¶ Ryan Knows Sacramento
That line between genius and madness is very fluid. You can sort of introduce alternative facts, as they say, and people believe them. Stoicism is not a formula for you to be a better sociopath. This is Gavin Newsom and this is Ryan Holiday.
Ryan, thanks for being here. Man. Of course, Sacramento, California. You know this area? Well, don't you not?
This area? Because I like, I think people don't understand that Sacramento is a bit like Los Angeles where to people who don't live there, it's one place, yeah, but if you live there, it's a bunch of other Like I probably came downtown like ten times in my life, interesting until later because I lived in the suburbs of sacrament I mean.
So this was a big city Sacramento back when.
Yeah, but it's like this is the town we would pass on the way to Arco Arena Kings, yeah, or or we would go down here in Sutter's Ford or the Railroad Museum as a kid. But you wouldn't actually do Sacromeno one because it wasn't. I mean, it's done so much amazing works for bringing it back to life. But also like California is like these self contained suburbs and you live in your in your suburb.
But you went you must have when you were a kid, you must have gone to the capitol, right, you have to. Part of the obligation of childhood. Here in California, everyone does a fourth grade they do a little tour. Yeah.
Yeah, how about the Governor's mansion where we are right now. I've never been. I've never been here. Interesting, I don't even think I've seen it. You've never seen it, I don't, I don't know.
I don't even Ronald Reagan's.
Here's when I would have seen it.
Uh.
They made you do your driver's tests and your driver's training in downtown because it was the only place that would have like four way stops. Right like anyways, I remember driving downtown to to get my drivers That's it.
But you're far Oaks kid, far Oaks, California, the suburb here.
I was born in Gold River. Yeah, and then and then we moved to fair Oaks and uh, yeah, I was there till high school.
Until high school and then you went what you went down South? Went to? Sure?
No, we went to I went to Granpe High School.
So your Granded Bay High School? Yes, yes, you know and you were you know, we're an excellent student. Were you that kid that was always raising your hand or were you in the back? What was give me your profile?
Well, my parents wanted me to go to Jesuit and I didn't go to Jesuits. So I was not that student. No I I uh, I think I was like I was like hit or miss. Uh. Sometimes sometimes it was a fit, and when it was a fit, it was good, and then a lot of times it wasn't. It wasn't until I went to college that uh, that anything really started to happen for me.
But in high school, were you just was I mean what you must have had some it wouldn't be a vision board, but you must have had some vision of your future. What was it? What were you thinking you'd become?
Oh, I wanted to be in a heavy metal band.
So that was it. That's just you were certain about that.
Yes, yes, I mean I think I want, I want. I loved music. But I've said this before, but like I I don't think Sacramento is a lovely place. But it was not then much the territory of entrepreneurs or artists or like I don't, I don't know if I ever met anyone growing up who didn't have a job like just a regular like like teachers, doctors, civil servants,
you know, real estate agents. It was it was just very conventional, right, And I think that's why people love Sacramento is that you could have a conventional life here. That version of the American dream was very accessible. But the idea that like I loved books, but I didn't meet anyone that wrote books, and you know, it wasn't like oh this neighbor there kid, you know, there wasn't any of that. So it was I just don't I
just didn't have a sense of what was possible. I mean, it wasn't until I it was probably in my twenties that I even learned Joan Didion was from out for it. Like, it wasn't a like, hey, this is a place where people who do that come from.
What were your parents? What were your parents doing? What kind of My.
Dad was a police detective and my mom was a school principal. I love it so just you know, like your classic sort of American job and.
A school principal. I mean, what kind of mindset do you have with a mom who's a school principal.
Well, my mom was a school principal in the San Juan School District. But she did like continuing adult education, so she did. She didn't have like kids as her students. It got it. It was like you know, plumbers going back to get their ged and stuff. So it was I mean, it was all. It was all really interesting, but just not what I wanted to do.
And were you surrounded by books as a kid, with your parents pushing books from you know, your tenth grade. You know, here's honey, here's the three books you need to read.
I mean I read a lot as a kid, but I read you know, like like Westerns and action. I didn't know about this thing called philosophy. I didn't know, Like I didn't know there was all these amazing history books. I was just I don't know. It was a It was a bubble in a good way. Yeah. And uh and then I mean that's why you go away to college is to expand what you're exposed to.
So you were in college and what we were studying, what'd you start to study?
I was a political science and creative writing.
And creative writing. Yeah. We always a writer.
I think I wanted to be a writer, and I remember my first seminar. We had to go down in the summer and we had the seminar was taught by Susan Straight, who's one of the great sort of novel California novelists, and she had assigned they had assigned us her book, and it was like it was a real book, like a you know, like a like a book you would see in a bookstore. And I was like, Oh, people do this, Like this is a this is a job you could have, This is a thing people do.
And I think, you know, like you talked about like NEPO babies and stuff, and I think one of the things people don't understand about that is that a big part of what it does is it demystifies the possibility of going in certain directions. You know, oh, hey, like my mom's friend does that, or hey, I've seen my dad practice you know, his lines for an audition like you.
I got to imagine for Steph Curry being in an NBA arena is like, this is where my dad works, and so it becomes possible in a way that obviously there's the genetics and the privilege and all that, but I think a huge part of it is just like no, no, no, this is a thing you can do because you saw other people do it, for the same reason that it was probably likely that I'd be a police officer or a school teacher because you know, you saw your parents.
Do that, And I think about you know, all that is. Once a mind is stretched, it never goes back to its original form or even the more simple frame, which is probably overstated, but you can't be what you can't see. Once you see something, yes, it's now more tangible.
And that's like they talk about this like with representation, Like if you don't see people like you on TV or in art, or you know, in the movies or you know, on the headlines, you just don't think someone like you can do it. And representation matters, not obviously just in terms of gender or class or nationality, but also just like, hey, people like you from this small town can That's why that's why towns celebrate like who came from here? That like there is a way to do that.
This is my favorite part of American Idol when they come back home and the entire town's out there on main Street. I'm just so proud their native sons. So you you know, you were out there. But meanwhile, you're just so, you're doing a little creative writing, but you've
¶ College Dropout Turns Writer
got a rock band on the side. What are you doing? I mean you're sitting there in the driving your parents crazy in the garage.
Uh huh, That's exactly what I was. I'm sure it was horrible, and they were pretty they were pretty patient, and and yeah, I just didn't go anywhere. And as is to be expected, But.
You lasted how many years in college? You too? Just too too? So what happened?
I got a chance to be a writer. So I was writing for the college newspaper, which, again you sort of get a chance to do a thing. Oh, this is a this is like a job. So I was writing for the college newspaper in Riverside, and and I I started working for this person that i'd written about, this guy named Robert Green who wrote the Forty Laws of Power.
And how did you get I mean, I mean Robert a legend. Yeah, and begin to describe him, and I mean you don't have to introduce forty Laws power.
I mean it's like one of the greatest nonfiction writers of.
So how do you even get a chance to even I mean you're writing about him, did you? And that all of a sudden, then he attached this.
Yeah, and then I started doing little things for him here there, and and it kind of became this whole He needed a research assistant, and I was like that's I remember thinking like, hey, if this is what I this is my first job out of college, college would be a success.
You know.
Did my parents agree with horror?
No?
No, they of course didn't, right, Yeah, because I I think my entire family was horrified. They're all teachers, and you know, also for that that was the thing is you your kids go to college so they don't end up living under a bridge somewhere, and so they did not. They did not handle it well. And it was I mean, it's funny too because I thought I was at the time. I thought it was this enormous risk, you know, like crazy thing that I was doing because I've never done anything.
You're still a teenager at the time, yeah, nineteen or something.
Yeah, maybe, but I do I do think we we put so much pressure on kids that like, if you don't go to college between the ages of eighteen and twenty two, it's over for you. Like you're you're just done. And I've so that's that's not really true. I could
have always gone back. And I think that the Silicon Valley model of dropping out to go do something, actually it was very helpful to me because I could be like, oh, all these other people had had done it in other ways and it doesn't it doesn't ruin your life.
And what and Robert was not you know, so you're doing research, but he's also just an outsized mentor.
Yes, in every way, it was like an appres I mean, in retrospect, you would call it an apprenticeship. I think sometimes people think these things are very official, like this person. You know, you sign a contract and then you're there your mentor for the next experience. It's it's a it's an informal thing that develops over time and you learn a lot. And then also I think people only claim the relationship if you go on to do things good.
Point right, like that the mentorship is is sealed by you by you, by you validating the investment that they put in you. And so but but yeah, I learned everything I could possibly learn about how to do the thing that I wanted to do.
