The Case for History (Before It Repeats Itself) | Kenny Curtis

0:00Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast. designed to help bring those four key Stoic virtues, courage, discipline, justice, and wisdom into the real world.

0:14Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. I was in Palm Springs about three weeks ago. I had the privilege, the honor of a lifetime of interviewing the great Doris Kearns Goodwin. And one of the things we talked about the night before, and then when I got up on stage, I sort of riffed on, it was like, what does it say about this moment in time that reading about Abraham Lincoln and reading about the Civil War is relaxing? But it is. You know, there's something soothing about studying the past. I think that the right word is edifying, right? It teaches and instructs.

0:56It doesn't always make you feel amazing, but it takes you out of the present moment and it gives you the perspective of the past. This is what Zeno hears from the Oracle when she tells him that the secret to the good life is to have conversations with the dead. You know, this moment in time that we're in where things are uncertain and that leads to nervousness and anxiety, maybe even paralyzation or despair. Well, you want to cut through that if you want to get perspective, you want to be philosophical in the lower case piece sense of the word. One of the things you can do is study the past, that this preparation helps build confidence, it builds clarity, it builds perspective.

1:45and, you know, that's what my study of the Stoics has helped me do. But also what I get to do in my writing that I feel so fortunate in is that I'm not just talking about one time period, but then I get to go take that idea from the Stoics and root it in, yeah, the Civil War or root it at the founding or root it in the Industrial Revolution or root it in medieval Europe during the Reformation. I get to go study all these different eras. By the way, that's what Seneca was telling us to do, that what philosophy allows us to do is annex all the ages of the past into our own life. Now, sometimes this can make you nervous.

2:23You have a sense of how bad things can get, but mostly I find it helps you calm down. It reminds you that human beings have always faced uncertainty and disease and political chaos and fear over and over and over again, right? We just lived through a pandemic. Marcus Spiele has lived through a pandemic in the middle. Montaigne lived through a plague. So I love history, partly because, you know, the characters are fascinating and epic and wild, and that's entertaining. But I think at like a deeper level, the more I study history, the more equipped I feel to manage my emotions here in the present moment.

3:05As I said, context, perspective. And this perspective creates calm. The problem is, You know, history gets a bad rap. I just interviewed General Ty Sedgley. I'll bring you his episode soon. But we were talking about Eisenhower and Eisenhower as a kid had loved history. But it is like literally beaten out of him as a student at West Point. You know, it becomes drudgery. It becomes memorization. It becomes a chore. And it's not until he rediscovers historical fiction through his mentor, General Fox Connor, that it opens back up to him. And maybe you had a bad history teacher. Maybe history bored you in class.

3:48Maybe you don't get why you should study a bunch of old, dead, white guys. I get that. And it's sort of precisely what I wanted to talk about in today's episode. I try to spend a lot of time getting my kids excited about history. We're a big fan of the Greeking Out podcast here in our household, which is done by Nat Geo. And so when I heard that Kenny Curtis has a new history-themed podcast coming out, I was very excited to talk to him. I wanted to nerd out about history, right, to talk about why the study of history matters. So here's what he had to say.

4:28okay so let's zoom out you're an adult who's not super into history maybe you got burned out on it in school or you're more of a math and science person give me the case for for why the study of history is so important well i think you don't ever really know where you're going to wind up you may think you know where you're going but you don't you can't really predict the outcome as well if you don't know where you've been. Past is quote-unquote. And I think science shows you that. I think whether you're a numbers guy or a science person or whatever, I think all of existence kind of shows that.

5:02You have to kind of know where you've been to really experience where you're going. If nothing else, you know what facts have informed your own particular decision-making. So history is really important because I think you take that look back and you and put everything that's happening now and everything that might happen in the proper context. So I think it's really important for any human to really understand that. It also brings us together. It lets us understand the common experience because the more you learn about history, the more times you can say, oh, this is like blank. This is like blank.

