The Daily Stoic - The Hardest Book Ryan Holiday Has Written | Right Thing, Right Now

Episode Date: June 12, 2024

The tables have turned for today’s interview, as Ryan is joined by his research assistant, Billy Oppenheimer. Together they talk about the Stoic virtue of justice, ways it is commonly misinterpreted, and how the Stoics thought about justice while weaving in examples from life today. Billy Oppenheimer is Ryan Holiday’s research assistant and the writer behind the newsletter, Six at 6 on Sunday. To read more of his work, check out his website billyoppenheimer.com.📕 Right Thing, Right Now is out now! To purchase your own copy, head here✉️ 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.

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of profit from the contract. Oh, and a lot of the equipment was unusable. Oh, a minor detail. And having said that she had nothing to do with that profit repeatedly, she then goes on national television and says that HONOR children are actually in line to receive nearly £30 million as a result of it. To find out the full incredible story, follow British Scandal wherever you listen to podcasts or listen early and ad free on Wondery Plus.

Hello, I'm Emily. And I'm Anna, and we're the hosts of Terribly Famous, the show that takes you inside the lives of our biggest celebrities. And just a warning, our latest season will feature a lot of accents. Can I just check what accents? Because... I can't tell this story without going all in. Okay, I'm scared to ask, but can you give us a clue? Why I'm Ant?

Oh, Ant... ...and or death? I'm afraid not, and it's not Alan Shearer either. I am talking about a young woman, plucked from obscurity, who rose to become... ...the nation's sweetheart. A woman who's had a lot of surnames? And has ditched them all to become just...

...Cheryl. Love it. Girls Aloud fans, strap in. We're gonna follow Cheryl from her Girl Band glory days, getting together with Ashley Cole and the many scandals and humiliations that followed. Not to mention a near-death experience. She's been through a lot. And she has needed every ounce of her northern grit to see her through. I promise you it's

going to be an emotional rollercoaster. Follow Terribly Famous wherever you listen to podcasts or listen early and ad free on Wondery Plus on Apple podcasts or the Wondery 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 Stoic Podcast. I don't remember exactly when it was. This would have been several years ago.

I went for a run in Vail. I think, yeah, yeah, I think it was in Vail. I was speaking at a conference. I went for this long run and I logged in on Strava, which I used to do. I, I think it was in Vale. I was speaking at a conference, I went for this long run and I logged in on Strava, which I used to do. I don't do it anymore. And then I got an email from a kid. I think we'd gone back and forth a couple of times.

I got an email from this kid. He said, hey, I'm a big fan. What are you doing in town? And I said, you know, I'm about to give a talk. You should come out. And that kid, Billy Oppenheimer, would go on to be my research assistant. And he's worked on stuff for the Daily Stoke.

He's helped me prepare for podcasts. It's been awesome to watch him grow. And I talked about him recently. He just sold his first book to my publisher, which will be coming out, I think, in 2025. He's got a great newsletter, the six on Sunday. I'll link to that. I think you can find it at BillyOppenheimer.com. Anyways, why am I telling you all this?

Because Billy has been there from the beginning on actually all the books in the Stoic Virtue series. And I think a little bit before that, I said, hey Billy, you know, I'm working on these books. Why don't you come move out to Austin? You know, I know you want to be a writer. Why don't you move out here? I'll move you out here.

Anyways, he moved out here in February of 2020, right before COVID-19 sent everyone back working remote. So we've been through quite a bit. And I thought to kick off the launch of Right Thing right now, he and I would talk about some of the ideas in the book. So this is kind of a turn the tables interview where he's interviewing me, but really it's two people

who are fascinated by these stoic ideas, who have been tracing them through the historical record over the last four or five years. And I think you're really gonna like this interview. It's a bit unusual. It's not normally what we do here at the Daily Stoic, but with the book coming out yesterday, Everywhere Books are sold,

so now if you were thinking about getting an audiobook, an ebook, that's all available. We're still honoring the pre-order bonuses, so you can grab those at dailystoic.com slash justice. I think we have a couple of the signed numbered first editions left. I know I'm running very, very low on the manuscript pages. Anyways, all that's at dailystoic.com.sus.

But I wanted to have a conversation about Stoicism, about this very, very important virtue. And also I wanted to give Billy a little moment to shine, which I think he did great at. So check out Billy's newsletter, check out the new book, and enjoy this conversation. This is part one. I'll bring you part two on Saturday and be well. I found that thing I emailed you about yesterday,

the story about the two cups. Yeah that the master's fills up the cup, and he says, you can't fill it up because your cup is full, whatever. That's the idea, the cup has to be empty to be a student, you have to have an empty cup. So I emailed Tristo, who is, for people who don't know, my research assistant before Billy, and he was like, no, no, no, it's definitely in the book.

And I was like, I don't think it is. It's like I searched all the phrases in the book and I looked where it was. Anyways, he was like, no, it's right here. And he sent me a manuscript. I do everything in Google Docs. And then when I move it to the manuscript, I save a new draft every day for precisely this reason.

So you can see like the differences. And it was in there on June 12th, 2015. Yeah, June 12th, 2015. And then by September, it wasn't in there anymore. Exact story was in the intro of Ego is the Enemy. And I cut it at some point. So sometime between June and September, but it's blowing my mind that I knew that story.

