The Daily Stoic - Admiral James Stavridis on James Stockdale and the Voyage of Character

Episode Date: April 17, 2021

On today’s podcast, Ryan talks to Admiral James Stavridis about the voyage of character as detailed in his book Sailing True North, his friendship with the modern day Stoic James Stockdale, the urgency of educating yourself through books and reading, and more. Admiral James Stavridis is a retired four-star U.S. naval officer. He served for five years as the Dean of The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. He led the NATO Alliance in global operations from 2009 to 2013 and is currently an Operating Executive of The Carlyle Group, a global investment firm. His new book 2034: A Novel of the Next World War was released in March 2021.This episode is also brought to you by Public Goods, the one stop shop for sustainable, high quality everyday essentials made from clean ingredients at an affordable price. Everything from coffee to toilet paper & shampoo to pet food. Receive $15 off your first Public Goods order with no minimum purchase. Just go to publicgoods.com/STOIC or use code STOIC at checkout.This episode is brought to you by Blinkist, the app that gets you fifteen-minute summaries of the best nonfiction books out there. Blinkist lets you get the topline information and the most important points from the most important nonfiction books out there, whether it’s Ryan’s own The Daily Stoic, Yuval Harari’s Sapiens, and more. Go to blinkist.com/stoic, try it free for 7 days, and save 25% off your new subscription, too.Today’s episode is brought to you by Munk Pack, Keto Granola Bars that contain just a single gram of sugar and 2 to 3 net carbs—and they’re only 140 calories. Get 20% off your first purchase of ANY Munk Pack product by visiting munkpack.com and entering our code STOIC at checkout.This episode is also brought to you by Ladder, a painless way to get the life insurance coverage you need for those you care about most. To apply, you only need a phone or laptop and a few minutes of time. Ladder’s algorithms work quickly and you’ll find out almost immediately if you’re approved. Go to ladderlife.com/stoic to see if you’re instantly approved today.***If you enjoyed this week’s podcast, we’d love for you to leave a review on Apple Podcasts. It helps with our visibility, and the more people listen to the podcast, the more we can invest into it and make it even better.Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: http://DailyStoic.com/signupFollow @DailyStoic:Twitter: https://twitter.com/dailystoicInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/dailystoic/Facebook: http://facebook.com/dailystoicYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/dailystoicFollow Admiral James Stavridis:Homepage: https://admiralstav.com/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/stavridisj See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hey, prime members, you can listen to the Daily Stoke podcast early and add free on Amazon music download the app today Welcome to the weekend edition of the Daily Stoke each weekday We bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stokes Something to help you live up to those four stoic virtues of courage justice up to those four stoic virtues of courage, justice, temperance, and wisdom. And then here on the weekend, we take a deeper dive into those same topics. We interview stoic philosophers. We explore at length how these stoic ideas can be applied to our actual lives and the challenging issues of our time.

Here on the weekend, when you have a little bit more space when things have slowed down, be sure to take some time to think, to go for a walk, to sit with your journal, and most importantly, to prepare for what the week ahead may bring. Hi, I'm David Brown, the host of Wundery's podcast business wars. And in our new season, Walmart must fight off target, the new discounter that's both savvy and fashion forward.

Listen to business wars on Amazon music or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, it's Ryan Holiday. Welcome to a very special episode, the Daily Stove podcast. I reached out to this guest through some context I have at the Stockdale Center, the US Naval Academy. I've read his fantastic book, Sailing True North,

Ten Admurals in the Voyage of Character by Admiral James Stavritis. And it's just a fascinating book. If you like my books, like The Ops Goes Away or Ego as the Enemy or Stillness is the Key, or I sort of tell moral stories. If you like learning by stories, this is a fantastic book for you. He has a new novel out as well called 2034, which he's co-written with a novelist I like named Elliott Ackerman. But James Stavritis spent more than 30 years

in the US Navy. He rose all the way to the rank of Forstar Admiral. He was the Supreme Allied Commander of NATO. He's a fascinating thinker and writer. He was a dean at Tufts University. He's just a fascinating guy. You can tell in this conversation how much I enjoyed having it. I learned a ton from this book. I learned a ton from talking to him. And we just we just really get into it. I was, it was an honor for me to have him on. It's an honor for me to talk to someone who knew the great Stoic Admiral Stockdale in person.

But I think you will love this book sailing through Newark 10 Admiral's and the voyage of character. It's a great, diverse, interesting list. I've heard of some of the people, hadn't heard of other of the people. I'm gonna do a bunch of further reading on several of them. So here is my interview with Admiral James Stavritis and can't wait for you to hear it.

