Selects: What exactly is stoicism?

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Speaker 18 Hi, everybody.

Speaker 22 I'm feeling very stoic today.

Speaker 24 So we're going to use what exactly is Stoicism as our weekly select selection.

Speaker 26 This one was released in July, July 4th, in fact, 2017.

Speaker 27 What a great 4th of July topic.

Speaker 24 Learn all about stoicism right here, right now.

Speaker 1 Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 29 Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with Charles W.
Chuck Bryant, guest producer Noel.

Speaker 29 Jerry's been out a lot lately. Chuck, have you noticed?

Speaker 28 Uh, no.

Speaker 30 Nah, I haven't really either.

Speaker 31 Of course, Jerry's got big life things going on.

Speaker 32 She does. Buying and selling houses.
She's like a real estate mogul.

Speaker 29 Visiting the mall, doing all sorts of stuff.

Speaker 18 We're just

Speaker 34 a couple of deep thinkers hanging out on the stoa.

Speaker 29 Yeah.

Speaker 29 Specifically, what is it? The stoa.

Speaker 29 Did you practice the word, this pronunciation at all?

Speaker 35 I tried to pronounce a lot of this,

Speaker 37 but you know, ancient Greek,

Speaker 35 you know, the phrase it's all Greek to me.

Speaker 38 Yeah.

Speaker 39 It comes from not being able to pronounce these things.

Speaker 29 It's quite literal.

Speaker 29 The stoa poikili.

Speaker 29 I think that's probably pretty close, man.

Speaker 13 So can I start this with a couple of quick thoughts?

Speaker 41 Sure. First of all,

Speaker 26 I took four different philosophy quizzes before we recorded.

Speaker 29 Like what kind of philosophy do you subscribe to type quiz?

Speaker 11 Yeah, you know, the ones that are super accurate.

Speaker 42 Right.

Speaker 8 Because they can figure that out in 8 to 15 questions.

Speaker 29 Sure, and then you can move on and find out what Muppet you are.

Speaker 44 So here's my results here.

Speaker 45 For the first one, I was Epicurean.

Speaker 46 Okay.

Speaker 13 The second one, existentialism.

Speaker 48 All right.

Speaker 24 Third one, atheist existentialist.

Speaker 26 And the fourth, Nietzsche slash Stoic.

Speaker 29 Nietzsche was a huge critic of Stoicism. I'm surprised they put those two together.
Well,

Speaker 25 that is Chuck, though.

Speaker 22 You know what I'm saying?

Speaker 29 Yeah, you're a contradiction in terms. You're yin and yang.

Speaker 48 Well, I am.

Speaker 35 The reason why I took these is because when I was doing the research on Stoicism,

Speaker 36 I found myself a lot of times going, yep, yep, totally.

Speaker 19 And then a lot of times going, no, that's really not me.

Speaker 29 Same here, same here. And I think

Speaker 29 even the Stoics from back in the day realized that there were very few, very, very few actual what they called sages walking around, stoic sages who really

Speaker 29 fulfilled every aspect of this to a T.

Speaker 29 And

Speaker 29 I think one of the reasons why Stoicism today is making a comeback and it's so appealing is because, well, there's two reasons. One, more than

Speaker 29 kind of a navel-gazing type philosophy where you're trying to figure out the nature of existence or something like that. It's more a blueprint for existing day to day

Speaker 29 in a useful, happy way. Sure.
And then, secondly,

Speaker 29 it's

Speaker 29 you can kind of pick and choose. It's almost like a buffet.
You can pick and choose what aspects of it you want to adopt or use.

Speaker 29 And no, you know, Greek ghost is going to come along and spear you in the face.

Speaker 52 With a trident.

Speaker 53 Right.

Speaker 38 Passage.

Speaker 21 Punch.

Speaker 49 Yeah, and I think that's, I mean, first of all, the age of reason fascinates me to no end.

Speaker 36 And second, I've kind of wanted to cover some of the great philosophies of all time.

Speaker 29 This sounds like a good start.

Speaker 37 Well, it is, but it's just kind of daunting because people spend like, that's their life's work, you know?

Speaker 49 And for us to try and summarize.

Speaker 32 any of them in 30 to 45 minutes is kind of like,

Speaker 35 you know, I don't know what philosophy you would liken to, foolishism.

Speaker 29 Yeah,

Speaker 29 dunceism.

Speaker 55 But that's what we do, you know?

Speaker 29 Well, how about this? If this one goes well, maybe we'll take it as a sign that we can tackle some other ones. But you're absolutely right.

Speaker 29 Like, even the, even just like, say, the internet encyclopedia of philosophy, which is meant, you know,

Speaker 29 it's sharp and it's detailed and it's exhaustive, but it's also clearly meant for lay people interested in philosophy, right?

Speaker 29 It's just just this, just stoicism

Speaker 29 is so involved that it's not possible for us to really capture all of it, even in an overview, you know,

Speaker 29 or giving it just hitting the highlights. We can't possibly hit all the highlights.
There's just too much to it. And that's just stoicism.

Speaker 29 I still say it's worth talking about, though, just because it's so interesting.

Speaker 31 So if I get up in the middle, you're going to pull me back.

Speaker 29 I'll just keep going.

Speaker 32 Well, I like the urban dictionary definition.

Speaker 42 Yeah.

Speaker 35 Stoic is someone who does not give a beep about the stupid things in this world that most people care so much about. Stoics do have emotions, but only for the things in this world that really matter.

Speaker 35 They are the most real people alive.

Speaker 31 And then in their little example is a group of kids sitting by the porch.

Speaker 12 Stoic walks by.

Speaker 35 One can say something very mean.

Speaker 23 Hey, you're a blankety blank and you blank blank.

Speaker 25 And the stoic says, good for you, and keeps going.

Speaker 2 Right.

Speaker 34 So part of me really, like, I hear that and I'm like, man, I am so that person on so many levels.

Speaker 39 but then sometimes I'm totally not.

Speaker 49 And I think what the difference is or what matters is, well, it depends on if they say something that matters to you.

Speaker 13 Or if something does matter to you, like I might get really riled up about some stuff.

Speaker 8 Right.

Speaker 29 Well, that would make you not stoic.

Speaker 35 That doesn't rile any, anyone else up.

Speaker 42 But I also, some things that really make other people irate.

Speaker 28 I'm just like, man, can't change it.

Speaker 13 It is what it is.

Speaker 23 And I only can get upset upset about the things I can change.

Speaker 29 Yeah, if you could apply that to everything, you'd be

Speaker 29 pretty high up there in the Stoic

Speaker 29 pantheon.

Speaker 41 I'd be a Stoic

Speaker 39 five-star general.

Speaker 29 Pretty much.

Speaker 29 Five-finger punch guy.

Speaker 18 All right.

Speaker 35 So we beat around the bush.