I knew I'd written my own version of that story before, and I thought it was in one of my books. But since I cut it, literally that is the intro of a chapter now, because I just copied and pasted it and redid it, updated or whatever, that will come out in 2025. So 10 years that it sat on the cutting room floor. You always tell yourself when you cut stuff,

I'll use it for something else. And you never, ever, ever, ever do. And you probably found that you read it first, however long before then. So that story has been brewing for- Yeah, that's true. I don't know when I heard it for the first time. The source you had is obviously this,

cause I asked you, I was like, maybe I didn't. So like, but I know this story, can you find me the source? And that's obviously the source that I used when I wrote. I'll send you the thing I did, but there's a phrase in the one you sent me from, I guess the story's from the 1800s, but it was written in the early 1900s. But that's what I used when I wrote.

So I would have read that book or somebody talking about that book at some point. Yeah, probably in 2014 or sometime earlier than that. Right. Which is crazy. But it was in the intro. Like the book was built around it. Of ego. Yeah. That's where I went first. I was like, because I thought I'd read it from you somewhere.

Yeah. And then now I'm worried. Now I'm like, what other things are like that that I forgot about that would be good? Right. Oh, that you've cut that you might want to use? Yeah, yeah. Is there like other is there stuff that I don't even remember that I don't remember? That would be awesome. That's like the exact thing that I'm needing or would just be like the perfect tag for like a sentence or something. Like if Ferriso hadn't sent you it, you wouldn't have found. Well, it's also weird that he had like, I just pulled up a random manuscript of it and I had a copy edited manuscript that I searched and it wasn't in there.

And so he had a working drafts and then copy edited drafts. So we were only four months apart or five months apart in the drafts we were looking at. And when I looked at it, it wasn't in there. And in the one he looked at, it was. So what if I'd said, hey, have I ever written this story and he was like I may be and he grabbed something from late September or if he was searching the published like I was searching mostly things that have been published not like of course earlier drafts yes I think there's a story in right

thing right now that was supposed to be encouraged. And then I moved to discipline. Yeah. And then I moved from discipline to justice. Yeah. So it like, I've rewritten it three times. Yeah. And I don't know what the story is. But there's probably an argument that it could be in wisdom, too. Because there's a Yeah, maybe. It was also weird going through, like for the book, we're doing some bonus chapters for the book. And I had to like, go find. Yeah, I was like, how do you find what you cut? Like I didn't remember. I remember one chapter that I obviously cut. And then there, I remember combining some, but it like, I had to do the same thing where

I went through and I was like, okay, what, I'll pick a random date and then go like, what is in here that isn't in the final draft. Right. Well, I've been doing it with the bibliography and on this one had to just like go through my emails with you and find when I was sending you stuff. Oh, right, right. Now with Wisdom, I've like started a dedicated document where as you're having me hunt down things, I'm like labeling it and keeping it there for like when the time comes. So the story getting cut from Eega, do you remember like the decision to like cut that?

Yes, as soon as I saw it, I was like, I remember why I cut it because, okay, so this is the story is about a student goes to learn Zen from a master. And he puts out his cup, and the master fills. And the student says, Whoa, whoa, whoa, it's full, it's overfilling, you can't pour any more in. And then the master says, yes, this cup is like your mind. You must sort of empty the cup of your speculations and opinions for it to be able to take. And I said something like, when I wrote it for Ego

as the Enemy, I said, we're so full of it, we're so full of shit, it stinks. Which I remember thinking was a very clever line when I did it. And the editor, I think they told me I needed to cut it because they there was too much cursing in the book or something, something like that. It was just some minor thing that it was too long. And they didn't there's this line in writing, you're supposed to kill your darlings. And I really

liked that line. And so when they suggested killing it, I was like, because I liked it so much, I agreed to cut it, if that makes sense. And so the intro is already pretty long, if I'm remembering correctly. So I think it just didn't need to be there. And then, yeah, it gets cut, and then you don't even remember that it gets cut.

And 10 years later, you have this vague recollection that there's something to this story. Yeah, one of the things I wanted to specifically with this book, and it's always like the challenge of any piece of writing or any piece of art is like the overlap between your tastes, what you want, what you like, and like what you think will resonate with an audience.

Sure. And this, the topic of this book seems like one of the harder ones to find that overlap or like the title, you didn't go with Justices insert. If someone could tell me now a really good one that involves justice in the title, I would go for it. I mean, I'm wearing an Injustice for All shirt, but that was the working title was Injustice for All.

But it just, there's just something about it that I felt like wouldn't work. I mean, this is the same thing, ironically, that I went through with you goes the enemy, is like humility is not what gets people excited. And so you have to come at an idea in a way that entices people to care about what you're saying. And the same way that, you know,

the first line of a book matters, so does the cover matter, so does the theme matter, right? You're like, what is the way into the thing? Funny enough, part of the reason I sold it as a package, and like the better way to do it financially as an author, potentially, is you sell the first book and then it does well, and then you sell the second book for more, and then on the strength of the second book,

you sell the third. And in this one, I always knew justice would be the third because you definitely don't open a series on the cardinal virtues of justice. I don't think you follow courage and justice because they're similar. And wisdom seems like the culmination of all of them. So that meant it had to be third.

