The Daily Stoic

but there's a look in the last two years I recommended an email list but it really does not get better than uh than Frederick Douglass's memoirs I think it's uh my free my bondage and my freedom one of the great American texts uh one of the great memoirs of all time just uh just an absolute uh incredible book that I would very much recommend

he wrote an incredible book which is called Fortune at Sun

book came out pulling surprise winner

It is extraordinarily exciting to finally see this project done. It was many, as you know, many years in the making.

I knew when she was a toddler, I read a number of news reports about vast disparities in reading achievement among black students and white students, lower socioeconomic students and higher socioeconomic students. And it really just bothered me.

a book is not a string of articles it's its own entity, its own dynamics

In making a clear statement of what I believe on a subject as a journalist there can be a lot of well some people say this and some people say this and they're a mere so this argument and merits to that argument and this sort of attempt at being objective so in a lot of these points I had to really go round and round with myself to say well what do you think my your name is on the cover of this book

an amazing book for perhaps the most important job parents have, getting our kids to love to read

that was when I read their eyes are watching God I already know her said who I later named my daughter after

there's a story i think it was john harbaugh was telling about his father jack carva and and then i guess every day as he would drop their kids off to school he would say some weird expression about like attack the day and don't take any plug nickels or some weird expression and um you know he'd said it every day for like 20 years and his kid 10 years and his kids never acknowledged it rolled their eyes every time and you know he forgets about it and on you know the the the first day his son becomes head coach maybe it was at stanford or whatever I forget where it was but the first day his son gives a press conference for this new job he says that line he's like i'm gonna and and the sun doesn't even remember where he gets it from the dad rings you know so so you you never know what you're kind of plugging into the subconscious either

check out teaming your temper the 10-day stowed guide to controlling your anger can just go to dailystoward.com slash anger

75% of venture capital goes to just three states and the other 47 states are fighting over the remaining 25%

I do think the pandemic...will have...a tipping point because it led...a lot of people to rethink how they want to work and where they want to live...

For many people in many parts of the country for a relaxed two or three decades there was a big brain drain, people leaving those places...

Most people when they come to town...they're actually quite surprised almost shocked about how much is happening in terms of the startup sector...

It's a more optimistic story of America...people will be shocked about how many places are really seeing thriving startup communities develop...

On Thursdays we do double duty, not just reading our daily meditation but also reading a passage from the book The Daily Stoic, 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance in the Art of Living which I wrote with my wonderful co-author and collaborator, Stephen Hanselman.

It's a conversation I very much want to have

Stephen Pressfield recommended it

his new book Action the art of excitement for the screen page and game is all primarily about Action stories and I would argue there really is no good story without Action

In the first chapter of my Action book I take the reader through the genres.

the Action genre is the most popular storytelling form and in mixes there's Action war Action crime Action love stories in fact Action of all kinds that mixed with various other stories and so the Action line is some very complex book

His latest book is really interesting, Wild Problems: A Guide to the Decisions That Define Us, and it looks at the big life-changing decisions--whether to marry, whether to have children, what career path to follow--and when we can't rely on sheer rationality or data to support us, and this lens of human flourishing in a life well-lived are important philosophical organizing principles that I'm excited to bring to you in this interview.

The book was released in August 2022...

I learned a lesson I read in a book called The Hard-boiled Wonderland and the End of the World; it's a great book by David White, I recommend it.

Path Lit by Lightning: The Life of Jim Thorpe is an epic biography of what is perhaps America's greatest all-around athlete.

I loved the opening scene. I forget who wrote it but they were talking about how they they were interviewing some like 90-year-old marathon runner and all the 90-year-old marathon runner wanted to talk about was how they'd met Jim Thorpe as a young person and to me it brings home something that we often miss on these stories which is that they feel very distant to us but they still exist almost in living memory.

The injustices and the unbelievable athletic achievements of a man born in the late 1880s like it's effectively still with us.

So I kept rooting for him for something better to happen but you know some of it was you know his own human flaws you know he had trouble drinking and he wasn't home much and the first two wives divorced him because of that and his drinking and he didn't see his seven children as much as as I would have you know liked or they would have liked that's more important during their childhoods but he kept persevering he kept trying no matter what obstacles were in his way and I came to admire that but you're right I mean he wanted more than anything well I'd say two things he wanted to be a college football coach you know we got that chance once for one season with Indiana University then the head coach was fired and that was the end of that and he wanted to somehow set up some kind of a hunting lodge or fishing lodge because he loved to hunt and fish more than anything else and that never quite happened either and you know their points in his life or his writing letters and it's it's almost like Willie Lohman you know he keeps thinking that something good is going to happen there these opportunities are going to open up in Florida or Cuba or somewhere you know in Nevada and they never do.

He was also a Pulitzer finalist three other times, including for one of his books, They Marched Into Sunlight.