The Daily Stoic - Thinking Outside of Your Tradition | Arthur Brooks

Episode Date: April 27, 2024

📘 Grab a copy of Arthur's book Build the Life You Want: The Art and Science of Getting Happier.📺 Listen to Arthur's last appearance on The Daily Stoic Podcast.IG: @arthurcbrooksX: @arthurbrooks📔 Pre-order your copy of Right Thing Right Now: Good Values. Good Character. Good Deeds. at dailystoic.com/justice.✉️ Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Check out the Daily Stoic Store for Stoic inspired products, signed books, and more, including the Amor Fati Medallion.📱 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.

I'm Afua Hirsch. I'm Peter Frankopan. And in our podcast Legacy, we explore the lives of some of the biggest characters in history. This season, we delve into the life of Alan Turing. Why are we talking about Alan Turing, Peter? Alan Turing is the father of computer science. And some of those questions we're thinking about today around artificial intelligence. Turing was so involved in setting and framing what some of those questions were.

But he's also interesting for lots of other reasons, Afro. He had such a fascinating life. He was unapologetically gay at a time when that was completely criminalised and stigmatised. And from his imagination, he created ideas that have formed a very physical, practical foundation for all of the technology on which our lives depend. And on top of that, he's responsible for being part of a team that saved millions,

maybe even tens of millions of lives because of his work during the Second World War using maths and computer science to code break. So join us on Legacy, wherever you get your podcasts. Hello, I'm Emily, one of the hosts of Terribly Famous, the show that takes you inside the lives of our biggest celebrities. Some of them hit the big time overnight, some had to plug away for years, but in our latest series we're talking about a man who was world famous before he was even born. A life of extreme privilege that was mapped out from the start, but left him struggling to find his true purpose. A man who, compared to his big brother, felt a bit, you know, spare. Yes, it's Prince Harry. You might think you know everything about him, but trust me,

there's even more. We follow Harry and the obsessive, all-consuming relationship of his life, not with Meghan, but the British tabloid press. Hounded and harassed, Harry is taking on an institution almost every bit as powerful as his own royal family. Follow Terribly Famous wherever you listen to podcasts, or listen early and ad-free on Wandery Plus on Apple Podcasts or the Wandery app. Diana Mosley, British aristocrat, Mitford sister and fascist sympathiser. Like so many great British stories, it starts at a lavish garden party.

Diana meets the dashing fascist Oswald Mosley. She's captivated by his politics, but also by his very good looks. It's not a classic rom-com story, but when she falls in love with Mosley, she's on a collision course with her family, her friends and her whole country. There is some romance though. The couple tied the knot in a ceremony organised by a great, uncelebrated wedding planner, Adolf Hitler.

So it's less Notting Hill, more Nuremberg. When Britain took on the Nazis, Diana had to choose between love or betrayal. This is the story of Diana Mosley on her journey from glamorous socialite to political prisoner. Listen to British Scandal on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to the weekend edition of The Daily Stoic. Each weekday we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stoics, something to help you live up to those four Stoic virtues of courage, justice, temperance, and wisdom. And then here on the weekend, we take a deeper dive into those same topics. We interview Stoic philosophers, we explore at length how these Stoic ideas can be applied

to our actual lives and the challenging issues of our time. Here on the weekend when you have a little bit more space when things have slowed down, be sure to take some time to think, to go for a walk, to sit with your journal, and most importantly to prepare for what the week ahead may bring. Hey, it's Ryan Holiday. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. It's one thing to be a fan of someone's work, and then you can also, you know, get a glimpse of who they are as a person.

And I love it when you get a glimpse of who someone is as a person and it confirms what you took from their work. My grandmother, it's her bonus grandmother, Dolores, she's in her 90s. She told me she'd read this article about this guy, Arthur Brooks. She wondered if I'd heard of him. And I said, not only have I heard of him, I've interviewed him a bunch of times. He's a her 90s. She told me she'd read this article about this guy, Arthur Brooks. She wondered if I'd heard of him.

And I said, not only have I heard of him, I've interviewed him a bunch of times. He's a nice guy. I gave Arthur her address and he sent her a signed copy. She was very excited. And then they've been exchanging letters. And it was so sweet. You know, when someone takes time out

of their very busy schedule, in Arthur's case, from his friendship with the Dalai Lama and Oprah Winfrey, and God knows who else. I just thought that was incredibly sweet. And then funny enough, I got a text from Austin Kleon, one of my favorite people in the world, certainly one of my favorite writers.

And he said, hey, should I read this Arthur Brooks book? I said, not only should read it, you gotta read these articles, he's great. And I've got another interview coming with him very soon. So that is what I am bringing you right now. We were talking about Arthur's new book, Build the Life You Want, The Art and Science of Getting Happier that he co-wrote with Oprah Winfrey.

I think we had a great conversation. I always do. And what I really appreciate about Arthur is that he knows the Stoics. I asked him one of my favorite questions, which is what do the Stoics get wrong? And I think he had a great answer for that. I've got some other episodes with Arthur

that I'll link to. You can check those out. I think Arthur's work is not just about personal development, but how do we develop ourselves so we can be better in the world, which is of course what I talk about in the new book, Right Thing Right Now. Good values, good character, and good deeds. You can pre-order that at DailyStoic.com. You can follow at Arthur C. Brooks on pretty much every platform on YouTube. He's ArthurBrooks123, I'll link to that. And without further ado,

I'll bring you the one and only Arthur Brooks. Yeah, how are you? You look good. I'm doing great. Lots of good stuff. You're writing a new book, of course. I am. I'm still doing this Cardinal Virtue series.

So Justice is next. It was done, but comes out in June, and then I just started Wisdom. Nice. Yeah, I guess I'm mentally preparing myself, unfortunately, for Justice to be the worst selling one in the series. What does worst selling mean for you?

Well, yeah, still pretty good, but- It's all relative. But the tricky part of that one is like, well, I guess it says something about society that if you're like, I'm writing a book about justice, most people are gonna be like, no thanks. Well, prudence is the one people don't want. Well, prudence is wisdom, right?

Yeah, okay, so that's why you, okay, I got it, yeah, of course. So that's been the perennial struggle with the book, which is, okay, you can't write a book on temperance. So you got to make it about discipline because nobody wants temperance. Then you can't do justice because justice is, means legal justice or social justice, even though both those things are important.

That's what it means to people, but no one, no one's, other than people who are law professors, they're not like, I want to read a book about that. So that's having to become about doing what is right, or, and then prudence is how wisdom is sometimes rendered. Is like, nobody wants that. Knowing the right thing to do. Yes, knowing the right thing to do,

but also I think, to me, that's the bucket where education and learning and knowledge and truth and all those things come in. Have you read all, you know, Peeper's? Yeah, I mean, that's the best book on the floor, right? Yes, yeah, yeah, no, he's amazing. And then C.S. Lewis has like an amazing essay on that. Yeah.

The nice thing about Peeper is that he defines them in a way that's expansive. Well, I think he does a really good job of showing how they're all interrelated with each other. Yeah, yeah. Like, courage is doing the right thing when you're afraid, prudence is knowing what the right thing is, temperance is the right amount of the right thing,

and then justice is like, who is it for, who does it help? Yeah, exactly, and that's how it all hangs together. Yeah. These are interconnected virtues. You really can't separate any of them. That's an interesting part of the process. Did you sign a contract for the four books? I did.

But for a good reason, which is that, the publishing is, they don't look at how many books you've sold, they look at how many your last, they look at how your last book did to decide the next one. So I wanted, I very much wanted to see them as a package and not want, you know, anyway, so far, so far discipline has outsold everything by maybe 50, 60% because that's the most straight down the middle

of what everyone wants. Yeah, that's the most stoic of your books and that's your audience. And I don't know about you, but I like having what I'm supposed to do. Like I like having the contract of like, I have to deliver a book by this time. Yeah, I'm not sure how I feel about that actually,

because I keep interrupting my schedule. I mean, I wasn't doing this. I mean, I wasn't on this wheel until I was 55 years old. Right. You know, I was just doing books about, you know, AEI stuff and then stopped. Yeah. And now I'm just doing books about AEI stuff. Sure. And then stopped. Yeah.

