← Old School with Shilo Brooks
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- [00:00]
Shiloh Brooks
Hey y', all, I'm Shiloh Brooks. I'm a professor and CEO and I happen to believe reading good books makes us better men. Today I'm talking with Admiral James Stubridis. He's a retired four star US Navy admiral who led NATO as Supreme Allied Commander. He's also a best selling author, former dean of the Fletcher School at Tufts University, and he's now a partner at the Carlisle Group. This year he published the Admiral's bookshelf, which features 25 of his all time favorite books and the lessons he took from them. First on his list, Ernest Hemingway's 1952 novella, the Old man and the Sea. The Old man and the Sea changed Admiral Stavridis life. Today I'm asking him why this is Old School. Old School is proudly brought to you by the Jack Miller Center. The Jack Miller Center's mission is to reinvigorate education and America's founding principles by empowering professors, supporting teachers, and bringing civic education to millions of students nationwide. If you believe in educating the next generation to sustain American ideals, join us@jackmillercenter.org Admiral Stavridis, welcome to Old School. Thank you for being here, Shiloh.
- [01:21]
Admiral James Stavridis
It's great to be here. And I gotta congratulate you on the title of the podcast, Old School. It just one of my favorite movies.
- [01:30]
Shiloh Brooks
Thank you. And thank Bari Weiss too. That was partly her idea, but I want to talk to you about books. I know that you are a voracious reader, which you'd have to correct me if I'm wrong about this, but I'm not sure how common that is for a man in your profession to read as widely as you do. And so I'm interested to hear, how did you become such a voracious reader and tell us how that's impacted your career in the Navy.
- [01:55]
Admiral James Stavridis
Well, let's back way up. And now I'm a little kid, I'm eight years old and I'm living in Athens, Greece. My dad is in the Marine Corps. That's why we're living in Athens, Greece. He's stationed in Greece. But here's the punchline. As to reading In Greece in 1963, when I'm eight years old, there's no television, therefore entertainment. When a lot of my contemporaries were developing the television habit, watching old episodes of Swiss Family Robinson, I was reading books because there were no options. So every week my mom would march me down to the English language library in Athens, there is such a thing. And I'd come home with a stack of Books. And I became a lifelong reader that way.
- [02:46]
Shiloh Brooks
And now tell me about. You know, I read something about you online that you have a massive personal library. How big is this library and what sorts of books does it contain?
- [02:58]
Admiral James Stavridis
Yeah, this my wife refers to as a gentle madness. And I have 5,000 books in my home, and about a thousand are what I would call collectible. They're first editions of writers you would know. About a thousand of them are highly collectible. So I have signed copies of Margaret Atwood, Cormac McCarthy, Ernest Hemingway, Larry McMurtry.
- [03:24]
Shiloh Brooks
Out of my chair.
- [03:25]
Admiral James Stavridis
We could go on and on. Because I've been a lifelong reader, I've kind of hung on to my books. And my wife, for Christmas last year, gave me a coffee mug. On one side of it says, yes, I need all these books, and on the other side, it says, I have actually read these books.
- [03:44]
Shiloh Brooks
Yeah. Yeah. Did you ever get. You know, there's this stereotype of the military man is a person of brawn and, you know, kind of adult. Did you ever get made fun of or did people find you impressive? I mean, how. How did that kind of love of books combine with this very manly profession that you've had?
- [04:02]
Admiral James Stavridis
Well, fortunately, I'm not a big imposing figure. As you can see, I'm like 55 on a good day, and 145 PO. My sports were tennis and squash, so I was never out there banging around my opponents. And I'm an admiral, not a general, so all those things kind of helped. But I will say this. When I was in the military, my contemporaries would often say, man, Stavridis, what are you doing in the military? Reading all those books, getting a PhD writing books. Why are you in the military? And I would just kind of shrug and say, you know, it's my chosen career. When I got out of the military, all the professors. I was then dean of a law school, the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, and all the professors would go, admiral, you're so military. You don't really fit in here because you're a military guy. So I feel as though the nice way to put it is I've always had a foot in both camps. Life of the mind and the life of the military. Others would say, I never actually fit in anywhere. But I'll conclude with this. When the president of Tufts University hired me to become the dean of the law school there, a lot of the faculty predictably said, well, we don't want a military guy here. Why do you have to hire a military guy? Right? And so the President of Tufts, who's a very witty kind of guy, so said, you know, I hired him because I've always wanted one dean who knew how to follow orders.
- [05:38]
Shiloh Brooks
Yeah, there you go.
- [05:39]
Admiral James Stavridis
I thought it was a good line. And at the end of the day, to the subject of our conversation. I do think reading and leading actually go together in very important ways.
- [05:53]
Shiloh Brooks
Yeah. I want to hear a little bit more about that in a moment. I'm actually quite interested in that subject matter, too. But I want to talk to you about a book that's near and dear to your heart. That is the first one on the list in a book that you wrote called the Admiral's Bookshelf, in which you review a number of books and distill lessons from them. And that book is the Old man and the Sea. And you've mentioned Ernest Hemingway. I think I heard you say elsewhere that you have a kind of separate shelf of all your Hemingway books are together.
- [06:22]
Admiral James Stavridis
I do. And they're all first editions.
- [06:24]
Shiloh Brooks
First editions. You've got a signed copy of Farewell to Arms. Is it?
- [06:27]
Admiral James Stavridis
I do. Very good.
- [06:28]
Shiloh Brooks
Which I would like to.
- [06:29]
Admiral James Stavridis
Your research is very good.
