The Daily Stoic

Outlive the science and art of longevity is a massive bestseller for very good reason i saw Oprah was raving about it among many other people I think you got to check him out he's just a great dude

he spends a good chunk of the last part of the book about so that's where I go in this interview

I just didn't see a way to do this any other way I didn't I didn't see a way to write about this and not include that awful example

20 years of life extension to a miserable person whether they realize it or not is torture I mean it's a curse

if you haven't figured out these other things it's not only not a blessing it's a curse

his books come out recently and just absolutely crushed out live the science and art of longevity is a massive bestseller for very good reason i saw opera was raving about it among many other people.

check out the new book out live the science in art.

I think the biggest problem I had in 2018 2019 was the tension that existed internally between two things on the one hand there was the understanding that a book about longevity and I always wanted this to be the most comprehensive book on longevity.

I think you gotta build these buckets and really narrow it down because that musician that's a drummer right even he didn't go out and say I'm going to practice the entire song when he practice or she practices right here she's going to practice some right specific something that it takes to play drums it's not gonna be okay I'm gonna just practice the entire song it might be this particular at this particular transition I struggle with no matter the song and I'm really going to work on it things like that so I think you we have to do that and it takes and stillness is the key I remember I was reading about Pete Carroll he was saying one year he made the coaches watch film of themselves on the sideline like they had to break down film of their coaching and how deeply uncomfortable that was for everyone because they were so used to dissecting every tiny movement or mistake of the players and then all of a sudden that scrutiny was applied to themselves and it was very unpleasant and surprising but that's kind of what we have to do is you have to put yourself up for review if you want to get better it's interesting I'm like because I know what I'm really accountable for is a GM like I really won't to self-assess I really won't good constructive critics it's accountable and mean something but it's interesting similar to the it just made me think on the coaching part which is a brilliant idea but like I hate listening to myself so I would never listen to this podcast so I don't know whether I'm good or bad but it would just but my wife always tells me okay if you wanted to get better at being a podcast guest you need to listen to yourself no matter how like and I would hear myself mumbling or rambling and going holy cow I've talked too long and Ryan's giving me every bit of body language to shut up this is a podcast I don't want anybody to cut this off right and I still didn't listen to your body but when I saw it at my hitting replay I would go it would make me feel so uncomfortable that would probably become a better podcast guest no I'm the same way actually like when I when I spoke at the NFL owners meeting where you were there that's pressuring I asked them for the recording of it and I was like I'm gonna watch this and see what I could do better and of course I could it's too uncomfortable but I do find you can just ask people who you trust you can be like look I always try to go like give me some feedback but no positive feedback like tell me what's not working like when I give someone a draft of my book for notes I say you know like what's the worst part of this like what do you hate what do I need to get rid of I try to just I try to get that that feedback by asking for I can't imagine if I were charged to do a TED talk like I would probably spend two years I would probably go back to waking up at 4am going to bed at 11am just to practice on but I'm not sure that would make you better I think then you'd be all exhausted and burnt out and you'd be in your own head about it so that shows you how hard it is to right live the the simple panic rules revert back to what we knew but what we knew wasn't necessarily wise last last question what are you reading you're a big reader are you reading anything good you remember when I visited you at training camp you had a big sack of the books you're reading the one I am I finished this summer uh Annie Duke Angela Duckworth had recommended Super Forecasters yep right and and they and that whole pin group brilliant people that's in the decision making and psychology decision making but I had never read it so it's a little bit older book but there's an element of what we do in especially in player personnel right decisions where you have these large staffs and right we're all we have these independent opinions and trying to right have you read Fooled by Randomness I have not I have heard but what I end up doing run like I'm the opposite of some people I end up reading a book and then I really want to now study it and make sure I know every now and then I'll read something just to go can need to get away and I read and I but I have it's interesting I had to tell my brain this is a book that I'm not taking notes this is a book I'm just going to digest right and enjoy and it's going to take me away and I'm sure I'm going to remember a nugget here there and then there's