The Daily Stoic - Agnes Callard on Socrates and Wisdom

Episode Date: March 27, 2021

On today’s episode Ryan speaks to professor and author Agnes Callard about the philosophical model that Socrates passed down, the ancient problem of fundamentally flawed people, how to re envision success and ambition, pulling rather than pushing your children towards philosophy, and more. Agnes Callard is an associate professor of philosophy at the University of Chicago (ancient philosophy and ethics). She wrote Aspiration: The Agency of Becoming and wrote the lead essay in On Anger, one of the New Yorker’s top books of 2020. This episode is brought to you by LMNT, the maker of electrolyte drink mixes that help you stay active at home, work, the gym, or anywhere else. Electrolytes are a key part of a happy, healthy body. Right now you can receive a free LMNT Sample Pack for only $5 for shipping. To claim this exclusive deal you must go to drinkLMNT.com/dailystoic. Get your FREE Sample Pack now. If you don’t love it, they will refund your $5 no questions asked.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 also brought to you by Talkspace, the online and mobile therapy company. Talkspace lets you send and receive unlimited messages with your dedicated therapist in the Talkspace platform 24/7. To match with a licensed therapist today, go to Talkspace.com or download the app. Make sure to use the code STOIC to get $100 off of your first month and show your support for the show.This episode is also brought to you by Box of Awesome from Bespoke Post.  They have a huge number of collections no matter what you’re into: the great outdoors, style, cooking, mixology, and more. To get started, you just take a quiz at boxofawesome.com your answers help them pick the right Box of Awesome for you. Get 20% off your first monthly box when you sign up at boxofawesome.com and enter the code STOIC at checkout.***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 Agnes Callard:Twitter: https://twitter.com/agnescallard 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 Stoic podcast early and add free on Amazon music. Download the app today. Welcome to the weekend edition of the Daily Stoic. Each weekday we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stoic, something that can help you live up to those four Stoic virtues of courage, justice, wisdom, and temperance. And here, on the weekend, we take a deeper dive into those same topics. We interview stoic philosophers. We reflect. We prepare. We think deeply about the challenging issues of our time. And we work through this philosophy in a way that's more possible here when we're not rushing to work or to get the kids to school. When we have the time to sing, to go for a walk, to sit with our journals, and to prepare

for what the future will bring. Hi, I'm David Brown, the host of Wunderree'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. Welcome to another episode, the Daily Still Podcast. Today's guest is someone I first heard about several years ago on Tyler Cowan's podcast conversations with Tyler, one of my favorite podcasts,

free shout out right there. And I've read many of her articles. She's written some great stuff on parenting, some great stuff on ancient philosophers. But it was actually my dear friend and former research assistant, Fristo, who recommended that I have her on, and I reached out, and I was very excited that she said, yes, because Agnes Caldard is a fascinating modern philosopher. But most of all, she's, I think, one of the most public proponents and popularizers, as if he needed help,

but he does, of the one and only Socrates, the Godfather of the Stoics, if you will. She's an associate professor of philosophy at the University of Chicago. She specializes in ancient philosophy and ethics. She's written everywhere you could possibly imagine, including the New York Times. She wrote a book called On Anger, as it happens, Sennaka also wrote a book with the same title. So you can imagine that this deals quite a bit with Senica in his thinking. She also wrote aspirations, the agency of becoming about that idea of ambition and drive.

Another important topic, Agnes has a PhD from the University of California, Berkeley. And just an all around fascinating person, you can tell she thinks differently, but she has such a deep relationship with these philosophers, particularly Socrates and his dialogues, which we nerd out about in depth in this episode, that she just brings them to life,

but brings them to life in a way that I try to do with my work on the Stokes, which is bring them to life in a way that can help people in their actual lives. So I think towards the end, we talk about how to teach your kids philosophy, which is something I'm thinking about, obviously more than ever, now as a parent, and something I tried to do in my newest book, The Boy Who Would Be King. But it's a great episode with Agnes.

Please check it out. She's a fascinating thinker, and I so enjoy enjoy this conversation and I think you will as well. I thought maybe we would start with a favorite of yours and a favorite of the Stoics, the one and only Socrates. Tell me how Socrates comes into your life. Tell me how Socrates comes into your life. He comes into my life in a lot of ways.

I guess the main one is that he's kind of my role model. So I think that Socrates is instantiates philosophy. He like, he symbolizes philosophy in my mind. When I think of like, what it is to be philosophical, I think of Socrates. That's the simplest answer, I can say more. But. No, no, please, please do say more. How does he come into your life?

Do you remember when you encountered him for the first time? Yes. So I read the Republic in high school, but it actually, I didn't like it that much. And didn't make a huge impression on me. The time that I think I really first encountered socrates was as a first-years undergraduate

at the University of Chicago. I took a kind of general humanities sequence and we read Plato. We read just like some dialogues, I can't remember which actually, at that point. And then I know we read the apology, but I don't know what else we read besides the apology. And it wasn't like that a transformative moment or something when I first read the apology or anything like that. It was like it took a long time for me to see what was happening in the dialogues were actual conversations. So they seem stylized. They seem like the youth of the flow.

OK, it's a dialogue in which there's like a guy who is about to prosecute his own father for the murder of a slave and a servant, the servant himself was the killer of a slave, and then he's not going to socrates, right? And socrates is about to be prosecuted for impiety, or not exactly be prosecuted. He's about to hear the charges against him, right? And they're standing outside the courtroom. They're like about to go in, right? And they're standing outside and they're having this conversation about piety.

And like the first, I don't know how many times I read that I didn't realize like how high the stakes are. Like both of them, right? This is like both for both of them in some sense, the very essence of their lives are on the line in this conversation. Like do I know what piety is? Can I defend myself from people who attack me on this charge? And can I defend myself from the claim that I'm violating it by prosecuting my own father in this extremely heterodox way?

