39:56.440 have to tend the fire. Um, and this is like the wake up call for her. This is also kind of the,

00:40:01.820 the plot of Cormac McCarthy's the road. Like, like the fire.

00:40:05.380 You're depressing the crap out of me. The fire passes. Right. And, and I wonder if we are in it,

00:40:13.020 like, is this, aren't, are new people going to decide to enter public service? Is there going

00:40:21.500 to be like sort of is, can this create less partisan mayors and city councils? And you know,

00:40:28.860 are we, it could, it could, I hope it could. Yeah. I hope it could. I know it could, whether it will

00:40:34.720 or not, because you have to have somebody has to be laying some cornerstones and I don't

00:40:41.180 see them. I think, I mean, when you look at, I mean, Louis CK, I love the song, uh, are all,

00:40:49.960 all my heroes are on TV for the wrong reason. Okay. I love that. Uh, is, I mean, okay. Disgusting,

00:40:57.960 whatever. But does he ever get a chance to go, okay, that was wrong. I got it. I've learned

00:41:06.100 and welcome back. There is the cornerstone of forgiveness totally is gone. So if we don't

00:41:13.220 have somebody relaying cornerstones, how does this new generation? Well, I think, uh, who's the,

00:41:21.780 the Congresswoman from, from California, she ran after the 2016 election, you know, she's the,

00:41:28.300 the bright young democratic face of change. And, and then she's like in a three-way relationship

00:41:34.400 with a campaign manager and then, you know, is forced to resign and then is like, oh, I'm the

00:41:41.680 victim here. Right. It's like, so I think the, the problem is even the people who are coming

00:41:47.560 to save us, you know, save us, uh, are, are, are horrendous hypocrites. That's what happened

00:41:53.960 to the tea party. Yeah. The tea party actually believed in a few things and then they elected

00:41:58.800 those people and then they all turned into the same monsters and they were like, right.

00:42:04.360 That was a waste of time. Yes. Yeah. And, and I like, I don't know. I don't know. It's,

00:42:10.660 uh, but I think, I think what, what I try to do is zoom, zoom way out. I think one of the

00:42:15.620 other, we were talking about this on your show, it's like, I think people consume way

00:42:19.060 too much news. Like we are watching information in real time when we should be zooming out

00:42:23.860 and turning to books and history and studying human nature and psychology and, you know,

00:42:29.540 biographies. And so it's like, so I do that and I watch too much news and it doesn't make

00:42:35.840 it better for me because I keep closing the book going, okay, that didn't end well.

00:42:40.980 Yeah. Try this one. I mean, it did end well in that we're here. You know what I mean?

00:42:45.380 Like, uh, well, it will end well in the end. I mean, life goes on. Men are meant to be free

00:42:54.100 and, uh, you know, might take us a couple of generations. If it's lost, it might be very,

00:42:59.580 very dark for a couple of generations, but we will, you know, you know, the people and the

00:43:04.820 Chinese people, the, the Christians in China are actually praying for United States to be brought

00:43:10.980 down. And I was talking to some of these people that have been rescued. I'm like,

00:43:15.140 what, could you stop that? Yeah. And, and they said, the help we can get. Yeah. They said,

00:43:19.540 if you're not humbled, you will not remember who you are and you will not be able to help.

00:43:24.940 You have to remember who you are.

00:43:29.320 I keep this. Maybe you'd like this. I'll give it to you. I keep this coin in my pocket. Um,

00:43:34.260 and this is a, a very ancient, uh, practice that the idea of memento mori, uh, the, the sort of

00:43:41.720 timeless elements of life. And that's a Marcus quote on the back. It says like, you could leave life

00:43:45.940 right now. Let that determine what you do and say and think. And what he means is not like life is

00:43:51.080 meaningless. You're about to die. Like go, go to an orgy. He means like, this is the only moment you

00:43:56.520 might have. How are you going to behave in that moment? Who are you going to be? What are you going

00:44:00.280 to do? And I think our obsession with the breaking news of the moment has taken us away from like

00:44:09.580 thinking about it. Like George Washington was performing for history, you know, and you might

00:44:14.880 think that's bad, but that's what caught like in the short term, like in up close, you know,

00:44:19.900 Washington is like moving his slaves around so he can keep them enslaved while being in free

00:44:26.000 territory. Right. Like he's a massive hypocrite, but on the larger scale, he's thinking about

00:44:30.600 what's the lesson I can teach, you know, people about power. How can I set up institutions that

00:44:36.300 outlast? I think he was thinking about that bigger picture. He wasn't thinking about his petty

00:44:41.600 squabbles with Thomas Jefferson, you know? And I think if, if people could get some perspective,

00:44:46.620 it would help give them some clarity. And that for me, I wrote the book. It's like, is this,

00:44:52.100 is this who I want to be? Like, is this the legacy I want to live? If I die tomorrow, is this enough

00:44:58.080 for me? And it wasn't.

00:45:18.060 How did you get to where you are? How did you, I mean, you are a remarkably unique individual.

