The Daily Stoic - Robert Coram on Living Life by a Code

Episode Date: September 14, 2022

Ryan talks to Robert Coram about the life and legacy of the fighter pilot John Boyd, the Stoic heroism of James Stockdale, the value of living your life based on a virtuous code, and more.Robert has had a long career as a reporter, staff and freelance writer, and author. He is a Pulitzer Prize nominated journalist. His writing has appeared in many publications, including the Atlanta Gazette, Atlanta Magazine, the New York Times, Sports Illustrated, and Esquire. As an author, he has published several novels and nonfiction books including Boyd: The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War.📕Pre-order Ryan Holiday's new book "Discipline Is Destiny" and get exclusive pre-order bonuses at https://dailystoic.com/preorder ✉️ Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail📱 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 Daily Stoic Podcast, where each day we bring you a passage of ancient wisdom designed to help you find strength, insight, and wisdom every day life. Each one of these passages is based on the 2000-year-old philosophy that has guided some of history's greatest men and women. For more, you can visit us dailystoward.com. 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. I am just doing some recording here for the podcast because I'm about to run up to Chicago where I'm going to furiously sign as many copies of discipline as Destiny as possible. Typically, what they do on a launch

is they try to send you pages of the book before the book is bound, and you just sign the pages, so they can, you know, I'm gonna sign them and think about 15,000 copies of this thing, and they try to send you 15,000 pages instead of 15,000 books. That's a little easier and cheaper and better for the environment.

That's not possible, because as I think I was telling you where in this major printer shortage, there's not enough slots at the different printers from big publishers. So what we ended up having to do is they shipped the books to the warehouse in Chicago. Some of the books are coming here to the Payton porch, but my team can't possibly do that many. So I'm heading up to Chicago to sign as many books furiously as I can, and I'm just getting caught up on intros. But in the last episode I was telling you about Tyler Cowan and how he sort of

showshaped my life. But if there is somebody else who as a writer and a biographer has shaped me, I think Robert Corum has got to be way up there too. I have raved and raved and raved about his book Boyd, The Fighter Pilot, who changed the art of war, which I read right around the same time I first got turned onto Tyler Cowan. And I've written about John Boyd, I put the to-be or to-do speech, which is one of the most moving and powerful things I've ever read, Robert does it perfectly in Boyd.

I've talked about that in Ego as the enemy, I've talked about it, if you listen to my talk at the Naval Academy, it's there. I loved his book on Colonel Bud Day, also who was a prisoner alongside James Stockdale and the Hanoi Hilton. Just incredible biographer, just like one of the best. And I think because of how few people have read this book,

one of the most underrated biographers that I've ever read. And I didn't even know until I sat down for this conversation what a decorated journalist he was, he's nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. He's written for the Atlantic Gazette and Lanta Magazine, the New York Times Sports Illustrated and Esquire. And it was born in a tiny southern town of Edison, Georgia, about 1200 people. And probably the only person from that town to ever make it as a professional writer.

But boy, are we lucky he did. I cannot rave enough about Boyd. And I can't rave enough about his book on, by day. I guess I didn't know what to expect, but he was so sweet, so kind, so introspective, we both got emotional at a number of times in the interview. It was just a wonderful conversation. And then he wasn't familiar with my work at all, which I didn't expect. So afterwards, I sent him the box set of ego, obstacle, and stillness. He sent me this note after the conversation, which I won't read all of it,

but he basically said that he'd been struggling with writer's block a little bit, and that he was reading the books, and he realized he was being a little judgmental on himself, and for a guy who's written 16 books, I mean, writer's block, obviously, is relative here, but he said he was struggling with it and that when he put down one of the books, he got a hotel room, closed the blinds, started working on a novel, and just started writing.

And he said that he finished a chapter, and now he knows where he's going, and that he's back in the saddle. And like what I responded was there is no possible. I said, this is a very small payment on a large debt because I feel like I owe so much to him. His books have shaped me in so many important ways. I feel like he's a conduit to some great thinkers that I never got to meet and not didn't really overlap with. But overall, just a wonderful experience. And I guess the power of podcasts, and it's a reminder to me to keep reaching out

to people I wouldn't have ordinarily thought would wanna come on. And so I'm very excited to see whatever Robert's new book is. But in the meantime, you must read, Boyd, the Fighter Pilot, the Change to the Art of War, which we sell at the Painted Porch. And I will link in today's show notes,

but enjoy this conversation and thank you Robert for stopping by. So I'm very excited to talk. This is my copy of Boyd. I realized as we were getting together to talk about this that I read this book in 2007, and I looked at my email, I have an email that I sent you in 2008. I'm afraid I don't have. I don't recall it for a minute. I don't expect you to, I mean to bring this up, it's just to say that all these years later, I still think about this book and what you wrote in it on an almost daily basis. And that is an incredible life for a book to have. I know when you sat down to write this biography of a then relatively obscure military figure,

did you have any idea the kind of legacy that the book would have? I did not. I think the publisher, Little Brown, had an inkling because the publisher cut out a couple of pages and put them on the wall of his office saying he liked the writing. And my editor said that almost never happened. And then that they had me meet the regional salespeople that had never happened. So I didn't know how to read the signs, but there were some signs that I couldn't read. Publisher thought it was going to be good. What do you think it is? Like, why would a book about, I said something about it, I read about stoicism, I don't know if you know this, but I go like, who would have thought that a book about an obscure

