Patrick Dempsey on Ethical Dilemmas, Being of Service, and Embracing Stoicism

0:28Why choose a Sleep Number smart bed? Look, ads are annoying. They are to be avoided, if at all possible. I understand as a content creator why they need to exist. That's why I don't begrudge them when they appear on the shows that I listen to. But again, as a person who has to pay a podcast producer and has to pay for equipment and for the studio and the building that the studio is in, it's a lot to keep something like the Daily Stoic going. So if you want to support a show but not listen to ads, well, we have partnered with Supercast to bring you an ad-free version of Daily Stoic. We're calling it Daily Stoic Premium.

1:12And with Premium, you can listen to every episode of the Daily Stoic podcast completely ad-free. No interruptions, just the ideas, just the messages, just the conversations you came here for. and you can also get early access to episodes before they're available to the public. And we're going to have a bunch of exclusive bonus content and extended interviews in there just for Daily Stoic Premium members as well. If you want to remove distractions, go deeper into Stoicism and support the work we do here. Well, it takes less than a minute to sign up for Daily Stoic Premium, and we are offering a limited time discount of 20 % off your first year.

1:49Just go to dailystoic.com slash premium to sign up right now or click the link in the show descriptions to make those ads go away.

2:02Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, where each weekday we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stoics, a short passage of ancient wisdom designed to help you find strength and insight here in everyday life. And on Wednesdays, we talk to some of our fellow students of ancient philosophy, well-known and obscure, fascinating and powerful. With them, we discuss the strategies and habits that have helped them become who they are and also to find peace and wisdom in their actual lives. But first, we've got a quick message from one of our sponsors.

2:52Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. Confession about me. I am bad at texting. I didn't know until very recently that you can mark a text unread. So sometimes I'll get a text, I'll check it, I'll be like, okay, I need to come back to that, but I'm busy or whatever, I shouldn't have checked it. And, you know, I forget to come back to it. Now I know you can mark them unread because I learned it because I almost missed out on a really cool opportunity that only happened because the assistant manager of the bookstore, Dina, came upstairs. She goes, hey, Ryan, Patrick Dempsey's manager called the bookstore, and he's going to be in town.

3:31And you guys were talking, but they couldn't get ahold of you. And they wanted to know if you still want to do the podcast. And I was like, oh, shit, of course. So anyways, thanks to Patrick and his manager for chasing me down. I will try to get better at texting because I would have missed out on this awesome episode of the podcast. Patrick Dempsey, you may know him from the wildly popular Grey's Anatomy, movies like The Art of Racing in the Rain, Sweet Home Alabama, Enchanted, and many, many more. And maybe you didn't know, and especially if you missed our part one of this episode, he is a very well-read dude who knows his stoicism.

4:06And he and I connected over it during the pandemic. And I would say we've become friends, shared a bunch of book recommendations, which is my main friendship language, I guess. And we ended up having an awesome conversation on the podcast. Go back to part one if you haven't checked it out. But in part two, we're talking about how we manage our emotions, how we deal with all those opinions that pop up, right? Stoicism is about sort of only trying to have opinions about things that are in your control. And then how we create positive efficiencies and impact on the people around us. And then we did a little tour of the painted porch because he was shooting a documentary he was racing uh some cars down at the f1 track which is near my ranch so then we we walked around the bookstore and talked about a bunch of awesome stuff and i think you're really gonna like this episode so uh here is patrick dempsey and i talking and uh thanks to patrick for coming out i imagine it's exhausting he was sort of mobbed by people while we were there he did a very gracious job saying hi to all the people in this small town, but I imagine it's a lot.

5:09So he made the effort. He came out. It was really cool. And I'm so glad to bring you this episode.

5:30We all have this sort of kid in us that can get triggered. And I think that's probably what a lot of the sort of protocols, even for, you know, pre-performance is about, is about getting, calming that energy and making sure that it's, you're not bringing in the wrong, like, I think in stillness is a key. I told this story that I thought was interesting about Judd Apatow. He was like, it took me many movies to realize that the studio was not my parents. And he was saying, so they were giving him notes and he's like, fuck you, mom. You know, and like, really, this is just an executive saying like, hey, I think that movie's too long.

