Adam Hochschild on Our Obligation to the Common Good pt. 1
The Daily Stoic
Daily Stoic | Backyard Ventures
4.5 • 5.3K Ratings
🗓️ 30 November 2022
⏱️ 60 minutes
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Summary
In the first of a two-part interview, Ryan speaks with one of the great non-fiction writers and historians of our time, Adam Hochschild, about how history can inform the push for change in the present, the civil rights trailblazers he examined in his book Bury the Chains (one of Ryan’s favorites), the links between the Stoic virtues and the United States’ anti-slavery movement, and more. Part two will be published on Saturday.
Adam Hochschild is an American author, journalist, historian, and lecturer. He has written 11 books, including the highly regarded and influential King Leopold’s Ghost. He has written for the New Yorker, Harper’s Magazine, The Atlantic, Granta, the Times Literary Supplement, the New York Review of Books, the New York Times Magazine, and The Nation. He has received many awards for his writing, including the Duff Cooper Prize and the Mark Lynton History Award for King Leopold’s Ghost, and the California Book Awards Gold Medal and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for History for Bury the Chains. Adam graduated from Harvard in 1963, and he holds honorary degrees from Curry College and the University of St. Andrews.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the weekend edition of the Daily Stoic. Each weekday we bring you a meditation |
| 0:09.9 | inspired by the ancient Stoics, something to help you live up to those four Stoic virtues |
| 0:15.2 | of courage, justice, temperance and wisdom. And then here on the weekend we take a deeper |
| 0:21.3 | dive into those same topics. We interview Stoic philosophers, we explore at length how |
| 0:28.7 | these Stoic ideas can be applied to our actual lives and the challenging issues of our time. |
| 0:36.3 | Here on the weekend when you have a little bit more space when things have slowed down, |
| 0:41.6 | be sure to take some time to think, to go for a walk, to sit with your journal and most |
| 0:47.4 | importantly to prepare for what the week ahead may bring. |
| 0:56.0 | Hey prime members, you can listen to the Daily Stoic podcast early and add free on Amazon |
| 1:00.4 | music. Download the app today. |
| 1:07.3 | Hey it's Ryan Holliday, welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic podcast. I was thinking |
| 1:14.0 | about this the other day. So my wife and I went to college together and I remember she |
| 1:18.0 | came home one day and she was reading this book, King Leopold's Ghost, which is all about |
| 1:24.7 | the terrible colonial crimes of King Leopold, of Belgium in the Congo, in the Belgian Congo. |
| 1:32.9 | That was the first time I'd heard of Adam Haaschild and then you flash forward 15, 16 years |
| 1:41.8 | later. I don't know how I got recommended this book but I got recommended his book, Barry |
| 1:46.5 | the Chains, Prophets and Rebels in the Fight to Free and Empire Slates. Basically it's |
| 1:52.2 | about abolition that the idea that slavery shouldn't just exist because it has always existed. |
| 2:01.9 | You know was it radical and a new idea, right? You go back to Seneca's time, he doesn't |
| 2:06.8 | question slavery. You go to Epic Titus's time. He is a slave, he doesn't really question |
| 2:13.1 | it. Marcus Aurelius doesn't question it. Cato owned slaves. In fact, Cato's great grandfather |
| 2:20.6 | who writes the first surviving work in the Latin language casually talks about slavery. |
... |
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