July 19, 2025 • 56 mins
The word stoic has taken on its own meaning apart from the philosophical movement which gave it life. In this classic episode, learn all about the early stoics, what the philosophy is all about and where the movement stands today.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi, everybody. I'm feeling very stoic today, so we're going
to use what exactly is Stoicism as our weekly select selection.
This one was released in July July fourth in Fact
twenty seventeen. What a great for the July topic. Learn
all about stoicism right here, right now. Welcome to Stuff
(00:28):
You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with
Charles W. Chuck Bryant guest producer. Noel's Jerry's been out
a lot lately, Chuck, have you noticed?
Speaker 1 (00:48):
No, No, I haven't heard it. Of course, Jerry's got
big life things going on. She does buying and selling houses.
She's like a real estate mogul.
Speaker 2 (00:58):
Visiting the mall of stuff.
Speaker 1 (01:02):
We're just a couple of deep thinkers hanging out on
the stoa.
Speaker 2 (01:08):
Yeah, specifically, what is it this soa? Did you practice
the word the pronunciation at all?
Speaker 1 (01:18):
I tried to pronounce a lot of this, but you
know ancient Greek, you know the phrase. It's all Greek
to me. Yeah, it comes from not being able to
pronounce these things.
Speaker 2 (01:29):
It's quite literal, the the stoa poikily. I think that's
probably pretty close, man.
Speaker 1 (01:39):
So can I start this with a couple of quick thoughts?
Speaker 2 (01:42):
Sure?
Speaker 1 (01:42):
First of all, I took a I took four different
philosophy quizzes before we recorded, like.
Speaker 2 (01:52):
What kind of philosophy do you subscribe to? Type quiz?
Speaker 1 (01:55):
Yeah, you know the ones that are super accurate, right,
because they can figure that out in eight to fifan questions.
Speaker 2 (02:00):
Sure, and then you can move on and find out
what muppet you are.
Speaker 1 (02:05):
So here's here's my result here. For the first one,
I was epicurean okay, the second one existentialism all right,
third one atheist existentialist huh. And the fourth Nietzsche slash stoic.
Speaker 2 (02:20):
Nietzsche was a huge critic of stoicism. I'm surprised they
put those two together.
Speaker 1 (02:24):
Well that that is chuck though.
Speaker 2 (02:26):
You know what I'm saying, Yeah, you're you're a contradiction
in terms, you're yin and yang.
Speaker 1 (02:32):
Well I am, and that The reason why I took
these is because when I was doing the research on stoicism,
I found me. I found myself a lot of times
going yep, yep totally, and then a lot of times
going no, that's really not me.
Speaker 2 (02:46):
Same here, same here, and I think even the Stoics
from back in the day realized that there were very few,
very very few actual what they called sages walking around
Stoics ages who really fulfilled every aspect of this to
a t. And I think that I think one of
(03:08):
the reasons why Stoicism today is making a comeback and
it's so appealing is because, well there's two reasons. One
more than kind of a navel gazing type philosophy where
you're trying to figure out the nature of existence or
something like that, it's more a blueprint for existing day
to day in a in a useful, happy way. And
(03:33):
then secondly, it's a you can kind of pick and choose.
It's almost like a buffet. You can pick and choose
what aspects of it you want to adopt or use,
and know, you know, Greek ghost is going to come
along and spear you in the face.
Speaker 1 (03:51):
With a trident, right punch. Yeah, And I think that's
I mean, first of all, the Age of Reason fascinates
me to no end, and second, I've kind of wanted
to cover some of the great philosophies of all time.
Speaker 2 (04:11):
This sounds like a good start, well it is, but.
Speaker 1 (04:13):
It's just kind of daunting, because people spend like that's
their life's work, you know, and for us to try
and summarize any of them in thirty to forty five
minutes is kind of like, you know, I don't know
what philosophy. You would liken that to foolishism, duncism. That's
what we do. You know, Well, how about this.
Speaker 2 (04:34):
If this one goes well, maybe we'll take it as
a sign that we can tackle some other ones. But
you're absolutely right, like even the even just like say
the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, which is meant you know,
it's sharp, and it's detailed, and it's exhaustive, but it's
also clearly meant for lay people interested in philosophy.
Speaker 1 (04:51):
Right.
Speaker 2 (04:52):
It's just this just stoicism is so involved that it's
not possible for us to like really capture all of it,
even get in an overview, you know, or giving it
just hitting the highlights. We can't possibly hit all the highlights.
There's just too much to it. And that's just stoicism.
I still say it's worth talking about though, just because
(05:14):
it's so interesting.
Speaker 1 (05:16):
So if I get up in the middle, you're gonna
pull me back. I'll just keep going well. I like
the Urban Dictionary definition stoic is someone who does not
give a peep about the stupid things in this world
that most people care so much about. Stoics do have emotions,
but only for the things in this world that really matter.
They are the most real people alive. And then in
(05:37):
their little example, as a group of kids sitting by
the porch, stoic walks by, one can says something very mean, Hey,
you're a blankety blank and you blank blank, and the
stoic says good for you and keeps going right. It's
a part of me really like I hear that, and
I'm like, man, I am so that person on so
many levels. But then sometimes I'm totally not, and I
(06:00):
think what the difference is or what matters is well,
it depends on if they say something that matters to you,
or if something does matter to you. Like I might
get really riled up about some.
Speaker 2 (06:13):
Stuff well that would make you not stoic, that.
Speaker 1 (06:16):
Doesn't rile anyone else up, But I also some things
that really make other people I rate. I'm just like man,
can't change it. It is what it is, and I
only can get upset about the things that can change.
Speaker 2 (06:28):
Yeah, if you could apply that to everything, you'd be
pretty high up there in the Stoic pantheon.
Speaker 1 (06:38):
That'd be a Stoic matt five star general.
Speaker 2 (06:41):
Pretty much five finger punch guy.
Speaker 1 (06:45):
All Right, so we beat around the bush. I mean,
that was a pretty good definition actually, even though it's
from the Urban Dictionary.
Speaker 2 (06:51):
But we should say we picked that one up from
an Aon article why Stoicism is one of the best
mind hacks ever devised.
Speaker 1 (06:57):
That was a good one by Larry Wallace.
Speaker 2 (06:59):
Yeah, you did a good job kind of giving an
overview of the whole thing.
Speaker 1 (07:03):
I think Larry Wallace is one of the great modern Stoicists.
Speaker 2 (07:06):
Maybe there's plenty of them running around these days.
Speaker 1 (07:09):
Yeah, but we're I mean, we'll go back in time
and study the beginnings of stoicism because we're talking about
like you hear the word stoic today, right, and it
means it was taken from this, but it's kind of
someone like sort of a grim face. Stoic doesn't say
much and that's not what stoicism and they say in
(07:29):
our article several times with a capital less really is
all about, right.
Speaker 2 (07:34):
Yeah, to these days people typically or I should say
these days. Up to about three years ago, people thought
of stoics as somebody who could watch their dog get
hit by a car and you know their reaction was
to raise their chin a little higher up in the air,
you know, like just grin and Barrett, as Larry put it, Larry,
where I'm on a first name basis with Larry Wallace
(07:57):
layer that it's a philosophy of grin, endurance, tolerating rather
than transcending life's agonies and adversities, just kind of trudging through,
just taking hit after hit from life as it deals
them to you. Right, that was the idea of stoicism.
You can kind of like it's not like that's just
(08:18):
radically unlike actual stoicism, but it's an outsider's interpretation of
what the stoics are actually doing, what's actually going on,
the purpose of the whole thing, That outsider's view that
doesn't really fully understand. It became the popular view until recently,
until it started to kind of gain some traction lately.
Speaker 1 (08:39):
Yeah, And you know, throughout the year, stoicism has informed
some religions these days. There are a lot of atheists,
there are stoics, But I like how our article says it.
Above all, it teaches the value of emotional control in
living one's life fully.
Speaker 2 (08:58):
Yeah. So here's the base of it. The basis of
it is if you can detach yourself from emotional responses
to things, then something that comes along, whether good or bad,
is not going to get your goat. Stoicism is all
about protecting your goat and not letting anything get it.
(09:19):
And the way that they do that is by saying,
there are very few things that I can control in life,
and everything that I can't control, I'm not going to
get up riled up over, you know, lose my job. Well,
it happens. It doesn't mean I'm any less of a person.
I just need to go out and get another job.
Dog gets hit by a car, Well that's really awful
(09:41):
because I really like that dog. But I'll just go
get another dog. Or maybe I'll just learn to live
without the dog. Maybe I was becoming too attached to
the dog. Things like that. That's stoicism.
Speaker 1 (09:52):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (09:52):
The whole point of it is it's not just to
get your goat or to protect your goat from being gotten.
It's about out living a moral life where you're a
very good human being and The idea is that the
only way to really do that is through things like
rationalism and investigating the universe and being understanding of knowledge
(10:16):
and then pursuing ethics, specific ethics, and they figured out
the best way to do that is dispassionately.
Speaker 1 (10:26):
Yeah, I think my bumper sticker would say onboard Colon,
part time stoicist, full time dreamer.
Speaker 2 (10:34):
Okay, that is a specific yeah, right, bumper sticker.
Speaker 1 (10:40):
I used to have a lot of bumper stickers in
high school, and now I hit loathe them so much.
Speaker 2 (10:44):
Really, what did you have?
Speaker 1 (10:45):
Like? Oh, I had an old Volkswagen Beetle and that
was my family actually bought brand new in nineteen sixty
eight and was passed down from kid to kid to kid,
and it was it was very cool. I thought at
the time, well, it is cool, love those old Beatles.
But I just went through one of those phases where
I was like, you know, here's a Native American saying
(11:06):
and here's something about mother nature and this Bob Marley
had this to say, and oh, just yeah, I was
one of those. And now I see those cars with
all the things and I'm just like, shut up, nobody cares.
Speaker 2 (11:23):
Yeah, for sure, I mean did you have a three
eleven sticker?
Speaker 1 (11:28):
No, this was pre three eleven.
Speaker 2 (11:29):
Actually, okay, gotcha. So did your mom come out and
be like, what'd you do to the family heirloom? No
stickers over?
Speaker 1 (11:37):
No, it's funny that that car had a the rear
floorboard was missing on one side.
Speaker 2 (11:43):
My dad had a car like that, a Malibu, so.
Speaker 1 (11:45):
You could like see the street.
Speaker 2 (11:46):
Uh huh there, Now that I look back, he didn't
even have a piece of wood. Now that I look back,
I'm like, that was extraordinarily irresponsible to be driving around
with kids in the back seat. Yeah, with the street visible.
Speaker 1 (11:59):
Yeah, I love that. Your dall was just like watch your.
Speaker 2 (12:03):
Feet kids, Yeah, easy, does it?
Speaker 1 (12:06):
Uh? All right? So look, you want to go back
and talk about the history a little.
Speaker 2 (12:10):
Bit, No, I want to keep beating around the butt.
Speaker 1 (12:12):
All right. Let's get in the way back machine and okay,
we need to really juice it up because we're going
way back.
Speaker 2 (12:19):
Got some kerosene, got some banana peels, huh, and got
some airplane glue. But that's just for us.
Speaker 1 (12:26):
That's right, because it's a long ride. Yeah, Ancient Greece
is where we're headed to the time of the Great philosophers.
And like we said earlier, sitting here on the stoa,
that was a joke, but it wasn't. And you you,
you know, you said, Stoa, You're gonna try it again.
(12:47):
The stoa poikilely yes, or painted porch is what it means.
And that was a public space in Athens grease.
Speaker 2 (12:53):
It was like a portico, yeah, where people.
Speaker 1 (12:55):
Would hang out and talk and chew the fat. And
that's what I love about this time. People just they
were just alive with ideas, these philosophical ideas of trying
to figure it all out.
Speaker 2 (13:07):
Yeah, but don't you think like every once a while
you just be like, oh, everybody, shut up, I live.
Speaker 1 (13:14):
I gotta do something useful.
Speaker 2 (13:15):
Yeah, plan talking. Yeah, you know, but I agree with you. Overall,
it was a pretty thrilling time.
Speaker 1 (13:23):
Did you take philosophy in college at all? No?
Speaker 2 (13:27):
No, I didn't. I really did not. I don't think
I took a single philosophy class now that I think
about it, not even a survey.