One argument is that discipline is gonna sell best. So that's actually exactly how you do it. So one, then you sell the other. And then riding on the success of that, you sell the third. And then knowing that the third will do the worst. This probably is like the worst thing I could say to people who are thinking about getting the book. But I was very aware going in that this would almost

certainly be the least of the four books in the series. And maybe that people would have the hardest time jumping into or be the most, I'll get around to it. Because just having talked about civic philosophy now for 15 plus years, you can get people really excited about all the things that stoicism does for them very simply.

And then when you have to say what stoicism asks of you, people are like, you know? So there's a tension there. And so still going into it, I tried to think about what is the way into this, I think, essential stoic concept in a way that most overlaps with what people think that they want or know that they want. Yeah. Appeal of self-interest. Yeah. Like nobody wants to buy a lecture. Think about it, it's like when people think justice, they think politics or the law. When people think social justice,

they think social justice warrior. It's got some headwinds, but stoic philosophy has headwinds. I was gonna say, yeah, like it's not dissimilar to the work you've done to redefine how we think about stoicism. So I think when you go, you know, one of the key stoic concepts is not only people go like, not super excited about that, but they're like, what does that even mean? But when you're like, no, no, no, it's essential to the stoics that one does the right thing, right? Or one is a person

of integrity or decency or kindness or honesty? You know, once you sort of break that term down, all of a sudden, we're kind of talking the same language. Yeah. And so I tried to go there. The system that we do today. Yeah. I mean, like most of what I feel like the Stokes talk about, let's say meditation, most of where like Marcus Rulis talks about justice, like literally dozens of times in meditations.

He also talks about doing the right thing dozens of times in meditations. The common good. The common good. And so when he's talking, he means something closer to integrity, a moral compass, a sense of right and wrong, as opposed to this list of policies

or these 10 commandments. It's something closer to the golden rule, something closer to, you know, this sort of universal values that cross-culturally we associate with being a good person, a person of rectitude, a person of integrity. Of course, the Stokes are also interested in social justice and engage in, you know, the political battles and arguments and fights at their time. And at different points are on different sides of the argument. But being a person like Cato is considered the great stoic because of his high personal standards that in a time of corruption and decay and decadence, he's a person who keeps his word, who is transparent, who fights for the little guy where not always, but for the most part, is a stickler for the

law, duty, responsibility, those sort of just like old fashioned values. Yeah, right. Marcus is like in the book, you say he uses the phrase common good like 80 times. Yes. And other variations a lot of times. Yeah, Marcus really says this quote in Meditations where he says,

the fruit of this life is good character and acts for the common good. And I think that to me is both sides of the stoic virtue of justice. So on the one hand, who are you as a person? Do you keep your word? Do you do the right thing? Assume responsibility? Do you treat people well? Your sort of personal code that the law, like what other people are doing, what society says is okay, what you can legally get away with

is secondary to what the standards you hold yourself to, character. And then on the other hand, acts for the common good, what are my obligations to humanity, to other people, to my family, to the future? How am I trying to leave this place better than I found it? That to me is the encapsulation of what the Stoics mean by justice.

Yeah, he's not like saying like, tomorrow we're gonna go get justice and put that guy in prison. Like it's always in like reference to himself. Whereas like when we think about justice today, it's usually like externally, like are we gonna get that person? Yeah, we think of justice as a thing you get because you have been wronged, right? Like I'm gonna get justice against the government against the person who stole from me, you know against this

societal problem, right? justice is something you go to a law court and a verdict is rendered in your favor as you go to a law court and a verdict is rendered in your favor, as opposed to justice as something that you do as a person in how you treat other people and how you run your business in how you treat the environment in who you vote for. Again, the core of Stoicism is like, what is in your control? And so justice as solving intensely difficult, timeless collective action problems, of course, that's an important thing to do. If everyone just accepted the status quo as the status quo, we'd never have progress, we'd never get better.

But there's something far more accessible and attainable that most of us ignore in favor of these big theoretical debates about what is right and wrong? Should we have done this? What should we do about this thing that's happening in this distant land or in Washington or Brussels or wherever, right? Like, we're thinking about it as like, how should the world be? As opposed to justice is a thing that I live and act by in the domain that I have power over, which can be considerable.

I'm not just saying like, hey, do you hold the door open for strangers? But like, you're a police officer, you're a CEO of a company, you are on this board of this nonprofit in your small town. How do you act with these ideas and ideals? There was this suffragette, I think, and she said, it's not small the sphere in which we move. And she was talking about the way that women at that time, who did not legally have the right to vote,

could influence things like the abolition of slavery and all these sort of major sort of progressive causes at that time because they could boycott, they could protest, they could write, they could speak, they could do all these things. And so the idea like we all have a considerable amount of impact in the world that we exist in if we choose to act with it instead of distracting ourselves with these theoretical abstract moral discussions. Yeah. It's a theme or a thread in all three books so far in the series,

which is like how these things are habits that start really small in small like tests and small acts. And then those things build and build on top of each other. So it's like, if you see somebody that's doing something kind of unethical or slimy, it's like what the steps they took up that staircase to like get away with that. Well, Aristotle says, you know,

virtue isn't this thing that you're born with and it's not this thing that you attain. It's a thing that you do. He's saying it's like a verb and not a noun. He's like, nobody goes like, how do I attain the virtue of home building? You just start building. You become a contractor by doing the act of building.

