October 14, 2025 • 49 mins
While sometimes it might seem the appeal of stoic philosophy is limited to only a certain group of people or a certain set of circumstances, Brigid Delaney (author of 'Reasons not to Worry' and 'Wellmania') is here to tell us how it can be for everyone, in every moment - and how it can benefit us collectively just as much as individually.
In this conversation:
- The one simple step to begin stoic practice in your own life
- How to develop immunity to frustration, anger and even suffering
- The power of communicating through values
Check out Brigid's new book The Seeker and the Sage
For from more Osher, including tickets to Story Club and his new book So What, Now What? head here
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
What we're going through as a society, as individuals.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
People before us have.
Speaker 1 (00:05):
Gone through and they've spent a lot of time and
energy trying to work out how to how to kind of.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
Get through life's really big issues.
Speaker 1 (00:16):
And then they've created this philosophy called stoicism, and it's
just sitting there.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
We just have to pick it up.
Speaker 1 (00:22):
We can tweak it, but it's surprisingly adaptable to current life.
Speaker 3 (00:32):
Good a, welcome to the show. This is better than yesterday.
Useful tools and useful conversations. It helped make your day
to day better than yesterday. Every single week, every episode
since twenty thirteen. Min Nam Josha Ginsberg. I'm very glad
you're here. I don't want to make anybody feel like
they're not a special snowflake here. But if you play
this episode, if you're listening to the sound of my voice,
there's a chance you fall into one of a few camps.
(00:55):
One you don't really have much of an idea about
what stoicism is. You want to know what it's about,
or you have been interested in stoicism, but you're not
so interested in the people who've talked about it, or
the way it was talked about, or how much real
estate advice or crypto portfolio work came with that stoic message,
or you know stoicism, You aren't into it. You have
(01:19):
got fortune favors, the brave and Latin tattooed acrossy collar bones.
But you're always down for some chat about old Marcus
a areally ono, Marcus Arellionio. I don't know you're interested
to hearing some of your ideas. However you got here.
I'm glad you hear. There's conversations for you. There's valuable
lessons in this conversation, some ideas and new tools, no
(01:40):
matter who you are, no matter how familiar are with
this stuff, because look, stoicism is so trending, and because
of that, it may be something you want to know
a lot more about. Oh you want to know nothing
at all about it if you're in the latter frame
of mind. For you not Bridge Delaney is not jumping
on any bandwagons. She wrote By the Way, the book
and later the Netflix series Well Mania, so she's a
had a skeptical of trends to make life better as
(02:04):
they come. Her other books, though, Reasons Not to Worry,
and her latest book, The Seeker and the sage definitely
show that Bridgard knows stoicism inside and out, and stoicism
has been an immensely useful force in her life, which
includes being things not just an author, but also includes
being a lawyer, a journalist, a travel writer, a Guardian columnist,
(02:28):
and most recently, a speech writer for not one, but
two federal cabinet ministers. Bridgard talks about what drew her
to stoicism, simple ways you can practice it. And here's
something you don't normally hear in these conversations. How stoicism
can even solve big societal problems outside of ourselves and
help us achieve greater social cohesion and a change for
(02:48):
good in our community. Not bad for an idea that's
thousands of years old and nothing's new when it comes
to her problems or how to solve them. The solutions
are all there, we just have to be brave enough
to use them. What did I say about being a
special snowflake, No, none of us are. We're back to
hear a full conversation with Bridget in just a moment,
But I do have to see about pay some bills.
(03:09):
Enjoy these ads, good? I thanks so much for listening
to the show. Thanks for having me, keep the lights on.
Enjoy this conversation with Bridget Delaney. Thanks for coming in. Oh,
no worries. I noticed before you have a water bottle
here from a wellness retreat in Thailand, and the delicious
(03:33):
irony that you have a water bottle from wellness retreat
is delicious to me.
Speaker 2 (03:38):
But why so well Mania? Of course you.
Speaker 3 (03:43):
Remember that whole book, a whole TV series that commissioned.
Speaker 1 (03:47):
And I've had two other books since then, so it's
kind of like the distant in the distant mists of time.
Speaker 2 (03:53):
When I was writing Wilmania. It's funny.
Speaker 1 (03:56):
I went to this wellness retreat in Pouquet two weeks ago,
loved itr action point, and it wasn't It wasn't a
pampering wellness retreat. It was a you stay at a
gym like you live at the gym, and you were
given a timetable and there are six to eight hours
of classes a day, plus rest and recovery, plus these
(04:19):
protein heavy meals like I'm talking. I'd been in France
eating baguettes and then suddenly I was on one hundred
and twenty grams of protein.
Speaker 3 (04:28):
Fromage where groom temperature drippy cheese here.
Speaker 1 (04:34):
No cheese in Thailand as I found. But yeah, but
a number of people who worked at the wellness center
have watched well Mania kind of looked at me and
they're like, oh, that was that was your show, because
you know, I had been in France, not doing any
exercise and eating a lot of carbs.
Speaker 2 (04:52):
So but they were like, what happened to Lorraine? We
didn't get a season two?
Speaker 1 (04:57):
Yeah, it was really fun to reconnect with those about
the show.
Speaker 3 (05:00):
Well, you're describing as a play sounds like my perfect holiday.
Speaker 2 (05:04):
Oh really?
Speaker 3 (05:05):
Oh yeah, that's the best week of my life.
Speaker 1 (05:08):
Wow, because like they make you do stuff that's a
bit out of your comfort zone muy Thai fighting and
hot cold plunges and sounds great.
Speaker 2 (05:17):
It was great.
Speaker 3 (05:18):
Actually, you're considering what else goes on in Pouquet and
you know what we also know about, you know, Ossie's
and Puket. That's a pretty decent thing to get up to.
Speaker 2 (05:27):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (05:27):
I was googling Ozzie's in Ozzie Death's Thailand recently is.
Speaker 3 (05:34):
Theam Man number one? He's got to be Warnie.
Speaker 2 (05:38):
Yeah, Kosa movie.
Speaker 1 (05:40):
There's been a number of unfortunate deaths but there's actually
a vast amount of Australians that die in Thailand and
Bali each year simply because they've gone over there to
retire and they're old and they just drop dead in paradise.
So so that was my pre holiday research.
Speaker 3 (05:58):
Can we work on a new Netflix TV too, called
in Paradise?
Speaker 2 (06:01):
I think it would rate its socks off?
Speaker 3 (06:02):
Yeah, okay, So the Australian Consulate in Piquette has found
out this is such a problem. They've permanently stationed an
Australian coroner there who's now living there all right, and
it's the classic you know, she's got grown kids. You know,
the husband didn't want to come and they are on again,
off again anyway. But yet now she's working with this
(06:25):
kind of hot assistant and you know she's there. It's
a procedural. So every week she's trying to figure out
how he died, but there's an overarch of her kind
of like it's a bit eat pre love, but it's
also a bit dexter. Let's pitch it.
Speaker 2 (06:39):
I think this is amazing.
Speaker 3 (06:40):
Yeah, I can't believe.
Speaker 2 (06:42):
You just came up with that.
Speaker 3 (06:43):
This is what I do all day. You were so
creative you didn't come here to talk about film and
TV production. But it's all a part of it. Yeah,
you know, because this is a part of the diversification
that is required. There was a time when you're going like,
this is it. I'm writing, I'll be a writer forever.
I hang on, it's not quite paying the bills like
you used to. How I'm going to make this ip
(07:04):
work for me? Time? At what point did you start
to realize that I'm going to have to start exploring elsewhere.
Speaker 1 (07:11):
I think if you want to be a writer, you
have to just presume that you're going to have to
have a second job or a first job, and writing
becomes your second job. There is always something else paying
the bills. Because I don't know if you've seen the
latest stats, but the average writer in Australia, you know,
it earns between like twenty and fifty grand if they're lucky.
Speaker 3 (07:35):
You don't write books in Australia to make money.
Speaker 1 (07:37):
But you do write books because you don't care about
the money, you know have You write books because you
are driven by such a kind of mysterious compulsion to
spend years of your.
Speaker 2 (07:50):
Life in a.
Speaker 1 (07:53):
In a horrible little room, staring at your laptop, just
looking at the awful thing that you've written that could
never be published, and you know whipping yourself that you'll
never write the book that you set out to write,
because there is some like weird compulsion to actually say something.
Speaker 3 (08:15):
Having I'm a great fan of Rick Rubin, the music producer.
Speaker 1 (08:19):
Yeah, he's amazing, written an extraordinary book on creativity.
Speaker 3 (08:23):
I love that extraordinary book because you got to detach
from the money. Yeah, the idea of detaching from it completely. Yeah,
and just not if I don't care about the money,
then what do I do? What do I care about?
Speaker 2 (08:34):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (08:35):
I care about Is this a true reflection of what
it is I wanted to make?
Speaker 2 (08:38):
Yeap?
Speaker 1 (08:39):
And often it's not often you fall well short. But
the process is where the gold is, like the process
of trying to work it out, like I've kind of
this is my fifth I've just got a new book out,
Seeker in the Sage, and it's my fifth book, and
pretty much in every single book, although they're all different,
I'm still trying to work out the same one question,
(09:01):
which is how should we live? You know, how should
we actually use the life that we've got? And each
book is trying to answer that, and obviously I don't
fully answer it to my for myself, That's why I
have to keep going. But you know, Rick will say
in his book, you know that you're often you're often
(09:23):
writing in many ways for yourself. You're trying to work
something else for yourself.
Speaker 3 (09:27):
Absolutely, when did you first start to ask that question?
Speaker 1 (09:31):
Really young? When I was a kid, I wanted two
things out of life. I wanted to have adventures and
I wanted to know the meaning of life. And that
were those were the kind of things that have propelled
me over the last few decades. You know, I want
to have an adventurous life. I want to have a
big life. In some ways, that's incompatible with being a writer,
(09:55):
because being a writer is, you know, by its nature,
it's quite small.
Speaker 3 (10:00):
You are.
Speaker 1 (10:01):
You are not socializing, you're not engaging. It's just you
and your brain and that piece of paper or that
screen trying to create something. But the meaning thing, I
think is really important, and it's only gotten more important
as I've got older, which is to live a life
where you're not grappling with meaning, is to kind of
(10:23):
live a life that's untethered. You know, there's nothing, there's
no stake in the ground. When things get really rough
politically or with world events, it's easy to feel sort
of swept away, And I think meaning gives you a
kind of ballast.
Speaker 3 (10:41):
I get why people find comfort in structural religion.
