The Daily Stoic - Author Bonnie Tsui on the Wonders of Water | Pressure, Like Power, Reveals

Episode Date: April 14, 2021

Ryan reads today's Daily Stoic email and talks to author Bonnie Tsui about her new memoir, Why We Swim, their mutual adoration of swimming, how physical exercise can be a catalyst for creative thinking, the philosophical benefits of spending time in the water, and more. Her newest piece, The Uncertain Sea, is available now on Scribd.Bonnie Tsui is the author of many books including American Chinatown: A People’s History of Five Neighborhoods, which won the 2009-2010 Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature. Her past accolades include the 2019 National Press Foundation Fellowship and the Jane Rainie Opel Young Alumna Award at Harvard University.This episode is also brought to you by Scribd, the e-book and audiobook subscription service that includes one million titles. We’re offering listeners of The Daily Stoic a free 60 day trial. Go to try.scribd.com/stoic for your free trial. That’s try.scribd.com/stoic to get 60 days of Scribd for free.This episode is also brought to you by Athletic Greens. Athletic Greens is a custom formulation of 75 vitamins, minerals, and other whole-food sourced ingredients that make it easier for you to maintain nutrition in just a single scoop. Visit athleticgreens.com/stoic to get a FREE year supply of Liquid Vitamin D + 5 FREE Travel Packs with subscription. This episode is also brought to you by Seed. Seed’s Daily Synbiotic combines 24 clinically and scientifically studied probiotic strains with non-fermenting prebiotic compounds concentrated from Indian pomegranate. Visit seed.com/STOIC and use code STOIC to redeem 20% off your first month of Seed’s Daily Synbiotic. That’s seed.com/STOIC and use code STOIC.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. 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.***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 Bonnie Tsui:Homepage: https://www.bonnietsui.com/Twitter: https://twitter.com/bonnietsui?lang=bn Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bonnietsui8/ 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 Daily Stoic Podcast where each weekday we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stoics, a short passage of ancient wisdom designed to help you find strength and insight here in everyday life. And on Wednesdays, we talk to some of our fellow students of ancient philosophy, well-known and obscure, fascinating and powerful. With them, we discuss the strategies and habits that have helped them become who they are and also to find peace and wisdom in their actual lives. But first we've got a quick message from one of our sponsors.

Hey everyone. Hi I'm David Brown, the host of Wonderree'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. Pressure like power reveals. As the ancient historians noted, Marcus Aurelius did not receive the good breaks he deserved. There were wars. There was palace intrigue. There were floods, a pandemic. You grieved the loss of his father, then multiple children, and then he outlived his wife.

And this was on top of the day-to-day high stakes of running the largest empire in the world. And while Marcus certainly staggered under the weight of these incredible burdens, it also exposed his true character. Beneath it all, he was decent. He was forgiven. He was dedicated. He was principled. We've talked before about how power reveals. Well, pressure does too. And the pressure that the boy who would be King was under, it showed that underneath was a good man. Marcus really says mentors and his parents and his philosophy it all stood up well underneath this unimaginable stress.

Well the last year has been a pressure cooker too. There's been lockdowns, a public health crisis. Many of us needed to find new jobs, new ways to manage our households. We had to look in the mirror and deal with fear with anxiety and our roles as citizens and human beings. What did that reveal for you? Did you stand up to the pressure? Were you stripped bare? How did your character look? Was it something to be proud of? Or did it reveal that serious work needed to be done? A Crisis like this cannot be wasted. It must be used. It must make us better and show us how we need to be better. And that's the final thing that pressure reveals.

It reveals the flaws and whether we're the kind of person who has resigned ourselves to them or for the kind of person who addresses them. Hey, it's Ryan Holiday. Welcome to another episode of The Daily's To a Podcast. I've talked about my daily routine like a million times. I try to get up early, go for a walk, I work, do my hard things first, try not to get sucked in to the phone, have lunch and read, do the intermittent fasting. One of the things that's been different about my routine over the last year, which I talk

about a little bit in today's episode, is that the workout that I do in the afternoon has almost exclusively for the last 12 months been running or biking. I haven't been able to swim. And swimming has been such a big part of my life for probably 10 years now. I got really reintroduced, I swam as a kid, but I got reintroduced to swimming by Robert Green, who helped me become a member at the Los Angeles Athletic Club where I used to swim. They have this amazing pool on the seventh floor, this indoor pool. It's like 12 feet deep. It used to have a high dive board. It's a credible pool built in like the 1912 or something. I just really fell in love with swimming and whenever I have a chance to go swim in a cool pool,

that's what I do. One of the things I love about Austin is Barton Springs and Deep Eddie and all these amazing pools. But because of the pandemic and trying to stay out of the city on our farm, I haven't been able to swim. We have a pool in our house, but it's not really great for laps. It's swimming the ocean a couple of days. But I just missed swimming. And I missed it for practical exercise reasons, but I've really missed it for philosophical reasons. And my guest today, Bonnie Saway, just wrote a beautiful book about those philosophical benefits. It's called Why We Swim. And it's an argument that I

think any swimmer would get a lot of value out of. It's a deeply philosophical and moving sort of owed to the wonderfulness of swimming. And if you have in swim, I think it's a great case for why you should swim. I absolutely loved the book. I love talking to her and I'm really excited for you to listen to this interview. This is me talking with Bonnie Soi about the wonderfulness of swimming, which I think goes to the core of who we are as a species. I think it goes even to the core of stoicism. I wrote an email for Daily Stoke not long ago about the relationship with the stoics and water because even that is really special

and seems to go back all the way to Marcus Releas in the idea of washing off the dust of earthly life. Seneca talks about swimming. I talk about the, Seneca famously would jump in the Tiber River to begin each day of a new year. Even the opening of stillness is the key. I talk about Seneca's staying above this gym and he makes all these observations about all the time, you know, just what it's like to be at this gym and he makes all these observations about all the time, you know, just what it's like to be at a gym and the noises and the pros and the cons of it.

