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Welcome to the weekend edition of the Daily Stoic. Each weekday we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stoic, something that can help you live up to those four

Stoic virtues of courage, justice, wisdom and temperance.

And here on the weekend we take a deeper dive into those same topics. We interview Stoic philosophers, we reflect, we prepare.

We think deeply about the challenging issues of our time and we work through this philosophy in a way that's more possible here when we're not Russian to worker to get the kids to school.

When we have the time to think to go for a walk to sit with our journals and to prepare for what the future will bring.

Hey, it's Ryan Holiday. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic podcast. My guest today is Joe Lawnsdale, one of the great investors and technology entrepreneurs of our time.

I've gotten to know Joe over the last couple of years at some events we both spoke at some mutual friends that we both have.

But most of all we connected over our mutual love of the classics, the four virtues of course courage, justice, wisdom, temperance.

As it happens, Joe in addition to being one of the co founders of Palantir, founder of eight VC, a tech VC fund, an investor in a bunch of really interesting cool companies.

Joe is a philanthropist, a activist involved in a lot of interesting different ventures, but Joe is a lover of the classics as I was saying and he's the founder of the Cicero Institute of Public Policy Research Think Tank.

And of course I love the name, but as you'll hear in the interview, we sort of talk about why Cicero is here at a Joe, what's the cautionary elements of Cicero's character, what's also inspiring about Cicero, what we can learn from about Cicero, a bunch of cool stuff like that.

Joe is also has the honor of being one of the only human beings who I'm not married to or living with that I've seen in the last several months he stopped by the daily stoic offices a couple weeks ago when he was in town kicking around a move to Austin and we had a socially distance breakfast and then a walk around town.

Welcome to Texas Joe and of course welcome to the daily stoic podcast I think you guys are really like this and Joe's thinking is I think provocative I wouldn't say contrarian Peter teal who lawn stales obviously work with for a long time says you know sort of contrarian is to be opposite of someone it's reactionary and I don't think there's really anything that admirable about being contrarian.

But it is important to be an independent thinker to figure out what you think about something independent of what other people think about it Joe is an independent thinker that means that he and I don't agree on everything we may not agree on much even as you'll see we disagree on Cicero was Cicero hero was Cicero tragically flawed figure I'm more in the ladder camp he's more in the former but I always think it's important that we talk to and discuss with people who we think differently then.

Because this is how we learn and this is how we get better is also how we change minds and this is also how we clarify what we think so anyways here's my interview to Joe lawn stale and joy.

I thought we should start with our mutual friend Cicero that's obviously what you named your foundation or your policy institute after but I'm curious like why and what what does he mean to you like where did he come into your life I probably have a study the classics as much as you all the classics or something I'm very passionate about but the you partially just assemble in general of ancient of the ancient values and of ancient.

So I think I think we were talking about this earlier there's a lot of Kato in me and I think my instincts as a young man was the kind was the be a Kato but I actually want to get things down the world and be a realist and Cicero to me represents you know somebody whose values tripped off the Renaissance and who's who who was just a really extraordinary person who I got a lot done and was willing to do things even though they were on popular least claimed anyway you know because they were the right thing to do.

And so just bring that ancient ancient wisdom and acknowledgement of the history history or society applying it to the things working on today that was very important to me.

Well I think that the dichotomy of Kato and Cicero is really interesting and then it becomes it almost sets up kind of the perfect Aristotelian mean if you then put sort of Caesar on the other end of the spectrum because they're they're all brilliant they're all successful they're all ambitious.

They're all motivated by a certain sort of personal philosophy definitely and the reason I would choose and I was awe I've been very inspired by all three of those men of course and I think I think little boys grew up in the 19th century reading about Caesar and Alexander the great in a way we don't anymore right now right as you learn more you know similar how as a Jewish young boy you learn about King David and then as you learn more you realize actually there's a lot of flaws with King David there are a lot of flaws with Caesar and that's the nature of these the reason Cicero.

The reason Cicero more representative for my institute anyway is Cicero really believe the power of commerce in a way that the other guys didn't as much.

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