Speaker 2 (10:46):
I kind of envy that.
Speaker 3 (10:47):
Like, I get it. But once I started to decouple
from that, I felt a lot more in control. But
then I also realized, oh, fuck, now I've got to
find these things for myself. But thankfully I'm not the
first person to do that, And thankfully there's people who
thousands of years ago kind of came up with a
fairly decent set of a waye to look at the
(11:08):
world for people who've never heard about selves. Because this
is your new book, is a parable really kind of
based upon this as a way to introduce the I
guess these ideas to people in a different kind of way.
If you're a Ryan holiday kind of person, I am,
and that's okay, but everybody is.
Speaker 1 (11:24):
Yeah. It's basically like The Alchemist or a fable between
a it's a it's a journalist who's sent to interview
a stoic sage. So it's a dialogue between these two characters,
and as the journalist is learning about Stoicism, so are
you the reader. So it's a way of teaching some
(11:47):
principles using story, kind of using fictional tools as well,
means that you can broaden out from your own experience.
Like my book before This Reason's Not to Worry, which
was also a Stoicism book, was essentially a memoir about
how I came to Stoicism, what I got out of it,
(12:08):
and my kind of testing of the Stoic principles. However,
you know, some of the biggest things that the Stoics
have to teach us are around like the really nihli
stuff like sickness, grief, and death, and I haven't experienced
those things. So my writing actually naturally had to stop
at a certain point in the first Stoicism book because
(12:31):
I couldn't you know, I hadn't had the experiences in
order to kind of write about them. In this book,
the characters do that work, you know, you can give
the characters experiences that you haven't had, including you know, sickness, grief,
and death.
Speaker 3 (12:49):
To be honest, when I think about all the things
I've listened to over the years about Stoicism, it's always
been men telling me about it.
Speaker 1 (12:57):
Yeah, it's weird that because I find Stoicism is not
a particularly gendered philosophy, like it never started off as
a gendered philosophy, Like the Greek Stoics believes that everyone
was everyone who was rational was equal. So if you're
a slaver or a free person, if you're a man
or a woman, if you were black, white, or brown,
(13:18):
you know, you were all equal if you used your
rational mind. The minute you lost rationality, you were not
considered equal. So you know, women were invited, you know,
theoretically at least to go to classes to learn Stoicism.
It was never a particularly masculine or feminine philosophy the
(13:43):
way I read it, and you read Marcus Arelius, and
he models some really great ways to be. I mean,
his life he was you know, you could say he was.
There was genocide and there was a lot of wars,
but in his writing he modeled kind of masculinity in
a much softer way than we're seeing today from the manisphere.
(14:05):
So yeah, I don't see it as an ultra ultra
male thing.
Speaker 3 (14:09):
It's super deep if you really want to get into it,
but it can also be boiled down feely quickly.
Speaker 2 (14:15):
Yeah, definitely, people.
Speaker 3 (14:16):
That might have never, you know, really considered what the
Stoic principles are. You mentioned that before, how would you
describe them?
Speaker 1 (14:22):
Okay, so I'd say to people who don't know what
it is, say three point fifty BC. There was a
heap of different philosophies in Greece, and you could kind
of pick and choose religion. You know, the kind of
old gods. Old gods were sort of fading. Christianity hadn't
come in, so there was this really interesting gap where rationality, reason, argument,
(14:48):
the kind of desire to be a good citizen, all
of that was bubbling around in the city. And Stoicism
was part of that mix. And the word Stoic comes
from the Greek Woods, which was the painted porch where
they all met, and then it traveled from Greece to Rome.
And the writing that we have on Stoicism is the Roman.
(15:10):
A lot of the Roman writing survived the Greeks not
so much. So that's the history. In a nutshell. Stoicism
looks at firstly what we can and can't control in life,
and it says we can only control a very small
amount of things. That is our characters, our actions and
reactions and how we treat other people, and the rest
(15:32):
is out of our control, so we shouldn't freak out
or worry about things that we can't control. The whole
purpose of this was to reduce suffering. The Stoics, like
other philosophers, realize that life is essentially full of suffering.
Speaker 2 (15:50):
We particularly back then.
Speaker 1 (15:52):
You know, you had eleven children, probably seven of them
would have died in childbooth. Yeah, there was you know,
no modern medicine, and there was.
Speaker 3 (16:01):
A cut could kill you. Water purification, there's no vaccination,
there's no tooth brushes. People were dying before the age
of thirty all the time. I'm fifty one, and I
would be ancient.
Speaker 1 (16:13):
In that system, you would be a sage probably. But
it's they needed something, as I was saying earlier, you
need some sort of meaning, you need some sort of framework.
Otherwise the chaos can overwhelm you and you know, and
that's a very unpleasant experience. So they tried to work out, well,
(16:34):
how can we lessen suffering? And we can lessen suffering
by not suffering more than we need to. So there's
going to be some suffering that you can't avoid if
you cut yourself. No antibiotics, it gets infected and then
you lose your hand. You're going to suffer. That's suffering.
You can't help that, but you can control the resentment
(16:57):
that you might you might spend the rest of your
life resenting the fact that this happened to you. And
they said, well, you can control that resentment. You know,
you can't control the first suffering, you can control the
second because you can control your thoughts, you can control
your reactions to things. So that's what they tried to
really work on was their reactions. You know, how can
(17:20):
I be less reactive, less angry? How can I be
more that this is Greek word that they keeps on
coming up time and time again at Araxia well being?
How can I not lose my call? Not get too high,
not go too low? Like how do I be chill
when the worst stuff's happening?
Speaker 3 (17:40):
Season two, Netflix, At Araxiomania.
Speaker 2 (17:43):
We're on, We're on.
Speaker 1 (17:45):
It might not be an interesting show because at Araxia,
by its very nature is not dramatic. You know, it's
it's it's the less drama the better.
Speaker 3 (17:57):
What I do love about this interesting time you talk
about between like the old gods, We're talking like.
Speaker 2 (18:02):
Zeus and yeah, all those guys.
Speaker 3 (18:04):
And people kind of figuring out, well, I don't know,
like what's just here. The idea that they wanted to
have some agency. It's not over to some bearded bloken
This guy who's starting lightning bolts at me was some
agency that I can deal with. The other thing I
really really love. They were also very aware of the
(18:25):
shortcomings of the brains that we have that's inside us.
There is an a meg dealer. We know the names
for all this stuff. Now, there is something that reacts
so much quicker than you can possibly intervene in. You
have no control of it. And when I learned that,
these guys went, oh, you're going to get flooded, and
you're going to get super mad, and you're going to
(18:45):
get super sad. Just don't do anything. For about twenty minutes,
I was like, oh fuck. So the idea of stoicism
is like I'm standing there and I'm holding this shit
in No. Yeah, because I'm feeling this, but I also
know not to say or do anything that could be
a problem. Will take myself out of situation and then come.
Speaker 2 (19:02):
Take myself out of ataraxia, you know, which is.
Speaker 3 (19:05):
It's just so brilliant that they understood that was within
them that they can't control it for a little bit. Yeah,
and what they can control is just don't do anything
in them. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (19:14):
Absolutely.
Speaker 1 (19:15):
Delay Seneca, one of the Roman Stokes, wrote this great
book on anger called The Era.
Speaker 3 (19:21):
Which I think was a Taylor Swift recorder, a.
Speaker 1 (19:23):
Taylor Swift record, but it's you can read it today
and it's still it's very usable, it's very useful. It's
practical tips for not getting angry. And they said, no
scourge has hurt the human race more than anger, and
this is this is how you deal with your anger.
I mean, you can't deal with someone else's anger. If
you're in a road rage situation and you're dealing with
(19:46):
someone who's very angry and they decide to bash you,
there's really not much you can do about that. But
you cannot bash them, you know, like that is that's
within your power. So they spent you know, part of
being a stoic was journaling, and it still is if
you want to practice it today. And it's not about
(20:08):
like I had this great interview with Osha today and
he did this, and you know, I wonder if he
thought you know the interview went, well, it's about how
how have I responded? I Have I shown up on time?
Speaker 3 (20:20):
No?
Speaker 2 (20:21):
Have I been prepared?
Speaker 1 (20:22):
You know when I got asked a difficult question, did
I did I get annoyed? So Stoic will monitor their
own emotional responses because they believed that emotional response was
within their control. So you journal as a way of
holding yourself accountable every night, and so with practice you
(20:43):
actually get far better at your responses. And this is
what they have in common with Vader Buddhists. A lot
of these Eastern religions. I may not be able to control.
I definitely can't control what happened in the Middle East
or in foreign war. However, if I make an effort,
(21:03):
a big effort to be peaceful, to not be angry,
to be loving towards others, that does have a ripple effect,
and I can control that.
Speaker 2 (21:13):
I can control how I.
Speaker 3 (21:14):
Am, And in my experience, if I can control my
level of anger about something like that, my ability to
take action can sometimes we far more useful.
Speaker 1 (21:30):
There's so many different kind of views on rage and anger.
Some argue that it's a kind of great catalyst for action.
It's definitely a very powerful energy. And there's this kind
of great feminist book I think it was in the
eighties that'd called The Dance of Anger about how women
should be more angry at their husbands.
Speaker 2 (21:53):
That Look, the Stoics would say.
Speaker 1 (21:55):
No, no excuses. I mean, maybe when you feel that
first burst of anger before it completely bubbles up, realize
it's trying to tell you something, but then use your
reason to suppress it or to redirect it. But it
should there's never an excuse for anger. Anything that took
(22:17):
you out of ataxia. They were really they were kind
of fearful of So it's about self preservation. Like it's like,
once you're out of ataraxia, like you think about the
decisions you make and what you think when you're stressed
and distressed. They're often bad decisions. So the Stoics prized rationality,
(22:38):
you know, using your brain, so getting rid of all
the emotions that are turbulent and then acting from that
position of calmness, from you know, equilibrium. But look, I
found since starting I started sort of really seriously reading
about stoicism and practicing it around eight years ago, and
(23:01):
I one of the major effects is like I just
don't get that angry anymore. I get upset with the
state of the world. I get sad, but it's really
hard to get me. I'll get angry every now and again,
but it's I get angry when people take advantage of
me or you know, I'm not respected, but the anger
(23:25):
is far less than it used to be.
Speaker 3 (23:28):
How would you say your overall mental health was before
you started thinking about things in this way and how
much control you felt over your life first is now?