00:45:28.060 Because you are, you're not only writing about it, but it's an, I can tell it's an honest

00:45:34.540 search. And you want to put it into practice every second, every time you put your hand

00:45:43.100 in your pocket. I've done it. Yeah. I've carried George Washington's compass with me on my hardest

00:45:49.900 days. Okay. Yeah. Um, because yeah, hold on, you know, who you want to be. Hold on. Where did you

00:45:59.240 come from? How did you get here? I, I don't think it's that exceptional. I had like two ordinary

00:46:05.540 parents. Uh, my mom was a school principal. My dad was a police officer. So was it

00:46:10.540 a little bit of that? Did the, did the, the shock of being hit in the face of being like,

00:46:18.540 you're my hero and it's Hitler. Was that it? What was it? I mean, I think, I think it was a

00:46:24.100 little bit from, from growing up and then, and then it was, um, I read these books and it was like,

00:46:31.040 this is, this is what I wish people had been telling. Like, I think I just got hit. I got hit by

00:46:35.800 this freight train of these books that this is like this timeless struggle that philosophy is

00:46:41.120 not this series of abstractions and questions. Like, you know, how do we know we're not living

00:46:46.580 in a computer simulation? Philosophy is like kind of man, do I want to be? What is the right thing?

00:46:52.040 Like, how do you control your temper? It's a difference between applied philosophy and

00:46:56.500 theoretical philosophy. Okay. I don't care about theoretical. Yeah. I'm like the greatest stoic

00:47:02.520 is Cato who doesn't write anything down. He's a philosopher because when it counted, he did what

00:47:08.560 he said he believed in. And Cicero, by the way, who wrote all sorts of things was the opposite of

00:47:14.820 that. You know what I mean? Uh, uh, Cicero wavered and Cicero contradicted himself and, and,

00:47:22.360 and Cicero like Cato dies resisting Julius Caesar. Cicero, his friend censors his eulogy of Cato

00:47:31.860 because he doesn't want to get on the wrong side of Caesar. You know, like I just, I just, I'm just

00:47:37.160 in love with those examples. To me, that's what transformed. You're in love with books. I am. And

00:47:43.660 ideas. And where did that come from? My grandmother was a reading instructor. And so I think that's

00:47:49.880 where it first came from. But I, it wasn't until much later in life that I read anything you might

00:47:56.000 call good. So I grew up with his novels. Right. And, and then there's nothing wrong with that.

00:48:00.460 No, no. It's the, it's the love of read. It's the idea. I remember I, I was 19. I'd only read

00:48:06.740 stuff that I was forced to read 18 years old. I pick up the adventures of Sherlock Holmes.

00:48:12.220 I read that book. Cause I thought at the time, this is the only good book in the world.

00:48:15.780 Yeah. You know, it just opened up so many different doors for me. And then I, you know,

00:48:21.740 wised up and went, I bet there's something else. And then I started reading classics and I realized,

00:48:28.240 well, there's a reason this book's been around for a couple of years. That's a really good story,

00:48:33.900 but you have to have the love of reading and the appreciation of a book.

00:48:38.560 Yeah. And it's, it's, I think something that people don't realize that it compounds. So each

00:48:43.240 classic you read gives you a whole new sense of history because that's what was influencing

00:48:48.320 the people doing those things. So yeah, I think it's been, it's been deciding to dedicate myself

00:48:54.540 to books. And the, the nice part about dedicating yourself to books is it eliminates the time. Like

00:48:59.760 I don't watch five hours of TV a day. Cause I like reading books, you know, like I, I get on an

00:49:05.140 airplane and I've never bought wifi in my life on an airplane. I just read books and you, you watch

00:49:11.580 people watching crappy movies and you go, of course you think you don't have time to read.

00:49:15.220 And so, yeah, I think, I think, you know, Warren Buffett has said like the best investment he

00:49:20.280 ever made was buying the intelligent investor by Benjamin Graham. I think we make a poor case

00:49:25.800 for books to young people. We say like read books cause that's what smart people do or read books

00:49:31.320 cause you'll get an F if you don't. We don't say like, this is, this will pay off for you. Like

00:49:38.000 this will give you an, I like the decision. I asked Dr. Drew what books to read. I went back to my

00:49:42.720 hotel room and bought them. Like I would not be sitting here if you hadn't, if I hadn't done

00:49:47.160 that. And so that ROI allows me to continue to invest in education.

00:49:54.780 It's the same thing in many ways that I did when I was 30. I mean, I, I, uh, uh, people used

00:50:02.640 to joke. I had the library of a serial killer because none of them agreed with each other.

00:50:08.440 And I was looking for, Hey, this guy says this, who would this guy really get pissed off? Who

00:50:16.600 would this guy say, don't read him as a contemporary? Yeah. And then I'd read him.

00:50:22.160 And then I'd find, my father told me when you find, if you could look at books and knowledge as

00:50:29.140 a transparency. And when you see the same thing, it's the cardinal point. When you see the same

00:50:35.600 things, you know, that's true. Yeah. You know what I mean? And it, it completely changes your

00:50:43.800 mind. So give me, give me five books that you should read. Meditations of Marcus Aurelius. The

00:50:50.540 most powerful man in the world writes a private notes to himself, not thinking anyone would read

00:50:55.660 it. It's incredible. I think Robert Greene's, the 48 laws of power is a prime is essentially an

00:51:01.700 introduction to all the classic texts of all time. Um, my favorite novel is this book,

00:51:07.600 the moviegoer by Walker Percy, which is all about sort of angst and deciding who you want to be and

00:51:14.160 what you want to do in life. That's one of my favorite novels. Um, have you read memoirs of

00:51:20.940 Hadrian? It's, I'm learning out about the Stokes, but it's a, it's a, it's a novel that's,

00:51:27.340 it's written as if memoir, as if Hadrian was writing the advice to Marcus Aurelius when he

00:51:33.640 is going to become emperor. So I think that's an incredible one. And then how many is that? Is

00:51:39.400 that three or four? I think it's four. Um, what, what would be the fourth one? I, I really liked,

00:51:45.800 it's influenced me a lot recently. I really liked David Brooks's new book, the second mountain,

00:51:49.960 um, about like you get to, and this was sort of the journey we're talking, you get to the top of

00:51:55.660 your profession or your thing and you go, wait, this is it. And then you have to find a second

00:52:01.800 more meaningful mountain or contribution to society. And that second mountain is usually smaller.

