The Daily Stoic - Living With Justice: Will Guidara Interviews Ryan Holiday

Episode Date: July 6, 2024

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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 St 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. Hey it's Ryan. Welcome to another episode of the daily stoic podcast. So when you do like a book tour, when you do nonfiction, you don't really do like readings from a book because it's weird, Ifiction, you don't really do like readings from a book because it's weird, I guess. No one's ever asked me to.

You're expected, like if you do an event at The Strand or Barnes and Noble or BookSoup, you're usually expected to have someone interview you, which is weird. So it's like, you're like, this is my day. This is the thing I did. And then you have to ask someone to interview you. And for this book, for the dress book, I really I didn't know who I wanted to do it. But I

basically asked my publisher, I was like, guys, I've already called in so many favors. Could you think of someone? And when I did Daily Dad in New York City, I had Casey Neistat interview me, who had been sort of an inspiration to me, he's had kids before I did. And that was great when I did it in Austin, Austin Kleon did it. So I've had different people do it over the years, Chase Jarvis has done it before,

Kevin Rose has done it for me before. So I left it to the publisher, I said, hey, you decide. And they came back and they asked if I was open to the idea of Will Gadara. And I know Will indirectly because we have the same speaking agent and we happen to have the same publisher. And I'm a fan of his awesome book, Unreasonable Hospitality.

And it was also fitting because we were gonna do this talk at the Barnes and Noble in Union Square, which is right across the street from Union Square Cafe, which is usually where I tend to eat to celebrate stuff and publishing just a place people end up going. And Will was at Danny Myers Union Square Hospitality Group. He talks a lot about this in his book. He would go on to actually purchase

and run 11 Madison Park. So anyways, he is awesome. And I was really looking forward to doing it. And I didn't want to have like a politician do it. I don't know. I just thought it would make an awesome conversation. And I think one of the things he and I talked about before we did the interview was like,

hospitality being a host is an interesting way to think about this virtue of justice, right? Because it's not what happens in a law court necessarily. It's not this legal thing. It's how we treat people. It's the standards we hold ourselves to in terms of that treatment. And so Will was gracious enough to be my host,

to let me have the spotlight. I got some questions in for him too. It's a conversation. It was just really awesome. His book, Unreasonable Hospitality, is selling like crazy. It's awesome. He's speaking all over the world about it. It was even featured in an episode of The Bear, that awesome TV show. And it was great to talk to Will. The crowd that came out was awesome. We talked about how we apply these stoic virtues in

our actions, in our businesses, in our life. And he asked some questions about the writing process for Right Thing Right Now. And then I nerded out about Jimmy Carter a lot. I'll warn you about that up front. This is going to set up some other episodes we got coming down the road. So this is me and Will Gadara at Barnes and Noble Union Square. And I have a long history with that bookshop, as I think I talk about in the episode, I remember coming there, it's where I got one of my first Robert Green books. I've been going to that bookstore for almost 15 years. I went there while I was writing The Obstacle is the way it was a dream of

mine to do an event there. And now it's my pleasure to bring you that conversation. Here's me and Will Godera talking hospitality justice, how we treat people. And I think you're really going to like this episode. If you haven't read Right Thing right now, you can grab that. We've got signed copies at Stuart.DailyStoic.com and you can grab it at the Painted Porch or anywhere books are sold. porch or anywhere books are sold. Barnes and Noble Union Square, please give a warm welcome to New York Times best selling authors, Ryan Holiday and Will Giddara. Good evening. So I'm the guy not photographed up here. My name is Will Gidera.

I wrote another book called Unreasonable Hospitality, and I'm super excited to spend some time with him talking about this amazing new book, which I've already had a chance to read. Before we kick it off, I want to tell a quick story, because it bears a lot of relevance to this and why this was so impactful for me. I ran a restaurant company for years in 2019. My best friend, who was also my business partner, and I fell out of love.

I have done that myself. And we had restaurants in New York, in LA, and the Hamptons in London. And what commenced was the process of us basically fighting to see who could hold on to what. And I called my dad in the beginning of it, because he was a very close friend. And I was kind of overwhelmed and just

destroyed by the whole thing. And he said, hey, this is going to be one of the hardest seasons of your life. At every crossroads, I want you to ask yourself what right looks like and do that. And he went on to say that if I always did what right looked like, I would probably walk away with less money, less of the things that I loved. But I could look back on that season and always know that I held on to my integrity. In the season since then, that has been my guiding light.