And so we should see courage as this thing that you do. Like, that's why that expression of like, do one thing that every day that scares you, right? Courage is this thing that you build. And, you know, I think soldiers and astronauts and like, truly courageous people would tell you they're not like they weren't born that way. This is a result of the training and the culture that they exist

in, which inculcated those values or skills. And I think this is true for discipline, too. Like, I don't meet that many people who are like, I'm just naturally super disciplined. Discipline is something that you cultivate by like doing the hard things over and over and over again until it becomes easy, you know, or it becomes habit. And I think we can say the same about justice too, like generosity is something you develop, you're not just naturally generous. Maybe some people are, but let's say most of us aren't. If we want to be

more of these things, we acquire that by actively thinking about it, setting rules for ourselves, engaging in the thing over and over and over again. And that's what the stoics are trying to talk to themselves about in their writings is like, Hey, why did you do this? Why not do that? You know, and how do you do it better and do it more often and make it kind of a second nature? Yeah.

It's what I love about the Regulus or Regulus story. Yeah. I didn't know how to pronounce the name either. And I probably botched it in the audio book. Yeah. That he keeps his word and goes back to the captivity. But to think of like how that person gets to a point where they don't break their word even in that scenario.

Yeah. So there's this Roman named Regulus and he is fighting against Carthage and he's winning and there's a sudden reversal and he's defeated and taken prisoner. And he spends like many years in a prison camp in Carthage. And then ultimately the Romans get the upper hand in the war and Carthage sends Regulus to Rome as a diplomatic envoy to hopefully negotiate return of hostages and a peaceful end to the war.

So they send him and he gets to Rome and he delivers the message. And then he asks to speak to, I guess would have been the consul at that time. And he goes, look, I know I just described, you know, exactly what they want. I don't think you should take it. I think they're weaker than you think.

I think you're on the verge of winning, reject it. And so the Romans do. And the next day or a few days later, Regulus is seen like packing up his stuff. And the Romans are like, what are you doing? And he said, you know, for them to release me, I had to promise that if I was not successful in the negotiations that I would return.

And I gave them my word as a man of honor, and he returned. And the reward for returning was not, oh my God, what an incredible person of character. It was death. The nicest story of Regulus's end is that he was crucified. The worst is that they had him stomped to death by elephants. And he knew this. He knew that's how it would go. And so we can imagine, you know, his wife begging him to stay, and imagine the tearful goodbyes to his children and his friends.

And they said, you don't have to do this. Like you're home. Why would you possibly go back? What do you care that you gave your word to these people? Especially you gave your word under duress. You know, like, of course you would say whatever you could say to the enemy to get home. And then once you're free and clear, like all bets are off, right? And he says, I totally get it. I gave them

my word on behalf of Rome. And if I break that word, now some later general or a citizen or diplomat will give their word to someone who's taken them prisoner or in a negotiation and no one will believe them. Right? They won't... He says, if I return, I alone will suffer the consequences. But if I stay here, future generations will suffer. So for him, it wasn't just like, hey, I gave my word and I'm suicidal about it, right? The moral of the story is that when we break our word, when we don't do a thing that we said,

we're not just hurting like the other person, but we're fraying the bonds that society depends on, right? It's like, there is a collective action problem. Why would anyone ever do what they say if it's not in your self-interest? And the answer is society depends on it, right? It's like there is a collective action problem. Why would anyone ever do what they say if it's not in your self-interest? And the answer is society depends on it, right? And so he has this sense that like, okay, I gave my word, and it's good for me to break my word, but it's bad for some other future person down the line. It's bad for future. Like think about all the times in modern politics where there's been something bad we know happening in an embassy or with a diplomat.

But we have these laws about these rules, these standards about how we treat diplomatic people and then how we treat sort of the sacred ground of embassies because without that institution, all of humanity is worse off. Right? I do think you make an interesting point which is like how do you get to a point where your word is literally your bond? Like you will return to prison because you gave your word. I mean there's a in Gandhi's life he's given seven days free from prison by the British authorities to mourn and bury his wife. I mean, he could have

gotten on the first car, plane, train out of there or just retreated into the interior of India in some way and waged his campaign on the run. It probably would have been a PR coup in many ways, right? But he had given his word. And I think you do that enough times, you become someone who says, you know, I do what I say. And again, this is all very lofty, right? It was like, I'm going to return upon penalty of death. But I think about, I think people have had the experience

of like a contractor gives you a price and then it turns out to be more expensive. And they're like, this is your problem. And then you've dealt with a contractor or a vendor or whatever. And they're like, I know, I told you it would be X, it's cost a lot more. But I gave you the quote. So end of story, right? And like, that person doesn't see themselves as being like some hero, but it's the same fucking thing. Right? The idea of like, I honor what I said.

I told you I'd get it to you by this time. I told you I would be there. You know, I told you there was a job waiting for you. Whatever it is, the idea of your word as your bond is a really, really powerful thing. And I, again, I don't think Regulus is some supernatural person. I think it is a muscle that he built. And when you look at really strong people,

you're like, how the fuck do they do that? And I don't think it's that different when you look at someone do something that demands so much character. It's from the work that they did. Yeah, like a marathon runner at one point made the decision to first just like run around the block. Yes.

And then like build on top of that. Yes. And that's where with like Regulus is like work backwards to all the little things that build up. ["The White House"] For more than two centuries, the White House has been the stage for some of the most dramatic scenes in American history. Inspired by the hit podcast American History Tellers, Wondery and William Morrow present the new book, The Hidden History of the White House.

