Kenny Curtis (6:15)

Okay, so let's zoom out. You're an adult who's not super into history. Maybe you got burned out on it in school, or you're more of a math and science person. Give me the case for, for why the study of history is so important.

Guest Historian (6:29)

Well, I think you don't ever really know where you're going to wind up. You may think you know where you're going, but you don't. You can't really predict the outcome as well if you don't know where you've been past is. And I think science shows you that. I think whether you're a numbers guy, a science person, or whatever, I think all of existence kind of shows that you have to kind of know where you've been to really experience where you're going. If nothing else, you, you know what facts have informed your own particular decision making. So history is really important because I think you take that look back and you can put everything that happens now that's happening now and everything that might happen in the proper context. So I think it's really important for any human to really understand that. It also brings us together, it lets us understand the common experience. Because the more you learn about history, the more times you can say, oh, this is like blank. This is like blank. This is like blank. One of the things that I see in all forms of ancient history is how much misogyny is part of the cultures of the world. It's sure, wow, if women, if we had just gotten on a different bet, on a different horse early on in civilization, we'd be on a much different and probably a lot better planet.

Kenny Curtis (7:45)

Instead of just seeing something that's outrageous or offensive or whatever, you see that historically. You see the stupidity and the cost of it.

Guest Historian (7:54)

Correct, Correct. And you. But you can also see how it's. The same mistakes are made here, but in different cultures at different times in different ways. And I think it. In a way, it's kind of a bonding experience. You can see what we have in common, but you also can see all sorts of other victories and cultural celebrations and religious opportunities, things that can bring us together as humans on the same planet, in the same world. And I think history gives you an opportunity to understand that kind of cultural connectivity in an important way.

Ryan Holiday (8:27)

Yeah.

Kenny Curtis (8:27)

There's a line from Truman. He says the only thing new in the world is the history.

Ryan Holiday (8:30)

You don't know.

Guest Historian (8:33)

That's right. I didn't. You know, for some reason, I think. I thought Einstein said that. I've heard. I'd heard that, but I didn't know that was Harry Truman. Man, that guy had. That guy had a great speechwriter. Boy, did he have the good lines.

Kenny Curtis (8:44)

I think this might be Truman himself. I mean, he. He grew up sort of a lonely. Kind of a lonely kid who basically read every book in the small town library. And he was just obsessed with history. And he would talk about how, you know, even as president, whenever he had a problem, he'd go back and read someone like Plutarch, and he'd be like, oh, okay, someone's been through this before.

Guest Historian (9:06)

Yeah, well, that's. And that's exactly the point of history. That's exactly the thing, is that it gives you. That kind of. It connects you to the past and gives you guidance to the future.

Kenny Curtis (9:15)

Effectively a superpower. Right. A way to talk to the dead. Zeno, one of the founders of Stoicism. This is what the Oracle of Delphi tells him, that the secret to the

Ryan Holiday (9:23)

good life is to have conversations with the dead.

Kenny Curtis (9:25)

So it's a superpower. It's a way of predicting the future. It's. You know, it's also fascinating. Why does it get such a bad rap, though?

Guest Historian (9:35)

Well, because it. People get hung up on dates and times, and. And I don't want to say they get hung up on facts, because facts are important. But, yes, I think when you're given a history test or when you think of your history test, you very often think of, when did the Revolutionary War start? What date? Who said what? Who said this? Who did this? The timeline. Memorize all the American presidents do all this, do that. It's memorizations. It's rote. It's the same. It's similar to math because Math really is engaging when you understand mathematics, the concepts. Right. But the arithmetic, eh, kind of boring, right?

Ryan Holiday (10:10)

Yeah.

Guest Historian (10:10)

And I think history suffers from that same sort of dichotomy, only tenfold, because it isn't as quick, it's long, and it can seem tedious. And if you're not invested in these people as people, if you just think of the names as names, you don't really care. You don't really care about Napoleon, Marie Antoinette or, you know, Meriwether Lewis and William Clark. You don't care about these people, you know. But when you find out that Merrillweather Lewis was actually like, struggling with his mental health on a daily basis, and for some reason Thomas Jefferson put him in charge of his expedition, you know, there's suddenly, there's a lot more at stake there. That's kind of exciting. You're reading his journals, you're like, this dude is whacked. He's terrible.

