The Daily Stoic - Ask Daily Stoic: Ryan and Author Tom Mueller Talk Whistleblowers, Courage, and Doing the Right Thing

Episode Date: June 10, 2020

In today’s episode, Ryan and bestselling author Tom Mueller talk about the history of whistleblowers, the crisis of courage in the world right now, how Stoicism helps us cultivate our conscience so we can do the right thing and why societies punish people who do.Get Tom’s latest book, Crisis of Conscience: https://geni.us/AjG8This episode is brought to you by Leesa, the online mattress company. Each of their mattresses is made to order and shipped for free right to your door. All mattresses come with a 100-night trial and a 10-year warranty, so you can feel confident in your investment in a good night’s sleep. And Leesa's hybrid mattress has been rated the best overall mattress by sites like Business Insider, Wirecutter, and Mattress Advisor. Daily Stoic listeners get 15% off their entire order with the code STOIC. Just visit Leesa.com and get your mattress today.This episode is also brought to you by Shippo. Shippo is a top-to-bottom shipping solution that works great with small and large businesses. Shippo will help you get the lowest rates on postage for your customers from dozens of global carriers like UPS, USPS, FedEx, and DHL. Visit goshippo.com/stoic to get a shipping consultation and a six-month trial of Shippo’s pro plan (up to $700 value) absolutely free.***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: DailyStoic.com/signupFollow @DailyStoic:Twitter: https://twitter.com/ryanholidayInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/ryanholiday/Facebook: http://facebook.com/ryanholidayYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/dailystoicFollow Tom Mueller: Twitter: https://twitter.com/tommuellerxWatch Tom’s TEDx talk on whistleblowing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=77rjqnNsP8QSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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You can listen early and add free on the Amazon or Wondery. Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another episode of the podcast. When I was on Book Two or First Stillness, I read a bunch of books I carried them all over the world with me. I was in Budapest actually when I started reading today's guest's book, his name is Tom Mueller, and his book is called Crisis of Conscience, and it's a cultural history of whistleblowers and fraud.

I know the restaurant that I was at in Budapest when I read it, and as I was going through my notes to prepare for an interview, I could see it was all stained with soy sauce. I'd spilled some while I was eating at this sushi restaurant in Budapest. Anyways, when I read the book, I was actually sort of depressed by it. It was sad.

Even though whistle blowing, as we talk about in the interview, has sort of enshrined actually in some of the earliest laws past year in the United States, Congress passed a law to protect whistleblowers during the Revolutionary War. And even though we sort of admire whistleblowers in theory, in practice, there's sort of a dark history of persecuting whistleblowers, of attacking the messenger,

of not being quick enough to respond to very real claims of wrongdoing. I mean, there were misdeeads of a Harvey Weinstein were quite well known more recently. There have obviously been claims against the Trump administration. But as Tom talks about, no one used or enforced the Espionage Act against whistleblowers more than the Obama

administration. And this goes back to John Boyd, who I've talked about. It was a reformer in the Pentagon who found himself sort of on the wrong side of his military compatriots who wanted to protect pet projects or didn't want to, you know, sort of upset the apple cart. So we like to think that when someone comes forward with wrongdoing or fraud or waste that we, you know, sort of immediately embrace them and do the right thing, but the reality is that's not how it goes.

I talk a little bit about this in the interview. I worked in American Apparel for a number of years, which is a sort of a complicated company where there were things going on that should not have been going on. And I look back at decisions that I made, things that I did stand up about and did talk publicly about, you know,

investigations I cooperated with, decisions that the board make that I was a part of, that I was proud of. And then I also looked back at why it took me so long to get there, at things that I either rationalized or didn't open my eyes fully to. So we know, Marcus really says, just that you do the right thing, the rest doesn't matter. But the truth is we find other things that matter, and we find excuses and rationalizations, and we're afraid.

We don't have the courage that we need to step forward. We don't always just do the right thing. And so I think this interview is really timely and really important. I think Tom's book, Crisis of Conscience, which I actually published by Peng Rannaus, my publisher is very important. It's worth reading, it's inspiring published by Pangranhas. My publisher is very important. It's worth reading. It's inspiring, although a little alarming.

