The Daily Stoic - Patrick Dempsey on Ethical Dilemmas, Being of Service, and Embracing Stoicism

Episode Date: July 31, 2024

Patrick Dempsey and Ryan’s conversation continues in today’s episode, talking about the ethical decisions made each day, how the entertainment world is impacting society, prioritizing being of service, contributing positively to communities, and how Patrick has embraced Stoicism in his life. Patrick Dempsey is an actor, race car driver, and founder of the Dempsey Center. He is most known from his role as Derek "McDreamy" Shepherd from the series Grey’s Anatomy. Patrick has also starred in Enchanted, Sweet Home Alabama, Transformers: Dark of the Moon, Made of Honor, The Art of Racing in the Rain, Ferrari, and more. 🎙️ Don’t forget to listen to part 1 with Patrick and Ryan if you haven’t already! How Patrick Dempsey Applies Stoicism in Acting and Race Car Driving 📚 Books recommended by Ryan and Patrick: The Johnstown Flood by David McCulloughThe Wright Brothers by David McCulloughAmerican Nations by Colin WoodardDaily Dad: 366 Meditations on Parenting, Love, and Raising Great Kids by Ryan Holiday Connect with Patrick Dempsey on Instagram &  X: @PatrickDempseyLearn about the Dempsey Center at https://www.dempseycenter.org/✉️ Want Stoic wisdom delivered to your inbox daily? Sign up for the FREE Daily Stoic email at https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Get Stoic inspired books, medallions, and prints to remember these lessons at the Daily Stoic Store: https://store.dailystoic.com/📱 Follow us:  Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, and FacebookSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to the daily Stoic early and ad free right now. Just join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple podcasts. I've been writing books for a long time now and one of the things I've noticed is how every year, every book that I do, I'm just here in New York putting right thing right now out. What a bigger percentage of my audience is listening to them in audiobooks, specifically on Audible. I've had people had me sign their phones, sign their phone case because they're like I've listened to all your audiobooks here and my sons they love audiobooks we've been doing it in the car to get them off their screens because audible helps your imagination soar. It helps you

read efficiently, find time to read when maybe you can't have a physical book in front of you and then it also lets you discover new kinds of books, re-listen to books you've already read from exciting new narrators. You can explore bestsellers, new releases. My new book is up, plus thousands of included audio books and originals, all with an Audible membership.

You can sign up right now for a free 30-day Audible trial and try your first audio book for free. You'll get right thing right now, totally for free. Visit audible.ca to sign up. Hello, I'm Hannah. And I'm Saruti. And we are the hosts of Red-Handed, a weekly true crime podcast. for free, visit audible.ca to sign up. and weekly show, Shorthand, which is just an excuse for us to talk about anything we find interesting because it's our show and we can do what we like. We've covered the death of Princess Diana, an unholy Quran written in Saddam Hussein's blood, the gruesome history of European witch hunting, and the very uncomfortable phenomenon

of genetic sexual attraction. Whatever the case, we want to know what pushes people to the extremes of human behavior. Like can someone give consent to be cannibalized? What drives a child to kill? And what's the psychology of a terrorist? Listen to Red Handed wherever you get your podcasts and access our bonus shorthand episodes exclusively on Amazon Music or by subscribing to Wondry Plus in Apple Podcasts or the Wondry app. Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, where each weekday we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stoics, a short passage of ancient wisdom designed to help you find strength and insight here in everyday life.

And on Wednesdays, we talk to some of our fellow students of ancient philosophy, well-known and obscure, fascinating and powerful. With them we discuss the strategies and habits that have helped them become who they are and also to find peace and wisdom in their actual lives. But first we've got a quick message from one of our sponsors. Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoke Podcast. Confession about me. I am bad at texting.

