The Tucker Carlson Show - September 15, 2026


Sean Stoneā€™s 10 Things to Learnļ¼š Ancient Wisdom for the Modern Soul

Norman Finkelstein Cuts Through Israelā€™s Propagandaļ¼š Gaza Genocide, Oct. 7 & Netanyahuā€™s Corruption Tucker on Macklemoreā€™s Cancellation and the So-Called ā€œConservativesā€ Championing Censorship

Episode Stats


Length

12 minutes

Words per minute

171.77

Word count

2,129

Sentence count

73

People

Also mentioned:
Sean Stone Sigmund Freud Bill Gates Bernays Gospels

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
00:00:00.000 AI is suddenly taking over the world, technology progressing faster than people can metabolize
00:00:09.700 or understand. And yet the population doesn't seem to be thriving. People don't seem happier.
00:00:15.240 So it's possible that technological progress isn't really progress if the cost is the destruction
00:00:20.960 of our social fabric and an epidemic of unhappiness and loneliness. Maybe that's why we need to
00:00:26.580 return to the truths that bring meaning to our lives. Our friend, Sean Stone, has just written
00:00:31.880 a book about that. Here it is. It's called 10 Things to Learn, Ancient Wisdom for the Modern
00:00:37.080 Soul. It's available now on tuckercarlsonbooks.com. He joins us now to tell us all about it.
00:00:43.000 So, Sean, in some ways, it's kind of a striking claim that you're making. You're saying that the
00:00:47.000 ancient world, a world without, I don't know, space travel or even flush toilets,
00:00:53.040 was wiser in some ways than our world this technologically advanced civilization that
00:01:00.040 we live in how was it wiser do you think because wisdom isn't necessarily a product of technology
00:01:09.300 right as we know um wisdom is something that's that's earned it's that's lived and and so the
00:01:17.240 ancients, I think, understood things about the nature of humanity. And it's not only ancient.
00:01:23.460 I mean, we draw upon in the book, we draw upon some films that are a little bit closer to us
00:01:29.340 time-wise. But yeah, a lot of the stories that I draw upon are from the East, the Bhagavad Gita,
00:01:35.840 a lot from the Bible, a lot of Bible stories, the Christ story, and then obviously ancient Greece.
00:01:43.700 And so why?
00:01:44.480 Because we've been telling stories for thousands of years, and I think that's essential to
00:01:48.620 the human experience, right?
00:01:49.860 Why do we look to stories?
00:01:51.480 When I grew up, it was like, what was the moral of the story when you watch a movie
00:01:55.160 or when you read a book?
00:01:56.220 That was always the question.
00:01:58.040 And I don't know that people are necessarily thinking along those terms anymore.
00:02:03.280 We got so much streaming at us that it's almost more about the spell of continuation, especially
00:02:08.840 you see with cv shows and whatnot where it's just meant to hook you and keep you almost like the
00:02:13.920 old days with the episode you know with the episodics where it's like it's the next commercial
00:02:17.160 right so you can say what happens next you know stay on the edge of your seat but the um but the
00:02:22.260 duty of of a story of a book or a myth or a movie even is always sort of that experience of receiving
00:02:29.680 of engaging with something right and then sitting with it having it hopefully having a cathartic
00:02:35.140 experience through that process, right, of watching a total story or hearing a story
00:02:40.380 and allowing yourself to be moved by it or learn something from it. And so that's, I think,
00:02:46.180 the heart of what I'm trying to do here is to just sort of boil down some lessons that we can take
00:02:50.800 from these stories from the ancient world and even some, you know, some from closer to the modern
00:02:55.360 world. What an interesting observation. So you're saying that previous civilizations in previous
00:03:03.260 times have focused on what people are like the nature of humanity you called it so that suggests
00:03:09.180 that human nature doesn't change technology may change the outward manifestations of a society
00:03:15.420 may change but people do not yeah we're still grappling with what with what it means to be human
00:03:22.540 um i started grappling with it i guess you know when i was young and and i came back to it uh
00:03:28.300 with a documentary called metahuman where i was interviewing people like deepak chopra and others
00:03:32.300 And we're at the cusp of, as you know, a transhuman agenda, a transhuman age, where people are talking about this idea of modifying the human, transforming the human, modifying us genetically, modifying us by potentially merging us with computers and whatnot.
