The Daily Stoic

But then when I read Talking with Strangers last year, I read it actually before last year, I read it when I was on my book tour for Stillness is the Key. I remember I shot him an email and I said Malcolm, this book is like the definition of mastery. It's like watching a master at work. He took this subject matter that should have been so difficult and frankly not interesting and it's fascinating.

I think I messaged you this when I read Talking With Strangers and it just felt like this was watching a master at work.

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.

I found her book to be absolutely fascinating. Good for a Girl, a woman running in a man's world.

Check out the new book Good for a Girl, A Woman Running in a Man's World. I think a must read for any female athletes out there, anyone who coaches athletes and anyone, everyone else.

And his new book, I would argue, is a much more interesting subject matter than any of the other books. The Bombing Campaign, the Final Days of the Second World War in the Pacific Theater and again manages to find a very counterintuitive read on it.

So today my guest is the one and only Malcolm Gladwell, the tipping point, Blink, Outliers, David and Goliath talking with strangers and now his new book, The Bomber Mafia.

I love this episode. I loved talking to Malcolm Gladwell.

I thought the new book was fascinating.

Well, what's the title of Mary Trump's book?

And for people who don't know the title of that book, it's Too Much and Never Enough, right?

Epictetus offered a powerful tool in his handbook, the Incaridion, which the Stoics use as an exercise in decision-making about difficult events.

This is from Epictetus' In Caridian. Every event has two handles, one by which it can be carried and one by which it can't.

If your brother does you wrong, don't grab it by his wrongdoing because this is the handle incapable of lifting it. Instead, use the other, that he is your brother, that you were raised together and then you will have hold of the handle it carries.

Then one day this very quote from Epictetus about everything having two handles occurred to him.

He says, it's not impossible that some of these people in SUVs have been in horrible auto accidents in the past and now find driving so traumatic that their therapist has all but ordered them to get a huge heavy SUV so that they can feel safe enough to drive or that the Hummer that just cut me off is maybe being driven by a father whose little child is hurt or sick in the seat next to him and he's trying to rush to the hospital.

I read Richard Dawkins when I was 18, 19 years old and found it fascinating and persuasive. I read The God Delusion.

Then I just read his new book, The Genetic Book of the Dead, which is absolutely fascinating.

It's basically how humans have progressed and evolved how we're all books of the dead which to me is actually a fascinating Stoic concept.

have you read The Art of Loving and not to bring up Eric from again

it's like as small or sort of a less like academic book that he wrote um we talked about love as an art rather than like a a fleeting feeling or some like electric thing

I mean relentless was was one book that just rang real true to me, you know and I think it's just a constant evolution of learning like we're going to learn until the day we die and there's people who have the growth mindsets and the people who have the fixed mindsets and I've always just been someone who wants to constantly grow and learn and I don't have all the answers nor do many other people but if you can constantly fill yourself with positivity and you know stories of people failing and getting back up again that is what resonates with me.

This new book is great, I read it, I really enjoyed it, we talked about that in the interview.

We also talked about his book, The Language Instinct, his book The Blank Slate and most famously and most provocatively and more recent, his book Better Angels is about the decline of violence and the progress we've made as a species.

He's a two-time fueled surprise finalist, one of times most hundred influential people in the world, foreign policies, 100 global thinkers sold a bazillion books.

His book Better Angels is about the decline of violence and the progress we've made as a species.

Well, it is an example of the my side bias which is one of the most pervasive of all of the cognitive biases.

The one is, well how can you say things are declined bad stuff happens? Yeah, but those are totally compatible, namely bad stuff happens but in the past even more bad stuff happened. That is it's the decline is not the same as a disappearance to say that X is less than Y is not the same as saying that X is zero so there's that.

It doesn't mean that every improvement was conceptualized and argued for in the better angels I talked about, for example the decline of tribal reading and feuding and blood feuds, the decline of medieval brigandage and homicide and deaths from jousting and other conflicts along medieval nights.

And the idea to me, what was so underrated about Emerson is his generosity, not just these financially supporting Thoreau and all these other people. But like when he found something he liked, he celebrated it.

He wasn't territorial. He wasn't egotistical. It wasn't about only himself.

But like when he found great work, he supported it and encouraged it. And like we might not get Whitman if it's not for Emerson's like sort of blurb on the cover.

So Emerson was this great supporter of other people. You know, they in sports, they talk about like a coaching tree. Do you know what that is?

And Emerson has an incredible coaching tree, not just through his work, but but literally, you know, Melville and Hawthorne and Whitman and Alcott. All all these great writers descend from not just Emerson intellectually, but like physically.

He gave them a place to live. He published them, he encouraged them.

And and I think that generosity of spirit and that that that openness was was one of his defining bits of greatness.

He goes, I greet you at the beginning of a grand career.

Or Whitman came to him and said, how can I make this Leaves of Grass a best seller? He said, well, take out the songs of Adam part, take out the homoerotic parts.