I didn't know until very recently that you can mark a text unread. So sometimes I'll get a text, I'll check it, I'll be like, okay, and you didn't come back to that, but I'm busy or whatever, I shouldn't have checked it. And I forget to come back to it. Now I know you can mark them unread, because I learned it, because I almost missed out on a really cool opportunity that only happened

because the assistant manager of the bookstore, Dina, came upstairs. She goes, hey Ryan, Patrick Dempsey's manager called the bookstore and he's going to be in town and you guys were talking, but they couldn't get a hold of you and they wanted to know if you still want to do the podcast. And I was like, oh shit, of course. So anyways, thanks to Patrick and his manager for chasing me down. I will try to get better at texting

because I would have missed out on this awesome episode of the podcast. Patrick Dempsey, you may know him from the wildly popular Grey's Anatomy, movies like The Art of Racing in the Rain, Sweet Home Alabama, Enchanted, and many, many more. And maybe you didn't know, and especially if you missed our part one of this episode,

he is a very well-read dude who knows his stoicism. And he and I connected over it during the pandemic. And I would say we've become friends, shared a bunch of book recommendations, which is my main friendship language, I guess. And we ended up having an awesome conversation on the podcast. Go back to part one if you haven't checked it out, but in part two, we're talking about how we manage our emotions, how we deal with all those opinions that pop up, right? Stoicism is about sort of only trying to have opinions about things that are in your control.

And then how we create positive efficiencies and impact on the people around us. And then we did a little tour of the painted porch because he was shooting a documentary. He was racing some cars down at the F1 track, which is near my ranch. So then we walked around the bookstore and talked about a bunch of awesome stuff. And I think you're really going to like this episode. So here is Patrick Dempsey and I talking.

And thanks to Patrick for coming out. I imagine it's exhausting. He was sort of mobbed by people while we were there. He did a very gracious job saying hi to all the people in the small town. But I imagine it's a lot. So he made the effort. He came out. It was really cool. And I'm so glad to bring you this episode. We all have this sort of kid in us that can get triggered. And I think that's probably what a lot of the sort of protocols even for pre-performance is about, is about getting calming that energy and making sure that it's,

you're not bringing in the wrong, like, I think it's stillness is the key. I told this story, I thought was interesting about Judd Apatow. He was, he was like, it took me many movies to realize that the studio was not my parents. And he was saying, so they were giving him notes and he's like, fuck you, mom. And like, really, this is just an executive saying like, hey, I think the movie's too long. And so that part in you that's triggered by either the stress or the tone of someone's voice or the violation or whatever the thing is,

yes, like you can push back on whether the feedback is right or not, but are you pushing back as an adult professional but are you pushing back as an adult professional or are you pushing back as the 16 year old that feels- The wounded child. Yes, exactly. Right. Which is really interesting because of entertainment,

right? You know, we have reality television. So reality television is all based on contrived conflict. Yes. They're like, no, you need to be bad, act badly. Yeah. You know, create conflict because everybody's getting along.

We need to, and I think it's really hurt our society because we're allowing people to accept this bad behavior. And now people are seeing it on TV shows or reality shows. And now it's kind of everybody's treating each other poorly. And I look down at the right thing right now, right? We need to kind of readjust this. So why aren't we teaching these values in a way that, people need to see from our leaders, number one,

from our stars, our athletes to set the right example. And we've really lost that and it's really dangerous. And you look at the storm before the storm. I mean, we're heading there, man. We're heading there. Is the republic over? Well, we should talk about that. I think reality TV as a sort of a way that we've taught ourselves culturally the wrong lessons

is one. And then I find whenever I turn on like ESPN or FS1 or whatever, or if you're in a hotel and it's playing while you're eating breakfast or something, and you have a group of people who've gotten together and they think that their job is to debate meaningless things or to have opinions about things that are not. There's this great line in meditation where Marx really says,

remember, things are not asking to be judged by you. They're not asking your opinion about them. And like what you see in a lot of entertainment television, you don't realize it's also what cable news is, is they're like, should LeBron James retire? Well, that's a LeBron James decision. It's not really a should thing. We're like, is this person the best ever at this? These are unfalsifiable, preposterously contrived, sort of prompts that

are designed to create conflict. But they're I think what they prime both in commentators who universally seem to me to be very unhealthy people, but also the audience, this idea that you just should have opinions about shit all the time, right? Right. Which is what news has become. Yeah, really, you should just be watching and learning or not watching and because it doesn't affect you. But this idea of like, commenting on stuff as it's happening and then having opinions about whether it should be different or not.

