The Daily Stoic - James Clear, Robert Greene, Brad Stulberg, Tom Nichols, and Julia Baird on the Writer’s Process

Episode Date: January 1, 2022

Today’s episode features some of the best interviews with authors from 2021. Ryan talks to James Clear about how to begin and maintain productive habitual action, Robert Greene about the process of writing some of his bestselling books and his newest book The Daily Laws, Brad Stulberg about practical steps to alleviate the anxiety that comes with the lifelong pursuit of greatness, Tom Nichols about what it means to take your responsibilities as a responsible citizen seriously, and Julia Baird about how the journey towards achieving stillness requires incremental progress. → We hope you join us in the 2022 New Year New You Challenge. It’s 3 weeks of actionable challenges, presented in an email per day, built around the best, most timeless wisdom in Stoic philosophy. Just go to https://dailystoic.com/challenge to sign up before sign ups end on January 1st!Reframe is a neuroscience based smartphone app that helps users cut-back or quit drinking alcohol. Using evidence-based tools, techniques and content, Reframe guides users through a personalized program to help them reach their goals. To learn more go to JOINREFRAMEAPP.COM/stoic and use the code STOIC for 25% off your first month or annual subscription. Download Reframe on the App Store today.Trade Coffee will match you to coffees you’ll love from 400+ craft coffees, and will send you a freshly roasted bag as often as you’d like. Trade is offering your first bag free and $5 off your bundle at checkout. And, this holiday season, give the coffee lover in your life the gift of better coffee too, with their own personalized gift coffee subscription from Trade. To get yours, go to drinktrade.com/DAILYSTOIC and use promo code DAILYSTOIC. Take the quiz to start your journey to the perfect cup.Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://DailyStoic.com/dailyemailCheck out the Daily Stoic Store for Stoic inspired products, signed books, and more.Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, FacebookSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hey, prime members, you can listen to the Daily Stoic podcast early and add free on Amazon music. Download the app today. Welcome to the weekend edition of the Daily Stoic. Each weekday we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stoics. Something to help you live up to those four Stoic virtues of courage, justice, temperance, and wisdom. And then here on the weekend, we take a deeper dive into those same topics. We interview stoic philosophers, we explore at length how these stoic ideas can be applied to our actual lives and the challenging issues of our time. Here on the weekend when you have a little bit more space when things have slowed down, be sure to take some time to think, to go for a walk, to sit with your journal and most importantly to prepare for what the week

ahead may bring. Hi, I'm David Brown, the host of Wunderree's podcast business wars. And in our new season, Walmart must fight off target, the new discounter that's both savvy and fashion-forward. Listen to business wars on Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoke Podcast. As you know, I love books. They're what I make when I do for fun. And then of course, if that wasn't enough, I also have this bookstore,

The Pain in Portshire in Bastrop, Texas, which all of you are welcome at and I'd love to see you at some time. But one of the perks, of course, of the Daily Stoke Podcast is that I get to talk to authors of books that I like. I get to, now as I'm reading, particularly new books that have just come out, I'm thinking like, oh, I want to ask the author about this, right?

Or that reminds me of this. I want to talk to Sohn so about that. And so one of the perks of doing the podcast now for two years, three years, I don't know, doing these interviews is that I get to talk to authors I admire about the books and I get to bring that to you. And in this special bonus episode, it's a compilation episode. It's on the best interviews. I think I've ever done with authors talking about some big ideas from their books. James Clear is going to be talking to us about how to get 1% better every day. Robert Green for his part is going

to be talking about the power of daily practice. Brad Stulberg on the practice of groundedness. Tom Nichols on the assault on modern thinking, right, misinformation, disinformation, and Julia Bard is talking to us about the idea of phosphorescence, which I think is so important and so beautiful. Really happy to bring you this compilation episode. And this is me chatting with James Clear, if you haven't read Atomic Habits, absolutely should, fantastic book. I think it was actually the first book that we sold at the Painted Porch, click a link in the show notes, or pick it up at the Painted Porch, or wherever you buy books. A New Year's resolution, the problem with that

is that you are focusing, you are starting with the result. I want to lose 40 pounds, I want to learn, I want to know Spanish, you know? Like, you're picking a thing and you're saying, I want to get that result. When really what you're talking about identity,

you're also talking about process. It should be, I want to eat better meals on a daily basis as opposed to, I want to get a certain thing, or I want to write a book is not the right goal. It should be, I'm going to start writing. Like, you know, it's doing the thing versus focusing on the outcome.

Well, and this is kind of one of the, I don't know, discoveries I had as I was working on the book and writing about the topic more is that when you stick to the process, like you're saying right now, when you like perform habits consistently, every action you take is like a vote for the type of person you want to become. And so by doing those habits, you're casting these little votes for the type of person that you are, the identity that you believe you have. You're sort of reinforcing that internal narrative. And so by building small habits, by sticking to the process, you are in that moment reinforcing that identity. And ultimately, once you get to that point where you say,

hey, actually, you know, I've done this enough times, I think this is part of my story. Like, I am a basketball player, I am a meditator, I am a writer, or whatever it is, you're no longer pursuing behavior change at that point because you're already, you're not trying to be someone new, you're just acting in alignment with the type of person you see yourself to be. And, you know, like take, you know, you're a great example of this as, say, someone who has the identity of a writer or an author. Now, that doesn't necessarily mean

the task of writing is easy for you or that it doesn't require any effort, but the act of writing every day is in alignment with how you view yourself. The internal narrative of I'm an author or I'm a writer, you're not like trying to convince yourself or in the case of many habits or New Year's resolutions, people say things like, I need to get motivated or I need to get amped up or like I need the willpower to do it.

And like, you don't necessarily need to get motivated to be a writer. You already view yourself in that way. Now, you still need to stick to the habit. You still need to do the work. But I think it's the work takes on a different characteristic at that point. Once you start to identify as the type of person who does that consistently. And it's sort of paradoxical. So I get why it's hard for people to understand.

You hear Bill Bellic, check or someone talk about the process, and you're like, but you've won the most games out of anyone. Or in Zen and the Art of Artory, he talks about put the target out of your mind. What's the point of archery if you talks about, put the target out of your mind. What's the point of archery if you're not aiming at the target? So it feels insane, and that's probably why people have resistance to it. And I think where I've come down is like, obviously, having goals is better than someone who has no goals. But then it's like, once you have the goal, philosophically, you get to a place where the goal becomes not important. So it's a weird contradiction you have the goal, philosophically, you get to a place where the goal becomes not important. So it's a weird contradiction that you're asking people to wrap their heads around.

Well, and I kind of feel like if you really care about the goal, you'll focus on the system. Like if you actually care about getting the result, which supposedly is what we all are doing this for, the archers trying to hit the bulls eye, the football players trying to win the championship and so on, supposedly results matter so much when we care so much about them. And this is coming by the way from someone who is very results oriented. Like I've kind of had to, you know, like do therapy on myself or whatever to get myself to focus on the process more and not be so hung up on the outcome. But if you do care about the outcome so much, then you need to focus on the system in the process because that's how you actually achieve it.