Kenny Curtis (10:57)

Yes, it is kind of interesting when you read some of these older history books. Like, you know, you can go back and read like the textbooks that Lincoln would have read as a kid or whatever, and you realize it's not so much that they did or Plutarch like Truman was talking about, it's not so much that they didn't care about accuracy, because I think they did, but they cared about it less. You know, it seemed. It seemed like it's like the vibe was more important, the moral is more important. There's just a number of priorities that are. Seem to be prized in history's version of history than today, which seems to be about, did this in fact happen, yes or no? I need it proven to me that's not what people used to read history so much for.

Ryan Holiday (11:50)

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Guest Historian (14:42)

Right? I like what you said. History's version of history. I love that because that goes back to the idea again. Howard Zinn the idea that history was written by the winners.

Ryan Holiday (14:50)

Yes.

Guest Historian (14:51)

You know what I mean. And it is. It is written by the winners. So you gotta kind of, you know, you got trailer tears. Not that big of a deal. Okay. So we made a bunch of people move. No big deal. I mean, literally, we gloss over that stuff. When I was in school, I. That was literally glossed over.

Ryan Holiday (15:07)

Yeah.

Guest Historian (15:07)

I didn't. They didn't really push that very heavily because it wasn't the vibe, the narrative that people wanted. And I think that's where the facts are so incredibly important.

Ryan Holiday (15:17)

Yes.

Guest Historian (15:18)

They're so incredible. I. I had a textbook, and it's weird, it's the only textbook I remember the name of. And it was called after the Fact. And it was in history. This was in the 80s, and it was a textbook. And it had. The main thing was the story. Whatever the subject was, the story. And then it would have. Here are the facts. Literally, this is what we have, and here's the fact, and here's why we know it's a fact. It was said here. This was written here. We know this happened at this time. We don't know, you know, when people, you know, really moved in because the Louisiana Purchase or whatever. But we know that these people were here at this time. And historians have then extrapolated that this is why. So it gives you a constant opportunity to check the source.

Kenny Curtis (16:01)

Well, I think there's two things here, and it's weird because they're kind of in tension with each other. But it's funny, my friend Bright Thompson, who just wrote this beautiful book about the murder of Emmett Till, he goes back. He grew up in Mississippi. He goes back and finds the textbook that he read as a kid, and it says Emmett Till describing what happened. And it's like when a man made a pass at a white woman in a grocery store. And it's like, okay, well, Emmett Till is 14 years old. So the decision to call him a man versus a child is an enormously significant fact that is changing how that story is perceived. So I think you're right in one sense. Those facts matter a great deal, and we battle over those. And I think we sometimes let propaganda or what we want to be true, you know, override the facts. I think that's one thing. But the other thing, the thing I was more trying to get your opinion on is like. Like when you read someone like Plutarch, a lot of the things that he's saying, he couldn't possibly have known because nobody wrote this stuff down. Nobody was there. But he's seeing his job as a historian, not to give you the line for line speech that Pericles gave Us, but he is trying to give us the sense of what the message was. And in that sense, it's more important. And also, what are you taking out of it as the reader? Are you taking out of. You memorize the speech or you're getting a sense of. Of what the human issues at stake were? So it's like. It's like this tension here of, like, facts matter more than you think. And then also, some facts don't matter at all. What matters is the lesson, right?

Guest Historian (17:44)

Well, I think they are. It's funny that their intention. But I also think they're in concert, these two facts. I think the facts are, obviously, you need to know specifically what happened, but they aren't. Facts don't do anything in and of themselves without context. Text.

Ryan Holiday (17:58)

Yes.

Guest Historian (17:59)

You know, Pericles did give a speech at a funeral. Okay.

Kenny Curtis (18:02)

Yes.

