Be This Kind Of Person | Ask DS

In matters of law, Cato was a stickler. In matters of principle, Cato was uncompromising. His opponents found him exhausting. Even some of his friends thought he was impossible. Yet as we wrote about recently, people who bumped into him in the street were always surprised. By how nice he was. By how low key he was. There was the man who struck Cato in the baths, not aware of whom he was fighting with, only to be unceremoniously forgiven by the great Roman he had assaulted. There were the local dignitaries who didn’t notice the powerful politician in their midst, and were gently reminded that future visitors might not be as easy-going as Cato. Again, few would have described the meticulous Cato as low maintenance, but in an important way–which is to say, ironically in unimportant things–he was. We should follow this example.---And in today's Ask Daily Stoic, Ryan addresses questions after a talk he gave to employees at the new Austin Public Library about how he curates his bookstore, the importance of having a physical space for books, the huge benefits that reading out loud provides for your brain, and more. You can watch the full speech and Q&A on the Daily Stoic YouTube channel here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=FUY7igobTqY ✉️ Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Check out the Daily Stoic Store for Stoic inspired products, signed books, and more.📱 Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, FacebookSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info. 📢 Share | ⚙️ Manage Subscription

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:02Ryan Holiday?

  Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, where each day we read a passage of ancient wisdom designed to help you in your everyday life. While on Thursdays, we not only read the daily meditation, but we answer some questions from listeners and fellow Stoics who are trying to apply this philosophy just as you are. Some of these come from my talks. Some of these come from Zoom sessions that we do with Daily Stoic Life members or as part of the challenges. Some of them are from interactions I have on the street when there happened to be someone there recording. Thank you for listening, and we hope this is of use to you.

• 0:45Ryan Holiday?

  Be this kind of person. In matters of law, Cato was a stickler. In matters of principle, Cato was uncompromising. His opponents found him exhausting. Even some of his friends thought he was impossible. Yet, as we wrote recently, people who bumped into him in the street were always surprised by how nice he was, by how low-key he was. There was the man who struck Cato in the baths, not aware of whom he was fighting with, only to be unceremoniously forgiven by the great Roman he'd assaulted. There were the local dignitaries who didn't notice the powerful politician in their midst and were politely reminded that future visitors might not be as easygoing as Cato. Again, few would have described the meticulous Cato as low-maintenance, but in an important way,

• 1:29Ryan Holiday?

  which is to say ironically in unimportant things, he was, and we should follow this example. In a world of Karens, we must get better at shrugging our shoulders at messed-up orders at restaurants. In a world of endemic understaffing and labor issues, we must be patient with customer service, including the folks who work at Daily Stoic. They're doing the best they can. Coming out of the logistical and supply chain crisis of the last few years, we have to get better at waiting, at dealing with delays, at not getting instant gratification.

• 2:01Ryan Holiday?

  Antoninus was a powerful example for Marcus Aurelius in this regard. Marcus saw his stepfather running for the office of consul, actually earning the votes that the emperor could have simply demanded as a matter of course. He saw him going into the private homes of his friends like an ordinary citizen. He watched Antoninus joke around and be joked about. He watched him deal with a frustrating customs agent, as if he wasn't all-powerful and above such inconveniences. He watched him go about his life without much fuss or entitlements. It doesn't matter who we are, what our job is, how big our bank account is, how prestigious our family is. It doesn't matter how much we paid for our ticket, how much in the right we are, or that the customer is always right. A stoic is low-key.

• 2:45Ryan Holiday?

  A stoic must be patient. Stoic must be forgiving. A stoic acts respectfully, but does not demand respect or special treatment from anyone.

• 3:08Ryan Holiday?

  Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. I had the incredible honor of being invited to address all of the employees in the Austin Public Library System back in October of 22. If you haven't been to the new library that they put in downtown Austin, it is incredible. It was, I mean, it should be incredible, considering what they spent on it. It was very delayed and very over budget, but, I mean, just even the room that I was speaking in was pretty epic. I think the whole talk is up on YouTube. I'll make sure I link to it in today's show notes. But this is me answering some questions from one of my favorite groups of people in the world, librarians.

• 3:50Ryan Holiday?

  They're doing the Lord's work, certainly here in Texas, where they're fighting all sorts of censorship and meddling and, you know, just nonsense from people who watch too much Fox News. Different story. That's neither here nor there. Here is me answering some questions on Stoicism, writing, and book banning in Texas. So I guess not really another story. Thanks for having me out. APL to your Staff Development Appreciation Day, and I'm excited to share a little snippet of our Q and A.

• 4:22Ryan Holiday?

  Do you have time for a couple of questions? All right, let's do it. Fire away.