6:04And so that, that part in you that's triggered by either the stress or the tone of someone's voice or the violation or whatever the thing is, you know, yes, like you can push back on whether the feedback is right or not, but are you pushing back as an adult professional or are you pushing back as the 16-year-old that feels - The wounded child. Yes, exactly. Right. Which is really interesting I think as entertainment, right? We have reality television. So reality television is all based on contrived conflict. They're like, no, you need to be bad, act badly. Create conflict because everybody's getting along.

6:42And I think it's really hurt our society because we're allowing people to accept this bad behavior. And now people are seeing it on TV shows or reality shows. And now it's kind of, everybody's treating each other poorly. And I look down at the right thing right now, right? We need to kind of readjust this. So why aren't we teaching these values in a way that, you know, people need to see from our leaders, number one, from our stars, our athletes to set the right example. And we've really lost that and it's really dangerous. And you look at the storm before the storm. I mean, we're heading there, man.

7:22We're heading there. Is the Republic over? Well, we should talk about that. I think reality TV as a sort of a way that we've taught ourselves culturally the wrong lessons is one. And then I find whenever I turn on like ESPN or FS1 or whatever, or if you're in a hotel and it's playing while you're eating breakfast or something, and you have a group of people who've gotten together and they think that their job is to debate meaningless things or to have opinions about things that are not. There's this great line in Meditations Remarks really says, remember, things are not asking to be judged by you.

7:54They're not asking your opinion about them. And like what you see in a lot of entertainment television, you don't realize it's also what cable news is, is they're like, should LeBron James retire? Well, that's a LeBron James decision. It's not really a should thing. We're like, is this person the best ever at this? These are unfalsifiable, preposterously contrived sort of prompts that are designed to create conflict. But I think what they prime both in commentators who universally seem to me to be very unhealthy people, but also the audience, this idea that you just should have opinions about shit all the time.

8:29Right. Which is what news has become. Yeah. Really, you should just be watching and learning or not watching because it doesn't affect you. But this idea of like commenting on stuff as it's happening and then having opinions about whether it should be different or not is this weird, gives everyone this inflated sense of their importance, which is, I think, just fundamentally unhealthy. We're just sitting arguing about whether reality should be the way that it is. Right. And this gets back to the gossip aspect of things, right? And what he was saying and talking about gossip. It's the same thing.

9:02And they're televised and paid a lot of money to do it. Yes. but it's really hurting our society. Yeah, it's very bad. We're so-and-so well-dressed at the Golden Globes. And it's like, I mean, it already happened and they didn't commit any crimes. Is this a thing we need to have an opinion about? Right. But it is. Like, it's a way of sort of disassociating from the reality you live in and abdicating the things you have responsibility over. Right. That's actually the premise in the book. It's like, I think when people think justice or they think philosophy, they think our job is to debate. You know what the trolley problem is?

9:34No, tell me what. The trolley problem is one of the most interesting prompts in ethical philosophy, which is, okay, a trolley is heading down a track and it's going to kill one person. But if you pull this thing, it will kill five people. Or sometimes they do it different ways. I think it's going to kill five people, but if you pull the handle, it will only kill one person. But then you are responsible for killing that one person, right? So it's basically an impossible moral dilemma. You go, oh, of course you should save five people to kill one person. But then it's like, so you would shoot a person in the head to save five people?

10:06Well, no, I probably wouldn't. So why is this different, right? So it's an interesting idea. But basically, I think what happens is you get so caught up in it that you're neglecting the fact that you have a bunch of very small ethical decisions in your everyday life that you don't think about at all. Where you buy your clothes, do you eat meat or not? What kind of car do you drive? How do you pay your employees? So it's this way of sort of abstracting reality into a morass of confusion and abstraction, as opposed to having to go, I'm a person in the world who is responsible for X, Y, and Z. And here are the things that I use to make those decisions.

10:48Yeah.

10:55Thanks 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.

11:40We got to go deep into the hill country's wild beauty. We've driven all the way out to East Texas. We've driven across the country. And by we, I mean not just my wife, but both my kids who I drove home from the hospital in that truck. Toyota trucks are built for those who understand that the best adventures happen when you're willing to veer off course, because you never know when you'll end up on a Toyota adventure detour. And of course, this is stoicism, too, because every detour, every obstacle is an opportunity. But it's helpful if you can handle the difficulty inherent in that. If you've got the resilience and the right companion to make it wherever the road takes you.

12:20Discover your uncharted territory. Learn more at toyota.com slash trucks slash adventure dash detours.

