00:15:10.140How can you do anything where you're just in the orbit?
00:15:13.080And was that something you had a concept of at the time or over time you started to wake up to that appreciation?
00:15:21.820You started to realize, wait a second, I need to really take this in more fully.
00:15:27.100And I need to really appreciate what I'm learning and what I'm absorbing.
00:15:31.340or is that your relationship to that the idea you know success leaves clues that you can pick
00:15:36.500up on other people's did that come in hindsight i think more in hindsight yeah there's a lyndon
00:15:41.840johnson thing where he's like you go to the people who are at the center of things nice and you just
00:15:46.940need to be in proximity to power influence expertise so i think i had some sense that you
00:15:52.800you just want to go where the action is yeah um it i think i was very just it would be like you
00:16:01.720know robert would assign me to transcribe a bunch of interviews and um and then he'd be like bring
00:16:08.140them by the house you know and i'd cut and to me that was where i was getting paid is that i would
00:16:13.660get to go and then you know he'd be okay so what's in here and we'd review it and then i'd maybe get
00:16:19.220to sneak in like one or two questions nice and and that to me that was that was how i was getting
00:16:24.400paid i mean he was actually very generous and he did pay me but like i i i was getting paid
00:16:31.240in something that i understood was much more valuable than you know would show up on a on a
00:16:37.140on a pay stub or whatever which is like how do you how do you get advice from the people who have
00:16:43.140done done the thing yeah and that's i think where you want to go it's funny because later he writes
00:16:49.680this i think his best book that it's probably the book that i would give most young people
00:16:53.460he wrote this book called mastery and and it's all about how you become great at something and
00:16:58.440there's this whole the whole i think the second uh step is is about this sort of apprenticeship
00:17:04.760you have to the first thing is you find the thing that you're meant to do and when and when you're
00:17:09.800lucky enough to be like oh this is the thing that lights me up this is what i want to do
00:17:13.600the next step is you find that person who is who has done it and you just have to you know you have
00:17:19.100to attach yourself to them and and um that that was the that phase for a good chunk of my 20s
00:17:25.360love it how many so you were you were there for how many years then with robert
00:17:29.000uh 20 19 to 26 27 yeah was a i mean and and and like i these things are fluid and they overlap
00:17:42.300you know you get your you get your first shot you know i i wrote a book and he was helping me with
00:17:48.360it it's not like this one day it ends and you graduate it's this it's this thing i mean i was
00:17:52.840just talking to him a couple of days ago asking him for some advice and so it's a it's kind of
00:17:57.280fluid thing but he ended up getting me a job at this company called american apparel and that was
00:18:01.960kind of the next sort of part of that education and you were doing marketing work there how'd that
00:18:07.900go for you ryan well it was uh it was interesting some people may not know a little bit of the
00:18:16.240story we give you what we don't have to dwell on this but it's a it's a hell of an interesting
00:18:20.920story what's a sad you know it's a sad story too in that you if you had told me at 23 that
00:18:27.740no that now i would say that name and people would stare at you blankly yeah it's kind it's
00:18:32.540a cautionary i mean i wrote i wrote a book called ego is the enemy that i wrote as the company was
00:18:38.340imploding because i sort of had a ringside seat to you know this one point the largest garment
00:18:43.640manufacturer in the northern hemisphere uh is this success story it was this incredible thing
00:18:49.940uh one of the coolest brands in the world and it just it it destroyed itself um destroyed itself
00:18:58.340and and the the genius that created it was also the the demonic energy that destroyed it and and
00:19:06.840that's a very common thing where like the that line between genius and madness is very fluid
00:19:14.900and uh and yeah it was it was a it was a surreal experience i learned a ton obviously uh and then
00:19:23.820a lot a lot of things that took a while to unlearn as well did you i mean there's you know
00:19:30.300the old frame you put a mask on you know i think orwell and shooting the elephant talked about i
00:19:34.800put a mask on his face grew into it did you see that happening to you in terms of trying to sort
00:19:40.320of defend or sort of, you know, the PR push, uh, you know, sort of, you know, mask the deviancy
00:19:47.560there. You, you experience only in looking back, especially as you get older, you go,
00:19:55.000I had no business being there. Like, like why did, why was a 22 year old running marketing at
00:20:00.640a publicly traded company? Um, it, you know, if you'd asked me at 22, I would have said,
00:20:05.860because i'm that good and then and then uh now i go oh i was probably good but i also didn't know
00:20:15.140how fucking insane any of this was and so that i think it's helped me understand some of some of0.69
00:20:20.580what's happening in the world some of the me too stuff where you're like oh part of the reason0.72
00:20:24.440that everyone there was was in their 20s uh working for someone who was not in their 20s
00:20:31.220was that there was a certain amount of control and a certain amount of naivete about what was
00:20:36.800happening that allowed, allowed that sort of system to, uh, go on as it did. So, you know,
00:20:44.940like, um, yeah, just, I just realized like, oh, I, I just shouldn't have been in any of these