And now I'm doing, now I'm more in your world. Cause I'm writing these types of books. Now you're reaching a popular mass audience, potentially anyone, not just the people in that world. Yeah, I'm sort of specializing in strivers, in old strivers. No, it's amazing, it's amazing. It's amazing.

Well, speaking of which, I was going to say, I feel like you're in danger of disproving your professional decline theory. I'm aware. But it's, no, I'm actually even worse. I'm not taking my own advice. Oh, okay. That's worse than, than disproving.

Cause you know, I'm on my crystallized intelligence curve big time. I mean, I'm not trying to do, I'm synthesizing the best stuff of other people into a narrative that actually makes sense with metaphor, pattern recognition, and that's pure crystallized intelligence. What I'm not taking my advice on is chipping away.

Yes. Chipping away to find the statue that the truly beautiful creation that is within. But rather I'm actually adding, there's more and more detritus, more and more stuff stuck to me. Well, and I, this is, that's, there's this beautiful passage in Seneca

where he's talking about the sort of old man still pleading cases, still trying, still striving, still trying to get attention, win one more thing. I imagine it's extremely hard, whether you're Tom Brady or Joe Biden, to walk away when you're still winning or still feel like you can win. Right, yeah, and so I walked away from it, yeah.

It was unprecedented, right? It was like, sayonara, suckers, do your best, right? And like- They're supposed to pry you out of the corner office of the crowbar. Completely. That would be the, do your best, right? And like what do you think? They're supposed to pry you out of the corner office of the crowbar. Completely, that would be, yeah, exactly, right. That would be the, you know, that would be the president of the United States.

That would be Joe Biden, right? Yeah. In a very small scale. Yes. And then did this new thing and it's like, I'm gonna see, I'm just gonna do good, I'm just gonna do good, and it went, pfft.

You know? It blew up, then Oprah called. But maybe it's a corollary to the theory, which is you find, you're very fortunate, the ultimate lottery is to find a thing that you can do that ages like wine instead of like milk. And writing is one of the few, particularly of the creative or entertainment professions,

where you really can do it forever. And there are some pretty clear examples of people who did their best work late in life. But they didn't do their most innovative work later in life. What they did was they did their best synthetic work later in life, inevitably. So writing, speaking, and teaching is the future when you're old, for sure, for sure.

That is crystallized intelligence. The problem is doing it too much. The problem is how much you do it. So the way to do is to move to Bastrop, Texas. No, no, I mean there's a lot here that you're doing right. Now I'm sure you're too busy. I'm sure you're crazy stupid busy. I did eight episodes this week. I've heard that. And because you're batching and once you start batching on something then it's crazy, stupid, busy, I'm sure. I did eight episodes this week, which I should have done. I've heard. Yes. I've heard that. And because you're batching, and once you start batching on something, then it's hard to do your absolute best work when you're batching.

Yes. And that means that you're too busy. You're probably on tour. Sort of, yeah. I mean, who's not on tour? Yes. Life is book tour, book tour is life, right? Yes. Does book tour ever stop?

Well, and what is a book tour and what is a paid talk? Big tour is meaningless. Because back in the day, you'd be doing readings at bookstores. And now everything's for pay. Yes. You're not taking free gigs, I hope. No, no, definitely not.

I only do Catholic stuff for free. It's very hard. I think, I've said this before, but saying no to money is one of the hardest things to do in the world. And you're financially independent, right? Yes, but what does that mean? Who actually just makes it?

I know. No, no, but I'm saying who makes decisions as if they are financially independent? Almost nobody. Even the wealthiest people. I think it's hilarious. I go to these conferences and I go, I don't need this, why am I here?

And then the eighth richest man in the world is also on stage and you're like, why is he here? And he's actually getting a fee. Yeah, because it's so hard to say, even when you have an unfathomable amount of money, it's still apparently hard. Ray Gaglio's still on tour, man. And he's still writing books.

And you know that when they offered him that book deal, he was negotiating about it, you know what I mean? Whatever the thing that makes you good at accumulating money makes it very hard to stop accumulating money just as it's hard for Tom Brady to go, I shouldn't get hit in the head anymore. Right, so I have a whole protocol that I give guys based on this that I'm following for people on how to retire.

Okay. Because I'm talking to guys, I mean, I'm talking to, we're not on the air, right? We're not taping right there, right? No, no, we were. But you haven't said anything. If you want anything, go, but we just sort of go. So I'm talking to this, okay,

huge CEO about how to retire. And he's 80 hours a week his whole life. Yeah. And he knows it's going to be a problem, right? So the way to retire when you're, I mean, you're still, I mean, it's all there. But you know you have to, because you don't wanna get a shove.

Is you actually put together a schedule that doesn't go from 80 hours a week to zero, and then your wife doesn't want you following her around the house. Like I've married her better for worse, but not for lunch kind of of. Yeah, yeah. I had to set up my own life the last 30 years to just come back.

Yeah, yeah, and now you're around? Yeah. I mean, what's the deal? So the answer is to figure out what you think are the best 20 hours. Okay. Right, and that means you're gonna take two or three clients, consulting clients,

you're gonna sit on one for-profit board and one non-profit board that you really care about. And you're gonna mentor like one person you think is really promising. And that's gonna blow up into more than that is the whole point. But here's the deal. Think about the thing you most hate in your life

when you're busy, busy, busy, busy, busy, busy. And I know what it is for you and me and for him. You don't have time to pee between your things. I know if I have things scheduled back to back, I'm fucked up. Like that's not the schedule of a person who is successful and independent and has autonomy over their life. Right. Yeah.

So, but it drives you crazy that you don't have enough time. So you're out to lunch with a friend and you're like, sorry, dude. Right? And that's not nice. Hard endings. You're at the gym and you're like, I'd actually like to go an extra half hour

because I'm feeling good today, sorry. I actually have to pack up and go. And so you're always stopping the things that you want to keep going. The nice thing in life is if you're doing interesting things but you don't have to stop something if you want to keep doing it. Yeah, sure.

And so the way to do that is you need more time between things. Lots and lots of time between things. So most people, they're, here's, so here's, and it's a very interesting research on this that talks about being busy. So there's a sweet spot of busyness when it comes to happiness.

If you're too idle, it's a huge problem. If you're too busy, now what we find is looking at the data on idleness and busyness, the optimal number of discretionary hours in the average workday is 9.5. Okay. Okay. The average number of discretionary hours a person gets is 1.8. Now the reason it turns out that it's 9.5, that they get 1.8 when they need 9.5 is, and that they're going in the wrong direction, is because they're more afraid of idleness than they are of busyness.

Because idleness is more miserable than busyness. And so they overcorrect and make a mistake in the wrong direction. That's what most people do. And so, because idleness is terrible, what you do is when you're idle, you immediately default, go to the default mode network of the brain, the brain apparatus that makes you go ruminate and, you know, perseverate and think about your teenage kids and bad stuff. Right? And it's no fun.

It's really miserable. The default mode network is really, people avoid it like the plague. And so they schedule themselves, they over schedule themselves. They look at their schedule, they're like, I only have four things on that day. Yeah. I'm going to put in more because they're like, I only have four things on that day. I'm gonna put in more because they're implicitly afraid of the default mode, network and idleness. You gotta get over that fear and say,

the ideal day has three things in it. The ideal day has a thing. And you also know yourself to know, to protect the part of the day when you actually need to be thinking and writing and doing creative work. And then only parts of the day when you actually need to be thinking and writing and doing creative work. And then only parts of the day that you can schedule them up where they make sense and you have tons of time between them.

And so I'll tell people to just make three or four commitments and then have days that never have nothing. They'll have two or three things in it. And then you'll be able to make them last as long as you want them to make. And you're always gonna start filling in things from there. But you have to build your schedule that way. Yeah, my assistant, I've told her like,

I know more than three things in the calendar in a day, and ideally some days with nothing. And it's not that I'm not- You like the nothing, you're not doing nothing. I'm not working, it's not that I'm not working, it's that I haven't scheduled any interruptions or random commitments or obligations. And so those are the best work days.