Speaker 43 I mean, that was a pretty good definition, actually, even though it was from the Urban Dictionary.

Speaker 29 We should say we picked that one up from an Aeon article, Why Stoicism is One of the Best Mind Hacks Ever Devised.

Speaker 19 Yeah, it was a good one.

Speaker 29 By Larry Wallace, yeah. He did a good job kind of giving an overview of the whole thing.

Speaker 35 I think Larry Wallace is one of the great modern stoicists.

Speaker 29 Maybe. There's plenty of them running around these days.

Speaker 35 Yeah, but we're, I mean, we'll go back in time and study the beginnings of Stoicism because we're talking about, like, you hear the word stoic today,

Speaker 35 and it means it was taken from this, but it's kind of someone like sort of a grim-faced stoic, doesn't say much.

Speaker 33 And that's not what Stoicism, and they say in our article several times with a capital S,

Speaker 64 really is all about.

Speaker 29 Right, yeah. To these days, people typically, or I should say these days up to about three years ago, people thought of Stoics as somebody who could watch their dog get hit by a car.

Speaker 29 And, you know, their reaction was to raise their chin a little higher up in the air, you know, like just grin and bear it.

Speaker 29 As Larry put it,

Speaker 29 I'm on a first name basis with Larry Wallace.

Speaker 29 That it's a philosophy of grim endurance, tolerating rather than transcending life's agonies and adversities, just kind of trudging through

Speaker 29 and just taking hit after hit from life as it deals them to you, right? That was the idea of Stoicism.

Speaker 29 You can kind of like, it's not like that's just radically unlike actual stoicism, but it's an outsider's interpretation of what the Stoics are actually doing, what's actually going on, the purpose of the whole thing.

Speaker 29 That outsider's view that doesn't really fully understand it became the popular view until recently, until it started to kind of gain some traction lately.

Speaker 19 Yeah.

Speaker 35 And, you know, throughout the years,

Speaker 35 Stoicism has informed some religions.

Speaker 65 These days, there are a lot of atheists that are Stoics.

Speaker 18 But I like how our article says it.

Speaker 35 Above all, it teaches the value of emotional control in living one's life fully.

Speaker 29 Yeah. So here's the basis of it.
The basis of it is if you can

Speaker 29 detach yourself from emotional responses to things, then something that comes along, whether good or bad, is not going to get your goat. Right.

Speaker 29 Stoicism is all about protecting your goat and not letting anything get it. And the way that they do that is by saying, there are very few things that I can control in life.

Speaker 29 And everything that I can't control, I'm not going to get up riled up over. You know, lose my job.
Oh, well, it happens. It doesn't mean I'm any less of a person.

Speaker 29 I just need to go out and get another job. Dog gets hit by a car?

Speaker 29 Well, that's really awful because I really like that dog, but I'll just go get another dog, or maybe I'll just learn to live without the dog. Maybe I was becoming too attached to the dog.

Speaker 29 Things like that. That's stoicism.
But the whole point of it is, it's not just to get your goat, or to protect your goat from being gotten. It's about

Speaker 29 living a moral life where you're a very good human being.

Speaker 29 And the idea is that the only way to really do that is through things like rationalism and

Speaker 29 investigating the universe and being understanding of knowledge and then

Speaker 29 pursuing ethics, specific ethics.

Speaker 29 And they figured out the best way to do that is dispassionately.

Speaker 49 Yeah, I think my bumper sticker would say

Speaker 52 on board, Colin, part-time stoicist, full-time dreamer.

Speaker 29 Okay.

Speaker 29 That is a specific

Speaker 29 bumper sticker.

Speaker 49 I used to have a lot of bumper stickers in high school, and now I loathe them so much.

Speaker 13 Really?

Speaker 29 What did you have?

Speaker 23 Oh, I had an old Volkswagen Beetle that was my family actually bought brand new in 1968 and was passed down from kid to kid to kid.

Speaker 12 It was.

Speaker 36 It It was very cool, I thought at the time. Well, it is cool.

Speaker 41 I love those old Beatles.

Speaker 11 But I just went through one of those phases where I was like, you know, here's a Native American saying, and here's something about Mother Nature.

Speaker 42 And this Bob Marley had this to say.

Speaker 19 And

Speaker 61 just, yeah, I was one of those.

Speaker 44 And now I see those cars with all the things, and I'm just like, shut up.

Speaker 54 Nobody cares.

Speaker 40 It's funny. Maybe I'm a silly rat.

Speaker 29 Yeah, for sure. I mean,

Speaker 29 did you have a 311 sticker?

Speaker 13 No, this was pre-311, actually.

Speaker 29 Okay, gotcha. So did your mom come out and be like, what'd you do to the family heirloom?

Speaker 38 You put stickers all over it.

Speaker 65 No, it's funny.

Speaker 3 That car had a, the rear floorboard was missing on one side.

Speaker 29 My dad had a car like that, a Malibu.

Speaker 35 So you could see the street.

Speaker 40 I had some wood there.

Speaker 29 Now that I look back, he didn't even have a piece of wood.

Speaker 29 Now that I look back, I'm like, that was extraordinarily irresponsible to be driving around with kids in the back seat with the with the street visible. Yeah,

Speaker 44 I love that your dad was just like, watch your feet, kids.

Speaker 38 Yeah,

Speaker 29 easy does it.

Speaker 18 Uh,

Speaker 51 all right, so let's you want to go back and talk about the history a little bit.

Speaker 29 No, I want to keep beating around the bus.

Speaker 37 All right, let's get in the way back machine, and okay, we need to really juice it up

Speaker 56 because we're going way back.

Speaker 29 Got some kerosene, got some banana peels,

Speaker 29 and got some airplane glue, but that's just for us.

Speaker 39 That's right, because it's a long ride. Yeah.

Speaker 41 Ancient Greece is where we're headed to the time of the great philosophers.

Speaker 35 And

Speaker 35 like we said earlier, sitting here on the stoa, that was a joke, but it wasn't.

Speaker 43 And you, you, you know, you said, stoa, you're going to try it again?

Speaker 29 The stoa poikili.

Speaker 61 Yes, or painted porch is what it means.

Speaker 44 And that was a public space in Athens, Greece.

Speaker 29 It was like a portico.

Speaker 56 Yeah, where people would hang out and talk and chew the fat.

Speaker 51 And that's what I love about this time was people would just, they were just alive with ideas, these philosophical ideas of trying to figure it all out.

Speaker 29 Yeah, but don't you think like every once in a while you'd just be like, oh, everybody shut up.

Speaker 38 Like go do something. Live.

Speaker 12 Go do something useful.

Speaker 38 Yeah. Plant the field.

Speaker 29 Talking. Yeah.

Speaker 29 No, but

Speaker 29 I agree with you. Overall, it was a pretty thrilling time.