- [06:30]
Shiloh Brooks
Thank you. And Hemingway is an extraordinary figure. He's an American icon. I mean, he's somebody who, you know, even if you're not a reader, you know, Ernest Hemingway, he changed American letters, dare I say letters around the world, forever.
- [06:47]
Admiral James Stavridis
Yes, but.
- [06:48]
Shiloh Brooks
So we should talk about Hemingway. But first, just take me to the time when you first picked up the Old man in the Sea. You found it for the first time. What effect did it have on you? Where did you find it? Tell me that story.
- [07:00]
Admiral James Stavridis
Sure. Like a lot of people, I read it in high school, and it was part of the required reading curriculum alongside To Kill a Mockingbird or Cannery Row or any other kind of American 20th century classic work of literature. But from the moment I read the book, and of course, it's very short. It's like 25,000 words. You can easily read it in an afternoon. From the moment I read it, the book spoke deeply to me. And at the time, I was not an old man, but I did love the sea. Today I'm an old man, and I love the sea. So it's a very logical book for me. Right. But when I first read it, what caught me was the ocean, the sea, the Lamar in Spanish. And that moved me very deeply. And when I first read the book Shiloh, I really identified less with the fishermen, with Santiago, and more with the young boy Manolino, who is a mentor of Santiago. And that Relationship, I think, is understudied and underappreciated in the old man and the sea. And so the ocean itself captured me. And even as a teenager, I knew I would be a Navy officer. It's always part of my ethos, my upbringing as the son of a naval officer, a Marine Corps officer. But then secondly, the leadership lessons, the mentorship piece of it moved me very greatly from my very youngest days. I've read that book now 10 times.
- [08:46]
Shiloh Brooks
Yeah, it's an extraordinary book. It's a book that I think, in Hemmingway's own estimation, was a great book. I mean, he seemed to think it was an extraordinary, even among his own work, piece of writing. It led to the Pulitzer, eventually the Nobel Prize.
- [09:00]
Admiral James Stavridis
Correct.
- [09:00]
Shiloh Brooks
It's probably his. Well, at least among his most two or three well known works. But for somebody. You mentioned the boy, you've mentioned the old man. For somebody who's never read the book before, it's a short book. I mean, it's a novella. One can read it in a single sitting if one wants to. Could you just give a basic summary of what this book is about and then lets you and me get into some of the nitty gritty on it?
- [09:24]
Admiral James Stavridis
I'd love to. The story opens in Cuba with Santiago, an aged fisherman who has been very successful and lucky as a fisherman throughout his life. But he's on a bad streak. He hasn't caught a fish in over 80 days, I think 84 days as the novel opens. And he's got this young boy, Marlino, who is his mentee, who comes and helps him and supports him. But his young mentee's family takes this boy away from him and says, you can't go with that old man anymore. He's unlucky. The next morning, Santiago gets up and he takes his skiff and he goes further out than he's ever really gone in a day kind of fishing event. And good news, he finally breaks the streak. He captures an enormous, enormous marlin. It's a big, beautiful fish. It's 18ft in length. And he has to fight it for three days to capture it. And he finally does. And. And so he's got this massive fish strapped to his little skiff. And now he's trying to get back into port. And I mean, this is like everybody's life, right? And so he's got this enormous prize strapped to the skiff and he's trying to get back in port and a shark comes, a tiburon and hits it, a mako shark. He calls It a dentuso, which means big teeth in Spanish. And the first shark takes a 40 pound chunk. He kills that shark, but he loses his harpoon. Then three sharks come and hit it. And then ultimately, as the day and the night go on, all the sharks come and they decimate. They destroy this beautiful fish. And he literally shows up at the end of the novel. He comes back into port and all that is on his skiff is a skeleton. Everything has been eaten by these sharks. And he goes and collapses in his small beach hut. And that's how the novel ends. It's very powerful. But here's the epilogue, if you will. The young boy comes back to him at this point and says, I don't care what my parents say. You are lucky and you're my mentor and I will support you and I will be with you. And together we will fish. And the last line in the book is, Santiago falls into a deep sleep and he dreams of lying.
- [11:57]
Shiloh Brooks
I can't. I know.
- [11:58]
Admiral James Stavridis
So beautiful.
- [11:59]
Shiloh Brooks
It's so beautiful. I want to come to that line. But first let me ask you about the three. It seems like there's three relationships in the book. You've mentioned the old man and the boy. So I'd like to start with that one. But then what I want to do is get to the old man and the fish, and then finally the old man and the sea. And what I want to do is ask how those relationships have shaped you. Because you started off by saying when you first read it as a younger man, it was the boy who you empathize with. Now, maybe it's the old man. So let's do the old man and the boy first. Move on to the old man and the fish, and then the old man and the sea. But what was it about that early reading with the old man and the boy that really captivated you?
- [12:37]
Admiral James Stavridis
It was the sense of what generations owe each other.
- [12:42]
Shiloh Brooks
Yeah.
- [12:43]
Admiral James Stavridis
An older generation is required to teach and to help and to lead and to mentor. And at the time, I appreciated that through my father, who was a Marine colonel, a very imposing figure. And we were talking earlier about him moving me to read Greek history and Greek military history and the Anabasis, the March up country, and many other books of Greek literature. And so I saw the old man, like my father, who I revered and loved. And I believed deeply in what an older generation owes that younger generation. What the younger generation owes is loyalty. And that's what, by the end of the novel, Montelino appreciates and knows he must be loyal to this old Man. And even as a very young boy, I felt the power and the importance of loyalty to those who are mentoring you, those who are leading you. I think those relationships are so powerful and so repetitive in literature. Think when they break. Think King Lear. They break badly when they work. Think another book. In my book, the Admiral's Bookshelf. Think the Godfather. And ultimately, after making a bad choice with Santino, the Godfather finally figures out the correct choice is Michael, the quiet one in the corner. And the loyalty and the empathy and the love between the Don at the end of the book and Michael as he takes over the Corleone family is a beautiful thing to see.