Right? So that kind of the the directness, I guess, the socratic dialogues are extremely direct. They're like, Socrates finds, when he meets someone, he finds like, what is the source spot in this person's ethical makeup in their ethical, theoretical makeup, and he attacks there? And it's like their whole life is on the line

in every conversation. And that that didn't strike me immediately when I read the dialogues. I think it's not exactly that I thought Socrates was being ironic or joking or whatever, but so many of the people around me thought that that it took me a long time to just be like, no, this is just an actual conversation about like whether or not my life is a disaster or not. Yeah, it's surreal because you tend to read them as this sort of provocateur or this guy that asked annoying questions or just even just now what, you know, if you asked a high school or what they think a philosopher was, they wouldn't, they wouldn't describe Socrates

as he really was, which was a soldier and a husband and a father and a, you know, a real person with hobbies and interests and then ultimately, who, you know, sort of gives their life, you know, in accordance with their philosophical beliefs. We don't stereotype the philosopher as a real flesh and blood human being. Yeah, I think that there's quite,

so the thing Socrates was doing was very threatening to people, that's immediately obvious in the dialogues and then of course he gets put to death for it, right? But I think the thing we don't often realize is how threatening it is to readers. So, you know, I think that the ironic, detached provocateur reading is partly an artifact of the readers desire to protect themselves from what's in the text. Right, if you read him as a court gesture, a court gesture, you don't have to change anything about your life. Yeah, like an in Shakespeare, for instance, he'll often give like the wisest and most incisive points to the fool because the fool is sort of protected from being taken seriously.

That's right. That's right. Yeah, there's a line. I think it's from Epictetus and he's quoting Socrates. He says, you know, just as some delight in improving their farm, I delight in improving myself day to day. We also don't really see Socrates as like a person trying to get better. We kind of see him as this sort of superior person off to the side, like poking fun at other people. But I make up that he was asking these questions not because he believed he had attained wisdom, but because he was trying to get to wisdom to be better in his own life. Yeah, I mean, he's really clear. So this is a point on which I think readers are just persistent in resisting

the text because he's really clear that he thinks he's not in any kind of a good shape. The, the, the lake is, I think he ends with a line that's something like, there's one thing that's clear, which is that we should not remain as we are. So I think that, you know, part of it is like supposed Socrates discovered these these huge gaps in people's ability to defend the most basic points about like the groundwork for how they're living their lives. And like at least you could take comfort in the thought that Socrates had it all worked out, right? And thereby identify with Socrates in the conversations and be like, I'm not like one of the messed up people. I'm like one of the Socrates kind of people who has it all worked out. But that's, you know, an obvious misreading

in a certain way. He's very clear that he doesn't have knowledge and he's knowledgeable about his own ignorance. I think the way people get around that is they think, well yeah, but as long as you're knowledgeable about your ignorance, it's fine, right? Right, no, he's not, that is, and obviously it gets projected on later.

He doesn't really talk about knowing of his own ignorance too much. I think it's Diogenes Leartis that says it many centuries after his death. But if we take it to be true, that Socrates is wise because he's aware of his own ignorance. It's also true that he does not accept this. He actively seeks to remedy the ignorance. And that's the, that's also why he's so annoying, is that he's asking all these questions and poking at all these pretenses trying to get at the truth. Yeah, sometimes I think of it like, imagine if you were, I don't know, you're on the way to the grocery store to get an ingredient

for a food that you're going to make, right? And you're walking with someone and they're like, no, no, this isn't actually the way to the grocery store. You know, you gotta go this way. Okay, fine, I'll go that other way. And then they're like, actually, that ingredient isn't like, you shouldn't use that ingredient for the food that you're going to make. You're like, okay, okay, I'll get something else. Oh, I got the grocery store. And then they're like, well, actually, you shouldn't make that thing.

Like, that's not a good dish. And you just imagine it keeps on going all the way to everything about your life. That's what Socrates is like. Like, that is, there is something that you're doing in the living of your life, right? Like something that you're doing right now, even, you know, youth or for like right now, he is operationalizing his own knowledge of piety, right? And being about to defend, being about to prosecute his own father, he's operationalizing it. And in that very moment, Socrates is like, wait, I don't think you know what you're talking about.

Um, and that wasn't knowledge that was sitting idle. It was like being used in the way that you were using your grip. I'm like, what food you wanted to make and what ingredients you needed for it. And where the store was in like moving forward. When some sense, it's kind of an intellectually unfair position too and this is why you'd get so frustrated with your friend, you'd be like, dude, just say what you fucking mean. Stop poke, stop killing me by a thousand cuts, questioning everything. You'd be like, do you have something, it's like, do you have something to say? Would you just like to say it? And then Socrates is like, no,

I just have a million more questions for you. And I'm an eventually lead you to what I'm not saying. So I think it's frustrating because we expect human beings to come out and take a stand or say what they mean. And Socrates' humility is also kind of, it's like fighting, it's like that fighting fair. Yeah, except in another way, it really is genuinely fighting as opposed to what you might think of as debating.

So I mean, say you have a view, right? You said your view about what piety is and say, I come along and I'm like, well, here's my view about piety, right? I take a stand. I say what I mean. What do we do next? Right? I mean, I suppose you can keep defending your view and I can keep defending my view and maybe whoever shouts the loudest or speaks the best or whatever is going to convince a third party, right? And that is that is the standard Athenian way to think about talking,

right? And it shows up in the Gorgias where Gorgias is like, I think most people who are sitting here listening to this conversation, sorry, not Gorgias Polis, I think most people sitting here listening to this conversation are going to agree with me, Socrates. And Socrates is like, yeah, this isn't like a contest in that way, right? We're actually trying to understand something. And like if you actually want to understand something with someone, just saying what you mean, once they have said what they mean, just saying what you mean, once they have said what they mean, isn't actually a useful thing to do, right? It affords the possibility for something like a debate, but the debate is resolved externally

by the judge or the audience or whatever. And suppose two people want to figure something out among themselves, I think two people saying what they mean is one person too many saying what they mean. I think two people saying what they mean is one person too many saying what they mean. Well, it's asymmetric, right? It's like why a guerrilla war frustrates a superpower.

It's like, we've taken our stand, and our stand is that we wanna occupy this territory. And you're not saying that you wanna occupy this territory and own all the responsibilities and obligations therein, you're just saying you you're going to undermine my ability to occupy this territory. And so, Socrates, you know, never fully comes out and says what he means, but he's definitely going to knock the legs out of whatever you think you mean. And so he does a real service there, but you could see why that would drive someone nuts. Yeah, I agree. Those Socrates himself says that he would prefer

to take the opposite role. And he would love to be investigated and refuted. He says that at the end of the Gorgias because he says that when somebody is refuted, then it's the one who is refuted that is benefited because they get to learn, right? And Socrates is like, I would love if people were benefiting me, you know, instead of the other way around, but people don't see what you're willing to do it. And, you know, in fact, there's a little exercise in