And furthermore, being outcome focused will help you achieve a goal one time. But if you wanna keep winning again and again, you have to be focused on the system. And so goals are good for one time wins, systems are for people who wanna win repeatedly. And I feel like that's kind of where I how I think about the distinction between the two. Yeah, what's that what's that joke where it's like once you're lucky twice you have good systems you know twice you're good you know it's like doing

it once is easy or it can be random but if you're trying to replicate it there needs to be some sort of process right and I be curious too as an like again, this is because the sports thing is, you want your book to be successful. No one writes a book and then they hope nobody reads it. But then they also, the place this process comes in, Mark really talks about this, he goes like, sanity is tying your happiness to your own actions. You know, like if you're a goal on your book,

it like you can't really have a system that guarantees you too much of the external results. So you can't have a system that is going to make your book a number one year or times or so. You can have a system that should generate a good book. You know, like you can have the system to focus on the parts that are in your control and then you also have to get to a place where you write off the parts that are not in your control as being Much less consequential. Yeah, I kind of think about it like you have things that you don't control at all the weather for example Then you have things that you influence, but you don't control them

You know like if you're playing someone in tennis you can influence the outcome You can't control how they play or where they shoot the hit their shots or whatever And then you have things that you're like fully under your control, you know, what you choose to wear today or whatever. And most of the things that really matter in life fall in the middle category, you can influence them, but you can't totally control them.

And so at some point, at least for myself, like with writing atomic habits, I had to kind of be at peace with the effort that I put in or something. I didn't want to get to the end of it, depending on how you measure it, it took somewhere between three to five years to finish the book. I didn't want to get to the end of that process and feel like I hadn't given the best effort I could. Now, I hoped it would do well and hit a best sellers list and sell a bunch

copies and all that, but I can't control that. But I just wanted to feel like I had influenced every bit of that process that I could. And then, you know, then we'll see what happens. And, you know, there's always something more you could have done, but I'm at peace with the effort I gave, you know, and I feel like that's, uh, that was probably the most important thing for me. And then the fact that it has worked out well, you know, just makes it all feel much better afterward. Yeah, that's, that's the extra. But I mean, imagine if you'd gotten the results, but you knew that it wasn't as good, like, you know, like, that's, that's a weird position to be in that I've been in at different times in my life. And I'm sure you've seen it with

articles or something where you did a pretty good job, but it wasn't like your best. Yeah. There's a, there's a weirdness to it. I mean, you still enjoy it. There's something about the, there's something about the struggle that makes the outcome more, you know, enjoyable. Like I think about, imagine if you would spend your whole career, you played football as

a kid and through high school and college and you're finally like the kicker on the Super Bowl winning team and you kick the field goal to win the game. And how that would feel after spending 25 years your life dedicated toward that goal versus being like a professional soccer player and then you retire and you're like, Hey, you know what? I might try out for a team and then you turns out you can be the kicker and then the starter gets hurt and you end up, hey, you know what, I might try out for a team. And then you turns out you can be the kicker. And then the starter gets hurt and you end up kicking the game when you feel goal and the super bowl. And it's like, it would still be really cool, but I don't know that it would be the

same because you don't have the struggle before it. And so there needs to be some kind of, yeah, the height of your joy is tied to the depth that you're sorrow in that sense. And the more that you, the more effort that you put in, the better it feels when you do have some success. There's a story I just found, and you can't steal it because it's going to be in my next book. But Jimmy Carter was a nuclear engineer before he was a politician and before, I guess, before he was a peanut farmer, but he went to the Naval Academy and he was sort of up for this promotion as a naval officer and he was interviewed by Admiral Rickover

who single-handedly basically invents the idea of a nuclear submarine. And anyways, he's in this long interview and these notoriously like insane interviews. He was like a really difficult guy to please. And so he's asking Jimmy Carter about all his accomplishments and he goes, you know, you know, how did you, how did you do in your class at at the Naval Academy? And he says, oh, I was 59th in my class of 400, which is extremely difficult

and he said, how did you do on this posting? And he goes through and he's like sort of beaming, listing all his accomplishments. And Rick over looks at him and he just goes, did you always do your best? And he was like, he was gonna be like, yes, look at all my accomplishments. And then he thought about it and he said, no, I didn't always do my best. And then Rick over just got up and left the room.

And Jimmy Carter said the rest of his life was trying to provide a better answer to that question. And so it was interesting to me to go like, he'd had this incredible career as one of the top people in the Navy, top of his class. But as soon as he had to look at it from the side of, like was it actually the best he was capable of doing, the accomplishment became totally meaningless.

And I think that's a good microcosm of life. Yeah, that's fantastic. That's a wonderful example of this idea. And it also encourages you to measure outcomes in a different way. Like we spend so much time measuring outcomes on how they are relative to everyone else. How much money am I making relative to the person next to me?

Or what is the number on the scale relative to the other people and on the team or in my class or whatever? All these other things that are like status symbols of some sort. And this is like an internal measure, which is also interestingly, both of those are about feelings. One is about how you feel compared to others, and one is about how you feel with like your

self-esteem and reputation with yourself. And I don't know, there's, I think there's probably a strong encouragement to measure it more in the second way than the first. Well, it's funny because both our mutual friend, Mark Manson, and I used this story of Dave Mistain in our, I did an egosianomy and he did it in the subtle art. But here's this guy, he's the lead guitarist and founder of Megadeth, that seems like a great accomplishment,

but in light of the fact that he was kicked out of Metallica, that's not an accomplishment. And it's like so many people would kill to a sold the amount of books that you've sold. But then you, so you can, and if I told you at the beginning of your book, this is what you're going to have, you'd be like, that's an unmitigated success. But you can still, but, but that's the problem with comparison and, and focusing on things that are outside of your control is you can immediately render your own accomplishment

meaningless by, by looking at someone who sold one more than you. And that's like the thing we do to ourselves. I don't know why we do that. You that's like the shitty thing we do to ourselves. I don't know why we do that. You know, like I've fallen to that just as much as everybody else. You could get like whatever your current level of output is or successes that becomes your new baseline.

And then you just look at whoever is slightly above that and then you, you feel the way you did before. And it's like, you need to remind yourself when you wanted what you currently have. You know, like there's so many things about my current lifestyle that I've spent the last decade working toward. And like I thought that was the thing I really wanted, you know, and then you get to hear and you feel differently. So I don't know, I, um, there's some kind of recalibration that goes on there. There's some kind of encouraging, of encouraging type of encouragement that we all need to like focus on those good bits that we have earned already rather than

always looking toward the next milestone. And I think this also connects back to what we were talking about a minute ago with process versus goals or systems versus outcomes, which is that this is one of the downsides of being goal oriented, is that you're always looking at the next milestone versus being process-oriented or system-oriented, which is, you know, I can feel really good about myself right now because I got two good hours of writing in this morning, and that was an accomplishment,

and it felt like a good day already. You know, like the day has already been a victory. I don't need to, like, be thinking about all these other huge goals and then also turn it into a failure. And here is my interview with the one and only Robert Green. I got to talk to him a couple times this year, twice in person, which was just incredible for me. And I got to work on help bring into existence

his wonderful new book, The Daily Laws, Meditations on Power Strategy, Seduction and Mastery. It's actually the second best-selling book the daily laws, meditations on power, strategy, seduction, and mastery. It's actually the second best-selling book in the Painted Ports this year. Check that out and here is my interview with Robert Green on the Daily Laws. This is the new book, The Daily Laws.