And you were and you had a very definitive intentional thing you wanted to do. I mean, writing's construct but there's so many different disciplines. I mean, where you did did you did you start to follow his path or were you trying to follow your own path and sort of you know, and all of a sudden you deviated back.
What I knew I wanted to write about sort of history and and stuff like that. And he is an interesting model because you know, he's not a university professor or anything like that. He just writes these books that are enormously popular and influential and have been for a really long time kind of outside the system. Like The forty Laws of Powers is consistently one of the most shoplifted books in the country. Well, it's also banned in most prisons.
Yeah, I trust me, I know this.
Yeah, it's like a issue.
We were just reviewing our banned books at our California and Department of Corrections.
It's yeah, like the Innocence Project will tell people like, hey, do not have this book in yourself. It will be used against you in sentencing.
Oh deal.
So you've just written these really interesting books that that you know, have this sort of outsized reputation, but but they're also just like meticulously crafted and really kind of transgressive in how they're laid out and organized it. I just didn't know you. Again, I didn't know you could do something like that, and and uh so that's I
wanted to do something like that, and I do. I think if you're like a young person, you're trying to figure out what you want to do, the best thing you can do is find someone who's done something similar, like something just in the ballpark, and find some means of being in the orbit. You know, It's like, how do you go sweep floors in their record studio? How do you know? How do use stock shelves in the store? How do you drive them? You know?
What? What?
How can you do anything where you're just in the orbit?
And that? So was that something you had a concept of at the time, or over time you started to wake up to that appreciation you started to realize, wait a second, I need to really take this in more fully, and I need to really appreciate what I'm learning and what I'm sory Or is that your relationship to that the idea you know, successfullys clues that you can pick up on other peoples. Did that come in hindsight?
I think more in hindsight, Yeah, there's a Lyndon Johnson thing where he's like, you go to the people who are at the center of things nice, and you just need to be in proximity to power, influence, expertise. So I think I had some sense that you just want to go where the action is. I think I was
very just. It would be like, you know, Robert would assign me to transcribe a bunch of interviews and then he'd be like, bring them by the house, you know, And and to me, that was where I was getting paid, is that I would get to go and then you know, he'd okay, so what's in here and we'd review it, and then I maybe get to sneak in like one or two questions nice and and that, to me, that
was that was how I was getting paid. He was actually very generous and he did pay me, but like I was getting paid in something that I understood was much more valuable than you know, would show up on a on a on a paste or whatever, which is like, how do you how do you get advice from the people who have done done the thing?
Yep?
And that's I think where you want to go. It's funny because later he writes this I think his best book. That it's probably the book that I would give most young people. You wrote this book called Mastery and and it's all about how you become great at something, and there's this whole, the whole. I think the second step
is about this sort of apprenticeship you have. The first thing is you find the thing that you're meant to do and when and when you're lucky enough to be like, oh, this is the thing that lights me up, this is what I want to do. The next step is you find that person who is who has done it and you just have to you know, you have to attach yourself to them. And that that was the that phase for a good chunk of my twenties.
Love it. How many so you were? You were there for how many years? Then with Robert uh.
Twenty nineteen to twenty six twenty, it was I mean and and like I these things are fluid and they overlap. You know, you get your you get your first shot. You know, I wrote a book and he was helping me with it. It's not like this one day it ends and you graduate. It's this, it's this thing. I mean. I was just talking to him a couple of days ago. Asking him for some advice, and so it's a it's kind of a fluid thing. But he ended up getting me a job at this company called American Apparel and
¶ American Apparel, Ego & Implosions
that was kind of the next sort of part of that education.
And you were doing marketing work there. How'd that go for you, Ryan, Well, it was it was interesting. Some people may not know a little bit of this story. Give you we don't have to dwell on this, but it's a it's a hell of an interesting story.
What's a sad you know, it's a sad story too, in that if you had told me at twenty three that that now, I would say that name and people would stare at you blankly. It's kind of it's a cautionary I mean, I wrote I wrote a book called Ego is the Enemy that I wrote as the company was imploding, because I sort of had a ringside seat to this one point, the largest garment manufacturer in the
Northern Hemisphere. It was this success story. It was this incredible thing, one of the coolest brands in the world, and it just it destroyed itself, destroyed itself, and the genius that created it was also the demonic energy that destroyed it and and that's a very common thing where like that line between genius and madness is very fluid, and and yeah, it was. It was a it was
a surreal experience. I learned a ton, obviously, and then a lot a lot of things that took a while to unlearned as well.
Did you I mean, there's you know, the old frame you put a mask on, you know, I think, orwell and shooting the elephant talked about he put a mask on his face grew into it. Did you see that happening to you in terms of trying to sort of defend or sort of you know, the pr push you know, sort of you know, mask the DEVNC.
There you you experience only in looking back, especially as you get older, you go, I had no business being there, Like like why did why was a twenty two year old running marketing at a publicly traded company it You know, if you'd ask me a twenty two I would have said, because I'm that good and then and then now I go, oh, I was probably good. But I also didn't know how
fucking insane it of this was. And so that I think it helped me understand some of some of what's happening in the world, some of them the two stuff where you're like, oh, part of the reason that everyone there was was in their twenties working for someone who was not in their twenties was that there was a certain amount of control and a certain amount of naivete about what was happening that allowed allowed that sort of
system to go on as it did. So you know, like, yeah, just I just realized, like, oh, I just shouldn't have been in any of these situations. Is wildly inappropriate and insane. But I didn't know because I'm a kid from Sacramento, and this all seems very exciting and interesting. I you know, I'm it's not sting, it's not it's not striking me as insane that this you know, single forty five year old multi millionaire wants me to live in his house.
You know, like that that seemed exciting and interesting. Thankfully I did not live in set house. But uh, but you know, you just you just don't realize what's crazy until you're out of the thing. And so I am somewhat sympathetic to people who kind of get in over their heads on stuff because that was that was certainly me. I just didn't I was I was. I was just really caught up in the energy and the excitement and the sort of canvas that it was to to you know,
uh do what I was doing. But the the the fact that it was all nuts, you know, was a
was a was a debriefing process. And then the funny thing is, you know, I've my wife and I've been together since we met in college, and so she was there through all of it, and she was like, you know, I was telling you every day that this insane like like I told you so, like I'll just be in you know, I'll be on the middle of a run somewhere and something will hit me and I'll come back and I'll tell her and she's like, I told you
that like eight hundred times, you know. And and so you were just you know, your you're what's that that Upton sinclear thing about it's very hard to understand something when your salary depends on you're not understanding. Well said yes, and was a lot of that.
There was a lot of that as well. So, I mean, how long was that Probably it was over a two year pero. Oh no, I was there.
Two thousand and seven, two thousand and fourteen or fifteen something like that.
So it was a it was a big chunk of my Yeah, it was a big trunk. And meanwhile, though you start you said, egoes the enemy. You're starting to I mean perfect book sort of the genesis of that experience and understanding it. And so I mean it was that the first I mean for you and you had written a number of things. But was that, yeah, because that sort of starts to move you in the direction that you ultimately are today, Or.
Yeah, I did when I did a book, I did a book on media first, and then I did my first book on stoicism was called the Opps was Away, and then and then yet ego was sort of at the Ego was was me kind of leaving a good chunk of that behind and watching that sort of explode. So it was it was, you know, in retrospect you look back, I'm sure you experienced this writing your book.
You think of these things as these kind of clean periods or that you had this like you had this insight, like this is when I knew I was going to do this. And then like I am one of the great California writers. Is this guy Bud's Bud Schulberg. If you know who that is. He wrote What makes Sammy Run on the Waterfront. Anyways, he wrote this book called The Herder They Fall, which is about this sort of corrupt PR agent who's working for the mob as they
fix boxing fights. And and I read this book. And if you asked me when I knew I wanted to leave American Apparel and get out of this life, I would tell you it was the day I read that book, and I would say like, like, and I know it because the like the last not the last page is this kind of big yes, this big insight because you know, I've realizing now you cannot deal in filth without becoming the thing you touch. Yeah, this is sort of my
truck moment. And so I was like, okay, so I read that, and I can I still gone back and looked at it. You know this, I can see the markings that I'm my holy shit, what is it like? It felt like, you know when you read something like I feel so attacked. You know this is about me specifically. Interesting away that would have been when I thought I I my breakthrough happened, and then I was talking to
someone about it. I was actually talking to Tim Miller about this because he and I had similar sort of arcs on our journey. And and I was like, as I was prepping for that conversation, I was like, oh, you know what, I bought this book on Amazon. I can see the day that I bought it. I can, you know. And I went on Amazon, and so I left. I left America Apparel in two thousand and fourteen or fifteen, and and that my Amazon receipt for the Heart of
They Fall is like two thousand and nine. Well, it was like way closer to the beginning than the end. And so you can often have you you get the insight or the idea that the thing, you understand it, but it can be a very long time until you understand it, and then more importantly, you have any of the sort of courage or clarity to act on it. And so it was that whole period is much more
sort of contradictory and overlappy than it feels like. And it is important if you're a young person you're like looking at someone's life story, that you realize that when they lay it all out, it's all that gets smooth, that all it gets laid out narratively, and it gets smoothed out as well. And they it can feel like it was this plan, or can feel like at one thing was leading to the next, and that's all that's all made up in retrospect. It's not like that in
the moment. And by the way, history is not like that in the moment either. Nobody knows how the story is going to end, and so you have to kind of deal in that ambiguity more than you would like.