12:33It's interesting you bring that up because, I mean, I'm literally just coming from a racetrack, right? Yeah. And we're dealing with global warming, you know, and you're like, there's that dilemma of like, wait, am I adding to the problem or am I helping the problem? Because the technology that's being developed can ultimately help or am I just, you know, you have those dilemmas and you have that thought. But you're not like, God, but it makes me a better person. So my actions are actually kinder and gentler because I am doing that. But I do think about that quite a bit. Interesting. Yeah. Yeah, I mean - And I don't think the electric cars are the answer because we're not really dealing with the big problem.

13:08Which is? Coal. The coal burning plants. Yeah. You know, so what are we gonna do? Are we just gonna have to slow everything down and get back into these smaller communities? Yeah, I don't know. Look, we're in this little community now that everything was here and the river was going by and they were chopping the trees down. But also like the most environmentally friendly place you could live is New York City because it's all concentrated and you don't have an acre of land that you raise designer grass on, you soak in water. There's an endless amount of ways to think about it. But that's kind of the point is like, I think you can look at these ethical dilemmas or debates in such a way, In the same way that we do, I think, politically, where we go, well, I don't like this person.

13:52I don't like this person. And then what about this? And then what about this? And what about this? And then 50 % of people just don't vote. You know, like, so it's this way, like, way more people have opinions about what's happening in the world, and then neglect the small sphere in which they have actual influence, because that seems small in comparison to the enormity of complex problems. but our job isn't to fix complex problems. Our job is first and foremost to start with what we have control. In our circle. Yes. What are we doing? Yeah. And also this gets into something that really is important to me is like, we should be of service.

14:28Yes. So he talks a lot about that. Mm-hmm. And like, that's the thing. How do you give back to your community? What are we doing to be of service? Yeah. He said the purpose of life is good character. So that's, I think, just the individual aspect of self-control, what standards you hold yourself, et cetera. He says, the fruit of this life is good character and then acts for the common good. And so to me, that's both sides of the sort of stoic coin, which is first and foremost, who am I going to be? What am I going to... It doesn't matter what everyone else is doing. It doesn't matter what's legal or not.

14:56It doesn't matter what they'll let me get away with or not. Who am I going to be? And then the other side of it is, what am I going to do? How am I going to leave this place a smidge better than I found it? How can I use the success I've had to open doors for other people, to be of service for other people? that was something my favorite, I think there's a line, you recommended that book to me and I read it. I thought it was so amazing. So Emerson reads Leaves of Grass. He gets a self-published copy of Leaves of Grass and he just sends Whitman a letter and he says, I greet you at the beginning of a grand career.

15:30So you have the most famous, respected artist in America reading this random weirdo poet who self-published a book and he just unsolicited sends him a letter saying like, you're talented, you're going somewhere. Whitman ends up using it as a blurb on the cover of the book. But like, we know about Walt Whitman because Emerson co-signed for him. You know, you gave him a stamp of approval. And so like, what's our version of that? Who are we opening doors for? Whose career are we helping? It's so easy to just be like, well, what's the next big thing for me? What's my next thing? But do we spend even a fraction of our energy going like, who's coming behind me?

16:11And what kind of legacy is that going to be for me? Again, when you think like, hey, this is a good person, they made the world better. Again, it doesn't have to be that they invented some new form of energy. It can really just be like, no, no, no, all these other people have jobs because of that person. And do you find that what you've done here with the the bookstore, the podcast changed this community? I think in some ways, I'm not sure everyone loves it. I'm sure they don't. I'm sure a lot of people are like, what are you doing here? Can you just go back to wherever you came from? Yeah. There's definitely some of that.

16:45But you put positive energy out in this community, right? The way we thought about it was, okay, I need a studio space for the podcast. I need an office because I want to stop working in my house and I need office space for other people. So I could rent a boring chunk of square footage from somewhere, right? Like every other business ever. And then when we eventually close or I move on to other things, they'll move us out. There'll be no record of it. It'll have zero positive impact on anyone but the landlord to whom I paid rent for however many years I was there. And then we were sitting and having breakfast across the street.

17:24we saw these things and they were for sale. And I was like, you know, honestly, like the math here, I can just buy these buildings, turn them into offices in the back. And then the bookstore could lose money every day. And still I'd probably net out about the same. Now that's not what ended up happening. The bookstore has been this really cool part of the community, but the idea was like, how can I take something I was already going to do and create efficiencies off of it that might have some positive impact. Like this is not a town that could support a bookstore. The 8 ,000 people live here, you can't have an independent bookstore.