Well, I wanted to start with the subtitle of of Sailing True North, this idea of the voice of character because there's something I've been thinking about that your title brings to mind that maybe you could help me get some clarity on. So the Greeks have this expression, character is fate, right? Sort of who you are determines what you're gonna do. But I think a thing that I struggle with that I've gotten questions about from other people is like,

but does that mean that it's not possible to change, right? Does that, so I love the idea of the voyage of character because it sort of called to mind this idea that it's a journey that we're going on as opposed to just being this fixed thing, either from birth or early age. And yet, I do believe in the expression character is fate. You know, what you see is what you get. So, what walked me through that paradox?

I'm a believer that just as with leaders are made not born, people of character are made not born. And I think anybody's voyage of character starts in the household. And if you're lucky enough to have parents who care for you deeply, but care enough to shape your voyage, then you'll succeed far more in that voyage of character. So it begins in the home with the example that your parents have for you. Then I think it goes to your school, your education, your interactions with your peers and your teachers. Why is it everyone can remember one teacher who really stands out for them. Typically around six or seventh grade,

Mrs. Dodge, who taught history, Mr. Robinson, who taught math. There's always a teacher in this story. And I think that becomes the next chapter in this voyage of character. And then life explodes. Life happens when you come out of high school or college or whenever you step into life in very real ways. And I saw in your biography that you didn't finish college, you stepped into life. It kind of exploded. Sure. And that's a moment of real character for anybody, whatever the circumstances, when finally

you own your education, you are not at that moment, in told what to read and how to curate it. and told what to read and how to curate it. All of a sudden, you own that education. That's where reading comes in immensely in the building of character. I believe in books. I believe in reading to build our character. And fourth and finally, it's the circumstances of your voice, the situations that challenge you.

And whether you have a relatively easy passage in life and things tend to go very smoothly for you. Not many people like that, I don't think. But for most of us, there are twists and turns and moments when like Cisophists, to go back to the Greeks, you feel like the Boulder is rolling back down on you. So resilience and your ability to meet those challenges, I think comes together with the first three things in

the voice that I just mentioned. That's how I would sketch it out. In one of the ways I was thinking about the sort of tension between, you know, character is fate, and then also that people can change. It's sort of this idea of like, you can change, but then when you're hiring someone or you're evaluating a political candidate or what you sort of go, look, who they've been is very likely who they're going to be in the future. So it's sort of this idea like you force yourself to change, but you don't go around expecting an old dog to learn new tricks.

That's a good way to be disappointed. I think that's true up to a point. In other words, we could both come up with, I'm sure some historical figures who do have epiphanies, sometimes relatively late in life, but is a general rule? No, there are very few St. Paul on the road to Damascus moments for anybody. Most people, I believe, their character

becomes quite well formed by the combination of the first three things I mentioned. By what happens in your home, by the education you receive, and then how you react in that explosive moment, the books you read, the experiences you have, I think your character is deeply shaped. Let's put it that way. By the time you're in your mid to late 20s. Yeah, we see that in sports, right? There's the athlete that gets in trouble, that gets arrested, that's been a locker room cancer on their last three teams.

And then the GM or the coach says, well, with me, it'll be different, right? We'll get it to work and it almost never works. I think that's true. And we see that in the Navy as well. And what I've always said about this is, I will give anyone a second chance, but I will never let the giving of chances hurt my ship,

hurt the organization. I think that's a pretty good rule to follow. It's not three strikes in your route, but I'm a believer in second chances, particularly having been given a few second chances myself along the road. Well, and it's also what's the motivation of the second chance? Are you giving the second chance out of generosity and belief and and desire to help someone or as is often the case with let's say in sports, but I'm sure it happens in the Navy, it happens in business.

You go, sure this person got in trouble, sure this person did some bad things. And so they're undervalued on the market, so it'll be good for me. You know, like they're like, sure this guy has a domestic violence charge on his record, but he can sure run the ball. That's always when it comes back to bite the coach. They're trying to, they're not trying to rehabilitate someone. They're trying to get something on the cheap and it comes back to haunt them. This is absolutely true. And there's also an ego on the part of the leader who, as you alluded to, says, I can fix this. And I'll give you a practical example.

When I was in my mid-30s, I was the captain of a warship for the first time, big, beautiful destroyer, about 400 people on it, marvelous, marvelous ship. I was very proud of that ship. We took the ship into my hometown, Jacksonville, Florida, for a port visit, and my chief engineer, effectively the third or fourth most senior officer went to a bar, got drunk,

lit up the whole bar, and then punched a police officer. My hometown. Yeah. And you know, I said, and it was a real act of ego, I said, you know, I can fix this guy. Because he was very talented and his sailors loved him, and he had a lot of ego. I said, you know, I can fix this guy because he was very talented and his sailors loved it. Then he had a lot of charisma. But I took a chance on him, brought him back, kind of didn't put it on his record. And we got him through that tour, but here's my punchline,

three years later on another ship for another captain, he did almost exactly the same thing. And so I had allowed my ego to perpetuate someone who turned out to be a problem for my successor. And that is another aspect to this. Yeah, that's fascinating. I was just reading a book about Captain Blie and Mutiny on the bounty and it was a really interesting book and it reminded me of this expression character's fate.