¶ How to Manipulate The Media
You wrote a lot about sort of ambiguity, wrote a lot about your own experience, and wrote a book that you know, we intentionally have not even with you being around, have on the on the shelf there. Trust me, I'm.
Lying, I'm actually doing I'm supposed to do the fifteen year anniversary edition of that book.
You have to. Yeah, it was you were decades ahead.
Yeah, it was funny when I was writing. Trust mean on lying. I remember saying in the publisher they were like, we're thinking, you know, like a summer twenty twelve release, and I go, I can't wait that long. I was like, it's like, I was like this all this stuff is like no, it needs to come out right now. And I remember being rushed and I was probably ten years early. Yeah, but fifteen it's a yeah, it's a strange.
It's a strange just for folks that don't know much about this book. I mean back to you know, the timestamp in twenty twelve. Yeah, and you were talking about citizen journalism. You were talking about legacy media, you were talking about truth and trust, you were talking about manipulation. You were talking about you know, the validation and how you're able to spread stories and validate that story and sources, and I mean.
Tell us, Yeah, I was trying to write sort of an expose of how the media system really worked, not how people thought it worked, which was objectivity and fact checkers, and I was looking at how the economics sort of shape shape it. And I was trying to show you, like how the sausage gets made, Like how how stories that you're reading in the news where they actually came from, and how easy it is to sort of inject things
into that kind of slipstream. And obviously in twenty sixteen we saw a sort of Russia at a whole element of that. And you know, I was writing before TikTok, I was writing before Instagram even really, so it's obviously become like hyper hyperdrive of a lot of the stuff I was talking about in that book. I mean, I wish I could sit back here and go fifteen years later, like I was totally dis totally proven wrong and everything
was awesome. But it's sort of like beyond my worst nightmare of all the things I was talking about in that book. Which is funny because when I wrote it, although a lot of people read it, the media reaction was mostly like shoot the messenger, like he's he's the bad guy. And what I was trying to say is like, look, this is what I do to sell t shirts or books or you know, the this is how I can I can, you know, introduce something funny, ridiculous into the
media cycle. But like if if media is where public opinion is formed, it this this vulnerability is just too too valuable to too many powerful, important or deranged people for them not to sort of take advantage of it. And I think we're seeing now a world where yeah, you can, you can sort of introduce alternative facts, as they say, into into this and people believe them. What what kind of vulnerabilities that exposes to us?
And they believe them and you've you've talked about this, they believe them even after they're debunked, sometimes even more after the quote unquote correction.
Well, I think I mean in a Again, this is always a complicate thing to talk about, but January sixth is a fascinating example of like everyone with eyes saw a thing happen, and then there was an investigation, right that that sort of laid out exactly what happened. But because one guy with a lot of followers, you saw him sort of scramb You saw Trump in the early days after January six where he was complicit and responsible for an unthinkable and inexcusable thing, scramble around for how
is he going to explain this? And then and then sort of settles on it was Antifa, and also these people were patriots and and by the way, are just two contradictory explanations, uh, just on the top of his head.
But then if he says it enough times, and if there is a financial and ideological and just cognitive reason to want that to be true, eventually a sizeable percentage of the population will coalesce around that thing, because to not do it would mean you have to face the tragedy and the horror and the violence and the you know, the implications of that thing, and so in a way,
it just kind of lays bare our media system. I mean, yeah, it's like it's laid out in these different lawsuits, it's laid out in these congress like we know what happened, and we know the role that people played in it happening. And yet afterwards he was able to kind of with this media jiu jitsu, just make it not have happened.
All right, I want to unpack all of that, and we I mean, you were right in this back I mean when you wrote trust Me Online, you mentioned Dick Tuck. You know it didn't exist. I mean, Facebook probably it was in its orphan phase. The cloud was in the sky, four G was probably a parking space back then, in linked in a prison. But you know, you were the algorithms weren't necessarily you were talking blogs mostly back then, right.
Yeah, logs and Twitter and and and how much traditional media was sort of the final step in that system. And now it doesn't need.
To be final step after you seed yeah, the extreme. Then you have a source, you say one sort now you have two sources, and all of a sudden, now now it moves itself up the ladder. I see that by the way I live this. Yes, Daily Mail says something, The California Post says something. Now, The New York Post says two sources have confirmed something. All of a sudden, I'm watching Jesse Waters on Fox and then the next night Hannity and all the rest of the lineup, and
then you had to respond to it. And I'm responding. Then I'm chasing something and I'm playing defense. They're already onto the next damn thing.
Yeah, And I mean again, Trump, it's sort of intuitively understanding all this. He is really good at going and a lot of people are saying and so it's this way that things that are not true become true by you bump into them enough time.
But you're I mean, you're. The point you're making is this is not this is bad. It's not only bad, but it's it's it's been I mean, it's uh, wake up, everybody. It's the way it's been done. It's hardly novel.
No, No, I mean, it's it. This is this has been the way that the sausage has been made for a decade and a half, basically, right.
So your new book is going to figure out to tell us what to do about it.
No, I mean, first, it's it's mortifying, of course to have to go back and read something that you wrote when you were twenty three and you thought you understood how the world worked, even though I was right about a lot of ways that you know, I think you mostly the cringe is mostly in the certainty and the the arrogance.
You know.
So, so that that's why I've been procrastinating it.
But that's that's plus you've meant it out about fifty other damn books in the in the interim, so it's not like you're not busy. So I want to sort of circle by so the you know, hell of a hell of a time American Peril and uh and then you you know, you're you're hardly an old man. Your wife saying I told you so, I told you so, I told you so. Mom and Dad are like Jesus, you know, how did we raise you young man? Yeah? Or not? They probably are more generous. Yeah, you know. So where
¶ Finding Stoicism From An Unlikely Source
are you now in terms of just you go on a walk about? Is that when you picked up meditations or no, I know.
I found the irony is I found stuicism before and in college I was in it was would have been I found the Amazon receipt for that the other day, October two thousand and six, So it's going on twenty years.
And what it was a motive, you remember, the motivation for even making the purchase.
Yeah, you want to know who told me about the Stokes. Yeah, there's no way you could guess.
There's no way you could guess Robert Green would be the safe bet.
No, it was doctor Drew. Okay, why not?
I was.
I was writing for the college newspaper and I went to this h I got invited to this conference in West Hollywood which was sponsored by Trojan Condoms, and he was he was giving a talk, and after the talk, I was just I was like, you know, a young kid was just hungry for advice and direction and all these things. And I just said, hey, I'm what what you got any book recommendations? And he turned me onto the Stokes and changed the course of.
My life in which which was which stoic and.
Which he told me first about Epictetus, about Epictetus and Mark Surelius and uh, you know, obviously it took a while for them to sleep in. But but you know, sitting in Riverside, California, reading Mark Trelis's meditations.
And what was that the first book? Was that the book that was.
The first one? Yeah? And I just I was what is this?
You know? And it really was that immediate.
Yeah, yeah, Perc. I didn't know there was writing like this. I didn't know there was advice like this. I didn't know it was what I was looking for. But it was exactly what I was.
And did you know there was about stoicism that he was about stoicism? Or was it just the most powerful man in the world and that intrigued you, I mean in its life lessons.