But I'm also at three going, you know, or two going, well, I'm gonna go for a run now, or I'm gonna head home early and see what my kids are doing. You know, I have the freedom to make good decisions as opposed to. You can. That takes discipline. You're a disciplined person too, so a lot of people won't do that.

So the way to think about that though, is that you have to, if you're a creator, like you or me, we're writers. Fundamentally, we're, you know, idea dudes, right? We're not working on a steel. Yeah, you have to understand how your brain chemistry is optimized for ideas. That's a super important thing.

Yeah, Toni Morrison said, you have to know when you are at your best. She's like, when do you make contact with the muses, is what she was saying, as a creative. And you have to know when that is. And her thing was, she liked to watch the sun come up while she wrote, and she had to do it before she heard the word mom.

Yeah, yeah. And so it's getting up very early. And you seem like, this is the earliest I think we've ever done this podcast, and you got here early. So I get the sense that you're an early person. Yeah, well, almost everybody actually is. See, this is the thing.

So people are like, no, I'm a night person. Probably not. Do you like to get up early? Probably not. I don't like to get up early. I've gotten up with an alarm clock every day, but I get up at 4.45. And that's called Brahmamutra.

So in ancient sort of Vedic wisdom, the idea is this called the creator's time. And there's something, and there's a lot of research that shows that the creator's time an hour and a half before sunrise, that when you actually, the ignition of your day is then, the day's yours. It's really, it hurts, man.

It's never been not painful for me at 4.45 in the morning because that's not what I want. I was a musician all the way through my 20s. I was like, I'm an 8.30 in the morning guy to get up to roll out of bed when the sun is warm. But, so this is the way to do it. And optimally for your brain chemistry, it works for almost everybody as well.

So 4.45 in the morning, I work out real hard for an hour and almost every morning. So I missed 11 days in 2023 in the gym because it's so important. I missed today by the way, because I get in at one o'clock in the morning. So anyway, but it's- Well, thank you for coming.

I love being here. And then it's an hour and then I'll do my spiritual work. So I go to mass or say my prayers or whatever. A lot of people will meditate. And then you can actually be, then use your caffeine. Don't use caffeine too early. Yeah, to wake up. Yeah, don't use caffeine to wake up.

And there's a whole lot of brain chemistry behind that. Huberman talks about that a lot, but it's actually pretty simple. The whole point is you don't wanna block the inhibitory neuromodulators in your brain because then they'll be looking for a parking space and then when you metabolize the caffeine, it'll all go in at two or three o'clock in the afternoon,

you'll crash. So wait for at least an hour and a half, two hours before you have a caffeine and then sit down to work at 7.30 in the morning and you'll get three uninterrupted max dopamine hours of focus and creativity. Well, I find it, so you wake up, let's say you work out or you spend time talking to your spouse,

or you wrestle with your kids, and then you maybe do a little work, whatever, you didn't get sucked into email, you got some stuff done early. Yeah, don't look at the license, right? You always say this. Yes, but let's say you just do that in the morning, and then you're driving to something,

you get in the car, it's 10 a.m., you get a flat tire, and you spend the next five hours by the side of the road waiting for someone to come pick you up or whatever, right? You're like, cool, because you already won. You already like, you already got, you feel like you stole a march on the day. Because you got up early, you did some stuff, you crossed some stuff off, and then you're like,

I guess it just wasn't in the cards today that everything else would go well. But if you wake and then you're like, I guess it just wasn't in the cards today that everything else would go well. But if you wake up, you're behind, you check social media so you're mad about this, CNN was running as you were getting dressed on the TV so you just feel like the world's falling to pieces, and yeah, then you're straight into caffeine, and then you're running to some meeting

that you didn't wanna do do and then something goes wrong, you're like, this day is the worst. The day shot? No, no, for sure. This is the reason that McRaven, at here at UT Austin, gave that famous- He was right here like two weeks ago. Yeah, famous speech, make your bet.

His whole point was, get your first win. Yes. Right now, it should be, get up at 445 and make your bet. Yeah, yeah. Because, but you have to build it around that. I mean, when I was 19 years old on my own for the first time, not in college, I mean, like you, I found myself not in college.

Yeah. And I was working for a living and I was 3000 miles away from my family, you know, and I remember waking up in my little apartment by myself at 19 for the first time. And it wasn't at 445 in the morning, by the way, it took me a little while to get that one down. But I remember opening my eyes and going,

well, how am I gonna start my adult life? And I thought, I'm gonna do something I've never done before. I had one stick of furniture, which was a bed. On the ground or was it raised off the ground? It was raised off the ground. Good for you, you're ahead of the curve. It was supposedly furnished apartment.

It wasn't me who bought that. And I made a bed. And I'm like, huh. And that was literally the first time It was supposedly furnished apartment. It wasn't me who bought that. And I made that bed. And I'm like, huh. And that was literally the first time I'd ever thought about that. And I have made my bed ever since then, since I was 19 years old. But that was the small win.

And life is built by the day and the days are built on the wins. And the wins start in the morning. And this is the point. And so if you guard that and have a protocol for that that's productive, that leads you to be able to do something really good before somebody can take it away from you, you can't lose.

But it is interesting how perennial this battle to like own the morning to do it right is. Like I remember I was 19, I was in my college apartment, which was also furnished. So that's why I had a bed off the ground. And I get my copy of meditations, it comes from Amazon. I had to wait a couple days for it to arrive because Prime didn't exist yet.

And I read this passage in Meditations from Mark Strelius. Let me find it. I think he says, At dawn, when you have trouble getting out of bed, tell yourself, I have to go to work as a human being. What do I have to complain of if I'm going to do what I was born for, the things I was brought in to this world to do'm going to do what I was born for, the things I was brought in to this world to do?

Or is this what I was created for, to huddle under the blankets and stay warm? And he says, but it's nicer here. And then he says, so you're born to feel nice? You know, and then he goes, he's like, you know, the dancer is up, the baker is up, the bugs are out, the dogs are up, you know, he's like, this is what animals do.

You're, he's not saying you gotta go be a wage slave at your crappy job. He's saying though, that we have purpose. I think, what was Dante's line? Like under the blankets is no way to fame. You can't, you're not gonna win the day staying in bed. You're not gonna be who you're meant to be staying in bed. And then there in that fit in this passage,

you're reading the most powerful man in the world arguing with himself about it. It's like, nobody's a mourning person. The mourning people are doing it out of willpower and strength and habit and philosophical principles. And you're just as capable of that too. I remember I typed up that passage, I printed it out, I taped it on the wall next to my bed.

Me too, me too, me too. Me too, it was hugely impactful. It really was, because you see that and you think, huh, I don't like how I feel about me when I lose that first battle. Yeah, when you hit snooze. Yeah, it's not even snooze. It's the, it's called in a number of religious traditions.

I can't remember what it's called. It's called the magic minute, right? Because that's the decision. The minute that you actually make. Yeah, it's like who am I today? Who do I want to be today? Okay, so you hit the snooze, and you hit the snooze three or four times, I get it. It's not the whole, don't stay in bed.

I mean, you don't have to do that. But the whole point is when you win that victory, it sets you up on a particular trajectory. And doing that is critically important because you don't want to, that's the frame. That's actually the frame today, but there's a lot of neuroscience behind it too. So it's like the Stoics had it right

and they didn't have the neuroscience. Now we've got the neuroscience to show how right the Stoics actually were from the beginning. It's also kind of just, it's like a microcosm of like the hero's journey, right? It's like, it starts with the refusal of the call. You know what you're supposed to do? Right.

Are you gonna answer? And not answering is kind of part of it, but eventually you gotta come around and do it. And the quicker you do it, the quicker you get on your way to what you're meant to do either that day or in your whole life. There's a query that I often get about this though.

Okay. Which is, if it's so good, why does it feel so wrong? And there's an answer to that, which is important, which is that mother nature doesn't care if you're happy, or really if you win in a lot of ways. The animal path and the divine path diverge around the decisions that we make as human beings. So one of the things that we know

is that the evolutionary imperative is for you to be as comfortable as possible, husband your strength. So it's normal that Mother Nature says, stay under the covers. Because you don't know if you're gonna be running away from a tiger today. So don't like get out of bed for nothing.