You know, so it happens the one time, I'm sure you know the story, but it happens the one time. And then I was reading, he gets another ship after and then Mutiny a second time and I was sort of thinking like, oh man, yeah, if it happens to you once, it's probably not your fault. If it happens to you again, it's definitely your fault. I think that's right. And by the way, not everyone will want to plow through the novel. And it's actually a trio of novels, meeting on the bounty, men against the sea, and pit care in Ireland.

But I highly commend the film. The most recent, it's been made into a movie four times, but the best of it, I think, is the relatively recent one. It's simply called Bounty, and it's absolutely terrific. A couple of riveting performances, and it really explores the character of William Bly, which was one of the convocated, say the least. Definitely.

And I wanted to talk to you about something pertaining to that as well. I guess who plays Christian Fletcher, you know, a young Mel Gibson. Really? Okay. Yeah, it was striking to me that the sort of, the fundamental flaw in Bly, which you write about in sailing to North, was his temper.

He sort of had a temper, and that temper is always coming back to Haunt him. You have an interesting story in the book you're talking about how collectively you and the men on the ship sort of go, men and women on the ship go, we're not going to lose our temper, is that all? And you said you were sort of successful and that I'm curious, how does one collectively manage the tempers of hundreds of people in very close quarters with each other? Number one, you send an example as the leader. And so job one is, you don't lose your temper.

And I know Albert Schweitzer, I know mother of Theresa, I'm like, anybody else, I get frustrated and upset, but I have worked very, very hard over the course of my life, not to allow my emotion to override my judgment. And I have found by observing other senior leaders who are pruned to losing their temper, shall we say, that it never helps. Yes.

It simply injects more chaos into what is already a frustrating situation. For me, you have to, as a leader, you have to try and let time slow down and understand what's happening. And that's in combat, and it's in day-to-day operations. So number one, it's tone and set from the top. Number two, go to the most senior people on the ship and get their buy-in. So here you're talking about your number two,

called an executive officer on a Navy worship, the second in command, your command master chief the senior enlisted sailor on the ship and your department heads, typically four or five people who are the next oldest people in the crew. So you get there very specific by end and you are ruthless about enforcing it as a culture. You call out anybody who verges into that. And then third and finally, you indicate again and again and again to the sailors

that we're not going to blow up. I expect you not to blow up. We're going to figure this out together. And that narrative is very, very important to solving the problem. Again, I found this works very well in the heat of combat and it works very well in the day-to-day maintenance of the ship. Yeah, I've never found, because I have a temper and I think what we're not talking about is you don't have a temper. What we're talking about is you keep it under control. George Washington loved to line from from from from Kato.

It's actually from a play about Kato, but he says you have to look at things in the the cool light of mild philosophy. You have to be able to step back and see it from a distance. But I've never found myself having lost my temper and then been like, I'm so glad I did that. It never feels good. Yeah, correct. For any number of reasons, you're talking about the play

that he would perform for his mental. Yes. Perform, yeah, this is very elemental. And I also commend people to his, as I'm sure you're very familiar with his rules of civility. Mm-hmm. That was a very small volume that I would often hand out in my various commands, up to and including

when I was a four star Supreme Allied commander in NATO. Got a quick message from one of our sponsors here and then we'll get right back to the show. Stay tuned. Celebrity feuds are high stakes. You never know if you're just going to end up on page 6 or Du Moir or in court. I'm Matt Bellesai. And I'm Sydney Battle.

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Yeah, again, we tend to think of these people as saints, whether you're looking at a George Marshall or a George Washington. You know, you think that, oh, they were just saints. And it's like, no, martial at a horrible temper, but he said, I can't afford to lose my temper. And I think it's almost more impressive if it's a choice than if they're just naturally have that disposition. Yeah, well said.

And Eisenhower, the same way, famously, had a real temper, and occasionally lost it, but could always get it back. In this regard, by the way, I love to quote what I think is the greatest book of leadership of the 20th century, which is the Godfather by Mario Pruzano.

And in the book, Don Corleone says, don't make the mistake of hating your enemies. It clouds your judgment. And that is so true. Again, this isn't about whether it's ethically morally right or wrong to lose your temper. I happen to believe it is ethically and morally wrong in the failure to treat others as we would be treated

ourselves. It's a failure. But here I'm making the case, prag pragmatically why it's a very good idea not to lose your temper for the host of reasons we've just explored. Well, the the the way I think about it to go back to sports is like what do you try to do when you are playing against someone? You try to make them angry because you know it make that's the whole purpose of trash talking is that you know that when one is angry, they act irrationally or they act emotionally and it comes back to haunt them.