And then guys, I read this book, and I'm someone that's always tried to live with integrity. This is a book that challenged me to want to live with profound integrity. And so I'm so excited that you wrote it. My first question for you is when you're writing it, how did it change you? Well, I went through a couple similar experiences like that and some other things. And you know, you want to win, you know, you want to get justice in the sense of like what is right from the world or what would be fair. And then you sort of find that's very different than what's right for you to do. And then also what's better for your family, for your life, for the stoats are always reminding us how little time

we have. So that was something I was thinking about when I was going through that. It's like, okay, there's one version of this that drags on forever and ever and maybe I win. There's a version of it where I give up everything and who is that fair to? And how do you sort of wrap it up quickly and fairly and as you're saying, do the right thing. And what I really came to understand writing the book and what I've tried to apply in my life is that we think of justice as this sort of big abstract thing. It's like it's something we get or it's something that they do in Washington or Brussels or a court of law. It's got a judge and a jury but actually no it's how we comport ourselves in the situations that we find ourselves in. Some of which are very big, some of which are very small,

depending on who we are and what we do, but that the sense of justice that we have colors how we interact in these situations, and cumulatively, that's who we are. And so what I've loved about this series, I did a courage one first, and the discipline one, and then this one, is that each one has allowed me for the period of time that I was writing it,

whether it was a year or this one was two years, was to like live with these amazing people. Sometimes awful people, but you're like, they're the bad guys that you're like, you know. But to live with these just wonderful people who seem to have a code of ethics or a sense of honor or just this kind of commitment to integrity seem to have a code of ethics or a sense of honor or just this kind of commitment to integrity that you're just

like, wow, that's what I want to be like. And a lot of the characters in my books previous were really awe-inspiring in terms of the immensity of what they accomplished. They were just very, very successful. And what I think was different about this book and what was so wonderful about living with them is these characters were really awe-inspiring

in these sometimes very big things that they did, but often just very personal choices that they made about whether they went this way or that way, whether they treated this person this way or that way. And when you steep yourself in those, hopefully it rubs off. Hopefully it rubs off. And I think that should be the point of these kinds of stories.

Well, that's what I want to get at. And guys, I can't wait for you to read it, because we live with integrity. If you're a good person, you try to live with integrity. This inspires you. I don't think it challenges you. It didn't challenge you. It inspired me to look at a lot of the decisions I'm making

and try to figure out where I'm living with profound integrity. And so I'm just curious whether you've made changes in the way that you've approached your life as you've written it in the same way that many will when they read it. Yeah, I talk about this a lot in the afterword. Again, it's one thing to talk about these ideas abstractly.

One of the wonderful things about owning a business or working for yourself, and then one of the benefits of all these cool tools that are out there that really empowered individuals to do things that previously only countries could do or big corporations could do, is that suddenly these ethical decisions are not things that other people are making or that exist only on some incomprehensible skill, but you have to choose.

You have to choose what you pay people that work for you. Or you have to choose whether you use a supplier in this country or that country. You have to decide, with this book, it's cheaper to mail things in plastic, and it's more expensive to use something that's, like, environmentally sustainable. And then you go, okay, should other people not use plastic and use something that's biodegradable? Yes. But that tends to be how we think about these things. We're like, what people should do is this.

And what being an entrepreneur does is suddenly, like, you're one of those people. Whether it's on some mom and pop scale, or the ability now to do it on a global scale, you could ship things all over the world in a way that, again, previously only some international conglomerate was doing it. So you have to make these choices.

And so I've always tried to think about those things. But as I'm writing the book and then working on it, I was like, OK, yeah, we had a supplier in Belarus that makes this edition of The Daily Stoke that I saw. And we go, hey, I don't know if that's the part of the world we we wanna be manufacturing stuff in right now for both for logistics reasons and moral reasons. And then you go, okay, well, let's find someone else.

Well, I'm sure it's the same price somewhere else. And it's like, it's not the same price somewhere else. It's like, and it's not 10% more somewhere else. It's like 400% more somewhere else. And now all of a sudden, this decision that you, you know, was very clean on paper has a balance sheet implications. And so I tried to get better over the years at making those expensive decisions. And then what you learn when you make the expensive decisions is how hard it is. And it does also

give you some empathy and understanding for people who are, you're like, okay, you're making a few thousand dollar decision and someone else is making a hundred thousand dollar decision. And then someone is making a hundred billion dollar decision and how, if you don't have a strong set of values or a moral compass, if you haven't built that muscle,

the chance that you're going to be able to withstand that pressure is next impossible. And so how do you cultivate that? And then again, instead of thinking so much about what other people should do, which is fundamentally not in your control, how do you just do the things that you think you should do? And then be satisfied and proud of the small impact

that that has. Yeah. Yeah, because raindrops make oceans. Enough people doing the little things can be transformational. Yeah, there's this story I tell in the book. It's this old story. It's a cliche at this point.