school of ancient philosophy would resonate with all these people? This is a book about an obscure, unknown military figure, not primarily known, not for his success on the battlefield, but his battle against bureaucracy inside the Pentagon, who was a terrible self-promoter who made way more enemies than friends. How on earth could we be talking about him right now, and this book have such resonance? It's kind of crazy to think about. Right, I've wondered that often,

and I don't know if it's because, boy, it is the man, if a man would like to be, or because it's the man, every man would like to be, or because it's the man, I guess a savage, much story, or he just fought everybody, probably honestly, don't know the answer. Well, do you think we're gonna say, if I did, I'd do it again.

Yeah, if every author knew how to get lightning in a bottle, their whole careers would be different. The problem is, as the Great William Goldman said, nobody knows anything about what's going to work. You was right. You were right. But in a sense, boy, it is proof of the advice that he gave to so many young men and women, the idea of to be or to do, he didn't focus on legacy, he didn't think about getting ahead, he didn't think about success, he just did his work, and somehow that was the most, that had the biggest impact on all of those things.

Yeah, well you picked out what most people talk about when they contact me about the book, and that's the to be able to do speech. Again, I don't understand if that really resonates with people. I guess all of us have compromised it sometime or another and more than ever did. And we were still we can do that. I think that's right. And it's refreshingly real, but also earnest, career advice. you know, it's refreshingly real, but also earnest career advice.

You know, so much career advice is like, follow your passion or it's very, it's like, do what you gotta do to get ahead. You know, his, I think it's a distinction that we all deep down know is true. There's a difference between the people who get the rewards and the recognition and the people who make the big difference. But we don't tend to talk to young kids about that.

We just say, go do a good job and everything will work out. It's an idea that's hard to capture it in a lecture. I think it's, I believe, is best done by example. And that's what board did. He set the example for the people all around him. The guys who followed him, those six men, he was close to him. I won't say it's our Dollar Tree, but they genuinely revere him. And they're not the kind of men to look up to or respect anybody.

They're all kind of classic, they're bright. And even today, they sort of get misty-eyed when they talk about boy, he picked those sex men gravitated toward him and that affected their lives. I thought for the words, I thought some of them lost their jobs, they've changed their lives and the time I mentioned that to Chuck Spinn, he really got offended. He said, there was a highlight in my life. If I can do it again, I would. It didn't affect my career. It affected who I am and what I am as a man. Do you think that, because I'm writing about this now, I'm fascinated by coaching trees, you know, when they look at like a great college football coach and they look at

everything that their assistance went on to do and those assistance assistance, you know, the impact that a coach has in their, not just whether they won or lost, but the other coaches that they help shape. And in a sense, John Boyd has an incredible coaching tree, unlike very few people. I mean, maybe George Marshall would be the only person close to having as impact, a positive and transformative impact on the careers of so many people who would go on to have a big impact. Yeah, the one part of that that surprised me was in England. Boris Johnson's former number one assistant, his name, I can't recall right now, read that when he was picked by Boris Johnson

to be the assistant, people said, who are you, what are you like? Who are you? And everybody that asked him, he sent them to read the board book. He said, wow, that's who I'm going to. So there was an incredible spike in the books in England. And there still is. That got later out fired, but you got out the word in the UK.

Yeah. And yeah, you know what, you got to England and Metty and because he was the most iconic classic person you can imagine in politics. He went to meetings with the cabinet, wearing a t-shirts for these nasty expressions on them. He says, there's no right one for anybody.

That is the paradox of boy. Do you think boy could have gotten more done if he could play better by the rules? There's always this tension of like, marching to the beat of your own drummer, being an iconoclast, as you said, having no reverence, and also kindness, friendship, relationships, et cetera. These are what make the world go around. I don't know. That wasn't the case for the boy. He talked about coaches. The coach in Alabama,

and Nick Sabin sent out a lot of the guys and the coach in Georgia was one of them and last year Georgia Coach BDM and what the national championship and people have been trying to unpack that mystery ever since When somebody follows the North Star invariably there Men who can do the same thing and they sometimes find the same thing That's right. I don't get sent to a metaphysical realm. Here's an, I wish I could better explain it, but I'm as mischievous as anybody else.

What do you, what do you think Boyd's North Star was exactly? Like if you had to put a word on it, what is driving a guy like that? He wanted to be recognized in his hometown in the area of Pennsylvania, which I don't know why anybody would want to be recognized there. He has some friends and he would go see them between the sun, much so just sometimes fly over the yeary. And they would ask him what he was doing and he would tell them and they would say, oh, he was doing classified work and he couldn't tell them. And they said, well, we don't believe you,

because nobody of a general can do that kind of work. He bought was a lieutenant colonel up until the near the end. He made curls. So he never, the guys in his hometown whom he liked did not really know who he was until he died and they read his opus. In New York Times and yes, there's some of the most prominent public picture in the read his opus, his opus.