Guest Historian (18:03)

And it wasn't a political speech. It was a funeral speech. It was essentially a. An obituary. You know what I mean? But he was such a good speaker that everybody was amazed and blown away. If you read the words, you may not of his speech, you may not get that. But if you read Plutarch or whoever talking about how they were moved, how the crowd was moved, that's their opinion. That's not necessarily the fact, but that's what gives that speech context. And then the fact would be, after that, he was able to rise in power and in station and really became a greater leader as a result of that. Then all of a sudden you're like, oh, I see these two things happen.

Kenny Curtis (18:45)

And it's like the lesson is, hey, in a moment of great peril and danger, a great leader can use a moment like a funeral to bring people together. And that, you know, what Pericles is doing there in Athens is similar to what Lincoln is doing all these centuries later at Gettysburg. And that, like, the lesson you should take is what he said or didn't say is not that important, but what he did and how he did it and the effect it had on people and what leadership looks like, you know that that's. That's what history is supposed to be teaching us.

Guest Historian (19:22)

Right? And that's what gives. That's what you need to take away from things. And I think it's funny because nowadays the. Everything is documented through journalism, but a good journalist is doing exactly that. They are right there in the middle. They're giving you their perception of what they're seeing, what they're hearing, what's happening, and they're trying to present it as fact, even though we all know what they're presenting is their interpretation of that experience at that moment.

Kenny Curtis (19:44)

So with the new podcast, which is sort of bite sized versions of history, I'm sure you're going back, you're like, okay, I want to tell the story of this famous event or this famous event. And you're going back and looking at a bunch of different accounts. What do you think they get wrong? And I don't mean historically. What are you trying to do differently that makes it accessible and interesting and valuable to people that maybe you see well meaning people having missed in previous goes at these stories.

Guest Historian (20:12)

Well, I'm not always sure that it's what well meaning people have missed. I think it's things that get swept over, under the rug or left out because they're, they're getting, they have a different agenda for whatever they want to get to. They want to get to general story of, of Cleopatra and you know, Mark Anthony in Rome. And they're leaving out about how like there was essentially siblings killing siblings in Egypt in order for Cleopatra to actually become Cleopatra. They leave out that part of it. Maybe they don't focus on it as much. I mean, I love our first episode, which is how the Greeks, the ancient Greeks reacted when they found fossils because of course there were dinosaur bones, sure, but they didn't know what the heck they were, you know what I mean? And how this contributed to history and mythology and the ability for certain city states to rise in power and things like that. There's a great story about a dinosaur, dinosaur bones in a well in Sparta, rising in power. I think it takes that moment of huh and wonder and wow and kind of clips on it. We try to focus on one or two specific moments in each episode. This, the podcast is the brainchild of Emily Everhart, who is the producer behind Greeking out. And she is a history file, bar none. So she really has found some great moments in history. We're going to do one on Pompeii, for example, that I know everybody knows what happened in Pompeii, but I think when I was a kid I was like, why did so many people, like, I know they didn't know that the volcano was gonna erupt, but lava doesn't move that fast, man. It really doesn't. And ash falls down from the sky. But I would think more people would have gotten out. But it is this. When you read the letters from Pliny the Younger, I think, yep, we have, yes. You realize that these people like literally put pillows on their heads and thought, oh boy, they really were. They just Believed that everything was good, they were in control of things that they had no frame of reference for, but they really believed that they were in control. So they didn't doubt.

Kenny Curtis (22:13)

And to make the case for history here is like, just the endlessness of it is fat. Like, I'm fascinated with Pompeii, and my kids know the story a little bit. And in the last two months alone, we have listened. We listened to them on the New York Times app, two new stories about Pompeii, like journalism and science. That's number one. They found out that, like, people moved back into Pompeii afterwards. So, like, if there's like a three story building, well, the first two floors filled up with ash. And then they found, like, evidence of people living there, you know, several hundred years later because, like, well, now the, the third floor is now the ground floor and they just live there. And you're just like, oh, okay. Like, yeah, this, this piece of territory doesn't cease to exist immediately. It gets slowly, you know, slowly lost to the elements. Not immediately, like in a snap, right? It's this process. And so we're listening to that and we're like, wow, they just figured this out.

