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Chapter 1: What key Stoic virtues are discussed in relation to modern society?
Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, designed to help bring those four key Stoic virtues, courage, discipline, justice, and wisdom into the real world. One of the things the Stoics understood is that a society doesn't fall apart all at once. It happens slowly. There's a good and a bad lesson in there, right? Like, it's that Julius Caesar doesn't magically overthrow the Roman Republic.
There had been signs. There had been decay. There had been compromises, also a failure to compromise, of which I have not spared Cato some of the criticism. Right. There's a great book, The Storm Before the Storm, that I've raved about. But each of these choices and decisions is bringing a society, a government, a civilization closer to an inevitable collapse and failure.
And people's failure to step in and do something about it is sealing their fate. On the other hand, I sometimes point out to people. when they're like, are we Rome? I go, Marcus Aurelius is one of the last of the good Roman emperors, right? Sure, Pax Romana ends with Marcus Aurelius, but the Visigoths don't sack the city of Rome until almost 250 years later.
Like the official fall of the Western Roman Empire is almost 300 years later.
Chapter 2: How does Ezra Klein view the decline of institutions in society?
The Byzantine Empire, which is like the remaining part of the Roman Empire, survives until the fall of Constantinople, like a thousand years later. So it can take longer than you think. It can take longer than many of our lifetimes stacked together.
But when you live in a society where people aren't telling the truth, where leaders stop acting with courage, where institutions maybe keep some of their names and rituals and procedures, but only in name, only in theory, you get yourself on that path or maybe even a downward spiral. And this is why virtue mattered so much to the Stoics.
Not a word, not a slogan, not the thing you signal at, but actually trying to live it, to build it into the society, into the governance. It's got to be there in the character of the people, as John Adams famously said. Like, it doesn't matter how good the Constitution is,
And he said this 250 years ago, it doesn't matter how good the Constitution is, without character in the people, you got big, big problems. And that's why I wanted to talk to today's guest, Ezra Klein. Ezra is a journalist, a New York Times columnist. He's the host of The Ezra Klein Show. He's the co-founder of Vox.
And he wrote two great books, Why We're Polarized and Abundance, which he co-wrote with Derek Thompson, whose work I also love. And in this episode... Ezra and I are talking about those themes that I was opening about, virtue, responsibility, masculinity. What happens when our institutions begin to crumble?
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Chapter 3: What role does individual and collective responsibility play in a healthy society?
What happens when those institutions depend on qualities that really no law can legislate? One of the questions I had for him that I've remained fascinated with is why so many powerful people are afraid to use the power they have. are afraid to zealously enforce the prerogatives of their office. I'm looking at you, Congress.
And why a healthy society requires both individual responsibility and collective responsibility. And then, of course, we get into stoicism in this episode as we're just talking about why Mark Shmuelis and the Stoics haven't always landed for him. But I can feel, because I listen to his podcast. It's one of my favorites. I'm going to be listening to it on this long flight I got.
I can tell he's coming around to some of the ideas, or at least he's turning back to some of these ancient ideas in a really interesting way, which is, by the way, what philosophy is supposed to help us do. It's not impractical and theoretical. It was, for the founders themselves, kind of an operating system, not just for life, but for institutions. and a culture.
As I said, Ezra is one of the best journalists and political commentators and thinkers around today. You've probably seen his stuff in the New York Times. If you don't listen to his podcast, you absolutely should. I was just listening to his episode with Helen Lewis, which I really liked. She's one of my favorite thinkers. She's been on the podcast. I You've probably seen his stuff on Vox.
He used to write for The Washington Post many, many years ago. I quote him in Conspiracy, in the preface of Conspiracy, actually disagreeing with him. But anyways, I've been reading his stuff and listening to his stuff for a very long time. You can follow him on Instagram at Ezra Klein.
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Chapter 4: What critiques does Ezra Klein have about contemporary liberalism?
You can check out his podcast, The Ezra Klein Show, wherever you get your podcasts. And you can pick up a copy of Abundance at the Painted Porch, which you should absolutely do because it's a great book. I was going to tell you, it was so funny that you called to prep before the episode.
I've been doing this a long time, and only one person has ever asked to prep for a podcast they were coming on before, and I don't think you would ever guess who it was. Who was it? It was General Dan Cain. Oh, interesting. There you go. Yeah.