I see it as kind of a greatest hits at one, a best of Robert Green. Because to me, I feel like it's a question people ask me a lot. They'll hear me or someone else talking about you and then they'll know what Robert Green looks like to start with. And it's kind of a tricky thing

because if you go 40 hours of power, maybe they get turned off because it's dark. If you went with seduction, maybe that's not what they're in. To me, it's actually a question I get with the Stokes too, like who should you went with seduction, maybe that's not what they're in. To me, it's actually a question I get with the Stukks too, like, who should you start with? It feels really hard, but this is to me perfect because it's basically the best of all of your stuff in the most digestible way. Like I was talking to a football player actually, I used to play at Alabama and he was, he

had heard that the laws of human nature was really good. And I thought, that's probably, to me that's like advanced class rock green, maybe not where I would start if I was 19 years old. Yeah, it depends, it depends on your background. And if you read a lot of books on psychology, and if you can stem it going through a nearly 600 page book. But it's you know I have a lot of people who you wouldn't think would be reading the laws of human nature but

are reading slowly and bit by bit and particularly here in a situation where you're dealing with a lot of difficult people. But the way I look at the book is a little bit differently in that I sort of see like it embodied kind of two main lessons that I've derived in life. The first one was, you know, unlike you, I did not have any success in my life until I was essentially 38 years old. And prior to that, I had a lot of very painful experiences. I kind of wandered my way through the work world.

And I was sort of entered the work world out of college with all of these silly illusions about people, about success, about who I was. And slowly, they all got knocked down one by one. And it was very painful and very emotional and it caused me a lot of drama and it probably set me back several years. Although in the end, gave me all the material

for the 48 loss of power. And what I sort of learned from all of that crap that occurred to me was that really what I needed to forge was kind of this realistic outlook on life. I tried to where I get rid of all the bullshit, all the things that you learn in university, all the bad ideas that you got from your parents, all the bad ideas that you get from your peers, and you're able to look at the world relatively objectively, and I mean relatively. And it doesn't mean that life

becomes this kind of boring gray world, it actually becomes more exciting and fulfilling. And so I learned that the hard way, that kind of realistic attitude, which I was forged through a lot of battles, is really, really what allowed me to write the 48 laws of power. And the second thing was the power of daily practice of habits. Now I've been meditating for about 11,

exactly 11 years now every single day, I'm just a single day. At Miss One Day, I make sure the next day I do two times. And the habit of doing it every day is just very fulfilling because something hasn't forward to it. And it's really helped have a profound effect upon me. But habits of work and discipline

where every day you attack something is where the power of our brain operates maximally. So this is a book that every day is going to make you meditate on something and it's going to infuse you with that realistic outlook that I think kind of actually literally saved my life. No, I think that's right because what I found with the Daily Stoke is you read it once and you're getting the sort of greatest hits, survey course of the works and thinking of Robert Greene. And there is a lot of value in that, and that's more than the 26th dollar or whatever the book

costs. But it's really on read number two and three, or 50, depending on how you're on the more of anybody by the book. That's where the value of the daily practice is. I imagine your meditation is relatively the same as it was 10 years ago, 15 years ago. And the power is the groove you get into doing the same thing over and over again. And I think, as you said, you mentioned the laws of human nature at 600 pages. So there's a percentage of the population that can read a 600 page book, but how many

people are going to take time to read a 600 page book two or three times, and the books that have really influenced me have been books that I've interacted with over the course of my life. Yeah, I think there's something really special about the data practice. This is what, like for instance, daily or nightly Bible study is for certain people. It's, again, the words are the same, but you're different. And what you just went through or are going to go through that day is different. This is that Heraclitus idea that we never stepped in the same river twice.

I think there's something really cool about revisiting the same ideas up and over again. Well, the thing is, my plus is always been, you have to make ideas your own. You have to take with somebody, teachers, and you have to put it into your own experience. It can't just be these dead words. Yes. That you kind of digest that have no relevance to your daily experience. You have to take them, they have to come to life within you,

within your own experience. So you read a passage and it's not maybe what I'm really going through right now, but you kind of maybe recall some experiences in the past that might be relevant. And then the second day you come up with something that is maybe a little bit closer. And then as you go through it more and more and more, the kind of soaks in, and you see more and more access points to your daily experience, and then it becomes something that you internalize. Yeah, I talk about sort of using the confirmation bias, like against itself,

or using the confirmation bias to your advantage. So like I'll hear from people and be like, how did you know on today's entry, the daily stuff, but this is exactly what I need. Well, the truth is, I didn't, right? I wrote it five years ago, and you might be in Australia and someone in America

might be reading different entries on the same day. So it's really that we bring to the text exactly what we need. It's why fortune cookies and horoscopes seem to have power is that we see in them what we already knew, but couldn't articulate to ourselves. And there's sort of a delphic quality there where like it's just vague like your passages are just short enough, just general enough that whatever you're going through, it could feel like that was exactly the advice that you needed that morning.

I had the experience, very weird experience with the 48 loves of power when it first came out. I would go, it was my very first book tour and I would go to Love's in Washington and I went to the, what was it called, Voice of America. And this woman comes running up to me in the hall where she, God that book that you just describe exactly what I'm going through. Everything is just so perfect, you must know, Washington really was, and not in it. The same thing happens to someone who's in the, in the, what's the charitable world he called it,

the non-profit, the non-profit world. It's the same thing, then athletes will say it. So yeah, you kind of project and your own emotions, your own experiences of the moment into what you're reading. That's totally viable. And I think that's also what happens when it's why Buddhism and Stoicism and Christianity often feel very aligned, even though they didn't particularly influence each other, because also when you boil something down to his essence, like in the way that in comedy, the really specific becomes universal because it's actually not that specific, it's

tapped into something uniquely human that everyone can relate to even if the experiences are very different. Yeah, yeah. So I was also thinking when we were talking about this book that in a way, maybe not everyone knows this, but I actually think that daily concept is slightly, it goes back to the very beginning for you because if I remember correctly,

you told me once that the original plan for the 40 laws of power was 52 laws, which could have been a week, a reading a passage a week, although if I remember correctly, you got rid of that specifically, so people didn't do that. Yeah, it was also like playing cards, which they're 52 weeks. Right. I mean, but the calendar 52 weeks. But I mean, what happened was, I mentioned the story before, is the publisher, normally my relationship to publish is, don't tread on

me, hands off, get a spar away from my material as possible. Do not edit it, I don't trust you. But in this, in spring, I'm open to their ideas, no, in this instance, they said, 52 laws of power doesn't sound so great. What we really want is 48 and the 52 sounded too much like a gimmick. Yeah. And I agree, because I can't be rigid about things. Sure. So what I did was I took four of the laws combined them

with other ones. So I didn't get rid of anything. I just kind of made into 40 and I just sort of fitted it in. Well, that is the 48th law. Well, as soon as I'm formalist this, right? That actually they can be moved around and combined with each other. I'm also violating a law. It seems, don't show your own tricks, but that's true. And it's 20, three years later, so I don't really care anymore.