Anyways, here's my interview with Bonnie Saway about why we swim, the philosophical power of swimming, the health benefits, and why if you're not swimming regularly, you absolutely should. absolutely should. This is somewhat of a selfish question, but let's start here. What are the three best places to swim in the world? What are your three favorite things that you've gone swimming? That's really hard, Ryan. I like how you started with just gun blazing. Of course.

I would say, oh gosh, one of my favorites is tunnel beach on the North Shore of Kauai. And I think it's because it's like a sheltered, you know, by coral beach, where you could come around with all kinds of marine life and you could even see sharks actually. But then just outside the reef, it's just like ripping people or surfing. You know, the winds could be blowing like crazy, but there's this wildness that you can kind of be a part of from a distance if you want or right up you know up close and personal. So I love swimming there because it makes me feel a part of that whole thing.

Gosh what's another place that I love swimming? I am realizing that all of the things that are coming up now are in Hawaii because I miss it so much. But I've also swam in the Aegean. God, it's like the colors there are unreal. I spent a summer in the Greek islands right after college and it was a summer where I was reporting for let's go travel guides, which is like a student run, travel guides at Harvard. And I could not believe, I mean, you just feel, A, just that it's such a historic, everything is just, you realize that everything here in this country is so young, it's a baby place. And then in Greece, it's like everything

has such resonance. And I think there's this nice physical connection to that place, right? But that ocean, I'm like, like the sea, the feeling that those blues can like are seared into your cornea. Well, there's this weird thing about the Aegean, which I've not been lucky enough to swim in yet. But Homer talks about the wine dark sea over and over again in the Odyssey. And it sort of baffles translators and classists since because they're like, what are you talking about?

What does that mean? It's not at all the color of wine. It's like the opposite of wine, so the color of wine. So is the Aegegen? Has it dramatically changed colors in the last three or four thousand years or, you know, is Homer a color blind? And it's, I just think that's a good question. Right. Yeah, the color blind discussion fascinated me the first time I had read about that. And I thought that makes perfect sense. Like to him, it's this, it's about

the, you know, the, the shading. It's not about the actual, well, the color as he was receiving it, right? I find that amazing because I think that it totally turns that whole, the picture in my mind, you know, it just completely changes it to me. And I end up making perfect sense. But he does it over and over again, talk about the dawn with fingertips of rose, which of course is the perfect way to describe a sunrise. And so you're like, what is happening in the water?

Strange glasses, let's go. Yeah. Hold on, Homer. All right, so what's your third? Those are two that are not on my list, but are now. What's your third? Okay, well I do, I remember swimming in the South China Sea with my dad.

And that was some years ago, I can't remember, but it was the first time we had swam together, I was a kid. So that to me has such personal connection because he had always talked about, we met up in Hein-On Island. He lives in southern China, not in Guangzhou, but I was born in New York and he lives in New York for 20 years and then sort of moved back to Hong Kong and then to mainland China.

But he had always talked about Hainan Island as like the Chinese Hawaii and he had this like romance with it as this place where it was you know poets and exiles, little black vials were sent to this island and he always wanted to go there and so I got sent there on a assignment and I said you want to meet me there? And we met there and went. And it was the first time I think in something like 20 years that we plumb together. So that was pretty special.

Well, yeah, I imagine if you were swimming in someone's rinky-dink backyard pool with your dinner, for some of that was also probably one hole. It's true. So I admit that my vision was clouded in that instant. Well, I'm not going to say this whole episode is going to be nerding out about swimming spots, but I'm also not going to promise that it's not going to be.

I would have guessed that you would have said, given your background in Australia. I would have guessed you'd have started with Bondi and the sort of the swimming clubs that dot the sort of the cove there where you can sort of walk swimming clubs that dot the sort of the co-there, where you can sort of walk from ocean-filled pool to ocean-filled pool, which I've done. I would have guessed that that's on the,

would be at the top of your list. It was. I have to say that on the tip of my tongue, whether I was gonna say South China Sea or Australia, it was hard, but I decided to throw one out that felt maybe a little bit unusual for our listeners. I guess I would put on the list, I'd put Barton Springs in Austin, which I think is the weirdest. So America has some underrated swimming spots in many ways, but the sort of that they would appear in these weird

landlocked places, I guess is not what you would expect. So, so that you'd be like, oh yeah, Austin has, you know, weirdly the greatest sort of underground spring fed pool you wouldn't think. Have you been to the the river in San San Marcos like 45 minutes from Austin? No, I haven't. And in fact, I've never swam at Barton Springs, although I have talked with Austinites about it very extensively. And the love is fierce for them. Well, it's incredible because, and I remember I swam there on my wedding day with Robert Green, the author who actually sort of introduced me to this habit of going to cool swimming

places, but it was snowing outside. It was a weird, freak storm where it's snowing. So it was like 30 degrees out, but Barton Springs inevitably, as it always is, was 71 degrees. And you're swimming in this spring, but it's paved on the side, right? It's like it's so weird. What's really cool, and so you'll have to do it when you come to Texas at some point,

is in San Marcos at the Texas State University, they did another weird thing where they, there's a river that starts right there from a spring. They did the same thing where they paved sort of the side. They basically made it a pool, but the bottom is not, you know, it's natural, but the sides are like a pool.

And so the river sort of curves through this little park and you can jump into, it's got ladders, just like it's a pool but it's it's flowing there's this heavy current and it's this weird thing where you can you can sort of swim laps against the current or not last but you can swim against the current like one of those those sort of treadmill pool things but it's totally natural. Yeah. I feel that way. I do find that when you get into a place that has a natural current to be swimming it is such a strange.

It's a strange and wonderful experience because you're feeling like you're muffling against the water in such a way that is just it's not our usual experience, right? To feel water resisting us in that way. I that that's totally right. And I think, you know, treadmills are enough a part of our life because of gyms, but you don't necessarily associate running with covering a distance, but with swimming, you do think about cuff movement. So the idea of swimming and not moving is a very strange experience.