00:52:09.040 It's usually smaller and much more personal and much less recognized by other people.

00:52:14.460 Correct. Correct. One you wouldn't have seen if you weren't on the top of the mountain.

00:52:19.460 Yes. You could have. Yes. You just had to realize that this big, huge mountain was kind of meaningless.

00:52:24.400 Yes. That's sort of what I'm thinking about and going through now.

00:52:30.020 I just read, um, Frankenstein all over again. And the reason why I read it is because I was looking

00:52:38.660 at the times that she was living in and the time she was living in was the beginning of electricity

00:52:45.120 and everything else. And so she's, she's being influenced by, uh, sticking electrical wires

00:52:53.920 into animals. You know what I mean? And they're dead and all of a sudden they reanimate. And,

00:52:59.720 uh, I was just talking to, you know, Jason Blum is. Yes. The movie producer. So I was just talking

00:53:05.780 to Jason. He was a, he was a big fan of Ego's interview. He told me. Yeah. So we were just

00:53:10.440 talking and I said, you've got to redo Frankenstein, but forget the old Frankenstein. Yeah. It's the

00:53:16.400 same thing. We're now talking because of science. Maybe there is no death. Yeah. And what can we do

00:53:25.400 with algorithms? What can we do in downloading people? What can we do by enhancing people?

00:53:31.060 Nothing's changed. Yeah. The same exact warning, except they didn't have the technology. And we're

00:53:40.760 coming to, we're coming to the party this time, like they did saying we do have the technology or

00:53:46.400 we will. Right. What is the monster going to look like this time? Or will it be a monster?

00:53:51.880 I will definitely, uh, the, the other two novels I think fall in that category. Uh, have you read

00:53:56.660 the Count of Monte Cristo? I love it. It's such a huge book. It's so much more than just about

00:54:02.420 revenge. I think that one is a shockingly modern book, but, uh, cause we were talking about it

00:54:08.060 earlier. I reread Fahrenheit four 51 three or four years ago. I was, I was, what inspired me is,

00:54:14.420 you know, he talks about the shell in people's ears. I thought, isn't this just ear pods? And,

00:54:18.500 and, and I thought that's what I was going to get from it. And then I re I had read it in high

00:54:23.140 school and my lesson, my, the lesson I took from it is like government censorship is bad.

00:54:27.680 That's what it was a warning of. And actually the book is a warning against the way we censor

00:54:33.280 each other. Like he says, like the government didn't want to burn books, minorities and people

00:54:39.000 wanted to burn books because they thought it was offensive to other people and other minority,

00:54:44.300 that this was a, this was a self-inflicted hellscape that we made.

00:54:49.100 And isn't it amazing how those, all those writers in the fifties, the thirties to the

00:54:54.800 sixties, they all got it pretty right.

00:54:59.280 Shockingly right. And in a, in a lot of, because I think great art, and this is something I talked

00:55:04.260 to writers all about is like great art is rooted in timelessness. So star Wars is,

00:55:11.360 Oh yeah.

00:55:12.100 Is not about cutting edge sci-fi effects. The reason kids, people are, people who went to the

00:55:17.280 premiere of star Wars now take their grandkids to see star Wars is because it's about the hero's

00:55:23.300 journey. And, and that's why Odysseus is still relevant. And Gilgamesh is still relevant. And I

00:55:30.240 think the count of Monte Cristo and Frankenstein, if you Lord of the Rings, totally pop it.

00:55:34.800 Yeah. And, and so, but now I would, I bet you could take the next year of novels on the New York

00:55:41.680 Times bestseller list and it's all nihilism and it's all gar, it's all garbage in that. It's,

00:55:47.780 it's about, it's, are you saying 50 shades of gray is almost 50 shades of gray. I wish I'm talking

00:55:53.040 more. It's like, these are novels that don't say anything. They don't say anything. They don't

00:55:58.400 mean anything. Um, they are not rooted in, they are not the great Gatsby is not a novel about the

00:56:05.760 jazz age, you know, like it just looks like. Correct. So the, the, um, uh, there's a show

00:56:14.440 on Apple TV plus that, um, I started watching and I've only seen four episodes. So what do I know?

00:56:20.860 But, um, it's called the morning show. Oh yeah. And if it's not the Matt Lauer story, I don't know

00:56:27.380 what is, but I was struck by it because I don't think a network could have made this show because

00:56:35.380 they have all that baggage, but they're asking the really hard questions on that. Is there

00:56:41.920 forgiveness? What about the people who knew about it and didn't say anything about it? They just

00:56:48.540 accepted. Are they good? Are they bad? There it's, it's, it's amazingly rich and deep, which you don't

00:56:57.000 see anymore because you're not supposed to be. You'll offend too many people. You're taking a side

00:57:03.020 when this, I haven't seen a side yet. I've seen both and you're like, wow, that's a really good

00:57:09.280 question. Now come nobody else is asking this question. I mean, and isn't that time, one of my

00:57:14.440 favorite books, uh, James Rom wrote a book called dying every day. And it's about the subtitle is

00:57:19.820 like Seneca in the court of Nero. And it's about how does the world's greatest philosopher become the

00:57:26.100 advisor to the worst emperor in Roman history. And on the surface, it seems obvious it must be

00:57:31.400 corruption must be a hypocrite. And then you're like, Oh, how does James Mattis serve Donald Trump?

