Live from the Birthplace of Stoicism (PT. 2) | Ryan Holiday and Donald Robertson (in Greece)

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1:33Welcome to the weekend edition of The Daily Stoic. Each weekday, we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stoics, something to help you live up to those four Stoic virtues of courage, justice, temperance, and wisdom. And then here on the weekend, we take a deeper dive into those same topics. We interview Stoic philosophers. We explore at length how these Stoic ideas can be applied to our actual lives and the challenging issues of our time. Here on the weekend, when you have a little bit more space, when things have slowed down, be sure to take some time to think, to go for a walk, to sit with your journal, and most importantly, to prepare for what the week ahead may bring.

2:24Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. I am recording beneath the Acropolis. It is 10.30 p.m. It is beautiful. I'm very lucky to be where I am. And I just left somewhere that I felt even luckier to be at. You might be able to hear it in the background, but I just took my family last minute, didn't know it was going to be here while we were here, walked by. This is why I like to go on long runs on vacation, is that you spot things, you go, oh, that would be cool to do. So Michael Kiwanuka was performing at a theater under, at the foot of the Acropolis. If you know anything about Athens, you might be familiar with this theater, or you might be familiar with its patron.

3:15Herodes of Atticus is Marcus Aurelius's rhetoric teacher. And in honor of his wife, who died under somewhat suspicious circumstances, he dedicates this theater to it. He pays to put up this music venue, which still stands to this day. And I just watched a concert, and 2 ,000 years this theater has been there. And it's hosted some amazing bands from Elton John and Coldplay Theater. I think Antigone is playing tomorrow. We're not going to be here, so I can't see that. But I'm sitting there with my kids. It's nine o 'clock. The sun has just set. And I go, boys, you know, Marcus Aurelius could have sat in those seats there at the bottom.

4:03Certainly he wouldn't have known about this theater. And here we are, you know, how the centuries collapse, right? You read meditations and all these centuries and And the distance collapses. Watching a rock concert in this venue. Obviously, they weren't playing rock music there 20-odd centuries ago. But the way the audience was clapping, the way that the band was interacting with the audience, just the awe that everyone had for this surreal, almost holy place, that's very timeless. list. And it's actually something I talked about in today's episode. I brought you the first half of this earlier in the week.

4:49I'm here in Athens, as I said, and that's how all this stuff is happening. And I had lunch with Donald Robertson, and he told me quite a bit about that theater. One of the things he points out, as we talk about in the episode, is the conspicuous absence of Atticus in Marcus Surrealeus' meditations. Right at the beginning of meditations, he thanks all of his teachers or many of his teachers, but he doesn't thank this one. Is it because he's the kind of person who potentially is involved in his wife's death? Tied to the Michael Kiwanuka concert, right? If you don't know his music, you probably have heard it because it's the theme, the opening, the beautiful Big Sur sequence of Big Little Lies, which is all about a murder and secrets and marital complications.

5:38I thought that was interesting. Anyways, it was a great lunch with Donald. As I said, I didn't bring my recording equipment with me. I'm recording this intro on the voice memo on my phone. And I just, I put the phone on a glass on the table and recorded. So if you've ever wanted to know what having a meal with me is like, this is a glimpse. I had a Greek salad. I think you'll actually hear my order in part one, but I had a Greek salad just to catch you up. I had a Greek salad and gyro. I didn't eat the pita, just nibbled on the French fries a little bit. And by a little bit, I mean, I'm probably ate 80 % of them.

6:10I drank quite a bit of sparkling water. It was nice. Actually, if you want to have a meal with me, we're doing a philosopher's dinner where we talk about philosophy for people who pre-order Wisdom Takes Work. If you pre-order a certain number of copies, you can get a signed page from the manuscript. If you pre-order a lot of copies, like you're going to give them away at your company or whatever, we'll have dinner together. We usually do it at Storehouse, which is a place across from my Painted Porch. Dolan and I were eating across from the actual Painted Porch here in Athens, the Painted Porch at my bookstore in Bastrop, Texas, across from a lovely farm-to-table restaurant that I eat at many, many times a month called Storehouse.

6:49Sonia, the amazing chef there, always treats us quite well. We're going to do dinner there for a handful of the folks that do that. So if you want to have dinner with me, you can pre-order Wisdom Takes Work, which comes out in the fall. We will run out of slots and sign manuscript pages. You can grab all that at dailystoic.com slash pre-order. Of course, order Donald's books. His biography of Marcus Aurelius is incredible. It's got facts like we were just talking about. His book, How to Think Like a Roman Emperor, is largely about the philosophy of Marcus Aurelius. Incredible. It's a book about Socrates.