Speaker 1 (13:34):
I took the one kind of general class. I guess
it was the one I won. And I actually made
an A which I didn't make a ton of a's
in college. And I remember at the time kind of
the same thing. About half the class I was like, man,
so fascinating, and then the other half I was just like, oh, man,
what a waste of time. I do something useful, go
(13:54):
like volunteer for a charity.
Speaker 2 (13:56):
Go make something out of wood, anything.
Speaker 1 (14:00):
All right, So back to the Stoa. We're on this
painted porch, this portico, as it were. People are everywhere
running their mouths about what they think is important. And
then this dude wanders up. Zeno of Citium, Yeah, who
had recently been shipwrecked. And there were other zenos. Not
to be confused.
Speaker 2 (14:21):
I know that is confusing. There should be one Zeno.
There can be in all of history.
Speaker 1 (14:27):
There were zenos of other things. But this is Zeno
of Cidium. And you're right, he was shipwrecked and he
was wandering around after a trip from Cyprus.
Speaker 2 (14:36):
Did you say we're in Athens.
Speaker 1 (14:37):
Oh yeah, not Georgia. No, although we did our fair
shriff sitting around on porches talking nonsense there as well.
Speaker 2 (14:44):
But that's a porch porch, yeah, had a Greek porch.
Speaker 1 (14:48):
And so Xeno took a little bit of insight from
the Synics and then eventually said, you know what, I
could my kind of forming my own thoughts here, and
I think everyone else is doing it. I have my
own philosophy.
Speaker 2 (15:03):
Yeah, and it's called Stoicism, Yeah, named after later later
I don't think he called it that. I'm not sure
he probably called it Zenoism. They're like, yeah, that sucks,
We're gonna call it stoicism after the porch. Yeah, but
this is I mean, like the Stoicism very quickly became
one of the big philosophies at the time, and it
(15:23):
rivaled some of the philosophies that it grew out of,
like Socratic philosophy and like you said, cynicism, the cynics. Sure,
And actually, if you look at Stoicism, it's kind of
a compromise between Socrates or so Crates, as Bill and
Ted call them, philosophy, which was that to lead a
(15:45):
good life. And this was the point of all of
the philosophies at this time, during this Age of Reason,
was achieving what was called you diemonia, and you diemonia
is a life worth living. It's thriving, it's flourishing, it's
being happy, like real happiness. Right. That was the pursuit
of all of these different ideas that were floating around
(16:07):
at the time was how to achieve that. Socrates had
the idea that you achieved that through like twelve cardinal virtues,
and some of them were things you could cultivate in yourself,
like courage, a sense of justice, that kind of stuff.
But then there are other ones too that had like
everything to do with luck, Like being good looking was
(16:27):
one of them. Right, Yeah, if you weren't good look,
if you were ugly, sorry, buddy, you could never achieve
you diemonia. Right on the other end of the spectrum
where the cynics and the cynics believed that earthly trappings
like wealth and fame and glory anything like that was
the path to ruin and that the true path to
(16:48):
you diemonia was living simply and living in poverty. And
so Zeno comes along and here's all these and as
he's formulating his own ideas, he's like, Socrates make some
sense over here, and so do the cynics a little bit.
But I'm going to put them together. And that's where
Stoicism came from. It was a compromise between the two
where you live a life of pursuing you diemonia through
(17:12):
these virtues for virtues. I think there's justice, courage, wisdom,
and then temperance, right, So you're practicing those four virtues.
So that's kind of a nod to Socrates. And you
don't have to live in poverty. You can be wealthy,
(17:33):
because if stoicism is anything, it's wealthy people who got
into philosophy that weren't quite sure how to feel about
being wealthy.
Speaker 1 (17:42):
Yeah, to say to kind of come to the point that,
like happing money is not a bad thing, right, right.
Speaker 2 (17:48):
And so was what they came up with was, sure,
you can be wealthy, and that's okay. You can prefer
to be wealthy, but you just can't be attached to it.
You can't desire to be wealthy because you can't control
being wealthy. And if you pursue being wealthy, you're pursuing
something beyond your control. So if you just happen to
be wealthy, that's great. You can be happy with it,
(18:10):
but also be prepared to lose it at any given time,
and that's a big part of stoicism.
Speaker 1 (18:17):
Yeah. I think it's so funny though to think about,
like thousands of years ago in ancient Greece, like they
spent so much time thinking about living this all these
schools have thought of living this life so like putting
so much thought into living life to its fullest and
all the different ways that they defined it and eventually,
(18:41):
like over the years, like as recently as like the
generation of our parents and grandparents the United States, like
the philosophy of life was like you just go to
work and you work hard until you die, and that's
the only thing that matters exactly, Like all that other
stuff is garbage.
Speaker 2 (18:58):
Yeah, well, I think that's one of the reasons why
stoicism is becoming appealing again, is this idea that, like
work seems to be kind of going through a weird transformation,
doesn't it. Yeah, Like it's not like that anymore. Like
that ethic is still around for sure, but like, how
many people do you know work from home? Like almost
(19:18):
entirely A lot a lot, And that's fairly new. So
I wonder if like this changing work dynamic is leading
to this resurgence in stoicism that you can find happiness
through other stuff.
Speaker 1 (19:31):
I mean, part of me thinks this is all like
super worthwhile, and part of me thinks and it's sort
of indulgent to set and a bit like you said,
naval gaysy and like put just start practicing good things
instead of sitting around thinking about the best way to
live life.
Speaker 2 (19:48):
Well, we'll talk about criticisms of them later on, but
I think you hit a big one though, Chuck, was
the idea that it's self indulgent because it demands introspection
almost every mo of every day. Yeah, you want to
take a break and then get back to it.
Speaker 1 (20:04):
Yeah, I gotta, I gotta get my head together. Where's
the airplane glue? All right?
Speaker 2 (20:34):
Nothing like airplane glue to get your head back on straight.
Speaker 1 (20:38):
Just kidding, of course. Everyone. Sure we're smart guys, we
don't do that kind of thing.
Speaker 2 (20:43):
No, it's pretty tough to be smart and huff model
airplane glue. Yeah, you're pretty much making a choice between
that and being smart.
Speaker 1 (20:51):
That's what they teach you early on. Yeah, like you
want to go somewhere life, you want to half airplane glue.
It's the one thing Nancy Reagan didn't lie about. All right,
So Zeno got things going. Peace of mind that comes
with living a life of virtue in accordance with reason
and nature. And then other dudes got on boards, and
(21:12):
of course got on boards got on board, and they
were all dudes back then, because everything was from the
man's perspective. Uh just want to point that out.
Speaker 2 (21:20):
Yeah, because it's changed so dramatically since then.
Speaker 1 (21:24):
But some of the other early stoicist Clianthes Kato.
Speaker 2 (21:30):
Kato the younger, elder younger, right, Kato the klin oh
I forgot about him.
Speaker 1 (21:36):
I'm not sure which Kto.
Speaker 2 (21:37):
I think it's the younger. Yeah, we'll find out from
two people who email.
Speaker 1 (21:42):
In to Seneca. And then a very important stoicis Uh. Well,
I'm going to pronounce.
Speaker 3 (21:50):
It epic epet Epictetus, epictetus. Epetic sounds like a vaccine shot.
It does E P I C T E T U s.
Speaker 1 (22:03):
It's that C.
Speaker 2 (22:04):
Going into a T that's getting you. Yeah, it's just
Epictetus or Epictetus. I think epictetis is what we should
go with.
Speaker 1 (22:12):
I want another C in there. I want it to
be Epitectus, but it's not.
Speaker 2 (22:15):
No, it's not. It's Epictetus, all right. So u oh,
and don't forget Marcus Aurelius Man.
Speaker 1 (22:21):
Oh well, sure, I mean he comes a little bit later.
He was he was the ruler of anthant Man. What
is my problem today.
Speaker 2 (22:30):
It's okay, man, everyone knew what you meant.
Speaker 1 (22:33):
He was the philosopher king, and that was when Stoicism
was kind of the most popular thing going. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (22:40):
Apparently they moved from Athens to Rome, which I didn't
realize this. I always had the idea that Rome venerated
Hellenistic Greece hundreds of years after basically the Greek civilization
had had just kind of, you know, gone into a
bit of a twilight or had gone out of its heyday. No,
(23:02):
there was total cross pollination, including some of these early
Stoics who traveled from Athens to Rome, and basically with
with that move transferred the seed of philosophy from Athens
to Rome, from Greek to Rome to Rome, from Greece
to Rome. I didn't realize that there were they were
actually like cross pollinating one another at the time. Did
(23:23):
you know that?
Speaker 1 (23:24):
I think I recalled that from deep in my college memory.
Banks nice.
Speaker 2 (23:29):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (23:29):
So Epitectus Tetus man he had a big role in
the Stoic movement. He was a former slave, which kind
of makes sense in terms of Stoicism.
Speaker 2 (23:43):
He almost almost single handedly gives credence to Stoicism because
so many other Stoics were extraordinarily wealthy, powerful man sure
that it's like, yeah, it's pretty easy for you to
go through life saying, you know, it's just just take
what life gives you. If life is giving you nothing
(24:04):
but gold bullion all the time. Right, this guy was
born a slave, crippled in the knee for life and
became a Stoic, one of the great Stoic thinkers, and
just through his life proved that stoicism can work.
Speaker 1 (24:20):
Yeah, And he wrote a handbook at the time was
called an Encritean, and he wrote the Encridian of Epictetus.
Speaker 2 (24:29):
Incridium literally means handbook. It means ready at hand.
Speaker 1 (24:32):
So it was a very famous handbook. And he attributed
I mean, the first line of it was some things
are in our control and others not right, and that
kind of sums it all up, like he could have
said the end, but he decided to dive a little deeper.
Speaker 2 (24:47):
I agree with you. I think our brand of Stoicism
has about the same contours because that that right there,
that's all. That's everything you need to know, right there
is some things you can control, most things you can't control.
There you go, don't get too.
Speaker 1 (25:04):
High, too low, right, don't get too mad about something.
Speaker 2 (25:08):
Well, ultimately, I think that's what it boils down to.
I don't really find much of a problem when people
are overjoyed. I don't think that's an issue. And technically,
with stoicism, that is a that's a problem. You should
not become overjoyed. Experiencing joy is fine, sure, but just
being like overcome with happiness or joy or grief or
(25:31):
whatever it is, you're you're violating one of those four
cardinal virtues, temperance, which is just being tempered and even keeled.
Speaker 1 (25:40):
Right.
Speaker 2 (25:41):
So, but I think if you're saying, don't get upset
about something that's out of your control, don't blame others,
don't try to control other people, just know that whatever
comes you can handle it. There you go, That's all
you need to know for me.
Speaker 1 (25:55):
Yeah, and you know, I mean, how many times have
you heard me say it is what it is? Which
is an annoying thing to hear and say.
Speaker 2 (26:01):
But it's pretty stoic.
Speaker 1 (26:03):
Well it is, but it's also in my case, it
is what it is until it isn't. It just matters
if I personally riled up about something, you know.
Speaker 2 (26:12):
Yeah, but I think again though, if like, there's probably
some people who listen who subscribe to at least modern
stoicism listening to this, and I would guess that they
would say that's because stoicism is basically meant to apply
to every day of your life. Like, no, Stoics are
really expected to become stages in their lifetimes, right that
(26:34):
it's something you just do every single day, is try
to not get riled up. But of course something's going
to come along and get you riled up. That's just
human nature. Stoicism is trying to put a bridle on
that human nature.
Speaker 1 (26:48):
Yeah, well, and this is insider stuff. I think you
and I compliment each other because we rarely get worked
up about the same thing.
Speaker 2 (26:58):
Just voter suppression.
Speaker 1 (27:00):
Well, no, it happens here and there, but just in
our personal lives and everything to do with work, Like
oftentimes I've noticed, like something that'll rile me up, you're
calming me down and the other way around. And yeah,
I mean, I think that's one reason we've lasted so long.
Like if two people were so similar that they're constantly
worked up about the same stuff, Yeah, no, one, you know,
(27:23):
you're just gonna be working each other up, and no
one's going to be there to say, hey, man, it
is what it is.
Speaker 2 (27:27):
Yeah, man, hey, mellow out, here's the Bob Marley bumpers exactly.
Speaker 1 (27:33):
So should we talk a little bit about the areas
of study, Yeah, all right, Well there are three main
ones and stoicism and this is all you know to
deal with introspection, which is kind of like all philosophies.
Physics is the first thing. And it's not physics like
you think of that you hate studying in high school.
Speaker 2 (27:54):
Well, it falls under a larger umbrella term, I guess.