There are those kind of, like I think of Admiral Rickover, I think of George Marshall, I think of John Boyd. Obviously they get to different places and maybe the first two had a slightly better sense of how to play the game. Maybe they were a little bit more obsessed with being than doing, but generally seem to be cut from the same cloth. There seems to kind of be this code, this like sense of, I'm going to do the right thing. That again, yeah, as you said, we'd like to all think is how we operate. But clearly, we don't, or those three guys wouldn't stand out to us so much as heroes. That's true. Marshall is a good example. He was, I just said the word, use the word,

saintly about a military thing, but he was close to be saintly. He was revered. He has was rico in the, they both followed their north star and they both gotten a lot of trouble. Yeah. Yeah. Well, it's a John Lewis famously had that line about making good trouble. They were, they made good trouble. They did. They did, they made good trouble. They did, they did. Yeah, yeah.

And I think part and parcel of being what you have to be one of the, you have to not only be strong enough to take on the trouble, but it seems like in Boyd's case, especially, he almost takes a perverse pleasure in causing trouble for the, for certain kinds of people. He wanted to get certain people upset. He did. He tried to and he was successful in that.

He said they're only, only so many ulcers in the world and it's my job to see the other people get them. He was quite good at that. Yeah, and what, it's interesting. It's like you sort of get what motivates a boy, you know, the sense of right and wrong, duty on our country as you talk about in the book. But it's always interesting to me when you think about the people on the other side of those conflicts, right?

He wasn't, his most intense battles were not with the North Koreans, they were not with the North Koreans, they were not with the North Vietnamese. It wasn't the external opponent that he is finding entrenched and intractable and willing to play dirty and try to cut his knees out from under him. It was ostensibly people on the same side as him. What motivates the sort of bureaucratic or the oppositional figure that someone like boy is always up against. Like, what's going through their head? Is it? I've never figured that out. He believed that he had a fiduciary responsibility and the people he worked for

was seniors and the Pentagon. Most people think the Pentagon is a place where we'd prepare for war and their, our saviors on the battlefield and all that. But they're not. The real reason that took for the Pentagon is to send money to the defense contractors. You boarded it not like that. And I've had several people say it was

really that bad and answers yes and they said, what about today? And I was even worse. Right. He wanted his bosses to do the right thing and to build the best possible weapons. The soldiers going to war with and they were not interested in that. They were interested in shoveling money to the contractors. In every piece of equipment with this airplane or the Bradley Fighting vehicle or tank or whatever, it never, never, performs the way contracture says it will. And we're getting we, the American citizens are getting shortchanges on that. And most, most people are not aware of it. We have a sort of reverence, if that's the right word, sure, pinning it on. He's not deserved. Yeah, well, that, that is interesting. The idea that he saw himself as a fiduciary and the people who,

that that was a solitary opinion seems so strange. Do you know what I mean? I was actually just reading, there's a famous legal decision that defined what a fiduciary is. It was, I'm pulling this up here. It's Justice Cardoza. He was a judge in New York. And let me find this here. He says, is it your job? Let me find this. It was a beautiful expression that I really liked,

that I thought you might like. He says, then responsible for someone else's money. Yeah, yeah. He said, sorry, he says, a trustee is held to something stricter than the morals of the marketplace. Not honesty alone, but the puntilio of honor. it's the most sensitive standard of behavior. The level of conduct for fiduciaries must be kept at a level higher than that trot in by the crowd. And this is from 1928. And I feel like that kind of describes the attitude that a Truman has, that a boy has, that these people are like, this is not my money. It has been entrusted to me. And I'm not just

going to go with the way that's easiest or most politically expedient. I'm going to fight for every penny. That's true. And they extended even to the little things beyond money. For instance, in the Air Force back in the 50s, 60s, there was a tradition that everybody just stopped at noon and went out and drank off right after noon. He would not allow, he was at a nellis at the time and he would not allow that. His people supported him and had to work at a 430. And it was even to the details like that. He said he worked for Uncle Sam and he wanted to deliver the best he had. Yeah, and didn't you say he died with a bunch of uncasted checks in the drawer in his small apartment?

Yeah, and his family really needed it. He was getting paid. I think the least the Pentagon could pay a consultant was for one day every two weeks. He wanted to work for free. It would be hard to have to be a double-dipper that is someone who got a Air Force pension and you know, checked from the government from the Pentagon at the same time. So he got his check for one day a week and didn't cash most of. I mean, his family really needed.

There were thousands of dollars worth of checks and the draw when he died. That is sometimes the tragedy of these men and women who have this intense sense of honor and duty and committed to service or their profession is that sometimes it feels like that strictness, it comes at the family bears the weight of it always. that sometimes it feels like that strictness, it comes at the family bears the weight of it always,

particularly in the military families, but it sometimes feels like one duty, the duty to the job, to the machine, to the thing, is the primary duty and the duty to, the duty of the father, the duty of the spouse, duty of the brother, sister, son, sometimes it feels like that can become a secondary duty.

And it's not approached with the same level of commitment always. He was a terrible husband and the worst father. And the best example is living in that cheap level of apartment for 23 years. His family had some deeper sentiment toward him after that is why he's widow. First time I went to see him down in the area of H. Went out to a choir room and we talked, she told me things in the first interview

that I would've considered myself fortunate to elicit from her in the 10th interview. She had a lot of hostility toward her husband. How do they square that? Is it, they don't think about it? Is it that they've just made a prioritization call or is it a blind spot? What is it?