00:57:36.060 Right. Even though like, not that Trump is Nero, but like to Mattis, he probably, you know what I

00:57:41.760 mean? These are exact opposite human beings. And you realize, Oh, this is a timeless struggle.

00:57:48.000 You know, um, how, how, what are our obligations to serve? What are our obligations to dissent?

00:57:54.220 Right. How does our story end? I mean, you've, you've studied it. You're looking at the

00:57:59.080 characters as characters. You're looking at the people on stage right now as the characters

00:58:03.620 that you've read. Yeah. How does our story end? Well, if this is a Shakespeare play, it ends with

00:58:08.580 us all committing suicide and dying, unfortunately, or, you know, this is setting the stage for a hero

00:58:15.120 to emerge. And that's what I'd like to think is, is, is in the works. Maybe it has to get worse before

00:58:21.880 it gets better. But like the one good thing about bad times is that they, they call up the best in us

00:58:30.060 as, as much as the worst in us. And, you know, I don't think in, you know, 1859, we thought an

00:58:37.380 Abraham Lincoln, like that was one, that was probably the worst time. Yeah. That was probably the worst

00:58:41.560 time in American history. And you would not have expected some, you know, hillbilly lawyer from.

00:58:47.340 Oh, was he the 56th vote at the brokered convention? Yeah. He was like, he didn't win

00:58:51.840 until the very end. A single term congressman, a guy who taught himself to read. I mean,

00:58:57.820 Lincoln goes to Washington and the civil war breaks out and he literally goes to the library of

00:59:04.080 Congress to read books about war because he was that inexperienced for what was just going to happen.

00:59:10.340 And yet, you know, you, you, you, you go to the monument and you read the second inaugural

00:59:16.000 address and you think, how did a human go from there to there in five years? It's

00:59:22.240 trials on unreal, but it's trials, but it's also what humans are capable of. And I think

00:59:28.840 that would, knowing what humans have been capable of and does in history makes you deeply depressed,

00:59:34.820 but it also means you'd never count us out.

00:59:37.720 Technology scare you, thrill you, a little of both.

00:59:46.000 A little of both. I mean, one of the things I've started doing now, especially writing about

00:59:51.320 stillness and thinking about it is like, I don't touch my phone for the first one hour that I'm

00:59:55.000 awake. I set the terms of the day. I do not, do not start the day reactive. And, and, and I,

01:00:03.680 you know, that's when I do my, my reading. That's when I do my writing. I like, I start,

01:00:08.120 that's when I do journaling. I'm, I'm, I think technology is great as long as you're using

01:00:13.640 technology. Like it's fire. Yeah. As long as the technology is not using you, like one of the

01:00:20.560 green, one of the bright spots for me, I think podcasts, and obviously people are listening to

01:00:24.420 this as a podcast. Like that is the first encouraging media development that I've seen in

01:00:30.400 the last five or six years. It's long form. It's antiviral. I bet half the people you have

01:00:36.540 on this show, you vehemently disagree with. And it is modeling. Like, I love those sort

01:00:42.400 of liberal condescension about the Joe Rogan podcast. Like what better thing could you design

01:00:49.280 for young men specifically to be consuming than hours and hours of thoughtful discussions

01:00:57.280 with like a meathead and college professors? Like this is, and a guy who's on the journey.

01:01:05.660 Yeah. Yeah. Like, again, that's always my thing with stoicism. People like, Oh, this is ridiculous.

01:01:10.800 What would you rather engineers in Silicon Valley be reading? Do you know what I mean? Like,

01:01:15.420 like this is like the thing that I love Jordan Peterson. I've gotten to meet him a couple of

01:01:21.560 times. You know, it's like, uh, uh, he's, that's the dream, man. Like that, that's what,

01:01:30.420 like whether you agree with him or not, like who would you rather young people be listening

01:01:37.480 to than a Harvard educated college professor who makes them love great texts?

01:01:42.980 And can I tell you something? I sat in one of his shows, he came to town and I told him this

01:01:48.160 afterwards because he was kind of musing on, I don't know why this is successful. And I'm sitting

01:01:52.300 in the audience and I, I wanted to shout at him. I, I do. Um, I watched this audience and a lot of

01:02:00.720 meatheads in the audience, a lot of people who have never thought about anything about what he's

01:02:05.820 talking about. Right. But he was up there going, you're smart. You can figure it out. You have to

01:02:12.920 apply yourself. You can make it. Yes. You know what I mean? He was saying things that were

01:02:18.400 empowering to people that made them sit and listen and want to learn more, want to open up their

01:02:26.680 minds. You know, I, I said to him, I said, I gotta tell you, man, you lost me at least four times

01:02:33.760 or I like my son looked at me and he said, what he's talking about. I'm like, I have no idea.

01:02:37.520 Okay. He's shaking the trees, but he's empowering people because he's telling them the truth.

01:02:44.420 You are not stuck where you think you are. What makes me so angry about Jordan Peterson is,

01:02:52.100 can I curse on this podcast? Yes. That's the job, man. That's the job of a college professor.

01:02:57.520 The problem is not Jordan Peterson. If you agree with him or disagree with him politically,

01:03:01.480 the problem is the tenure system is supposed to create. Every university should have 50 Jordan

01:03:07.500 Peterson's. Right. You know what I mean? Like that's the, that's the entire profession.

01:03:11.580 Love books, encourage learning, you know, make people think, take provocative viewpoints,

01:03:17.500 like stand on principle. That's what college professors should be doing.