You know, we're only a few years out from the movie Gladiator at this time, so I think I was a little bit primed. But but there there was something about I think, what at the core young men are looking for direction, right, and they're looking for direction, particularly now in a world where a lot of the old sort of traditions and explicit and implicit instructions in that regard are gone, and so there's this just kind of
existential void. There's this leadership void. You just don't you don't know how to be a person, and and there's not it's not like they're these rituals or these groups, or this kind of process by which you become a
man that just doesn't exist. And so to sort of pick up the private thoughts of the Emperor of Rome, and he's he's talking to himself about how to how to not just be you know, a productive person and a strong person, but also a wise person and a good person, and how how to deal with you know, everything from his temper to his anxiety to his you know, sort of fear of death or his frustrations with other people.
I just I didn't If you had asked me to define philosophy in my late teens, I would have said, I don't know. It's like, you know, it's it's those people in togas, or it's those people on college campuses, you know, asking impossible questions about things for which there are no answers, you know, like that it's first things, it's for people smarter than me, right, And then to read the Stoics, you go, oh no, no, this is for people trying to be human beings like and trying
to just deal with the difficulties of life. And that is what I think struck me so much about meditation, because even compared to the other Stoics, you know, whether they're reading senec or epicteties, they're there at least talking to an audience. And and there's something so personal and disarming about meditations because here it's it's it's not meant for publication. It's it's it's just a guy. It's like
a guy's inner monologue. It's like that the angel on his shoulder, you know, trying to be like, you're better than this, you should do this, try to do that. What about this? And and so I think I was just I was blown away. And then particularly that he is such a good writer, that even his notes to himself are some of the best philosophy ever written. I think that that all is what's struck me.
So was that. So it's sort of you know, all of a sudden, this book speaks to you and your time of life, your state of mind titis. Similarly, you mentioned the Big three of Stokes, but these aren't the ogesus stoves. I mean, what the broader stoic construct for you? When did that click versus more of a contemporary no stoicism.
Well, they represent the ogs of stoicism. You go back to, you get Zeno and Anthes and Chris Zippi's Cato being maybe another one that maybe some.
People have heard of.
You know that that was the process of kind of tracing it back the words you kind of. I think most people should start with the big three of the of the Stoics and then and work their way back. There's a reason that they're the ones that are most well known, and that is a really cool thing. It just blows your mind about history, where you're like, Okay, to Marcus Aurelius, Stoicism was ancient philosophy, ancient philosophy like five, like Zeno is to Marcus Aurelius what Shakespeare is to us.
I was quoting Plutarch the other day. The imbalance between the rich and the poor is the oldest and most fatal ailment of all republics, says it. You know, I don't know fifty seventy eighty. Yes, the oldest and most fatal ailments.
But that's so and you hey, Plutarch right again, Yeah, probably the great, one of the great biographers. Truman would talk about how whenever he had a problem as president, he could take he could pull out. He said, I pulled up my old friend Plutarch, my old friend, my old friend Plutarch, and he would have the solution to my problems. But Plutarch is writing about you know, Caesar and Cicero and Demosthenes and and all these Greek and Roman figures who were to him what he is to us,
you know, not quite that far. But but but we think about ancient Greece and Rome as this kind of like brief moment as opposed to a civilization that lasted hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years. Even the decline and fall of Rome is like nine hundred years, you know, maybe a little bit less than that, depending on where you want to date it to. But the point is that should give.
Us comfort in the US.
It's a little bit, but it gives you. You just realized that that they were like when they were going through stuff. When when when Marx realist is living through a civil war, or Cato is living through a civil war, or Seneca is in exile or during the reign of Nero, what are they turning to? They're turning to the ancients, who we are also turning to. And then what we have is generations. This is why they call philosophy the Great Conversation, because it's these core ideas that were sort
of brought into existence at some point. But the genius of them is the layering on top of each subsequent generation trying and riffing. And just as just as the Founders I give you Jeffrey Rosen's The Pursuit of Happiness, the Founders were turning to the stokes that my nine
years obsessed with Hamilton. Oh, the play Hamilton, the most famous play in the Western world in the eighteenth century, was a play about Cato, and it was as famous as Hamilton is now, and in the way that you know, like if you go immigrants, they get the job done. People know what you're talking about. When George Washington would talk about, you know, looking at events through the calm light of mild philosophy, or when they say I regret I have but one life to give for my country,
these are lines from that play. And so it's this great tradition of these ideas being just so perfectly expressed and the example being so powerful that people have been turning to it over and over again. And that's the really powerful thing. Stoicism wasn't Marcus realized. It was six hundred years of it in Greece and Rome and then you know, I mean it continues on up. It's not like people haven't been talking about and riffing about it
in the eighteen hundred years since. They absolutely have. And so it's just this energy I think you tap into and you go, oh, these are ideas that have really been tested in the crucible of human EXPSI.
Was the stoic? I mean, was I mean when Zeno it was three hundred BC or something. Yeah, he said, I am I declare myself a Stoic? Uh it was? Or was he declared a stoic?
Well, that's that. I think it's to Zeno's credit that the philosophy is not called Xenoism. Right, there's a little bit right at the beginning. There's some humility, so Stoa. So so the founding story of Stoicism is Zeno's a merchant. Uh, and he deals in this rare purple dye and uh that that die being a commodity in those days, a dyeing purple. Yeah, we we we we think of like it's funny where the straight of four moves is shut
down global trade, but it's the modern thing. It's like, no, the purple dye was this commodity that that was made across multiple islands in the Mediterranean, and it would get traded and moved around like the same the same navigational issues we're having right now people talking about then. But but but he suffers this shipwreck, he washes up in Athens and ends up there discovering philosophy, and that's where
stoicism starts. But he just begins lecturing about these ideas on the Stoa Pochila, which is the painted porch in Athens, and that's where that's what stoic means. It just Stoa means porch. It doesn't mean anything. These are just the guys from the porch, bullshitting and talking and sharing. It is funny then that he would talk about that, that's this merchant of purple dye. His philosophy would become the philosophy associate with Marcus Relis because I could tell you
mouthing the words there. One of the powerful lines and meditations, as Mark Sali says, this is a reference to being emperors, is be careful that you are not dyed purple. And he's saying that that make sure that power doesn't corrupt youss because the Roman emperor was one of the few that could wear the color.
So you're reading all of this, your portal to this beginning with Meditations, which has had an outsize influence and on everybody that's ever picked up did you read? You pick it up? I picked up all the wrong versions, couldn't understand a damn thing interesting. I look back, it's interesting. I must have fifteen or twenty different copies. Wow, And it took me listening to you on damn YouTube to go here's the one I recommend. I'm like, start reading.
I'm like, wait, this makes some sense because the translations are, you know, time back to decades and decades ago. So I think my father, someone you know, was around, and then here my uncle says, here's a book you should read, like Jesus, you know. Lasting. So they just sort of collected dust. But there were a few efforts, and they just didn't go anywhere because it didn't speak to me with the kind of language that I understand today. I do.
I don't believe in miracles, but I went on Amazon and I just bought a random copy that I got was just the first one I like. I got the copy that change my life, and I've now recommended it so many people that just that's the first the algorithm blessed me, someone who's so critical of algorithms, and that one case the algorithm blessed me.
By the way, one of the things I love that you do is you'll go back to the same you'll go to different translations. Yeah, and you're able to sort of lay them out. And I mean it shows, I mean, you know how language is radically changed. Well that and how important the translation is.
Yes, I mean, so I don't speak Greek or Latin, so I don't I don't know exactly, but it is interesting when you read all these different translations, you go, oh, like, this is the same idea, fifteen different cuts on it, and what a big role the translator plays, and also what a big role the moment in time that you're in.
So how we like how you interpret it in the context of something contemporary.
So I've been reading Meditation for fifteen years and then twenty twenty pandemic hits. I'm reading Meditations and all of a sudden there's all these references to the plague and to pestilence, and and you realize, oh, it's this is a plague book. This guy wrote in the middle of the Antonine plague, this fifteen year pandemic that killed millions of things.
And you never picked up on that, I mean necessarily, I guess, I just you don't. You think he's being metaphorical. Yeah, and then and then you realize he's being literal.
Like one of the passages I thought the most about during the pandemic is this one where he goes, there's there's two types of plagues. There's the one that can destroy your health and the one that can destroy your character. And I and then then you watch over the next two years, people get radicalized, People turn off their hearts and their their neighborliness to other people, and and you and in other cases lose their mind come, you know, do and say things they would have been shocked by,
just if you years earlier. And you, oh that he must have seen that, you know, he must he must have seen that. And and I think there's a there's a famous story about Markusrelius. He's presiding over some court and one of the lawyers, uh makes this reference to the victims of the plague, and he just bursts into tears. And so you think Number one, I thought this is
the stoics don't have emotions, they don't care about people. Yes, and then and and here he is just sort of weeping over these untold thousands of people who have died. You know, in some cases people we would have uh cared deeply about and been very close to. And you go, oh, that's not what stoicism Isn't this uh uh fuck you? I got mine, or like I got a strong immune stitu I think there.
