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ryan holiday welcome to the show man yeah thanks for having me it's an honor to have you likewise so uh yeah this year one of my goals is to become a little more stoic as uh the political and world current events just continue to spiral out of control um that's been one of my goals primarily for my family you know it's just uh you seem stoic though lowercase stoic that's you see are you not i tend to lose my shit every once in a while but um as we all do but uh but yeah i just i want to be a little more stoic primarily for my my family my kids yeah i'm the

same way i mean i think there's some people who are sort of naturally there and then then you

have kids and then you realize you're not there at all yeah yeah but um and actually several my wife's been wanting me to do this for a while and i'll bet it five six years ago uh she gave me one of your books and that's when i first heard about you and read it uh it was like a daily yeah the daily stoic maybe stoic yeah and um read through that and then this year got uh marcus aurelius's book on stoicism and and so this is perfect now you're here all right

well i brought i brought you a good edition of marcus realist i don't know which one you have this is my favorite translation so i think what's cool about this is like am i out of the way here you have the the private thoughts of the most powerful person in the world and and um almost certainly not intended for publication like he might be mortified that we're holding this right now. So, you know, most books are written for the audience, right? But this is a book for the author. Like, that it's a book is the byproduct of the philosophical process, which is like, he has a temper, he has anxiety, he has a shitty job with people he can't trust and an empire that's coming apart, and he has health problems, he has marital problems, he has a plague, there's floods, it's a series of endless wars. And what he's doing is sitting down and writing to himself, trying to get back to center, right? Interesting. And it just wasn't burned upon his death, or it wasn't destroyed when he died. and so it's it doesn't it doesn't read like a typical book i mean it's it's it's 12 books each passage is numbered but it's really like almost like journal or diary entries because that's what stoicism is is like this you know how you're trying to be and then you're here there's a great line of meditations where he's saying like fight to be the person that philosophy tried to make you and that's what he's doing and you say that again he says fight to be the person that philosophy tried to make you or fight to be the person that philosophy wants you to be, right? It's like, we all know the idea, the ideal, like what our best self is. And then we're dysregulated or we're tired or we're hungry or somebody's being really awful and annoying. And we're struggling to be, to get from the lower self to the higher self. Gotcha. Right? And that's what this is. So I got this. And then this one will hopefully, like meditations should be thank you it should be a book that you like most books you read right this meditation should be a book that you are reading like it should sit on the nightstand and you pick it up and you read it throughout your life because it was written throughout someone's life but the idea is that you don't know what passage you're going to need until you're flipping through the book and it jumps out at you that's that's the idea of meditations Roger that. Thank you. All right, I got a bunch more. I won't take so much time. But I know you got young kids. Do you know Steve Rinella? Yeah. He's a meat eater. This is, I think this is, he wrote an amazing book.

about hunting called the uh american buffalo which is like one of my favorite books where he gets a buffalo tag in alaska and he goes to hunt uh and the american bison and it's all about that that that's my favorite steve runella book but as a parent this is inside outside kids in an inside world i think that's what every parent is struggling with right now because screens are so addictive and uh video games are so exciting and we're all glued to our devices right i mean I mean, people are probably listening to this, almost certainly listening to this on a device right now. But the point is you want to raise outdoor kids, right? Kids, he says, you want to raise kids that don't say ew a lot because they're good being outside, getting dirty, doing nonsense. I love that book. I think it's amazing.

You spend a lot of time outdoors with your kids?

Yeah, we live on a ranch in Texas. So we're pretty outdoorsy, but it's a constant fight. it's like it's like um they love it when they're out there but they hate the process of getting out there really do you know what like like it's like when we we were yesterday we went on a hike they did not want to get out of the car they did not want to go on it and then as soon as they we were in it they loved it right and that's like i think the struggle uh is the is the is the starting you know what i mean yeah um all right so we got that uh oh this is another interesting parenting one. This is about Churchill and his son. So, Churchill has a horrible father and horrible mother basically neglect him, becomes a great man, and he tries to do better with his son, but he doesn't do a great job. And I think that's another thing that keeps us up at night as parents is like, if you're successful, how do you not raise spoiled, entitled kids? They have comforts and security and love that maybe we didn't get, but how do you make sure that that works to their advantage, not that they're to their disadvantage, right? And so I thought it's a really interesting sort of, because it looks at three generations, right? It looks like Churchill and his father, and then obviously Churchill and then Churchill and his son. It's a great book. I thought you might like that one. Have you read any Stockdale? No, I haven't. All right. So this is thoughts of a philosophical fighter pilot. So Stockdale goes to the Naval Academy in 43, graduates, becomes a pilot. And it's not until he spends 20 years as a pilot. It's not until the Navy sends him to Stanford where he gets a graduate degree that he's introduced to stoic philosophy. On his last day at Stanford, his philosophy professor goes, hey I think you might like this book it gives him a copy of Epictetus the Stoic philosopher and he does two more deployments there before he gets shot down and that's his sort of he's every every night in his bunk on the on the uh on the Ticonderoga and then the constellation and a little bit on the on the on the Ariskany he's reading Stoic philosophy so when he gets shot down in 65 he says he famously says to himself I am leaving the world of technology and entering the world of Epictetus. And it's in the Hanoi Hilton that he basically takes Stoic philosophy as a, which was a sort of, you know, a theoretical thing. And he applies it in this, what he calls the laboratory of human behavior. Holy shit. Did you get to meet him? I see he died in 2006. I never got to meet him. He died, yeah, I think he died in 2008 or six. What does it say?

He died in 2006 at the age of 81.

Yeah, no, I met his children and met a lot of people that have met him, but just, I mean, one of the greatest Americans ever. Man. Incredible book. You'll love that. I was just, I'm doing, I'm actually doing a book on Stockdale right now. And this is, do you ever read The Right Stuff? The Tom Wolfe book? No. Oh, you would like that too. So that's about test pilots who become the first astronauts. So it's about John Glenn and Chuck Yeager. Really good. But this is, this is about, there's a little Stockdale in there too. this is like uh about uh carrier pilots in vietnam uh not enough people know about this book it's incredible um it's called over the beach it was stockdale's favorite book about um about the air war in vietnam um and then the guys that get shot down um so i just read that i think you would like that if you don't read a lot i think you would like that book perfect um and then the last one uh you ever read any hunter s thompson yes okay so hunter s thompson we think of as the badass wild man crazy guy you think fear and loathing in las vegas is a book about drugs and alcohol which it is but it's the subtitle of that book is is about the american dream because he's also one of our most astute sort of cultural and political writers and so this is freak kingdom um and it's about uh Thank you. hunter s thompson as a political thinker and critic because he covers nixon he covers carter he covers like every presidential candidate between you know sort of the the late 60s and and then his death and uh i don't know i got the sense i think it would line up with where because you're kind of like a man without a party you're you're politically engaged you have you but you're not like democrat republican um i think you'd like i think you'd like that book it's he what he's primarily is anti-fascist not like antifa but anti-fascist like doesn't like fascism doesn't like people telling him what to do doesn't like liars doesn't like hypocrites uh doesn't like corruption and uh i think i'm gonna met this guy i think you're gonna like it yeah thank you yeah thank you also keep me busy yeah i think so i appreciate it i could have brought so i my wife have a bookstore outside austin and so uh my my favorite thing is when i'm gonna meet someone or someone comes in like what what books would i think they like that's my that's my that's what gets me excited so those are the ones i thought you'd like thank you i really appreciate that i'm

actually i want to talk about this one later okay fatherhood segment done uh this is something i talk about all the time uh with a lot of a lot of different people how they do it but uh well my gift is not as exciting but this is the gummies the vigilance league gummy bears legal in all 50 states made in the usa all right horrible for you but they taste amazing so but uh let me let me give you an introduction here real quick ryan holiday author of 12 books on stoicism with more than 10 million copies sold including the obstacle is the way ego is the enemy and stillness is the key you're the founder of daily stoic reaching millions through books podcasts newsletters and youtube your work is right in nfl locker rooms special operations units i can attest to that and silicon valley boardrooms in 2025 you completed your four books stoic virtue series and launched a sold-out world tour across australia ireland and beyond welcome to the show yeah thanks and uh so we have a patreon account yeah and uh it's turned into quite the community and to be honest they're the reason i get to sit down here with you today all right um so they get the opportunity to ask every single guest a question this is from cory smith ryan for people battling anxiety depression or the long recovery from a brain injury when the brain can feel like the obstacle how can stoic principles be applied most effectively oh i mean i can speak more to the

first two than the than the brain injury that's not something i have direct experience with but i think basically what stoicism is at its core is this kind of distance between you and your thoughts right this is similar to eastern philosophy but it's the idea that you have the opinion you have the feeling you have the dread or the anxiety or the worry or the frustration or the anger and you're trying to take a second and ask yourself is this true right like um you're worried about this thing happening and what you're not stopping and thinking is like hey is my worrying about this affecting the outcome in any way or am I just torturing myself right um you're not asking yourself hey let's say it does happen what then right because oftentimes what we're torching ourself with is this kind of vague idea that like oh if this happens that will be bad and I won't be able to handle it. But the truth is we handle stuff all the time. We've handled everything in our lives up until this point or we wouldn't be here. We survived everything in our lives up until this point or we wouldn't be here. And so stoicism is, it's funny he said, he or she said about, you know, your brain is the obstacle. Sometimes the brain is the obstacle, injury or not. Like we have biases, we have patterns, we have things that we make up and they're not true. right it's it's based on things that we haven't really worked through and stoicism is the idea of kind of working through that and that's again what mark shrews is doing in the meditations it's not like this magical formula as soon as you hear it you don't have that problem anymore it's the hey i'm going to pause and think about this and work through it and decide whether i'm going to assent to it or not Epictetus who's one of the Stoic philosophers he would talk about how like he says a good money changer like a person you would get money from in the ancient world he said they know how to tell a counterfeit coin from a real coin by the by banging it on the table like they don't have to melt it down to test them out they just know right you have that intuition you just know and i think what stoicism is whether you're doing journaling whether you're taking a few minutes whether you take a long walk or you're just talking through it with someone you know stoicism is about asking yourself hey is this real or not is this true or not is this productive or not is this helpful or not again this is all very easy to say um but that that's what it is as a process is is to deal with precisely those feelings which every person ever whoever lived has struggled with in some way or another

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bottling it up i think i think obviously the word stoic in english like so stoicism comes uh about the fourth century bc this this guy named zeno founds this school of philosophy um he's inspired by the cynics and another word that we don't do great justice to in the english language we think cynics or cynicism means sort of negative or skeptical or um you know uh doesn't believe in anything, not what it is at all. And stoicism is called stoicism because Zeno sets up his school on the stoa pochile, the painted porch in Athens. Stoa just means porch. These were guys hanging out on this porch talking about these ideas. Now, flash forward 2,500 years later, when we go, oh, that guy is really stoic, we take that to mean, like, he doesn't feel anything. He's a robot. He stuffs it down. And that's not what it is at all. To me, it's about processing that emotion, asking yourself, hey, is this productive or not productive? Like, is losing my shit about this, is that helping anything? Or is it in fact hurting myself, other people, making the situation worse. So it's not like, hey, I'm feeling an emotion. Emotions are not okay. Let me white knuckle it. To me, it's about asking yourself, working through it. Hey, why am I feeling this way? What is this doing for me? And then I think your question about like, where's the release valve is a good one because to me, I find that release valve in the work and usually in some kind of physical activity. Like, I think you've got to have outlets for it. But the idea of just getting to a place where you're pretending it's not happening, like grief, you know, if you just go, oh, I don't feel that. That's not real. We have multiple stories about Marcus Aurelius crying, right? The most famous Stoic in the world. We don't have that much, like, the historical record is relatively thin on this person. Like, we don't have that many stories about him, right? and I think there's four. about him crying. One is over the loss of a tutor, like one of his favorite teachers dies. Another is when he's told he's going to become emperor. He's just like so overwhelmed at the weight of the job. He doesn't think he can do it. And then two others are about the victims of the plague. Marx Aurelius is the emperor of Rome during what's called the Antonine Plague, which is this devastating pandemic that kills millions and millions of people. And then another is when he's told that an earthquake has flattened this Roman city.