Speaker 35 Did you take philosophy in college at all?

Speaker 29 No, no, I didn't.

Speaker 29 I really did not. I don't think I took a single philosophy class now that I think about it, not even a survey.

Speaker 36 I took the one kind of general class, I guess it was the one-on-one, and I actually made an A, which I didn't make a ton of A's in college.

Speaker 52 And I remember at the time,

Speaker 57 kind of the same thing, about half the class.

Speaker 61 I was like, man, this is so fascinating. And then the other half, I was just like, oh, man, what a waste of time.

Speaker 5 Like, do something useful. Go like volunteer for a charity.

Speaker 29 Go make something out of wood.

Speaker 30 Anything.

Speaker 26 All right, so back to the stoa.

Speaker 25 We're on this painted porch, this portico, as it were.

Speaker 35 People are everywhere running their mouths about what they think is important.

Speaker 35 And then this dude wanders up, Zeno of Cidium.

Speaker 29 Yeah, who'd recently been shipwrecked.

Speaker 68 And there were other Zenos,

Speaker 35 not to be confused.

Speaker 29 I know, that is confusing. There should be one Zeno.

Speaker 56 There can be

Speaker 29 in all of history.

Speaker 68 There were Zenos of other things, but this is Zeno of Sidium.

Speaker 35 And you're right, he was shipwrecked and he was wandering around

Speaker 44 after a trip from Cyprus.

Speaker 29 Did you say we're in Athens?

Speaker 40 Oh, yeah.

Speaker 12 Not Georgia.

Speaker 29 No.

Speaker 60 Although we did our fair share of sitting around on porches talking nonsense there as well.

Speaker 29 But that's a porch porch.

Speaker 18 Yeah.

Speaker 38 Not a Greek porch.

Speaker 51 And so Zeno took a little bit of insight from the cynics and then eventually said, you know what?

Speaker 46 I got my kind of forming my own thoughts here.

Speaker 58 And I think everyone else is doing it.

Speaker 39 I have my own philosophy.

Speaker 15 Yeah.

Speaker 44 And it's called Stoicism.

Speaker 29 Yeah, named after later, later, I don't think he called it that. I'm not sure.
He probably called it Zenoism. They're like, yeah, that sucks.
We're going to call it Stoicism after the porch.

Speaker 38 Yeah.

Speaker 29 But this is, I mean, like the Stoicism very quickly became one of the big

Speaker 29 philosophies at the time. Oh, yeah.
And it rivaled some of the philosophies that it grew out of, like Socratic philosophy and, like you said, cynicism, the cynics. Sure.

Speaker 29 And actually, if you look at Stoicism, it's kind of a compromise between

Speaker 29 Socrates

Speaker 29 or Socrates, as Bill and Teg call them,

Speaker 29 philosophy, which was that to lead a good life, and this was the point of all of the philosophies at this time, during this age of reason, was achieving what was called eudaimonia.

Speaker 29 And eudaimonia is a life worth living. It's thriving.
It's flourishing. It's being happy, like real happiness, right?

Speaker 29 That was the pursuit of all of these different ideas that were floating around at the time was how to achieve that. Socrates had the idea that you achieved that through like 12 cardinal virtues.

Speaker 29 And some of them were things you could cultivate in yourself, like courage, a sense of justice, that kind of stuff.

Speaker 29 But then there are other ones, too, that had like everything to do with luck, like being good-looking was one of them right Yeah, if you weren't good look if you were ugly Sorry, buddy, you could never achieve eudaimonia, right?

Speaker 29 Yeah, on the other end of the spectrum were the cynics and the cynics believed that earthly trappings like wealth and fame and glory

Speaker 29 Anything like that was the path to ruin and that the true path to eudaimonia was living simply and living in poverty and so Zeno comes along and hears all these and as he's formulating his own ideas, he's like, Socrates makes some sense over here, and so do the cynics a little bit, but I'm going to put them together.

Speaker 29 And that's where Stoicism came from. It was a compromise between the two, where you live a life of

Speaker 29 pursuing eudaimonia through these virtues, four virtues.

Speaker 29 I think there's justice,

Speaker 29 courage, wisdom, and then temperance, right? So you're practicing those four virtues. So that's kind of a nod to Socrates.

Speaker 29 And you don't have to live in poverty. You can be wealthy because if stoicism is anything, it's wealthy people who got into philosophy that weren't quite sure how to feel about being wealthy.

Speaker 49 Yeah, to say, to kind of come to the point that like, having money is not a bad thing.

Speaker 29 Right, right. And so

Speaker 29 what they came up with was,

Speaker 29 sure, you can be wealthy, and that's okay.

Speaker 29 You can prefer to be wealthy, but you just can't be attached to it. You can't desire to be wealthy because you can't control being wealthy.

Speaker 29 And if you pursue being wealthy, you're pursuing something beyond your control. So if you just happen to be wealthy, that's great.

Speaker 29 You can be happy with it, but also be prepared to lose it at any given time. And that's a big part of Stoicism.

Speaker 44 Yeah, I think it's so funny, though, to think about like thousands of years ago in ancient Greece, like they spent so much time thinking about living this,

Speaker 49 all these schools of thought of living this life so like

Speaker 49 putting so much thought into living to life to its fullest and all the different

Speaker 65 ways that they defined it and eventually like over the years like as recently as like the generation of our parents and grandparents in the United States like the philosophy of life was like you just go to work and you work hard until you die and that's the only thing that matters.

Speaker 29 Exactly.

Speaker 26 Like all that other stuff is garbage.

Speaker 29 Yeah, well, I think that's one of the reasons why stoicism is becoming appealing again is this idea that like work seems to be kind of going through a weird transformation, doesn't it? Yeah.

Speaker 29 Like, it's not like that anymore. Like,

Speaker 29 that ethic is still around for sure. But, like, how many people do you know work from home? Like, almost entirely?

Speaker 30 A lot.

Speaker 29 A lot. And that's fairly new.
So I wonder if like this changing work dynamic is leading to this resurgence in stoicism that you can find happiness through other stuff.

Speaker 35 I mean, part of me thinks this is all like super worthwhile and part of me thinks and it's sort of indulgent to end a bit, like you said, navel gazey

Speaker 31 and like put just start practicing good things instead of sitting around thinking about the best way to live life.

Speaker 29 Well, we'll talk about criticisms of them later on, but I think you hit a big one though, Chuck, was the idea that it's self-indulgent because it demands introspection almost every moment of every day yeah you want to take a break and then get back to it yeah I gotta I gotta get my head together where's the airplane glue here you go all right

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Speaker 29 Nothing like airplane glue to get your head back on straight, is it?

Speaker 25 Just kidding, of course, everyone.

Speaker 29 Sure.

Speaker 62 We're smart guys. We don't do that kind of thing.

Speaker 29 No, it's pretty tough to be smart and huff model airplane glue. Yeah.