Speaker 1 (23:38):
Look, I'd say my mental health was actually pretty good
because I'd spent fifteen years before stoicism doing the research
that would end up being well mania. So I had
gone on every single retreat. You know, I used to
be a travel journalist, and I'd send myself, you know,
I kind of credit a niche for myself. I'd send
(23:59):
myself to these places where, you know, whether they be monasteries, ashrams,
all these places where it was about learning different techniques
to keep your mind in good. Nick didn't always treat
my body well, but I sought out places where, you know,
(24:21):
mindfulness was key. So I've been on a long journey since,
you know, you know, my twenties around this stuff, and
stoicism is the thing that's stuck for me, and I
really recommend it. I just think it's super easy and
(24:43):
it works.
Speaker 3 (24:44):
And there's only four there's only four things to remember, Yeah, Courage, justice,
and temperance, and they're.
Speaker 1 (24:50):
The four virtues. You know, there's no kind of church
to worship in. There's no sort of hierarchy. It's very
much you. You're reading about it. You if you jibe
with it, start you know, just by a journal, start
incorporating it. Read Ryan Holiday, read more academic stuff. If
that's your that's the level you want to go in at.
(25:11):
Like my books are very basic for new people. But yeah,
just explore it. It's been I mean, how I think
of it is what we're going through as a society,
as individuals.
Speaker 2 (25:26):
People before us have gone through.
Speaker 1 (25:29):
And they've spent a lot of time and energy trying
to work out how to how to kind of.
Speaker 2 (25:34):
Get through life's really big issues.
Speaker 1 (25:40):
And then they've created this philosophy called stoicism, and it's
just sitting there. We just have to pick it up,
put it on. You know, we actually don't have to
develop we can tweak it, but it's surprisingly adaptable to
current life, particularly things like social media and right.
Speaker 3 (25:58):
Let's let's say, for an example, or I don't know,
it's it's two fifty five and you are running like
the school pickup. You've got a little one in the
back who has missed a nap and they're screaming, can
I watch K Pop Demon Hunters again? And why did
I get you out of daycare early today? And then
the other one jumps in and you know, they're covering
(26:20):
in bandaids and something terrible happen. They've got a note
from the teacher or whatever, and then now you're trying
to get to piano class. Everything's just like fucked, kind
of a kind of afternoon. How does stoicism play into
that moment?
Speaker 1 (26:30):
So it's they do this thing called premeditation of evils,
which is you imagine before a situation happens. A scenario
is like that. You imagine that it's likely that at
that time of day, if a nap has been missed,
the child's going to be ratty. You might know that
(26:50):
your other child's adventurous is likely to get into scrapes,
so you have some sense that this is foreseeable, and
when it happens, you've already imagined it. You've already run
the scenario through. In reality, you're like, Okay, this is
the nature of having two children, this age, this is
(27:12):
the nature of living in a city. This is the
nature of the traffic in this city. There's nothing unexpected
about this. This is just how it's meant to be.
To demand that the universe bend to your will, that
the child is in pristine condition, that they've slept for
four hours, that you've got an absolutely car free, you know,
(27:37):
ride home on the m one like you are dreaming.
I mean, what stoicism says is be in reality. Know
what reality is, and reality is often not what we
would like it to be. So the Stoics did this
thing where they trained for discomfort. You know, sometimes they
slept on the ground. Sometimes they wore we're clothing, so
(28:00):
you know, scratchy stuff, scratchy stuff, but also stuff that
was unfashionable. So if they were mocked, they realized that
it didn't it wouldn't kind of affect their own character.
They fasted all sorts of things, so they got used
to discomfort. And so there's you know, it's uncomfortable having
screaming children in a car and you're stuck in traffic,
(28:21):
but if you've if you've mentally prepared for it, and
you've physically prepared for it, you've.
Speaker 2 (28:27):
Been there before.
Speaker 1 (28:28):
You know you can survive it. You'll be okay, you'll
be fine.
Speaker 3 (28:34):
The acceptance of this it is what it is and
it isn't what it isn't, Yeah, is such a it's
such a leap to make. But once you get on
the other side of it, Yeah, now you're free to
make more choices, because before you've made that, the only
choice is upset and you've got very binary you know. Yeah,
(28:54):
that's it. Yep, that's it. But once you get on
the other side of that, you're like, okay, well what
do we go from here? And you will kind of
opens up a bit more. But I understand because it's
a bit of a back to the you know, the
primitive brain parts. There's a viable instinct at play here.
You know, Oh, this is uncomfortable. We should make this
stop in any way possible. However, how do we make
this stop? We call the whole thing off. That's the
(29:15):
best quickest way through, all right, Yeah, But the more
we do that, the bigger and those things become, and
our barrier to calling the whole thing off gets lower
and lower and lower. Eventually we don't do anything. Yeah,
we don't leave the house, we don't meet people, We don't.
Speaker 1 (29:27):
Which is kind of happening now in society. Yeah, there's people,
you know. I got an UBI here because the sort
of getting up a little bit earlier, getting several forms
of public transport.
Speaker 2 (29:40):
It's just too much friction.
Speaker 1 (29:42):
And I thought, oh, this is not a stoic way
of coming to the interview, you know, like I should
be as a stoic wanting friction. I should be wanting
a public transport strike today because friction. If I can
train myself in friction, I then get stronger at dealing
with it. And when friction comes at me in a
(30:03):
big way, which it will always does for everyone, I'm
okay with it.
Speaker 2 (30:10):
I've got my ataxia. I can roll with it.
Speaker 3 (30:12):
You know.
Speaker 2 (30:12):
It's about getting used to being uncomfortable.
Speaker 3 (30:15):
It seems like all effort though we can't. Why do
I have to change myself? Can everybody else change? What
do we get? What do we get by taking responsibility
for our reactions?
Speaker 2 (30:26):
We get a sense of freedom.
Speaker 1 (30:29):
You know, it's incredibly liberating to realize that you can't
control anyone else because so you stop trying and you
actually let a bit of air into relationships.
Speaker 2 (30:40):
You let people People want to be accepted for who
they are.
Speaker 1 (30:44):
You know, don't want someone saying you're not good enough
or you need to be this other sort of person.
So when you stop trying to change people, when you
just start focusing on your own qualities and the stoics,
as you said earlier, it was courage, wisdom, just and temperance,
which is moderation. When you focus on those things and
(31:08):
not being reactive or reacting to someone with love and compassion,
it actually has a transformative effect on those around you.
You know, it's very hard to be at war with
someone who is giving you the freedom to make your
own decisions, trying not to be judgmental.
Speaker 2 (31:25):
Yeah, it's kind of intoxicating.
Speaker 3 (31:30):
A quick breakaway from bridge to delaying to let you
know if you want to come to the next live show,
which is possibly the last live show we're doing for
twenty twenty five. It's at the Marrickville Factory Theater in
Marrickville the ninth of November. Story Club featuring Harley Breen,
Nina Oyama from Dead Luck, and Mark Humphrey's more guests
to be announced, possibly the last one doing for the year.
(31:51):
Do not miss it. It's an amazing, amazing night. Also
my new book, So What Now? What is aut Wherever
you get books, it's the perfect Christmas gift. If you're
in the office Secret Santa, if you're in Chris Kringle,
give it to someone you care about. Just whack it
on the table there in the middle of the boardroom,
put it in an envelope and you know, Bob Joe,
it'll be the best thing that person ever gets. We're
(32:13):
back in a moment. How can stoicism you mentioned it
has a earlier we were talking about it to have
an effect on the world we live in. How can
stoicism or the these philosophies work on a societal level
(32:33):
or on a collective level. How can they change a group?
How can they change a culture?
Speaker 1 (32:38):
So that's what I was interested in with my book
The Secret and the Sage, which was looking at how
does stoicism work on a collective And this journalist is
sent to find this town which is like rumored to
be the happiest town on earth. It's called Silver Springs
after the Fleetwood Max song and she undertakes a very
difficult journey. She finally gets are to spend three days
(33:01):
with the mayor to find out how does stoicism work
on a government level. And it can work by you know,
role modeling. As I said before, So you know, the
schools in this town teach stoicism, they teach resilience, they
(33:24):
teach acceptance of others, not trying to change others. And
there's some people that doesn't work for and they leave
the town. But most people have enough freedom to be
themselves and enjoy their life, but enough of a sense
of these are our values, shared values that there is
incredible social cohesion. So through the conversation between the journalists
(33:47):
and the mayor, I'm looking at governance. I'm looking at
well because I've just spent the last three years working
in government as a ministerial speech writer and got to
kind of see up close how government work. It's so
it's so massive, so fascinating. And then I took those
lessons from that time in government, shrunk them down, and
(34:08):
then put them in this book.
Speaker 3 (34:10):
How could a leader of whether it be a school
or a company or a country, how could a leader
incorporate these values in a way that could be could
be useful. What does a leader look like who uses
these principles.
Speaker 1 (34:23):
There's someone who firstly has the four virtues. You need
a leader who's courageous. I would put Zelenski definitely in
that camp. You need a leader who recognizes justice. And
I think recognizing justice is something innate. It's like, is
it just to take people off the street, hold them
without charge and then send them to Venezuela without a trial. No,
(34:49):
you know, we have principles of justice which you need
to know what you've been charged with. You need to
go before a court. To not tell someone why they've
been what they've been charged with is unjust. So we
have this innate sense of justice. And I think a country,
or a company or a community, in sort of my book,
(35:12):
their system has justice at the core and those principles.
Temperance and moderation is I think around resources, you know,
around not being too greedy. You've got to keep the
lights on, But how do we do it in such
a way that things are in balance with the natural world?
Speaker 2 (35:32):
And then.
Speaker 1 (35:36):
Wisdom is you know, wisdom's thought like the difference between
leadership that is inspiring and powerful and a disaster. You know,
is Trump wise? I think he's smart, don't think he's wise.
(35:56):
You know, a wise leader learns from past mistakes and
doesn't repeat them.
Speaker 3 (36:04):
So you worked as a speechwriter. People may this might
be the first time they've come to understand that someone
else writes the words yea and now leaders get you
in front of seventeen or twenty six. I can't remember
what Abbot's record was for the Australian flags behind someone
else writes those words. They're busy people, all right, and
(36:25):
there's a very complicated policy or thing that's probably one
hundred and eighty pages long. You're trying to get down
into something short enough that one paragraph of it will
survive to a SoundBite on the news, and that's going
to tell everybody everything they needs to know. It's very
hard thing to do, certainly not if you're busy running
a country. How did you even get that gig?
Speaker 1 (36:46):
So I've been working as a journalist for The Guardian
and done a column for about eight years.
Speaker 3 (36:52):
I'm impressure you. I haven't asked me for donation yet, no.