- [14:33]
Shiloh Brooks
So I see what you mean about the old man and the boy's relationship. It seems to me what. In a way what you revere or esteem. You mentioned loyalty and mentorship, but some wisdom. In other words, the old man seems to have some wisdom, and the boy's not persuaded that his supposed bad luck is worth leaving that wisdom behind.
- [14:53]
Admiral James Stavridis
That's 100% correct. And, you know, when I finished up 37 years in the Navy, I was casting about for what to do next. And so, like a lot of people, I spoke to various mentors, and I spoke to Bob Gates, Secretary of Defense Bob Gates, who I'd worked directly for for four, five, six years. I said to Secretary Gates, what do you think I ought to do next? And he said, I thought this was a great question, and none of my other mentors, by the way, were asking me this. Gates said, well, what kept you in the Navy for 37 years? If you could answer that question, you might know what you want to do next.
- [15:31]
Shiloh Brooks
That's a good one.
- [15:32]
Admiral James Stavridis
I thought, wow, I could see why this guy was the nation's spymaster, right? He knows how to interrogate you. And so I answered him. And I was thinking about it as I was answering, and I was like, in this flow of words, you know, I love the sea and being a mariner, and I love the adventure of the Navy, and I love traveling the world, and I love wearing snappy uniforms. And I petered out. And then I said to Secretary Gates, you know what I really loved about the Navy? I liked all those things. What I loved was taking care of sailors, mentoring them, guiding the trajectory of their lives, sharing what I had learned in my voyage with those who are sailing behind me. And Gates said, you ought to be a teacher. That's how I became a dean. Pretty good.
- [16:21]
Shiloh Brooks
I approve of that profession.
- [16:22]
Admiral James Stavridis
And I know you are a professor yourself. What's better than that? And as a dean, I was often on my feet in a classroom in front of students, sharing what I had learned. I think it's important, too, to do it not in an arrogant way or a certain way, but to do it in a way that Santiago imparted his wisdom and his learning, his teaching, to this young boy?
- [16:47]
Shiloh Brooks
Let's talk about the fish. Let me read you some quotes from the old man. When he's sort of speaking to himself out on the sea, to the fish, he says this. I'll kill him, though, he said, in all his greatness and his glory. Although it is unjust, he thought, but I will show him what a man can do and what a man endures. Then let me give you one more thing, he says to the fish. Fish, he said, I love you and respect you very much, but I will kill you dead before this day ends. I think, you know, contemporary readers might find that odd. I love you. I respect you. You're a being of glory, and I'm gonna kill you right. So can you explain what we should sort of take away from and learn from this relationship, which is very different from that seems in the old man and the boy? What is this old man after in this fish?
- [17:37]
Admiral James Stavridis
Well, if we were in an English class at the University of Virginia or at Princeton, where you've taught at both, we could probably have a conversation about how at times we have to kill the thing we love in order to achieve something higher. The most obvious example is in Christian religion. God kills Jesus. He permits him to die in the most painful and awful way. Why? For a greater good. To save others. In a military context, there are moments when, as a commander of an aircraft carrier strike group, I would launch aircraft and strikes into war, knowing some of them are not going to come back. There are always moments where you find yourself in life. Maybe you don't have to literally kill something, but you have to create pain and. And take hurt in order to achieve a greater good. This is a long way of saying, and I know you're thinking about writing a book about ambition. I think the fish is also ambition. It is what we want desperately. We want to succeed. We want to show others that we are highly capable. Santiago desperately wants to be one of the great fishermen of his time.
- [19:02]
Shiloh Brooks
He.
- [19:02]
Admiral James Stavridis
And so he's going to go out, he's going to catch that fish, he's going to kill the fish, he's going to bring it back. I think there's just finally to stay with the epic literary references. It's Moby Dick. It's the greatest of American novels. It's Ahab seeking to kill the white whale.
- [19:22]
Shiloh Brooks
Yeah.
- [19:23]
Admiral James Stavridis
And all this can sound very woo woo, very mythology driven and symbolic, but I think a lot of that was going through Hemingway's mind. And frankly, I can drop a plumb line from Moby Dick to the old man in the sea.
- [19:38]
Shiloh Brooks
Absolutely. You know, there are some commentators who do point out the way that the old man's hands scar up is very Christlike in a way.
- [19:45]
Admiral James Stavridis
Oh, sure. And don't forget it's three days while he is out circling with his fish. Like the three days between Christ's torment on the cross and his resurrection.
- [19:56]
Shiloh Brooks
What about this aspect of the fish? I mean, you know, the old man talks to the fish and he says, I'm a man. And in a way you're going to learn what a man is and what a man can do. And he's reflecting a lot on his journey about his own manliness and manhood and masculinity. I'm fascinated by that. And I wonder whether the old man thinks that a man needs an adequate rival to overcome. In other words, if a man who is strong overcomes a weak thing, that's somehow not a proof that one is a man. But a man needs to take a risk. That is to say, to meet a rival in a certain kind of metaphorical battle in this case, or real battle in your case, who's not a joke, like you might lose and if you win, you know, you're a man. I mean, it's almost like he's trying to prove something to himself.