00:20:50.340situations is wildly inappropriate and insane. Um, but I didn't know because I'm a kid from
00:20:56.120sacramento and this all seems very exciting and interesting i uh you know i'm i it's not strict
00:21:03.040it's not it's not striking me as insane that this you know single 45 year old multi-millionaire uh
00:21:12.140wants me to live in his house you know like uh that that that seemed exciting and interesting
00:21:17.820thankfully i did not live in said house but uh but you know you just you just don't realize
00:21:23.100what's crazy until you're out of the thing and so i am somewhat sympathetic to people who kind
00:21:28.660of get in over their heads on stuff because i was that was certainly me i just didn't
00:21:32.320i was i was um i was just really caught up in the energy and the excitement and the sort of
00:21:39.120canvas that it was to to you know uh do what i was doing but the the
00:21:46.140the fact that it was all nuts you know was a was a was a debriefing process and then the funny
00:21:55.100thing is you know i've my wife and i've been together since we met in college and so she
00:22:00.180was there through all of it and she was like you know i was telling you every day that this is insane
00:22:04.200like i told you so like so i'll just be in you know i'll be on the middle of a run somewhere
00:22:10.680and something will hit me and i'll come back and i'll tell him she's like i i told you that like
00:22:15.160800 times you know and and so that you were just you know you're you're uh what's that
00:22:21.520that Upton Sinclair thing about it's very hard to understand something when your salary depends
00:22:26.140on you not understanding well said and uh there was a lot of that there was a lot of that as well
00:22:32.260so you I mean how long was that it was over two years oh no I was there
00:22:36.3402007 2014 or 15 something like that so it was a huge a big chunk of my yeah it was a big chunk
00:22:49.480and meanwhile though you started you said ego is the enemy you're starting to i mean perfect book
00:22:54.980to sort of the genesis of that experience and understanding it and so i mean it was that the
00:23:00.040first i mean for you you had written a number of things but was that you know because that sort of
00:23:05.520starts to move you in the direction that you ultimately are today or what did that book
00:23:10.780represent i did a book on media first and then i did my first book on stoicism which is called
00:23:16.040the obstacles away and then and then yeah ego was sort of at the ego was was me kind of leaving
00:23:23.700a good chunk of that behind yeah watching that sort of uh explode uh so it was it was um you
00:23:33.780know i in retrospect you look back i'm sure you experience this writing your book you think of
00:23:38.560these things as these kind of clean periods or that you had this like you had this insight like
00:23:43.980this is when i knew i was going to do this and then like i i um they're one of the great california
00:23:50.340writers this guy bud bud schulberg yeah if you know who that is he wrote what makes sammy run
00:23:54.360on the waterfront nice anyways he wrote this book called uh uh the harder they fall which is about
00:24:00.580this sort of corrupt pr agent um who's working for the mob as they fix uh boxing fights and
00:24:07.080and i i read this book and if you asked me when i knew i wanted to leave american apparel and
00:24:13.480get out of this life i would tell you it was the day i read that book and and i would i would say
00:24:18.780like like and i know it because the like the last not the last page is this kind of big
00:24:24.640he has this big insight he goes you know i'm realizing now you cannot deal in filth without
00:24:30.800becoming the thing you touch yeah yeah this is sort of my truck moment and so i i was like okay
00:24:36.020so i read that and i can i i still i i've gone back and looked at it you know this i can see
00:24:41.760the markings that i'm like holy shit what is this um like it felt like you know when you read
00:24:46.820something like i feel so attacked you know this is about me specifically so anyways that would
00:24:51.160have been when i thought i i um i my breakthrough happened and then i was talking to someone about
00:24:56.740it i was actually talking to tim miller about this because he and i had similar sort of arcs
00:25:00.140on our journey nice and and i was like as i was prepping for that conversation i was like oh you
00:25:05.240know what i bought this book on amazon i can see the day that i bought it i can you know and i went
00:25:10.080on amazon and um so i left i left america apparel in 2014 or 15 and and my amazon receipt for the
00:25:20.020harder they fall is like 2009 well it was like way closer to the beginning than the end yeah right
00:25:26.300and so you you can often have you you get the insight or the idea that the the thing you you
00:25:33.720understand it but it can be a very long time until you you understand it and then more importantly
00:25:39.340you have any of the sort of courage or clarity to act on it and so it was that whole period is much
00:25:48.660more sort of contradictory and and uh overlappy than than it feels like and it is important um
00:25:57.820if you're a young person you're like looking at someone's life story that you realize that when
00:26:03.660they lay it all out it's all that gets smooth all it gets laid out narratively yeah and it gets
00:26:08.800smoothed out as well and they it can feel like it was this plan or can feel like one thing was
00:26:15.720leading to the next. And that's all, that's all made up in retrospect. It's not like that in the
00:26:21.940moment. And by the way, history is not like that in the moment either. Nobody knows how the story
00:26:26.700is going to end. And so you have to kind of deal on that ambiguity more than you would like.