And I do talk with Tom about that, sort of, what inspiration can we take from these stories where people suffered and were punished, in some cases, for doing the right thing? And the other note that I thought was interesting in the book, he talks about this early on, he talks about the sort of Greek word, parhesia or paresia. And basically, you can look it up if there's a Wikipedia page for it, P-A-R-R-H-E-S-I-A. And it translates roughly to sort of speaking

truth to power. And this is what Socrates famously did. He started the ultimate example. He spoke truth to power. He didn't censor himself, he did what he thought was right. And ultimately, the citizens of Athens do not rise up and throw him a parade and give him a hug. He sentenced to death for it. But even then, he's given the chance to recant. He could have probably gotten out of it.

But to compromise in that way was anathema. It was a betrayal of his principles. Kato was the same way. Thrasia, one of the stilloks who lives in Neuros' time is a great example of that. Musonius Rufus is another, Agrippinus is another. I talk about all these guys in the new book, Lies of the Stilloks, which will be out in the fall. And then we can contrast this to Tesseneca, right, who takes the insider's path, who is

late to awakening to Nero's flaws, or at least late in doing anything about them as far as stopping them. So look, life is complicated. People who have admirable principles, people who put together beautiful writings, people who are Christian, people who are highly ethical fail to often in these sort of trials. We fall short, we don't do it's right.

Then on the other hand, there are the heroes that we look up to who do do the right thing, who despite being hopelessly outmatched, stand up, speak out. I think Susan Fowler is a really interesting woman. She's a fan of the Stokes and she says the Stokes were part of what inspired her to write her famous essay that ultimately sort of you know led to a leadership regime change it Uber So there are Stokes who stood up to the challenge. There's the Kato and for every Kato. There's a Seneca and so it's it's complicated and and I think we have to study it and and Research and and that's why I wanted to have Tom on to talk about this. And I do hope this is something that people are thinking about.

You know, Epic Tita says it's not about talking about your philosophy. It's embodying it. Marcus says again, it's that you do the right thing. He says, you know, waste no more time talking about what is a good man. He says, be one. So ultimately, that's what we talked about the interview. Check out Tom's book, it's fascinating guy. Hope you like this.

And you know, if you're seeing something out there that you don't think is right, say something. I think that's what a stoic would do. So here is my conversation with Tom. So Tom, obviously the title of your book is Crisis of Conscience. I'm curious, obviously that's an expression and I think sort of encapsulates the sort of whistleblower experience. But I wonder if it's as much a crisis of conscience

or right now for experiencing sort of a crisis of courage, right? A lot of people know that things they're seeing are not right in all sorts of industries or spaces, but it seems like what you talk about a lot in the book is, is how do you actually work up the courage to do something about it? No, I think you're absolutely right, Ryan. It is a crisis of courage. A lot of us seem to be going with the flow rather than putting our foot down and following our individual conscience. We have a group conscience, which is pretty malleable.

But most of us, if we're left-door on devices, know when something doesn't smell right, doesn't pass the smell test. I think, yeah, we need to have more courage to be able to stand up and say, no, I'm not good with this. And not only am I not good with this, I'm gonna make it stop. And why is it, it's like we admire whistleblower sort of

in theory, but then as a society, like you talk about how basically whistleblowing is almost enshrined in the founding of the United States at sort of the cool, it was sort of a core thing the founding fathers were thinking about. How is it that, not just in the US, but all over the world, somehow, even though we admire whistleblowers,

particularly the more distant they are in the past, yet we actually don't make it easy for people to step up and do it. Well, I think on our own, again, most of us say, we believe in equality and equal justice before law. We believe in the little guy that, you know, we pull for the underdog, but when we are in groups and that can be our business, our government,

our church, our nation, we tend to lean more towards obeying orders and following the crowd, following our peers. And so loyalty and obedience are valued, in many cases, a lot more than truth and justice, even the truth and justice, as you say, are enshrined in our founding documents. But if you think about, I mean, free speech, in 1778 to continental Congress.

Before, there was actually United States, George Washington was fighting the Brits in New Jersey, which states it a bit. The continental Congress received 10 military whistleblowers, 10 servicemen, US Marines, and Navymen, who accused their supreme commander, the commander of the Navy, the Commodore, of dereliction of duty and abuse of British prisoners.

And not only were they not jailed forever or driven into exile or called traitors. They were celebrated by the founders and the founders passed the law saying it is the right and the duty of all citizens of this nation to call out wrongdoing by public officials. And they even made sure that these people got their legal fees paid. So the founding fathers were very much on side with whistleblowers.