17:57But if you have offices that are subsidizing an independent bookstore, then the people here, it's as if they live in a town that can support an independent bookstore. And that's a positive thing. And so I have just tried to think about, yeah, how does your success end up creating sort of positive efficiencies for other people or things. Again, it's not the same as curing cancer or something, but if you actively think like that and you consistently do it, depending on how lucky you are and how long you're around, that can be cumulatively quite a lot. Right. Exactly. So that's how I think about it.

18:33Good. And it's interesting you brought up the cancer situation because it's a small town of Maine. So we do a great deal of research. This is your foundation. So the Dempsey Center. So what we do there is we don't treat the disease, we treat the person holistically. And we try to customize the care. Yeah, we have our counseling and support services and we do it remotely. It started in the small town I grew up in. It's an old mill town, kind of like this, and all the factories had left. All the industry has gone overseas. Baschu was there. So you had all these beautiful factories, but the identity has been lost.

19:10So that's the cancer of like the exporting of our local businesses. So, you know, we do so much in these hospitals where we're throwing so much money into research and the pharmaceutical companies are doing a great job in their way, but people are coming out of cancer treatment without being healed. You know, they're being treated, but they're not being healed holistically. Their body's been ravaged. Yeah. And then the door's shut and they're like, you go, you're good, you're done. Yeah. And they're left completely scarred. So that's been through my mother's cancer journey. She had over 12 reoccurrences, you know, and passed away in 2014, you know, and was diagnosed in 97, I think it was.

19:51And so this came out of that obstacle or that tragedy. And a lot of these wellness centers of support groups that are around the wraparound care, I should say. So we do counseling, which we do remotely, and now we're reaching out to other states, I think at 32 states. And then we also do in office where we're doing Reiki and acupuncture and all of those things. And I think this is something that we need to continue to do. And what we want to do is connect to more like-minded centers. And most of these that have started have become someone in their family has been impacted and everything is at no cost.

20:29So we treat the family, the caregivers, which I think people forget about. Sure. It's not easy for them to see that every day. No. And they have their own responsibilities that they have to keep up and deal with. And who do they talk to? Who supports them? And the nutrition, we don't talk about what we're feeding. I mean, look at the issues that we have in this country with the industrial food complex. Right. And that's a big problem. We're seeing more issues with obesity and diabetes, and that's leading to complications. And then God forbid, you don't have the right exercise. as you go into a situation, into a hospital, and you're overweight, something else could happen and the side effects happen.

21:05So it's bringing all that stuff together holistically in our approach. I mean, we've got all this technology, but we've really forgot the moment of the right thing in kindness and compassion. That's my favorite quote from Epictetus, or from Seneca. He says, everyone you meet is an opportunity for kindness. Right. Which again, Stoics feels like this hard philosophy, this sort of like walled off philosophy, not as this thing that you give to other people. Like there's a story about Cleanthes, who's one of the early Stoics. And we don't have that many stories about the actual Stoics. So I love the ones where you're like, oh, this is like a glimpse of how they went through the world.

21:45So he's walking through the streets of Athens and he hears this man, I think we've all been in this situation where you screw up, you blow something, you're like, you fucking idiot. You know, he's just talking to himself, but like yelling at himself about this thing that he screwed up. And Cleanthes is walking by and he just says, hey, just a reminder, you're not talking to a bad man. He's just like, this guy's talking to himself. He's just, remember the person you're talking to is not a bad person. And then he just goes about his business. Obviously the easier thing would be like, weirdo over here, let's go in the other direction.

22:13Or, you know, hey, do you need anything? But just this like little intervention of kindness, this sort of one liner that wouldn't, if someone said that to you as you're in the middle of yelling at yourself, you'd be like, it would shock you out of the spiral you're in. And I just, I just love that. Okay. That's what stoicism looked like in practice. Right. And then there's the thing of like, when you're about to lose your temper or someone is really acting crazy, instead of like reacting spontaneously to like, you know, flip them off or whatever, just go, what's wrong with you? You know, and maybe disarm them.