And so in all these cases, he's not stuffing his emotions down. In fact, in the first story about the beloved teacher, he's trying to not feel the emotion. He's like a young kid. and you know he probably some of the ideas of masculinity that we all know you know like boys don't cry don't be a little bitch right like he's he's not he's he's he's clearly upset by that the fact that that this person he loves has died and um one of his philosophy teachers goes to him and tries to tell him like like you know let's keep it under wraps kid and his stepfather who's the emperor of Rome, Antoninus Pius, he sees this and he goes, no, no, no, no, no. He says, let the boy be human. And so, stoicism to me is not you never have the emotion or that you stuff it down. I think it's more like, okay, look, if you're still paralyzed by this grief a year later, you can't get out of bed. You know, that's a problem, right? To me, it's the processing, the passing of the emotion and then it's getting back to center as quickly as possible that that to me is what the

philosophy is okay yeah i think this book here meditations is going to be very interesting i think you'll like it because i just it it does seem it does feel like kind of stuffing your emotions what you're saying makes me thinking before acting but really you know what really got me into it is i've started bitching all the time about what just bitching about i mean i'll just be honest i haven't been happy with the last two administrations sure but at all and um i feel like i really got duped on this one and um you know and so i want to be more solutions based and focus on actual solutions than just do what everybody else does and yeah let's bitch about all the problems let's bitch about the epstein files let's bitch about the wars let's there has to be let's bitch about the stuff that we've been bitching about for you know ever yeah and uh at least as long as i've been around and and there's just very few people that take the time to take the things that make them angry and and and come up with real focused

potential solutions well and it's important one of the things you hear the stoics talk about is like getting some perspective, right? Like none of this is new. So Seneca is one of the famous Stoics. Do you know who his boss was? It was Nero. Like his boss is the worst leader maybe of all time, right? And I got to imagine this is stressful. I imagine it's demoralizing. I imagine there's a lot to bitch about. Like in a way, none of this is new, right? Corruption is not new. Hypocrisy is not new. Declining empire is not new. The only thing that's new about any of this is that we have a lot more information in real time about what's happening, right? Like, it was possible to get away from it in the past in ways that we can't. Now, it was also worse in the past in other ways, right? Like, you know, no one's being forced to fight for their life in the Colosseum, let's say, right? There's definitely some things that are better. But, like, I think about even Socrates, right? Socrates, you think, oh, that was that guy, he wore the toga, he walked around Athens, he asked those questions, you know, must have been pretty chill. And it's like, Socrates lives through the Peloponnesian War. Like, Athens fights, like, a generationally long war against Sparta, and loses. Like, his country, like, loses a world war, effectively. And then Athens is ruled by 30 tyrants that literally it's known as the time of the 30 tyrants I mean like the world must have felt like it was falling apart and it was falling apart and so I think one of the things you you can take from the study of history and I think I think we all need to study history more right like people think like people watch too much news and don't read enough history and the reason for this is like they think that being

that their job is to be an informed citizen. And it is, your job is to be an informed citizen in America, in any democracy. The problem is watching news in real time is not necessarily the best way to be informed. And so I urge people to read more history, not because it takes anything away from the moral calamities that are happening in this moment, but it allows you to understand them in context. It allows you to understand which ones are really important and which ones are kind of par for the course, right? And it allows you to also remember that, like, no one has lived in a perfect society and that most of the people that you admired were looking around at the world and going, what the fuck are we doing? This is insane. You know, like, and that actually the job is to not despair, not to get into, like, bitterness and anger, not to, like, one of the things Mark Shrews talks about in meditations, he talks about revenge a lot. You can imagine the most powerful man in the world, if he wants to get revenge on someone, he can do some pretty heinous things to people. But he says, you know, he tries to remind himself the best revenge is to not be like your enemy. And one of the things I look out at the world and I go, I don't like the corruption. I don't like the cruelty. I don't like the dishonesty. I don't like the pettiness. I don't like the crassness. I don't like any of this. Now, obviously, as a citizen, my job is to vote against those things, speak out against those things. But my main job as a person, philosophically, is to not be those things, right? Like, if what you allow is the shittiness of what's happening around you to make you feel shitty and worse to be shitty, like, they are winning. And so I think that's, to me, that's where stoicism really has a lot to offer. Because we are living in disorienting, disappointing, disillusioning times. But if you allow that to strip from you, your happiness at home, your productivity at work, your, you know, your decency, your kindness, your connection to other people, like, it is winning. And that's kind of how I think about it.

I mean, how do you, I'm curious too, because I mean, it's, you know, I brought up politics. Yeah. but there's there's just so many other and i think that's something that everybody can relate to one way or another right yeah but i mean we're going to talk about this you know towards the end of the interview and i guess we'll talk about a little bit right now but you know as you find success uh you also find very disingenuous people that start to come around they want to take advantage of you sure they want to take advantage of your kids to get to you they want to take advantage of your wife to get to you they are not honest people you know and and you threw out the word revenge yeah and that's in my mind i mean revenge used to be something that i mean i would waste an entire day planning all the things that i could do to somebody that took advantage of me or wronged me or or fucked over my family or myself or whatever right whatever the circumstances are and then i you know back in the a long time ago i would act on that but this is the best plan let's say we're gonna do this and then i you know and then i realized this is a just a total fucking waste of energy yeah and it just makes you look like an asshole i think and so now i'll i can't help myself a lot of times and i will still go through the planning phase on what i What can I do to get back at this person? And then I've developed one where somehow I've developed enough discipline to never act on it. That's a good first step. Just to let it go.

I imagine there's an extra level of, not temptation, but where you're like, I could break this person in half. That's not a thought that enters my head. But I imagine when you are trained to do what you are trained to do and at different points in your life that has been unleashed, just the restraint of going, hey, that's not the rules of engagement in the world that I'm in now. That would be like a level of like restraint that you would have to practice. but one of the things i think about is like okay if somebody tried to control my thoughts or controlled what i said controlled what i did i'd like i'd resist that like just instinctively i'm that's no i get to decide i'm in charge and yet we kind of hand our minds over to people all the time like we let them we let them just take up like in amounts of time and space in our life. I was talking to this, talking to this writer I know, and she was saying, you know, she really didn't like what was happening politically, and she was saying that she was having trouble. She was like, I just can't, I can't work right now. Like, she's like, I'm so outraged, I'm so upset, so pissed off that, like, I just, I can't, I can't do it. And I was saying, like, okay, but, like, if this administration came to you and was like, hey if you keep doing your work we're going to throw you in prison you'd be like like you would that would be so immediately galvanizing that it would fire you up right you would never allow a government of any persuasion to tell you what you can and can't say like that's the job of an artist right and that's what it means to be an american that's what's all right there in the first amendment and i was like but here voluntarily you're doing precisely that because you don't like what's happening in the world because it's dark or pissing you off or whatever you're allowing it to consume so much of your mental bandwidth and your motivation that's having the same effect like they might as well be putting a gun to your head and saying you can't do this but it's actually worse because they're not doing that. And so I do think it's really important that we, you got to have some mechanism by which you put up some walls and boundaries and then you protect the thing that is yours. Like the Stoics would say the greatest empire is like command of yourself, right? Your sovereignty as an individual. And the problem is we give that up all the time because somebody cut us off in traffic, you know, like because we opened up our phone and the news was bad because our parents are visiting or, you know, like we just let these things get inside us and then determine our mood, determine our, you know, our focus, determine what we think about,

determine our behavior. And I mean, it's not easy. It's a lot of work. And I fall down this, you know, sort of into these traps all the time, but I am trying to go, hey, like I'm, i gotta i gotta protect this even even if it feels good or it it it it feels natural

i can't allow that have you ever done psychedelics no okay well the reason i'm asking yeah i have um i did uh i did a ibogaine treatment in mexico four years ago i haven't had a drop of booze sense but a lot more in the moment um it was very uh it was a life-changing experience for me uh anyways the reason i bring it up is it's it's there's been very few times in my life where i've been able to completely separate myself from i guess maybe my ego and look at things uh from a just a detached point of view that's maybe a different perspective than what I'm feeling in the moment?

One of the things that I did this, like, really intense therapy thing, and I was, you know, sort of, like, just vomiting all this anger and resentment I had at this group of people, and the therapist was like, you know they're not thinking about you at all, right? And he was like, they're just doing their thing. That's who they are. They have no awareness. Not only are they not doing it on purpose, but they're utterly unconcerned and disinterested of its effect on you. like they're not waking up and thinking about torturing you in this way they're not waking up and thinking about abusing you in this way they're not waking up and trying to make you miserable they're inherently selfish narcissistic people like they're waking up and thinking about them he's not saying it's awesome to be them he's just saying like they're not thinking about you at all and it's like we can see this i think much more clearly in other stuff like the economy's not thinking about you. Like a hurricane's not thinking about you. That truck barreling towards you on the freeway is not thinking about you. But then for some reason, because people do have intentions, and obviously we have to be aware of them, we do, I think, project a lot more intentionality on other people than is actually happening. And I think when you have someone who's, like, way inside your head, reminding yourself that you're not inside their head is really important. And then I, I, like you all, sometimes I'll be like, I just planned out like a whole operation in my head of what I'm going to do if they do this. And it's like, this is a hypothetical. Like I just, I just, my whole run, I was thinking about what I'm going to say if they say this, and then I'm going to say this. And then, and it's like, this conversation might not even happen.

Contingency planning.

Yeah, for a made-up scenario about a person that, again, if you ask them, you're like, they'd be like, who? They wouldn't think about me at all. And so it's like, you're not the center of the universe, and almost certainly you're not the center of whatever the situation that you're making all about you is.

makes sense also where i was going with that is is stoicism the ability to kind of uh view things not as a participant of what's happening it's just strictly a in observation or observing a

situation yeah it's like sometimes it's really helpful to zoom way in and then sometimes it's helpful to zoom way out but it's like a lot of times it's like how do i take myself out of this equation. And that's what ego does, right? Ego makes it all about you. It makes you at the center of things. And even just remembering that everyone is the center of their situation and that you're not the main character in all these other people's stories. You're a tangential character at best is helpful. It's like, yeah, why am I making this all about? Whatever this was was not specifically chosen to drive you nuts. Like, and that again, it's totally indifferent to you. Like one of the ideas for the Stoics is events are objective, our opinions about them are not. Like the situation is what it is. And then we say like, this is good or bad. I don't mean morally like positive or negative. We say like, this is fair or unfair. We say this is, like, mean or cruel. We say this was, you know, targeted. We say, like, we've been harmed by it. Like, the thing is, and then we decide what it means. And a lot of times the stories we tell ourselves about stuff are pretty self-absorbed, pretty distorted, and, like, pretty emotional. emotional and I think how do you get better at going what if I could see this from another perspective or another way or what if I told myself a different story about this event yeah

what happens I mean what goes through your when I told you you know oh I'll spend an entire day planning revenge yeah or vengeance what happens in your head when you're wronged when you think

you've been wronged when somebody's well often times i go okay um let's say i i pull this revenge off in all the times in my life when i have done it how did i feel after pretty shitty yeah shitty or at best disappointed you know and why am i telling myself it's gonna be different this time and i the idea of thinking about what you're going to think after is like a really powerful way do you know you know the word epicurean i don't that's that that was the rival school to the stoics there's the stoics and the epicureans and epicurean also in english tends to mean like loves pleasure um you know indulges every whim it and that's not really what they thought at all But Epicurus, what he would say, he was, let's say, more pleasure-seeking than the Stoics. He would say that, like, if you're going to, you're like, hey, let's share this bottle of wine. He's like, you can't think about just how it's going to feel on the way down. You have to think about how you're going to feel after. And that part of the experience has to be put into the calculation. Okay. But humans are bad at this, right? Like, we tell ourselves, oh, if I make this amount of money, then I'll feel secure and good. If I get with this person, then I'll feel, it'll be amazing, and then I'll feel good. And people will look, if I get this car, if I win this office, if I, you know, hit this number on the chart. Like, we just, we tell ourselves this lie that, like, this thing will do something for us. now the first time or when you're younger we can excuse this because like we don't have although there's all sorts of wisdom out there telling us that it's not going to do what we think it's going to do for us we don't we haven't directly tested the hypothesis ourselves but i think as you get older to still be

falling for that lie is a problem, right? You know, like, you know how you feel when you have a hangover. You got to take, like, that should change the drinking that you do. You know that, I don't know, your marriage is incredibly important to you and certainly not worth a few minutes of pleasure. And yet you, in the moment, are considering doing something that, you know, would blow that up. Or you know all your other accomplishments have never made you feel secure, or like you've arrived, that there's an emptiness or a hollowness to them, and yet you go, it's different this time. Why do we, I mean, yeah. Well, I think from an evolutionary standpoint, it makes total sense, right? Like, if humans were good at being like, I'm good, I don't need any more. Like, enoughness is not a great evolutionary feeling. But, like, insatiability makes you go on to the next and the next and the next thing. And so, that can be good for the species as a whole, but really bad for the individual. Makes sense. I think it's, we're not... We are not designed to... our biology is not inclined to make us feel content and happy and secure and it takes a lot of work like to counteract that that impulse how have you done it um i mean i i i struggle with it like everybody else i i i i try to walk through this process like how am i gonna like am i it's not that to me like going like okay hey if i get on the other side of this this accomplishment this achievement whatever it's not going to make me feel so it's not going to magically fill some hole in my soul that doesn't mean it's not worth doing i can find other reasons to do it like it's challenging it's interesting um you know it's it's beneficial to people around me like there's other reasons to do it so i i and then what i find is that if i'm doing it for those different reasons the outcome if i'm lucky enough to get it i uh i feel differently about it too because there's not there's not a false expectation that was impossible to meet but i i think i i i mean i i'm constantly trying to to stop and go why do i why do i keep finding myself in this same why of you know and the definition of insanity is trying the same thing over and over again expecting different results like that's that's like the kind of the human condition and i'm like why

why do i keep sort of backing myself into this corner finding myself going down this lane and then i'm like i know better than this i'm doing it i think i'm doing it better than i was when i was 19 but like i'm still doing some version of it and i think that's kind of we're all battling these kind of scripts or these patterns that we picked up on in our lives and we're we're trying to get a little trying to get a little better at it as we go yeah it's uh reminds me of the saying

nothing nothing's what it's cracked up to be but well how did you get into this i was socialism i

was your interest yeah uh it's funny i was in college i was taking a philosophy class and then i went to this uh i went to this conference i was i wrote for the college newspaper and um i asked the the guy who's speaking i said like hey you got any book recommendations and he was like you know i'm reading this guy epitetus i think you would like it and i ended up getting somehow i i forget how but i ended up with marcus realis instead probably because i saw the movie gladiator and and uh and i just i opened this book and i go what the fuck has this been you know like um this is what like this exists like this is this advice is there like and it kind of just it kind of just turned my world upside down how so just just that i think i think all young people anyone coming of age but but but men especially in this world are looking for like the path like what should you do what should you not do and they're looking for it in a way that like school doesn't address they're looking for it in a way that the church doesn't address i mean especially i think i think in some ways like uh uh you know So sports programs and definitely maybe like a military tradition it is based on certain values and uh you're you're being inducted into a way of life right um but if you don't have that um you know you go away to college and they're like you can do whatever you want like you can be whoever you want you can do whatever you want if it feels good it's right you know um you just have effectively unlimited choice right like we live in a world like religion used to go like hey don't do these things or you'll go to hell and i think obviously that puts a lot of fear and shame and control on people that's not good um but the problem is when you when you say hey do whatever you want nothing's wrong everything's right trust your gut you know like the last thing a 19 year should be doing is trusting their gut, like you're an idiot, you know? Especially like a 19-year-old dude, you know? And so, I think what struck me about stoicism was like, oh, this is a 2,500-year tradition. This is a tradition that's been followed by the most powerful people in the world, some of the most powerless people in the world. Epictetus is a slave. And these are people that were dealing with uncertainty and chaos and disorder and dysfunction they were dealing with temptation

they were dealing with adversity they were dealing with loss and pain and hey they they wrote some of their experiences down and they they put it into a framework that that is actually strikingly modern let's just say it's timeless and i think that's what like sitting at the the table in my college apartment i was like oh okay like this makes sense to me in a 21 you were the director

of marketing for american apparel yeah how did that happen uh an insane i mean it says more about

the company than it does about me you know it was a dysfunctional crazy uh you know uh shit show really um but uh yeah it got to be a huge company it was i mean it was a huge company when i when i started there i i i had nothing to do with it becoming what it became um but i got sort of thrown into the deep end um and and yeah it was uh yeah my 20s were nuts um but i i i watched a you know a guy create a billion dollar company and then destroy a billion dollar company and um i watched people get caught up in it i watched people get sort of spun sideways by it Um, I watched people enable it, you know, um, I enabled it and so I, you know, in a way it was like, it was, um, it was quite an education in, I mean, it was like, it was like a king's court. like he was the sort of king and everyone was uh you know currying favor and wanted something and you know it was it was a it it certainly informed like what i ended up writing about a lot

at 25 you wrote trust me i'm lying yeah where did that come from um it was also you know american

