The Daily Stoic - Win The Day | Tim Ferriss, George Raveling, & Ryan Holiday

Episode Date: March 30, 2025

Tim Ferriss sits down with George Raveling to uncover the incredible story of how he came to possess the original copy of Martin Luther King Jr.’s I Have a Dream speech and where it is now. Tim also talks with Ryan about the lessons he’s learned from the 88-year-old basketball icon, the best advice George has given him, and what working on What You’re Made For meant to him.📕 You can grab copies of What You’re Made For by George Raveling and Ryan Holiday at The Painted Porch: https://www.thepaintedporch.com/🎙️ Listen to George's interview on The Tim Ferriss Show here🎥 Watch George Raveling’s FULL interview on The Daily Stoic Podcast: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SJ-ZQ2p0WhY🎙️ Follow The Daily Stoic Podcast on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dailystoicpodcast🎥 Watch top moments from The Daily Stoic Podcast on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@dailystoicpodcast✉️ Want Stoic wisdom delivered to your inbox daily? Sign up for the FREE Daily Stoic email at https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Get Stoic inspired books, medallions, and prints to remember these lessons at the Daily Stoic Store: https://store.dailystoic.com/📱 Follow us:  Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, and FacebookSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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Welcome to the weekend edition of the daily Stoic podcast. On Sundays, we take a deeper dive into these ancient topics with excerpts from the Stoic texts, audio books that we like here or recommend here at Daily Stoic, and other long form wisdom that you can chew on on this relaxing weekend. We hope this helps shape your understanding of this philosophy and most importantly, that you're able to apply it to your actual life.

Thank you for listening. Hey, it's Ryan Holiday. Welcome to another weekend episode of the Daily Stoic podcast. One of my favorite people in the whole world is George Raveling. And when I first met George now, 10 years ago, one of the things I did was I just introduced him to a bunch of friends of mine that had podcasts

and I said, you gotta talk to this guy. I didn't have a podcast at that time. I was just really excited and I really wanted George's story on the record. You know, there's these people, maybe you have some of them in your own family, or your parents or grandparents or great aunts or uncles, and you know, one day they're gone and you go,

I really wished I'd recorded their story. I really wish I'd asked them more about it. And I just thought, I wanted to hear George on Rich Roll's podcast and Jordan Harbinger's podcast. And I wanted to hear him on Tim Ferriss' podcast. And so I connected George and Tim and George flew out, did the podcast and then afterwards George and I had dinner and that's where I gave him the idea for what would become The Daily Coach, this really awesome newsletter that he does with my friend Michael Mbarte.

Anyways, working on this book with George, What You're Made For, which has come out now and people are loving. We've got copies at the Painting Porch. I'll link to those in today's show notes. George did this awesome three hour interview with Tim, which everyone should listen to. But when I went out to LA to interview George to talk about the book, Tim Skyped in for a chunk of it, FaceTime.

I can't believe I just said Skype. I sound like an old man. That's like send him a telegraph or something. Anyways, Tim was in there for part of it. George and I were in the same room. Tim was remote. I think he was in there for part of it. George and I were in the same room. Tim was remote. I think he was in Salt Lake City. We were just catching up and that kind of produced

this little extra thing that I think would make for an awesome episode of this podcast. And I wanted to bring you that. If you haven't listened to the full episode with Coach, I think you'll really like it. But here's another chunk of us talking, just an incredible person. He tells the I have a dream speech story.

I just love soaking in George's wisdom. I know many of you do as well. So that's what this is. Thanks to Tim Ferriss for joining us and letting me post this. That was very nice. And if you want more of George, again, not stories so much as lessons from his life,

I think you will like this. I think you will like this and I think you will like his book. And then because George is just the absolute sweetest person, I know he sent me this very cute picture of him standing in front of his book at Barnes and Noble in the new and notable section. And then I just woke up this morning, he texted me, "'You are one of the very best people on planet Earth.

Thank you for believing in me. Who says that? And I mean, to get that from him, I mean, I don't even know what to say. I'll take the compliment. And I think very much the same of him. And that's why I wanted to bring you some more time with George. Enjoy and grab what you're made for. I'll sign your copy. If you want me to, I'll link to that in today's show notes. and grab what you're made for. I'll sign your copy if you want me to. I'll link to that in today's show notes. I thought we might start with a bio change and the bio change was very subtle. I read it twice had to do with the I have a dream speech and the past tense used to own.

So there seems to be a change in the state of ownership. And I thought we would just lead off with that background and the story leading up to wherever it is now, which I don't know the answer to. So perhaps, Coach, if you wouldn't mind taking us through a trip down memory lane and then telling us where things have ended up. Yeah, how does one come in possession of one of the most significant pieces of American history?