Speaker 2 (36:55):
Longer there so I can put away the begging bee.
Speaker 3 (36:58):
Even after donate as a subscriber for a while. They
still ask me like, come on, surely there's a cookie
that tells you I've done.
Speaker 2 (37:05):
This pop up? So annoying.
Speaker 1 (37:10):
Yeah. So I was working there and I'd loved this
book by Don Watson called Recollections of a Bleeding Heart,
which was his account of being a speech writer for
Keating in the it was the eighties and the nineties.
And always thought that that sounded like a really interesting job.
So you're close to the action, you get to see
behind the curtain. You were talking before in a different
(37:32):
context about looking behind the curtain. But also I think
it's really interesting and important, like if there's complex policies,
that the person delivering the information about the policies is
able to deliver it in a way that most people
can understand and connect with. So and also just fascinated
(37:53):
with like what goes on in Canberra. So I started
kind of towards the start of the first term of
the Albanese government and finished after the election.
Speaker 2 (38:06):
So did my tour of duty.
Speaker 3 (38:09):
Yeah, take us through it, like if like we want
to be able to communicate this to the people, yep,
we've also got to satisfy members of you know, factional
members within the party, and yet we're also going to
stave off kind of criticism from there.
Speaker 1 (38:21):
How do we The person delivering the speech is the
is the minister or the politician, so they are the
ones that steer the process. Like they'll have an idea
of what they want to say, which beats.
Speaker 2 (38:38):
They want to hit.
Speaker 1 (38:40):
They'll also know better than anyone the interests that might
be pleased or displeased by the speech. And then you
work with policy people, so senior people who are subject
matter experts, like I did a number of speeches last
year on the Murray Darling basin, which is something I
had I knew nothing about, and this speech had to
(39:01):
be delivered to a room full of subject matter experts.
So you've got to enlighten the experts. And so that's
where you have advisors in a political office who are
subject matter experts and you work very closely with them
to get the technical information, and then you work with
the minister to sort of like, but what do you
(39:21):
want to say in this You know what's the message?
Sometimes you know things happen in the news, which means
the speech has to change at the last minute, or.
Speaker 2 (39:33):
You know, it's very dynamic.
Speaker 3 (39:35):
So when through the three years of doing this, you
would have seen how some things you wrote just perhaps
cause more problems than anybody expected, and some things you
wrote absolutely amazing and really drove real fundamental change change
people's lives. What would you say, What have you learned
about you know, effective communication from doing that job.
Speaker 1 (40:01):
You never know how something's going to land. This is
a stoic thing. You can't control the outcome. You can
control the amount of work you've put into something, the
amount of research you might have done on a policy thing,
if you've spoken to the appropriate stakeholders. What you decide
to admit is really important. Like what you leave out
(40:22):
can often be as critical as what you put in.
You can't control the media's reaction to speech or you know,
something that the minister might say on the Today Show
or whatever. So and the politicians know that better than anyone.
Speaker 3 (40:38):
Like they are.
Speaker 1 (40:39):
They are schooled in stoicism, whether they realize it or not.
You know, every election they're out there not knowing what
the outcome is going to be. You know, will they
lose their job or they see.
Speaker 3 (40:52):
There's a What did you learn about the appeal to
a common value when you're trying to communicate a political message.
Speaker 1 (40:59):
I mean, it's it's super important, and that's often work
that say the media team will do with the politicians.
They'll work out, well, look what you know, what are
we trying to trigger here? And the easy thing for
me is I share the I share labor values in
terms of.
Speaker 2 (41:19):
The values of that.
Speaker 1 (41:21):
Party, you know, things like workers' rights, you know, closing
the gender pay gap, those kind of big old fashioned
labor things are things that I also believe in. So
writing speeches that use those values were something that came naturally.
(41:45):
I think I'd find it more difficult to write a
political speech that used fear. That would be tricky for me.
And I also think people don't necessarily want to People
all read anxious enough, like they don't necessarily want another
dose of fear with their morning coffee.
Speaker 3 (42:07):
Yeah, it's it's so wild that we have to like
very deliberately appeal to humanity, you know.
Speaker 1 (42:15):
I think people want their humanity appealed to, you know,
I mean they want to feel like they are not,
you know, walking out in the middle of some.
Speaker 2 (42:25):
Like terrible culture war. That's I mean.
Speaker 1 (42:28):
I go on x dot com and my feed has
all this stuff about it's very misogynist my feed for
some reason. And I don't want to go out on
the street and look at men differently and think, oh,
this guy hates women. You know, that's not my experience
of men. But yet social media will will tell me that.
You know, guys think that any woman under twenty one
(42:50):
is an old slack.
Speaker 2 (42:51):
So it's a it's a it's this is the world
we're in.
Speaker 1 (42:56):
Like reality and the inter are quite I feel like
they're quite different. You know, the Stoics were actually really
precient on social media, Like they didn't they had no idea,
they had no idea that social media was coming. It's
like that's two thousand years early. But they did talk
a lot about like people like if you get like
(43:20):
slagged off or dock st or you know, when I
was writing the column, I used to get so much hate,
you know, how to deal with a hate on social media?
Speaker 3 (43:28):
When who works with The Guardian.
Speaker 1 (43:29):
I think it's part of the journey which I do
not miss. But the you know, the Stoics would say,
you can't control what other people say about you. So
what I do now is I don't read any comments
on anything that i've I don't read my good Reads.
I don't look at any internet comments. I also, if
(43:53):
someone says there's been a great review of your book,
I do not read that because I don't want to
get a false picture of my value or how good
a thing I've done, you know, if it's good or bad.
I just don't want to know anything.
Speaker 3 (44:09):
So, for example, people have already heard you speaking about
writing things down and at the end of the day.
So for example, someone did have that day with the
kids in the car and the piano list and da
a day they swouned something on X and it's bothering,
bothering them. What does it look like at the end
of the night, what does that practice look like? And well,
someone wants to try it out tonight, what would they do?
Speaker 1 (44:31):
Okay, so they would get their journal and just a
plane journal, pen and paper. And you say, today in
the car when I was agitated, did I scream at
the kids? How did I respond? Did I tell them
to shut up? Did I fail to show love to
my child that was injured? Did I abuse another driver
(44:53):
on the way home? Did I you know, did I
respond a way that wasn't.
Speaker 2 (45:02):
You know, stoic?
Speaker 1 (45:04):
And if it was like yeah, I yelled at my kid,
told my kid to shut up. You might write that down,
make a note of it, and make a note of
like what circumstances were you in, what were you feeling
at the time, What ended up happening after you told
the kid to shut up? They started crying, they were upset,
they were hurt. So it's like, okay, well that was
(45:27):
the consequence of that, which further aggravated me. So you
kind of chart your responses and then you might say, well,
what about next time. It's like, Okay, next time, I
might still be agitated within myself when I'm in that circumstances,
but I might just do one thing differently and that's
(45:47):
not yell at the kid. And then it's like, what
can I do to make this experience easier next time
it happens, because it will happen again.
Speaker 2 (45:57):
It's like it might be too.
Speaker 1 (46:00):
You have an exercise where I imagine my kids as
middle aged and they're not. They're not relying on me anymore.
You know, they don't need me, so that time in
the car is actually it can be sacred time if
you think about how it's not forever. So you turn
(46:22):
something hideous into something precious and that might take a
while to get there. But the kids are going to
grow up. They're not gonna you know, you're gonna have
an empty car one day.
Speaker 3 (46:35):
So is there is there a point in this writing
where you kind of think about some action steps, like
I'm gonna have to say sorry for that, or I
might have to make that better.
Speaker 1 (46:43):
Well you can't, you can't make it better. It's happened.
So Stoic's sox a very much in the present, like that.
They don't believe in guilt, you know, just your work
is the work in the journal, and then you know,
next time it happens, you just do it differently.
Speaker 3 (46:58):
But to apologize to the kid for yelling, yeah.
Speaker 2 (47:00):
Yeah you might.
Speaker 1 (47:01):
If that's that's your bag, you might say, I'm sorry
for yelling that. You know, I'm trying to work on
keeping my cool. It's all you need to say. You
don't need to go over the top.
Speaker 3 (47:14):
And how long is this process?
Speaker 1 (47:15):
They however long it takes, you know, like it's I mean,
stoicism's a bit like religion, like you talked earlier about
about the church. You know, there's a reason I can
see it now why we had to go back every Sunday.
Speaker 2 (47:28):
I got Catholic.
Speaker 1 (47:30):
Why we were in doctrinated at school while we have
religious education classes. Why there were all these sacraments throughout
childhood and masses and everything. It's because you don't just
read the Bible once and then you're a Christian. You
have to have it drummed into you over and over
and over again, and then one day you know you've
absorbed enough that it becomes part of your nature. Stoicism's
(47:53):
the same, Buddhism's the same. You know, they're all the same.
You have to make a lifelong practice.
Speaker 3 (48:00):
Yeah, I had a six pack once for eighteen hours.
I still I do not still have that seat.
Speaker 2 (48:04):
If you took a.
Speaker 3 (48:05):
Photo, yes it was the cover of a magazine, but
I do not still have that six pack because I
did not keep up the practices which required that allowed
my body to look like that.
Speaker 1 (48:15):
It's ongoing, but it's it's super rewarding. Actually, it's funny.
In the puquette at the Pukeut Wellness Center, I said
to the guy after a particularly brutal training session, how
long do I have to do this for?
Speaker 2 (48:26):
Like this regime? And he's like, until you die.
Speaker 3 (48:31):
I'm like Okay, I'm so delighted you came in. It's
so lovely to hear from you.
Speaker 2 (48:35):
It's great, great to be here. Thank you for inviting me.
Speaker 3 (48:38):
Oh, thank you. And I don't know, do we put
a pitch deck together? Do we go to screend Australia?
Speaker 2 (48:44):
Just track to Netflix?
Speaker 3 (48:45):
Shall I put a deck together?
Speaker 2 (48:47):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (48:47):
Put a deck wicked.
Speaker 2 (48:48):
I've got a name for it. Instead of kicking the bucket,
it's kicking the poop cut.
Speaker 3 (48:57):
Come on your Yeah. That was Bridget Delaney. Thank you
so much for listening. The new book that she's written
is called The Seeker and the Sage. And you'll be
very happy to know that the conversation we had about
kicking in the pouquette or kick the pouquette or whatever
we ended up with, that conversation carried on and Bridge
(49:18):
and I we are going to meet over coffee in
a couple of days to talk about what happens next.
