The Daily Stoic - Wright Thompson On The Costs Of Greatness Throughout History

Episode Date: June 3, 2023

Ryan speaks with Wright Thompson about his work studying the convergence of sports and culture, the evolution of society in conjunction with people’s emotional regression, why history is less distant than we think it is, and more.Wright Thompson is an author and journalist who covers the intersections of sports and culture. Thompson has written for ESPN.com and ESPN The Magazine on topics like auto racing, MMA, bullfighting and more. Thompson wrote The Cost of These Dreams: Sports Stories and Other Serious Business and recently released the New York Times bestselling Pappyland: A Story of Family, Fine Bourbon, and the Things That Last. Wright’s work can be found on his website www.wrightthompson.com, and on Instagram @wrightthompsonbooks.✉️ Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Check out the Daily Stoic Store for Stoic inspired products, signed books, and more.📱 Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, FacebookSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hey, prime members. You can listen to the Daily Stoke podcast early and add free on Amazon music download the app today Welcome to the weekend edition of the Daily Stoke each weekday We bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stokes Something to help you live up to those four Stic 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. Here on the weekend when you have a little bit more space when things have slowed down, be sure to take some time to think, to go for a walk, to sit with your journal, and most importantly to prepare for what the week ahead may bring. Hey, it's Ryan Holiday. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast.

Maybe the greatest living writer in sports, certainly currently publishing living writer. It's got to be right, Thompson. I've raved about his book, The Cost of These Dreams, which is not really about sports, but it so much is about the pursuit of greatness and what it costs you. The kinds of individuals that are drawn to that, the cost of being drawn to that. I have drawn so much from his work. You, if you've read Stoenstown, this is the key, I'm drawing on his Tiger Woods story. If you picked up the Daily Dad, there's stuff in there from his story on Ted Williams

and his daughter, there's stuff from Tiger Woods. And a bunch of other examples actually from our last conversation, I had them on the podcast back a year or two ago, a remote. This one's in person, he came out to the New Daily Stoke Studio, which was very, very cool. But anyways, it was in that episode of the podcast that he gave me a pointer, that he pointed me towards Bruce Springsteen's wonderful conceit about an ancestor or a ghost. What are you going to be for your kids? Just a fantastic writer, if you want to just read some of the best sports writing or journalism on the planet today, pick up the cost of these dreams, his

book Papu Land, a story of family, find bourbon and things that last. Also fantastic. But just look at his stories for ESPN, just grab a bunch of them. Just fan, just a masterclass. He's covered Super Bowl's Final Four as the master's, the Kentucky Derby, and so much more. Thank you to Wright for coming all the way out and doing this interview. We both have a shared connection and mutual friend in Lane Kiffin, who we sent a picture of, who we sent a picture of us hanging out to. And I think you're really going to like this episode with me talking to the one and only Wright Thompson.

And you'll be able to watch this one on YouTube also. I think if you're watching them on YouTube, you can check this out because we filmed a video of it also. But check out the cost of these creams we carried in the painted porch and then Papu Land also fantastic. I think he signed copies of both and those are probably available also all linked to those in today's show notes. Life can get you down. I'm no stranger to that. When I find things are piling up, I'm struggling to deal with something. Obviously, I use my journal, obviously I turn to stosism, but I also turn

to my therapist, which I've had for a long time and has helped me through a bunch of stuff and because I'm so busy And I live out in the country. I do therapy remote so I don't have to drive somewhere And that's where today's sponsor comes in. Toxbase makes it easy to find a therapist that you like. It's convenient It's affordable by doing everything online toxbase makes getting the help you want easy and affordable So why wait and tox space can help with any specific challenge you might be facing. That's why it's the number one online therapy platform with license therapists and over 40 specialties. It's secure and private and in network with most major insurers. As a listener of this podcast, you can get 80 bucks off your first

month with talk space when you go to talkspace.com slash stoic to match with a license therapist today and go to talkspace.com slash stoic to get 80 bucks off your first month and show your support for the daily stoic. That's talkspace.com slash stoic. It's funny, I talk to lots of people and a good chunk of those people haven't been readers for a long time. They've just gotten back into it. I always love hearing that and they tell me how they fall in love with reading. They're reading more than ever and I go, let me guess, you listen audio books, don't you? And it's true and almost invariably they listen to them on audible. and they tell me how they fall in love with reading, they're reading more than ever, and I go, let me guess, you listen audio books, don't you?

And it's true, and almost invariably, they listen to them on Audible. And that's because Audible offers an incredible selection of audio books across every genre from bestsellers and new releases to celebrity memoirs. And of course, ancient philosophy, all my books are available on audio,

read by me for the most part. Audible lets you enjoy all your audio entertainment in one app, you'll always find the best of what you love or something new to discover. And as an Audible member, you get to choose one title a month to keep from their entire catalog, including the latest best sellers and new releases. You'll discover thousands of titles from popular favorites, exclusive new series, exciting new voices in audio. You can check out Stillness is the key, the daily dad, I just recorded so that's up on Audible now. Coming up on the 10-year anniversary

of the obstacle is the way audiobooks so all those are available and new members can try Audible for free for 30 days. Visit audible.com slash daily stoke or text daily stoke to 500-500. That's audible.com slash daily stoke or text daily stoke to 500-500. 500. What did this person eat? What did they think? He's like, what did they think about God? I just think about that all the time. And there's another scene in there where he talks about this, like, these buffalo that just

get like stuck standing up in the mud or something. And they just, like, 100,000 buffalo just die standing up. And they just find them. Yeah. Or they would run them off the cliff. That's crazy. Like just the idea that like, so the myth that like, that they were like great conservationists.

Yes. They were of the individual animal, like they were very resourceful on the individual animal. Like they could use all the pieces. Yeah. But they might kill a thousand of them if they could. Yeah, it's sort of like, you know, like your grandparents who grew up in the depression, they were like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. We're using every bit of that buffalo.

Yes, but yeah, they would just run them off, or they would burn huge swaths of forests to run them off, like they would use fire. And like it also made me like I started watching me later after reading the book. Yes. Because I was like, okay, like I'm curious about. Yeah. And it's like the anti hunting show. Yeah, he, well, I mean, I don't mean against hunting.

I mean, it's the anti like what you would normally think of like, like, bros. Totally. Well, I mean, and a lot of the episodes, he's like, like, bros. Totally. Well, I mean, a lot of the episodes, he's like, yeah, I'm not gonna shoot this one. Yeah, which I like. Yes, yes.

Yeah, or like, there's this one I saw where they go hunting with alpacas. Like, they have like alpacas that carry their gear. It's pretty nuts. My son likes to watch those before bed for some reason. So we've seen pretty much all of them. Elder son? Six.

Oh yeah, I have a two and a five year old. Yes. So one of my other books was A to two scientists. Oh. Ava Marie Ava Marie, now I can do the whole thing. Well Steve has a good book, I'll give you, it's called Outdoor Kids in an indoor world. Okay, I need to check that out.

That's all about, like he's like, you wanna raise kids that don't say, you when they're outside. Oh, that's good. You know, like, like, they can just do stuff, right? He's like, they don't have to love the outdoors. They just have to not be afraid of the outdoors. And also, like, if the whole world turns into like a

Karthi novel, you like, at least want to be able to do some stuff. My favorite scene in the book, he's like, they're out camping as a family and the kids go, we found scorpions and he's like, no, you didn't. There are no scorpions in Montana. He's like, this is literally what I do. You did not find the scorpion.

And I'm like, yes, we did, yes, we did. And he said, absolutely did not. But any parent knows, whenever your kids, I just saw a monkey riding a bicycle, you know, you didn said, absolutely did not. But any parent knows whenever your kid's like, I just saw a monkey riding a bicycle, you know you didn't. They definitely did. It's like the second you doubt them, you're proven wrong. And he says, like, prove it to me.

And they come back with a scorpion. It turns out it's some super rare and endangered species of scorpions. But he had to eat it. Like, okay, dad, expert. It was sort of like, I'm making this documentary right now with Mickey Hart, the drummer from the Grateful Dad. And so I was talking to his daughter at his house one day

and I was like, how do you rebel when your father's in a Grateful Dad? Did you get a job you were a suit? Well, she wrote up her sleeve and had a big patty Smith tattoo and just said, punk rock, but it's sort of like, how do you rebel when your dad is Steven Rinalo? Sure, sure. It's either you play video games or you're like actually you don't

know shit. Right. You go so hard. Yeah. That you're like actually there are scorpions. You know, Mr. Famous TV honor. No, his stuff's amazing. He's really good. It's funny. I just had I just had Gretchen Rubin in here and I was talking to her about it and then I hadn't finished it. So this will be the second episode I open talking about this book. But I just finished Walter Lord's book. The past that would not die. I have not read that. Dude, it's unbelievable. But it made me think is you have that ESPN piece about the football, the football game right before the football game right before the Times Cup, but right before the integrate Mississippi, and the book was just unreal.