Speaker 29 You're pretty much making a choice between that and being smart.

Speaker 56 That's what they teach you early on. Yeah.
Like, you want to go somewhere in life?

Speaker 35 You want to huff airplane glue.

Speaker 29 It's the one thing Nancy Reagan didn't lie about.

Speaker 49 All right. So Zeno got things going.

Speaker 35 Peace of mind that comes with living a life of virtue in accordance with reason and nature.

Speaker 35 And then other dudes got on boards and of course got on boards, got on board and they were all dudes back then because everything was from the man's perspective.

Speaker 27 Just wanted to point that out.

Speaker 29 Yeah, because it's changed so dramatically since then.

Speaker 61 But some of the other early Stoicists, Cleanthes,

Speaker 26 Cato.

Speaker 29 Cato the younger or elder? Younger, right?

Speaker 37 Cato the Caelan.

Speaker 29 Oh man, I forgot about him.

Speaker 5 I'm not sure which Cato.

Speaker 29 I think it's the younger.

Speaker 29 Yeah, we'll find out from two people who email in to let us know.

Speaker 51 Seneca and then a very important stoicist.

Speaker 35 Well, I'm going to pronounce it

Speaker 26 epictetus.

Speaker 29 Epictetus.

Speaker 40 Epictetus.

Speaker 29 Sounds like a vaccine shot.

Speaker 20 It does. E-P-I-C-T-E-T-U-S.

Speaker 29 It's that C going into a T that's getting you. Yeah, I think it's just Epictetus or Epictetus.
I think Epictetus is what we should go with.

Speaker 68 I want another C in there.

Speaker 24 I want it to be Epictectus, but it's not.

Speaker 29 No, it's not. It's Epictetus.

Speaker 51 All right. So.

Speaker 29 Oh, and don't forget Marcus Aurelius, man.

Speaker 15 Oh, well, sure.

Speaker 3 I mean, he comes a little bit later.

Speaker 27 He was the ruler of

Speaker 47 Anthon?

Speaker 24 Man, what is my problem today?

Speaker 29 It's okay, man. Everyone knew what you meant.

Speaker 35 He was the philosopher king, and that was when Stoicism was kind of the most popular thing going.

Speaker 66 Yeah.

Speaker 29 Yeah. Apparently they moved from Athens to Rome, which I didn't realize this.
I always had the idea that Rome venerated Hellenistic Greece hundreds of years after

Speaker 29 basically the Greek civilization had just kind of, you know, gone into a bit of a twilight or had gone out of its heyday. Right.

Speaker 29 No, there was total cross-pollination,

Speaker 29 including some of these early Stoics who traveled from Athens to Rome and basically,

Speaker 29 with that move, transferred the seed of philosophy from Athens to Rome, from Greek to Rome,

Speaker 29 to Rome, from Greece to Rome. I didn't realize that they were actually like cross-pollinating one another at the time.

Speaker 29 Did you know that?

Speaker 23 I think I recalled that from deep in my college memory banks.

Speaker 29 Nice.

Speaker 46 So, Epitectus Tetas, man,

Speaker 49 he had a big role in the Stoic movement.

Speaker 57 He was a former slave,

Speaker 35 which kind of makes sense in terms of Stoicism.

Speaker 29 He

Speaker 29 almost single-handedly gives

Speaker 29 credence to

Speaker 29 Stoicism because so many other Stoics were extraordinarily wealthy, powerful men that it's like, yeah, it's pretty easy for you to go through life saying, you know,

Speaker 29 just take what life gives you if life is giving you nothing but gold bullion all the time, right? This guy was born a slave, crippled in the knee for life, and

Speaker 29 became a Stoic, one of the great Stoic thinkers, and just through his life, proved that Stoicism can work.

Speaker 48 Yeah, and he wrote a handbook at the time was called An Enchoridion, and he wrote the Enchoridian of Epictetus.

Speaker 29 Enchoridium literally means handbook. It means ready at hand.

Speaker 35 So it was a very famous handbook, and he attributed, I mean, the first line of it was, some things are in our control and others not.

Speaker 39 Right. And that kind of sums it all up.

Speaker 51 Like, he could have said the end, but he decided to dive a little deeper.

Speaker 29 I

Speaker 29 agree with you. I think our brand of stoicism has about the same contours because

Speaker 29 that right there,

Speaker 29 that's everything you need to know right there. There's some things you can control.
Most things you can't control.

Speaker 18 There you go.

Speaker 12 Like, don't get too high, too low.

Speaker 26 Right.

Speaker 13 Don't get too mad about something.

Speaker 29 right well ultimately I think that's what it boils down to I don't really find much of a problem when people are overjoyed I don't think that's an issue and technically with stoicism that is a that's a problem you should not become overjoyed experiencing joy is fine sure but but just being like overcome with happiness or joy or

Speaker 29 grief or whatever it is you you're you're you're violating one of those four cardinal virtues temperance which is just being tempered and even keeled. Right.
So, but I think if you're saying,

Speaker 29 don't get upset about something that's out of your control, don't blame others, don't try to control other people, just know that whatever comes, you can handle it. There you go.

Speaker 29 That's all you need to know for me.

Speaker 11 Yeah, and you know, I mean, how many times have you heard me say it is what it is, which is an annoying thing to hear and say.

Speaker 29 But it's pretty stoic.

Speaker 51 Well, it is, but it's also, in my case, like it is what it is until it isn't.

Speaker 52 It just matters if I am personally riled up about something, you know.

Speaker 29 Yeah, but I think, again, though, if like there's probably some people who listen who

Speaker 29 subscribe to at least modern stoicism listening to this, and I would guess that they would say that's because stoicism is basically meant to apply to every day of your life.

Speaker 29 Like, no Stoics are really expected to become sages in their lifetimes. Right.
That it's something you just do every single day is try to not not get riled up.

Speaker 29 But of course something's going to come along and get you riled up. That's just human nature.
Stoicism is trying to put a bridle on that human nature.

Speaker 44 Yeah, well, and this is insider stuff.

Speaker 3 I think you and I complement each other because we rarely get worked up about the same thing.

Speaker 29 Just voter suppression.

Speaker 65 Well, no, it happens here and there, but just in our personal lives and

Speaker 33 everything to do with work, like oftentimes I've noticed like something something that'll rile me up, you're calming me down and the other way around.

Speaker 62 And I mean, I think that's one reason we've lasted so long.

Speaker 60 Like if two people were so similar that they're constantly worked up about the same stuff,

Speaker 33 you're just gonna be working each other up and no one's gonna be there to say, hey, man, it is what it is.

Speaker 15 Yeah, man.

Speaker 29 Hey, mellow out. Here's the Bob Marley bumper sticker.

Speaker 12 Exactly.

Speaker 41 So should we talk a little bit about the areas of study?