• 4:27Speaker 01

  I've been to your bookstore.

• 4:28Ryan Holiday?

  Yes, thank you.

• 4:29Speaker 01

  It's great. I didn't know that was your bookstore.

• 4:31Ryan Holiday?

  Oh, awesome.

• 4:32Speaker 01

  My sister and son. And it's a beautiful space. That part of Ashrop is so cool, anyway. It's a beautiful space. And I was just struck going in there about, you know, how, what you said makes sense. Like, every book in there is curated.

• 4:51Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 4:52Speaker 01

  Every book was struck, chosen for a reason. And I was struck by the Marcus Reilly of being in there.

• 4:58Ryan Holiday?

  Oh, thank you. Yeah, I mean, it's funny, you know, people go, "Oh, we want to, you know, support independent retailers. I don't want to support some big multinational conglomerate like Amazon." But the truth is, most bookstores just buy their books from publishers, which are multi-billion dollar conglomerates, and distributors like Ingram, which are multinational conglomerates. And so, we just decided, like, let's dispense with all the pretense of that. And let's just actually carry books that we like, right? Like, the first thing that happens when you start a bookstore is they go, "Here's the suggested list of books that you should order from us." And that just seemed like, what's the point? Right?

• 5:43Ryan Holiday?

  If people want access to any book, they should go to the library. Or all books, they should go on Amazon. But if you want to be recommended something that maybe you wouldn't have otherwise thought of, a lot of the books, the painful part about owning a bookstore is like, we get books that the publishers aren't prioritizing because they don't sell thousands of copies a year. We have to wait for them or to ask for reprints of them. But if you want a book that, like, we have actually read and that, I think, could change your life, like, that's the idea. It's like, I want to carry books that have the potential to change your life or be one of those books that you go, "This is one of the best books that I ever read." Yeah.

• 6:26Speaker 02

  So, off the cuff, if you could make money from the public libraries could have innovation, what would your drivers be and what do you see as the exorable strengths of public libraries in current existence?

• 6:45Ryan Holiday?

  I'll start with the second part. I mean, if I'm thinking about what strengths public libraries have, it's the space, right? It's the land. This is some of the most valuable real estate in Austin. This is some of the most beautiful architecture in Austin. It's the space. And as stuff increasingly becomes digital, physical space has a premium in a different way. That's one of the things we thought about in opening the bookstore too, which is like, again, if you're looking for a specific book, you're probably just gonna grab it on the internet. If you wanna explore, if you wanna be exposed, this is the place to do it. One of my favorite novelists is John Fontaine, this book called Ask the Dust, which is maybe the greatest novel ever written about Los Angeles.

• 7:30Ryan Holiday?

  And that novel, I wrote a story about this a few years ago, that novel came out, it's published by a small publisher, and then it was lost to obscurity for somewhat strange reasons. It was lost to obscurity because his publisher also simultaneously, in 1933, 34, something like that, publishes an English translation of Mein Kampf. And Hitler sues them for copyright infringement and wins in US federal court and bankrupts the publisher. And the book loses its marketing budget, the publisher basically goes under, and the book is lost to history.

• 8:11Ryan Holiday?

  Except, there is one copy in the Los Angeles Public Library. And Charles Bukowski is wandering around there one day and finds it. He says it's like finding gold in the city dump. And this is the height of Bukowski's fame. He brings the book back. John Fontaine enjoys this resurgence. In the last couple of years of his life, the book sells millions of copies. It's made into a very mediocre movie with Colin Farrell. But it's a book that never would have...

• 8:43Ryan Holiday?

  Had this second life, were it not for a library and the physical space of the library and what connections and events and discoveries can happen inside a library. And to me, that's the magical thing about these places. Anyone else? Go for it. Do you ever read out loud? To my children, yes. I read out loud all the time. I think it's wonderful and fun. And then I read my own audiobooks, which is not so wonderful and fun. And generally makes me feel like a babbling idiot by the end of it. And I am reminded, talking about, you know, finding things you could use.

• 9:26Ryan Holiday?

  I am constantly reminded, as I read my own audiobooks, how few words I myself have ever heard out loud and thus have no idea how to pronounce them. I learned them reading and have to look them up on YouTube or whatever to be able to pronounce them. But I love reading out loud. It's, you know, such a great sort of family connection. I don't like listening to books as much, so I prefer to sort of quietly read alone by myself. Hi.

• 10:01Speaker 01

  So, well, first of all, as I have a really good dear book today, it's really a lot of...

• 10:07Ryan Holiday?

  Oh, thank you.

• 10:08Speaker 01

  ...is easy and wonderful. As someone who works here, I was curious to see if you had any idea of how we could integrate Stoic philosophy and basically really get a lot of insights into programming or events or things in the community.