Is this weird, gives everyone this inflated sense of their importance, which is I think just fundamentally unhealthy. We're just sitting there arguing about whether reality should be the way that it is. Right, and this gets back to the gossip aspect of things, right, and what he was saying and talking about gossip. It's the same thing.

And they're televised and paid a lot of money to do this. But it's really hurting our society. Yeah, it's very bad. And it's so- So and so well dressed at the Golden Globes. And it's like, I mean, it already happened and they didn't commit any crimes. Is this a thing we need to have an opinion about? Right. But it is. Like it's a way of sort of disassociating from the reality you live in and advocating the things you have responsibility over. That's actually the premise in the book. It's like, I think when people think justice

or they think philosophy, they think our job is debate. You know what the trolley problem is? No, tell me about it. The trolley problem is one of the most interesting prompts in ethical philosophy, which is, okay, a trolley is heading down a track and it's gonna kill one person. But if you pull this thing, it will kill five people, or sometimes they do it

differently. I think it's gonna kill five people. But if you pull the handle, it will only kill one person. But then you are responsible for killing that one person, right? So it's basically an impossible moral dilemma. You go, of course, you should save five people to kill one person. But then it's like, so you would shoot a person in the you should save five people to kill one person. But then it's like, so you would shoot a person in the head to save five people? Well, no, I probably wouldn't.

So why is this different? Right, so it's an interesting idea, but basically I think what happens is you get so caught up in it that you're neglecting the fact that you have a bunch of very small ethical decisions in your everyday life that you don't think about at all. Where you buy your clothes, do you eat meat or not?

What kind of car do you drive? How do you pay your employees? So it's this way of sort of abstracting reality into a morass of confusion and abstraction, as opposed to having to go, I'm a person in the world who is responsible for X, Y, and Z. And here are the things that I use to make those decisions. Yeah.

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including American History Tellers, Legacy, and even the Royals. It's interesting you bring that up because I mean, I'm literally just coming from a racetrack, right? And we're dealing with global warming, you know And you and you're like there's that dilemma of like wait am I adding to the problem or am I helping the problem? Because the technology that's being developed can ultimately help or am I just you know, you know

You have those dilemmas and you have that thought, you know, yeah God, but you know, it makes me a better person So my actions are actually kinder and gentler because I am doing that. I do think about that quite a bit. Interesting, yeah. And I don't think the electric cars are the answer because we're not really dealing with the big problem.

Which is? Coal, the coal burning plants. Yeah. So what are we gonna do? Are we just gonna have to slow everything down and get back into these smaller communities? Yeah, I don't know. I mean, look, we're in this little community now

that everything was here and the river was going by and they were chopping the trees down. But also like the most environmentally friendly place you could live is New York City because it's all concentrated and you don't have an acre of land that you raise designer grass on, you soak in water. There's an endless amount of ways to think about it,

but that's kind of the point is like, I think you can look at these ethical dilemmas or debates in such a way, in the same way that we do, I think politically, where we go, well, I don't like this person, I don't like this person, and then what about this, and then what about this, and what about this? And then 50% of people just don't vote.

You know, like, so it's this way, like way more people have opinions about what's happening in the world and then neglect the small sphere in which they have actual influence because that seems small in comparison to the enormity of complex problems. But our job isn't to fix complex problems.

Our job is first and foremost, to start with what we have control. In our circle. Yes. What are we doing? Yeah. And also this gets into something that really is important to me is like,

we should be of service. Yes. So he talks a lot about that. And like, that's the thing. How do you give back to your community? What are we doing to be of service? Yeah, he said the purpose of life is good character. So that's, I think that just the individual aspect

of self-control, what standards you hold yourself, et cetera. He says, the fruit of this life is good character and then acts for the common good. And so to me, that's two, both sides of the sort of stoic coin, which first and foremost, who am I gonna be? What am I gonna, it doesn't matter what everyone else is doing.