But this boy walks up to the beach, and there's all these starfish that have washed up on the beach. And he starts to throw them back in the ocean. And this sort of cynical adult comes and says, why? Can't possibly make a difference. It doesn't matter. And as he throws one back in, he says,

it matters to this starfish. And so it's not just that raindrops make an ocean. Little things do add up. But they also matter to the specific person that you're doing it to. So yes, hey, if we all make these small contributions, maybe it sets in motion a trend or it has cumulative impact. But it also has individual impact

to the people or the places that you're doing a thing. And that is significant. And you're saying the raindrop also matters. Yes, yes, yes. The starfish, I think, bruises the story better because it's a sentient being, or I don't know if they're sentient, but it is a living being. And so it matters to that.

And so how you think about it on this small scale is actually really empowering. And then it becomes a feedback loop because it feels good, you see good, and and then you hopefully hopefully you do succeed and you can have impact on a bigger level but it starts there. Peyton it's happening. We're finally being recognized for being very online. It's about damn time. I mean it's hard work being this opinionated. And correct.

You're such a Leo. All time. Yeah. So if you're looking for a home for your worst opinions. If you're a hater first and a lover of pop culture second. Then join me, Hunter Harris. And me, Peyton Dix, the host of Wondry's newest podcast, Let Me Say This.

As beacons of truth and connoisseurs of mess, we are scouring the depths of the internet so you don't have to we're obviously talking about The biggest gossip and celebrity news like it's not a question of if Drake got his body done But when you are so messy for that, but we will be giving you the b-sides Don't you worry the deep cuts the niche the obscure like that one photo of Nicole Kidman after she finalized her divorce from Tom Cruise Mother a mother to many Follow let me say this on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts.

Listen to episodes everywhere on May 22nd, or you can listen ad free by joining Wondery Plus and the Wondery app on Apple Podcast. How much do you really know about Black History? Like really, really know. Wondery's new podcast, Black History for Real, we's Black History's most overlooked figures back into their rightful place in culture

and the world at large. Listen to Black History for Real on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. One of the first lines that kind of like shook me was justice is not a noun, it's a verb. Can you just unpack that a little bit for everyone? I think it's worth saying that all the ver- like virtue is a verb and not a noun. This goes back to Aristotle, he's like, you become courageous the same way you become

a carpenter by building things, like by doing the thing. It's not, you either are it or you're not. It's not an end state that you arrive at. It is a process that you are participating in. Writing is the same way. Like you are a writer and the byproduct of that is books. And so often we are very outcome-oriented or we're very identity-oriented.

So when can I call myself a writer? When do I qualify as an entrepreneur or a professional or a celebrity? Whatever the thing. And instead of seeing it as this incidental byproduct of doing the thing. And my friend Austin Kleon says this, more people want to be the noun than do the verb. And I think that when I heard that for the first time, it changed my life in so many different capacities.

But I think justice is it much more than the other virtues. Because again, we think of justice as something that is handed down to you by a court of law. Or it's something you bring into the world by the triumph of some cause or a campaign, which it certainly can be. But justice is also a standard that we have to hold ourselves to as people. Is this right?

Is this fair? What would the world look like if everyone did this? And so that's why I think the important part in the book for me was part one, which is justice as the individual. Because that's the part of it that's the most in our control, just what are the standards of behaviors and rules that you hold yourself to as a person? And I think we live in a world where you get into arguments with people about whether something

is illegal or not, or legal or not, or standard practice or not, or whether everyone does it or not. Which strikes me as somewhat irrelevant compared to whether it is something that you should do or not. I had that conversation with a friend earlier today that if you were deciding whether or not you should do something based on whether it's legal or not, you probably shouldn't be doing it. The fact that you're asking that question.