Was when you first heard about it, because so many people see it as just yeah, I'm just I will have no emotion. I'm just being stoic, you know, the sort of ridge, robotic.
I think what I was at I was attracted to stoicism for the reason that young men have been attracted to stoicism for centuries, which is it's about getting your shit together, getting it on lock, you know, just just that sort of ownership and control of the self, which I think if anyone needs help in, it's young men. So so I think that was my initial attraction to it.
And then and I think I was attracted to trappings of power and you know, all the all the things that make it, you know, interesting and unique compared to I don't know, existentialism or some other school of philosophy, but over the years you realize, oh, this is actually a profoundly ethical philosophy. This is about our connections to other people. This is about our responsibilities to other people.
This is about being like when when they're talking about excellence, they don't simply mean perfection excellence, and that actually professional excellence is pretty common, but professional and personal excellence, like sort of rounding that package out is actually the sort of thing to be more ambitious about. So I think my initial attraction to it was one thing, and then what it works on you, And I think it's interesting to hear you talk about sort of starting and stopping
it over the years. It's it's important that people understand stoicism is a philosophy you should be reading, not a philosophy you have read.
You say that. I love that you say that. And also you make the point and I don't remember exactly who said it, but you never swim in the same river twice. Yeah, this notion that the river's changed or step in the same way. Yeah, I'll swim in it American just up the black where you were growing up. But we change as well, Yes, and back to this.
You know, you're reading it again, and now we're in a plague, and all of a sudden you're reading it as I mean almost as a new visitor to the same, same old Well.
I think it's so fascinating that, Yeah, you picked up a book when you were one age, you picked it up again another, it continually wasn't working, and then at some point, and I bet if you actually laid those translations outside by side, they're not that different.
They're not there.
I think you were.
You were profound Well, I was trying to find language period. I you know, wrote a book about my own learning disability. So just I mean literally the words just above my pay grade that needs to be explained to me. I remember Shakespeare class in college. I mean, your toast is a dyslexic. You're like me, doth thought that, I mean Jesus, So you like immediately try to find a cliff note version or something on TV that you could claim that I read or understood. Yeah. So no, it's so you
¶ Stoicism Is A Practical Tool
did all that. You know, so you're reading this, but you weren't necessarily going Wait a second, this is my new path, my career that I'm going to become. You know I'm going to translate this to a whole different audience that I'm going to be able to express this with new media. I'm going to be able to get a whole new generation to understand and bring to life these extraordinary figures.
No, I mean I was introduced to the Stokes in two thousand and six, and my first book on PTol philosophy came out in summer of twenty fourteen.
So what was the in spir What what said? You know, I have to do my version of this, But I've written about store. Yeah, I don't know. I was.
I wrote my first book because I wanted to be a writer, and I knew that that book had to come first. You couldn't write the stoic books and then the media book. So I knew I had to get the media book out of the way. So I did the media book first, and then what I really wanted to write about was was the Stoics. But no, I I thought I had this idea for one Stoic book about this one passage from Archstreet. That was it.
And I think again, obstacles away, what stands in the way becomes the way. Yes, I love it.
Come on, I know, I could somewhere. I mean, I just, I just it's too good. It's the best, it's the best. Someone some to action becomes the action. Yes, the way becomes away. But you want to know something funny about that quote there Again, you you evolve your understanding of these things as you get So I wrote the book and The Obstacles Away mostly about how we deal with like professional obstacles, right, Like how you're trying to like do something and something gets in the way, which is
obviously what he's partly talking about there. But the fuller quote, which obviously I knew is I edited to put some ellipses in there, But mostly what he's talking about is is is annoying people and obnoxious people's He's saying, people can cause problems for us, they can get in our way, but you know, we all, he says, we always have the ability to accommodate and adapt. He says, we can convert this to our own, you know, our own potential acting.
And then he says, you know, the impediment action in advances action, what stands in the way becomes a way, and then you go, okay. So when he's saying, some person comes up and says something horrible to you, or some some some person screw something up for you, or some some person, uh you know, it's just constantly uh stressing you out or abusing you or whatever it is.
What he's saying is that that's an opportunity for you to be the better person, the bigger person, to grow as a person in wrestling with and handling what this
person is doing to you. And and so you go, Okay, Like when the Stokes are saying the obstacles the way, they don't necessarily mean, oh, this is a chance to you know, hey, this, this huge recession that we just got plunged into, is actually a chance for you to retrench in the business and tighten things up and come back smarter and and and leaner, and you know, more organized.
It may be.
But he's saying, actually, you know this, this, this person who just broke your heart, or this person who just lied to you or stole from you, or this per who just said something horrible to you, they're a chance for you to grow as a human being in how you respond to them. That is obviously not my reading of the passage when I'm nineteen, but it's how I understand it. Twenty years later and.
You understand it. It's sort of the core part of what you said is sort of for you if you were going to distill the essence of stoicism, this notion that we have agency, Yeah, that you know, it's not what happens to us, how we respond to what happens to us.
Yeah, yeah, would I'd be curious, Like in politics, isn't that I'd be curious to find some line of work in which that's not the case the case, right, Like you wake up and somebody gives you the news and then you figure out your job is to say, here's what we're going to do.
Yeah, but so much of our life is this sort of victim mentality that you know that it's fate and we can't control our own fate. Yeah, you know, the systems rigged against me. There's nothing I can do, nothing one person can do. Yes, who this is, whose fault it is? This is how why it should have gone the other way. Just a lot of a lot of dwelling on why it happened, as.
¶ Is There Room For Introspection In Politics?
Opposed to what you're gonna do about it.
Yeah. So it's interesting to me just you know, I write a little bit and uh, some of my my friends like why you're writing about Tony Robbins. But it's interesting I write about it because I was, you know, around your age, and all of a sudden, my contemporary version dare I say, how dare you? Was this guy with you know, who was self described with big teeth on you know, on infomercials selling me cassette tapes. Yeah, and I listened to those today and I'm like, so much is you know?
Well, I do think that that there's a little bit there that's just a complete indictment of philosophy as a whole these days, right, like like that that that is, that's what Socrates is doing, That's what that That's what
uh Aristotle was doing. They were they were trying. I mean, Socrates gets killed for corrupting the youth, which is to say, teaching the young boys what they need to know about life that their parents didn't want them to know, right, or challenging convention or or you know, teaching them a new way of thinking. And I guess it just says something that that philosophy does not speak to people in
a way that it's supposed to. It is supposed to be the guide to the good life, which you know, to me, the American dream is both a financial dream but also a sort of a moral and a spiritual
dream of a of a better life. And and philosophy is supposed to be part of that and and it's just it's just not and and I think we're in extra trouble when you know, organized religion has not just fallen away, but also you know, alienated huge swats of the population, whether you're talking about the abuse scandals in the in the Catholic Church, which is what I grew up in, or you're looking at the sort of political
radicalization of sort of evangelical faith. And so if if you're not going to have traditions and sort of rituals, you're also not going to have religion, what are you Where are people supposed to learn this stuff? And and and it's I think created a huge vacuum that that certain you know, bad actors have stepped into phil and.
You haven't become a bad actor. Thanks you talk about you know, because you you talked to you, we can go back to sort of March twenty twenty and sort of the beginning, and we could talk about that pandemic people, you know, I mean, I explained more things in more ways, on more days of everything. Sure, our relationships back to truth trust. This certainly are politics. I didn't fully absorb
it appreciate it at the time. And what we've become on the other side, and what people became people I don't they were unrecognizable to this day that went through that process. We can get Elon Musk in a minute, but I knew him well before.
That's my favorite part of your book. You talked about how you came of age as all. You came of age at the same time as all those Silicon Valley people.
I was with Larry and Serge at Google and when Steve Jobs taps us on the shoulder and says, hey, he wasn't interested in me, he was interested in Larry and Serge to show us pulled out of his back pocket the first iPhone and we're like, you know, it was like a joy ride. We're going with our fingers like oh we and they're all by you know, they were just in. There was sense of optimism back to you when you were writing this book.
So what happened? Like I think that that quote where Elon Musk is on Rogan and he says, you know, empathy is going to be the death of Western civilization. That to me was one. And then when I watched Mark and Drees and talk about how he has zero introspection and and he's like, I never looked backward. He goes, I never looked backwards. It's like, by the way, that's not what introspection is. Just to be like, you clearly don't even know what it is. Like introspection is looking inwards.