7:19Also great, How to Think Like Socrates. Just one of my favorite people. He's been on the podcast a bunch of times. I'll link to those other episodes, and then we will just get into it. He has been a great supporter of my work. I try to be a supporter of his work. I think it's important. I think it's great work. And I was excited to see him. And then I texted him this morning as I was walking down, well, running, starting my run. I saw a fox running up the path of the Acropolis. How cool was that? And he said he'd never seen one in all his time living here. So that was pretty cool. Anyways, let's get into the episode.

7:51Here's me and Donald Robertson talking. And goodbye, Athens. Thank you for indulging this somewhat untraditional episode of the podcast. And I'm going to enjoy this view for a couple more minutes and then go put my kids to bed. Bye.

8:07I think the other interesting thing about stoicism in terms of the kind of demographics and the reach is that a lot of the people I speak to, like, stoicism is their only exposure to CBT and therapy. like if you work in therapy you kind of assume that everybody is a self-help junkie because all your clients tend to be right and psychotherapists have to be reminded and people that are in the self-help school usually have to be reminded there does like a large percentage of people particularly quite a large percentage of men that never read any self-help stuff right like you know they're completely beyond the reach of self-help they just you know aren't interested in it right but if they read books about stoicism because they're into roman history or whatever they find out about cbt self-help stuff and they often think it's really interesting the only exposure they get sure so sometimes i think well these ideas are good some of these ideas are going to be familiar to people that have read other stuff yeah but a lot of the people that read books like roman emperor some europe are like no this is the only self-help stuff i've ever read I think about that with the historical stories they tell.

9:11Everyone knows this story. Everyone knows this story. I mean, Blue Jard tells the story. You know, just like also when you do academic stuff, you're like, everyone knows about this study. And then you realize, no, people are living their lives. They have no idea about this. And if they're hearing it for the first time, it's new. It's new to them. I wrote about Queen Elizabeth a lot in Displaced Destiny. And people were like, I had no idea. It's like, this is one of the most famous people in the world. You just realize, well, first off, you can always take something that people do know about and present it in a new way.

9:42Yeah. But most people are busy and they don't know about it. Yeah. It's funny, though. I think we're switching. So you're going to write more topic-based stuff. Yeah. I'm doing a biography of Stockdale. Oh, really? Uh-huh. That'd be cool. That's a great idea. I was just working on it in our Airbnb. I mean, his grandmother, like we think of him as this 20th and 21st century figure, this modern guy. Right. Because he flies a fighter jet. Yeah. Obviously, he runs for president. He dies in 2008. His grandmother, Mabel, goes as an eight-year-old to see Lincoln speak during the campaign. So you're like, oh, this is almost a 19th century figure.

10:24right like and so in that in a way he's closer to the sort of victorian stoics certainly that's the tradition he's he's raised in but he's born in 1923 it's like you think of the guys in vietnam being young right but he's almost 40 when he's shot down he's a throwback figure so anyways i'm really interested in that well that's what i'm doing no that's a really good idea for a while I got a picture from his sons of his copy of Epictetus that he's introduced to when he's at Stanford. He gets a copy of the Higginson translation. Higginson being a Civil War general. You know what I mean? He doesn't go to a bookstore and get like some new edition.

11:04Right. It's a throwback era. Root into the philosophy for him. And in a way, he's kind of part of that military stoicism tradition. Right. Higginson being, you know, the first leader of black troops in the revolution. That's definitely like a whole niche even today. But yeah, there's a lot of these dudes in the military. It's a little bit disjointed, though. I kind of always thought it would be good if somehow they kind of talked to each other. We had a military stoicism virtual conference a few years back. I remember that. Yeah. It was kind of an attempt just to introduce them all to each other.

11:37I keep coming across you guys and keep reaching out to me, but none of them know each other. Right. Right. I think that's because it's one of the last places where character development is part of the role of the institution. because basically universities and public schools, that's not part of it, right? Or it is, but it has to be so watered down because it can't be religious, it can't be judgmental, it can't be... So sort of like real values-based moral teachings, it's one of the last places that that's a part of it. Yeah. It's interesting, like in therapy, therapy's always, very much always been, at least as long as I can remember, the code of ethics.

12:17So different organisations have always emphasised that you have to be value neutral. It's got to be non-direct. Right. Value neutral and all this kind of stuff. And I always felt that was virtually impossible. And the therapist values invariably come through and shape what's going on indirectly. There's a famous study of Carl Rogers, who really was one guy that pushed this idea. He invented counselling. So in the Hadea psychoanalysis, when everybody was interpreting everything, Rogers kind of abandoned all of that and said we should just paraphrase back what the client is saying and empathize with them and reflect their own words back and not impose any interpretation at all.

