The Daily Stoic - Why Justice Is The Cornerstone Of The Stoic Virtues | Billy Oppenheimer (Pt. 2)

Episode Date: June 15, 2024

Ryan is the one answering questions today as his research assistant, Billy Oppenheimer, joins him for part 2 on what the Stoic virtue of justice is actually about. In this episode, Ryan and Billy talk about the downfall of American Apparel, accepting personal responsibility, the cycle of success and self-destruction, and the powerful stories of justice in Right Thing, Right Now.  Don't forget to tune into part 1 of Billy and Ryan's conversation if you missed it!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 pick up your own copy, visit https://store.dailystoic.com/✉️ Want Stoic wisdom delivered to your inbox daily? Sign up for the FREE Daily Stoic email at https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Get Stoic inspired books, medallions, and prints to remember these lessons at the Daily Stoic Store: https://store.dailystoic.com/📱 Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, and FacebookSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to the daily stoic early and ad free right now. Just join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcast. left school at 15 and devised an idea, a next level bra that remoulds the cleavage. An uplifting story, which gives you a real boost. I hate myself. She moved from business to politics, and when COVID hit, says she knows a great company to supply PPE. And the company, PPE MedPro, made millions of pounds

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 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. to prepare for what the week ahead may bring. I'm a copywriter, Billy Oppenheimer, who interviewed me in part one of the episode. And I don't know if I totally expressed my excitement at how cool a thing that was for me to watch, even though I was in it.

That might sound weird, but one of my favorite chapters in Right Thing Right Now is about coaching trees. And I really dug into the San Antonio Spurs, Greg Popovich specifically. So Greg Popovich is one of the greatest coaches in the history of the NBA, no question. All these championships, this super long playoff streak, an Olympic gold medal, I think an Olympic bronze medal, just a powerhouse in the history of the NBA. And to do it all in one franchise is incredible. But what's so impressive to me about

Greg Popovich, and something I've gotten to know know getting to know some folks at the Spurs since I moved to Texas is that he has the most impressive coaching tree in sports that is what his coaches have gone on to do Adam Silver the Commissioner of the NBA once said that it feels like they're doing a coaches clinic down in San Antonio in fact the best coach in the WNBA is one of popovich's protege Becky Hammond and A good chunk of the NBA has been through the San Antonio Spurs

Organization at some point or another one sports writer said that Greg Popovich doesn't have a coaching tree He has a coaching forest because those coaches themselves have gone on to have incredible coaching trees, Steve Kerr being a great example of this. And so that was something I wrote about in the book and a part of justice that I wanted to highlight that it's not just what you do, it's not just the barriers you break or the things you accomplish, but it's what do you do for others? How do you bring others along with you in your success? And I've been lucky enough to have a couple different interns and assistants go on to do things I was talking about

Brent Underwood, whose book we ran an excerpt of a couple of months ago, he started as my, my intern or assistant, Christo, who runs Tim Ferriss's podcast with someone that used to do Billy's job for me. And so it was really cool as I was thinking, it was like, okay, I wanna talk about the new book and I wanna explain it, but who would I have talk to me about it?

Who would I trust with that? I was like, you know what? Billy would be perfect for this. And one of the reasons I also wanted to have him do it is he's got a book coming out in 2025. And I was like, you gotta get some reps interviewing people and let's do it in a safe space. So we sat down, he interviewed me about right thing right now, which he saw come together. I moved him to Austin in February

of 2020. So great timing with the pandemic. He did a year of remote work before we really sat down and started working more together in person, which was the whole idea. I was like, you know what, why don't you come into the orbit and I'll really show you how this stuff works. And then, you know, we didn't get to do that for a while, but it's been awesome. So he worked on the Courage book as my research assistant.

He worked on the Discipline book as my research assistant. And so many different things in right thing right now are related to things I had him chase down, including when I was like, okay, I'm doing a chapter on Greg Popovich's coaching tree. Illustrate that for me. Show me everyone who's in the coaching tree, not just the people I would think of.

So this was a great conversation. This is part two. If you want to listen to part one, that came out on Wednesday. Right Thing Right Now came out on Tuesday. And I think you will really like this interview. It was an awesome conversation. Flipping the tables.

I did this with Tim Ferriss many years ago. I guess I would consider myself part of Tim Ferriss' coaching tree because he was so instrumental in my career and he helped publish The Obstacle is the Way and Ego is the Enemy, which set up right thing right now to even happen. We're still honoring those pre-order bonuses. You can grab those at dailystoic.com slash justice.

You can check out Billy's newsletter, which is awesome It's he sends it out at 6 p.m. On Sunday every week Not always sometimes I can tell you wait until the last minute and goes out at 6 o 5 or it goes out at 2 a.m But it's a great email. I love getting it every week and I've recommended it to a lot of people So I'll link to that in today's show notes But please grab right thing right now good character good, good deeds at dailystoic.com slash justice, or grab it on whatever retailer you want and we'll honor those bonuses at the same website.

Thanks everyone who did support the book and I hope you like it and I can't wait to hear from you. Seinfeld and Larry David, they talked about they would just go out in public settings and observe and just try to get ideas for the show. And then when the show got really big, they couldn't go out in public because they would just be mobbed by fans. And then it became way harder to write the show.

Yeah. Your life ceases to be normal. And Robert Greene talks about this in the 50th law, like you have to have this direct connection with the audience because that's ultimately who you're servicing and the more successful you are, the more intermediaries there are between you and that thing. And then you can even, I mean, I've known artists

that have done this where they almost come to like hate and resent the fans. Like I knew this one author who like, as they worked more and more on themselves they like almost looked back they were almost like ashamed of who they were and because they couldn't admit that to themselves they came to like despise the people who were fans of them for that reason and so they had this like not just just an arms distance between them and the stuff, but this like repulsion because it was them on evolved.

Do you know what I mean? Like when the person would come up and be like, I love your stuff, man, you changed my life. Right. They felt shame because they didn't like the person that that person liked. And they couldn't integrate that person into their life then. They couldn't go like, I was this person,

I'm now in this person, and I needed to be that person to become this person. It was a like, they basically just sort of blew up their whole career. And I think there is that kind, there's some self-loathing and a desire for oblivion that motivates some of these figures sometimes because it's impossible to express it's really complicated and possible to unpack but

there is just this like they just say this doesn't work for them anymore yeah huh do you know that song little room by the white stripes no it's like 37 seconds long or something like that. It's like the trajectory of starting out in your little room making stuff. It's successful. So with the success, you get a bigger room. And then he's like in that bigger room, like you forget how you got started. Yeah. And then you go back to the little room. But this, I've not heard this of like, wanting to blow up because you're no longer identifying with that person that started out. Yeah, I think often you'll see artists

try to reinvent themselves because they don't want to be for the people that they're currently for. Right. Like oftentimes to be really successful at a thing, you yourself were not balanced or healthy or evolved or whatever, right? And so one of the rewards of success is hopefully access to things or time or space

to work on your stuff, right? I mean, imagine an artist who is now sober getting up and performing the songs they wrote in the depths of addiction or some partying phase. You would have a weird relationship with that work. I mean, I have a weird relationship with my first book, which is like a version of myself that I don't see myself as anymore.