Ryan Holiday (23:11)

This is a new.

Kenny Curtis (23:11)

And then, then the other one, which I was just reading, like two. Two weeks ago, is like, they excavated this, this group of bodies, and they're wearing, like, heavy woolen clothing and they're like, okay, but this supposedly happened, like, in the middle of the summer. Why would they be wearing this? And now it's throwing into doubt our whole understanding of when it might have happened, which is largely based on Pliny or Pliny's letters. That's when we think it happened. You're reading this article and these historians are like, okay, so it could be that we have no idea when this happened. Our data's wrong. It could also be that these people just couldn't have afforded any other clothes. And wool was, you know, much more accessible than cotton for your, you know, your average Roman or whatever. And just the point that, like, they're still. The story is changing and evolving even now. Like, every time I think, okay, I do not need to read any more books about the American Civil War. I'll get a new one. And I'll be like, this is insane. How is there more here? But that the amazing thing about history is there is always more. I think the point is it's not a passive thing. Even though you're just listening, even if your kids are listening to the podcast or you're reading a book to Me. The real joy, too, in the study of history is when you know enough about a topic to disagree with the author or to go like, but what about this? But I heard this one time, that's when it really starts to come alive. Foreign.

Ryan Holiday (24:48)

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Kenny Curtis (24:51)

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Kenny Curtis (25:47)

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Ryan Holiday (26:27)

And you know, I opened this podcast with something from Doris Kearns Goodwin, who's one of our great living historians. Well, just a couple of years ago, we lost one of our other great historians, David McCullough. I've raved about his Truman book. I've raved about his Wright Brothers book. I've raved about his John Adams book, his Theodore Roosevelt book. Well, listen to this passage from him. He has this lovely little book I just read called History Matters. In the opening chapter, this is what he has to say. He says, what history teaches, it mainly teaches by example. It inspires courage and tolerance. It encourages a sense of humor. It is an aid to navigation in perilous times. We are living now in an era of momentous change, he said, of huge transitions in all aspects of life nationwide and worldwide. And this creates great pressures and tensions. But history shows that times of change are the times when we are most likely to learn. This nation was founded on change. We should embrace the possibilities in these exciting times and hold to a steady course, because we have a sense of navigation, a sense of what we've been through in times past and who we are. That's exactly, exactly it. And actually, I said something similar when I was in San Diego a couple of weeks ago, talking about how we have always lived in stressful and strange times. This is what I said. And by the way, I'm going to be in Phoenix next week. I think the 27th or so. I don't know I'll put the exact date, but I'm gonna be in Phoenix at the end of the month. You can come see me. But this is what I said

Kenny Curtis (28:14)

feels

Ryan Holiday (28:14)

like a lot of our problems are very modern, very new, very unprecedented. Whether we're talking about AI or we're talking about social media, or we're talking

Kenny Curtis (28:25)

about what happened, what's happening in the news. It feels new. Feels like this hasn't happened before. And that, of course, would be news

Ryan Holiday (28:32)

to the ancients who experienced so many of the same things. I think it's worth remembering in times like these, as the saying goes, that there have always been times like these.

Kenny Curtis (28:45)

The people in the past didn't know

Ryan Holiday (28:47)

they were living in the past. Right. They lived in what was then one of the most advanced times in human history.

Kenny Curtis (28:54)

They thought they lived on the cutting

Ryan Holiday (28:57)

edge of things, and they were dealing with political dysfunction, technological disruption, change, decline, the falling apart of the old ways of doing things. They were experiencing all the things that we're experiencing now. I mean, think about someone like Socrates.

Kenny Curtis (29:14)

Okay, so Socrates lives through a great

Ryan Holiday (29:16)

power conflict between Athens and Sparta, which, by the way, his country loses. Then he lives through something known as

Kenny Curtis (29:24)

the rule of the thirty tyrants.