12:58So he really laid on thick this idea about a kind of hands-off approach. Yeah. Then some behavioral psychologists studied a load of videos of him working with clients and they said that clearly when his clients mention sex, he frowns and leans back and looks disinterested. and then when they talk about self-actualization he always leans forward and kind of asks him to say more like so he's implicitly shaping the course of the public and they said you can quantify this and prove like none of his clients ever talk about sex because he always looks bored whenever they do it and even though he thinks I'm being totally non-directed they're like no he's like profoundly shaping the things that they're discussing in the sessions he just doesn't realise that he is that's so interesting he's in denial of the fact that he is oh by the way why are there tortoises up there well like actual tortoises walking around yeah you didn't know that there's a huge thing of like giant tortoises sometimes you see them and sometimes you don't there's like always a few in there and then the ceramicus there's a bunch I didn't know if they were somehow like deities or god it's just they're just like a peacock walking around is that when you it's not like a they're not like they're as a what do you mean statues of tortoises No, they just live here.

14:16They run wild in Athens. If you go to even the public parks, like in academia, I don't think there's any in academia, but in some of the other public parks, you'll just see them wandering around. Often they're kind of in the bushes and stuff, so you don't really see them. You have to be careful at night, because they hunt in packs. The tortoises are? Yeah. They're faster than they look. And you can trip over them? Yeah. But they... No, I saw one down here once, actually. It's kind of come onto the street, like it wandered out the agora. So it walked across the bridge. That's so amazing. Somewhere.

14:52Somewhere around here. Like, I mean, there's loads of feral cats around. My kids are obsessed. They're just... All they're doing is pounding cats. Be careful about stroking them. Like, one of them scratched Casey really badly and there's blood all pouring down her arm. She tried to pet it and it just went... Yeah, of course. Probably thought it was trying to get caught or something. The angriest they get is if you actually feed them. So you give them like a little bit of fish or something like that. They're always hanging around the restaurants. And then they literally will bite the hand that feeds them right.

15:21Because then they get really angry because they want to get more and more from you. If you don't acknowledge them, then they generally leave you alone. But as soon as you start interacting with them, they can get a little bit of guessing. We walked by our place the other day and there was a feral cat eating a bowl of spaghetti someone had put out. My kids just thought it was the funniest thing they've ever seen in their life. The Greeks buy bags of cat food and just throw them on the sidewalk.

15:50We just took our kids to an outdoor performance at the Nutcracker. They had a snow cone and then they went insane in the car ride home. And one of the things I try to remind myself when that's happening is that I don't control my kids' behavior, especially when they're too far gone like that. But I do control how I respond, right? Right. That's stoicism, but it's also what Dr. Becky talks about. Dr. Becky is a clinical psychologist and a bestselling author, and she founded Good Inside, which is there to give parents practical, actionable tools for handling those everyday challenges with confidence.

16:25My wife introduced me to Dr. Becky's books. I love them. I've recommended them a million times. I've had her on the podcast. And as it happens, Dr. Becky is hosting two live Q &A events for Good Inside members. I am one of them. She signed me up for it about a year and a half ago. I've loved it ever since. On December 1st, you can join Dr. Becky for her How Not to Raise Assholes event, which is about avoiding entitlement and raising kind, empathetic kids. And on December 15th, she's hosting her How Not to Lose It Over the Holidays event, which I'm sure we could all use. As I said, I'm a big fan of Dr.

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18:52So are there any other stoic sites that you can tell people about? Okay, so things that are relevant off the top of my head would be the theatre of Dionysus on the side of the Acropolis. Okay. Where Aristophanes performed The Clouds. Yeah. And there's a story that Socrates was sitting in the audience and it was kind of ridiculing him. And he stood up and kind of acknowledged that it was about him, like he wasn't ashamed of it. And the Agora, we believe that was probably where he was put on trial and imprisoned and executed. The Socrates' prison is not. That is nonsense. Yeah. Yeah, I don't even know why they had that sign up.

19:28It's super confusing. There's the Stoppourcet, there's the Academy, there's the Lyceum, like Chrysippus Lecture got the Lyceum. That's Aristotle's. Yeah. I'm going to try to run there tomorrow. Yeah, it's just a small... I mean, the actual archaeological site of the Lyceum is probably not much bigger than that. Okay. But it's in a relatively posh part of Athens. It's in Kalanaki. It's like a really well-kept little garden. You have to buy a ticket to go in it. And it's right beside the Byzantine Christian Museum. Okay. Now, the actual Lyceum would have been like 10 acres or something like that.