And what's it about? It's about James Meredith integrating the University of Mississippi. Oh, that is, like, there's that book, I didn't know that was about it. There's a book called American Insurrection that's also very good about that. The detail of that, that I,

there a couple that's really sticking my mind. One of them is that, they sent the 82nd and 101st Airborne Dox from Mississippi. Not like National Guard, like stone cold killers. And then the other detail I love is that, they also sent military police units and they landed the naval air station in Memphis and they put them in trucks and in jeeps and they were going to drive them from Memphis.

And essentially they got across the state line, almost got to shoot out with the state troopers and then they're driving down Highway 7 into Oxford and one of the MPs who was in one of the lead jeeps Said that black families came and stood on the side of the road because they were literally watching the Union Army come down Whoa, and it was just like this idea of like They've sent these people to help us. Yeah, and like you know, they were ready to you know Kill some lippy, almost fried boys. Have you ever read Walter Lord? Huh?

Have you ever read any Walter Lord? I have not. He wrote this book. I don't think so, but I... He wrote this book about the sinking of the Titanic. It's like maybe the greatest narrative, nonfiction book of all time. Really?

It's like, you know, the final hours of the Titanic. It's just so good. And he wrote it in like 1960 or something. Before this was, it's like, it's not Gonzo, but it's before that was really a genre. Do you know what I mean? And it's incredible. And then I just found that he'd written this book,

which I read and I thought it was amazing. My favorite detail about the story was that the head of the National Guard there though, which they sent out first is like Faulkner. It's a Fa which they sent out first, is like Faulkner. It's a Faulkner. It's like Chucky Faulkner. It's like his grand nephew or son or something. You're just like, what are the, what are the chances? And also Faulkner died like two months before that happened.

Really? And so one of the interesting things about Faulkner, I mean, he writes about a lot of things. I mean, you know, know, mostly especially with like, absel maps on people talk about race, but one of the things he also writes about a lot is the way civilization comes for wilderness. And, you know, the sort of lamenting of this vanished world. Sure. I mean, you know, Mississippi was hardwood forest until a lot of it until like the late 1880s. Like this is after the Civil War. And so one of the things that's so interesting

is that the amount of trees got cut down in like 30 or 40 years that would have taken, I mean, I'm making this up, but three or 400 years and like the dark old forest in Europe, and it was just bewildering to people and so that bewilderment feels like such a Sort of animating feature of not just Wagner's language, but also of his structure sure and so but it's interesting that he died right before right before

sort of The end of this one Mississippi in the beginning of another one. Yeah. And I don't know what that means, but it means something. Somebody somewhere is, you know. Well, yeah, maybe if you're using it as a character, you know, he was the one that kept saying, like, just a little more time. Let's not do it too quickly. And then he dies. And then they go, all right, time's up.

Well, in the eerie detail is so, Kennedy, they kept telling President Kennedy, like, you need to say something. Yeah. And so he had an address planned. Yeah. And the address started, I mean, almost simultaneously to the riot, yeah, which is a,

it's a key. He was gonna give one version of the talk and then to hopefully avoid what was happening as he started the talk. a, it's a, he was going to give one version of the talk and then to hopefully avoid what was happening as he started the top. And so what's crazy is so there's the of the tear gas going off that people can hear and you know those big canisters hitting the pavement and there's tear gas everywhere and their cars parked all around the circle where this is going down. And so you can hear his address in the background of this thing jumping off.

And it's like, that's one of those details that makes the hair stand up on my own, because you're just like, you know, anyway, I have to find that so, I find that so interesting. No, the story was so fascinating and so terrible and tragic and unnecessary. I actually just read this other road trip book.

Joan Didian did this road trip from New Orleans to Atlanta and back. I've read that too. She had this great line. She was like, the problem with the South. The thing about the South is that the Civil War was yesterday, but 1960 was 300 years ago. Well, that's, no. And by the way, that's very, very accurate because it's like, you know, my high school history teacher literally called it the War of Northern Aggression.

Yeah. And all that stuff is so stupid. It's just like, you know, I mean, the fact that they're Confederate statues, I mean, like, it would be like us, why don't we put up a statue of Rommel? Like, when you get your ass kicked in a war, like, you're not supposed to,

you don't get to have, it's like, the funniest thing about it is all of those Confederate statues, they're just participation trophies. They're just, you lost, you don't get to have the statue. Right. That's the whole point of, you know, all the war is, is you pushing all of the chips of your culture into the center of the table and saying, call, is somebody else doing it.

And then whoever wins gets all the chips. You don't get to be like, but we know you lost. Well, there's the Von Klauswitz thing that says war is the extension of politics by other means. Yes. But what happens in the civil war is basically the civil war ends. And then the war is just continued via politics. Well, what's the great Churchill? The Irish remember the defeats long after the English have forgotten the victories. And so like if you look at, you know, Kentucky is much more southern now. Yeah. So one of my favorite details is Kentucky was not a Confederate state. It had many more citizens fighting for the north and the south. Now it totally claims it.

So like the paythos of the following thing is nuts. Like how broken inside you have to be to want to pretend you lost a war that you actually won. Right. There's a lot of Confederate statues of like New Mexico and Arizona and a lot of the Western states. It's just like what? So obviously came after. Yeah. And it is a weird, you wonder what's going on that you identify with the losing side and not just the losing side tragically, but the losing side on the losing end of the moral end of it also, right?

There's something stranger. There's something American and also very not American about the idea of identifying with the most morally complex losing end of an event like that. No, it's masochistic. Yeah. In a way that like is a kind of skeleton key for understanding so many other things about the culture. Yes. I mean, because you know, like one of the things that we'll get to, but like, you know, You know, like one of the things that we'll get to, but like, you know, Papyland at its core is just a book about inheritance. Yeah.

And so like, you know, all Southern stories are in one way or another about inheritance. Have you seen that meme where it's like a bunch, it's like tiny dominoes leading into one giant domino? Have you, yeah, yeah. And it, and it, so I saw one the other day, it's like a bunch, it's like tiny dominoes leading into one giant domino. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it, and it, it's so that I saw one the other day, it was like the big domino was like all of America's problems.

And then the little tiny domino is like ending reconstruction early. And it's basically saying that everything that America is dealing with today is, can be explained by the collapse of political will in the mid 1870s. And they just, yeah, just didn't have the stomach forward anymore. Yeah. And no, that's 100%. I mean, like, I'm fascinated. I mean, this is a whole separate camera.

But I'm fascinated by sort of reconstruction. And the way I was taught it in school is not at all what happened. Totally. And so when you actually dig into it, and so it's, you know, all of the stories told about it became the moral justification for everything that happened after. I was actually, I was reading a book about Kennedy and he was saying that it wasn't until he was like, because he went to school like in the peak of the sort of lost cause mythology, right? Right. And even though they're Eastern schools, he's like, he said something like it wasn't until he starts dealing with these Southern governors that he goes, oh, maybe I got told

the wrong version of history at Harvard when he really he he had heard the idea of Reconstruction being the sort of northern sort of invasion projection Here and he over the South carpet baggers and scallywags Yeah, exactly and then he realizes like my job like they were doing what I'm having to do now Which is just ask the most basic respect for federal law and federal power, the most basic assurance of constitutional rights for a minority of Americans. And it's escalating so quickly that he's having to use more and more tools out of his

toolkits. And he just basically realizes that, yeah, that our understanding of the Civil War could not have been and reconstructed, could not have been sort of just more incorrect. And also like there was, you know, there was no one in charge, reconstruction needed George Marshall

or it needed Douglas MacArthur. Like it needed somebody to come in and be like, needed federal power that it didn't really have. And just, you know, I saw you had the American Caesar in there, which I love that book. Oh, it's so good. So do you know, you know about his son, right? Dude, I was just talking to someone about this.