5:38This is like blank. One of the things that I see in all forms of ancient history is how much misogyny is part of the cultures of the world. It's, wow, if women, if we had just gotten on a different, bet on a different horse early on in civilization, we'd be on a much different and probably a lot better planet. Instead of just seeing something that's outrageous or offensive or whatever, you see that historically, you see the stupidity and the cost of it. Correct, correct. And you, but you can also see how it's, The same mistakes are made here, but in different cultures at different times in different ways.

6:15And I think it in a way, it's kind of a bonding experience. You can see what we have in common, but you also can see all sorts of other victories and and cultural celebrations and religious opportunities, things that that can bring us together as humans on the same planet in the same world. And I think history gives you an opportunity to understand that kind of cultural connectivity in an important way. Yeah, there's a line from Truman who says, the only thing new in the world is the history you don't know. That's right. You know, for some reason, I think I thought Einstein said that. I'd heard that, but I didn't know that was Harry Truman.

6:54Man, that guy had a great speechwriter. Boy, did he have the good lines. I think this might be Truman himself. I mean, he grew up sort of a lonely kid who basically read every book in the small town library, and he was just obsessed with history. And he would talk about how, you know, even as president, whenever he had a problem, he'd go back and read someone like Plutarch, and he'd be like, oh, okay, someone's been through this before. Yeah, well, that's exactly the point of history. That's exactly the thing is that it gives you that kind of—it connects you to the past and gives you guidance to the future.

7:29Effectively a superpower, right? A way to talk to the dead. Zeno, one of the founders of stoicism, this is what the Oracle of Delphi tells him, that the secret to the good life is to have conversations with the dead. So it's a superpower. It's a way of predicting the future. It's, you know, it's also fascinating. Why does it get such a bad rap though? Well, because people get hung up on dates and times and I don't want to say they get hung up on facts because facts are important. But yes, I think when you're given a history test or when you think of your history test, you very often think of when did the Revolutionary War start?

8:04What date? Who said what? Who said this? Who did this? The timeline. Memorize all the American presidents. Do all this. Do that. It's memorizations. It's wrote. It's the same. It's similar to math because math really is engaging when you understand mathematics, the concepts. Right. But the arithmetic, kind of boring. Right. Yeah. And I think history suffers from that same sort of dichotomy, only tenfold, because it isn't as quick. It's long and it can seem tedious. And if you're not invested in these people as people, if you just think of the names as names, you don't really care. You don't really care about Napoleon, Marie Antoinette or, you know, Meriwether Lewis and William Clark.

8:50You don't care about these people, you know. But when you find out that Meriwether Lewis was actually struggling with his mental health on a daily basis, and for some reason Thomas Jefferson put him in charge of his expedition, suddenly there's a lot more at stake there. That's kind of exciting. You're reading his journals. You're like, this dude is whacked. He's terrible. Yes. It is kind of interesting when you read some of these older history books. You can go back and read the textbooks that Lincoln would have read as a kid or whatever. And you realize it's not so much that they did or Plutarch, like Truman was talking about.

9:24It's not so much that they didn't care about accuracy, because I think they did, but they cared about it less. You know, it seemed like it's like the vibe was more important. The moral is more important. There's just a number of priorities that seem to be prized in history's version of history than today, which seems to be about did this in fact happen? Yes or no. I need it proven to me. That's not what people used to read history so much for.

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12:54stoic right i like what you said history's version of history i love that because that goes back to the idea again howard zinn the idea that history was written by the winners yes you know what i mean and it is it is written by the word so you got to kind of you know uh You got Trail of Tears, not that big of a deal. Okay, so we made a bunch of people move. No big deal. I mean, literally, we gloss over that stuff. When I was in school, that was literally glossed over. Yeah. They didn't really push that very heavily because it wasn't the vibe, the narrative that people wanted. And I think that's where the facts are so incredibly important.

