#252 Socrates

**David Senra** (0:00)
I want to tell you about a one-time only limited event that I don't think you're going to want to miss. I am doing a live show with Patrick O'Shaughnessy from the Invest Like the Best podcast in New York City on October 19th. Patrick has interviewed over 300 of the world's best investors and founders for his podcast. I've read over 300 biographies of history's greatest entrepreneurs for my podcast. We'll be talking about what we learned from seven years of podcasting, sharing our favorite ideas and stories, and doing a live Q&A. There will also be special event-only swag. If you live in New York City, I think it's a no-brainer. But if not, I think it's a great excuse to fly in. I've already heard from a bunch of people that bought tickets. They're flying in from other cities. Some people are flying in from other countries. That's setting the bar really high. So I will have at least four shots of espresso or four energy drinks before or during the show. So we can make it a night that you'll never forget. If you're interested in attending this unique live event, I will leave a link down below. I highly recommend you get your tickets today. And I hope I get to see you in New York on October 19th. Socrates was the first person to demonstrate that life is open to philosophy at all times, in every part, among all kinds of people, and in every experience and activity. Often hailed as the founder of philosophy, Socrates taught and indeed strove to embody his credo that how each of us chooses to live and die has great meaning. He influenced the way in which we think about moral choices, as well as the way we make them in our daily lives. In this brilliant biography, renowned historian Paul Johnson offers a fresh and fascinating portrait of a charismatic man whose ideas still shape our decision-making, our ethics, and our ideas about the body and the soul.
That was from the back cover of the book that I want to talk to you about today, which is Socrates, A Man of Our Times, and it was written by Paul Johnson. I wanted to read this book now because a few episodes ago on episode 249, there was a quote from Steve Jobs that I thought was interesting, and he said, I would trade all of my technology for an afternoon with Socrates. And I thought reading a biography of Socrates and then talking to you about it would help put context for you and I into what that statement by Steve Jobs meant. And then when I went to search for a biography of Socrates, made sense. In the last year, I've discovered the author Paul Johnson. I've read now three, this is the fourth biography of his that I've read. So back on episode 225, I read his Winston Churchill biography, which was absolutely fantastic. On 226, I read his book called Heroes from Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar to Churchill and de Gaulle. And then on episode 240, I read his biography of Mozart. And one of the things I like about Paul Johnson is he writes these 200 page biographies on a bunch of historical figures. I think he's got like 10 or 12 of them. And reading these shorter books is a great way to get some ideas from historical figures into your brain quickly. And then if you want, like it's a good introduction, say, hey, I found that person interesting. Let me go find maybe a deeper, more in depth biography. So I want to start at the very beginning on the very first page.
And he's going to talk about something that's very fascinating because this is what I feel is a main theme of founders. And what I've discovered, and I try to always point out to you is that there's always, it was fascinating how like great entrepreneurs would arrive at similar conclusions, even though they lived at different times in history, they lived in different parts of the world, and they worked in different industries.
And Paul starts this book comparing that Socrates thought similarly to Confucius and Ezra. Let me just jump into it. He says, there's always a spirit of the times, even in deep antiquity, strong and almost identical impulses drove forward the elites and societies separated by unabridged chasms of space. So that strong and almost identical impulses is what I've noticed across a lot of these biographies as well. We cannot explain these coordinations because he's saying they didn't know each other, they were not aware of each other's existence, even if they arrived at similar thoughts. But this is the punchline here. But we can profitably study them. Two and a half millennia ago, in three advanced areas where literacy existed, but was still in its infancy, three outstanding individuals echoed one another in insisting that the distinction between their civilizations and the surrounding barbarism must be reinforced by systematic moral education. And that is what Paul noticed, and that's what he's gonna explain over the next several pages.