McGurgius where he's like, Polis is like, why can't I be the one who asks you the question, Socrates? And Socrates is like, that's fine. Go do it. You know, let's switch roles. And Polis is like, super bad at it. And Socrates has to keep saying, Paulis, now you have to ask me this. Paulis, now you have to ask me this. Because Paulis can't like, can't do it. And I think it requires an extraordinary amount of altruism to really be thinking, to forget about what it is that you think

about something and to just devote all of your attention to what might be problematic about what someone else has said. Most people are not capable of it, but I do think once you become capable of it, it's true, and this is what people are noticing, that that is an advantageous argumentative position. It's easier, once you get what he's doing, it's an easier role than the role of the speaker, And that, somebody agrees with that. So he's really great, fully the other person's willing to do this hard thing of trying to define piety. And I think it's sort of, for me,

one telling manifestation of the fact that the Socratic role is in some way more powerful is that if you try to do both of these things yourself, so if you, if you try to incorporate both interlocutors into yourself, Socrates and the other guy, I think you kind of end up a skeptic because the Socrates guy keeps winning. Right. Right. Yeah, I was talking to a friend of mine a few years ago, we were giving each other some onvarnish feedback. And I said, you know, you're very so cratic. You always ask these tough questions about other people about what they're doing and their things. And I said, you know, you're very so cratic. You always ask these tough questions about other people,

about what they're doing and their things. And I was like, I appreciate it. I would just remind you that everyone hated Socrates and ultimately they killed them for it. You know, it's an intellectually, it's fascinating. But I think you're also saying it's a dangerous position to occupy because you're questioning, in some cases, the most sacred,

either the most sacred things to a society or to a person, or at the very least, you're just befuddling them and frustrating them by forcing them to question things that they thought they'd already figured out. Yeah, those Socrates didn't think it was dangerous. He said that the worst thing people could do is kill him for it, which is not even harming him according to himself. So in fact, what's dangerous is like not taking care of your own soul and not inquiring into the good. Sure. Ignorance is more dangerous than whatever harm befalls you in searching for the truth.

One thing that struck me as I was, so my most recent book is this book, Lives of the Stoics, where I wanted to look at the actual human beings who sort of make up the Stoic tradition. And what was fascinating to me is they were obviously lived much closer to Socrates. So in Xeno is introduced to Socrates' writing, Socrates' is only dead a few years at this time. But there were stories and anecdotes.

They weren't just like, oh, check out this great, the singular from Socrates. I think it was Antipeter when he sort of starts to talk about relationships and family life, which he teaches to the Stokes. To him Socrates was this example of, and I'd be curious about this because it's sort of a cliche and sort of shows some sexism of the time. But he was really fascinated with Socrates' marriage and that it was maybe not a happy one. And it just struck me as like, we tend to think

of Socrates as this intellectual philosophical figure. But thousands of years ago, he was a guy and you could get practical advice from the choices that he made as a human being. Yeah, that's super interesting. I didn't know that about the secretary's marriage. I mean, we, you know, what's come down to us from Plato and Zenophon, the only thing that pops into my head is, you know, the thing at the, in the fetus, where Socrates says, get her out of the way, Look, he gets rid of his wife because she's gonna be too emotional and stuff. But we don't have, we don't know a lot about that marriage.

Right. But I think that it's not an accident that Socrates, first of all, came to be this guy that a lot of people wrote dialogues about, right? I mean, we have the Plato and Zanaphon's, but we know there were at least like, what 14 other people, something like that

who wrote dialogues. And then he became the figurehead for just about every ancient school in one way or another, not the Echevercureans, but the, you know, the Stoics, the skeptics. Like he shows up, you know, like even he's the kind of, he's a kind of, he has a kind of, he has a kind of symbocrys in Vincan,

it's not just for me, but for a lot of people. And so it makes sense to me that people became interested in his life and of course Plato encouraged that interest, right? By sort of giving him this very symbolic death. I mean, you know, many dialogue, many of the dialogues are about Socrates' death and about his response to his death. Got a quick message from one of our sponsors

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for Socrates and that he stays in the marriage and that he's good to his wife. But yeah, that just what I think what I like about it is whatever the sexist stereotype is there, there's a certain element of like, just like that's so real. And like that it's not the sort of high-minded Socrates, triumphant over death are going bravely to his death,

or even Socrates on the battlefield, it's just like Socrates putting up with a minor annoyance with some level of equanimity. I see. Yeah. Yeah, I mean that, I guess in Plato, you see the more heroic sides of it, right? Like him, how he doesn't feel cold, apparently. And he can drink without getting drunk.

And then the stuff on the battlefield, there's a kind of superhuman character to like the way that he's presented, like say, especially in the symposium, which is kind of a dialogue that's about the cult of Socrates. But yes, the idea that he's just kind of a like a tolerant, emotionally well-balanced person is that's not a side of Socrates that Plato emphasizes. Yes, yes. The other one I like is Sennaka sort of lists, like all these hobbies that people have, and he points out that Socrates was sort of famous. He was like the guy in the neighborhood that if the kids were out playing in the street, he would go kick a ball around with them and have fun. And I just, it was like, oh, yeah, that's so, he's also this guy,

like he's a physical human being. And that, that the philosophical ideas would not have resonated and at the time or historically, if they hadn't been backed up to a certain degree by his real world exploits. And again, the battlefield one, I think is, I thinkophon's unshakable admiration for Socrates, I think is one there in how he comports himself in a stressful situation. Yeah, that's interesting. I mean, it makes sense to me, but it also, you know, if you're dealing with stuff, even that's the next generation after Socrates, it also seems like it's very likely that the some of it will be like a kind of the accretions of the culture of personality that Plato sort

of describes at the beginning of the symposium. In some way, if we want a contemporary, like the best contemporary evidence might be the clouds, right? Because it's like earlier, and you know, our Sofini's is like younger, relative to these other people who wrote, right? And so there, it's like, there's something quite comic about Socrates too.

Something a bit. And now, of course, this is weird because the clouds is some kind of composite portrait of Socrates and then a bunch of different intellectuals, as Socrates complains. But still, Socrates was also a little bit a guy that people laughed at or that you could laugh at. At least during his lifetime, I think that's a bit of evidence for that. But that's like who he was at the time. Yeah. Yeah. I think what the, another thing that fascinates me about Socrates is like, I think people think,

you know, sort of Athens democracy, democracy, Socrates, we sort of forget that he was also, you know, sort of navigating what must have been a tumultuous political climate. I mean, the 30 tyrants, like Socrates wasn't this guy living in this sort of golden age, this sort of fantasy world. He was navigating a sort of real world politics. He's forced to go to war. You know, he, it's, it's, he's also living in the real world.