So why would you inflict that upon yourself? Indeed. In this regard, I'm a tennis player. I played intercollegiate tennis for Navy, squash also. So I know racketacket Sports pretty well. And it's really a function in those sports of trying to break the concentration of your opponent. And in that case, the way to do it is to be very, very steady and return ball after ball

after ball. This is the Michael Chang, late 20th century Asian American tennis player, who I like because he's like my size. Like a foot six inches tall. And that almost zen like ability to retrieve the ball can ultimately break an opponent quite quickly. No, in my book, The Opskwizway,

I talk about Arthur Ash. You know, his, the amount of pressure, the amount of horrible things he had to endure, No, in my book The Ops Goes Away, I talk about Arthur Ash. The amount of pressure, the amount of horrible things he had to endure, but he sort of channels that out on the court. And then you compare that to the tantrums of John McEnroe or something, and you go, one, who's the greater man, but two, what's the more sustainable strategy? Yeah, as he probably discovered reading about Arthur Ash, one of his quotes, and I really commend his autobiography,

which is a gorgeously written book. And in the book, he says, I'll paraphrase it here. In a match, you're not really playing an opponent. You're always playing yourself. And I think that's, I think that's so true. He also said, by the way, to this whole question we wrestle with today, and you alluded to it at a moment ago of social injustice

and being black in America, he said, and I think this is really true. Being black in America is like having a second full-time job. In other words, you've got to be up on the issues. You've got to have thought through all your positions. You have to know the history. You're constantly in the middle of a conversation, whether you want to be or not. And in Ash, I thought carried himself with such immense dignity and kindness and was really an exemplar in a lot of different dimensions including parenting. The end of the

book, the autobiography, he knew he was dying of AIDS which he had contracted to a blood transfusion of all things. He'd always had heart problems which he had to overcome, that's why he had a transfusion. He had a beautiful little daughter named Camera. His wife was a photographer. And he wrote a letter to Camera, knowing that he wouldn't be around to parent her. And I, in the course of raising two wonderful daughters who are millennials, you know, kind of late 20, early 31 of each. I would often pull that letter out from Arthur Ash. The title of the autobiography is Days of Grace,

and I cannot commend it more highly to people. What strikes you most about the letter? I'm a huge Arthur Ash fan, but I haven't read this. First, that he would write it in such a practical way. And Ash was a practical kind of thinker. He wasn't a hugely emotional person. And the letter is full of very specific admonitions to camera about dating, about what would happen to her growing up as an African-American about her mother.

And it's a very moving in that. It's very practical. It's very moving in that. It also hits some grace notes that will pluck at your heartstrings as any such letter will do. And then thirdly, simply knowing it's from Arthur Ash and as you alluded to what he overcame in his life, kind of the male version of Althea Gibson, the great first African American who went through all this, Ash sailed in her wake, truly, but was always very cognizant of it. And he manages to capture all this in the just a lovely letter. He has a great expression that he tries to play physically loose but mentally tight, which I think is a great way

to do any sort of high performance elite activity. Yeah, I think that's right. I hadn't heard that quote. It's a good one. So you have a sort of a titillating exchange in your book about an evening you spent in a hot tub with James Stockdale, which is not a phrase I ever thought I would hear myself saying, but I would love to hear that story because it must have been a surreal experience.

Well, first of all, I know the stock knew the Stockdale's through the US Naval Institute, and always was fortunate to be relatively close to the US Naval Institute is the professional organization of the C-Service is kind of like the American Medical Association. And I spent a fair amount of time getting to know the stock deals around the time their book came out in love and war. And we were at a US Naval Institute event and ended up around the pool and really talking about life and believe me I was completely in the receive mode. I was perhaps a lieutenant commander. I was a very young officer in in awe of Admiral Stockdale and what really struck me about

him are the things that always strike people about or strike people about James Stockdale and what really struck me about him are the things that always strike people about or strike people about James Stockdale, which is to the title of this podcast, his knowledge of Greece and Greeks and Greek philosophy and in particular stoicism and the way that he was able to carry that with him as he was in effect parachuting into the Hanway Hilton. And the easy way he carried his stardom,

if you will, the kindness he showed to his wife, to my wife, he was an exemplar in so many different dimensions. Yeah, it's interesting for me, you know, writing about this philosophy and these philosophers who lived so long ago. You read about a Marcus Relius or an epictetus or a Seneca and there's this, it's impressive and it's almost unbelievable. You go, oh, this happened such a long time ago. They don't make human beings like that anymore.

Even in your book, you're talking about a Francis Drake or a thymistically's, you know, that it, this feels like something that can't happen anymore. And to have, I think what's so surreal about his story is that it, I mean, it was not that long ago, you know, and it was, it was as epic and he was fulfilling these ideals and these ideas on par with, with these sort of great historical figures. It's strange to think about even. And yet, doesn't it tell us that the human spirit renews itself generation after generation?