But I've tried not to relate to it from a position of regret, but just an empathy and an understanding, but also I'm glad I'm not that. But I do feel like when people come up to me and they're like, I love that book, or I see what that book did for people that I don't like, or I think are not positive contributors to humanity,

I'm like, well, what is that? Or like the disconnect between what you thought that book was gonna do and what it did for people. Yeah, sure. I was thinking earlier when we were talking about the Prima and Kerouac thing, and like how one of the rewards of mastery should be like you get more efficient

and you're better at what you do and it takes less time, but often people like Kerouac get like more and more consumed and have less and less time for things other than that. Yeah, the craft or whatever? Or like in most cases, it seems like if you like, you read the Isaacson book, it seems like all he does is work on whatever it is.

So, sorry, what do you mean? It's just interesting, like he should be able to afford and he has the ability to be more efficient in like the work he does, but it's all he does. Yeah, I mean, you'd think that you'd be able to create a system that was very efficient and effective that allows you to do all these things and not run around life your hair is on fire.

But then his brother said something like he's addicted to the drama. That's like the fundamental theme of his life is like drama and chaos. And I've met people like that. There's just this like pattern that they're enacting. Like Dove Charney in American Apparel was like that. Like so it'd be like, things would be going well.

And then there was this like cycle where he'd be like, I'm changing fucking everything. Or he's like, we're all going to Montreal right now. And we're gonna reimagine things from the ground up. He'd be like, oh, someone did the math and built up this transition plan where we're gonna move a lot of the shipping and distribution from this old eight story building

that was very ineffective to this like big flat like Amazon style warehouse like 45 minutes from here. Okay, here's the plan. We're gonna approve it. This is the timeline. And then dove like drives out there one day and maybe he got news about something or he was worried. And he's like, I want it all here by the end of the month. And they're like, it's not physical. He's like, fucking do it, man. And it like, it blew up his life.

It blew up the company. I mean, he literally, towards the end, he'd like, he was living in his office. He didn't like must did at Twitter. He like put showers in and he was sleeping on this cot. And not that he was sleeping. And it was this, it was this sort of manic spiral of craziness that ultimately sunk him and the company.

That like, it's not only he shouldn't have done it, I don't even know if he needed to know that that facility existed. Like, you know, like I'm not sure Ralph Lauren wakes up and he's like, what building are we shipping clothes out of these days? Like, he's like, no, what's cool? You know, he's like, he's thinking about the parts

that only he could think about. I remember one time we had this like fucking three hour meeting in Dove's office where I was like, I'd walked in and I was like, hey, like, what do you think about this? And then he's like talking to me, he's like, get Marcia in here. And then he's like, get this person in here.

And one by one, he called like literally every executive in the company to his office, who he then talked at for like three hours. Nothing got accomplished. It was the theatrics and the craziness, it was better. And then as we were leaving, I remember Marsha, I was like, Marsha, what the fuck was that? And she was like, you have to understand Dove

wants an audience a little bit more than he wants to make money. And so understanding that a lot of this stuff, it's like, it's funny, in meditation, Mark Sturlus talks about nature's inadvertence, like how sometimes things are the accidental byproduct of other things. Well, this is also true of like, deeply dysfunctional things, like sometimes the deeply dysfunctional person is also as a byproduct, creating art or business or

insights or whatever, right. And it was like, Dove really wanted like an audience and a scene and he wanted power and he wanted women, he wanted all these things. And it was like, the desire for that accidentally created an enormous fashion company, right, you know, And then the desire for those things ultimately destroyed said company. If what you actually need is like drama, excitement, I mean, most of the time that kills you or leads nowhere,

but one time out of a billion, it makes you a billionaire. Right. And so it's like, what is the force that's compelling or motivating a person? This is all funny because this is in the next book. Well, you also have the North Star chapter in this book. Yeah, that's true. Oh, for Dr. Charney?

Yeah. And it sounds like what he said was the North Star was actually like the line about the audience matters more than the money to him. That was always in North Star, but he kind of like distracted himself or deluded himself with thinking that like these other things were important. Well, yeah, early on, it's like he wanted to make a positive difference

and he really loved fashion and he loved people and he loved doing things. And over time though, in the way that an addiction kind of swallows a person, the desire for attention, the desire for chaos and energy, and then ultimately like an insatiable need for validation and, I guess, dopamine and whatever sort of swallows all of that. And yeah, the North Star goes from, hey, I want to revolutionize fashion, and I care about all these workers to like, I'm this slave to my appetites and urges. And it was a powerful force early on, and then ultimately superseded by a more powerful force and it destroyed that company. Tens of thousands of people lost their jobs, investors lost millions and millions of dollars. She lost hundreds of millions of dollars.

And I think most sad, like the positive good that that company could have continued to do as the largest carpet manufacturer in the United States that was paying its workers in comprehensively generous salaries, you know, ceases to exist. And it has this tragic effect of like, if you were to say,

hey, I want to make a made in USA fashion company, people would be like, it doesn't work. Look at American Apparel. Look where that ended up. So it's also proving, it's not just, it didn't work for you. It's like a nail in the coffin of even the idea Yeah, well, it's similar to the regular thing of like the downstream consequences

Sure and like him setting up the future to like be people that keep their word I mean think about Elizabeth Holmes, right? So it's not just that she defrauds the government and defrauds her investors and screws over the employees who? Decided to work for her instead of taking stock options at some other startup. But like, what if, I mean, the idea is not insane, right? Like, like what if you could from a single drop of blood on someone's finger, learn all this information, how much more information would we get, how much better and faster would we find things out? Ostensibly, at some point, someone will actually be able to make that idea work. But think of the reservations and the headwinds that they're going to face to make that work.

So the cost isn't just to her and to that singular business. But yeah, it's like Regulus is saying, like, if she had come out and said, I can't make it work, something's wrong, she would have gotten fired and they would have replaced her or whatever. But instead she made everyone suffer. Like now that's, like even I imagine, I don't know this, but I bet if you just looked at the VC inflows to that space, like biotech period, I'm sure suffers as a result of it.

Just entrepreneurs in general, female entrepreneurs in general, female entrepreneurs in general. Just you think of the consequences, the knockdown effects of other things that were harder because of the fucked up path that she took. Yeah, in hindsight, like we were saying how Antonitis is like helping the stepfather up the stairs was an indicator of like larger character traits.