00:26:34.520You wrote a lot about sort of ambiguity, wrote a lot about your own experience and wrote a book
00:26:41.320that you know we intentionally have not even with you being around have on the on the shelf there
00:26:48.500trust me i'm lying i'm actually doing uh i'm supposed to do the 15 year anniversary edition
00:26:53.980of that book uh you have to yeah it was uh you were decades ahead yeah it was funny when i was
00:26:59.920writing trust me i'm lying i remember saying to the publisher they were like we're thinking you
00:27:03.060know like a summer 2012 release and i go i don't i can't wait that long i was like it's like i was
00:27:09.380like this all this stuff is like no it needs to come out right now and um i remember being rushed
00:27:14.780and i was probably 10 years early yeah 15 but 15 it's it's uh yeah it's a strange it's a strange
00:27:22.280just for folks that don't know much about this book i mean and back to you know the time stamp
00:27:27.1802012 yeah and you were talking about citizen journalism you were talking about legacy media
00:27:32.740you were talking about truth and trust you were talking about manipulation you were talking about
00:27:37.620you know, the validation and how you're able to spread stories and validate that story and sources
00:27:45.220and I mean, tell us. Yeah, I was trying to write sort of an expose of how the media system really
00:27:52.320worked, not how people thought it worked, which was objectivity and fact checkers. And, and I was
00:28:00.560looking at how the economics sort of shape, shape it. And I was trying to show you like how the
00:28:05.800sausage gets made like how how stories that you're reading in the news where they actually came from
00:28:12.060and uh how easy it is to just sort of inject things into that kind of slipstream and obviously
00:28:23.020in 2016 we saw a sort of russia add a whole element of that and you know i was writing before
00:28:29.660tick tock i was writing before instagram even really so so it's obviously become like hyper
00:28:35.840hyper drive of a lot of the stuff i was talking about in that book i mean i i wish i could sit
00:28:42.200back here and go 15 years later like i was totally totally proven wrong and everything's awesome
00:28:47.220but it's sort of like beyond my worst nightmare of of all the things i was talking about in that book
00:28:52.920which is funny because when i wrote it although a lot of people read it the media reaction was
00:28:59.640mostly like shoot the messenger like he's he's the bad guy um and and what i was trying to say
00:29:07.600is like look this is what i do to sell t-shirts or books or you know the this is how i can i can
00:29:14.180you know introduce something funny or ridiculous into the media cycle but like if if media is where
00:29:23.240public opinion is formed it this this vulnerability is just too too valuable to too many powerful
00:29:32.100important or deranged people for them not to sort of take advantage of it and and i think we're
00:29:37.840seeing now a world where um yeah you can you can sort of uh introduce alternative facts as they say
00:29:47.420into into this and people believe them um what what kind of vulnerabilities that exposes to us
00:29:53.820and they believe them and you've you've talked about this they believe them even after they're
00:29:58.280debunked sometimes even more yeah after the quote-unquote correction well i think i mean
00:30:03.960Again, this is always a complicated thing to talk about. But January 6th is a fascinating example of like everyone with eyes saw a thing happen. And then there was an investigation, right, that sort of laid out exactly what happened.
00:30:19.860But because one guy with a lot of followers, you saw him sort of, you saw Trump in the early days after January 6th, where he was complicit and responsible for an unthinkable and inexcusable thing, scramble around for how is he going to explain this?
00:30:39.580And then sort of settles on, it was Antifa.
00:30:47.840And which, by the way, are just two contradictory explanations just off the top of his head.
00:30:54.260But then if he says it enough times and if there is a financial and ideological and just cognitive reason to want that to be true, eventually a sizable percentage of the population will coalesce around that thing.
00:31:13.620Because to not do it would mean you have to face the tragedy and the horror and the violence and the, you know, the the implications of that thing.
