The Daily Stoic

This is my interview with Tim Egan. It's a great one.

It just came out yesterday on April 4th, and it's a fascinating book.

It's a good way to understand some of the extreme feelings that are going on, the backlash, the resentment, this idea of white supremacy.

The main character of this book is a monster okay. He's a rapist. He's a cannibal. I mean he's a woman. He's an outroaging alcoholic. He's a fraud. He's a con man. He's a liar. He's a braggart. He's a millionaire.

I did not sell the clan in Indiana on hatred. I sold it on Americanism.

Maybe what you need to know about this book is the Wall Street Journal said that it quotes Marcus Aurelius too much.

I think the original title of the book was something about politeness.

What happens when civility collapses? What happens when norms are shattered? What happens when no people don't behave like philosophers?

And that's really the wellspring of true civility and it's like a very stoical insight like you know we're so inclined it's part of the human condition to point fingers and blame and to be focusing on what other people should be doing differently. And yet he inverts that and he says you know only focus on you. I forgive the shortcomings of others and avoid falling short yourself which is a high standard one that I fall short of all the time.

I'm talking about Rameet Setti who wrote this great book. I Will Teach You to Be Rich no guilt, no excuses, no BS just a six-week program that works.

I wish he updated just a couple of years ago.

I don't just want to get to the end of my life and find that I have just lived the length of it. I want to have lived the width of it as well.

Her new book, The Urgent Life, My Story of Love, Lost and Survival was released back in late February. And it's about the loss of her husband, a loss of child. And the lessons that came out of that, what she calls The Urgent Life, her version of sort of what comes out of Memento Mori.

It's a beautiful book. We have a great conversation.

Her new book The Urgent Life, My Story of Love, Lost and Survival is just a beautiful, haunting eye-opening book.

I reread one of my favorite novels a couple months ago. This is book Bright Lights, Big City.

He shows up and everyone sort of looks at him. And he said he felt in this moment that he was behind and that it struck him right then that he would never catch up.

And I think that to me is such a quintessential, that's like inner child slash shadow, that you just have this idea that you're behind and that everyone else is feeling this other way and that you're sort of constant.

In his fascinating new book on Canadian wildfires, John Volant, if you haven't read his book, The Tiger, You Must, he explains that fire is the principal mechanism by which the boreal forest purges and regenerates itself to the point that the cones of several keystone conifer species, including the black spruce, will not drop their seeds unless they are heated to temperatures unachievable by sunlight alone.

I listened to the Michelle Obama audiobook of Becoming and there were so many words I was like oh is that how you say that like I always said indie fatigable and learned it was like indie fatigable or something

Her new book Beyond Disruption, Innovate and Achieve Growth without displace in industries companies or jobs came out on May 2nd.

Check out Beyond Disruption.

It's a fascinating book, my wife loved it because she's really into crossword puzzles and as we talk about in today's episode I happen to not really be that into crossword puzzles but to each their own

It chronicles his journey to understand the enduring power of puzzles while we love them, but they do to our brains how they can improve the world and as it happens we end with a fascinating memento mori puzzle that he set up.

You can check out AJ's new book The Puzzler One Man's Quest to solve the most baffling puzzles ever from crosswords to jigsaws to the meaning of life.

I was the answer to one down in the New York Times crossword puzzle

I teamed up with this designer a Dutch puzzle designer he's crazy and he makes these their mechanical puzzles like where you twist things and Rubik's you he and I designed what's called the Jacobs Tower

I want you to read Nate Silver's new book, On the Edge, The Art of Risking Everything.

So look, this kind of a rambling introduction, I understand, and I'm sure my editor will have cleaned up some of it by the time you get to it. These are all things that I have been thinking a lot about. Like I literally have this stack of note cards here on my desk. Life is risk, I wrote. There is one in every decision. There is risks to questioning, right? To curiosity, right? It kills the cat. Ultimately, there is no learning without risk. I wrote, it killed the cat again. So clearly I wanted to do that. The point is I've been thinking a lot about the themes of this book, so I was very excited to have it.

His new book On the Edge, The Art of Risking Everything is incredible.

if listeners didn't want to go straight into the magnum opus on Robert on Robert Moses his book on right is it writing? I think it's all Working Working yes and I just found that I mean it's sort of a summary I guess almost an abstract of everything he's done and it's just so brilliant

When I saw that Professor Gelsow had written this new book Robert E. Lee a life which came out in September I rushed out to read it and I rushed to have him on the podcast.

it's a great book and I think you'll enjoy it.

I didn't understand in college and now I'm starting to understand. And I haven't not finished the whole book, but I've read parts of it all over is the Fountainhead.

His 2019 book, The Uninhabitable Earth Life After Warming was a number one bestseller. It was, as one reviewer said, one of the most terrifying books you will ever read The Washington Post called it The Silent Spring of Our Time.

His books include Sex, Drugs, and Coco Puffs; but what if we're wrong?; and Chuck Klosterman X, two novels Downtown Owl and the visible man.

there's a center code I love he says we don't choose our parents but we choose whose children we would like to be right