Just to be clear, that's not looking backwards. But but but he goes, you know, the great men of history, they they they they didn't look around. They didn't It's like the bad ones, you know, the ones who were responsible for genocides and pointless wars and uh ecological disasters and economic calamities. Yes, they had no sense of introspection
or history or perspective. But the great ones, whether you're talking about FDR or Truman or Theodore Roosevelt, Washington or Lincoln, the best of the best, all the great, all the greats. And I just named a bunch of of white dudes. So I'm sorry, but like you know, you could we could.
Talk about that too, and where women are in the story, you could expand.
But the point is that the great historical figures are by definition profoundly considerate and conscientious people, and and when when they're not, it is responsible for their biggest failings. And so what so what's.
Happened was what happened?
What happened?
And what happened to you? That you didn't fall prey to all that? I mean you you, I mean, your rise just gone. I mean it's you can you were wildly successful before the pandemic. But you know, I mean, now the ubiquity and your success it's just exploded. But but it's but it suggests that people are they're not they haven't necessarily been sold that bill of goods either, that they're looking for something different.
I mean, look, I've definitely experienced some success. It's small potatoes compared to being, you know, one of the richest or most powerful people in the world. So I I don't want to judge people whose thing you know, who's who's uh, whose you know sort of experiences is something I can't even comprehend.
But it does.
It does seem weird that these people, many of whom I I also knew or met over the years and thought were one thing. It sort of revealed themselves to be another. What do you what's your explanation.
I'm struggling with it, and I've been strung. I mean, I struggled with it a little bit of the book. It looks even you know who I was becoming. I mean I was, you know, and and you know, God bless, I was reading one of your books for years ago and took a little indirect shot at me, and I thought it was completely you to see, you know back. I don't want anyone get back. The one of the most important stories. You always say, what during the plague?
What Marcus really did? He sold all the things in here? I was going to a damn restaurant and you made it. And I'm like, you know what fair? And it was Legit hurt. It hurt because it was right. And of course I knew I had no greater critic of me than me, and so I appreciate it. But so you know, but in a lot of what I write about in this book, I mean talk about ego, there's I mean
the whole thing. I mean, I just I laid it all out, and I laid myself out in this sort of journey of discovery, this memoir of discovery, and discovering myself and my own you know, and my own you know this, there's so many but you know, expectations and how I was living in other people's expectations and I was kind of losing myself and how now And I think it's why sort of reading dove deep into your work.
It's just so sort of all coincided. I'm like, oh, you know, just literally just breathe again and have perspective and grace and humility.
You're saying, introspection, interest like the thing they are running away from.
Running away from the coarseness. That's why I've got forgive me. I didn't mean to put you behind these knee pads. And I think about with Trump, I mean the obstacles away. To me, it's so profound in the context of how I'm dealing with the challenges and the obstacle it stands
in the way of decent. From my perspective, decency, lack of character, all those those cardinal VERSI choose that you write so beautifully about this notion of justice and this notion of what courage really is in temperance, all these found what discipline looks. It's a math amount of what we have today. But I think about, all, right, obstacle
is the way it stands, the way becomes away. So how we can sort of with agency, you know, manifest and take responsibility and have the discipline and the character to you know, not just identify the problems, but begin to march strategies and iteration to address these problems and to move in a more enlightened direction. And again, you've been a huge part of that for millions of us, but certainly for the guy sitting here as the current occupant of the governor's mansion.
That's unbelievable to me. I think, you know, there's this passage of Meditations where Mark Schmiz talks about fighting to be the person that philosophy tried to make you love it. And now I think about that, that's what he's doing in Meditations, is he's trying. He's trying to be better than whatever he could get away with or whatever you know, he would he might just be on his own. He's
sure sort of aspiring to be some greater self. And it does feel like in the sort of Silicon Valley kind of like leadership class, there is this and Trump I think obviously hastened it. But it's this kind of like why why should you try to be back?
Why just do what you want? Yeah, you know yours when you're.
Famous, they let you do it, you know. And it's like the embracing of that and the idea of like why.
One of my favorite headlines of all time, there's this Huffington Post headline from fifteen years ago and it says, uh, I don't know how to explain to you that you're supposed to care about other people and that, and it really does feel like like there was this concerted effort in a small group of people to just let themselves off the hook for being responsible for or to anyone, despite the incredible power and privilege that they enjoy.
¶ The Erosion of American Institutions & Civilian Action
There you go, there you go, and we're I mean, it's and we're living with the consequences of that. I mean we you know, we've hit on you know, young men, but you you know, subtly made the point. I'll make it more expressive. Young men are in crisis. Yeah, And it's interesting how you connect tradition and rituals. And now, I mean we're seeing a little bit now with religion. People are finding religion a little bit again. But we've
lost those institutions, that connection to each other. I am, because you are this notion of untu, this commonwealth, you know, and this uh and and of course with algorithms and now this manus for broadly defined and you know Hustlers University and Bugatti Bugotti you get mine and you know, and and all the just patriarchy that comes in there. I mean, and these guys sometimes trying attach these name I know, and.
Now it's it's uh, I try to say, it's not. Stoicism is not a formula for you to be a better sociopath. It's supposed to do the opposite. It's supposed to it's supposed to help you because look, we're all inherently selfish. We are all self interested. And the Stokes talk about this like you come out of the womb being like inherently not just dependent on others, but you will you will suck your parents dry literally and figuratively so you can survive. That's what your genes are designed
for you to do. Right, And and that maturation or growth, the Stokes would say, is the like the the the overcoming of that realizing that you have these obligations and duties to to not just these people immediately around you, but everyone else like, there's this there's this stoke named Hirocles and he talked about the circles of concern and that he said, the purpose of the philosophy is pulling these outer rings inwards. And to me that like when I heard that, I was like, Oh, that's that's what
they were talking about in church as a kid. That's also what Jesus was talking about. And so there is there is actually a if Catholicism, especially because it has those cardinal virtues that I think you sort of you immediately recognize it in the Stoics that oh, oh, this was the tradition before that tradition, and that there's a lot of overlap there.
Yeah, well, I love. I mean, just even when we were celebrating the two and fifteth anniversary of the declaration Best of Roman Republic, Best of Greek Democracy. I mean back to your point in terms even the books. You just thank you for the books, but just reminding me the founding fathers, the direct inspiration from these greats.
You know, Washington's the only one of the founders who doesn't read the Stoics in Greek or Latin like them in English, because every they were. They were so familiar, like Jefferson as Jefferson as Seneca in French on his nightstand, when he dies, and so like these were These were
incredibly literate philosophical figures. And you know, the primary influence on the Founders was not you know, those English legal thinkers, It was the It was the when they're writing the Federalist papers and they're masquerading as these Roman characters, they're thinking about Cato, they're thinking about Seneca, they're thinking about Marcus Aurelius. That those are the people who are influencing
them the most. And you know that that that does go back to I think the founding of America, which we've fundamentally misunderstood, this idea that, yes, on the one hand, this is a country about freedom where you're the state can't tell you how to be or how to live, your your individual behavior is not legally prescribed the way that it would be in another society. But they were very much of the mind that all that freedom was to be counterbalanced by a sense of virtue in the people.
And John Adams said, like, hey, without it, we're fucked, Like the constitution cannot is not strong enough. He says it will go like a whale through a net like ah, actually, this is my this is my I wrote a piece about this for the Economists a couple of years ago, and maybe maybe now that you're leaving office, it's going
to be a next project. Okay. So so Victor Frankel talked about how there's a statue of liberty in New York Harbor and he believed that it should be counterbalanced by a statue of responsibility in San Francisco Harbor.
It's funny, and I think there's people.
Yeah, the idea that we're we're going to spend federal money to make Alcatraz a pro God when when what what we desperately need as a society is not to lock more people up. We need a monument, I think, to responsibility and our obligations to each other.
Right, I was just tritt a Senator Padia about this. We are literally this is a real conversation. No way. Yeah, So I'm not waiting till I'm out of it. Okay, all right, No, I love this idea. It's well, this notion of responsibility, it's that's uh. I don't want to get the too political, but kind of missing in my party at the kind of level that I think it needs to be. We talk about opportunity, we talk in
terms of community sometimes but not responsibility. It's you know, about service and civics and I mean all these, I mean it's really critical and back to you know, I don't know, there's uh, it's part of that three legged stool, and I think often we're talking two legs, not that third leg when and.