So you know, if that ends up one day as
a multi season, multi part streaming series on a gigantic
megaopoly kind of video on demand publishing service, you can
(49:39):
say I heard the genesis of that moment. I'm not
even kidding It's going to be real fun. Thanks for listening.
Thanks to Adam Buncher, who produced the episode. We'll see
you Monday,
What we're going through as a society, as individuals.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
People before us have.
Speaker 1 (00:05):
Gone through and they've spent a lot of time and
energy trying to work out how to how to kind of.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
Get through life's really big issues.
Speaker 1 (00:16):
And then they've created this philosophy called stoicism, and it's
just sitting there.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
We just have to pick it up.
Speaker 1 (00:22):
We can tweak it, but it's surprisingly adaptable to current life.
Speaker 3 (00:32):
Good a, welcome to the show. This is better than yesterday.
Useful tools and useful conversations. It helped make your day
to day better than yesterday. Every single week, every episode
since twenty thirteen. Min Nam Josha Ginsberg. I'm very glad
you're here. I don't want to make anybody feel like
they're not a special snowflake here. But if you play
this episode, if you're listening to the sound of my voice,
there's a chance you fall into one of a few camps.
(00:55):
One you don't really have much of an idea about
what stoicism is. You want to know what it's about,
or you have been interested in stoicism, but you're not
so interested in the people who've talked about it, or
the way it was talked about, or how much real
estate advice or crypto portfolio work came with that stoic message,
or you know stoicism, You aren't into it. You have
(01:19):
got fortune favors, the brave and Latin tattooed acrossy collar bones.
But you're always down for some chat about old Marcus
a areally ono, Marcus Arellionio. I don't know you're interested
to hearing some of your ideas. However you got here.
I'm glad you hear. There's conversations for you. There's valuable
lessons in this conversation, some ideas and new tools, no
(01:40):
matter who you are, no matter how familiar are with
this stuff, because look, stoicism is so trending, and because
of that, it may be something you want to know
a lot more about. Oh you want to know nothing
at all about it if you're in the latter frame
of mind. For you not Bridge Delaney is not jumping
on any bandwagons. She wrote By the Way, the book
and later the Netflix series Well Mania, so she's a
had a skeptical of trends to make life better as
(02:04):
they come. Her other books, though, Reasons Not to Worry,
and her latest book, The Seeker and the sage definitely
show that Bridgard knows stoicism inside and out, and stoicism
has been an immensely useful force in her life, which
includes being things not just an author, but also includes
being a lawyer, a journalist, a travel writer, a Guardian columnist,
(02:28):
and most recently, a speech writer for not one, but
two federal cabinet ministers. Bridgard talks about what drew her
to stoicism, simple ways you can practice it. And here's
something you don't normally hear in these conversations. How stoicism
can even solve big societal problems outside of ourselves and
help us achieve greater social cohesion and a change for
(02:48):
good in our community. Not bad for an idea that's
thousands of years old and nothing's new when it comes
to her problems or how to solve them. The solutions
are all there, we just have to be brave enough
to use them. What did I say about being a
special snowflake, No, none of us are. We're back to
hear a full conversation with Bridget in just a moment,
But I do have to see about pay some bills.
(03:09):
Enjoy these ads, good? I thanks so much for listening
to the show. Thanks for having me, keep the lights on.
Enjoy this conversation with Bridget Delaney. Thanks for coming in. Oh,
no worries. I noticed before you have a water bottle
here from a wellness retreat in Thailand, and the delicious
(03:33):
irony that you have a water bottle from wellness retreat
is delicious to me.
Speaker 2 (03:38):
But why so well Mania? Of course you.
Speaker 3 (03:43):
Remember that whole book, a whole TV series that commissioned.
Speaker 1 (03:47):
And I've had two other books since then, so it's
kind of like the distant in the distant mists of time.
Speaker 2 (03:53):
When I was writing Wilmania. It's funny.
Speaker 1 (03:56):
I went to this wellness retreat in Pouquet two weeks ago,
loved itr action point, and it wasn't It wasn't a
pampering wellness retreat. It was a you stay at a
gym like you live at the gym, and you were
given a timetable and there are six to eight hours
of classes a day, plus rest and recovery, plus these
(04:19):
protein heavy meals like I'm talking. I'd been in France
eating baguettes and then suddenly I was on one hundred
and twenty grams of protein.
Speaker 3 (04:28):
Fromage where groom temperature drippy cheese here.
Speaker 1 (04:34):
No cheese in Thailand as I found. But yeah, but
a number of people who worked at the wellness center
have watched well Mania kind of looked at me and
they're like, oh, that was that was your show, because
you know, I had been in France, not doing any
exercise and eating a lot of carbs.
Speaker 2 (04:52):
So but they were like, what happened to Lorraine? We
didn't get a season two?
Speaker 1 (04:57):
Yeah, it was really fun to reconnect with those about
the show.
Speaker 3 (05:00):
Well, you're describing as a play sounds like my perfect holiday.
Speaker 2 (05:04):
Oh really?
Speaker 3 (05:05):
Oh yeah, that's the best week of my life.
Speaker 1 (05:08):
Wow, because like they make you do stuff that's a
bit out of your comfort zone muy Thai fighting and
hot cold plunges and sounds great.
Speaker 2 (05:17):
It was great.
Speaker 3 (05:18):
Actually, you're considering what else goes on in Pouquet and
you know what we also know about, you know, Ossie's
and Puket. That's a pretty decent thing to get up to.
Speaker 2 (05:27):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (05:27):
I was googling Ozzie's in Ozzie Death's Thailand recently is.
Speaker 3 (05:34):
Theam Man number one? He's got to be Warnie.
Speaker 2 (05:38):
Yeah, Kosa movie.
Speaker 1 (05:40):
There's been a number of unfortunate deaths but there's actually
a vast amount of Australians that die in Thailand and
Bali each year simply because they've gone over there to
retire and they're old and they just drop dead in paradise.
So so that was my pre holiday research.
Speaker 3 (05:58):
Can we work on a new Netflix TV too, called
in Paradise?
Speaker 2 (06:01):
I think it would rate its socks off?
Speaker 3 (06:02):
Yeah, okay, So the Australian Consulate in Piquette has found
out this is such a problem. They've permanently stationed an
Australian coroner there who's now living there all right, and
it's the classic you know, she's got grown kids. You know,
the husband didn't want to come and they are on again,
off again anyway. But yet now she's working with this
(06:25):
kind of hot assistant and you know she's there. It's
a procedural. So every week she's trying to figure out
how he died, but there's an overarch of her kind
of like it's a bit eat pre love, but it's
also a bit dexter. Let's pitch it.
Speaker 2 (06:39):
I think this is amazing.
Speaker 3 (06:40):
Yeah, I can't believe.
Speaker 2 (06:42):
You just came up with that.
Speaker 3 (06:43):
This is what I do all day. You were so
creative you didn't come here to talk about film and
TV production. But it's all a part of it. Yeah,
you know, because this is a part of the diversification
that is required. There was a time when you're going like,
this is it. I'm writing, I'll be a writer forever.
I hang on, it's not quite paying the bills like
you used to. How I'm going to make this ip
(07:04):
work for me? Time? At what point did you start
to realize that I'm going to have to start exploring elsewhere.
Speaker 1 (07:11):
I think if you want to be a writer, you
have to just presume that you're going to have to
have a second job or a first job, and writing
becomes your second job. There is always something else paying
the bills. Because I don't know if you've seen the
latest stats, but the average writer in Australia, you know,
it earns between like twenty and fifty grand if they're lucky.
Speaker 3 (07:35):
You don't write books in Australia to make money.
Speaker 1 (07:37):
But you do write books because you don't care about
the money, you know have You write books because you
are driven by such a kind of mysterious compulsion to
spend years of your.
Speaker 2 (07:50):
Life in a.
Speaker 1 (07:53):
In a horrible little room, staring at your laptop, just
looking at the awful thing that you've written that could
never be published, and you know whipping yourself that you'll
never write the book that you set out to write,
because there is some like weird compulsion to actually say something.
Speaker 3 (08:15):
Having I'm a great fan of Rick Rubin, the music producer.
Speaker 1 (08:19):
Yeah, he's amazing, written an extraordinary book on creativity.
Speaker 3 (08:23):
I love that extraordinary book because you got to detach
from the money. Yeah, the idea of detaching from it completely. Yeah,
and just not if I don't care about the money,
then what do I do? What do I care about?
Speaker 2 (08:34):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (08:35):
I care about Is this a true reflection of what
it is I wanted to make?
Speaker 2 (08:38):
Yeap?
Speaker 1 (08:39):
And often it's not often you fall well short. But
the process is where the gold is, like the process
of trying to work it out, like I've kind of
this is my fifth I've just got a new book out,
Seeker in the Sage, and it's my fifth book, and
pretty much in every single book, although they're all different,
I'm still trying to work out the same one question,
(09:01):
which is how should we live? You know, how should
we actually use the life that we've got? And each
book is trying to answer that, and obviously I don't
fully answer it to my for myself, That's why I
have to keep going. But you know, Rick will say
in his book, you know that you're often you're often
(09:23):
writing in many ways for yourself. You're trying to work
something else for yourself.
Speaker 3 (09:27):
Absolutely, when did you first start to ask that question?
Speaker 1 (09:31):
Really young? When I was a kid, I wanted two
things out of life. I wanted to have adventures and
I wanted to know the meaning of life. And that
were those were the kind of things that have propelled
me over the last few decades. You know, I want
to have an adventurous life. I want to have a
big life. In some ways, that's incompatible with being a writer,
(09:55):
because being a writer is, you know, by its nature,
it's quite small.
Speaker 3 (10:00):
You are.
Speaker 1 (10:01):
You are not socializing, you're not engaging. It's just you
and your brain and that piece of paper or that
screen trying to create something. But the meaning thing, I
think is really important, and it's only gotten more important
as I've got older, which is to live a life
where you're not grappling with meaning, is to kind of
(10:23):
live a life that's untethered. You know, there's nothing, there's
no stake in the ground. When things get really rough
politically or with world events, it's easy to feel sort
of swept away, And I think meaning gives you a
kind of ballast.
Speaker 3 (10:41):
I get why people find comfort in structural religion.
Speaker 2 (10:46):
I kind of envy that.
Speaker 3 (10:47):
Like, I get it. But once I started to decouple
from that, I felt a lot more in control. But
then I also realized, oh, fuck, now I've got to
find these things for myself. But thankfully I'm not the
first person to do that, And thankfully there's people who
thousands of years ago kind of came up with a
fairly decent set of a waye to look at the
(11:08):
world for people who've never heard about selves. Because this
is your new book, is a parable really kind of
based upon this as a way to introduce the I
guess these ideas to people in a different kind of way.