13:31Yeah. They're so incredible. I had a textbook, and it's weird. It's the only textbook I remember the name of, and it was called After the Fact. And it was in history. This was in the 80s. And it was a textbook and it had, the main thing was the story, whatever the subject was, the story. And then it would have, here are the facts. Literally, this is what we have. And here's the fact and here's why we know it's a fact. It was said here. This was written here. We know this happened at this time. We don't know when people really moved in because of the Louisiana Purchase or whatever. But we know that these people were here at this time.

14:06And historians have then extrapolated that this is why. So it gives you a constant opportunity to check the source. Well, I think there's two things here. And it's weird because they're kind of in tension with each other. But it's funny, my friend, Bright Thompson, who just wrote this beautiful book about the murder of Emmett Till, he goes back, he grew up in Mississippi. He goes back and finds the textbook that he read as a kid. And it says, you know, Emmett Till, describing what happened, and it's like, you know, when a man made a pass at a white woman in a grocery store. And it's like, okay, well, Emmett Till is 14 years old, so the decision to call him a man versus a child is an enormously significant fact that is changing how that story is perceived.

14:53So I think you're right. In one sense, those facts matter a great deal and we battle over those. And I think we sometimes let propaganda or what we want to be true, you know, override the facts. I think that's one thing. But the other thing, the thing I was more trying to get your opinion on is like, like when you read someone like Plutarch, a lot of the things that he's saying he couldn't possibly have known because nobody wrote this stuff down. Nobody was there. But he's seeing his job as a historian, not to give you the the line for line speech that Pericles gave us. but he is trying to give us the sense of what the message was.

15:34And in that sense, it's more important. And also, what are you taking out of it as the reader? Are you taking out of you memorize the speech or you're getting a sense of what the human issues at stake were? So it's like this tension here of like facts matter more than you think. And then also some facts don't matter at all. What matters is the lesson. Right. Well, I think they are. It's funny that they're in tension, but I also think they're in concert, these two facts. I think the facts are obviously you need to know specifically what happened, but they aren't facts. Don't do anything in and of themselves without context.

16:11Yes. You know, Pericles did give a speech at a funeral. Okay. Yes. And it wasn't a political speech. It was a funeral speech. It was essentially a, uh, an obituary. You know what I mean? Yes. But he was such a good speaker that everybody was amazed and blown away. If you read the words of his speech, you may not get that. But if you read Fudark or whoever talking about how they were moved, how the crowd was moved, that's their opinion. That's not necessarily the fact, but that's what gives that speech context. And then the fact would be, after that, he was able to rise in power and in station and really became a greater leader as a result of that.

16:55Then all of a sudden you're like, oh, I see these two things happen. And it's like the lesson is, hey, in a moment of great peril and danger, a great leader can use a moment like a funeral to bring people together. And that, you know, what Pericles is doing there in Athens is similar to what Lincoln is doing all these centuries later at Gettysburg. and that like the lesson you should take is what he said or didn't say is not that important, but what he did and how he did it and the effect it had on people and what leadership looks like, you know, that's what history is supposed to be teaching us.

17:35Right, and that's what gives, that's what you need to take away from things. And I think it's funny because nowadays everything is documented through journalism, but a good journalist is doing exactly that. They are right there in the middle. They're giving you their perception of what they're seeing, what they're hearing, what's happening. And they're trying to present it as fact, even though we all know what they're presenting is their interpretation of that experience at that moment. So with the new podcast, which is sort of bite-sized versions of history, I'm sure you're going back, you're like, okay, I want to tell the story of this famous event or this famous event.

18:05And you're looking back, you're going back and looking at a bunch of different accounts. What do you think they get wrong? Like, and I don't mean historically, Like, what are you trying to do differently that makes it accessible and interesting and valuable to people that maybe you see well-meaning people having missed in previous goes at these stories? Well, I'm not always sure that it's what well-meaning people have missed. I think it's things that get swept under the rug or left out because they're getting, they have a different agenda for whatever they want to get to. They want to get the general story of Cleopatra and, you know, Mark Antony in Rome.