some books that I go okay I want someone recommended this one just like the one you just did and go okay how do I need to read that when I need to study it and now now review it and then review it again so it my man my wife Kara can like read if she gets everything right yes you need four or five books a week if she gets into it and she can give me the cliff notes and then passes but she passes books to me mine stack up and it would take me a lifetime to read so it took me two summers I just finished this summer reading for the first time because I didn't read it young Atlas shrugged yeah so I mean I mean it's your thousand something pages into a pretty what did you think you know what well this is a controversial right you know what I thought and I thought she was brilliant it was very interesting sociology being from Russia yeah to now probably United States and some of those whether you are all in on her ideology or not what was interesting is I thought she was brilliant into right getting her ideology across and like all ideologies I'm never going to fall on the sword for all of it right but what I try to do in books like that that are right deep and meaningful is okay if I were all in these are the positives if I were all against these are the negatives kind of look at those and see in reality right which ones blended together you know or working or not working so like everything right there's there's probably some thumbs up parts in it and there's maybe some thumbs down parts like I don't know if that could really work but no it's it's what I think about Atlas shrugged is it's very interesting and it's impressive that she was able to make it interesting yet but it's it's also at my I read it when I was 19 or 20 and I think a lot of young men read it at that age and it feels good then as you get older I think you go this is kind of childish like you're like oh you don't appreciate me and my talents you don't love me for all my contributions to society so I'm going to take my ball and I'm going to go to my gulch you know in the middle of wherever and there only around my fellow brilliant people will I be appreciated I my thing is like what would the world look like if people did that it would be horrible so that my my ultimate takeaway on on Atlas shrugged is that it's it's immature does that make sense yes definitely I mean there's we could talk all day you know on that right but going back to the technique of the book I started it when when the quarantine kind of hit and I'm like there's no better time to read if I'm going to read Atlas shrugged than maybe now yeah so I started it last summer I'm a slow reader and this is dense and and then I came back and finished it this summer but what was fascinating is for her to set up all those characters and it I guess it was interesting enough for me to stay with it but it but then in the second half when she when it really went to rolling and there was action and now the people are preaching the ideology and you're figuring it all out you're like how did I get through that first part where she like like I really know Dagny now I mean I feel like Dagny's my sister like I know her and but it took a long time to get to know her which I don't know if you could pull off a book that dense and let's call it modern Gen Z millennial that's right ADD times I that's what I kept going back to could this book be successful today I now know it's it's an you're an author you could extraordinarily difficult and you think it's the book is basically like a series of like 20 page speeches it's like character 20 page page 20 page 20 and you're like when you finish it you're like this shouldn't have worked but somehow it did so artistically it's a feat of genius philosophically it's sort of like the joke about an iron Rand is that her thing is about the virtue of selfishness right I think it's who said do you really find that people have trouble with that you know like if you ever met anyone who wasn't selfish enough like and I think I think that's where it falls short is it's sort of addressing a problem that doesn't actually exist no doubt less this is amazing I can't wait to see you again soon and and yeah we'll do this again looking looking forward to I enjoyed it talk soon talk soon Hey it's Ryan if you want to take your study of stoicism to the next level I want to invite you to join us over at daily stoic life we have daily conversations about podcast episodes about the daily email we actually do a special weekend set of emails for everyone you get all our daily stoic courses and challenges totally for free that's hundreds of dollars of value every single year including our new year new you challenge which we're going to launch in January you get a special cloth bound edition of the best of meditations that we've done you get a bunch of cool stuff it's an awesome community I've loved being a part of it I've loved getting to meet everyone who's trying to take their study of stoicism to the next level love to have you join us check us out at daily stoic life dot com we'd love to have you and join us on this digital stoa that we that we've staked out together and get better every day if you like the daily stoic and thanks for listening you can listen early and add free right now by joining wonder e plus in the wonder e app or on apple podcasts prime members can listen ad free on Amazon music before you go would you tell us about yourself by filling out a short survey on wonder e dot com slash survey