And people talk a lot these days about the greatest generation, about these Americans who marched off to war in the second world war. And they were a great generation, and they are largely now passing from the scene. I'll tell you, I would not underestimate these millennials. And if you look at American history, and you look at the cycles of character in American generations, about every fourth or fifth cycle is a so-called hero generation.

The last one was the greatest generation, the World War II generation. They did many great things. The baby boom is of course the massive one that I'm a part of. And there've been a couple others, but the one to watch, I think, are these millennials. And I have two daughters who are millennials. They're both married to two wonderful young men. Two of them are the two boys, are physicians.

One of my daughters is a nurse practitioner. The other one is a tech executive at Google. What do they have in common? What they have in common is they care about other people deeply. They are truly moved by these conversations in America today about inequality and racial and justice. They're hard working. And of them, two of the four served or served in the military, one of the boys and one of my daughters. And I know that generation through them, but also having led that generation into these so-called forever wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

I've spent a lot of time in the field, a lot of time on Navy ships at sea, a lot of time in the field, a lot of time on Navy ships at sea, a lot of time in hangar days, talking to these millennials. And they care about their country, they care about each other. I would bet 50 years from now, we'll be talking about the millennials

as one of these hero generations. I hope so. That is the interesting thing about Stockdale's story. I think, you know, the superficial glance is just the kind of the superhuman strength and the endurance and the determination that he exhibits. But what I think so fascinating whether you're looking at his story or Denton's story or McCain's story is that what was at the root of that sort of defiance and unbreakableness, it wasn't this sort of selfish,

superhuman, like you're not gonna beat me, it was, I'm not gonna let you beat me because these people are depending on me. You know, like when Stockdale attempts to kill himself, he wasn't doing it because he didn't want to be tortured and spill secrets. He did it because he thought it could end torture in the camp for everyone else.

So there's this profound selflessness in their stories that I think kind of gets glossed over because Vietnam was such a complicated conflict. Indeed. A book that I often recommend to people who want may recall, it's about the 300 Spartans who stand and delay the massive Persian army as it seeks to invade and conquer Greece. And there's much to admire about that book and much to learn from it. But there's a conversation in it about, by the Greeks,

about why they stand in battle. And to boil it down quickly, the comment is simply that in combat, the opposite of fear is not courage. The opposite is love. the opposite. The opposite. Love. His love. It is love, filo, and Greek, for the men and women who stand on either side of you. And that is as true today as it is for the ancient Greeks or any other civilization to 3, 4,000 years ago.

Got a quick message from one of our sponsors here and then we'll get right back to the show. Stay tuned. No, I love Stephen and actually, Stephen's been a mentor of mine since I started as a writer and I I reread Gates of Fire at the beginning of the pandemic and I'm very glad I did. I think one of the things that's been so hard for me to wrap my head around the last 12 months, you know, totally agree with your points about the sort of millennial generation. Steven wrote a great piece about, you know, the Spartan, the Spartan line that the Spartan soldier carries their shield not for their own protection, but to create the impenetrable line for the

person next to you. You couldn't invent a better metaphor for that than masks during the middle of a pandemic or social distancing in the middle of a pandemic, he was saying, and just how hard that's been for people to do. And how little it actually asks of us, I think that's been the hardest thing for me to watch and to struggle with. It's been hard to watch people who you care about, not care about other people. I think that's right. And I, another book by Stephen, you may have read, is called the Afghan campaign.

And of course, it's not about our current war in Afghanistan or the British campaign. You know, Afghanistan is the graveyard of empires, it's the same ghost. This is about Alexander the Great marching through Afghanistan the first time someone in recorded history, anyone really tries to conquer it. And many of these same themes are extenter. He is quite a marvelous writer. Yeah, it's fantastic. He, I love him so much. I was curious to this idea of sort of selflessness, it's something I'm working on in my next book. I'm curious, you know, you talk about

these sort of great admirals and generals of history, but then there's also the moment, you talk about sort of disobeying orders, there's a great MacArthur line about, you become famous for the orders you disobey. And I was thinking about on the one hand, it strikes me that sort of military culture is about creating people who follow the rules, who stick to the rules, who know what to do, know the protocol. And yet there's also these sort of great moments.

There's one in the pandemic on the US as theodore Roosevelt, where sometimes the commander has to, I don't want to say go rogue, but the commander has to be willing to violate protocol in service of a greater good. So I'm very familiar with this case. Captain Brett Krozier worked for me as a commander, was a targetier, someone who is in charge of selecting targets in combat for me in the Libyan campaign. And so that's a very delicate job.

