Does your boss talk with his mouth full, then fall asleep mid-sentence? Does he wake up standing at attention like he's receiving a medal, then march past everyone without saying good morning? Somebody needs a vacation—or maybe they just need to read Book 10 of the Analects.

In this seventh episode, host Elliott Bernstein tackles three passages at once—10.10, 10.21, and 10.24—all six-character snapshots of how an exemplary person (or maybe Confucius himself?) should behave. But why does ancient wisdom care whether you talk while eating or lie stiff as a corpse in bed? What's the difference between asking questions as a nosy tourist versus asking questions as a ritual act? And how do you know when to be formal and when to chill out if the Analects never gives you a straight answer?

Along the way: why Book 10 is the weirdest chapter in the entire Analects (no "Confucius said" anywhere—scholars think it might be culled from a lost ritual manual), the difference between etiquette guides and ritual propriety instructions, why asking "what's this? what's that?" at the Grand Temple would get you side-eye but asking about everything happening there might be the point, the Duke of Zhou's ancestral temple where this all went down, the impossibly paradoxical standard of being "gentle yet firm" and "composed yet fully at ease" (there's no word for that perfect middle ground), the concept of 天人合一 or achieving full unity with the way of heaven, and why 中庸—constantly hitting the mark—is going to be a recurring theme.

Plus: three different classical Chinese words for different types of speech (conversation, talking, questioning), why 寝 survives in modern Japanese but not Chinese, and the scribal mix-up between "formal deportment" and "guest" that fortunately doesn't change the meaning much.