All, so the responsibility and agency are related to each other, right, because there is this thing in our society where I think most most people are like, hey, this shouldn't be happening. This isn't good. I don't like this, this is wrong, and then everyone is waiting for somebodybody to do something about it.
I mean, brand I said, in democracy, the most important office is office of citizen active, not inert citizenship.
But you mentioned the Democratic Party. I think, even like your thing on redistricting, right, like everyone is like, hey, what they're doing in Texas, which is where I live, is wrong, it's it's regulousism whatever. And then like the typical Democratic Party response would be why do they stop doing that?
Yeah, so shame on them, shame on them. Meanwhile, they're consolidating power. Yeah. Yeah, I mean it's hard though, right, because you don't you know what you know, when they I mean the Michelle rama, when they go low, we want to go high and we you know, we have a higher sense of self in that respect. But you know we'll lose this republic. Yeah, that's the way I feel, right, I mean, this is this is this is code read Yes,
this is serious. And so this notion of having agency stands in the way becomes sorry, I'm going to keep coming back. You wrote the damn book. You know, you rewired my brain and uh and uh, this notion, I mean, it's it literally that became the foundation of the inspiration and the responsibility to be held to a higher level of accountability, particularly when you have this gift for me, it's a gift of public service. And to be in this position I don't want to dream of ready well.
And because it also it could have not worked. It could have been it could have failed, it could have been embarrassing, it could have been the end of your and all the book. But there is this, there is this sort of sense of like, well, I got to keep my powder dry for the moment that there I there is this thing where people tell themselves, hey, like later i'll be more secure, yeah, or later that's when I'll do it. And the result is is nobody's doing anything.
Thank you?
What it feels like.
I mean, come on, I mean what you you look, you write a lot about this, you talk a lot about this. It just it's the do yeah yeah, stop talking, stop thinking about, just start doing it. You got it? Its action, you know, And it's I mean this notion when I'm thirty then, or when i'm a millionaire then, or when I have that then I'll be you know, yeah or you know this notion even have to be something to do something that I have to be a city council or governor or mayor before I can meet
move there. I don't think Gandhi waited around for elected office. I don't recall, seriously, was it President, King, doctor king? It wasn't all right, I mean, you know, even even the guys that served in office, like Hovel or even Mendela, I don't remember. You know, four years of Mendela's presidency were interesting. The new con I don't want to disregard it. But that's not why I think of Mendela. His peak of his power wasn't he is in jail. Yeah, and there's moral authority.
And one of the things that you you missed too
¶ What's So Scary About Banned Books
is like all the we're naming the name to guys we're named, and most of those were men, but you're you're naming mostly the people that we've heard of, as if they also weren't part of enormous organizations of a bunch of ordinary p bhoblos who were also participating. And so like it may it may fall on you to be one of those people, but uh, it may also just fall on like like Rosa Parks was a secretary at you know, the NAACP and and and eventually, yes,
she also has her moment in the thing. But if if that had been the only thing she'd done, if she'd only been answering phones, there you've got that would have enabled whoever ultimately was the person who doesn't go to the back of the bus.
Right And and of course you know she was an echo of Vita b. Wells and so many others that that that inspired.
Along the way, there's this other book I should have brought you, do you know what the Highlander School was? No? Okay, So so again we think of Rosa Parks as like this lady that just gets tired one day and you know, sets in motion. There is this thing in Tennessee and the mountains of Tennessee called the Highlanders School, which is run by this this sort of folksy family of activists. And it was a school where they trained activists in
nonviolence and political activism. And almost all the major figures of the civil rights movement, including John Lewis, including Rosa Parks, they all go to this school.
And it's not only I didn't know about it.
Not only do they they learn the things like they would practice, you know, having racial slurs shouted at them, and how how do you how do you roll on the ground and cover yourself as you're getting beaten? How do you you know, how do you talk to people? But it's also where like the relationships that they then took back all over the country. But it's like nobody knows the name of this school, or not enough people do.
But those people they're coaching trees. I'm free, I'm right now forgetting the names of the founders of the Highlanders, except mclark was one of the graduates that their coaching tree leads to the civil rights movement, just as by the way Gandhi's coaching tree leads to the people that came back to found the Highlander School, and so again you're gonna you. One of the things that Stokes talk about is that like we're all assigned these like parts,
these roles, and we don't know what it is. It could be a big one, it could be a little one. But your job is to just play the hell out of that role and you but chances are your role is not sit on the sidelines and complain about God.
I can't take it. I mean, I just can't take it. I can't take the's and I don't mean to disregard people that really do feel like they're victims and have plenty of receipts to back that up. I can't take it. Do something. Seriously, it's exhausting. You know, I love what you're saying about. Just you know, we all have this role. I mean, it's it's the women, right, oh mell life. You know, the powerful play goes on and we almost
contribute our verse. And this notion that we have to contribute our verse again back to agent was.
Doing in the civil worries, volunteering in hospitals, taking care of soldiers, like there's always something you can do, yes, And and the problem is, I think that our political leaders are not are not willing to risk their political careers.
Well, they had no problem in risking their political reputation by trying to get rid of Rosa Park's race in the social studies books, because it was woke, as if race said anything to do with her story. Uh. They finally were called out on that, by the way, as you were called out of the Naval Academy.
Fun the hell was that it was? It was surreal. Yeah, I was gonna.
I was with some of your great speeches and lectures. Thank you are there.
And there was honor. It was the honor of my life to be able to.
And the reception you get there is off the charts. But one of the few.
Things that gives me hope about our society is if you spend any time with people who are in the armed services right now, it's it's less point.
Guy. I was with a dozen of these kids.
It blew me away, especially because like that was the opposite of who I was at seventeen, eighteen eighty twenty. You're just like, yeah, you just like you have it, you have it together at this level. It's incredible.
And there.
I mean they could they could be at Harvard, they could be working at some Wall Street firm, they could be anywhere other than what they're doing, and they're choosing to be there. And then you watch, even even as as they are being mismanaged, as they objectively are right now, just the what they are able to do, the problems
they are able to solve, it's incredible. Anyways, Yeah, so I was supposed to give a talk at the the Naval Academy and I was canceled the last minute, right, yeah, about about an hour before I was supposed to go on because because I because I was going to make the political statement that I think removing books from the library, which they did idea.
Yeah, you know, I think there was two years ago, four three and forty books, if I recall the exact number that were been in libraries or schools across this country. This banning bende rewriting history, censoring historical facts, as if that makes us stronger and wiser.
Yeah, it's like, hey, this person is going to be uh, you know, in charge of nuclear weapons or flying a fighter jet. But maya Angelou's memoir is to.
Handle. Yeah. Yeah, they can't handle it. Yeah, they're way too sensitive for that. Yeah, exactly. But you gave the lecture nonetheless.
Yeah, get well, I gave it one to put this stuff into practice. You know, it's like, oh, actually, you know it's it's an It was an interesting insight into it too, because I remember talking to the person giving you know, the messenger who had to pass along that I was, you know, being, and who I really felt for because it's like, hey, this this dude has a pension. Anyways, I he goes, Look, we just don't want to we just don't want to draw any tention to ourselves, you know.
And I said, I think I don't think that's how this works. I think I think canceling the lecture an hour before I'm supposed to go on is going to add a lot more here.
There were a few dozen headlines.
And yeah, and and so yeah, I gave I gave the talk online, and it was obviously seen by a lot more people than would have there.
But and you had the audacity to talk about I don't know these uh, you know, these extreme progressive liberal woke you know, admirals like Stockdale. Yes, yes, yes, a move many others.
By the way, A great California story there. He the Navy sends him to Stanford in nineteen sixty one and he gets an advanced degree and in and as part of his studies there, he's he he takes classes in comparative Marxism, I forgot it and then and then is introduced to to Epictetus and and it's those two things that allow him to survive the Pow experience.
And it was like seven years or something.
I was fascinated to my grandfriendrandfather just like what.
Get what he didn't read Aupictitis.
Well, you came back just when you are exposed to an experience that's designed to break you as a human being, and they strip you down and then just fling you back into the world like very few people could can can manage that. And the reason that Stockdale doesn't break is that he is introduced to these things at a woe liberal institution run by you know, California hippies.
And uh and it's interesting and I want to go too far down the rabbit all with Stockdale. But this notion of optimism, it was not that, wasn't that wasn't his go to default, so it just remain optimistic. He just remained clear and confident with the end goal. The optimist didn't tend to do as well as well.