He's still alive. No, and he's living in New York City under an assumed name. Actually, it's better. I think I talked about his own podcast recently. No, they found, you know how they found him. Yeah, because they had to buy him out for a condo that they're buying.

They had to buy him out of a condo and his name was like, this isn't it, but it was like Bill Smith. Yeah. And they started doing some research and it's, you know, Douglas MacArthur, son. Yes, yes, whose grandfather was a civil war hero. Well, his father and grandfather were both generals

in both one the congressional Medal of Honor. Yes. So that boy, what do you think that Thanksgiving dinner table was like at the MacArthur House? You think these guys were just, like it wasn't just one endless awful alpha dog, flex arm wrestle, like. Well, I think his mother, he had like the sort of,

I think his mother was the driving force the sort of i think his mother was the driving force of both of their careers from what i've read uh... but yeah like the idea that we think history is so distant to go to falcona right to that but in in fact that passes an even dead right and here you have one guy you could walk by him on the street or entering a bodega in New York City, his grandfather,

his father fought in World War II, World War I, and his grandfather was at the bloody angle or something? No, it's the, you know, like Ross Barnett, who is the governor that Kennedy's talking about most when he talks about all that, was the son of a Confederate veteran. And so when you have the governor of Mississippi during the civil rights movement being the son of a Confederate veteran, you're just like, what are we even doing here? And so that's really interesting. And then, I mean, the Maggar, so I sent a letter to Maggar, their son.

I found out where, I've pulled some property records. So I sent a letter to MacArthur's son. Like I found out where, like I'm I'm posting property records and FedEx to the letter. His nice new condo that he bought for a couple million bucks. Yeah. And so I wanted to go talk to him and he obviously never wrote back. But like, like, there is a, so the story I want to, like, the great story or book or whatever that is, so what's the best way to say this?

So I was in Europe during the year, the year was the soccer tournament, like whenever five, four, five, six years ago. And so I was over there free as a pianist, which was in France, it was in, and so I was bouncing around France and kind of writing stories. And on June 6th

I wanted to go to Normandy to Normandy and so I was calling all the tour gods and they said something that I felt like I was the first person in the world who had been told about the Canary in the Monshaft Mm-hmm. Because these guys said to me this is unbelievable But this is the first year no veteran is old enough to travel. And it hit me that like, this was before Brexit, this was before Trump, this was before, you know, because all those guys are just manifestations of sort of, and I was like, Oh, all the people who remember how horrible it is for a world to be at war,

for dying. Yeah. And the moment that the last one dies, we will forget. And then we will forget, and then we will start the process of doing it again. Yes. And so I think there's a really beautiful thing to be done when Mr. MacArthur finally leaves us that like, he is the last living citizen of an old America.

Like there's something really interesting about that. Well, and just, I was just at the Naval Academy and it was interesting. They were showing me all the, like, you know, when you walk along the streets in London, you see all the mementos of an imperial empire, right? You see like the, the stuff they stole from Egypt and the stuff. Well, you don't really see that in America, right? Like when you walk down the street and wash in the sea, you don't see America as a colonial power. But on the grounds of the naval academy, you are reminded that we were in an imperial power and are an imperial power, right? This is a bell that we took from trying.

Like the US Navy was an imperial power, right? And one of the interesting things about, say, someone like Arthur MacArthur, Jr., right? Or I figured it was an- Arthur MacArthur, which is his name. So like the fifth or, I don't know, I'm making that, I don't know. But he grew up in the Philippines,

like not, and not like in the Philippines as an expat, but in the Philippines as an expat, but in the Philippines as the colonial ruler as the son of a god. Yeah, basically, yeah, like a boy came. Yeah, exactly. And and that there was a whole generation of American military men who experienced that MacArthur, Eisenhower, these guys, they ruled the Philippines. And I was talking to some of the people about this. We don't even, when we think about Pearl Harbor, if you listen to FDR's famous speech about it, he goes, the world was attacked today. And he goes, the United States was attacked in

Pearl Harbor. And he goes, the Philippines was attacked as if these were separate things. Like, it's the US was attacked in the Philippines. The Philippines was an attack as a separate country. The Philippines was attacked as a colonial, we just granted rule, but it was going to be like 10 years before they took back over. But the idea was like, America ruled islands in the Pacific as an imperial power, and Arthur MacArthur grew up as the son of that. As Douglas MacArthur had grown up in Indian forts on the frontier with his father. There's something, and I wish I could remember this, but you might remember it. There's something really interesting about when Arthur MacArthur decided to drop out of sight. And it's like, because you know, he grew up very famous.

He was like Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie's kids of that era, like he was in Life magazine. Like, you know, whatever the version of us weekly is, there was this kid wearing his, you know, London fog, overcoat, you know, and so. I mean, just the recipient of hours and hours of propaganda and every newspaper, yeah, he's the hero of the country. And just a little bit of boy.

And so like, I do, I would love to talk to him about, when you give up your name, what are you getting? What do you lose? Yeah. You know, I mean, you know, I mean, that's inheritance too. I mean, do you want to mean that? Of course. Yeah, of course.

That's the, uh, or just think he, his father, there's a famous, I forget which journalist said it, but he was with MacArthur when MacArthur returns from Japan. He's been, or returns from Korea. He's been fired. He addresses Congress. There's this, it's kind of like this very moment where, uh, I think there's been, or returns from Korea, he's been fired. He addresses Congress. There's this, it's kind of like this very moment where a thing has been politicized and he's definitely in the wrong,

but there is a percentage of the political apparatus that wants to use him to their ends. And he basically says, if MacArthur had wanted, he could have overthrown the government. Like a flick of his hand, he could have overthrown the government. Like a flick of his hand, he could have overthrown the government. And you're just like, this dude's dad was there on the precipice of being the man on horseback. And we just pretend that never happened.

Because we like, Or that the entire country rests on the knife's edge of one narcissist morals. Yes. But like, and it's interesting though, because of all the stuff you could say about him, when the moment arrived, he didn't. He did the right thing. Like, they're like, whatever else, you know, how the load of come over of restraint, but however preening he might do you have the like the greatest thing ever is the let me find them His speech at Westfield so just never die the end the core and the core in the core. Yeah, the The language. Do you think he wrote this himself? Do you think he had a ghostwriter? I mean, he definitely had publicity men working for him, but he did have a

flourish for He was also part of that old generation of military men where you were trained in rhetoric and he was a good writer Let me find this all right. I got it right here. I'd so here The shadows are lengthening for me the twilight is here my days of old have vanished tone intent They have gone glimmering through the dreams of things that were. Their memory is one of wondrous beauty, watered by tears, and coaxed and caressed by the smiles of yesterday. I listen vainly, but with thirsty ears, for the witching melody of faint bugles blowing revelry, of far drums beating the long roll.

In my dreams I hear again the crash of guns, the rattle of musketry, the strange mournful mutter of the battlefield, but in the evening of my memory, always I come back to West Point, always there echoes and re echoes duty honor country. Today marks my final role call with you, but I want you to know that when I cross the river my last conscious thoughts will be of the core and the core and the core. That could be from Thucydides. That's like one of those sort of epic. The reason he didn't overthrow the country is due to, is that like, that in every great person, there is the battle between their angels and demons and like, he was vain, he was

preening, he was a narcissist, he had a God complex, but he also was the person who's capable of doing that. When push came to shove, duty honor country won. It's why you can have that book over there. And do you know what I mean? It's why everybody is gray. Yes. You know, and it's interesting how, you know, Patton died so he never had to make any of those choices. Yes. And like, I've read a lot about him too,

and I don't know if he did, I mean, you know, he wanted to go to Moscow immediately. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And was like, we're gonna have to fight him anyway. We're over here with 50 divisions. Why don't we just do it now? Yeah, I mean, MacArthur is doing that. His redemption there is impressive.

And yet he nearly caused World War three. Like, and wanted to. Like this close, yes. And wanted to. Yes, yes, yes. And would have if Truman, by the way, Harry Truman from Independence, Missouri, Little O'Gah, imagine having to stand down somebody who thinks they're a god. Oh, incredible.