Well, yeah, there's a story in the book I have about the golfer Patrick Reed where he's accused of cheating. And he starts making this argument that cheating is only when you break a rule to get an intentional advantage. It's like a rules infraction is when it happens in a bet. It's like when you're making a distinction between cheating and a rules infraction, you're pretty far from where you should be going. Okay, so just to make sure everyone's caught up here, what are the virtues of stoicism?

Like a little primer here. And then the next question of that is, in here, you kind of say that this perhaps is the most important virtue. I think so. So the cardinal virtues of stoicism, which is the series I've been doing, is courage, discipline, justice, and wisdom.

I guess you can put them in any order you want. That's the order I'm doing. But courage, temperance, justice, wisdom. The idea for the Stoics is that this goes back to my first book on Stoics. When the Stoics say the obstacle is the way, what they're saying is that every situation is an opportunity to practice one of the virtues.

So you might have been trying to do one thing, life intervenes, things go sideways. It's still a chant. Nothing can stop you from practicing one or more or all of those virtues. So courage, discipline, justice, wisdom, everything in life is demanding one of these situations from us.

And ultimately, there's a lot of great quotes out there about courage is the mother of all the other virtues. Everyone's always making the argument, which of the virtues is the most important? But I think you can make a strong case that justice is the most essential of the virtues because of what happens when you isolate it from the other virtues.

So if someone takes a courageous stand, they speak out some unpopular opinion. The opinion is unpopular because it's dumb. It's just fundamentally wrong. Just ill-informed. They just don't know the facts. Or unjust. Well, I'm just saying, just nonsense.

Do we count that as courageous? Like, there's silly things you could say. You know, like, if you're the person who courageously stands up and goes, the earth is flat, you know, it's not courageous. You could lose your, you could lose people's respect because of it. People could laugh at you because you're standing alone because of it.

But that's just because it's silly, right? Discipline in pursuit of the wrong thing, you know, what does this get us? And then, yeah, most importantly, I think courage in pursuit of something that is morally unjust or fundamentally, you know, evil. I think we would go, that might be a brave thing to do, but is it a virtue? Is it the virtue of courage? Obviously not. And so when you subtract the other virtues,

you start to see it as what it is. And Marx really talks about this in meditation. He's like, some of the virtues have things that balance them out. There's pleasure and discipline are counterbalances to each other. But he's like, there is no positive counterbalance to justice, the opposite of justice is injustice.

We know that that's wrong. And so I think ultimately justice or the right thing has to be the north star, has to be what the other virtues are pointed towards. The other virtues are trying to help us get there. So they are related and inseparable, and yet what you see if you try to separate justice from them is you get somewhere that's not what's going.

So I know enough about you to know that you're intentional. So why this one third? Oh, that's not a super exciting answer. Courage was the most exciting, I think, and, you know, most, like, inspiring. Discipline seemed like the most straight down the middle. Um, wisdom seemed the hardest and the one that would need... I needed to think about the most.

And so that left just as third. You share so many stories from so many people. Some people that I think we maybe even consider to be villainous in how we look. Well, not like widely, but like you hear about Truman or something, and there's a lot of noise around there. But you learn about him and you unpack him, and you gain new respect and admiration for someone

who maybe history didn't look back on as positively as it should have. I guess, like, what are, just a story for people that a person, what's one of them that you really were struck by when you? Oh, yeah, I mean, that's my favorite thing when I discover a person that I thought I knew about or I knew nothing about. And I go, oh, there is like, I want

to go so deep on this person. Like, I probably read 5,000 or 6,000 pages on Truman. Guys, he delivers it to you in like 12. So it's actually really helpful. He did the work, so you don't have to. Each of the books, I tend to really fall for one person that I didn't know about. So for this one, yeah, Harry Truman or maybe Jimmy Carter,

those were the two. I was like, I just didn't know anything about this. And I loved that. For the Discipline book, it was Queen Elizabeth. For the Courage book, it was probably Florence Nightingale. You just didn't know about someone. And then you go, this person is Shakespearean in so many ways, and they have so much that you didn't know about them.

They have so much. I'm also fascinated when you do vaguely know about someone historically, and then you're like, no, these are the kinds of things that we should be talking about in school. So yeah, Truman was a big one. Jimmy Carter was fascinating. I remember I was getting my haircut in New Orleans when I lived there.

I was writing my first book. And I was getting my haircut in this old timey barber shop in the French Quarter. And I was like, it was kind of a challenge. I'm laughing because your hair looks like it was just cut in an old-timey barber shop in New Orleans. So I was sitting in this barbershop, and I look, and I go, hey, you're the only barber in here.