- [20:44]
Admiral James Stavridis
Yeah. And let's move this to a lighter plane and shift metaphors entirely and go to sports. At the moment, as we are taping this interview in the summer, Wimbledon is going on and you're seeing a very generational passing of Novak Djokovic and Roger Federer and Nadal, who have been this trinity dominating the sport for decade and more. Now one of them is left, it's Djokovic. He is seated way down like number six. And there are now these young powerful figures coming along. Sanaar, the top player in the world at this minute, Carlos Alcaraz, etc. So if you were to ask these top tennis players, would you want someone to be a pushover? Would you want someone that you could guarantee you're going to win? That would be a nightmare for them. Djokovic talks all the time about how Nadal and Federer and he really pushed each other to achieve more and more. I think that's the same kind of theme you have to succeed. And by the way, we ought to stipulate Hemingway had his issues with women, married four times, difficult, and as a result gets a lot of detrimental comment from the academy, a lot of it justified. On the other hand, he was a product of his life and times. World War I, World War II. And I think in the context of his life and times, the way he talks to the fish, I think is very much part of manhood in the early 20th century.
- [22:37]
Shiloh Brooks
Yeah, I think that's right. And I think Hemingway is known to be this masculine. It's almost a caricature, you know, in popular culture. But he's this sensitive soul.
- [22:49]
Admiral James Stavridis
And we find in some of his posthumous writings some indications of very in touch with his feminine side, shall we say that.
- [22:58]
Shiloh Brooks
Yeah, I know what you're talking about.
- [23:00]
Admiral James Stavridis
Probably without going any further.
- [23:01]
Shiloh Brooks
Yeah, I know. I know exactly what you're talking about. Well, let's talk about the sea. And just kind of to wrap up the Old man and the Sea, and then I want to look at a passage with you. But we've talked about the old man and the boy. We've talked about the old man and the fish. Now, there's the Old man and the Sea, which is the title. I wonder if you might reflect on a few things there. One, the Old Man. There's something about the fact that this man is an old man. It's not the young man in the sea. It's not the man in his prime in the sea. It's the old man in the sea, and then it's the sea. And there's this sort of lesson about perseverance and resilience, which I know you've reflected on some in, because I've looked at your book, the Admiral's Bookshelf. So talk to me about the nature of the old man, its combination with the sea, perseverance and resilience. What are we to take from that title and just the setting as a whole?
- [23:47]
Admiral James Stavridis
Yeah. Let's begin with the sea itself. And I spent, if you add up all the days and nights I spent on the ocean, out of sight of land, on the deep ocean, it comes out to somewhere around 11 years. When you add it all up. All my time on ships at sea. Went back to my logbooks a while back and figured that out. So I spent a lot of time at sea. And at the end of a day at sea, I would often go up to the bridge and look at the horizon. And for a long time I would be almost perplexed by it. The vast scope and scale of the oceans. And I'd look at that line where the sky meets the sea. And then in my 40s, I thought, you know what I'm looking at? I'm looking at eternity. That's the oceans. And that's, I think, what Hemingway tries to do here. If we think about the old man and the young boy and that relationship, that's our world with each other. That's the world of people and the fish. I think we've talked about a couple interesting interpretations. I think the fish ultimately is your ambition. It's what you want to accomplish. It's how you prove who you are. The sea is this vast eternal arena in which it happens. And here's the point. The ocean could care less. The ocean isn't sitting around wondering, hey, did Santiago make it back with that big marlin? The ocean doesn't care. And so the takeaway for me, every time I would look at that horizon as a mid grade officer and today when I'm out on a boat, I'll think, jim, it's okay. Do the best you can. Get along with others when you can. Don't let your ambition overwhelm you because eternity is out there and you're your newsflash. Not really a big part of it, and neither is anybody else. That, I think, is what Hemingway saw. And I think in some way I'll conclude with this. But I think it's important because to talk about Hemingway, you have to talk about his demons. His ultimate suicide. Shot himself to death in his house, knowing his wife would discover the body. I mean, it's a very dark ending. And I think there were a number of different explanations that occur here, including very medical, clinical depression, mental health issues and so on. But I think bearing down on Hemingway was that sense that the world's eternal. I'm really not going to be remembered. I'm not a huge part of it. And I think collided with the medical side of his brain and ultimately led to despair. Final thought here. That's what you have to fight against. You have to know that what you do in the end is not gonna be remembered forever. And it's not gonna drive the shape of the earth. And we're a tiny, dusty, minuscule corner of this impossibly huge universe. You have to hold that thought in your mind and find your way to humility and enjoyment in the moment and a sense that we're here. We have purpose, we have each other, we have our ambitions. But keep it in perspective.
- [27:38]
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- [28:08]
Shiloh Brooks
One of the things I ask all of our guests to do is select a passage that's particularly meaningful to them, read it out loud, and then kind of interpret it for us. Give us some sense of what you think it means. So I know you've selected one. Let's hear it.
- [28:22]
Admiral James Stavridis
So Santiago is out on his skiff. He's got this massive prize marlin lashed to the skiff. But now the sharks are coming and they're hitting it. And he is doing everything he can to defend his prize, his ambition, if you will. Here's what he says, because he begins to understand that at the end of it, because the sharks are going to come. He will not conquer. He will not bring that fish back in the way he wants. He says he did not like to look at the fish anymore since the fish had been mutilated. When the fish had been hit, it was though he himself were hit. But I killed that shark that hit my fish, the first one, he thought. And he was the biggest dentuso that I have ever seen. And God knows that I have seen the big ones. It was all too good to last, he thought. I wish it had been a dream now and that I had never hooked the fish and was alone in bed on the newspapers. But man is not made for defeat, he said. A man can be destroyed, but not defeated. That's a pretty good line.