22:44I forget the philosophy. I don't know where it came from, but it was like, that's such an interesting thing to try to remember and to keep your cool when someone is losing it and they're really abusive to you. I said, are you okay? Because clearly they're scared. So how do you take the fear away to remove the anger? And I think there's so much fear in this country right now. Why are our leaders not going after like that? Because there's so much pain and we're like this right now. Yeah. Yeah. Like I saw, remember during the pandemic, there'd be like, those people would freak out like at a store you know about mass or something and like obviously it was totally inappropriate and you can't just scream no right but one of the things i tried to get better at as i've seen more and more of those videos is is first off like 80 of the time the person is just mentally unwell right and then the other 20 of the time you're like what's what was every interaction of that person's day up until that point you know there you know like the tension was just so and And now they're snapping about this totally inconsequential thing.

23:47They've lost the ability to understand that the other person didn't deserve any of this and it's totally inappropriate. But you realize they're not having a good time, that it sucks to be them. It sucks to be everyone in this situation. It's like, okay, if you can see that in this person, now the next time you're in one of those situations, you can either stop yourself or someone's doing that to you. can you not escalate it and escalate it and escalate it? Right. Which is hard. It's so hard. It's because you get triggered too. Yeah. And then you're losing it. So it's very challenging that. Yeah.

24:22No, no. It's incredibly tough.

24:35So are you winning a four virtues range? Yes, I did. I just got it here because I've always wanted one. Oh, amazing. And I wanted to get it because I wanted to have something to remember today. And I wanted to have it in person. I was going to order it a while ago, but I was here and I got a couple of the leather bound books too. Like the Daily Stoic is so important. And the newsletter, of course. Yeah. You know, because it just helps reset things. And, you know, I don't know if anybody out there who is listening who's dyslexic and you can't journal because it's too much. Oh. What's really good is you dictate into a phone or you'll get your iPad out and you'll dictate into it.

25:13Not chat GP, none of that, but you just sort of go, here's what I'm feeling. And what I've noticed, because remember I called you maybe a couple of years ago when you were doing the program of keeping your diary and doing all that stuff. And I go, look, man, this is not working for me. It's a mess. I'm basically a functional illiterate who somehow became a star and I don't know how this has happened. In a thing that you have to read. I could never get through school, but I've always listened to, and I'm using technology. So here's a beautiful thing about technology. Instagram can be a real gift and it can be your university.

25:45Yeah. You know, it really can be. If you get in the right algorithm. If you get in the wrong algorithm, it can make you lose your mind. Make you really lose your mind and go crazy. And then also audio books, you know, used to be records. I'd have to go to the library to listen to something. It's like a 12 - Or I would go to, I'd go to lectures. Like I really got into sort of Jungian philosophy early on. So Robert Johnson, you remember he, she, and we, and getting into all that stuff. And I'd go to the lectures and that's how I could learn. So I think with this technology, it's giving people an opportunity who normally wouldn't be able to do it.

26:16So that's how I'm starting to do it. And then something approaches like, hey, we want you to, you know, why don't you write a book? I'm like, there's no way I can write a book. You know, but I think that's the next challenge for me is can I use that technology? Sure. to be able to express myself in a way. And then you go back and then you edit it, you know, and sort of like, and go, okay, I can say, let me find a better word for that. Well, it's very easy to be snobbish about sort of forms of technology. And I found that like, I love books. And so for me - Right. And you've turned your love and your insight has really turned me on because I'll go, what are you reading?

26:49What are you reading today? Or if I come across something and then you sent me Transcendentalist in the World, which is like what, 9 ,000 pages or something crazy like that. But I can't do, I don't like audiobooks. And I think there was a point in my, where I'm like, it's obviously physical. It's the only way to do it. And then you're realizing, I just would talk to all these people and they'd be like, I didn't used to read. And now I listen to audiobooks, multiple audiobooks a week. They like, they read more than me. And I realized, oh yeah, they thought they didn't like reading, but really they didn't like books because books didn't work for them for whatever reason.

27:22And so what matters is that you're downloading the information, you're getting it in your brain. And some mediums work better for others. I even see this with my books. People go, oh, why do you need to read Ryan's books? Just read the originals. And I'm like, I would love to exist in that world where my books weren't necessary. Right. But hey, I don't know if you check the sales. But they don't sell that well. Right. And the reason they don't sell that well is because not everyone wakes up and thinks, hey, I can read a book from a person whose name I can't pronounce. Right. And so it's like different people are at different places.