Speaker 1 (27:57):
Yeah. They're talking about the natural world, the natural you know,
and also what lies beyond it. And when they say
the natural world, they're talking about everything God, the divine nature,
everything that we know and things that we don't know.
Speaker 2 (28:13):
Yeah, everything we would view as science or like you said, nature, Yeah,
all that stuff that's physics and all of it. That
One of the things the Stoics, I think, if they
weren't the first to come up with it, they definitely
popularized it was the idea that all of this was interconnected. Yeah,
which is pretty I mean, you take it for granted today,
(28:36):
like everybody thinks that everything's interconnected these days.
Speaker 1 (28:38):
Yeah, but.
Speaker 2 (28:41):
It's to be among the first to kind of point
that out or suggest that it's pretty pretty significant contribution
to Western thought.
Speaker 1 (28:49):
Yeah, imagine that was a pretty deep thing when it
first started hitting people, you know.
Speaker 2 (28:53):
Can't you just see George Carlin being like, oh, you.
Speaker 1 (28:56):
Just blew my mind? Oh because he was so great?
Mm hmm. Man.
Speaker 2 (29:02):
Wait, no, he wasn't so crazy. He was he was
the guy their spirit a Yeah, what.
Speaker 1 (29:09):
Was his name? Oh? Man got killed on this.
Speaker 2 (29:13):
We'll just edit this part out.
Speaker 1 (29:14):
I didn't know. I had to brush up on my
bill and deed.
Speaker 2 (29:17):
I didn't either. I surprised myself. You should have seen
my face.
Speaker 1 (29:20):
You know. They kept they kept talking about remakes, like
as recently as a couple of years ago, I think,
or not remakes, but uh sequels with the originals. Oh yeah,
Like Kenna Reeves was like, man, I love those movies.
I'd love to make another one.
Speaker 2 (29:34):
Did you see what what was?
Speaker 1 (29:36):
So?
Speaker 2 (29:37):
Was Keanu Reeves?
Speaker 1 (29:38):
Bill? Or Ted?
Speaker 2 (29:40):
Why are we even doing this to ourselves?
Speaker 1 (29:43):
Boy? I want to say he was Ted?
Speaker 2 (29:45):
So the guy who played the other guy?
Speaker 1 (29:47):
Yeah, Alex Winter.
Speaker 2 (29:49):
Oh geez, Chuck.
Speaker 1 (29:50):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (29:50):
Nice chob So Alex Winter was in what was the
Charles Bronson view Cola is most famous death Wish Death
Wish three. Death Wish three was what he was in,
which was when Gol and Globis got their hands on
it and turned it into like schlock, violent, like almost
(30:12):
post apocalyptic movie. Yeah, and he's great in it. But
he's also in a documentary on Golan Globis. I can't
remember what the name of the name of the documentaries,
but it's just about how bad the movies they made
were and how how gleefully these guys made them. But
(30:32):
he's interviewed in it. That guy hasn't aged a day.
Speaker 1 (30:35):
No, he looks exactly Bill.
Speaker 2 (30:38):
Okay, so he's Bill.
Speaker 1 (30:40):
Yeah all right.
Speaker 2 (30:42):
So, uh so we got that settled. Physics is done.
Speaker 1 (30:44):
What's next? Logic, which they wanted to include social scientists, psychology, sociology, history,
which I kind of like, I'm down with that as
far as the philosophies go. They want to include all
this stuff. But electively they kind of called this all reason.
It was a very big deal to stoicism, perhaps the
(31:07):
biggest deal, right.
Speaker 2 (31:08):
And they also were engaged in epistemology, which is theories
of what knowledge is, how we gain knowledge, what's true,
what's belief, what's false? How do we differentiate between these things?
And they spend a lot of time investigating this and
putting it all under logic, because it was through logic
that you could investigate physics, which included investigating God and
(31:32):
the nature of universe and stuff like that. And then
through all that investigation, that introspection, that naval gazing, you
were ultimately figuring out how to best pursue and best
live out the third part, which was the ethics of
the whole thing.
Speaker 1 (31:52):
Yeah, and you mentioned the four great virtues earlier, courage, justice, wisdom,
and temperance, And the whole idea here is uh, it's
it's not like you want to block out the bad
and only embrace the good. You like, you want to
consider both the good and the bad, but just don't
let any of it get in the way of anything
that you're trying to pursue in your life.
Speaker 2 (32:13):
Right, pretty simple.
Speaker 1 (32:16):
Yeah, and the whole good bad thing. Where did you
find this this thing on ethics?
Speaker 2 (32:22):
Was that the that was the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
from their from their entry on it. Yeah, it's pretty
pretty good. The whole thing was. Dude, you should have
seen how in depth they go though, But I thought
this one was a good snippet.
Speaker 1 (32:36):
Well, I'm sure, yeah, they dive pretty deep, but I
thought this was a pretty good little summation there. You know,
they're talking about, like you said, like money isn't just
not good or a ka bad. Things like this they
called indifference as in I N D I F F
E R E N T S. Right, not indifference, And
(33:00):
it's like not good or bad. It could be either one.
It's really kind of all about not letting something like
that get in the way of your pursuit.
Speaker 2 (33:11):
Right, So and again it went back to wealth, right,
And this person in the Encyclopedia of Philosophy points out
that like money, definitely being wealthy usually is helpful or
beneficial to the individual. Sure, but it can also not
(33:32):
be beneficial. Where say you have a big heroin problem, Well,
the more money you get, the more money you're going
to spend on heroin. So in that case, being wealthy
is detrimental to you're not beneficial. And for something to
be a good it has to be good under all circumstances,
and to a stoic only there's only four things that
are good under all circumstances, which are those four cardinal virtues.
(33:54):
Everything else, like you said, is an indifferent and it
can either be preferred or dispreferred, like wealth typically would
fall under being a preferred and different, whereas say, disease,
having chronic disease would be a dispropered dispropered, wow, a
dispreferred indifferent man.
Speaker 1 (34:16):
That's tough though it is.
Speaker 2 (34:18):
But the point is is whether it's fabulous wealth or diabetes,
they should affect you about the same or you might
want one, you might not want to have one. But
if you have either one, you can live with it.
And that brings up a huge, huge component of stoicism
that's really been blown up and exploded in the twenty
(34:40):
first century, which is you should take adversity and turn
it into an opportunity for growth. That is a huge
aspect of stoicism that's really being practiced and espoused these days.
Speaker 1 (34:56):
Yeah, I'm down with that. Like I don't think I
like being able to take from all these philosophies and
different religions to form your sort of pathway through life,
you know, sure, Like when I hear sometimes I started
to read about Buddhism and the whole thing with Buddhism
(35:17):
of like every day you start anew and you have
a new chance. Like that really appeals to me too, Right.
What I don't like is when either religions or philosophies
say like like this is the only way and everything
else is BS. Sure you know, yeah, that just that's
(35:37):
a harsh buzzkill.
Speaker 2 (35:40):
It really is. Not only is a BS, but I'm
going to kill you for thinking otherwise.
Speaker 1 (35:44):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (35:45):
So Seneca who was one of the great thinkers of Stoicism.
He was an advisor to Nero, and we'll talk about
him as criticism of Stoicism later on, but he had
a very famous quote where he says, you are unfortunate
in my judgment, for you have never been unfortunate. You
(36:07):
have passed through life with no antagonist to face you.
No one will know what you are capable of, not
even yourself, And that kind of shapes the basis of
that idea that no matter what life throws at you,
you take it and you say I'm going to become
a better person from this, like oh this happened, Well,
that's great because that means that I can learn to
(36:29):
be better at this. So my dog just got hit
by a car. I'm going to practice fortitude and make
it through this really hard time and become a stronger
person on the other side.
Speaker 1 (36:43):
Yeah, he may as well have said, you comma trust
fund kid, kamma.
Speaker 2 (36:47):
Sure right exactly, And I mean that that makes a
people turn that on Seneca as well, but a lot
of modern Stoics come to his defense. Is like, no, like,
I had a harder life than you would think.
Speaker 1 (37:00):
Should we take another break? Yeah, all right, let's do it,
and we'll talk about Seneca and Cicero and all other
kinds of weird names.
Speaker 2 (37:32):
So, Chuck, you were saying, you were talking about religion.
Stoicism apparently informed Christianity in a lot of ways.
Speaker 1 (37:40):
Yeah, and Buddhism in some ways. Yeah, yet atheists embrace it.
Speaker 2 (37:44):
It's kind of weird these days. But I mean, the
early Stoics were definitely they definitely believed in a divine intervention.
It was kind of the basis of the whole thing,
that this is God's will, So why try to control it?
Who are you to try to control it? Just roll
with the punches.
Speaker 1 (38:01):
Yeah, that's a big When when I was taking all
those philosophy quizzes, they're all a little bit different, but
you saw through line through a lot of these questions,
and the free will one was in every single one
of them. Yeah, like, how do you feel about free will?
And different ways of asking it, but you know.
Speaker 2 (38:20):
You will what do you think exactly?
Speaker 1 (38:23):
If you want to find out which philosophy that you
jibe with, you have to answer the free will question.
Free will question.
Speaker 2 (38:30):
Yeah, hey, that's easier to say than just preferred indifferent.
Speaker 1 (38:37):
Nice work.
Speaker 2 (38:38):
So one of the big points, especially today for practicing
stoicism is looking at adversity as a growth opportunity for growth.
Speaker 1 (38:48):
Right right, That's just a good tool in life.
Speaker 2 (38:50):
I think another one and this one, I really this
is where I big time diverge from stoicism as like
a part of a daily practice is something called negative visualization.
Speaker 1 (39:01):
Yeah, like, uh, try and try and imagine the worst
case scenario constantly. Yeah, I'm not into that at all.
Speaker 2 (39:10):
No. So, say you say you're at like your child's
birthday party, right, and you are not you specifically, this
is you just a general person and you're having just
the most intense moment of joy and appreciation for your
child According to stoics, you should follow that up with
(39:32):
a thought about how at your child's next doctor's appointment,
your child could be diagnosed with terminal leukemia.
Speaker 1 (39:38):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (39:38):
That that is what you should be doing basically all
the time, negative visualization. And the idea is it's twofold one.
You're preventing yourself from becoming overjoyed at that moment. Don't
don't do that. Yeah, and then secondly, you're you're exploring
how you will feel if your kid does get diagnosed
(40:00):
to something horrible or something bad happens, and that when
it actually happens, you'll say that's not so bad, I'm
already used to it, or you'll be able to confront
it through your imagination and say, this is what I'm
afraid of. That's not that bad. But I mean, it's
a really extreme, horrific example.
Speaker 1 (40:20):
But it is.
Speaker 2 (40:21):
Ultimately it's definitely in step with stoicism that you should
be visualizing the worst case scenario all the time.
Speaker 1 (40:29):
Yeah, I mean, And that's one of the reasons stoicism
has such a downer reputation, such that Cicero wrote a
stoic rouse enthusiasm. He is much more likely to extinguish
any enthusiasm, the student may have to begin with burn. Yeah,
it was a pretty good burn. And you know, I
(40:51):
get that. Like, who would if that was one of
the first things you learned if you started to poke
around with stoicism, ninety nine percent of people would probably
be like, Man, I don't want to. I don't like
the sounds of that.
Speaker 2 (41:05):
Yeah. I like the not having to control everything aspect,
but the thinking about nothing but negative thoughts all the time. Yeah,
you know, And I get the point of it. I
just it doesn't It doesn't appeal to me.
Speaker 1 (41:17):
No, I mean, you shouldn't be Pollyanna either. Well.
Speaker 2 (41:20):
No, it's it's in direct contradiction to the idea of
the power of positive thinking, right, which is stoics like, you, fool,
what are you doing? All you're doing is setting yourself
up for nothing but letdowns when that doesn't actually come true.
Speaker 1 (41:34):
Well, but I also agree with that to a certain degree,
you know, like the whole like just you can conjure
it up just by thinking positively. I think that's on
the opposite side equally, uh bs.
Speaker 2 (41:47):
Sure, sure, I think so too.
Speaker 1 (41:50):
I'm kind of right down the middle. I guess when
it comes to that.
Speaker 2 (41:52):
Stuff, and I think most people are. But I think
that's what's fascinating about this kind of thing is it's like, well,
well there's some people actually are these these degrees, these extremes.
It's interesting to me.