00:31:26.560And so in a way, it just kind of lays bare our media system.
00:31:33.380I mean, yeah, it's like it's laid out in these different lawsuits.
00:31:37.060It's laid out in these like we know what happened and we know the role that people played in it happening.
00:31:42.460and yet afterwards he was able to kind of with this media jujitsu just make it not have happened
00:31:50.460all right well i want to unpack all of that uh and we we i mean you were writing this back i mean
00:31:56.920when you wrote trust me i'm lying you mentioned dick tuck you know it didn't exist i mean facebook
00:32:02.840probably it was in its orphan phase the cloud was in the sky 4g was a probably a parking space
00:32:08.520back then and linked in a prison but you know you were the algorithms weren't necessarily you were
00:32:14.340talking blogs mostly back then right yeah blogs and and twitter and and and how much traditional
00:32:20.160media was sort of the final step in that system and now it doesn't need to be final step after
00:32:26.140you seed yeah the extreme then you have a source you say one sort now you have two sources and all
00:32:31.640of a sudden now the main now it moves itself up the ladder when i see that by the way i live this
00:32:36.680yes daily mail says something the california post says something now the new york post says two
00:32:42.140sources yes have confirmed something all of a sudden i'm watching jesse waters on fox and then
00:32:47.440the next night hannity and all the rest of the lineup and then you have to respond to and i'm
00:32:50.980responding then i'm chasing something i'm playing defense they're already on to the next damn thing
00:32:54.920yeah and and i mean again trump is sort of intuitively understanding all this he's really
00:32:59.080good at going a lot of people are saying a lot of people are saying everyone's everyone knows
00:33:03.920and so it's this way that things that are not true become true by you bump into them enough
00:33:10.360times but you're i mean you're the point you're making is this is not this is bad but it's it's
00:33:17.360it's been i mean it's uh yeah wake up everybody it's the way it's been done yeah it's hardly
00:33:22.740novel no no i mean it's it this is this has been the the way that the sausage has been made for
00:33:28.340a decade and a half basically right so your new book is going to figure out and tell us what to
00:33:32.920do about it no i mean at first it's it's mortifying of course to have to go back and read something
00:33:37.580that you wrote when you were 23 and you thought you understood how the world worked even though
00:33:41.700i was right about a lot of ways like you know you i think you mostly uh i the cringe is mostly in
00:33:47.840the certainty and the the arrogance you know so so that that's why i've been procrastinating it
00:33:53.900but but that that's that's what i plus you've mined out about 50 other damn books in the in
00:33:58.480the interim so it's not like you're not busy so i want to sort of circle by so the you know
00:34:03.700hell of a hell of a time american peril and uh and then you you know you're you're hardly an old man
00:34:10.360uh your wife's saying i told you so i told you so i told you so mom and dad are like jesus
00:34:15.520you know how did we raise you young man yeah uh or not they probably are more generous yeah
00:34:21.100there's two golden rules that any man should live by rule one never mess with a country girl
00:34:30.820you play stupid games you get stupid prizes and rule two never mess with her friends either
00:34:37.160we always say that trust your girlfriends i'm anna sinfield and in this new season of the0.67
00:34:44.260girlfriends oh my god this is the same man a group of women discover they've all dated the
00:36:14.660So come hang out with us in the studio and listen to Playing Along on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:39:10.140i mean robert green would be the safe bet no it was dr drew okay
00:39:15.420why not yeah i was i was writing for the college newspaper and i went to this uh they i got invited
00:39:23.640to this conference uh in west hollywood which was sponsored by trojan condoms okay and and he was
00:39:30.680he was giving a talk and after the talk uh i was just i was like you know a young kid i was just
00:39:35.560hungry for advice and direction and all these things and i just said hey um what what you got
00:39:41.700any book recommendations and he turned me on to the stoics and changed the course of my life
00:39:46.560and which which which stoic and which book he told me first about epictetus about epictetus and
00:39:51.560mark surelius and uh you know obviously took a while for them to seep in but but you know sitting
00:39:58.160in in riverside california reading mark surelius's meditations and what was that the first but was
00:40:03.220that the book that was the first one yeah um and i just i was like what is this you know and it
00:40:09.840really was that immediate yeah yeah a hundred percent i didn't know there was writing like
00:40:15.160this i didn't know there was advice like this i didn't know it was what i was looking for but it
00:40:19.560was exactly what i was and did you know i mean there was about stoicism that he was about stoicism
00:40:25.420or was it just the most powerful man in the world and that intrigued you i mean in its life lessons
00:40:30.780We're only a few years out from the movie Gladiator at this time. So I think I was a little bit primed. But there was something about, I think at the core, young men are looking for direction, right? And they're looking for direction, particularly now in a world where a lot of the old sort of traditions and explicit and implicit instructions in that regard are gone.