Apparel was one of the sort of most controversial companies in the world at that time. And so, you know, I had sort of a window seat to how the media environment worked. And then I worked with a number of other sort of controversial clients and stuff over the years. So I wrote an expose on sort of the media system and marketing and PR. I mean, I basically wrote a book on fake news in 2011. That's what it seems like. Yeah. Yeah. The funny thing is I thought I thought um I remember trying to get the book out as quickly as possible going like like this is right now and you know and if anything I was probably 10 years early um but I was I was watching how like the sausage got made right like how true stories got distorted and how made up stories became true and how people could get attention, what attention would do to people, the incentives of the media system. And so the book was me kind of trying to rip back the curtain on. on what that was and how it worked. Can you go into it a little bit? Yeah, I mean, it's funny, because I mean, I wrote that book before. Because it is, it's now. Yeah, but it's funny, it's like, you know, I wrote that book before TikTok existed, before I think maybe Instagram had just come out. I was writing mostly about a world of blogs and, you know, sort of not traditional media, but like traditional media as it was being intersected by social media. And I mean, if anything, just all those trends have accelerated now. But it was, ultimately, what I'm trying to say in the book is like, you have to think about the incentives operating on both sides of the equation. The people that are trying to get messages out and then the people who are communicating those messages. and that everyone is effectively competing for attention in this enormous ecosystem or this marketplace. And so in a world where it used to be, okay, half the country subscribes to the New York Times, half subscribes to Washington Post. Now both these papers have an agenda. There's a bias, but mostly they're trying to deliver value for the subscribers of this paid product. And they're putting out a 40 page newspaper where once you buy it, all the information is there, right? Like if you look at like the headline in the New York Times for the Pentagon Papers, it's like, there's no sensationalism in it. There's no crazy, because like you're not buying the New York Times in Grand Central Station with a news boy

like, shouting, like, extra, extra, read all about it, right? Which was the media environment in the late 1800s and early 1900s. And so basically what the internet did is it broke all that apart and it made it so every story, every headline, every article, every clip is competing with everything else out there, right? So it's like, what's the craziest? What tells people what they want to hear? what pisses people off, right? What offers the most certainty? That's what draws, like an analogous way, like what happened in the early to mid 2000s is akin to what's happening now with podcasts, like which I'm sure you've experienced, which is like there was this period where podcasts were long form interviews that subscribers of that podcast listened to, right? So you have all the subscribers to this show and you think about like delivering high quality guests who you have a long form conversation with and people listen to the whole thing. And then what's been happening the last, I don't know, two years is like the sort of the clip economy, right? Where now it's like about the most sensational clip. Like, so that two hour conversation is distilled down into a 20 second clip or whatever. And what that's doing is creating, as I'm sure you're seeing it with peers of yours is like a lot of competition for like the craziest clips like gotcha moments or conversely like you're just having the same conversation but then people are coming and cutting out those clips and spreading them and so now it's creating a lot of pressure and a lot of noise and changing the incentives of the medium and so what I was writing about in Trust Me I'm Lying was that sort of first wave of that happening where, like, now you don't read a website. You read articles from that website. And you only read them because it's showing up in your Facebook feed or it's showing up in Twitter or it's because somebody emailed it to you, right? And that's creating an incentive, a bias, towards certain kinds of emotion. Like, for instance, they found that, like, the valence of the extremeness of the emotion is, like, the number one predictor of virality. so like something that makes you feel pretty good is not going to be shared as something that makes you extremely angry or something that makes you kind of angry is not going to spread as well as something that makes you laugh really hard and so it's creating this incentive for extremes right so everything becomes an exaggerated you know distorted version of itself to meet that and then you layer on top of that like this is the first in the sort of blog world one of the

first kind of big breakthroughs was like reporters or influencers or whatever you you were you were your job performance was like how much traffic your article got or how many views your video got right um which is different than how journalists had basically been paid for the entirety of the institution. And so, in the same way that you wouldn't want a journalist to own shares in a stock that they were reporting on, now they own stock in the story. Instead of being like, hey, it's complicated and we don't know, which isn't going to do well, it shapes the story that they're writing and i think what we're seeing now now that people are working for outlets less and less and working for themselves more and more like are you going to tell your sub stack audience what they don't want to hear are you going to have a guest on like not you but like you can imagine someone in a different financial position um you're like hey when i when i have these kind of guests my patreon numbers go down and when i have these kind of guests my patreon numbers go up or, you know, um, donations go up when I do this and they go down when I do this. And so now again, these financial incentives are acting on the information that people are getting and people are not good at evaluating the reliability of the person they're getting information on. We're just really bad at it.

When I'm traveling in the summer, the routine is always the first thing to slip. Different schedule, different bed, late nights, early mornings, and you're usually not eating the same way you would at home. And that's why I rely on AG1. It takes 30 seconds, one scoop, 8 ounces of water, and I know I'm getting a daily health drink with a multivitamin, pre- and probiotics, superfoods, and antioxidants. And the next-gen formula delivers 75-plus ingredients that are clinically shown to support gut health, fill common nutrient gaps, and improve key nutrient levels within three months. For me, it's one simple thing I can keep consistent, whether I'm home, on the road, filming, or trying to get back on track after a long weekend. Visit drinkag1.com slash SRS to get a free AG1 travel case with seven free AG1 travel packs in your welcome kit with your first AG1 subscription. Order while supplies last. That's drinkag1.com slash SRS. I think we've lost that because I think that the thirst for real information has significantly diminished because now people are more concerned with confirming their opinions and their own thoughts. And so rather than actually search for some kind of truth or really try to figure out what the hell is going on, what's at the bottom of this, instead of doing that and spending the time to research and hear other opinions and perspectives, they immediately sift through everything they possibly can to find the one person that is going to tell them everything that they're thinking is correct, and then it turns into they tell them how to think. Yeah. And it's become like this lazy search for just confirming your own biases, opinions,

and thoughts. Yeah. And there's always going to be someone who will fill that need. So like we saw this like in the aftermath of the 2020 election, right? It's like, oh, if you're not going to tell the audience what they want to hear, then they're just going to go watch this channel. And if that channel isn't going to do it, they're going to watch this channel. And so it's hard, like choice is good, but the problem with choice when it comes to information is that you're creating a market incentive for people to lie to you. um and typically that incentive is mitigated or by the fact that the media outlet is owned by a big company or the reporter themselves is a salaried employee who identifies as a journalist or a writer or whatever there it's different when it's like no no like i write for substack and I am directly dependent on how many subscribers I have, paying subscribers. So, like, audience capture, there's fewer intermediaries between the creator and the sort of payment structure. Now, in many ways, it's great for creators because there's fewer people taking, you know, picking their pocket along. the way but it also means that they are directly exposed to um some perverse incentive like audience captures right there there's an influence yeah and and like it takes a person it takes it takes some character and some self-control and some ideals to be like no no no i i i have an audience the audience doesn't have me like I say what I think needs to be said not what's gonna do well

that's what I try to do I think that's what you do too yeah I mean do you think that because I've always been more of a long game person than a short game and so I see exactly what you're talking about all the time and I would say that the majority of those people don't last very long eventually it patters out and but by being being true to yourself and not being beholden to an audience or financial incentive or whatever I mean you're you're gonna do this and it's a

fucking roller coaster yeah yeah they're they're outraged about this and then oh no no we're not outraged about that anymore now we're outraged about this and no no actually i never said that like they're you're you're surfing you're surfing the audience and it's both exhausting and also it just doesn't feel like success to me right like if if success is like i have to tell you what you want to hear then like i work for you it's boring anyway i mean just to sit in here i

mean i get a lot of people pissed at me right now because i've leaned across the aisle because i like i like new perspectives that's how shit gets done you know and and but i just don't i just don't care you know it's i'm like this is it's what i'm gonna do i'm just i'm not gonna be beholden to anybody on who i talk to and do not talk to yeah and and i it's boring to me to sit there and talk to somebody that has the exact same opinion to me over and over just to confirm to each other that we're the we're in the right way of thinking but i i'm i'm curious how you navigate it because i've you know when i started this thing it was uh just military guys and you know intelligence folks and people that i'd worked with in the past and i really just wanted to kind of correct the record and actually have people that had been in the events that these reporters were talking about. Like, well, actually, here's what actually happened from a guy that was there, you know? And then we started talking about political issues, issues with kids, like lots of different problems that society faces, and it would be a discussion inside one of those. And then to make a bigger impact, i actually started going to this to the to the lawmakers yeah you know to the people in charge people that can make a difference and um and then i realized they all just lie to you you know and they use the platform to to advance themselves and so now now i'm extremely particular even have friends that are running for senate for congress for whatever places in the administration doesn't matter yeah you know and um i won't have them on interesting because i just you're just gonna tell me what you think i want to hear and what i think my audience what you think my audience wants to hear yeah and then even if you do have great intentions i've seen it too many times you're going to get in there you're not going to make an impact you're not going to they're going to own your ass you're not going to be put on committees if you go against the grain and you're just going to turn into the same shit that we see every single time.

Yeah.

But if you do hold true to your word, I'll help you with your re-election.

Yeah.

You know? That's interesting.

Yeah, I think deciding what you're going to be a part of and not be a part of to me is like what it's kind of all about. and um i think i've been amazed at the degree to which um people i know don't think about like hey is this a good person do i agree with them and just not just agree with them but like are they a bad actor or a you know uh someone at least operating from good faith or whatever and they just think about like how's this gonna do you know and like to me success and

platform comes with responsibilities not not just like hey how do you look yourself in the mirror but like like people are if they see you have someone on or they see you writing about something or talking about something like they assume that it's not a co-sign but you're you're you're you're participating right you're like you're they go oh they wouldn't have this person on if they were a psychopath or a lot like people like i just think there's a responsibility that comes from having a platform or having influence and it's a huge responsibility yeah people make

decisions based off what's said in this room yeah like life-changing decisions yeah yeah there's um

there was i remember finding when i was writing trust me i'm lying there's some some and it's funny, none of this stuff is new. There was this media critic, and he was writing in the late 1800s, early 1900s. And he says, America is a country ruled by public opinion. That's what a democracy is. And he says, therefore, what determines public opinion rules America. And so the people that own newspapers, yeah, sure, it's a for-profit business. But they are responsible for something that in a way affects like the whole country and that there has to be a response. He was saying there has to be a responsibility, that these things are kind of public trusts. And look, again, I think you get in a real problem territory when the government is deciding, you know, like I'm not saying it should be like this. This isn't something that should be legally policed, but like if the people with the platforms are not policing themselves, that's a problem. Right? Because then, basically, people without character, people with agendas, they can take advantage of that. You know, they take advantage of that. And we're so consumed in America by, like, our political disagreements that we forget that there's people outside America that are also trying to steer and navigate this discourse. Right. And just as by the way, historically, we have done that in other countries, but like we seem to think that like the only agenda someone could have is like left or right, not like Russian, Chinese, Iranian, like, like our, our enemies see these gaping holes in our media system. And they see these people who are basically available to the highest bidder and they're like, do I want to go to a war with America or do I want to make America go to war with itself? And I think one of the things I was trying to write in Trust Me, I'm Lying is like, hey, look, here's how I'm getting you to buy t-shirts or getting you to follow this brand or this person or whatever. but like real bad people can do these same things and in fact are doing these same things and i think that to me though the even the craziest part of our system isn't just like that bad actors can do but also like the system can manipulate itself just like like it's so primed for for like going to where the energy the action is that sometimes things that start as jokes become real things or things that start as the most harebrained conspiracy theory that you could imagine, like, becomes real.

Like, I live in this town called Bastrop, Texas. And one of the first ones that really caught my eye on this, do you remember the Jade Helm conspiracy? No. There was this conspiracy that, like, this is during, this is 2015, so it's during the Obama administration. They were doing, like, these big training exercises in like the south and the southwest um and uh this conspiracy theory comes out that like it's actually this false it's like this crazy operation where they're gonna like um i don't know the federal government was gonna like occupy the southern states it was like the faux military training exercise as a pretext to like start a civil war or something it was this Conspiracy theory that starts online and starts on Facebook. And one of the exercises was happening in where I live. And, like, the governor of Texas ends up sending the National Guard to observe the exercises to make sure this didn't happen as if that could do anything. But anyways, the point was, it came out in the years after that this was mostly...

like a foreign sort of propagated theory. Like this thing, some crazy person online said this and then-

It was objected from a foreign influence.