Speaker 1 (42:04):
Well yeah, And the other interesting thing is we you know,
you're talking about Christianity, and then it's weird how Stoicism
on one hand, like atheists like I can totally see
how they'd be down with Stoicism, but also the whole
notion that some believers in God and some Christians like
give it all up to God because only God can
(42:24):
control anything. So all we're going to do is pray
about it, and that's popular among Stoics as well. Right,
So it's just interesting that it has such a wide
range as far as from atheism to like the you know, serious, serious,
give it up to God Christianity.
Speaker 2 (42:43):
Right, yeah, no, it definitely, yeah, it almost It's kind
of like it's that buffet thing again where people can
come along and take what they want from it and
it becomes part of their own philosophy or their own
religion or whatever. Let's talk about some of the ways
that that it's been used over the year's stoicism, right, Okay,
(43:05):
so there's been a lot of people who have followed
Stoic thought, like Adam Smith apparently was very much informed
by Stoicism when he wrote The Wealth of Nations because
one of the big, big aspects of it was individual liberty.
One cool thing about the early Stoics was that everybody's equal. Yeah,
(43:26):
it doesn't matter whether you're a man, woman, gay, straight, black, white, whatever,
everyone is equal. And this was at a time when
slavery was rampant, right, Yeah, so that was a big,
a big that's a big aspect too. That's a big
aspect of the Wealth of Nations is anybody can come
along and become a capitalist. You just have to compete, right.
(43:51):
Another place that it popped up kind of famously was
in cognitive behavioral therapy.
Speaker 1 (43:55):
Yeah, which initially when I saw that, I was like, huh,
that kind of surprised me, But then it all made sense,
Like exposure to something bad can help you get over
it is kind of like that conjuring up the worst
possible It's almost numbing yourself to the worst possible thing.
If you think about that worst case scenario thing all
(44:18):
the time. It's almost a way of preparing for that.
Speaker 2 (44:21):
Yeah, and it's rooted specifically. One of the founders of CBT,
Albert Ellis, was an adherent of Stoicism as a younger man,
and what's known as the cognitive model of emotion, which
is the basis of cognitive behavioral therapy, is based on
(44:41):
Epictetis's maxim that people are disturbed not by things, but
by their view of things. And that's part of that
whole Stoic philosophy, which is nothing is good or bad.
There's only good in the four virtues. Everything else is
how you view it.
Speaker 1 (45:01):
Yea.
Speaker 2 (45:01):
Whether it's losing your job or winning the lottery, those
things aren't inherently good or bad. It's you, the person
experiencing that, who bestows good or bad on them. Yeah,
and why label things?
Speaker 1 (45:14):
Sure, I'm down with that, Yeah a little bit.
Speaker 2 (45:18):
Did you hear about Admiral Stockdale.
Speaker 1 (45:21):
Yeah, I remember that name for sure. When he came
out with his book Courage under Fire, colon Testing Eptectus's
Doctrines and the Laboratory of Human Behavior in nineteen ninety three.
He was a famous prisoner of war in Vietnam for
seven years, endured some of the worst of the worst
(45:43):
you can imagine in war. And what got him through
was certainly not Christianity, because he thought that's nothing but
false hope.
Speaker 2 (45:53):
Well, not only that, he shared the pow camp with
people who who clung to that and did not make it.
Speaker 1 (46:00):
Yeah, so he saw it right up front, right, So
what got him through was his stoic beliefs.
Speaker 2 (46:06):
Yeah, he was a huge, big time adherent of Epictetus.
He'd studied him in college. Apparently he'd read everything that
Epictetus had written or said that had been written down
and attributed to Epictetus twice from two different translators. So
this guy knew his Epictetus. And he said, well, I'm
(46:27):
a prisoner of war in Vietnam. I've got some broken bones,
I'm starving, I'm being mistreated. I'll be here for seven years.
What a perfect opportunity to put Epictetus's teachings to the
test in a real life laboratory experiment. And he said
Epictetus passed. The flying Colors. Was Stockdale's final report on it.
Speaker 1 (46:47):
Yeah, he said, if Epictetus's lecture room was a hospital,
my prison was a laboratory, a laboratory of human behavior.
I chose to test his postulates against the demanding real
life challenges of my laboratory. So, man, talk of out
a strong will like to be faced with that and
be like, well, hey, this is a great chance to
work on my philosophy of life.
Speaker 2 (47:08):
Exactly what else am I going to do? But that
follows in and of itself on the whole too, of
turning adversity into a room for growth as well.
Speaker 1 (47:17):
Yeah, man, yeah, stronger than me. Let's just say that.
Speaker 2 (47:22):
So you want to talk about some criticisms of Stoicism.
Speaker 1 (47:26):
Well, Cicero certainly thought it was a big.
Speaker 2 (47:28):
Downer, yeah, he said, Well you already said what he said, right, Yeah,
it basically extinguishes enthusiasm and students. Not a good thing. Right,
And over the years, the fact that some of the
great Stoic thinkers of all time have been super wealthy
and powerful. Seneca Marcus Aurelius was the Emperor of Rome.
(47:49):
He basically ran the free world. Well, I don't know
if the free worlds right, the Western world for almost
twenty years. Yeah, And when you sit there and yeah again,
if you say yes, you can turn anything into any
adversity into an opportunity. If you're super wealthy and you
don't have to worry about where your food's gonna come from. Like, yes,
(48:10):
of course you can be a Stoic. And then Epictetis
came along and, like we said, kind of erased all
that to an extent for sure, but it is still
kind of criticized as like a wealthy person's philosophy, and
it kind of smacks of that a little bit today too, Chuck,
with its huge resurgence in Silicon Valley.
Speaker 1 (48:32):
Oh is that happening?
Speaker 2 (48:34):
Oh? Yeah, most of the Stoic revival is taking place there.
That's where it's cradle is right now.
Speaker 1 (48:42):
Well, our own article has a couple of good points
to talk about it not being as appealing because it
lacks the mystique of Eastern practice. And then they also
said this, it's also regarded as a philosophy of merely
breaking even while remaining determinedly impassive.
Speaker 2 (48:59):
Yes, I don't know if that's entirely fair, but it's
as it kind of catches it a little bit.
Speaker 1 (49:06):
Well, yeah, because the very next sentences, this attitude ignores
the promise proffered by stoicism of lasting transcendence. And that
one article that you said talked about the power of indifference, right,
which I thought was interesting. It's not about just like
not caring about anything. It's about caring about only the
right things that you have the power to change. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (49:28):
And also though I also see that even keel aspect
being indifferent, the power of it. I mean, think about
how much time whenever you are like super happy about
something going right or super upset about something going wrong,
you're ultimately you're being distracted from keeping on keeping on.
(49:50):
Oh yeah, and then you go back to eventually get
back to that middle again, which is the baseline anyway.
And so I guess what stoics are doing is staying
on that baseline and not being distracted so they can
get further along faster or at a more steady pace.
Speaker 1 (50:08):
Yeah. I mean, there's definitely something that's really frustrating in life,
which is when you look back and say, man, I've
spent two days stressed and worried about something that I
have no control over, right, And what a waste of
time that was when I could have done X, Y,
and Z.
Speaker 2 (50:26):
One of the big questions I have, it's not necessarily
a criticism, I guess it depends on what the answer
would be. But my big question for stoicism, since it's
so it places so much emphasis on the individual and
self exploration and introspection. How would a stoic suggest enacting
(50:46):
massive social change? Where something some ill is happening to
some large group of people, but nothing's going to change
unless you go out of your own personal sphere and
work to make others change. Right, how do you do that?
Or do you just say, well, whatever, it's God's will
(51:07):
that these people suffer and be put down by the
majority forever, or is there some way that that can
be addressed through the stoic you know, philosophy. I'm very curious.
So anybody who knows that right end, please.
Speaker 1 (51:23):
Yeah, maybe that's why it appeals to Silicon Valley. Right.
Speaker 2 (51:27):
Well, that's the other thing too, right. So it also
very much smacks when when you hear of it from
like wealthy people espousing it to anybody, it smacks of
that whole aspect of Christianity where hey, medieval peasant, you
know how your life is terrible and you're going to
live to thirty five and all you do is work
(51:47):
all the time, and you give most of the spoils
of your effort to your king. Well, there's such a
thing as Christianity, and your treasure is in the afterlife,
so don't worry about this life. Yeah, it smacks the
same thing where you can keep a population placated and
not searching for larger social change by saying, hey, just
(52:07):
focus on these four things and everything else is just
It just happens, and you don't need to get worked
up about it at all. It seems like a bit
of a pacifier too. Yeah, depending on how you look
at it, it's fascinating. Are we done with stoicism?
Speaker 1 (52:24):
I finished with it?
Speaker 2 (52:25):
Okay?
Speaker 1 (52:28):
I think that was a good overview.
Speaker 2 (52:29):
I think so too.
Speaker 1 (52:30):
It's a good thought starter.
Speaker 2 (52:31):
If you want to know more about stoicism, Bud, there's
a lot more out there than this. Just dive in
and see what it means to you. And again, it's
a buffet. Take what you like, leave what you don't want,
leave the kerdle pudding behind, Take the perfectly garlic green beans. Yeah,
if you what else? Did I already say that one part?
Speaker 1 (52:55):
Oh?
Speaker 2 (52:55):
Since I said green beans, it's time for listener mail.
Speaker 1 (53:01):
I'm gonna call this Beagle Brigade slash police dogs.
Speaker 2 (53:05):
People love that.
Speaker 1 (53:06):
One man who doesn't love beatles, Beagles on brigade, on parade.
Speaker 2 (53:11):
No one, even people who get busted with whole pigs
still are like that. Beagles adorable.
Speaker 1 (53:17):
So this dude, Eric Stover is a sandwicher, meaning he
follows our advice, which is to listen to the newest
episode as well as whatever from our back catalog. He
chooses to Yeah, he's doing it right. Hey, guys are
working the sports and entertainment business in New York and
after nine to eleven, the use of bomb sniffing dogs,
mostly German shepherds, became standard operating procedure for all events.
(53:41):
If you ares, prior to a concert one night, the
canine units were sweeping all the backstage areas and one
of the bomb dogs hit on an employee locker, so
you can imagine it caused an immediate and serious response.
A bomb squad was dispatched and that portion of the
arena was evacuated. Plans were even made to cancel the show.
He doesn't say what show, which I was very curious about.
Speaker 2 (54:01):
I'm going to say three doors down.
Speaker 1 (54:04):
Okay. After some very tense moments, the police officers opened
the locker. Those guys are super brave, thankfully they didn't
find a bomb, but did find drugs. An employee must
have thought, must have brought in an extra bump for
the show.
Speaker 2 (54:19):
Oh man, it was definitely three doors Down.
Speaker 1 (54:22):
You might be asking yourself. No, this wasn't the band's
green room. This was an employee.
Speaker 2 (54:28):
Oh, I know, I know. Three Doors Down. Three Doors
Downs fans are among the most drug addled of all
music plans? Are they sure?
Speaker 1 (54:36):
I thought that was the Juggalos?
Speaker 2 (54:38):
No, they put the Juggalos a shame. Jugglers take time
off once in a while, you know what I mean?
Speaker 1 (54:43):
Yeah, that's true. Uh, you might be asking yourself, how
does a bomb dog find drugs? As it turns out,
the dog had failed out of drug school and was
retrained as a bomb talk poor guy. That's hilarious, isn't it?
Poor guy?
Speaker 2 (55:02):
Which one the dog or the guy who just happened
to run across the failed drug dog? I guess I
still remembered something.
Speaker 1 (55:10):
There are no winners here. I guess he didn't completely
forget his drug training, though, and he set off a
chain of events that scared the crap out of us.
The story ends with the employee getting arrested. The show
went on and the fans none the wiser. My guess
is the dog was reassigned to crowd control.
Speaker 2 (55:26):
Just barking up people. Keep back in line.
Speaker 1 (55:29):
Thanks for everything you guys do. Please let me know
if you ever need anything in New York City. Is
that a hint?
Speaker 2 (55:35):
We don't do drugs, Eric, Yeah, we're terrified of dogs.
Speaker 1 (55:41):
That is Eric Stover in New York and I guess
he's still in the sports and entertainment business.
Speaker 2 (55:46):
Yeah, he's like, you need some sports, Come see me.
Speaker 1 (55:50):
I could use some sports.
Speaker 2 (55:52):
Thanks Eric. That's a pretty great story, right, that's right.