I don't think board was aware of it. And if he was, he didn't care. He had a hard duty. And he calls them scars. I'm in touch with his family from time to time. And they're all in pretty bad shape. Yeah, it's certainly undermines the legacy that it's often men, the great men were not always good man at home.

Yeah, there's an idea that you can't be successful in your job and in a successful home life too. I'm sure that some people do, but a board did not eat, gave everything to the job, which was his country. And I imagine that must be particularly hard for a family member when you see the doting and the support and the empathy and the love that he has for these protégés and mentees that he had. Like if that's your father and you see your father guiding and cultivating the careers and being there for these young people who in some cases probably the same ages you, but then he just can't do it for you. That would

be so heartbreaking. When the board was dying, he was sort of in and out of consciousness. They're toward the end. And there was a time when he started calling out the names of his friends and saying, oh, we did just the members he had, members he had, which one. And then he got through and his daughter, I think, was in there with him at the time. She said, why didn't you mention any of us?

Why didn't you mention the family? In instantly he apologized and said, I love you, which was the first time he ever told her that he loved her, but he, uh, his family was deeply resentful toward him for the people he worked with and the show gave them all of his love. It's a, it's a, I think these, these Shakespearean figures and, and boy, it is Shakespearean in that sense. They show us the sort of heights of what we're capable of. And then usually their flaws are tragic flaws. And they should hopefully caution us and remind us what not to do also.

Yeah, I'm going to use sometimes when a book review was said that I had a during a sequest attitude toward board. And I mean, here's a guy, as I said, a bad husband and a worse father, a terrible table manners. He was rude to people. He burned up stuck a tie in there. The list of his personality shortcomings could go forever.

But somehow people read into it, but that was agilatory toward him. Well, you know what I found this more so on your butt day book, which I also really enjoyed, is unlike a lot of biographers. And I think this is a knock on other biographers. To me, it's a virtue and you're writing. You actually admire and respect the person you're writing about. You're not just like, this is a historical figure and I'm going to tell you about them.

You've chosen people who, it's not that you're celebrating them, but you do think there is some inherent value in their story and life, and that's what's driving the biography, not where they were born and what they did when they were 26 and who they met. You know, you're actually trying to get what they did when they were 26 and who they met, you know, you're actually trying to get to the essence like a Plutarch. You're trying to get to the essence of why that person is worth knowing about. Over the years through newspapers, magazines, books, and then the other is I found that when I interviewed people, I think everybody wants to be a saint, but they're very few of them. interview people, I think everybody wants to be a saint, but they're very few of them. The people I interview especially for books, they show me only their best side and their best qualities and the best habits.

But after a while, they get used to my being around and I see some old cracks in the arm of them, I see who they really are. That was not true, but they never changed. He was the same. When I saw him the last time, he was the first time I met him. He was just a straightforward, middle-western guy. And when you saw what you got. To live your healthiest, longest life possible, you need to understand what's going on inside your body. People age different speeds in generic annual blood works part of a physical or whatever.

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You can listen ad-free on Amazon Music or the Wondering app. And I imagine as a reporter of an award-winning reporter, you've gotten pretty good at getting beneath those defenses and seeing what's really there, there's something, someone told me that they have this theory, it's called the Apple Theory. And there's the skin of the apple, there's the fruit of the apple, and then there's the core of the apple. And I think someone like,

but someone like, Boyd has an unpleasant skin, right? A complicated fruit, but the core is good, right? And I think your book really captures all those levels. But Dave was, I've never met anyone like him, truly. He was, he was just a good man, and never a sense of the word. And I discovered one little flaw in his personality,

if you will, I have one news in Vietnam. And I thought long and hard about whether I should include it in the book because it was something that was so serious. That's the right word. It would've colored people's judgment toward him. And I thought he's too good a man to have this one incident, be part of his legacy. So I didn't include it in the book. I might have managed my decision, if you will, to leave that out. And I think what you leave

at is can be as important as what you put in. I think that's right. What I, one of the things I've thought in the many years since I read that book is, you know, the book sort of ends, what year did Bud day die? Oh, it was about 10 years ago, as I recall. You sort of end, the book is wrapping up and he's part of the Swiftboat, the group of Swiftboat captains that go after John Kerry, he sort of talks about some of the allegations of torture, the torture policy, etc. There was a part of his, the end of his story that I've thought about in the last several years where you take someone who is so fundamentally good and decent, who has such a strong moral

compass, and you see the way in which our political system has kind of, some of those folks have gone sour, I guess, I don't know how to put it, not that he is that, but it's bitter reminder to me that they're fundamentally good and decent people that can get caught up in things or maybe the news they get, or I don't know, I just, does that make sense at all?

Yeah, let me make a small correction if I might. But it was not part of the Swiffboat crew. His objection was to carry accepting metals that he shouldn't have gotten. And somehow those two groups melded and people thought of him as one. Yeah. The Swiff Wars, but with Butter was a form of honor.

The guy got medals he didn't deserve, and he'd be pushed for them, advocated himself. And the PLW just fell so strongly against Kerry. You know, he married the widow of the fellow who owned the hands, catch up the, it would be PLW's, HADB's unions, they stipulated in the contract with the hotel, they would not serve hands, Ketchuk, they won't.