01:03:22.440 What is the, what is tenure all about? If it isn't about saying things that make people

01:03:28.920 uncomfortable. Yes. That's what you're supposed to be doing. That's the only way to learn.

01:03:34.060 You know, uh, it's, it's crazy. Like the, the problem is that there's not enough Jordan Peterson.

01:03:40.060 It's like that Jordan Peterson is the only college professor probably that your average white male,

01:03:46.580 like who's under 20 could name is a pro like it's the same thing with Malcolm Gladwell. So if you don't

01:03:53.020 want to be political, it's like, uh, the problem is not Malcolm Gladwell popularizing academics.

01:03:57.440 It's that academics are so boring that nobody wants to read them and that it's fallen on this

01:04:03.740 journalist to bring their work to a mass audience. So I don't think a lot of academics

01:04:09.800 they've gotten there and then they've reached the mountain and then they're just there where

01:04:16.600 the ones that are exciting, Joe Rogan, not an academic, but he's searching and he's excited

01:04:23.460 about when he finds something. Yeah. Academics don't seem excited about anything anymore.

01:04:29.120 I love Tyler Cowen. Uh, just an amazing human being like that. That's, that's the ideal of a

01:04:35.420 college. Like I, I love those guys and I love those guys, particularly as a college dropout who,

01:04:42.600 who didn't get that, you know what I mean? And, uh, you think he'd be the same person if you had

01:04:47.040 continued college? Yeah. I don't think, I mean, I don't think it would have changed me that much,

01:04:51.640 but I, it did help make the distinction for me that, that Twain quote about schooling versus

01:04:57.340 education. It was like, Oh, college is school. Education can happen at school, but it's better

01:05:06.160 if it happens wherever you are. So I think it might've changed me in some ways. Maybe I would

01:05:11.220 have had a better base of knowledge in other ways, but I think. In some ways, maybe you're awfully,

01:05:16.640 you explore an awful lot. So. Yeah. I mean, I think that's almost like me compensating for it. So I

01:05:21.280 think, I think that it was a net positive. The problem with school is, um, I think school done

01:05:29.960 right should open up doors. Yeah. You should leave there thinking I'm a dummy. I've learned all this

01:05:37.580 stuff and there is so much out there. I'm a dummy. Instead you walk out going, I'm the smartest man

01:05:43.360 to ever live. Yeah. I think it's John Wheeler, the physicist, he invented the hydrogen bomb. He says,

01:05:48.600 as your Island of knowledge grows, so does the shoreline of ignorance. That's what they should

01:05:55.040 print on your degree. Uh, but, uh, it's not, did you ever talk to him? John Wheeler? Yeah. No,

01:06:01.920 I know. Yeah. So I talked to him really years and years and years ago. He was one of the more

01:06:06.780 frightening people I've ever met. Why? Because he was so bummed. Oh, sorry. Not the hydrogen bomb.

01:06:13.280 Sorry. I'm thinking neutron bomb. Okay. Um, he was so bummed that a neutron bomb hadn't been used.

01:06:19.280 He was like, this is the best. It doesn't blow up buildings. It just kills people. And, uh, you

01:06:24.700 know, and, and you're like, yeah, but they die a horrible, horrible death over several hours. He's

01:06:31.860 like, yeah, but the army gives up immediately. I don't know how you feel about this. I think

01:06:36.860 this is why we have checks and balances. Yeah. Good for you for inventing now. Yeah. Yeah. Um,

01:06:44.000 so tell me, because we are not a society that is

01:06:47.700 still. No, I, I, I knew when I was sober, not, not drinking when I was sober, when I found myself

01:07:02.160 turning off the radio in the car and driving and just thinking, you know what I mean? Totally. Yeah.

01:07:10.780 Totally. And I was like, something's happened here. I think I might be better. Yeah. Uh, we

01:07:17.860 don't do that. It's constant interruption. Not that we don't do that. We have never done

01:07:23.640 it. Like it is bad, of course, but like the two, two pivotal things for me in the book

01:07:27.940 were one, there's a blaze Pascal quote from 1500s from the 1500s. All of humanity's problems

01:07:33.900 stem from our inability to sit quietly in a room alone. And then there's a scene in one

01:07:39.020 of Seneca's letters where he is describing how hard it is to concentrate because it's

01:07:43.660 so noisy outside of his window in Rome. And you're like, no car horns, no jackhammers, no

01:07:49.380 trucks. You go, Oh, it's always been hard to focus, but it's harder than ever. Yeah. I used

01:07:56.280 to cut fields on the tractor without anything, uh, in my years now. And it was, they were glorious

01:08:06.160 days now trying to get my kid onto a tractor without something he's listening to is impossible.

01:08:12.020 And you're like, trust me, you will thank me. You will thank me over time.

01:08:17.520 No, I have this piece that's coming out. I went, I went deer hunting with my, uh, 17 year old

01:08:22.300 neighbor a couple of weeks ago. And you know, we're up, it's like five in the morning. We're

01:08:26.780 at my back pasture and there's no, there's no cell reception. And I was like, do you understand

01:08:32.580 how abnormal what we're doing is right now? This is, and I think about that too. I love swimming.