20:06So it actually would extend underneath where the Byzantine Museum is. Okay. They have this little bit marked in it that they call the Lyceum, which is one tiny little corner of it. But it's worth checking out. It's pretty pretty. Then we're going to go to Delphi. Yeah, that's amazing. I guess that's where it all begins. Yeah, I mean, it's just like a really stunning place and a really remarkable art. It's got a good museum there. The only thing is it's like a two and a half hour drive or something. So we're leaving on Friday. We're doing like a 10 day road trip. Yeah. My son wants to go to Ithaca, so we're going to go to Ithaca.

20:41And at the end of the trip, I'm going to do the run from Marathon back to Apple. If you had time, the only other place I'd say is like LFC now. but there's like so many the thing about Greece and the reason British people all come here on holiday and retire here and stuff there are many places in the world like Montreal maybe where you might go once it's like oh this is really cool yeah and maybe you go twice but then you think okay I've kind of like seen everything there yeah yeah with Greece you come to Athens you leave you think there's still like loads of things in Athens that I haven't seen you come back two or three times and you think maybe I'll go to one of the islands right there's like 200 islands and they're all different and then there's loads of other things on the mainland so you end up thinking you could just keep coming back to Greece every year and see different things Right, yeah that's interesting well because there's just so much it's not one era of history there's thousands of years of history that is something I've been thinking about recently which is like how old Stoicism would have been to the Stoics right, like you think about how old the Stoa was by the time Marcus Aurelius comes here maybe it's ruins maybe it's not oh yeah elefcena is kind of a bit relevant to stoicism because there's a there's actually a bust of marcus aurelius still there where ancient eleusis oh they call it elefcena today so i swear that the big there's a big temple complex there it's the temple of demeter okay and the it was raided by the sarmatians during the reign of marcus aurelius and looted and then when he comes to athens he goes there and has it rebuilt and they rebuild the main gate, the proper layer to the temple, and it had a big cluster mark.

22:20And that's still there. So it's one of the few places where there's a cluster mark, so really it's in the location where it was originally. Right, instead of just finding it. Or even when Norcus and Hadrian and Antoninus, they come here in some ways for the same reason that we're coming here, as this historical birthplace. And so just that for 2 ,000 years, that process has been ongoing. is fascinating to me that the nostalgia is already there for centuries by the time he gets to it. No, there's like a whole thing about, like I always intrigued me, for example, that as far as we know, Seneca never went to Athens.

22:55But like, if you teach philosophy, it's kind of to some extent, I mean, you can kind of maybe get away by the Roman period, but generally speaking, it would look a bit lame if you hadn't been to Athens and you were claiming to be an expert. Oh, that is interesting. So Marcus Aurelius spoke fluent read Right He was completely immersed in it Like really identified with philosophy And he didn't go to Athens until Towards the end of his life So for him Even more than people like us Reading about it and stuff It must have been like A massive Like pilgrimage But also like You know today There'll be these stories about You know Young men are turning to Ancient ideas for modern guidance That's what he's doing Yeah You know what like That's what the Romans were doing looking backwards hundreds of years for guidance.

23:46Although it's more of a living tradition that they're still doing the same thing. Just the timelessness of that process of looking backwards for foundational ideas, that we've been doing that since basically he's first setting up on this porch. It's kind of an incredible thing. I think they probably thought about time a little bit differently, but for sure to Marcus, Zeno, and the foundations of stoicism are like us looking back to the medieval period. Or Shakespeare. Yeah. Yeah. Like it's a whole different world to him. And I think to some extent just like Greek. I mean, he would have been very familiar with Greek culture, but it's also still slightly exotic.

24:28We just compress that whole period down. Yeah. Into it's all this one thing. Ancient stuff. Yes. And it's like, no, the Greeks give way to the Romans. and the Romans believe that they're living in the future. Yeah, it makes me laugh about, like, even in documentaries and stuff, you always hear people saying, like, even professors will sometimes say, in ancient times. Yeah. And they'll be like, what does that mean? Like, you know, what does ancient times mean? Totally. Like, that could be anything. That's as vague as you could be in the ancient world. Yeah. And also, I mean, there's obviously all these worlds that they don't even know about.

25:07Yeah. whole civilizations that didn't leave any records behind and i mean we don't really know much about the cowards to be honest like well there's a problem i forget who says it but like she's reading some ancient author and she's like what would he what would he think of me now reading this you know all this time is there on an unrumored continent you know like to think like there's all these other things happening in the world but they don't even know that it exists You know, that's what I think. So, like, you get to Montaigne, and he's now aware of the new world. And then there's this sort of different type of civilization for the first time, different kinds of people, and then the whole picture of the world has been artificially reduced by 50 % until that very moment.