They wanted whatever the other one is, but they took it that far. You know, there's something I've asked a number, I interviewed Admiral Steph Reedus recently and a number of other, I talked about this with General McMaster's as well. So obviously Stockdale and Stoicism, there's a connection there, right?

And I'm fascinated with Stockdale specifically. I don't have a strong opinion about it, but I'm always interested for different perspectives. So Stockdale later coming out of the camp, it talks about how he was there during the Gulf of Tonkin incident, right? And that basically, it wasn't an incident, right? He's like, this is all a bunch of nothing, basically.

So as I think about what he endured in that horrible prison camp, and I think about the fact that he must have had doubts then about the legitimacy of the war or the moral validity of the war. I go back and forth between, does it make the experiment, his heroism incomprehensible, or does it make it even more heroic? Do you know what I mean? It's it with a more you think about it. It just kind of it's like he was there. He was sacked. If it was if you were there and you're like I'm fighting Nazism all undergo anything to stop this from happening. That's different than knowing your own government is not quite as pure as you would like it to be. Stockdale had an additional problem.

He was senior enough that he wasn't put in general population, if you will. He was in solitary the entire time. He was at the Wallow Prison in New York, and that made it rough. Solitary blood was in solitary, often owned for a while, as was McCain. And people react to it differently, solitary mud was in solitary off and over while as was McCain and

People react to it differently, but it can be They can't really work on a person's mind when they're stuck in a hole with their rats and there's glass in their food fecal matter and They haven't talked to their family in years and don't know if they were will again They stood up under their beliefs, their core beliefs were strong and that's it. And it was general shock then, in particular. It was just iron wraps. Yeah.

It was a great moment. Yeah, and you just think about, you know, the moral complexity of that conflict would not have been lost on the men in that camp. And so as you're subjected to torture and incentives would not have been lost on the men in that camp. And so as you're subjected to torture and incentives and bribes and, you know, to stick to not to continue to do the right thing, when there must have been a part in your mind that's saying, screw it.

You know, you know, like that's obviously what the captors exploit is they try to plant doubts in your mind that's saying screw it. You know, like that's obviously what the captors exploit is they try to plant doubts in your mind, they try to undermine where you're from. But the inherent complexity of that conflict, it makes their principles stand just so, again, incomprehensible in a good way. It truly sort of awesome in that sense because it's just, it's just that another level than clear black and whiteness. The black and whiteness would be supportive. The gray must have been hard. I don't think any American POWs have ever endured that much toward,

that severe torture for that long, and some of those guys, the mud was in there almost six years as I recall. And they all went by the code of conduct, which is quite simple. And they were, some of them were broken under torture, but in Bud's case, when he did give us some information, later he would come back and say, I was joking, I didn't really mean that, that's not what happened. And he was told to really badly because he had escaped once and because the government means to lose face.

And they gave him particularly a brutal treatment. And late in his career after four guys broke out, I think, and they were all captured and two of them died in the beatings. And then they came to get blood because he was the SRO, the senior rank officer of that building. He knew it was going to be a bad time. And he wondered how he's going to handle it without a embarrassing his family or his Air Force or his country. He just remembered one phrase, a return with honor. And he wanted to know the details of the torture. But it never told his wife the details. And he had horrible scars on his back and his bottom. And I had to push him a little bit to find out the details.

And as he was getting into it, he started weeping. And then his wife, Doris started weeping. And finally, I did have, well, three, just set their crying because the man could go through that. And it's man's inhumanity to man, just the things we're capable of doing to each other. You're right. But then, but then that the the things that some people are capable of despite that, you know, the heroism and the honor and the strength of it, it doesn't quite restore your faith in human. It doesn't cancel it out, but it does give you a glimmer of hope, I guess.

I think military people are better than the rest of us, they have a higher code of honor than eat those, what you conduct themselves in PLWs or a good example. I don't have any friends, and I know I couldn't have stood up to that kind of torture. I don't know any one of good, but it's into the DNA of military people. And they don't see anything extraordinary. It was just, I once heard somebody ask John McCain, what was in your career? Where did you stay the longest duty session? And they thought it said Japan or something like that. He said, Hanoha in his stopped conversation. He, again, it was interesting.

He was a smart ass of the beginning. And he could have gotten that early because his dad was a four-star admin. And he chose not to. He said, treat me like everyone else in the dead. They beat him constantly. But he and Bud were big buddies. They were probably in the worst shape of any other field evidence in the, but it had his arm broken. It couldn't walk.

He was crippled in McCain. He got now broken up in the crash. High-speed injection. And they sort of looked after was broken up in the crash. I had speed injection. And they sort of looked after each other for a long time. And they got together. There was a relationship there that you rarely see between men. They had looked over the abyss, and the abyss had looked back. And they came through, they kept their honor and it was

my great privilege to know those men. It's not to take away from their incredible heroism, I think prove it, but what I think the military men and women that you're talking about, what they have, that the rest of us don't have, is a system, a code, a philosophy, right? And the rest of us are winning it, right? So you said, you said, you know, he goes in there and he's thinking in that depth of despair and evil and loneliness to return with honor.