I mean, life is short. And of course, for animals, and if you were living in the Pleistocene, it probably would have been for you too. But that's the point about actually having a really developed prefrontal cortex, which is 30% of the weight of the human brain, is that you can actually choose the divine,

the uniquely human path over the animal pressures that you're actually getting. The animal pressures say get as many calories and as many mates and as much rest as possible. And that's wrong. That's actually just wrong. Mother nature doesn't want you to have the happiest life. Mother nature wants you to live another day

and have some babies. That's all mother nature wants. If we just listen to mother nature, like after you're 30 or 40 years old, if you've already had kids, nature's like, I don't need you anymore, you're superfluous. So we've already decided to reject that premise. So you might as well also reject the premise

that it's more comfortable than just huddling under the covers. Yeah, yeah, and what Marcus Aurelius is talking about, as was Epictetus and Seneca and everybody else in between, is that there's a divinity to that rejection. There's a divinity to that, that sort of muscular attitude toward your own life. That there's something about it

that goes beyond the animal nature of it. And that's a beautiful thing to confront that. Like, I get it, it hurts. And that's the point. That becomes part of the point of the exercise is the internal struggle that you face every single day. You can't face the struggle of life until you face the struggle with you

first thing in the morning. And that very first thing in the morning. And that very first moment when the alarm clock goes off, it's like, who's gonna win? Who's gonna win? And if you win. There's the central myth of Western culture, like one of the founding myths

that for some reason we have lost, and I think more people should know about it, is the choice of Hercules, right? Hercules comes to a crossroads and he can choose between virtue and vice, the hard way and the easy way, the way that gives him everything he wants, the way where he has to earn all the things that he wants.

And this is the story that Zeno hears, Socrates tells it. This is the story that Zeno hears when he washes up in Athens and it's the founding story of Stoicism. It's also, John Adams proposed it as the symbol for the seal of the United States. Not the eagle clutching the arrows, but the choice of Hercules,

choosing the harder way, not the easier way. I didn't know that. Isn't that incredible? I did not know that. But almost no one knows that story. And I think the idea that it's the strongest person in history is struggling with this choice, the easy way or the hard way, the way of the gods or the way of the lower self.

Achilles' choice is instructive on this, right? Where he had the choice to live out an easy, happy life on his farm in a long life or go to an almost sure death, but in glory. Yes. Right? Yes. And he chose the latter path because he felt that that was the...

Now his motivation was legacy. But that's... And that's a little bit different to be sure. To choose the harder path because it's the harder path, that's an incredibly empowering victory that each one of us can have. And it starts with this tiny little choice. And why? Because all choices start with tiny choices.

Yeah. And this is the nature of everything. It's a branching design. This leads to this leads to this leads to this. Start someplace is the bottom line. Yeah. And as soon as that clock goes off, that's the first one. Hello, I'm Hannah. And I'm Hannah. And I'm Saruti.

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You think so? Yeah, I think so. But it's just like it's been done. You know, I didn't want to, I was like, I don't want to be NBA. You think so? Yeah, I think so. But it's just like, it's been done. You know, I didn't want to, I was like, I don't want to be a follower. Hi, I'm Jason Concepcion. And I'm Shea Serrano, and we are back. We have a new podcast from Wondering.

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What I love about your work, and I'm curious how you think about it, is that you're very eclectic in the philosophies and the philosophers that you pick from. One day you have a column about the advice of Epicurus, then it's the Stoics, then it's Schopenhauer. You actually read my column. Of course I love. Brian Hall reads my column.

Everyone reads your columns. It's like the most read column in the history of the Atlantic, I'm sure. And that's a pretty long tradition, right? I mean, you're up there with Emerson and Whitman and Burrow, it's great. But I just like that you sort of, it seems like what I make up is that you wake up and you go, what could I learn from a school

I don't know that much about today? Or what do these people have to tell us about this? Which I think is different than how a lot of people think about it, which is they go, I am this, but I believe this. And you seem to be willing to take from anyone and anything that has something to teach you. Yeah, this is one of the, so I left academia.

I was a French horn player for the first 12 years of my career. But then I went to graduate school and became an academic, did very conventional academic work. I was writing academic journal articles for huge audiences of 14, 15 readers, doing stuff of highly mathematical work, quite esoteric. And then I went and I ran a think tank for a long time. And I was in the think tank, I was thinking, what do I wish I could do? And the answer is I wish I could actually look

at the whole world and take what's best to ask the questions and answer them using all these different traditions. And I formulated this theory of the case that basically says all the most interesting questions in life, they come from the theologians, philosophers, historians, and artists. That's where the really interesting questions come from. They don't the theologians, philosophers, historians, and artists. That's where the really interesting questions come from. They don't come from social scientists

like me. Social scientists say, I could answer that question, which maybe nobody's ever asked, because I have good data to answer it. That's the wrong place to start the story. Look at where the interesting questions are, then expose them to the mechanism of causation, which usually comes from biology, you know? And so, because psychology is biology, is really what it is. And so you have to understand the neuroscience in my field. Then the social science comes in.

Then the social science says, we've done a bunch of experiments. Is this right? Was Seneca right? Yeah, he usually was. And then- Surprisingly so, yes. And then last but not least, how do you use it?

How do you use it? And so it's a four step process again and again and again. It's philosophy, neuroscience, social science, management, self-management, and that's really where it comes from. So you have to listen, so I'm listening, but you also have to read widely, and it's a thrill. It's unbelievable. Every place you look, there's a column.

Every place you look, there's an column. Every place you look, there's an idea. Everybody's philosophy and theology. And so I study a lot of world religions. And I go to India a lot. You know, with my lab, we're going in April to see the Dalai Lama and do a conference with the Dalai Lama, which is great. And I'm going to meditate with the Tibetan Buddhist monks

outside of my tradition. But the whole point is,'s outside of my tradition. Yeah, that's lovely, the idea of thinking outside your tradition because otherwise you're a dogmatic or fundamentalist and you're needlessly blinkering yourself to what other people have explored or understand. My favorite quote from Seneca, he says,

I'll quote a bad author if the line is good. And then he says, not that everyone from a different school is a bad author, but his point is I'll take a bad author if the line is good. And then he says, not that everyone from a different school is a bad author, but his point is I'll take from anyone. And he says, and actually that's the whole point, you have to read like a spy in the enemy's camp. Which is like, which you see him do

because in his letters to Lucilius, the philosophy quotes the most is Epicurus. He's not quoting Zeno or Chrysippus or Cleanthes or Cicero. He's quoting the person who he's supposedly diametrically opposed to, but he's so intimately familiar with that guy's work. And he's not quoting all the areas that they disagree. He's quoting the areas that they agree,

that he says, oh, that's actually great. It doesn't come from a source like from my religion or from my philosophy, but that doesn't mean it's wrong. And I'm gonna celebrate that and I'm gonna share that with you. That's actually the secret to our world, quite frankly. And there's a really interesting example of that that I got just from one of my students.

So I just finished my class at HBS yesterday on leadership and happiness, which is a big Science of Happiness seminar. I have two sections of 90 MBA students and a really long waiting list of people who wanna get into the Science of Happiness class. I have two sections of 90 MBA students and a really long waiting list of people who wanna get into the Science of Happiness class. It's super fun and really interesting. There's a lot of science in it,

but it's always based on these philosophical principles. And then we were talking about, there's a whole lecture that we do on finding your purpose. How do you find your purpose? And it starts with this whole idea of essence and existence. And that dichotomy in philosophy is super interesting. What comes first, your existence or your essence?

Do you have to discover your meaning or do you have to invent your meaning? So the existentialists say that it doesn't exist and you have to invent it. Yeah. You have to make up a reason to get out of bed every morning. Exactly, but the Stoics would say it already existed and you gotta find it.

Yeah. And Christians and the Jewish philosophers and the Muslims, everybody up until the existentialists. And the nihilists say there is no meanings, so stop trying. So Nietzsche would say that. So I'm lecturing on that. And a student really astutely says, so a modern thinker on this, of course, is Viktor Frankl,

who is all about finding meaning and purpose. And he quotes in his most famous book, Man's Search for Meaning, which everybody who listens to this podcast has read Man's Search for Meaning. Incredible book. My aunt gave me that book when I graduated from high school and it may be the greatest present that I've ever gotten. Incredible, because it changes your life.