It doesn't matter what's legal or not. Doesn't matter what they'll let me get away with or not. Who am I gonna be? And then the other side of it is, yeah, what am I gonna do? How am I gonna leave this place a smidge better than I found it? How can I use the success I've had

to open doors for other people, to be of service for other people? That was something, I think there's a line, because you recommended that book to me and I read it. I thought it was so amazing. So Emerson reads Leaves of Grass right he gets a self-published copy of Leaves of Grass and he just sends Whitman a letter and he says I greet you at the beginning of a grand career like so you have the most famous respected artist in America reading this random weirdo poet who's

self-published a book and he just unsolicited sends him a letter saying like, you're talented, you're going somewhere. Whitman ends up using it as a blurb on the cover of the book. But like we know about Walt Whitman because Emerson co-signed for him. Right. You know, it gave him a stamp of approval. And so like what's our version of that? Who are we opening doors for?

Whose career are we helping? It's so easy to just be like, well, what's the next big thing for me? What's my next thing? But do we spend even a fraction of our energy going like, who's coming behind me? And what kind of legacy is that gonna be for me? Again, when you think like,

hey, this is a good person, they made the world better, again, it doesn't have to be that they invented some new form of energy. It can really just be like, no, no, no, all of these other people have jobs because of that person. And do you find that what you've done here with the bookstore, the podcast changed this community? I think in some ways, I'm not sure everyone loves it. I'm sure they don't.

I'm sure they don't. I'm sure a lot of people are like, what are you doing here? Can you just go back to wherever you came from? Yeah, there's definitely some of that. That was really- But you're putting positive energy out in the community, right?

The way we thought about it was, okay, I need a studio space for the podcast. I need an office because I want to stop working in my house and I need office space for other people. So I need it, So I could rent, you know, boring chunk of square footage from somewhere, right? Like every other business ever. And then when we eventually close, or I move on to other things, they'll move us out,

there'll be no record of it, I'll have zero positive impact on anyone but the landlord to whom I paid rent for however many years I was there. And then we were sitting and having breakfast across the street, we saw these things and they were for sale. And I was like, you know, honestly, like the math here, I can just buy these buildings,

turn them into offices in the back, and then the bookstore could lose money every day. And still I'd probably met out about the same. Now, that's not what ended up happening. The bookstore has been this really cool part of the community. But the idea was like, how can I take something I was already gonna do and create efficiencies off of it that might have some positive impact?

Like, this is not a town that could support a bookstore. The 8,000 people live here. You can't have an independent bookstore. But if you have offices that are subsidizing an independent bookstore,000 people live here, you can't have an independent bookstore. But if you have offices that are subsidizing an independent bookstore, then the people here, it's as if they live in a town that can support an independent bookstore and that's a positive thing.

And so I have just tried to think about, yeah, how does your success end up creating sort of positive efficiencies for other people or things? Again, it's not the same as curing cancer or something, sort of positive efficiencies for other people or things. Again, it's not the same as curing cancer or something, but it has, like, if you actively think about like that and you consistently do it, depending on how lucky you are and how long you're around, that can be cumulatively quite a lot.

Right, exactly. So, yeah, that's how I think about it. Good, and it's interesting you brought up the cancer situation as a small town, and so we do a great deal of research. This is your foundation. So the Dempsey Center. So what we do there is we don't treat the disease.

We treat the person holistically. And we try to customize the care. Yeah, we have our counseling and support services and we do it remotely. It started in the small town I grew up in. It was an old mill town kind of like this, you know, it's like, and all the factories had left. Yeah.

All the industry has gone overseas. Bashew was there. Oh. You know, so you had all these beautiful old factories, but the identity has been lost, right? Yeah. So that's the cancer of like the exporting of our local businesses. So you know, we do so much in these hospitals where we're throwing so much money into research

and the pharmaceutical companies are doing a great job in their way, but people are coming out of cancer treatment without being healed. Yeah. They're being treated, but they're not being healed holistically. Yeah. So- Their body's been ravaged. Yeah.