That is the power of a culture that articulates and reiterates and teaches its principles. And obviously it's good that we live in a pluristic society that lets people do what they want, that doesn't mandate or enforce any sort of, you can live however you want, you can do you want, you can be a good person, you can be a bad person, et cetera. But the downside of that is that we don't have that Spartan or stoic kind of code that says, if you're in a situation like this, here's what you should do. Well, I look at the behavior of people around me and then I remember how the P.O.W. is behaved and what they endured. Yeah, might you reassess everybody you know?

Yeah, you think about this during the pandemic, just how people say, love your neighbor, and then you're like, but I obviously am not willing to be inconvenienced in any way for any reason. It's pretty, it's, it's, it's, it's, if it wasn't so sad, it would be funny. Yeah, I remember I'm a military family and I had sort of split with my father when he was 15 to 16 and he was trying to teach me the military ethos and I could get it about turning

the lights off when you leave the room, keep your shoes shine, get the air, and I could get it about turning the lights off when you leave the room, keep your shoes shine, get the air gun, and I can do all that. But the patriotism part and the sense of duty and love of country, they look that really meant, I never got there for 50 years later until I was interviewing a bad day. And he was talking about what he went through in that brutal torture situation. And certainly I got what my father had tried to teach me when I was 15 years old and I had rejected the most priceless gift a father can pass on to a son.

And that, still bothers me. That's clearly though the lesson did get in though. It was just the delay. It was there. You just didn't fully open your heart to it until you saw it embodied in someone truly great. Just took 50 years to get it. Better later on.

Well, that's better than a small country cemetery in South West Georgia in a couple years. He was while I was writing the Butte Booker maybe shortly after. I went to a cemetery and said on the edge of the grave and had a long talk with him. This time, the first time ever, I got to do all the talking. And I told him that I understand that I got it. And I thought that he would be proud of me to the birthday book. I think he would be. That's a beautiful story. There's a line from General Mattis that I think about quite a lot. And I would put him up in the pantheon of similar to those individuals we've been talking about. But he said cynicism is cowardice, right?

And I think the patriotism, the belief, the principle, even a thing like return with honor, there's a kind of hackneyed cliché to it, right? But it's also immensely powerful, right? And I think we're afraid of it. We're afraid to earnestly commit to an idea, right? It's think we're afraid of it. We're afraid to earnestly commit to an idea, right? It's easier to make fun of it. It's easier to, to, ah, whatever old man, you know, you're right. But there's, there's a real beauty and power to it if we're, if we're brave enough to accept it. I've talked to a marine pilots and different groups because of the

books and and that's what amazes me every time I talk to them I just see things in them that are different from the people I meet in the everyday world they have great admiration for our people in uniform. strong. I'm supposed to speak at the naval academy in Annapolis in a couple of weeks. And the same thing, I see these 18, 19 year olds and I go, I remember what I was like at 18 or 19 years old. And I was not remotely qualified to be in this room. And you think about just how much they have their act together,

how sincere they are, you just go, this is the best. This is the best of what? Of a generation, yeah. My favorite example that is Marines coming out of a boot training. They've been there for 12 weeks, I think, and their parents haven't seen them and they were sorry kids when they left on the road to some of them literally and and then one day they come to see them and they graduate. I mean, it's a different person. It's a US Marine and I've seen

I mean, it's a different person. It's a US Marine. And I've seen parents to stop and stare at their sons because they, it's not just physical, they're bigger and of course they physically drop all the work out, but there's something in their eyes and they're madder. And their parents know that not their little boys. Do you have children? Yes. How old are they? I have one daughter and she's in her 40s. Have were you able to impart any of the any of the values you learn from from bud day and John Boyd onto your children. What did I could better and more than our divorce and she didn't want to carry anything from the marriage to my daughter. So so no, I'm sorry to hear that. It does it does, it does.

I had a moment changing gears. I right before the pandemic, I gave a talk at Aviano Air Force Base in Italy, the NATO base. I spoke to one of the fighter wings there. And afterwards they said, hey, you want to sit in an F-16. And I was said, hey, you want to sit in an F-16.

And I was like, sure. And so you're sitting in the plane that obviously John Boyd was so responsible for bringing into existence. And the amazing thing was they were like, see that number on the wing? It was, you know, blah, blah, 78 or something. And they were like, this plane was built in 1978. And they were like, it recently flew missions over Afghanistan.

And I said, I can't tell if that is wonderful to hear or terrifying to hear that we, that obviously something that these reformers helped bring about is still in operation, or the fact that that was the high watermark of their innovation in a sense and how stalled out we have been by the exact same forces that they were battling against all those years ago. I had a similar experience when I was speaking to Moraine

that Moraine fight up I was a view experience when I was speaking to Marines, the Marine Fighter pilots of Uford, South Carolina. And they had some F-22s on the ramp, and when the young pilots wanted to know if I wanted to look in the cockpit, and I did, and there was a statue, if you will, of backpacking. It was open. And it was open to where the EM charge were. That John Boyd was a foundation, was his energy maneuverability study. He leaned over very quickly and closed it so I couldn't see them.