Right. And I guess, you know, it's, it's, he, in the apology, that sort of one of his credentials, right, is not giving in when the 30 want to him to participate in one of these sort of executions without a trial. And And so that's supposed to be, you know, at least Plato, but what Socrates actually said, right? But Plato is there presenting Socrates, Socrates is sort of ethical stance and his philosophical activity as something that can guide him in making difficult real-world

decisions that are potentially life-threatening to him. Yeah, I think you know you have Socrates 30 tyrants, then you have Aristotle, you know, having to figure out his way, you know, working for with, you know, Alexander, you have Seneca in the time of Nero, there is this sort of tradition of, I mean, the cynical view is there's a tradition of the philosophers being corrupt hypocrites. The other argument is sort of having to make

difficult moral navigations in not Plato's republic. Like Marcus really goes sort of, don't go around not Plato's Republic. Like Marcus Realist goes sort of, don't go around expecting Plato's Republic, meaning that there's the real world. And they all had to live in that real world and make real choices. They didn't get to, you know, sit in a university with tenure apart from everything.

They were in the thick of it. you're apart from everything, they were in the thick of it. Yeah, I mean, maybe in some way, like, Socrates was kind of at an extreme of being in the thick of it, I guess, because like a whilst while in a sense being fully a philosopher. And, you know, the, I guess, Socrates' life raises this question of, like, does the philosopher need to be sheltered, right? And you get, both Socrates, you get, you know, slowly the emergence of something like philosophical schools or philosophical communities, right? Where, you know, maybe there's this distinction between kind of intramural

and extramural speech. I mean, they didn't have walls yet in the academy, but still like, there's the kind of not fully public philosophical speech. Or even there's the idea, you know, I guess my feeling with like the Roman authors is like, there's this idea of philosophy as a little bit something you do in like your spare time, right? As your OTM, you know, you're the way that you make use of your leisure, right? And that's a kind of separation too, right? So there's this, I think, never again after Socrates, is there such a sort of complete fusion

between philosophy and just the living of life that these various kinds of separation start to appear. Of course, they're never gonna be perfect or complete and philosophers are going to be persecuted in one way or another for their views for a long time. But still, even as a level of philosophical content, the fact that Socrates does not make a distinction between practical and theoretical philosophy, right?

That's Aristotle. You have to wait for Aristotle to get that distinction and arguably maybe the later dialogues of Plato, where it's Plato, right? But you, you know, for Socrates, like, there's just one thing, there isn't like going off and thinking about things in a way that doesn't relate to real life. And then the thing where it's more like politics, right? That's sort of the way Aristotle thinks about the space of thought. For Socrates, it's all just very integrated. Well, and Socrates doesn't even,

it's almost like it never even occurs to him that philosophy is something you write down. Like to him, philosophy seems to be this sort of series of questions. It's how you live. It's the legacy you leave. There's really not another philosopher as integrated, as you said, as Socrates maybe until someone like Kato, who's sort of widely seen as a philosopher, I'm talking about Kato the younger, who is seen as the sort of penultimate philosopher, but then leaves essentially no written works behind them.

Yeah, I mean, you know, it's, it's hard to imagine what we would think of Socrates. If they're hadn't been a Plato, right? Or, you know, Arsophonies and Santa Falun, still kind of mainly Plato. So yeah, it's, it's almost like you need someone like Socrates can make the kind of marquee did only because of stuff that was sort of out of his control. Yeah, yeah. So I wanted to ask you, you sort of brought up how Socrates is sort of the head of most of the schools that come after him, the sort of the the the mascot, if you will. Except for the Epicurians. Yeah. So the Stoics take Socrates sort of as their model and the Epicurians don't, which is

interesting. This idea of sort of doing versus thinking because then of the schools that the sort of Epicurians are the most sort of insular sort of apart from the world. And then the still acts of all the schools are sort of the most engaged and the most active. Is that the sort of socratic lineage, you think? I think that we have to explain it differently because Socrates is just so popular as a figure sort of, I mean, for the skeptics too, right? I think that it's more like why didn't the Epicureans, why wasn't Socrates more important for the Epicureans?

And the answer has just got to be all the various critiques of pleasure that like keeps showing up in the Socratic dialogues, right, from the protagonists, the Gorgias, the Republic, the Vilebus, over and over and over again, socrates being like, pleasure is not the good. It'd be pretty hard to take that guy, you know, and make him the epicurian mascot, I think. So that that would be my guess, but I don't know actually. Yeah, it is, it is interesting because of all the schools, I guess the cynics are sort of not engaged to a certain degree in the skeptics more so.

There's kind of a spectrum, but I think the Stoics, you sort of mentioned philosophy versus politics, the Stoics seem to kind of think that those things are similar, but there is this real undeniable tradition inside the Stoics that like a philosopher is not someone who talks about philosophy or rights about philosophy, a philosopher to the Stoics is someone engaged in public life in some form or another. And to me, that seems like that's got Socrates' fingerprints all over it.

Yeah, but how do the Stokes reconcile that with the idea of the sage who is in some way with a drawn? It's true, but what's interesting about this about the Stoics is they sometimes say these things and then you kind of look at who their heroes are. And it's like there are no sages that the Stoics hold up as heroes who were not deeply engaged. I mean, the sort of their Socrates, that's one hero, then there's Kato, that's the other hero, very engaged. All the Stoics were, you know, date, Mark's Reo talks about the sort of the pen and ink philosophers and sort of somewhat derisively. All the Stoic Heroes were, you know, sort of active participants.

And when I went, when I did Liza the Stoics, I did about 20 or so of the major Stoics. Like there was not a single one who you'd probably, you'd primarily define as like an academic philosopher. Right, but it's just odd that the sage figures sort of quite importantly in the theory, right? So that's just that's that's that's always puzzled me. No you're right you're right. But yeah I think I mean there are these moments right so like there's a moment in the early in the symposium where Socrates doesn't come into the house he waits outside and he's just standing there like thinking and then and and it actually gets there's a

reprisal of that in the story that El Sabahidee tells about Socrates that he, he's like, yeah, we are on the battlefield and he was just like standing outside thinking for a while. So you have this sort of almost, you can, you can tell that there's some kind of a desire to create an image of Socrates as being something like, complete unto himself in the way that someone who just stands there thinking, it's kind of the image of thought, like you don't actually get to see the thought, but they look like they're thinking deep thoughts from the outside. And that's sort of how we imagine this age, but then we're actually looking at actual people, we're like, what,

I want to see the wisdom manifest somehow. Well, this just occurs to me. So, okay, so Socrates is sort of most famous student is Alcy Biteys. You know, Aristotle's most famous student is Alexander the Great. Senaqus, most famous, to say, Areas and Athena Doris, they're most famous student is Octavian. And then Senaqus, most famous student is Octavian,

and then Santa Caz most famous student is Nero. Arguably, and I would say inarguably, all these students turned out to be not at all what the philosophy was sort of intended to teach them. Is it that they were bad teachers? Is it that the philosophy falls short? Well, how does this work? Yeah, that's a good point.