How like early on when you look back was a dub is capable of- Oh, a dub? Oh, that's a good example. Or just a small thing that was like, those two things are connected. I mean, certainly people knew it before I even started there, right? And I should have known better.

And I think what I have come to understand is that, so I started working in American barrel because Robert Green was on the board and Robert was like, you got to hire this kid, he can help you with a bunch of stuff. And Dove invites me to his house. And then he's like, come see me at the factory. And I mean, it's the nicest house I've ever been to. And it was the biggest factory I'd ever been to, right? I knew why I wanted to work there, right? Like, it's clear to me why it was attractive and exciting

and in my self interest to do so. But why does a then 40 something year old man who has all this stuff, who has access to the best talent in the world, why is he hiring a 20 year old? Right? And why is he entrusting him with all of these things? In retrospect, it's because I would not recognize things

that his peers would obviously see. You know what I mean? It's not that like, we now use this word, grooming for everything, which I think is fucked up. But like, I mean, he, there's a reason he chose young, ambitious, naive people to work there instead of poaching them from other companies, right? young, ambitious, naive people to work there instead of poaching them from other companies, right?

It's because, you know, in a must-term, you wanted people who were extremely hardcore, but not informed enough to see the insanity that was obvious to anyone else. And so that's actually the thing about dictators and cults and whatever, is by definition, they don't attract the best people. They attract first the people who have some sort of affection

or attraction to people like that. And I can kind of see in my own family, like different people have worked in places like for similar figures. But like, so there's something about just how I grew up that was like, when I saw that, I wasn't like, get me away from that guy. I was like, I wanna work there.

But then also they self-select for the people who are either willing to turn away or to not see is obvious to other people. I think James Comey talked about this like his first day in the Trump administration, he walks in with a bunch of people and Trump is like, that was the biggest inauguration crowd in history, wasn't it?

Right, like, and he's like, in that moment, Trump is deliberately or not, like whether it's just a habit he's cultivated to feed his own ego or he's much more diabolical in the way like maybe a Putin would do. He's going like, will you willfully deny reality because it's what I want from you? You know, like will you tell me what I wanna hear

more than what your own two eyes in front of you are obviously telling you? And there's some people that will and some people that won't. And the people that won't, he knows are gonna be a problem for him at some point. That's your Alexander Vindmans, that's your James Mattis, that's your McMasters,

that's your Rex Tillerson, that's all the people who ultimately resign or quit or turn against him. And the ones who are still with him are still with him. And the same is true for Dove. Like, there are still people, despite him blowing up American Apparel and doing all the things that he did, that still work for him and think that he's the victim in what happened. And like, he probably thought I was one of those people and he thought a lot of other people were those people, and it turns out they weren't.

But yeah, that's the selection. Like there's a Voltaire quote. He says like, he who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. And it's not always as extreme as that. But the point is, can I get you to debase yourself or to deny what your conscience or your eyes are telling you

to continue to wanna work for me, if so, you're who I want. And I think there was a part of my life, I think ambition was a part of it, I think not knowing better was a part of it, I think a bunch of things were a part of it where I was like, he told me things that in retrospect, I'm like, that should have been it.

You know, that was insane. What are you talking about? But I was like, sure thing, boss, you know, or like. I had the unique experience also of working at that time for other people, and then also going on and working for other people like that. And a lot of times what happens is you don't have the pattern recognition to go,

oh, this is what they all say. So like you work for someone who gets canceled or me too or something, and they tell you like how actually they're the victim and actually here's how it went. And people, you go, if you believe, if you trust that person, you like that person, you're on their side, it makes sense to you.

Well, when you talk to the 30th person that's told you the exact same thing, you go, they can't, it's like a defense attorney. At some point you realize like, my clients can't all be innocent. Like, they're all telling me the same shit, you know? I think later I came to go, oh, okay, this is how these people operate.

This is what they do. And I think that gave me some insights into Musk or to Trump. It also gave me insights into your Nero's and your whomever's of history. Like this is a type of person that recurs over and over again. And these are also the people that I can, I remember reading James Rahm's Dying Every Day

during the takeover slash restructuring of American Apparel and going, oh, this is much more familiar than it should be to me. Like I could, I understood it in a way that I think your average reader wouldn't because like, oh, I've been in Versailles or Neuros Court. Like I'd seen how these people operate and what they do. Yeah, it's interesting to contrast it with,

like you just are looking into that Marshall Eisenhower story and how their first meeting came about because Eisenhower was like a young kid that told his boss that he should cut something out of his memoir. And he didn't cut it, but Marshall kind of liked that. He was like, had the balls to suggest it. Yes, Marshall, who I talk about

in the justice book a little bit, has the greatest coaching tree in basically the history of the world. Like he picks presidents and four-star generals and people who win World War II and along with a bunch of politicians. But yeah, he seemed to understand that his job was to find people who disagreed with him, who had a lot of potential, but whom he could delegate stuff to. That was Dove's thing, is that fundamentally he didn't want competent people around him because competent people threatened his control. Right. I think Marshall saw something in

Eisenhower made him think he could shape this person, but also that he was fully formed enough that he wasn't, he wasn't, he was fully formed enough that that he wouldn't be shaped into a sycophant like someone said that the that that what? MacArthur did that the fatal flaw of MacArthur which which ultimately sowed his demise was that No, it said Thing about MacArthur staff is that no one could be if no one could afford to be first rate that Fundamentally there was a ceiling

on how good you could be around MacArthur before he came to perceive you as a threat. Either get rid of you or become alienated from you and... Do what you weren't as good at. Yes. And that's the real problem of ego is that he can't be it can't see it as a team sport where you want to be surrounded by really great people. And I think Marshall saw his role as a being a cultivator of talent, as opposed to building an organization that worked for him personally. Right. Yeah.

And ultimately, MacArthur is undone by the incompetence of some of his subordinates who don't serve him well, right? They don't tell the truth to him, and they also make a bunch of mistakes. And so, yeah, how do you, your coaching tree isn't just this sort of generous thing. It's that you need people around you are good because they, they challenge you and force

you to step up. I'm Mike Bubbins. I'm Ellis James. And I'm Steph Guerrero. And we're convinced that our podcast, The Socially Distanced Sports Bar, is going to be your new favourite comedy podcast with just a little bit of sport thrown in. You don't have to love sport, like sport or even know anything about sport to listen. Because nobody has conversations which stay on topic.