01:08:39.420 I love swimming more than ever because it's the only place that no screens and sounds are really

01:08:44.920 possible. No, I, now I can do it. We can't help ourselves. Uh, it's like, Oh, how can I take my

01:08:53.020 cell phone and check it while I'm swimming? Like people are doing that. But, but I think seeking

01:08:57.940 out activities that, that cultivate solitude. The first thing I do every morning is I wake

01:09:04.140 up, don't use my, I don't use my phone as an alarm clock. And I take my son, we go for

01:09:09.260 a walk and we walk outside, we watch the sun come up. And that experience sets me up to

01:09:16.400 be creative and clear headed and not jerked around and not, you know, it sets up my whole

01:09:21.040 day, but people, you know, people wake up and the TV they fell asleep watching is still

01:09:27.100 on. And then they go to the office where there's a TV running and then they're getting, they're

01:09:31.360 you know, their phone is telling them this and that, and they go from meeting to meeting. And

01:09:36.700 then they wonder why they make bad decisions or they don't think big picture. And, you know,

01:09:41.080 they wonder why they can't, we wonder why people can't see what's obviously happening,

01:09:45.660 whether it's with Trump or anything, it's because they're so up close to it. They can't,

01:09:50.700 there's no room for reflection or perspective or, or any of that.

01:09:58.240 I think it's why successful people are always the first by hours, usually

01:10:03.020 total work in the office, all about the morning. Yeah. When I was in, when I was in New York at this

01:10:08.740 great office, one window looked at the empire state building and the other one looked at the

01:10:13.260 Chrysler building and I would come in early before anybody and I'd watch the sunrise and I would,

01:10:17.240 I would sit there for a few minutes and I would just watch how the light was bouncing off of one

01:10:22.060 of those buildings and it centers you. And, and so when people hear that word stillness, I think

01:10:29.300 they think, Oh, I got to go to a meditation retreat or I got to, you know, go to India or, you know,

01:10:34.800 they think it's like, you can go for a run. You know, you can, you can read a book, you can watch

01:10:40.220 the sun come up from your office. There are, there are, think about what an athlete does before they go on

01:10:46.260 the court, right? Like there are ways to get stillness that are not sissy, that are not

01:10:51.120 withdrawing from the world. There are ways to get stillness that make you better at what you do.

01:10:56.240 And in fact, if you're not doing it, you're not going to be good at what you do.

01:11:03.380 And to me, like one of the things that motivated the book was it was really like, I was like,

01:11:06.940 what are the best, I bet when you think of some of the best moments of your life,

01:11:10.060 there are moments like, like, I bet you think very fondly even now of those moments when you watched

01:11:14.940 the sun come up. Probably more than some of the biggest accomplishments in your life.

01:11:20.220 And so it was like, if those are the special moments or those are the best moments,

01:11:24.280 why am I content to just like, let them happen randomly? Shouldn't I be cultivating? One of the

01:11:29.620 reasons I live in Texas and I live out in the country a little bit is so I can build my life

01:11:37.560 around those moments.

01:11:38.420 It's funny you say this. I forgot that I did an event in Washington, D.C. about 10 years ago.

01:11:46.160 500,000 people there. What I think of when I think of that are two things. One, going down the night

01:11:54.880 before where it's still pretty quiet and the sun was setting and I just talked to a few people

01:12:00.780 and then the next morning I got up and I sat with my children in the links, the steps of the Lincoln

01:12:07.060 Memorial and we watched the sunrise.

01:12:09.580 I've done that many times.

01:12:10.980 Yeah. And it's not the screaming crowd. It's not that moment of that.

01:12:17.180 Right.

01:12:17.420 It was those personal quiet moments.

01:12:21.380 Yeah.

01:12:22.320 Interesting.

01:12:22.720 I think that's what that monument is there for.

01:12:25.400 It is.

01:12:25.920 That monument's not there for you to take a bunch of photos at 2 p.m. as part of a tour

01:12:30.300 group. I think it's there to catch the sun coming up and to see yourself reflected in

01:12:36.220 that waiting pool and, you know.

01:12:38.160 I was 18 years old and I was working in Washington and this is when they would hose it down like

01:12:43.820 once a week. I don't think they hosed it down since Reagan now. But I would go early,

01:12:50.040 early in the morning before the sun was up and I would just sit on the steps and I would,

01:12:55.340 you know, talk to the guy who was hosing it down when he was hosing it down or just

01:12:59.840 nothing and just sit there. And it, it, uh, there's something, and I think maybe part of my life was

01:13:08.100 set. You know, the compass points may have been set at that moment because it's, you're right.

01:13:14.320 That is what that is for.

01:13:16.480 Yeah.

01:13:17.020 It's horrible when you go there and there's a whole bunch of people.

01:13:19.300 Yeah.

01:13:19.780 It's horrible.

01:13:21.000 Of course.

01:13:21.740 It was mainly, at least me. I'm like, what are you doing? Shut up.

01:13:25.000 Right.

01:13:25.200 Shut up. Look, read that. Look at him.

01:13:27.920 No, this should be accompanied by silence and reflection. And, and again, that's what the

01:13:33.740 mornings and that's what the late evenings are, are so special for. And, uh, we, we lose that

01:13:41.640 because we try to cram crap in there. And what I love about podcasts is like, I don't know

01:13:47.740 about you, but I don't have a lot of 90 minute conversations just for the hell of it with

01:13:51.340 people with no device. Like, you know, you don't feel like it's almost like it's forcing

01:13:56.060 us to do the thing that naturally. This is what the founders weren't watching TV. They

01:14:01.940 were sitting around discussing. That's why they were in all these clubs. And that's why

01:14:05.700 it's so great. I love having people. I really, I have respect for because I think they're

01:14:10.880 honest. Um, but they really disagree. We usually, you know, come into it thinking this could

01:14:16.980 turn into a bloodbath and it never does because we respect one another. And it's those, what

01:14:23.340 I love about it is you're sitting with somebody and you're like, write that down. Remind me

01:14:29.260 of that. I've never thought of it that way. That's what we're missing. We're, we're only

01:14:34.240 getting the thoughts that we agree with.