Ryan Holiday (29:26)

That sounds bad.

Kenny Curtis (29:27)

Then the democracy doesn't go so well for Socrates either. Cato lives through what they believed then

Ryan Holiday (29:36)

was the end of Rome's most maiorum, or its old ways.

Kenny Curtis (29:41)

He sees the rise of Julius Caesar, he sees the fall of the Republic, Seneca and Epictetus.

Ryan Holiday (29:49)

They're two men on very different ends of the sociological spectrum, and yet they both experience exile, and then they both experience the deranged reign of Nero, Marcus Aurelius. There's this ancient historian who Lives basically right after Marcus Aurelius. And he says that, you know, Marcus

Kenny Curtis (30:08)

doesn't have the good fortune that he

Ryan Holiday (30:09)

deserves because his whole reign is involved in a series of troubles. And Marcus probably would have found this to be a preposterous understatement.

Kenny Curtis (30:18)

He lives through a flood.

Ryan Holiday (30:19)

He lives through famine. He lives through a plague. He lives through wars, foreign and domestic. It's one thing after another, but it's one enormous crisis and tragedy after another. And then he has personal issues and health issues and family issues. And then on. On top of that, he talks repeatedly in meditations about how fast the world seemed like it was going, that it was spinning faster and faster and faster. He has this handful of about change, which I think are interesting because they seem like they could be written today. He says, constant awareness that everything is born from change. The knowledge that there is nothing that nature loves more than to alter what exists and make new things like it. And then he says, keep in mind how fast things pass by and are gone. Those that are now and those to come. Existence flows past us like a river. The what is in constant flux, the why has a thousand variations. Nothing is stable, not even what's right here. The infinity of past and future gapes before us, a chasm whose depths we cannot see. But then, this is my favorite part, he says. So then it would take an idiot to feel self importance or distress, as if the things that irritate us lasted. I'll give you a couple more. Some things are rushing into existence and others are out of it. Some of what now exists is already gone. Change and flux constantly remake the world, just as the incessant progression of time remakes eternity. And this is my favorite, he says, so you're frightened of change, but what can exist without it? And so the point is, the world

Kenny Curtis (32:01)

was moving very quickly.

Ryan Holiday (32:02)

It seemed like things were falling apart. It seemed like things were changing, and they were.

Kenny Curtis (32:09)

But what you realize when you study the past is how changeless it is,

Ryan Holiday (32:13)

even for all to change.

Kenny Curtis (32:16)

So what I thought we could talk

Ryan Holiday (32:17)

about tonight is like, given everything that's happening in the world, what do we turn to? What can guide us? What can help point us in the right direction? We know that the ancients turned to ancient philosophy, and that's another thing you

Kenny Curtis (32:30)

realize about the past is that Stoicism

Ryan Holiday (32:33)

was an ancient philosophy to Marcus Aurelius, too. It was 500 years old by the time he gets to it.

Kenny Curtis (32:42)

So people have been turning to these ideas that we're gonna talk about tonight

Ryan Holiday (32:46)

for thousands and thousands of years. So anyways, come see me in Phoenix and thanks to Kenny for joining me on this topic. History Snacks is Kenny's new podcast. It's easily digestible bite sized pieces of history. It's for kids and all ages. I love listening to Creaking out with my kids, so we're very excited and it just launched on the 18 so we're excited for the new episode on the Byzantine Empire, Medieval heists, lost explorers, cursed objects, epic royal sibling rivalries, and the fall of Rome. Start here or start with Greeking out, but you'll love it. And I'll link to my full episode with Kenny back when he was on last year. Anyways, I hope this case for history resonated with you. I hope you dig a little deeper, maybe pick up a great biography, listen to some history podcasts, but understand the present through the lens of the past. That's what we're after here. I hope you're liking this new format of daily Stoic episodes as well. Thanks so much for listening. If you could rate this podcast and leave a review on itunes, that would mean so much to us and it would really help the show. We appreciate it and I'll see you next episode.

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