Speaker 29 Yeah.

Speaker 58 All right.

Speaker 13 Well, there are three main ones in stoicism.

Speaker 37 And this is all, you know, to deal with introspection, which is kind of like all philosophies.

Speaker 41 Physics is the first thing.

Speaker 37 And it's not physics like you think of that you hate studying in high school.

Speaker 29 Well, it falls under a larger umbrella term, I guess.

Speaker 65 Yeah, they're talking about the natural world, the natural universe, and also what lies beyond it.

Speaker 33 And when they say the natural world, they're talking about everything.

Speaker 23 God, the divine, nature, everything that we know and things that we don't know.

Speaker 29 Yeah, everything we would view as science or like you said, nature.

Speaker 29 Yeah, all that stuff. That's physics.
And all of it, one of the things the Stoics,

Speaker 29 I think

Speaker 29 if they weren't the first to come up with it, they definitely popularized it was the idea that all of this was interconnected. Yeah.

Speaker 29 Which is pretty, I mean, you take it for granted today. Like everybody thinks that everything's interconnected these days.

Speaker 69 Yeah.

Speaker 29 But

Speaker 29 to be among the first to kind of point that out or suggest that's pretty significant contribution to Western thought.

Speaker 3 Yeah, I imagine that was a pretty deep thing when it first started hitting people.

Speaker 67 Yeah.

Speaker 29 You know, can't you just see George Carlin being like, oh, you just blew my mind?

Speaker 26 Oh, because he was Socrates?

Speaker 18 Man.

Speaker 29 Wait, no, he wasn't Socrates. He was

Speaker 29 the guide, their spirit agent.

Speaker 12 What was his name? Oh, man.

Speaker 31 I think we killed on this.

Speaker 29 We'll just edit this part out.

Speaker 7 I didn't know I had to brush up on my Bill and Ted.

Speaker 29 I didn't either. I surprised myself.
You should have seen my face.

Speaker 41 You know,

Speaker 8 they kept talking about remakes like as recently as a couple of years ago, I think.

Speaker 39 Or not remakes, but sequels.

Speaker 29 With the originals?

Speaker 9 Oh, yeah. Like, Keanu Reeves was like, man, I love those movies.

Speaker 7 I'd love to go make another one.

Speaker 29 Did you see what is, so it was Kiana Reeves, Bill, Bill, or Ted?

Speaker 29 Why are we even doing this to ourselves?

Speaker 65 Boy, I want to say he was Ted.

Speaker 29 So the guy who played the other guy.

Speaker 55 Yeah, Alex Winter?

Speaker 29 Oh, geez, Chuck. Wow.
Nice job. So Alex Winter was in

Speaker 29 what was the Charles Bronson vehicle, like his most favorite. Deathwish.
Deathwish 3.

Speaker 29 Deathwish 3 was what he was in, which was when Golan Globus got their hands on it and and turned it into like a schlock, violent, like almost post-apocalyptic movie. Yeah.

Speaker 29 And he's great in it, but he's also in

Speaker 29 a documentary on Golan Globus. I can't remember what the name of the name of the documentary is, but it's just about how bad the movies they made were and how gleefully these guys made them.

Speaker 29 But he's interviewed in it. That guy hasn't aged a day.

Speaker 46 No,

Speaker 38 he looks definitely Bill.

Speaker 29 Okay, so he's Bill.

Speaker 18 Yeah.

Speaker 29 All right, so we got that settled. Physics is done.
What's next?

Speaker 35 Logic, which they wanted to include

Speaker 44 social sciences, psychology, sociology, history, which I kind of like.

Speaker 35 I'm down with that as far as the philosophies go.

Speaker 3 They wanted to include all this stuff, but collectively they kind of called this all reason.

Speaker 3 It was a very big deal to Stoicism, perhaps the biggest deal.

Speaker 29 Right.

Speaker 29 And they also were engaged in epistemology, which is theories of what knowledge is, how we gain knowledge, what's true, what's belief, what's false, how do we differentiate between these things.

Speaker 29 And they spent a lot of time investigating this and putting it all under logic because it was through logic that you could investigate physics, which included investigating God and the nature of the universe and stuff like that.

Speaker 29 And then through all that

Speaker 29 investigation, that introspection, that navel gazing,

Speaker 29 you were ultimately figuring out how to best pursue and best live out the third part, which was the ethics of the whole thing.

Speaker 34 Yeah.

Speaker 35 And you mentioned the four great virtues earlier, courage, justice, wisdom, and temperance.

Speaker 44 And the whole idea here is

Speaker 35 it's not like you want to block out the bad and only embrace the good.

Speaker 33 You want to consider both the good and the bad, but just don't let any of it, get in the way of anything that you're trying to pursue in your life. Right.

Speaker 29 Pretty simple.

Speaker 52 Yeah, and the whole good, bad thing.

Speaker 35 Where did you find this thing on ethics?

Speaker 12 Was that the...

Speaker 29 That was the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy from

Speaker 29 their entry on it. Yeah.
It was pretty good. The whole thing was.
It was. Dude, you should have seen how in-depth they go, though, but I thought this one was a good snippet.

Speaker 55 Well, I'm sure, yeah, they dive pretty deep.

Speaker 65 But I thought this was a pretty good little summation.

Speaker 22 You know, they're talking about,

Speaker 34 like you said, like money isn't just not good or

Speaker 8 aka bad. Things like this they called indifference, as in

Speaker 54 I-N-D-I-F-F-E-R-E-N-T-S,

Speaker 42 not indifference.

Speaker 49 And it's like not good or bad.

Speaker 58 It could be either one.

Speaker 35 It's really kind of all about not letting letting something like that get in the way of your pursuit.

Speaker 29 Right. So, and again, it went back to wealth, right? And this

Speaker 29 person in the Encyclopedia of Philosophy points out that like money definitely

Speaker 29 being wealthy usually is helpful or beneficial to the individual. Sure.
But it can also not be beneficial where, say, you have a big heroin problem.

Speaker 29 Well, the more money you get, the more money you're going to spend on heroin. So in that case, being wealthy is detrimental to you, not beneficial.

Speaker 29 And for something to be a good, it has to be good under all circumstances. And to a Stoic, there's only four things that are good under all circumstances, which are those four cardinal virtues.

Speaker 29 Everything else, like you said, is an indifferent, and it can either be preferred or dispreferred.

Speaker 29 Like wealth typically would fall under being a preferred indifferent, whereas say disease, having chronic disease, would be a disprepurred, disproport,

Speaker 38 wow,

Speaker 29 a dispreferred indifferent.

Speaker 7 Man, that's tough, though.

Speaker 29 It is.

Speaker 29 But the point is, is whether it's fabulous wealth or diabetes, they should affect you about the same.

Speaker 29 Or you might want one, you might not want to have one, but if you have either one, you can live with it.