01:14:37.120 Yes. Or the thoughts that fit in 140 or 280 characters and that make for a good YouTube

01:14:43.120 video or a good headline. Uh, nobody likes it, but everyone's participating in it. I

01:14:50.180 think that's the, can you tell me from the book? Well, one of the stories that really

01:14:55.160 stuck out, uh, never heard before. Um, the Michael Jordan story. Oh yeah. I think this

01:15:00.720 has all kinds of ramifications in our society today that we could, we should learn. Well,

01:15:08.720 so obviously Jordan, the greatest, the greatest basketball player of all time, incredible human

01:15:12.800 being incredible businessman, incredible entrepreneur, now an incredible philanthropist.

01:15:16.940 I'm sure also generally a nice person, especially now I've heard, but I would urge everyone to

01:15:23.860 go watch the Michael Jordan hall of fame acceptance speech. Cause it's one of the darkest, saddest

01:15:31.380 things you'll see.

01:15:32.440 When I read about it, I, I had no idea and I would never have thought about that from Michael

01:15:39.140 Jordan. He, he basically from an early age decided that the fuel for greatness was anger.

01:15:47.460 It started, he believed that his father loved his brother more and that was the first sort

01:15:52.660 of spark. And he said, I'm going to prove my dad wrong, you know? And this is the saddest

01:15:58.140 thing. I think about this now cause I had a little bit of that growing up and, and, uh,

01:16:01.760 and now I have young kids. It's like, if you think you can earn someone being proud of you,

01:16:08.140 you've, you've already, it's already, it's already lost. And, but so he starts there, he

01:16:12.680 gets, you know, cut from the high school basketball team. In fact, he just doesn't make varsity

01:16:17.460 as a kid, as a, as a sophomore, because the other guy was eight inches taller, but instead

01:16:22.760 he accumulates slight after slight. And it's this anger, this rage that, that, that is at the

01:16:29.320 core of what's motivating him as a player. That there's love of the game shit was, was

01:16:33.360 not true, right? What motivated him was crushing his opponents. I mean, he punched Steve Kerr

01:16:39.680 in the face when they were on the same team. You know, he, he wrecked people's careers, even

01:16:44.820 at the saddest part. So he gets, he doesn't make, he doesn't make the, the high school team

01:16:51.140 and this fuels him to, to, you know, to prove everyone wrong. Okay. That's enough. He's at,

01:16:57.200 he's at, he gets accepted into the NBA hall of fame and he invites that guy to the banquet

01:17:06.400 so he can point him out in front of a national audience and say, coach, you picked the wrong

01:17:12.860 person. I mean, just imagine how terribly sad that, sad that is. Like, and it's the opposite

01:17:18.660 of Marshall, the opposite of Marshall. It's the opposite of, of, uh, Gandhi or, or Lincoln

01:17:25.440 or, or, you know, it's, it's the opposite of the greatness that truly endures, you know?

01:17:32.060 Um, and, and, but worse than that, it's just a miserable way to live. Like that should have

01:17:39.420 been his shining moment instead. And someone I know, they said that that's the moment when

01:17:45.660 everything he'd crammed in the closet came exploding out all over him. And he saw, even

01:17:51.700 he saw it afterwards and said, I don't, I don't like that person. And so anger is anger

01:17:59.000 is, we think anger is good fuel, but it is the most corrosive. It's like jet fuel. It'll

01:18:05.720 blow up all over you. And, and the worst part is it, even if it makes you great, it doesn't

01:18:13.580 give you the one thing you want, which is feeling, feeling good about yourself.

01:18:19.520 Aren't we kind of training our society to be like him?

01:18:22.660 Yeah. To me, this is the real danger that Trump represents that, that, uh, that that's

01:18:29.300 what we now think success or power looks like it's pettiness and funny. Cause I, I agree with

01:18:36.920 you on that, but that's not what I thought of. I thought of all of the, you know, Greta

01:18:42.460 Thunberg, you, how dare you, you stole my childhood, all of this anger and angst that

01:18:49.400 I've been slighted by someone else, even people who lived a hundred years ago.

01:18:54.280 Yeah. It's craziness.

01:18:56.120 No, that, that is, that is, that is true. We have now conflated anger and political change

01:19:02.540 when really the great political movements were typically motivated by love or idealism,

01:19:07.640 even if they are about a grave injustice. Um, you know, you compare Martin Luther King and

01:19:12.720 Colin Kaepernick, like Martin Luther King is saying, this is what we believe. Let us, you

01:19:17.420 know, let me, let me shine this at you to inspire you. And Kaepernick is basically, and I actually

01:19:25.680 admire, I admire the courage that it takes to put your ass on the line. What I don't respect

01:19:30.820 is the, what I don't think is strategically valuable is the, is the hopelessness of it.

01:19:37.560 Do you know what I mean? And like the way I think about it is like, look, most people who

01:19:42.980 are doing wrong in the world are not doing it on purpose. And so if you yell at them,

01:19:48.200 you don't change their mind. And then there are really awful people in the world. Like you,

01:19:54.380 you don't defeat the Stephen Millers of the world by yelling at them. You, you don't, you don't defeat

01:20:00.240 the Hitlers of the world by being angry at them. Not to compare those two. I know that's extreme,

01:20:04.280 but, but like there are people who are, who have hold malevolent beliefs and who are, who

01:20:10.440 are attempting to exact an agenda that I think runs counter to the principles that the world

01:20:17.920 should operate by. Do not beat those people by being emotional. You beat those people by

01:20:23.060 being strategic and by being hopeful and by being collaborative.