And then, yeah, exactly. Like they went and they put energy behind, they put spend behind it and spread it and whatever. And so it was like, oh, okay. So again, we're so consumed with like what we're doing to each other that we don't think about the fact that other people have an even bigger incentive to get us really focused on this or that. And so, again, you know, countries that are real close to Russia, like Finland, they spend a lot of time teaching media literacy to their kids because they know that it's real. And they know that these operations and this agenda is right there all the time. And I think we live in a bubble because we've so often been the exporter of culture that we don't think about the ways that, you know, different nations, causes, et cetera, have a vested interest in directing that culture in certain ways. And so that's one of the things I was talking about in the book too.

Yeah, I've, uh, I mean, I've, like I said, I've changed my tune since the last election. And, you know, what I've realized is I think, I think that the, you can have a better, bigger impact in just initiating, in how you initiate certain conversations rather than who you initiate them with. If you start the conversation properly and plant the seed, then it will grow. It will grow into what it needs to be instead of trying to hit the head honcho and pour your ideas into them and hold them accountable. Interesting. What do you mean? i mean that what do i mean i mean that i've just everybody i've brought on here that that that can make an immediate impact that is in a position to make an immediate impact they always fall short okay no matter what they tell you but what i have noticed is the things that that that just in my own personal experience with some of the discussions that i've had in here The biggest impact that we've made is by starting a conversation and watching the conversation grow through regular people, through the population, not from getting direct to a president, a congressman, a senator, a CEO of a company, somebody that owns a nonprofit, whatever. It's the conversation that happens that engages the population has a much, much bigger impact than going directly to the decision maker.

have you heard that expression that politics is downstream from culture no i think that's sort of what you're saying is like uh what matters is the consensus or the idea like the the energy the vibe is more important than like a single decision maker which is by the way our whole system like we have a decentralized system so where decision making is decentralized and widespread because the founders were so concerned about sort of man on horseback. And so there really isn't one singular person who can make a difference. Now, the problem is that has also allowed a lot of people who are in positions of power to abdicate their responsibility to make a difference, right? Like everyone, everyone is trying to save their jobs for some point in the future when they'll be the decision maker, you know? And like, look, you do need those people, but chances are you're not that person. Yeah. Like chances are you should do the right thing right now. Yeah.

It's interesting. It's interesting. I think, what do you think it is? I think it's addiction to power, but then looking at it from the outside, and it does appear that they have a lot of power. But then when you see it and you're like, you're fucking completely powerless because you're not saying what needs to be said, even though you know exactly what the fuck you need to do because you want to hang on to the fake power that you think you have. But you're actually powerless because you're not saying what you know needs to be said because you know you won't have that position anymore when that position represents your power, your relevance in society. I think the difference here, there's power and there's status, right? And so they don't exercise

the power because they want to keep the status like i mean look thomas massey is is is not going to be a congressman much longer um the irony is when you meet a lot of these politicians privately not only will they tell you a bunch of things they won't say in public but they will also tell you how much they don't like their job like they fucking hate it like it's a miserable job they don't like their colleagues they think there's a lot of you know performance and they have to spend all this time fundraising they don't like the job and yet when it comes down to these votes that seem to me to be very clearly conscience-based or very stark moral choices um they're like well i gotta do what i know is wrong to keep this job that i don't fucking like i'm like i don't get it at all it doesn't make any sense to me right but the problem is i remember i sitting in the senate dining room talking to um uh senator and and i was saying like hey why don't you guys you know you and i probably have very different politics but i was like why don't you know this trump thing is crazy like what are we doing here and um i was like why don't you speak out about it you know and um and he goes see that guy over there and he's like yeah and he's like That guy was going to be head of the CIA. And he's, and I go, okay. And he's like, and then, I could probably say who it was. He said that the White House was like adult daycare over there. I think it was Senator Corker. And he's like, he's not even going to be a senator anymore. You know, he was like, that guy was in line for the next office, the next level, and he made a comment. And it's not happening anymore. And the guy was basically saying, like, that's why. And he was laying it out, like, it is crazy. Because, like, me as a citizen, I'm like, you're one of the, you know, hundred most powerful people in the world. And that's not how they see themselves. And so, I don't know. Why would you want... And look, I write about this. I wrote this book on Courage. I talk about, I was once, when I was at American Barrel, I was once asked to do this thing that was profoundly wrong and immoral. And I didn't do it, but I thought about doing it and I struggled with doing it. And the reason that I didn't challenge my boss about it was that I didn't want to get fired, right? Now, in retrospect, why would I want to keep a job that speaking up about something that was wrong would get you fired from? That's crazy. It doesn't make any sense. But these are the equations that we make in our heads. But why would you want to work in an administration where even the slightest criticism gets you on the shit list? It's not going to be a good job.

This job that you dreamed of having your whole life, it's not what you think it is, right? Like, they just showed you it's not what you think it is. But we rationalize. Everybody is saving themselves for this thing. Higher calling? This higher calling. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I remember, you know Adam Kinzinger? Mm-hmm. I remember he was saying he felt like a lot of... I was talking to him once, and he was telling me that he feels like members of Congress tell themselves there's a super Congress, and their job is, like, that super Congress will take care of it. And it's like, no, no, you were elected to take care of this. This is what we sent you to Washington. We didn't send you there to be in the job for as long as you could have it. We sent you there to represent our interests and to solve the problems of governance, right? That's the fucking job. And you think your job is to continue to be congressman or congresswoman. And you're so afraid of being the former senator from Massachusetts or the former congresswoman from California, that you aren't making the tough decisions that you have to make. And, look, one of the things I've been trying to remind myself of is, like, it is very easy as citizens to be like, why aren't these people risking their jobs to do what is right? And why aren't they putting themselves out there? And then it's like you, and by you, I mean like the person listening, you are working a job you fuckin' hate, and you know you could be doing something different or better, you're working in an industry that you know is fucked up, like, blah, blah, blah. What was the last risk you took like that? Like, you know what I mean? It's very easy to evaluate the moral choices and the comp... and the contradictions in other people. And of course, as citizens, it's our job to do that and to throw those people out. We cannot keep this republic, as Benjamin Franklin said, if we don't do that. However, to me, the main purpose of looking at this, the cowardice and the contradictions and the shamelessness and the sort of petty turf wars is it should be a mirror reflected back at ourselves and go, well, I could be doing more. Like I could be, I tell my kids to follow their dreams and then I'm like not doing it, you know? And so I don't know. I just think it's really easy to kind of just point this like judgment lens at washington or the state house or

whatever but ultimately you've got to point it at yourself yeah i would it's interesting you bring

that up because i wanted to talk to you about hypocrisy being a hypocrite i'm i'm sure we all are i mean i'm real one of us yes real quick to point it out and everybody else but i do do a lot of self-reflection and i talked a lot you know how can i improve when i'm always thinking about that whether it's being a dad being a businessman being a pod whatever it is you know and and i can't find the i can't find my own hypocrisy does that make sense on on i don't know what it is i don't know i mean now i'm sure it'll show up in the comments section the comments helpful for that but uh but i don't i i can't see it in myself a lot of times i can't see it in

myself right yeah right now no no i mean look this is why this is why a company's got to have a board of directors this is why a president is supposed to have a cabinet i think the most alarming thing about where we are politically right now is that not only are a lot of the of governmental checks and balances not there. But a lot of the cultural checks and balances aren't there. Like the press is supposed to be hostile to power. And the cabinet is like, the founders set up a system where ambition was supposed to be a check against ambition, right? The Congress was supposed to zealously enforce its prerogatives. Like part of being a senator, like part of the perk of being a senator and having a six year term, whereas the president has a four year term, is you're supposed to be able to go like this to the president when the president is wrong. Right. Like Congress has war making powers, not the president. But if Congress decides that they don't want to enforce that power, then the president has that power, right? And, you know, if we have a partisan news environment where the left-wing media slobbers all over a left-wing president and the right-wing media slobbers all over the right-wing president, and then if the president has a cabinet and has been allowed to confirm a cabinet of people who are dependent on him and um fully bought in on him then the president's never going to hear no and never going to hear uh that's a dumb fucking idea like uh what about this what about that um and and so i mean we know historically what happens when people in positions of power are not subject to any checks and balances and when their information diet is degraded. Like one of the oldest stories that we have about this is that the emperor has no clothes, right? And when everyone says, hey, sir, we love your new outfit, and he's walking around naked, there was a reason, there's a moral to that story. And it's funny, actually, Marcus Aurelius, the reason Marcus Aurelius becomes emperor is actually like 2,000 years earlier in illustration of that story. So Hadrian does not have a son. He's the emperor of Rome. He doesn't have a son. So he has to choose his successor. And there's this kid. He's a member of a sort of prestigious Roman family who somehow he meets.

that kid is marx realis and um for some reason marx really says a young kid just doesn't seem to be intimidated by the emperor at all and he tells him the truth and you can imagine that the the emperor of rome does not hear the truth very often it's actually a famous story about hadrian where hadrian is in an argument with one of his advisors who's a philosopher and uh some it's like it's uh we don't know exactly what it was about but it was something where it was like it's like an objective you know like uh anyways the the philosopher ends up saying you know what sir you're right you're i was wrong you're right and um later one of his friends comes up to him and he says you know why did you tell the emperor he was right like the like the math equation is very clear. He's wrong. And the philosopher looks at him and he says, this is what you don't understand. The man who controls 50 legions is always correct. People don't tell powerful people the truth because they are afraid of powerful people. And Marx really supposedly tells the emperor Hadrian the truth. And his nickname is Varismus, the truest one. Part of what makes Hadrian ultimately select Marcus Aurelius is that he is like the boy in the story, The Emperor Has No Clothes, who actually says to the emperor, sir, you're naked. What are you talking about? Like, I don't care what these people said. You don't have any fucking clothes on. You got conned, right? And so you, as you become powerful and important, and as you, this is why revenge is bad. When you get a reputation for punishing your enemies, or punishing your perceived enemies, like critics, it degrades your picture of the world because you have just sent a message to everyone around you. Do not challenge that person. Do not tell them the truth. Do not tell them what they don't want to hear. Like, do you think there were many advisors who told Putin that invading Ukraine would be a bad idea? Like, do you think anyone laid out, like, this is how bad it could go?

No.

No, because you don't want to end up fucking in a plane crash, right? Or, like, you don't want to fall out a fourth-story window. And so oftentimes you think you want control. You think you want people on board. You think you want true believers. And you don't. Like, the antagonistic, hostile, like, the system of government we have is set up there for a reason. Even the so-called deep state is also there for, like, you want career governmental employees who are not necessarily political. I mean, there can be problems with it, too. I don't mean to overstate it, but, like, you want a bureaucracy that doesn't want to swing too far in one direction or the other direction. You want Congress to be oppositional. You want your cabinet to have their own political ambitions. Like, Lincoln staffs his cabinet with his political rivals because he wants, he knows that what he has to do is extremely difficult. And if he only has people telling him what he wants to hear, he will not actually be able to do it. And so that, to me, is what alarms me about where we are.

I'm just, you know, you brought up an interesting point about, I mean, where do you draw the line between sending a message, maybe not revenge or vengeance, but sending a message, because I've done this where I will never initiate, I shouldn't say never, I will not initiate arguments, blast people, get in fights on the internet. I just think this shit's stupid and it's a waste of time and causes a lot of stress. But there have been times where powerful people come after me, and then I think it is, that just, I think it, for a variety of reasons, I think it's important to stand up and to engage. one to set an example to anybody else out there that's planning on coming after me if you do come after me this is what the fuck's going to happen if you back me into a corner i think it also gives other people courage i just went through one of these at the beginning of the year a congressman um went after me and i went right back at him and now he's no longer in fucking congress yeah But, you know, I did that because I started this in my attic. So I still, I don't, I'm still coming to the full realization of the magnitude of the shit that can come out of here because I still consider myself that guy in the attic that was doing this with my wife. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

small thing and but so i'm kind of in the middle of you know does that make sense but i also did that because i wanted to show people like you don't have to get fucking pushed around by these people man yeah they're gonna come after you and it is scary to have somebody that high up in government coming after you but they don't have as much power as you think they do yeah and i just prove that yeah and at the same time i don't want to you know for for for my immediate team like i i ask anybody that's been here for a little bit you know that's especially the guys that have been here from the beginning which is only a handful of them yeah i'm always asking them like hey what do you think of this am i off am i off on this right you know and i think they tell me you know especially my top two guys tell me they tell me yeah but you know i don't want to do you see what

i'm getting at no totally i think look sometimes you gotta establish some deterrence or you get you get pushed around i think that's important um but yeah i i do think what we're talking about culturally is the problem like we we want people to stand up we want people to to do the right thing and then what examples do they have of that happening and i think we're in like almost like a cultural death spiral of a lack of those examples and so i do think it's important um but making a martyr of yourself you know is is usually not a great thing to do but like the idea that like uh there are more people out there that feel this way than people think is really important and because it's so easy to think like oh everyone's going along with this everyone's okay with this like this is just this is just what we have to put up with and and i it's important like acts of courage like cowardice is contagious and so is courage um moral courage and physical courage like if you see someone else do it it changes your sense of what's possible and what um is sort of uh the cultural expectation and i think when i say we're in a death spiral it's like it's like everyone is saving themselves for some crisis and it's like dude this is the crisis this is it man um what are you how much worse are you expecting it to get um and and look like the stoics are not exempt from this as i said uh seneca works for nero now seneca probably told himself he was the adult in the room, that he was making Nero less bad, and that he prevented Nero from doing a lot of bad stuff. And he almost certainly did. But as a result, he also allowed Nero to do a lot of bad stuff. And these are not easy moral choices. And the only reason I think, like, 2,000 years later, it becomes a little clearer, right? But in the moment, they are vexing emotional and moral choices. And when you're asking someone to choose, hey, you're going to lose your job over this. You're going to be attacked. Maybe your family will be threatened. There's a lot to ask of people. I get that. But chances are, when you look back, you're going to wish you did more. You're going to wish you said more. You're going to wish you, you're not going to be like,

I'm so glad I waited and uh because here's the thing about waiting is that you can always tell yourself that this isn't the right time that like again no no no I need to be I need to stay in the room till the real crisis happens and then and what you've actually done is over and over and over again, built the habit of not doing the thing, right? It's a damn good point. And the idea that suddenly, when you're at the second to the top level, that's when you're gonna gamble at all and do the hard thing. Like, you have to build it as a habit. Like, Aristotle said that it was wrong to think of virtue as this thing that you have or don't have. Like that people are born courageous or born generous or simply are, you know, smart or, you know, any of the things that we hold up is good. He's like, no, no, no. It's a verb, not a noun. thing you are doing or not doing. Like, courage is a muscle you are exercising. Like, speaking truth to power is a muscle you are exercising. It's a thing you are doing, not a thing you are or aren't. And so, the good news about that is, like, if you want to be generous, if you want to be a generous person, you can start right now. Like, start tipping bigger. Like, tie the percentage of your salary, right? You can start doing that right now. That's the good news. The bad news is, if you are not doing it, you are building the habit and the muscle of not being that person. And it becomes harder and harder to break as the stakes get higher and higher. That's a damn good point.