You know, if you had put up a list, I would not have been shocked by that. I mean, the military men are very... are very methodical. I don't usually, but because I thought it would be good to see if we could direct to more interesting things, I thought it'd be good to connect.
I wasn't surprised though. You do seem, I was trying to think of the word. Is it thoughtful, conscientious? Like I can tell when I listen to your podcast that you are very prepared. That is true. You're not just like, hey, let's see where this goes.
No, I go on podcasts where people see where it goes and I find it shocking. It's also, it's two things too. It's like one, you got to know your strengths. I was just on Dax Shepard's show. I don't know if it's out yet. I don't think it is. And you know, it's like a real talent to just
exist in the hang and to make the hang work, you know, with Dax and, and Rogan and some of the others have, but I think what I'm good at is actually like absorbing the other person's project and kind of coming out with like a, like an interesting distillation of it. And then the other, which I've been trying to, I do a lot less now. I don't go on TV. I'm selective about which shows I go on.
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Chapter 5: How does Ezra Klein define virtue in the context of democracy?
And one thing I want to try to do is then if I'm going to be selective, like be even more thoughtful about using those opportunities well, so that there's some reason to do it and interesting things happen when I'm there that are creatively generative for me and good for the show I'm on. Be more narrow, but also more, put more into it.
It's interesting, though, because I'm not sure from a listener's perspective if they can always tell the difference, like the external product can feel the same. Like I've been interested in the medium of podcasting, how how often people sort of mistaken. it for something very deliberate and considerate when it really is people sort of bullshitting.
You know, like often the episode is people thinking out loud as opposed to having expressed something that they have put a lot of thinking into. And I'm not sure that the difference is always discernible to the listener. And so, you know, like people will be like, oh, sometimes I do audio books and sometimes I listen to podcasts. And I'm like, those are very different things.
Like they're not even in the same ballpark as far as like what the finished product is, I guess is what I'm saying.
I think people can often tell the difference without knowing they're telling the difference. The way that when you see amazing athletes, their work looks effortless.
I think the really, really, really good podcasters, in different ways, it's not always because they did so much preparation about the material, but the shows that are really good, people are seeing something that reflects an iceberg under the surface. A podcast that seems strained, there are certain shows I have listened to where the amount of work going into the show is very, very present.
And that's also not a good feeling. Yes. You're trying to get to a point where it's a tremendous amount of work to make things feel effortless. A lot of effort to get there.
Yeah, it's an interesting medium because it, unlike I think a lot of journalism, it is not usually hostile. They're usually friendly conversations. And I think that's sometimes conducive to giving people a pass.
You balance this in an interesting way, which is something I wanted to ask you about because it's always struck me as something that must take a lot of restraint for you, is you clearly have a lot of people on that you disagree with on a lot of issues. but the episodes are very rarely contentious. You disagree with the guest, but you don't call the guest out.
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Chapter 6: What insights does Ezra Klein share about Stoicism's application in real life?
I am trying to understand them. And that means pushing to the point where I feel like I've come to the boundary of their response. So in a show where I really disagree with somebody, you'll often see me push harder than when what they're saying feels more intuitive to me. But once I feel like I have found what their response to that pressure is... I move on.
I'm never, ever, ever, it has never happened on my show and it never will, but I'm trying to humiliate somebody before my audience. I never want to do that. People have ended up, a fairly small number of them, but people have ended up not loving how they've performed on my show, but it's almost always because
I asked some very straightforward questions and their answers just weren't very good, but I don't do debating tricks. I'm a, I think a fairly good debater. I've been in that format a lot in my life and have had some experience with it. And one thing it has taught me is that debate is a skill. And so I don't mistake being good at that skill for being right about things. It's just, I don't know.
It's never even occurred to me to make my show that way. I think that I learn a lot from the episodes where I disagree with people, but that's the intention is to learn a lot, not to show that my views are better. I have home court advantage. I have control over the edit. It's my audience listening to a show with my name, with album art, with my face.
The idea that it is, I need to bring people on there to beat them. Like what kind of fair fight is that?