25:50Really interesting. I wonder to what Kingston, I mean, some educated, like a lot of Romans must have felt like Rome was basically the world, as far as they were concerned. why wouldn't they but some of them i think also show this awareness that it's yeah a small corner of the world and there's i mean i think probably they were all slightly taught just they see like they're kind of bugged by alexander the great and the fact that just constantly acts as a reminder to them like that there's the whole apergia and india and stuff beyond that that's almost entirely unknown to them yes yeah there was this kind of limit probably mostly because oh shit but basically they're like if it's outside the Mediterranean we're not interested well I'm glad that you finally made it yes it's been good and you're enjoying it yeah it's pretty hot but you're probably used to that I mean it's fluer than Texas yeah yeah last summer we did Australia which was the exact opposite of this and that did totally escape the key right have you been up the Acropolis yeah yeah yeah we did that yesterday you must have done a lot of things yesterday we did a lot of things yesterday and then we're doing it we're doing it again tonight isn't that again?

27:00yeah wow The boys are upset. We're one day to a night time. Have you been up Mount Lecavetis? Is that the tallest being? No one up there? Yeah. So we did the improvise yesterday, and it was like a drive-in set after, so we took us up there. Oh, you did good. Awesome. So we got to see that. That was pretty cool. What was that, historically? Anything? They mention it in passing, but don't really say all that much about it. Right. It's interesting when you're here, yeah, because there are, like, things... They talk a lot about the agora and the gymnasia and stuff, but there's other things that they don't say that much about.

27:32They're just not that... Look at it as it's kind of in your face, but they don't really... Yeah, they're like, no, we just have the one now. They all have the one now. Yeah, it's weird they would so build that out as a temple, and then over there, nothing. I don't know if there was anything on it. Like, yeah, I think it was kind of... And the name sounds like it has something to do with wolves. Actually, I'll tell you something about the real. The Lyceum is at the foot of the Cavettus, in a saying, basically. And Lyceum sounds like it. It's like lycos, the word for wolf. We have no idea. It says there's some kind of connection between the Nisseldell and the name of the Lyceum.

28:14Oh, look, they're moving it closer over here. They're going to do some digging over here, maybe. Yeah, it's a trick. Those are what's going to need. So these are mostly college students, you think? I think so. It's a long, slow process. What do you think that is? Like 10, 15 feet? They'd have to go down to even get to the... Yeah, to even get to that level. I mean, it kind of looks like there might be things built above that level. Maybe there were other structures built on top of it that they'd have to excavate first, and then maybe move somewhere and not get to that. It'd be crazy. The painted porch itself might not be on the ground level.

28:49It could be on ruins itself. We were supposedly a shrine to Aphrodite next to the Stoke Boichel. I don't know if they'd ever uncover a part of that. I think it's, and then also says it was dedicated to the three races. I do love, there's a bookstore right there. Under the green thing, there's a bookstore? No, there's an Irish bar. Yes, of course. But they didn't have any of my books or any of your books, so that would have been cool. I think I've seen your book in some of the bookshops I was trying to find I don't know what they look like in Greek I don't know because you know they send you the different translations I don't know if I've ever seen them in Greek and some countries it's like when you're in the Netherlands for instance they are translated but most people just read them in English what is tipping culture in Greece?

29:37you don't expect people to tip and sometimes it's a little bit of a hassle because like in Canada whenever you pay by card every time it will always give you the option Try it. Whereas here, often it doesn't. And then sometimes you'll say, sometimes I've even said, hey, can I add a tip? I can't be bothered. Wrecking it up again. It's like annoying. Have you sold the anger book yet or no? We're in the process of the St Martens looking at the proposal at the moment. I think they're probably going to make me an offer on it, but they wanted me to revise the proposal to make it like a little bit less about history.

30:12it was about Caesar and Brutus and Octavian a bit. And I kind of used those as the case. And they said they thought I'd put too much emphasis on the history and they wanted me to put more emphasis on the psychology. I think that's a good call, actually. Usually their notes are wrong, but that's actually a pretty good one. You know St. Martin's also bought a historical novel about Mark Ceruleus? Have you read Augustus by John Williams? No. John Williams who wrote Stoner, the novel. He wrote a very famous historical novel about Augustus that came out in the 70s that sold very well. And it was St.