18:44And they're leaving out about how, like, there was essentially siblings killing siblings in Egypt in order for Cleopatra to actually become Cleopatra. They leave out that part of it. Maybe they don't focus on it as much. I mean, I love our first episode, which is how the Greeks, the ancient Greeks reacted when they found fossils. Because, of course, there were dinosaur bones. Sure. But they didn't know what the heck they were. You know what I mean? And how this contributed to history and mythology and the ability for certain city states to rise in power and things like that. It's a great story about a dinosaur, dinosaur bones in a well in Sparta rising in power.

19:21I think it takes that moment of huh and wonder and wow and kind of clips on it. We try to focus on one or two specific moments in each episode. The podcast is the brainchild of Emily Everhart, who is the producer behind Greeking Out. And she is a history file, bar none. So she really has found some great moments in history. We're going to do one on Pompeii, for example, that I know everybody knows what happened in Pompeii. But I think when I was a kid, I was like, why did so many people like I know they didn't know that the volcano was going to erupt. But lava doesn't move that fast, man. It really doesn't.

19:59And ash falls down from the sky. But I would think more people would have gotten out. But it is this, when you read the letters from Pliny the Younger, I think. You realize that these people literally put pillows on their heads and thought, oh boy. They really were, they just believed that everything was good. They were in control of things that they had no frame of reference for. But they really believed that they were in control, so they didn't doubt. And to make the case for history here is like just the endlessness of it is like I'm fascinated with Pompeii and my kids know the story a little bit.

20:35And in the last two months alone, we have listened. We listened to him on the New York Times app to new stories about Pompeii, like journalism and science. Number one, they found out that like people move back into Pompeii afterwards. words. So like, if there's like a three story building, well, the first two floors filled up with ash. And then they found like evidence of people living there, you know, several hundred years later, because like, well, now the third floor is now the ground floor and they just live there. And you're just like, oh, okay. Like, yeah, this, this piece of territory doesn't cease to exist immediately.

21:12It gets slowly, you know, slowly lost to the elements, not immediately, like in a snap, right? It's this process. And so we're listening to that and we're like, wow, they just figured this out. This is a new. And then the other one was I was just reading like two weeks ago is like they excavated this group of bodies and they're wearing like heavy woolen clothing. And they're like, OK, but this supposedly happened like in the middle of the summer. Why would they be wearing this? And now it's throwing into doubt our whole understanding of when it might have happened, which is largely based on Pliny or Pliny's letters.

21:50That's when we think it happened. You're reading this article and these historians are like, okay, so it could be that we have no idea when this happened. Our date is wrong. It could also be that these people just couldn't have afforded any other clothes and wool was much more accessible than cotton for your average Roman or whatever. And just the point that they're still, the story is changing and evolving even now. Like every time I think, okay, I do not need to read any more books about the American Civil War. I'll get a new one and I'll be like, this is insane. How is there more here? But the amazing thing about history is there is always more.

22:32I think the point is it's not a passive thing. Even though you're just listening, even if your kids are listening to the podcast or you're reading a book, to me, the real joy too in the study of history is when you know enough about a topic to disagree with the author, like, or to go like, but what about this? Or, but I heard this one time. That's when it really starts to come alive.

23:05And, you know, I opened this podcast with something from Doris Kearns Goodwin, who's one of our great living historians. Well, just a couple of years ago, we lost one of our other great historians, David McCullough. I've raved about his Truman book. I've raved about his Wright Brothers book. I've raved about his John Adams book, his Theodore Roosevelt book. Listen to this passage from him. He has this lovely little book I just read called History Matters. In the opening chapter, this is what he has to say. He says, what history teaches, it mainly teaches by example. It inspires courage and tolerance.

23:40It encourages a sense of humor. It is an aid to navigation in perilous times. We are living now in an era of momentous change, he said, of huge transitions in all aspects of life, nationwide and worldwide. And this creates great pressures and tensions. But history shows that times of change are the times when we are most likely to learn. This nation was founded on change. We should embrace the possibilities in these exciting times and hold to a steady course because we have a sense of navigation, a sense of what we've been through in times past and who we are. That's exactly, exactly it. And actually, I said something similar when I was in San Diego a couple of weeks ago, talking about how we have always lived in stressful and strange times.