And then the door's shut and they're like, you're good, you're done. You're good now. Yeah. And they're left completely scarred. So that's through my mother's cancer journey. She had over 12 reoccurrences and passed away in 2014 and was diagnosed in 97, I think it was. And so this came out of that obstacle or that tragedy. But, and a lot of these wellness centers would support groups that are around, wrap around care, I should say.

So we do counseling, which we do, you know, remotely, and now we're reaching out to other states, where I think at 32 states. And then we also do in-office where we're doing reiki and acupuncture and all of those things. And I think this is something that we need to continue to do. And what we wanna do is connect to more like-minded centers. And most of these that have started have become

someone in their family has been impacted and everything is at no cost. So we treat the family, the caregivers, which I think people forget about. Sure, it's not easy for them to see that every day. No, and they have their own responsibilities that they have to keep up and deal with. And who do they talk to? Who supports them?

And then nutrition, we don't talk about what we're feeding. I mean, look at the issues that we have in this country with the industrial food complex. Right. And that's a big problem. We're seeing more issues with obesity and diabetes and that's leading to complications. And then God forbid you don't have the right exercise,

you go into a situation, into a hospital, and you're overweight, something else could happen, and the side effects happen. So it's bringing all that stuff together, holistically in our approach. I mean, we've got all this technology, but we've really forgot the moment of the right thing and kindness and compassion.

That's my favorite quote from Epictetus, he says, or from Seneca, he says, "'Everyone you meet is an opportunity for kindness.'" Right. Which again, we don't fit, Stoics feels like this hard philosophy. Right. This sort of like walled off philosophy,

not as this thing that you give to other people. Like there's a story about Cleanthes, who's one of the early Stoics. And we don't have that many stories about the actual Stoics. So I love the ones where you're like, oh, this is like a glimpse of how they went through the world. So he's walking through the streets of Athens and he hears this man,

I think we've all been in this situation where you screw up, you blow something, you're like, you're a fucking idiot. You know, he's just talking to himself, but like yelling at himself about this thing that he screwed up. And Cleanthes is walking by and he just says, "'Hey, just a reminder, you're not talking to a bad man.'"

He's just like, this guy's talking to himself, he's just, remember, the person you're talking to is not a bad person. And then he just goes about his business. Obviously, the easier thing would be like, weirdo over here, go in the other direction, or, you know, hey, do you need anything? But just this little intervention of kindness,

this sort of one-liner that wouldn't, if someone said that to you as you're in the middle of yelling at yourself, you'd be like, it would shock you out of the spiral you're in. And I just love that, okay, that's what stoicism looked like in practice. Right, and then there's the thing of like, when you're about to lose your temper,

or someone is really acting crazy, instead of like reacting spontaneously to like, you know, flip them off or whatever, just go, what's wrong with you? Yeah. You know, and maybe disarm them. I forget the philosophy. I don't know where it came from, but it was like, that's such an interesting thing to try to remember and to keep your cool when someone is losing it and they're really abusive

to you. Yeah. As it, are you okay? Because clearly they're scared. Yes. So how do you take the fear away to remove the anger? Yeah. And I think there's so much fear in this country right now.

Yeah. Why are our leaders not going after like that? Because there's so much pain. Yes. And we're like this right now. Yeah. Yeah, like I saw, remember during the pandemic, there'd be like, those people would freak out

like at a store, you know, about masks or something. And like, obviously it was totally inappropriate and you can't just scream. No, right. Exactly. But one of the things I tried to get better at, as I've seen more and more of those videos, is first off, like 80% of the time, the person is just mentally unwell.

Right. And then the other 20% of the time, you're like, what was every interaction of that person's day up until that point? You know the tension was just so, and now they're snapping about this totally inconsequential thing. They've lost the ability to understand

that the other person didn't deserve any of this and it's totally inappropriate. But you realize they're not having a good time. Like that it sucks to be them. It sucks to be everyone in this situation. Right. It's like, okay, if you can see that in this person, and now the next time you're in one of those situations, you can either stop yourself or someone's doing that to you.

Can you not escalate it and escalate it and escalate it? Right. Which is hard. It's so hard. It's because you get triggered too. Yeah. And then you're losing it. So it's very challenging that.