27:53And we should, the more inclusive we are and open we are, and the more we make things in all the mediums that are possible, that's fantastic. Yes. Yes. Yeah. And I think what's really great about it is that you find your own technique. Yes. Right. And then you go, okay, we're not all the same. Yeah. And the way we teach kids, the way we're teaching everybody, it's, you can't put everybody in this box. Yes. It just does not work. But when you go back to the book, I'll go back and I'll isolate a chapter. I'll make a note. Okay. I need to go and check this out and I'll write it down and I'll look at it and I'll read it and then I'll keep it and then start to develop the file.

28:31I wonder if that actually makes you a better reader because you're engaging with it in multiple mediums and then you're really zooming in on something that you think is important. And because it's like people with my note card system, they always go, it would be so much easier if you read audio book or if you read eBooks and then you just highlighted the passages you want to keep and then you just sent it into Evernote or some Dropbox or whatever. And I go, no, the whole point is that it's hard. Right. It's supposed to be tough and it's supposed to be labor intensive because in the difficulty and the labor, first off, you're only going to do it over things that actually matter to you.

29:05And then by engaging with it, I imagine the ritual you have to go through on a script makes you understand it at a level that if reading was very easy and came naturally to you, you would maybe have a more superficial understanding of the material. You had to really understand why each word was there and what each word did because you had to break it down in your process. Right. And I went into a profession which is all about reading the written word so that you're dealing with that all the time. Yes. So your ego is constantly getting challenged. Wow. But what's interesting when we talk about the Transcendentalists and certainly the Peabody Sisters and what was going on, like the new cool thing was magazines.

29:47Yeah. And like, what's the new book? That was like their Instagram and their thing at the time. Yes. That's all they had. Yeah. But they also had the Lyceums, which was the lectures. Yes. Which is now the podcasts. Yeah. Uh-huh. You know, so it's really interesting how it's still the same, but how we're reaching people are different. There were probably people like, why do you need to go see him talk? Just read the book. You know, like there's always this thing where it comes naturally to you. You don't understand why someone prefers to consume it in another medium. But really, we should all just be celebrating anytime anyone is taking even the smallest amount of effort to open their mind or learn something or hear from someone's different perspective.

30:23Like I just did this interview for NPR and they were like, what do you think about all these tech bros that are reading stoicism? Is that a problem? I was like, of all the problems in the world, that seems like the one I'm the least worried about. Like I actually can't think of anything I'd rather they be doing. You know, like, like if you're like, hey, they're going to be doing any of these things or they're going to be reading about an ancient philosophy centered around virtue. I'd be like, that sounds like something we should all be getting excited about, not something we should be judging or, you know, calling broicism or whatever.

30:55It seems weird that we just have this. It's a snobbishness where we want to like discount that people are learning differently than us or consuming it in a medium differently than us. It's just all great. Well, didn't it all start just by conversation? Probably, yeah. Right? Like the Greeks, weren't they just sitting around handing out books? We know what stoa means, right? Stoa just means porch. Painted porch, which is why you have this. It was called the stoa pochile, which is the painted porch in Athens. Right. Zeno sets up his school in the Athenian Agora, the busiest part of Athens, and he's just talking.

31:32Right. And do you know why, but the real joke of why the bookstore is called The Painted Porch is, so Zeno suffers a shipwreck. He ends up in Athens. He loses everything. But as a young man, he'd gotten this prophecy from the oracle. The oracle said, you will become wise when you begin to have conversations with the dead. And he has no idea what this means. So he washes up in Athens, ends up in a bookstore, and he hears the bookseller reading this dialogue of Socrates. And in that moment, he realizes this is a conversation with a dead person. Right. And that is, so it's the bookstore, the Painted Porch.

32:05We don't know the name of the bookstore he went into, but the Painted Porch is a descendant of a encounter that happened in a bookstore. Right. And that's the wonderfulness of books. Right. And it was coming in here, I was amazed today, you know, there's, I guess, a festival going on or, I don't know, you walk outside, it smells great, food's good. and then just this wonderful, loving energy. Bookstores have a vibe. Yeah, it's just, and it's like, we've lost all these, the privately owned bookstores, right? Yes. And it was just great. And you're meeting people and people are just smiling. That's pretty cool.