But isn't it also funny that, like, so when you're working on it, it could be 42, it could be 48, and then once it's done and in the world, it's like 48, it is obviously the right number. Like no other number before. Yeah, people obviously, what's the 49th law far as if there's no such thing, it's only 48th of all. This is everything in the universe. But, you know, numbers have kind of a feel to them, you know,

and so the number 48 has a kind of power already in it, which is where as 47 or 46 doesn't have that kind of resonance. Although if it had been the 47 miles of power, and it had sold millions of copies and had the influence, I think everyone would be saying, obviously, there's no 48's box, but there's only 47 months. Yeah, that's true, that's true. So it's a research of backwards

and we're like, it could have only been the way that it was. But in reality, there was, it was more malleable than it was. It was, and to be honest with you, when I first started doing the research for God so many years ago, I had like 72 laws. I mean, the original concept was, I was going through all my research and yoast the man kind of packaged his march

and I did the cover of this book. He said, well, Robert, what do you, how's it coming? And I said, well, I'm working on these kind of laws of power. He goes, wow, that sounds great. Just that phrase. Yeah, yeah. And he goes, I said, yeah, I kind of have like 72,

and he goes, well, just can no longer do it. And then I sort of like, Rich kept reducing, the reducing, and the reducing, until it came to 48, so we're all just 72, ever. Raising kids can be one of the greatest rewards of a parent's life. But come on, someday, parenting is unbearable.

I love my kid, but is a new parenting podcast from Wondry that shares a refreshingly honest and insightful take on parenting. Hosted by myself, Megan Galey, Chris Garcia, and Kurt Brownleur, we will be your resident not so expert experts. Each week we'll share a parenting story that'll have you laughing, nodding, and thinking, oh yeah, I have absolutely been there. We'll talk about what went right and wrong, what would we do differently? And the next time you step on yet another stray Lego in the middle of the night, you'll feel less

alone. So if you like to laugh with us as we talk about the hardest job in the world, listen to, I love my kid, but wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen ad-free on the Amazon Music or Wondery app. Here is me chatting with Brad Stolberg. His new book, The Practice of Groundedness is wonderful. I also like his book, Peak Performance. So here's me talking with Brad.

Yeah, I was thinking about this idea of groundedness, which is the new book like I was thinking about how much more literally grounded my life is. Like I was walking on a dirt road this morning instead of concrete, there were no cars going by. I was outside. Like I think there's also, none of almost nowhere you can live in the United States

at this point is like sort of pristine nature. But I do think the A, even the suburbs are more natural than the sort of concrete, jungle, busy city life, which I find like, I think it wasn't until I moved out of New York city that I was quite, and then I went back, like I moved out, and then now when I travel there, particularly as I've gotten older, how much, how viscerally the noise pollution affects me, like you go through your life not hearing large trucks

or horns or jackhammers, and then you hear them and you're like, oh wow, this is awful, like this isn't natural to hear all the time, and you can get really used to hearing it, so you're not aware of the harm, the procussive harm that's having on your body, but it is there. Yeah.

The biologist E.O. Wilson has done fascinating research that basically shows that if you think of our species on the 24-hour clock for about 23 hours, and I don't know, 57 to 56 minutes, we lived in these open spaces in bands and tribes of between 10 and 150 people. So the frenetic tumult of city living to an extent, even suburban living, is very unnatural to how our mind embodies evolved. Now are we evolving with it in some ways?

Yes, but I think that a lot of modern illnesses, anxiety, depression, you can throw burnout in there are very much because the pace of cultural evolution has outpaced what our mind body systems can do. If you put someone in an environment that is extremely frenetic, then it's not surprising that that person will have a tendency to become more frenetic themselves. Yeah, although one thing I struggle with and I talk about this at the beginning of stillness is the key. I sort of tell this scene of Seneca in his apartment in Rome. There's all like shockingly modern sort of busy noises.

And he says, you know, I forced my mind to concentrate and I keep it from straying to things outside itself. All outdoors may be bedlam, provided there's no disturbance within. I don't wanna say it's guilt, but there is a part of me that thinks, like, you know, if you really are Zen or you really are still, or you really have done the philosophical work, you should be able to have stillness or peace or quiet or happiness

in any environment. And so is there, again, it doesn't, it's not weakness, but is it somewhat of a, of a cheat to just opt out of all that entirely and live sort of an artificially isolated or, you know, protected or privileged lifestyle. Do you know what I mean? For sure, and I think there's a huge spectrum. And perhaps one extreme is living in a monastery where the outside world is completely cupped at bay. And then on the other extreme might be living in Manhattan. And is either right or wrong?

No, I don't like to put a value judgment around it. I think what I am saying and certainly what my research and reporting has showed is that for most people, your temperament can get you so far, doing your individual work can get you so far, and environment matters a lot to. Are there people that have achieved tranquility of mine and calm, and as you would call it stillness, that can be in the midst of just total circus and remain at ease and calm for sure. Are those people few and far between and is that harder than what most people have the capacity

for? Yes, I think so. And then it's like, if you have a choice, why not make it a little bit easier on yourself? I mean, I'd certainly find myself more creative, more calm, more grounded, living outside of a big city than in it. And life is for me more than just like a big self-improvement project, so I might as well be happy here. Yeah, right. No, it's sort of like... I think this is something you see in meditations a lot, Mark Sirillo, sort of doesn't want to be emperor. He's sort of forced upon him. And so he's writing to himself about,

you know, how you can be happy anywhere, you know, how you should focus on, you can retreat inside your soul any moment, which is all well and good. But if he actually, if there actually was a path in which he could not be emperor and it wasn't an abdication of duty, then, I guess I don't see anything philosophically wrong with taking it.

So yeah, if you're fleeing to a monastery to escape Bingham, problems or responsibilities, then that's not what we're talking about. If you're doing it to optimize or refiner, you're doing it because you have a spectrum of options and you're choosing the best option for you, there's probably no problem with that. Yeah, I said bingo, because I think you hit the nail on the head there, man. I think in general, not just when it comes to a place to live,

but if you're running away from something or trying to escape something, generally speaking, that's gonna come back to butt you in the ass. If you are moving escape something, generally speaking, that's going to come back to butt you in the ass. If you are moving towards something, generally speaking, that's a good decision. And it's a subtle nuance difference, but I think that it takes you either all the way in a route towards avoidance and diminishing your life

or all the way in a route towards enlarging your life. Yeah, I think that's what I said. Are you stepping towards the challenge or are you running away from the challenge? Yup, or in ground in this, the framework that I use is like core values. So what are your core values? What do you really value?

And are you escaping something that's scary? Or are you moving to being greater alignment with those core values? There's all kinds of extreme examples. Somebody that's in recovery might make the decision to leave a community where there are users, or even just for the physical environment triggers use. Sure. Now, is that person weak? I guess it depends on who you're asking, but if that person's core value of sobriety or clear-mindedness trumps their core value of community, then of course they're going to leave their community.