And if you think about it, they were whistleblowers themselves. They were taking, in a sense, a major, major chance by breaking with mother Britain and breaking with their supreme, you know, their divine monarch. This is a big deal in 1778, in order to do, you know, to recognize a higher cause, to recognize a higher allegiance. And that's what whistleblowers are constantly telling me that, you know, I believe in my company, not just my boss.

I refuse to follow orders, or I believe in my community, not just my company, and I refuse to dump that poison into the river. There's a higher loyalty that whistleblowers respect, which gives them courage. Yeah, I actually loved it. It comes in a couple of different whistleblowers in the book. They say something like, I actually don't think I'm a whistleblower. My job is to tell the truth or to serve the taxpayers or the institution that I'm a part of. And so actually, I'm not doing anything different by being a whistleblower. I'm just continuing along the lines of the duty that I believe I have as a public servant or as a human being or whatever it is. That is beautifully put, Ryan.

That's exactly right. I mean, if you're a nuclear engineer, you have a professional responsibility of which you sign before the law to prevent a mushroom clad from appearing over your work site. If you're a doctor, you have a professional responsibility to the health of your patient. So it's, in many cases cases whistleblowers have told me,

I hate the word whistleblower, you know, that I was just doing my job. And why do I need a special set of laws and a weird title to recognize what I was simply doing the right thing? And I think that's right. I think that the fact that there's a rise of whistleblowing, it's a great thing that we have whistle blowers,

and it's a great thing we have laws to protect them. But ultimately, it's a bad sign for society that more people aren't just doing the right thing in the normal course of their occupation. Yeah, I think one of the more interesting so X is Kato, he sort of stands against Julius Caesar when Caesar attempts to overthrow the Roman Republic, not far from where you happen

to live now. But what's interesting about Cato is like, so here you have a guy who's sort of a ceaseless public servant, even though he's very wealthy, he's not flashy, he shares his money, he treats everyone the same, he's sort of impeccably honest and dedicated and principled and sort of believes he's living up to to what they call the old ways, the sort of the precedent and the history of Rome. And yet, and Plutard talks about this, it's almost as if the way he lived and was acting was sort of an implicit rebuke to everyone else. And so I was curious, like, why is it that we have

this instinctual reaction against whistleblowers? Is there some cognitive dissonance there, right? Is it that we, by inditing the business, the industry, the government that we live in, maybe is perhaps part of the reason why we're so conflicted about them is that they're kind of pointing the finger at us. I think there's no question that the first person to stand up and say, this house, Rees Rotten, there is something corrupt here, is going to get some angst among his fellow

workers or members of a government organization or church or school or whatever it is, because they've called out what many people already see but aren't willing to speak aloud about. And frankly, I think that whistleblowers are in many cases a contrarian. They may not be the ideal cube made. They may not be the perfect team player or good soldier. I think we really overestimate the value of team players and good soldiers.

I mean, I'm sure there are a lot of really loyal and obedient people in Nazi Germany from 39 to 45. That is unimaginably not a good thing. You have to define loyal to what, obedient to whom before you can start saying those things are absolutely good. And whistleblowers, I think it's time to celebrate that more prickly, the more questioning, the less team player in Good Soldier we need, people who are willing to challenge authority and really speak out. No, I think that's actually something that I think is interesting about Kato. So Kato, you know, sort of actively practices wearing different clothes, you know, living

more sort of spartanly than other people. He sort of cultivates his whole life, this sort of indifference to public opinion, to what other people think. And so when Caesar does cross the Rubicon and sort of prior to that, it had sort of been so aggressively sort of usurping Rome's laws. A lot of people made a lot of excuses for it, a lot of rationalizations for it, and of course there's also just the sort of the pressure and the temptation.

I think it's in this moment that Kato's sort of not caring what other people think really comes back to his benefit because he's seeing it sort of objectively, not sort of what's in his interest to see. And I'm curious, it is interesting in your book, just yeah, a lot of the whistleblowers or weirdos or strange or sort of marching by this own internal drum. And that's what allows them to see it differently. Is that something people can cultivate

or should it be that companies should be cultivating, you know, sort of acquiring that kind of talent? I think both. It is absolutely something that people can cultivate. You know, whistleblowers, as you say, Kato, the Stoics, the cynics, certain Old Testament and New Testament profits,

people, you know, are ostentatious in their refusal to accept the party line. And that is the reason that organizations that don't like that crush whistle-lower so mercilessly and prophets and various other critics is because they are infectious. A lot of people look at them and say, hey, if that person can do it,

why can't I? And, you know, consciously or unconsciously organizations that are threatened by these people go out of their way to make their end a very ugly one. So the people sitting on the fence will say, hmm, I think I'll just stay where I am. But absolutely, you know, one of the real predictors of whether someone will blow the whistle is whether they have heard a whistleblower story in the past. And whether they are aware of that as an option. And many of the people that I talked with who failed to blow the whistle, they said, you know, things are so confused.