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And now, when you read them as an adult, you think some of these old tales could use a fresh spin. We have a perfect podcast to bring you the stories you remember, remix and reimagine for the kids in your life today. Join me, DJ Fuse, and my trusty turntable, Baby Scratch, as we spin up new tales in the new kids and family podcast, Once Upon a Beat. Wondry and Tinkercast are bringing you a jam packed, music-filled weekly party where hip

hop and fables meet. It's Once Upon a Beat. Follow Once Upon a Beat on the Wondry app or wherever you get your podcast. You can listen to Once Upon a Beat early and ad free right now by joining Wondry Plus in the Wondry app or Wondry Kids Plus in Apple Podcast. I tell this story in the book that I love about this poet named Danielle de Prima, who's at this party with Jack Kerouac and Alan Ginsburg.

They're like the sort of literary lions and she's this aspiring poet. It's this great party because it looks like it's going to go on for hours. It's probably great for fun and networking. She gets up to leave and they're like, where are you going? She says, I got to go relieve my babysitter. I told her I'd be home by 10. And Jack Kerouac says, if you don't forget about that babysitter,

you're finished as a writer. He's saying like, to be a writer demands selfishness and it demands you put the scene and the art and the inspiration above any other concern. And De Prima says something like, no, no, no, no. If I forget about the babysitter, I'm lost as a writer. And she was saying that like the act of keeping one's word to the babysitter and to her family was the same process

and required the same discipline as keeping her word to herself when she says like, I'm gonna get up tomorrow at eight and write for three hours, or I'm gonna finish this manuscript by the end of summer. I'm going to do this thing. And because I said to myself, I'm going to do it, it is the same as if I said to the babysitter or my boss or my probation officer, whatever it is,

like I said I would be here at a time. I said I would do a thing. That's all you need to know. or my boss or my probation officer, whatever it is, like I said I would be here at a time, I said I would do a thing, that's all you need to know. And it's true, like if you get comfortable lying to other people, you're probably also gonna get comfortable lying to yourself and the converse is also true, right? So developing this muscle or this habit or this standard where if you commit to a thing,

you can take that to the bank. And the truth is people do take that to the bank. You know, like if you tell someone, hey, I'm gonna deliver this thing by this time, or it will be ready by this date, or here's my quote, you know, this is what it's gonna cost. And then you stick, you knew all along that that was wishful thinking at best

and you're gonna stick them with all these other fees as you go. Or you knew historically, it never goes that quickly and inevitably there's gonna be all these other things. Like they took that to the bank. That's how much they budgeted, right? That's when they built a plan around, right? And now you're breaking your word and that costs somebody.

I mean, it costs, I think all of us are jaded a little bit because we've been lied to so many times in our lives. So that's a cost, that's a societal cost. But then there's also just the cost of like, fuck, now what am I supposed to do? Like my third quarter was dependent on this thing happening this way. And you assured me it would go this way.

You know, you told me you would have a decision by the end of next week, and now it's clear you didn't think about it at all. Like that's not free, there's a cost to that. And so I think, again, this is the intersection of like, I'm a person of good character, but I also understand that my actions have consequences for other people.

And so they are connected in that way. Or if the Prima does break her word to the babysitter and she learns a lesson that like, oh, there weren't severe consequences when I did that. So next time she's thinking about breaking that promise to herself that she's going to wake up and write, it's easier to go, well, last time I got away with it. So look, that's how you end up as Jack Kerouac. Dies like prematurely, pathetically as an art monster, right? Like there is something fundamentally selfish about being a writer, for sure, or any kind of artist, right? You have, no one is truly great at anything

by putting everyone and everything else in front of that thing. But if you don't have some sort of code that you live by and some kind of sense of empathy to balance that out, you can spin off the planet like extremely quickly. And to me, that's what that story is about. She's realizing like, hey, I wanna be more than just a writer or a poet.

I wanna be a well-rounded person. I wanna be good at this thing and a good person. And so in that sense, the discipline is not just what you bring to the creative act. It's also how you behave as a person. That story seems to be kind of an illustration of the way that sort of small things are indicative of like larger character traits. You have the story of Hadrian seeing Antonidas in like

this kind of trivial setting. And it's to him, there's like, he's the right guy for the job. So Plutarch is like the greatest biographer of all time. And he says that you learn more from a small utterance or an affect or an anecdote than you do from all these facts and figures, where they were from, where they were born, exactly how many troops were at this battle or every option they considered in this decision, that there's these little sort of moments that reveal the essence of the person. And that's why

Plutarch's biographies are so incredible and everyone should read them and why they've endured for thousands of years. And funny little side note, Plutarch's grandson or nephew is Sextus, the philosopher who markets thanks in the beginning of meditations. So Plutarch lives in Hadrian's time. So generation later in Marcus's time, that's the connection. It's a fascinating question. How does Hadrian, the most powerful man in the world, who was probably not a great person,

and in fact is monstrous in many ways, he sets in motion this succession plan that sets up Marcus Aurelius to be the most powerful person in the world, but he knows Marcus isn't ready. And he knows someone, he knows, Hadrian knows he's not going to be long, live long enough to shepherd this boy and teach him all the things that he needs to know. So it has to be a placeholder. Later, this would become known as a regent. But how does somebody set up this person for the toughest job in the world?