Speaker 29 And that brings up a huge, huge component of stoicism that's really been blown up and exploded in the 21st century, which is

Speaker 29 you should take adversity and turn it into an opportunity for growth. That is a huge aspect of stoicism that's really being practiced and espoused these days.

Speaker 46 Yeah, I'm down with that.

Speaker 56 Like, I don't think

Speaker 23 I like being able to take from all these philosophies and different religions to form your sort of pathway through life, you know? Sure.

Speaker 35 Like when I hear sometimes

Speaker 35 I started to read about Buddhism and the whole thing with Buddhism of like every day you start anew and you have a new chance, like that really appeals to me too.

Speaker 8 Right. What I don't like is

Speaker 43 when either religions or philosophies say like, no, like this is the only way and everything else is BS.

Speaker 29 Sure.

Speaker 22 You know?

Speaker 29 Yeah.

Speaker 25 That just, that's a harsh buzzkill.

Speaker 29 It really is. Not only is it BS, but I'm going to kill you for thinking otherwise.
Yeah.

Speaker 29 So Seneca, who was one of the great thinkers

Speaker 29 of Stoicism, he was an advisor to Nero, and we'll talk about him as criticism of Stoicism later on.

Speaker 29 But he had a very famous quote where he says, you are unfortunate in my judgment, for you have never been unfortunate. You have passed through life with no antagonist to face you.

Speaker 29 No one will know what you are capable of, not even yourself. And that kind of shapes

Speaker 29 the basis of that idea that no matter what life throws at you, you take it and you say, I'm going to become a better person from this. Like, oh, this happened.

Speaker 29 Well, that's great because that means that I can learn to be better at this. So, my dog just got hit by a car.
I'm going to practice

Speaker 29 fortitude and make it through this really hard time and become a stronger person on the other side.

Speaker 35 Yeah, he may as well have said, you, comma, trust fun kid, comma.

Speaker 29 Sure, right, exactly. And I mean, that makes a

Speaker 29 people turn that on Seneca as well, but a lot of modern Stoics come to his defense as like, no, that guy had a harder life than you would think.

Speaker 37 Should we take another break? Yeah.

Speaker 56 All right, let's do it.

Speaker 45 And we'll talk about Seneca and Cicero and all other kinds of weird names.

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Speaker 29 So, Chuck, you were saying you were talking about

Speaker 29 religion. Stoicism apparently informed Christianity in a lot of ways.

Speaker 46 Yeah, and Buddhism in some ways.

Speaker 39 Yeah.

Speaker 51 Yet atheists embrace it.

Speaker 29 It's kind of weird these days. But I mean, the early Stoics were definitely, they definitely believed in divine intervention.

Speaker 29 It was kind of the basis of the whole thing that this is God's will, so why try to control it? Who are you to try to control it? Just roll with the punches.

Speaker 33 Yeah, that's a big,

Speaker 23 when I was taking all those philosophy quizzes, they're all a little bit different, but you saw a through line through a lot of these questions, and uh, the free will one was in every single one of them.

Speaker 3 Yeah, like, how do you feel about free will?

Speaker 44 And it had different ways of asking it, but you know, that free will.

Speaker 38 What do you think?

Speaker 40 Exactly.

Speaker 51 If you want to find out which philosophy that you jibe with, uh, you have to answer the free will question.

Speaker 54 Free will question.

Speaker 29 Yeah, hey, that's easier to say than

Speaker 29 dispreferred, indifferent.

Speaker 12 Nice work.

Speaker 29 So

Speaker 29 one of the big points, especially today for practicing stoicism, is looking at adversity as an opportunity for growth. Right.

Speaker 44 That's just a good tool in life, I think.

Speaker 29 Another one, and this one I really, this is where I big time diverge from stoicism as like a part of a daily practice, is something called negative visualization.

Speaker 53 Yeah, like

Speaker 35 trying to imagine the worst case scenario.

Speaker 29 Constantly.

Speaker 52 Yeah, I'm not into that at all.

Speaker 29 No, so say you're at your child's birthday party, right?

Speaker 29 And you are, not you specifically, this is you,

Speaker 29 just a general person, and you're having just the most

Speaker 29 intense moment of

Speaker 29 joy and appreciation for your child.

Speaker 29 According to Stoics, you should follow that up with a thought about how at your child's next doctor's appointment, your child could be diagnosed with terminal leukemia. Yeah.

Speaker 29 That that is what you should be doing basically all the time, negative visualization. And the idea is, it's twofold.
One, you're preventing yourself from becoming overjoyed at that moment. Right.

Speaker 29 Don't, don't do that.

Speaker 40 Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 29 And then secondly, you're

Speaker 29 exploring how you will feel. If your kid does get diagnosed with something horrible or something bad happens, and that when it actually happens, you'll say,

Speaker 29 that's not so bad. I'm already used to it.
Or you'll be able to confront it through your imagination and say, this is what I'm afraid of. That's not that bad.

Speaker 29 But I mean, that's a really extreme, horrific example. Yeah.

Speaker 29 But it is ultimately, it's definitely in step with stoicism that you should be visualizing the worst case scenario all the time.

Speaker 62 Yeah, I mean, and that's one of the reasons stoicism has such a downer reputation,

Speaker 26 such that Cicero

Speaker 43 wrote, a stoic rouse enthusiasm, he is much more likely to extinguish any enthusiasm the student may have to begin with.

Speaker 46 Burn.

Speaker 61 Yeah, it was a pretty good burn.

Speaker 32 And, you know, I get that. Like,

Speaker 60 who would, if you, if that was one of the first things you learned, if you started to poke around with stoicism,

Speaker 52 99% of the people would probably be like, man, I don't want to, I don't like the sounds of that.

Speaker 29 Yeah. I like the not having to control everything aspect, but the thinking about nothing but negative thoughts all the time.
Yeah.

Speaker 29 And I get the point of it. I just, it doesn't, it doesn't appeal to me.

Speaker 46 No, I mean, you shouldn't be Pollyanna either.

Speaker 29 Well, no, it's in direct contradiction to the idea of the power of positive thinking. Right.
Which is Stoic's like, you fool. What are you doing?

Speaker 29 All you're doing is setting yourself up for nothing but letdowns when that doesn't actually come true.

Speaker 3 Well, but I also agree with that to a certain degree.

Speaker 35 You know, like the whole like, just you can conjure it up just by thinking positively.

Speaker 49 I think that's on the opposite side equally

Speaker 18 BS.

Speaker 38 Sure.

Speaker 29 Sure, I think so too.

Speaker 46 I'm kind of right down the middle, I guess, when it comes to that stuff.

Speaker 29 And I think most people are. But I think that's what's fascinating about this kind of thing is it's like, whoa, there's some people actually are to these degrees, these extremes.

Speaker 29 It's interesting to me.