I'm, he's, he's the main character. I'm doing this Cardinal Virtue series. And he's the first of the characters that I talk about in that book, is it's this remarkable thing where basically they take the average American citizen and they give him ultimate power. It is the ultimate test of the American political system. You have a guy who doesn't graduate from college, you have your ordinary veteran, you have the clothing salesman from Independence, Missouri, who is a product of the political machine. I mean, he was known as... Oh, Bob Pindergras. Like, if you've ever been to Kansas City, there is... I used to work

for the newspaper there. The Majestic Steakhouse above it was Pindergras' office. Yeah. I mean, he was seen as a bot and sold politician. Yes. And then he is given all the power in the world. And it's one of these remarkable things where it seems to make the person better than worse. And it's pretty, it's pretty. It is, I think what's interesting,

we're talking about a bunch of stuff that I think are some of the greatest moments in American history, that people know nothing about. These are novel we learn about in school. These are the idea of reconstruction being the high watermark of what America could have been and fucked up, then conversely, Truman being the president we should celebrate, not Washington or Jefferson or whomever, the breed, what is embodied and say the MacArthur's, that's three generations of Americans that basically get 80% of American history between them.

These are the things I think that truly help you understand where we are and what's happening and the human experience of the whole. Dude, Arthur MacArthur, if for some crazy reason you're listening to this, I am right Thompson at gmail.com. And we gotta do this book man, cause like it's the story of the America that was, and like there's something,

I get more of the sense he's like listening to sports radio calling in and yelling at the uh, would that be hilarious if you're up there? There's this guy just, just mother fucking Aaron Boone, you know, and you know, done that like, oh, it's, yeah, this is art from Queens. Exactly. That's exactly right. Like one of those people you pass in the streets in New York City and you're like, how do you live here?

Yeah. And it's like, because your dad was the greatest general in American history. And somehow that got you a lifetime suite in the Waldorf store. Yeah, it's like what? Oh, I know, like Supreme Allied Commander. That's a good business card or whatever the but like

that is God I'm fat double smog author is fascinating Is this thing all check one two one two? Hey y'all I'm Kiki Palmer. I'm an actress a singer an entrepreneur and a Virgo just a name of you Now I've held so many occupations over the years that my fans lovingly nicknamed me Kiki Kiki Pabag Palmer. And trust me, I keep a bad love.

But if you ask me, I'm just getting started. And there's so much I still want to do. So I decided I want to be a podcast host. I'm proud to introduce you to the baby this is Kiki Palmer Podcast. I'm putting my friends, family, and some of the dopest experts in the hot seat to ask them the questions that have been burning in my mind.

What will former child stars be if they weren't actors? What happened to sitcoms? It's only fans, only bad. I want to know, so I asked my mom about it. These are the questions that keep me up at night, but I'm taking these questions out of my head and I'm bringing them to you. Because on Baby This Is Kiki Palmer, no topic is off limits. Follow Baby This Is Kiki Palmer. No topping is off limits. Follow baby this Kiki Palmer whatever you get your podcasts. Hey prime members you can listen early and

app free on Amazon music. Download the Amazon music app today. Hey there listeners. While we take a little break here I want to tell you about another podcast that I think you'll like. It's called How I Built This, where host Guy Razz talks to founders behind some of the world's biggest and most innovative companies, to learn how they built them from the ground up. Guy has sat down with hundreds of founders behind well-known companies like Headspace, Manduke Yoga Mats, Soul Cycle, and Kodopaxi, as well as entrepreneurs working to solve some of the biggest problems of our time, like developing technology that pulls energy from the ground to heat in cool homes, or even figuring out how to make drinking water from air and sunlight. Together they discuss their entire journey from day one, and all the skills they had to learn along the way, like confronting big challenges, and how to lead through uncertainty. So if you want to get inspired and learn how to think like an entrepreneur, check out how

I built this wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen early and add free on the Amazon or Wondery app. Well, I think, you know, I was thinking about the through line of your work. And it seems to be about greatness and the complexity and gray that goes into being great or that greatness costs a person, right? I think that's the beautiful title of your book, the cost. I mean, the cost of Douglas MacArthur's greatness, the cost of his father's greatness is two generations later,

wreckage, like the boy never recovers. Or the cost of his father's greatness was that he built a person who could have overthrown the government. Yes. And like, you know, all of Douglas MacArthur's terrible shit was in response to his father. And you know, the hurt, like, can you imagine if that's your dad, you know, and like, you know, it's like, I think Robert E. Lee went back to and was the president of Washington and Lee. And I mean, can you imagine having to be a student going to knock on his door? Just how terrifying that would have been?

Well, you know, Arnold Schwarzenegger gave this really interesting speech after January 6, where he was like, I saw, he's like, my father was a Nazi, and I saw him after the war, and he never recovered. You know, he was like, he was a drunk, he was miserable, he beat us, he was living with the moral injury of what he participated in and what his country had done. Do you think, do you think it's that or do you think that he was living with the wholesale rejection of everything he still believed in? I think it's all of that.

I think it's all, I think it's first up just seeing the death and destruction on the battlefield. It's probably knowing deep down that you're the bad guy. Are we the baddies? You deep down and you go, I don't think we're going to get here. And also you got your ass kicked. Yes, all of that. And then so he's talking about just what that does to the subsequent generations.

And I think there is something about that in the American story, but then also the Southern American story where you're just having to deal with the moral injury of all of it. You just can't, you can't, you can't escape it. Well, it's like, you know, there are, I think if, if you are a southerner who thinks the south is all bad, you're kind of an idiot. And if you are a southerner who thinks the south is all bad, you're kind of an idiot. And if you're a southerner who thinks the south is all good, you're kind of an idiot. And like the only way to live there, and frankly, it is necessary for both survival, but also

it's just the most interesting part of being from there is everybody has to sort it out for themselves and because of inheritance is, you know, if there's a through line between the cost of these dreams and papy land, it is the idea of inheritance. And like that, you know, I think a lot of people are just prevented by the culture from even starting on the necessary and rewarding work of trying to sort out what it was, the hell that happened here. Does it make sense? It totally does.

There's a center code I love. He says, we don't choose our parents, but we choose whose children we would like to be, right? And I think what Swartz and Igor was talking about with the American South struggles with what all of us struggle with is deciding what path you're going to follow, who you're going to look up, who you're going to say you inherited what from because the reality is you inherit a bunch of stuff. And you choose what to give permanency. It's that right, you know, the the Bruce Springstain

thing, which I we've talked about before. I know it's in the new book a bunch. I love it so much, which is, you know, you know, the the Bruce Springsteen thing, which I we've talked about before. I know it's in the new book, a bunch. I love it so much, which is, you know, you can, uh, you could either be an ancestor or a ghost. Yes. And like, and like, I find that to be so interesting. I mean, it's like the, you know, one of the things I wrestle with, one of the things it was interesting about writing Papyland was thinking about the decisions my father made. Yeah. Because, you know, I don't

want to air too much laundry, but his childhood, his home growing up was a scary place. And in ways that he never said to me, his older brother who has since passed, we were sitting around Uncle Will, who's in the book, Uncle Will was sitting around and saying, you know, I've never been to New York City. And I was like, what? Yeah. And he was like, I've always wanted to go. I've never been.

And my Aunt Becky doesn't really like to travel. And so I was like, well, that is one problem in the world. I can fix. Yeah, sure. So we went to New York and like, I paid for it. And it was such a treat. And like, we stayed at the Mercer, I came down one morning for breakfast and Will Thompson from Bintonia, Mississippi on day four

was telling me that's Russell Simmons over there. I'm like, how the fuck do you even know Russell Simmons is? Yeah, yeah. You know, we getting up going bagels and his favorite part was riding the subway and I asked him, I was like, well, what do you like most about New York City?

And he was like, I just love the diversity. And he wasn't using it in a jargon way. He just was talking about the coffee and he loved it. Yeah. When he went and went and saw Jersey boys, which was his, the music of his 60s. Sure. And then my cousin at the time was living up there. And when he took him to dinner, we went to Peter Lugers. Yes.

And we started drinking martinis. Yeah. and we took him to dinner and we went to Peter Lugers. And we started drinking martinis. And he started telling my cousin and I stories that we had never heard before about their house growing up and what it was really like. And we were just sitting there where their jaw's hanging open. And my father was the most kind, loving, compassionate, father was the most kind, loving, compassionate, you know, supportive person in the world. And it wasn't until I started, you know, and I write about this in Papu Lama, but it wasn't until I really understood where he had come from to understand that he had, all he ever

told us growing up was how great it was to be a Thompson. And Thompson's don't quit and we're tough. He just edited the inheritance he got and passed on the parts that he found useful. And the other ones who just shoved down inside and was the senator. And like I had no idea any of that was going on. And like, my wife jokingly calls it, he pray love for dads. But. And like, you know, my wife jokingly calls it,

he pray love for dads. But it is like, you know, but it's the fucking, it's like, it's sorting all of that stuff out. And it's, these are not, these are conscious choices that people make. I've been thinking about that with my own family. My grandmother was an immigrant from Germany, her father fought in World War II, not on the right side.

And my grandfather on that side was a refugee who ended up in a displaced persons camp in Gratz, which is actually where Arnold Schwarzenegger is from. And they had always presented their stories, this kind of sort of like positive American dream version of the story. And like, we, there was never, growing up, never was my childhood or my mother's childhood presented as like the immigrant story. We were just like assimilated Americans. Yeah. But as I get older, I go, wait, so my grandfather was a, was a basically a concentration camp came here on a boat. Was a German teacher in a, at a high school and had four daughters.

Like, their life was terrible. You know what I mean? Like, that was a grinding, brutal, like, subsistence level existence for many, many years. And then when I look at my aunts and my own mother, I see now where the trauma of that experience has manifested them in their lives. And I just think about how much harder that probably was with the refusal to admit that any of it was happening. Do you know what I mean? The pretending that it was all normal. I'm asking this, this is a real question that I don't know the answer to. So I'm actually asking you, is it there something unbelievably noble about being the person in the family tree who just decides that I'm going to fucking eat all this? I guess. Yeah, I mean, there is a sort of a dignity and

jumping on this grenade. Yeah, no, there's a dignity and the quiet lowercase stoicism of like- Yes. Suffering for the better life, which is the immigrant experience, but they're also, I think, comes along with it. Trauma that reverberates through future generations,

you see this with, say, like, children of Holocaust survivors and grandchildren, like the trauma goes, is also part of the inheritance and it's probably harder when nobody wants to admit or acknowledge what they've been through. Well, you know, the generation that is fucking up America so much are all the children of the greatest generation. Yeah. You know, and a lot of people came home with a lot of scars. For something totally separate, I've been reading.

It's what I was doing sitting outside on the painted porch was reading after action reports from December, January and February of 1944, 1945 from Europe. And it's just thing I'm working on. And it's just brutal. Like day after day, I mean, like... If you read Lee Sandlin's book about, or essay on World War II. I have not, and I just saw Lee Sandlin book out. That book is incredible. But he has his essay.

I'll send you about World War II. And he says something in there. He's like, they just sent them to Europe and said, you'll either die or come home when it's over. Yeah, there's no like 15 months. Yeah, exactly. And they said, by the way,

and then when we're done in Europe, we may send you to the Pacific. They were just, people being fed into a meat grinder basically. And then sure it worked out, so we came home and we celebrated it, but that was equally inhuman and inhumane to what the World War I's holders went through, but there wasn't, there was this lightness and celebration of it

that was probably profoundly disorientated. We were supposed to just come home and everything was fine. Come back to work in a factory. Yeah, and like, your parents didn't want to know what you'd seen. Yeah. And like, no, like, you know, I find it like,

yeah, there's a whole, I think they only ever talked about it to each other and only one drunk. And there's probably something about why alcohol was so prevalent in society at that time. No, I don't think those things are unrelated. That the only way you can ever do it was around other veterans. I would love to know about the rise of the unofficially all male hunting camps, starting from 1950 to 1980.

I would love to like somebody to do some sort of longitudinal study, because I think all that is is PTSD self-medication. Sure. You gotta go somewhere where everybody there is gonna be a vet and everybody is shit faced and you eat a big steak and play some cards, and then you start talking about the snow, and what it felt like.

You could probably look at a fair amount of newspaper reports and find that there were a lot of accidents at those hunting camps also. Oh yeah, like the gun went off. Yeah. And like, I've seen the deer hunter, you know what I mean? Like, like, but like, it's just fascinating the degree to which we don't really even now.

What a book I wanted to do is I want to go everywhere. American blood was spilled from 1939 to 1945, but not do histories of it to write about it now and to like like what would it be? It would be, uh, Have you seen those pictures? I just saw one the other day. It was like Normandy, but it was interspersed with what Normandy looks like now. Yes.

So those pictures are incredible. And you could, you would go to all of them. And it would be like, uh, you know, the title will be the last full measure and the subhead is American blood and the price of forgetting. And you just write about what they actually did. The thing they got me thinking about this is I was working on a story and then the pandemic came up and it just grounded all to a halt. But one of the things that happened was one of the characters in the story died in a battle in Northern Africa in World War II. And I read this unbelievable detail, which is free years making this number up.

But for five years or a decade after the battle, kids in Algeria would go through the sand and find and play on tanks and find them. But now it's all gone. It it like the it's all been buried by the desert. And it's like this unbelievable osamandia shit, which is that these people went over there and they died and they didn't come home. And the desert just ate any evidence that they were ever there at all. And like that's crazy to me, like the idea that the earth is literally erasing, you know, it's not just this entire generation of people is almost dead. But like, how many living world or two veterans do you think there are? This is crazy. This

is not at all what I thought we were talking about, but this is fascinating. I know. 10,000, 5,000. And what do you think it'll be? If it's 5,000 today, you think it'll be if it's 5,000 today you think it'll be 2000 in a year. I mean are we at that time where? There's a there's a really good book called the last of the doughboys that you might like I want to read that was there was written in like 2012 like way later than you would think and he goes around the interviews the last living world war one veterans Wow and again, this is in the the mid-Auts. And so you read it like it goes on longer than you think,

but he was basically saying, this was the most consequential event in American history. There's thousands of statues. And then literally, it was immediately forgotten. So I had a Google alert forever on Richard Cole who was the last surviving do little rater because I just sort of wanted to know when he died because I felt like that was also the end of something. So it happened I think during the pandemic because I want I'd originally wanted to go to the funeral and write a story for somebody.

Anyway, all of that's just fascinating to me. I don't know how that will ever appear. Well, in a much more minor scale, we are dealing with this this week. We're gonna have to put our dog down, which we've had for 16, 17 years. And so my oldest who's six is like taking it super hard and he's just struggling. It's just hitting him like not just the dog is gonna die,

but that people die and that nothing is here forever. Right. Jesus Christ. And, you know, so he's really upset. And there is this idea, I think, of, you know, stoicism being uppercase, stoicism, low-case stoicism, the idea of, like, it's all right. Don't worry about, like, try to stuff it down.

And we're just, we're sort of letting him process it and talking to him about it. The idea, I think there is this idea. If you don't think about it, if you shove it down, if your pretend it doesn't exist, it goes away. And it doesn't. It stays with you and it explodes out somewhere else. And I think you see this both on an individual level. You're talking about that doesn't happen? But generationally, that's also what happens. Right? You stuff the stuff down, and then it manifests itself in your children, in your children, in the things that you get upset about politically,

in the causes you support. There's probably something about, even when we were talking about in Mississippi, just like it had both everything to do with race and nothing to do with race, right? Like that it was about just trying to stop, time and change period because there was some, that some kind of trauma response to a culture

that's fundamentally broken and people who are fundamentally broken. Well, if on one level you know that it's broken, you know, as long as it keeps going, you don't have to address it. It's only when it falls apart that you're gonna have some splining to do. There's a post-poma of having to sort of have an accounting. Well, I like that metaphor,

because I like putting it on a credit card. You're just paying interest. And then eventually you look at the bill and you're like, holy shit, I should have just paid this at the store because now it's 10 X, it's gonna cost me 10 X what it would have cost me originally. And as you defer.

And we should have just stayed at the Marriott and so the four seasons. Like I should have just stayed at the Marriott instead of the four seasons. Like I should have just used my points. Like God damn it, that was so stupid. And like in the moment I was like, you know, my granddad used to say, well, for 10% more, you can go first class and that of course is a lie.

Because it's like for three times, and 300% more, yeah. Well, think about, you mentioned like what it's like to be Walter, I'm sorry, MacArthur's son. But also I think about some of mentioned like what it's like to be Walter, or sorry, MacArthur's son, but also I think about some of the stories in your book, you know, what is it like to be Michael Jordan's son? What's it like to be Earl Woods's son? And how that defines a person.

And 10 Williams daughters. Yes, yes. Who, you know, there's a story in the cost of these dreams about Ted Williams's daughter and one of the things to me that was so fascinating is that you start off being like, aren't they the people who cut off his head and froze it? Yeah. Because the great detail is that Ted Williams' head is resting on an empty can of a bumblebee brand tuna, so that it doesn't stick to the bottom of the thing. Just fucking crazy.

Can you see it? No, I've never seen it. And, but, you know, he was such a, hurt people, hurt people. His mother, and his parents were terrible. His mother was so bad that she lived through his entire baseball career. She never saw him play.

Her son was Ted Williams. She didn't go to a single game. She dies after he retires. He flies back out to California. He pays for the funeral. She has a very nice funeral. Then he goes to the house and he gets all the family photographs and destroys them. Just so you know, just this is what we're dealing with. So he was a

terrible father and it wasn't until he got really old and needed them and was so old that those old fires just at some point burned out a little. And so they started. You can talk about, because I put it in the daily devs, like he would write these little notes that he, it was a fishing diaries. You know, they gave me access to all of his fishing diaries, which was unbelievable to read.

And, but he, they finally had this father, they'd been trying to have their whole lives and then about six months later He started getting sick for the first time and started declining so by the end of that story Cutting his head off and freezing it and promising to cut their own heads off and freeze them So they could be together in some unseen future. Yeah keep it going it is It actually starts to make a certain amount of sense, which is like the thing I wanted the story to do, which was to take this thing.

You don't have to agree with it. I don't think I don't even really know, but by the end, you at least understand what was going on. Yeah, yeah, the Earl Woods one, he talked about the trauma of war. I mean, like this is a dude who is coming from a segregated America. He's sent into the meat grinder of Vietnam.

Does all sorts of stuff speakable things? Yeah, like, you know, like, like, you know, I've read the, I've read the Tim O'Brien story about, you know, the high school sweetheart who ends up with an necklace of ears. Yeah, and this is a, this is a special forces operator. That's what I mean, like, jungles of Vietnam. Yeah, there is no law. Yeah. And then he brings that home and he doesn't deal with it. So his son is dealing with it 40 years later.

Still, and you know, there's a, there's a great in springstains book. He said that he would, for years, he would, at night, couldn't sleep and you find himself driving past the house where he grew up. Yes, his father's house. Yes, yep. And he has that song. And but one of the great things, his therapist told him that what he was doing by going back there was thinking that one of these times, if he went back there, he could change the past. And like, and, you know, you

see that over and over and over again, we're forever called back to the scene of the crime. Well, and he talks about that. That'd be another book I'd pick for the story. His biography is incredible or his autobiography is incredible. But he basically says, like, when you have that kind of person in your house, you can't help as a child, but think it has something to do with you. Yes. And so imagine you grow up, your parents are the greatest generation, but they're dealing with the trauma of, yeah, the battles of North Africa or, you know, the Italian peninsula or whatever, how do you, how do you not feel like you're why your dad is so unhappy? Yeah, it would hurt you.

Hitler's why your dad is so unhappy. Yeah, I mean, that's what's... Your dad's liberated book and wall. That's why your dad is unhappy. Yeah, some part of him never came back. Maybe the best part of him never came back. Maybe the best part of him never came back. Yeah, so imagine your governor Barrett, right? Barrett? Barrett. Barrett. You're dad committed war crimes, you know, in Mississippi or the Battle of

Corrinth or whatever. And you know, that's going to shape how you think about these people who look differently than you, who want equal rights, which you interpret as being a reduction of your right. You can't look at that objectively. Your brain has been broken. I mean, and when your brain is broken, it can't be... Well, I mean, that's a... No, so let me rephrase that. it be, well, I mean, that's it. Now, so let me, let me, let me rephrase that. If your brain has been broken in that way,

then how do you fix it? Well, I think that brings us to where we are now. If you have been watching a steady diet of Tucker Carlson or worse, right? And that is broken your brain about what's happening on the border or what gay people want to do, you know, how do you get unbroken? I don't think you can get unbroken. And I think that's the, I was when I was reading the Walter Lord book, the thing that struck me as most similar to where we are today is the sort of reactionary, defiant governor slash local sheriff.

Oh, yeah, just like, oh, yeah, that's still here. We're fighting about slightly different things, also kind of fighting about the same thing. But the archetypes are there. Yes. I mean, the specifics change to fit the modern news cycle, but what the fight is actually about is very old and existed before any of us were here and will exist like when we're going. Who are you to tell me what to do? Who are you telling me that I should be ashamed?

Who are you telling me that I don't treat people well? Who are you to tell me blah, blah, blah, blah? And that's why I'm taking over Disney's board. You don't have to be so funny, Cameron. that's why I'm taking over Disney's board. You don't wanna be so funny, like, I mean, there's so many examples. Well, one of the things you find is that the accusation is always the confession.

That is a life-changing, life-door opening, I get for this. Just like anybody who's accusing someone in a screed-like fashion of anything, it is just a confession. And like, you know, it's the, when people, you know, ego is always the other side of the coin of insecurity, you know, and like there's certain things that are just always true. And you know, ego is always the other side of the coin of insecurity. You know, and like, there's certain things that are just always true. And you know, and like, you know, one of the things, it's not funny because of what's happened, but, you know, one of the things about the late president, the, you know, perhaps future president again, that is.

Former not late. I get where's that. One of the things about the former president is that he is a poor person's idea of what a rich person is like. And that's actually really interesting, separate from what you think about. Just the intellectual exercise of thinking about that is really interesting. An insecure person's idea of a confident person.

Yeah, a weak person's idea of a strong person. Yeah, an incompetent person's idea of a competent person. It's just as reality TV is what people think reality is, but it isn't. No. That's not how it works. Reality TV is what people think reality is. Yeah, but it isn't. No, that's not how it works. I watched one episode with Sonia, Sonia, I'm sorry for calling you out of here. We watched, love is blind.

Yeah. First of all, how is that even fucking legal? Like that shit is, like, I mean, you know, you can't say fuck on network TV, but you can put that on. Like what, what, I thought there was a standards department, but like, like you just watch that and you're like, oh, wow, look, you know, one day when someone writes the downfall of Western civilization, the little funny anecdote at the start of the book is either going to be about love is blind or it's going to be about

we all paid $500 for phones that we know don't work. Like, that's going to be the cute little anecdote about the moment. Like, you know, when an airplane flies into a canyon or mountains, like there's a moment, it's like a vent horizon, there's a name for it, I can't think of it. But there's a moment where you might have 20 seconds to fly, you might have six minutes to fly, but the airplane can no longer get out.

So you were dead. You just don't know it. Sure. And like, the foam thing is like when I realized like Oh civilization is over like we just we don't know it like this thing won't make a fucking call But I could play yeah, you know, I'm really good at you know Have you ever gotten so good at a At a phone game that you really start to worry about yourself?

I don't I can't do any phone games at a phone game that you really start to worry about yourself. I can't do any phone games. I don't have any, but I also, I'm just generally terrible at all. We're, we're video games. I feel like I'm about to get, you know what? It's like first hits free. Yeah, yeah.

No, I'm looking at it. I got this golf game that I'm so good at that I feel like it's embarrassing. Golf, you know what, I'm not giving them free advertising. Don't do it. No. You know, I was talking to a friend about this recently where I was saying, I was thinking about the emotional range

required to function in today's world, right? Like all the things you have to be sensitive to, the different kinds of language that you have to know, right? Like all the things you have to be sensitive to, the different kinds of language that you have to know, right? Think about, like I think about the, we're talking about my son and their dog now, like think about what I am expected to do as a good father by today's definition versus like what my father could have gotten away with versus what his, his father could have just taken the dog of the backyard and shot it, right? My dad would have had to, hey, we're probably gonna put the dog,

me, I have to, right, the emotional range is increasing, right, the emotional requirements. And you just think about the sensitivity that you have to have, the acceptance that you have to have, the tolerance that, there's a lot, right? I'm not saying it's wrong, I'm just saying it's a lot. And you think about what it would feel like to be a person for whom that is too much, right?

For a person who doesn't have what it takes to function in that world, what you would get is anger, resentment, try to burn it all down, ism, right? And if you can look at Trump as partly that, right? What, how do you, this is a guy who sees things he doesn't like on the internet, prints them out, writes in them with a sharpie, what he doesn't like, and then has his assistance

mail it to that person, right? Like, that's the, that's the, that is to me the embodiment of a person who's just angry that the world operates the way that it does. Well, it's also like, I wonder if the opposite is also true in that, the world requires more and more emotional sophistication as the population is emotionally devolving. So, one of the things I've noticed doing my weird job, and this is like one of those canary and a monchef thing, knock on doors. Sometimes people don't answer their phones,

won't answer an email, after you've mailed a letter, going to knock on your door. People used to have the social skills to greet you at the door and then politely, but firmly, like open the glass door, but leave the screen door closed, say thank you so much, but I'm really not comfortable. And like, people have lost that social skill. I will not partly explain some of these shootings recently. Well, I think it took, because one of two things happens.

Either they just start screaming immediately and that's just because they have lost the social sophistication required to deal with this non-second interaction. And the other thing is people will just let you in now because they don't know how to not do it. And so like you have an angry, passive aggressive person who just didn't have the social skills to not do this. And it's like, I find that fascinating to see because like they're all sorts of ways

in which socially we are devolving. No, that's right. It's not only is the world asking more and more of each and every person, but then it is less and less preparing people for those things. And then, so the stakes are rising, but then the confidence is either staying the same or atrophy, and that creates a lot of fear, a lot of resentment, a lot of parallelization. Like you said, like when someone knocks on my door, they may as well be in my house. Like, I feel like, where did this come from? What's going on? Because it's not a thing that I have.

It rarely happens anymore. Exactly. And like, you know, there's a, because basic, like, so like, yeah, the things you're talking about about, you know, trying to be sensitive about language. So like, that really doesn't affect. Like, that's really not asking someone to say enslaved person as opposed to slave is not really asking anything at all of you.

And if that suddenly is a line in the sand, it actually is nothing to do with which one of those two words it is, it actually is nothing to do with which one of those two words it is, it's like there's something else that I'm not sort of smart enough to totally see and articulate. But like, I just think humanively it's a lot, right?

So it's a good thing to do that. You also have to accept whether your son wants to do ballet or not, right? You have to accept all these things that were different when you were a kid. Like rub some dirt on it and get back out there. Yeah, you just have to do, you're just cumatively asked to do stuff, right?

You have to just think about, okay, in a workplace where everyone is like you, everyone is a white dude who went to college. That is a more comfortable environment than a diverse environment from people from different backgrounds, different countries, different lifestyles, different genders, and suddenly you're not able to just be yourself, you have to be on behavior, right? And I'm not saying that's a bad thing.

I think it's a great thing. And I feel like I'm good. I can function in that environment. I thrive in that environment. I like it. It's better than the other one. But you realize, especially if someone's older, but also if they came from an environment where they weren't taught the skills, that's overwhelming

and stressful. And so I think we're look at forces and not say this person's good or bad, because one of the things that's interesting is that this is a stereotype, and I'm speaking concretely about an enormous group of people for whom that's actually this is on some level this is bullshit. But like the people the generation it seems that are resisting this were I mean threatened with an inch of their lives to conform. Like that was the civic first commandment. Thou shalt be like everyone else around us. And like, I mean, these are every person of authority that they met from the time they were born

until ever. So from teachers to priests to boy scout leaders to professors to bosses, every single person was telling them that the first commandment of our civic religion is. That's a similar, be the same. A similar, be the same. And so now the sudden when you're saying

that the first commandment of our civic religion is the exact opposite of that Be yourself to what you want you can understand how people just literally like don't don't know how to do it When I think that they also I never thought that's really interesting I think no, I think you're totally right and I think you add on top of that like I was so surprised by the reaction to the decision to Forgive a bunch of student loan debt. I don't have any student loan debt. I don't care if yours gets forgiven, so sweat off my back, right?

But there is a group of people to whom that feels unfair because they had it and they paid for it. And so like if you go- The obsession with fairness. Yeah, so if you're someone who I had to conform, I didn't get to be myself. I didn't get to do what I wanted. I didn't get what I needed for my parents. And now you're telling me I have to do X, Y, and Z for these people,

there, there's a part. If you are wired in such a way where fairness is how you think about the world as opposed to just accepting what's happening in the world. There's a part of you that objects to this new world. Even if that new world is better, you just don't like it because you didn't get it. Well, and so, I mean, three things come to mind. I mean, one, of course, the world was fair for you, but not for, you know, you know, but the thing that's also, that makes me think about is this idea that like, that, you know, one of the

things my dad used to say is that, you know, you should always be happy for other people's success. Because that has nothing to do with you Yeah, and like one of the things that's interesting is Like I don't care My parents paid for my college, you know, one of the things that You know, Papy Lane came out and did Well, I didn't spend a penny of any of that money. I just endowed both of my daughter's college funds.

So if I literally dropped dad walking out of here, I will have done the same thing for them that was done for me. And like that was very important to somehow. So like I felt the thing I owed for having a free education, was to give a free education. And like I felt like, and also I felt like to not do that was to somehow let down the work that that had required.

But like, it is weird when people are upset about, like, that's just a weird, we don't wonder what that is. It's like, I mean, is it there? Would someone say, I don't want my tax dollars. Is that what someone would say? I mean, I think I think it's just an emotional reaction to What sucked for me? Why should it not have to suck for you? It's a very sad way to go through life, but I think there's there's an emotional I Can emotionally understand it.

Yeah, I mean, it's just life's too short. And like, you know, do you remember in the great Gatsby he opens it with like my father's advice was to always remember that other people haven't had the advantages that you had. So I did a story, it's not in that book, but I did a story on Coach K last year, or I don't know, I don't remember when, this is last season, was that last year, last year. So one of the things that was interesting is I'm not spending all this time with his best friends in the world who are all God's, his age, who he had gone to school with since elementary school and their, you know, Polish Catholic ghetto for like, you know what I mean? Like just was a really like in the actual definition

of that word. Like it was a really insular world. And so we would go, I went out to dinner with him one night and one of the things they said that was so interesting was that he was the only one among their friends who followed his dream. And they were all really successful. They had all done really well in their jobs. They were now retired. And they were so indulgent of their kids wanting to get

a master's degree in social work, or one of the kids wanted to be a musician. And like all of the dreams that had been pruned by their responsible, worried immigrant parents who didn't want their children to struggle. They were now in their 60s and 70s, or however, all they were 70s, and we're looking back at their lives,

and all they wanted for their children was for them to not be proneed in this way that they had been proneed. Yeah, there's two responses that a person can have to adversity. Right? So if you have a shitty hard life or you go through something, you can go, I want to make it easier for other people, right? I empathize with what it's like to be the underdog, to be struggling, and you seek to make a world

that's more fair and just and easy. And then there's often another approach to adversity, which is the opposite. I think it's called the adversity paradox, which is you have to so harden yourself to get through that adversity that it makes you less empathetic, right? Clarence Thomas is a good example of this. You think about what it's like to have grown up where he grew up, what he went through, what America was like, how just fucking smart and ruthless and ambitious he had to be to get to one of nine slots and the most difficult thing there is, right? That can make you really empathetic or it can harden you and make you the opposite of empathetic. I got what's mine.

Like, I'm gonna put, I'm almost, you're almost threatened by the struggle and difficulty of other people because you feel like you have so much that you have to protect to get where you wanna go. I had a very weird choir's Thomas experience. Oh, I was doing a story about when Obama was elected about pick up basketball in DC as a way of sort of writing about power and Clarence Thomas there's a basketball court above

the Supreme Court like directly above the actual court. So he blew out his Achilles playing basketball there. Clarence Thomas. Yes. And so I emailed, I think I just emailed press at SupremeCourt.gov and was like, sure, love to talk to Clarence Thomas about his Achilles. So I am in Memphis shopping with my wife, which is about an hour, 10 minutes, and where we live, and we're at a best bar, a bed bath and beyond or some bullshit. And my phone rings, it's 202, and I answered it and we're like, how is this so and so and so? Please hold for Justice Thomas.

Now I got him on the phone. He's telling me all these stories. My wife finishes shopping, still on the phone with him, getting the car, still on the phone with him. She's overjoyed. Oh yeah, super happy. And now I can't get him off the phone. And I'm doing all this stuff you do.

Thank you so much for your time. I know you're so busy. And so now we get home. I'm still on the phone with Clarence Thomas. I can't get him off the phone. If you pull down into our garage, it drops the signal. So now I'm standing at the top of my driveway on the phone with Clarence Thomas.

And so finally, he's like, well, if you're ever in DC, you should give me a call. And so find, get him off the phone. And then like several months later, I'm there randomly. And I'm like, I'm gonna fucking call Clarence Thomas. So I just called his assistant. And assistant was like this is really weird, but He told me and she was like Yes, come on by so I go and we sit there and we make jokes about betting on football in his office and then he gets one of his

Law Clarks to take me upstairs to play horse at the court. You saw the court. I played we went and played horse and then It doesn't seem like he plays a lot basketball. I think that the Achilles, but like my take away was One it's interesting to come face to face with a human being who you ideologically despise Because it becomes a lot more complicated. Yeah. But the other thing is like, he just, and if this is wrong and like someone listening who really knows him, like, I don't, I mean, this is a little psycho babble, but like, he just seemed lonely. And that speaks to the thing you're talking about is like, you get so

hard and do you live in a world that has a population of one? Yeah. I've said, I've said this and do you live in a world that has a population of one? Yeah. I've said this before, my least favorite quote in the whole world is that idea of, if you're not a liberal when you're young, you don't have a heart, and if you're not conservative when you're old, you don't have a brain.

I hate this idea that the whole trajectory of your life should be that you become less and less open and less and less interested and less and less community-minded as you go, that your heart should harden and your brain should take over as you get old. Well, because if that were true, then the arc of the moral universe

would bend toward tribalism. And ultimately, my only real responsibility is to protect these. And like, you know, the thing we're talking off through though is like that empathy is the key to a happy life. Here my dad used to say like, if you're going to kill somebody for revenge, you better dig two graves. And like this idea that like be empathetic, not just because it keeps you on the right

side of all the stuff, but just because it makes you happier to not just be walking around and raged all the time. And like, you know, you're red, John Fonte. He's like maybe the great Western, like Los Angeles novelist and Fonte F and F-A-N-T-E. He wrote this book called Ask the Dust which I'll give you. This was a dude so you want to talk about Hitler. So he publishes this great novel which is like the great Los Angeles novel, publishes in like 1936, has this small, 1933, this small publisher, and that publisher is called Stackpole and Suns.

And shortly after it publishes his book, it publishes an illegal addition of mine comp. Hitler is coming to power, it's published mine comp, but people don't understand Hitler was a published author, right? And his publisher in the US was Houghton, Mithlin, right? And so they published their own translation of Minecraft and said that basically this guy is a gangster and a criminal. We're not going to respect his copyright. And Hitler's agents sue in federal court and he wins.

And more or less bankrupts Fonte's publisher. Takes his marketing budget with him. The book dies on the vine. He ends up making a living as a screenwriter, but he doesn't return to being a novelist until the late 1980s, as he's dying, when Charles Bukowski discovers, ask of the dust in the Los Angeles Public Library.

Oh my God. It's one of the great literary stories of all time. Anyways, this dude basically had everything within his grasp and total injustice outside of his control steals it all from him. But he has this great quote. He's like someone asked him for advice and he said, you just can't become bitter. Bitterness is the death of your artistry.

And I think about that all the time. It's the death of all the things that matter in life. And if the ability to not be bitter. Bitterness and paranoia. If you get Gwanner, if either of those things like your days of joy, feel like to me or over. Yes. And your ability to create your ability to work well with others, your ability to make good decisions, to be on the right side of issues.

That bitterness, it just, it corrupts and fucks with your compass to such a degree that you, I don't know, you look at someone like Rudy Giuliani, how do you go from America's mayor to worse than a laughing stock? Somebody asked me to sign a book firm the other day. Scotch, probably. And I said, not on my life, would I inscribe a book to Rudy Giuliani. But you think about how does that happen? That comes, when you look at the people who have really gone a stray or spun off the planet

at the root of it, to me is some grievance. They have a grievance, and the grievance leads to drinking the grievance leads to something, but it's the sense of having been harmed and having something taken from you is the ultimate corrupting destructive force that ruins you and turns everything to ash in your mouth. The random fun fact is that when the Nazis were trying to figure out how to write what became the Nuremberg laws, they were very into crossing tees and dotting eyes.

So they needed a legal and philosophical framework. So they sent a Nazi lawyer to do a study abroad at the University of Arkansas Law School to study the Jim Crow laws to figure out how they could do this. And like, I mean, that, you know, so like the the Colesbrings Harbor, the the eugenics research facility that was on Long Island that closed Just as World War II was starting an outfit. They couldn't find the University used to take their archives, right and the stuff's crazy, but like the head of the Well two things are interesting one the head of the Colesprings laboratory received an honorary doctorate from the University of Nuremberg

for his research in in eugenics. And the other thing is he recommended the sterilization of lots of people, but one of them was epileptics. And he was an epileptic. And you're just like, oh, this is, you're destroying the world just out of self-loathing. Like, just the hubris of like... Well, the lost cause is essentially the grievance that something was done to the South as opposed to the South was guilty of a terrible sin. And Hitler's ideology is based on the big lie, the stab in the back, that Germany was the victim instead of the perpetrator.

Right. And so much accusation is the confession. Yeah. And so much of the people who are now, like, let's say anti-cancel culture, are the people who have done something to someone. And instead of saying, I fucked up, I messed up, I didn't get the grace or mercy or clemency that maybe I think I deserve, it somehow, I am the victim.

And the interesting thing about cancel culture and that is that as, you know, not everybody who's listening to politics are like mine or not even totally know what yours are although I can kind of guess from the way this conversation's gone. All we have done really is create a system of weakening ourselves,

because like, we can fuck up a Z's on sorry, but we can't do anything about Donald Trump. Do you wanna mean? Sure, sure. So there's a certain amount of transfer incident. So it's all a little like, look, sure, you should be to mean? Sure, sure. So let's project there's a certain amount of transfer It's so it's it's all a little like look sure you should be empathetic and kind and all of your dealings with people But it does worry me that at this moment when people who believe in democracy

Should just be in lockstep with each other that all we're doing is like Let's get through this. But also, but to your point, I mean, the thing about the Faulkner saying, if we could wait just a little while longer, maybe if you've been waiting a really long time, you don't wanna fucking wait anymore.

And shouldn't have to. Like I do understand that, but it's sort of like. No, it's just a decision that like, look, things are gonna happen to you and to people in life. Some of those things are going to be fair. Some of them are going to be unfair. Some of them are going to be near fault. Some are not going to be near fault. Some of them are going to be really tragic. Some of them are just going to be minor. But the Stokes talk about this distinction between being harmed and feeling like you've been harmed. Those are, yes. Right. So what do they say about that?

It basically says like, unless it destroys your character, it didn't actually harm you. May have taken away stuff that you thought you owned, but you don't really, that's an illusion. We don't own any of the stuff. He makes this great, Mark Sirus made this great observation during the Antonine plague, which I thought a lot about during COVID.

He said, there's two types of plagues. There's one that destroys your life, and there's one that destroys your character. And so I think for the Stokes, the idea was like, is it, if it fucks with your moral compass, if it make, if what happened to you, makes you, turns you into an asshole, turns you into a bad guy, turns you into the villain, turns you into a,

a hater, a bitter person, then, then it really did you harm. If it just did you harm. If it just costs you your job or it costs you this promotion or all, and then it was unfortunate, it sucked, it was unjust, but it just was. And also, the true everybody is going to get knocked down by some things, and none of those, for almost everyone, those things will be unfair. And like, that is just a thing that happens.

And actually, it's just an opportunity to stand up, dust yourself off and just say, we will keep walking. And like, so like, there's an interesting, the idea that everything's always gonna go your way and that if it doesn't go your way, it is somehow cosmically unfair, is like modern narcissism cranked up to 11.

It's also a profoundly fragile way to live because stuff is good. Like the only thing for certain is that shit is gonna happen to you. And if you take that shit personally, and if that shit affects how you see the world or it messes with your values or affects how you see the world or it messes with your values or what tribe you're in or who you support or don't support, you

are going to end up very far afield from where you are now and where you want to be because you're not in control what happens to you as a person. You're also defining yourself in opposition to something which is you just fucked from jump. As opposed to, I am the cumulative, I am the culmination of these inheritances that instead now I'm just in the wind. Well, man, I think that's a great place to stop. This was amazing. I love your stuff so much. And would you sign these two for me?

I do have a pen. I do have a pen. That's great. Thanks so much for listening. If you could rate this podcast and leave a review on iTunes, that would mean so much to us, and it would really help the show. We appreciate it, and I'll see you next episode. Hey Prime Members, you can listen to the Daily Stoic early and ad-free on Amazon Music,

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