00:03:47.040 And yet we don't really understand what it even is to be a human being, right?
00:03:51.680 And we have this body.
00:03:52.760 We have a body that has a certain level of, well, not a certain level, a huge amount of knowledge itself, right?
00:04:00.460 The body is so wise, it's so intelligent, and it connects us, you know, I believe, to the spiritual realm.
00:04:06.800 You know, we feel it with our emotional states, for example.
00:04:09.380 And, you know, really having higher mental intelligence or cognitive ability does not necessarily make you a more empathetic being, more emotionally attuned being, right?
00:04:21.300 So as they say, like there's emotional intelligence and that, you know, having higher IQ, let's say, doesn't necessarily translate to having a greater bandwidth for emotional intelligence.
00:04:32.740 That's for sure.
00:04:34.120 This paradoxical thing is happening where as life becomes physically easier for people, more comfortable, more abundant food, less physical labor, people are not getting happier, but instead are getting more despondent to the point where the suicide rate rises.
00:04:50.960 What is that?
00:04:53.400 Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of darkness, as we know, in our world.
00:04:59.120 And you can't just get rid of darkness by expediting things or making things faster, let's say, right?
00:05:09.720 Giving us more information.
00:05:12.320 I think information overload is a very real thing.
00:05:16.920 I certainly grapple with it.
00:05:18.620 I'm sure you do in some ways.
00:05:19.880 The access to information is readily there, and yet we have to still prioritize our own lives.
00:05:29.360 And so going back to what the book is about is just recognizing that you can't get rid of the process, let's say, of being human.
00:05:39.860 You can't expedite that.
00:05:41.960 You can't get rid of the falling.
00:05:43.860 You can't get rid of the need to surrender to a, I believe, to a higher power, right?
00:05:48.720 And let, you know, and let, let things play out because we don't have, you know, we don't
00:05:52.720 have control and there's an illusion of control.
00:05:55.380 And I think this has been very much what has been sold to us.
00:05:59.280 You could say, you know, going back to the century of the self-concept, right?
00:06:02.600 The marketing campaigns of the first, you know, Bernays was probably one of the first
00:06:07.180 famous ad man, right?
00:06:08.740 The nephew of Sigmund Freud.
00:06:10.020 And a lot of it's playing upon our urges and our instinctual urges to satisfy things, food, sex, material, goods, things like this.
00:06:21.120 And yet, just because you have a material reality that's satisfying, it doesn't mean that you're emotionally happy or at peace.
00:06:31.120 In fact, oftentimes we see people that have more are the most fearful.
00:06:35.420 That's oftentimes the one, you know, why?
00:06:37.280 I've thought oftentimes, why are these people like Bill Gates and others who have so much, so intent on trying to control humanity, or even control the population, or control the individual?
00:06:48.940 Again, transhuman modalities oftentimes go down to this question of trying to mind control the masses, trying to control other people, trying to control behavior, trying to control the environment.
00:07:00.120 We have a, that's, I would say, a fear-based way of approaching life, as opposed to a way of surrendering and saying, you know, there's a higher power at work, and how do we hopefully show up and be better people, more empathetic people, without trying to control or manipulate others?
00:07:17.560 control is a theme that runs throughout this book and our lack of it and the need to acknowledge
00:07:24.960 that to to identify the things that we cannot change and and submit to them why do you think
00:07:32.480 that fact is almost never noted in public by anybody that actually you can't control
00:07:38.860 most important things why don't you just say that yeah i think it's you know again we come
00:07:45.120 we're coming at it from as americans right and so a certain level of there is this um exceptionalism
00:07:51.040 i think you know in terms of america and in some ways rightfully so because you know our constitution
00:07:56.640 is so unique and so you know beautifully you know the declaration the promise the declaration of
00:08:00.640 independence is is real you know this idea that god is endowing us with these with these rights