And I said, why can't I look at those? And he said they're classified because they show what this aircraft can do and what it can't do. And he said they take those in the briefing room before every mission. And they have to remember where they're flying and what they're doing and what the airplane can do and what the threat aircraft can do. And I was truly amazed to find EM charts in the cockpit of F-35. Yeah, you hope that would be on a computer at this point.

Yeah, yeah. So this just eight by 10 pieces of paper, and you see the red or blue. Yeah. And still a lot of red on some of them. I bought it that way. He said, even General was going to understand blue is good red is bad. So there was a simplest way to present the EM charts. I mean, in another sense, it really

is an important piece of context, just how great those bureaucratic status quo forces are that all these years later, it's so hard to do to make changes, to innovate, to meet what seemed like strict, but are actually pretty basic standards that John Boyd was working for, that no, without a constant battle against the suits and the stars, so to speak, the stars on the shoulder, the conservative interests went out and there can be immense costs to that. Yeah, I get great pride. When I see military people and they found out that I write the board book,

they just get really excited. And I mean, the book was published 20 years ago. And I still get emails about it, and the sales are still good. So something in there that resonates with people, most of the buyers of men, which goes against the grain for the book market, because they average book buyers at four or five-year-old woman in New York, Boston, Phillips, they have to try and go. And these are guys from all over the country. Well, look, I'm sure that as they were trying to roll out like repeating rifles in the Civil

War, that there were people in the capital that were resistant to that. Do you know what I imagine at every point in American history, innovation and stand, I mean, the Truman Commission was about battling the exact same forces that, yes, boyd was then fighting against in the Pentagon. And as I understand it, as I was just reading a really interesting book about Truman, Truman himself based his commission off a commission that existed during the Civil War to make sure the defense contractors were being honest. And I heard recently I read a book about whistleblowers. Apparently whistle blowing is in

the US Constitution, specifically in relation to the founders' experience with defense contractors during the Revolutionary War. They would buy boots or barrels of meat and it would come rotten or broken or messed up. This goes back to the very founding of this country. And I'm sure Napoleon dealt with the same thing too. You never changes. And this is sad in a way that defense contractors, shortchains the people in uniform in charge so much for. Yes, yes.

Yeah, and I'm sure if we read through the letters of Roman generals, we'd find complaints about the helmets being faulty or the food being bad. I imagine it goes back to whatever the first war was. There was a defense contractor screwing somebody over. It was during the Revolutionary War, too. We had a lot of that here. Yeah.

Well, no, that's what I'm saying. The whistleblower protections that we have in this country date back to the founders experience with that fraud and the need to empower the public and bystanders to call fraud when they see fraud. Yeah. Board did not like whistleblowers. He said that was the easy way out and that they had no credibility and should fix it from within. I had mixed feelings about that because it was whistleblower that brought up, I think, was $8,000 toilet

seats on one of the lucky aircrafts some years ago sir. Did they bring about some changes? I think we, it's easy to dismiss whistleblowers and I think they play a very important role. It particularly as things get more complex. Sometimes the person who can spot something that's wrong does not have the toolkit to fix what is wrong and what they should just not say something. I mean, there's an important, there's importance to just bringing the information to light. People on the inside know what's wrong better than people on the outside. It's like newspapers can bring things to life. Nobody else can. I think it takes a lot of courage to be a whistleblower. I think that's exactly right. And I remember I was giving a talk.

I interviewed Alexander Vindeman on the podcast a while ago. And I got a lot of angry emails from people. Particularly it was always interesting to see angry emails from people with the military email address. And I said, look, you can disagree with what he blew the whistle about and you can not like him as a person. But I said, why don't you directly challenge the most powerful man in the world before you tell me whether he was courageous or not. That is, that, he could be totally wrong. That is a ballsy difficult thing to do. It is. And I have great respect for the people who resigned on January the 6th in the White

House. They were principal moral people. I like to see the people like that are in government. And they were ostracized by their work partners, I'm sure, but I think it was admirable what they did. Well, I think that pulls it full circle on void, which is doing the right thing is not only often not rewarded, it's punished, right? And they don't throw you a parade. Often they criticize you and sideline you and attack you for exactly what you should be doing.

Not a favorite example that it was a subject of another book, General Groot Krulak, Marine Three Star, Deer and Beard. Got it right here. There it is. Deer and Beard Nam, he was the only senior officer who publicly went out against the way Johnson was prosecuted in the war.

And he took the plane himself to go to Washington and to get a meeting with Johnson and to tell him what he was doing wrong. And if you don't change, you're going to lose the election and you're going to lose the war. And Johnson quite literally pushed him out of the over-lifest. And he lost a chance to be the common-down of the Marine Corps

because of that. It's his great life's ambition. He had already told some of his friends, get ready for duty on my staff when I'm coming down the Marine Corps. No, he's on his son's toes, but can't come and die. That must have been, that must have made it worth it. But yeah, you know, doing the right thing can cost you everything. Yes, you can.

And isn't that really the ethos of to be or to do, like if, if, if boy had been more willing to be and less willing to do, what, what rank might he have retired on and, and how much cushier might his life had been and, you know, it, it would have been a different existence. His family might have liked him too. That's true. That's true. I do tend to find that usually people who are so principled and committed, you know, they can't turn it off. So you're like, Dad, can we turn up the AC? And they're like, he's like, no, you know, it makes it, it's hard, it's hard to be a saint because you have to be a saint consistently and that makes it hard to live with, I imagine.