And it's the same on our podcast. We might start off talking about ice hockey but end up discussing, I don't know, 1980s British sitcom Alo Alo instead. Imagine using the word nuance in your pitch for Alo Alo. He's not cheating on his wife, he's French. It's a different culture. If you like me and Mammoth or you like Alex and fantasy football league then you'll love our podcast. Follow the Socially Distant Sports Bar wherever you get your podcasts. The Socially Distanced Sports Bar, it's not about asymmetrical overlords. James, podcasting from his study, and you have to say that's magnificent. Listening on Audible helps your imagination soar. Whether you listen to stories, motivation, expert advice, any genre you love,

you can be inspired to imagine new worlds, new possibilities, new ways of thinking. And Audible makes it easy to be inspired and entertained as part of your everyday routine, without needing to set aside extra time. There's more to imagine when you listen. Listening can lead to positive change in your mood, your habits, and ultimately your overall wellbeing. As an Audible member, you choose one title a month to keep from their ever-growing catalog. Sign up for a free 30-day Audible trial,

and your first audiobook is free. Visit audible.ca to sign up. Visit audible.ca to sign up. Yeah, it's another kind of similarity to like the Marcus, Marcus's story of bringing in talent and like to that piece about when like the plague broke out. And like he brings in, I'm forgetting the guy's name. He has this great line in the beginning of Meditations,

which I thought about, yeah, a lot during the plague. And then it struck me as a distinction, obviously, between the Trumps of the world, the good leaders of the world, but also at American Apparel. It says something about how he yielded the, oh, his willingness to yield the floor to experts in oratory, law, psychology, whatever,

and to support them energetically so that each of them could fulfill his potential. And it's funny, he's saying fulfill his potential. I think Marcus means they could fulfill their potential, but I think it's so they make you better. Like Eisenhower and Omar Bradley and all these generals and young officers that Marshall discovers and gives jobs to and delegates to,

they allow him to fulfill his potential, literally as the chief of staff, but also just as like a leader and a human being. Like you benefit from the success of the people underneath you, especially in that case where like you're all fighting and working for the same thing. Yeah, not only was that a lesson,

but he says it's the most important thing he learned. Yes. And you can imagine like another type, like a Dove Charney type seeing that and being like the lesson he internalizes is like weakness or like, you know what I'm saying? Like... No, I always thought it was remarkable, like how many people worked there and then how few went on to work at other companies or do other things. Right? There's like a handful of us that,

that that wasn't like the peak experience of our life, that that was a stepping stone. You know, and you see this, like Trump's ostensibly this billionaire. He literally had a show where he picks, like a reality show where he picks talented business people. Like Shark Tank, there's literally like hundreds of huge companies that have come out of Shark Tank. Yeah.

What have the people from The Apprentice gone on to do? Yeah, to go for it. What, like, tell me someone who got their start at the Trump companies. You know what I mean? Like, tell me someone, like, Warren Buffett has this whole generation of investors. Like, all the big hedge funds have people who, like, they worked for here, then they went on to do this, you know. Like, the PayPal mafia is a thing, right? Peter Thiel has an incredible coaching tree of entrepreneurs that have come off of him. And then also politicians and thinkers and whatever,

you don't have to like all of them. But like, it's clear he is a cultivator of talent. And it's usually a sign. If a person does not have that underneath them. It means that either they were lucky or they're inherently selfish and fragile because you can't afford to be first rate around that person. Right. Or like the things they do are not transferable to anything else. Yeah. I talk about Popovich in the book. I think what I think is so impressive about Popovich,

his coaching tree, like Belichick has a pretty impressive coaching tree, but they're all kind of like these mini Belichicks. And it hasn't always worked at other teams. A lot of them come back and work for Bill Belichick. Really create an incredible system, not disputing it at all. But I think what's so incredible about Craig Popovich

is that Becky Hammond, Mike Brown, Steve Kerr, these are very different coaches with different styles and different approaches and have built very different teams. Like it's one thing to make replicas of yourself. Some people are so threatened that the idea of a protege is unfathomable to them. And then other people, they think a protege is a replica of yourself. I think the highest form of it is you're able to identify talent, period, and then help that talent become what it is meant to be not what you would do if you had it

Right. Yeah. Yeah made me think of a bill Walsh and how he cultivated Joe Montana Steve Young a couple others I forget it's really only been Brady with That if I guess but he's not like a Montana Steve Young sure that have, I guess, but he's not like a Montana or Steve Young. Sure. He's been to the Super Bowl. That seems to be an indication that like, it was less Belichick than it was Brady. Well, I think, yeah, yeah, yeah.

To look at Popovich and to have it over multiple eras. And I think football is different because sometimes a team is built around a quarterback and he got lucky in that he had the quarterback this whole time. But if you look at the, if you watch the Tom Brady roast, you look at some of those players.

He had a generation of football talent in all these different ways. I think the less your coaching tree looks like you, the more impressive it is. And then probably the more generous it is. As I guess what I'm saying. Yeah. It was funny when I was talking to RC once about this,

cause I talked to him, RC Buford is the CEO of this first, he was the GM. I was like talking about it as a coaching tree. And he was like, but what about, and he starts like talking to me about like all their like social media employees and ticket sales people. Right.

He was saying like their front office staff gets poached too. Yeah, he was like, you don't know the half of it. Yeah, he was like. It's a real problem. But I think he meant it in a positive, he was saying like, he was saying that as the CEO and the GM, he saw the coaching tree

as being more than just coaches and players. You know, like what did the, like, we hired this kid straight out of college to be a marketing intern, and then today they're the CEO of this company. Like, he was saying, like, he was saying, organizationally, they see themselves as a cultivator and generator of talent,

people who try to give chances and opportunities to people that maybe other people don't see or open doors for them. And that like, it expanded my mind too. Like for me, if I only saw myself as like, okay, I've helped these other writers succeed as opposed to, you know what I mean? Like, hey, this person I gave,

this person who worked the front desk at the bookstore 20 years from now, I would like, like, hey, I gave you your first job. Or like, Braden, like this kid that was like, you know. It's also an interesting like trait of, because it's easy to imagine wanting to do everything you can to not let those people get away. Sure.

The talented people. And it's like a headache, and it takes a lot of time to replace those people and what it is about somebody that is- I actually think it's, I think the other thing we miss is like, okay, obviously would it be better if the world was more fair, if people got more chances, if people didn't discriminate, if people didn't mistreat people, whatever, right? And yes, as a society, we have to come together to solve those problems, of course, right?

This is what politics is about, and the legal system is about. But like, there's also just like, what are you doing as a person in the sphere that you contain? So when Robert F. Kennedy takes over the Justice Department, he makes civil rights a priority. So he's going and he's saying like, you know,

University of Mississippi, you can't discriminate against black students that want to come there. And he you can't segregate he's like, and the refrain amongst a lot of southern governors and politicians and university presidents at that time was, but how many black people work in the Justice Department? You're saying that our system is unfair and unjust, but you, where you actually have control over it, are actually operating under the same assumptions. We think the same thing. You don't mean this."