Speaker 34 Well, yeah.

Speaker 22 And the other interesting thing is, you know, you're talking about Christianity and then it's weird how Stoicism, on one hand, like atheists, like I can totally see how they'd be down with Stoicism, but also the whole notion that

Speaker 27 some believers in God and some Christians, like, give it all up to God because only God can control anything.

Speaker 44 So all we're going to do is pray about it.

Speaker 62 And that's popular among Stoics as well.

Speaker 44 Right.

Speaker 29 So it's just interesting that it has such a wide range as far as from atheism to like the you know serious serious give it up to god christianity right yeah no it definitely yeah it almost it's kind of like it's that buffet thing again where people can come along and take what they want from it and it it becomes part of their own philosophy or their own religion or whatever um

Speaker 29 let's talk about some of the ways that that it's been used over the years stoicism right okay

Speaker 29 so there have been a lot of people who have followed Stoic thought, like Adam Smith apparently was very much informed by Stoicism when he wrote The Wealth of Nations, because one of the big, big, big aspects of it was individual liberty.

Speaker 29 One cool thing about the early Stoics was that everybody's equal.

Speaker 38 Yeah.

Speaker 29 Doesn't matter whether you're man, woman, gay, straight,

Speaker 29 black, white, whatever. Everyone is equal.
And this was at a time when slavery was rampant, right?

Speaker 38 Yeah.

Speaker 29 So that was a big, a big, that's a big aspect to,

Speaker 29 or that's a big aspect of the wealth of nations is anybody can come along and become a capitalist. You just have to compete, right?

Speaker 29 Another place that it popped up kind of famously was in cognitive behavioral therapy.

Speaker 53 Yeah.

Speaker 62 Which initially, when I saw that, I was like, huh, that kind of surprised me.

Speaker 33 But then it all made sense.

Speaker 41 Right. Like exposure

Speaker 57 to

Speaker 37 something bad can help you get over it is kind of like that conjuring up the worst possible,

Speaker 35 it's almost numbing yourself to the worst possible thing if you think about that

Speaker 68 worst case scenario thing all the time.

Speaker 35 It's almost a way of preparing for that.

Speaker 29 Trevor Burrus Yeah, and it's rooted specifically. One of the founders of CBT, Albert Ellis,

Speaker 29 was an adherent of

Speaker 29 Stoicism as a younger man. And

Speaker 29 what's known as the cognitive model of emotion, which is the basis of cognitive behavioral therapy, is based on Epictetus's

Speaker 29 maxim that people are disturbed not by things, but by their view of things. And that's part of that whole Stoic philosophy, which is nothing is good or bad.
There's only good in the four virtues.

Speaker 29 Everything else is how you view it.

Speaker 29 Whether it's losing your job or winning the lottery,

Speaker 29 those things aren't inherently good or bad. It's you, the person experiencing that, who bestows good or bad on them.
Yeah. And why label things? Sure.

Speaker 12 I'm down with that.

Speaker 18 Yeah. A little bit.

Speaker 29 Did you hear about Admiral Stockdale?

Speaker 32 Yeah, I remember that name for sure when he came out with

Speaker 42 his book,

Speaker 7 Courage Under Fire, colon, testing Epictectus's.

Speaker 52 doctrines in a laboratory of human behavior in 1993.

Speaker 61 He was a famous prisoner of war in Vietnam for seven years, endured some of the worst of the worst that you can imagine in war.

Speaker 8 And what got him through

Speaker 35 was certainly not Christianity because

Speaker 37 he thought that's nothing but false hope.

Speaker 29 Well, not only that, he shared the POW camp with people who clung to that and did not make it.

Speaker 12 Yeah, so he saw it right up front.

Speaker 29 Right.

Speaker 41 So what got him through was his Stoic beliefs.

Speaker 29 Yeah, he was a huge, big-time adherent of Epictetus.

Speaker 29 He'd studied him in college. Apparently, he'd read everything that Epictetus had written or said that had been written down and attributed to Epictetus twice from two different translators.

Speaker 29 So this guy knew his Epictetus and he said, well, I'm a prisoner of war in Vietnam. I've got some broken bones.
I'm starving. I'm being mistreated.
I'll be here for seven years.

Speaker 29 What a perfect opportunity to put Epictetus' teachings to the test in a real-life laboratory experiment. And he said, Epictetus passed to flying colors was Stockdale's final report on it.

Speaker 62 Yeah, he said, if Epictetus' lecture room was a hospital, my prison was a laboratory, a laboratory of human behavior, I chose to test his postulates against the demanding real-life challenges of my laboratory.

Speaker 40 So, man, talk about a strong will, like to be faced with that and be like, well, hey, this is a great chance to work on my philosophy of life.

Speaker 29 Exactly. What else am I going to do? But that follows in and of itself on the whole, too, of turning adversity into a room for growth as well.

Speaker 28 Yeah, man.

Speaker 13 Yeah. Stronger than me.
Let's just say that.

Speaker 29 So

Speaker 29 you want to talk about some criticisms of Stoicism?

Speaker 26 Well, Cicero certainly thought it was a big downer.

Speaker 29 Yeah.

Speaker 29 He said.

Speaker 29 Well, you already said what he said, right? Yeah. It basically extinguishes enthusiasm in students.
Not a good thing, right?

Speaker 29 And then over the years, the fact that some of the great Stoic thinkers of all time have been super wealthy and powerful, Seneca, Marcus Aurelius was the emperor of Rome.

Speaker 29 He basically ran the free world. Well, I don't know if the free world's right, the Western world for almost 20 years.

Speaker 29 And when you sit there and, yeah, again, if you say, yes, you can turn anything into any adversity into an opportunity, if you're super wealthy, you don't have to worry about where your food's going to come from.

Speaker 29 Like, yes, of course you can be a Stoic. And then Epictetus came along and, like we said, kind of erased all of that to an extent, for sure.

Speaker 29 But it is still kind of criticized as like a wealthy person's philosophy. And it kind of smacks of that a little bit today, too, Chuck, with its huge resurgence in Silicon Valley.

Speaker 65 Oh, is that happening?

Speaker 29 Oh, yeah.

Speaker 29 Most of the Stoic revival is taking place there. That's where its cradle is right now.

Speaker 31 Oh. Well, our own article has a couple of good points.

Speaker 37 They talk about it

Speaker 32 not being as appealing because it lacks the mystique of Eastern practice.

Speaker 33 And then they also said this.

Speaker 34 It's also regarded as a philosophy of merely breaking even while remaining determinedly impassive.

Speaker 29 Yes. I don't know if that's entirely fair, but

Speaker 29 it kind of catches it a little bit.

Speaker 44 Well, yeah, because the very next sentence is this attitude ignores the promise proffered by Stoicism of lasting transcendence.

Speaker 41 And that one article that you sent talked about the power of indifference.