- [29:46]
Shiloh Brooks
Yeah. So talk about that line. A man can be destroyed but not defeated.
- [29:50]
Admiral James Stavridis
Yeah, that's the. The quick top line of this book is resilience. It is knowing that the sharks are gonna come and destroy your prize. Ultimately, whatever you hold dear, ultimately is going to be destroyed. And yet you persevere. You can see your world destroyed in front of you, but not defeated.
- [30:17]
Shiloh Brooks
And this would then shed some light on how you understand that final line the old man was dreaming about. L. Which is an extreme. I mean, it's just such a. It's both manly and beautiful. And you know that he's. He's. He's not defeated. He's.
- [30:31]
Admiral James Stavridis
No, no. And. And you also need to tie it back to the rest of Hemingway's canon, which so much of which is centered in Africa and big game.
- [30:41]
Shiloh Brooks
Hunt. Right. Right.
- [30:42]
Admiral James Stavridis
And of course, Hemingway. What did he do to the lions? He killed the lions.
- [30:47]
Shiloh Brooks
Right.
- [30:48]
Admiral James Stavridis
And he knows that Santiago has killed the fish, but that's part of who he is. It's his ambitions. And he knows in the end he will never hold those ambitions forever because the sharks will come and destroy them. But he ends the novel on this incredibly hopeful line and beautiful and poetic. As you say, he dreamed of lions.
- [31:13]
Shiloh Brooks
Yeah. You mentioned at the outset of our conversation that you are older than you were when you'd read the book, and so it takes on a kind of new meaning in a certain sense.
- [31:23]
Admiral James Stavridis
Sure.
- [31:24]
Shiloh Brooks
I wonder whether you have a fish and if so, what is it? This man at the end of his life has this last great ambition and he spins himself out on it.
- [31:40]
Admiral James Stavridis
First and foremost, my greatest joy in life is my wife, Laura, my two daughters, Christina and Julia, and my old man, six grandchildren, all under the age of eight. So to the degree I have one big fish, it's to be part of that happy family. And I caught that fish. The second great fish in my life may or may not surprise you. I think people think of me as this military guy in Afghanistan and the falcons and firing missiles, or dean of a law school or my current gig with the Carlyle Group doing private equity and big international finance deals. I guess there's some fish out there. But the fish that I feel the most bound to is writing, is writing books. And that's a craft. And I've published 15 books and I'm starting now to write more and more fiction because I think that's more challenging, more difficult.
- [32:49]
Shiloh Brooks
I agree.
- [32:51]
Admiral James Stavridis
And so I would love to write a book. A tenth as great as the old man I'd like to write. A truly great novel would be my fish.
- [33:08]
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- [33:40]
Shiloh Brooks
Ernest Hemingway is one of America's most influential writers. He influenced the styles of generations of writers who followed him. And the reason for that is he's well known for his athletic, punchy, short and quick prose. But what's so innovative about that is not just that it's short, not just that. When you look at a page of Hemingway dialogue, only Half of the page is full because the sentences are so short. It's not just that. It's also that he combines the speed of his writing with poetic flourishes. And these are two things that ordinarily don't go together. A lot of times you get poetic flourish, and it's long and drawn out. Hemingway writes in this punchy way, but uses poetic language. So you get this combination of athletic writing with poetry, poetic tone and style. So for the word of the day, what I want to do is read you a beautiful paragraph from the Old man and the Sea that really encapsulates Hemingway's classic style. And he uses a word here, iridescent, in a beautiful way that makes the poetry of his simple writing shine forth. So let me begin from where he swung lightly against his oars. This is the old man, by the way. He looked down into the water and saw the tiny fish that were colored like the trailing filaments and swam between them and under the small shade the bubble made as it drifted. They were immune to its poison, but men were not. And when the same of filaments would catch on a line and rest there, slimy and purple, while the old man was working a fish, he would have welts and sores on his arms and hands of the sort that poison ivy or poison oak can give. But these poisonings from the agua mala came quickly and struck like a whiplash. The iridescent bubbles were beautiful, but they were the falsest thing in the sea, and the old man loved to see the big sea turtles eating them. In the passage, Hemingway's talking about jellyfish, and the old man sees jellyfish in the water, but they're clear and they're see through. And so when the sun shines down on them, you get this rainbow. And Hemingway describes that with the word iridescent. And he calls them iridescent bubbles, as though the jellyfish are bubbles. And when you move your head and you change your vantage point, new rainbows form in these jellyfish that look like the rainbows that would form if the sun were shining through bubbles on a sunny day. And he uses this beautiful word, iridescent, which has its root in the Latin word for rainbow and also is tied to the Greek goddess Iris, who used to travel and walk on rainbows to see human beings and see other gods. And so Hemingway invokes this beautiful poetic word with this rich poetic history in this relatively pedestrian context, A man fishing. And it's just a prime example of the genius of Hemingway to combine the ordinary and everyday with the beautiful and poetic in an efficient and athletic prose. If you had to say about the Old man and Sea. I mean, I've asked you what your fish is and how you kind of have internalized the book over the decades of reading it. If you had to say this, that the Old man in the Sea is medicine for someone suffering from something. I think oftentimes books come along when you need them. Sometimes a book, if you're a reader, will walk into your life and open the way. What affliction, if we can use that term, is a person suffering from for which the old man in the sea is the medicine?