Ryan, let's take a quick break. All right. Most guys try to cover up body odor with cologne or body spray, but if you've been training, traveling, out in the heat, on long flights, or just grinding through a long day, that only goes so far. That's why I use Mando. Mando is a whole body deodorant, so it's not just for your underarms. You can use it on your pits, feet, below the belt, basically anywhere sweat and odor become an issue. What I like is Mando handles odor at the source instead of just trying to cover it up. It's safe to use anywhere on your body. They've got solid deodorant sticks, sprays for harder to reach places, clinically proven to block odor all day and control it for up to 72 hours. Want to try America's number one whole body deodorant formula right now? For the best deals, go to ShopMando.com and use code SRS for 20% off. S-H-O-P-M-A-N-D-O dot com. Please support our show and tell them we sent you. Mando's got you covered. With deodorant plus sweat control, say goodbye to sweat stains and hello to long-lasting freshness. Again, go to ShopMando.com and use code SRS for 20% off. S-H-O-P-M-A-N-D-O dot com. Welcome to Hollywood vs. Reality. Did I do it? Right? What does he do in the movies? Tell me if I'm doing this wrong, because I don't watch any of this. A little flick like that, right? Seems pretty cool. It is pretty cool. Gotta silence it. in another lifetime i did gun reviews for a living proprietary magazines supposedly the best engineering in the world when that breaks you're and now we're bringing them back it does look pretty cool i gotta i gotta admit that all right ryan we're back from the break i want to dive into ego okay ego is the enemy

wrote a whole book on this yeah where do we start i mean is there anyone that thinks ego is good like is there anyone who's like we need some bigger egos around here that'll help i don't think so uh i like to think of ego as as being the thing that gets between you and whatever it that you want to do. So in a way, like, I'm not saying, like, oh, be sort of humble so low to the ground that you don't want anything, you don't try to do anything. Like, I actually think ego is the enemy of the ambition that you have. Like, whatever you're trying to do, like, what you need is a sense of reality, you need self-awareness, you need a sense of connection, you need truth. Like, the ingredients to doing what you want to do are for the most part not delusion and grandiosity and selfishness. It's the opposite of that. So when I say ego is the enemy, I'm not saying think you're a piece of shit. I'm saying just don't think you're God's gift to humanity. Confidence to me is somewhere in the middle between those two extremes. um and uh and yeah chances are ego is causing the problems not solving the problems and

personally or in your organization how do you keep yours in check i mean you're an extremely successful guy well i mean a lot of people that find success and then their ego just fucking

explodes yeah i look the first first and foremost admitting that you have one and that it is a problem is like a critical step like like if i'm sitting here going like let me tell you how to conquer your ego because i don't have one like be really

suspicious because you know i mean my ego causes problems for me all the time um it's something i try to work on it's something i try to work on and i'd be aware of and and knowing that yeah like success inflates the ego success uh it not just inflates the ego but it it enables people around you to inflate the ego right like in in a way you need to be more self-critical and aware the more more successful you are for the reasons we were just talking about, which is the air is thinner and you get less. Not only do you get less feedback, but you got this really important piece of feedback that can be really misleading, which is like you did something that wasn't supposed to be possible. You didn't listen to the critics and doubters and haters. and so do you take from that that you know better than everyone else right like this happens to a lot of entrepreneurs like everyone said it was a bad idea everyone said it didn't work how do you know when to listen in the future like like when Elon Musk started uh SpaceX which was his second company with the money that he made from his first company like his friends had like a literal intervention like you cannot do this this is a bad bad idea you will lose everything i mean it's going to go public and be a multi-trillion dollar company right so like they were wrong so how does he now and by the way this is also true for tesla that was supposedly a bad idea right like how does he i think this is again a sort of larger life story that should help us understand this in our own lives. Like, how does he know in future instances not to just listen to himself, right? And so, you know, he's done some real dumb stuff too. And that's what ego does, is that sense of, I don't need to listen to you, I know better.

So with that, earlier we were chatting about trusting your gut instinct.

Yeah.

Obviously, Elon trusted his gut instinct when it came to SpaceX. and it was, it is wildly successful. Maybe the biggest company in the world. Yeah. And, you know, and so how do you differentiate what to take in from external influences

and what got instincts to trust? Well, to me, it comes down to, like, the story you tell yourself, right? So, like, when I went to my publisher and I was like, hey, I want to write a book about stoic philosophy, They were not like, cha-ching, you know? Like, they were like, what? You know, that sounds like a horrible idea. Like, literally, they were like, eh? And I think I've said this before, but I took less than half what I took. For the book that became The Obstacles Away, I took less than half what I got for Trust Me, I'm Lying. So, like, they thought it was going to be less than 50% successful. as successful. So what's the lesson that I take from that? Like, I mean, it ended up selling millions of copies and being this big thing. Like, do I take from that, like, those fucking idiots at my publisher don't know shit, right? Do I take from that, like, I'm a genius that I can see around corners that I, that like, I know what the people want? Or do I take from this, like, hey, I had what I thought was a pretty good idea, and I could see how it wasn't an obvious home run to some other people. And the reason it succeeded is because of, you know, I did the work. I was willing to roll the dice anyway. And also because, like, the downsides of being wrong were not that either. I took a risk and it paid off. It wasn't a certainty that I knew. It's I took a risk and it paid off. So again, you could take, and we have a thousand examples of this, but you could take from this, hey, I'm a genius. I know better. That's ego. Or you can go, hey, I took a risk and it paid off. That's to me confidence with some self-awareness in there. And so whatever story you tell yourself about why you are where you are, it doesn't change what happened. Like, the event doesn't know that you're telling a story about it, but it does change how you make future decisions. Mm-hmm. Right? Like, if you feel like you're anointed, if you feel like the rules don't apply, if you feel like you can defy gravity, you know, all these things make it really likely that, in the future, you're going to overreach. And that tends to be what successful people... do, right? They tend to overreach. And so that's what I think you want to take from, like, trust your gut, but trust the right part about it, not the delusional part of it. Do you feel that you have ever overreached? Yeah. I mean, I try to think mostly back around the calls that I made where I was super wrong. Like, I don't think about the fights I had with my publisher where I ended

up being right i think about the times where i insisted on getting my way and in retrospect they had a point you know i try to think about the the times where you know i didn't listen to the feedback um and i would have saved myself a painful bump on the head had i done so and i think that's healthy. I mean, again, if you focus on all the things you know, you don't get any better. If you focus on what you don't know, you can get better. If you focus on where you fell short, you can make improvements. And if you focus on what you got right, you're just jerking yourself off. How about humility? I mean, I think humility is important. To me, confidence is confidence is an awareness of strength and an awareness of weakness like to me the story of David and Goliath is at its core uh about the power of both those things right um David doesn't think oh I'm anointed by God therefore I of course I can defeat Goliath right um if if if he knew that he was preordained to win he would have just you know rushed heedlessly into battle and uh let god take care of it right like the story to me that the the critical part in the story of david and goliath is when david tries on the armor of the soldier his brothers and it's too big and he goes i can't do this like this isn't gonna work i'm he's like as a shepherd he's just not able to operate as a traditional warrior. And that's when he turns to the sling, right? The sling is, hey, he's bigger than me. He's stronger than me. He's better trained than me. I don't have these tools in my toolkit, but I do have this thing, right? And so humility to me is a key element in matching what every battle figurative and literal is about, which is about matching strength against weakness. Like, strength against strength is stupid. It usually creates two losers, even if there's one winner, right? Like, what a great general does, what a great athlete does, what a great entrepreneur does, um, is match strength against weakness, like, and, and by the way, also protects, hides your own weakness, right? Because that's where you don't want their strength to go against yours. So, so to

me, this humility is really important, like knowing what you're not that good at, what you need to get better at, um, is, uh, yeah, it's like a big part of it. How do you keep yourself humble? you know the kids help uh spouse helps um trying to do hard shit helps like if you are only doing what you're really comfortable with and you're never in situations that you're outmatched that you're um that you're out of your depth in you lose that feeling of like oh shit i gotta figure this out And so, like, when I take on projects, one of the things I think about is, like, is this something I've done before? And if it's something I've done before, like, it's not that interesting to me. And if it's something where I'm, like, oh, I'm going to have to figure out a lot of different skills to be able to do this. And this can be in, I don't mean, like, you're reinventing the wheel every time. Like, I just mean, like, what's the element of your game that you're working on? like if you go into the off season and you're like i want to practice getting better at what i'm really good at i think that that is you know not just not just the gains are going to be less than exciting but like it's a sort of a confirmation of ego but if you're like hey no no what i don't what i'm not good at is this what i could get better at is this and that's what you're to spend your time on to me that's that that helps with humility because you're waking up every day and it's hard it sucks um and it's just it's uh you can't you can't feel you can't feel great about how you're doing when you're getting your ass kicked and so how are you seeking out those experiences i think that's really important what about what

just amongst people i mean somebody as successful as yourself you've reached millions of people with your books lots of people seek you out they want to talk to you they want to meet you they want to get on an autograph they want to pick your brain they want to they just want to be around yeah you know and and that can really inflate your ego so how do you navigate that especially how do you

navigate that around your kids yeah yeah it is like when you get recognized around your kids It's a weird thing. My kids, they roll their eyes. And we were in Greece this summer and they started playing this game where they wanted to see if they would see more stray cats than I would get recognized. And the fact that they saw hundreds of more stray cats than I got recognized was like a thing they were just constantly shoving in my face. Which I love. I love. And, you know, so yeah, there is that. I think anything you do in public that has fans or, you know, sort of recognition attached to it can sort of puff you up. I have the benefit in what I do in that it's not mine. Like, I write about an ancient philosophy that has been around for 2,500 years. like the reason the books work is 90% the philosophy and 10% me. And I try to remind myself of that fact. Like I'm a conduit for a thing that not only did I not invent and can't be credited with, I'm not even good at. Like my success in writing about stoicism is very different than my individual journey through stoic philosophy as a human being. And I try to remind myself of do you consider yourself a stoic yeah i mean if this is the philosophy that i am interested in that i am trying to apply in my life do i call myself a stoic i mean i would say i am an an aspiring stoic like i i would certainly not uh claim to have attained any kind of enlightenment or mastery of the stuff like in fact the reason that i'm so driven to write about it and talk about it is because it's like it's really hard and i really struggle with it so i try to remind myself that like like when someone someone comes to me and says like hey your books changed my life they help you know uh or they say stoicism changed my life it got me through cancer whatever it is i go yeah it worked for me too like like we're we're on the same journey like what it's what what what they think um is as is my books is really like the philosophy that i am also a student of if that makes sense it does make sense but it's like you know when um when they interview athletes like in the in the locker room after like a big game and they're like you know all glory to god i think they mean that and i think that's important i also think that's, like, a really important professional adaptation.

Like, if LeBron James or Kobe Bryant or whoever is like, fuck, yeah, that was all fucking me, you know? Like, I'm the greatest, that's bad. Like, that's bad for future performance. It's better to credit, and I don't just mean, like, from a public relations standpoint. Like, you have to mean it. Like, if it's false modesty, it's a pro it's you might as well just own it um but if you're like no this was the team this was the training this is the tradition like you are you are that is that is the right and the healthy way to think about it first off because it's true and second because it's not good for you to put that on and credit yourself for things that why is it not good well i think as i said first of all it's not it's not good because it's not true right like everything is a team sport right and second because it breeds complacency and entitlement and And if it's not a little scary to you and it's not a little hard and you're not questioning your ability to do it, you're probably going in the opposite direction. Like you're, it should be getting, it should always stay challenging and hard or else. It's like, you know, you're lifting weights. When it becomes easy, you grew the muscles and you need to crank the thing up.

Makes sense. Let's move into, how do I word this? People that have experienced death or been close to death, or I guess not experienced death, but they've been around death. People that have killed, people that have seen war, people that have been around death a lot. and kind of knowing when to act, when to let things go, that kind of stuff. I mean, you have a lot to say on that.

I mean, I'd be curious your opinion. I mean, when you experience how fragile life is, does it turn down the volume on stuff for you? For a little bit. Yeah. And then it creeps back.

And then it creeps back.

Yeah.