Yeah, how does that happen? One of my best friends at that time in my life was named Warren Wilson, and his dad was a very prominent dentist in Wilmington, and probably the most prominent black person in the state of Delaware. This was a Thursday night. I was having dinner at their house and the conversation turned to the March on Washington and Dr. Wilson said, are you guys going down to the March on Washington? And we said no. And he said,

why not? And so Warren said, well we don't have any money or way to get there. And so he said, okay, you take one of the cars and I'll give you enough money to get you through the weekend, but I think you guys should be down there. And he had a premonition that this was going to be a special moment in the lives of black folks. And so Warren and I drove down, we found a place to stay, we went, decided, let's go down to the monument grounds

and just see what it looks like and how the best way to get there. And so we get down there in the evening and we run into a gentleman and he says, are you guys coming tomorrow? And we said, yeah. And he said, would you guys be interested in being a security? And we said, sure, we'd be interested.

And so he told us to meet him down there the next morning at 8, and we found them. And he looked at us, two, six, four dudes, and he said, OK, you guys are going to be part of the security force for the podium. And they had a special contingent of security for each of the speakers. It actually started around nine o'clock in the morning. The first speaker was John Lewis. And what was fascinating was this was the largest gathering of black people in the history of

America. And so each of the speakers worked their way through the day and Martin Luther King was the last speaker on the dais. And so when King started the speech, first of all, there's a variety of things that people don't understand about the speech. Each speaker had to submit their speech in advance for approval. And they wouldn't approve James Baldwin unless they made some changes and Baldwin wouldn't speak. He said, if you want me to speak, I gotta say what I wanna say.

And so Baldwin never got to speak. So King's speech had no title. It was five minutes, he submitted it, and he began to speak. As he got toward the end of the speech, you hear this voice say, tell them about the dream, Martin, tell them about the dream. And that was Mahalia Jackson, a great Negro gospel singer, who was her and Harry Belafonte basically bankroll most of Martin's movement through the last three years. They were the ones who financed it. She had heard Martin talk at other occasions and referenced

this piece about having a dream. And so Martin Luther King ad-libbed the I have a dream part into the speech. It was never intended at all. And at that time, I had no idea that we were seeing history manifest itself right before us. So when Dr. King was finished the speech and I was right on his left side, and as he started to fold it, I don't know, for whatever reason, I said, Dr. King, can

I have that speech? And it was folded, and he handed it to me. And actually, in a documentary that CBS did, they actually show him folding it, and you can see where he's handing it to me. I had the speech for over 50 years, and no one even knew that I had the original copy and so forth. And then when I took the job at the University of Iowa, the Des Moines Register was going to do a Sunday feature in the magazine on me being the first black coach at Iowa in the Big Ten.

So the reporter who came down to do the story, during the interview, he said to me, were you ever involved in the civil rights movement? And I told him about the march on Washington and so forth. And he said, what, you have the speech? I said, yeah. And I had just moved to Iowa. A lot of boxes hadn't been opened yet.

So we went down and found the speech and I showed it to him. Tell him what you were storing it in because that's another little quirk of the history of this story. It's almost unbelievable. Yeah, I had the speech stored inside of a book that President Truman gave me.

But once the Des Moines Register came out with the story and told the public that I had the original speech, all hell broke loose because now was the fact that I had it, that it was in good shape and so forth. My wife got a little concerned about it, having it in the house, and she says, now that the public knows where it is, they might come some night and try to break into the house to get the speech. And so we actually ended up putting it in a vault here in Los Angeles for a number of

years just for safe keeping. And then ultimately you donated it, right? As the years passed, one of the things that I thought would be a good idea is if I could get it to become the property of Villanova where I went to school and graduated. And so we were able to work out a deal to have the speech purchased and given to Villanova University, which made me very happy because I'm a grad there. One of the things that I said publicly numerous times is I would like to see the speech end up in the hands of Villanova. So Villanova worked out a deal with the African American Museum

that for the next 10 years, they would have possession of the speech and they would put it on display six months out of the year. And so, the actual copy is at the African American Museum in D.C. In Washington, D.C. Have you ever wondered how a circus performer could become the most powerful woman in the Byzantine Empire? Even the Royals is a podcast from Wondery that pulls back the curtain on royal families, from ancient empires to modern monarchs, to show you the darker side of what it means

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SONIA DARA So let me hop to Ryan for a second here, because I know the two of you have known each other for some time. And I'm curious, Ryan, how did this book come to be? And then I have some questions for you personally about how the process has affected you and how coach and his life lessons have affected you. But let's just talk about the Genesis. Well, I know you're talking lately about the importance of saying no, right?