- [37:36]
Admiral James Stavridis
I'll give you two. One is obvious. It's aging. And I think as people age, often they become more despairing. They're approaching death. They are feeling as though. Did what I do in my life really matter? I think the Old man and the Sea is ultimately a very hopeful book about, you know, don't worry about whether you caught the fish or not. What you ought to worry about are those relationships in your life. I think that that despairing sense that some people are afflicted with as they age. And this is Dylan Thomas poem, Rage, rage against the dying of the light that is the Old man in the Sea. So it can be a tonic for people in that situation, I think. And then secondly, I think for people who have suffered some great loss, the book can help them understand that you can have a terrible disease in an operation, or you can have a loss of a beloved family member, or you can have a huge business opportunity collapse in front of you, or you can see your finances fall apart in front of you. But I think the book teaches us that with the help of others, with resilience and with perspective, we can end up dreaming of lions.
- [39:16]
Shiloh Brooks
Well, that's a beautiful way to conclude our discussion of the Old man of the Sea. Let's now talk about your life as a reader and especially about the Admiral's Bookshelf, in which your analysis of this book and many others appear. So you. At the beginning, you talked about the fact that you think there's a relationship between leadership and reading.
- [39:35]
Admiral James Stavridis
I do.
- [39:35]
Shiloh Brooks
I'd like for you to talk a little bit more about that. I think a lot of the messages that I deliver in my class, in my own writing and speaking, are bound up with that. And I think we agree. And I can talk about that till I get blue in the face. And that's why I'm excited to hear somebody else talk about it. But tell us about why reading can make you A better leader, and then why you wrote the Admiral's Bookshelf, to kind of contribute to that mission.
- [40:01]
Admiral James Stavridis
I think leadership benefits in three very distinct ways from reading. Number one is every book is a simulator. Every book is a chance to put yourself into the book and say, hmm, what would I do? I'll give you an example. To Kill a Mockingbird. There's a book we all read when we were 15 years old, right? Go back and read that book again in your 40s or your 50s or your 60s. It's a book about race in America. It's a book about a flawed judicial system. It's a book about a young woman's coming of age. But above all, To Kill a Mockingbird is about integrity. Atticus Finch, the protagonist, is asked to defend a black man wrongly accused of rape in the 1930s South. Easiest thing in the world for him would have been to say, boy, I don't want any part of that. He takes that case. He does it because he is a person of unimpeachable integrity. Here's the question, Shiloh. When you read that book and you put yourself in his shoes, what do you do? That's a pretty powerful tool for a bunch of pages on a bookshelf. So reading is a simulator. Number two, reading for leaders gives you perspective. And we talked quite a bit about that in this conversation. But I think reading about Winston Churchill in World War II and understanding the pressures and the immense costs of failure, suddenly your challenges as the young captain of a destroyer don't look as scary. They don't look as big. Reading can really help you find that perspective. And then third, and finally, reading can unlock ideas in your own mind that can help you solve problems. I mentioned a moment ago the greatest book of leadership ever written, which is, of course, the Godfather by Mario Puzo.
- [42:13]
Shiloh Brooks
The.
- [42:13]
Admiral James Stavridis
There's powerful, clever ideas in there. How does Michael finally undertake the revenge and the right moves and, oh, it's beautiful. The interlocking pieces of it. So there are very practical things you can learn both from fiction, like the Godfather or not in the Admiral's Bookshelf, but the Prince by Machiavelli.
- [42:37]
Shiloh Brooks
Oh, absolutely. I teach that every Sunday.
- [42:39]
Admiral James Stavridis
I'm sure you do. And it's an extraordinary book, full of very practical advice. So I think there are many, many reasons to read, and we haven't touched on the most obvious one, which is it's enjoyable, it's fun, and you get to talk with smart people about books and compare notes.
- [42:57]
Shiloh Brooks
I heard you say on an interview that you Think that if a person begins reading a book and they decide they don't like it, they should stop immediately and begin reading another one. I happen to disagree with that, and so I'm gonna ask you to defend it. My view is this. There is something edifying about reading a book you don't like. And so I say to my students, I hope that at least one book on this syllabus you hate and you have to get through it because it provokes a visceral reaction in you. I can remember reading, as an undergraduate, Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit, which is nearly impossible to get through, and it made me want to bang my head against a brick wall. But I have to say it edified me in a way that I would have been impoverished by had I abandoned it because it was unpleasant.
- [43:45]
Admiral James Stavridis
Your position is very defendable. Recognize that the book you've selected to use as an example is a cornerstone of philosophy. What I'm talking about when I say if you pick up a book and you start reading it and it just doesn't click for you, then move on to another book. If it is a foundational work that generations have revered, then I would say, yeah, you're right.
- [44:17]
Shiloh Brooks
Stick it out.
- [44:18]
Admiral James Stavridis
Stick it out. And we could think about any number of novels that can be incredibly impenetrable to try and read. The classic example of this, you'll know well, is Ulysses by James Joyce, which is on everybody's list as the best novel ever written in the 20th century. I happen to find it very difficult to read, and I have ground into it on three or four different occasions. And I'm very proud to report, last weekend in Dublin, Ireland.
- [44:53]
Shiloh Brooks
Get out of here.
- [44:53]
Admiral James Stavridis
I finally finished.