And I think that so many people, myself included, I think it's almost impossible to live in the 21st century and not be a little bit addicted to conventional definitions of success and all the striving that comes with it. I think place for me plays a big role in that. So if I could get out of a place that felt like I was more in this conventional success, you're defined by what you have, everything is super expensive to a place more where success is like, I actually spent two and a half hours working on my garden. I just feel better as a result.

Yeah, and I think, I think if you're, is running, is moving away because it triggers you or makes it hard to be sober, is that a move of weakness or is it just as easily a move of strength because it's coming from a place of self-awareness. So you're saying, look, I have this sort of problem. I don't want to say addiction is self-discipline,

but you're saying, I have a problem being disciplined about something. So I'm going to make a giant move out of discipline to reduce my exposure to potential lapses in discipline. So I like that. Yeah. Are you resisting the peanut M&Ms on your counter? Are you not buying them at the grocery store?

Yes. And for a lot of people, it's easier not to buy them at the grocery store. And I think it's important to call out like the ability to move does require a certain set of like I don't love to use the word privilege broadly, but I'll use it here, a certain amount of privilege. And I think it's really funny because I first started tinkering with this idea

back in 2017 and a story I wrote for outside magazine when my family was getting serious about leaving the Bay Area. And I got all these notes saying, well, you know, how could you ever suggest that people move, it takes so much privilege, you're just another person that is out of touch. And of course, all those notes were coming from people that lived in like New York City, L.A. or San Francisco.

Yeah, so this isn't necessarily for everyone, but I think probably for lots of people that tune into this podcast, I think that it's often not a lack of privilege or a lack of autonomy, it's a lack of imagination to make decisions like this. No, I talk about moving an immigration a little bit in the new book on courage and it's interesting. Some people use sort of lack of resources as a reason to move, and some people use it as an excuse not to move. But I'm always amazed when people, they find out that I live on a farm

or that I move to Texas or whatever, they're sort of like, how could you do that? And it's like, by making a lot less money than you do, right? Like the people that are often amazed that one could do something like that are actually not impressed or surprised by the lack of, by the privilege that made it possible. It's mostly about the commitment or the actual want or desire or sort of, again, sounds like

an overstatement, but also courage. Like, I guarantee you that what I purchased my farm for is less than many people I know's apartment in New York City. So it's often not so much an issue of resources, but about determination, commitment, or as you said, sort of core values. If it's important to you, you can figure it out. Again, this is not true to someone who's trapped in a, in a, in a, in a projects, in an inner city or something. They're obviously some people who are unable

to change circumstances or environment for a bunch of reasons that are outside their control. I think you tend to find the people who are quickest with the, oh, I could never do that. Actually, could very easily do it. They've just decided not to. Exactly. So you do open the book pretty early on.

You get into the Stoics. You talk about acceptance and you talk about sort of acceptance and you talk about like life is not, which I think is a sort of very core Stoke principle, which is like life is not easy, life is not always fun. And if you don't understand this, you will suffer on top of that because you will be surprised, you will be resentful, you will be, you will be moan it, you will, you will suffer doubly as opposed to the person who simply comes to terms with the reality of existence, which both the Stoics and

the Buddhists say is not without suffering. Right, in the Taoist too. I mean, that's a theme throughout the book is, you know, my whole model is to go after truth, I call it truth with the capital T. So, principles that I can be damn near certain are broadly applicable and reliably play out the same for people in different situations. So, I'm interested in like, what does the modern science have to say? What is ancient wisdom? Not necessarily just one tradition, but where is their convergence? And then what's like real life practice? In here, in acceptance, all the ancient wisdom traditions point towards this truth in the

same way. Stoicism, you said there's that quote in the book. If you're going to use your exact quote, it might be a little bit different, but if you're going to use your hands in your feet, like your hands in your feet are going to get soaring calloused. Right. And what that means, if you're going to live a life, you're going to get beat up. And Buddhism, there's the parable of the second arrow, which says that the first arrow,

which is something that you can't necessarily control, either internally, illness, externally, something in a relationship in your work, whatever it might be, that hurts. But the second arrow, which is your judgment, your repression, your delusion, your magical thinking, that ends up hurting worse. And then in Taoism, the whole notion of the way is dancing in the flow of life and not resisting the dance. So yeah, it's such a powerful thing. And something that the traditional model of success pretty much like swings the entire app as it went. You know, if something's going wrong, like you buy stuff in tweet or you

numb it with substance or you go on social media and you airbrush whatever image is wrong so it looks better. So that's a theme throughout the book. I know it's core to your writing too, is that so much of what we're doing in modern society and really is causing so many of our modern ailments because we're wired away from these values that ultimately lead to like a deeper, more fulfilling kind of success. I was very glad to talk with Tom Nichols on the assault on modern thinking. His book, The Death of Expertise, is a must must read definitely a book for and of these times to check that out. Yeah, there's a great Richard Feynman quote where he's talking about how hard it is to really

know something. And the work that it goes into truly deeply understand an idea or a concept or a field of study. And when you see these people making sort of glib assumptions or or quips or remarks or sweeping sort of generalizations, you know, you're saying, I know it's that true because they couldn't have done the work to possibly have the certainty that they're having. And Scott, in the book, I quote, the utterly ridiculous human being, Scott Adams, who unfortunately, and I was really, I mean, I really like his cartooning and, you know, he's good at cartooning.

I mean, his punch lines are funny and the drawings are amusing. But this is also a guy who said, give me an hour with, you know, any subject matter expert and I can become an expert on a thing. Well, so I know Scott a little bit, and I've spent some time with him and like you, obviously everyone's familiar with Dilbert, that's almost like the extreme end of the spectrum of this where you bait, it's almost like you have narcissism and then you combine it with the feedback loop of social media. You get a person who's basically become untethered from reality that I think any thinking person immediately goes like, what is wrong with this guy? And yet the irony is there's a huge percentage or a huge number of people cumatively who are not

only like not suspicious, they're like, this guy fucking gets it. Yeah, well, because again, it's being in the treehouse with the cool kids saying, we're all the smart kids, not those stupid nerds down in the lab. And it's reassuring, right? It's like this guy is very rich and he's famous and he's in the entertainment world. And obviously, he must really know what's what. Part of that too is that we have become obsessive about the idea that if you're good at one thing, you're good at anything. It's like, well, this guy's an award-winning cartoonist.

He must know a lot about foreign policy, which is a name and silly. But I, I mean, you talk about the feedback and loop of social media, and that's a big part of it of people saying, wow. I mean, I guess I kind of like the fact that a lot of my Twitter presence is people telling me how much I'm wrong, I am, and how much they disagree. But it really is important to understand some of the limitations here.

And I'll give an example, I kind of surprised I was in Switzerland, a graduate student who was just finished her dissertation on Russian politics, said, I really want your opinion about this, because I'm curious about the better sources and did I use the right stuff? And I said, look, I wrote my dissertation 33 years ago. You wrote yours yesterday, and on this, you're the new expert. It's okay to turn it over.