Yeah, no, no, it's incredibly tough. So are you wearing a four virtues ring? Yes, I did. I just got it here. Cause I always wanted one. Oh, amazing. And I wanted to get it cause I wanted to have something to remember today.

And I wanted to have it in person. I was going to order it a while ago, but I was here and I got a couple of the leather bound books too, like the daily stoke is so important. And the newsletter of course, you know, cause it just helps reset things. And you know, I don't know if anyone out there who is listening is dyslexic

and you can't journal cause it's too much. What's really good is you dictate into a phone or you'll get your iPad out and you'll dictate into it. Not chat GP, none of that, but you just sort of go, here's what I'm feeling, and what I've noticed, because remember I called you maybe a couple of years ago when you were doing the program of keeping your diary and doing all that stuff, and I go,

look man, this is not working for me, it's a mess. Like I'm basically a functional illiterate who's somehow became a star, and I don't know how this has happened. In a thing that you have to read. I could never get through school, but I've always listened to, and I'm using technology. So here's a beautiful thing about technology.

Instagram can be a real gift and it can be your university. Yeah. You know, it really can be. If you get in the right algorithm. If you get in the wrong algorithm, it can make you lose your mind. Make you really lose your mind and go crazy. And then also audio books, you know,

it used to be records I'd have to go to the library to listen to something. It's like a 12 to D. Or I'd go to go to the library to listen to something. It's like a 12- Or I would go to, I'd go to lectures. Like I really got into sort of Jungian philosophy early on. So Robert Johnson, you remember he, she, and we, and getting into all that stuff. And I'd go to the lectures and that's how I could learn. So I think with this technology,

it's giving people an opportunity who normally wouldn't be able to do it. So that's how I'm starting to do it. And then some approach is like, hey, we want you to, why don't you write a book? There's no way I can write a book. But I think that's the next challenge for me is, can I use that technology to be able to express myself in a way?

And then you go back and then you edit it. Yes. And sort of like, and go, okay, I can say, let me find a better word for that. Well, it's very easy to be snobbish about sort of forms of technology. And I found that like, I love books. And so for me-

Right, and you've turned your love and your insight has really turned me on because I'll go, what are you reading? What are you reading today? Or if I come across something and then you send me trends and dentalists in your world, which is like what, 9,000 pages or something crazy like that.

But I can't do, I don't like audio books. And I think there was a point in my, where I'm like, it's obviously physical, it's the only way to do it. And then you're realizing, I just would talk to all these people and they'd be like, I didn't used to read. And now I listen to audio books,

multiple audio books a week. They like, they read more than me. And I realized, oh yeah, they thought they didn't like reading, but really they didn't like books because books didn't work for them for whatever reason. And so what matters is that you're downloading the information, getting it in your brain.

And some mediums work better for others. I even see this with my books, like people go, oh, why do you need to read Ryan's books? Just read the originals. And I'm like, I would love to exist in that world where my books weren't necessary, but hey, I don't know if you check the sales, but like they don't sell that well.

And the reason they don't sell that well is because not everyone wakes up and thinks, hey, I can read a book from a person whose name I can't pronounce. And so it's like different people are at different places and we should, the more inclusive we are and open, and the more we make things in all the mediums that are possible, that's fantastic.

Yes. Yes. Yeah, and I think what's really great about it is that you find your own technique. Yes. Right? And then you go, okay, we're not all the same. Yeah. And the way we teach kids, the way we're teaching everybody,

it can't put everybody in this box. Yes. It just does not work. But when you go back to the book, I'll go back and I'll isolate a chapter. I'll make a note, okay, I need to go and check this out. And I'll write it down and I'll look at it and I'll read it. And then I'll keep it and then start to develop the file. I wonder if that actually makes you a better reader

because you're engaging with it in multiple mediums. And then you're really zooming in on something that you think is important. And because it's, like people with my note card system, they always go, it would be so much easier if you read audio book or if you read eBooks, and then you just highlighted the passages you wanna keep, and then you just sent it into Evernote or some Dropbox or whatever.