In many ways, that's the tougher job, right? How do you hire someone as a transitionary figure? How do you set someone up to put themselves in service of someone? I mean, we see this in football all the time. No quarterback wants their team to draft high high up in the draft, another quarterback. Nobody wants to be a mentor to the next. And this is, I mean, you can relate to it and it's also kind of a sad commentary, right?

But this is what Hadrian does. And he doesn't do it with like a multimillion dollar contract. He does it with absolute power. He says, I'm gonna give you absolute power over your successor and indeed every other person in Rome and I hope that it doesn't corrupt you and I please don't kill this Right and set up your own dynasty, you know that rules for all time. Right? So how does he know and We don't know he doesn't leave like a detailed record of what it was But like Antoninus had been in politics his whole life,

he had served in every capacity you could imagine. He could do the job, right? He was more than qualified for the job. So Hadrian didn't have any question about that. The only reservation would have been like, does the person have the character and the decency that such inherently selfless set of responsibilities would demand of you. And yeah, we hear that Hadrian walking in the Forum one day sees Antoninus helping his elderly

stepfather up a flight of stairs. And he doesn't know that anyone is watching. It's not a performance. It's just a real moment of character. Here you have the speaker of the house or Senate majority leader or the secretary of state, right? You have some incredibly powerful person used to having people do things for them just in a private moment, being fundamentally decent and kind and helpful. And this is, you know, may well be what seals the deal for Hadrian. And those are, I think those are the kind of things you can't fake.

It's less impressive if he knew Hadrian was watching. It's not impressive at all if he knows he's watching. You know what I mean? It's not like a, and I'd like to bring my family up on stage, you know? It's just, oh, okay, this is who you are. I mean, the governor of South Dakota just admitted in her memoir that she shot a puppy in the face

because it wasn't behaving well. Right. These are moments where you get a glimpse of, oh, I can relate to this scenario because I got two livestock guarding dogs that killed all my chickens. And then they bit, I had a smaller dog at this time, I had this dachshund my wife and I had had since we first met. And the dogs would bark all the time. They weren't as purebred as we'd been led to believe. We bought them from a neighbor. So, you know, they chased people, they bit my dog. I had young kids. It was untenable that we would have these dogs, right?

It's my property, I could do whatever I want. It's unthinkable to me that I would shoot them in the head to get rid of them, right? Like we found a neighbor who was willing to take them. And then they found someone else who was desperate for dogs like this. And then they found someone else who was desperate for dogs like this. And then we re-homed them with this person. And first off, we sent the dog to these classes and that didn't work. Like we tried a bunch of different options. And then when it

became, okay, not safe for here, we're like, well, what is the thing that works for the dogs? And then that's what we did. And I'm not saying this is like an insight into me being a wonderful person. I'm just saying like, you have something that, you have an unpleasant, difficult scenario. This is where if you don't have character, you do the expedient thing. And I think what was so telling to me about that thing was not just that she did it, right?

Because what she did it is like, again, insane. Like her kids came home and they were like, where's the dog? You know that she did it. Then she tried to put it in her first book. And the editor was like, this cannot be in your book. Like you come off horribly in this story. So it gets cut from her first book. And then now she's in again, this is like weirdly more of a parallel than you would think she's in the running to be the vice president to be a heartbeat

Away from the presidency, right? Like she Trump is thinking of making her her big not no comments on who's gonna win the election But she's being vetted for a job like Antoninus is being vetted for a job she writes a second book to like get attention and yeah, the book is her resume, right and She's with a smaller imprint now. She's more famous now. She has more leverage She puts the story in like she had said she doesn't even get that This is like it's not just the absence of character that goes so we should just shoot this 14 month old dog There's an absence of character that goes, so we should just shoot this 14 month old dog,

again, a 14 month, we should shoot this 14 month old dog in the head in a gravel pit in the backyard because it keeps eating chickens instead of fetching pheasants and quail. They're very similar. I could see why the dog, so not only does she do it, but she can't even conceive of a world where this is not only not the right choice, but it's a horrendous

choice, you know, like a horrendous choice. And then, you know, the condemnation is swift and almost unanimous. Right. But this is the problem. If you don't have that thing, no one is saying this person's been a monster from the day she was born. But you can imagine, and I think this is something we're seeing on both sides of politics, but certainly in the right, where if you have a scene or an environment, and then you have a media culture that is celebrating brutality, violence, surprise, shock, you know, like how do we own the libs? How do we provoke controversy? You could see a person developing as such that not only do they do such a thing, but they're proud of it. Right. It's funny when I spoke to the Los Angeles Rams a couple years ago at training camp, I'm like sitting at this table and her husband was there for some reason.

And so we had lunch together. He seemed like a perfectly nice person, but I mean, he would have known about this. Yeah, he didn't say like maybe cut that out of the manuscript. Well, no, no, yeah, I don't know about that, but I'm just saying you just, you meet a person and you're like, you're not like, oh yeah, you sleep in the same bed as someone

who shot your children's dog in the head. Like I'm now off on a tangent. And now, when you read them as an adult, you think some of these old tales could use a fresh spin. We have a perfect podcast to bring you the stories you remember, remix and reimagine for the kids in your life today. Join me, DJ Fu, and my trusty turntable, Baby Scratch, as we spin up new tales in the new kids and family podcast, Once Upon a Beat. Wondry and Tinkercast are bringing you a jam packed,

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I'm Afua Hirsch. I'm Peter Frankenpane. And in our podcast, Legacy, we explore the lives of some of the biggest characters in history. This season, we're going to be exploring the life of Margaret Thatcher. The first female leader of Britain. Her 11 year premiership completely overhauled British society. This season we're going to be exploring the life of Margaret Thatcher. The first female leader of Britain.