It's okay to say, look, I have a lot of accumulated knowledge and I can help you with some things, but it's also okay to say, you know, I'm not required to be this omnipresent and omniscient 24 hours a day. I love the fact that in some environments I've been in sub years ago, about 12 years ago, I went on a fellowship to the Kennedy School and I was immediately the dumbest guy in the room and it was invigorating. The problem is people don't like that feeling anymore. Everybody has to say, well, you're not smarter than I am. I know all about nuclear weapons.

I understand Iranian, you know, centrifuge inspections. You can't talk down to me. And all of that comes from, I mean, I have a pretty healthy ego about my, you know, the things I'm good at, about my writing, about the work I've done. But it's almost a relief to be able to say, wow, someone smarter than me is helping me out here. People don't feel that way anymore. They take it because they are narcissistic and childlike about this.

Anytime someone says, let me explain something to you, they say, what are you saying I'm stupid? Yeah, I mean, maybe I am a little bit. Yeah, I think this goes back to Socrates that the essence of wisdom is what you don't know. And the so-cratic method is based on what? It's the asking of questions, not the making of statements. And I think social media in particular prioritizes assertions of a fact of fact and opinion compared to you know questions or uncertainties. And it prioritizes negativity. Of course. Nobody nobody comes on to Twitter to or to Facebook to say, hey, I really liked this. And it's funny, because people, they will even zero in on the negativity and strain out the positivity.

Every Saturday I get together with my friend Dennis Haring, who's a Grammy, you know, Humble Bragg, my friend, the Grammy-winning music producer. And we sit around and shoot the paris about bad 1970s music while we're listening to old KC K-SIM recordings, old KC K-SIM replays on XM Radio. And about half the time I'll say, I really remember this song and I really love this song and I fond memories this song.

But the minute I say, man, this song is crap, people will zero and say, you're negative about everything. Because it's almost like our brains are wired now on social media only to see the negative comment because it's a challenge. No one takes a positive comment as a challenge. No one takes a comment that, hey, I really like the Alman Brothers

as a challenge to say, oh yeah, what about Marshall Tucker? But if you say, I don't like the challenge to say, oh yeah, well, what about, you know, Marshall Tucker? But if you say, I don't like the Alman Brothers people say, aha, now I have something to fight about. And this is why you're wrong. And this is why you should do this. And I think it's just, you know, Facebook admitted this recently, and it's in the book and my new book, Facebook admitted our algorithm appeals to a basic human attraction to division and conflict. Yeah, and it's funny that you brought up that some people think that the book is about

the failures of expertise, because there have been failures of expertise, which is precisely what people seize upon to undermine expertise generally. Like I think about how many, you know, in retrospect, ridiculous or incorrect takes, you're sort of dating this back to the 70s. I think about like what health or diet advice must have been like in the 70s.

And then that we wonder like why people don't trust the medical establishment of the FDA. Now, it is problematic, but it's interesting that the failures of expertise have made us more likely to accept dubious information from even less credible people. Because they're an excuse, and this is the problem with the failures of expertise, and this is where experts, I think, have to own some of this because the public has been so rough on them about the failures rather than the successes that experts now don't want to engage with the public and don't want to own their failures. Look at the beginning of the pandemic

where Fauci and CDC, they admit and they said, look, we didn't want to cause a run on masks. We screwed up the mask advice. We're owning that. We're sorry. And they're saying, aha, so you admit that you're just a bunch of lying sharlonins that we should never listen to about anything. Right. And that makes experts gunshide to say, you know, if we ever admit a mistake, that means we have to just like everything else we ever say becomes irrelevant. I had someone say to me, for example, when I was doing a book talk in person on the death of expertise, and I pointed out how I'd given my own doctor hell about eggs, right? Yeah, I said, yeah, you told me not to eat eggs and he started shrugging and he said,

yeah, we got that wrong. Okay, well, first of all, who figured out that eggs were okay for you? Other doctors do other studies that fact check, this is called peer review and science, which is a process. But a guy in the audience said, well, I think it's very clear that this shows that doctors don't know anything about heart disease. In other words, I wanna drink a bottle of scotch

and eat a cheeseburger for breakfast. And now I can, because I caught you out on this one thing that now invalidates that you don't know anything about anything. And this is really a problem of, again, I keep coming back to this description of childlike, but adults understand that other well-meaning adults will occasionally make mistakes and get things wrong. What children do is say, aha, I caught you and now I'm going to dunk on you and you never, I never have to listen to you again because this one time, you know, you were wrong about

something. And people extend that even to cases where experts were not wrong. Someone pointed out the other day that when talking about the vaccine, you know, the anti-vaxxer saying, well, this is the same FDA that approved the litamide, the drug that caused birth defects. And of course, the FDA, in fact, did not approve the litamide and saved millions of Americans from potentially deadly effects because the FDA said, we looked at this and we don't think it's safe. And yet people have gotten it into their head because an expert somewhere in Europe failed, all experts failed.

Interesting. Yeah. And that this thing that happened over 60 years ago, like, is a meat, you know, if you say, look, you should really trust experts. They say, oh, yeah, well, what about the litamide in the space shuttle? Well, it's funny, too too because there's this weird, kind of double standard where like there's this great graphic, it was like Joe Rogan, and I know that actually

know the owners of this company, so it was extra funny to me, but it was like, Joe Rogan questioning, you know, a bunch of pure, all this data, like let's say about vaccines or whatever, and then it was like, meanwhile, Joe Rogan endorsing on an alpha brain product, which has one study with 60 participants that found a minor bit of positive correlation

and that's sufficient. So I think your point about being child like what we see in this is actually not a rejection of expertise at all, but a cherry picking of expertise that fits what one wants. And then ironically, holding those experts to the most preposterously loose standards, I've ever to go back to Scott Adams, that Scott Adams really only credibility is that this guy makes a newspaper cartoon that's been popular and is wealthy because of it. But his predictions are like overwhelmingly incorrect

and wrong all the time, objectively so. If this is gonna happen, that doesn't happen, this is gonna happen, that doesn't happen. And of course, Jenny MacArthur and Meefee Vax movement. What are your qualifications? Well, I'm beautiful. And I was in Playboy and I'm an actress. And I did, she literally said at one point, I went to Google University.

Right. No, and that's what I think is interesting about Scott Adams is like, if he were to be held to the skepticism or scrutiny that the things that are being tossed outward held to, I mean, he would crumble like a house of cards, right? So it's this weird picking and choosing of expertise and then I'm moving on the goalposts or the standards by which one judges the experts and it really all comes back down to, well, here's what I want to do

and I'm looking at what I'm afraid to do or not do or whatever it is and how can I pick and choose information that either allows me to do and I'm looking or what I'm afraid to do or not do or whatever it is. And how can I pick and choose information that either allows me to do this, absolves me of responsibility or blame, and then therefore I can be whoever I want to be. So it's this weird not rejection of expertise, but a misuse of expertise. So one does not have to be changed or challenged. And this is why when people say, well, I did my research.

I always come back at them and say, no, you didn't do research. You surfed around the internet until you found the thing that agreed with what you wanted to think in the first place. Right. Did you do your own peer reviewed study? You went to medical school?