- [44:55]
Shiloh Brooks
Get out of here.
- [44:55]
Admiral James Stavridis
Yep. Did you? I did. For the exact reason, the exact reason that you articulate. I didn't especially like the book, and yet a lot of people love that book, and I wanted to understand it.
- [45:08]
Shiloh Brooks
I've also heard you say you read two or three books a week often, and as many as 100 books a year. I do, which is very impressive. Sometimes I begin my classes in which I oftentimes teach only three or four books, by saying this. There are many courses at this university in which you will be assigned 20 books. I'm going to assign five. And the reason is because I want you to know a few books well, rather than many books, you. Poorly.
- [45:30]
Admiral James Stavridis
Yeah.
- [45:31]
Shiloh Brooks
And I wonder what you would make of that habit of reading, rather than reading two or three at a time, having one or two or three books which you know, the way a religious person knows the Bible, you can almost call it to mind, chapter and verse. And it fills your soul in a deeper way than a potato chip, where you're just like. And I read that in two days and I don't even know what happened. You see what I mean?
- [45:50]
Admiral James Stavridis
Well, here we come into something I talk about in the Admiral's Bookshelf, which is read fast.
- [45:56]
Shiloh Brooks
Yeah.
- [45:56]
Admiral James Stavridis
To read slow. So I think we're in kind of agreement here, which is to say you pick up a book, and you may even pick up a book on the list of books in the Admiral's Bookshelf, you may pick up Margaret Atwood's the Handmaid's Tale, which I think is an extraordinary novel in so many different dimensions. You know, we often wring our hands about the authoritarian state we're living in today. Well, let me tell you, there's some serious authoritarian states out there.
- [46:25]
Shiloh Brooks
There.
- [46:26]
Admiral James Stavridis
And that's a book that I think if you pick it up and you start reading it and it's just not to your taste, you know, it's dystopian, it's extremely misogynistic, it's easy to read. But you might say to yourself that this doesn't really matter for me. Toss it, move on to the next book on the list. I'm fine with that. But to your point, and this is where I read fast in order to then find that handful of books that I truly, deeply revere and have read on multiple occasions. And to close the thought, this also gets us to, I think, a very important word, which is re reading. And so the Plains Indians say, you never cross the same river twice. Cause the river has moved on. It's true with books. The Old man and the Sea that I read when I was 15, is a completely different book than the Old man and the Sea when I read it in my 50s.
- [47:30]
Shiloh Brooks
First of all, Admiral's Bookshelf, the selection is terrific. So, you know, you said a moment ago you read a bunch of books, but you, in your own books about books, have sifted out some great ones. And I think if people are looking for good, just book recommendations, just from somebody who's a real reader and has gone through a bunch of stuff and has sifted out the good stuff. Stuff for you. They should probably check out your book. I mean, one of the books that you have in there, Cormac McCarthy's all the pretty Horses, he's among my favorite authors. And the reason I thought of it is his books seem to me to be of the sort that lend themselves in particular to repeated reading because there's some chronological anomalies in the book. You can't always see everything. And so, you know, if you find novels like that, they're reading them again.
- [48:11]
Admiral James Stavridis
Read them again. And let's park on Cormac McCarthy for a moment, because I think you'll agree with me. His book, Blood Meridian, just one of the absolute great American novels up there with Moby Dick. Maybe those are the top two. But the point. Here's my point. There can't be two more different books in the world than Blood Meridian and All the Pretty Horses. They're stylistically different. They're set in very different ways. I guess they're both kind of about the American west, but, boy, are they very different books of the two. You got to grind it out with Blood Meridian. Yeah, all the Pretty Horses. That's just so lyrical and readable. And I've read that three or four times. Yeah, it's like the old man in the street.
- [48:56]
Shiloh Brooks
That's right. That's right. Well, let's move to a lightning round. I'm gonna ask you a couple questions and we'll. We'll conclude. But so let me ask you this. What is the best book about? Military history that you. Or naval history? Either one that you.
- [49:09]
Admiral James Stavridis
Well, the best book of military history is a very ancient one. You'll know it. It's Thucydides.
- [49:15]
Shiloh Brooks
How do I.
- [49:16]
Admiral James Stavridis
The Peloponnesian Wars. And very readable, you know, Very readable. It's this epic battle between Athens and Sparta, and it's about the creation of coalitions and authoritarianism versus democracy in a very nascent form. It's an extremely clever book that reads well, 2500 years later. I'm going to go with Thucydides.
- [49:43]
Shiloh Brooks
Good choice, in my view.
- [49:44]
Admiral James Stavridis
I'm going to pick one other one, though, a great military book, and it'll surprise you. It's actually a trilogy. It's the Lord of the Rings.
- [49:50]
Shiloh Brooks
Is that right?
- [49:51]
Admiral James Stavridis
Absolutely. Look in that book for military thinking of deception and reinforcement at critical moments and innovative technology, think one ring to rule them all. Yeah, it's like drones. I mean, it's. There's a lot of military theory in the conduct of operations in the Lord of the Rings. But military history, which is what you asked about. I'm going with Thucydides. What. What do.
- [50:21]
Shiloh Brooks
What do civilians most misunderstand about military and military service members?