And so he had to go, oh yeah, like here I have real hiring and firing power. How am I going to do that first? Right? Now they were arguing this in bad faith because they didn't want the justice department to be integrated and diverse either. But he understood like, oh, okay, yeah,

I'm going to have to fight tooth and nail to desegregate the South is going to be this incredibly difficult legal battle. But who am I hiring in my office right now? Yeah, let's start there. Let's start there. And also let's not let ourselves off the hook because our heart might be in the right place, but look at the situation around me.

Do I actually believe this and hold this to be true? Or is this a standard I'm holding other people to? And I think that's this fundamental thing. Like justice is not this thing, justice discipline is not this thing that you enforce on other people. It ultimately has to start with you. Then so Stoicism going, well, what part of this is in my control? What can I do right now? Yeah. This is a little bit of a leap maybe, but it came to mind. The Taylor Swift story

of like the music industry and her masters. And initially like speaking out about it, but then Kelly Clarkson is like, hey, you could do this. You have this control. And she starts like, yeah, I'll just rerecord my masters. Although the irony is that now from what I understand, like labels are closing that loophole. Like she did it so brilliantly and so like made it clear how fucked up the system was that now they're like, we'll never let someone do that to us again.

But yeah, right. Like you can rage against the injustice of a situation and the unfairness of it generally, but at some point you gotta decide, well, where do I have some power here? And what can I do about it? Yeah. Have you ever read anything have some power here? Yeah. And what can I do about it? Yeah. Have you ever read anything by Eric Hoffer? Yeah. He came up when you had me look into some

Eisenhower stuff. Eisenhower, like mentioned his book, The True Believer or something. He's also in the wisdom book because General Mattis hitchhikes as a kid to go to an Eric Hoffer book signing. And- Wow, I remember that story. I forgot that was Hoffer. He asked Hoffer for some advice and Hoffer says, write down everything interesting that you find. Yeah. And that's how he starts this habit of notebooks. Hoffer actually did it with note cards.

They're at Stanford, there's like- Wow. Hundreds of file cabinets full of no-cars. I told Madison, I was like, I don't know if you know this, but it came full circle because he's at the Hoover Institute. So I was like, you got to go check him out. Did he go? I don't know if he went, but the idea of Hoffer as this sort of long-shoreman philosopher,

cultivator of wisdom is very fascinating. Yeah, super fascinating guy. There's a book, it's like the passionate state of mind in other aphorisms or something like that. And he has this line in there about, it just may be that a perfect society is a stagnant society. Okay.

And like, if you think about who, like revolutionaries were acting on what they perceived to be an injustice against them. But then like, if you think of why an artist makes what they make or why anyone does what they do is to solve some sort of problem or injustice that is being imposed against them. Well, that is the fundamental misunderstanding of stoicism

that because stoicism or the stoics resign themselves to things that are outside of their control, they're somehow apathetic politically or disengaged from the world. But in fact, not just in ancient history, you have this thing called the Stoic opposition who defies Nero and a bunch of the other terrible emperors and that gives their lives like in protest or is forcibly executed

for their resistance to this sort of tyranny. For your Seneca-like collaborators, we also have the contrast of Thrasya, who's this like freedom fighter like resistance figure. But the philosophy that inspires the American founders more than anything is Stoicism. that inspires the American founders more than anything is Stoicism. They're inspired by Cato most of all, this figure who says, I do not accept that this is how, the direction that things are going,

this is how it should be. And they invented new nation. I mean, there's literally, it's called the revolution. They invent a new system of government, they change the world. Did they accept a bunch of things and injustices from their time that they shouldn't have accepted? Of course, but they also,

the best of them challenged that in their own way too. I mean, Washington is slowly comes to understand slavery differently and is one of the few founders who frees all his slaves upon his death. But the idea of them being apathetic politically is blighted by all the major moments of the time that they're involved in.

There's this translator of Epictetus, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, who I've been reading a lot about, who is not just involved, like he's one of the supporters of John Brown. He is this intense activist against the fugitive slave law and is radicalized by watching sort of Northern slave catchers come into Boston and take people back into slavery. And so he leads one of the first black troops in the black regiments

in the American Civil War. So like the Stokes have always been incredibly engaged politically and in pursuit of justice. Were they also realist and pragmatists? Yeah, of course. But to them, the contrast between the Stoics and the Epicureans was the Epicureans sort of retreat into inward personal development. And the Stoics, for all their interest in inward personal development, ultimately thought that those were skills,

mastery of one's emotions, sort of all the things that go into being Stoic is what you needed if you were in the arena, literally and figuratively. So I just hate this idea that stoicism is this acceptance. Like there's this quote where it's like, the rational man adapts himself to the world. The irrational man tries to adapt the world to him. He says, so therefore,

all progress depends on the irrational man. And so there is this rational component to Stoicism, but there's also this fundamentally irrational part. Cato is crazy that he thinks he can withstand the forces of change and tyranny of his time, but he says, fuck it, I'm going to try. The founding of America is insane. Totally, yeah. And so stoicism is not tampening down that insanity, it's helping them keep their head about them in the midst of that insanity.

Yeah. So there is, the idea that you're gonna eradicate slavery as an institution, which has existed throughout human history, is insane. And yet, instead of accepting that it's insane, Higginson is using Stoicism to manage himself inside the insanity, which he is attempting to eradicate or resolve. If you're reading Stoicism and you're like the world is terrible it is what it is and I have this philosophy to help me not have to be sad about that you're missing what it's about. Yeah I often think about the

founders and how just insane what they pulled off really was when you like kind of think about it. I think I talk about this in courage is calling, but like when you look at the average age, it's even more insane. Yeah. Just the idea that they would do that. And I'm not sure it had really ever been done before the idea of like a colony breaking off and becoming its own thing. And just taking on like the great like power of the time.

Yeah. Like a bunch of kids just like, Hey, let's. Yeah. They were like, the oldest one was like 30. It was insane. It was insane. I think it's encouraged the story of Benjamin Rush or something like that. It's like an anniversary of the day they decided they were going to do it.

And he's like, I just can't escape the thought of being in that room and knowing we're signing our death warrants. Yeah, because in retrospect, it works out. So you go, they obviously knew this was great. It was that we see it as this monument of, you know, legal thinking, right? Like they came up with this idea and it's so smart as opposed to, yeah, you have these guys walking into a room, betting their life, literally, by signing their thing, he says, yeah, each of us was signing our own death warrant and our hands trembled as we did it. Yeah, the sheer courage of that and irrationality of that.