There's like three chairs. So I was like, what is this? And I was like, where are the other barbers? And he said, you know, I used to have these other barbers in here, but we kept arguing about politics, so I let them all go. And I said, oh, you know, what? What do you mean?

And he's like, well, they kept bad-mouthing the president. And I hadn't lived, you know, what do you mean? And he's like, well, they kept bad-mouthing the president. And I hadn't lived in the South very long, and so I probably shouldn't have asked, but I said, oh, wait, what president? And there is no universe in which I thought the next words out of his mouth were, they kept bad-mouthing Judy Carter.

Oh. And first off, because this was like not that long ago. So it is a long time to hold your shop bacon. It's decades that he has been the sole barber in the shop. And I just remember thinking that he thinks Jimmy Carter is a great man. And I was like, it's not that I don't think that. It's that I just never think about him at all.

Like, I just, I don't know anything about him. And so I was like, I'll read about this person. that I just never think about him at all. I don't know anything about him. And so I was like, I'll read about this person. And I started to read about him. And I was amazed. And so he's one of the characters in the book. The funny thing is I was back. Will and I have that same speaking agent. And so I was doing a talk in New Orleans on Canal Street.

And I walked down to the barbershop after I formed my flight ahead. I was like, I'll go back to this barbershop and get a haircut. And so I get in there. And I love that story so much because it means something to me and I think it's funny. But there was this part of me that was like, maybe I'm not

remembering this right. Again, it seems absurd. And I was like, I didn't want to ruin it. I didn't want to ruin the memory of it. So I was reluctant to just ask him, like, hey, are you a big Jimmy Carter fan? I didn't want to ruin it. I didn't want to ruin the memory of it. So I was reluctant to just ask him, hey, are you a big Jimmy Carter fan? And so I'm in there, and he's talking.

And so I thought I'd just do it again. I was like, hey, I notice you don't have any other Barber. He just ran the exact same script. And he goes, yeah, I kept arguing over politics with them. And I said, really? And he's like, yeah. He's like, they kept bad-mouthing Jimmy Carter. And I was like, I know.

And I was like, that's so weird, because he's actually a great president, because I've read all these books. Did you just start quoting all the stuff you'd recently learned? He goes, Jimmy Carter is one of the finest men who ever walked this earth. And then we just nerded out about Jimmy Carter for an hour. And then it was also funny because this guy came in to get his haircut.

And he's sitting there. And this barber and this guy are talking about Jimmy Carter. And he starts to act weird. And I start saying, are you Ryan Holiday? And he recognized he'd read all the books. And then he was out from out of town, too. It was this hilarious occurrence all about the Barbers. What is now?

Are you just using me for your book right now? One of my favorite presidents. And then I went a week after that, I gave a talk at the Naval Academy. And I gave this speech about Jimmy Carter, who graduated from the Naval Academy. And if you want to get a sense of some of the ideas I'm talking about in the book, just an idea.

Jimmy Carter goes to the Naval Academy. He's class of 46. He's the only president to ever graduate from the Naval Academy. They named a building after him last year because the naming commission said they couldn't have any named after Confederate generals and so, or Confederate admirals.

So Jimmy Carter, who is one of the greatest people to ever live, is snubbed by his alma mater for decades, but we, at the same time, this place, it's inculcating and generating the next generation of American military leaders, is walking in a class every day for, in Confederate named buildings. So I think it's important, there's this line from Mark Cerullo. I'll tie all this together.

Sorry, I'm too excited. But Mark Cerullo says, the perks of being an emperor is to earn a bad reputation by good deeds. And Judy Carter embodies that in many ways. He made all sorts of decisions that a president should not make in their first term because it decreases

their chances of re-election. And that's what made him a great president, but in many ways also a somewhat ineffectual politician. And his reputation suffers for it. So when we say the right thing right now, and we're talking about virtue, I think it's probably worth the sombering note of like, no one throws you a parade. And in fact, a lot of times, as you said with your story, you do the right thing. And what it's actually doing is costing you every step of the way. And

you look around and you go, I might be better off if I was more of a dick, or if I fought more for my stuff. But then also you'd have to be that person. And so that's that's to me the tension of the book. I mean, I guarantee you, when you read this, it's going to challenge the way you make decisions because you will be deciding against your own immediate self-interest if you're inspired as much as I was by what it compels you to want to become. I mean that really sincerely. Have you ever heard of the term nuclear family?