If you're a Ryan holiday kind of person, I am,
and that's okay, but everybody is.
Speaker 1 (11:24):
Yeah. It's basically like The Alchemist or a fable between
a it's a it's a journalist who's sent to interview
a stoic sage. So it's a dialogue between these two characters,
and as the journalist is learning about Stoicism, so are
you the reader. So it's a way of teaching some
(11:47):
principles using story, kind of using fictional tools as well,
means that you can broaden out from your own experience.
Like my book before This Reason's Not to Worry, which
was also a Stoicism book, was essentially a memoir about
how I came to Stoicism, what I got out of it,
(12:08):
and my kind of testing of the Stoic principles. However,
you know, some of the biggest things that the Stoics
have to teach us are around like the really nihli
stuff like sickness, grief, and death, and I haven't experienced
those things. So my writing actually naturally had to stop
at a certain point in the first Stoicism book because
(12:31):
I couldn't you know, I hadn't had the experiences in
order to kind of write about them. In this book,
the characters do that work, you know, you can give
the characters experiences that you haven't had, including you know, sickness, grief,
and death.
Speaker 3 (12:49):
To be honest, when I think about all the things
I've listened to over the years about Stoicism, it's always
been men telling me about it.
Speaker 1 (12:57):
Yeah, it's weird that because I find Stoicism is not
a particularly gendered philosophy, like it never started off as
a gendered philosophy, Like the Greek Stoics believes that everyone
was everyone who was rational was equal. So if you're
a slaver or a free person, if you're a man
or a woman, if you were black, white, or brown,
(13:18):
you know, you were all equal if you used your
rational mind. The minute you lost rationality, you were not
considered equal. So you know, women were invited, you know,
theoretically at least to go to classes to learn Stoicism.
It was never a particularly masculine or feminine philosophy the
(13:43):
way I read it, and you read Marcus Arelius, and
he models some really great ways to be. I mean,
his life he was you know, you could say he was.
There was genocide and there was a lot of wars,
but in his writing he modeled kind of masculinity in
a much softer way than we're seeing today from the manisphere.
(14:05):
So yeah, I don't see it as an ultra ultra
male thing.
Speaker 3 (14:09):
It's super deep if you really want to get into it,
but it can also be boiled down feely quickly.
Speaker 2 (14:15):
Yeah, definitely, people.
Speaker 3 (14:16):
That might have never, you know, really considered what the
Stoic principles are. You mentioned that before, how would you
describe them?
Speaker 1 (14:22):
Okay, so I'd say to people who don't know what
it is, say three point fifty BC. There was a
heap of different philosophies in Greece, and you could kind
of pick and choose religion. You know, the kind of
old gods. Old gods were sort of fading. Christianity hadn't
come in, so there was this really interesting gap where rationality, reason, argument,
(14:48):
the kind of desire to be a good citizen, all
of that was bubbling around in the city. And Stoicism
was part of that mix. And the word Stoic comes
from the Greek Woods, which was the painted porch where
they all met, and then it traveled from Greece to Rome.
And the writing that we have on Stoicism is the Roman.
(15:10):
A lot of the Roman writing survived the Greeks not
so much. So that's the history. In a nutshell. Stoicism
looks at firstly what we can and can't control in life,
and it says we can only control a very small
amount of things. That is our characters, our actions and
reactions and how we treat other people, and the rest
(15:32):
is out of our control, so we shouldn't freak out
or worry about things that we can't control. The whole
purpose of this was to reduce suffering. The Stoics, like
other philosophers, realize that life is essentially full of suffering.
Speaker 2 (15:50):
We particularly back then.
Speaker 1 (15:52):
You know, you had eleven children, probably seven of them
would have died in childbooth. Yeah, there was you know,
no modern medicine, and there was.
Speaker 3 (16:01):
A cut could kill you. Water purification, there's no vaccination,
there's no tooth brushes. People were dying before the age
of thirty all the time. I'm fifty one, and I
would be ancient.
Speaker 1 (16:13):
In that system, you would be a sage probably. But
it's they needed something, as I was saying earlier, you
need some sort of meaning, you need some sort of framework.
Otherwise the chaos can overwhelm you and you know, and
that's a very unpleasant experience. So they tried to work out, well,
(16:34):
how can we lessen suffering? And we can lessen suffering
by not suffering more than we need to. So there's
going to be some suffering that you can't avoid if
you cut yourself. No antibiotics, it gets infected and then
you lose your hand. You're going to suffer. That's suffering.
You can't help that, but you can control the resentment
(16:57):
that you might you might spend the rest of your
life resenting the fact that this happened to you. And
they said, well, you can control that resentment. You know,
you can't control the first suffering, you can control the
second because you can control your thoughts, you can control
your reactions to things. So that's what they tried to
really work on was their reactions. You know, how can
(17:20):
I be less reactive, less angry? How can I be
more that this is Greek word that they keeps on
coming up time and time again at Araxia well being?
How can I not lose my call? Not get too high,
not go too low? Like how do I be chill
when the worst stuff's happening?
Speaker 3 (17:40):
Season two, Netflix, At Araxiomania.
Speaker 2 (17:43):
We're on, We're on.
Speaker 1 (17:45):
It might not be an interesting show because at Araxia,
by its very nature is not dramatic. You know, it's
it's it's the less drama the better.
Speaker 3 (17:57):
What I do love about this interesting time you talk
about between like the old gods, We're talking like.
Speaker 2 (18:02):
Zeus and yeah, all those guys.
Speaker 3 (18:04):
And people kind of figuring out, well, I don't know,
like what's just here. The idea that they wanted to
have some agency. It's not over to some bearded bloken
This guy who's starting lightning bolts at me was some
agency that I can deal with. The other thing I
really really love. They were also very aware of the
(18:25):
shortcomings of the brains that we have that's inside us.
There is an a meg dealer. We know the names
for all this stuff. Now, there is something that reacts
so much quicker than you can possibly intervene in. You
have no control of it. And when I learned that,
these guys went, oh, you're going to get flooded, and
you're going to get super mad, and you're going to
(18:45):
get super sad. Just don't do anything. For about twenty minutes,
I was like, oh fuck. So the idea of stoicism
is like I'm standing there and I'm holding this shit
in No. Yeah, because I'm feeling this, but I also
know not to say or do anything that could be
a problem. Will take myself out of situation and then come.
Speaker 2 (19:02):
Take myself out of ataraxia, you know, which is.
Speaker 3 (19:05):
It's just so brilliant that they understood that was within
them that they can't control it for a little bit. Yeah,
and what they can control is just don't do anything
in them. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (19:14):
Absolutely.
Speaker 1 (19:15):
Delay Seneca, one of the Roman Stokes, wrote this great
book on anger called The Era.
Speaker 3 (19:21):
Which I think was a Taylor Swift recorder, a.
Speaker 1 (19:23):
Taylor Swift record, but it's you can read it today
and it's still it's very usable, it's very useful. It's
practical tips for not getting angry. And they said, no
scourge has hurt the human race more than anger, and
this is this is how you deal with your anger.
I mean, you can't deal with someone else's anger. If
you're in a road rage situation and you're dealing with
(19:46):
someone who's very angry and they decide to bash you,
there's really not much you can do about that. But
you cannot bash them, you know, like that is that's
within your power. So they spent you know, part of
being a stoic was journaling, and it still is if
you want to practice it today. And it's not about
(20:08):
like I had this great interview with Osha today and
he did this, and you know, I wonder if he
thought you know the interview went, well, it's about how
how have I responded? I Have I shown up on time?
Speaker 3 (20:20):
No?
Speaker 2 (20:21):
Have I been prepared?
Speaker 1 (20:22):
You know when I got asked a difficult question, did
I did I get annoyed? So Stoic will monitor their
own emotional responses because they believed that emotional response was
within their control. So you journal as a way of
holding yourself accountable every night, and so with practice you
(20:43):
actually get far better at your responses. And this is
what they have in common with Vader Buddhists. A lot
of these Eastern religions. I may not be able to control.
I definitely can't control what happened in the Middle East
or in foreign war. However, if I make an effort,
(21:03):
a big effort to be peaceful, to not be angry,
to be loving towards others, that does have a ripple effect,
and I can control that.
Speaker 2 (21:13):
I can control how I.
Speaker 3 (21:14):
Am, And in my experience, if I can control my
level of anger about something like that, my ability to
take action can sometimes we far more useful.
Speaker 1 (21:30):
There's so many different kind of views on rage and anger.
Some argue that it's a kind of great catalyst for action.
It's definitely a very powerful energy. And there's this kind
of great feminist book I think it was in the
eighties that'd called The Dance of Anger about how women
should be more angry at their husbands.
Speaker 2 (21:53):
That Look, the Stoics would say.
Speaker 1 (21:55):
No, no excuses. I mean, maybe when you feel that
first burst of anger before it completely bubbles up, realize
it's trying to tell you something, but then use your
reason to suppress it or to redirect it. But it
should there's never an excuse for anger. Anything that took
(22:17):
you out of ataxia. They were really they were kind
of fearful of So it's about self preservation. Like it's like,
once you're out of ataraxia, like you think about the
decisions you make and what you think when you're stressed
and distressed. They're often bad decisions. So the Stoics prized rationality,
(22:38):
you know, using your brain, so getting rid of all
the emotions that are turbulent and then acting from that
position of calmness, from you know, equilibrium. But look, I
found since starting I started sort of really seriously reading
about stoicism and practicing it around eight years ago, and
(23:01):
I one of the major effects is like I just
don't get that angry anymore. I get upset with the
state of the world. I get sad, but it's really
hard to get me. I'll get angry every now and again,
but it's I get angry when people take advantage of
me or you know, I'm not respected, but the anger
(23:25):
is far less than it used to be.
Speaker 3 (23:28):
How would you say your overall mental health was before
you started thinking about things in this way and how
much control you felt over your life first is now?
Speaker 1 (23:38):
Look, I'd say my mental health was actually pretty good
because I'd spent fifteen years before stoicism doing the research
that would end up being well mania. So I had
gone on every single retreat. You know, I used to
be a travel journalist, and I'd send myself, you know,
I kind of credit a niche for myself. I'd send
(23:59):
myself to these places where, you know, whether they be monasteries, ashrams,
all these places where it was about learning different techniques
to keep your mind in good. Nick didn't always treat
my body well, but I sought out places where, you know,
(24:21):
mindfulness was key. So I've been on a long journey since,
you know, you know, my twenties around this stuff, and
stoicism is the thing that's stuck for me, and I
really recommend it. I just think it's super easy and
(24:43):
it works.