And he starts that book by quoting Nietzsche. This is weird, right? I mean, the father of nihilism, at least as we understand it. And he quotes it with this very famous quote from Nietzsche that says, a man who understands his why can endure anyhow. Yeah. Right, okay, and you think,

and one of my students says, professor, what's the dealio? I mean, it's like, so Victor Frankl quotes Nietzsche to motivate his own work about looking for the why of your life. Why, why, why, to quote our friend Simon Sinek. Yeah. Right? Okay. But wasn't he a nihilist who didn't believe

that there is a why? And I'm like, huh, huh. So you go back and you look at it. And another one of my students, and I said, I think it's gotta be a misquote. It wasn't. It turns out that he says, a man who understands his why can endure any how.

And then he goes on to say, no one cares about happiness except the English. It's just a weird aphorism. He's clearly derisive about the idea. He believes there isn't a why, but if you're going to be deluded enough to finding it, then you'll be able to get through life. That's his point. And that's a very Nietzschean point. That's even more depressing is the whole point.

There is no why, but you know, knock yourself out. That's what he's saying. Viktor Frankl says, I'll take that first part, just like Seneca. I'll take that first part, and I'm gonna understand it non-ironically. And I do believe there is a why, and I am going to endure anyhow,

and you're gonna be able to as well. And he saved millions of people from misery. It's also, sometimes I think about nihilists and I go, you sure worked really hard on this book that you wrote, of this book of nihilism that you wrote. Do you know what I mean? Like you still, you can't read Nietzsche and not see a person who really cares about what he's doing.

Might be insane, especially towards the end. Yeah, it literally was. But he's slaving over each sentence. He really feels like he has something he has to communicate. Yeah, I know. You know really feels like he has something he has to communicate. You know what I mean? Some truth he has to get to, effectively the opposite of nihilism.

Do you know what I mean? Pretty ironic, I know. And it just shows you can have a theory of something and contradict the theory in your actions. And we do that all the time. Well, people say that of the Stokes. They go, meditation is depressing, right? And I go, this dude buried six children.

He experienced a devastating plague. He was betrayed. Some suspect his wife was unfaithful to him. He didn't want to be emperor. Rome is dark and dirty and awful. And what is he doing? He's waking up every day, early. Doesn't have to, waking up every day,

not, you know, blunting his senses or pain with pleasure or cruelty or whatever. And he's writing these notes to himself. Yeah, writing notes to himself about how to be better. And he's trying really hard. That's the, this is a work of profound optimism and hope and perseverance.

And on par with Victor Frankel, you know, where you go, if the actions show us that he's not depressed and cynical and dark, because, you know, Seneca has that quote about how sometimes even to live is an act of courage, getting out of bed and then continuing to keep going and to just not give up is a statement of hope.

And inspiration. What this book did for so many of us, the meditations, I mean, this is the first thing to read. The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius is the first thing to read, right? It's probably the easiest, most accessible work of philosophy ever written and the most universal. Because it was his diary.

It was not intended to be read by anybody, as far as we know. And it's the most empowering thing I ever read. The most empowering thing that I ever read, especially for when I was young. It was incredibly important. There were other things too, tempus a campus, the meditations of Christ,

which is incredibly important, but it's kind of like, it's stoicism. It's Christian stoicism. And you realize that the root of a lot of this thinking that we have that's most empowering to us, how could it be conceived of as depressing? On the contrary, this is basically bring it on. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

This is life, this is life. There's a lot I don't choose, bring it on. And this is one of the ways that I used oasis to talk about the best way to live, the best way to understand happiness because I'm a happiness specialist. And so much of the misguided work that we've had in happiness is just positivity,

just positive thinking. That's the wrong way of thinking about it. Happiness has the parts, enjoyment, which is not pleasure. Satisfaction, which comes from managing your wants, not maximizing your haves. Meaning, which actually requires a lot of suffering and pain and sacrifice, or you're not gonna actually find this meaning.

The route to happiness goes through unhappiness. And the only- Suffering. Yeah, suffering is incredibly sacred, but you can't see that until you understand how the Stoics actually conceived of this and wrote about it really eloquently. You must suffer and you must embrace that suffering

in a very positive way. It's not like, okay, okay, I'm gonna put up with this. No, I don't know what this day is gonna bring. I'm gonna be grateful for all the dessert I get to eat, but man, there's gonna be things I don't like and I'm grateful for that too, in advance. Yeah, Cassius Dio, the ancient historian who's writing roughly around the time of Marcus Aurelius,

he catalogs all the things that go wrong when Marcus Aurelius comes to power. There's a plague, there's floods, there's wars. He goes, Marcus, all the personal struggles bearing children is his marriage, his son. And he goes, Marcus Aurelius doesn't meet with the good fortune that he deserved. He says his whole reign is involved

in a series of troubles. And he says, but I, for my part, admired him all the more because amidst extraordinary difficulties, he both survives and preserves the empire. And you go, oh, Marcus Aurelius is Marcus Aurelius because everything went wrong. Under normal circumstances, under everything going right, without the suffering, without the pain,

without the problems, he's just a regular guy. He's Tiberius or Antoninus or Hadrian. You know, he's not, he's not- He's just one of these guys who had an extreme comfort. Yes, he's not, and where does he go? How does his character break? What temptations does he fall prey to? He's great because of what he went through,

which is the essence of what Victor Frankl is saying. It's not supposed to be easy. It's good that it's hard. And that's where you find the stuff that defines you and you make the choices that define you. Yeah, that's an astonishingly important point because we always tend to oscillate in our preferred form of self-care.

Okay. So if you go back to the 60s, by the way, your photographic memory, this quote's just astonishing to me. I've said this quote many, many times. Yeah, but reps are one thing. It's like, I mean, we're looking around in the books here. That's like your brain anyway.

So you go back to the sixties and you know, the hippies would say, if it feels good, do it. That is the best way to ruin your life. That's that, that is why, because it profoundly misunderstands the difference between pleasure and enjoyment of life. Pleasure plus people plus memory equals enjoyment, which is a source of happiness.

And if you keep hitting the ventral tegmental area of the limbic system of your brain over and over and over again, you'll just be an addict. Nobody's ever said the secret to happiness, meth. No, right? And they're like, oh, I did this psychedelic, it changed everything. And that's why I do it over and over and over.

And over and over or anything that actually can capture your brain and mother nature has all these things that can capture your brain. And Mother Nature has all these things that can capture your brain. And that we have in the lab, taken sexual activity and turn it into pornography, which is the opioidization of sex. It's horrible for your brain, terrible for your brain. It's like straight THC or what?

Yeah, totally. It's distilled out. It's slot machines, which there's all kinds of, we know why we want those, we wanna be looking for things that have uncertain rewards. I mean, it has in nature that exists, but slot machines are unnatural and they'll capture your brain.

And the same thing with fentanyl, as opposed to natural endorphins in your brain when you have pain, et cetera. So what we find is that people who search for pleasure, if it feels good, do it, are gonna ruin their lives. Now the opposite, but similar life philosophy that we see today, especially it feels good, do it, or you're gonna ruin their lives. Now the opposite, but similar life philosophy that we see today, especially among young adults, is if it feels bad, make it stop.

That's the same thing as if it feels good, do it. And it's equally misguided, and it will screw up your life. If it feels bad, make it stop. And if you go to campus counseling services and say, I'm feeling anxious and depressed, they'll say, something's wrong. Yeah, yeah.

No, I mean, at my university, if you're at Harvard and you're not anxious and depressed, something's wrong with your needed therapy. You know, show me a 20-year-old who doesn't have those feelings. Right, now, to be sure, it can be maladaptive, it can be exaggerated, it can become a clinical health problem,

but all of these things are dials, they're not switches. And the point is, if the dials turn up too high, okay, but the dials shouldn't be at zero and it's not a binary phenomenon. Life has suffering in it. And so the whole point is not, don't go searching for pleasure as your modus operandi, and don't try to get rid of your suffering.