I feel like Nero was the worst case scenario there. Well, I mean, the worst case scenario, of course, would be Marcus Aurelis and Commodus, but I, you know, who, I guess, if we add one more bad example to the list of. Okay. Right. No, it's a good point. I mean, you know, maybe we find, I mean, like, look, in some sense, right, Plato is a

student of Socrates too. So, maybe there's a sense in which, right, we are gravitating towards the example of the people who became infamous. But Socrates Plato does have an explanation of this in Republic 6. He says that it's the same basic nature that is pulled towards philosophy and tyranny. And that if nurtured well, it will go in the direction of philosophy, but if nurtured badly and in particular, if the outer temptations are such, then it's going to go in the direction of tyranny. if the outer temptations are such that it's going to go in the direction of tyranny. And if you sort of put that together with what he says in the Theatitis,

that a lot of his students tend to, what Socrates says, a lot of his students will go away from him before it's time, and will not like nurture the like wisdom babies, that this is the midwife that passage. You know, there's a failure to properly raise the wisdom babies that were born under the association with Socrates and that this is like, you know,

people get into trouble for this reason that the idea would be, in prop, was to just be Plato's theory, in proper association with a philosopher has a tendency to lead to the kind of full-blown development and deterioration of somebody who had tyrannical impulses. Yeah, it's like in the philosopher is getting the most brilliant students because that's their parents are sending them to hire the best philosopher. That doesn't make any, there's no selection mechanism that's saying, you're brilliant, but a bad person or you're brilliant, but immoral or immoral.

So just as you'd be like, you can look at all the, all the people who went to Harvard who've done good for the world, and then all the people who went to Harvard who did bad for the world and really what they have in common is that Harvard gets the most brilliant people and there's no selection method to weed out one from the other. Right, but you might have hoped that maybe unlike Harvard philosophers wouldn't just try to select for the moral people but they would make you moral, right? Right. Yes. And it's like they would like get you to care about morality. Like that's what the Republic is about, right? It's about persuading people to be just.

It's about praising justice on its own terms as being good in and of itself. And so, you know, it is a little alarming to think. The philosophers, you know, what, incapable of doing that, incapable of creating enough of making the case for morality. And I think that the thing is that that's not quite right. Like the philosopher can make the case for morality, but the philosopher only does that in the context of also really entertaining, very serious doubts about morality too, in ways that the conventional culture doesn't.

And so the question is just whether you kind of put Humpty Dumpty back together again before that you send the person out in the world, right? So imagine Descartes' meditations. Imagine you stop after meditation number one where Descartes decided he's going to doubt the existence of the external world, his own body, all of the knowledge of his senses, even his mathematical knowledge. He's like, what if everything is a lie and what if an evil demon has deceived me and is controlling my mind? That's the end of meditation one. And like, okay, you go on, the meditations, and it turns out that's not the case. It turns out, actually, Descartes, you know, is an immaterial thinking substance created

by a perfect deity, and his senses are pretty accurate. But if you didn't make it to mediation six, you wouldn't know that. You'd just be stuck at one, and you could easily, in a sense, it could feed into a kind of nihilism and an easy justification for anything you wanted, if you sort of like never put Humpty Dumpty back together again. Well, I've talked about this. You could argue that's what happens to Ted Kaczynski or something, right?

And you have this brilliant person and philosophy sort of breaks their brain. But, you know, there's this way where a philosophy like stoicism could just make you a better sociopath. And maybe that's what's missing. You know, Socrates says, no man does wrong on purpose. It does seem that the ancient world struggled to wrap their heads around the fact that there were like just fundamentally broken people or people operating on a different logical or ethical conception. To me, that explains a commonis that explains a neuro that explains an Alexander to a certain

degree. Like they look and act like a regular person and they're brilliant. So they understand the philosophy and they're parroting it right back. Elsie Abides is brilliant and smart and wise, but also, you know, it feels like a malignant narcissist in other ways and maybe no amount of interacting with Socrates can undo that in a person. Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, I guess it becomes difficult, you know, the thing that this puts my mind is like, Peter Strauss' distinction between like, the kind of second person versus third person or how he puts it perspective on like moral accountability, right? Like if you if you make Them alien enough if you think of them as really broken then they're no longer morally responsible Like if their brains just don't work or something like that, right? And so the you know, I think the puzzle that Moving socrates when he says nobody does wrong willingly, is presupposing that this is somebody within our moral space, who we can get like a basic grip of like understanding why they do what they do, can we then allow that they are, you know, understanding what is bad and still doing it?

And I think it's not as like, no, we can't. And, you know, if the question is like, well, maybe this isn't really like a human being. Maybe it's like wearing a human disguise, but it's not actually a human being. I think Socrates might have said, okay, all bets are off then. Right. And so, so I don't know that it's just the ancients. Like I think we continue to struggle with this thought that if you vilify someone enough,

you actually lose a grip on the categories required to hold them accountable. Got a quick message from one of our sponsors and then we'll get right back to the show. Stay tuned. Yeah, I mean, look, that's the thing. I'm sure future generations will have to wrap their heads around with Trump. To what degree is he aware that he's lying and to what degree is he incapable, fundamentally

constitutionally of telling the truth. And, you know, those characters have existed in the plays of, you know, from the plays of Shakespeare all the way back to Rome, you know, how much do you hold a person responsible? And obviously what we, the, it seems like the ancient philosophers seem to be under this sense that everyone's sort of a perfectly rational person if you just get to the rationality you were good, but obviously science and, and psychology is, you know, we now understand it's a,

it's gray. Like, it seems to me that, you know, there's a trade-off between saying they did wrong on purpose, rather between saying that they understood that it was wrong and that they did it on purpose. And at least it gets harder and harder to call it on purpose if they fully knew that it was wrong, right? And we're like, we want to do both things. We tend to create layers. We're like on some level he knew, right?