01:20:27.260 And listening. Yes. Not having, we, we are not, we're not a society that is, is humble enough

01:20:39.660 to release certitude. We, we have to be, stop being so certain. The one thing I'm certain about

01:20:46.860 is certitude will kill us. Moral certitude is okay if you actually are right. Moral certitude

01:20:53.220 is the worst. Yeah. Yeah. Certitude on mathematics. Yes. Right. Sure. Yeah. Okay. I'm not getting

01:20:59.260 into a rocket if you're not certain you did the math right. Um, yeah. Moral certitude. I am right

01:21:05.280 about this when it's not, you know, I appreciate the fact that you're an agnostic and you know,

01:21:12.460 I've, I've had several atheists on and they'll ask me if I could prove it, if you could prove that

01:21:17.720 God didn't exist, I'd be a moron. Okay. I'd be a moron. Sure. And, and if I could prove to you

01:21:24.140 that God did exist, you'd be a moron. Right. If we're honestly looking, I don't know. I really

01:21:31.280 don't know. It's not provable. Yeah. Okay. And the moral certitude is what is killing us

01:21:37.720 because we're dummies. We have no, it's not like we're the scientists that were, you know,

01:21:44.120 working on the Manhattan project and going, no, I'm pretty, that's right. I'm right on that. We're

01:21:50.220 not that we're uneducated boobs that are just emotional going. It's your side. When, and how

01:21:57.520 quickly moral certitude seems to descend into total moral hypocrisy, right? Like the guy prosecuting

01:22:04.300 Harvey Weinstein is like into kinky, violent sex, you know, like, it's like, uh, the, the media that

01:22:11.160 attacks, uh, Kavanaugh, you know, what like is, is colleagues with Matt Lauer. Like it's, it's so

01:22:19.540 complicated. Right. And, and it's not, it's only complicated because we, we want to win. That was

01:22:29.400 the one thing about Donald Trump that I bothered. You're going to be sick of winning. I'm already sick

01:22:32.960 of winning. Okay. I just want to do the right thing. Well, that's the Jordan thing. Like, you know,

01:22:38.600 people laughed at that. And it's like, if sometimes you look at some of those winners

01:22:42.100 and you realize they are sick of winning, cause it sucks. You know, like, like when you look at

01:22:46.880 Jordan at that hall of fame speech, you're not like, I want to be that guy. I talked to people.

01:22:51.200 It's like, you have to live in Donald Trump's head. What's that like? You know, like that's what,

01:22:56.780 you know, I don't want to be, uh, alone in the white house. My wife, not wanting to be in the same

01:23:02.120 room with me. My only friend is Sean Hannity. And I, you know, we text each other at 3am.

01:23:06.460 That's not healthy. You know, like that's unhealthy. Uh, and so that there are a lot of

01:23:12.020 people who are tired of winning, you know, like there are a lot of rich, like you don't want to

01:23:18.880 end up like the end of there will be blood, you know? Uh, and, and that's where it goes. I think

01:23:24.340 a lot of times and, uh, yeah, yeah. We, we, we tired of winning is a real thing.

01:23:31.020 Cause we've mislabeled winning. Yes. And that's why I liked the second mountain so much. Oh,

01:23:38.460 winning is, uh, not how much you accumulate. And the Stokes talk about this so much too. It's not

01:23:43.700 what you accumulate. It's what you do. I love the Jackie Robinson thing on his tombstone. Like a life

01:23:49.280 is important in so far as its impact on other lives. My, um, one of my heroes is Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

01:23:56.220 He was executed. Most people say he didn't win. He did. Yeah. The guy who helped, um,

01:24:03.540 Oh, and then 36 Olympics, uh, Jesse Owens, the, the German that helped him on the high jump.

01:24:13.420 He won. I mean, he was sent to the front for that, but he won. It's, it's, it's, um,

01:24:19.420 a miracle is a change of perspective. That's all it is. Yes. And, and, and to circle back to where

01:24:26.940 we were, we need to hold up those. Where's that guy's, where's that German guy's statue? Do you

01:24:33.120 know what I mean? Where's, where's the, cause you can't be a society without statues. Yeah. Right.

01:24:39.940 Where no one is perfect. Yeah. Like, look, okay. You give Robert Lee a statue. Sure. But where's the

01:24:46.780 statue of the Southern guy who left everything behind to go fight for the union? Like, where's

01:24:52.000 that guy? Like, there's lots of those statues. I'm more interested in the people who are not

01:24:56.460 traitors, you know, like, uh, like that, that was a bigger sacrifice. Uh, and, and we can tell,

01:25:03.700 we can tell those stories. Um, and we can build monuments to those people. And, and if, if we're not

01:25:10.220 going to build monuments to them, you can have monuments in your house about them. And, and, uh,

01:25:14.820 yeah, where, where are the Frederick Douglass statues? Like, and, uh,

01:25:20.420 how's the Booker T statue? Oh, incredible human being. Um, there are so many fascinating people

01:25:28.300 like that, that we don't, we give short, short shrift to. Thank you for the conversation.

01:25:35.820 This was so cool. Thank you. It was really great. Yeah. We'll have you back. Thank you.

01:25:39.060 Just a reminder. I'd love you to rate and subscribe to the podcast and pass this on to a friend so it

01:25:50.640 can be discovered by other people.

01:25:51.900 I'll see you next time.

The Glenn Beck Program - March 28, 2020

Ep 73 ｜ Finding Stillness in the Chaos ｜ Ryan Holiday ｜ The Glenn Beck Podcast

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