You need to be fully alive. So St. Irenaeus, the great fourth century saint. Now we're in my territory. The glory of God is a man fully alive. What does this mean? That forgive the gender specific language. They all talk that way, right? A person fully alive is a person who's like Teddy Roosevelt

would say the man in the arena, right? That's, that's pure stoicism. That's pure stoicism. It's like, bring it on. You know, this is the day the Lord has made. I will rejoice and be glad in it. That doesn't mean I will rejoice and be glad in all the fun stuff.

That means I will rejoice and be glad. It means the flat tire, it means the traffic delays. All of it. Yeah. Yeah. And that's how you master the day. That's how you master your life is understanding this. Cause only then can you learn, only then can you grow and only then can you be happy in this fulsome sense

of meaning satisfaction and ultimately enjoyment of all the things that come your way. What's so amazing about Man's Search for Meaning is you read this book and you get this sense like, okay, this guy went through this horrible stuff but he's sort of unfazed by it. He's still happy, he's still joyful, he still has purpose and meaning.

But then during the pandemic, they put out an edition, they found this sort of lost work of Viktor Frankl and Daniel Goldman wrote the intro, but it's called Yes to Life. And it's like a series of lectures and some letters. I haven't read that. It's in the bookstore, I'm gonna give it to you. Okay. It's incredible.

But there's this one letter, like midway through, and this is right after he's liberated from the concentration camps. And he returns home and everyone he's ever known or loved is gone, his life's work has been destroyed. It's like the gravity- He found out that his purpose, which was his wife, Yeah, he, is gone.

Yeah, in the middle of it, he's just in the middle of it. He hasn't gotten the full bill. The sheer cruelty and awfulness and devastation of it is hitting him. And he writes this letter to these friends, and he's like, why should I continue this? You see him actually wrestling with it. And you realize he's not just naturally sunny

and optimistic and just endures this with, you know, unlimited patience and, you know, farsightedness. No, he's having to have this exact conversation with himself. And there were moments when he doubted it. There were moments when he would have gone the other way. Like it's work, it's work. Do you know what I mean?

And it was so, he's saying, so the amazing part of this book, and I recommend it to everyone, it's called Yes to Life. And then the subtitle is In Spite of Everything. So he's saying yes, continue in spite of all of it. Not yes to life because life is amazing, life gives you what you want.

He's saying no life, yes to life in spite of the Holocaust, in spite of cruelty, in spite of being cheated on, in spite of bankruptcy, in spite of the prison sentence you're about to face. You know, it's in spite of everything. Yeah, for sure. And once you recognize that life has a lot of life in it, then you can actually start managing your life.

You can start managing, and you're not trying to torque it so you can avoid these things. On the contrary, you can learn from these things. You can find what the meaning actually is in these things. And that's, at the end of the day, that's all my work's about, is about the experiences of human life per se.

And that's a, it's funny because the study of human happiness has a lot of different manifestations to it in the way that, and so it's sort of in the pop literature, happiness is all about feelings. It's not. And this of course gets back to Aristotle. It gets back to looking for the good in Plato's work. But Aristotle talked about eudaimonia,

which is the basis of most of how Stoicism works. Eudaimonia is a good life well lived with duty and naturalness and all the things that really go into it. And there's nothing in eudaimonia, the concept, the ancient Greek concept of happiness that is at odds with unhappiness at all. Yes to life, man, in spite of all of it. And then you'll actually be alive.

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How I Built This, and many more. Wondery means business. So you seem to have a secret power to me, which is that you can operate in different worlds, and you also seem to be, a networker sounds like, a networker sounds like a slur. But I have a Washington. No, no, but I mean, you're probably one of the only people

that's collaborated with the Dalai Lama and Oprah. You're probably one of the only people in the world to ever collaborate with Oprah. What is the skill there that maybe people don't appreciate or understand? I've never thought about this before. I didn't approach Oprah Winfrey. You know, the whole point was,

well, okay, so let me back up a little bit. And I don't know about the premise of the question because I don't know if it's true. I never thought about it before. But when I started doing the work on unhappiness, it was on the basis of discernment. So I had run a think tank for a long time, and I had been worked in, you know, I wasn't,

I'm not a politician and I don't care that much about politics, but I care about public policy. I ran a think tank for 11 years in Washington, DC. Free enterprise oriented think tank in Washington, DC, called the American Enterprise Institute. Some people know about it. And when I left, I was 55 years old. I said, okay, what am I gonna do next?

And every 10 years, I take my whole career down to the studs. I have what's called a spiral career. So it's like a classical musician and academic and then CEO of this think tank. I'm gonna do the next thing. What is it gonna be? So I spent six months thinking about it for 15 minutes a day.

That's the discipline. So the Buddhists call it Panna, which is a word in Pali, and the Sunnis, the ancient Greeks would talk about they're looking for the divine knowledge on the basis of finding one's ethical through ethical discernment, the discernment of spirits in the Catholic tradition.

I spent 15 minutes a day and I wrote a mission statement for myself, the discernment of spirits in the Catholic tradition. I spent 15 minutes a day and I wrote a mission statement for myself, which was this. I'm gonna spend the rest of my life lifting people up and bringing them together in bonds of happiness and love using science and ideas. That's what I'm gonna do. I don't know what it's gonna look like but that's what I'm gonna do.

And then I started doing that and tried to make it magnetic so that people who could use it and would find it winsome and would find it helpful would approach me. That was what I was trying to do. And maybe I was gonna sit in a shack by myself, right? And maybe the phone was gonna ring. And the latter happened. So I started off by, I took a position at Harvard, and I said, I want to teach this

thing that's based on my mission. They said, take a shot. We've never done that before. The business school? Right? And the whole point was leaders should be happiness teachers. I'm not trying to make just happier leaders. I want leaders to be happiness teachers because that's leverage for this particular mission.

And it was popular. And then went to the Atlantic and started this column four years ago. And they're like, how many columns you do on happiness? Like a million, because everything is as possible as you know. And what happened was that people, it turned out that when you have the right mission

and the mission is outwardly focused on lifting other people up, then if it's right you have the right mission and the mission is outwardly focused on lifting other people up, then if it's right and at the right time, people will approach it. And so I went from a supply mission of here's some whiz bang policy ideas, what do you say, to a demand focus, which is here's this thing, do you want it?

I have an idea on how to live better. I have an idea on how you can be happier. I have an idea on how to live better. I have an idea on how you can be happier. I have an idea how you can live with other people up. And I offered it up to the universe. I said, want it? And maybe not, but it turns out they did. Yeah. It turns out they did.

And that's ultimately what we, now we all have to make a living. Yeah. You know, we all have to make a living, but each one of us has an opportunity to offer something up to the universe in a spirit of love, in a spirit of giving. And it was my great mission to do something like that.

And I hadn't really done it before because it was a little bit too much about me. And when it was about you, everything changed. So you step back and yeah, the I, I don't recall seeing I in your columns very much. Yeah, I mean, I'll use my weird life as an example. Yeah. So it's not about my feelings,

but I'll have a particular example. The reason is I want to relate to people. But the whole point is basically this in more philosophical terms. I went from the me self to the I self. Yeah. So the I self is outwardly focused. The me self is basically this in more philosophical terms. I went from the me self to the I self. So the I self is outwardly focused. The me self is looking in the mirror.

The me self is really dangerous and what the world tells us to do and it's mediated by Instagram or something, which is the ultimate mirror. And by the way, there's mirrors every place. And to stop doing that, I had actually worked with this guy who he was a fitness influencer, right? I mean, this guy was shredded, diced to the socks, man. And he was miserable. He didn't eat anything he wanted for 10 years.

And so finally he realized that the problem was that it was all mirrors. Yeah. So he literally got all the mirrors out of his house. He took every mirror out of his house. And then he started showering in the dark so he couldn't see his own body. And he was only happy after several months

of actually doing this and his life changed. Cause he went from- It's monitoring progress less and probably also rooted more in how do I actually feel? Yeah, so the life is a, I realize this is abstract, but this sort of gets to the point. Life became for me a pilgrimage. There's an ancient, there's a Zen Buddhist koan.

And koans are riddles that the Zen Buddhist monks will tell the junior monks so that they'll actually have to ponder them and- Give them something to chew on while they just sit there. Yeah, while they're chopping the wood and carrying the water. And so there's this Zen Buddhist coin of a junior monk who's walking down a trail in the woods.