No, you Googled around, you looked at healthinfomindbody.com and you found that first. Even worse than that, you started by saying, I think vaccines are unsafe. So you went and typed in vaccines are unsafe. And of course, it brought up 100 sludgy websites that are run by Cooke's and Charlottes, who will tell you the vaccines are unsafe.

Well, okay, you found what you were looking for. And then after you've spent all afternoon going down that rabbit hole and watching YouTube videos and looking at Facebook memes, you start walking around and saying, well, you know, I'm very informed on this. I did my research. A guy asked a question during one of my talks about this where he said, why should I have

to listen to these experts when the journals, like the Lancet or the New England Journal and Medicine, are online and I can read them anyway. And I said, and he got very, you know, I won't say upset, but he was offended. I said, they're not written for you. You don't even know what you're looking at. I said, that's like reading architectural digest thinking you're going to build a house. They're written by experts, for experts, based on foundational knowledge that all of them already have. They are not there to peruse the back issues. I mean, you know, I was like medical students and researchers spend years trolling through these, trolling, I shouldn't say trolling, trolling through

these articles to assemble them so that then they can be judged and tested against each other and then a new paper. This is, again, this is called science. This is how it's done. Again, this is called science. This is how it's done. But again, I had that weird feeling of, how did this happen that the ordinary citizen, and when it comes to medical stuff, I'm as ordinary as it gets. I don't even think that they could just like say,

well, I'll just go read the Lancet. That'll pedal, you know, and I'll be up to snuff on this stuff. Today is the last day, the last day to sign up for the Daily Stoke New Year New Year challenge. I'd love to have you join me. I'll be doing it alongside you. It's 21 actionable challenges. One per day built around the best joke wisdom, but for what? How to be better in the new year.

This is the time when we start to think about what we're going to do next, where all the time went, what we wish had gone differently or better. How we're still struggling with this or that, how we'd like to stop doing this or that. And that's what the New Year New Challenge is all about. It's my favorite thing that we do, and it's three weeks of actionable challenges presented in one email per day built around the best most timeless wisdom in Stoke Philosophy It should help you snap out of this trance We've all found ourselves in and help make 2022 your best year yet

No matter what's happening in the world around you go to daily stoic.com slash challenge to join us I'd love to have you. I'm challenging you to join me. I can't wait to see you, dailiestoac.com slash challenge. And then talking to Julia Beard, her book on Queen Victoria is spectacular, a biography everyone should read, and her new book, Foss Forressants, was just a joy for me to read one of my favorite books this year. So here's me talking to Julia Beard.

books this year, so here's me talking to Julia Baird. There's a river in Texas. It starts from a natural spring. It's in San Marcos. And there's this sort of rare species of, or I think it might be the only place. It's like a, it's like an underwater rice. I forget what it's called, but it's this sort of wavy, like tall grass. And the rivers, it's like millions of gallons are just coming up. You can see where the river starts. It just starts out of nowhere.

And, and this, you know, millions of gallons are just pouring out. And you get into water and you can kind of swim against the current at like almost like a treadmill or one of those infinity pools. And you're just watching these like waves of grass, you know, go sway into the current like it's, you know, you're in the middle of the prairie somewhere, but you're underwater. And it's one of the most sort of incredible rhythmic things that I've ever experienced in my life. And yeah, I think you go and you experience one of those things. And then you leave, to me, what the idea of the the book your book is, is like

that energy that you bring back into the world, we need more of that. Yes, I think that's right, and it's almost hard to put your finger on, and that's what I was trying to to grasp. Like, what is that? When you're sitting on a hill in a, it's some area where there's no light pollution, you're looking at the stars like what is that? We all know that that soothes us. We all know that it makes us feel better, but but but why and and that's why I think you know scientists are trying to get to it. Why have we designed life to be literally the opposite of that and to have as little of that as humanly possible. That is the strange, strange thing about the modern world. The infinite distraction.

I think that's true. Yeah. That's pretty much just environmentally, right? Like, for instance, on the Gulf Coast in America, it's somewhat recently, there's this like law that because turtles are attracted to light, you can't have lights on any building that faces the ocean. So it's pretty incredible, but you're sort of walking along the ocean, it's completely dark. And it's, you can actually see the stars and it's wonderful. But to think that like this was a thing they had to, this, it's this incredible gift. Anyone that experiences experiences it loves it, just as if you know, you get out of the city and you're away from the light pollution, you can actually see the star show.

This is incredible. And then you're like, this only exists by accident or this only exists because they rammed this unpopular law down people's throats. If people had there, if people had the freedom to choose, they would choose not this, even though they love it when they have it. It's insane. Yeah, that's so true.

It's like, it's almost like we're becoming toddlers again that need to re-learn attention. I don't know about you, but when I write, I download, I think the Freedom app. So it locks all of my other internet access on my computer. And I don't want it. Because otherwise I'm back. And then sometimes I have to go and put my phone like the other end of the house or something. So I'm not looking at that. I have to, I have to really fight for my attention. And that's why I call

eco-resorts where they promise you you can't get wifi because we get distracted, but the more the world has become urbanized and we only tipped over a few years ago into more people living in urban than regional centers. The more we're going to have to be reminded of these mountain, growing mountain of evidence about how good green is for us, the side of green, even in our plants, even in our house, like in our neighborhoods and our communities, how crucial that is. I was just reading an article this morning about the shrinking backyard in Australia. And what that's going to mean in terms of climate and creating kind of little heat pools. So yeah, I was reminded of this too when they're the, so I'm not sure if you're aware of this, like, this growing forest therapy movement.

And I went and met Professor King Lee in a Tokyo to talk to him about, and he is a very busy and in-demand moment. So I'm, um, Tsunrin Yoko, who's a Yoko who is what it's called. And people are being taught around the world to be far as peripus and also to go on these walks into natural areas and use all their five sensors and take it in slowly. And I find that wonderful in the sense that that's what people do and obviously it's not too expensive and all tied up with ego results, that not everyone can access. That's a great thing to be doing.

But there's also strikes me at the same time that it's almost sad that we have to be taught how to do that again. Yes. Yeah, like that you mentioned indigenous peoples. It's like we're paying, we're rediscovering a thing that has been well known for thousands of years by people that we not only didn't listen to, but tried to take away,

not only did we take the stuff away from them, we took them away from it and tried to indoctrinate them with our understanding of reality to their detriment and our detriment. That's right. And I mean, when you think about one of essential tenants, as non-indigenous person, I won't explain it as well as it should be explained, but the central tenant

that Aboriginal people in Australia always talk about is listening to country, you listen to country. And in a way that's a psychologically soothing thing for a person to take time out and be still and get off your devices and listen to country. But there's a second part of that, which is because is country sick now? Like what are we doing to country? Right.

Are we caring for it? And are we disconnected from it? Are we taming it and conquering it and plundering it and mining it? Or are we nurturing it? And Aboriginal people have always been custodians of the land. That's what we, the phrase that we always use. And that's caretakers. And that's a fundamentally different understanding of what it means to be human.