Speaker 12 Right. Which I thought was interesting.

Speaker 52 It's not about just like not caring about anything.

Speaker 33 It's about caring about only the right things that you have the power to change.

Speaker 29 Yeah, and also, though, I also see that even keel aspect, being indifferent, the power of it.

Speaker 29 I mean, think about how much time whenever you are like super happy about something going right or super upset about something going wrong, you're ultimately you're being distracted from keeping on, keeping on.

Speaker 29 Oh, yeah. And then you go back to eventually get back to that middle again, which is the baseline anyway.

Speaker 29 And so I guess what Stoics are doing is staying on that baseline and not being distracted so they can get further along faster or at a more steady pace.

Speaker 44 Yeah, I mean, there's definitely

Speaker 15 something that's really frustrating in life, which is when you look back and say, man, I've spent two days stressed and worried about something that I have no control over.

Speaker 49 Right. And what a waste of time that was when I could have done X, Y, and Z.

Speaker 29 One of the big questions I have, it's not necessarily a criticism. I guess it depends on what the answer would be.
But my big question for Stoicism, since it's so,

Speaker 29 it places so much emphasis on on the individual and self-exploration and introspection, how would a Stoic suggest enacting massive social change

Speaker 29 where something, some ill is happening to some large group of people, but nothing's going to change unless you go out of your own personal sphere and work

Speaker 29 to make others change?

Speaker 40 Right.

Speaker 29 How do you do that? Do you just say, well, whatever, it's God's will that these people suffer and be put down by the majority forever?

Speaker 29 Or is there some way that that can be addressed through the Stoic, you know, philosophy? I'm very curious. So anybody who knows that, write in, please.

Speaker 62 Yeah, maybe that's why it appeals to Silicon Valley.

Speaker 29 Right. Well, that's the other thing, too, right? So it also very much smacks when you hear of it from like wealthy people espousing it to anybody.

Speaker 29 It smacks of that whole

Speaker 29 aspect of Christianity where, hey, medieval peasant, you know how your life is terrible and you're going to live to 35 and all you do is work all the time and you give most of the spoils of your effort to your king?

Speaker 29 Well, there's such a thing as Christianity and your treasure is in the afterlife. So don't worry about this life.

Speaker 29 It smacks of the same thing where you can keep a population placated and not searching for larger social change by saying, hey, just focus on these four things and everything else is just, it just happens and you don't need to get worked up about it at all.

Speaker 29 It seems like a bit of a pacifier, too. Yeah.

Speaker 29 Depending on how you look at it.

Speaker 29 It's fascinating. Are we done with Stoicism?

Speaker 24 I'm finished with it.

Speaker 28 Okay.

Speaker 3 I think that was a good overview.

Speaker 15 I think so, too.

Speaker 27 It's a good thought starter.

Speaker 29 If you want to know more about stoicism, bud, there's a lot more out there than this. Just dive in and see what it means to you.
And again, it's a buffet.

Speaker 29 Take what you like, leave what you don't want. Leave the curdled pudding behind.

Speaker 29 Take the perfectly garliced green beans.

Speaker 45 Yum.

Speaker 29 What else did I already say that one part? Oh, since I said green beans, it's time for listener mail.

Speaker 26 I'm going to call this Beagle Brigade slash police dogs.

Speaker 29 People love that one.

Speaker 47 Man, who doesn't love beetles?

Speaker 32 Beagles on brigade, on parade.

Speaker 29 No one.

Speaker 29 Even people who get busted with whole pigs still are like that beagle's adorable.

Speaker 44 So this dude, Eric Stover, is a sandwicher, meaning he follows our advice, which is to listen to the newest episode as well as whatever from our back catalog he chooses to.

Speaker 24 Yeah.

Speaker 22 He's doing it right.

Speaker 35 Hey guys, I work in the sports and entertainment business in New York, and after 9-11, the use of bomb-sniffing dogs, mostly German shepherds, became standard operating procedure for all events.

Speaker 22 A few hours prior to a concert one night, the K-9 units were sweeping all the backstage areas and one of the bomb dogs hit on an employee locker.

Speaker 35 As you can imagine, it caused an immediate and serious response. A bomb squad was dispatched and that portion of the arena was evacuated.

Speaker 34 Plans were even made to cancel the show.

Speaker 25 He doesn't say what show, which I was very curious about.

Speaker 29 I'm going to say three doors down.

Speaker 30 Okay.

Speaker 35 After some very tense moments, the police officers open the locker.

Speaker 5 Those guys are super brave.

Speaker 35 Thankfully, they didn't find a bomb, but did find drugs. An employee

Speaker 34 must have brought in an extra bump for the show.

Speaker 29 Oh, man, it was definitely Three Doors thing.

Speaker 49 You might be asking yourself,

Speaker 36 no, this wasn't the band's green room.

Speaker 25 This was an employee.

Speaker 29 Oh, I know, I know.

Speaker 29 Three Doors Downs fans are among the most drug-addled of all music fans.

Speaker 38 Are they?

Speaker 26 Sure. I thought that was the Juggalos.

Speaker 29 No, they put the juggalos to shame.

Speaker 29 Juggalos take time off once in a while, you know what I mean?

Speaker 56 Yeah, that's true.

Speaker 49 You might be asking yourself, how does a bomb dog find drugs?

Speaker 56 As it turns out, the dog had failed out of drug school and was retrained as a bomb dog.

Speaker 38 Poor guy.

Speaker 55 That's hilarious, isn't it?

Speaker 29 Poor guy, which one? The dog or the guy who just happened to run across the failed drug dog? I I guess everyone still remembered something.

Speaker 64 There are no winners here.

Speaker 41 Why not?

Speaker 35 I guess he didn't completely forget his drug training, though, and he set off a chain of events that scared the crap out of us.

Speaker 34 The story ends with the employee getting arrested.

Speaker 13 The show went on, and the fans none the wiser.

Speaker 44 My guess is the dog was reassigned to crowd control.

Speaker 29 Just barking at people. Get back in line.

Speaker 35 Thanks for everything you guys do. Please let me know if you ever need anything in New York City.

Speaker 62 Is that a hint?

Speaker 57 We don't do drugs, Eric.

Speaker 38 Yeah,

Speaker 69 we're terrified of dogs.

Speaker 13 That is Eric Stover in New York, and I guess he's still in the sports and entertainment business.

Speaker 28 Yeah.

Speaker 29 He's like, you need some sports?

Speaker 69 Come see me.

Speaker 54 I could use some sports.

Speaker 29 Thanks, Eric. That's a pretty great story.

Speaker 8 Right? That's right.

Speaker 69 If you want to get in touch with us like Eric did, you can send us an email to stuffpodcast at iHeartRadio.com.

Speaker 1 Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

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Speaker 1 This is an iHeart podcast.