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in the next week, you're having a conversation with the author. But, okay, justice, you define it like a million different ways. Accountability, honesty, responsibility, decency, loyalty. And it feels to me, and I'm not sure whether I'm doing that thing, where the past is better than the present. You look at politics and a lot of people complain that there's a lack of honesty. You look at how we're like increasingly inclined to ghost other people and people complain that it's a lack of responsibility.

You look at internet trolls and comments, and people complain it's a lack of decency. You look at just the selfishness of people generally, and it feels like people are complaining that there's a lack of loyalty. Do you think this is, is it really bad right now? Or where are you at? I don't know if you could't know if you could go back historically

and find an era where you're like, you know what was wonderful about that time? We treated everyone great. It's never been true. We've always been selfish. We've always discriminated. We've always abused. We've always ignored.

We've always pulled one over on people if we thought we could get away with it. That's what humans do. But then there's also been people inside those moments that sort of resisted that temptation or that urge. And so when you go back to Surya, you find wonderful examples, or I'd say counter examples. But I think for the most part, this

has been a timeless struggle. It's why the Stokes were laying this out as a virtue worth striving for, you know, 2,000 years ago. But yeah, I do think there you could argue some of the trends of the moment accelerate these things. our lack of consensus about history or our inability to pick models and celebrate them and hold them up makes it hard for us to have sort of a common ideal that we're aspiring towards, right? Like, who are the heroes that we hold up and go, we need to be more like that. I think it's funny, it's like, I remember as a kid learning not that George Washington chopped down the cherry tree. I remember learning that George Washington did not chop down a cherry tree and that that story is not true. Yes. You know? But I don't think anyone thought this.

When you go back and read some of these old readers from the 17 and 18, like it's mostly the 1800s. I'm not sure how true anyone thought it was, but that wasn't the point of teaching the story to children. Like we have this sort of sense of it's good that we propose in myths and legends and we don't whitewash the past, but the purpose of history was largely moral instruction.

So Plutarch, the great biographer of history, would say that it doesn't really matter what time it happened or place it happened or how many soldiers were at this place. He was like history is these sort of anecdotes and moments that reveal character, the essence of the person. And I would say that one of the big voids in the world today is today is those stories or exemplars of what we want to be and then what we want our children to be. We're really good at tearing them down and poking holes in them and pointing out the contradictions in them. But if you don't replace it with anything, you're left with

this vacuum and in that vacuum, people who have no moral compass whatsoever do what they want. And then also, people are uncertain and they're not called to and inspired to be what they're capable of being, I think. But you, you're like a hopeful person. Yeah, I think I think I have a line in the Courage book from General James Mattis. He says, cynicism is cowardice. And I think that's true.

The idea of earnestness, like actually caring and actually trying, is probably the theme that appears the most in all of the books. There's a wonderful Jimmy Carter story that I love. It's in the Discipline book. This is all about the books. There's a wonderful Jimmy Carter story that I love. It's in the discipline book. This is all about Jimmy Carter. But he graduates from the Naval Academy. He's interviewing for a job in the submarine service.

Admiral Hyman Rickover is interviewing him. Rickover asks him, how did you do in your class at the Naval Academy? He's like, you know, I was 55th out of 800, and he's talking about all this. And then Rickover says, but did you always do your best? And Carter wants to say yes, but he realizes it's not true. And he says, no.

He said, no, I didn't always do my best. And Rickover looks at him and he says, why not? And then he gets up and he leaves the room. And Carter would write later that he's been struggling to answer that question his entire life. Why didn't I give my best? Why am I not giving my best? And then there was like, there's an earnestness to that

and a sincerity to that. And I think the idea of individuals trying to become what they're capable of becoming and to do their best is to me the antidote to the cynicism or the hopelessness that's there, the idea that, hey, like just because things are the way that they are doesn't mean that they have to be that way. And an individual can change them.

And I think the stoicism has this reputation about being resigned and accepting. And there's part of that to it. But the stoics were also people who ran for public office, who fought for causes, who fought for losing what would almost certainly be losing causes in some cases. But they did it anyway.

I think to me, there's this idea that Mark Suarez's Meditations is depressing because it talks about some dark themes. Yes. But when you look at this guy's life, he buries six children. He's betrayed in a coup. He suffers crippling health issues. He lives through a plague and floods and wars. Basically, everything that could go wrong goes wrong in his life.