24:36This is what I said. And by the way, I'm going to be in Phoenix next week, I think the 27th or so. I don't know. I'll put the exact date, but I'm going to be in Phoenix at the end of the month. You can come see me. But this is what I said. feels like a lot of our problems are very modern very new very unprecedented whether we're talking about ai or we're talking about social media or we're talking about what happened what's happening in the news it feels new feels like this hasn't happened before and that of course would be news to the ancients who experienced so many of the same things i think it's worth remembering in times like these, as the saying goes, that there have always been times like these.

25:23The people in the past didn't know they were living in the past, right? They lived in what was then one of the most advanced times in human history. They thought they lived on the cutting edge of things. And they were dealing with political dysfunction, technological disruption, change, decline, the falling apart of the old ways of doing things. They were experiencing all the things that we're experiencing now. I mean, think about someone like Socrates. Okay, so Socrates lives through a great power conflict between Athens and Sparta, which, by the way, his country loses. Then he lives through something known as the rule of the 30 tyrants.

26:04That sounds bad. Then the democracy doesn't go so well for Socrates either. Cato lives through what they believed then was the end of Rome's Mos Maorum, or its old ways. He sees the rise of Julius Caesar. He sees the fall of the Republic. Seneca and Epictetus, they're two men on very different ends of the sociological spectrum, and yet they both experience exile and then they both experience the deranged reign of Nero. Marcus Aurelius, there's this ancient historian who lives basically right after Marcus Aurelius and he says that Marcus doesn't have the good fortune that he deserves because his whole reign is involved in a series of troubles.

26:51And Marcus probably would have found this to be a preposterous understatement. He lives through a flood, he lives through famine, He lives through a plague. He lives through wars, foreign and domestic. It's one thing after another, but it's one enormous crisis and tragedy after another. And then he has personal issues and health issues and family issues. And then on top of that, he talks repeatedly in meditations about how fast the world seemed like it was going, that it was spinning faster and faster and faster. He has this handful of passages about change, which I think are interesting because they seem like they could be written today.

27:31He says,

28:01Right here, the infinity of past and future gapes before us, a chasm whose depths we cannot see. But then this is my favorite part. He says, so then it would take an idiot to feel self-importance or distress as if the things that irritate us lasted. I'll give you a couple more. Some things are rushing into existence and others are out of it. Some of what now exists is already gone. Change and flux constantly remake the world, just as the incessant progression of time remakes eternity. And this is my favorite. He says, so you're frightened of change, but what can exist without it? And so the point is the world was moving very quickly.

28:40It seemed like things were falling apart. It seemed like things were changing. And they were. But what you realize when you study the past is how changeless it is, even for all, the change. So what I thought we could talk about tonight is like, given everything that's happening in the world, what do we turn to? What can guide us? What can help point us in the right direction? We know that the ancients turned to ancient philosophy. And that's another thing you realize about the past is that Stoicism was an ancient philosophy to Marcus Aurelius too. It was 500 years old by the time he gets to it.

29:19So people have been turning to these ideas that we're going to talk about tonight for thousands and thousands of years.

29:30So anyways, come see me in Phoenix. And thanks to Kenny for joining me on this topic. History Snacks is Kenny's new podcast. It's easily digestible bite-sized pieces of history. It's for kids and all ages. I love listening to Greeking Out with my kids, so we're very excited. And it just launched on the 18th. And so we're excited for the new episode on the Byzantine Empire, medieval heists, lost explorers, cursed objects, epic royal sibling rivalries, and the fall of Rome. Start here or start with Greeking Out, but you'll love it. And I'll link to my full episode with Kenny back when he was on last year.

30:05Anyways, I hope this case for history resonated with you. I hope you dig a little deeper. Maybe pick up a great biography, listen to some history podcasts, but understand the present through the lens of the past. That's what we're after here. I hope you're liking this new format of Daily Stoic episodes as well.

30:27Thanks 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.