I just didn't see that as an option. And quite often it's only when they hear about another whistleblower that they say, hey, you know, actually I could do that too. That's what I am, I'm a whistleblower. So understanding that narrative is something that certainly individuals can and should cultivate and corporations.

I mean, my book is a series of horror stories about things that went horribly wrong. But I know full well, although I was unable to document it, that there are countless organizations that in good faith, fix problems before they become, before they go nuclear, and do the right thing. It's just, they don't wanna air their dirty laundry and talk to reporters like me about how they were breaking

the law and realized it and fixed it. So, but good, well-meaning organizations and there are many absolutely must put forward the model of, you know, the conscientious objector, the profit, the seer, the critic, as a way of building a stronger organization, not all yes, man, and yes women, but people who actually challenge that, and that's kind of gone out of fashion. I mean, unfortunately unfortunately loyalty by now, and if you look at the Washington today,

you get a sense of it, loyalty is the number one. And the only real characteristic that people are judged by, and that's of course death to whistleblower. Well, I was actually gonna ask you that because I think sort of the depressing part of your book is that if I was thinking about being a whistleblower, I'm not sure walking away from crisis of conscious,

I'd say, this sounds like a great idea, this is gonna end very well. So are there some examples that come to mind for you? Like if someone was thinking about sort of speaking out about something or sort of pulling back the curtain on something, Are there some examples that you would point them to that they do you think they should read about? Yeah, absolutely. And I think, you know, the first thing to realize is that the vast majority of people that I interviewed,

even if even if their story had had a bitter ending, when I asked them, would you do it again? They 100% of the time said, oh, it was rough, it was hard. But yes, because I could only do this to be and be true to myself. I had to do this, or I wouldn't be able to sleep at night. I wouldn't be able to look myself in the mirror. So in a large, in every case that I looked at,

even if things ended badly, people really had no choice. They had to, in order to be I looked at, even if things ended badly, people really had no choice. They had to, in order to be true to themselves, to do that. But, you know, to be honest with you, I think that every story in my book, when an individual is able to stand up to a multinational corporation or to a government agency or to an entire government, that's an amazing thing. That's an incredible achievement. And yes, the individual person may be challenged by this, but I, you know, I think that is actually a, it is a victory story in itself.

And then of course you could look at someone like Daniel Ellsberg, who of course he torched his future career and the Pentagon and in the State Department, but he actually gone and in the State Department, but he actually speeded the ending of the Vietnam War and got the help to trigger the eviction of, if not the impeachment of Richard Nixon. So, you know, that's an incredible achievement. And I do think that, you know, we tend to dwell on the dark side of whistle blowing and in this time, when whistleblower laws seem to be really flaunted by the Trump administration, ignored, and whistleblower figures like Inspector General are being fired out of hand. It's a rough time to be a whistleblower,

but in many cases, the reason that we continue to see them is because individuals have individuals, have simply had enough, and their conscience says, no more. It's interesting, and sort of the history of stoicism, you can trust Cato, the sort of moral purity, to a figure like Seneca. So Seneca is this great writer, this brilliant thinker, he's a senator, and he's exiled by a corrupt emperor. And when he's sort of beckoned back, it's he has to tutor this, you know,

seemingly promising the un-cate named Nero, and then find some self-working for many, many years in the Nero administration. And James Rom has a fascinating book called Dying Everyday, which is sort of a portrait of Kato in Nero's administration. But I'm fascinated by that as a historical example because it's so easy to say like, oh, that's

obviously the wrong thing to do. But it seems unlikely to me that as someone as wise and as sort of smart as Santa could have been at least very, very conflicted about it and would have solely done this because he's a massive hypocrite, right? And so when you look at people who, you know, and I talked to David French, the writer about this is he's spoken of lots of people working with Trump administration, the sort of, it's this tension tension. And I'm curious if you, if the whistleblowers you talk to sort of, feel, felt that tension between sort of like trying to reform from the inside or having to step outside and sort of draw that very clear line. There is no question that getting involved, getting your hands dirty in an administration, in a corporation, in any organization, does