If you want to get in touch with this like
Eric did, you can send us an email to Stuff
Podcast at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 1 (56:07):
Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts myheart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Hi, everybody. I'm feeling very stoic today, so we're going
to use what exactly is Stoicism as our weekly select selection.
This one was released in July July fourth in Fact
twenty seventeen. What a great for the July topic. Learn
all about stoicism right here, right now. Welcome to Stuff
(00:28):
You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with
Charles W. Chuck Bryant guest producer. Noel's Jerry's been out
a lot lately, Chuck, have you noticed?
Speaker 1 (00:48):
No, No, I haven't heard it. Of course, Jerry's got
big life things going on. She does buying and selling houses.
She's like a real estate mogul.
Speaker 2 (00:58):
Visiting the mall of stuff.
Speaker 1 (01:02):
We're just a couple of deep thinkers hanging out on
the stoa.
Speaker 2 (01:08):
Yeah, specifically, what is it this soa? Did you practice
the word the pronunciation at all?
Speaker 1 (01:18):
I tried to pronounce a lot of this, but you
know ancient Greek, you know the phrase. It's all Greek
to me. Yeah, it comes from not being able to
pronounce these things.
Speaker 2 (01:29):
It's quite literal, the the stoa poikily. I think that's
probably pretty close, man.
Speaker 1 (01:39):
So can I start this with a couple of quick thoughts?
Speaker 2 (01:42):
Sure?
Speaker 1 (01:42):
First of all, I took a I took four different
philosophy quizzes before we recorded, like.
Speaker 2 (01:52):
What kind of philosophy do you subscribe to? Type quiz?
Speaker 1 (01:55):
Yeah, you know the ones that are super accurate, right,
because they can figure that out in eight to fifan questions.
Speaker 2 (02:00):
Sure, and then you can move on and find out
what muppet you are.
Speaker 1 (02:05):
So here's here's my result here. For the first one,
I was epicurean okay, the second one existentialism all right,
third one atheist existentialist huh. And the fourth Nietzsche slash stoic.
Speaker 2 (02:20):
Nietzsche was a huge critic of stoicism. I'm surprised they
put those two together.
Speaker 1 (02:24):
Well that that is chuck though.
Speaker 2 (02:26):
You know what I'm saying, Yeah, you're you're a contradiction
in terms, you're yin and yang.
Speaker 1 (02:32):
Well I am, and that The reason why I took
these is because when I was doing the research on stoicism,
I found me. I found myself a lot of times
going yep, yep totally, and then a lot of times
going no, that's really not me.
Speaker 2 (02:46):
Same here, same here, and I think even the Stoics
from back in the day realized that there were very few,
very very few actual what they called sages walking around
Stoics ages who really fulfilled every aspect of this to
a t. And I think that I think one of
(03:08):
the reasons why Stoicism today is making a comeback and
it's so appealing is because, well there's two reasons. One
more than kind of a navel gazing type philosophy where
you're trying to figure out the nature of existence or
something like that, it's more a blueprint for existing day
to day in a in a useful, happy way. And
(03:33):
then secondly, it's a you can kind of pick and choose.
It's almost like a buffet. You can pick and choose
what aspects of it you want to adopt or use,
and know, you know, Greek ghost is going to come
along and spear you in the face.
Speaker 1 (03:51):
With a trident, right punch. Yeah, And I think that's
I mean, first of all, the Age of Reason fascinates
me to no end, and second, I've kind of wanted
to cover some of the great philosophies of all time.
Speaker 2 (04:11):
This sounds like a good start, well it is, but.
Speaker 1 (04:13):
It's just kind of daunting, because people spend like that's
their life's work, you know, and for us to try
and summarize any of them in thirty to forty five
minutes is kind of like, you know, I don't know
what philosophy. You would liken that to foolishism, duncism. That's
what we do. You know, Well, how about this.
Speaker 2 (04:34):
If this one goes well, maybe we'll take it as
a sign that we can tackle some other ones. But
you're absolutely right, like even the even just like say
the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, which is meant you know,
it's sharp, and it's detailed, and it's exhaustive, but it's
also clearly meant for lay people interested in philosophy.
Speaker 1 (04:51):
Right.
Speaker 2 (04:52):
It's just this just stoicism is so involved that it's
not possible for us to like really capture all of it,
even get in an overview, you know, or giving it
just hitting the highlights. We can't possibly hit all the highlights.
There's just too much to it. And that's just stoicism.
I still say it's worth talking about though, just because
(05:14):
it's so interesting.
Speaker 1 (05:16):
So if I get up in the middle, you're gonna
pull me back. I'll just keep going well. I like
the Urban Dictionary definition stoic is someone who does not
give a peep about the stupid things in this world
that most people care so much about. Stoics do have emotions,
but only for the things in this world that really matter.
They are the most real people alive. And then in
(05:37):
their little example, as a group of kids sitting by
the porch, stoic walks by, one can says something very mean, Hey,
you're a blankety blank and you blank blank, and the
stoic says good for you and keeps going right. It's
a part of me really like I hear that, and
I'm like, man, I am so that person on so
many levels. But then sometimes I'm totally not, and I
(06:00):
think what the difference is or what matters is well,
it depends on if they say something that matters to you,
or if something does matter to you. Like I might
get really riled up about some.
Speaker 2 (06:13):
Stuff well that would make you not stoic, that.
Speaker 1 (06:16):
Doesn't rile anyone else up, But I also some things
that really make other people I rate. I'm just like man,
can't change it. It is what it is, and I
only can get upset about the things that can change.
Speaker 2 (06:28):
Yeah, if you could apply that to everything, you'd be
pretty high up there in the Stoic pantheon.
Speaker 1 (06:38):
That'd be a Stoic matt five star general.
Speaker 2 (06:41):
Pretty much five finger punch guy.
Speaker 1 (06:45):
All Right, so we beat around the bush. I mean,
that was a pretty good definition actually, even though it's
from the Urban Dictionary.
Speaker 2 (06:51):
But we should say we picked that one up from
an Aon article why Stoicism is one of the best
mind hacks ever devised.
Speaker 1 (06:57):
That was a good one by Larry Wallace.
Speaker 2 (06:59):
Yeah, you did a good job kind of giving an
overview of the whole thing.
Speaker 1 (07:03):
I think Larry Wallace is one of the great modern Stoicists.
Speaker 2 (07:06):
Maybe there's plenty of them running around these days.
Speaker 1 (07:09):
Yeah, but we're I mean, we'll go back in time
and study the beginnings of stoicism because we're talking about
like you hear the word stoic today, right, and it
means it was taken from this, but it's kind of
someone like sort of a grim face. Stoic doesn't say
much and that's not what stoicism and they say in
(07:29):
our article several times with a capital less really is
all about, right.
Speaker 2 (07:34):
Yeah, to these days people typically or I should say
these days. Up to about three years ago, people thought
of stoics as somebody who could watch their dog get
hit by a car and you know their reaction was
to raise their chin a little higher up in the air,
you know, like just grin and Barrett, as Larry put it, Larry,
where I'm on a first name basis with Larry Wallace
(07:57):
layer that it's a philosophy of grin, endurance, tolerating rather
than transcending life's agonies and adversities, just kind of trudging through,
just taking hit after hit from life as it deals
them to you. Right, that was the idea of stoicism.
You can kind of like it's not like that's just
(08:18):
radically unlike actual stoicism, but it's an outsider's interpretation of
what the stoics are actually doing, what's actually going on,
the purpose of the whole thing, That outsider's view that
doesn't really fully understand. It became the popular view until recently,
until it started to kind of gain some traction lately.
Speaker 1 (08:39):
Yeah, And you know, throughout the year, stoicism has informed
some religions these days. There are a lot of atheists,
there are stoics, But I like how our article says it.
Above all, it teaches the value of emotional control in
living one's life fully.
Speaker 2 (08:58):
Yeah. So here's the base of it. The basis of
it is if you can detach yourself from emotional responses
to things, then something that comes along, whether good or bad,
is not going to get your goat. Stoicism is all
about protecting your goat and not letting anything get it.
(09:19):
And the way that they do that is by saying,
there are very few things that I can control in life,
and everything that I can't control, I'm not going to
get up riled up over, you know, lose my job. Well,
it happens. It doesn't mean I'm any less of a person.
I just need to go out and get another job.
Dog gets hit by a car, Well that's really awful
(09:41):
because I really like that dog. But I'll just go
get another dog. Or maybe I'll just learn to live
without the dog. Maybe I was becoming too attached to
the dog. Things like that. That's stoicism.
Speaker 1 (09:52):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (09:52):
The whole point of it is it's not just to
get your goat or to protect your goat from being gotten.
It's about out living a moral life where you're a
very good human being and The idea is that the
only way to really do that is through things like
rationalism and investigating the universe and being understanding of knowledge
(10:16):
and then pursuing ethics, specific ethics, and they figured out
the best way to do that is dispassionately.
Speaker 1 (10:26):
Yeah, I think my bumper sticker would say onboard Colon,
part time stoicist, full time dreamer.
Speaker 2 (10:34):
Okay, that is a specific yeah, right, bumper sticker.
Speaker 1 (10:40):
I used to have a lot of bumper stickers in
high school, and now I hit loathe them so much.
Speaker 2 (10:44):
Really, what did you have?
Speaker 1 (10:45):
Like? Oh, I had an old Volkswagen Beetle and that
was my family actually bought brand new in nineteen sixty
eight and was passed down from kid to kid to kid,
and it was it was very cool. I thought at
the time, well, it is cool, love those old Beatles.
But I just went through one of those phases where
I was like, you know, here's a Native American saying
(11:06):
and here's something about mother nature and this Bob Marley
had this to say, and oh, just yeah, I was
one of those. And now I see those cars with
all the things and I'm just like, shut up, nobody cares.
Speaker 2 (11:23):
Yeah, for sure, I mean did you have a three
eleven sticker?
Speaker 1 (11:28):
No, this was pre three eleven.
Speaker 2 (11:29):
Actually, okay, gotcha. So did your mom come out and
be like, what'd you do to the family heirloom? No
stickers over?
Speaker 1 (11:37):
No, it's funny that that car had a the rear
floorboard was missing on one side.
Speaker 2 (11:43):
My dad had a car like that, a Malibu, so.
Speaker 1 (11:45):
You could like see the street.
Speaker 2 (11:46):
Uh huh there, Now that I look back, he didn't
even have a piece of wood. Now that I look back,
I'm like, that was extraordinarily irresponsible to be driving around
with kids in the back seat. Yeah, with the street visible.
Speaker 1 (11:59):
Yeah, I love that. Your dall was just like watch your.
Speaker 2 (12:03):
Feet kids, Yeah, easy, does it?
Speaker 1 (12:06):
Uh? All right? So look, you want to go back
and talk about the history a little.
Speaker 2 (12:10):
Bit, No, I want to keep beating around the butt.
Speaker 1 (12:12):
All right. Let's get in the way back machine and okay,
we need to really juice it up because we're going
way back.
Speaker 2 (12:19):
Got some kerosene, got some banana peels, huh, and got
some airplane glue. But that's just for us.
Speaker 1 (12:26):
That's right, because it's a long ride. Yeah, Ancient Greece
is where we're headed to the time of the Great philosophers.
And like we said earlier, sitting here on the stoa,
that was a joke, but it wasn't. And you you,
you know, you said, Stoa, You're gonna try it again.
(12:47):
The stoa poikilely yes, or painted porch is what it means.
And that was a public space in Athens grease.
Speaker 2 (12:53):
It was like a portico, yeah, where people.
Speaker 1 (12:55):
Would hang out and talk and chew the fat. And
that's what I love about this time. People just they
were just alive with ideas, these philosophical ideas of trying
to figure it all out.
Speaker 2 (13:07):
Yeah, but don't you think like every once a while
you just be like, oh, everybody, shut up, I live.
Speaker 1 (13:14):
I gotta do something useful.
Speaker 2 (13:15):
Yeah, plan talking. Yeah, you know, but I agree with you. Overall,
it was a pretty thrilling time.
Speaker 1 (13:23):
Did you take philosophy in college at all? No?
Speaker 2 (13:27):
No, I didn't. I really did not. I don't think
I took a single philosophy class now that I think
about it, not even a survey.
Speaker 1 (13:34):
I took the one kind of general class. I guess
it was the one I won. And I actually made
an A which I didn't make a ton of a's
in college. And I remember at the time kind of
the same thing. About half the class I was like, man,
so fascinating, and then the other half I was just like, oh, man,
what a waste of time. I do something useful, go
(13:54):
like volunteer for a charity.