I bet I could guess what some of those episodes are. What I what I found interesting about them is like they were pretty straightforward questions you were asking. And it's clear that although this person is in many cases pretty experienced with being on shows, they've never actually been asked those questions or forced to answer them in a way.
that, yeah, they haven't been forced to actually put it in black and white. They've been able to dance around it a long time.
Going back a very long time, I've had the view that softball questions are the true hardballs and hardballs are the true softballs. And what I mean by that is that if I had Donald Trump on my show and I were to ask him about the five most controversial, outrageous questions malicious things he has said in the past year, I think he would know exactly how to handle that. And if I were to say
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Chapter 7: How does the conversation address the balance between personal and societal responsibility?
Mr. President, how do the dual eligibles in Medicaid work? I think it is very plausible. And I mean, this, if you know, Medicaid issues is a huge issue. He would have no idea what I'm talking about. Now, I don't know if that's true. Right.
I've not asked Donald Trump that question, but I've seen this many, many times with politicians, with news news figures and with people who are just experts in their field that you ask people questions. And journalists do this all the time, this sort of pose of toughness. You ask them the question that's supposed to be most uncomfortable for them, and they're fine with that.
They knew exactly what that question was.
Someone prepped them for that very question.
This thing you're saying, how does it work? How do you think about this obvious implication of it? And then you can really begin to see, have they thought through it clearly? You know, when I was at Vox, we always used to talk about this. There was actually, when you would do an explainer of a straightforward question, like what is infrastructure spending?
It would turn out that the amount of hiding in a term that we all thought we knew was tremendous. We actually just go through life pretending that there are, and I think convincing ourselves that there are far fewer holes in our knowledge than there really are.
And, you know, part of I think the work of this stuff is actually understanding like the base layer of our intellectual pyramids when it's very easy if, you know, you're reading the news and following controversies to always be at like the peak, right? Always be at some narrow point everybody's debating as opposed to like actually developing a foundational understanding.
Yeah.
Is this a transferable skill for you? I'm curious about this idea of like you ask a question, you let the person explain up to their limits of understanding, and then you just go, okay, if that's your reality, that's your reality. Can you apply that in your personal life? That's something I struggle with.
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Chapter 8: What are the implications of virtue signaling in modern politics?
Right. A very sort of human thing. Like we want to we want people to know how we feel. And sometimes we feel like it's mutually exclusive, like rather than two people can have two different understandings of something. All right. Can you apply that outside the... The confines of your show? Not as well as I can on the show.
Yeah. So, I mean, depending on the situation, but, but the show is a very, I wouldn't even call the experience I have on the show as restraint. I really do want to learn from the people I have on the show, including the people I disagree with.
So I do not have the experience in the room that many people emailing me seem to think I'm having of white knuckling it through my own desperate desire to throttle the person in front of me. Yeah. I am in a shared energy with them and am genuinely trying to understand their model of the world, even if it conflicts with mine.
And yes, there are times people say things that I find distasteful or cruel, but I don't find it so impossible to be in a mode where I'm trying to inhabit their vision of the universe. I always think about this. I had a show back at Vox, same podcast, you know, but back when it was at Vox.
And I remember having Rod Dreher on, who is a, you know, quite, I would say, hard right Christian conservative. And I remember talking to him about his view of the world and And finding it—and I remember trying to say this to my audience before the show started because Rod and I were never going to agree.
Like, we weren't—to him, biblical authority is a sufficient explanation for core questions about— American in modern life. And to me, it just isn't. We are not sitting on ground that can be in any significant way, like empirically reconciled. So it was like very straightforward from there to say, okay, well, I want to understand how he thinks. I'm not trying to persuade him.
He's not going to be persuaded of what I think, at least on some of these core issues. Whereas if I am talking to a family member, or my partner, hopefully I am trying to understand the way they understand the world. But sometimes I have a, you know, more direct rooting interest in the outcome without specific conversation. I can't hold myself quite as much at arm's length.
Yeah, I've been thinking about this with my kids, just trying to be more curious about things like, OK, but what did you think was nine and six? So just like, you know, wait, why did you think this was a good idea? Or like, wait, explain to me your understanding of what's happening here.
And, you know, it can be difficult because it's easier to sort of tell or to explain, especially, you know, when you're dealing with things where, you know, safety is concerned or whatever.
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