00:40:54.500And so there's this just kind of existential void. There's this leadership void. You just don't know how to be a person. And it's not like there are these rituals or these groups or this kind of process by which you become a man. That just doesn't exist.
00:41:13.240And so to sort of pick up the private thoughts of the emperor of Rome, and he's talking to himself about how to not just be a productive person and a strong person, but also a wise person and a good person and how to deal with everything from his temper to his anxiety to his sort of fear of death or his frustrations with other people.
00:41:40.660I just I didn't. If you had asked me to define philosophy in my late teens, I would have said, I don't know, it's like, you know, it's it's those people in togas or it's people on college campuses, you know, asking impossible questions about things for which there are no answers.
00:42:01.260there you go you know it like that it's first thing it's for people smarter than me right yeah
00:42:05.820and and then to read the stoics you go oh no no this is for people trying to be human beings like
00:42:13.480and trying to just deal with the difficulties of life and uh that is what i think struck me so much
00:42:25.160about meditation because even compared to the other stoics you know whether you're reading
00:42:29.140Seneca or Epictetus, there they're at least talking to an audience. And there's something
00:42:34.360so personal and disarming about meditations, because here it's not meant for publication.
00:42:42.640It's just a guy. It's like a guy's inner monologue. It's like the angel on his shoulder,
00:42:49.880you know, trying to be like, you're better than this. You should do this. Try to do that. What
00:42:54.040about this and and so i think i was just i was blown away and then particularly that he is such
00:43:01.200a good writer that even his notes to himself are some of the best philosophy ever written i think
00:43:07.840that that that all is what struck me so was that so you sort of you know all of a sudden this book
00:43:13.880speaks to you and your time of life your state of mind um tetis similarly you mentioned the big
00:43:21.340three of Stoics, but these aren't the OGs of Stoicism. I mean, what the broader Stoic construct
00:43:27.520for you, when did that click versus more of a contemporary version of Stoicism that they
00:43:33.760represented? Well, the OGs of Stoicism, you go back to, you get Zeno and you get Cleanthes and
00:43:38.060Chrysippes, Cato being maybe another one that maybe some people have heard of. You know, that
00:43:44.820was the process of kind of tracing it backwards. You kind of, I think most people should start with
00:43:50.840the the big three of the of the stoics um and then and work their way back there's a reason
00:43:56.560that they're the ones that are most well known and that is a a really cool thing it just blows
00:44:01.120your mind about history where you're like okay to marcus aurelius stoicism was ancient philosophy
00:44:07.440ancient philosophy like five like uh zeno is to marcus aurelius what shakespeare is to us
00:44:16.620I was quoting Plutarch the other day. The imbalance between the rich and the poor is the oldest and most fatal ailment of all republics. It says it, you know, I don't know, 50, 70 AD.
00:56:16.680So no, it's so you did all that, you know, so you're reading this, but you weren't necessarily going, wait a second.
00:56:22.740This is my new path, my career that I'm going to become, you know, I'm going to translate this to a whole different audience that I'm going to be able to express this with new media.
00:56:33.160I'm going to be able to get a whole new generation to understand and bring to life these extraordinary figures.
00:56:39.740No, I mean, I was introduced to the Stoics in 2006, and my first book on Stoic philosophy came out in summer of 2014.