Speaker 2 (13:56):
Go make something out of wood, anything.
Speaker 1 (14:00):
All right, So back to the Stoa. We're on this
painted porch, this portico, as it were. People are everywhere
running their mouths about what they think is important. And
then this dude wanders up. Zeno of Citium, Yeah, who
had recently been shipwrecked. And there were other zenos. Not
to be confused.
Speaker 2 (14:21):
I know that is confusing. There should be one Zeno.
There can be in all of history.
Speaker 1 (14:27):
There were zenos of other things. But this is Zeno
of Cidium. And you're right, he was shipwrecked and he
was wandering around after a trip from Cyprus.
Speaker 2 (14:36):
Did you say we're in Athens.
Speaker 1 (14:37):
Oh yeah, not Georgia. No, although we did our fair
shriff sitting around on porches talking nonsense there as well.
Speaker 2 (14:44):
But that's a porch porch, yeah, had a Greek porch.
Speaker 1 (14:48):
And so Xeno took a little bit of insight from
the Synics and then eventually said, you know what, I
could my kind of forming my own thoughts here, and
I think everyone else is doing it. I have my
own philosophy.
Speaker 2 (15:03):
Yeah, and it's called Stoicism, Yeah, named after later later
I don't think he called it that. I'm not sure
he probably called it Zenoism. They're like, yeah, that sucks,
We're gonna call it stoicism after the porch. Yeah, but
this is I mean, like the Stoicism very quickly became
one of the big philosophies at the time, and it
(15:23):
rivaled some of the philosophies that it grew out of,
like Socratic philosophy and like you said, cynicism, the cynics. Sure,
And actually, if you look at Stoicism, it's kind of
a compromise between Socrates or so Crates, as Bill and
Ted call them, philosophy, which was that to lead a
(15:45):
good life. And this was the point of all of
the philosophies at this time, during this Age of Reason,
was achieving what was called you diemonia, and you diemonia
is a life worth living. It's thriving, it's flourishing, it's
being happy, like real happiness. Right. That was the pursuit
of all of these different ideas that were floating around
(16:07):
at the time was how to achieve that. Socrates had
the idea that you achieved that through like twelve cardinal virtues,
and some of them were things you could cultivate in yourself,
like courage, a sense of justice, that kind of stuff.
But then there are other ones too that had like
everything to do with luck, Like being good looking was
(16:27):
one of them. Right, Yeah, if you weren't good look,
if you were ugly, sorry, buddy, you could never achieve
you diemonia. Right on the other end of the spectrum
where the cynics and the cynics believed that earthly trappings
like wealth and fame and glory anything like that was
the path to ruin and that the true path to
(16:48):
you diemonia was living simply and living in poverty. And
so Zeno comes along and here's all these and as
he's formulating his own ideas, he's like, Socrates make some
sense over here, and so do the cynics a little bit.
But I'm going to put them together. And that's where
Stoicism came from. It was a compromise between the two
where you live a life of pursuing you diemonia through
(17:12):
these virtues for virtues. I think there's justice, courage, wisdom,
and then temperance, right, So you're practicing those four virtues.
So that's kind of a nod to Socrates. And you
don't have to live in poverty. You can be wealthy,
(17:33):
because if stoicism is anything, it's wealthy people who got
into philosophy that weren't quite sure how to feel about
being wealthy.
Speaker 1 (17:42):
Yeah, to say to kind of come to the point that,
like happing money is not a bad thing, right, right.
Speaker 2 (17:48):
And so was what they came up with was, sure,
you can be wealthy, and that's okay. You can prefer
to be wealthy, but you just can't be attached to it.
You can't desire to be wealthy because you can't control
being wealthy. And if you pursue being wealthy, you're pursuing
something beyond your control. So if you just happen to
be wealthy, that's great. You can be happy with it,
(18:10):
but also be prepared to lose it at any given time,
and that's a big part of stoicism.
Speaker 1 (18:17):
Yeah. I think it's so funny though to think about,
like thousands of years ago in ancient Greece, like they
spent so much time thinking about living this all these
schools have thought of living this life so like putting
so much thought into living life to its fullest and
all the different ways that they defined it and eventually,
(18:41):
like over the years, like as recently as like the
generation of our parents and grandparents the United States, like
the philosophy of life was like you just go to
work and you work hard until you die, and that's
the only thing that matters exactly, Like all that other
stuff is garbage.
Speaker 2 (18:58):
Yeah, well, I think that's one of the reasons why
stoicism is becoming appealing again, is this idea that, like
work seems to be kind of going through a weird transformation,
doesn't it. Yeah, Like it's not like that anymore. Like
that ethic is still around for sure, but like, how
many people do you know work from home? Like almost
(19:18):
entirely A lot a lot, And that's fairly new. So
I wonder if like this changing work dynamic is leading
to this resurgence in stoicism that you can find happiness
through other stuff.
Speaker 1 (19:31):
I mean, part of me thinks this is all like
super worthwhile, and part of me thinks and it's sort
of indulgent to set and a bit like you said,
naval gaysy and like put just start practicing good things
instead of sitting around thinking about the best way to
live life.
Speaker 2 (19:48):
Well, we'll talk about criticisms of them later on, but
I think you hit a big one though, Chuck, was
the idea that it's self indulgent because it demands introspection
almost every mo of every day. Yeah, you want to
take a break and then get back to it.
Speaker 1 (20:04):
Yeah, I gotta, I gotta get my head together. Where's
the airplane glue? All right?
Speaker 2 (20:34):
Nothing like airplane glue to get your head back on straight.
Speaker 1 (20:38):
Just kidding, of course. Everyone. Sure we're smart guys, we
don't do that kind of thing.
Speaker 2 (20:43):
No, it's pretty tough to be smart and huff model
airplane glue. Yeah, you're pretty much making a choice between
that and being smart.
Speaker 1 (20:51):
That's what they teach you early on. Yeah, like you
want to go somewhere life, you want to half airplane glue.
It's the one thing Nancy Reagan didn't lie about. All right,
So Zeno got things going. Peace of mind that comes
with living a life of virtue in accordance with reason
and nature. And then other dudes got on boards, and
(21:12):
of course got on boards got on board, and they
were all dudes back then, because everything was from the
man's perspective. Uh just want to point that out.
Speaker 2 (21:20):
Yeah, because it's changed so dramatically since then.
Speaker 1 (21:24):
But some of the other early stoicist Clianthes Kato.
Speaker 2 (21:30):
Kato the younger, elder younger, right, Kato the klin oh
I forgot about him.
Speaker 1 (21:36):
I'm not sure which Kto.
Speaker 2 (21:37):
I think it's the younger. Yeah, we'll find out from
two people who email.
Speaker 1 (21:42):
In to Seneca. And then a very important stoicis Uh. Well,
I'm going to pronounce.
Speaker 3 (21:50):
It epic epet Epictetus, epictetus. Epetic sounds like a vaccine shot.
It does E P I C T E T U s.
Speaker 1 (22:03):
It's that C.
Speaker 2 (22:04):
Going into a T that's getting you. Yeah, it's just
Epictetus or Epictetus. I think epictetis is what we should
go with.
Speaker 1 (22:12):
I want another C in there. I want it to
be Epitectus, but it's not.
Speaker 2 (22:15):
No, it's not. It's Epictetus, all right. So u oh,
and don't forget Marcus Aurelius Man.
Speaker 1 (22:21):
Oh well, sure, I mean he comes a little bit later.
He was he was the ruler of anthant Man. What
is my problem today.
Speaker 2 (22:30):
It's okay, man, everyone knew what you meant.
Speaker 1 (22:33):
He was the philosopher king, and that was when Stoicism
was kind of the most popular thing going. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (22:40):
Apparently they moved from Athens to Rome, which I didn't
realize this. I always had the idea that Rome venerated
Hellenistic Greece hundreds of years after basically the Greek civilization
had had just kind of, you know, gone into a
bit of a twilight or had gone out of its heyday. No,
(23:02):
there was total cross pollination, including some of these early
Stoics who traveled from Athens to Rome, and basically with
with that move transferred the seed of philosophy from Athens
to Rome, from Greek to Rome to Rome, from Greece
to Rome. I didn't realize that there were they were
actually like cross pollinating one another at the time. Did
(23:23):
you know that?
Speaker 1 (23:24):
I think I recalled that from deep in my college memory.
Banks nice.
Speaker 2 (23:29):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (23:29):
So Epitectus Tetus man he had a big role in
the Stoic movement. He was a former slave, which kind
of makes sense in terms of Stoicism.
Speaker 2 (23:43):
He almost almost single handedly gives credence to Stoicism because
so many other Stoics were extraordinarily wealthy, powerful man sure
that it's like, yeah, it's pretty easy for you to
go through life saying, you know, it's just just take
what life gives you. If life is giving you nothing
(24:04):
but gold bullion all the time. Right, this guy was
born a slave, crippled in the knee for life and
became a Stoic, one of the great Stoic thinkers, and
just through his life proved that stoicism can work.
Speaker 1 (24:20):
Yeah, And he wrote a handbook at the time was
called an Encritean, and he wrote the Encridian of Epictetus.
Speaker 2 (24:29):
Incridium literally means handbook. It means ready at hand.
Speaker 1 (24:32):
So it was a very famous handbook. And he attributed
I mean, the first line of it was some things
are in our control and others not right, and that
kind of sums it all up, like he could have
said the end, but he decided to dive a little deeper.
Speaker 2 (24:47):
I agree with you. I think our brand of Stoicism
has about the same contours because that that right there,
that's all. That's everything you need to know, right there
is some things you can control, most things you can't control.
There you go, don't get too.
Speaker 1 (25:04):
High, too low, right, don't get too mad about something.
Speaker 2 (25:08):
Well, ultimately, I think that's what it boils down to.
I don't really find much of a problem when people
are overjoyed. I don't think that's an issue. And technically,
with stoicism, that is a that's a problem. You should
not become overjoyed. Experiencing joy is fine, sure, but just
being like overcome with happiness or joy or grief or
(25:31):
whatever it is, you're you're violating one of those four
cardinal virtues, temperance, which is just being tempered and even keeled.
Speaker 1 (25:40):
Right.
Speaker 2 (25:41):
So, but I think if you're saying, don't get upset
about something that's out of your control, don't blame others,
don't try to control other people, just know that whatever
comes you can handle it. There you go, That's all
you need to know for me.
Speaker 1 (25:55):
Yeah, and you know, I mean, how many times have
you heard me say it is what it is? Which
is an annoying thing to hear and say.
Speaker 2 (26:01):
But it's pretty stoic.
Speaker 1 (26:03):
Well it is, but it's also in my case, it
is what it is until it isn't. It just matters
if I personally riled up about something, you know.
Speaker 2 (26:12):
Yeah, but I think again though, if like, there's probably
some people who listen who subscribe to at least modern
stoicism listening to this, and I would guess that they
would say that's because stoicism is basically meant to apply
to every day of your life. Like, no, Stoics are
really expected to become stages in their lifetimes, right that
(26:34):
it's something you just do every single day, is try
to not get riled up. But of course something's going
to come along and get you riled up. That's just
human nature. Stoicism is trying to put a bridle on
that human nature.
Speaker 1 (26:48):
Yeah, well, and this is insider stuff. I think you
and I compliment each other because we rarely get worked
up about the same thing.
Speaker 2 (26:58):
Just voter suppression.
Speaker 1 (27:00):
Well, no, it happens here and there, but just in
our personal lives and everything to do with work, Like
oftentimes I've noticed, like something that'll rile me up, you're
calming me down and the other way around. And yeah,
I mean, I think that's one reason we've lasted so long.
Like if two people were so similar that they're constantly
worked up about the same stuff, Yeah, no, one, you know,
(27:23):
you're just gonna be working each other up, and no
one's going to be there to say, hey, man, it
is what it is.
Speaker 2 (27:27):
Yeah, man, hey, mellow out, here's the Bob Marley bumpers exactly.
Speaker 1 (27:33):
So should we talk a little bit about the areas
of study, Yeah, all right, Well there are three main
ones and stoicism and this is all you know to
deal with introspection, which is kind of like all philosophies.
Physics is the first thing. And it's not physics like
you think of that you hate studying in high school.
Speaker 2 (27:54):
Well, it falls under a larger umbrella term, I guess.