And he sees a senior monk walking toward him. And he greets the senior monk and says, "'Where are you going?' And the senior monk says, "'I'm going on a pilgrimage.' The junior monk says, "'Oh, where's your pilgrimage taking you?' And he says, Senior monk says, "''m going on a pilgrimage. The junior monk says, Oh, where's your pilgrimage taking you? And he says, senior monk says, I don't know. Junior monk says, how do you

not know where your pilgrimage is taking you? Why don't you know? The senior monk says, because not knowing is the most intimate knowledge. That's the I self. That's the, that's saying, here's the mission. It's a pilgrimage. Where's it going? I don't know. What's the point? I love you. That's the point. And then the world changes.

No, the universe changes in its orientation toward you. That was the proposition. And that's more or less what happened. Ryan, I can't believe it. I can't believe it. I was looking in the mirror for years and years and years and years. And look, I mean, I've been influenced by Stoic philosophy

and your work for a lot longer than I've known you. And it's been very, very helpful to me. But when I was 55, I said, okay, let's give it a shot. Let's try to live this way. And it's been good. It's been good. And I don't know where it's gonna take me. Maybe it a shot. Let's try to live this way. Yeah. And it's been good. It's been good. And I don't know where it's gonna take me. Maybe it ends tomorrow.

You know, maybe it is tomorrow. You know, I'm turning 60 in May and my family doesn't make it through our 60s. Yeah. Right? Yeah. It's a tricky decade. Yeah.

But who knows? You know, who knows what actually, and that's actually how old was Marcus when he died? 59? Yeah, something like that. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Can you be good with that?

Can you, you know what I mean? Can you, can you, are you doing it so you have some period in the future where you get to do what you want or be who you are? Or can you do it day to day? I can live day to day. I love my wife and I love my kids and I'm a grandfather. And my work is outwardly focused.

I'm on a pilgrimage and not knowing where I'm going is the most intimate form of knowledge. So what I would take, if someone goes, how does this guy collaborate with these people, write this awesome column, work for these prestigious institutions? Part of it is you stop caring about checking those boxes and achieving those things,

and you really lose yourself in creating value or saying what you feel like needs to be said. And there is, it seems crazy, like when I go, my books really started selling when I stopped checking to see how many copies they were selling. You know what I mean? When I stopped, when that was, when that stopped even being,

well, yeah, when that stopped even being the goal, right? Like that stopped being how I measured success. You told me something very profound about this that had a big impact on me. One time when we were talking, so it was like the fourth time we've done this. You said that the goal is inherently an exercise in futility in so far as that it does not endure

and that will lead to suffering as a result of that. You gave me an example of that. You said, I wonder what it's like to have a number one New York Times bestseller. It's gotta be awesome. That's a box to check, it's a box to check, it's a box to check. Somebody told me that it's like, yeah, it's okay.

And I'm like, well, let me try. And you said you got it, and you're like, great. And the next week, number one was Trump's kid. Yeah, and he rigged it. They used PAC funds or campaign funds to pay for it. Yeah, but even if he didn't rig it, the point is, it's ridiculous. The goal, I mean, I got it, you gotta have goals,

but this is the whole point about how goals are supposed to work in the I self. Yeah. Intention without attachment. You have to go in a particular direction. There's a great word in Spanish, rumbo. And rumbo is a navigational term. It means that, the word in English is rumbo. And rumbo is a navigational term. It means that the word in English is rum line,

R-H-U-M line, it's a sailing term. It means you gotta go in a particular direction towards something and you can't move effectively or efficiently unless you have a straight line toward that thing. But you must not be attached to the rum line, right? Because you're gonna be blown off course. And if you're dark and you're dark and you're not again,

and if you're only thinking about that, you'll have, you'll fall prey to all kinds of psychological problems like the, the, the arrival fallacy. It's gonna be so great when I'm number one. And then it's like Trump's kid. And you realize how absurd that whole thing was and it becomes disappointing to you. And that is the whole idea of, in Buddhism,

of intention without attachment, intention without attachment. That's what a pilgrimage really is. The pilgrimage is the whole idea of in Buddhism of intention without attachment. Intention without attachment. That's what a pilgrimage really is. The pilgrimage is the intention. The lack of dogmatic need to get to a certain goal thinking that it's going to be so particularly wonderful is the non-attachment to that particular goal. It took me a long time. I wish at 35 I'd been able to do that as opposed to waiting until I was a little bit older,

but better late than never is the whole point. And when you do that, then you become more magnetic to really good things happening. And so when Oprah Winfrey called me, and by the way, I don't mean to underestimate how important it is that I have an incredible team. Yeah, sure.

It's like, how do you do all this stuff? Well, I don't do it. Yeah, yeah, of course. You're surrounded by amazing Yeah, sure. You know, it's like, how do you do all this stuff? Well, I don't do it. Yeah, yeah, of course. You're surrounded by amazing people and so am I. They make it possible for us to do these things, but they wanna be part of the project too, which is really important. And so Oprah Winfrey called and said,

ah, the column's cool, like the last book, why don't we do something together? I'm like, yeah, that's a great idea. It wasn't like, check. Yeah, sure, sure, or like, finally, I like, you know. I made it. Yes, yes. She walked into the trap that I set.

You know what I mean? Like, because that takes all the joy and meaning out of it if it was all preordained or planned or, you know, the perfect execution of a strategy. Exactly, so I have a question for you about this. Cause you understand exactly what I'm talking about here. And this is your life too. How do you reconcile that with the 48 laws of power?

Oh, interesting. Well, first off, I love Robert Greene as a human. He's a wonderful guy and he's an incredible writer. But his point is very, very strategic. Sort of. I think first you have to understand who Robert is and how he wrote that book. So he's-

And everybody in the audience knows that that was your origin story. Yes, yes. So he's 40 something years old. He's tried every job you could possibly imagine. He's never found his thing, but he loves ancient history, whether he's reading Machiavelli or Sun Tzu, he loves that world.

He's a history nerd. And so for him, the book, aside from whether it's true or not, or whether it's good strategy or a good way to live or not, you have to see it first as a puzzle that he put together. It's a work of art where he captured the through lines between all these different schools of thought, all these different eras of history

of what made people do what they did and how they achieved those things. So a lot of them being the not good people, Cesar Borgia or, you know, or- He's in hell in the inferno. Of course, of course. But what made them do what they did, these people are enigmas.

And what Robert did in that book is figure out the physics and the motivations and the strategies of that. So it's, I think primarily he's, first I think you just have to see it as this masterwork of like, he captured it, he got it. In the way that- So this is analysis more than prescription. Totally, totally.

It's the sopranos or you know what I mean? It's a work of art capturing a thing. I think it's really important. And Robert says this, the 48 laws of power is not. I think it's really important, and Robert says this, the 48 laws of power is not immoral, it's amoral. He's saying this is how the world operates and has operated, particularly in boardrooms or Hollywood or the court of Louis XIV.

So that's what he's trying to put down. Now, he's not saying you should do all these things. He's saying though, if you think that the boss that hired you really just wants you to succeed and they don't have their own fragile little ego, that if you succeed too quickly or too prominently, they're not gonna become immediately sensitive and insecure about that and try to crush you.

You're being naive. So the first law of power is never outshine the master. He's not saying that you should be the master that doesn't let anyone outshine you. He's saying when you get your first job, understand that your boss is not your dad and they're not just happy for you. And by the way, your dad probably isn't as happy for you

as maybe you think they should be because they have their own sensitive little ego. So I think it's really important to see the 48 Laws of Power not as a prescription, but as a description of reality. And then when you read his other books, particularly Mastery, then you sort of unlock the puzzle that is Robert Green, which is someone who loves, I think what's so fascinating about The 40 Lines of Power

is just how beautifully it's designed. And the sheet, like the thousands of books that went into reading that. It's a gorgeous book, it really is. And that's very helpful, Ryan. That's very helpful because I've loved that book for a long time, but don't see it as the manual for how to live.