Where the some level has got to not be the same level as the level on which it's on purpose to separate these things that seem to contradict one another. So I think we are just still in that socratic predicament of, you know, that in some way the very basic idea of agency is an attempt to do something good. Why would you do anything if you didn't think

it was a good thing to do? And, you know, there are things that could happen to you that wouldn't be good, but if you were going to be in charge of it, you'd make it good unless you didn't know how to make it good. And then you might unintentionally make it bad, right? But that basic thought is like, I think, continues to be pretty hard to evade, in my view. Well, I, um, I'm fascinated. There's this statue of, of Nero and Sennaka. I think it's by Eduardo Perrone. It's, it's not super old. It's this statue of of Nero and Sennaka, I think it's by Eduardo Barone. It's not super old. It's like maybe 200 years old or something like that. And in the statue,

it's sort of Nero on the throne and Sennaka trying to teach him. And it's this fascinating statue because of I think the body language that it captures. And to me, it's perfectly nails. What must have been their relationship. And to me, it captures the logic of that expression, or the truth of that expression, you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink. You know, Nero has access to the greatest mind of his time, but something in him or a part of him prevents himself, you know, Nero gets all the same instruction and has all the same advantages as Marcus Aurelius, but they turn out on opposite ends of the spectrum. Why does that happen? I just find to be endlessly fascinating. I mean, Neuro could have been the philosopher king.

Instead, he was the deranged, murderous tyrant. Right. Right. I don't know. That's what I think is so interesting about philosophy again is these aren't just happening in this small part of the world that these sort of philosophical things are played out in the court of the emperor,

and that just how few generations pass from Socrates and Plato and the idea of a philosopher king to actually getting a philosopher king. Yeah, I mean, maybe I'm trying to get like, I'm trying to think about like, what's the best way to think about being on the inside of that tension or something? And you know, maybe, in terms of like, maybe one thing to think about is like, the Ascibiades is self-description of being pulled in two directions, like in his speech at the end of the symposium, right? So because the alcibiades ends up going

in the, you know, attempted, tyrant direction, he's just not that successful, but he even goes and sells himself to a bunch of different groups, right? And trying to be essentially an tyrant. And he's like, yeah, I'm really persuaded by Socrates whenever he's around. But then like the minute he leaves, I'm like, I go back to my old ways.

And I can even when he's not around, I know that like, I know what he would be saying to me if he were around. I know how he would be criticizing me and stuff. But, and I know that I'll be ashamed the next time I run into him. But I, you know, I, and I know that I'll be ashamed the next time I run into him, but I, you know, I, I'm still lured by these worldly temptations. And then, and then I go back to Socrates, and then I'm like, okay, I'm going to reform my ways. So anyway, the way the way Asabiaides describes it as us being a kind of living in two worlds, and the pool of the one world eventually sort of winning out.

Well, maybe this goes to the, I think this one of the central arguments in your other book, which is, you know, the idea of ambition. And so it's like, on the one hand, he has this love of wisdom, this love of truth, and he has this side of him that can be made to be good and all these things. And then on the other hand, he has this ambition. And, you know, he's being pulled in two different directions. And eventually the ambition wins. And I think that's true in a lot of these sort of very powerful characters, the ambition wins. And very rarely does the goodness be ambition historically?

Yeah, and I guess like what ambition is here, right, is taking your conception of the good or of success kind of pre-packaged from your society, right? So it's like, you can without a lot of work be like, okay, if I could make really a lot of money, that would be success, right? And, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, And a lot of the work there is in getting that interview as even being a target that you should have, whereas in the case of ambition, it isn't a lot of work to get interview what the target should be, right? That is like, that's handed to you from when you're a young child that you can pursue honor and power and wealth, right?

And you don't need to do work in order to come to value those things. Right, yeah, in Meditations, Marcus says, ambition means tying your well-being to what other people say and do. I take this to mean external things, right? Power, fame, applause, et cetera. And he says, sanity means tying it to your own actions. So there's a part of alceobitis or there's a part of, you know, let's say Alexander,

their ambition says success is conquering, success is power, success is relevance, you know, success is being in, you know, at the center of things, whatever it is, then there's the other part of them that loves wisdom that maybe deep down suspects that that's not enough, that it's too just to pursue that is insufficient. And so ultimately they chase, or it's hard to nail down, and how do you know whether you're making progress? And so they chase, they chase wealth or achievement or whatever. Cicero to me being a great example of this too.

Nobody knows ancient philosophy better than Cicero. And ultimately nobody's life is sort of more pathetic and less philosophical in the big pivotal moments. Yeah. Yeah, I think that I really like that that quote about tying your well-being to what other people say. What do people say and do? It's like there's a and maybe that's also important And maybe that's also important in like to thinking about like why didn't these philosophers succeed more? Is that I do think that's the question that Plato is putting before himself in terms of defending Socrates, right? Like the symposium is a kind of defense of Socrates and because Assobides is like Exhibit

A as to why he should kill Socrates, right? And I think the thought is like, well, it was up to Asa Biodes, right? That's the, you know, like it's like don't get mad at Socrates. Like you, you know, if the thought here is that The problem is people tying their well-being to what other people say and do, as opposed to what? Well, as opposed to actually figuring it out for themselves, right? Actually figuring it out for yourself is not something that any philosopher can do for you, if that's the goal, right? So it can't be the philosopher's fault that you didn't do it, because you had to do it. That's the whole point. Like, it could be someone's fault for not feeding you the ideology, which had you believed it

you would have acted appropriately. But if the whole point is for you not to have an ideology, then it's hard to, like, the philosopher can help you to the extent that you're willing to be helped. And then there isn't anything more that they can do because someone else can't do your thinking for you. Right. No, that's what I mean about sort of you can lead a horse to water, but you can't get drink. I think that's fascinating too with Marcus Relius, so he's chosen to be king. You know, it's not part of his ambition, but at some time in his 20s, you know, it's not it's not part of his ambition, but at some some time in his 20s,

Rousticus hands him a copy of the lectures of Epictetus. We don't know if it's the notes that Rousticus takes himself or if it's just, you know, an early edition of of Aryans, transcriptions, but but what I what I've honed in on there is like, so he gives him the book recommendation. And that's what the philosophy teacher's job is to do. But nobody makes Marcus read it. And more importantly, nobody forces Marcus really as to actually live by these ideas. And so the philosophy teacher can only kind of open the door, but the student has to walk through it.

And the student has to live there if they choose. Yeah, and arguably, you know, Socrates is sort of way, way more hands-on than that, right? Like nowadays, I think we do think of philosophical engagement as happening in large part through books, where there's something very hands-off and kind of in a way kind of liberating, right, about engaging with a philosopher through a book. Like you can stop anytime you want,

you can take what you want from it. The interaction is completely governed by the student. By contrast with conversations with Socrates when people are often kind of like, I don't really want to be doing this anymore. And Socrates is like, come on, let's keep talking. So, like, I mean, there's only so much that even Socrates can do. But like, if you're a philosopher writing a book, there's even less. But it's really up to the reader of the book, not only to read it, to think about it, to internalize some parts of it, to resist some parts of it, and then to realize it in some way in their life, right?