I liked everything I was reading, and then I did. I compared it to myself, and I was like, you know, a lot of this stuff bleeds back. Yeah. And then you get, you know, in my life journey, in my previous life, it was, you know, there was constant, oh, you're humbled again. Yeah. Oh, you're humbled again. Oh, you're humbled again. Somebody died. Somebody died. We killed somebody. Somebody, you know, and so there's that constant reminder, and you live in that. Yeah. pretty regularly then i left and i'm not around it anymore and things that maybe don't matter or shouldn't matter uh they creep back in and they they they seem like a bigger deal than they are and then i go into my revenge planning or you know what i mean and and it just it i'm just being honest it creeps back in and it creeps back in faster than you would think yeah a friend of mine

is in martial arts was telling me that it's like sweeping the floor you don't sweep it once and it's clean forever it's a constant process of sweeping and i think ego is that way and i think uh like the urgency of life is another one like you go to the doctor and they're like oh check that out there's that moment where you're like oh is this it you know is this did it just get serious or you know you were talking to a friend on friday and then you find out over the weekend they died or um you know natural disaster you know whatever anything that happens and and suddenly you're like oh i forgot we're mortal yeah um that's the stoic practice is memento mori like remember you are mortal um but it it it has to be an active meditation because like we all know objectively that we're all going to die. Like every, every person who's ever lived has, has, has eventually died. Um, there's, there's no way out of life. And, um, we know that although on average, you know, this is about how long you have, um, people die before they should all, all the time. The healthiest people in the world dropped out of a heart attack. The greatest people in the world get, you know, murdered for the money in their wallet. Obviously, wars and natural disasters. It happens. But, you know, then you get a little soft, a little entitled. You drift away from that urgency. And so, yeah, to me, it's an active process of reminding yourself that, yeah, tomorrow is not certain. The future is not yours. One of the, I think, the most powerful ideas from the Stoics, this comes from Seneca. You know, he says it's wrong to think of death as something that happens in the future. Like, that death is something we're moving towards. he says actually death is behind us he says like um the time that passes belongs to death so instead of thinking like you live 80 years he says like you've died however many years you're currently old so like like i'm gonna i turn uh 38 next 38 no 39 next month i don't remember Um, but anyways, like my birthday, I should look back and go, this is how many years I have died. What do I have to show for that? Not how many years do I have left, but what have I, what do I have to show for the time? Because, because how we spend our time is how we spend our life. Right.

And, and so the idea of going like, Hey, oh, you know, I'm, I don't like this, but I'm going to do it until my kids grow up. or I'm gonna do it, you know, for a couple more years. I'm gonna do it till things settle down. Like, you know, we tell ourselves like, we make these assumptions about the future. And really the only thing that's certain is now, the thing you're paying for with your life right now. And so that, I do try to remind myself of that, that like, we don't, the choices we're making about our time right now are the choices that matter. The idea of working something you don't like, deferring something you don't like, because what you really want to do is play golf in your 70s is naive and entitled. And so, by the way, it's just the basic procrastination of like, you know what? I think I'm going to start that project next week. Like, if you're going to do it, you should do it and you should start right now. That, to me, is what you take out of the momentum where you practice.

I really struggle with this. In my personal experience, every time that I have been around death, thought I was going to die, there's only one thing that goes through your mind, and that's your family. That's it. It's not all your shit. It's not all your accomplishments. It's not what you've done at work. It's not any of that. it's not how much fucking money the only thing is like shit you know who's gonna watch out for my family yeah when i'm out of here and uh and then you know that that creates the fight you know to stay alive but what you're what you're talking about i and i still struggle with this no matter how many times i thought i was gonna die or been around it or been close to it i it's been i've had that constant reminder like none of this shit matters yeah the only thing that matters in my head is my family and but then there's the preparation you know i have to hit this financial benchmark i have to hit this i have to hit all these accomplishments or or goals or whatever it may be to make the future of of my life my wife's life my kid's life hopefully easier in the future which takes away from living in the now because it's all planning right well

even more insidious like at some point you would give literally all of it back for five more minutes of time with them right and then here you are fucking doom scrolling on twitter with the five minutes that you have for sure right now like you you would you would you're gonna look back and wish that you could have more of this and what are you doing with it right now you're wasting it and that that to me is what i take from it is like um i have the thing that in the future will be priceless and unattainable and i'm so frivolous with it and i say yes to things because I don't want to be rude to someone. I get distracted because something's happening in the world. I, you know, I get overwhelmed and I'm like, I'm going to take a break. You know, like, and you experience it in little, like already, like if you have little kids, you're just like, dude, like a year ago, like that's gone, right? Like, these periods are so fleeting and so short. And in the moment you want it, you want, like, the next thing, you want to get out of it. I can't wait till they walk. I can't wait till they, you know, talk. I can't wait till they drive, whatever it is. And then, actually, when those moments come, all you'll wish for is more of what you wished away in the moment because you're entitled or short-tempered or frustrated or whatever.

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How do you reset? Do you find yourself going down those rabbit holes too?

Yeah, of course. I mean, I try to... The good news about the present moment is that you're always getting another one until the moment that you don't. And so, to me, how quickly can you get, like... Shit, I'm throwing the phone down. Like, I'm stopping right now. Not, like, tomorrow I'll do better, but, like, I'm stopping right now. It's like, how fast can you get back to center? It's, to me, like, the key skill, both as a parent and as a person in this crazy modern world. um but you know today was rough okay how do you do better tomorrow and how do you stop whatever the direction you're going in that you know you shouldn't be going in and how quickly you can do

that what are your indications do they come from you do they come from your wife your kids

yeah i mean i feel like parenting is a lot of uh after they go to bed you're like man what are we doing why did it go this way you know it's that sort of debrief at night um to me that's that's you know and it's very rarely um and we crushed it today like it's usually like why did we try to squeeze one more thing in you know why did why did why did why did i i remember i was putting my son down to bed the other night and uh you know first i can have a little more ipad time then i gotta brush my teeth oh no now i gotta go to the bathroom again or oh no i'm not in water oh i'm hungry even though i had dinner twice you know all the stuff that he's making up for uh you know not going to bed and uh then i finally he's like all right we go in his room and i'm like all right let's get in bed and he's like no no i'm sleeping on the floor and i go what you're not sleeping on the floor like and then we just got in this huge you know it's like what do you mean you never said i couldn't sleep on the floor we're getting this whole fucking argument about why couldn't sleep on the floor and then i was finally like i was like why do i have an opinion about this you know like sleep on the floor i don't care i realized like i think in the moment it was like i didn't want him to sleep on the floor because here's what i knew what happened he would sleep on the floor until like the middle of the night and then wake up and then he'd come in our room you know and i was like i wanted sleep right i i was extrapolating what this means with you know like instead of like going like i don't care where you fall asleep uh i was thinking about what it means if you sleep here or there right and so anyways um finally i'm like i just i realized i'd gotten down that i was in a battle of wills that like i had the power to end right then by saying sleep wherever you want you know if you want to sleep on this teddy bear on the floor like knock yourself out so anyways he lays down and uh just when i think he's fallen asleep and i go to leave he goes, I'm ready to sleep in my bed now. And I go, all right, let's go. And he walks and he falls asleep in his bed. And it was such an illustrative one for me because it was like, it's like, I know when it started. It started when we walked into his room and he said, I wanted to sleep on the floor. And I said, no. And then it ended with him realizing that he didn't want to sleep on the floor and uh he would rather sleep in his bed and that whole argument you know where i argued one thing and then i realized i was wrong and then i changed like that whole thing in the middle it just didn't fucking need to happen you know like the whole like it it would have worked itself out had i been uh a little more go with the flow about something and i think i what i took from that what i as a parent is just like i need i need to be more Like, does this thing actually matter? Like, why am I thinking that this matters?

And I'm thinking that it matters because I'm thinking about what it means as opposed to that it means nothing, right? And that I could save us both a lot of trouble. And in fact, like, not only did it work itself out, but it worked itself out, except we also had a big argument in the middle, which has a has a has a cost to it right and so look i'm not saying you do everything your kids want and you let you know it's you got king baby walking around but um most of the conf like when i think about the things i had conflict with with my parents how many of those in retrospect were significant in any way you know and how how many of those things are they glad that they went to mattresses on and and i i i i'm trying to i'm trying to get better at that you're saying pick your battles totally and and and by pick your battles i mean avoid 99.9 of the battles because

they don't matter so how do you guide of that i mean now we're moving into fatherhood yeah how do you i'm just curious how do you guide them without confrontation without discipline disciplining them yeah i mean yeah of course that's the

challenge is like you're not creating this fantasy world where they get to do whatever they want whenever they want it but at the same time like like again why do i care whether you sleep on the floor or their bed there's no lesson in here what what there actually is is me wondering about the consequences of this for me, and two, my desire for control, right? Like, you want to do this, and I want you to do this, and why am I going to let a six-year-old win? You know, like, most... So, like, in a way, you think, like, oh, I'm giving them discipline, I'm giving them structure, it's very helpful. Actually, you're just showing them, like, authority is arbitrary and pointless this and, you know, should be fought against it. Like you're actually sending the exact opposite lesson you want. And again, I'm saying this all as someone who constantly struggles with this. So I'm not saying this is something I'm good at. It's precisely the opposite. But I mean, look, you teach your kids by example and you teach your kids often in the moments when they are open to being taught because they've experienced some kind of consequence for a choice or there is an opening because of something that's happened for you to actually insert that thing, that bit of wisdom or experience or lesson or whatever. That's kind of how I think about it.

Okay. I mean, you wrote a whole book on Stoic fatherhood, correct?

Well, I did a book called The Daily Dad, which is just sort of, yeah, classical or ancient lessons, like, one a day. I think the problem with parenting books is, like, you're supposed to read this book and then just be good. Like, I'm supposed to read about, when my kid is 13 months, I'm reading about how you teach things to a 13-year-old. Like, I'm not going to remember any of this. So the idea of The Daily Dad is it's an email, too. The Daily Dad email is just one thought a day. I think, to me, parenting is like a series of values and lessons that you've got to be reminded of over and over and over again. And that's kind of what I've tried to do with it. What are some of the most important ones that stick out to you? Yeah, I think the most important one, I think, is just how fast this is all going and that you uh every time i i cut my kids fingernails or take them to get a haircut i go like that's that much life right there that's that much uh of the brief window that they live in my house right that uh that we get to do things together and i i try to be always aware just as like that like memento mori is uh about your own mortality realizing that like i don't have a two-year-old anymore i my three-year-old is dead and gone my four-year-old is dead and gone like you are cycling through those ages and they will never be that thing again to me that's like one of the ultimate parenting lessons the other one uh my wife and i were related to that was like We were like, do we want to, there was like some kids concert or something, we were thinking about going. And we're like, but we got to get in the car, it's like a 30 minute drive, are they going to appreciate it? And it was just like, how many more times are they going to want to do this? you know um probably not that many more like at some point there's the last time and are we going to be glad that we stayed at home and didn't do the thing are we going to be glad that we did the thing so realizing that you only get so many shots of these things i think is a big one um that uh you are the voice that's going to be in their head and what is that voice like Is it a negative voice? Is it a positive voice? Bruce Springsteen talked about how we're going to be either ancestors or ghosts to our children. Like an ancestor guides and a ghost haunts. And what kind of example are you going to show? Shit, I never thought of it like that. And it's not just like what you say, but also like, is dad working on his shit? Is mom working on her shit? Or are they just foisting that stuff on you? And so like thinking about getting serious about the stuff that you know you need to address, you know you need to work on, I think that's one.

And then related to that, I think like I have, I've never lost my temper at my kids. And then afterward been like, I'm so glad I did that. Yeah. I have like on my phone, you know, it cycles through like pictures of my kids like as my home screen. And one of the things I'm always struck by is like how little they were. Like, I was real fucking pissed at a very small person. Like, it doesn't age well. Like, the things you get upset about, the things that you thought were a big deal, as they get older and you get a little better at this parenting thing, I think that the disparity of them in you becomes more obvious. And I'm like, what do I give a shit about the backseat of the car so much for, you know? Or like, you know, you walk in and he's drawn on the wall or, you know, broke something, you know what where's where's the car that my parents were really concerned about me spilling fucking my mcdonald's ketchup on like it's in a it's in a fucking cube somewhere yeah like it doesn't like it did not ultimately affect the resale value of said car it did not teach me any lessons about cleanliness, like, it was just like a stupid argument that we had, right? Like, and I try to think about that. Again, not good at it, but I try to go like, where will this thing be in the future? Am I going to care about it? You don't put importance on any things. Yeah. Yeah. Or I try to get better at not the human or the thing. What do I care more about? The marriage advice is like, do you want to be right? Do you want to be married? Do you want to have a good relationship with your kids or do you want to get your way all the time? How do you know if you're a... I mean, this is a really good way to put it, if you're a positive or a negative in your kid's mind. How do you gauge that? To me, I think... it comes down to to like like no no parent is perfect every every every therapy session ultimately ends up in all the ways that your parents could have done better or whatever right but like you know people say like oh my parents did the best they could i'm not sure that's always true and so like are you actually doing your best like that's to me the question is like

like i go you know i'm i'm i'm doing my best and i go am i because i feel like i try a lot harder at other stuff like i'm not saying parenting is easy but i feel like i do a lot more work evaluating myself professionally i bring in a lot more help professionally i i measure myself better professionally and then a lot of times as a parent i'm just winging it And then I want them to let me off the hook and go, Dad was doing his best. Like, I'm not sure that's true. And so that does kind of push me to try to do better. Damn. It's like me. I'm like that. Yeah, because, look, and I think culturally, for men especially, right? Like, your job was where you were supposed to be, like, your best, where you prove yourself.

And then parenting was like an afterthought and the expectations were, you know, that expression of the soft bigotry of low expectations that that's basically dudes for all of human history when it comes to parenting. And like, I don't know, I want to do better than that.

I mean, what are the steps that you're taking, that you're thinking about taking, that create a better balance?