imply a certain level of risk that you will be sucked into whatever the narrative is, whatever the wrongdoing is. That's something I'm sure Seneca was well aware of. He was not a contemplative. He was an active practitioner of Stoicism. And there's a lot to be said for that. Public servants. And I think many, many whistleblowers consider themselves before or after they

blow the whistle to be servants of the public, you know, you really have to get out in the public arena and do something. You can't just sit back and talk about it. It is a very risky business when you are dealing with someone as profoundly corrupt as Donald Trump. It is a very risky business that your own behaviors won't be warped by his expectations, because you know that as soon as you show any sign of independence, you may, your head may be on the chopping block. On the other hand, yes, I mean, people talk about the adults in the room

and how many military people, Mattis and Kelly and various others have positioned themselves as well. We need someone to grow up in the room if we start talking about nuclear weapons. This is true, but it's also very risky. And part of one of the most interesting parts of my book for me anyway, a writer was understanding just how much we know about the cognitive traps and the self-illusion that people fall into, particularly when they're dealing with money goals and in organizations where there's a lot of peer pressure. And it's not just nilgram, but nilgram's teachers, Solomon Ash, and cognitive

descendants, and straight down to Daniel Kahneman, and phase one and phase two, thinking, all of these things show that, really, we are very vulnerable to reading our own, believing our own press releases. We are very vulnerable to self-serving behaviors. And particularly when the level of power is available that you would have in a presidential administration, the risk of compromising your conscience, your individual conscience, is immense.

So I'm very worried that people who hang around and go with the flow and say, yeah, well, we'll steer the ship from the back. This ship seems remains rudderless here. I mean, I don't know. I mean, COVID is a pretty good example that, you know, our gyroscope is broke here. So where are all the adults in the room? They seem to get fired anytime they speak up. No, it's an interesting thing.

I've experienced it. My books have sort of made their way through, their way through sort of political parties on both sides. And you meet people and it's, they're sort of this, in Washington, and there's this sort of very interesting dichotomy of between what people are willing to say in private and then what they do in public. And I believe it's earnest and well-ment,

there's this sort of sense of waiting for the right moment, right? Of keeping the powder dry, or being the adult in the room for when it really counts. And then I think that is where that tricky mechanism of your mind, you know, the Uptonston Claire thing, it's very hard to get someone to understand something that their salary is dependent on them not understanding. It's very hard having kept your powder dry for

so long to then finally use it, right? And I think that's sort of what we see not just in politics, but I'm sure, you know, people who work for an Elon Musk or people who work for Howard Hughes or, you know, people who work for Harvey Weinstein, you see the good in people and you see that good you're able to do through them and you tell yourself right now it's outweighing the bad, but eventually that ratio shifts and it's very hard to then go, okay, now is the moment. I feel like that is absolutely right, right? I mean, it is, you know, that it is a perfectly natural and perhaps lottable temptation to say, look, you know, I can do good here. I see what's going on

and I will wait for the right moment, you know, to blow the whistle, to take action. And some people do or some people just simply have enough and say, okay, that's it. I'm out. But, you know, the charismatic leader, the charismatic CEO or political leader, or, you know, renowned professor of economics or preacher, you name it, the charismatic person tends to attract a lot of people. And in many cases, tends to surround themselves with people In many cases, tends to surround themselves with people who reflect their aura. They like that. A wonderful book by a business professor, Mary Ann Jennings, seven signs of ethical collapse. Her first sign of ethical collapse in an organization, typically a company, but she also talks about other organizations, is a larger than life CEO. You know, someone who seems to be above the law,

who actually flaunts the law and shows that they make their own rules. And the world is just going to have to get along with that. That's very seductive. It's very powerful. We are herd animals. We are pack animals. And that's how the evolutionary background of loyalty and obedience is deeply wired in our DNA.

But it is also very dangerous when you have someone a charismatic leader. You can go a long way down the wrong track. And the famous expression, all that is necessary for evil to succeed in the world is for good people to do nothing. That's kind of the situation we're talking about. No, and I don't exempt myself from that. For many years, I was an executive

before I became a writer at a company called American Apparel, which had this sort of charismatic brilliant CEO who'd sort of built this deeply ethical sort of disruptive fashion company that didn't use sweatshops that, you know, sort that didn't use Photoshop models. It did all these things. Then he sort of had these kind of personal demons and sort of you tell yourself at the beginning that the good outweighs the bad and you tell yourself that you're steering the ship, that you're a positive force inside of a chaotic, complicated environment. I think the other thing that people struggle with is, and I struggled with this, is it's like, I have my team of people.