And I go, no, the whole point is that it's hard. It's supposed to be tough and it's supposed to be labor intensive because in the difficulty and I go, no, the whole point is that it's hard. It's supposed to be tough and it's supposed to be labor intensive because in the difficulty and the labor, first off, you're only gonna do it over things that actually matter to you. And then by engaging with it into, I imagine the ritual you have to go through on a script

makes you understand it at a level that if reading was very easy and came naturally to you, you would maybe have a more superficial understanding of the material. You had to really understand why each word was there and what each word did because you had to break it down in your process. Right, and I went into a profession

which is all about reading the written word so that you're dealing with that all the time. So your ego is constantly getting challenged. But what's interesting when we talk about the trans and dentists and certainly the Peabody sisters and what was going on, like the new cool thing was magazines. And like, what's the new book?

And I was like their Instagram and their like thing at the time. That's all they had. But they also had the lyceums, which was the lectures, which is now the podcasts. So it's really interesting how it's still the same, but how we're reaching people are different. There were probably people like, why do you need to go see him talk? Just read the book. There's always this thing where it comes naturally to you. You don't understand why

someone prefers to consume it in another medium. But really, we should all just be celebrating anytime anyone is taking even the smallest amount of effort to open their mind or learn something or hear from someone's different perspective. I just did this interview for NPR and they were like, what do you think about all these tech bros that are reading stoicism? Is that a problem?

I was like, of all the problems in the world, that seems like the one I'm the least worried about. I actually can't think of anything I'd rather they be doing, you know? Like, if you're like, hey, they're going to be doing any of these things, or they're going to be reading about an ancient philosophy centered around virtue, I'd be like, that sounds like something

we should all be getting excited about, not something we should be judging or calling bro-icism or whatever. It seems weird that we just have this, it's a snobbishness where we wanna like discount that people are learning differently than us or consuming it in a medium differently than us. It's just all great.

Well, didn't it all start just by conversation? Probably, yeah. Right, like the Greeks, weren't they just sitting they're walking around handing out books. We know what stoa means, right? Stoa just means porch. Painted porch, which is why you have this. It was called the Stoa Pochile,

which is the painted porch in Athens. Zeno sets up his school in the Athenian Agora, the busiest part of Athens, and he's just talking. And do you know why, but the real joke of why the bookstore is called the painted porch is, so Zeno suffers a shipwreck. He ends up in Athens, he loses everything. But as a young man, he'd gotten this prophecy

from the Oracle. The Oracle said, you will become wise when you begin to have conversations with the dead. He has no idea what this means. So he washes up in Athens, ends up in a bookstore, and he hears the bookseller reading this dialogue of Socrates. And in that moment,

he realizes this is a conversation with a dead person. And that is the bookstore, the painted porch. We don't know the name of the bookstore he went into, but the painted porch is a descendant of an encounter that happened in a bookstore. And that's the wonderfulness of books. Right, and it was coming in here, I was amazed today at, you know, there's I guess a festival going on. I think so, yeah. I don't know, you walk outside, it smells great, food's good, and then just this wonderful, loving energy.

Bookstores have a vibe. Yeah, it's just, and it's like, we've lost all these, the privately owned bookstores, right? Yes. And it was just great, and you're meeting people, and people are just smiling. That's pretty cool. And you're looking around like, oh, I've read that or if I'm well listened, I've listened to that one and I've listened to this one and all that. And it was great. And

then you're here in this this pilgrimage and you can feel like all the conversations that have happened around this table. And you were telling me a great story about this table this is. Have you said this? I have. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Now, I Now at some point I'll probably sell the table again. Like I bought it as a charity auction. This is Joan Didion's table. She donated all this money to Alzheimer's, I think. And so they sold off her stuff.