Speaker 3 (24:44):
And there's only four there's only four things to remember, Yeah, Courage, justice,
and temperance, and they're.
Speaker 1 (24:50):
The four virtues. You know, there's no kind of church
to worship in. There's no sort of hierarchy. It's very
much you. You're reading about it. You if you jibe
with it, start you know, just by a journal, start
incorporating it. Read Ryan Holiday, read more academic stuff. If
that's your that's the level you want to go in at.
(25:11):
Like my books are very basic for new people. But yeah,
just explore it. It's been I mean, how I think
of it is what we're going through as a society,
as individuals.
Speaker 2 (25:26):
People before us have gone through.
Speaker 1 (25:29):
And they've spent a lot of time and energy trying
to work out how to how to kind of.
Speaker 2 (25:34):
Get through life's really big issues.
Speaker 1 (25:40):
And then they've created this philosophy called stoicism, and it's
just sitting there. We just have to pick it up,
put it on. You know, we actually don't have to
develop we can tweak it, but it's surprisingly adaptable to
current life, particularly things like social media and right.
Speaker 3 (25:58):
Let's let's say, for an example, or I don't know,
it's it's two fifty five and you are running like
the school pickup. You've got a little one in the
back who has missed a nap and they're screaming, can
I watch K Pop Demon Hunters again? And why did
I get you out of daycare early today? And then
the other one jumps in and you know, they're covering
(26:20):
in bandaids and something terrible happen. They've got a note
from the teacher or whatever, and then now you're trying
to get to piano class. Everything's just like fucked, kind
of a kind of afternoon. How does stoicism play into
that moment?
Speaker 1 (26:30):
So it's they do this thing called premeditation of evils,
which is you imagine before a situation happens. A scenario
is like that. You imagine that it's likely that at
that time of day, if a nap has been missed,
the child's going to be ratty. You might know that
(26:50):
your other child's adventurous is likely to get into scrapes,
so you have some sense that this is foreseeable, and
when it happens, you've already imagined it. You've already run
the scenario through. In reality, you're like, Okay, this is
the nature of having two children, this age, this is
(27:12):
the nature of living in a city. This is the
nature of the traffic in this city. There's nothing unexpected
about this. This is just how it's meant to be.
To demand that the universe bend to your will, that
the child is in pristine condition, that they've slept for
four hours, that you've got an absolutely car free, you know,
(27:37):
ride home on the m one like you are dreaming.
I mean, what stoicism says is be in reality. Know
what reality is, and reality is often not what we
would like it to be. So the Stoics did this
thing where they trained for discomfort. You know, sometimes they
slept on the ground. Sometimes they wore we're clothing, so
(28:00):
you know, scratchy stuff, scratchy stuff, but also stuff that
was unfashionable. So if they were mocked, they realized that
it didn't it wouldn't kind of affect their own character.
They fasted all sorts of things, so they got used
to discomfort. And so there's you know, it's uncomfortable having
screaming children in a car and you're stuck in traffic,
(28:21):
but if you've if you've mentally prepared for it, and
you've physically prepared for it, you've.
Speaker 2 (28:27):
Been there before.
Speaker 1 (28:28):
You know you can survive it. You'll be okay, you'll
be fine.
Speaker 3 (28:34):
The acceptance of this it is what it is and
it isn't what it isn't, Yeah, is such a it's
such a leap to make. But once you get on
the other side of it, Yeah, now you're free to
make more choices, because before you've made that, the only
choice is upset and you've got very binary you know. Yeah,
(28:54):
that's it. Yep, that's it. But once you get on
the other side of that, you're like, okay, well what
do we go from here? And you will kind of
opens up a bit more. But I understand because it's
a bit of a back to the you know, the
primitive brain parts. There's a viable instinct at play here.
You know, Oh, this is uncomfortable. We should make this
stop in any way possible. However, how do we make
this stop? We call the whole thing off. That's the
(29:15):
best quickest way through, all right, Yeah, But the more
we do that, the bigger and those things become, and
our barrier to calling the whole thing off gets lower
and lower and lower. Eventually we don't do anything. Yeah,
we don't leave the house, we don't meet people, We don't.
Speaker 1 (29:27):
Which is kind of happening now in society. Yeah, there's people,
you know. I got an UBI here because the sort
of getting up a little bit earlier, getting several forms
of public transport.
Speaker 2 (29:40):
It's just too much friction.
Speaker 1 (29:42):
And I thought, oh, this is not a stoic way
of coming to the interview, you know, like I should
be as a stoic wanting friction. I should be wanting
a public transport strike today because friction. If I can
train myself in friction, I then get stronger at dealing
with it. And when friction comes at me in a
(30:03):
big way, which it will always does for everyone, I'm
okay with it.
Speaker 2 (30:10):
I've got my ataxia. I can roll with it.
Speaker 3 (30:12):
You know.
Speaker 2 (30:12):
It's about getting used to being uncomfortable.
Speaker 3 (30:15):
It seems like all effort though we can't. Why do
I have to change myself? Can everybody else change? What
do we get? What do we get by taking responsibility
for our reactions?
Speaker 2 (30:26):
We get a sense of freedom.
Speaker 1 (30:29):
You know, it's incredibly liberating to realize that you can't
control anyone else because so you stop trying and you
actually let a bit of air into relationships.
Speaker 2 (30:40):
You let people People want to be accepted for who
they are.
Speaker 1 (30:44):
You know, don't want someone saying you're not good enough
or you need to be this other sort of person.
So when you stop trying to change people, when you
just start focusing on your own qualities and the stoics,
as you said earlier, it was courage, wisdom, just and temperance,
which is moderation. When you focus on those things and
(31:08):
not being reactive or reacting to someone with love and compassion,
it actually has a transformative effect on those around you.
You know, it's very hard to be at war with
someone who is giving you the freedom to make your
own decisions, trying not to be judgmental.
Speaker 2 (31:25):
Yeah, it's kind of intoxicating.
Speaker 3 (31:30):
A quick breakaway from bridge to delaying to let you
know if you want to come to the next live show,
which is possibly the last live show we're doing for
twenty twenty five. It's at the Marrickville Factory Theater in
Marrickville the ninth of November. Story Club featuring Harley Breen,
Nina Oyama from Dead Luck, and Mark Humphrey's more guests
to be announced, possibly the last one doing for the year.
(31:51):
Do not miss it. It's an amazing, amazing night. Also
my new book, So What Now? What is aut Wherever
you get books, it's the perfect Christmas gift. If you're
in the office Secret Santa, if you're in Chris Kringle,
give it to someone you care about. Just whack it
on the table there in the middle of the boardroom,
put it in an envelope and you know, Bob Joe,
it'll be the best thing that person ever gets. We're
(32:13):
back in a moment. How can stoicism you mentioned it
has a earlier we were talking about it to have
an effect on the world we live in. How can
stoicism or the these philosophies work on a societal level
(32:33):
or on a collective level. How can they change a group?
How can they change a culture?
Speaker 1 (32:38):
So that's what I was interested in with my book
The Secret and the Sage, which was looking at how
does stoicism work on a collective And this journalist is
sent to find this town which is like rumored to
be the happiest town on earth. It's called Silver Springs
after the Fleetwood Max song and she undertakes a very
difficult journey. She finally gets are to spend three days
(33:01):
with the mayor to find out how does stoicism work
on a government level. And it can work by you know,
role modeling. As I said before, So you know, the
schools in this town teach stoicism, they teach resilience, they
(33:24):
teach acceptance of others, not trying to change others. And
there's some people that doesn't work for and they leave
the town. But most people have enough freedom to be
themselves and enjoy their life, but enough of a sense
of these are our values, shared values that there is
incredible social cohesion. So through the conversation between the journalists
(33:47):
and the mayor, I'm looking at governance. I'm looking at
well because I've just spent the last three years working
in government as a ministerial speech writer and got to
kind of see up close how government work. It's so
it's so massive, so fascinating. And then I took those
lessons from that time in government, shrunk them down, and
(34:08):
then put them in this book.
Speaker 3 (34:10):
How could a leader of whether it be a school
or a company or a country, how could a leader
incorporate these values in a way that could be could
be useful. What does a leader look like who uses
these principles.
Speaker 1 (34:23):
There's someone who firstly has the four virtues. You need
a leader who's courageous. I would put Zelenski definitely in
that camp. You need a leader who recognizes justice. And
I think recognizing justice is something innate. It's like, is
it just to take people off the street, hold them
without charge and then send them to Venezuela without a trial. No,
(34:49):
you know, we have principles of justice which you need
to know what you've been charged with. You need to
go before a court. To not tell someone why they've
been what they've been charged with is unjust. So we
have this innate sense of justice. And I think a country,
or a company or a community, in sort of my book,
(35:12):
their system has justice at the core and those principles.
Temperance and moderation is I think around resources, you know,
around not being too greedy. You've got to keep the
lights on, But how do we do it in such
a way that things are in balance with the natural world?
Speaker 2 (35:32):
And then.
Speaker 1 (35:36):
Wisdom is you know, wisdom's thought like the difference between
leadership that is inspiring and powerful and a disaster. You know,
is Trump wise? I think he's smart, don't think he's wise.
(35:56):
You know, a wise leader learns from past mistakes and
doesn't repeat them.
Speaker 3 (36:04):
So you worked as a speechwriter. People may this might
be the first time they've come to understand that someone
else writes the words yea and now leaders get you
in front of seventeen or twenty six. I can't remember
what Abbot's record was for the Australian flags behind someone
else writes those words. They're busy people, all right, and
(36:25):
there's a very complicated policy or thing that's probably one
hundred and eighty pages long. You're trying to get down
into something short enough that one paragraph of it will
survive to a SoundBite on the news, and that's going
to tell everybody everything they needs to know. It's very
hard thing to do, certainly not if you're busy running
a country. How did you even get that gig?
Speaker 1 (36:46):
So I've been working as a journalist for The Guardian
and done a column for about eight years.
Speaker 3 (36:52):
I'm impressure you. I haven't asked me for donation yet, no.
Speaker 2 (36:55):
Longer there so I can put away the begging bee.
Speaker 3 (36:58):
Even after donate as a subscriber for a while. They
still ask me like, come on, surely there's a cookie
that tells you I've done.
Speaker 2 (37:05):
This pop up? So annoying.