And yet somehow it squares with their understanding of classical virtue, I think is very lovely and important. And just like how fed up you have to be with the injustice or like what you perceive to be. Yeah, I tell the story in this book about Thomas Clarkson, who basically invents the abolition movement from scratch in Britain at roughly the same time. And that these 12 people just get together from these different

backgrounds with basically no political experience. And again, that they're able to say that this thing, which none of them have experienced personally and negatively impacts their life in no way. And in fact, the wealth and power of the country they live in is built on the back of this institution of slavery, thousands of miles away, for him to go, you know, this shouldn't be happening, and we 12 people can make it stop happening, is an incredible, and then to succeed at that thing.

Within a few decades, slavery is abolished in the empire, and the tide is turning against it globally from one guy. And so we don't like the great man of history theory because everything is structural, everything is systemic. There's all these other complicated facts. I think we do ourselves a real disservice to understand history that way, because yes, it is true that those things exist, but the world is what it is in so many moments because certain individuals

decided to go left instead of right, you know, or decided to get involved instead of not getting involved or to ask a question or to make a move instead of the alternative. And there's this Mark Struill's passage where he goes, you know, if it's humanly possible, know that you can do it also. To see those figures as not somehow fully formed men and women of destiny who have something

that you don't have, but to see them as just regular people. I mean, Thomas Clarkson is a college student at Oxford. I mean, I guess that's hard. Not everyone gets into Oxford, but he's a college student at Oxford who's asked to write an essay about this question of whether slavery is morally right or wrong. And from that essay, changes the course of human history and saves millions and millions and millions of people from a life of bondage and death and destruction.

And liberates all the other people from complicity in that horrendous system. What did you write your thesis about? So he has this moment, he's riding his horse home from Oxford and starts thinking about like, well, could I do something about it? He's struck by this thought that so powerful he has to get off the horse, he goes, I think I could like,

and not only could I, like I should. To me that is as much stoicism as mastering your emotions. friends. for your worst opinions. If you're a hater first and a lover of pop culture second, then join me, Hunter Harris, and me, Peyton Dix, the host of Wondry's newest podcast, Let Me Say This. As beacons of truth and connoisseurs of mess, we are scouring the depths of the internet so you don't have to. We're obviously talking about the biggest gossip and celebrity news. Like it's not a question of if Drake got his body done, but when. You are so messy for that, but we will be giving you the B-sides, don't you worry.

The deep cuts, the niche, the obscure. Like that one photo of Nicole Kidman after she finalized her divorce from Tom Cruise. Mother, a mother to many. Follow, let me say this, on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. Listen to episodes everywhere on May 22nd or you can listen ad-free by joining Wondery Plus

and the Wondery app on Apple Podcasts. 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'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 going to 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. What is the story? It's a similar, like a person hears something, should they do something about it, they don't do it. And it turns out that it was like a person that fell and like That's the story of Camus the fall. He's walking through the streets of Amsterdam and he hears a scream and a splash. And there's some part of him that thinks somebody just

jumped or fell in the water. And then there's other part of him that goes, nah, couldn't be bothered. And his life is changed by this refusal of the call. And that call is, I think, sometimes explicit, but sometimes it's not explicit. Or sometimes it's life and death and sometimes it's not. But the decision to get involved and to not turn away

is, I think, where justice and courage, the two of the cardinal virtues, intersect with each other. And then the discipline is the not quitting, right? You think about how many years Clarkson fights, how many miles he travels by horse and by wagon and by sea, and how many court documents he reads, and how many arguments he gets into, and how much money he raises, and how many nights he stayed up till two or three in the morning, por pouring over these documents and preparing these speeches and writing these bills and then yeah, the sheer strength of mind, but also the wisdom, right?

All the virtues are inseparable in that way. But ultimately, you know, they were equally dedicated and equally adamant proponents of slavery. So justice is to me the key swing vote in the other virtues. It renders it either admirable or awful. Yeah. It's like Clarkson wasn't the first person to become aware of how wrong that system was. So it's kind of an example or an illustration of the, you can commit an injustice by doing nothing.

Yeah, which Marx really says, yeah, sure. And how many people committed that injustice. I mean, in the beginning of meditation, Marx was proud of himself. He says that I never laid a hand on the names to female slaves. So at best he's talking about physical abuse So at best he's talking about physical abuse. At worst he's talking about sexual abuse.

And he says this in such a way that we know he obviously knew that other people did it. And he must have been repulsed by it because he saw it as something that he should not do. And yet, with all this power, doesn't do much about the institution as a whole. Both Antoninus and Marks-Rudis apparently passed some laws that prevent some abuse against slaves or allow them to eventually get their freedom. I'm not sure of the specifics. He didn't do nothing about it,

but he didn't free all the slaves. He didn't speak out forcefully against the institution, which is a bit sad given that his philosophical hero is Epictetus, a slave who is tortured and abused in the system of slavery. So he's not exempt from his own high standards there. You know, he says you can commit an injustice by doing nothing also. He commits an injustice by doing nothing about it, just as literally every century subsequently doesn't really do anything about it. But like we all see things and we know they're terrible or we know that they're sad or we know we could see things.

Like you could watch videos about factory farming and know more about it, but you know then probably change where I eat so you don't want to. I remember Doug would say that about American pears. He's like, you can't make to. I remember Dove would say that about American abolish slavery. He's like, there's human flesh in the sugar that you're eating. People were chewed up, used up and spit out and in fact died so you could make tea taste less bad. When you see how the other half lives, and Jacob Rees said this, when you see how the other half lives, you're then faced with this question, like, and then what? And what are you going to do about it? And that's why we don't want to know. Because

if we knew, then we would have to do something about it. Or live with the knowledge of not doing anything. Yeah. And then become the person who says, yeah, but I deserve a $5 bikini or I deserve, I don't want to pay $4 for a hamburger, it should be $1. And I don't care what sort of abuses are necessitated by my desire to get it at this price. Yeah. Yeah. It kind of makes it feel like when you think about those things and just the vastness of

the issues and where do you begin? Where does one begin? Yeah. the vastness of the issues and where do you begin? Where does one begin? Yeah, Mother Teresa said something like, when I think of the mass, I do nothing. Like when I think of the one, I get involved. Do you know the story of the starfish? No. So this is famous story.

Maybe it's real, maybe it's not, but this kid's at the beach, walks to the beach one morning and it's covered in starfish that have washed up all over the shore. And he's horrified. The storm has washed all these living creatures up and they're dying on the beach one morning and it's covered in starfish that have washed up all over the shore. And he's horrified. You know, the storm has washed all these living creatures up and they're dying on the beach and so he starts throwing them back in the ocean. And this adult comes, much more informed, you know, experienced, jaded adult and he goes, you're never gonna throw them back in. What does it matter? You know? And the kid says it matters to this starfish as he throws it back in the ocean.

And so the idea that, yeah, if you think of all the problems that face humanity, it's hopeless, it's pointless. But if you help one person, it matters to that person. There was an election in this little town two cycles ago that was decided by two fucking votes. You know, two fucking votes. Two people didn't show up and vote. And so this person won versus this person.