30:48Martin's bought a historical novel about Marcus. Oh. What's the other famous historical novel about it? Oh, Memories of Hadrian. Yeah. So I'm excited for that. Great thought. It's a good idea. It's a very good idea. Memories of Hadrian is weird because the letters are supposed to be written to Marcus Aeulius. Yes. But it doesn't include any of his... It's kind of a bit of an odd literary... advice in a way, because it's framed as everything is two books first, but nothing about it once. Yes. Yes. Which is weird because there are letters that survive. Yeah. But it's a very beautiful novel. Have you read Last of the Wine?

31:23Yeah. I read that. That was good. In anticipation. That was beautiful. Oh yeah. You probably read it when you're doing your Socrates book. Yeah.

31:37Thanks to Toyota Trucks for sponsoring this episode. When I bought my ranch in 2015 out here in Bastro County, I drove my car about halfway down the dirt road that we live on, thought this isn't going to work, stopped, parked it, walked the rest of the way home, borrowed my wife's car, drove in Austin and bought a truck. What I bought was a Toyota Tacoma. And this truck wasn't just transportation. getting me to and from my house. It unlocked a whole different style of living for us, not just on the ranch, but in our little Texas towns. There were places I could go now that I couldn't go before, especially out here in the piney forests, through the fields, and on the unpaved roads like the one that I lived in.

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33:55people like give me a hard time about something i don't really read novels but jeez knows that i've always had to do read a lot of non-fiction yeah so i don't like read books about psychotherapy or history or whatever all day and then it's like i know i'm gonna kick back and read another but no no it's if that is one of like because you become a writer because you love books yeah and then you choose what you're going to write about and then that assigns you all the things that you have to read and so suddenly the idea of just reading there's just not enough hours in the day to read as much as you would like for pleasure because unless unless you're going to completely neglect your family or your health or anything that's happening in the world there's just not enough time to read given how much you have to read to fill up your own writing and one of the tricky things i find as well is that people will sing me manuscripts of books by stoicism right?

34:51Like 90 % of the time they're like the least interesting books to read because a lot of them are just like rehashing what other players are. It's rare that you would read a book about socialism that would tell you something you didn't know. So when you do it's very exciting. Yeah. That's why I've liked your books. What other ones have I liked? I still like Walt Zarnsworth. Yeah he's good. He's great. Like I think he's quite a good writer. But when you're reading somebody tell you what the people said and you've read what the people said, it's not always that interesting. Well, that's another reason I don't read that many new books because often when I'm doing research for these kind of like historical books, I spend most of my time just like reading the classics.

35:31Yeah, right. Again and again and going over and like... And you're finding something new in there even though you've read it before. And then you read a modern commentary on it and sometimes it sheds light on it but sometimes you're like, I could have just read the original text and got that. But I think one thing that's worked out for me is that because it comes to classics from a different background, like there's a lot of stuff in ancient philosophy that just jumps out at me as being relevant from a psychological perspective. And I think classicists often, what's really interesting is often I'll be talking to professors of philosophy or classics and I'll say, hey, you know this bit in Xenophon where he says such and such?

36:11And they'll be like, oh yeah, I guess he says that. They just completely ignore it, but it didn't seem important to them. But it jumps out to me as being really similar to something that's important in modern psychology. And it's strange how they kind of don't see it. It doesn't seem important. If you're only looking at the classics as the classics, what you're not having is the things that it can make connections to. And so you layer on top of that that you're living a somewhat cloistered or sheltered academic life. Now you have even fewer things to connect it to because you don't, you have tenure.

36:49You have like, so maybe you can see, oh, there's this thing in Xenopin that connects to this office politics thing. But you're not actually living in the world of most people. You're not experiencing most people, even the people you are experiencing, most of them are children. You're not in the position to make the connection from one thing to another. And so you end up just focusing again and again on the main thing. and you get sucked into academic debates about what other people have written articles about yes yeah these sort of distinctions without a difference or yeah or you're primarily right i think the other thing is you get very used to writing to people who have the same basis of knowledge as you do so you take you have all these assumptions that you're making as opposed to being like what i think like what's wonderful about being a popularizer is you find something you're like, I love this is amazing.

37:40I want to go tell more people about it that don't know about it. I've just come to think that like, there's, there's sort of two types of translation. There's the translation of one language to another, which is obviously a very difficult task and requires an understanding of language. And then there's this new form of translation, which is translating from one context to another or one demographic to another. And I think that's kind of what I do in my books. I think you do this in your books too, which is like, you're taking a thing, whatever language you're interacting with is not important, but you're making it relevant to people who didn't or wouldn't have thought it was relevant to them.