So I think my plan with the table is I'm gonna have it be the podcast table. So all these cool people come and sat at it. So now it has like this whole other story on top of the original story. And then I'll sell it for some charity. That's the idea. But it's pretty cool to think like, she could have written something

that you've read at this table. Or there is a photo in the New York Times, like if you Google Joan Didion, she, her husband, John Gregory Dunn and her daughter Quintana are sitting at this table in these chairs, like eating breakfast. And you're just like, this person I've read,

this is their thing. So there's a story like this about Epictetus' lamp. Have you heard this? No. So Epictetus has a prized possession. It's a silver lamp and he keeps it in a shrine in his house. It's like burning to one of the gods. And one day he hears something in the hallway,

comes down, a thief is broken into the house and he steals the lamp. So Epictetus could have been angry, could have tried to get justice. He goes, no, this is my fault for having an expensive lamp. He's trying to be the pure stoic. So he's like, tomorrow I'm gonna go buy a clay lamp that's cheaper.

So he buys the clay lamp, has it for the rest of his life. And then when he dies, a fan of his spends a lot of money to buy it. And all the stoics are laughing that this guy doesn't get it, you know, like that he thinks the possession is you're buying the thing that he bought because it was cheap. Right. You don't get it. So I sometimes think of that story when I stay. But it does. Yeah. Yeah, I can see that. It's special. I think so. Yeah, I like things with yeah, I can see that. It's special, I think. I think so.

I like things with good energy. Yeah, you can feel the energy in here because of all the conversations that you've had. Right in there and look what's surrounding us. Yeah, these are cool. This is, you probably, so this, it's- Oh, there you go, right there. It's called a company called Book by the Foot

and they mostly do movie sets. Like when they need like a library in someone's house, you just buy, you're like, I need eight feet of books. And they send you the books. Yeah, that's what this is. But and then some other books from my publisher and stuff. But you want to go check out some books in the bookstore? I do.

I'm trying to think. I always try to give people books. What are you reading or not reading? I'm in the midst of trying to get into the next thing, right? I'm kind of surfing a bit. Oh, okay. Oh, the James McCullough. Oh, he's amazing.

He has this one on the right. He used to live in Maine, you know, two years. I've camped him all the time. Okay, he has a really short one that I'll give just actually is amazing. Oh, he's amazing. He has this one on the right. He used to live in Maine, you know, two years. I've camped him all the time. OK, he has a really short one that I'll give you that's amazing. This is amazing.

This is the best one. This is Night of the Johnstone Flood. It's a nice short one. I think you'll like it. And then you read it in the Heart. You read it in the, oh, do we have the Wright Brothers? Yes, this is great, too. American Nations, too.

Have you ever read American Nations? No. Colin Woodard, he's actually from too. American Nations, too. Did you ever read American Nations? No. Colin Woodard. He's actually from Maine. It's really fascinating. This sort of breaks down, like, where people settled and how it's affecting culture today and what sort of the consciousness was then in those settlements.

Did I send you the parenting one? No. Grab that one to your left. Daily Dad. Great. I'll definitely need this. I'm gonna do a leather one, too. I just haven't done it Dad. Great. It'll definitely be this. I'm going to do a leather one, too. I just haven't done it yet.

Yeah, the leather's really beautiful. My copy of Meditations is like the covers taped on and the pages are all torn and stuff because I just put so many miles on it. Right. You just keep going back and revisiting it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that's why I tried to do it. Because you're like, oh, I remember, and it takes a long time for you to absorb it.

Yeah. And every time you go back and you look at it, you're like, oh, I never So that's why I tried to do it. Because you're like, oh, I remember, and it takes a long time for you to absorb it. Yeah. And every time you go back and you look at it, you're like, oh, I never saw that the first time. I didn't understand it on the level I should have. So I mean, I don't know how many times I'd read meditations, but it didn't hit me that it was a plague book until COVID and that he was writing during what's

called the Antonine Plague. We have a book about it. All right. And he almost died, right? Yeah. He probably did die. Yeah. Well, they did.

And then that's when all the, yeah. But so like, it? Yeah, he probably did die. Yeah, well, they did. And then that's when all the... Yeah. But so, like, it's like, oh, he knew things I thought he was being metaphorical about. He was being literal. And, like, he would have experienced all the things that we experienced, but 20 times scarier. Yeah. Remarkable there. Amazing.

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 would really help the show. We appreciate it. 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

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