It's where you, as the targetier or the one who goes to the commander and says, yes, we can hit this target safely without creating collateral damage. And it's because of the way we wage war following the laws of war and with morals and ethics intact, you come as a commander to depend a lot on your target here. So I got to know Brett pretty well through that campaign. This is back in about exactly 10 years ago. And tracked his career along. It was absolutely certain. Brett Kroger was going to be an admiral in the Navy. He took command of the Thierry Roosevelt,

in a blaze of glory, went off to sea, and then this pandemic occurs. And I know him and I know his qualities well. And what he did was sacrifice his career for the good of his sailors. And he could have chosen otherwise. He could have simply suffered through the situation, let the Navy stumble around trying to figure out what was going on. And in fairness, all this happened at the very beginning of the pandemic, before knew you know what the conditions were. You know this is the point of time in the pandemic where we're all wiping down our groceries right because we're certain that just touching a surface

will give us a COVID. Of course now we know that's just not true. It effectively can't live on a surface. It's a breath to breath transmission. That wasn't known at the time. So he had hundreds of sailors constantly wiping down the carry. He did everything he could imagine. The Navy could not give him a set of solutions. He knew a massive percentage of his crew was infected. And so he chose to a massive percentage of his crew was infected. And so he chose to make very public what happened. Now, here's where there's a foot fault by Brett Kroger. He could have launched that red flare

inside the boundaries of classification. He put it in an unclassified email. I think if I'd been on a shoulder as is good angel, I would have said, your email is perfect, Brett, but put it in a classified format. And if he had done that, I think he probably would have completed his command to run going on to be an admiral. But he felt that he had to go right now,

that time was of the essence, that if he classified it, it would slow everything down, allow the Navy to just, you know, kind of hold it inside a little bit longer. And so he launched a pretty significant red flare, costume is career. I'm still in pretty constant contact with Brett Krozer in my next book is a nonfiction book called Nine Hard Choices because I'm fascinated by decisions by how we decide things, the big things in our life and what drives those big decisions. And like sailing through North, which is about the lives of 10 animals,

north, which is about the lives of 10 admirals. This is nine naval figures, different ones completely, who make very hard choices. The ninth one is Brett Crocher. Well, that's fascinating. Yeah, it's, it's, I guess we're really talking about here too, is the distinction between physical courage and moral courage. And the willingness to risk something more intangible, one's reputation, one's job, one's social status, it's fascinating to me how often that's even scarier to people than the physical risks. Indeed it is. And it's because we tend to think a reputation hangs on it

in such real ways. And physical courage, I think Abraham Lincoln got it about right. All men can stand adversity if you would judge a man's character, give him a little bit of power. And I think that when you are dealing with a moral decision, you feel as though it will be part of the judgment that's rendered on you by everybody. In other words, physical courage,

there's only a very small number of people who have to deal with the challenges of physical courage, right, very few, but everybody deals with moral questions all the time. So I think for me, I would, I want to get a both right, but I really don't want to get that moral courage question wrong. Yeah. And I'm, let's talk about theater Roosevelt, because you've got the bus behind you and we're talking about the USS theater Roosevelt What I'm fascinated with philosophy, but why I love the Stokes is that There's this great expression from Junius Rousticus one of the Stokes He talks about the pen and ink philosophers that he doesn't want to be a pen and ink philosopher wants to be a

philosopher-duer and it strikes me that that's that's the The through line of theodore Roosevelt's life. He wants to be the man in the arena. He's brilliant. He's an academic. He could have been a historian. He could have been a philanthropist, but he decides instead to pursue not just the strenuous life,

but really the active life. Absolutely. And by the way, I always say about Roosevelt's surprise to some people. I think we'll find he's the only person in American history to win both a Medal of Honor and Combat in a Nobel Peace Prize. Those two don't often go together. And I think at your point about the breadth of theodore Roosevelt, the other great quote about him, and he was guilty of this, is that Teddy Roosevelt wanted to be the bride at every wedding,

and the corpse at every funeral. He just had to be at the center of everything. That's kind of the main in the arena piece of this thing, but boy, did he tackle life full on. And he died very young. And I think because of the death of his first wife and his baby daughter while he's a very young man, he always had that sense of times winged chariot at his back and he did die very young. I think it's 60 and having been out of the

presidency for 10 years by the way And really just packed his life. And that's what I admire about him is that he hit life head on. He was unafraid to make mistakes. I think another quote, I think it's by Roosevelt, is when you're faced with a hard decision, the best thing you can do is make the right choice, the second best thing you can do is make the right choice, the second best thing you can do is make the wrong choice, and the worst thing you can do is just not to make a choice, which unfortunately is what a lot of people do. He was willing to make choices,

again, to be the man in the arena. There's a lot to admire about that philosophy. Well, I wonder how it works for you, because I mean, you're a historian, now you're a novelist, you clearly love big ideas, you work in business, you've done all these things. Did you, is that, are those pursuits or ideas that you wanted to do after your time in the Navy or was the idea that the time in the Navy would influence those things or how do you sort of balance the cerebral and the physical sort of domains or careers that you've had? I think everybody's life when you've had a relatively long life, I'm in my 60s, is like a series of books on a shelf. And you get to kind of decide what the book's going to be. What you don't

know is what's going to be inside each book. I think that I always felt I would want to do three or four books. I knew I wanted a career in the military because I grew up in the military. My father was a career military officer. I loved the ethos of the military. I like wearing a uniform. I like serving the country. I like mentoring young people. I came to love this sea. I came to love being a mirror. My father was in the Marine Cori, he was kind of a land grunt, fought in Vietnam, Korea. I was like, we alluded to him earlier. I went to the Naval Academy thinking, oh, I'm going to be a Marine just like my dad. They put me on a ship after my freshman year, your plea beer at the Naval Academy.