38:19I think that in a way that's kind of central to what psychotherapists are supposed to do for a living because they're meant to read all the psychological research. And the clients, most of them aren't going to understand any of that or see the relevance of it. So a CBT practitioner in particular is many spend a lot of their time looking at the current research and then figuring out how to translate that into terms, you know, a 15-year-old kid or an elderly Jewish matriarch or a guy who drives a bus. yeah you know it's actually interesting you know they've been finding you're like it's supposed to kind of oh that connects to this thing and maybe you go read more about it or oh somebody like a cancer doctor's like oh you know i did hear about this type of study they're doing on a person a very simple with a very similar disease as you you know and and that yeah that process of of one making connection from one group to another actually i'm just like albert alice i think stumbled across the fact that that quote from Epictetus was just something that his clients related to.

39:23But he latched onto it because he's getting that idea from research that was going on in psychology at the time, and research on the cognitive appraisal model of emotion. And then he's like, how am I going to explain that to all his clients? And he's like, well, there's this quote from Epictetus that says something about that. And they're all like, that makes total sense. So now he's like, oh, I'm going to say that to everybody. and when is he doing this in the 70s 60s 60s just like think about what percentage of people who don't have a classical education would be familiar with a quote from epictetus that you know they didn't have the internet in a way that could spread these things and so yeah what an important task it is to be like hey this connects to this he was just he was an unusual guy like he was definitely he was an old guy he was probably a little bit even more he was like a workaholic he quite possibly saw more clients than any other psychotherapist I've ever heard so he got his hours in he was super like nerdy about the history of psychotherapy he'd read all this stuff that most psychotherapists probably wouldn't have read so you're right it's kind of unusual that he would have even read Marcus Aurelius and Epictetus but he did because he was like a massive nerd and like read loads of random stuff sure but then that was what he chose to draw funny thing is he says he read it when he was a teenager and then kind of forgot about it and then decades later it pops back in your head that's why you need this broad sort of liberal arts education where you're connected to the stuff and then you go oh like that's what I do I'm writing a book about courage and I go maybe I'll do the 300 Spartans here and then I'll go oh okay let me go get Herodotus off the shelf and let me go get this off the shelf you have to kind of vaguely know where stuff is.

41:10And I think that's what's going to be interesting about AI for people is if you haven't built the habits of being vaguely informed about these different things, you're not going to know where to look. So you're actually not going to be able to use these tools very effectively or you're going to be very easy to manipulate. You need to have a kind of a broad understanding of where you don't have to have read all the books, but you have to vaguely know what the different books are and what's in them how do you think yeah well i mean i'm kind of surprised in a way that ai hasn't had a bigger effect already on publishing yeah it seems like already you could generate a book within a couple of minutes just by putting a prompt then yeah well and if you take that most books aren't very good they're probably pretty replaceable but at the same time it's like the decision to read a book you are deciding to spend a lot of time with a person so like it's not the words that are important so much it's like why am i reading this book from this person i don't know though so in the wisdom book i open seneca has this story about this wealthy roman who instead of learning things he hires a bunch of really smart slaves to tell him stuff and then he thinks he's getting away with it yeah he thinks he thinks he's getting away with it and then one of his friends comes up to him and he He says, you know, have you thought about becoming a wrestler?

42:28And he says, why would I become a wrestler? I'm an old man. And the friend says, yes, but all your slaves are still young. Why don't they just do it for you? And to me, that is, there's something about AI there where it's like, you think you can get something to do it for you, but the whole point is to do it yourself. You know, in Plato's Fivers, there's this, like, famous section where Socrates says that he thinks writing... Yes, it's going to kill everything. It's going to kill an intellect. but people aren't going to think for themselves. But the arguments that he makes against writing sound very similar to the concerns that people have about AI.

43:01And the problem is he's actually totally wrong. Like, I think, and I'm probably going to do a piece on this, I think actually the transition from oral culture to writing culture is actually what makes us smart. Like, I think the reason we're in this mess right now culturally is that people are listening to podcasts to learn about things. Right. With the exception of a scripted podcast, which is written, people just bullshitting is not how you learn about pens like there's something about sitting down and thinking joan didion has this lunch is writing is a hostile act i'm having to take what i think and attack what you think the act of writing but what about reading i think but i'm but reading is consuming what someone has spent a lot of time thinking about so writing i think actually sharpens thinking.