And maybe because that person doesn't show up, this person gets elected and a new housing development that makes housing more affordable doesn't get built, you know, or whatever, right? Like this law that does this doesn't happen or does happen, like these things make a huge shift. So, if you think about the preposterousness of your vote mattering, you're not gonna do it.

If you think about, is it in my control to do it, yes or no, then you do it. And these things matter. There's something about looking at the enormity of the problems that's actually very self-serving because then you go, well, there's nothing I can do about it and so I should just live my life as if it's not a problem.

Or I should just yell about the problem as opposed to dealing with it at some smaller level where I would have impact. Yeah. So like, they say all politics is local, but the vast majority of people's focus is on national and international politics. Meanwhile, what are you doing about where you live? Right. Why are you walking past a piece of litter? What are the decisions you're making about your business? I think that's been a weird experience. As a writer, you're only really dealing with ideas. But then with Daily Stoic, I've had this unique experience where it's like,

we manufacture physical things. And so, I mean, nothing like the scale that I experienced when I was at American Pearl, but I have to decide, you know, we have this coin about the four virtues, like, do I want to make this coin, which talks about courage and wisdom and justice, and doing the right thing? Do I want to make that in China for much cheaper, and then have to ship it by a containership or airplane, you know, thousands of miles, or do I want to pay many times more to manufacture it

at a facility in Minneapolis that's been in business for 150 years and pays its employees a fair wage? It's like a family-owned business. One is better for me, you know, to go back to that Regulus thing, one is better for me and not better for the customer. We made the daily stoic book at this, there was this company, we found them, they were in Texas,

but they manufacture in Belarus, where they've been for like decades. Except for Belarus is basically like a Russian satellite that, I mean, that's where Putin currently stores nuclear weapons, they've sort of rubber stamped the invasion of Ukraine. I remember I was talking to Congressman Tim Ryan, who was on the podcast, who had obviously knows that had a bit more access to the intelligence than I did.

And I was like, Hey, look, Belarus isn't technically on the list of sanctioned companies. Um, I could continue to do business and I'm not nearly at the size, like where it would make someone would come after me for doing it, but I was like, what do you think? And he was like, Belarus is Russia. He's like, your call. And I was like, okay, we'll find someone else.

And we found this company in the UK that has also been doing it a long time, but it's not like 10% more. It's like 250% more. But I can't sell it for 250% more. Like that's just out of my pocket and It wasn't fun. Yeah, but the reason that you study people from history is you want to study people who had to make vexing Incredibly difficult decisions like Regulus deciding. Hey, am I gonna keep my word and die or break my word and live in?

shame that only I would know. And you go, okay, if they could do that, can I choose between worse margins and a clear conscience and better margins? And it might be a little bit embarrassing if people found out. And so you make those decisions. And it is a muscle. Like, I think part of the reason like one of the decisions we made really early on with daily stoke is I've

always thought Black Friday and Cyber Monday were super gross. Like, so you all get together as a family on Thanksgiving in America. And you're talking about gratitude and the important things in life and whatever and then you go to Walmart and fight for a big screen TV, you know what I mean? Like the contrast of like family time, and then mass consumerism has always struck me as discussing. But that's like where companies make a lot of their money is like those are the two of the biggest retail

and online retail days of the year. And so I felt gross just philosophically, like just doing a sale. So like the first couple years of Daily Stoke and the painted porch or whatever, I was like, we'll just treat it like a normal day. We won't do a sale. But the sales were higher anyway, just because people were. And so I said, okay, we're actually gonna use this slot

to do like a fundraising drive. And so we did, I think we've done Feed for America most of the time, we've raised almost like millions, millions of meals for it. Right? Like I put up money in the data. So community does it. And, but mostly the opportunity costs of that slot

is the pricing is the expensive thing. Right? The point is it was practice making an expensive but right decision. It was practice making an expensive right decision. Yeah. And you get used to it. You know, hey, I'm a person who makes expensive

but right decisions. I'd rather say no to this than, and be proud of myself than say yes and feel a little gross. I know that this is a thing you can develop because I was not always that person. I think about people that I've worked for and things that I've said yes to. And I wish that I had done it differently.

And it was hard for me to even consider saying no to them at different points in my life. And just this year, I mean, I turned down a ton of money to speak at this conference from this person who I think is a fucking crook, you know? I mean, he's not literally a crook. Like what he does is not illegal or has not currently been indicted or charged for it

I think he's also gross and I think he's like a scammer and He offered me a bunch of money to do this thing and I was like, yeah, you know Which it should be the benefit of success is the ability to do that and I I don't fault people who like they're doing it Well, I do but you know, it's one thing if you're doing it to survive. But like the point of your success should be, it should put you in a position to make better decisions. So like, what's the point of having the better margins if you can afford not having the better margins

is how I thought about it. And so that's a muscle that I built over time that I, if I had to make that decision in 2010, definitely couldn't have made it. Could I have even made it two years ago? I don't know, but you develop it. That's what the Stokes are doing in the journaling and the talking and the writing and the studying of history.

It's to get to a place where you can, let's just not even say do it every time, but do it more often than not, make the hard right decision. Yeah. I was going to ask from just the process of writing the book and just spending so much time with this this topic and the virtue of justice like if there were any new ways in which you came to see like stoicism. That's a good question. I mean I definitely see the stoics as being more engaged and progressive not in the like American sense of the word but progressive in that like trying to change and improve things and make things better.

And that's not the reputation they have. And I think I'm excited to help rehabilitate that perception, especially now with stoicism being misused and contorted to sort of support this kind of modern day know nothing, bro, sort of, you know, i hate some of what stoicism is being made to rationalize and support like so this is not supposed to help you be a better sociopath it's supposed to help you be a better person in all senses of the word courage discipline justice wisdom like it's all around that virtue of doing the right thing, good character and works for the common good,

that's Mark Strzocza saying. Like that is really important to me. Not always the most popular with the audience, but it wasn't popular then. I mean, a lot of stokes died. Yeah. Right. So like, it's very easy to be like, I'm happy to publish an email that will get unsubscribes.

And in fact, I kind of think about, well, what, if that's what people are resistant to or upset about, then it means I'm not talking about it enough. I could certainly see a world where Daily Stoke would be bigger if I never touched on those things. And I can certainly see where there's a huge audience to be had telling certain people, mostly young men, only the parts that they want to hear about it.

And someone will do that, someone is doing that, the parts that they want to hear about it. And someone will do that, someone is doing that, but it doesn't have to be me. I heard someone go like, look, every person is entitled to a lawyer, but that person doesn't have to be you. Like that's how lawyers think about it, right? Like the system is predicated

that everyone deserves a defense attorney, but just because some morally repugnant, fucked up, awful person wants to hire you doesn't mean you have to do it. And I think there were times in my life where I felt like maybe what someone is going through is a little unfair or it was still a good opportunity or whatever and I would go, well, someone's gonna do it.