And I told myself, like, hey, I can navigate this system. I can protect these people. And so I think one of the things that you touch on the book that I think is important to, that it seemed like a lot of these whistleblowers are struggling with, is like, hey, like, look, like when Susan Fowler blew the whistle at Uber, that company lost billions of dollars of market cap, and people lost their jobs. And so there's this tension of like, well, if I do this thing, it will hurt some people

that I care about. But if I don't do this thing, many other people might be hurt over a longer period of time. And so there's, I think there's also this kind of tension between the, the sort of the personal and the principle, the, the little and the big. And, and we don't, we don't give people a lot of instruction on how to, you know, wrestle with those, you know, profoundly philosophical dilemmas. You're absolutely right. I mean, you know, most whistleblows that I know they are not utilitarians. I mean, they're virtue ethicists. They see their role. And of course, you have to ask yourself, so when did they arrive at this? You know, when I get their story, they've

already blown the whistle, so they've already gone through this sometimes really difficult struggle to decide what to do. And a lot of their story, consciously or unconsciously, maybe self-justified. This is why I did what I did, explaining to themselves. But I think you're absolutely right. I mean, whistleblows tend to take the long term of view that this is going to be bad for the company down the road. They also take the bigger picture view. This is going to be bad for the company down the road, they also take the bigger picture view. This is going to be bad for my company, if this goes on great for my boss, however, who's raking in money on fraud. So they see things in a larger perspective.

And collateral damage is a major concern for them. They see that their colleagues, their bosses sometimes, are going to be axed or be damaged by this. Ultimately, it comes back to the individual conscience and how it sits with the group mind, the hive mind. And that is, this is where the courage of the individual whistleblowers that I've talked with really stuns me, really inspires me. Is that the end of the individual whistleblowers that I've talked with really stunts me, really inspires me.

Is that the end of the day? You said earlier, a lot of us know that there's some bad stuff going on. But go along to get along one day leads to another. We'll see things will be better soon. I got to stay inside at the table in order to change things. All of these justifications for not actually doing something. And of course, taking a huge risk by doing it.

These individuals actually hear the voice of their conscience, and this comes back to my title. It is a crisis. And the voice comes from the individual conscience, which, you know, virtually all of us have. I think that sociopath is a vastly overused term. And that individual voice is so easily drowned out by the chorus of obedience and loyalty, but these people have it and they listen.

And when they do it, the vast majority of us who don't work for that company say, good for you and I wish, I hope, when I am in that company say, you know, good for you. And I wish I hope when I am in that same position, I can do the same thing. And so Marcus are really as, you know, as you're fascinating figure, you have the sort of the emperor of Rome and he writes in meditations, he says, you know, just that you do the right thing, the rest doesn't matter. He says, cold or warm, says busy or tied up with other assignments. He says

loved or hated. And I think that's, to me, that's a great sort of dictum for the whistleblower is that, yeah, you have to do it's right. You can overthink yourself out of doing the right thing because, you know, hey, it'll hurt this person or what if this happens to me, where you almost, it's almost like intuitively at a gut level, we know it's right, and then our mind and our sense of self-preservation can convince us to not do the right thing. I completely agree. I mean, you know, our capacity to rationalize self-serving behavior is boundless. And again, that's what the social psychologists of the middle and late 20th century have taught us.

That, you know, we always tend to do things that make us look like heroes. We always tend to do things. If we have a choice and are not aware that there are bad things on either side, we tend to choose things that benefit ourselves, which is perfectly normal. But so much of this happens at a subconscious level, so much of our decision making is not within our conscious control. Ultimately, I'm a big, I'm a big doubter of utilitarianism of people who say, well, the greater good, because you can always redefine

the greater good to mean my greater good, and maybe also for everybody else. The absolute is of course, from a philosophical point of view, are very tricky to pin down. But that's where we come back to the individual voice, and the individual conscience. And a lot of people on their own without a group will say, now, that stinks to high heaven. That is just not right. But the same

behavior, the same dishonesty, the same illegality, they will carry through with that if they are doing it for other people or with other people. And that's, you know, we just have to recognize that as part of a deeply coded part of human nature. The thing I thought we could close with that I think is interesting and maybe in our sort of, it's actually something that sort of worries me about our increasingly polarized society. And I experienced this a little bit.