Yeah, it is. It sends these signals to your brain that something is a mess, something is strange. But I think also just being in the water does that in a really beautiful, fantastical way, right? Because even if you do it a lot, I think that there is a magic upon entry and immersion that is still something that you really feel in a tangible way.

Yeah. And one of the really cool things about this one in San Marcos is there's some weird species of grass or rice that doesn't appear anywhere else in the United States. It's this sort of sea grass or I think it's technically like a rice, but it's underwater and you see it sort of waving. So it's like, you know, when you walk past a really green field and you see it sort of the blowing in the wind and you can kind of see those patterns, you that's an experience you have under water very often. And so, especially in a river. So, it's like, I tend to love pools or water where it seems so out of whack with where it is. Like, my wife and I were driving across the United States a few years ago and we we just crossed out of Texas.

No, we're just leaving New Mexico, I guess it's in New Mexico, right? But have you been to the blue hole in New Mexico? No, but I know of it. Yeah, you're, like, so we're driving along this highway in the middle of landlocked America, and you see the diving flag, you know, the red flag with the weight.

And you're like, what's this campus? It would be like, you know, it's there by the side of the road, you know, with the gas station sign and the red, the rest stops sign. The telling you the amenities that are off of this exit. And then you pull off and there's a, you know, like a 90 foot across hole in the ground that goes down hundreds of feet of crystal clear. Why? I, there's something, I think water is always special, but there's something freakish about

the water that like shouldn't be there or shouldn't be like that. I think Tahoe is another good example. Like, it shouldn't be that clear. Right. Right. be like that. I think Tahoe is another good example. It should be that clear. Right. Right. It's stunning because of the contrast with your expectation of what the immediate surrounds are. I mean, I feel that way. I think an Iceland as well. In my book, In Why We Swim, I talk a lot about how Iceland has this about how Iceland has this really wonderful rich swimming culture. And in that every tiny town, no matter how small,

it has a public pool, and often geothermal heated. But you'll be driving along in the snow-covered icy landscape, and then you will see the signs with the little head poking out of the squiggly lines that are in the water. That's like, all right, pull over here, somebody pull over here and it's open year-round, you know, for everyone and everyone does it. I mean, I think that every day-ness is so wonderful and I wish that were the case in more places. Yeah, it's strange.

I mean, unfortunately in the American South, you know, the swimming pools are the history of the sort of public swimming pool is tainted with racism and the, you know, sort of the dividing line between, you know, different sort of case of society. But it is weird when you're in one of these pools, whether it's Barton Springs or Belmoria, which I think is the largest Spring Fed pool in the United States. It was like, not that long ago, you know, less than a hundred years ago, a community came

together and made this for everyone. And yes, not technically everyone, but there are pools for everyone. In other parts of the United States, not so tempted by. But yeah, when you're walking on Bondi Beach, too, you're just like, this is so, is this what we used to do? Like now we build social networks and apps, and that's where our collective energy goes. But these things don't exist. And we used to make thing places that we could all go and do something together. Yeah, I think, yeah, I think that the physicality of it, the tangibility of what you're talking

about and at being a gathering place. And I think what's so wonderful about the pool or, you know, the shore, a lake is that in its best incarnation, it is a place that is available to everyone, once you know how to swim. You can walk down there and put your feet in and be immediately transported somewhere else. And I think that the tragedy of the history of our country is that so many of our public spaces have been partitioned off or cordoned off or divided or exclusive, you know, made exclusive based on race and that has a legacy that persists. So I think that in particular was swimming with public beaches, public pools. They were not open to everyone for a large chunk of our history. And those ideas, those those unjust ideas persist to

today as we all know and and that's tragic because swimming in its most you know I don't know what an empirical beautiful pure you know you and I as bodies in the world form is something that is so elemental and transformative. Got a quick message from one of our sponsors here and then we'll get right back to the show. Stay tuned. Celebrity feuds are high stakes. You never know if you're just gonna end up

on page six or Du Moir or in court. I'm Matt Bellesai. And I'm Sydney Battle, and we're the host of Wonder E's new podcast, Disantel, where each episode we unpack a different iconic celebrity feud from the buildup, why it happened, and the repercussions. What does our obsession with these feud say about us? The first season is packed with some pretty messy

pop culture drama, but none is drawn out in personal as Brittany and Jamie Lynn Spears. When Brittany's fans formed the free Brittany movement dedicated to fraying her from the infamous conservatorship, Jamie Lynn's lack of public support, it angered some fans, a lot of them. It's a story of two young women who had their choices taken away from them by their controlling parents, but took their anger out on each other.

And it's about a movement to save a superstar, which set its sights upon anyone who failed to fight for Brittany. Follow Dissentel wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen ad-free on Amazon Music or The Wondery App. Yeah, I think like one of the worst photos of the civil rights movement is that hotel owner, Trump dumping the acid, although it's not actually acid. And then in the pool, where two black people are swimming and you're, you just, it's like you're take, yes, and it was a, it was a motel pool.

So not technically like a public pool in some way, but, but just the idea of like, it is this sort of equalizing thing. Suddenly, suddenly the, the, the fit person and the unfit person and the child and the adult are suddenly sort of equalized by the reduction of the gravity and the weightlessness. It is a shame that it became such a flashpoint because it Right. Yes. Yes. Yes. And it is, you know, anyone who, who, I mean, all of us, I forgot, you know, we take that house, we do forget into water, you know, and everyone from a baby, you know, splashing around in the bathtub, too.

I mean, I think about the full time whenever I go to my community pool and there are the you know not in so much in the last year but I would see all of the you know the seniors in the morning you know swim in the indoor pool where it's like lovely and warm and just so supportive of everything like their joints joints, they're chatting, they're just, it's the place where they feel free and relief. And I think that again, like in this last year where things have been so challenging

that that simple relief has been taken away for so many is, it's been hard, you know. Totally. Here, by the way, I just see your question all edit this out. But yeah, it appears that your thing is, I see the squiggly lines where you're talking. Okay, good. I didn't want to interrupt the flow, if that would be.