Speaker 1 (37:10):
Yeah. So I was working there and I'd loved this
book by Don Watson called Recollections of a Bleeding Heart,
which was his account of being a speech writer for
Keating in the it was the eighties and the nineties.
And always thought that that sounded like a really interesting job.
So you're close to the action, you get to see
behind the curtain. You were talking before in a different
(37:32):
context about looking behind the curtain. But also I think
it's really interesting and important, like if there's complex policies,
that the person delivering the information about the policies is
able to deliver it in a way that most people
can understand and connect with. So and also just fascinated
(37:53):
with like what goes on in Canberra. So I started
kind of towards the start of the first term of
the Albanese government and finished after the election.
Speaker 2 (38:06):
So did my tour of duty.
Speaker 3 (38:09):
Yeah, take us through it, like if like we want
to be able to communicate this to the people, yep,
we've also got to satisfy members of you know, factional
members within the party, and yet we're also going to
stave off kind of criticism from there.
Speaker 1 (38:21):
How do we The person delivering the speech is the
is the minister or the politician, so they are the
ones that steer the process. Like they'll have an idea
of what they want to say, which beats.
Speaker 2 (38:38):
They want to hit.
Speaker 1 (38:40):
They'll also know better than anyone the interests that might
be pleased or displeased by the speech. And then you
work with policy people, so senior people who are subject
matter experts, like I did a number of speeches last
year on the Murray Darling basin, which is something I
had I knew nothing about, and this speech had to
(39:01):
be delivered to a room full of subject matter experts.
So you've got to enlighten the experts. And so that's
where you have advisors in a political office who are
subject matter experts and you work very closely with them
to get the technical information, and then you work with
the minister to sort of like, but what do you
(39:21):
want to say in this You know what's the message?
Sometimes you know things happen in the news, which means
the speech has to change at the last minute, or.
Speaker 2 (39:33):
You know, it's very dynamic.
Speaker 3 (39:35):
So when through the three years of doing this, you
would have seen how some things you wrote just perhaps
cause more problems than anybody expected, and some things you
wrote absolutely amazing and really drove real fundamental change change
people's lives. What would you say, What have you learned
about you know, effective communication from doing that job.
Speaker 1 (40:01):
You never know how something's going to land. This is
a stoic thing. You can't control the outcome. You can
control the amount of work you've put into something, the
amount of research you might have done on a policy thing,
if you've spoken to the appropriate stakeholders. What you decide
to admit is really important. Like what you leave out
(40:22):
can often be as critical as what you put in.
You can't control the media's reaction to speech or you know,
something that the minister might say on the Today Show
or whatever. So and the politicians know that better than anyone.
Speaker 3 (40:38):
Like they are.
Speaker 1 (40:39):
They are schooled in stoicism, whether they realize it or not.
You know, every election they're out there not knowing what
the outcome is going to be. You know, will they
lose their job or they see.
Speaker 3 (40:52):
There's a What did you learn about the appeal to
a common value when you're trying to communicate a political message.
Speaker 1 (40:59):
I mean, it's it's super important, and that's often work
that say the media team will do with the politicians.
They'll work out, well, look what you know, what are
we trying to trigger here? And the easy thing for
me is I share the I share labor values in
terms of.
Speaker 2 (41:19):
The values of that.
Speaker 1 (41:21):
Party, you know, things like workers' rights, you know, closing
the gender pay gap, those kind of big old fashioned
labor things are things that I also believe in. So
writing speeches that use those values were something that came naturally.
(41:45):
I think I'd find it more difficult to write a
political speech that used fear. That would be tricky for me.
And I also think people don't necessarily want to People
all read anxious enough, like they don't necessarily want another
dose of fear with their morning coffee.
Speaker 3 (42:07):
Yeah, it's it's so wild that we have to like
very deliberately appeal to humanity, you know.
Speaker 1 (42:15):
I think people want their humanity appealed to, you know,
I mean they want to feel like they are not,
you know, walking out in the middle of some.
Speaker 2 (42:25):
Like terrible culture war. That's I mean.
Speaker 1 (42:28):
I go on x dot com and my feed has
all this stuff about it's very misogynist my feed for
some reason. And I don't want to go out on
the street and look at men differently and think, oh,
this guy hates women. You know, that's not my experience
of men. But yet social media will will tell me that.
You know, guys think that any woman under twenty one
(42:50):
is an old slack.
Speaker 2 (42:51):
So it's a it's a it's this is the world
we're in.
Speaker 1 (42:56):
Like reality and the inter are quite I feel like
they're quite different. You know, the Stoics were actually really
precient on social media, Like they didn't they had no idea,
they had no idea that social media was coming. It's
like that's two thousand years early. But they did talk
a lot about like people like if you get like
(43:20):
slagged off or dock st or you know, when I
was writing the column, I used to get so much hate,
you know, how to deal with a hate on social media?
Speaker 3 (43:28):
When who works with The Guardian.
Speaker 1 (43:29):
I think it's part of the journey which I do
not miss. But the you know, the Stoics would say,
you can't control what other people say about you. So
what I do now is I don't read any comments
on anything that i've I don't read my good Reads.
I don't look at any internet comments. I also, if
(43:53):
someone says there's been a great review of your book,
I do not read that because I don't want to
get a false picture of my value or how good
a thing I've done, you know, if it's good or bad.
I just don't want to know anything.
Speaker 3 (44:09):
So, for example, people have already heard you speaking about
writing things down and at the end of the day.
So for example, someone did have that day with the
kids in the car and the piano list and da
a day they swouned something on X and it's bothering,
bothering them. What does it look like at the end
of the night, what does that practice look like? And well,
someone wants to try it out tonight, what would they do?
Speaker 1 (44:31):
Okay, so they would get their journal and just a
plane journal, pen and paper. And you say, today in
the car when I was agitated, did I scream at
the kids? How did I respond? Did I tell them
to shut up? Did I fail to show love to
my child that was injured? Did I abuse another driver
(44:53):
on the way home? Did I you know, did I
respond a way that wasn't.
Speaker 2 (45:02):
You know, stoic?
Speaker 1 (45:04):
And if it was like yeah, I yelled at my kid,
told my kid to shut up. You might write that down,
make a note of it, and make a note of
like what circumstances were you in, what were you feeling
at the time, What ended up happening after you told
the kid to shut up? They started crying, they were upset,
they were hurt. So it's like, okay, well that was
(45:27):
the consequence of that, which further aggravated me. So you
kind of chart your responses and then you might say, well,
what about next time. It's like, Okay, next time, I
might still be agitated within myself when I'm in that circumstances,
but I might just do one thing differently and that's
(45:47):
not yell at the kid. And then it's like, what
can I do to make this experience easier next time
it happens, because it will happen again.
Speaker 2 (45:57):
It's like it might be too.
Speaker 1 (46:00):
You have an exercise where I imagine my kids as
middle aged and they're not. They're not relying on me anymore.
You know, they don't need me, so that time in
the car is actually it can be sacred time if
you think about how it's not forever. So you turn
(46:22):
something hideous into something precious and that might take a
while to get there. But the kids are going to
grow up. They're not gonna you know, you're gonna have
an empty car one day.
Speaker 3 (46:35):
So is there is there a point in this writing
where you kind of think about some action steps, like
I'm gonna have to say sorry for that, or I
might have to make that better.
Speaker 1 (46:43):
Well you can't, you can't make it better. It's happened.
So Stoic's sox a very much in the present, like that.
They don't believe in guilt, you know, just your work
is the work in the journal, and then you know,
next time it happens, you just do it differently.
Speaker 3 (46:58):
But to apologize to the kid for yelling, yeah.
Speaker 2 (47:00):
Yeah you might.
Speaker 1 (47:01):
If that's that's your bag, you might say, I'm sorry
for yelling that. You know, I'm trying to work on
keeping my cool. It's all you need to say. You
don't need to go over the top.
Speaker 3 (47:14):
And how long is this process?
Speaker 1 (47:15):
They however long it takes, you know, like it's I mean,
stoicism's a bit like religion, like you talked earlier about
about the church. You know, there's a reason I can
see it now why we had to go back every Sunday.
Speaker 2 (47:28):
I got Catholic.
Speaker 1 (47:30):
Why we were in doctrinated at school while we have
religious education classes. Why there were all these sacraments throughout
childhood and masses and everything. It's because you don't just
read the Bible once and then you're a Christian. You
have to have it drummed into you over and over
and over again, and then one day you know you've
absorbed enough that it becomes part of your nature. Stoicism's
(47:53):
the same, Buddhism's the same. You know, they're all the same.
You have to make a lifelong practice.
Speaker 3 (48:00):
Yeah, I had a six pack once for eighteen hours.
I still I do not still have that seat.
Speaker 2 (48:04):
If you took a.
Speaker 3 (48:05):
Photo, yes it was the cover of a magazine, but
I do not still have that six pack because I
did not keep up the practices which required that allowed
my body to look like that.
Speaker 1 (48:15):
It's ongoing, but it's it's super rewarding. Actually, it's funny.
In the puquette at the Pukeut Wellness Center, I said
to the guy after a particularly brutal training session, how
long do I have to do this for?
Speaker 2 (48:26):
Like this regime? And he's like, until you die.
Speaker 3 (48:31):
I'm like Okay, I'm so delighted you came in. It's
so lovely to hear from you.
Speaker 2 (48:35):
It's great, great to be here. Thank you for inviting me.
Speaker 3 (48:38):
Oh, thank you. And I don't know, do we put
a pitch deck together? Do we go to screend Australia?
Speaker 2 (48:44):
Just track to Netflix?
Speaker 3 (48:45):
Shall I put a deck together?
Speaker 2 (48:47):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (48:47):
Put a deck wicked.
Speaker 2 (48:48):
I've got a name for it. Instead of kicking the bucket,
it's kicking the poop cut.
Speaker 3 (48:57):
Come on your Yeah. That was Bridget Delaney. Thank you
so much for listening. The new book that she's written
is called The Seeker and the Sage. And you'll be
very happy to know that the conversation we had about
kicking in the pouquette or kick the pouquette or whatever
we ended up with, that conversation carried on and Bridge
(49:18):
and I we are going to meet over coffee in
a couple of days to talk about what happens next.
So you know, if that ends up one day as
a multi season, multi part streaming series on a gigantic
megaopoly kind of video on demand publishing service, you can
(49:39):
say I heard the genesis of that moment. I'm not
even kidding It's going to be real fun. Thanks for listening.
Thanks to Adam Buncher, who produced the episode. We'll see
you Monday,
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