Like you're figuring only at the very beginning stage of that. Well, that was the last thing I wanted to kick around with you. I read your piece on acceptance parenting, which I thought was fascinating, and I've got two young kids, so I related to it. How does, the question of your piece is sort of like, how do you raise kids to be successful in an uncertain world, which I think deliberately an unanswerable question that's sort of your premise of the piece,

but maybe my question to you would be, and maybe you don't have an answer, maybe you do, how does one raise philosophical kids? Like how does one apply, you know, as you said, the sort of more hands-on version of Socrates' philosophical approach? How do you cultivate that in kids? So it's weird because I don't see myself at all as having set out to do that. How old are your kids or your your kids? My kids are 17, 12 and seven. But my seven-year-old recently it turned out in school they asked what they wanted to be when they were, they grew up and he

said not only did he say a philosopher, but he he said he didn't put in these words because he basically said he wants to be a philosopher who works on Spinoza. Because we had talked to him about he has his view that like God is everything and God is in everything. And we've talked about how this is actually he's kind of reinventing Spinoza and stuff. So he's like, okay, I guess that's my thing. You know, I'm going to work on this. So I definitely think my kids have absorbed a lot of philosophical culture. And I think maybe it's that some people have multiple hats.

Like they speak in multiple different registers or they have like a, like several personas, right? So you might, for instance, you might meet them and talk to them in their office, and then you might hear them give a lecture, and then you might go to their house, and they would seem sort of like three different people. sort of like three different people. And I'm less like that than anyone I know. Like I don't have multiple registers. So it's less like a matter of... So philosophy isn't a performance for you, it's who you are.

Right, I mean, I don't wanna say that it's a performance for those people either. Like they might just have three authentic selves or something. Do you see what I mean? Yeah. It's just that I don't have any other self to fall back on. And so I didn't have any other way to do parenting than to like ask my kids questions and talk to them about things. And so it was not at all a strategy, but I do think it has ended up making them be quite philosophical

and they have told me like when they go to other kids houses, they're like, they don't argue at all in the dinner table. And it's like, it don't argue at all in the dinner table. And, you know, it's like, it's unimaginable for us to have a dinner table conversation that doesn't involve some argument about like last night it was, what is my seven year old came up with, what would be the best kind of glove you could have? If you could have your dream glove, it's like, what a weird question, right?

But it was like, okay, so now we're gonna try and think about what is the ideal kind of glove? And then there were all kinds of questions about whether, for instance, if there were claws and things coming out of the glove, did that count? Was that like a glove or not even a glove anymore? Right? So the borderline between a glove and non-glove is has to get

adjudicated in this conversation about what's the dream glove. Right? That's like a normal dinner conversation for us. And I kind of like can't imagine what we would talk about if we didn't do that. But I know mostly from my kids that that's like not the way what other people do. So I don't have a good, it wasn't like, I wasn't selecting between options. Let's put it that way. Got a quick message from one of our sponsors and then we'll get right back to the show. Stay tuned.

Did you actively encourage this idea of having sort of debates and discussions over dinner or again, was that just something that sort of happened because they saw you doing that? Yeah, I think that my guess, if I had to guess this to how it would arise, it would be something like this, you know, say with my oldest, right, like we'd be sitting at the table and I would be trying to have a conversation with my husband, that now ex-husband, but the time husband. While my son was like, you know, eating his food and blabbering and whatever, and eventually, like, my son would figure out

that he has to try to participate in the conversation that we're having. If he's gonna, like, get our attention, right? And then with each child, they're in a sense, they have to join the club or something, you know, and they have to find a way to join it. And I do think we make an effort, something we, so I don't think a lot of this is intentional, but the part that is intentional is we make a very big effort to always include everyone in the conversation.

We have rules about like things you're not allowed to talk about. It dinner is like things where other people haven't seen the movie or read the book. So the conversation has to be open and accessible. And then there's just a strong incentive, I think, for the kid, the youngest kid to get up to speed to the point where they can participate in it. So my guess is that that's how it goes. It's not that we tried to bring it about. We did try to be a bit open, but it's that they want to be, they want to participate

and like this is the price of admission. Well, one of the questions I get from a lot of people they'll go like, how can I introduce my kids to stoicism or how can I introduce my kids to philosophy? What advice do you have? And this, you know, it's funny, like sometimes they'll be like, you know, my kid is seven. How do I introduce them to philosophy, what advice do you have? And this, you know, some it's funny, like sometimes they'll be like, you know, my kid is seven. How do I introduce them to philosophy?

And then other times they'll be like, my kids at 20, you know, 21 year old junior in college, how do I introduce them to philosophy? It's funny to me that the question is still the same. But it also strikes me how modern that question is because like, I don't think that's what the Greeks or the Romans were thinking question is because like, I don't think that's what the Greeks or the Romans were thinking. Like, George Washington was considered like stupid among the founders because he'd only read philosophy in English as a child.

He didn't also know it in Greek Latin or French, the way that say Jefferson did. So there's this there's almost this kind of patronizing approach that we have today where it's like of course, you know, a kid couldn't understand these ideas, but for thousands of years kids have understood these ideas. Yeah, I think that it's going to be very hard to introduce your kids to philosophy if you're not interested in it. Sure. So, and I think if you are, like, you're just going to end up talking to them about it. Like, so, I mean, that is, I think that, like, you have to, in terms of introducing them,

like, you know, at least for me, the most natural way that it comes up is just that there's like some question that we want to know the answer to. And what was one, when we really debated it for a long time, this is my seven-year-old came up with this, if they were conjoined twins, and one of them committed a crime. And you should, you put them both in jail. So, and you know, questions about, like lots of interesting questions arose about,

like could the sex, could the innocent twin really have been fully innocent? Like, could he have not known it all if they're conjoined, right? And maybe they could have resisted or something. But like, it's more important to not jail the innocent, not to jail the guilty, but what if the crime is really bad, right? So this question has like tons of interesting stuff

about more responsibility, you know, baked into it. And I think like if you're interested in the question, then the kids are, I think in certain ways, kids are more naturally philosophical than adults. Like I feel like the question should be from kids, how do I interest my grownups in philosophy? Yeah, or maybe it's, how do I not discourage my kids interest in philosophy? And maybe first and foremost, is not making them think philosophy is this thing, this external sort of ghettoized thing, but we go back more towards this Socrates model,

which is that philosophy is asking questions about what you know and don't know and trying to get to truth in some form or another. It's philosophy is not philosophizing. Philosophy is the search and the love of wisdom. Yes, but I also think it's nice to have these sort of figures that are kind of like philosophy heroes. Of course. Where like even, you know, even if, I mean, my two older kids have actually read philosophical texts, my younger one hasn't, but like recently he was really, really,

really angry about something I can't remember what it was. And he was trying to think of the worst thing that he could say. And he said something like, I don't like Aristotle. Aristotle was stupid. He was like, that's your stab during the heart. Yeah, exactly. And so like that indicates, right, that in his mind, Aristotle, you know, he's never read any aerosol, but has a kind of status, right? And so I think that like the idea that people have been thinking about these things for thousands of years, and there were these kind of like heroes of thought, that we have sort of access to, we have sort of access to, I think that kids really, they connect with figures, I think, with individuals, people, right?