No, no, no, I see yours. Good. Okay. Again. Okay, so back to favorite pools then. I would add hamstered heath in London. Oh my gosh. Then Lord is the lady's the lady pond? Is that what it's called? There's a ladies pond. It's one of the weird ones. Yeah, where it's a ladies pond and a male pond. And you swim in a circle around a lake, which is kind of unusual. And then there is it.

My wife and I almost got arrested because the joint one was closed, but we snuck in anyway, it was some people. But it is, it's so, you talk about sort of how old these are. Just that they're sort of gender segregated. And then you walk through a legit bathhouse is just, I don't know, I love that pool or that's what I experienced too. I also love, I mean, you reminded me when you were talking about visiting Hansette Hease's dear wife and sort of getting into trouble.

In Japan, you know, this is more of a bathing experience, but depending on the size of the pools, an onsen that you could swim around for sure, that there are all these ones that are created that's the sort of like hot springs bath houses that are segregated by gender, but there are also ones that are, you know, in very natural, in wild locations where it's like a rock pool outside halfway up a mountain. And so if you're there isolated and there's not anyone policing it, you could go, you

know, I just remember going on this beautiful fall hike with two male friends and we came to this natural onset. And we, you know, just steam and rising up and it says, like, you know, go around to this side of the rock, if you're a man, go around to this side of the rock of your woman, because you baton these these schools in the nude and so we were chatting on the other side of this rock and then there was no one else around so we said would it be weird if I went you know if I came in on your side and so we did but then these two women happened along and yeah you know they were seniors and they said you have to go back on the other spot. And it was just, I felt so embarrassed, but it was like this funny, you know, the, you, you absent anyone else that, what are the rules? But then you have to, you have kind of people coming along and saying, you know, this, you

are actually breaking the rules. And it feels funny because there was no one around, right? It is strange some of the rules. Like I swam in Lake Evion once in France, I guess it's France and Switzerland. But it was weird where it was this sort of bathing beach like there's a big slide. It's all sort of cut out of the lake, but it was speedo only.

Like you were not allowed to swim in shorts. Which was not something I'd packed for. That was weird. And then I just- Are you speedo handy? No, thankfully. But I just sort of broke the rules because it was gonna care.

But I remember I also swam in a pool in Helsinki once, it was sort of a sauna. And what it was is it, the rule had always been that you swim naked in it. And then, but it was obviously only for men for however long it existed. And then at some point, women said, this is ridiculous. We want to go here too. So it was, they alternated days of the week. So like Monday, it was women's makeup and then couldn't go. And Tuesday, men went and swim naked.

And it was a very strange experience that I'm not sure what it added to the experience in any way and why, why, you know, it struck me as one of these things that maybe a generation or two ago, like the men insisted this was some sort of positive addition, but it's probably just more about sort of old men being creepily comfortable with their naked bodies, you know, sort of one of those things. Where's the British now? We can't handle it.

Yeah. Yeah. Yes. Could we all be as comfortable with ourselves as old men seem to be naked in a locker room? I will say from the other side, the old women in the locker room, you know, on that side, I aspire to be that comfortable with my naked body in public. I aspire to be that comfortable with my naked body in public. Well, it's weird, you know, the Romans sort of, you know, famously sort of do all these things naked and like there's part people go, you know, we used to do this and then it's like, and then I imagine they realized that they're,

it's I'm not sure it was shame that said, hey, like, man, why don't you wear shorts when you're wrestling? Like I was, I think this is a technological advance. Right. Right. There's some, maybe there's a comfort thing. I don't know. Maybe. Yeah. All right. So I would say my favorite pool, my two favorite pools in the United States, and I'd be curious to hear yours, like in actual inside swimming pools, I think it's a tie between the Los Angeles Athletic Club and the

Olympic Club in San Francisco. Yeah, the Olympic Club in San Francisco is pretty cool. I would say any pool that is divine by julium Morgan. So that's the Berkeley City Club, right? So here, I, and that used to be the women's club,? Yes. I have a swim in that one too. And then there's there is herst pool. Right so herst pool at the top on the UC Berkeley campus. That's outdoor so it's a rooftop pool. Okay. That was on top of the herst gym. That was the, I believe that was the women's gym where they would, like they, I think they were only, they were allowed to swim there,

but there was no swim team, so you could do recreational. There's such interesting history there, but that's Julian Morgan. And that pool, have you come there, you can have that amazing view of the Campanille from there? I've done the Berkeley City Club one. I stayed at hotel. At the Hearst pool on the rooftop, it is actually not a great pool for swimming laps because the pool is like black marble, or some very dark marble.

So you're swimming basically into, you got some of those. Yeah, this. Yeah, this. But that also seems kind of appropriate. But it's also 33 yards, I think. So I'm like, oh, you're lame. You're lame.

So I'm obsessed. So I used to live in downtown Los Angeles when I worked in American Apparel. And I joined the Los Angeles Athlet I worked in American Apparel and I joined the Los Angeles Athletic Club, which I loved. And it's this sort of fancy old private club that in New York would cost 50 to $100,000 to join in LA because no one lives in downtown. The initiation fee was like $200.

I've kept my membership, even though I don't live in Los Angeles anymore, because you get to go in all the other pools. So I've swam in both of the fancy athletic, but like the New York Athletic Club, the Olympic Club, the Brooklyn one, the Seattle Athletic Club, I love those pools. They're all amazing.

And I, like when I'm on BookTour, I always ask my publishers like, you know, here's the hotel right next to the venue. And I always pick whatever the reciprocal club is. Like there's a club in DC that was like an old pool in the basement. And so I always do that to swim in them. But the strangest thing about the pools is they're always really weird lengths. Like I think the Olympic club in Berkeley is a super strange length too. They

also have the other pool, or sorry, the one in San Francisco. There's a, there's another like actual like Olympic style pool, but the, the, the beautiful one with the huge ceilings is like 112 feet long or some like completely arbitrary length that's hard to wrap your head around. What I'm really understanding from this conversation, Ryan, is that the next time we're allowed to go on physical book tour, we have to put our heads together and put together the greatest hits, cool, you know, access for every city in the United States. That we would go through. So there we have it.