Yeah, I mean, to me, a big one is like, okay, so you're really good at what you do, you're successful at it. And then you think that that somehow, like, exempts you from having to do shit at home, right? like um like obviously look managing your time and delegating where you can but you're like why am i assuming that like my wife should make the school lunches or there's this like they did this interesting study of like schools where like they needed something at home like like there's problem at the school right and the the the the receptionist or the principal or whatever had to call the parent like what percentage of the time do they call the dad probably a very small percentage and there there's there's the assumption of the person making the call and then there's also the reality of like the family like and um like i've worked really hard and my wife and i Like, whenever we hire, like, an assistant or we're, like, we're, like, there's no, we're both the default parent. Like, it's not, like, call her if there's anything important and then call Ryan if you can't reach her, you know? Like, I want to make this a thing that I value. and that like like i heard someone say like your kids are not a distraction from your work they are your work and that's easy to say but like do your what does your calendar say you know what is your division of household labor say like a kid has a birthday are you just showing up at the birthday party or did you make planning decisions you know did you make purchase decisions did you did it catch you off guard that it was there but like like there's just there's just a uh an assumption i think it's look it's obviously better than it's ever been before but there is like an assumption that like that's not like the term for this is emotional labor that's not emotional labor that the father should have to do unless they're like a single parent or you know whatever um and uh i'm not saying it came easy and i'm not saying it came voluntarily i'm just saying like in my marriage and in my family my wife and i have tried to not do that and it's been like i've had to learn how to do a bunch of things that i would not i would not normally be inclined to do uh or be good at i've had to figure out how to do

man it's just a man it's such a dichotomy right i mean i think about this all the time i've talked about this several times on the show i mean my wife and i have like this little bitty fucking hunt cabin that's it is like looks like you can blow on it fall over yeah you know it's it's it's all one room you know the kitchen the bathroom it's all one room yeah and uh and and before my kids were born we would spend weekends down there and it just we live out in the women yeah we live out in the woods you go down there you're really out in the woods and that's the some of the happiest times i've had with my wife is down there zero there's no cell reception there's no internet there's nothing and um and i keep coming back to this which i love doing this but i'm happier right there no distractions i'm in the moment sure and you know and now um that that's that i'm close to being able to just i could do that i could get rid i could sell the studio. I could get rid of all of this, sell it. It'd be totally fine financially and actually live that life where I'm 100% dedicated to my family. 100% of the time.

and knowing that I would probably be happier. Yeah. I'm 99% sure I would be a happier person. You know, if I put all the... Even though I love doing this, you know, put all the world's distractions just away from my life, but I still fucking come back to this. Yeah. Because I love it. And I also think about, you know, would it be better? better would it would it would it realistically would it be better for me to be there a hundred percent of the time for my for my wife and my two kids and what kind of example is that setting for my son because that's not how society is set up yeah i think it's an interesting question is it better for them is it right it's it's it's better for them right now is it better for their future yeah because they're they're they're going to hit a point where they're going to have to provide for their family uh it's unattractive i personally think it's unattractive for a woman to whether whether he is a wealthy financially wealthy man or not a trust fund baby you know i don't think i don't think women i don't think that's a real attraction sure you know um yeah to find it in a partner sure you know and so if he doesn't if he doesn't see me providing for the family in doing things that, in my opinion, men should be doing as the leader of the household, then what happens to him when he comes of age to find a wife and have kids and provide? If he never had that example, then what is that going to lead to? And he may not ever find somebody if he doesn't get that example.

I remember a couple weeks into the pandemic, my wife was like please never be home this much ever again you know um and like obviously i had to do some work on like being like okay i have i have to be i have to become a more stable like chill person because this this is it this is a currently operating in a way that's only good in small doses right that wasn't good at the same time like to take the energy and the drives and the competence and the mastery all the stuff that you have and be like i'm gonna put all this at home you know i think that's also how you get fucking stage parents and um you know uh sports parents like what are stage parents i just mean like the parents that make all facets of their existence their family right and then all of a sudden you're just channeling that energy yeah at home like it's there's an intensity and an and a and uh an energy that has to have her release valve and i think work and impact like that shouldn't all be on your family like there we're meant to go out and do things and to figure things out. And it's like, so you're just going to drive them to school and then play golf all day? Like, I'm not sure that's not thriving as a human being either or setting a good example either. So there's a tension. But yeah, I think one of the things that bothers me and I think we all delude ourselves with it is we go like, I do this all for my family. it's like no you don't you stop needing to do this for your family a long time ago this is about you right and um and that's not to say it's not about them at all but like you're a billionaire dude like you're not doing this for anybody you're doing this because there's never enough for you and so um it can be very easy to take something selfish and make it seem like it's selfless. Justify it. Yeah. And so understanding the tension between those two things. And like what I've tried, I've tried to say and work on a way that I can be really good at what I do and keep it within some reasonable hours, boundaries, and systems. Like I, to me, like what I'm working on, Like, I'm not trying to sell the most books in the world, have the most impact in the world, or be the most famous or any of that. I'm trying to be really good at what I do and be a really good parent. And that, in a way, that's actually a more difficult needle to thread

than just being all in one or all in the other. And I think it's important that we understand that that's possible to do. like the athletes that i admire or the entrepreneurs that I admire or the leaders that I admire are not the maniacs, right? It's the ones who seem to be reasonably well-adjusted human beings also, right? Like sometimes you read about these like, this is my daily routine. This is my system. This is how so-and-so prepares in the off season. And you're like, well, I'm sure that's all really easy to do if you don't fucking see your family you know like if you're a piece of shit that's easier yeah um it's it's can you can you be in great shape can you do what you do can you perform at a high level and do school drop off or um i don't know uh be involved and be be present when you're around you know like um can can you like that's the challenge for me like it used to be like when I was working on a book, I was just an all-consuming thing. I don't just mean the hours, I just mean like I couldn't turn it off. And now I try to judge the success on a book on like how not disruptive it is.

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Yeah, I mean, look, just practically, I try to measure, like, the stuff that I do or I say yes to, I measure it in bedtimes. Like, how many bedtimes am I going to miss for this thing? And, like, one is a lot. Two is usually too many. Right? So I try to measure it in bedtimes. So that's, like, that's kind of my North Star. Like, physically, is this taking me away, yes or no? And that's kind of how I judge, like, the stuff that comes my way. That being said, that can be a way of fooling yourself, which is like, you're there, but you're not really there. So I try to think about, like, hey, how is my emotional state, my focus, like, am I the reason that this is all dysregulated, or am I the calming presence, right? And, and I think too often, like I'm, it's like, I came home amped. I came home worked up. I'm stressed. I'm distracted. And you can like, I think you can just feel the energy in the family dynamic. And I want to be the solution, not the problem. and i think i know i'm i'm not taking care of the things i need to be taken care of and i'm not doing what i'm supposed to be doing when i am i'm the problem you know like like if the three-year-old is upset because they're a three-year-old great if the three-year-old is upset because you snapped at them because you were trying to play with them and check your phone at the same time you're the problem and so i i try to think about that like how am i fitting into this system this this sort of wavelength as opposed to, I want to make it all about me.

Makes a lot of sense. Makes a lot of sense.

And then you should have a spouse and a family dynamic, co-parent, whatever it is for you, where they're like, dude, what was that? You know, like, I think my wife and I talk a lot about, like, let's back each other up in the moment, you know? Let's not throw each other under the bus in front of the kids, but, like, afterwards, like, yo, you can't do that. Like, you know you can't do that. you saw you saw when you made that choice right it goes both directions but like i think if if um if if you're not making each other better as parents you're not you're not doing your job

yeah yeah you know steve ranella's book yeah about outdoor kids and then inside world i mean there's so many studies to talk about you know the more kids are outside the the the i mean the the percentage of them having depression decreases dramatically i mean less screen time depression decreases dramatically you're raising your kids on a farm yeah correct my my son's my

youngest is in first grade and when he started in august it was the first time he ever sat at a desk because he went he did kindergarten and pre-k for several years at an outdoor school like they would go there was no buildings and they did it outside rain or shine you know they ate their lunch around a campfire and they did all the stuff outside that's awesome and it was incredible and that kind of education called i think it's just called a it's like a nature school or an outdoor school I guarantee you there's one around here. And it was incredible. And, you know, that was a big, big choice for us. And then, you know, we, like, one of our big things is like, okay, sure. Screens are, maybe better parents than us could exist in a screen-free household. That ship has sailed. but like we try to use them to like how is that an entry point into a world that we we are by nature of where we are financially and the freedom we have like we i can show you that world right like my my boys got really into this podcast called greeking out um which is it's all about the greek myths it's amazing uh it's like 10 seasons they listen to every episode multiple times and so like we went on a road trip across greece going to rome this year like you get if they get interested in a thing like because they watch a video about it they hear about it like let's go experience that thing in real life um so to me like one of the most important skills you can have in life is first curiosity, but then second, the ability to take that curiosity to its natural conclusion, right? Like if you're interested in something or you don't know about something, do you have the skills to go figure it out? You know, like there are books about that. There are videos about that. There are podcasts about that. There are places we can go. There are experts about this thing. There's AI, right? Like how you, like to me, I try to see the screen as an entry point into the enormity of the world. And then it's like the algorithm is exposing themselves to stuff. And then because they're interested in it, like my job as a parent is to take them down that rabbit hole. Okay. And so that's kind of how we think about like learning and doing stuff. I like that. Like, oh, we're going on this road trip now, I guess. like you know um or and i'm i'm showing them stuff right well it's like like i showed my son this like saturday night live video he thought it was hilarious and then you know um it's like oh

you want to take an improv class now done you know or oh did you actually know like lauren michael's papers are at a museum in austin let's go do that so like that that idea of like they have that flicker of interest or um uh awareness of something how do you how do you take them down

that rabbit hole so they show interest and you immediately act on it yeah yeah and and like it's

not heavy-handed but it's like oh there's so much more of that you don't even know and that's like that gets me excited right because like sometimes it's something i know a lot about and i get to show you all the things that I know about it and that I love about it. And then sometimes it's something I know nothing about, and we get to go learn about that together.

Do you introduce things to...

as well yeah yeah you're it's like you're always like um what about this what about that and you know you don't have a great hit rate but when you when when it when it um when it lights them up that's like the best like music movies um yeah nice let's talk i'm dying to talk about this

all right churchill yeah okay i didn't grow up with money yeah was never around it you know and uh now i find myself making a pretty decent amount yeah and i don't know where to look to you know how do you raise kids with that keep them humble keep them from being entitled keep them from idolizing shit yes fucking cars watches whatever you know the the yeah luxury items or you know how do you do it i don't know and and you don't know whether you see all these people that have grown up with it and a lot of times i don't like way they turn out you know i don't wish that for my kids i'll say that and you don't know if you're

doing a good job until it's like too late yeah no i think i think it's the thing that keeps parents up at night um i remember i was talking to matthew mcconaughey one time and he said you know there were a lot of things when he was a kid where it was like we can't but then you find yourself in a position as a parents very different and it's like like we're not going to like we don't do that that that challenge like in a way it's not easier because it's hard to not have enough but it takes the choice out of things right like yeah um you know and i think i think not to idealize the past but like there used to be society was the the the income inequality was less like we've never existed with this level of income inequality in this sort of stratified world right where it's like okay now it used to be there was first class and uh economy on an airplane now not only are these different levels on an airplane but there's like private and um the people who are flying private are living in a very different world than the people who are not and how do you how do you stay in reality i think is like the first the first challenge um especially as you know people get to levels where you know it's it's inconsequential to them like what this costs or that costs um you you have to create some artificial boundaries and rules i think um

i just i don't know it's fucking tough it is because they have to like you could starve them from all of that as a parent and you can you can start but then on the other hand eventually they're going to be in it and if they don't know how to act and when they're around it then i also think you're doing them a disservice and so they really need to know how to operate in both worlds in my opinion how do you get them to operate in both worlds without becoming a self-entitled, selfish piece of shit. I mean, for lack of a better word.

And look, it's a timeless challenge. Plutarch, one of the great biographers of antiquity, was talking about how parents will spend a lot of time on their will, trying to create an estate. Who's gonna manage the estate? Who's gonna be the guardians? How much money do they get? You know? Spent a lot of time thinking about that, and not enough time thinking about, how do I raise a person with enough character that, like, they can handle it, right? Like, instead of being like, oh, we're creating a trust fund and the trust fund gives them this much per year, which is just enough and not too many. It's like, you could also just raise, spend your time trying to raise a child who has good values and a good work ethic and doesn't derive their value from luxury goods, right? So I think it's a challenge. Certainly, again, nothing close to the challenge of being a single.

on food stamps trying to raise three kids or whatever. But it comes with its own challenges. And ultimately, I think we have to model it. And then I think we have to... Like, the most valuable gift you can give your kid is not, you know, a huge estate. It's, like, the ability to, like, have the thing that lights them up, like, that they like doing, that, like, they want to spend their life doing. Like, Robert Greene, my mentor, he calls this your life's task. What is your life's task? Like, what were you put here to do? And I think our job as parents is to help our kids find that thing, to create an environment where they can find that thing and be supported and loved. in pursuing that thing um you know it's not to make them a doctor or a lawyer or to inherit the family business it's to find the thing that if they didn't do not only would they be unhappy but the world would be worse off for them not doing it i mean but i i want to say something

too just for the audience i've been i don't want to sound like a couple of elitist yeah you know sitting up here talking about this but this is this is because we're not even talking about what we have what we don't have we're just anybody who finds himself in a position that they are doing better than than their parents did this applies to them whether

does that you know what i mean look your average american has a a level of choice and privilege that a struggling family almost anywhere else in the world is not having to think about. So this is privilege, but in a way that we're all privileged, and there's just different degrees of it. But yeah, how do you raise a kid who is resilient? Like, stoicism to me is about being in control of yourself, being master of yourself, and that's what we're trying. Like, you're trying to raise kids who can go through life and are not going to be, as I said, don't say ew a lot, Don't throw in the towel a lot. Don't expect other people to solve their problems for them. How do you raise self-sufficient, resilient kids? That's the challenge of our time. And yet, it's also the most timeless challenge for us. Every parent for all time has had to deal with that in some form or another. And I think... I don't think there's one thing you do. I think it's a handful of things.