Her 11-year premiership completely overhauled British society. The political legacy of Thatcherism is both pervasive but also controversial. So who was the woman behind the policies? Wow, what a titan of modern British history, Peter. It's kind of intimidating, actually. We spent days, days recording this one. And just to cut it down, there is so much that happens over the course of Margaret Thatcher's life

that we've had to think really hard about what we can include. And this is, of all the characters we've done so far, the one who's had the most personal impact on my conscious, waking, real-time life. I mean, I lived through her, I was born under her, I'm a Thatcher baby. That's gonna be set to dance music. So follow Legacy now from wherever you get your podcasts.

Or binge entire seasons early and ad free on Wondery Plus. The other thing about the Marcus Antoninus succession plan, And back to like the analogy of the quarterback seeing mentoring a younger guy, but on the flip side is like the rookie doesn't wanna like sit behind that guy. Like the Falcons just took that guy from Washington and the GM said something like, ideally he'll sit behind Kurt, whoever it is for four years.

Yeah, for four years. And then everyone was like, he's not gonna wanna sit behind him for four years. Yeah, that doesn't happen anymore. Yeah. Yeah, he's like, that's what college was. Right. Yes.

And back to like the Marcus story is, that took 20 years where he's sitting, waiting in the wings. It's totally remarkable. I mean, it's unprecedented in the history of the world. And we have, these are the most famous, like we know the most about kings and power and succession than any other thing. Like we don't know about that much about merchants in the year 1500, right? We know some, but like these are the most studied, written about, portrayed, documented people

in the history of the world, kings and queens and princes and princesses. And for most of human history, this was the only system of government that there was. And so it's totally unprecedented in the history of the world. Like first off, you have three Tehadrian emperors who don't have a son, then Hadrian doesn't have a son. So he chooses Antoninus, but breaks the chain in saying that, and I'm picking your successor also. So here you have the five good emperors,

and they weren't amazing, but they were better, we great emperors on a curve, right? But you have five good emperors who each choose a successor who is not biologically their child and gives them power. And each one in turn does the same thing. Leading to Antoninus, yeah, not, you know, Hadrian's an old man, very near death when he chooses Antoninus.

So he has to live with this decision for not very long. And Antoninus has to live with the decision for not very long. He probably expected a few years, five years, that Marcus would have to rule under or live under Antoninus' rule. But yeah, it's 20 years. And it seems like not only did both of them not have a problem with it, but it was the greatest, most meaningful transformative experience of either of their lives. Like Antoninus seems to have loved it

and Marcus seems to have loved it and both of them were like, it's over too soon. Right. And Marcus, I think repays this, makes the ultimate sort of embodiment of what he just saw Antoninus do. There's this sort of third figure, Lucius Verus, who is the son of a previous person that Hadrian had attempted to set up as his successor but had died. So Lucius Verus has some pretensions towards the throne. But Antoninus, as soon as Hadrian is out of the picture, goes like, no, it's Marcus. Marcus is the one. He's the he's

the most qualified, we get along the best, he's who I wanna set up for this. And what does Marcus do though, like the second that Antoninus is out of the picture is he says, no, no, no, no, no, I'm gonna make Lucius Ferris my co-emperor. The first thing he does with absolute power is give half of it away. And it's sort of not remarked on enough,

but that's what Antoninus also did. Antoninus didn't just, I'm the emperor for 20 years, and then on the last day of my life, I'm giving it over to Marcus. Marcus and he effectively towards the end of that reign are ruling together as co-emperors. So you have this rule, absolute power corrupts absolutely. Nobody goes before it's their time.

Kings and queens don't abdicate, and yet you have these two kind of exceptions that prove the rule, Antoninus and Marcus Aurelius. And it's incredible. And again, I think, was Marcus Aurelius a good ruler? You know, that's a question of justice. That's the virtue of justice. Did Marcus Aurelius, as a human being,

act with this kind of profound moral compass that's incredibly impressive? That is also the, like that decision to not be corrupted by power and to share power is also a matter, is under this bucket, I think. Yeah. It's interesting because both of those, those two are kind of brought into the royal lineage. And then Marcus' son is now he's in it. And then he is like goes back to the precedent of like deranged. Yeah. But what is it about like distinction between Marcus not expecting to be like that?

That was not on his radar for much of his life. It's a terrible system. Do you know what I mean? Like they had less history of it than we do. You know, we have 2000 years and a thousand examples of why it's a bad system and why it works on the people who inside it. Do you know what I mean?

Like we have more evidence than they do. I mean, political science is like just being invented. We don't have the same, they did not have the same understanding that we did. I mean, should they have known better that like, what are the chances that the kid of a good ruler is gonna be a good ruler? It seems silly in retrospect.

It was also probably pretty silly at the time. This is why Rome was a republic and why they, Rome historically had a hatred of kings, but it is the system that they live in. And so they're not able to question it. But yeah, it doesn't go well for Commodus. It doesn't go well for Nero either, right? It's not a good system.