That's what that's basically the only reason that I do agree to go on book tour. It is because that there'll be cool play. Like I did a talk in, maybe it was Amsterdam or something and I said, I'll come, but you have to find the coolest pool for me to swim in and then get me into the pool because I'm not going to figure anything out. You know, so I, that's, I'm dropping your name at any time I'm doing that now.

Uh, yeah, there, and I don't know why. I think there's just something, and this to me is basically the premise of your book. There's just something special about water and swimming in it. And anytime you can do it, you should avail yourself of set opportunity. That's my philosophy of life. I think you've nailed it on the head. I'm with you.

So what is it? I mean, to me, one argument is still like the last place where there's really no screens. It's room like sensory, what is it? I think, I mean, certainly the sensory muffling, you know, and I mean that in the best way, where you go in, you know, you're, you're, you're, it's a muting of everything else that comes,

the barrage of modern life that comes at you. And it's, again, like what's so beautiful about it, is that once, if you can find a body of water to get into, that is there for you. And to know how to swim, again, like, right, so that back to the agents, everybody thought of swimming as something that was a basic life skill to be a good person. And to be an educated person, to be a person who, you know, could experience life fully and was the skill that was important to have not just for martial purposes, but for the whole human whole person, whole personhood. And that's something I talk about. I've talked about a lot is that swimming, of course, on its surfaces, great, it's great

for your body, but for your mind, it's moving meditation. It is a thing that takes you outside of yourself. It takes you quite a side of your normal element, and you are less alone with your thoughts in a way that can be uncomfortable, but ultimately is really like a special time these days. We are always in front of our screens. We're always connected to the world in good ways in that, right? So I think to have the daily practice of swimming of just being out in the water is that daily check in with yourself?

Do you find that, that ideas come to you when you're swimming? Like I, I remember, oh, absolutely. Yeah. I remember one time I was, I had a pool in Austin and, uh, I was just about to get in and, and someone walked up to me and said, Hey, like, are you Ryan Holiday? I, you know, I, I read your books, like, I just read your new book and I really liked it. And I said, Oh, thank you. That's very nice. I actually wrote most of it in this pool. And they were like, they were like, what are you talking about? You know, and it was true because, you know, you, my schedule, I tend to like to write in the morning and then I'll go swimming or running. And I find that so many of the problems that I was struggling with in the book or the thing I was thinking about sort of magically untangles itself when I'm in the water. Oh for sure. I yes and

yes I wrote a lot of why we swim in the pool or you know out on the water, swimming in the open water or surfing or something like that. I really spent a lot of the time working out the ideas, worrying the ideas. You know, I would sometimes I would go to the pool in the morning and get in and then interrogate myself as I was swimming. What am I thinking about? What am I thinking about? But you know, like, what are the, where is my, Where is my mind ranging to? That was this really, really funny meta, like self-reflection upon self-reflection moment, and then I would get out of the pool and I would go into the locker room and kind of

jot fiercely or take a break now into my phone and just say, what is I, because I would have those moments of clarity and insight and I do think the water really is conducive to that. Got a quick message from one of our sponsors here and then we'll get right back to the show stay tuned. I found I know I said that the wonder waters like the place with no screens, but I actually found my swimming practice was greatly improved by an Apple watch because now I don't think about like counting the laps or the distance or the time or whatever, like having something take that over for me, allow my mind to actually be more meditative because I, you know,

I have some loose sense of how far I am, but it does actually allow me to get lost in the experience of what I'm doing and not have to check in with like, how many laps have I done, how am I going, how much time do I have left, that sort of thing. I am a few miles of avowash because I just recently got one for Christmas and I had never flown with a watch ever and I tried it and I liked

that I tried to give myself over to it but I what one side of my brain couldn't stop counting and and I realized that when you're kicking, when you're doing a kick set, it doesn't register. It's so worthless. It's so worthless. How is nonsense? It's so worthless. It's so worthless. How is nonsense?

It's so worthless. It's so worthless. How is nonsense? It's so worthless. How is nonsense? It's so worthless. It's so worthless. It's so worthless.

How is nonsense? It's so worthless. It's so worthless. How is nonsense? It's so worthless. How is nonsense? It's so worthless. How is nonsenseboard, it's basically, what's so funny though? And this is like, I think for anyone who does distant sports, you realize like just sort of what a prisoner you are to your own mentality, where like, you do it. And then the watch isn't giving you credit for it.

And you're like, like, I actually find myself not wanting to do that, or Matt, as if I've somehow been deprived of the arbitration. Really such a head game. So you have to figure out what makes you feel like you've gotten the reward for doing the thing. How do you, how do you, you know, you blogged it, you could log it with your, you know, just your brain or you can trust the watch, but then also you really need to trust the watch because if it doesn't give you what you want, you're going to feel cheated. So, wrestle about. When you, like, let's say you're swimming in a lab pool. And you're, you're, how do you count? Like, how do you think about it? Do you have a distance you're doing?

Do you think by time, do you break it in the sets? Like, what do you, I find one of the weird things about swimming is like, on the one hand, like, it's wonderful and I feel, it's absence from my life when I don't have it. And then if you describe to me, Michael Phelps' existence, I would want to kill myself. Like there's this fine line between it's therapeutically wonderful and also

perhaps the worst torture you could come up with to inflict on someone just staring at this line over and over and over and over again. It is a be devoling thing. I mean, I understand only a very small amount of what it is to be a competitive swimmer where that starts to really wear on you, you know, that that seamness wears on you mentally. I think that I have enough distance from being growing up for 10 years of the club as a kid, that some incompatibly was something that really does get into your psyche in a way that you have to have a buffer to de-condition yourself from that way of thinking of the act of doing it. So, you know, I've talked about the tour where I had to stop swimming for a while to then

come back to it and deprogram myself to understand that swimming could be something else, right? So I still get into the pool. You know, it is like a certain it is a certain way of being, I have like default workouts that I do that I've done so many times that I don't really have to think about them. Or when I swim with my master's team, that I give my soul home to my coach

and I just do whatever she tells me to do. But when I swim in open water, that's something that is like a completely different thing, right? You, I think that it's more like for time, so that I don't really think about the specifics of doing sets or changing strokes too much, but then it's the attentiveness to the environment, what light is doing, is there a current that's pushing you? I might recalibrate to swim in a certain very much like it's sensorally an alert to what I'm like more to the environment.