So my first book was this sort of ex-bose of how sort of marketing and media works. And it was controversial, and sort of deliberately provocative. And so I get all that. But it was interesting to me to see the reaction, where a lot of people would say, sort of like, I don't like that person. I don't like what they do.

The reaction, which is, to me, an entirely separate debate about whether I'm right or not. And so what I think is interesting about where we are now is that because we look at everything as this sort of team sport or this polarization, we've forgotten that the world is very complicated and that whistleblowers are often not sort of perfect narrators or perfect figures. Like, when you look and you talk about this in your book a little bit, but when you look at like sort of the whistleblowers or some of the people that ultimately ended up testifying

and playing in a critical part in watergate and in Nixon's downfall, these were not necessarily great people and certainly not people with entirely clean hands. So I'm just curious, how can people sort of understand that the truth is what counts, not whether you like the person, whether you disagree with the person. If you want to bring whistleblowers out, I feel like you have to give them a place to land.

And I wonder if part of the reason you do see some of the loyalty and the inside say the Trump administration, but other administrations too, is like the option presented to these people is essentially become a pariah or double down and try to get a Fox News contract down the road. There's no exit.

It's like you can't leave the gang and you can't go straight either. I think that's why there's the triumph of false news because fake news. Because at the end of the day, we have bent our data so badly and we have been warped so badly by loyalty to one team or another. And we're not just talking about Trump as you quite rightly pointed out, Ryan. I mean, the loyalty to Obama, the loyalty to George W. Bush, the loyalty to the team or another. And we're not just talking about Trump, as you quite rightly pointed out, Ryan. I mean, the loyalty to Obama, the loyalty to George should be Bush, the loyalty to the Clintons, the loyalty to, you know, it's a binary game.

You're either four or against. And if, you know, what that produces, of course, is if you bring data that is against our team, you are not just wrong, you're evil. And that's no, that's more religion than reason. But that's no environment in which to hold a rational debate about right and wrong, and it's no environment in which to blow the whistle.

The whistleblowers rely on an environment in which facts matter to some extent. And as you say, I mean, things have become so polarized that if I take a position that in any way reflects badly on Barack Obama, for instance, and I think my book is a good example of this, a lot of people have been really angry at me for my book because I show with perfectly abundance of facts

This ice show, with perfectly abundance of facts that Barack Obama was very, very bad for national security whistleblowers. He used the blunt forced instrument of the Espionage Act against more whistleblowers in the national security environment than any other president in the history of the United States. That is not a good thing. But when I say these things, people attack not what I've said, because I can't refute it, because it's true. But the fact that I am saying them, which makes Obama and therefore the Democrats look bad,

they say, but you should be, I mean, they say it or they think it, you should be on-side at a moment like this one, we need to get rid of Trump for goodness sake, do not talk badly about the alternative. And of course, that is anti whistleblower talk right there. You know, it's either true or it's not. You know, and we cannot be so religious in our allegiances politically that we simply,

you know, do what's right for power rather than doing what's right for people. It's a shocking state of affairs, but you're absolutely right, that our polarization in politics these days puts us in a, puts us and puts whistleblowers in a very difficult position. Yeah, it's like we have to get to a place where it shouldn't matter what the person has done

in the past, what sort of party affiliation they have. Yeah, our loyalty has to be to is what they're saying true is what they're doing genuine. Are they at least, you know, trying to to make the world a better place? And if that's the case, then they're on our team. If that's not the case, then they're not on our team. You know what I mean? It's like, it should be sort of team truth above sort of a team America. And bless that, Phil.

You know, team America rather than team Republican or team Democrat, whatever that means anymore. And I push it further, Ryan, I'd say, you know, we shouldn't ask whistleblowers to be saints. That is counterproductive and wrong. What we care about is facts. We don't care why they do what they do. If they bring good facts,

whether it's because they are Mother Teresa and they want the good, good, good for all mankind or because they really, really hate their boss, we shouldn't care. If they can prove their facts. And if this shows that there has been serious wrongdoing, who cares what's in their minds? And that's of course a very, I mean, I confess to it myself. It's a natural human reaction to a whistleblower to say, wow, what's going on there?