Getting out of bed every day was an act of incredible hope and determination and optimism. Like, that he wrote meditations was proof that Stoicism is not a hopeless, depressing philosophy. He clearly believed in something, and he believed that things mattered, and he really cared. And that, to me, is the hope that runs through the books. Well, yeah, and what gets talked about is ultimately what gets thought about, right?

He was doing that through those books. Yeah. Yeah. OK. Are you hopeful or are you not? I'm a relentless optimist. Good. I think sometimes I'm also pragmatic. And so when I'm optimistic and hopeful about the world,

I look for things to grab onto. Sure. Right? And you're talking about people or figures that haven't been torn down because we're so quick to tear everything down that I mean, maybe the rock. I mean, I'm serious. Like when people look for people that we can all rally around to like, say, like, this is someone who represents the world that I want to live in, it's harder and harder to find those people not due to people's individual contributions or personalities, but just that we're quick to tear everyone down.

And because information is so easy to circulate, I'm sure everyone was always talking smack about everyone, but it wasn't this easy to communicate it to the world. Sure. OK, we're going to wrap up and go to questions for all of you in a moment. I think that when you read this, you try to imagine the person that you could be. Yeah.

And I think a lot of people are gonna start from here and aspire to be a little bit better. If you're reading this and you have just been living in the complete absence of integrity, that's a real question. Okay. Is it too late?

Can someone change late in life? And for lack of a better word, I'm saying this in a very secular way, be redeemed. I mean, the hopeful answer is of course, yes, that it's not too late for anyone. I think so the Greeks had this expression that character is fate. So your values determine who you are, what you're going to become. And so we have that idea, which I think is true. When people show you who they are, believe them. It's always going to go the way that it was going to go. They were never going to magically surprise you

at the end. And so the truth of that, I think, is important. And then at the same time, can character be changed or shaved or improved? The answer also obviously has to be yes, or what is Marcus doing in meditation? What is the point of philosophy? If we're all just baked cakes, what's happening?

So I was talking to my friend Tim urban the other day He was I said this thing they didn't work it and then but I'm still working at a workshop I like I said, we're broken, but we're not fixed the idea of like we're broken We're all flawed all the problems, but we're not fixed like in the sense of growth verse fixed And so the idea is yeah, we all have these problems. we all have these flaws, we all have these tendencies, but we have, I do believe, the ability to decide to do things differently. And that if we are what we do, then we do have the ability to change and become something else. So if you're either, if we see it as you're either a person of integrity or you're a person without integrity, if you're a liar, the way you turn that around is by doing the thing. You become a writer when you start writing.

Yes, yeah, and you stop becoming a writer when you stop writing. You have the ability always to just start doing it again. And so that's kind of how I think about it. And I mean, I certainly, I'm not trying to give myself credit here, but I feel like who I was at the beginning of the book is different than who I am. At the end of it, that was one of the wonderful parts

about writing it. And in that way, to me, it's a success, whether it's one copy or lots of copies. Like it affected this person, and that is what I control and that's great. But I also go like what I think about what initially attracted me to stoicism and philosophy. It was none of this. Like this wasn't what got me excited.

This wasn't what I wrote about, you know, it what got me excited was the much more self-interested parts that stoicism isn't a self-help, meaning it's selfish. And I think I have expanded over time. I feel like it was working on me as I was working on it. And so I know my character has changed. I mean, I would leave it to other people to say what it is. But I can feel in my life the ability to make decisions

and the feeling of, and that I care about things that previously were just outside what was my concern. So I don't know if that answers your question. No, it does. And I mean, I think if you're either here or you're listening to this wherever this ends up existing. If you're someone that, it's like it's a practice, right? Like any practice, it's hard to take that first step.

And if this is something that you want more of in life and you're trying to find a way to either retrain your brain or just inspire you to pursue it. I'm only halfway through this book and I feel like I'm a slightly better version of myself than I was when I started it. And I'm almost certain the same will be true for anyone who picks it up. So I'm grateful that you wrote it and I'm grateful to be reading it and this is super fun. Well that's very nice. So thank you. Thanks so much for listening. If you could rate this podcast and leave a review on iTunes, that would mean so much to us and it would really help the show.

We appreciate it and I'll see you next episode. If you like The Daily Stoic and thanks for listening, you can listen early and ad free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple podcasts. Prime members can listen ad free on Amazon Music. And before you go, would you tell us about yourself by filling out a short survey on Wondery.com slash survey.