Speaker 1 (27:57):
Yeah. They're talking about the natural world, the natural you know,
and also what lies beyond it. And when they say
the natural world, they're talking about everything God, the divine nature,
everything that we know and things that we don't know.
Speaker 2 (28:13):
Yeah, everything we would view as science or like you said, nature, Yeah,
all that stuff that's physics and all of it. That
One of the things the Stoics, I think, if they
weren't the first to come up with it, they definitely
popularized it was the idea that all of this was interconnected. Yeah,
which is pretty I mean, you take it for granted today,
(28:36):
like everybody thinks that everything's interconnected these days.
Speaker 1 (28:38):
Yeah, but.
Speaker 2 (28:41):
It's to be among the first to kind of point
that out or suggest that it's pretty pretty significant contribution
to Western thought.
Speaker 1 (28:49):
Yeah, imagine that was a pretty deep thing when it
first started hitting people, you know.
Speaker 2 (28:53):
Can't you just see George Carlin being like, oh, you.
Speaker 1 (28:56):
Just blew my mind? Oh because he was so great?
Mm hmm. Man.
Speaker 2 (29:02):
Wait, no, he wasn't so crazy. He was he was
the guy their spirit a Yeah, what.
Speaker 1 (29:09):
Was his name? Oh? Man got killed on this.
Speaker 2 (29:13):
We'll just edit this part out.
Speaker 1 (29:14):
I didn't know. I had to brush up on my
bill and deed.
Speaker 2 (29:17):
I didn't either. I surprised myself. You should have seen
my face.
Speaker 1 (29:20):
You know. They kept they kept talking about remakes, like
as recently as a couple of years ago, I think,
or not remakes, but uh sequels with the originals. Oh yeah,
Like Kenna Reeves was like, man, I love those movies.
I'd love to make another one.
Speaker 2 (29:34):
Did you see what what was?
Speaker 1 (29:36):
So?
Speaker 2 (29:37):
Was Keanu Reeves?
Speaker 1 (29:38):
Bill? Or Ted?
Speaker 2 (29:40):
Why are we even doing this to ourselves?
Speaker 1 (29:43):
Boy? I want to say he was Ted?
Speaker 2 (29:45):
So the guy who played the other guy?
Speaker 1 (29:47):
Yeah, Alex Winter.
Speaker 2 (29:49):
Oh geez, Chuck.
Speaker 1 (29:50):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (29:50):
Nice chob So Alex Winter was in what was the
Charles Bronson view Cola is most famous death Wish Death
Wish three. Death Wish three was what he was in,
which was when Gol and Globis got their hands on
it and turned it into like schlock, violent, like almost
(30:12):
post apocalyptic movie. Yeah, and he's great in it. But
he's also in a documentary on Golan Globis. I can't
remember what the name of the name of the documentaries,
but it's just about how bad the movies they made
were and how how gleefully these guys made them. But
(30:32):
he's interviewed in it. That guy hasn't aged a day.
Speaker 1 (30:35):
No, he looks exactly Bill.
Speaker 2 (30:38):
Okay, so he's Bill.
Speaker 1 (30:40):
Yeah all right.
Speaker 2 (30:42):
So, uh so we got that settled. Physics is done.
Speaker 1 (30:44):
What's next? Logic, which they wanted to include social scientists, psychology, sociology, history,
which I kind of like, I'm down with that as
far as the philosophies go. They want to include all
this stuff. But electively they kind of called this all reason.
It was a very big deal to stoicism, perhaps the
(31:07):
biggest deal, right.
Speaker 2 (31:08):
And they also were engaged in epistemology, which is theories
of what knowledge is, how we gain knowledge, what's true,
what's belief, what's false? How do we differentiate between these things?
And they spend a lot of time investigating this and
putting it all under logic, because it was through logic
that you could investigate physics, which included investigating God and
(31:32):
the nature of universe and stuff like that. And then
through all that investigation, that introspection, that naval gazing, you
were ultimately figuring out how to best pursue and best
live out the third part, which was the ethics of
the whole thing.
Speaker 1 (31:52):
Yeah, and you mentioned the four great virtues earlier, courage, justice, wisdom,
and temperance, And the whole idea here is uh, it's
it's not like you want to block out the bad
and only embrace the good. You like, you want to
consider both the good and the bad, but just don't
let any of it get in the way of anything
that you're trying to pursue in your life.
Speaker 2 (32:13):
Right, pretty simple.
Speaker 1 (32:16):
Yeah, and the whole good bad thing. Where did you
find this this thing on ethics?
Speaker 2 (32:22):
Was that the that was the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
from their from their entry on it. Yeah, it's pretty
pretty good. The whole thing was. Dude, you should have
seen how in depth they go though, But I thought
this one was a good snippet.
Speaker 1 (32:36):
Well, I'm sure, yeah, they dive pretty deep, but I
thought this was a pretty good little summation there. You know,
they're talking about, like you said, like money isn't just
not good or a ka bad. Things like this they
called indifference as in I N D I F F
E R E N T S. Right, not indifference, And
(33:00):
it's like not good or bad. It could be either one.
It's really kind of all about not letting something like
that get in the way of your pursuit.
Speaker 2 (33:11):
Right, So and again it went back to wealth, right,
And this person in the Encyclopedia of Philosophy points out
that like money, definitely being wealthy usually is helpful or
beneficial to the individual. Sure, but it can also not
(33:32):
be beneficial. Where say you have a big heroin problem, Well,
the more money you get, the more money you're going
to spend on heroin. So in that case, being wealthy
is detrimental to you're not beneficial. And for something to
be a good it has to be good under all circumstances,
and to a stoic only there's only four things that
are good under all circumstances, which are those four cardinal virtues.
(33:54):
Everything else, like you said, is an indifferent and it
can either be preferred or dispreferred, like wealth typically would
fall under being a preferred and different, whereas say, disease,
having chronic disease would be a dispropered dispropered, wow, a
dispreferred indifferent man.
Speaker 1 (34:16):
That's tough though it is.
Speaker 2 (34:18):
But the point is is whether it's fabulous wealth or diabetes,
they should affect you about the same or you might
want one, you might not want to have one. But
if you have either one, you can live with it.
And that brings up a huge, huge component of stoicism
that's really been blown up and exploded in the twenty
(34:40):
first century, which is you should take adversity and turn
it into an opportunity for growth. That is a huge
aspect of stoicism that's really being practiced and espoused these days.
Speaker 1 (34:56):
Yeah, I'm down with that. Like I don't think I
like being able to take from all these philosophies and
different religions to form your sort of pathway through life,
you know, sure, Like when I hear sometimes I started
to read about Buddhism and the whole thing with Buddhism
(35:17):
of like every day you start anew and you have
a new chance. Like that really appeals to me too, Right.
What I don't like is when either religions or philosophies
say like like this is the only way and everything
else is BS. Sure you know, yeah, that just that's
(35:37):
a harsh buzzkill.
Speaker 2 (35:40):
It really is. Not only is a BS, but I'm
going to kill you for thinking otherwise.
Speaker 1 (35:44):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (35:45):
So Seneca who was one of the great thinkers of Stoicism.
He was an advisor to Nero, and we'll talk about
him as criticism of Stoicism later on, but he had
a very famous quote where he says, you are unfortunate
in my judgment, for you have never been unfortunate. You
(36:07):
have passed through life with no antagonist to face you.
No one will know what you are capable of, not
even yourself, And that kind of shapes the basis of
that idea that no matter what life throws at you,
you take it and you say I'm going to become
a better person from this, like oh this happened, Well,
that's great because that means that I can learn to
(36:29):
be better at this. So my dog just got hit
by a car. I'm going to practice fortitude and make
it through this really hard time and become a stronger
person on the other side.
Speaker 1 (36:43):
Yeah, he may as well have said, you comma trust
fund kid, kamma.
Speaker 2 (36:47):
Sure right exactly, And I mean that that makes a
people turn that on Seneca as well, but a lot
of modern Stoics come to his defense. Is like, no, like,
I had a harder life than you would think.
Speaker 1 (37:00):
Should we take another break? Yeah, all right, let's do it,
and we'll talk about Seneca and Cicero and all other
kinds of weird names.
Speaker 2 (37:32):
So, Chuck, you were saying, you were talking about religion.
Stoicism apparently informed Christianity in a lot of ways.
Speaker 1 (37:40):
Yeah, and Buddhism in some ways. Yeah, yet atheists embrace it.
Speaker 2 (37:44):
It's kind of weird these days. But I mean, the
early Stoics were definitely they definitely believed in a divine intervention.
It was kind of the basis of the whole thing,
that this is God's will, So why try to control it?
Who are you to try to control it? Just roll
with the punches.
Speaker 1 (38:01):
Yeah, that's a big When when I was taking all
those philosophy quizzes, they're all a little bit different, but
you saw through line through a lot of these questions,
and the free will one was in every single one
of them. Yeah, like, how do you feel about free will?
And different ways of asking it, but you know.
Speaker 2 (38:20):
You will what do you think exactly?
Speaker 1 (38:23):
If you want to find out which philosophy that you
jibe with, you have to answer the free will question.
Free will question.
Speaker 2 (38:30):
Yeah, hey, that's easier to say than just preferred indifferent.
Speaker 1 (38:37):
Nice work.
Speaker 2 (38:38):
So one of the big points, especially today for practicing
stoicism is looking at adversity as a growth opportunity for growth.
Speaker 1 (38:48):
Right right, That's just a good tool in life.
Speaker 2 (38:50):
I think another one and this one, I really this
is where I big time diverge from stoicism as like
a part of a daily practice is something called negative visualization.
Speaker 1 (39:01):
Yeah, like, uh, try and try and imagine the worst
case scenario constantly. Yeah, I'm not into that at all.
Speaker 2 (39:10):
No. So, say you say you're at like your child's
birthday party, right, and you are not you specifically, this
is you just a general person and you're having just
the most intense moment of joy and appreciation for your
child According to stoics, you should follow that up with
(39:32):
a thought about how at your child's next doctor's appointment,
your child could be diagnosed with terminal leukemia.
Speaker 1 (39:38):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (39:38):
That that is what you should be doing basically all
the time, negative visualization. And the idea is it's twofold one.
You're preventing yourself from becoming overjoyed at that moment. Don't
don't do that. Yeah, and then secondly, you're you're exploring
how you will feel if your kid does get diagnosed
(40:00):
to something horrible or something bad happens, and that when
it actually happens, you'll say that's not so bad, I'm
already used to it, or you'll be able to confront
it through your imagination and say, this is what I'm
afraid of. That's not that bad. But I mean, it's
a really extreme, horrific example.
Speaker 1 (40:20):
But it is.
Speaker 2 (40:21):
Ultimately it's definitely in step with stoicism that you should
be visualizing the worst case scenario all the time.
Speaker 1 (40:29):
Yeah, I mean, And that's one of the reasons stoicism
has such a downer reputation, such that Cicero wrote a
stoic rouse enthusiasm. He is much more likely to extinguish
any enthusiasm, the student may have to begin with burn. Yeah,
it was a pretty good burn. And you know, I
(40:51):
get that. Like, who would if that was one of
the first things you learned if you started to poke
around with stoicism, ninety nine percent of people would probably
be like, Man, I don't want to. I don't like
the sounds of that.
Speaker 2 (41:05):
Yeah. I like the not having to control everything aspect,
but the thinking about nothing but negative thoughts all the time. Yeah,
you know, And I get the point of it. I
just it doesn't It doesn't appeal to me.
Speaker 1 (41:17):
No, I mean, you shouldn't be Pollyanna either. Well.
Speaker 2 (41:20):
No, it's it's in direct contradiction to the idea of
the power of positive thinking, right, which is stoics like, you, fool,
what are you doing? All you're doing is setting yourself
up for nothing but letdowns when that doesn't actually come true.
Speaker 1 (41:34):
Well, but I also agree with that to a certain degree,
you know, like the whole like just you can conjure
it up just by thinking positively. I think that's on
the opposite side equally, uh bs.
Speaker 2 (41:47):
Sure, sure, I think so too.
Speaker 1 (41:50):
I'm kind of right down the middle. I guess when
it comes to that.
Speaker 2 (41:52):
Stuff, and I think most people are. But I think
that's what's fascinating about this kind of thing is it's like, well,
well there's some people actually are these these degrees, these extremes.
It's interesting to me.