and I think the math can tell you that I think really good coaches can present that to their players in a very emotional state to go okay we've missed six straight but we're about to hit 14 the math says it and we're going to go on a run and their leads going to dissipate and it's going to get back to normal and then we got to go do what we got to do but the coaches can take right that complexity pull it down into something simple and actually believable in a moment when there's a lot of doubt right in the room

I remember i read a study i Paul tough wrote this book i think it's called uh How Children Succeed um and he was talking about you know the marshmallow tests right they do the marshmallow test to predict whether children can be successful do they have the ability to uh delay gratification but he was saying that one of the problems with let's say a lower income child who has been burned by the system where people you know they've had a hard life when somebody comes in and sits in a room and says uh hey i'll give you one marshmallow now yeah but i'll come back later and give you two marshmallows if you don't eat the marshmallow yeah they're like i don't trust this motherfucker give me the marshmallow now it's not even smart it's not even prudent i mean yes they're just they're just uh aware they're they're predicting properly whether they'll they'll be treated well if they if they restrain from the restrain themselves from the marshmallow

Didn't he have the book about nagging?

I follow him on Instagram. Oh yeah, he's doing better now.

He wrote the biggest book ever, the pickup artist game.

I just got attracted to seekers like you and and I I wanted to read the things that you guys read

And over there is the Tao Te Ching.

I just had the book that probably inspired me the most is the doubty jang Lao two sure and also to 3000 years old I believe and it was the no one really knows but what we believe the story is or at least one of the stories of why the book exists is the old man Lao two was leaving town and a person uh believe who was a guard at the on the outskirts of town said well if you're gonna leave can you like tell me what to do like you were like he's the wise man and he wrote these 81 things just for this one person and that has again I don't know if that's true story we don't know 3000 years ago but it was just a off-handed this is what I know for one person and it after the bible it's the most uh the most published book in the world it's like if you would ask him to put down the one thing he was gonna leave to posterity to summarize all of his beliefs um first up the task probably would have been paralyzing it would have been uh or it would have taken years and years but yeah if that story is true offhandedly doing it for a stranger you know in a few minutes or whatever before you are on your way there's probably something that almost sounds like uh one of the exercises that you have towards the end of the book like hey put everything you know down in in one quick thing but you only have uh 81 spots or whatever

She talked about one of the things that she learned from her former boss the Supreme Court's first female justice Sandra Day O'Connor shortly after Gretchen published the happiness project she asked O'Connor who she'd clerked for what was the secret to happiness.

read all of Gretchen's many great books she's awesome.

You may know her for her many other wonderful books The Happiness Projects which will knowings of copies

There's actually a great chapter in Morgan Hells' new book, Same as Ever, called The Best Story Wins, and I think he's absolutely right.

He does that very well in the new book, Same as Ever,

And his new book, Same as Ever, is actually published by my publisher Portfolio, which is an imprint of Penguin Random House.

It's been off to an incredible start also.

He signed a bunch of them in the bookstore.

i think about um micha luis and The Big Short which is one of the greatest nonfiction books of all time but also a massive hit uh sort of conscious you know consciousness changing book uh you know like chain it you don't write a book about a financial crisis that gets read by millions of people and then turn into a huge movie

But you could also argue that sort of his, his development as a writer perfectly intersects with the financial crisis in 2007, 2008. And you get The Big Short.

So there's also this, I think element of you stay in the profession as long as you can, you work on the skills. And then you're also hoping that you kind of, you meet your moment that you, that your skills become perfectly suited for some future moment that you really can't even anticipate yet. And that's where really great profound work comes from.

I think what's great about The Big Short is not that it's sold extremely well and then got turned into this great movie.

Have you ever read that Jonathan hate book The Righteous Mind?

His new book, Soul Boom: Why We Need a Spiritual Revolution, is all about precisely that.

This new book is actually quite good, Soul Boom: Why We Need a Spiritual Revolution.

it was a Globe and Mail bestseller, a Publisher's Weekly bestseller, and a New York Times bestseller and like I said, it's great

I'm going to read from the second greatest book next to the Bhagavad Gita and next to the Daily Stoic, Soul Boom...

It's got some legit books. It has a blurb from David Bentley Hart who's this great theologian and translator who's work on the Bible I read, who's translation of the New Testament I really enjoyed.

So that might be a little weird. I imagine for you, you look like the guy, you look like someone who grew up watching the office.

It took me the entirety of COVID three, three and a half years of working on it.

It's about 300 pages. I tried to make it as accessible as possible, funny with some jokes and levity and kind of really accessible metaphors and examples of what I'm talking about.

If I get hit by a bus tomorrow in case anyone ever and that's probably like three dozen people want to know what the guy who played Dwight thought about life and God and the soul and the meaning and service and love. It's all here in the book.

But there was an Anne Frank like a magazine, like an issue dedicated to Anne Frank who is a character in Stillness is the key, who I read a lot about as I was writing the book and someone who's profoundly brave and wise beyond their years person.

Why is there this magazine to her? I mean she'd be like in her, she and Martin Luther King were born almost the same year so she'd be quite old but still alive today. Quite reasonably potentially. She very well could be alive today but she's not, she's been dead for a very long time and why has she had the impact that she's had? It's not because she was a victim. That was a thing that happened to her but what she affected, who she was, what she did was all in the pages of this little journal and I tell that story in Stillness is the key which this episode is excerpting so you can listen to that and it's actually a really moving biography of Anne Frank that we carry in the painting porch all into that in today's show notes

she says paper is more patient than people instead of vomiting your thoughts on your employees on your friends on your co-workers on the driver in front of you who's taking forever um put it on the page the page is forgiving and patient it keeps secrets doesn't care doesn't care if you're contradicting yourself it doesn't care if you're being uh a baby it doesn't care if you're whining just put it down on the page the page will help

Then he came up with this thing called Soul Pancake which is this really interesting YouTube channel that makes these sort of philosophy videos and spirituality videos.