00:56:55.820i i i was i wrote my first book because i wanted to be a writer and i knew that that book had to
00:57:02.860come first you couldn't write the stoic books and then the media book so i knew how to get the media
00:57:06.460book out of the way so i did the media book first and then what i really wanted to write about was
00:57:10.200was the stoics um but uh no i i i thought i had this idea for one stoic book about this one passage
00:57:17.320that was it um and and uh again obstacles what stands in the way becomes the way yes i love it
00:57:24.500come on i know i heard you say this somewhere i mean i just i just it's too good it's the best
00:57:29.060it's the best someone what some impediment to action becomes the action yes stands away becomes
00:57:35.760away but you want to know something uh funny about that quote again you you evolve your
00:57:40.140understanding of these things as you can so i wrote the book the obstacles away mostly about
00:57:45.360how we deal with like professional obstacles right like how you're trying to like do something
00:57:51.980and something gets in the way which is obviously what he's partly talking about there but the
00:57:55.820fuller quote which obviously i knew is i i edited it to put some ellipses in there but mostly what
00:58:01.160he's talking about is is is annoying people and obnoxious people he's he's saying people can cause
00:58:07.720problems for us they can get in our way um but you know um we all he says we always have the
00:58:14.720ability to accommodate and adapt he says we can convert this to our own you know our own
00:58:19.900potential acting. And then he says, you know, the impediment to action advances action,
00:58:23.620what stands in the way becomes the way. And then you go, oh, okay. So when he's saying
00:58:27.680some person comes up and says something horrible to you or some person screws something up for you
00:58:34.880or some person, you know, is just constantly stressing you out or abusing you or whatever
00:58:43.160it is, what he's saying is that that's an opportunity for you to be the better person,
00:58:48.740the bigger person, to grow as a person in wrestling with and handling what this person
00:58:56.640is doing to you. And so you go, oh, okay, like when the Stoics are saying the obstacles away,
00:59:03.620they don't necessarily mean, oh, this is a chance to, you know, hey, this huge recession that we
00:59:09.900just got plunged into is actually a chance for you to retrench in the business and tighten things
00:59:15.740up and come back smarter and leaner and, you know, more organized. It may be. But he's saying,
00:59:23.600actually, you know, this person who just broke your heart or this person who just lied to you
00:59:29.820or stole from you or this person who just said something horrible to you, they're a chance for
00:59:35.680you to grow as a human being in how you respond to them. That is obviously not my reading of the
00:59:42.860passage when i'm 19 but it's it's how i understand it 20 years later and you understand it it's sort
00:59:48.020of the core part of what you said is sort of for you if you were going to distill the essence
00:59:52.700of stoicism this notion that we have agency yeah that you know it's not what happens to us how we
00:59:58.980respond to what happens to us yeah i yeah i would i'd be curious like in in politics isn't that
01:00:05.100i'd be curious to find some line of work in which that's not the case the case right like you wake
01:00:12.480up and somebody gives you the news and then you figure out your job is to say here's what we're
01:00:18.160going to do yeah but so much of our life is this sort of victim mentality that you know that it's
01:00:24.180fate and we can't control our own fate yeah uh you know the system's rigged against me there's
01:00:30.380nothing i can do nothing one person can do yes who this is whose fault it is this is how why it
01:00:37.200should have gone the other way um just a lot of a lot of dwelling on why it happened as opposed to
01:00:44.400what you're gonna do about it yeah so it's interesting to me just you know i i write a
01:00:49.480little bit and uh some of my my friends like why are you writing about tony robbins and but it's
01:00:55.260interesting i i i write about it because i was you know around your age and all of a sudden
01:00:59.340And my contemporary version, dare I say, was this guy who self-described with big teeth on infomercials selling me cassette tapes.
01:01:11.600And I listened to those today and I'm like, so much is, you know.
01:01:18.680Well, I do think that there's a little bit there that's just a complete indictment of philosophy as a whole these days.
01:01:25.300Right. Like like that, that that is. That's what Socrates is doing. That's what that's what Aristotle was doing. They were they were trying. I mean, Socrates gets killed for corrupting the youth, which is to say teaching the young boys what they need to know about life that their parents didn't want them to know.
01:01:47.800right? Or challenging convention or, you know, teaching them a new way of thinking. And I guess
01:01:55.400it just says something that philosophy does not speak to people in a way that it's supposed to.
01:02:04.040It is supposed to be the guide to the good life, which, you know, to me, the American dream is
01:02:09.260both a financial dream, but also a sort of a moral and a spiritual dream of a better life.
01:02:17.000And philosophy is supposed to be part of that. And it's just not. And I think we're in extra trouble when, you know, organized religion has not just fallen away, but also, you know, alienated huge swaths of the population, whether you're talking about the abuse scandals in the Catholic Church, which is what I grew up in, or you're looking at the sort of political radicalization of sort of evangelical faith.
01:02:46.140And so if you're not going to have traditions and sort of rituals, you're also not going to have religion, where are people supposed to learn this stuff?
01:03:04.100And it's, I think, created a huge vacuum that certain bad actors have stepped in to fill.
01:16:03.560Well, this notion of responsibility, I don't want to get too political, but it's kind of missing in my party at the kind of level that I think it needs to be.
01:19:39.740But you're naming mostly the people that we've heard of as if they also weren't part of enormous organizations of a bunch of ordinary people who are also participating.
01:19:50.000And so, like, it may fall on you to be one of those people.
01:19:54.780but uh it may also just fall on like like Rosa Parks was a secretary at at you know the NAACP
01:20:02.720and and and eventually yes she also has her moment in the thing but if if that had been the only
01:20:08.820thing she'd done if she'd only been answering phones there you've got it that would have
01:20:13.180enabled whoever ultimately was the person who doesn't go to the back of the bus right and and
01:20:18.260of course you know she was echo of Vida B. Wells and so many others that that that inspired along
01:20:23.540the way there's this other book i should have brought you do you know what the highlander
01:20:26.660school was no okay so so again we think of rosa parks as like this lady that just gets tired one
01:20:33.580day and you know sets in motion there was this thing in tennessee in the mountains of tennessee
01:20:38.400called the highlander school which is run by this this sort of folksy family of activists
01:20:43.560and it was a school where they trained activists in non-violence and political activism and almost
01:20:52.420all the major figures of the civil rights movement including john lewis uh including uh rosa parks
01:20:59.300they all go to this school and it's not only i'm going to deny that i didn't know about it
01:21:03.840it's not only humiliated not only do they they they learn the things like they would practice
01:21:08.600you know having racial slurs shouted at them and how how do you how do you roll on the ground and
01:21:13.420and cover yourself as you're getting beaten how do you you know how do you talk to people
01:21:17.540but it's also where like the relationships that they then took back all over the country
01:21:21.780but it's like nobody knows the name of this school or not enough people do but those people their
01:21:27.420coaching tree yeah i'm free i'm right now forgetting the names of the founders of the
01:21:31.640highlander school septima clark was one of the graduates that their coaching tree leads to the
01:21:37.160civil rights movement just as by the way gandhi's coaching tree leads to the people that came back
01:21:41.820to to found the highlander school and so yeah again you're gonna you what one of the things
01:21:47.480the stokes talk about is that like we're all assigned these like parts these roles love it
01:21:53.340and we don't know what it is it could be a big one it could be a little one but your job is to
01:21:57.460just play the hell out of that role and um i i you but chances are your role is not sit on the
01:22:06.400sidelines and complain oh god i can't take it i mean oh i i just can't take i can't take the
01:22:46.420And the problem is, I think, our political leaders are not willing to risk their political careers.
01:22:55.820Well, they had no problem in risking their political reputation by trying to get rid of Rosa Parks' race in the social studies books because it was woke.
01:23:40.680especially because like that was the opposite of who i was at 17 18 you're just like yeah
01:23:46.720you just you meet like you have it you have it together at this level it's incredible and there
01:23:51.600i mean they could they could be at harvard they could be working at some wall street firm they
01:23:56.420could be anywhere other than what they're doing and they're choosing to be there um and then you
01:24:01.660watch even even as as they are being mismanaged as as they objectively are right now just the
01:24:07.600what they are able to do the problems they are able to solve oh come on it's incredible
01:24:12.480uh uh so anyways yeah so i was supposed to give a talk at the like the naval academy and i was
01:24:19.620canceled the last minute right yeah about about an hour before i was supposed to go on um because
01:24:24.680because i because uh i was gonna make the political statement that i think removing
01:24:29.100books from the library which is a bad idea yeah you know i think there was two years ago four
01:24:35.2603,340 books, if I recall, the exact number that were banned in libraries or schools across this
01:24:40.700country. This banning, binge, rewriting history, censoring historical facts, as if that makes us
01:24:45.620stronger and wiser. Yeah, it's like, hey, this person is going to be, you know, in charge of
01:24:51.880nuclear weapons or flying a fighter jet, but Maya Angelou's memoir is too low for them to handle.
01:25:00.500Yeah, of course. Yeah, they can't handle it. Yeah, they won't be able to handle it. They're way too
01:25:04.220sensitive for that yeah exactly um but you gave the lecture nonetheless yeah well i gave it online
01:25:09.960put this stuff into practice you know i was like oh actually you know it's it's an it was an
01:25:16.000interesting insight into it too because i remember talking to the person giving you know the messenger
01:25:20.400who had to pass along that i was you know being and who i really felt for because it's like hey
01:25:24.480this this dude has a pension um yeah anyways i i he goes look we just don't want to we just don't
01:25:31.440want to draw any attention to ourselves you know and i said i think i i don't think that's how this
01:25:37.100works i think i think canceling a lecture an hour before i'm supposed to go on is going to
01:25:41.240add a lot more attention a few dozen headlines and and yeah and and so yeah i gave i gave the
01:25:46.780talk online and it was obviously seen by a lot more people than than would have uh there but
01:25:50.880and you had the audacity to talk about i don't know uh these uh you know these uh extreme
01:25:56.260progressive liberal woke uh you know admirals like stockdale yes yeah yes among many others by
01:26:02.180the way um a great california story there he the navy sends him to stanford in 1961 and he gets an
01:26:11.940advanced degree and in and as part of his studies there he's he he takes classes in comparative
01:26:18.680marxism that's what i forgot uh and and and then and then is introduced to to epictetus and and
01:26:26.260it's those two things that allow him to survive uh the pow experience and i was like seven years
01:26:33.180or something i was fascinated to my grandfather grandfather yeah just like what get what he didn't
01:26:38.380read epictetus well he came back just when you are exposed to an experience that's designed to
01:26:44.480break you as a human being and they strip you down and then just fling you back into the world
01:26:50.940like very few people could can can manage that and the reason that stockdale doesn't break is that
01:26:56.660he is introduced to these things at a woke liberal institution run by you know california hippies
01:27:05.520and uh and it's interesting and i don't want to go too far down the rabbit hole with stockdale but
01:27:11.520this notion of optimism, that wasn't his go-to default to just remain optimistic. He just
01:27:21.160remained clear and confident with the end goal. The optimist didn't tend to do as well.