And I walked up on the bridge of that ship, is a gun underway from San Diego Harbor. And I was like Paul on the road to Damascus. I mean, the scales dropped before my eyes and I wanted to be a mariner. So another book for me is not just that military career, but a book of being a sailor. Is it important for me? Thirdly, I always knew I wanted to study

and learn the international world. I lived in Greece as a child, went to a French speaking school. I've always had an international set of connections. And so for me, logically, I knew a part of the book for me would be the international world, and that's what led me to the Ph.D. at the Fletcher School. And then, forth, I'll stop in a minute. Fourth, I always wanted to be a teacher.

I think being a teacher is one of the great things you can be in life. And certainly there are teachers who are in classrooms and there are teachers like my father who taught everyone he was ever around. Maybe not in a formal sense, but he was always looking to instruct, you know, that idea of the teachable moment. So the idea, when I got out of the Navy and was casting about for what do I want to instruct, you know, that idea of the teachable moment. So the idea, when I got out of the Navy and was casting about for what do I want to do, I went to one of my life mentors, Secretary of Defense Bob Gates, and I said, sir, what do you think

I'd do next? And at that point, everyone had a plan for Stavreta, and the plans ranged from, go to the defense industry, to go to Wall Street, to run for office. You know, there were a lot of plans for Stavreta's. Gates was the only mentor who actually asked me a question before launching into his advice. And Gates said, well, what kept you in the Navy for 37 years?

Maybe that would give you a clue about what you want to do next. And I kind of reflected on that. And I realized that I liked going to see, I liked being a mayor, I liked wearing snappy uniforms, I liked serving my country, I liked traveling the world. But the thing I loved was mentoring young people, helping guide their journey. And I said that to certain kind of gates. And he said, education, you ought to become an educator. And we forget that to Secretary Gates and he said,

education, you are becoming an educator. And we forget this about Bob Gates. Everyone can tell you he was Secretary of Defense. Most people can tell you he led the Central Intelligence Agency, he was a career officer there. What did he do in the middle? Between those two jobs, he was a dean of the Bush School of Government and then became president of Texas A&M. He spent 10, 11 years in higher education. He helped me get the job as dean of the Fletcher School. That's kind of that fourth book. And then fifth and finally, I've always enjoyed international business and finance. That's what I studied as part of my graduate education on the international side.

So now I'm doing private equity in the CarLoud Group, very internationally oriented. So each of those books was, I would say I could have told you when I was 20, what those books would look like. I couldn't tell you what the pages inside of each of them would be. Got a quick message from one of our sponsors here and then we'll get right back to the show. Stay tuned. When you mentor a young person and you, let's say you walk through this philosophy of books on the shelf,

do you advise that it's one book at a time or can they be in the middle of working on two books at the same time? I'm just trying to think about my own career. I've done, I've tried both types, but I'm just wondering what you think is the most effective. I think the best thing you can do is have a book that allows you to have a wide variety of different kinds of pages inside it. And that's what the Navy was for me, because one minute I'd be the captain of the destroyer, leading 400 men and women into combat in the Arabian Gulf. A year later, I'd be in the Pentagon doing long-range planning, focusing on budgetary systems for the United States Navy. Two years after that, I'd be the chief of staff to the Secretary of Defense, managing high-level acquisition

and intelligence for Secretary Don Rumsfeld. So having a book, let's call your book right now, that of commentary and communicating ideas. But within that book, you've got podcasts, you've got articles you're writing, you've got books you're writing, you've got speaking you're doing. There are many ways those pages can be oriented

at this stage for you. But I'm intrigued by your question and I think it is possible in some professions to have a completely different book going on off to the side. That hasn't been my experience, but maybe it's been yours. It has a little bit. I mean, what I tell people who talk about wanting to be a writer is that your previous book has to have been really interested, and now the metaphor is getting twisted. But the point is, like, the best advice I got

when I was wanting to be a writer, they said, you know, writers live interesting lives. Basically, that you have to go do stuff to then, you know, drive the point of view in the book. Just like, I'm sure you could have written this book as an academic professor, but it wouldn't have been as good without the actual experiences that you have