So that like for my son, you know, like Spinoza, like that's like, that my way of life is a person. My thinking is, you know, can be sort of condensed into a person that I think that, yeah, so I would say like, you only need the cartoon version of each of these people, or like some interesting points or something that's made by them. I think that having some connection to that world in some way makes it real for kids.

Well, it's funny you said cartoon version, right? If you lived in a Roman villa, your family would have, you know, busts of Socrates or Cato or Seneca or, you know, you would have the, you would have the likeness of these heroes embodied in your library or in your hallway. And this was a tradition that existed until relatively recently. I have this little bust of Marcus Reales on my desk that it was made in 1840. And that was it before images could be so easily reproduced. I guess paintings,

too, but yeah, what paintings were the Renaissance painters doing? It's the death of Socrates and the death of Senica. It's also the imagery and creating this sort of lexicon or this familiarity with these figures to again make them flesh and blood people that you're trying to either live up to or to be the opposite of. And maybe that's another way to teach kids philosophy, you know, instead of reading them, you know, instead of having a poster of curious George up on the wall, you know, who who's who are the philosophical heroes you're helping them them understand. Right. And like they, you know, they have other, they have my kids of lots of heroes. So I could hear your stories too.

But I think that like, it's an idea that it's possible to devote your life to thinking, I guess. Like, I think that it's nice to have that as a, as a possibility, as a possible life that's put before you. I mean, I didn't have it as a kid, but and it's not as though I intentionally put it forward to my kids, but that's just I guess I couldn't be able to be me and not be always talking about these people that for me figure largely. So. No, I think it's interesting.

Yeah, you mentioned the play that's that satirizes Socrates. You know, there's not a lot of philosophers that get parodied in, in, in hit films or plays these days. So there's, you almost have to compensate by, by making philosophy relevant at home. So because certainly pop cultures not doing it the way that it would have done when these figures were essentially rock stars. Like nobody's bothering to put Socrates to death in 2021 because he's just not much of a threat. Yeah, I mean, there's Bill and Ted Dexlin adventure. They talk about documentaries.

That's true. I used an image from that for a poster, for an event I did in public philosophy, and my son saw it and was like, what is this, something from the 70s? So that's why, that's when I realized like many, many people in my audience are not going to know what this is a reference to sadly. Well, no, when I tell people about Marcus really, I say go, you know, the, the, the, the

guy, the old guy at the beginning of Gladiator, that Joaquin Phoenix's character kills. And it was, it was so funny. I was talking to a, because my books have sort of become popular in sports. I was talking to a, let's call it a first round high level draft picked in the NFL who would who come to stoicism through my books. And and it was this is the first time I felt really old from from this is he he said, you know, he'd read about Mark Serea and he goes, I'm thinking about watching the movie Gladiator. Is it any good? Do I should I watch it? And it struck me that he was born the year that the movie Gladiator came out

and is now 20 years old and 21 years old. And so even that movie is like probably the most philosophical movie, as far as ancient Rome goes, of the last few decades, isn't even relevant to him. Right, right. Yeah, I mean, you're right that that is not, there's not a lot being produced along those lines. It's, but we'll have to resolve that. And hopefully, you know, podcasts are new.

And I mean, where else, the one thing that's me excited is podcasts are to me some some inching our way slightly back towards the sort of socratic debates and the the sort of accessible, but also popular discourses about philosophy that I think I think you could take an ancient Roman and plug them into a podcast and they get what's happening here quite, quite clearly. Yeah. Yeah, I think that's true, though I think that like there's a kind of, you could, if you do a spectrum and you had, I think you would have podcasts at one end, and at the other end, you would have

something like philosophical dialogues in the written in the dialogue form, but not written by Plato. Like, I don't know, Augustine or Hume, or all these other people who wrote dialogues, right? Not just a playwright, it's not the only guy who are dialogues, barkly, right? So, the kind of philosophical dialogues, like they're sort of, they're not as fun to read as playtaker, like because it sort of feels like the interlocutor is just a device. On the other hand, they get a lot of argumentative work done. And then the podcast is, I think, very engaging

and there's a bunch of ideas put out there and it's fun to listen to. I admit, I basically don't listen to podcasts. I read them when there's a transcript, but I find it very hard to listen. And the Socratic Dialogs are just this amazing a transcript, but I find it very hard to listen. And like the Socratic dialogues are just this amazing middle ground in terms of being both engaging, but also really pursuing a

line of thought in a quite extended way, you know, for like sometimes like, I mean, they're public or the gorgeous. That's a lot of pages. And it's quite focused, I think. So that's a thing I don't think we figured I had to do yet with podcasts. But I think the difference there between those sort of three, there's three examples on the spectrum, the thing that makes, that this conversation engaging,

but probably not essential. And the other dialogues as being, you know, containing wisdom, but not being interesting and what put Socrates right there in the center is the urgency and the stakes of what happens. You know, he's talking about, in some cases, matters of life and death, he's talking about really real questions.

What is courage, what is endurance, what is P.A.D. You know, he's talking about the central questions of our time in the real world at real moments, sometimes of real physical peril. And thankfully you might argue that none of that is at stake in this conversation, but it's what the exocrity is sort of the one and only. Yeah, that's a really good point. I think there's a kind of most people who are on podcasts, both the podcaster and the guest, are there. There's a kind of leisure.

It's that a kind of lack of urgency. That's that's your right about that. We're not arguing for our life or for, you know, we're not really arguing for anything. We're just having a conversation and, which is great, but there's some element of urgency falls away. Yeah.

Well, thank you so much. This was amazing. I'm a huge fan of your work. And we'll talk when your next book comes out. Thank you. Thanks very much for having me. Of course. Thanks so much for listening. If you. Thanks very much for having me. Of course. Thanks so much for listening.

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that would mean so much to us, and it would really help the show. We appreciate it and I'll see you next episode. Hey, Prime Members, you can listen to the Daily Stoic early and ad-free on Amazon Music, download the Amazon Music app today, or you can listen early and ad-free with Wondery Plus in Apple podcasts.