So it might as well be me, but it didn't have to be me. You know, and understanding that I think is important. But I guess, yeah, just understanding the stoicism at this deeper level, I think is very important to me and what I'm talking about more and more. It's what gets me excited. Is there anything where you'd update from the stoic perspective on justice? That's a good question.

I don't know. I mean, I'm not really that interested in what the stooics thought about, like sort of specific things, right? Because like when people go, what do the Stoics have to say about politics? Like what they had to say about politics was that you should participate in the polis,

like in politics. And they're mostly all politicians. Yeah, they didn't, yes. But they didn't go like, here are the Stoic policy positions. There, they didn't, yes. But they didn't go like, here are the stoic policy positions. There's lots of, like, I would probably disagree if Admiral Stockdale had expressed his political platform right now.

Would I agree with all of it? Probably not. But his idea that a stoic, if asked to serve, should serve, I think we're in agreement there and in broad strokes, what America's role in the world is what honor and decency and about you know, probably in so I think if we think of the stoics having a lot to teach us about character and values, as opposed to tax policy, we're probably a bit closer to what it should be. And I do think though, this dose, I mean, a lot of where we are today, I feel is like, we have a bunch of

problems. And you have a group of people who want to deny that those problems exist, or the moral obligation to do anything about those problems. And then other people who have a bunch of policy proposals, some of which are correct and some of which are not correct. But first and foremost, we have a disagreement about whether we should do anything. And I think that is where stoicism, first and foremost, is of service. Like the idea that we're just going to go, yeah, hundreds of thousands of people should die every year because the second amendment exists.

It's preposterous. Do you know what I mean? The idea that we should just let it rip in a pandemic because it puts us in vexing dilemmas between individual freedom and collective action problems, that's still a difficult, whatever, you know? You have to solve for these problems. You have to balance these conflicting things, not just thoughts and prayers.

You know, that's fucking bullshit. Yeah. What about like Seneca and like his serving Nero and being there? This is the million dollar clip. With the modern like analogy of like, I thought I could be a part of changing this person. Yeah, are you the adult in the room

or you complicit in what's happening? I understand this, cause I mean, I felt like I was that in American Apparel. At a certain point I stayed, not because I thought Dove was doing an amazing job, but because like I'd hired people and I could protect those people. At the same time, I also liked getting paid, you know?

And I was, I'd never just walked away and quit anything on principle for that was not a muscle that I had. So I guess I'm just really sympathetic to how hard that choice is and how insidious, I mean the the afterword of courage is calling us all about this, how insidious the things we tell ourselves. Like when Upton Sinclair said, you know, it's really hard to get someone to understand something

that their salary depends on them not understanding. That is very, very, very true. And it's also true that there have been moments in time where had a worse person been in that position, things would have gone differently. You can criticize Mike Pence all you want for being a sycophant and an enabler and that he should have known better, all of that. And yet Trump had replaced him

and there was someone else certifying the election on January 6th or someone else who didn't stand up to the president as he attempted to execute a coup that would have been quite familiar to the Stoics, the Catalan conspiracy being a pretty good parallel here. We might live in a very different country right now. Right? And so like Seneca tells himself,

I'm preventing Nero from being what Nero would be without me. Seems self-serving and like flattering and like he's just a martyr or whatever. But the first five years of Nero's reign are even at the time held up by historians as really good. Seneca's grip loosens, Seneca maybe does get caught up in things, but then Seneca does leave.

And Nero doesn't get better. Nero gets much worse. And maybe Rome doesn't burn. Yeah, maybe it goes differently. Maybe if Cato hadn't killed himself and found some way to work within the system, we don't know what the historical you know, the historical alternative. So there's something self-serving about walking away also.

Yeah, it's like that line of, you never know what worse luck, your bad luck saves you from. Yeah, sure. Maybe it is quite possible that if Seneca was not in there, like it'd be far worse. It's also interesting how like, there's not somebody as well known from

like Commodus's circle of like the way in which Seneca is complicit in Nero's. Yeah, yeah. That is interesting. I don't know. Is that just because Seneca like they'll establish himself in other ways and like- Yeah, I don't know. It's like he became famous as a writer, but and then people were like, well, actually, did you know also he was complicit in Nero's? Yeah, I don't know. I don't know. That's a good question. The reality is very rarely does the adult in the room make a positive difference.

Yeah. It's like that, the Hamilton line of, if there's a fire you're trying to douse, you can't put it out from inside the house. Oh, interesting. Yeah. H.R. McMaster's is a fan of Stokes. He wrote this book called Their Eliction of Duty, and he looks at the chiefs of staff and the advisors to the president, all the presidents through Vietnam. And he notes that even though to a rule, almost every single one of them had some strong disagreement with the direction of policy, either that it should have gone, that it could have been saved had they gone in earlier and more troops, or that it could have been saved, had they gone in earlier and with more troops, or that it was a lost cause and needed to be wrapped up. He said not a single one resigned

in protest. And so how could the president not take from that, every president take from that, that people were more or less in agreement with the policies. Right. And he asked one of them, and then one of the generals said, if I resign in protest, it's a news story for a couple of days, and then you know what I am?

I'm an ex-general. But, and this is where the Seneca thing is so interesting, you weren't having that much influence in the house either. Right. You know? Yeah, that's McMaster's book. Yeah, it's called, Their Election of Duty. you weren't having that much influence in the house either. You know? Yeah. That's McMaster's book? Yeah, it's called Their Election of Duty.

It's pretty incredible. And then the craziness of him to become the national security advisor to the president and ultimately have him to resign is, it's like he wrote this book 30 years ago. That was before, wow. H.R. McMaster is a general It's like he wrote this book 30 years ago. That was before, wow. H.R. McMaster is a general

who was Trump's national security advisor. Got it, okay. So maybe that's kind of like the, like what did they go on and do? Well, yeah, Seneca's point is like, if you can be of service to the many in government, great. If you can be of service to your city, great. You know, if you can't do that,

can you be of service to an audience, like through writing? And then could you just be of service to your city, great. If you can't do that, can you be of service to an audience, like through writing? And then could you just be of service to the community, like as a human being? Can you help someone move or something? Can you feed a beggar? And his point is that there's multiple spheres in which we can operate.

Ideally, you operate for as many people as possible, but to not neglect the lower ones. Yeah, the circles 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. How much do you really know about black history? Like really, really know. Wondery's new podcast, Black History for Real, we's black history's most

overlooked figures back into their rightful place in culture and the world at large, listen to Black History for Real on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcast.