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2:05

Welcome to the Daily Stoic

2:07

Podcast, where each weekday we bring you

2:10

a meditation inspired by the

2:12

ancient Stoics, a short passage

2:14

of ancient wisdom designed to

2:16

help you find strength and

2:18

insight here in everyday life.

2:20

And on Wednesdays, we talk to

2:23

some of our fellow students of

2:25

ancient philosophy, well-known and obscure, fascinating

2:27

and powerful. With them, we discuss

2:30

the strategies and habits that have

2:32

helped them become who they are

2:34

and also to find peace and

2:36

wisdom in their actual lives. But first,

2:39

we've got a quick message from one

2:41

of our sponsors. Hey,

2:54

it's Ryan. Welcome to another episode of

2:56

the Daily Stoic Podcast. I think this

2:58

is the first intro I've recorded since

3:02

I got the news. I took my kids

3:04

to Jiu-Jitsu last week. I'm sitting there

3:06

on the couch watching them roll around and

3:08

wrestle and my phone starts blowing up a

3:10

little bit. And I

3:13

didn't want to check it yet. I wanted to

3:15

be present for that. I

3:17

drove them, we switched with my wife, got them in the

3:19

office and I'll play

3:21

you a clip of that conversation

3:23

right now. Ryan,

3:25

congratulations. Well, what's the word?

3:29

You're number one. New York Times? Number

3:31

one, New York Times advice ahead

3:34

of all other books. No way.

3:37

It doesn't get any better than that. No,

3:40

it doesn't. It doesn't. This

3:42

is number two, right? This is the

3:44

second time. You've had

3:46

several number ones, but I guess what? In

3:48

the series, this is the first time. No,

3:50

no, I mean, so still this hit number

3:53

one and then this is the second number

3:55

one New York Times. I don't

3:57

think I've hit it any other times because for discipline it was

3:59

done. Yes, I think that's correct. It

4:02

was. There's something about hitting

4:05

a target as

4:07

a byproduct of

4:09

doing what you were trying to

4:11

do, as opposed to aiming at said thing. Like,

4:14

this is nice, but not the main goal. The

4:16

main goal was to do the book and to

4:19

get it to people, and then this is a

4:21

byproduct. You know, you did brilliantly with the book.

4:24

Connecting with the audience, I think

4:27

the way you put it forward, people really

4:29

engage again. So, this doesn't

4:31

get old, my friend. No,

4:33

no. You

4:35

know, after Belichick won his first Super

4:37

Bowl, someone said, you know,

4:40

what do we do next? And

4:42

he said, we win more

4:44

of them. And I don't

4:46

know if that's exactly the right

4:48

vibe, but I do. I'm

4:52

going to go work on the Wisdom

4:54

Book a little bit as a celebration.

4:56

Absolutely. So, enjoy. And

4:58

you're really a bright

5:01

light in the world of publishing now, and

5:04

everybody thinks this book is timely, and they're

5:06

really excited for you. Oh, that's amazing. All

5:08

right, well, Steve, thank you for everything that

5:10

you've done and for making it happen. And

5:12

as I was saying when we had dinner,

5:14

I don't think either of us would have

5:16

guessed this 13 years ago. It's

5:19

been a marvelous journey, and we're

5:21

just getting started. All right, thanks.

5:24

Talk soon, and have a good night. So

5:27

anyways, I wanted to say thank you

5:29

to everyone who made that possible. Thanks

5:31

to all of you who preordered the

5:33

book. Thank you to everyone at the

5:35

Painted Porch and Penguin Random House, our

5:37

warehouse in Illinois, my wife, my family,

5:40

everyone who's a part of Brass Check and Daily Stoic

5:42

for getting the books out there. Thank

5:44

you for physically packaging and mailing

5:46

all of those books. Thank you,

5:49

all of you who ordered it,

5:51

of course. And thanks to

5:53

everyone who's reading it. I hope you love the book. I

5:55

was really proud of it. And this

5:58

is something that makes me happy. entirely

16:00

so that you don't study what went wrong.

16:02

And you could have had that exact experience

16:05

that the guy in your doc has. I'm

16:07

forgetting the doctor's name. Yeah, Axel Buschon. Yeah,

16:10

where he's like calls his wife to tell

16:12

her the huge news and she's like, I'm

16:14

out. Like I'm

16:16

leaving you. That happened. I mean, like

16:18

I was making catfish and

16:21

doing making We Are Your

16:23

Friends at the same time and it was

16:25

intense. Like I had no time for anything.

16:27

In fact, we were on the road. I

16:29

was editing on my laptop. I

16:31

would like we would shoot during the day and then

16:33

I would edit at night. I would sleep for like

16:35

three hours and then we would shoot again. And I

16:37

was like coming apart at

16:39

the seams and then

16:42

I finally, you know, I finally finished

16:44

the movie and I was like, oh, here

16:46

it is. Deliverance. Finally, I can sleep

16:49

redemption. And you

16:51

know, my wife was pretty

16:53

upset that like I had

16:55

basically like not been around. These are

16:57

finite wells that you're tapping. Right. And

17:00

then the movie didn't do well. So

17:03

it's like that didn't pay off. Yeah. And

17:06

then the so then the. And

17:08

you're like, now I need you to support

17:10

me as I pick up the pieces of

17:12

my broken psyche. Right. Like what? Now

17:15

you used it all up over here. Right. Yeah,

17:17

I used up all my credits. And yeah, and then

17:19

you're like, well, what what really matters? Right. Like

17:22

we're always we are walking around. And

17:24

I think we are in America in

17:27

particular, like we're in a we're caught in a

17:29

bind. Right. We're

17:31

we're smart enough and we're educated enough

17:33

and we consume enough information

17:35

to know that there

17:38

is like a better way to

17:40

be living our lives. But we're

17:42

also so immersed in the

17:45

waters. We've grown up in the

17:47

waters of achievement and a comp

17:49

like competing with other people. Yeah.

17:52

And an accomplishment based

17:54

self worth. Yes. Which

17:57

is kind of the fundamental problem.

18:00

that I have and that I imagine a

18:02

lot of people have. It's like, yes,

18:04

we are the sum of our accomplishments. And

18:07

like, yeah, you go to school for like, you

18:10

know, you go through 20 years

18:12

of schooling or something to

18:15

get you to like, okay, then you

18:17

graduate and it's like time to

18:19

achieve, baby. Like now you're in it now.

18:21

We gave you everything. Yeah, what kind of

18:23

car do you drive? Yeah, like how big

18:25

is your house, you know? Or

18:28

it doesn't have to be monetary. It could

18:30

just be like, you know, how many books

18:32

have you published on this subject? How well

18:34

are you respected in your field? Like your

18:37

field might not be a well-paying field. And

18:40

in fact, I found that like

18:42

documentary filmmaking is not a particularly

18:44

well-paying field, that it makes the

18:46

people in it like

18:49

that much more competitive, like

18:51

the laurels are like people

18:53

will stab you in the

18:55

back even harder and faster.

18:58

Yeah, because the pie is so

19:00

much smaller. And it's still

19:02

relative, right? So even if like, look, if

19:04

you play in the NBA, you're measuring who

19:07

is the best in terms of hundreds of

19:09

millions of dollars. But if

19:11

you're in academia, you're measuring it in terms

19:13

of thousands of dollars or how many assistants

19:15

you have, but you're still measuring. Right? And

19:19

you're still going, yeah, they don't have a 5,000 or

19:22

50,000 square foot mansion, but you still go,

19:25

well, their apartment is nicer than mine, you

19:27

know, or whatever they drive in. You're still,

19:29

humans inevitably find some way to turn everything

19:31

into a status competition. That's what we do.

19:34

I've been writing books for a

19:36

long time now. And

19:43

one of the things I've noticed is how

19:45

every year, every book that I do, I'm

19:47

just here in New York putting right thing

19:50

right now out, but a bigger percentage of

19:52

my audience is listening to them in audio

19:54

books, specifically on Audible. I've had people had

19:56

me sign their phones, sign their phone case,

19:58

because they're like, I've listened to all your

20:00

audio books here. And my son, they love

20:03

audiobooks. We've been doing it in the car

20:05

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20:18

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21:10

So my wife is Brazilian and so

21:13

I go down to Brazil a lot

21:15

and I go to parties and get

21:17

togethers and no one

21:19

is talking about work. Yeah.

21:22

No one's asking me what

21:24

do you do? I mean like I'll

21:27

bring it up because that's all I have to talk about.

21:29

I don't have anything else. I'm kind of dying for

21:33

someone to be like tell me about that

21:36

last project you did. I have to compete

21:38

here as a regular person you know like

21:40

fuck. I got nothing. I

21:42

don't know any hobbies. I've

21:45

optimized my whole life around achieving in

21:47

this one. I mean like I don't

21:49

I'm not even a sports fan like

21:51

that would at least give me something

21:55

to talk about beyond. You gotta

21:57

really get into coffee or something. Right. You

21:59

know I started surfing, but by the way,

22:01

I'm like, I suck. So it's like, I

22:03

can't, I'm not very good. So

22:06

you don't wanna bring up things that you're

22:08

not that good at, but it's nice

22:10

to be in a culture where your value is

22:13

not just tied to like,

22:15

well, what did you do in the last two years? And

22:17

like, how relevant are you? And

22:20

it's just the inherent value of just you as

22:23

a human being, it's like, not a human doing.

22:25

I just like you. You give

22:27

off a good vibe and you ask good

22:29

questions and I like talking to you. And

22:31

I'm not saying Brazil has it all figured out. They got

22:34

their own set of problems. You

22:36

could, but you don't. No, and it's

22:38

easy to romanticize a place that you

22:40

visit once in a while, but different

22:42

places have different sets of problems. And

22:44

our problem in the US, and unfortunately,

22:46

because we are such an exporter of

22:48

culture, like we are- That's the only

22:50

thing we do. We are

22:52

marketing and exporting our problem everywhere. Yeah,

22:54

the thing where you're often like the

22:56

thing that you're most unbalanced about is

22:59

the thing you have the excess of,

23:01

right? So you're exporting. It's like, I

23:03

thought the most powerful part of the metaphor that you

23:06

have in the thing, which really stopped

23:08

me cold, because I think it's a tendency we

23:10

have. So like, I don't think it's

23:12

a controversial argument, right? To go like, okay, there's

23:14

these different buckets or different beakers or whatever you

23:16

wanna call it, you have to fill up to

23:18

be happy, right? And

23:21

obviously career and success is one, pleasure

23:23

is one, whatever. But you go, there's

23:25

no evidence that shows that a

23:28

surplus in one can fill up the

23:30

other or compensate for the other. So

23:32

what tends to happen is you're

23:35

good or successful with the thing you have

23:37

the abundance of, right? And so you just

23:39

do more and more and more of that,

23:42

trying to fill these other buckets or holes.

23:45

And it's not only not working, it

23:47

can actually suck the joy and meaning

23:49

out of the singular thing, right? So

23:51

the workaholic just is

23:53

alienating the family. And so they're

23:55

just, well, work's the only thing that makes sense, so they're

23:58

working and they're sucking the joy out of the family. to

24:00

the extreme as they're empty

24:02

everywhere else. I can describe the,

24:05

do you want, so yeah,

24:07

they're essentially, and this

24:09

is not like I didn't come

24:11

up with this science, I'm reporting

24:13

on it, but basically there are

24:16

six neurotransmitters that represent our positive

24:18

reward systems. All of our, they

24:21

represent, in different combinations, they represent

24:23

all of our positive emotions. And

24:26

they evolved in a specific order,

24:28

right? There's dopamine, which has allowed

24:31

us to be motivated to

24:33

find food. That came first.

24:35

Then there's testosterone, which

24:38

helped with reproduction,

24:40

right? So you need dopamine for

24:42

finding food, you need testosterone to

24:45

reproduce. Then there was serotonin, which

24:47

is like recognition and it's pride,

24:49

which helps in reproduction.

24:53

Like- And you're the

24:55

best food gatherer. Right, right. It's like, yeah,

24:57

someone thinks I'm the best or

25:00

you're being chosen or you're choosing someone

25:02

else based on how good they are

25:05

at a certain thing. So that's serotonin,

25:07

it's recognition. Then there's oxytocin,

25:10

which is you're having these kids.

25:13

You need to basically be able to- It's

25:15

like family in connection. You need

25:17

to take care of them. You need to love them in

25:20

order to, human children

25:22

need 18 years before their brains

25:24

are formed. We need a drug or

25:26

a neurotransmitter to help us

25:28

take care of our kids. Then there's

25:30

cannabinoids. So whereas oxytocin

25:33

is like family love,

25:35

cannabinoids is friendship love.

25:38

And that then, that comes

25:40

hand in hand with community,

25:42

with cooperation, working together. Without

25:44

cannabinoids, that's not possible. And

25:46

then there's opioids. Opioids

25:49

is like pleasure and gratitude. So

25:52

you have these six neurotransmitters.

25:56

And the thing is, is that you can't fill one

25:58

up. or

28:00

the richest person in the world

28:02

because you're balanced out. No, you

28:04

you decided fuck the other neurotransmitters.

28:06

This is the only one that

28:08

matters. And then people

28:10

look at that and they go, I'll

28:13

do what that person's doing. And you're

28:15

just mimicking a fundamentally unbalanced person. Right.

28:18

And like the right, the the further we

28:20

get in history, the more imbalanced they get.

28:22

There was a moment in like the Renaissance,

28:24

right, where they were looking back. And the

28:26

Stoics, right, where Leonardo is all

28:29

of them at once. You

28:31

know, that that is the he's an artist

28:33

and a scientist. And and

28:36

there is something to that for sure. But

28:39

what I actually found interesting and they're going to

28:41

come out and they're not going to have numbers,

28:43

but but it's in the philosophy episode. So each

28:45

episode, I saw. Yeah. OK. The first episode that

28:48

came out is on is the

28:50

science of happiness, neuroscience. Then there's

28:52

an episode on on the philosophy,

28:54

the philosophies of happiness. And what

28:56

I actually like kind of didn't

28:58

fully realize or appreciate is that

29:01

so much of our conceptions

29:04

of of well-being

29:07

and happiness and even Maslow's

29:09

pyramid and hierarchy and all

29:11

that stuff, he never said pyramid. Even

29:14

though we show it as a

29:16

pyramid, he actually never said that.

29:18

It's all individual. Yes. Based. Right.

29:21

Even even Aristotle's, you know, treatise.

29:24

It's all about how to become the

29:26

best person. And it

29:28

gives short shrift, or at least we

29:30

don't put the emphasis on the

29:33

serving of the community. Like

29:35

how much our happiness is actually tied

29:37

up in being one of

29:39

a group of people. Yes. And it's

29:42

and I think especially here in the

29:44

West and certainly in America with our

29:46

foundational myth of the

29:49

rugged individual, like there's

29:51

this I'm going to become self-sufficient

29:53

or self-reliance. Emerson, right? I'm going

29:55

to become so self-reliant and self-sufficient

29:57

that I can say. I'm gonna

29:59

walk you to everyone else, I

30:01

can do my thing, I'm

30:03

gonna become self-actualized, and

30:06

then I'm gonna stand on top of

30:08

that mountain. But what's so amazing

30:10

about Emerson, the irony of Emerson, so he writes

30:12

this thing on self-reliance, he's like

30:14

the most generous person of all time. Like

30:17

Whitman doesn't have a career without Emerson,

30:20

Melville and Hawthorne, and he

30:22

creates this scene. And the scene

30:24

is like, he had a

30:27

rich spouse and he had invested well.

30:30

He was like this guy, his cup runneth

30:32

over, and he shared. And he

30:35

was this, and then I think obviously one

30:37

of the benefits of art is that, although

30:40

artists tend to be selfish people, is

30:42

there is something generous about it. You're making

30:44

this thing for other people, you're sharing what

30:46

you know and what you care about. And

30:48

there's something, I love the irony

30:50

of Emerson being this incredibly

30:52

generous person with this awesome coaching tree

30:55

of all these other artists coming off

30:57

it. And so yeah, it's funny, like

30:59

we tend to, we look at these

31:01

philosophies, we look at stoicism also as

31:03

this individualistic philosophy of self mastery. And

31:06

then what did all of them

31:08

do? Like they entered politics where they, like

31:10

politics not in the, I'm gonna be the

31:12

most powerful man in the world politics, but

31:14

they're like, no, no, no, your duty is

31:17

to serve. And you have to participate, you

31:19

can't withdraw from the world. And to me,

31:21

that's where that other virtue of stoicism comes

31:23

in, the idea of justice. There's this beautiful

31:27

image in stoicism, they say, so you're

31:29

born self-interested, so these are called the

31:31

circles of hierarchies. So you're born inherently

31:33

self-interested as a baby, you're just like,

31:35

gimme, gimme, gimme. You care

31:38

about yourself, then you care about your mom because

31:40

you can't survive without your mom, then your dad,

31:42

and then your family, you get these circles that

31:44

come around you of people and things that you

31:46

care about. And then ultimately there's the biggest circle,

31:48

which is just like the future

31:50

of humanity or animals, plants,

31:52

the environment. And he basically

31:54

says that the work of philosophy is

31:57

to pull the outer rings inwards. Finally

54:00

being recognized for being very online. It's

54:02

about damn time. I mean, it's hard

54:05

work being this opinionated. And correct. You're

54:07

such a Leo. All time. Yeah. So

54:10

if you're looking for a home for your

54:12

worst opinions. If you're a hater first and

54:14

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54:16

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54:18

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54:21

this. As beacons of truth and connoisseurs of

54:23

mass, we are scouring the depths of the

54:25

internet so you don't have to. We're obviously

54:27

talking about the biggest gossip and celebrity news.

54:29

Like it's not a question of if Drake

54:31

got his body done, but when. You are

54:33

so messy for that. But we will be

54:35

giving you the besides, don't you worry. The

54:37

deep cuts, the niche, the obscure. Like that

54:40

one photo Nicole Kidman after she finalized her

54:42

divorce from Tom Cruise. Mother. A mother to

54:44

many. Follow, let me say this,

54:46

on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts.

54:48

Listen to episodes everywhere on May 22. Or

54:51

you can listen ad free by joining Wondery

54:53

Plus and the Wondery app on Apple Podcast.