43:50And when you have read writing, you are consuming sharpened thinking. Let me tell you something that's an unusual observation, but it's well known in modern psychotherapy. So there are a series of research studies, trying to see some of what's called role-governed behavior. And they get two groups of participants in a study, right? And they have to solve a puzzle, like pressing some buttons in a particular order and they get penalised if they're wrong they get a log for their right and first group are given verbal instructions or written instructions so they read, are you doing this order and they figure out how to apply that they do it and then the other group have to figure it out to be trial and error so the first group the second phase of the experiment is that they change the rules that govern reward and penalty without telling the group so previously they would press buttons ABC, now that doesn't work it only stops working the groups that were given written or verbal inscriptions will consistently carry on trying to use the original strategy for much longer whereas the group that figured that out through trial and error will adapt much more quickly now psychologists are really interested in that because they think that one of the puzzles of mental health is why do people use coping strategies that don't seem to work.

45:16Right. When they're getting feedback, does she tell them that it's not working? Yeah. What causes rigidity? Sure. What causes coping rigidity? I heard this once. Yeah, they're saying like, I heard this and then I didn't take on any new information. So one idea is that when they've heard it or read it, they tend to apply in a more rigid, unconventional way. I would agree with that. Now, funnily enough then, if that's true and that kind of applies to thinking, Socrates would absolutely be this kind of iconic example of somebody who does the opposite and exhibits cognitive flexibility by figuring everything out from scratch and questioning everything.

45:56Whereas Socrates would teach people to learn lectures and maxims. And I think he's aware that this causes a problem with people learning the formula and then applying it in two sides of the wave. Right. He's always trying to get to think about the exceptions to a rule or the exceptions to a definition. And we do that with therapy. We say, well, this might be a good coping strategy in some situations, but maybe it's backfiring when you try to do it in a meeting. So maybe when you were in the military, talking to people that way worked really well. But now it's not good for your kids. Yes. It's not working out so well in your marriage.

46:33Totally. The final law and the 40 laws of power is assume formlessness. Yeah. And I think like there's, there's something about, you have to learn all the rules and all the, all the ideas. And then you have to, you have to toss it out. And actually Seneca talks about that, right? He's like, the whole point is that at some point you have to put your own spin on it. It's not this so-and-so said this and so-and-so said this. You have to sort of put your own version on it. And if you're not, you're not doing it right. Yeah. Let me see where I'm meeting the, they went to the, they went to the park.

47:05The National Gardens. Yeah, they went to the National Gardens because they wanted to see some turtles again, even though we have turtles literally in our backyard. What I do is we agree on all the places we're going to go as a family. And then anywhere I want to go, I do on my run. Are you doing your run? I do on my run. So I go and look at the faraway things or the things that are all. They haven't run up. I've seen people running up Luke of Anasas. I saw that when I was driving yesterday. And I was like, this would be good. Yes, that's in maybe more. Although the hill next to the Acropolis, where that big rock is, that's where the prison is and stuff.

47:41I'm going to run up there, I think. That's Philip Appa's Hill. Yes, okay. It's beside the Pinnets, which is where they have the political assembly and stuff. Got it. You can see right at the top of that hill, there's a monument from the sign of Haypain. Called the Philip Appa's Monument. It's actually one of the main viewpoints. Yeah, well one of the things you could do is maybe you could come up there and walk up to the peak where the Philip App's movement is. You get a nice view of the apocalypse. That's what I think I'm gonna do. So how much longer are you in Athens for? Till Friday. So Friday, just a few days.

48:16Yeah. Well I mean if you want to meet up again, I'll do that. Okay, yeah yeah, I'll show you the text. But I'll let you know about the beach too. Yeah, we're gonna be not far from you. That sounds amazing. And if you've got any questions about anything, you know you've got my number, just text me. this is awesome well i'm excited about the new book that's a great idea yeah i'd be happy steve's the best isn't he i keep telling myself that too yeah steve's really good he's been a good channel so you think that but like we're we're doing a 10-year anniversary of daily stoic and then it's a 10-year anniversary of uh ego after that so you think you think you're winding down but actually i bet your things are just start because of the culture we live in now also it just takes so much longer for people to get around to books yeah so you don't think about it but every year new people are coming to the stuff right people email me and they say i read your book and i'm like which one like oh that was one that i wrote like years ago yeah i think roman emperor was like five or six years ago i remember it was now and i've written a bunch since then totally like well you can do an updated one yeah and then they ask about it you're like i'm not totally sure i remember everything that i wrote in it that well i think i just interviewed ron sure now and He said he put it well.

49:27He was saying that every new book pushes out the stuff from the old book. Yeah. And so, yeah, you're living in a different world than the reader. So I will say no, this is amazing. All right. Yeah. I'll text you when I figure out where we're going. All right. See you. Bye.

49:46Thanks 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.

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