00:08:05.840 not governments um and yet you know we live in a society you know in in america where uh we do you
00:08:12.640 You know, we are used to sort of trying to control things, especially when we look at global matter, global affairs, right?
00:08:18.860 You know, it's like the U.S. wants to be in control of the world, it seems, right?
00:08:22.380 Whether it's economic, militarily, things like this.
00:08:25.880 And then you travel abroad, and I think people are, generally speaking, a little bit less demanding when it comes to a desire to control.
00:08:34.800 I don't think that they have that belief, maybe, that we do.
00:08:37.840 that's part of our economic success as a country, right? That we feel like, oh, we've achieved
00:08:43.140 wealth. So then, as I said, the more you achieve materially, oftentimes it can put you in a state
00:08:49.600 of fear. Like I've got, you know, I've achieved it. I've got a large bank account. I've got a
00:08:53.740 house. I've got whatever. I've built a business and you're afraid of losing it. So I think that
00:08:58.340 the more you have engenders the more fear of loss. And that's why, you know, there's such a,
00:09:05.120 Again, this book keeps relating back to those stories about starting with the fall, like failure and falling is okay.
00:09:11.900 That's a necessary aspect of reality.
00:09:14.720 The story of Job in the Bible is so powerful for that reason, right?
00:09:18.400 A man who loses everything and yet sustains his faith.
00:09:23.460 And then, thankfully, he's rewarded in his faith and he's able to laugh again after the tragedy of everything taken away from him.
00:09:28.940 And so the desire for control, I think, is just an aspect of what you could call success.
00:09:35.820 Yes.
00:09:36.980 Yeah, Jesus touches on this at some length in the Gospels.
00:09:41.380 Of course.
00:09:42.080 Last, and it's so rarely said and so welcome to hear it.
00:09:47.120 My last question derives from your title, which mentions the human soul,
00:09:51.300 something else that's rarely even alluded to in modern life, but the need to tend to it.
00:09:57.420 it's it's of course the essence of who you are and if you ignore it it doesn't thrive
00:10:01.640 so what what's your what is one practice um that that you observe to tend to your soul
00:10:10.500 and that you would recommend yeah it's you know thankfully even though i was you know i could say
00:10:17.820 i was born into privilege right and and i acknowledge that it's not white privilege
00:10:21.460 just the privilege of having uh you know parents that were able to provide for me you know having
00:10:26.260 a certain amount of wealth available access to things being able to travel the world see things
00:10:31.380 um and you know from a young age my parents introduced me to spiritual teachings and
00:10:37.060 practices you know my dad more with meditation trying to you know just start the day by checking
00:10:43.620 into yourself just sitting with yourself right and and my mother more with uh a mixed christian
00:10:50.100 like a christian tradition but um also open to like reading the the religious texts of other of
00:10:55.940 other cultures to understand that there is a higher power at work and so i would say that
00:11:02.900 there's a chapter on breathing for this reason right through our breath we are connecting to
00:11:07.860 the divine and we come back whether it's with meditation or prayer right we come back to the
00:11:11.860 power of breath speech right in all the religious traditions it's always right speech because this
00:11:18.100 is the this is the beginning of everything breathing speaking right trying to put good
00:11:23.940 intention into the world and how we you know how we show up how we reflect ourselves and so i would
00:11:30.260 say that just by acknowledging the breath we are connecting to spirit and that's the magic of of
00:11:37.780 our reality that you know the scientists can't figure out no matter how much they you know they
00:11:42.660 try like what is what is the source of life right what is the source of of of life in the universe
00:11:48.580 what is the source of humans, right?
00:11:51.140 And I would say that if we tune in with the breath
00:11:53.980 and we start to connect to our spirit,
00:11:56.420 to our intuition, our inner knowing,
00:11:58.820 we can work with the power that's working through us.
00:12:06.220 Sean Stone, thank you very much.
00:12:09.700 It's a pleasure.
00:12:14.400 Thanks for watching.
00:12:16.100 You can get your copy of Sean Stone's book,
00:12:18.100 10 Things to Learn, Ancient Wisdom for the Modern Soul
00:12:20.900 at tuckercarlsonbooks.com, and we hope you will.