that shaped your understanding of these people. Yeah, I completely agree with that. And my co-author on this novel, 2034, and we should probably wrap up with a question or two on that, is a guy named Elliot Ackerman, who's a millennial-ish, I think he's in his very late 30s, might have turned 40, but he's a combat Marine officer, Afghanistan, Iraq, and then got into the CIA, was a CIA officer,

recipient of the Silver Star, the Bronze Star, Purple Heart, then gets out of the military, becomes a White House fellow, gets involved in political theory, working on third party ideas for the United States, and then becomes a writer, you know, kind of a third book, as well. And he's led a very interesting life, as you can tell by what I just told you. And he continues to be effectively a work correspondent while he writes this novel with me. But his other novels are very atmospheric,

very different than 2034. So yeah, I think you can have a couple of different books, if you will, in your life, going on at the same time. No, I found, I thought green on blue was an incredible novel, a haunting dark novel, but a great one. As you said out to write this book, what is it that you thought fiction would allow you to accomplish that nonfiction or your other work wouldn't allow you to do? Yeah, this is a great question, because I could have written a book about geopolitics in the year 2034 as a kind of an

academic treaty and laid out many of the same ideas. But here's the news flash. Many, many, many more people are going to read 2034 than would have read that other book I just described. Why? Because it's a story, Because it's a character driven story. This book is not techno thriller. This is not Tom Clancy. If that's what you're looking for, go back to Tom Clancy. This is about the human character facing the greatest of challenges. The backdrop to what happens to be a war between the United States and China. And it is constructed as a cautionary tale, much like Cold War literature was. I think Dr. Strange loved the Bedford incident, failed safe. Many, many novels, I think helped us avoid stumbling into a hot war during the heights of

the Cold War because we could imagine how terrible it would be. So character-driven, lots of imagination in it, and a wider readership, cautionary tale. I hope it never happens. That's the idea of 2034. That's something I think people miss about philosophy because it seems so distant, but when you read any of the ancient philosophers, the one thing, it doesn't matter what school

you're reading, but they all have in common is how regularly and consistently they draw on theater and literature and poetry, because these were the ways that they communicated these ideas, and there was a familiarity with them. So I think sometimes people who are really smart get sort of trapped in a bubble of their own smartness where they don't open themselves up to fiction or story or literature or television,

and it's a great way to learn. 100% agree with that. And my next book after this is called The Sailors Bookshelf, 50 Books to Know the Sea. And it is half fiction, half nonfiction. And it runs the range of ship handling and navigation and oceanography and rules of the road to the environment, the Jacques Cousteau, the silent world,

but on that fiction side, it's full of books, character, and I want to surface one for our conversation as we wrap things up. And I'll start by saying, if you ask anybody what's your favorite book, saying, if you ask anybody what's your favorite book, and it's a novel, they're going to tell you the name of a novel because a character captured them. And the book in this regard that I always use as an example, and it's a book about a stoic. The old man in the sea. Of course. It's himmingly Santiago is, you can drop a plumb line from the stoics to Santiago and his resilience and his effort in what he knows is a doomed cause at the end of the day. It's a gorgeous book and I read it at least once a year and you can, you know, you can read it in a sitting. In fact, the true first edition of the Old Man and the Sea is not a book.

The true first edition is Life Magazine. It was published in its entirety in Life Magazine. 2034 was the first half of it was the February issue of Wired magazine. So things have moved on. But the point is Santiago and his character have stayed with me my whole life. And I think is a good example of this idea of characters with drives great literature. Well, what does Hemingway say? A man can be destroyed, but not defeated? I think

that's the essence of stoicism and stock deal certainly. That's the that that line comes from the old man in the sea. Satya has that line and it's just a beautiful book and when Santiago finally stumbles back in after his tragic but beautiful adventure on the sea, that next generation comes along and picks him up and helps him. There's another piece of this, which is what we owe to the generation that came before us back to those millennials. One other short piece of C fiction that I'm sure you've read that I'd love to hear your thoughts that it struck me as being relevant these days,

but a man without a country. Oh, sure. Yeah, this is another marvelous book about someone who dams the United States of America. And it's a metaphorical kind of book, but he's literally sent to see for the rest of his life without being allowed to touch a land again in the United States.

By the end of the book, he has quite an epiphany in that regard. And it's a book about our country and about patriotism and about what we hold dear. And back to where we started this conversation almost an hour ago, can people change? And the man without a country changes in the course of the book. That's another thing I like about it.

Yeah, he realizes what he took for granted. And there's a reason that was written at the height of the Civil War. Correct. Admiral, thank you so much. This was a true honor. I love the book. I'm so excited about the new one and I want to talk about this hard choices book.

So as soon as it comes out, you let me know. We'll do. Thanks so much. Great check. Thank you, sir. Appreciate it. Yep. Thank you for listening to the Daily Stoic podcast.

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