• 10:27Ryan Holiday?

  That's a great question. I mean, obviously, I think all the time about how do you take philosophy, which most people think they don't need or are not smart enough for, and then how do you take Stoic philosophy, which has this negative connotation of being... About being an emotionless, invulnerable robot, and how do you make that happen to people? My first book on Stoicism, The Obstacle is the Way, I probably say the word "stoic" or mention stoic philosophy like all of three or four times. Because I was very conscious of the fact that it had this sort of headwind. And so I wanted to present philosophy

• 11:10Ryan Holiday?

  as a solution to somebody's problems, as opposed to an academic discipline or an intellectual thing. So I think one of the best ways you can popularize Stoicism is not by talking about Stoicism itself, but talk about great examples of people acting in accordance with the philosophy, or showing that philosophy is this accessible, usable thing.

• 11:39Ryan Holiday?

  So I tried to do a kids' book, these two kids' books on Stoicism for that idea. Like, they don't need to know the names of these people or the historical facts or any of that. They just need to see that, like, actually, hey, yeah, when your brother steals your toys from you, you don't control that, but you control how you respond to that. And so I've tried to think more about the substance, the actions of Stoicism, and demonstrating it that way.

• 12:06Ryan Holiday?

  But I guess I would try to start there. And then, you know, I think Gladiator's a great movie. And I think, like, finding ways into these... I think the reason when someone said, "Hey, you should read Marcus Aurelius and Epictetus," the reason I went and picked up Marcus Aurelius first is that I remember him as the old guy in the movie Gladiator. And so I try not to judge... I try to go where people are and try not to judge what their entry point to those things is. And so with Daily Stoic, I spend a lot of time, you know, posting inspirational quotes on Instagram and making YouTube videos and reels and stuff on TikTok.

• 12:50Ryan Holiday?

  Because, like, I love books. And when I want to learn about something, I think I should go read a book about that. That is not how the vast majority of people think about things. They think about Wikipedia, or they think about social media, they think about videos. But that can be the entry point to that thing, and I know that because I talk to so many people and go, "You know, Marx's Realism was the first book of philosophy I've ever read." They'll tell me that one of my books was the first book that they have read since high school. And I love that. I think our job should be getting people into the ideas by whatever means necessary and whatever entry point, you know, is as accessible to them as possible.

• 13:32Ryan Holiday?

  But I love that you're thinking about that, and however I can help, just let me know. Anyone else?

• 13:38Speaker 01

  I know what you mean about you can't step into the same river twice and how that relates to books. The first time I read Confederacy of Dunces, I thought it was laugh-out-loud funny, and I would recommend it to people. And then, like, ten years later, I read it, and I thought it was satisfying. But I think it kind of relates to like, and I think about that a lot, and I was like, and I haven't been ready to read it again because I was like, what am I going to think of this?

• 14:07Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, you know, it's funny, because Ignatius Riley is a loser. And it's funny because he's not aware that he's a loser. And it kind of depends on how, do you relate to him as a loser, do you relate to him as someone who's better than all of the people? I think it depends on where you are. But I was actually just thinking of this the other day, because as we've sort of seen downtown Baskerville revitalized, little new things are happening. And a guy started a hot dog cart on the corner. And I was getting a hot dog one day, and I was like, "You know what's there here? I have a book for you." And I went, and I got him a Confederacy of Dunces, which I was so excited to, because like you, I thought it was the funniest book of all time. And then as I was handing it to him, I was like, "I hope he's not insulted." Like, I hope he's not...

• 14:50Ryan Holiday?

  And it is interesting, like, these books operate in different contexts, and depending on where you are in your life at that moment, you get something totally different out of them. Which is also why I think this idea of banning books that make us uncomfortable or challenge us. ...or controversial, or inappropriate, or whatever, is so dangerous. Because what you see in it, it might be radically different than what other, somebody else sees in it. And once you start that process, that's what Fahrenheit 451 is. He has this great, very politically incorrect passage in the book that I won't repeat, but he goes, "We banned these books because this minority group was offended, and we banned these books because this minority group was offended," and da-da-da-da-da.

• 15:34Ryan Holiday?

  And the result is, there were no, there was no reason to read anymore after they got rid of all those books. And so, we never step in the same river twice. And then also, everyone else is always stepping into their own river, and their own version of the river, and coming to it at a different time. And I think we have to have a lot of empathy, and openness, and patience with that. But I do think, I still think Confederate Conference holds up pretty well, and it's pretty fucking funny.

• 16:03Ryan Holiday?

  Thank you guys very much, I really appreciate it.