The stoic version of optimism is not, oh, this is going to go amazingly, I'm going to get lucky breaks. The stoic version of optimism is I'm going to be better for this, however horrible it is. And ultimately his view was he was going to comport himself in such a way that if he survived, he would not just be proud of how he acted. That's the idea of returning with honor, which they now teach all POWs, but that he was going to turn it into something. He
said that in retrospect he would not trade away. And I think that's how we have to see this moment. Like, look, I would love to have a normal president. I'd love to have normal politics. I'd love to have not lived through a pandemic. I would love all the If you had had given me my choice of how I would like the last ten years to go, I would have picked very differently. But the number one you don't get a choice. Number two, you think you know how you
want it to go, but you actually don't. And three, the only thing you have to say over is how do you look back and go that was my moment, that was a thing that I rose up to meet, and that's going to be different for all of us. But that's to me, what the stoic is trying to say is that, Hey, I want to be able to look back on this period and say I was what I was capable of being, and that I grew and
was changed by that experience for the better. That that is to me actually profoundly optimistic and hopeful thing to say.
¶ What Stoicism Gets Wrong
It's also realistic what.
I mean, you look back at stoicism and anything they from your perspective got wrong.
Well like basically everyone for the last two thousand years. They get the whole slavery thing wrong.
There was a little that I mean, Marcus, realist slavery. You know, you had Seneca working for a guy named you know, good loss named Narrow.
Yes, so wealthy guy. There's the kind of just basic, you know, personal decisions, and you can't study history and not go, hey, this person was flawed and made mistakes. We're all products of our time, so that there's certainly a lot of things like that. How about in their teachings, Well, look, they believed, I think, much more in predetermination and predestination
than we do. They they they had obviously to go to the idea of agency, right like they were all these things that they thought couldn't be changed, that they that they thought was just a fact of life. And in a way this explains the political stuff, right like even epictetis the Slave doesn't question the institution of slavery.
And so, you know, when you look back at history, you can't help but be grateful to the sort of revolutionary, radical, progressive people who imagined that the world could be something different than it currently is. And if there's anything that the Stokes get wrong, it's just that they were resigned to the world being the way that it had always been.
And we are lucky that Gandhi was like, hey, what if there's a way to solve problems that doesn't involve terrorism or insurrection or overthrowing a government, you know, and Martin Luther King picks that up from him, and the gay rights activists pick that up from them, and you know, we're obviously lucky that all these different innovations happened where people were like, you know, we're in the debt of Thomas Clarkson, who in the seventeen hundreds writes an essay
at Oxford about whether people should own slaves or not and then says, well, what if I'm right and they shouldn't, and then maybe someone should do something about it, And then he says, maybe that person could be me. And that's where the abolitionist movement comes from. And you know, you go back, back and back and back. We are the beneficiaries of the people who imagined the world being better than it is, and stoicism cannot simply be a tool for accepting the status quo.
You just finished the book on wisdom. You talk about these cardinal virtues, you end on wisdom. You don't begin with wisdom, even though you said none of the other virtues are possible without yeah, wisdom, So why the hell do you end the.
Series the hardest I say the hardest one for last. I felt weird starting with wisdom, just aving a practical writing standpoint, But I don't know, I felt like the last alphabetically it's last. Now there's no good reason they're all that. Zeno said that the cardinal virtues, courage, discipline, tempera, courage, discipline, justice, wisdom.
They were independent yet inseparable from each other. Yeah, and and it really doesn't matter what order you think about them, whatever you read about them, whatever you write them about them.
They all.
You can't have one without the other. I mean, courage in pursuit of injustice is no impressive thing. And then you know, how do you know what the right thing is without wisdom? You know, how do you how do you bring good into the world without savvy incompetence. I think that's one of our big problems right now, is like we just think that being right is sufficient. Yeah, you know, you have to have you have to be
a savvy political operator. You have to be a savy business like just because you you're in the broad strokes, correct, I don't get you.
What, So what are you working on next?
I'm doing a biography of Stockdale?
Oh good, okay, yeah, there you go. Yeah. I mean you talk about him enough. He's one of my time you and he's you know, and and forgive me because it's just it's impossible to talk about Stockdale except he's better known. And this is why you need to write the book, Yeah, because he deserves not to be better for one simple line and a vice presidential debate, What sir, was that line?
Who am I? Why am I here?
Which as a stoic.
Philosophically, it's actually line.
For debate prep. You may want to use different language.
Yes, yeah, the family. I'll save it for writing. But apparently it's a big story as to how he found himself on that stage.
And ros Pro's but but uh.
Dennis Miller has a great bit about Stockdale where he says, you know, this was the first guy in last guy out of Vietnam hero like seven years right, prisoner serves honorably. When's the medal of or does all this? And he says he he committed the one unpardonable sin in our society. Do you know what it is? What I mean, it's he was bad on television?
He was on TV. There you go. It's pathetic. What's happened to us? Huh? Yeah, sincerely, this is rather pathetic.
Yeah, you imagine that incredibly as as a as a charismatic, good looking man, he's there there, there, there are I imagine there are many many more qualified people. But I could not just can't cut it politically because they different, they look bad or in a speech that that, you know, eighty years ago you only would have been heard about from a newspaper column, and they could have I could taft to be president now, good question.
Right, Yeah, not on the basis of what he's been described.
And I mean even FDR has to hide that he has a reponsibility.
I mean, even Kennedy is there's a reason the rocking chair. I mean, you know, and he was you know, and he was plenty of you know, external things that were injected to get them through the day. I mean yeah, yeah, in Instagram twenty four to seven.
Yeah, probably would not have not have made it.
I don't know.
Yeah.
Well, and of course the infamous there, I mean the first TV president.
Yes, yeah, then Nixon, the Nixon candibs.
Yeah, Radio Nixon crushes them TV Kennedy. Yeah, no, Look, I appreciate it. I'm glad you. So it's good for you on this Starckdale thing. So what is I mean you got every morning? If you haven't got, by the way, everyone listening watching needs to subscribe to the damn Morning Email, which is next level. And what I love about it too, it's you know, repetitions and other skill too. What I like is it's not one and done. You'll come back
to old themes. Yeah, and I'll see that as a critique. No, but it's but it's important, right, So it's just it's reps and you know you're sort of and so it's it's remarkably and it's a quick read every morning, way to wake up, uh, sort of recalibrate your brain. And it's contemporary. You put things. I love it. If you're feeling all these things, you're like, yes and yes. So clearly someone whoever's writing those things you were, what do you mean whatever? It's uh, it's uh, uh, it's it's
it's I mean, it's free. What more can I say? But it's uh, it's it's profoundly impactful and and something everyone should sign up for. You've got you did what I did again? Your damn January? Oh you did?
Yeah?
I sat there in Lake Tahoe and you know, one degrees jumping in the damn river with icicles. By the way, it should have gone on my Instagram. But I didn't look pretty. I need to get a little better shape. I didn't look good without the shirt on. Plus I had underwear. So it's another conversation. So I was out there and you know, it was day one the polar plunge. Well then I get I had to burn away mind, tent,
whatever the other things. Yes, but you're doing that. You got twenty six for twenty six, you had the thing, You've got all the stuff on YouTube, got all the I mean, come on, man, this is crazy. What's you know?
What?
When's enough enough? Are you? Are you a stoic?
Is this this is what I like to do? I'd be doing it, and this is what I do.
This is what I do. Uh, well, it's uh. I appreciate you coming back home, of course, coming back to California. Yeah, off your ranch in Texas which ain't so bad. Uh, and your credible kids. And I'm going to close on this the best thing you do as a father of four, the daily dead and dispensing advice as a father. Yeah, thank you. What was the inspiration of that?
Besides I on my life was made better by writing about stoicism every day, the forced practice of having to do the meditation. And so when I when I when we had our first I was like, you know what I'll do a parent, I'll take the best parenting advice, not not my advice. I don't know shit, but like, what are the best smartest people, the wisest people say out this and all riff on it each morning, and so the daily Dad has almost eight years old, now nine years old, and it's it's made me a better
parent because I'm I'm writing about this. I'm like, you know, when your kids are having trouble, you know, getting out of bed in the morning and you want to get you know, I'm not saying that I didn't just yell at my kids for not getting in the car in time. I'm saying I'm writing having just done that, trying to not do it tomorrow. You know, it's it's a you're constantly you know how you're you know what you know the parent you want to be and you're never being
that parent. But so it helps to remind yourself over and over and over again, not of we're falling, sure, but what the ideal that you're aspiring towards.
Love it and that's what that is the most important job right great to be with you, Thank you very much.