And you get asked to do these various things and people invite you to stuff. And it's true, you gotta say no. And then sometimes you say yes to things and it just changes the course of your life. Shock is Smart, who is then the head basketball coach at Texas, said, hey, you should come out to a practice sometime. And I came out to a practice about 10 years ago,

and I watched him play and he said, hey, I want you to meet a mentor of mine, George Raveling. And we met and we became friends. I wouldn't say you're my oldest friend, but you're maybe my second or third oldest friend. We hit it off and yeah, we've stayed in touch and I was just blown away by his story and I would ask him for advice

and sometimes he would humor me by asking me for advice. And his son, Mark, texted me a couple years ago and said, hey, my dad was thinking about doing a book, what do you think? And Tim, I said, well, let me ask my agent Steve about it. Tim and I have the same agent for people listening. And I have never heard or seen Steve move faster or a book deal get completed faster

than when he went to Penguin and said, hey, George Raveling, pioneer basketball coach, former driver of Wilt Chamberlain and owner of the I Have a Dream speech, the guy that brought Yao Ming and Dirk Nowitzki and all these players to America, was thinking about doing a book, what do you think? And they fell all over it.

And honestly, I didn't know what kind of book it would make sense to do. And what happened was George sent me a text and it was just a page from his journal. You know, a lot of books from people who have had interesting lives. It's just like a, you know, a memoir. I did this, then I did this, I did this.

And George just sent me this page from his journal where he wrote this question. He said, what am I made for? And then beneath it was a series of bullet points where he was trying to work his way through like what he felt like he was put on this planet to do. He was talking about being a trailblazer, reading books, acquiring wisdom, you know, helping others.

And I was just so moved by it. I said, George, that has to be the book. I can't think of anything better than that being the book. And I don't work on many people's books these days, but this was one I felt like I had to do. And the fact that I got to spend a couple hours on the phone each week with this guy was just gravy on top. Prior to the book project, if you take a moment to reflect on what you've asked Coach Raveling

for advice regarding what are the types of things, you can give a real example or maybe it's a hypothetical that comes to mind. I'm just curious what types of situations or questions would prompt calling him. You know, there's a great expression I love that says any fool can learn by experience. I prefer to learn by the experiences of others. And any chance you get to talk to someone

who has lived many decades more than you, I think you want to take, right? Whether they're successful or not successful, you want to know, hey, what do you feel like you did well? What do you feel like you could do better? What do you wish you hadn't done? What do you wish you'd done more of? And so I just felt like it was this really special opportunity to talk to someone who lived not just so many more years than me, but in so vastly different circumstances of me. I would just text him questions here and there, we would get together. I asked him questions when I was writing

different things in my books that pertained to people he met, whether it's a Truman or a Jordan or a Martin Luther King. But I remember I asked you one very specific question about, when you have something you're really good at and you're really driven, how do you balance pursuing that thing and not becoming unbalanced by that thing? This is a basic question about work-life balance, and I remember you gave me a bunch of advice about that.

You know what my favorite piece of advice that George gave me, which I was just thinking about? He said when he wakes up in the morning, as he puts his feet on the ground, he says to himself, he says, George, you have two choices and only two choices. Today, you can be happy or very happy. And I think about that whenever my kids wake me up early in the morning, or I gotta catch a flight, or I'm frustrated, or the weather's no good,

or whatever it is, I go, look, the choices are between happy and very happy and nothing in between. George, have you always been hardwired that way or was there a point in time when you decided to view each day that way? I think the older I became, the more I realized every day God gives each of us the same gift. Nobody gets more, nobody gets less.

Every day, we get 24 hours of opportunities to be a better person today than I was yesterday. And so, to me, when I start a day, I want to win the day. I want to feel like I utilize the 24 hours to their best advantage. And I spend a lot of time trying to make sure I can control the things that are controllable. My energy, the way I think, what I read, who I talk to, how I spend my time, how do I spend my money.

And so I think if you can put together a small strategy under what I call to win the day, every day is a contest. It's a contest to win or it's a contest to lose. And so every day when I get up in the morning, the first thing I do after I get my feet on the ground and say I'm either going to be happy or very happy is I try to say to myself, what is the most important thing I have to get done today? If nothing else happens, and then I'll pick the second thing. What's the second most? Most times I never get to the second, but I would say 90% of the time, the opportunity that I see in front of me, I get done because I stay focused on what it's going to take to win the day.

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