And so the presentness is there in that way, like sensitive to where my body is based. But in a pool, because it's a very known distance and environment that is very safe. And so I can go on autopilot and then everything kind of goes more internal. So am I counting laps? And I think, you know, I could be doing, you know, thinking about my stroke,

but I'm also wandering around somewhere else, you know, in my head. It's not as external or focus. Yeah, like when I swim laps, I'm usually counting. And I, so like, let's say I'm doing a mile, I break the mile up into like seven sets of 10. Uh-huh. And you know, I'm thinking that way. So I'm thinking in these really small chunks. So I don't have to keep like running total of anything. But I feel like, yeah, when you're swimming in open water, the weird part is like, what's the line between swimming in open water and snorkeling?

You know, like it's inherently a much more observational process than swimming in a pool, though. What's so wonderful about Barton Springs is like, you're doing both at the same time somehow. Yeah. And the crazy thing about Barton Springs, which I think you'll love, is that it's an eighth of a mile long. So it's like the most magical distance you could come up with for swimming because it's just long enough that it doesn't feel like you're doing laps.

But it's like when I swim with friends, what we'll do, I, my best friend from high school lives in Austin and what we used to swim there every couple weeks and it would be like, okay, so we're start, we'll swim in eighth of a mile, stop and talk, swim in eighth of a mile. Like, you know, the eighth of a mile was the perfect distance to break upsets and enjoy yourself in a way that, like, just swimming in the ocean, you know, sometimes you can't stop because you you have to tread water, which you might as well be swimming. I love that that that your swims and Barton Springs are punctuated by the social moments. Yeah. At every eighth of a mile, I love that. I actually I would say that does not an experience that I have had very often at all.

And so I really look forward to going there and trying it. So going back to this idea of how timeless it is, the other thing I think about was swimming. It's like, obviously we're talking about people who swim, but really it's the water, right? Like you don't actually have to know how to swim to enjoy water. And there's a shallow end to parton springs. And there's this great expression in meditations where Mark's really talks about washing off the dust of earthly life.

And I think that's what swimming is too. Like you sort of feel reborn when you go in and emerge out of the water, even if you didn't get a great workout in, just jumping in is part of it. It feels cleansing. I think I feel cleansing not just to your body but to your mind. I think everyone, whether or not they're the columns of this summer, everyone knows that feeling of plunging in, of jumping in and just feeling of the fruit, that feeling, and I think that's the feeling that we're after. It's that washing away of just for that moment and beyond, if you really get after it,

that it feels like it wipes the slate clean. And I love that element of it. It really does feel like you left behind whatever it was that was preoccupying when you got in. And what I love is when you know you sort of you hear the philosophers sort of talk about these ideas and then you know this is maybe in late 2019 I gave a talk in Budapest. And Budapest is people don't really think of it this way, but Budapest was an outpost at the extreme ends of the Roman Empire.

And you get there and you visit these little towns in Budapest. And the first thing the Romans did was build a bathhouse here, right? And then, and now those, you can swim in a lot of them because they became Turkish bathhouses, which then became sort of now tourist destinations. So it's like, you're swimming in something that, that you're swimming in water bubbling up from the ground, that the Romans experienced, then 1500 years later, the Turks experienced, and you know, 500 years later, you're experiencing. Just the idea that life is dusty and dirty, literally and figuratively,

and then people have been devising ways to wash themselves off. I just, I love that so much. I love that too. I love that like physical tie. I love that like geographic tie. I also think that what is also profound about thinking about our relationship with water is that life death quality, right? So you talked about how you don't have to know how to swim to be able to experience that feeling of self-purification, I mean, it's just what it is.

But there is the fear element and to know how to swim or actually to not know how to swim is to be constantly reminded of your mortality and water. And then once you do know how to swim, you're still reminded of it because you understand the precariousness or this porousness between those states. And I think that, again, part of the daily practice, part of the daily routine for me, not so much in a pool, of course, because of the, you know, that it is this circumscribed known place that's safe.

But to be in open water, to be, something in open water, to be surfing for me, is like this constant awareness in the ocean, that the ocean is hazardous. Constantly renewing hazards and risk and me having to conquer fear to do that thing. I think that is so useful. I think about that a lot lately. I think you're right. I was telling you about Robert Green earlier, and Robert's sort of lifelong swimmer, and he talks, he's working on this book now

about the sublime, sort of sublime experiences and he talks, he's talked about this, I think he talks about in laws of human nature, but he talks about how, you know, sort of we stand on the edge of this fast ocean. And we only understand a glimpse of it from the shoreline, but I think your point that like, a vast ocean isn't just beautiful,

it's also terrifying and dangerous. And you know, like, the ocean can soothe you and restore you and be a fun place to swim around and can also kill you like that. And so there's something special about it. Yeah, and then holding all of those things at once, I mean, that is like the complex and terrible beauty of a relationship with ocean, right? And, you know, and I, in the uncertainty, which is the long,

one piece I wrote recently about a guy named Ron Elliott who he had been, you know, chooses to die with great white sharks in the Farrell Island. Off the coast of San Francisco, every season is the renewing of that understanding, right? So I've, and, and, and why do you do it? You do it because, you know, you're seeking something, some kind of joy from that.

Um, and that seems crazy and stupid. And, you know, from a sort of like statistical standpoint, you have to sort of weigh what that is, but really it's about like what you what you feel that's driving you to do that thing. Got a quick message from one of our sponsors here and then we'll get right back to the show. Stay tuned. Yeah, I like you.

I was on a swim team when I was a kid, but I hated it and it's this weird thing where both with running and swimming, which my parents made me do competitively, I hated, endured it, never wanted to do it again and then our two of the things I feel now deeply upset if I don't get to fit that in in my life. But I think one of the things I learned and sort of try to practice to this day or see as an opportunity each time, I think with water is also like,

there's something important and metaphorical about the jumping in, you know, like the muscle, the literal and figuratively, to jump in water, which you know, even like the nicest pool is like uncomfortable for the first few seconds. Mm-hmm. Yeah, you have to get up the activation energy to do it,

to do it every time, really. You're right, you're totally right. As inviting as it is, as hot a day it is, you have this what second of, you know, you've got to you've hesitate. Yes. That's so funny. Yeah, it is even, even again, like even on the days when you just or can't wait to get in the water, there is some tickle on the back of your brain, right? That's saying hold on to that. What are we doing here?

And it's like, it's sort of like that voice in your head's like, you know you don't have to do this. Right, right. And then you, but then you overcome it for all of the things, all of the reason. Well, have you read the, have you read the Murakami book, what I talk about when I talk about running? Yes. I think he talks about running as being sort of an exercise and a metaphor. I think there's something more to writing too, or it's like every time you're about to, you know you're going to enjoy having written it. You know, it's good. You know

that you want to do it. And yet there is that part of you, you know, Steven Presfield calls it the resistance. There's that part of you right before you start. It's like, what if you just didn't do it? Like, what if you just didn't, what if you just put it off? Maybe tomorrow, like, what if you just didn't do it? Like, what if you just didn't, what have you just put it off? Maybe tomorrow, like, what have you just did it tomorrow? But you gotta, like, you gotta jump in. And that's also the weird thing too with like busy pulls, really. Like, if I don't jump in, I'm gonna lose my spot

and someone else will get in there and then I'm not gonna wait for lane. That's the competitive nature coming out. I think that the, but it is funny, the effort, there's effort required, right? So there's effort required for every reward. And when you think about, you know, I mean, for me, running, I don't love running. And so if I have to run because there's no other way to be active somewhere,

I will think to myself, there's no other way to be active somewhere. I will think to myself, I wish I would like to have run. I would like to have done it, but I don't really wanna do it right now, but I know that when I am done, I will have liked that I did it. So it's funny, I'm bargaining with my teacher self. Yeah, right, you're having to convince yourself to do something

that you know is good for you and will be mildly uncomfortable at least. Like for me, it's not even the jumping in that's uncomfortable is if the water's not like perfect, you know, it's like you know that by the third lap, your body will have warmed itself up. You've gotten your blood going, you won't be thinking

or feeling the temperature, but you still have to swim those first three uncomfortable laps. I have a question for you for someone who is a runner and a swimmer in more equal parts than I think I am. Which brings you more pleasure to do? That's a good question. So I always feel much like I got, and it might not have been true,

but I definitely feel that I've worked out more running than I do swimming. So swimming, if I swam every day, I'd feel like that I'm not pushing myself hard enough, you know, that like I need the push of running. Although I would say the hardest part of the pandemic for me is that I have, I swam in the ocean, I swam in the Gulf twice, but I haven't, I haven't gotten to go to a pool and do any swimming, even though the pool is an austen or outside, it just, I just haven't done it. So I've been running and biking the last year and I miss the sanity and the meditative element

from swimming in a way that I didn't anticipate. Yeah, I think that that is, I think that what you just said is an experience that a lot of swimmers, that what you just said is an experience that a lot of swimmers, no matter how regular their practices, have come, like they've come to that realization over a year in which for most people swimming was taken away for at least a large part of the time. And to understand that there was something that was more than just the physical aspect of doing it,

it is that meditative quality, it is that cleansing immersive property that we talked about. And it's all of those things and it feels really good. It feels really good in a way that's different from land-based exercise. And I think that part of it, that part of the picture has been really thrown into like Star Wars minutes,

you know, in this time. And, you know, for me, the pool closed for a large part of the year, but I was, you know, because I live in Berkeley, I've been able to get into San Francisco Bay, I've been able to get into Pacific Serf and so I feel really lucky. Now in recent months, the pools have been open if you're lucky enough to snag a lane. And really getting into the pool, that is, it's a different kind of,

it's a relief in that it's, there's that safety element, right? There's the, you can give yourself over to it without being afraid as much as, like there's, again, like the alertness that you have to have, like the responsibility of self, for yourself in an ocean or today with currents. And then when you get on the pool, you've got a lifeguard. It's great, you know, you can just do your swim and you work out and you can charge and you can float and you can do whatever and there's something that's relatively comfortable about that. And that's more accessible. Right. So that's.

Yes. I think I think for me to like because Texas has been, you know, obviously, Texas and Florida were both crazy when it came to the pandemic. So you could do a lot of stuff, whether you should is different. And it was sort of weird. It's like what I like about swimming is that I feel calmer and better for having done it. And so the idea of like not that the swimming is dangerous because we know that it's not, but just the experience of the locker room and driving and going through the entrance and all that stuff. I like, I got to a place where having removed all those things from my life

to go through the anxiety or the exposure to get the thing. It was like this weird, it's like you can swim, but you have to cross this really narrow, rickety bridge first. I'd be like, I know, and I'm just gonna, I'm gonna go for a run instead. I know. What is it? What is the net anxiety at the end of the experience? Yeah. Yeah. I think and no one needs to add that to their, you know, to their anxiety right now. Well, and of all the things that limit me from swimming, I would say actually like there's a, you know, running, actually, this is funny, Mark really talks about this in meditations because it's better to be a boxer than a fencer because a boxer doesn't need any tools.

Right. That you just close your fists and you can do it. One of the things that I think with swimming, it's like, okay, you've got to drive to the place. You know, you've got to change, you've got to shower, you put on your goggles, you swim, it takes longer to get the same workout, and then you've got to shower and drive and come home.

Like, you know, it's like, let's say I'm working at my office or at my house, and it's like, okay, I'm gonna run. If I'm gonna go on a 30 minute run, that takes 32 minutes of time, like one minute to put on your shoes shoes and one minute to take them off. Swimming, there is a larger buy-in unless you, you know, you happen to live in, you know, on the beach or something. There's a lot, there's a, there's a buy-in, I'm not saying the pay-outs not worth the reward, but there is a higher buy-in to swimming in some ways.

Yeah, there is. I mean, there's definitely, um, it's like the, yeah, whatever stuff that you need to get. I think that when you, when we, when people will think about taking up the sport, uh, again, it's the activation energy of not just getting to the place where you have to practice the thing, but what are the things you need to acquire to do the things? And I think about surfing in that way, in warm weather and warm water, in CDU, you have a board and then you just paddle out. And here, I got the wet suit, I've got the booties, I've got the gloves, I've got, you know, it's so much, it's like, you feel so burdened by that, but then when you get out, that's when you, you know, of course, when you're doing

it, it feels wonderful on your glove that you have done, right? It's like being a hockey goalie, it's like a group's position in all recreational sports. You know, let me get to the corner. Right. And you have to carry all the gear. You know, it's just like, it's just, it, it definitely cuts into the, to the, the margins of the experience. It's the opposite of the freedom of movement that we've been talking about, that we want, right? of the freedom of movement that we've been talking about that we want, right?

Well of all my first world problems, you might be able to relate to this one, which is, we live out in the country in Austin and our house as a pool. It was there when we bought it. But I feel like the person who designed the pool did it to taunt me, which is that they made a perfectly rectangular pool that is nine yards long. So it has none of it. It's not like curvy. There's no diving board. It's not like special for kids in any way. You know, like a like a kids pool, like your typical backyard pool. It looks like a lap pool. And then you get in it, you know, like I can do two strokes here. And that's the, it's like they did it to taunt me. I think he just needed to think about it as a bathing social site. Yes. Well, that's it.

I remember one time when we first moved there, I was in the pool with my wife, and I was like, do you want to like swim laps or something, and she was like, you know, you can just be in the water, right? Like you you could just do that. There's the wisdom right there. Well, and I was laughing at that and then, you know, a couple of months later, my parents came to visit and

my dad gets in the pool and he suddenly like, he gets on this mask and because we had a pool growing up and he's like swimming around the pool, inspecting it. He gets out and he has this report for me about all the, the plaster's coming off here. I think, and I was like, ah, this is where I get it. You can't get in the pool without it becoming a home improvement project.

Yeah. He had to examine the grout and the structural integrity. I love how different our brains work when we approach a thing. I just love that he looked at it and thought, all right, I got to, this is something that I can do. You know, and that both of us got in and couldn't it doesn't occur to either of us that you can just enjoy the magical experience of totally safe water like three feet from your house, you know, I think that's indicative of the modern condition as well. That's where your wife comes in. She's going to remind you. Yes. Yes. So you've mostly swam in open water the last year? And now you're just getting back in the pool?

Yeah, the last few months, my local pool reopened. And so there has been opportunity to do that. There's been math�'s swimming just started up again in that pool so I can go in a couple of times a week and do the workout distance from everyone else. But I did do that and it felt really good. It just, yeah, it's, but in, I would say, last year ago, year ago, April is when I really started swimming

in San Francisco Bay in earnest, more regularly. The way I would, you know, we talked about sort of the making at a routine, right? So that driving 12 minutes to the bay to swim at that beach and do that swim is something that I built into my schedule, so that I didn't have to think about it. So, it didn't occupy the space in my brain that it would have before when it was like more novel and I could, you know, be making the decision. I'm just having made the decision and it's on the calendar and then I'll

do it. And so it was just like this re-jigging of the routine in a way that worked for me. You know, so I could go from the morning, I could write, go some in the morning, and then come back and write some more, and that worked because it was just, you know, my, I don't feel well if I'm not regularly in the water. I really don't. And that's something that I became magnified in this pandemic year because, you know know I didn't get out this morning

because the conditions were bad and I didn't have a poor, the the third conditions were bad and I didn't have a poor reservation. So I went for a walk before talking to you and to just to try to like get my body feeling calm enough to sit down and have a conversation so that I could feel like I was me. Like I really do feel that the water is something that is my daily tonic and it has been so obvious and has become so obvious. The last years that I don't get it, I am the craziest person, you know, within a five mile rate of my house. I know.

What I would say is for people who that sounds totally strange, I would bet. It's like one of those things where, you know, sometimes you do an elimination diet, or you add, you cut something out of your diet, and you don't realize that actually you're mildly allergic to it, or it's making you uncomfortable. It's, I think it's one of those diet and you don't realize that actually your mildly allergic to it or is making it uncomfortable.

It's, I think it's one of those things where you actually, until you've added it into your life, you don't, you don't fully understand what you were missing by not having it be a regular occurrence in your life. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Well, this was amazing. I look forward to hopefully swimming together someday. Please let me know when you come. I'm to Austin. We'll go to Barton's.

We go to Barton Springs. You go to San Marcos. The other weird one is Hamilton pool, which is a very strange sort of this natural grotto. And then there's this thing called Jacob's well, which you can't swim in, but it's like. It's like the size of maybe a normal bedroom across. this natural grotto, then there's this thing called Jacob's Well, which you can't swim in, but it's like the size of maybe a normal bedroom across.

It's just like 90 feet deep straight down that you can see. It's like a well that you swim in. It's very weird. I think we're just going to have a tour of all the pools around Austin, and we can save that for last for like, probably. There's a book meditation. There's a there's a book we'll have to use called the swimming holes of Texas, which is one of my favorite books. Thank you so much Ryan. Of course, thank you. I appreciate it. Starting this morning, the boy

who would begin is just a dollar 99 on Kindle. It's a huge discount, but the price creeps up every hour until it's back to its full price tomorrow. So don't wait, check out the boy who would be king on Kindle today and get it for $199 on Kindle. Hey, Prime Members. You can listen to the Daily Stokeic 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.