Speaker 1 (42:04):
Well yeah, And the other interesting thing is we you know,
you're talking about Christianity, and then it's weird how Stoicism
on one hand, like atheists like I can totally see
how they'd be down with Stoicism, but also the whole
notion that some believers in God and some Christians like
give it all up to God because only God can
(42:24):
control anything. So all we're going to do is pray
about it, and that's popular among Stoics as well. Right,
So it's just interesting that it has such a wide
range as far as from atheism to like the you know, serious, serious,
give it up to God Christianity.
Speaker 2 (42:43):
Right, yeah, no, it definitely, yeah, it almost It's kind
of like it's that buffet thing again where people can
come along and take what they want from it and
it becomes part of their own philosophy or their own
religion or whatever. Let's talk about some of the ways
that that it's been used over the year's stoicism, right, Okay,
(43:05):
so there's been a lot of people who have followed
Stoic thought, like Adam Smith apparently was very much informed
by Stoicism when he wrote The Wealth of Nations because
one of the big, big aspects of it was individual liberty.
One cool thing about the early Stoics was that everybody's equal. Yeah,
(43:26):
it doesn't matter whether you're a man, woman, gay, straight, black, white, whatever,
everyone is equal. And this was at a time when
slavery was rampant, right, Yeah, so that was a big,
a big that's a big aspect too. That's a big
aspect of the Wealth of Nations is anybody can come
along and become a capitalist. You just have to compete, right.
(43:51):
Another place that it popped up kind of famously was
in cognitive behavioral therapy.
Speaker 1 (43:55):
Yeah, which initially when I saw that, I was like, huh,
that kind of surprised me, But then it all made sense,
Like exposure to something bad can help you get over
it is kind of like that conjuring up the worst
possible It's almost numbing yourself to the worst possible thing.
If you think about that worst case scenario thing all
(44:18):
the time. It's almost a way of preparing for that.
Speaker 2 (44:21):
Yeah, and it's rooted specifically. One of the founders of CBT,
Albert Ellis, was an adherent of Stoicism as a younger man,
and what's known as the cognitive model of emotion, which
is the basis of cognitive behavioral therapy, is based on
(44:41):
Epictetis's maxim that people are disturbed not by things, but
by their view of things. And that's part of that
whole Stoic philosophy, which is nothing is good or bad.
There's only good in the four virtues. Everything else is
how you view it.
Speaker 1 (45:01):
Yea.
Speaker 2 (45:01):
Whether it's losing your job or winning the lottery, those
things aren't inherently good or bad. It's you, the person
experiencing that, who bestows good or bad on them. Yeah,
and why label things?
Speaker 1 (45:14):
Sure, I'm down with that, Yeah a little bit.
Speaker 2 (45:18):
Did you hear about Admiral Stockdale.
Speaker 1 (45:21):
Yeah, I remember that name for sure. When he came
out with his book Courage under Fire, colon Testing Eptectus's
Doctrines and the Laboratory of Human Behavior in nineteen ninety three.
He was a famous prisoner of war in Vietnam for
seven years, endured some of the worst of the worst
(45:43):
you can imagine in war. And what got him through
was certainly not Christianity, because he thought that's nothing but
false hope.
Speaker 2 (45:53):
Well, not only that, he shared the pow camp with
people who who clung to that and did not make it.
Speaker 1 (46:00):
Yeah, so he saw it right up front, right, So
what got him through was his stoic beliefs.
Speaker 2 (46:06):
Yeah, he was a huge, big time adherent of Epictetus.
He'd studied him in college. Apparently he'd read everything that
Epictetus had written or said that had been written down
and attributed to Epictetus twice from two different translators. So
this guy knew his Epictetus. And he said, well, I'm
(46:27):
a prisoner of war in Vietnam. I've got some broken bones,
I'm starving, I'm being mistreated. I'll be here for seven years.
What a perfect opportunity to put Epictetus's teachings to the
test in a real life laboratory experiment. And he said
Epictetus passed. The flying Colors. Was Stockdale's final report on it.
Speaker 1 (46:47):
Yeah, he said, if Epictetus's lecture room was a hospital,
my prison was a laboratory, a laboratory of human behavior.
I chose to test his postulates against the demanding real
life challenges of my laboratory. So, man, talk of out
a strong will like to be faced with that and
be like, well, hey, this is a great chance to
work on my philosophy of life.
Speaker 2 (47:08):
Exactly what else am I going to do? But that
follows in and of itself on the whole too, of
turning adversity into a room for growth as well.
Speaker 1 (47:17):
Yeah, man, yeah, stronger than me. Let's just say that.
Speaker 2 (47:22):
So you want to talk about some criticisms of Stoicism.
Speaker 1 (47:26):
Well, Cicero certainly thought it was a big.
Speaker 2 (47:28):
Downer, yeah, he said, Well you already said what he said, right, Yeah,
it basically extinguishes enthusiasm and students. Not a good thing. Right,
And over the years, the fact that some of the
great Stoic thinkers of all time have been super wealthy
and powerful. Seneca Marcus Aurelius was the Emperor of Rome.
(47:49):
He basically ran the free world. Well, I don't know
if the free worlds right, the Western world for almost
twenty years. Yeah, And when you sit there and yeah again,
if you say yes, you can turn anything into any
adversity into an opportunity. If you're super wealthy and you
don't have to worry about where your food's gonna come from. Like, yes,
(48:10):
of course you can be a Stoic. And then Epictetis
came along and, like we said, kind of erased all
that to an extent for sure, but it is still
kind of criticized as like a wealthy person's philosophy, and
it kind of smacks of that a little bit today too, Chuck,
with its huge resurgence in Silicon Valley.
Speaker 1 (48:32):
Oh is that happening?
Speaker 2 (48:34):
Oh? Yeah, most of the Stoic revival is taking place there.
That's where it's cradle is right now.
Speaker 1 (48:42):
Well, our own article has a couple of good points
to talk about it not being as appealing because it
lacks the mystique of Eastern practice. And then they also
said this, it's also regarded as a philosophy of merely
breaking even while remaining determinedly impassive.
Speaker 2 (48:59):
Yes, I don't know if that's entirely fair, but it's
as it kind of catches it a little bit.
Speaker 1 (49:06):
Well, yeah, because the very next sentences, this attitude ignores
the promise proffered by stoicism of lasting transcendence. And that
one article that you said talked about the power of indifference, right,
which I thought was interesting. It's not about just like
not caring about anything. It's about caring about only the
right things that you have the power to change. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (49:28):
And also though I also see that even keel aspect
being indifferent, the power of it. I mean, think about
how much time whenever you are like super happy about
something going right or super upset about something going wrong,
you're ultimately you're being distracted from keeping on keeping on.
(49:50):
Oh yeah, and then you go back to eventually get
back to that middle again, which is the baseline anyway.
And so I guess what stoics are doing is staying
on that baseline and not being distracted so they can
get further along faster or at a more steady pace.
Speaker 1 (50:08):
Yeah. I mean, there's definitely something that's really frustrating in life,
which is when you look back and say, man, I've
spent two days stressed and worried about something that I
have no control over, right, And what a waste of
time that was when I could have done X, Y,
and Z.
Speaker 2 (50:26):
One of the big questions I have, it's not necessarily
a criticism, I guess it depends on what the answer
would be. But my big question for stoicism, since it's
so it places so much emphasis on the individual and
self exploration and introspection. How would a stoic suggest enacting
(50:46):
massive social change? Where something some ill is happening to
some large group of people, but nothing's going to change
unless you go out of your own personal sphere and
work to make others change. Right, how do you do that?
Or do you just say, well, whatever, it's God's will
(51:07):
that these people suffer and be put down by the
majority forever, or is there some way that that can
be addressed through the stoic you know, philosophy. I'm very curious.
So anybody who knows that right end, please.
Speaker 1 (51:23):
Yeah, maybe that's why it appeals to Silicon Valley. Right.
Speaker 2 (51:27):
Well, that's the other thing too, right. So it also
very much smacks when when you hear of it from
like wealthy people espousing it to anybody, it smacks of
that whole aspect of Christianity where hey, medieval peasant, you
know how your life is terrible and you're going to
live to thirty five and all you do is work
(51:47):
all the time, and you give most of the spoils
of your effort to your king. Well, there's such a
thing as Christianity, and your treasure is in the afterlife,
so don't worry about this life. Yeah, it smacks the
same thing where you can keep a population placated and
not searching for larger social change by saying, hey, just
(52:07):
focus on these four things and everything else is just
It just happens, and you don't need to get worked
up about it at all. It seems like a bit
of a pacifier too. Yeah, depending on how you look
at it, it's fascinating. Are we done with stoicism?
Speaker 1 (52:24):
I finished with it?
Speaker 2 (52:25):
Okay?
Speaker 1 (52:28):
I think that was a good overview.
Speaker 2 (52:29):
I think so too.
Speaker 1 (52:30):
It's a good thought starter.
Speaker 2 (52:31):
If you want to know more about stoicism, Bud, there's
a lot more out there than this. Just dive in
and see what it means to you. And again, it's
a buffet. Take what you like, leave what you don't want,
leave the kerdle pudding behind, Take the perfectly garlic green beans. Yeah,
if you what else? Did I already say that one part?
Speaker 1 (52:55):
Oh?
Speaker 2 (52:55):
Since I said green beans, it's time for listener mail.
Speaker 1 (53:01):
I'm gonna call this Beagle Brigade slash police dogs.
Speaker 2 (53:05):
People love that.
Speaker 1 (53:06):
One man who doesn't love beatles, Beagles on brigade, on parade.
Speaker 2 (53:11):
No one, even people who get busted with whole pigs
still are like that. Beagles adorable.
Speaker 1 (53:17):
So this dude, Eric Stover is a sandwicher, meaning he
follows our advice, which is to listen to the newest
episode as well as whatever from our back catalog. He
chooses to Yeah, he's doing it right. Hey, guys are
working the sports and entertainment business in New York and
after nine to eleven, the use of bomb sniffing dogs,
mostly German shepherds, became standard operating procedure for all events.
(53:41):
If you ares, prior to a concert one night, the
canine units were sweeping all the backstage areas and one
of the bomb dogs hit on an employee locker, so
you can imagine it caused an immediate and serious response.
A bomb squad was dispatched and that portion of the
arena was evacuated. Plans were even made to cancel the show.
He doesn't say what show, which I was very curious about.
Speaker 2 (54:01):
I'm going to say three doors down.
Speaker 1 (54:04):
Okay. After some very tense moments, the police officers opened
the locker. Those guys are super brave, thankfully they didn't
find a bomb, but did find drugs. An employee must
have thought, must have brought in an extra bump for
the show.
Speaker 2 (54:19):
Oh man, it was definitely three doors Down.
Speaker 1 (54:22):
You might be asking yourself. No, this wasn't the band's
green room. This was an employee.
Speaker 2 (54:28):
Oh, I know, I know. Three Doors Down. Three Doors
Downs fans are among the most drug addled of all
music plans? Are they sure?
Speaker 1 (54:36):
I thought that was the Juggalos?
Speaker 2 (54:38):
No, they put the Juggalos a shame. Jugglers take time
off once in a while, you know what I mean?
Speaker 1 (54:43):
Yeah, that's true. Uh, you might be asking yourself, how
does a bomb dog find drugs? As it turns out,
the dog had failed out of drug school and was
retrained as a bomb talk poor guy. That's hilarious, isn't it?
Poor guy?
Speaker 2 (55:02):
Which one the dog or the guy who just happened
to run across the failed drug dog? I guess I
still remembered something.
Speaker 1 (55:10):
There are no winners here. I guess he didn't completely
forget his drug training, though, and he set off a
chain of events that scared the crap out of us.
The story ends with the employee getting arrested. The show
went on and the fans none the wiser. My guess
is the dog was reassigned to crowd control.
Speaker 2 (55:26):
Just barking up people. Keep back in line.
Speaker 1 (55:29):
Thanks for everything you guys do. Please let me know
if you ever need anything in New York City. Is
that a hint?
Speaker 2 (55:35):
We don't do drugs, Eric, Yeah, we're terrified of dogs.
Speaker 1 (55:41):
That is Eric Stover in New York and I guess
he's still in the sports and entertainment business.
Speaker 2 (55:46):
Yeah, he's like, you need some sports, Come see me.
Speaker 1 (55:50):
I could use some sports.
Speaker 2 (55:52):
Thanks Eric. That's a pretty great story, right, that's right.
If you want to get in touch with this like
Eric did, you can send us an email to Stuff
Podcast at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 1 (56:07):
Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts myheart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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Hosts And Creators
Chuck Bryant
Josh Clark
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