Yeah. It doesn't bring out the best in people. And we're told Marcus cries when he's told he's gonna be king because he his understanding of history has made it clear to him how many bad kings there are and he's not sure he can be the exception to that rule and We could imagine a bunch of alternative universes where it doesn't you know it's not

that the people who are made worse by extreme power and wealth are simply of weak or low character. It's that it's an impossible amount of temptation and stress and isolation. I was just listening to this podcast about Elon Musk and it was like, what happened to Elon Musk? How did he go from where he was to who he is now?

And the person was like, we don't have a lot of examples of people suddenly worth $200 billion and a lot of data on what that does to a person, but it probably doesn't do good things. You imagine how many employees he has, you imagine how much stress he has. He hasn't been in a regular airport in 20 years.

You know, he flies private everywhere. He has to be worried about security. There's not a single person that he talks to that doesn't tell him what he wants to hear or doesn't want something from him. And you also have this thing acting on a person where if he had listened to what people said to him along the way, like when, apparently when he started SpaceX,

his friends literally had an alcoholic style intervention with him. Like you cannot do this. You are going to ruin your life. This is the stupidest thing in the entire world that you could possibly do. And that company is now worth tens of billions of dollars and has changed, like literally put a dent in the universe. So it's not good for a person to constantly prove conventional wisdom wrong,

because how could you have any trust in conventional wisdom or rules or basic human standards or restraints? So this is not good for you, right? And I don't think many people make it out of that alive. Yeah. In that Tennessee Williams. Oh, the catastrophe of success. He talks about like the part of the catastrophe was like the removal of struggle is what he talks about. And how like in the relationship between a person being served, it's not good for either party, but it's probably worse for the person that is being served because they're just

like without that. There's this story, is it the Model X? What's the one with the cool doors? I don't know. The Tesla with the batwing doors. Yeah. That's there because when Elon Musk was designing that car, when they were designing that car,

he had five young children and he was constantly loading them in and out of the car seats. And it's a pain in the fucking ass to load kids in and out of car seats. The reason minivans are nice is because the door goes all the way back and you have easy things, but nobody likes driving minivans are nice is because the door goes all the way back and you have easy things.

But nobody likes driving minivans. So we all get SUVs and it sucks. And so he had this fundamental insight about what it is to be a human trying to do this thing. And he invented this better way of doing it. He has many more kids since. I do not imagine he's loading the kids in the car seat that much anymore. You know what I mean? First up, imagine he's loading the kids in the car seat that much anymore. Yeah. Do you know what I mean? First up, cause he's gone all the time. And second, because he's one of the richest people

in the world, and he lives in a fantasy world where everything is taken care of. Even if that's not true, the idea is like, it's not just struggle, but it's like just the shittiness of being a person. Right, like being part of the experience of living. Yeah, you are stripped of the things that connect you to what it is to be a human.

And then so, of course you have trouble empathizing. It's like in Arrested Development, how much could a banana cost, Michael? She has no idea. And so this happens to comedians, it happens to writers, it happens to entrepreneurs, it happens to powerful people. You just lose any understanding of reality. So then it becomes hard for you to give a shit

about other people's problems, let alone feel compelled or obligated to do anything about them. And yeah, you just get weird, it's just disorienting. Like the air is thinner up there. I have a line in Disciplined Destiny, because I was very impressed with Queen Elizabeth. The second, how did she manage to remain so disciplined and self-contained amidst all the craziness, right?

Like when, as they say, the royal family thinks the world smells like fresh paint because everywhere they go, everything is fresh and new. They're like, holy shit, the queen is coming. Let's make this the nicest it could possibly be, right? She's not, oh, sorry, ma'am, like, it's a little dirty. We'll clean up after you leave. Like, everything is nice for her.

And so that becomes this disorienting, unreal picture of reality that you then live in. And it makes it hard for you to know what is up and what is down, what is good, what is bad. And you could imagine in some ways, Mark Cerullo is being forced to be away from Rome in a tent like everyone else is probably part of what keeps him from being Caesarified.

Nero is not only in the palace, he's like, hey, let's get everyone together in the arena and make them listen to my poetry. He's surrounded by sick, he's losing his bead on- And has no one to say that's actually, let's not make people do that. Yeah, right. Who can tell that person that's a really, really bad idea?

Right. Or that sucks. And even if there's someone who can tell you, have you lost your ability to listen? Right, so like, I actually think the Cybertruck looks pretty cool, but like, you can imagine, let's say it's the dumbest car idea of all time.

Well, every idea before this, a lot of people thought was the dumbest idea of all time. And it became the most valuable car company in the world. So like, how do you know how to calibrate that? It becomes disoriented. And there's probably some part of you that almost wants to take it like a child, wants to take it as far as it can go,

just to understand what the limits are. And I bet there's part of, so it seems like self-destructiveness is, is maybe even a little bit like, just trying to figure shit out. Yeah. Yeah. That's really interesting thing about like, he couldn't have had the idea for the doors now because he's not doing those things. Yeah. 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. And I'll see you next episode. If you like The Daily Stoic and thanks for listening, you can listen early and ad free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple podcasts. Prime members can listen ad free on Amazon Music. And before you go, would you tell us about yourself by filling out a short survey on wondery.com slash survey.