I think I first, obviously he came out with a memoir many years ago right around the time the office was blowing up called The Bassoon King, my life in art, faith and idiocy.

I was interviewing Charles Duhigg who wrote this book, Super Communicators, and he was saying he knows when he asks a question and the person has a quick answer or an answer that is prepared, that he's not asked a new question.

Then he wrote this new book, Super Communicators, How to Unlock the Secret Language of Connection.

And she kept going like multiple times throughout the last month and a half, having been reading this book, Super Communicators.

She is normally not interested in any of the guests on the podcast at all let alone reading the books and she keeps like I would say at least five times she was like so it's reading in this super communicator.

I think it's a great book.

We do have signed copies of The Power of Habit and Super Communicators in the painted porch.

I remember I first read The Tipping Point, that I read Blink, then Outliers, most recently his book, then David and Goliath, which is also very good.

but like when i read Frederick Douglass' story or Malcolm X's story i much more relate to that coming of age story than i do hold in coffee old who seems like a little bitch to me basically uh like hold it like a rich kid going to private school you know like uh i had no conception of what that experience was but then this other person who you wouldn't so by increasing the representation some people are maybe reading Frederick Douglass and going he looks like me i'm empowered by that but also by making things diverse you're matching experiences between people who maybe on the surface don't look or seem alike at all

If you read Walter Isaacson's fascinating and often horrifying biography of Elon, you get the sense that he simply cannot be at peace and instead chooses the storm, chooses chaos and violence because it's less scary to him than being with his own thoughts or even enjoying his own success.

I got the new Walter Isaacson Elon Musk book which I burned through

It's a history, a crisis and a plan. It's about arguably our most important right, our ability to vote to decide who represents us and our representative government which has been under siege not since the Supreme Court decision in Shelby County versus Holder which gutted the 1965 voting rights act but you could argue that the right to vote has been in peril literally since America founded.

That's really kind of the point of the book. There are crises that we have faced in the past and we've met those crises because people decided that they were going to commit themselves, sacrifice put their lives on the line and make this country better protect democracy.

And I think we can do it, we can do it again.

Sammy just worked on this book...with Attorney General Eric Holder and that book are unfinished March the violent past and imperiled future of the vote is a fascinating look at the fight for voter rights in America arguably the most important right that we have.

And I really wanted to have this conversation with Sammy not just because the book is great and the issues it talks about are important but I'm interested in young people who are doing things.

I start you know looking into the first third of the book which is the history of voting rights quickly changed my mindset on all these issues.

These people who are giving up and assuming we can't do anything. New compare it to the agency of the folks at the beginning of our country and it's not even close.

And so you look at in those moments how those people channels courage and decided to not give up and maintain some sense of agency and autonomy. And then you'll look at us now and we have absolutely no excuse.

It's funny, today's guest, his book starts with something very similar.

And it's true. Like I think about this, I know authors have decided to start companies that don't really matter or they sort of go down, they're like, I don't, why, why write another book?

That's actually something I talk about in the Justice book, which by the way, you can pre-order now at dailystoic.com.

So I'm really excited that he wrote this new book, The Way of the Champion pain persistence in the path forward.

It was published by my publisher portfolio. I was really excited. I introduced Paul and them and I did, I did some work on this book because I wanted Paul to bring his unique way of thinking about sports to, to, to other, other domains. And I think he did a great little book here.

He actually wrote the forward to Paul's new book, The Way of the Champion Pain, Persistence and the Path Forward, which I was lucky enough to help bring into existence.

It's an awesome book and Paul came out, he was in town for a friend's wedding a couple of weeks ago and he stopped by the studio and we talked for two hours.

Check out the way of champion pain, persistence in the path forward

grab it now

And as it happens the second habit in the seven habits of highly effective people is begin with an end in mind having an end in mind is no guarantee that you'll reach it no stoic would tolerate that assumption but not having an end in mind is a guarantee that you won't

It almost feels like I was a little kid when I first saw The Perfect Storm.

but I highly commend the film. The most recent it's been made into a movie four times but the best of it I think is the relatively recent one simply called Bounty and it's absolutely terrific couple of riveting performances and it really explores the character of William Bligh which was one of the most complicated to say the least.