- [50:28]
Admiral James Stavridis
Sure. They think we are like the Jack Nicholson character in A Few Good Men, where the colonel. Colonel Jessup, who is clearly from the very start of the movie, is arrogant, domineering, harsh. And the Tom Cruise JAG finally takes him apart on the stand when he's testifying and Colonel Jessup ends up screaming, you don't understand. You've never stood on a wall and defended. And it's just, I think many civilians kind of think military people are like that, that were kind of angry and arrogant and pompous. And I can tell you from a lifetime of experience, it could not be further from the truth. Yeah, sure. Are there a few generals who act or look like Colonel Jessup? Yeah, there's a few more. Typical. There's General Jim Mattis, who is a very scholarly, well read individual. Elliot Ackerman, again, someone you should have on this show, a true combat hero. I find generally the more combat someone has seen, the more perspective they have, the calmer they are. One thing you learn in combat is how to make time slow down. You have to do that. You have to slow down no matter how intense events are around you. That's, I think, what good military people do. They ought to be calm and balanced and rational and sensible. I think most are.
- [52:09]
Shiloh Brooks
So you mentioned that reading a book is like a simulator. If you could go back and command any naval battle in all of history, which one would you go?
- [52:19]
Admiral James Stavridis
Why do you ask all these easy questions? No, seriously, it would be the Battle of Trafalgar. This is in the early 1800s. Lord Nelson is in command of the British fleet. They're off the coast of Spain. He's facing and is outnumbered by the combined Spanish and French fleet. England is at war with Napoleon. Napoleon is threatening to invade, literally. The future of Britain is going to be determined by this Battle of Trafalgar. And Nelson, by the way, is this very flawed character. For starters, he's the last person in the world who looks like an admiral. He's like my height, five' five. He weighs 125 pounds. He's had one arm shot off in battle. He's blind in the other eye. He's having a long public affair with Lady Hamilton, betraying his wife. I mean, he couldn't get confirmed by the Senate of the United States in a million years, yet he's the greatest admiral in history. And I would love, I wouldn't be so arrogant to say to command at that battle, but I would love to have been there and watched him in command and watched how he led his troops. Final thought, he hoists a flag signal to the entire British fleet and it says simply, england Expects every man will do his duty. And he was famous for his ability to inspire, to create this band of brothers, this Henry V, like team of teams. There's a lot to admire about Lord Nelson. I would love to have been there at the Battle of Trafalgar.
- [53:59]
Shiloh Brooks
All right, that's a good one. And last question. I've seen you on a round of news programs and I'm just curious what keeps you up at night in 2025?
- [54:08]
Admiral James Stavridis
I think it's pretty obvious what keeps us all awake at night these days. And it's some combination of a nuclear armed Russia threatening the west by attacking Ukraine, Iran seeking to find a nuclear weapon, China in a pretty relentless quest to build its military. There's a lot out there that keeps me awake at night. I'd rather conclude, if you don't mind, on what helps me sleep at night.
- [54:34]
Shiloh Brooks
Yeah, that, that's a good one too.
- [54:35]
Admiral James Stavridis
And it's, you know, certainly a couple glasses of red wine will work. But what, seriously, what helps me sleep at night are three things that I think are actually going pretty well. One is technology. And yeah, we ought to be concerned about the rise of AI and we ought to worry about the environment. But if you really look at what's happening in AI, fusion, energy, biotechnology, it's extraordinary. Technology, I think is not going to save us from everything, but it's going to be a very positive force. Number two may or may not surprise you. I think the rise of India as a global nation is going to be very significant and important. If you think of global geopolitics in the 21st century, of all the democracies and NATO and the West, Japan, and then you have all the authoritarian nations, China and Iran and North Korea and Russia, who's kind of right there in the middle. It's India, this vast mega state, 1.4 billion people dominating the Indian Ocean, the last really unexplored ocean. And they're a democracy. And ultimately, I think India will be a force for good. And then third, and finally again, may or may not surprise you. 300 years from now, when the history of this century is written. And it's not going to be about the rise of India, it's not going to be about AI, it's not going to be about China. 300 years from now, the historian will write about this century for the rise of women. This is the century in which women after 5,000 years have been chattel in these societies. Women are going to really step up. Look where we are just 25 years in. Who's the global leader who has handled Trump the best, Claudia Shinbaum, the president of Mexico. Women are stepping into roles, and by the end of this century, I think we're really going to have a 50, 50 gender parity. And yeah, it's the right thing to do and all that. But here's the point. It's a pragmatic one. It's all of that human capital, all of that talent coming online, I think that helps me sleep at night.
- [56:55]
Shiloh Brooks
Well, Admiral Stavridis, I want to thank you for coming on Old School. And I want to say this, and I don't say it all the time. You really do embody some of the virtues of mind and the combination between thought and action that I hope people take away from what we do here. So thank you so much for coming on Old School.
- [57:12]
Admiral James Stavridis
And for you, Shiloh, I'll say something that I get all the time from people, which is they say to me, thank you for your service. You've been a teacher and a professor. That is true service as a teacher. Thank you for your service.
- [57:28]
Shiloh Brooks
I appreciate it. Thank you.
- [57:29]
Admiral James Stavridis
You bet.
- [57:30]
Shiloh Brooks
Limu Emu.
- [57:32]
Admiral James Stavridis
And Doug, here we have the Limu Emu in its natural habitat, helping people customize their car insurance and save hundreds with Liberty Mutual. Fascinating. It's accompanied by his natural ally, Doug. Limu is that guy with the binoculars watching us. Cut the camera. They see us.
- [57:52]
Shiloh Brooks
Only pay for what you need@libertymutual.com Liberty Liberty, Liberty. Liberty Savings Ferry, underwritten by Liberty Mutual Insurance Company and affiliates.
- [57:59]
Admiral James Stavridis
Excludes Massachusetts.