01:27:28.980The stoic version of optimism is not, oh, this is going to go amazingly. I'm going to get lucky
01:27:34.660breaks. The stoic version of optimism is, I'm going to be better for this, however horrible
01:27:40.840it is. And ultimately, his view was he was going to comport himself in such a way that if he
01:27:50.160survived, he would not just be proud of how he acted. That's the idea of returning with honor,
01:27:55.860which they now teach all POWs. But that he was going to turn it into something he said that in
01:28:01.380retrospect, he would not trade away. And I think that's how we have to see this moment. Like, look,
01:28:05.740I would love to have a normal president. I'd love to have normal politics. I'd love to have not
01:28:10.280lived through a pandemic. I'd love, I would love all the, if you had given me my choice of how I
01:28:16.000would like the last 10 years to go, I would have picked very differently. But number one, you don't
01:28:21.580get a choice. Number two, you think you know how you want it to go, but you actually don't. And
01:28:28.120three, the only thing you have a say over is how do you look back and go, that was my moment. That
01:28:35.900was the thing that i rose up to meet and and that's going to be different for all of us but
01:28:40.580that's to me what the stoic is trying to say is that hey i want to be able to look back on this
01:28:45.460period and say i was what i was capable of being and that i i grew and was changed by that experience
01:28:55.360for for the better that that is to me actually a profoundly optimistic and hopeful yeah thing to
01:29:01.000say it's also realistic what i mean you look back at stoicism anything they from your perspective
01:29:09.740got wrong well like basically everyone for the last 2 000 years they get the whole slavery thing
01:29:15.660wrong there was a little of that i mean marcus realist slavery you know you had seneca working
01:29:20.400for a guy named you know good boss named narrow yes so so wealthy guy there there's the kind of
01:29:25.720just basic, you know, personal decisions. And you can't study history and not go, hey, this person
01:29:31.960was flawed and made mistakes. We're all products of our time. So there's certainly a lot of things
01:29:39.220like that. How about in their teachings? Well, look, they believed, I think, much more in
01:29:44.400predetermination and predestination than we do um they they they had obviously uh
01:29:53.180to go to the idea of an agency right like there were all these things that they thought couldn't
01:30:02.160be changed that they that they thought was just a fact of life and in a way this explains the
01:30:07.140political stuff right like even epictetus the slave doesn't question the institution of slavery
01:30:12.740And so, you know, when you look back at history, you can't help but be grateful to the sort of revolutionary, radical, progressive people who imagined that the world could be something different than it currently is.
01:30:28.060And if there's anything that the Stoics get wrong, it's just that they were resigned to the world being the way that it had always been.
01:30:38.160Yeah. And and we are lucky that Gandhi was like, hey, what if there's a way to solve problems that doesn't involve terrorism or insurrection or overthrowing a government, you know, and Martin Luther King picks that up from him and the the gay rights activists pick that up from them.0.80
01:31:02.800And, you know, we're obviously lucky that all these different innovations happened where people were like, you know, we're in the dead of Thomas Clarkson, who in the 1700s writes an essay at Oxford about whether people should own slaves or not.0.57
01:31:22.880And then says, well, what if I'm right and they shouldn't?
01:31:26.900And then maybe someone should do something about it.
01:31:29.920And then he says, maybe that person could be me.
01:31:32.200And that's where the abolitionist movement comes from.
01:35:58.740So it's good for you on the Stockdale thing.
01:36:00.220So what is, I mean, you got every morning, if you haven't got, by the way, everyone listening, watching needs to subscribe to the damn morning email.