Yes. See it as a book to help you understand the world. Yeah, or see it as, so, the Tidistosism here in Choridion, which is Epictetus' work. I think Erasmus also has a work called in Choridion. In Greek, it means handbook, but there's also this connotation of a defensive weapon.

It's something to protect you. Like the ideas in the book are something to protect you. I think if you also see the 48 laws of power as an understanding of the world, I'll give you a... So my first job out of college, I was working for Robert, but I was also working at this talent agency, like this big Hollywood talent agency. And one of the guys there was sort of the inspiration

for the Ari Gold character. And so I'm working at this talent agency and I'm researching for Robert. So I always had a copy of the 40 Laws of Power on my desk. And somehow the main guy, who's not my boss, gets this sense that I'm this like kid who's plotting and can't be trusted. And he just takes a sheer dislike to me

and is basically looking for an excuse to fire me. And eventually he does sort of this, I've told this story before, but it wasn't fun. I get sort of kicked out. And I end up at American Apparel after this. Robert Greene gets me a job there. And I go, Robert, what happened? Like, how do I succeed here

instead of how it went poorly there? And he gave me this advice that I think about all the time. He's like, the problem was you had one ally there, which was your boss, and then you had this other guy who you turned into an enemy or decided was your enemy, and they canceled each other out, and then you got kicked out.

He's like, you're starting with this new place. How do you think about cultivating multiple relationships, delivering value for multiple key people? So you're indispensable, right? And so he's not saying, here's how you get to the top and stab people in the back. He's saying, see how it didn't go well last time? That wasn't your fault, that was that person's fault.

But you have to understand the politics that are happening inside a large organization or a company, and you've got to sort of defend yourself against that and prepare for it. And then also probably a certain amount of acceptance too. But that's how I think about Robert's book. I get it. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.

I like that a lot. Don't see this as the owner's manual for the rest of your life. See it as a way to understand what's actually going on around you. Yeah, I mean, look, it's a very popular book in prison. I bet. And you could imagine one person,

they're joining the Aryan Brotherhood, they read the book and they're like, this is how I'm gonna rule this prison with an iron fist. Then you can see another kid that's there, maybe on trumped up charges, or they made some terrible mistake, and now they're in the most wicked fucked up environment they've ever been in in their life.

And they should also read that book, because where they sit at the table, or how they speak to someone, could be the difference between life and death. Yeah, I thought it useful for academia. Yes. The knives are sharp because the pie is so small. Prison.

That was Kissinger. It was. It was Kissinger. And you notice he left academia. Yeah, yeah. For the nicer world of the White House. Of the State Department. All right, last question,

and then I'm gonna go give you this book. What do you think, and I feel like you're one of the few people that I could give this question to off the top of their head and you'd give me a good answer. What do you think the Stoics got wrong? That's a hard question because not a lot. Yeah.

Here's how I go after that one. Saint Paul has a lot of stoicism in him, right? In the epistles of St. Paul in the Bible. Early Christianity is hugely stoic, but it takes one extra twist. It takes one extra turn of the screw beyond that. Where St. Paul says, we talked about the thorn in his flesh.

And he says, when I am weak, then I am strong. And he taught, he uses his weakness as a form of strength with other people and in so doing, he gives his heart away to others where I think you could take one more turn. So I'm not gonna say that the Stoics got it wrong. I think the Stoics didn't quite get there. I think there's one more pass, which is pure love. Which is pure love.

So I can live a Stoic lifestyle, but it's a little, read textually, it's a little desiccated for my taste. Interesting. At the end of the day, happiness is love. At the end of the day, that's all you have. Now, I sound like I'm John Lennon or something, but that's not what I mean. That's not what I mean at all.

Because when I talk about this, what do you find that happens to the happiest people fall into four categories? Faith, family, friends, and work. Yeah. Right? And when I mean faith, family, friends, and work. Yeah. Right? And when I mean faith, I don't mean religious faith. I don't necessarily mean my faith. I give people four examples

when I'm talking to young people, study the Stoics, walk in nature before dawn, study the fugues of Johann Sebastian Bach, join a meditation group. Yeah. Or the fifth one is follow the faith of your youth, which in my case is Catholicism and it's the center of my life.

Yeah. But the whole point is you need to transcend your youth, which in my case is Catholicism and it's the center of my life. But the whole point is you need to transcend you. That's what faith actually means. Family, friends, which are relatively self-explanatory, although woefully under-practiced, and work, which is serving other people. The point is love of the divine, love of your family, love of your friends, and love of everybody

is expressed through your work. That's the ultimate secret to it. Now I know I'm positive that Epictetus got this. How could you not as a slave? Do you know what I mean? Yeah, yeah. And, and, and- The ability part of it.

I'm sure Seneca did. Yeah. Right. I'm a hundred percent sure Cicero did. I mean, he was writing this stuff for his son. Yeah. For his peace sake whom he loved, right? Yeah.

But the work itself renders incomplete to a lot of readers today because it only, here's how I'm thinking about it. Life has two parts to be successful, to have a successful life, which means a happy life and a complete life. There's preparation and there's performance. Life is preparation and performance.

Sports is preparation and performance. Music is preparation and performance. Sports is preparation and performance. Music is preparation and performance. You can't stop with preparation. You gotta go on to the performance. You gotta get on the stage. You gotta get on the field. And that means improvising and that means loving. And that means,

and a lot of the way that people read the Stoics today and a lot of the ways that it's interpreted and understood is all preparation. And so it's all wind sprints. It's scales and arpeggios and a lot of the ways that it's interpreted and understood is all preparation. And so it's all wind sprints, it's scales and arpeggios and a lot of that. And the whole point is the practice of that is the practice of giving your heart away, of loving and being loved.

So I don't think the Stoics got it wrong. No, they just, if you think about meditations, it's just what he happened to write, not everything he thought, but it can feel like an omission. Well, he didn't write this, maybe he had a second diary full of sentimentality. Yeah, right, no, no, that's a great point.

But the Meditations is not a sentimental book. It's an empowering book because it's not a sentimental book. Look, the problem in our society today, it's all feelings. And the reason that people read Meditations and it changes their life is because it's like, huh, I don't have to be shackled to those feelings. I get it.

I completely get it. But the truth is that if you stop with just what Marcus says in the meditations, it's not enough. I think that's right. Yes, he does say, this is one of my favorite passages, as soon as you said that, I thought of it. He says, from Sextus, he says,

not to display anger or other emotions, to be free of passion. So that's your standard view of Stoicism. But then the second part he says, and yet full of love. And so, you know, he clearly learns this, but it's not evident in meditations that he's full of love. We have some stories, you know, he cries multiple times, the loss of a tutor, the victims of the plague.

You do get the sense that he's this feeling. They foolishly left the empire to his wasteful son. A true reader of the 48 laws of power would have dispatched Communists, which Marcus does not do. No, no, he couldn't, great emperor, couldn't not do that one big sentimental thing. I mean, he was a complete person,

but a lot of people who are reading it are a point of, and a point in their life where what they need is the starchiness of the laws itself, the laws themselves. And that's how a lot of people will read Seneca too. It's very empowering because it's so bracing is the whole point. It's refreshing. Totally, because it's so counter-cultural.

So unbelievable. And it's always been counter-cultural by the way. It's always been unbelievably. Well, the Christians didn't like it. You know, like- And then they adopted it. Yes. Well, the Stoics didn't like the Christians

and then the Christians didn't like the Stoics and then they actually both kind of merged together over the thousand years. And so when I read this stuff, for example, what I don't like like Epicurean philosophy. Yeah. You know, I don't actually trash it. I don't like Epicurus by the end.

You know what I mean? I don't have respect for Epicurus. Yeah, to avoid suffering. That is the antithesis of Epictetus. There's a reason that Epictetus was trashy and Epicurious all the time. You know, years and hundreds of years after he died, which is pretty unfair. But sourious all the time. You know, years and hundreds of years after he died, which is pretty unfair.

But so that's the point. You know, I am fully prepared to, I assume that the Stoics were full people. But what comes to us today is probably what we need the most, but it isn't complete. And this is what I tell my students. Start with the Stoics, but don't stop there. That's great. Yeah. Well, let's stop there. Ha ha ha. Appreciate it and I'll see you next episode.