32:37And you're looking around like, oh, I've read that or I'm well listened. I've listened to that one and I've listened to this one and all that. And it was great. And then you're here in this pilgrimage and you can feel like all the conversations that have happened around this table. And you were telling me a great story about whose table this is. Have you said this? I have, yeah. yeah yeah now i at some point i'll probably sell the table again like a like it would i bought it as a charity auction this is joan didion's table she she uh donated all this money to uh alzheimer's i think yeah and so they sold off her her stuff so i think my my plan with the table is i'm gonna have it be the podcast table so all these cool people come and sat at it yeah so now it has like this whole other story on top of the original story and then i'll sell i'll sell it for some charity yeah that's interesting that's the idea yeah but it's pretty cool to think like she could have written something that you've read at this table?

33:27Or there is a photo in the New York Times, like if you Google Joan Didion, she, her husband, John Gregory Dunn, and her daughter, Quintana, are sitting at this table in these chairs, like eating breakfast. And you're just like, this person I've read, this is their thing. So there's a story like this about Epictetus's lamp. Have you heard this? No. So Epictetus has a prized possession. It's a silver lamp. and he keeps it in a shrine in his house. It's like burning to one of the gods. One day he hears something in the hallway, comes down, a thief is broken into the house and he steals the lamp. So Epictetus could have been angry.

34:03He could have tried to get justice. He goes, no, this is my fault for having an expensive lamp. He's trying to be the pure stout. So he's like, tomorrow I'm going to go buy a clay lamp that's cheaper. So he buys the clay lamp, has it for the rest of his life. And then when he dies, a fan of his spends a lot of money to buy it. and all the Stoics are laughing that this guy doesn't get it. You know, like that he thinks the possession is, you're buying the thing that he bought because it was cheap. You don't get it. So I sometimes think of that story when I take this table. But it does. Yeah. Yeah, I can see that.

34:35It's special. I think so. Yeah. I like things with good energy. Yeah, you can feel the energy in here because of all the conversations that you've had. Yeah. Right, and then look what's surrounding us. Yeah, these are cool. This is, you probably, so this. Oh, there you go, right there. It's called a company called Book by the Foot. And they mostly do movie sets. Like when they need like a library in someone's house, you just buy, you're like, I need eight feet of books. And they send you the books. Yeah. And that's what this is. But, and then some other books from my publisher and stuff. But you want to go check out some books in the bookstore?

35:03I do. I'm trying to think. I always try to give people books. What are you, what are you reading or not? I'm in the midst of trying to get into the next thing, right? I'm kind of surfing a bit. Oh, okay. Oh, David McCullough is just absolutely amazing. Oh, he's amazing. He has this one on the right. He's still living in Maine, you know, too. I'm in Camden all the time. Okay, he has a really short one that I'll give you that's amazing. This is amazing. This is the best one. That's the great thing. This is Night of the Johnstown Flood. It's a nice short one. I think you'll like. And then you read The Wright Brothers.

35:32Oh, do we have The Wright Brothers? Yes, this is great too. American Nations too. Have you read American Nations? Colin Woodard, he's actually from Maine. It's really fascinating. It's about, it sort of breaks down like where people settled and how it's affecting culture today and what the consciousness was then in those settlements. Did I send you the parenting one? No. Grab that one to your left, Daily Dad. Great. I'll definitely need this. I'm going to do a leather one, too. I just haven't done it yet. Yeah, the leather's really beautiful. My copy of Meditations is like the cover's taped on and the pages are all torn and stuff because I just put so many miles on it.

36:11Right. You just keep going back and revisiting. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that's why I tried to. Because you're like, oh, I remember. It takes a long time for you to absorb it. Yeah. And every time you go back and you look at it, you're like, oh, I never saw that the first time. I didn't understand it on the level I should have. Well, so, I mean, I don't know how many times I'd read Meditations, but it didn't hit me that it was a plague book until COVID. That he was writing during what's called the Antonine Plague. We have a book about. All right. He almost died, right? Yeah. He probably did die. Yeah.

36:36Well, they did. And then that's when all the. Yeah. But so it's like, oh, he knew things I thought he was being metaphorical about. He was being literal. And he would have experienced all the things that we experienced, but 20 times scarier. And yeah. Remarkable day. Amazing.

36:55Thanks 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.

37:23Shopify's point of sale system helps you sell at every stage of your business. Need a fast and secure way to take payments in person? We've got you covered. How about card readers you can rely on anywhere you sell? Thanks. Have a good one. Yep, that too. Want one place to manage all your online and in-person sales? That's kind of our thing. Wherever you sell, businesses that grow, grow with Shopify. Sign up for your$1 a month trial at shopify.com slash listen. Shopify.com slash listen.