Why did they do that? What's the backstory? And that, you know, it's normal, but it's wrong-headed. Because really, it's the easiest way to derail a whistleblower disclosure is to turn the conversation from the message to the messenger. And so I was saying, well, they must be greedy, or they must be disgruntled, or they must be psychotic, or they must be, no, no, let's look at the facts here. We don't care really, you know, the kind of person they are,

the sexual orientation, what they have for breakfast, we care about the facts. And we should start celebrating rebels. I mean, once upon a time, right? The founders were rebels. Rebels, they were dangerous. They were, these were really dangerous people. Dude, people sitting back and Britain, these were,

these were the Taliban, these were, you know, these are ISIS. These are really dangerous people. Do people sitting back and Britain, these were the Taliban, these were, you know, these are ISIS. These are really dangerous people. Well, it's time that we celebrated rebels, not Taliban and ISIS, but people who are willing to risk a great deal to say, I don't think that's right. And not only that, I'm not going to go away quietly. I'm going to try to change it. But there's something noble about that

that we were at risk of losing. Now, I think that's right. And yeah, this idea of sort of making it about the messenger, we seem to have this problem across a bunch of different domains, right? Like a criminal informant, it shouldn't matter what crimes they committed. It matters, do they have information

about a different crime? And then on the other side of that, we also seem to be, you know, this is why we sort of got in the mess we got with sexual harassment and sexual assault, is that we spent a lot of time as a society trying to think about, you know, if this is a perfect victim or not, if the victim is, it has any guilt on them, rather than is what they're saying true yes or no. And if it is, then we have to take it seriously. And if it's not, then, you know, then you don't. But we seem to be so caught up with, yeah, is this person like me? Is this person on the same team as me? Has this person led a perfect life? Not does this person help

us do what we're trying to do, which is create a better world or live up to our own standards or keep people safe? I think you're absolutely right. And the keep people safe, I think that for all of the horrors that coronavirus pandemic has brought, it's an opportunity for a hard reset. For us to rearrange a little bit our priorities about, who's on our team and who's not,

and start looking at the team, which is America, not the team, which is right and left and up and down and right and right. And as you say, keeping people safe, I mean, this is a time when whistleblowers, like it or not, are absolutely life and death. People who call out wrongdoing A, in the medical profession and in healthcare in general, risks to old age facilities and hospitals and various places where people will die if they don't do the right thing.

That's one. B, trillions of dollars flowing into our economy in aid, which you know, and I know, and everybody else knows Some of which is going to be routed into schemes fraud scams crimes You know whistle blowing right now is is a vital concern It's a vital tool especially when we have such gridlock in politics and And frankly we have a remarkable level of power of incorporations, individuals who are on the inside

but have the conscience of an outsider. They're key. So, you know, I'm hoping, and I may say on naive when I say this, but I'm hoping that COVID-19 will allow us to reset a little bit our priorities about, you know, about being a public servant, about protecting the common good. And that exists, whether Trump or Obama or Biden or whatever supporters think about each

other, if they were just to spend the period of quarantine together in the same house, or as my brother would say, if they were to force to ride the bus three times a month together, you know, that's the people. These are people. And they're the vast majority of people are people we could get along with if we didn't treat them as things, as enemies, as disease. And so we need to break, break that down and coronavirus might do that. Very well said Tom. Thank you so much. I love the book and I appreciate you coming in chat with me. Thanks a lot Ryan, it's a pleasure. If there was something I could put on the wall of your office to inspire you along this

idea of being a whistleblower and a true teller, it'd be this quote from Marcus Aurelius. You know, he says, waste no more time arguing what a good man is like B1. That's sort of the stoic motto I feel. We have a print of that in the daily stoic store. You can check out go to store.dailystoic.com. And then if you want something, maybe a little bit more portable, that I think is also important.

I mean, the four stoic virtues to me overlap perfectly with the sort of code of ethics of a whistleblower, courage, self-discipline, justice, that's doing the right thing, wisdom. You gotta be wise, you gotta be smart about this, you have to be strategic, courage, temperance, justice, wisdom. Those are the four-storeg virtues and we have our daily stock four virtues. Coin, you know, Marx releases, try not to trade those virtues for anything else. So check that out in the daily stock store as well. We also have our some-embonum coin,

which has Marx's quote on the back, just that you do the right thing. The rest doesn't matter. So we're trying to not just talk about this philosophy, not just to explore it intellectually, but of course, to live it, to do it when it counts, whether you're working at a small government office in your small town, or you're an aid to the prime minister of your country, whether you're an executive

at a billion dollar company, whether you're an executive at a billion dollar company or you're just somebody who sees something going on down the street, Stoke speaks out, Stoke stands up, as Stoke doesn't just talk about what a good person is like, as Stoke does the right thing when it counts. Speak well, do good, talk to you soon. Hey, prime members, you can listen Talk to you soon. you