Some of your friends are zenithed to, they think you're being self-righteous. If you say, I'm not going to do that because I think it's wrong. They just, it didn't go well with those who are not principles. Well, the tricky thing is when you take a principled stand, you are implicitly condemning the people who are not, the principles are the people not willing to take that stand. And that's, that's a difficult balance.

That's a difficult balance. I was, I read a book about Gandhi recently and how hard Gandhi was on his children. Yeah. And they're like, hey, we didn't sign up for a vow of celibacy, Dad. What's this? You know, but, you know, there's a great line from Marcus Aurelius who clearly failed at this with his own son. But he said, tolerant with others, strict with yourself.

And I think that's the balance that you have to strike. Yeah, it's hard to do sometimes. It's, uh, no. In Rome, they said, we can't all be Kados. Yeah. We can't all be John Boyd's or Bud Day's either, I suspect. Well, writing about those men,

I've put particularly, as well as Boyd, it was just his beliefs were iron wrapped and also General Krileck. I think he made me a better person, just being exposed to men of such high ideals, that I certainly said, notice some things that in the past I might have said yes to. Yes, me too.

I like Longfellow's line in a Psalm of Life. He says, the lives of great men all remind us we can make our lives sublime. It's difficult to do, but yes. Hope springs eternal. Yes, we can.

It I think anyone we talk about coaching trees, right? Boyd's coaching tree is not to do, but yes. Hope springs, E.T. Yes, we can. I think, and when we talk about coaching trees, right, Boyd's coaching tree is not just the men and women he mentored. It's not just the the the pilot he trained. It's also the people that he reached through your book. And then it's, yeah, you and I and regular people making a slightly more ethical decision because their example was floating in our mind I've had young officers call me you know lieutenant's captains and they said that it it changed their life that In the everyday on officer there comes a time when he comes to fork in the road in the yesterday

Make a choice. I want to be somebody of that. I want to do something. I don't know how many of these young officers stick to it when they came to that moment, but they dozens have called me and said that it's motivated them to try to live the life that board left. When you brought up January 6, you know, what you see in moment,

even up until that point, if you have been making the wrong decision and wrong decision and wrong decision, it's never too late to make the right decision and making the right decision in that moment could change the course of history as a few people's decisions in that moment did, right? The decision to do one's duty, to say,

screw the consequences, I'm going to do this thing because it's right. The world pivots on those decisions. They do. Sometimes you don't realize that moment until later, you've already passed and you've made your chores and you realize what you've done, but you can't unrank the bill. And that's a sad moment. Yes, and that's why hopefully the training, that's why the training's so important, so that you're not even thinking about it. You just, you just do,

you just do your job as Bill Belichick says. Do your job. You got advice, you got advice. It's simple, but it's not easy. No, it's not. It's a constant challenge, too. You attempt it every day to do, take the easy course or to do something that would impress your boss or help you get a promotion. And, they'll be at a promotion. And that's not always the right thing.

No, no, it's not. But it comes back to to be here to do, which is such a beautiful, a beautiful piece of wisdom that obviously existed because a number of people got the advice directly from Boyd. But I feel like you have made an enormous impact on the world by writing about it so beautifully and capturing it in this book. And I know it's changed my life. And I've heard from a lot of other

people that has. And I even wrote, I even used you as a source in one of my books. And so I thank you very much for keeping that coaching tree going. Well, you made my day. I'm grateful. Thank you for that. Well, thanks for coming on and seriously thank you. I've loved all your books. And do you have another one in you? I did want about Robert Scott who was a of the flying tigers in World War II,

but he was not, I picked the book for the wrong reasons. And he had some major faults, and frankly, later on, I was sorry that he picked him to ride it. Interesting. I'm looking right now. Did you publish it? Or now? Oh, yeah. It's a title is double ace. Okay. I'm looking right now. Did you publish it or no? Oh, yeah.

The title is double A's. Oh, okay. He was a typical Southern. And he liked it Southern. He liked to tell stories. And it didn't matter if they were true or not. They became true in the filling. Yeah.

And he just did some wild stories about things he had done. And his colleagues took a fancy of that. And some of them have very little respect for on the other hand, the book they wrote, God is my copilot, pushed an entire generation, maybe two generations of young men into aviation. Right, right. Are you working on another one? Are you working on another one? No, I have run out of steam, I guess, trying to find an idea.

I'm trying to retire on the coast, and I'm wrestling with it. I want to keep going, but I think maybe I've killed enough trees. Well, now, I mean, yeah, when I think about when I bought this book, audio books didn't exist. E-books didn't exist. It was social media didn't exist. I mean, it was a whole other world. Right.

Yeah. But I think it says something that it's still relevant. You made something very timeless. Well, Robert, thank you very, very much. It was an honor. Thank you. And I'm very proud of that book and the others I've written about military opinion left.

Thank you for drawing attention to them. Yeah, you should be very proud. Hey, it's Ryan. Thank you for listening to the Daily Stoic podcast. I just wanted to say we so appreciate it. We love serving you. It's amazing to us that over 30 million people have downloaded these episodes in a couple of years.

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