Yeah. And I mean, there's also this sort of myth making or revisionism that we can tell about, you know, first people's where they also had problems with over hunting and not sort of burning large swaths of land to do what they want. I mean, human beings, I think, just generally have this tendency of like sort of There's the part of us that appreciates land and wants to be a custodian of it And then there's the other part of us that want something for it And so we exploit it and we ravage it and we steal from it and we don't realize that what we're really doing is stealing from ourselves and stealing from the people that we claim to care about which is our

Family and you know, subsequent generations. Right. Exactly. For everyone. Yeah. I mean, I haven't seen evidence of that, you know, in Australian history, and we have the oldest continuous living culture.

On the planet, 65,000 years, and one of the big things that actually has been an issue is that Aboriginal people always did burning as a way of controlling the climate and controlling the bushfires. So we have, like, having a lot of discussions around the time to these, like, horrific bushfires about whether we're not. Like, well, no, we were rejecting their ancient wisdom on how, if you sort of take over certain functions from nature, then you also have to take over some of the destructive functions of nature

or you make yourself super, super vulnerable. Yeah, exactly. It's like in California, like a million acres a year would burn on its own. And then now nobody burns anything. And then the whole state catches on fire and people go, how could this happen? It's like, this has been happening for a million years.

Exactly. We just have so much to learn on that front, I think. We better do it quickly. Yeah, or there won't be anything left to learn. One of the things I was going to ask you, I have some Victoria questions, which we'll loop back to, but I was curious, you know, like going through what you went through, I was struck, and obviously before I knew what you had gone through, one of the things I was struck by when I was reading about her life was just how much pain

she must have been in as a human being or just throughout her life, not just the pain of the loss of her husband and the pain of childbirth, but it sounded like when they when they sort of looked at her body after death, they were like, how did this woman stand this? and stand this. I know. And that was one of those things I was awkward about because I realized that too. That's why she wanted to be carried around by strong servants a lot of the time.

I mean, childbirth had literally kind of ravaged her body in a way that, and she would never examine by doctors and you know, and she never received any help for what must have been, you know, an ongoing, very difficult physical condition. So that gave me a lot more insight and compassion into the fact that she was not physically mobile, if you're not physically mobile, you can have other attendant health issues and so on. So, yeah, and that was that the doctor found that she had a prolapse on her dead bed when he examined her. And the thing of, like, do we tell that story when we tell a queen?

Is that, like, too much, you know, like, you know, going into her privacy, is that something we should know? We shouldn't know. And you don't want to be prudent about it, but we also need to understand that in centuries past and still today what childbirth can do to women and what they endure silently. What's like all the time? I think it is important to talk about it, because if you think about someone like Queen Elizabeth, if we sort of marvel at her decades and decades of service.

But then you're like, what if you found out she was also in chronic pain every single moment of that service? You realize like, oh, this wasn't like an impressive person. This was like a superhero. Like this is incomprehensible that a person could have done this. Yeah. They talk about the veins of iron that went through victorious character. That's right. And they didn't have, you know, the pain relief iron that went through victorious character. That's right.

And they didn't have the pain relief in the way that they did now. And a lot of her uncles had been addicted to OPM and had gout and had done, you know, like we're mostly in debt and indulged every kind of gambling and the like dozens of mistresses and all the rest of it. And she was so upright. And but also think about another thing but like, dozens of mistresses and all the rest of it. And she was so upright.

And but also think about another thing that she was constantly attacked for, which was her reclusiveness. She worked. She worked very hard, but she didn't want to go out into public. And she didn't want to leave the comfort of her carriage a lot of the time towards the end of her life.

And she had a big jubilee. She didn't get out, it drew up in front of the, Abby or the cathedral, and she stayed in there for the rest of the ceremony. But now we would understand that if we know again, that you're right, that she was in chronic pain. Yeah, Churchill had that joke about, I forget who he's talking about, but he's like,

they're a modest man who has much to be modest about. It's sort of funny, you know, we admire sort of modesty or humility or restraint, but then you look at someone like Queen Elizabeth or you look at Queen Victoria and you're like, oh, but this person is that way, but they could get, if you look at their predecessors,

particularly their male predecessors or kings and royalty of any nationality in any country, you're like, think of what you could get away with that you have chosen not to let yourself get away with. I'm always very impressed, the sort of voluntary regulation, you know, like she could have done whatever she wanted. Instead, she chose to work very hard. Yeah, I know. I mean, she did stretch the limits of constitutionality. She did, you know, have a visceral dislike of William Gladstone, tried to prevent him from coming prime minister. She corresponded with generals in the field directly about how to

conduct the wars. I mean, when there was overreach, that was the kind of things she did, but you're right. I mean, she conducted herself in a way. She didn't. She burst into tears on pond discovering how close she was to the throne. And I think we know it's a heavy burden, and then inherited power is a very peculiar thing. I think we kind of fundamentally recognize that. But she grasped it and she performed her duty. So England has had the Victorian and the current, you know, Elizabethan eras of these women who should never be underestimated as decorative or functional because of how hard they work. And the fact that both of them have been the most famous working women of their time. One of the things, there's a couple of things in that book that you just threw off handedly

that really hit me. And one of them connects to the new book also, and I ended up doing a bunch of research on it when I read it. But you sort of threw out this weird thing about William Gladstone, how we like to just go cut down trees as a hobby. And that strikes me as a, I mean, it's a form of, I guess, forest bathing,

but also just sort of hobby and getting lost in the flow state of doing the thing, kind of an unusual hobby, but I just I love the peculiarity of it. Yeah, that's right. Oh, that's so smart. I've not had anyone weave together these two books before, so that's quite a delightful insight for me. That's right.

I mean, and he would do it some months at a time. He would have thousands of trees he'd chuck down in his lifetime. Three months. do it for months at a time. He was thousands of trees he'd chucked down in his lifetime. Three months. And then go off and really, I don't know, think about what to do about Ireland. Where'd a few heavy tomes. And he would conduct a few sermons.

He always gave a few sermons for his servant, which I'm sure they were thrilled about every week. I mean, Victoria said she spoke to him. He speaks to me as if it was a public meeting. And that was part of his problem with the awkwardness of his relationship with her, is that he was kind of strict and booming and very, very smart, but possibly charmless, whereas Benjamin and Disraeli was so elegant in prose and manner and constantly complimenting her and she was utterly charmed by it.

I think he was, you know, really great company. So that was part of that. But no, I think that's it. He did get into that's how he got into flow. And this is a man who gave four to five hour speeches, you know, on the stump, which itself is hard to fathom as well. Right. He must have been practicing them in his head as he was doing.

Yeah, but dot points for his work. But you know, imagine the luxury of being able to do that now. Like we can we don't wait as long as a day off, a little on a weekend. Demand more of yourself in 2022. And one of the ways you can do that is by joining us in the daily still a new year, new you challenge. All you have to do is go to daily still at dot com slash challenge to sign up. Remember daily still life members get this challenge and all our challenges for free. But sign up seriously. Think about what one positive change, one good new habit is worth to you. Think about what could be possible if you handed yourself over to a little bit of a program.

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