Do you think it's how you act? I mean, the things that I've learned, and my kids are very young. My oldest is close to five. But, you know, I think it is, I really am starting to think it's, the only thing that really matters is the example that you set for them. Yeah. So if you idolize your shit, they're going to idolize their shit. If you get pissed because they fucking scratch your car, break a window, whatever, break a vase, anything, you know, and you overreact and idolize the thing, that's going to be passed on.

Yeah.

Same with people. you know they're going to look to see how you treat people all people yeah not people you look up to and people that you think that you're above all people and you know they're going to take that in and in hopefully the you know the the financial aspect it doesn't have any relevance if you if

you lead by example yeah like they they say your kids uh kids don't always listen but they're always watching and like a way to think about it is like let's say you never gave them a single piece of advice like you never told your kids do this don't do that this is important that's not important this is what we believe these are our values what do you think they would deduce about what you think about those things from the life that you lead like like if you were tried in court would you be convicted of those beliefs from your actions i think that's like you know i think about this it's like okay so i write about stoicism but if if i didn't would my kids say that that's what i believe in or care about that would that be how they would describe me you know and that that like that's the message that ultimately matters like what are you what are you saying with your your deeds not your words and you say this matters and this doesn't matter and then, you know, your decisions tell a very different story. I like to say, like, you know, your calendar doesn't lie. Yeah. And neither ultimately does your, you know, your shared behavior at home.

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guarantee do you ever ask your kids for input on how you're doing oh like what can i do better yeah all the time do you really yeah what do they say they're usually like can i you should give us our ipads more stuff like that um i i think it's it's a lot to ask them to be able to i think when they're older they're going to be better at being able to verbalize like what um what they need more of and what they need less of um but uh i do try to think like hey like why isn't this working you know uh i try to like why if this isn't having the effect that i want it to have i need to do something differently instead of insisting over and over again that this is how it should go this is you know this is what i think but i don't know it's it's it's a it's a constant fucking challenge yeah and one of the one of the um one of the things uh i heard someone say that was helpful to me is like like uh the bad parents aren't thinking about whether they're doing a good job or not you know so the fact that it is a challenge and that you are thinking about it and that you're you know how are we doing here where could we do better i'm worried about this like that's not that already puts you in in somewhat elite uh company you're a better parent by yeah you're you're in the better parent category yeah yeah yeah well i look a lot of people have kids not everyone's a parent yeah and the decision to be like hey i'm gonna i'm gonna take this thing seriously i'm gonna it's not this side hustle that i have it's like my main thing it's the main reason i'm here um and uh i'm going to i'm gonna work at this like i work at anything else which means i'm gonna take it seriously which means i'm gonna ask for advice which means i'm gonna actually look at how it's going and the results um and then i'm gonna be willing to change and try try it differently i'm not just gonna go well my parents did it this way or well this feels right to me but actually be willing to change and take feedback is uh not just change and take feedback i think i think also apologize like there are things that 30 years later my parents apologized for it would mean a lot to me right like i don't know about you but like if my parents were like hey you know what when you a teenager you really clearly needed this and we didn't do that for you and i bet that was hard and like we thought about it more and like we wish we'd done it differently i'd be like oh my god

right so it's never too late right to apologize how how quickly can you do it now though like like can i go hey like the next day hey i don't know why i picked this fight with you about you wanted to sleep on the floor it doesn't matter to me i just love that you still let me put you down and uh picking a fight was not how i wanted it to go but i did and uh i don't want to do that i'm sorry um i mean i don't know about you but i didn't get apologized too much when i was a kid um and and you know maybe some people think that's weak or soft or whatever to me i'm trying to get better and i do it i'm not going to get Thank you. better if i'm not taking accountability and responsibility for when i don't do it the way

that i want to do it i do it especially about the phone yeah i feel so fucking guilty and i keep doing it over and over and over again yeah but i probably you know i'm like I do. I just, I have to do it. Yeah. Because I think that once again, a lead by example, because it also teaches them like they need to be able to do that too.

Or just to see you struggle with like, you're like, Hey, this is a thing I have to use, but I use it way more than I have to. And I want to use it less. So here's where I want to be. And here's where I am. And here's your dad trying to get there. to me, that's a much more relatable, a much more inspiring, and ultimately much more practical perception of your parents that mom and dad are perfect. Their word is law. Like, because kids know that's not true. They sense the bullshit. Yeah. And they resent it. And it undermines their connection and their belief in you. And so, yeah, I try to... to I try to to own that shit when I can and I try to be I try to be clear about the stuff that I'm working on and the stuff that I'm trying to get better at yeah yeah you know I'm doing a um I got

so much out of my first psychedelics uh ibogaine treatment I'm doing it again um in the in the in foreseeable future and what i'm really hoping i get out of it is some kind of perspective of what my kids think of me oh interesting i really want to see what i look like through their lens yeah and that's probably going to be a hard thing to see but um yeah i uh i just want to i want to improve and uh i just i really want to see that i saw this video of uh this billionaire

and uh someone was like you know what's it like to have a billion dollars or what's it like to be rich and he was like rich isn't having a billion dollars rich is having kids who want to come home for the holidays i think it's it's it's really important that you sort of define what success is right like people go oh you only get 18 summers with your kids and it's like legally but like you meet families and they spend a lot of time together and you're like oh that's a whole different thing i didn't know we could do that you know i didn't know that was something we could work towards and so thinking about like what the goal is and so the goal is not to have the shoes nicely lined up by the back door the shoe the the goal is not to have i remember i was talking to someone once she was she's in her 90s and she's like people used to come over and be like it doesn't look like you have kids and she was like i took that as a compliment and i i don't she's like i don't know how i could have possibly been so wrong she was like your house should look like you have kids you're like you have kids why what are you doing so like the goal is to have it's to not have these people for 18 years and then eject them and go back to your selfish life like you started a family the goal is to have the family yeah in the future and so remembering that running the things through the lens of that and again it doesn't mean giving them whatever they want whenever they want it because that is also at odds with that i would also say though like if you're a billionaire you can go visit your kids for the holidays you know they don't need to come home but the point is they should want they should want to come home right like like you should the success here is uh that that when the authority ends the relationship is still there yeah and i think uh people lose

side of that i've never heard it like that that's really good let's talk about speed reading

oh speed reading is a scam well how do i read faster i don't know it's i think it's illustrative that that's what you want to do you're not like how how do i eat food faster is there a way to have sex faster like the point is stuff that's good you want to you want it to take how long it's supposed to take so i don't know why we want to read faster like if the question is how do i read more i got lots of answers to that question but i don't think we should try to read faster right like i would say i read at a medium speed i just

spend a lot of time reading. And I spend a lot of time reading because it's worth doing. It's enjoyable to do. And also it's magic. The founding of Stoicism has a story about this. Zeno, the founder of Stoicism, he visits the oracle at Delphi, the famous oracle, and he asks what the secret to the good life is. And he's told that wisdom comes when we begin to have conversations with the dead and it's only later at a bookstore that he realizes that that's what books are it's a way to talk to people who are dead um that we can converse with marcus aurelius through meditations but we can read the speeches of churchill that we can read you know the poems of emily dickinson that uh you know we can read great novels the campaigns of the greats um it's magic it's fucking time travel like here is someone who's no longer with us transporting us to them them to us breaking down you know there's a there's a famous poem that says uh you know uh books are door-shaped like they're portals to another world and and so anyways, the point is reading is spectacular. Like, for $15 or $20 or fucking free at the library that you can have access to the brain of Julius Caesar or Napoleon, you know, you can read from Stockdale, you can read from Marcus Aurelius, you can read from Epictetus, you can read from Frederick Douglass, you can read from Abraham Lincoln. You know, this is incredible. Like, like the amount of wisdom and hard-won experience inside the pages of the book is an incredible thing and like most people are like nah i'd like to i'd like to learn by trial and error or they're like eh i don't know a lot of good stuff on instagram too uh right like it's it's ridiculous. Tolstoy talked about like, you can converse with the wisest people who ever lived and you choose not to. So I think first and foremost, understanding what reading allows you to do makes the ROI of it much clearer. Is it also entertaining and fun and relaxing? Sure. but it's an incredible thing that we have contained in these pages um the other thing is is um like you got to make time for it like there's no there's no shortcut like you got to do it you got to make time for it and if i looked at your screen time app i promise you i could find the time you know like you have the time you're just not spending it and this is for all of us like i

could read more i just get distracted by things and so one of the reasons i like carry a physical book with me everywhere is like when i sit down because i'm a little early or someone's late or i have a few minutes between here or there like i want to read a book i don't want to go into social media i don't want to go into work like i want to read um and i see that as part of my job like it's crazy like some of my best ideas some of the biggest successes i've had as an entrepreneur but also as an employee came from things i read in books but for some reason if someone had come into my office and i was sitting in a chair like this reading they'd be like i don't pay you to do this yet if i was sitting at my computer monitor checking espn they'd have no idea and so so it's it's i think we we need to do a better job understanding that reading is not just work like has a work uh benefit but it's like some of the best single best way you could spend your time and uh i know that's my case for reading right on

man well ryan i know you got a flight to catch but this was amazing this was an awesome conversation i'd love to have you back at some point we'd be honored we do have a hot question i almost forgot

one last thing hot question right audie murphy tried to enlist in the marines at 17 they rejected him for being too small. The paratroopers rejected him too. He finally got into the army by gaining weight before the physical 5'5", 112 pounds. He went on to win every U.S. combat decoration for valor, including the Medal of Honor, 28 medals total, the most decorated American soldier in history. He came home, became a movie star, and was haunted by PTSD for the rest of his life. slept with a loaded pistol under his pillow got addicted to sleeping pills locked himself in a hotel room and kicked a cold turkey and then he did something

Something nobody at his level was doing in the 1960s. He went public, talked openly about combat trauma, demanded the VA take it seriously, died in a plane crash at age 45. Here's the question. Tell me about Audie Murphy. What does the smallest, quietest guy in the room, becoming the most decorated soldier in American history, tell us about what real toughness actually looks like?

Well, they told us quite a bit about Audie Murphy right there. just an incredible human being an incredible american uh he has a memoir called to hell and back which uh i should have brought you because it's an amazing book one of the great memoirs of the 20th century i'll tell you one little story about audie murphy that all those accomplishments are incredibly impressive um one of the ones he doesn't get enough credit for that i think in in a way is it's not harder but it's rare is um so he becomes a movie star country musician right and and he's asked to do a bunch of endorsements. And he turns down all cigarette and alcohol endorsements because he doesn't want to model that for kids. And so I just think he did a lot of feats of discipline and a lot of feats of courage. Saying no to money is a thing that a lot of brave and powerful people have found it hard to do. Um, and, uh, I just, I, I, in a way that's like, there's physical courage and then there's moral courage and the moral courage to say, Hey, I'm not going to do that. It doesn't feel right to me is courage that we don't celebrate enough. We don't, we don't give out medals for that kind of courage. And then the courage to speak out and to, to speak honestly about what you're struggling with, like vulnerability, like, Hey, I'm not okay. Hey, even though I've capable of all these things, this thing is kicking my ass. I'm struggling with this thing. again that's another form of courage that that we don't we don't celebrate enough and we don't hold up enough uh and and it's it's uh and we wonder why it's you know we wonder why it's rare and and um it it uh it moves me just just as much he's an incredible person and uh you you read some of those medal of of honor citations for those guys and it's just absolutely unreal right yeah yeah there's a

follow-up here okay you're gonna like this what does this story say to every influencer right now selling alpha males, alpha male stoicism.

Yeah, uh, I, uh, Andrew Tate is a fucking abuser of women, a shitty person, a sex trafficker. And the idea that like, that's who you should be taking life advice from is insane. Right? Stoicism is not a recipe for making you a better sociopath. It is not this pick and choose thing where you take a couple motivational quotes and then you put it up next to an AI-generated picture of Marcus Aurelius with a 12-pack and you're like, I get it. It's a philosophy. And It's a philosophy built around virtue. And the four virtues of stoicism, courage, essential, discipline, essential, wisdom, essential. But the fourth is justice. That's ethics. That's the standards you hold yourself to. That's your contribution to society, to the world. And none of the other virtues are of any worth, if not balanced out by or in fact directed at justice right like um courage on the battlefield sure very impressive but what if you're fighting a horrible war like i was in stayed in franklin uh and you know walked past the confederate statue And, you know, it says, there have never been braver men or a cause more honorable. It's like, I can think of quite a few causes more honorable. Like, other than Nazism, it was literally the worst cause. Like, literally the worst cause to ever go to war for. Now it's complicated. A lot of the men were drafted. Most of them didn't own slaves. They were told a bunch of lies by the slave powers. But...

let's not lie to ourselves about what that heroism was used for and what it would have looked like had it triumphed. The world would have been a worse place. In fact, their virtue, that military valor was weaponized and spent in the wrong way for the wrong cause, right? And so that's ultimately what philosophy is designed to help us wrestle with. It's like, what's right and wrong? What do we owe other people? Are we making the world a better or worse place? And look, if the ideas of masculinity and toughness and resilience, if that's what initially attracts you to stoicism, awesome, right? You just can't stop there. And I think probably you see this in your line of work. The recruiting poster is what gets the people in the door, right? But ultimately, you got to buy into the values and the cause larger than yourself. And that if that's not you, that's actually the most dangerous person Because, like, the violence and the power and the strength, all that stuff is, like, it's dangerous if not moderated by and controlled by this ethical compass. It can become very addictive. Yeah. Yeah. That's a good question. everyone should read uh to hell and back by audie murphy just like an incredible an incredible book right on yeah well ryan dude thank you thank you man this was

awesome this was awesome i really appreciate you coming i had a great time i hope you come back

yeah sweet

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